The Thomas Chronicles

PING (pĭng) v. - an abrupt shift in long-held attitudes and beliefs, the result of which is usually contradictory to a person’s history, which also suggests an instability of mind, characterized by hysteria and wild accusations.

You won’t find the above definition in any dictionary or textbook. That’s ’cause I just wrote it. A friend of mine coined the term a few of years back and we’ve been using this term ever since to describe a peculiar phenomenon. After reading Bookworms post yesterday on Rosie O’Donnell’s comments on the Iranian hostage crisis, I thought this was an apt term for her actions.

It is easy to forget that Miss O’Donnell used wear the crown of “Queen of Nice” on daytime television because of the way she’s been acting lately. With good ‘ole Jerry Springer on her right and tough-as-nails Sally to her left (not to mention no-nonsense Judge Judy…), her talk show tried to prove that you could garner good rating and still be “nice”. Naturally, her schtick wasn’t my cup o’ tea, seeing that I still found her too abrasive and forcefully “comic”, but she didn’t do the ad hominems (not that I know of), and she smiled rather generously. She didn’t have the chair-throwing, hair-brain excitement of a Springer, but her show’s format wasn’t conducive to that sort of thing. It resembled the David Letterman show more than Jerry Springer.

She was nice and tried to be civil. Then some time around the turn of the millennium, she abruptly became hostile and belittling of virtually everything wholesome and American.

PING!

She was not alone. Notable Pingers include George Clooney, who used to be as pro-American as it gets but is now muddled in evil oil company, evil America conspiracies; Charlotte Church, who used to be the epitome of the angelic, sugar-and-spice girl but is now a vulgar anti-American, anti-Christian Leftist; lifelong military men, former U.S. generals aiding foreign groups and foreign powers to stop President Bush’s prosecution of the War on Terror; etc., etc…

Then there are the legions of Christians who up and decided that they aren’t going to worry about the Apocalypse anymore and are now “Name-It-And-Claim-It” prosperity doctrine Christians. (If we pray for a brand-spanking new Cadillac hard enough, God is going to give it to us… ) That sounds more like voodoo shamanism than Christianity to me. Nevermind that Christianity is a prophetic faith and that about two-thirds of the Bible is composed of prophecies.

These Pings! happen very often. I can’t tell you how many times I encounter it on the blogs. It’s that seductive temptation crossing all our minds, whispering into the dark caverns of our soul… “Go ahead, Thomas, don’t hold back. Indulge your judgments. They deserve it! Those haters! They judge you, why not give them a f–kin’ dose of their own medicine!”

If we give in and indulge, that gorgon, that ravenous beast that is our ego, will in the end devour all our loves until we become a shell of the men we once were. This is how a Christian goes PING! and becomes a Pharisee, so full of worldly, political concern that he would care nothing for the Kingdom of God. That’s who the Pharisees and the Sadducees were… the keepers of the Law.

On the road to work, on TV, in our government, in our military and our “watchmen”— these Pings! happen all around us.

The question used to go, “Who watches the watchmen?”

The answer is always and forever, “If God does not watch the watchmen, the watchmen watch in vain.”

God help them, but the perils of this world are endless. Let us hope they snap out of it, and that we’ll see them at the Wedding Feast before our Lord.

Not according to a recent YouGov poll.

Less Than A Third Of Brits ‘Feel British’
Thursday, 29th March 2007, 07:19

Fewer than one-in-three Brits regard themselves as British, reveals a new survey.

And young people in particular are turning their back on the Union Jack by having more loyalty to their county than their country.

Meanwhile only one-in-25 Britons (four per cent) believe themselves to be in any sense European, according to the YouGov poll of 2,300 people.

Overall only 30 per cent said they were British with almost as many (29 per cent) putting their kingdom - England, Wales, or Scotland - first.

And more than a fifth (22 per cent) had turned their back on any form of national flag – instead defining their loyalties to their county or their village.

But the importance placed on local communities is not being driven by the older generation - those perhaps that can remember the “good old days” of local life with a plentiful supply of local shops, post offices and milkmen.

It’s the “digital” generation of under 25s that have grown up with the global reach of the Internet, text messages and an impersonal call centre culture that are driving a return to the local community.

The over 55s are those most likely to define themselves as British (36 per cent) or English (33 per cent) whereas the under 25s are those most likely to be loyal to their village, town or county (29 per cent) - compared with only 17 per cent who define themselves as British.

You can read the rest here.

I see this development in British psychology as a good sign that they’re not diving headlong into a globalist European Union. Far from it. Instead, they’re introverting by focusing on their immediate surroundings. The county, their village, their immediate home.

And the shocker is that the iPod, cellphone, internet generation is driving the change!

Many would see this reversion to locality as a return to tribalism. This could very well be the case since it is the case throughout most of the world, even here in some parts of the United States, but this can also be the start of a renewal in the British people.

One of the most virulent diseases of our age is how people reduce humanity into ideologies and utopian schemes. Communism, Fascism, Socialism, Environmentalism, etc. are all abstract ideologies that focus on the distant and neglect the local. By straining to reach the distant, you almost invariably trample on what’s just right next you, as though the people in front of you are so much cement to be shoveled around.

The British young, however, are beginning to turn that around.

Peter Lock, who commissioned the survey, said:

“People want their community and identity back. With the nation’s youth driving the move back to localness the future of local community traditions and values seem in safe hands.”

I have often wondered to myself amid all the partisanship, “What is the point of reasoning with diametrically opposing viewpoints?” For that matter, in the micro, what is the use of reasoning with people in interpersonal affairs when almost no one seem to be listening? Immediately as I write this I can see just how far down the path of cynicism I have gone for such thoughts to occur to me. However, even now, I think this observation illuminating, cynical as it is.

One of the salient characteristics of Rome before it fell was the ubiquitous presence in the letters and diaries of senators and generals on down to the common plebeian of how men refused to listen. Everyone vied for their agenda and their immediate wants and appetites. The Roman legions could have smashed the barbarian tides at any time, except that by that time, the Roman legions were composed mainly of mercenaries, who themselves came from barbarian tribes. While Romans indulged themselves and fed off the fat accrued from previous generations, Rome collapsed.

I don’t know if we are at yet another similar turning point in the affairs of men, but ominously, like Rome, I am hearing on all sides how people are not listening. All the shouting and hollering gives it away. There have been many a night where I’ve come home wearied from work, flipped on the boob-tube and immediately beat a retreat. I wielded my remote control with deadly accuracy and depressed the OFF button before yet another utterance can escape a disembodied talking head.

For a brief five arduous minutes, I was treated to another episode of Hannity versus Colmes. I used to like Sean Hannity when I first started to listen to him five years ago over the radio in Houston. He illuminated the hypocrisy of the Left very well, and his frankness was very refreshing to hear given the eggshell tip-toeing I’ve had to do for four years in college. Then on the run-up to the 2004 presidential election, something happened to his manner and rhetoric. He stopped listening. His interviews became methods of interrogation of the “Aha! Gotcha!” variety, and he won’t be questioned. He behaves like an Inquisitor trying to force a square block into a round slot; the more it resists, the harder he shoves.

Alan Colmes, on the other hand, seemed reasonable when I first saw him as well. He was definitely liberal, leaning Left, but he still tried to be a decent, fair chap. As the years progressed, however, his mental decline coincided with the Left seizing control of the Democratic Party. He forced his mind into accepting patently contradictory ideas and insisted on very dishonest positions of moral equivalence. He never keeps refrain of “Isn’t-that-the-same-as…” far from his reach. As a consequence of having to blank out a host of inconvenient facts, Colmes’s mental faculties has been reduced to finding smarmy logical loopholes around arguments to insist it’s all the same. Barring that, he’d just talk over his guests, just like Hannity.

Neither listens very well. I’m sure they both are acting from genuine conviction, but I’m not so sure their methods are laudatory.

But this lack of listening isn’t limited exclusively to the universe of the politically charged news personalities. It’s pandemic to our society, from top to bottom. No one is listening.

What then would be the utility of reasoning when men have willfully shuddered their ears and blinded their eyes? Truth discovered through reason does not compel action any longer, and forcing others to see these truths becomes counter-productive. That’s immediately apparent when others start forcing back.

One of the primary reasons these power-driven arguments exist is because people no longer agree on self-evident truths, or if your rather, people refuse to accept the same premises and stand on common ground. To quote the post-modernists, there is no unified “grand narrative” which everyone accepts. Lacking a unified “grand narrative”, liberals and conservatives, Democrat and Republican, mailroom clerk and office executive, peasant and overlord— they try to force their own version of the “grand narrative” down the throats of others, or else ignore everyone and sink into becoming a lumpy connoisseur of their appetites, enslaved, as it were, to their stomach.

If you cannot agree on premises, no matter the goodwill, conversations would be without substance.

The utility reasoning only comes into play once both parties agree on premises, and this usually involves how one views the world. A subjectivist and an absolutist cannot agree being from two diametrically contradictory views of the world, but two absolutist can agree that the world is round and proceed to reason from there.

You see, you need a point of reference, like in sailing, to navigator human discourse. This necessitates an objective view of the world since relative views would lead a poor besotted fellow in circles without any bearings. I find that conversations between two relativists are liken to two blind men wandering through the world arguing whether or not the sky is actually a cheerful shade of green.

Once agreed on premises, however, reasoning becomes a great aid. It can clear obstructions to understanding, resolve frustrations, and illuminate truths about human nature and the world around us. Reasoning with each other aids us in coping with the rigors of life, and it delights us when it occasionally opens out vast oases of insight and beauty, some qualities that can only filter to us through our intellect.

Humanity rests in what we hold in common— not in what divides us, not what makes us oh-so wonderfully unique and special. If I may be so bold, the lack of humanity around us stems from men wanting to be worshiped as infallible gods. Never wrong. Never questioned. Truly, what is relativism and subjectivism but men grasping after godhood by trying to remake the world in their own image, even if it only exists in their splendorous minds?

***Further thoughts below***

***Further further updates below***

As Tony Blair’s rhetoric heats up against Iran, Britain’s hostage crisis doesn’t seem to be moving any closer to a resolution. Like it as not, modern Great Britain ain’t the Great Britain of yesteryear. I blogged on this topic in late January and garnered the attention of captain of the royal navy. I meant to return to the topic after conducting further research on the matter, but after poring through hours of news accounts and hard numbers from the Ministry of Defense, I became too despondent to even write about it.

Fred Thompson’s article yesterday reminded my of Britain’s impending calamity. It seemed he read the same Telegraph article I read…

Tony Blair’s getting angrier every day. But if past Iranian hostage takings are an indication, he may be upset for a while. The American-embassy hostages were held for 444 days, and the Israeli soldiers kidnapped last year by Iran’s Hezbollah puppets still aren’t free.

Blair is threatening to escalate to a “different phase,” but Iran’s leadership knows something that most Americans don’t. Two months ago, Britain’s government announced plans to mothball almost half its naval fleet due to defense-budget cuts. Much of its existing navy is already so degraded; it would take over a year to get into action. According to the British newspaper, the Daily Telegraph, senior naval officers say that the cuts “will turn Britain’s once-proud Navy into nothing more than a coastal defense force.”

In fact, the British naval forces have been so neglected; the U.K. probably couldn’t pull off the Falkland Islands mission today. The world’s fifth-largest economy now supports an army that ranks 28th in size.

What are they thinking?

Commentor Greg Laurich opined in my previous post that, “There is still some bulldog left on that island.”

Frankly speaking, I’m not so sure.

Further thoughts:

Perhaps this entire situation would slam the Brits awake to the dangers lurking out there, and it’s a danger that Continental Europe cannot help them with.

When all is said and done, Britain is a maritime power and it’s grand strategy rests on controlling the seas. It’s an island after all. Otherwise, it would be completely defenseless to starvation, economic implosion and invasion. Would they risk that as part of the price for joining the EU?

Is it not ironic that Britain’s deadliest enemies have traditionally come from the European Continent? France, Spain, Germany, Russia… And now they plan to unilaterally disarm in the face of Islamofascism and the rising tide of fascism in general across the world.

Truly, the universe does not support boldness… and certainly not of the sort evinced by the Brits.

Update:

Britain is really gearing up to challenge Iran now. Blair and company is getting all worked up and threatens Iran with… a big, fat, happy UN Resolution.

How this changes anything is beyond me. If anything, by resorting to the UN just shows how impotent Britain truly is. How many UN resolutions have Iran defied without any meaningful consequences? Ah, I’ve lost count. It is a truism in the affairs of nations that if a country does not have vigorous navy, its means to project power is very, very limited. Britain is mothballing about half its fleet.

While it is true that Britain can threaten to nuke Iran off the face of the planet, Iran knows they won’t do it and risk economic meltdown and being ostracized from the rest of the world. This national embarrassment could go on for a long time unless we intervene and do what the Brits are unable to.

(cartoon by: http://www.coxandforkum.com/)

Update Again:

Commentor Ymarsakar wrote:

An elaboration on my point is that AIDS is more than just a disease, it is also a method by which to subvert something (a civilization) that you cannot defeat in a straight up match. If you can’t overpower someone, deceive them, right?

So Britain’s corruption has been ongoing for awhile now, Thomas. Any laments are perhaps, nearing the epitaph end of the spectrum.

Like many people, I read Melanie Phillips for the take on Britain. Now I can easily imagine that if things are bad now, that they must have been going worse since 1950s.

If you can’t take down a civilization in 50 years… well.

Yes, Britain has been in decline for the past fifty years, but that is to be expected. After WWII, they lost their empire, they lost most of their colonies, their nation was in rumble, and they were in a constant state of starvation all the way up into the 1960’s. The 20th century after WWII was really just a touch and go situation with Britain all the way around. She was lucky she didn’t fold then and there. People forget what a calamity WWII was… Just for some perspective, from the start of the century to the end of WWII, there were just a handful of countries that didn’t undergo a revolution with Britain being one of them. You could probably count the number of the countries that survived on just two hands. It’s hard for us to see sometimes but Britain really wasn’t in a position similar to ours after WWII, untouched by war on a vast continent stacked to the gills with natural resources.

So, I can’t really fault the British for being susceptible to the dream of socialism. It’s an alluring dream, especially to one that’s been through a whole wallop of trauma, but it’s dysfunctional at best and diabolically evil at worst. In comparison to most social engineering endeavors, Britain’s attempt was pretty benign… for now.

Even as late as Maggie Thatcher’s Prime Ministership, the British held that dignified stoicism that I so admired. I usually fault Labour with its demise, but I doubt that’s the case. The British people had fundamentally changed, a fact that Queen Elizabeth II had to face immediately after the death of Diana.

As to the why’s and wherefores, I contend that politics and the manipulations of social constructs had much, much less to do with with that than the collapse of Christianity in Britain.

Shortly before C.S. Lewis’s death, I heard he gave an interview where he said something to this effect (I’m paraphrasing):

“I’ve fought for the faith all my life. But the battle for Christianity in England is lost. Morality will follow. America will hold on grimly for another 50 years. Then the storm will break.”

Personally, my opinion is that any engraving on Britain’s tombstone now would be premature. I think they are still at a place demographically and technologically where they can recover and soldier on. But if they finally decide to wake up, it won’t be a very pretty sight. In fact, if they tried to reverse it, the ensuing civil unrest and violent protests would be the least of their pains.

Navies are ruinously expense, but they can rebuild under our naval umbrella. That is, if they’re smart and not piss away our Grand Alliance.

Related Posts:

Bookworm: That head scarf
Neo-Neocon: It’s “parading for the cameras” time
Michelle Malkin: Iran plays games, Britain wants condemnation
Hot Air: Hostage update: Blair threatens to …
Ace of Spades: Iran Demands Admission of “Trespass”

This has become something of a motto for me… at least with my friends since they’re all taller than me.

With our planned expansion of the missile defense shield to Central and Eastern Europe, Russia initially vehemently protested. At one point they even pronounced in bellicose language that all the anti-ballistic missile sites in Central and Eastern Europe would be “targeted”. They claimed that the proximity of our missile defenses so close to their territory would be a direct threat upon Russia. Furthermore, they claimed, it would upset the post-Cold War strategic balance of power and could possibly stoke up another Cold War.

Like many of our “allies” and enemies, Russia has a proclivity to view our dominance as a threat, that looming specter of the tyrannical hegemon. Last week Mark Pekala, Deputy Assistant Secretary, Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, said that “extensive talks were under way with Moscow, and that U.S. officials were open to the idea of merging the missile shield with a Russian system.” But he was at pains to state that in these discussions, “There‘s no quid pro quo.”

Bush today tried to allay Russia’s fears— for the moment at least.

MOSCOW (Reuters) -
President Bush on Wednesday told Russia’s
Vladimir Putin he was ready to discuss his plans for an anti-missile shield in Europe and Moscow said it had received the offer “with satisfaction.”
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“Putin laid out the reasons for Russian concerns about U.S. plans to create anti-missile defense bases in central Europe,” the Kremlin said in a statement after the two leaders spoke by telephone at Washington’s initiative.

“In this connection, the U.S. president’s expression of readiness for detailed discussion on this subject with the Russian side, and for cooperation in the interests of joint security, was received with satisfaction,” the Kremlin said.

The United States wants to build a radar station in the Czech Republic and a missile battery in Poland under a plan to expand its defenses against ballistic missiles which could be fired from what it calls “rogue states” like
Iran or
North Korea.

The plan has drawn strong opposition from Russia, which sees the missile shield as a threat to its security and an encroachment on its former sphere of influence.

When each country holds a few thousand thermonuclear devices, as Elmer Fudd would say, we should move wary, wary slowly.

I began writing a post earlier today, and for some reason, it is growing like a weed (or rather an elegant vine depending on whether or not you’ll enjoy it.). Unfortunately, because the words are multiplying like bacteria in a petri dish, I’ll probably not finish it today. Definitely tomorrow though.

(shrug)

What can I do? Words with me have a way of taking on a life of its own sometimes; kind of like a clown pulling an never-ending handkerchief from his bowler hat. Robert Heinlein once described this need to write as a monkey that climbs on his back. When it started, it demanded only 3,000 words at a time… by the time he grumbled in his grave, that monkey was demanded tens of thousands of words.