The Thomas Chronicles

*** Please see Update below ***

Mr. James Lewis, at the American Thinker, writes that the British are “rapidly trying to become more like the Continent”. I do not dispute this; however, perhaps the British are further along in their Continental European-ization than we think. Mr. Lewis blogged about “Massive cuts in the Royal Navy” over a week ago, and while I agree with everything he wrote there, there is also an added dimension that needs looking at.

When the United States was attacked on 9/11 and we engaged in battle across the globe against Islamofascism, Britain, under the leadership of Tony Blair, went with us. In fact, throughout our 50-plus years of alliance, Britain has increased our force projection across the globe by approximately a factor of one-third.

However, with the news that Britain will cut almost half of its Royal Navy, a shadow has fallen between Britain and the United States.

According to the Telegraph, soldiers return on leave from dangerous overseas missions are treated to “near-squalor” conditions in their barracks. Even more ominous are reports that ships “are ignoring faults to weapons systems in order to save money but will spend cash if it is a health and safety issue.” This means that ships from the Royal Navy are setting sail into possible enemy fire without even being armed properly.

It is quite clear that Britain’s military has been degenerating for some time for conditions to reach such catastrophic levels of readiness. It can also be surmised that the British Parliament voted to go to war without allocating the money for the conduct of war.

Mr. Lewis quite astutely wrote that this is a direct manipulation on the part of the British elite to coerce “ambitious young officers” into joining the EU’s military rather than Britain’s. Internationalism is finally having its way in Britain—their hour has come round at last.

But what of the United States? Isn’t Britain still “co-equal partners” with the United States in the War on Terror, which rages across the Mideast and other parts of the world?

I think not. Not anymore.

In gutting of the Royal Navy and the other arms of the British military, Britain’s elite are also cutting their American “allies” off at the ankles. We are four years into this war with both America’s and Britain’s military working together in tandem, and suddenly we discover that their Parliament didn’t even provide funds for the war and that the Ministry of Defense is bankrupt? They wait until the consensus of opinion is that the United States is spread too thin across the world, and then makes the announcement that they will cut half of their fleet, rendering them virtually impotent.

If all this is accurate and not just a ploy to trick our enemies, this is not just irresponsible; this is close to Machiavellian in its mendacity.

Perhaps, the Tories will reverse this tide of globalism in British politics and policy, but I wonder if it isn’t already too late. And if it is, they’ll get to sleep in the bed they’ve made for themselves. By slashing their navy, Britain has handed itself utterly to the Continent, who in turn is utterly dependent on Russia for their energy supplies (without which they’ll freeze), and who is becoming more totalitarian with every passing year. Aside from their personal nuclear deterrent, Britain is virtually disarming itself, for what is Britain without its navy? (Was the Norman Conquest of England that successful?)

Haven’t they become just another backbiting sycophant whose heyday has past, like France; and who, in their apparent lack of true courage, accuses the courageous of being evil?

Have the mighty British people sunk to become little better than another marginal EU outpost?

For that matter, what use is Britain to us, now that they have joined wholeheartedly in the chorus of the envious?

God bless them, but I don’t think they know what they’ve done…

Update 1/30/07:

Commentator Captain Mike Davis-Marks wrote:

I am a Royal Navy officer in the Ministry of Defence in London and your blog saddens me, not for the opinion you are offering, but for your willingness to believe what is written in the Daily Telegraph or other peoples’ blogs. The truth of the matter is that the Royal Navy is not about to be halved as reported. In fact, even though decisions have not yet been made it is very unlikely that any significant changes will be made to the force structure at all. Furthermore, the UK is embarking on its largest warship building programme in 20 years with new larger Aircraft Carriers, Destroyers and Submarines all at various stages in the pipeline to add to the best Amphibious capability we’ve had for years. When this works its way through, the Royal Navy will be more capable than ever before. Reports of our demise are, I’m glad to say, premature.

Nothing would delight me more than if Britain remained our stalwart ally.

I’ve long admired the British people with her rich history, from King Henry the Second to Edmund Burke to Winston Churchill. There was a time when I didn’t question our alliance, that of the United States and Great Britain. It was a matter of course between two nations with a shared culture and close affinity that they should help in the defense of one another.

But in recent years, with all the mass protests against President Bush on his visits, all the subtle and vociferous anti-Americanism propounded by the BBC and other media outlets– I’m afraid my confidence in the alliance between America and Great Britain has been terribly frayed.

I do not relish the idea of the United States standing alone against the tide of world, as it increasingly seems to be the case, but it seems many of our “allies” have already abandoned us. This is, indeed, a sad business…

I truly hope I am wrong. I hope the reportage from the Telegraph is nothing more than Leftist propaganda aimed at eroding the will of the British people and her Majesty’s government (much like the Leftist propaganda here in the United States), and I invite anyone more knowledgeable than myself to refute the Telegraph’s article earlier this month.

I would be delighted to print a correction.

Update 1/23/07 3:40 p.m.:

I thought I should warn readers properly that this is a bit of a rant.

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As the President prepares to make his State of the Union speech, some pundits, newsanchors, bloggers, and God-knows-who-else are already critiquing his speech.

That would be typical enough, except the problem is: HE HAS NOT MADE THE SPEECH YET!

One blogger wrote:

Why even bother with a televised State of the Union Speech from George W. Bush? By the time Bush steps up to the microphone tonight, the entire world will already know everything that is contained in his speech. Americans who are interested will already have read the important parts of the speech on the internet or heard pundits pick them apart on 24 hour news channels.

It is the single most glaring characteristic of our manic, Tasmanian Devil world that people cannot actually stop to hear what others are saying. Including me.

The President has not stepped up the podium before Congress and already the Democrats has drafted their response, the talking heads have been analyzing his proposals and explaining in great detail why it won’t work, and bloggers are shrugging, “Why bother?”

It was a great American tradition to allow people (even the President of the United States) to have their say. This last month people were decrying the President’s proposal to surge the number of troops into Iraq weeks (almost a month) before the President actually proposed it. During the intervening time, news publications and other media outlets tore the President’s plan to shreds before it even got out of the chalks. By the time he opened his mouth to speak, his proposal was already a dead letter to many of his opponents… and also to his thin red line of his “fellow” Republicans.

I mean who cares what the President actually says? is people’s attitude.

The same blogger I quoted above queried:

I remember a time when Americans yearned to sit down and listen to words from our President. What’s changed?

Isn’t it obvious? We’ve already decided what the President is going to say before he speaks and many are queuing up to oppose it.

This is a Brownshirt tactic, or if you prefer a Straw man argument. They erect a false, weak argument, and then smash it with their overwhelming brilliance. I doesn’t matter whether it proves false in the end. Who would pay attention?

Let us calm the torrents of our brilliance and listen for a change. Perhaps, we will want to hear something he has to say.

He’s only the President of the United States.

Related Posts:

Captain’s Quarters: Bush To Focus On Domestic Agenda
Webloggin: State of the Union Speech, Why Bother?

Last month during the manic seasonal Christmas shopping, I dodged in and out of strip malls and palatial indoor affairs, which we also call malls, on the presumption of searching for gifts. What I found instead were rows upon rows of homogenized, repetitious clothing and the dull monotony of stores offering the same thing.

Oh, to be sure, there were some variation. Some clothing logos shifted the alligator (or whatever) two inches to the left rather than to the right; some shoes and jackets had bronze-colored nailheads and they were a bit larger than the silver-colored nailheads; and some shirts had pockets…

Beyond just mere clothing, I also recently watched an old video from the 1980’s and marveled at how human they all look compared to us. The people I saw had dynamic personalities, and seemed possessed of more empathy than most of us. The typical “man on the street” interview evinced an intelligence that’s virtually vacant from much of academia. Heck, even the floozies from the 1980’s had more personality than our politicians (which ain’t saying much).

How we got from there to here? I dunno.

I suppose on some level, by general consensus, everyone decided that people should be predictable, and their behavior should conform to a checklist of personality traits. If you are a fashion dilettante, you would have X characteristics. If you are an artist, you have Y characteristics. If you are an athlete, you would have Z characteristics. Some mutually exclusive, some crossing various categories. That is to say, a businessman would not have the same personality traits as an artiste but would share some with an engineer. And so on.

None of this is real. They’re cartoons we draw for ourselves that fall apart with the least amount of scrutiny. The problem is that we believe these starched fictions. The right presentation, the right gesture and thought at the right time could earn one a good job, a vocal praise, perhaps even a interesting partner for the night– but they’re lies, they’re not real.

We’re like Cookie-cutter men baked and rolled out by the dozens; we’re not individuals, but dough molded by the thoughts of others, and we tend to change our flavors often. To this person we’re this. To another person we’re that.

Without even realizing it, people “short-circuit” when they see someone not conducting themselves according to the cartoon script.

I’ve seen one stranger say to another one, “I know you. You’re like so-and-so on TV.”

When the addressed person protested and said, “No, I’m not like that. I am myself,” the other threw a minor fit.

“Yes, you are. I know you.”

Unpredictability is not a desired characteristic, no matter what other people might say. The eerie part of all this is we find ourselves trying to make ourselves what they say we are… at times even gleefully…

I can make the unqualified statement that we are less human than our forefathers, and I shudder to think where we might go from here.

Far from saying, “it’s all bad,” however, we stand a pretty good chance of received another renewing revival in America. Periods in American history are punctuated by low troughs and sudden surges of Renaissance and Revival.

That low period in 1979 was one such low period. Who could have said in 1979 when it appeared that America had entered her twilight hours, with our embassies burning around the globe, riots erupting all across the nation, that within a decade the Berlin Wall would fall and freedom restored to a billion human beings? No one (except maybe President Reagan) believed it possible without the missiles flying.

I submit that we are in another such moment, and our Revival is entirely dependent on what we do now. It is entirely up to us to choose to pray from our misguided liberals/ Democrats and right-wingers/ Republicans. Do we pray for our enemies or shall our indulged resentments and irritations lead us to the thing we all most fear?

This, I submit, is the question before us.

I was browsing the blogs the other day and found Victor Davis Hanson’s latest post. As usual he had many interesting things to say. However, on this occasion I felt compelled to comment. I’m posting my comment below and here is the link to Hanson’s post: Prosecutors to Actors.

My comment:

Ah, thank you, Mr. Hanson for your blog. It sure does feel good to have a bit of fresh air.

You pointed out here many things, of which I am only going to comment on a few.

The Libby Insanity

I find prosecutors increasingly employ the Watergate method of interrogation to virtually case across the board. What you knew and when you knew it are commonplace interrogation questions. By the way, don’t contradict the 200-plus questions they throw at you or they’ll slap you with perjury. Everyone high-profile case from Martha Stewart to the Duke case to the Jack Abramoff to Libby Scooter are being jabbed with these kinds of questions.

This is not just a miscarriage of justice. To wield the law as weapon in this manner is an outrage. Grandstanding trial lawyers, who by the way virtually own large portions of our political parties, and “special prosecutors” are now political mainstays. Unless we ram through tort reform legislation, I don’t see these kinds of legal travesties ending any time soon.

Furthermore, about the Libby case in particular, I do find it curious that Armitage and Berger are not prosecuted for treason. Armitage, who was then Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, knew he had committed a faux pas when the scandal broke. When questioned he said he was ordered by the special prosecutor not to say anything. Now, this is an overt, shabby lie. The prosecutor ordered his silence months after the scandal broke and Libby accused.

As for Sandy Berger, what he did would have landed a person in Leavenworth for 30 years, this if he’s below a certain pay-grade. Getting virtually scotfree with with this crime is inexcusable. But there is not a court in the D.C. area that would convict a person of treason…

No one seems to question why former Generals and various politicians are suddenly becoming millionaires after they leave office. Bill Clinton, who used to boast he never made over $50,000 a year in his life, is now a billionaire and with his wife, Hillary. Colin Powell is well on the way toward being a billionaire if he’ not already there from joining the Buildaburgers.

National patriots are so passe. Transnational allegiances is now the way of the rich and powerful. But perhaps this is too cynical. I am sure American patriots are still ubiquitous in government, but patriotism of the old stripe (the kind I admire) doesn’t lend itself to ostentation, does it?

Flip-flopping on Iraq

Both Neocons and Democrats change their views of the war every time perception of the war changes. As you pointed out, “perception” is the key word. We are seeing the fruits of decades of subjectivism. The Democrats could vote to authorize the war, do everything oppose it, run on a pro-war “Blue Dog” platform, and then renege on it once they’ve taken Congress– They could do all this within 4 years time and have the perfect concurrence of their conscience. Subjectivism allows them to.

Likewise the Republicans, in their ebb and flow of support for the President whenever political expediency demands it of them.

How we reached this sad state of sophomoric reasoning from where we were after WWII is just staggering to contemplate– staggering because it is darn near incomprehensible.

I think either we receive another fresh breath of liberty from our Creator, or we’ll be minor footnote in history, that briefest of time when freedom flourished…

Masculine Actors

I have to agree with you there, Mr. Hanson. There really isn’t anyone on the Hollywood acting scene that could pull off a, say, a Robert Mitchum or a John Wayne role.

I don’t think this is just a “perceived decline”. This is a point of fact. Many of Hollywood’s leading men are very feminine and given to gushing, febrile emotions, and as if evince some shred of masculinity, they conduct some random act of violence.

Note how men are constantly portrayed as violent or ludicrous on TV and in Hollywood movies. Fathers are buffoons and manhood is in testosterone driven violence.

Women, however, are praised and all virtues are attributed to them– intelligence, compassion, calm, rational, etc…

This current crop of actors actually remind of the 1920’s American movies. Lots of soft lighting, inundating emotions, and long, long pregnant pauses in close-ups to convey a particular emotion. I saw part of Gary Cooper’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls” done in the 1920’s or 30’s and couldn’t finish it for all the overflowing sentiment.

Today’s movies are very similar. Just with more special effects and violence.

I’m starting a new segment here where I will post something I think is bizarre and/or outrageous in the news. You really do run across a lot of… to put it mildly, weird things on the net…

So, here’s the first installment, compliments of the BBC. As Charleston Heston said in The Planet of the Apes, “It’s a Madhouse!!“

Mother wins dead son sperm case

Attention: This is not New England.

It’s Oklahoma!

For the past several weeks, we have seen strange and portentous weather raging across most of the United States. Foxnews reported 65 storm related deaths as of this morning, and this number will likely increase as another blast of arctic storms approach the Southern states. Another 8 inches of snow is expected…

South Carolina, Oklahoma, Texas, even Southern California and other Southern and Western states are in the icy grip of winter. In fact, some parts of Colorado have been without electricity for over a month!

What pricks my incredulity is the nonchalance and laissez-faire complacency of most of our countrymen. To simply say that this is odious weather does not quite capture ominous tone of the weather changes we are seeing.

For instance, if these weather patterns are part of a wider shift in climate, the L.A. Basin will be in for a shock. From top to bottom, this basin was designed for an arid desert climate, not for overnight freezes and rainstorms, which are increasing yearly. Who knows what this shift would do to buildings, pipes, bridges, sewage– all the infrastructure?

I also find it unbelievable that parts of Colorado have been without electricity for over a month– this is America not some backwater Chinese province. I have a friend who just returned from a skiing trip to Colorado and she reported that the parts of Colorado she visited worked just fine, but other parts of still without electricity since the snowstorm back in December of 2006.

Perhaps in our arrogance and willfulness we think that electricity and infrastructure just happens without direct action on our part. We don’t like the power lines and towers near our homes. We don’t like living near power plants and oil refineries. No one likes power stations near them. A ghastly sight, isn’t it?

As a consequence to this infantile belief that the world will continue to generate energy and electricity to our PC’s and TV’s and DVD’s just because we say it will, we may live to see the day when the roof will come down on us. We are living off the infrastructure built back in the 1950’s, when entire extended families owned one car, when the population of America was about 160 million people, and when affluent homes had one 15 inch TV– We live off the backs of our ancestors (and think ourselves superior) and we refuse to invest time and energy and money for our descendants. We’d rather plug into an iPod and piously proclaim “family values” and meaningless slogans, like “Do it for the children!”.

Our children couldn’t be further from our minds. We barely raise them because we don’t want to be inconvenienced. It follows that we aren’t going to give up an inch of our many benefits and invest in better roads and secure energy supplies.

Maybe we should get used to rolling blackouts, fragile power grids, antiquated oil refineries, and cracked roads… for starters. We haven’t built a refinery for over forty years, and this issue doesn’t look very high on our agenda. It definitely isn’t on our witch doctors’ — I mean, environmentalists’ agenda. I don’t think people quite understand just how important energy is. It makes all aspects of our lives possible, and I am not just talking about luxury items like computers or TV’s. We’re talking about the energy to produce crops, energy to transport it from one end of the country to the other, the energy to refrigerate it while in transit, the energy to deliver it to your local grocery store, the energy to run the grocery store at all, and the energy for you to put it in the back of your car and drive home.

Here’s the bottom-line: Without reliable energy, people will die… in the thousands, if not millions.

If you think this an hyperbole, factor in the number of people who will starve from malnutrition, then the number of people who will surely die in the first winter without heat, then the number of riots and armed conflict for control of the remaining food supply, then the diseases that would accompany the unburied dead… the number would be in the hundreds of thousands at the least. Given the fact that about 80% of America lives in cities, things can go downhill and fast.

We all think we are above the level of basic necessities because we are a technologically advanced civilization, which, of course, only exists through an abundance of energy. But civilization is just a thin veneer that can unravel at any moment. After all the pressures that came to bear upon the United States in the past century with World War I, World War II, Korean War, Vietnam War, Cold War, urbanization, civil rights, women’s rights, environmental concerns, domestic gang violence, riots, burning embassies around the world, and on, and on — it is a wonder we are standing in as good a shape as we are in. But the barbarians are pounding on our gates daily…

So while most of the Republicans and the conservative bloggers swing at liberals and Democrats for their pomposity and mendacity, nothing gets done on Capitol Hill.

Our infrastructure deteriorates. We buy more than we produce. Perhaps mere anarchy has already been loosed upon the world…

… Or perhaps this is the dark moment before the miracle. America has been on the trajectory for a full-on Christian revival and renaissance for some time. May God awaken us and grant us His grace…

*** The picture above is from the Associated Press.

Update 1/19/07 3:19 p.m.

Victor Hanson’s blog titled Work and Days discussed the California freeze this past couple of week. Hanson is a farmer and scholar in the classics, and a couple of days ago, he spent most of his time fixing busted pipes and fixing the general damage of the freezing temperatures. He reported:

No global warming here. At Huntington Lake at 7200 feet last night it was about 5 degrees and had been below zero earlier. Here in rural California, it was around 22 this week and below. So I’ve been spending most of the day fixing frozen water pipes that have cracked or trying to unclear those up in the mountains. Most of the surrounding citrus orchards look ruined. There is not all that much sugar yet in the fruit, and the ground has been really dry—just the conditions to ruin the crop when the cold hits. Otherwise grape and deciduous tree-growers like the hard cold, since it gives good dormancy by ensuring sufficient collective hours (500 or so) below 50.

Other reports from the Leader predict that the price of citrus fruits will soar.

It’s all the result of temperatures that went as low as -6C last weekend in California, destroying up to three quarters of the harvest in the state, the second largest U.S. producer of oranges after Florida.

“The prices will go up because the product is just not available,” said Tony Singh, president of the Fruiticana chain of Greater Vancouver produce outlets.

“All the citrus, broccoli, cauliflower, strawberry and avocado has been totally wiped out with the freeze.”

Well, we’ve put our infrastructure on layaway and have absconded on payment. First, rolling black outs in California. Then entire regions of the Midwest shuts down because an electrical glitch. Every time a place freezes or floods people are without electricity and basic resources.

We have ZERO redundancy in our power grid.

All our plants are pumping out the maximum amount of energy they can year-round, and last year we held congressional hearings to accuse them of price gouging. I don’t doubt that was what occurred on some level, but wouldn’t it just make more sense to build more refineries? Most of the existing ones are pretty inefficient and antiquated, some even were retrofitted with updated technology to increase the productive capacity. IF we build a new refinery, it’ll burn cleaner and at least double the capacity we currently have per refinery. Our increase in technological know-how in this field makes producing energy more environmental safe, not less…

But… but, what does it mean?

Off and on for two months, I’ve been wondering what is the purpose of all this blogging, aside from being fun. Is it to have people visit your site and coo at your writing? Is it to be influential and be part of the blog-happy citizenry, better known as amateur journalists?

Or is it to impress the folks you know? Hey man, d’ya check out my latest post? Yeah, that’s right. I wrote it myself.

Or do people, including myself, blog to climb the incline of self-importance? King of the mountain, baby. I’m gaining on it!

Perhaps bloggers want to have their own “online presence”. I don’t know what this amounts to, really. If you’re famous, people will look for further information about you and will eventually come across your blog. If you’re a anonymous nobody, like yours truly, why in tar-nation would anyone care what you would have to say to begin with? Then again, if a blogger is patient and makes a concerted effort to write well and “chase the link” till his blog becomes a veritable hub of hyperlinks, perhaps he’d be influential and people will search for his blog.

But that’s being “famous” after a certain fashion, ain’t it, if only for a microcosm of online commentating enthusiasts?

Some people begin their blogging sojourn into the cyberverse, and after a month or so, get bored from the non-attention his blog receives; then his blog recedes into the nameless, ephemeral electrons from whence it came. The internet abyss…

Others muddle along (like myself) who would like to be noticed but don’t; who goes on blogging anyway because… well, it’s pretty fun writing and posting things up.

At times I feel like my blog is a high-tech bulletin board, and I’m slapping a whole crap-load of canary post-its on the cork. Thumb tacks and ideas not included. Every once in a while, some stray person feels compelled to respond, and pin up some post-its of his own.

Maybe one day I’ll tire or run out of post-its, and sadly the bulletin board would have to go into the janitorial closet never to be seen by friendly eyes evermore (Will someone give me a handkerchief?) Who knows? Maybe this bulletin board might one day be part of a syndicated newspaper. Hey, it’s possible.

Until then, I’ll be tossing up thumb tacks and post-its or whatever suits my fancy. It’s my bulletin board. So for all you avid readers of my blog, sit back, don’t touch that mouse, and enjoy reading.

It’s only a blog after all.

Related Posts:

La Shawn Barber: Black.Woman.Mediocre.
And another La Shawn Barber:The Long Tail of the Blogosphere in Action