Firstly, on the topic of Ghost In the Shell SAC, I have two things I want. The first is a video game, and the second is a Tachikoma of my very own. If I could drive the second around in the first, that would be spectacular.
On the one hand, summer is conspiring to piss me off a lot. On the other hand, the AC in the house seems to be working so well that I've been resorting to my NINJ4 hoodie, which, while l33t and all, as it were, is something I didn't expect to do for another few months.
On a totally unrelated note, today's blog surfing seems to have involved a lot of people talking about assorted current events, such as this excellent Supreme Court ruling that lets local government jack your land if they should feel inclined, and this even better piece of news, wherein we are now apparently snagging people out of airports, detaining them using secret evidence, and shipping them to Syria, of all places, where they are then tortured.
The lengthy discussion of all this is here and here, wherein it becomes increasingly apparent that John Scalzi is the Man, but allow me to quote something I said to Regina a while back:
[14:57] TontoMarius: Because, you know, either we're the United States of America who's all about life, liberty, the persuit of happiness, rule of law, justice, and all that, or we aren't.
[14:57] TontoMarius: Either we're better people than Saddam, or we're not.
[14:58] TontoMarius: Either we have souls, or we don't.
I am further reminded of the movie Three Kings, wherein lots of Iraqis run up to our intrepid, gold thieving American soldiers, shout stuff like "United States of Freedom! We love United States of Freedom!" and are met with "Where's the gold, guys?"
It should come as no surprise to you all that the Bush administration has been sending out a lot of those same vibes. We're not quite to the point where I expect Republican Party stormtroopers to bust down my door and zot me with tasers until I pronounce my undying admiration and love for Jesus, George W. Bush, and the Reich, but we've got, you know, 3 years left. Give it some time.
Because, well, come on guys. I'm all for defeating terrorists too, and I'm all for doing the right thing by Iraq, but really, here.
This is, of course, half the reason why I haven't been paying much attention to the news since, oh, roughly the election. Not only is it either uniformly depressing or sheer drivel, I'm not sure that any given piece of media is going to even make the attempt to give me an objective story. And you can thank all those milblogs lamenting the general tone of the media towards Iraq for that one, I suppose.
Without re-establishing my credentials, here, I've always considered myself to be pretty politically moderate. It seems to be the particular tragedy of moderates these days that we're all too busy going into Democrat vs. Republican mode to have any room for us.
Little did they reckon on my master plan to take over the world...
Posted by Dwip at August 15, 2005 1:47 PM