inkbluesky

goofy

Most people have probably at least heard the phrase credentialism. It is the not completely bad concept that a society or institutions within society rely on credentials like a Bachelors degree or a Doctorate as a measure of competence. You wouldn’t want to go to a doctor that got their degree from a correspondence school they found on the back of a matchbook cover. On the other hand there is a tendency on occasion to confer an inordinate amount of social status and authority to anyone whose head bobs up and down on TV with a PH.D after their name. The reason the issue of credentialism keeps coming up is varied. One is that a person with a modest formal education can become very well informed on particular subjects without benefit of a degree or might have a degree in biology for instance yet through work and research become quite an expert on geology. Another reason is the pundit class and the reverence with which their credentials are referred. Those talking heads who are supposed to be experts. People like historian and neocon cheerleader Victor David Hanson. His soft sell monotone combined with the substance or lack of substance of his arguments plus his not infrequent factual errors should have earned him the reputation of a modern Stepford child. Instead some from treat him like a blend of holy sage and the greatest thinker since Ludwig Wittgenstein. He’s mentioned in this essay on 300 with other historians who have attempted to analyze that movie. Some of them have been too picky while others didn’t get some major narrative points. Hanson tried to use the film as a far right fetish object, taking the viewer by the scuff of the neck and insisting that they see the movie in a certain way. - Some thing of a disclaimer. If I judge 300 solely through the eyes of a critic that evaluates plots, editing, narrative, acting and so forth I think 300 succeeds up to a point, but personally just not my my kind of movie. If I’m in the mood for stylized violence movies like Crank or Gross Point Blank are more interesting, but you’ll have to take your heroes deeply flawed.

Although Spartan culture esteems public honor and civic service as its noblest of virtues, there are severities in Spartan communal life that are dramatized early: they practiced infanticide, as imperfect infants were routinely killed as a matter of policy, and boys had to survive the wild alone to earn their promotions. Although these points stress the draconian nature of life in an armed camp of professional soldiers, they become concessions (and thematically ancillary) to Snyder’s larger argument regarding the greatness of the public sphere in which Spartan life is conducted.

Bush’s tangled arms deal - Playing Puppet master

When it comes to dealing with countries in the Middle East, the Bush administration knows only two approaches. It either tries to blow them up or bribe them. God forbid that Washington should try to find out what the people in the region actually want — or what might actually work.

I don’t subscribe to conspiracy theories, but when you set back and watch someone year after year barely hide the constant smirk, the smile of contentment at the cycle of violence that they’re largely responsible for you don’t need a goofy theory. As long as people are killing and dying Dubya feels the mission has been accomplished. He’s like the guy who goes to car races just hoping for the crashes.