Ivory Dome

I read an essay this week that gave me a whole new framework for observing popular culture and understanding why, as Chilean author Armando Zegri once noted, “Joy is a fruit that Americans eat green.”

The essay is entitled, “How ‘The Karate Kid’ Ruined The Modern World” and the author is David Wong, Senior Editor of cracked.com, the website of Cracked, the satirical magazine that many of us read as kids.

The message of the title is that movies like “The Karate Kid” and “Rocky” instill in people the false security that if you just give it your best shot, you can achieve anything in a relatively short period of time.

Wong takes issue with this conventional wisdom, introducing the concept of “Effort Shock”:

It seems so obvious that it actually feels insulting to point it out. But it’s not obvious. Every adult I know–or at least the ones who are depressed–continually suffers from something like sticker shock (that is, when you go shopping for something for the first time and are shocked to find it costs way, way more than you thought). Only it’s with effort. It’s Effort Shock.

Like sticker shock, Effort Shock is that rude awakening that the “price” a person needs to pay (in terms of discipline, hard work and self-sacrifice) for accomplishing something worthwhile far exceeds what’s anticipated at the outset. And like the consumer who’s unwilling to pay what he perceives to be an inflated price, many, if not most, people faced with a higher than expected price for success simply walk away.

Effort Shock goes a long ways in explaining the subprime mortgage crisis, reality television, and the “American Idol” phenomenon. Whether it’s owning a home that’s clearly beyond your means, being “famous” rather than accomplished, or taking the fast track to stardom, society’s obsession with “self-esteem” dictates that we’re all “special” and have a birthright to have whatever we want without having to pay our dues. When the first bill comes due, we’re stunned. It can’t possibly cost that much!

Politics is not immune from Effort Shock. Back in April 2007, when the junior senator from Illinois was being heralded as the great hope of the Democratic Party for winning back the White House the next year, I wrote a post on this blog entitled Coincidence? – I think not!, in which I jokingly implied that the resemblences between “Barrack” Obama (few people could spell his first name back then) and American Idol flash-in-the-pan Sanjaya Malakar were so great that they might very well be the same person.

Fast forward three years. Aside from a brief run on the reality show “Survivor,” Sanjaya has faded into obscurity, either unwilling or incapable of paying the price needed to succeed. And what became of Sanjaya’s “twin”? Like the rest of us, I think he may be reeling from Effort Shock.

It can’t possibly cost that much to be Leader of the Free World!

Can it?

This article kind of reminded me of Bo’s famous sign at the lib anti-war rally. War is bad unless your a democrat. Seems the same goes for torture. Its bad unless your a democrat. Anyone recall any great outcry from the left over this?

http://volokh.com/2010/04/19/waco/

Waco
Kenneth Anderson • April 19, 2010 11:48 pm

Bill Clinton’s invocation of Timothy McVeigh in connection with the Tea Party movement caused me to recall my review of a book on the Waco massacre that was a motivation for McVeigh. The book under review was Reavis, The Ashes of Waco, and it appeared in the Times Literary Supplement in 1995. Re-reading it for the first time in many years, I was struck by this section:

[T]here is the post hoc justification for the use of CS tear-gas in the raid offered by the US Justice Department and senior Clinton administration officials. The public generally, and even the Congressional hearings, seem to have accepted that the children at Waco were gassed and then died as, in effect, “collateral damage” in the course of a raid aimed at their parents.

This is not quite the case, however, by the Clinton administration’s own admissions. CS gas was used at the compound, in order, as senior White House adviser George Stephanopoulos said, echoing senior Justice Department statements, to “try and pressure” those in the compound. It was hoped, he said, that as this “pressure was increased, the maternal instincts of the mothers might take over and they might try to leave with their kids” (Washington Times, April 23, 1995).

But the FBI knew beforehand that adults in the compound had gas masks; the gas therefore would not put pressure on them. On whom, then? If the FBI knew that the adults had gas masks, but went ahead with the gas attack anyway, it is plain that this “pressure” was brought directly against the children because, as the FBI knew, they could not fit into adult– size gas masks. “Maternal feelings”, the FBI hoped, would be unleashed in the mothers by watching their children choking, gasping and blistering from the gas.

The plan Reno approved and took to President Clinton for approval contemplated the children choking in the gas unprotected for forty-eight hours if necessary, to produce the requisite “maternal feelings”. By taking aim at the children with potentially lethal gas, their mothers would be compelled, according to the FBI plan repeatedly defended by the Clinton administration afterwards as “rational” planning, to flee with them into the arms of those trying to gas them. [Emphasis added.]

An independent report on Waco written by the Harvard Professor of Law and Psychiatry, Alan A. Stone, for the then Deputy Attorney General Philip Heymann, says it “is difficult to believe that the US government would deliberately plan to expose twenty-five children, most of them infants and toddlers, to CS gas for forty-eight hours”. Unfortunately, however, that appears to have been exactly the plan.

The effect of CS gas on an unprotected infant exposed for only two to three hours is discussed in the report; in that case report, dating from the early 1970s, the child’s symptoms during the first twenty-four hours were upper respiratory; but, within forty-eight hours his face showed evidence of first degree burns, and he was in severe respiratory distress typical of chemical pneumonia. The infant had cyanosis, required urgent positive pressure pulmonary care, and was hospitalized for twenty– eight days. Other signs of toxicity appeared, including an enlarged liver.

Professor Stone’s report is measured, careful and damning. It is hard to know whether Heymann’s courage in commissioning it was a reason for his subsequent departure from the Justice Department. In the mean time, questions about the performance of the Justice Department are treated by the Clinton administration not as serious allegations of criminal activity, but as little more than a below-the-belt salvo in the culture wars.

I was shocked to read in Stone’s report that the Justice Department had undertaken, and had defended in the press as such, activities which if conducted in wartime would constitute war crimes. Because exposing the children to CS gas was the point of the FBI exercise: no children exposed, no pressure.

This is anouther of those e-mails that go around.

If a conservative doesn’t like guns, he doesn’t buy one.
If a liberal doesn’t like guns, he wants all guns outlawed.

If a conservative is a vegetarian, he doesn`t eat meat.
If a liberal is a vegetarian, he wants all meat products banned for everyone.

If a conservative is homosexual, he quietly leads his life.
If a liberal is homosexual, he demands legislated respect.

If a conservative is down-and-out, he thinks about how to better his situation.
A liberal wonders who is going to take care of him.

If a conservative doesn’t like a talk show host, he switches channels.
Liberals demand that those they don’t like be shut down.

If a conservative is a non-believer, he doesn’t go to church.
A liberal non-believer wants any mention of God and religion silenced. (Unless it’s a foreign religion, of course!)

If a conservative decides he needs health care, he goes about shopping for it, or may choose a job that provides it.
A liberal demands that the rest of us pay for his.

When I first heard the news of the tragic airplane crash that took the life of Lech Kaczynski, the President of Poland, on his way to the commemoration of the massacre of some 22,000 military officers, intelligentsia and other “undesirables” by the Soviets in Katyn Forest on April 3, 1940, one of my first thoughts was, “Not again!”

The Katyn massacre, like so many other historical events,  is etched in the collective memory of the Polish people.  In the 1980’s, I worked for a naturalized American whose father was among the Polish officers who was murdered there.  But for decades, the Soviets tried to cover up their role in this atrocity.  The heavy handed way that they attempted to shift blame to the Nazis, by using German ammunition, is well documented. 

It has only been in recent years that the Russians have been willing to admit to having commited this vile act (although the government has yet to issue an apology).  A formal ceremony, attended by Putin, Medvedev and Polish Prime Minister Tusk, had already taken place in the Katyn Forest on the Wednesday before the crash.

But the “not again” doesn’t have anything to do with the actual massacre of 70 years ago.  In early 1943, Polish Prime Minister in Exile Wladyslaw Sikorski unilaterally sought the aid of the International Red Cross to investigate the Katyn Massacre.  Bear in mind that this was still during World War II, and the Soviet Union was allied with the United States and Great Britain in their fight against fascism.  Any revelations about the Soviet’s role in Katyn would have been not only an embarrassment for the USSR, the USA and the UK, but also a propaganda coup for the Germans.

On July 4, 1943, General Sikorski flew out of Gibraltar (a British colony at the time – now part of Spain).  His plane crashed shortly after takeoff under very suspicious circumstances, killing Sikorski.  But unlike the latest crash that took the life of President Kaczynski, the pilot of Sikorski’s plane, a Czech, survived.  His survival was due at least in part to the fact that he was wearing a so-called “Mae West life jacket.”  The irony of this is that the pilot was notorious for refusing to wear such a device.  When he was interrogated later, he claimed to have no recollection of having donned the life jacket.  There are other questions involving who might have had access to the plane shortly before takeoff.  After years of speculation over who, if anyone, was responsible for this crash, an investigation concluded just last year indicated that there was no foul play involved.

Although I’m always fascinated by a good conspiracy theory, I’m not ready to claim that the recent crash that killed the Polish President, First Lady and numerous government officials was anything but a tragic accident brought on by the error of an arrogant pilot that refused to heed the advice of the air traffic controllers in Smolensk.  But the coincidence of the Katyn massacre and the deaths of Sikorski and now Kaczynski seem to fit into a long string of misfortunate that has befallen the Polish people for centuries, going back at least to the partitions of this country in the late eighteenth century that lead to its disappearence from the map of Europe for 123 years.

The opening lines of the Polish national anthem can be translated as follows:  Poland still hasn’t perished as long as we live (Jeszcze Polska nie zginęła póki my żyjemy).  Poland will survive this tragedy, but one has to wonder why the Poles have suffered so much over the centuries.  My heart goes out to them at this time of national mourning.

Today I turned 60 years old.  I thought I’d post a few of my impressions as I begin a new decade.

First of all, I don’t feel like I’m 60 years old.  Physically, I’ve never felt better.  And having survived prostate cancer and a heart attack over the last three years, I feel like the worst is behind me.  We’ve purchased a treadmill, which I’ve been using on a regular basis, and I”m continuing to climb the seven flights of stairs to work, at least several times a week.  I’ve been blessed with joints that allow me to do both.  I know there’s no guarantee that I’ll continue to enjoy good health (the last three years have shown me how I can be blindsided), but I’m doing what I can to reduce the odds.

Secondly, although the 60’s are supposed to be the years when people start thinking about retiring and moving to Florida or Arizona, I have no intention of doing either any time soon.  My reasons for this are fourfold:  1)  I really love my job;  2)  I like the seasonal changes that Amarillo provides; someone once said that four distinct seasons temper the soul – live in the same weather all the time and dry rot will set in; 3)  I don’t want my future to be dependent on government programs that may not be there for my whole life; and 4)  with more and more of us baby boomers retiring, someone is going to have to earn the money and pay the taxes the support them. 

In short, I want to be a producer for as long as I can.