A small talent for war
Bookworm on Apr 07 2009 at 10:10 am | Filed under: Uncategorized
There are a raft of articles and posts today about Obama’s spectacular timing in calling for nuclear disarmament at almost the precise moment the Norks launched their missile. Obama’s contention that he’s not naive reminded me of Nixon’s claim that he was not a crook. Whether they’re delusional or dishonest, their words and their acts conflict.
As for me, the whole thing reminded me, believe it or not, of one of those TV shows that, once watched, is never forgotten.
I’ve always been a big fan of Rod Serling’s original Twilight Zone. I won’t justify why I like it. Either one does, or one doesn’t. If you do, you understand me. If you don’t, my preference will forever remain a mystery.
What some of you may recall is that, in the mid-1980s, Hollywood decided to see if the formula still worked, and brought back The New Twilight Zone. It didn’t work. The show lasted one season (at most) and vanished. Although it lacked Rod Serling’s magic touch, it wasn’t that bad a show, at least some of the time. There was one episode, however, that I thought was great, and that’s stuck in the back of my brain since I saw it. It’s the episode entitled “A Small Talent for War.” Here’s the plot synopsis, from Wikipedia:
John Glover plays the role of an emissary from an alien race that claims to have genetically engineered humanity. He directly challenges the United Nations to prove humanity’s worth, displeased over their “small talent for war”. He then tells them that mankind has failed to produce the potential that the aliens nurtured in them thousands of years ago, and as a result all life on earth will be destroyed in 24 hours. With the survival of humanity at stake, the UN hurriedly establishes an accord for lasting global peace and presents it to the emissary.
However, the emissary was in fact seeking a greater talent for war, as the aliens routinely breed warriors to fight for them across the galaxy. Humanity’s “small talent” for war (crude weapons, petty bickering over borders) is not significant enough to be of any use to them, and worst of all, the ultimate goal of humanity is peace. As the ambassador calls down a fleet of spaceships to destroy the Earth, he praises the humans for their “delightful sense of the absurd”, and his parting comment repeats the dying words attributed to several English-language actors: “Dying is easy, comedy is hard”.
Obama’s demand for disarmament, just as the Norks and Iran are ramping up their nuclear capabilities, strikes me as remarkably similar to that plot line. Obama is showing a small talent for war, one that he wishes to destroy entirely, even as the nature of our enemies demands that we develop a greater talent for war — or die.
Related posts:
- Hollywood talent on the conservative side
- And you thought hamsters lacked talent
- Press releases as they should be written
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20 Responses to “A small talent for war”
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Those that have no talent for war are the first to invite it upon themselves.
Prior to 9/11, we were not at war with militant Islam. They were at war with us and they won that battle.
Obama is inviting another attack here at home through his naive and childish methodology of blaming America’s past administrations for current world problems. But… this is where Democrats are at their best – blaming others.
North Korea and Iran may now prepare for their wars with impunity. Obama will just talk with them until they are ready to act.
Ouch! That was brilliantly to the point, Book!
I’m reminded of a quote, “you may not like war, but war likes you”.
Societies are like living organisms. When the immune system weakens or fails to recognize and react to a disease organism, it invites attack. We will pay a terrible price for Obama’s sophomoric world view.
See my post deadly naivite.
Why do people who are highly educated, and often fairly intelligent, so often fail at comprehending and predicting the behavior of thugs and fanatics?
For similar reasons why people believe there is a certain way to respond to violence.
They think they know things but their intelligence does not allow them to look at the galaxy from the outside. They can only observe and calculate from the inside.
Wisdom, intuition even, allows you to jump to the right conclusion as if you were momentarily outside looking in. Able to see all and in every detail.
Wisdom and intelligence are not the same thing and they aren’t obtained the same way.
Overall, it is not even about middle/high class values vs low class or another class value. This is about basic human indoctrination on such things as cannibalism and dealing with people who are not restrained by the same limitation.
It is said in the field of Wisdom that you cannot truly understand someone until you have walked in their shoes. To understand a cannibal or a sociopath or a sadist or anti-American thugs, you have to empathize with them, become them in part, in order to understand them.
What the Left does is the exact opposite. They project their own insecurities and neuroses unto criminals and murderers like Tookie. They project it and believe in their delusional fantasy world, that Tookie was unjustly convicted, that all these black men are unjustly convicted, not because they were innocent, but because so many innocent black people (like the Democrat voters in question) didn’t do any crime.
Check my blog out for the top post on George Carlin, his interview on the show with Mayer if you want a concrete example.
On another topic, true diplomacy is rendered through use of empathy as well as cunning and positional strengths. The Left, being composed mainly of narcissists and the bottom quartile of human decency and ability, either won’t do what is necessary for diplomacy or they are incapable of doing so even if they wished it to be done.
Thus, war is the only thing left. And that is the only thing the Left is good at creating.
Rod Serling was Twilight Zone. Not for his hosting but for his eye for good stories. Many of those stories were drawn from published works in the SciFi/Fantasy genre. The revival was a bunch of writers who were told to do some weird shit like Serling.
>>Not for his hosting but for his eye for good stories>>
And talent, I think. Seeing some of the replays, I was surprised at how many I recognized as young actors on the series, who became prominent actors later in life.
suek,
Excellent observation. I’m jealous.
Roy
“Why do people who are highly educated, and often fairly intelligent, so often fail at comprehending and predicting the behavior of thugs and fanatics?”
They used to understand, in past generations. I think two factors are uppermost: First, greatly increased wealth and insulation from the normal dangers of life has caused them to become childishly naive. Second, leftism (which has a natural appeal for childish minds) has taught them to prefer thugs to decent people.
Really, this cartoon sums it up.
>>“Why do people who are highly educated, and often fairly intelligent, so often fail at comprehending and predicting the behavior of thugs and fanatics?”>>
Remember the old children’s story of “Country Mouse, City Mouse”? I’ve seen more and more circumstances where the principles demonstrated in that story apply. We each adapt to the circumstances of the life we lead. We consider whatever those circumstances are to be “normal” and probably “universal”. Take a person out of their element, and suddenly they are naive and unprepared for their surroundings. Those who are highly educated and fairly intelligent are accustomed to others who are the same – for the most part, they are simply never exposed to thugs and fanatics (well, maybe fanatics, but not _violent_ fanatics). They simply can’t give consideration to something so totally outside their experience, unless like Ayers, they rebel against their upbringing and circumstances and delve into the underbelly of society. Even Ayers didn’t seem to actually participate, but was part of planning and writing…depending on others to actually carry out violence.
I think Obama’s a babe in the woods. I think he’s been so protected all of his life that he doesn’t really understand violence, doesn’t understand that _everybody_ does what they think will benefit _them_. He really believes that all children will share their toys – if we just raise them right.
David #9,
That comic strip really does sum it up!
The most likely real world example of that strip is that North Korea will launch an EMP bomb about a hundred miles up over Japan. Or perhaps Hawaii or California, if he can reach it, if Kim Jong Weirdo happens to be angrier at us than Japan on that particular day.
I’m still trying to figure out how much easier an EMP bomb is to build than a nuclear bomb. Certainly it doesn’t have to be anywhere near as precise, and its effects from a hundred miles up create a complete technological disaster across states, not cities.
Which do you think would be more destructive: An EMP bomb that takes down the entire electronic/electrical infrastructure across California, Oregon, and Nevada… or a nuclear bomb in Los Angeles?
Mike Devx,
I’m afraid the EMP thing has been terribly over hyped. An EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse) results from any nuclear explosion. There is speculation that a weapon can be designed so as to enhance the effect but no hard data. There were specific four specific EMP tests conducted in 1962. The first, Starfish (US), involved a 1.4 megaton device. The other three were Russian using devices in the 300 kiloton range.
http://glasstone.blogspot.com/2006/03/emp-radiation-from-nuclear-space.html
Note that the Hiroshima bomb was 20 kilotons. A 300 kt device requires at least 15 times the fissile material of the 20 kt. and is far more complex in design and a lot heavier.
In case you don’t care to wade through the technical data (I don’t recommend it) I’ll summarize: An EMP attack is the waste of a perfectly good firecracker.
Regards,
Roy
I’d thought that it was possible to produce an EMP bomb *without* a corresponding thermonuclear explosion; or to put it more correctly, that disabling EMPs could result from other types of bombs than a thermonuclear bomb.
I’ve scanned the link, most of it seems devoted to the Starfish (thermonuclear) experiment. I’ll have to find out if a non-nuclear EMP bomb is feasible – I’d be relieved if the EMP threat has been recently overblown!
Mike,
There have been rumors of EMP generators. They are not bombs but rather charged capacitors. One was supposedly tried in Iraq, apparently without success. They are quite limited in capacity. Might be able to take out a TV station which was the rumored target in Bagdad.
I was in Peshawar, Pakistan when the first of the Russians tests occurred. They launched an ICBM from Tyuratam, 2 IRBMs’ (one of which carried the device) from Kapustin Yar and 2 ABM’s from Sary Shagan. They were not testing for ground EMP effects but rather how their missiles would perform. This occurred during the Cuban Missile Crisis and affected the resolution of same.
Roy
I appreciate the information very much, Roy! I sometimes throw information out there that is regretfully not based on as solid a level of information as I think it is! This looks like one of those cases. I try not to contribute to hysteria, nor to contribute to internet myths… but I fear in this case I have.
It is a relief to see better information than mine indicate that the EMP threat comes solely from thermonuclear (atomic) bombs that would be burst miles high in the atmosphere, and that the threat from even those has been overhyped.
I’ll keep following this, but for now, I’m going with your take.
Mike,
The sky is falling. The sky is always falling. I have memories going back near 60 years when the sky was falling.
I quit worrying about it about the time I quit thinking about the monster in the closet.
In the words of the Old Philosopher: Don’t take life so seriously. You’ll never get out of it alive anyway.
Roy
Which do you think would be more destructive: An EMP bomb that takes down the entire electronic/electrical infrastructure across California, Oregon, and Nevada… or a nuclear bomb in Los Angeles?
The nuke of course. As Ghenghis Khan discovered, once you kill the people, resistance and food production drops down to almost zero. You can destroy their crops and their farms, but so long as humans exist, they will try to survive.
On 9/11, we were sad because of the lost in lives. Because we knew that so long as we lived, we could rebuild. AIrplanes could be rebuilt. Skyscrapers rebuilt. Foundations set once more. But a life once lost ain’t going to just spring back with some magic wishes.
It would help if you understood exactly how an EMP effect works and why it is dangerous for electronic components.
I’ve posted a little summary in the comments on this blog before concerning this subject, to suek I believe.
Basically, EMP destroys electronics by short circuiting them or causing a voltage spike which destroys electronic components by increasing current past their maximum capacity. Current is the amount of juice flowing while voltage is the amount of potential juice that could flow depending on the resistance.
The reason why sometimes a high voltage doesn’t kill you is because the current is not high enough and it doesn’t go through your heart.
A bomb that high up would concurrently lose field strength as it goes down to the cities. It would have to be in the hundreds of megaton range or even the gigaton range.
As for a pure EMP bomb, that is only technology feasible on paper. Even if they could get something like that down (which is not practical given that we cannot directly manipulate or even harness EMP radiation from the sun or a nuke), the technology would be light years beyond China or Iran’s capacities.
The Electro Magnetic Pulse also requires the magnetic field of the earth, from what I have read. Thus a nuke in vacuum doesn’t produce an EMP because there’s no field for it to cross over and create voltage spikes with. Just radiation emitting out.
If the nuke is too high, I am unsure as to what exactly it will do given that the Earth’s magnetosphere only reaches up so high.
Because EMP doesn’t work in a vacuum, it is not exactly a straight proportional scale.
Amplifying on Ymarsakr’s comments.
EMP was one of those “WTF is that?” moments. There was only one scientist in the early days of development who speculated that something like that would happen. Given the tenor of the times (Berlin, Korea, Formosa Straits, Cuban Missile Crisis) the emphasis was on developing weapons that fit the strategic doctrine of both sides. EMP was considered only in regard to its effect on our weapons, not theirs. I can give you an example, in considerable technical detail, of how that was done in the Minuteman II missile. It’s not classified. We wanted the Russians to know that that was not our weakness. I’m sure it would bore you to tears.
Theories were developed about EMP. There were only the four tests specifically studying EMP. The theories turned out not quite right. Then testing move underground. Nobody knows enough about EMP to incorporate into doctrine. The idea that a state like NoKo or Iran could utilize it is fanciful at best.
Technically, all you would need to create an EMP field would be to create a huge electromagnet that is as strong or stronger than the earth’s magnetosphere.
That has about as much practicality (as a bomb) as the chances of Al Gore getting poor because of Global Warming.