What is bothering me a lot right now is this "hashtag diplomacy" as it's being called. The First Lady and a bunch of celebrities are tweeting selfies holding signs that say "#bringbackourgirls". The idea apparently being to let the terrorists of Boko Haram, who kidnapped 300 Nigerian girls, know that we want the terrorists to give the girls back.
This is after we've seen some State Department officials using their personal twitter feeds to make comments about Putin and the situation in Ukraine, among other things.
They think Putin and the terrorists in Nigeria are going to care because... well, that's not entirely clear. But it's understandable with this particular crowd (liberals) because they equate raising awareness with doing something. When liberals say, "It's the least I could do!" they mean that literally.
And it's actually gotten worse over the years. It used to be that you would run a 5K race where a part of the entry fee goes to cancer research. Then at least something goes to the researchers. If you post a selfie on twitter or instagram, no assistance goes to anyone. When you ran the 5K you got a t-shirt so everyone would know you did it, (which is really the point, right?) With twitter you get the narcissism without the effort or expense. It's a win/win!
But that's not really what bothers me about the current situation. It's the logical disconnect, the lack of awareness of cause and effect. I've written about this before, how liberals can't quite seem to connect the dots between their various positions.
'We don't want to be the world's policeman! How dare we insist our culture is superior to another culture! Ayaan Hirsi Ali is an Islamaphobe who shouldn't be allowed to speak!"
How do liberals square these positions with the #bringbackourgirls twitter campaign?
If we are not the world's policeman, no one else is going to be either. So who exactly do they think is going to step up to bring these girls back? The UN?
SOMEONE should do SOMETHING! Yeah, well, "someone" has been the U.S. military since about 1945. And no one looks eager to tag in. "Something" in this case is going to be force of some kind. No one is taking our warnings and strongly worded statements any more seriously than they ever took them from the UN.
I guess the most irritating thing about liberals at the moment is the sudden interest in what happens to little girls in the Islamic world. None of this is new. You should see how they treat them in Afghanistan, and don't ask what the little boys go through. Or maybe do ask.
But really liberals? You are just waking up to the serious mistreatment of women and children under Islam?
Maybe you should stop shouting down every guest speaker who tries to come to your college to talk about something uncomfortable. You might learn something about the world.
I suppose I should just be happy that liberals are starting to notice what goes on in parts of the world that people in private jets don't usually visit. For example, hollywood is currently boycotting a Beverly Hills hotel because the middle eastern country that owns it (!) adopted Sharia law.
Not because of how women are treated under Sharia, mind you. But over treatment of gays. Which is also not new. Iran executes gays. Just saying. Look it up. Been going on for a long time.
Anyway, back to the cause and effect I mentioned earlier. We decided with the election of Obama that we didn't want to participate in solving the world's problems anymore. He ran on that, and we elected him.
It pisses me of to see the very people who wanted the U.S. to play a smaller role in the world wringing their hands now and wishing someone would do something. The reason is a little complex, but stay with me.
There are two ways of going about "doing something". We can wait until something bad happens, like 300 little girls get kidnapped, and then try to go in and save them. The problems with this scenario are many. Like the girls are suffering from the first hour, and without bases nearby, or any previous arrangements with whateverthird-world shithole country they happen to be in, the rescue would be a long time in coming. Also that most of the countries in which this might happen won't let us conduct military operations there, and just sending in some drones without permission would be a violation of international law.
The other way involves spreading democracy and trying to help these people into the current century where we don't mutilate the genitals of little girls or rape little boys as a matter of course. This is a long process that requires staying engaged with the world and, sometimes, getting dirty with the bad guys to let them know what is and isn't acceptable behavior.
This seems to me to be the better choice, but we decided we don't want to do that, didn't we liberals? So it's time to make some hard choices, isn't it?
No, lol, not really! I know how this will work for liberals. Before the glow of "raising awareness" by tweeting your hashtag selfie has faded, some evil right-winger will try to cut funding for free birth-control pills and before you can tweet "#firstworldproblems", those little girls will be forgotten.
This is after we've seen some State Department officials using their personal twitter feeds to make comments about Putin and the situation in Ukraine, among other things.
They think Putin and the terrorists in Nigeria are going to care because... well, that's not entirely clear. But it's understandable with this particular crowd (liberals) because they equate raising awareness with doing something. When liberals say, "It's the least I could do!" they mean that literally.
And it's actually gotten worse over the years. It used to be that you would run a 5K race where a part of the entry fee goes to cancer research. Then at least something goes to the researchers. If you post a selfie on twitter or instagram, no assistance goes to anyone. When you ran the 5K you got a t-shirt so everyone would know you did it, (which is really the point, right?) With twitter you get the narcissism without the effort or expense. It's a win/win!
But that's not really what bothers me about the current situation. It's the logical disconnect, the lack of awareness of cause and effect. I've written about this before, how liberals can't quite seem to connect the dots between their various positions.
'We don't want to be the world's policeman! How dare we insist our culture is superior to another culture! Ayaan Hirsi Ali is an Islamaphobe who shouldn't be allowed to speak!"
How do liberals square these positions with the #bringbackourgirls twitter campaign?
If we are not the world's policeman, no one else is going to be either. So who exactly do they think is going to step up to bring these girls back? The UN?
SOMEONE should do SOMETHING! Yeah, well, "someone" has been the U.S. military since about 1945. And no one looks eager to tag in. "Something" in this case is going to be force of some kind. No one is taking our warnings and strongly worded statements any more seriously than they ever took them from the UN.
I guess the most irritating thing about liberals at the moment is the sudden interest in what happens to little girls in the Islamic world. None of this is new. You should see how they treat them in Afghanistan, and don't ask what the little boys go through. Or maybe do ask.
But really liberals? You are just waking up to the serious mistreatment of women and children under Islam?
Maybe you should stop shouting down every guest speaker who tries to come to your college to talk about something uncomfortable. You might learn something about the world.
I suppose I should just be happy that liberals are starting to notice what goes on in parts of the world that people in private jets don't usually visit. For example, hollywood is currently boycotting a Beverly Hills hotel because the middle eastern country that owns it (!) adopted Sharia law.
Not because of how women are treated under Sharia, mind you. But over treatment of gays. Which is also not new. Iran executes gays. Just saying. Look it up. Been going on for a long time.
Anyway, back to the cause and effect I mentioned earlier. We decided with the election of Obama that we didn't want to participate in solving the world's problems anymore. He ran on that, and we elected him.
It pisses me of to see the very people who wanted the U.S. to play a smaller role in the world wringing their hands now and wishing someone would do something. The reason is a little complex, but stay with me.
There are two ways of going about "doing something". We can wait until something bad happens, like 300 little girls get kidnapped, and then try to go in and save them. The problems with this scenario are many. Like the girls are suffering from the first hour, and without bases nearby, or any previous arrangements with whatever
The other way involves spreading democracy and trying to help these people into the current century where we don't mutilate the genitals of little girls or rape little boys as a matter of course. This is a long process that requires staying engaged with the world and, sometimes, getting dirty with the bad guys to let them know what is and isn't acceptable behavior.
This seems to me to be the better choice, but we decided we don't want to do that, didn't we liberals? So it's time to make some hard choices, isn't it?
No, lol, not really! I know how this will work for liberals. Before the glow of "raising awareness" by tweeting your hashtag selfie has faded, some evil right-winger will try to cut funding for free birth-control pills and before you can tweet "#firstworldproblems", those little girls will be forgotten.
