Ignorance is the sperm of apathy. If you don't know, you can't care.
Thank God the world is inanimate. Given the diseased mentality of these times, if the world were human, it would start revolving the wrong way. Consider the dramatic deterioration of our intelligence just since the 1940s.
Can you imagine a White House spokesman telling the assembled newsfolks, as the German army was storming through a defeated France, "We have no evidence that command-and-control of those German forces is being exerted from Berlin"? Or a White House spokesman calling the Pearl Harbor attack, which destroyed America's Pacific fleet, "a loud but hardly significant Japanese annoyance, disrupting little more than a Sunday morning's peace"? Or a White House spokesman dismissing the overwhelming contribution of the Soviet Red Army to Allied victory by ignoring it?
The scary part is, satire allows you a generous helping of exaggeration. And in these few examples, I haven't nearly used up my allotment yet! You beg to disagree? Come along, let's check me out.
I've given you a satirical portrait of a White House spokesman as France was falling to the Germans in June 1940, seriously trying to convince the press, "This German army shows no evidence of being under command-and-control from Berlin." If a White House spokesman ever did try that, the assembled newsfolks would storm out in a rage. But none ever would, right? Read on!
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How remote is that sketch from White House spokesman Josh Earnest claiming that the Yemeni rebels who overthrew Obama's pride and pal, President Ali Abdullah Saleh, "offer no evidence of being under command-and-control from Iran!"? Yes, Josh said that! Those Yemeni rebels are Shiite, Iranian-backed, Iranian-armed and Iranian-financed, but Josh tells us there's no sign of Iranian command-and-control. Believe that, and I've got a pistachio orchard I'm willing to sell cheap between Teheran and the Caspian Sea!
As for the satirical jape about Pearl Harbor being not much more than a loud Japanese disruption of the Asian calm, despite the "Iranian belt" of allies and satellite states to the north – Syria, Lebanon and huge hunks of Iraq taken by ISIS – we now have Yemen, until a few days ago led by Obama's pal Saleh, completing the encirclement of Saudi Arabia to the south. Arabia is terrified.
While it's hard to decipher any discernible emotion from the White House, all those defeats of America's allies – including Saleh, who's long been held aloft as Obama's victorious poster-boy-success when it comes to gaining and holding allies in the war on terror – plus the total evaporation of any fear or respect for America, America's ineffectiveness against Russian expansion in Ukraine, the loss of Turkey as a proud American ally all the way down to the breathtaking security breaches of Edward Snowden – all that may rattle America's standing and American's security but never America's self-esteem, judging from White House press conferences.
Anti-communism is a wonderful political position. It's been my favorite self-description since 1947. But denying the overwhelming contribution of the Soviet Red Army in the Allied victory in World War II is wrong and beneath us. The satirical squirt in the upper paragraphs here reminds us that the Kurds – the under-armed, under-financed, outnumbered but heroic Kurds – have stood their ground and actually retaken territory captured by ISIS, territory that much American blood and treasure went to liberate! When's the last time you heard Obama utter even the slightest praise for this gallant band of allied warriors?
Don't we miss that funny-looking guy from the 1940 whose dopey face smiled at us from so many cartoons saying, "What? Me worry?"
You go ahead and be your own umpire. I think I'm safe on first, second, third and home!
We don't know. We don't care. Our leaders dish out the most phantasmagoric whoppers, and the media pass it all on to the masses with a straight face. It's no shame for a golfer to admit his score is higher when he's 80 than when he was 30. It's no shame for a boxer to admit he was a better fighter at the age of 30 than he was at the age of 80. But it's an irredeemable disgrace for a nation to have to admit it's a lot stupider in 2015 than it was in 1940.
I hate to give my cousin Gurney a flashbulb's duration of credence here, but he may have a slight point when he theorizes that the coup in Yemen and all the other associated disasters in the Middle East and elsewhere are deliberate distractions to take the public's mind off what they really care about, namely, NFL footballs being illegally deflated.
No. Listen carefully. This is what civilizations sound like when they're deflating.
Not footballs.
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