From Georgia to Facebook to Nukes, finally landing on Bietz and, presumably, buying a vowel

The Great State of Georgia complains that I inadvertently left them out of my paean yesterday to the online debate community. This is patently false. I left them out advertently. (And that’s a real word.) I do not like Georgia. I have never liked Georgia. I wish Hoagy Carmichael’s sister had had a different name. I refuse to change planes in Atlanta. I do not dare to eat a peach for fear of its provenance, I will have nothing to do with Ms. Brown because of who named her and claims her, and for that matter, I don’t like the former SSR, the eponymous king the II, or Bulldogs, Panthers and Eagles.

Jeesh.

Now, of course, I’ll get the cards and letters from you-know-where, taking up where the Pffft ‘R’ Us fans left off. You can’t please anybody, nowadays.

Last night the Sailors berated me soundly for my existence in Sims with Real People (i.e., Facebook). Then everyone started comparing who had the best profile picture, with the group generally preferring O’C’s, not because it looks good but because of the inherent mysterious lack of inherent mystery, seeing that he changes it every day without ever changing it. Or vice versa. Anyhow, as long as there’s Scrabulous, I’m not leaving Facebook. Deal with it.

We also kicked around Jan-Feb some more. Termite, fresh from the Parsnip Ritz, was able to provide the latest and greatest in case material, much of which struck me as rather silly. The hegemony argument, from which I demur (admittedly without actually hearing it), seems to have most of the fanboys praising it because they can say they’re running heg-good more than its inherent truth. Remains me of the days of cap-bad (i.e, capitalism); everybody loves a good catchphrase that looks supercool. Anyhow, hegemony over whom? Our enemies? Our friends? Let’s look at Western hegemons in the Middle East. Pick your European nation, pick your Middle Eastern country, pick your time period, and then think for a minute. Yeah, Western hegemony over the Middle East is not exactly working yet. Hegemony over the Far East? Let me see. Na’ah, I don’t see it there either. Maybe it’s just me. Or maybe it’s some other definition of hegemony. Then there’s the nukes falling into the hands of terrorists, which strikes me as something of a stretch. Given the nature of nuclear politics so far, possession of these weapons is the inherently sought-for goal, not giving them away or misplacing them. I guess one could claim that NK and Pakistan selling these technologies is a problem, and somehow that leads to terrorist acquisition, but that seems an awfully tenuous thread to me, with enough political switches having to be set so perfectly that I wouldn’t want to base policy on it, especially given the more immediate (simple and resolutional) threat of our enemy nations having nukes. That’s sort of like saying you’re going into shark-infested waters, so prioritize your planning that don’t cut your foot on a broken Coke bottle. Then there's MAD, which only makes sense if there is, in fact, a threat of mutual destruction, and presumably a country newly acquiring nukes has the odd handful, not the odd countryful, unlike the US, so it’s more Singly Assured Destruction. Leaking missile bins in Russia came up, but that may have just been Termite planning his own personal attack on Moscow, which I wouldn't put past him. Anyhow, as always, popular content early on seems to be anything but what the US should do about perceived enemies arming with nukes. Curiously enough, with the possible exceptions of 1962, depending on how you define the Cuba/USSR connection, and with Iraq (which, coincidentally, has really resulted in a hegemonic hit out of the park), that is if you accept that the US administration believed in the phony nuke evidence, the US has tended neg. I mean, all right, maybe we haven’t decided that it’s unjust, but in the game of realpolitik we usually haven’t done it. On the other hand, military and political logic seem to support the aff, with or without nukes. The good news in all of this is that there is so much ground for real resolutional discussion, some of it will have to break out sooner or later. Then again, maybe not. Whole resolutions have gone their entire spans without ever touching reality: the old separation of church and state rez comes to mind. Maybe that’s another reason why I continue to find Pfffft appealing. We haven’t yet developed a digressive approach to the activity that allows us to find a way to avoid every topic while allowing us to use our favorite obscure college-assigned texts that we recently read, regardless of their true applicability. Still, I may be reading too much into the random spurtings of Mr. Termite. For all I know everyone will be on topic from now till the closing gavel at TOC. Here’s where I really miss my Hour with Bietz. I’d love to hear what the take on this is from him and his circle. Come to think of it, whatever did happen to my Hour with Bietz? Did he move to Georgia? Is he coaching Pfffft now?

I just can’t keep up.