a sense of joy and then a panic

My two library books are due tomorrow and can't be renewed again for whatever reason, so I just spent the last three and a half hours finishing them: The Priest by Thomas Disch, and Tik-Tok by John Sladek.  Both turned out to be pretty weird books, in different ways.

I've been wanting to read Disch for a while because he seemed like an interesting guy, but I only picked this book because the library had nothing else by him (I was looking for The Genocides).  The Priest is about - I guess - Father Patrick Bryce, a priest who also happens to be an alcoholic with a fondness for teen boys.  He's not the most likable dude, but he's also not the least likable dude.  The really bad guys are Nazi-homages, unfortunately, obsessed with a German saint and with holding young pregnant women hostage in a grotesque shrine to keep them from having abortions.  Father Bryce is blackmailed by a whole number of people and suffers strange flashbacks to the Dark Ages, where he's a nasty Inquisition-supervising bishop named Silvanus.  I enjoyed some of the writing and the complexity promised by the plot, but my interest/enthusiasm waned.  I'm not sure why.  I didn't get how all of it was going to tie together, and I disliked everyone.  A lot of the content just tasted like vomit - noxious people, medieval torture, catacomb prisons, murder, Satan tattoos.  And unfortunately, as the plot clumsily wraps up it starts feeling more like The Da Vinci Code.  I was okay "spending time with" Father Bryce - he was a well-grounded, complicated character who I felt bad for - but then the reader is splitting time between him and Silvanus, who's just ick, and then with a bunch of other characters who become "action heroes" out of nowhere.  I'm like, "Wait, where the fuck is Father Bryce?  Oh yeah, still trapped in the Dark Ages.  Damn it!"  I am perfectly willing to concede that I was not the right audience for this book, because I can't say that I "got it," and my feelings toward it are very... meh.  I kept forgetting who the hell all these damn people were and all the horrible things they'd gotten away with and how they knew each other.  What may stop me from trying more Disch, though, is the dialogue.  Oh man.  All his characters sound the same, and none of them sound like people.  It's surprising in a book that is otherwise competently written.  You've got a 12-year-old girl sounding the same as a middle-aged male priest - and this is a Just No for me. 

Tik-Tok I wanted to read because of the premise: in the foreseeable future, the incredibly misanthropic and cunning robot Tik-Tok goes from being a servant of various bizarre households to an acclaimed painter to a healthcare CEO to Vice Presidential candidate - killing humans as the whim strikes him on the one hand and playing to whatever vision of robot-hood humans want from him on the other.  I loved this book.  It reminded me of darling Catch-22, which I incidentally thought was science fiction the first time I read a snippet of it.  Sladek clearly had a blast creating an absurd vision of the future - starting with Ridiculous and Bad Situation 1 and just making it worse and worse.  But Tik-Tok doesn't go down like vomit, because it's very funny (to me, anyway) and it doesn't waste time getting you to care about anyone.  Children, pets, love interests - forget it.  They'll probably all end up in the grinder.  This is one of my favorite passages (it reminded me of the Canadian pipeline project currently being pushed through Nebraska):

The USS Leviathan would not be anything like an ordinary carrier.  It would be a monster platform, some fifty miles across and equal in area to the state of Delaware.  It would launch both missiles and planes of all types, and it would be capable of fast movement around the countryside.  

In the first design, Leviathan was to run on wheels, thus promoting the interests of a large rubber company.  But the number of tires required turned out to be 135 million, plus spares (a tire change would be needed every hundred yards).  Unless a complete rubber factory were taken on board - one of the alternative suggestions - the entire ship would have to hover.  Grumbling, the rubber company settled for a contract to provide the giant hovercraft skirt required.

Both houses of Congress shoved through the necessary legislation.  There were objections that Leviathan would cost too much, would be a sitting duck, would devastate any land over which it happened to hover.  But by now the Army wanted it as badly as any of the dozens of states, thousands of companies and millions of workers.  The combined force of industrial, political, military and commercial arguments rolled the project over all opposition as one day Leviathan itself would crush down anything in its path.  One junior Senator who continued to oppose it was sent on a fact-finding mission to Antarctica while the bill was railroaded through.

From the start, there were problems called "teething troubles".  The fans which were to lift the craft were at first too weak, then (redesigned) so powerful that they blew away the topsoil for miles around the craft, created dust storms and buried small towns in soildrifts.  A computer company suggested expensive monitoring equipment to regulate each fan, but this never seemed to solve the topsoil problem.  A chemical firm then went to work on a binding agent to hold the topsoil in place; Leviathan would spray the stuff out before moving.  After months of experimentation with expensive agents, they found the best to be ordinary water.  The Leviathan was now redesigned to accommodate huge water tanks holding whole lakefuls of water.  Even so, it would never be able to stray more than fifty miles from a major water source (though thousand-mile flexible pipelines were considered).  

The truth is, I was interested in Tik-Tok because the whole robot-slaves-in-a-human-world thing seemed like it might strike the same chords as my novel, and it sort of did - Tik-Tok himself is a lot like my character, Peter, just way over the top, and at one point the political group American People First comes up with a Keep America Human slogan, much like my disenfranchised villagers come up with Keep Junction Human (I kid you not - I cracked up when I read it).  So I felt real conceptual kinship with this book, even though my novel isn't satirical, and was sad to see it end.  I'll definitely read more Sladek.

But apparently fans of The Priest find it hilarious and ironic, so maybe what all this means is that humor is subjective. I think I felt like The Priest didn't go far enough for it to really be funny to me, whereas Tik-Tok functioned entirely in the realm of the absurd. 

Is Superman A Traitor?  "in the short story “The Incident” in Action Comics #900, Superman is renouncing his American citizenship." 

Result: A Little Bit of Cosmic Rage.  Aside from the "I will never buy DC comics again!" declarations, there's actually a decent amount of soul-searching in those comments.  I have zero investment in Superman, and I'm sure this will be (a) contradicted by some previous incident, and/or (b) retconned, so I'm not sure if it's that big of a deal.  But commenter Daniella thinks it's a very big deal: "The reason he stands for truth justice and the American way is because those are God given morals. He wouldn't be Superman if he hadnt been raised by God fearing farmers from Kansas."

BUT, on a more serious note back at the first link, Bryan Reesman says: "Is Superman only considered so by us if he is an American? Is a hero only someone who allies himself with one side or one country? Isn’t a hero someone who commits selfless acts to save people, prevent catastrophe, stand up for important values or to improve people’s lives? And is a hero allowed to speak their mind and express their beliefs beyond their actions?"

That last sentence might actually be the most interesting (the other questions, and their answers, are a little too obvious for me).  That there's the kind of thing that fits mighty fine in my novel, the whole hero/puppet/golem thing.  And I love that it's being posed in the context of one of the most quintessentially heroic heroes instead of the antiheroes, who usually get this kind of introspection.  I know I'm in the minority on this one, but I've always found heroic heroes to be much more interesting than antiheroes, which is actually why I'll probably never get into GrimDark fantasy...

One of Reesman's commenters adds: "I must say that, as an Australian, I haven’t ever thought of Superman as a purely American hero. He has been a role model for people all around the globe. I don’t know if I would feel differently about this if I was American or not, but considering Superman came from ANOTHER PLANET entirely, I don’t see why people would complain."

Can I just say how much this reminds of various arguments in the DBZ fandom (which seems almost without exception to be extremely hawkish, often socially conservative - gee, I can't imagine why - as well as oddly religious)?  Rather delicious, really.

I'm making this call based somewhat off comments on Idol-watching blogs and somewhat off the American political scene today.  And a bit based off American Idol's own trends. 

American Idol's past three winners have been different versions of the same basic type: the safe white male (by safe I mean unthreatening to middle class, white America).  First we have David Cook, who I liked.  In the finals he was up against an extremely tweeny, made-for-Disney little LDS boy, David Archuleta.  Next season, I believe, was the breaking point.  It was spring of 2009 and Obama was new in office and conservatives were beginning to freak out over "losing our country."  In AI world, Kris Allen defeated Adam Lambert in the finals.  Lambert is my mother's favorite Idol contestant of all time.  He's also openly gay.  One might even say "flamboyant."  Kris Allen wasn't a bad singer, but he was very boring, and he was very safe - especially contrasted to Adam Lambert (who got the Teen Choice Award over Allen).  Churches in the South, where Allen is from, got mobilized to vote Allen in over Lambert, and were at least somewhat supported by AT&T.  Season 9's winner, Lee DeWyze, is in my opinion the worst winner - or finalist - Idol's ever had.  He was up against a white mother who sang pretty good folk music and wore dreadlocks, Crystal Bowersox.  But I predicted, correctly, that DeWyze would win - because the judges were pumping him up as a "steadily improving" diamond in the rough, and thus an "underdog," and because he was totally, totally, safe. 

I would also say that from Cook to Allen to DeWyze there has been a slide toward country music.  Further, AI has always had a voting bloc dominated by women who don't like other women, meaning female contestants drop like flies unless they have very solid fanbases.  In general, a bad male singer will last longer than a bad female singer on AI, and will often last longer than a good female singer as well. All this is especially interesting given that Seasons 1-6 were won by two black girls, two white girls, one black guy, and one gray-haired white guy.  So basically after six seasons of various kinds of diversity, we suddenly had three seasons of white male winners.  I hope it doesn't coincide with the racial hysteria gripping the country, but I'm pretty sure it does. 

So here we are in Season 10.  These trends are coming to a head.  We've got a boatload of talented singers who are all, in some way, threatening to middle class, white America. 

Among the men: scruffy Casey Abrams, who's white but sings like Screamin' Jay Hawkins, Hot Topic-inspired James Durbin, who has Tourette's and Asperger's and wears a tail, weird ass Paul McDonald, who's Thom Yorke on antidepressants, ballad-singer Stefano Langone, who's Italian, and Jacob Lusk, who's the most frightening of all.  He's black.  He comes from gospel, and sings like it.  He's emotional.  And the judges really, really, really like him.  There's been incredible blowback against Lusk from women on the internet named "Barbara" and the like, who think he can't sing, think he's over the top, can't handle his gestures or movements or facial expressions, and are basically just terrified - terrified! - of gospel.  My mother thinks he's the next Adam Lambert, and is in love.  I also like Lusk a great deal. 

Among the women: ballad-singer Pia Toscano, who looks like a lost Kardashian sister but sings like Celine Dion, country Christian blonde Lauren Alaina, who isn't really all that country and is not near as glam (nor, I predict, as presentable) as Carrie Underwood, lounge singer Haley Reinhart, who's white but sings funk and Motown and is probably going home tonight, sweet little boring Asian girl Thia Megia, who is probably going home next week, and Naima Adedapo, who actually broke out the African dance routine last night.  Yeah, good luck to you, Naima.  The public has already succeeded in knocking off "baby Diana Ross" Ashthon Jones and "baby Selena" Karen Rodriguez, who actually said things like "America needs a Latina idol" and sung songs partly in Spanish.  Yeah.  Bad move, Karen.

My mother and I have been watching since Season 1 and my mother thinks it's the most talented group they've ever had - I would certainly say it's the most interesting.  But there's not a lot of options here for the conservative AI fanbase to get behind.  Pia and Lauren will be the last two girls standing, and some say Pia will win because she's such a classic Idol type, but I doubt it.  The guys' field is more open, but there's a real lack of a Safe White Male in that bunch.  

BUT WAIT.  I'M MISSING SOMEBODY.  I'M MISSING THE ONLY OPTION... THE ANSWER TO ALL OUR PRAYERS... YOUR NEXT AMERICAN IDOL... SCOTTY MCCREERY. 

Scotty McCreery sings country.  That's all that Scotty sings - it was Motown night last night and he turned a Motown song into a country song, because damn if he's gonna sing Motown, y'all.  Whereas all those other weird/multi-ethnic contestants all claimed to grow up listening to Motown, Scotty had never even heard it!  Now the fact that he sticks to his genre is totally A-OK, even though Jacob is totally not allowed to stick to gospel.  Now, he is more country than AI usually goes.  AI has never gone for someone this country.  Carrie Underwood could and would sing mainstream pop songs when she was on AI, and Scotty, I predict, will not.  But part of Scotty's appeal is his extreme country-ness, this "back to your America" Americana that he presents.  He plays on a baseball team.  He looks like a cross between Alfred E. Neuman and George W. Bush.  He's young: 17.  He comes across as a nice guy.  He's utterly lacking in any kind of "crazy."  Lots of girls scream when he comes on the stage.  And he's Christian, wears a big cross.  In the words of one CNN iReport writer, he "can do no wrong," despite an unimpressive voice and an extremely narrow range. 

The AI public's going to be faced with an exaggerated version of the same choice they've had to make in the past couple seasons: safety versus talent (exaggerated because Scotty is so white that he's almost a parody of white America, and because he is surrounded by so many singers of superior talent).  I think they're going to go for what's safe.  They need something to cling to, after all, what with all the illegals trying to take their jobs and the Muslims trying to blow them up and the blacks trying to take their promotions and the black socialist Muslim Kenyan president in office. 

So there you have it: you heard it here first (maybe).  Scotty McCreery, American Idol 2011.

One of the most enduring characteristics of U.S. foreign policy, it seems to me, is a complete disregard for other states' sovereignty coinciding with a very stubborn insistence on American sovereignty.  At best it's Julianne Moore's character in The Lost World: "She has to touch it.  She can't not touch."  At worst it's Azathoth on the loose.  There are exceptions of course - most of the African continent appears safe from U.S. foreign policy, for better or for worse - and there are regions that are particularly prone to recurring U.S. infection (as one of my college professors said, "pray to God that you don't have oil").  Related is the characteristic to respond to a dog bite with a machine gun.

So the U.S. now has military aircraft and ships edging closer to Libya.  Because "all options are on the table."  And "they were held back until Friday because of fears that the Libyan government might take its diplomats and other Americans there hostage."  Oh dear.

As usual, people in the military are trying to drag their feet.  Why?  "There is no appetite for assigning ground troops to any mission," and "any United States military presence could undermine the legitimacy of the Libyan revolt as an internal, grass-roots movement" and "Qaddafi supporters — and even those across the Arab world who do not like the dictator — could denounce American action as being only about oil" and the problem of "the limits of force and the difficulties and complexities of contemporary military operations."  (European countries continue to be wary of their colonial legacy, too, something that can't be said of the U.S. - "what colonial legacy?" ba-dum-bing)  And of course, it would play right into Qaddafi's hands.  What would happen after the "crazy" man is gone?  Would we ("the U.N."/"NATO"/"coalition forces") stay to make sure things don't get out of hand?  Would we perhaps set a date for free and fair elections?  Or how about sending some nation-building experts?  Well, we'd need to find somebody good to replace the crazy before we could leave (maybe somebody like the fine gentlemen featured in this book).  And suddenly, aw, another itty bitty American colony.  And the U.S. would succeed in, once again, vanquishing a bottom-up democratic trend in the Middle East.  It is, as always, Congress and certain think tanks - left and right - who are pushing for action. 

Humanitarian intervention is tricky, yes.  But what's happening in Libya is not genocide.  It's a conflict between pro-regime and anti-regime forces.  There is an opposition force in Libya that wants to get Qaddafi out themselves.  There is no indication that they're slowing down or giving up, and it is impossible to know whether or not they'll succeed.  David Cameron's bombastic remarks about "not leaving the people of Libya to their fate" (too much Lord of the Rings, Prime Minister?  Gondor "called for aid," remember) are belittling and unnecessary.  The possibility of self-determination is not out of the picture here.  Not until the U.S. takes it out of the picture by taking the conflict into America's own hands.  Does that mean "sit around and do nothing"?  No.  Believe it or not, a whole range of possibilities exist between thumb-twiddling and invasion.  Humanitarian aid to opposition forces and civilians is a very good idea.  Working with refugees along the borders is another very good idea.  Military intervention is not.  Military aid in the form of training and ammunition and strategic planning might be a good idea, but I'm not convinced the U.S. would be capable of restraining itself to the level of "consultation" when trying to overthrow a regime (the U.S. has a better track record in that regard when trying to help a regime suppress opposition).  Maybe if we start calling this a "covert mission" the U.S. will restrain itself, although that would mean the involvement of the CIA.

What do the people in Libya want? 

This happy ending, however, is marred by a fear shared by all Libyans; that of a possible western military intervention to end the crisis... one thing seems to have united Libyans of all stripes; any military intervention on the ground by any foreign force would be met – as Mustafa Abud Al Jeleil, the former justice minister and head of the opposition-formed interim government, said – with fighting much harsher than what the mercenaries themselves have unleashed.

Nor do I favour the possibility of a limited air strike for specific targets. This is a wholly popular revolution, the fuel to which has been the blood of the Libyan people. Libyans fought alone when western countries were busy ignoring their revolution at the beginning, fearful of their interests in Libya. This is why I'd like the revolution to be ended by those who first started it: the people of Libya.

So as the calls for foreign intervention grow, I'd like to send a message to western leaders: Obama, Cameron, Sarkozy. This is a priceless opportunity that has fallen into your laps, it's a chance for you to improve your image in the eyes of Arabs and Muslims. Don't mess it up. All your previous programmes to bring the east and the west closer have failed, and some of them have made things even worse. Don't start something you cannot finish, don't turn a people's pure revolution into some curse that will befall everyone. Don't waste the blood that my friend Ahmed spilt for me. (via: Please Don't Intervene)

But who cares what they want, right?  It's a shame the U.S. isn't more of a vampire, really - that way we'd have to wait to be invited in.

my friends' list has exploded over something.

Good thing I wasn't checking LJ, cuz I wouldn't have gotten any of my many tasks done today.  I'm not going to comment on the TOC thing itself, because it's all the stuff that comes out of the woodwork once the TOC red-herring has been beaten to death that I find more noteworthy.  I've put my thoughts on "PC" as a slur on cucumberseed's LJ, so this is what I have left.  It's a little angry, but I'm a little angry.  I usually confine this type of thing to other people's LJs, but I feel the need to say something this time.  Particularly over things like "Most modern people are color-blind and gender blind and don’t care whether you’re a WASP or some dude from Argentina or a girl from that village in Togo."  That is not true of most people in Lincoln, Nebraska and it's not true of most people at Columbia University and it's not true of most people in Jakarta, Indonesia.  My own mother says she isn't color-blind, and she married "out of' her race and religion. 

Bondoni's argument advocating that we stop being oppressed by the PC parrots reminds me of a chain letter I got in middle school from an LDS friend, saying "75% of Americans believe in God.  Why can't we just tell the other 25% to sit down and shut up!!!"*  I responded with a long-ass convoluted email about how horrified this made me, and one of the reasons I gave was basically "Dude.  Are you seriously claiming that religious people in America are more persecuted than non-believers?"  But then the term "reverse racism" was born, and it seemed like every little inch, every little sign that maybe the demographics of power would shift to reflect the demographics of the country, that maybe the same people wouldn't have all the power all the time, was taken to be a sign that those people who never had power were going to rule, iron-fisted, over the people they "usurped." 

[This paranoid push/pull and desperate grip on diminishing power is true in other countries too, cuz humans love power and security, although it's a lot more complicated in places where the now-majority is descended from people who were enslaved by the now-minority, and the now-minority still has a lot of the country's wealth - that is, post-colonial countries.  So I'm not going to touch that.]

I don't think the majority social group in America is in any danger of being guillotined.  I really, truly don't.  Even if minorities wanted that (which they don't - I'm going to give everybody the benefit of the doubt here and say no one wants genocide), the reason they are called "minorities" is because there just aren't enough of them to overrun the majority group.  But I would like the majority social group to remember that these people who are suddenly "threatening to take your shit" - your job, your seat in the lecture hall, your place on that science fiction TOC - they didn't just fall out of the sky.  Or to keep with the SF theme, out of a spaceship.  They've been here the whole time.  In the ditches, in the fields.  In the shadows.  Taking the dirty jobs - or being forced to take them.  Does this mean your life's been roses?  Nope.  Civilization's a bitch, ain't it?  And if you want to start some kind of anti-capitalist revolution, you can count me in.

The End.  Shelly still loves you, she's just pissed.  We didn't start the fire - no we didn't light it, but we tried to fight it.

*: might not be 75.  It was somewhere in the 70s, so I just went for the median.  Also, I am well aware that LDS people have been discriminated against, but this was not LDS vs. the rest-of-the-world.  In fact, I'm sure if the statistic was reversed, and the conclusion was "why don't we just tell those Mormons to sit down and shut up!!!", she wouldn't have forwarded it to me.

Scarface and Capturing the Friedmans have more in common than you might think.  Besides both being incredibly awesome watches, that is - five out of five stars to both.  Yes, I had not seen Scarface until a couple weeks ago. 

They both revolve around "reviled villains" who have been black-marked by the society they live in - 1980s Miami, 1980s upstate New York.  After brief experiences living "the good life," something has slipped, some care has not been taken, and Tony Montana and Arthur Friedman find themselves in jail, with both their social standing and family life in ruins.  Seemingly overnight, they have become hazards to society.  Communal napalm.  And they are treated appropriately.  Their friends and neighbors have either abandoned them or left death threats through the telephone.  They've become scapegoats for a complicated illness that the whole community feels, but can't pinpoint - because nobody's going to point at themselves.  Except, of course, Tony Montana and Arthur Friedman.  True pillars of the community that they are, they will gamely carry on the mantle of their social role to their deaths.  Guilty plea, blame it on me.

Notice, however - neither Tony Montana nor Arnold Friedman are saints.  They are far from it, in fact.  CtF concludes - based off Friedman's own letters - that Friedman was a pedophile and he had acted on it (but he was probably innocent in the incredibly lurid case he was prosecuted for).  Montana smuggles cocaine and kills anyone who gets in his way, and on the side he kills anyone who gets involved with his younger sister.  This isn't Salem, Mass.  It's also not Forks, Wash., with all its "what if I'm the bad guy?" bullshit.  No, these are the Bad Guys, in-the-deed-the-glory, right down to their Inevitable Downfall. 

I wish I could find Tony Montana's speech on  YouTube, but it's all shit quality.  But here's the gist - and this takes place at a very ritzy restaurant filled with rich white people, after having chased off his wife with the admonition that she's a junkie who can't have kids - "You need people like me so you can point your fucking fingers and say 'that's the bad guy.'  So, what does that make you?  Good?  You're not good.  You just know how to hide, how to lie.  Me, I don't have that problem.  Me, I always tell the truth even when I lie.  So say goodnight to the bad guy.  Go on.  Last time you're gonna see a bad guy like this again.  Go on.  Make way for the bad guy, there's a bad guy comin' through!" 

Victimized communities is from Debbie Nathan, an investigative journalist who first suspects all the parents are participating in mass hysteria.  Not even going to try to find that clip.  Here's the policeman's quote that sets it up: "Sometimes there'd be some idle conversation about you know, another boy was sodomized five times, but my son was sodomized six times.  As if that meant something in the overall scheme of things."  And here's Nathan: "There's a whole community atmosphere that gets created in a mass abuse case like this.  There is definitely an element when a community defines itself as a victimized community, that - if you're not victimized, you don't fit into that community."

Use all your well-learned politesse
Or I'll lay your soul to waste

Heard about this from Kissing Suzy Kolber, of all places:

Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish, says it is his experience that most interracial marriages do not last long.

"I'm not a racist. I just don't believe in mixing the races that way," Bardwell told the Associated Press on Thursday. "I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like everyone else."

Bardwell said he asks everyone who calls about marriage if they are a mixed race couple. If they are, he does not marry them, he said.

Bardwell said he has discussed the topic with blacks and whites, along with witnessing some interracial marriages. He came to the conclusion that most of black society does not readily accept offspring of such relationships, and neither does white society, he said.

"There is a problem with both groups accepting a child from such a marriage," Bardwell said. "I think those children suffer and I won't help put them through it."

If he did an interracial marriage for one couple, he must do the same for all, he said.

"I try to treat everyone equally," he said.

You heard the man!  You let one interracial marriage go through soon they're all gonna want an interracial marriage!  He's just tryin' to protect the little halfbreeds from being born!

So the U.S. Navy killed 3 pirates to rescue Captain Richard Phillips.

This was to be expected (seriously, can our military resolve anything without killing people? no), but it's still sort of startling.  On the trip to Montauk last Friday the girls in the back of the van were expressing disdain over the fact that the U.S. Navy was suddenly putting massive amounts of energy into rescuing one American, when pirates have been tilling the world's seas for years and, well, it's only one American.  My reaction to their disdain was, "well, what do you expect them to do?" and I maintain that stance.  It's actually the one thing I think the military should be kept around for: protecting citizens abroad.  I don't mean protecting citizens from their own mistakes - and believe me, the U.S. government doesn't give a shit about all the Americans "locked up abroad" (foreign service officers will visit them every once in a while, and that's about it) - but protecting citizens from criminals and psychos.  Of course, the military should cooperate with any foreign government involved, and that's what embassies are there for, and in less intense situations it should be a SWAT-team-like combo of the military and the FBI, not like, tanks rolling down the streets - but on international waters, who's going to help Captain Phillips?  No one but the U.S. Navy.  The number one duty of a state is protecting its citizens, after all.

The problem is overkill.  Americans do that a lot.  The problem is instead of spending our massive defense budget on making weapons that will secure the situation without killing anyone, we spend it on making weapons that will kill more precisely, more efficiently, more spectacularly, more mechanically, whatever.  The problem is we like to shoot first and ask questions later.  It's the "cowboy hero" in us, and it's a bad habit, ridiculously reactionary.  Now we're debating whether to arm ship crews - even though the crews say they don't really want more weapons on board, because that might just invite more pirates to come steal the weapons.  My God, it's so typical.  Just like the 9/11 debates we had with foreign countries about stepping up their counter-terrorism - we wanted more armed forces and police, they were afraid that would just spark a backlash.  But hell, you know, this is one of those Vietnam lessons we never learned - we really just want to march into countries and shoot the whole place up and love the smell of napalm in the morning cuz that'll put fear of God in the hearts of the Communists... consequences not really be damned, just ignored.  What do you mean we haven't won their hearts and minds?  What do you mean collateral damage?  We killed the bad guys!  The townsfolk should be happy!

So of course we killed three pirates, of course we now want to put weapons on ships.  We put weapons on planes after 9/11, didn't we?  Honestly I'm surprised we didn't decide to invade Somalia like we did Afghanistan.  

I mean, look.  Pancho Villa kills a few soldiers in Texas -> General Pershing tries to invade Mexico.  We have no idea how to solve problems without making them worse.

When Condoleeza Rice tried to get Indonesian President Yudhoyono to step up military and police counter-terrorism efforts, he gave the counter-suggestion of stepping up education to keep terrorism from forming in the first place.  He's absolutely right.  And given that Somali pirates became pirates because big corporations had over-fished and polluted the ocean and they could no longer be fishermen - so they turned to piracy - we should invest in a more constructive, proactive solution in this case too.  "Blowing pirates out of the water" as they approach commercial vessels is not proactive.  It's also yucky P.R.

I agree with this person: "While it is understandable that the crew of the Alabama would be relieved with the rescue of their captain, the picture of the crew with American flag and obvious gestures of thumbs up and “We’re number 1” is unfortunate.  What transpired is not a pretty picture with too much Hollywood fiction coming to life. While captain Richard Phillips captors deserve little sympathy, the devolution of this event into a triumph of patriotism and derring-do says more about our national impulse to celebrate the use of violence to solve problems than it does about any willingness, or dare I say capability, to reach a greater understanding about the world in which we live.  The President will call the captain a hero and we will forgo an opportunity to elevate our national character which must appear as crass, unthinking and immature as Somalian life is rife with desperation and poverty."