Posted 4:53 PM by Angie Schultz

Godless Columnist

More Bright nonsense, this time from Ben McIntyre in the Times o' London. This article, however, is actually a Bush-basher, disguised as an article on Brights.

The term Bright was coined, consciously imitating the gay rights movement, in reaction to the steady spread of religious politics under George W. Bush.

It may well have been, but without much cause, unless you're a Chicken Little "the-sky-is-falling ewww icky god talk!" dim type of Bright.

In Bush's Washington, "godless" is the supreme insult, for religion suffuses every aspect of this presidency...In large parts of the US, thanks to the atmosphere fostered by the Bush Administration, candidates for office, whether as police chief, judge or senator, are happy to declare their beliefs, while millions of Americans who don't believe, like gays of an earlier era, are obliged to remain silent. There is nothing so overt as "Brightbashing", yet there is an underlying assumption of shared belief, a one-nation-under-Godism that reveals itself in subtle ways. When I covered the last presidential election, I lost count of the number of times I heard a candidate thank God for the weather.

Man, this kind of crap pisses me off. Look, this has been the case in the US for decades, if not centuries. Hard cheese, I know, but there it is. It has nothing to do with Bush. It was much, much worse under Reagan, when the Religious Right were much more of a force. In fact, almost everything I've heard of Bush's religion comes from newspaper columnists sneering at it; I've heard very little about religion from Bush himself (disregarding the weeks immediately after 9/11).

What really disgusts me about this is not the sniping at Bush, or religion, but the fact that someone who obviously knows so very little about the US is paid to write authoritatively on the subject for the Times. And that wouldn't even bug me if this were not seen over and over and over again, in all sorts of foreign venues. Really, it has been an eye-opener. If only Australia were a world power! I could make my living concocting nonsense about it ("In summer, Sydney families enjoy a barbecue of kangaroo caught in the city's vast Centennial Park, roasted over Wollemi Pine coals.")

(And I've not heard "godless" used as an insult since Les Nessman denounced the "godless tornadoes". Seems rather inappropriate for our current foes. But then I'm not a Bush insider, either.)

Not content with the easy target, McIntyre takes on Blair.

British Brights have a far easier time, of course, yet there are hints that Mr Blair, if not actually a Brightophobe, is not exactly an advocate of Bright rights either. His prewar rhetoric was awash with rectitude, giving the impression that the angels were not just on his side, but driving the tanks.

These two sentences alone should be enough to damn [look! I used a religious concept!] McIntyre into irrelevance. Where does this absurd statement come from? Can anyone really say with a straight face that Blair holds a Manichaean viewpoint? Really, at this point he's just throwing any old words down on paper. Do they look good? Must be true, then!

Via Doctor Frank.

Posted 8:31 AM by Angie Schultz

FEAR to Read This Post!

The other day Emily Jones had a post about some dimwit political science professor at Santa Rosa Junior College in California. Said dimwit apparently (reports are contradictory) told his students:

to compose an e- mail to an elected official that included the words "kill the president, kill the president," a school administrator said Wednesday.

...

Michael Ballou [the dimwit] intended the assignment to be an "experiential exercise that would instill a sense of fear so they would have a better sense of why more people don't participate in the political process," said Doug Garrison, the vice president and executive dean of the Petaluma campus.

One kid actually sent such an email, which brought down the wrath of The Man upon Mr. Ballou's head.

Niles and I discussed this. Niles is a cynical pollyanna, so he thought that the point was to demonstrate why it is more people don't become politicians---because they might get nasty emails.

I had a different idea, which turned out to be correct. Joanne Jacobs points to this story in the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat, in which all is made clear.

Ballou said the goal of the exercise was to get students to think about what could happen if they did send the e-mail or make such a statement.

"Just the act of saying that and knowing your e-mail could be tapped and your phone listened to, you get a wave of fear over you and you realize we're actually afraid of our own government," he said.

Yes. Just by the simple act of making a death threat to the President you too could become a target of the fascist Police State. Dissent is crushed!

Now, there are contradictory opinions whether the students were actually meant to send an email. Only one student sent one; some thought they were never meant to. However:

At a subsequent class session, Ballou asked if his students had done the assignment, [executive dean Doug] Garrison said.

"A number indicated they thought he was joking," Garrison said. "He said, 'I'm quite serious and want you to fulfill this.'"

As PJ/Maryland says in Joanne's comments (comment #6):

Reading between the lines, this sounds like a very strange assignment. Both news articles use the word "compose"; my take on "composing" an email means to write it, not to actually send it. I'm mystified as to how simply typing a few words into a computer are supposed to "instill fear". ("Did you complete your assignment?" "Yes teacher, I typed 'kill the president' into an unaddressed email in my Outlook Express, and then deleted it." "Good, now tell us about the fear you experienced.")

This sounds like what he meant to me, too. Perhaps his point was that by just having the words "kill the president" on your hard drive, you should feel fear. The NSA robo-sniffers, which sift through all the world's hard drives, will find it---after they've automagically discarded all the "spoiler" text ("atomic bomb explode bin laden chinese anthrax haarp black helicopter area 51") placed on countless Usenet posts and email messages by crafty conspiracy aficianados---and come for you in the middle of the night and you'll never be heard from again. FEEL THE FEAR!

(Just think, if you have read about this story anywhere on-line, you now have the words "kill the president" on your hard drive! Do you feel the fear yet?)

Just to be very clear: I don't think that Ballou ever meant to urge his students to send death threat, let alone urge them to carry out death threats. And, unlike some people, I don't think he's an idiot for using the phrase "kill the president" as an example. Where I do think he's an idiot is that he seems to think that we all naturally fear the US government, and that somehow typing death threats onto the screen is supposed to make us realize that.

There are two depressing facets to this story. The first is that neither the professor or his students seem to be able to grasp the difference between legitimate dissent, and threats:

In a brief interview outside his classroom at the college's Petaluma campus, Ballou called the federal investigation of his assignment "farcical" and the result of a "growing police state."

His students agree:

Before class Wednesday, several students supported Ballou and expressed surprise that the exercise had brought the Secret Service to the campus.

"The point of the assignment was to experience fear of the government," said Andrea Joy of Windsor, adding that she didn't send an e-mail. "Everybody did by just suggesting the assignment. At no point was Michael advocating any violence.

"The reaction really validated his point," Joy said.

Why, it's getting so that you can't make a simple death threat to a public official without Ashcroft's goons marching jack-booted into your house! Dissent is crushed! (Actually, I'll bet that both Ballou and Joy are enjoying the delicious frisson of fear they get from knowing they are dangerous dissenters against the Establishment. The Man is coming down on the People!)

They also don't seem to grasp the difference between saying, and doing. The police didn't come investigate because the NSA X-ray vision satellite read his lips, but because other people made complaints. (In addition to the email, one student---a high school student taking this college course---told his parents, who called the police. Did the kid or the parents misunderstand (or exaggerate) what was said into a real threat? Or maybe both the emailer and the high school kid are informers paid to seek out any whisper of dissent!)

The second depressing point is that this bozo is teaching "Introduction to U.S. Government". I looked for an on-line syllabus for the class, but found nothing. I imagine it looks something like this:

Week 1: Your government: fear it
Week 2: Reasons you should fear the government
Week 3: Fear of the government throughout US history
Week 4: Lab work: feeling fear
Week 5: Analysis of the fear we felt in Week 4
Week 6: Brave anti-government tactics
Week 7: The so-called "Constitution"

Since this is a summer course, there are only seven weeks.

Michael Ballou also runs this pop-up infested Angelfire site, meant to call attention to the plight of adjunct professors.

Now, I don't want to go into it in this post, but this is a legitimate concern. Instead of hiring full-time faculty, many colleges have decided they can save money by hiring several part-timers. The part-timers are paid far below what the regular faculty get for much the same work.

However, Ballou's site badly designed, poorly written, and above all, whiny. He seems to be one of the Perpetually Aggrieved.

Every cloud has a silver lining, though. After his recent little stunt, he probably won't have to worry about being an second-class academic citizen anymore.

UPDATE: I wrote this several days ago and put off posting it because I feared (there's that word again) that perhaps I wasn't getting the whole story, and that there would turn out to be less than meets the eye here. Now, Ballou hisself has replied to Emily in the comments section of her original post! (Emily replies to the reply here.)

Huh. Turns out I needn't have worried. It's every bit as stupid as I had supposed. I like this bit especially:

2. The exercise was not to "instill a sense of fear" as one newspaper reported, but to bring out the fear and paranoia that already exists within each one of us. And it's not fear of Al Qaida or Saddam. It's fear of our own government surveillance and of each other. Next we examine who benefits from this state of insecurity and what can be done about it. It's a graphic exercise that has worked well in the past. My class assignment brings out the fear each of us is already carrying around and then discusses how people or institutions capitalize on that baggage. It was not about pulling fire alarms just to see if the fire trucks appear.

Well, if a person doesn't feel fear and paranoia of the government, and you seek to bring it out, I'd say that was a pretty good definition of "instill". I still don't know why I'm supposed to fear simply by typing "kill the president" on my computer. Is it the death threat I'm supposed to worry about? Or is it political? If I typed "impeach the president", would that make me fear too? How am I supposed to feel fear if no one knows what I've typed?

The rest of his very long answer (there are ten points!) is incoherent and laden with his own intellectual and psychological baggage. Please don't take my word for it, but go over to Emily's and see for yourself.

Hmmm...I could interpret this to mean that Michael Ballou is spying on us, seeing how he showed up on Emily's site and all. Should I feel fear?

Posted 3:38 PM by Angie Schultz

Adventures in Advertising

Prim and proper Andrea Harris is raising a delicate eyebrow at a booze commercial. She thinks the innuendo in it is a little "out there".

Let me tell you about Australia. Most Australian commercials were much like American commercials---some amusing, some annoying, most boring. But some of them were more than out there.

Take, for example, the Bacardi Breezers commercials. These would involve a handsome young person in sober dress talking to someone in a dull business situation. Then something would be said which would cause the young person to think back to happier times, when he was blind stinking drunk on Bacardi.

For example, one showed a job interview. Our Hero is asked, "How many people did you have under you?" and he flashes back to the time when he was floundering on his back on a sticky dance floor with two hot babes, awash in spilled Bacardi. In another commercial, Our Hero is a woman, who remembers the time when she was riding a half-naked man bareback---er, piggyback---and urging him on with her cowboy hat.

I would have loved to see one of those "Bacardi urges you to drink responsibly" disclaimers on those.

Another set of commercials were for Tim Tams, an authentic Australian treat. They're rock hard cookies which comes in many flavors now, but it's basically a dry chocolate cookie covered with over-sweet chocolate. In these commercials, two pretty young women have somehow summoned up a very hunky genie and have demanded that he give them endless Tim Tams.

Now, a time-honored way of eating Tim Tams (which are shaped like small candy bars) is to suck liquid up through them, thus softening the hard cookie inside. Can you see where this is going? So in one commercial the two young women do this, while the camera lingers lovingly on their rosebud-like lips, puckered tightly about the Tim Tams. sluurrrp...slurrrrp

Abruptly one young woman stops and asks the other, "Whatcha thinking about?" The other woman considers for a second. "Nothing." "Me too," her friend agrees, and they go back to their Tim Tams. sluurrrp...slurrrrp The hunky genie, sitting on the couch between them, writhes a bit, then conjures up a pillow and ostentatiously places it on his lap. Ha ha!

(Here's an article discussing the relationship between Tim Tams and oral sex. They also mention the much-missed Mint Slice---a chocolate mint cookie---which is much better than the Tim Tam and clean of sin to boot. Except maybe gluttony.)

However, for sheer what-the-hell mindboggle, nothing beats the YoGo commercials. YoGo is what Americans would call pudding; it comes in little plastic tubs. It's sold with a series of claymation commercials featuring YoGorilla and his pal Snake (Here's a picture.) In the first commercial, they're tooling down the highway in their sports car when there's a call on the mobile TV-phone. A raspy-voiced white-haired rhino with a vaguely Southern US accent is calling to tell them that aliens have stolen the world's supply of YoGo, and that he himself is down to his last tub.
(Note that when the world's in trouble, the one who summons YoGorilla is not the Australian PM, not the Queen, not the Secretary General of the UN, but the POTUS.)

Standing next to the President's desk is a vaguely canine woman sporting a puffy black hairdo and wearing a blue dress. As the President gestures, he knocks the tub over and the YoGo splashes all over the skirt of her dress. She looks disgusted.

After some adventures in subsequent commercials, YoGorilla and Snake land the alien spaceship on the White House lawn before cheering crowds, and are greeted by the Rhino-Clinton and Lewinsky-Dog, the latter still in her stained dress.

Oh, yeah, it's American culture that's vulgar, that's right...

Posted 5:07 PM by Angie Schultz

The Perfect Movie

Note: Very often, some goofy idea will catch my fancy, and I'll spend some pleasant thinking about it, tweaking it, trying to get it right. And when it finally is, it goes nowhere. It stays in my head, useless, until something pushes it out.

But now that I have a blog, I can save these little pointless gems forever. The only downside is that you have to suffer through them too. Hard luck for you.

Michele leads us to this site, which allows you to pick a movie by genre, then select director, writer, budget, male and female leads, and two male and two female supporting actors. It then gives you the chances of Oscar nomination and who's likely to give it good and bad reviews.

So I tried to set up my perfect movie, but sadly I was constrained by having to pick a cast from among the living (if that's the word I want). As we all know, the most perfect type of movie is the 1950s science fiction B movie, which is surpassed only by the rare 1950s science fiction A movie.

Now, it won't do to make a 1950s-style science fiction movie today. The hallmarks of a good 1950s SF flick were new and shiny then, but now they're old and weatherbeaten and torn. The things which, in those days, aroused a sense of wonder in your audience, now only arouse a sense of ridicule. They've seen it, examined it, chewed it up and excreted it.

The only solution then, is to make a real 1950s B movie, using genuine 1950s cast and crew. Here, then, is my perfect movie:

An astronomer finds a faint, never-before-seen star cluster in a very unusual pattern. He goes to Europe to present this find at a conference. Meanwhile, an archaeologist is studying some newly-discovered relics which feature dots in, you guessed it, a very unusual pattern. He goes to Europe to present this find at a conference. In a train station, their briefcases become switched (original, eh?), which goes unnoticed until they arrive at their respective hotel rooms. As each man examines the strange briefcase, light dawns in his mind, accompanied by creepy music as your neck hairs stand at attention.

After they compare notes, the archaeologist decides to go in search of the lost civilization which made the relics, and the astronomer insists on going along. They start in the jungles of Brazil (or possibly Africa), searching for the man who sent the relics to the archaeologist: his old mentor. Old mentor is found, and of course has a daughter who used to be in love with the archaeologist (yes, I'm stealing freely from previous movies).

So they all go up on the plateau (of course there's a plateau) from which the relics came. After some standard adventures, they find a Lost Civilization, the survivors of Atlantis, who are in reality the remnants of a marooned colony of humanoid aliens. The Atlanteans know about the existence of the outside world, but they have been laying low, because they've been expecting a rescue ship any millennium now.

Naturally, their time is running out, because they won't be able to hide from our technology much longer. Also, some elements of the Atlantean society are getting restless, saying that the rescue ship is never coming, and they ought to try to join the outside world.

Also, there's a complication in that there's a slave revolt brewing. Yes, the Atlanteans are very advanced, and they have gadgets which use forces we've only begun to glimpse, but they still have slaves. There's a beautiful, heroic slave girl. Also an evil princess, slimy suitors, dinosaurs, a volcano, spaceships, man-eating plants, a fortune in gems, molten lava, ritual combat, fantastic architecture, beautiful sets, incredible vistas, rich colors, filmy costumes, and lots and lots of dancing girls. (No Lost Race movie would be complete without dancing girls.)

In the end, (most of) our heroes escape, the wicked are punished, and Atlantis is destroyed again. That's all I'm sayin'. I will steal freely from the Hammer production of She, the 1960 Irwin Allen production of The Lost World, The Mole People, Lost Continent, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and many, many more.

Leigh Brackett will write the screenplay from a story by H. Rider Haggard (which he hasn't written yet). George Pal will direct, and Willis O'Brien will do special effects. As for casting...John Agar will play the archaeologist, Peter Graves will play the astronomer. Agar's mentor will be played by Claude Rains (haven't decided on the daughter yet, maybe Phyllis Coates?). For the beautiful but evil princess I have in mind Coleen Gray (who was The Leech Woman), unless I can think of someone else (Coleen's beautiful, but she's not the best actress in the world). The beautiful and brave slave girl (who will fall in love with the archaeologist) will be played by Rosenda Monteros, who was Ustane in the above-mentioned remake of She (just do the same role, honey---you get to live this time). Slimy suitor to be played by Basil Rathbone. Also starring: Hugh Beaumont! Russell Johnson! Celia Lovsky! Edward Everett Horton!

But, of course, the web site wouldn't let me make this movie. You had to pick your cast from among the living, if you can imagine (writers can be dead, though---I chose Alexandre Dumas). So I picked Ridley Scott to direct, David Duchovny and Halle Berry to star, with supporting actors John Rhys Davies, David Spade, Susan Sarandon, and Janeane Garofalo. (I intended nasty ends for those last two, naturally.) I had a $100-109 million dollar budget (I mean, really, how could you make an epic for less these days?) and only brought in something like $20 million.

It would have been different if they'd have let me cast John Agar.

Posted 9:18 AM by Angie Schultz

Bright Sparks

OK, everyone, get out your pencils and paper, and write this down: "In the modern world, there is no minority group so oppressed, so marginalized, that the creation of an advocacy group cannot worsen their plight."---Me

Hmmm...needs work.

In this case, the marginalized and oppressed are atheists, and Richard Dawkins is swaggering to their aid.

This article reeks of smug. Great waves of smug roll from it and envelope my keyboard. It falls to the floor and wafts over the carpet. Anybody know where I can buy some smug remover? I'm fresh out.

He begins by talking about "consciousness-raising", which I'm sure at one time was a dewy fresh idea, but now it's a multi-billion dollar industry. "Consciousness raised, buffed, and tuned! Show up your friends! Be better than everyone else on your block!"

After touching on Northern Hemisphere chauvinism and male chauvinism, he attacks theist chauvinism, homing in on the tiny, precious baybeez:

My favourite consciousness-raising effort is one I have mentioned many times before (and I make no apology, for consciousness-raising is all about repetition).

Otherwise known as keeping a constant, humorless vigil designed to wear down the unsaved heathen until he gives in and adopts the outward trappings of your faith, just to shut you and your fellow harpies up.

Oops. Did I just use a religious metaphor? Heavens...

A phrase like "Catholic child" or "Muslim child" should clang furious bells of protest in the mind...Children are too young to know their religious opinions. Just as you can't vote until you are 18, you should be free to choose your own cosmology and ethics without society's impertinent presumption that you will automatically inherit your parents'...Occasionally a euphemism is needed, and I suggest "Child of Jewish (etc) parents"...children should hear themselves described not as "Christian children" but as "children of Christian parents". This in itself would raise their consciousness, empower them to make up their own minds...I could well imagine that this linguistically coded freedom to choose might lead children to choose no religion at all.

Ahhh...and that was what this was all about, right? Influencing the little tykes' minds.

Friend, I guarantee you that only those children who have no need of such "consciousness raising" will benefit by it. Only those whose parents are already disposed to admit the possibility of atheism in their own households will crack the linguistic code and wonder if it means anything for them. The others will embrace or reject their parents' faith in the fullness of time, as ever before.

Onward into the modern social Hell, whose path is paved with you-know-what:

Please go out and work at raising people's consciousness over the words they use to describe children. At a dinner party, say, if ever you hear a person speak of a school for Islamic children, or Catholic children...pounce: "How dare you? You would never speak of a Tory child or a New Labour child, so how could you describe a child as Catholic (Islamic, Protestant etc)?" With luck, everybody at the dinner party, next time they hear one of those offensive phrases, will flinch...

Puke.

I expect they'll be doing plenty of flinching on the spot. Please do feel free to reply, "Why don't you shut your smug yap, you insufferable shrew. Take your post-modern piety and shove it firmly up your preternaturally-tight sphincter. And take off that halo, it's cutting off the blood supply to your brain."

This is precisely like being confronted by the big-haired, tightly-smiling Church Lady who attempts to pry into your marital status or religious inclinations. Perhaps Dawkins is not dismayed by the prospect of turning into what is essentially a narrow-minded small-town scold, but I'll pass, thanks.

We retreat from this vision of the Pit to take in a different one:

A triumph of consciousness-raising has been the homosexual hijacking of the word "gay"...Those of us who subscribe to no religion; those of us whose view of the universe is natural rather than supernatural; those of us who rejoice in the real and scorn the false comfort of the unreal, we need a word of our own, a word like "gay".

Oh, God. No we don't. But we do need a cast. We seem to have broken our arm patting ourselves on the back.

Paul Geisert and Mynga Futrell, of Sacramento, California, have set out to coin a new word, a new "gay"...Like gay, it should be positive, warm, cheerful, bright.

Bright? Yes, bright. Bright is the word, the new noun. I am a bright. You are a bright. She is a bright. We are the brights. Isn't it about time you came out as a bright? Is he a bright? I can't imagine falling for a woman who was not a bright.

Ugh. This example would more readily suggest the twees, the smugs, the smarmies, the preciouses (hmmm...), or the insufferables. I could go on---the emetics, the ipecacs, the...

Dawkins then assures us that all the really Smart Set (as exemplified by the membership of the National Academy of Sciences) are atheists.

People reluctant to use the word atheist might be happy to come out as a bright...

It invites the question, "What on earth is a bright?" And then you're away:

"A bright is a person whose world view is free of supernatural and mystical elements. The ethics and actions of a bright are based on a naturalistic world view."

"You mean a bright is an atheist?"

"Well, some brights are happy to call themselves atheists. Some brights call themselves agnostics. Some call themselves humanists, some free thinkers. But all brights have a world view that is free of supernaturalism and mysticism."

"Oh, I get it. It's a bit like 'gay'.

So apparently the acceptance of the term "bright" hinges on whether your audience actually is accepting of atheists. The whole exercise seems a bit moot at that point. Otherwise, the only way you have avoided the terrible stigma of "atheist" is if you have given your hearers a tremendous laugh at your expense. They now think you're too goofy (i.e., stupid) to be any harm. The more humorless Church Lady types, however, now believe that not only are you one of the Godless, you're weird too.

Dawkins concludes his imaginary conversation:

"Oh, I get it. It's a bit like 'gay'. So, what's the opposite of a bright? What would you call a religious person?"

"What would you suggest?"

Uh...DIM?? Dull? Dark? Occluded? Cloudy?

HAW! HAW! HAW! What wit, Professor Dawkins! Well said, sir!

What a jerk. This whole column is embarrassingly childish and simplistic for a man who prides (and I do mean prides) himself on his intellect. You can imagine Maureen Dowd writing much of it.

Posted 8:04 PM by Angie Schultz

Republican Party Nadir

This just in to Yahoo, via Agence France Press:

The man many Democrats blame for Al Gore's achingly narrow defeat by George W. Bush in the 2000 presidential vote, could be a candidate when the next election is held in 2004, he will be 70.

...

[Ralph] Nader says that if the Greens reject him, he might choose to run as an independent, or possibly even as a Republican, which would pit him against George W. Bush in the primary.

...

When asked why a campaigner so closely identified with progressive causes would contemplate running for the White House as a candidate from a party on the other end of the political spectrum, Nader answers without missing a beat.

"To give the American people a choice as to the political institutions they desire and the clean elections they deserve," he said. "Isn't that what politics should be all about?"

So. Has Nader gone completely crazy, or what? An election always needs some comic relief---and Nader on a Republican ticket would be nothin' but---but, aside from the laughter of millions, what would Nader get out of it? Does he somehow believe he has become Spoilerman, able to undermine candidacies at will? Or is his grasp of politics not firm?

Perhaps he intends to run on a platform of prayer in the public schools, outlawing abortion under all circumstances, stiffer drug penalties, pornography crackdowns, etc, thereby attracting the rightmost wing of the Republicans (who will, of course, be too stupid to know who he is) and drawing them away from Bush.

Or maybe he's just pulling the reporter's leg.

Note that "progressive causes" is presented to us naked, with no quotes. Also note that the story's titled "Liberal pariah Ralph Nader flirts with new White House run."

Via Hollywood Halfwits.

Posted 9:20 PM by Angie Schultz

The Phantom Empire

Nelson Ascher of EuroPundits brings us word of this Guardian piece by Marxist historian (or "historian", as Ascher would have it) Eric Hobsbawm. Oh, this is rich, ripe fruit.

I found something to object to in nearly every paragraph, and so have had to pare it down considerably, lest I end up reproducing the whole thing, which would be Fair Use, you know.

Sit down (er, which you probably are already), because there are many astonishing assertions here.

The present world situation is unprecedented. The great global empires of the past...bear little comparison with what we see today in the United States empire. A key novelty of the US imperial project is that all other empires knew that they were not the only ones, and none aimed at global domination. None believed themselves invulnerable, even if they believed themselves to be central to the world - as China did, or the Roman empire.

Well, it's hard to argue that the present world situation is not unprecedented, because it is. So he's right there. But he immediately begins to go off the rails with his implication that the US aims for global domination. And it's pretty clear that the US does not feel itself to be invulnerable, or else it would not have felt threatened enough to invade Iraq and Afghanistan.

A global reach, which became possible after 1492, should not be confused with global domination.

Which, of course, Hobsbawm does throughout this entire article. But he assures you that he sees the quagmire, so you know that he will not step right into it. Pay no attention to that ooze lapping at his collar bone. That's not quicksand, no.

The British empire was the only one that really was global in a sense that it operated across the entire planet. But the differences are stark. The British empire at its peak administered one quarter of the globe's surface.

Whereas the US is "administering" (He makes it sound so nice! I would have thought ruling would be a more appropriate word) much less land than that. Er, in fact, very little at all.

The US has never actually practised colonialism, except briefly at the beginning of the 20th century. It operated instead with dependent and satellite states and developed a policy of armed intervention in these.

And those satellite states would be...? Well, aside from the Phillipines (which was our fling at colonialism), there's...uh... Well, there's Japan and Germany, in which we had "armed intervention", in that we defeated them in a war they started (rumor has it that other countries were involved in defeating them, but I wouldn't know much about that). Then there's South Korea (which would be my vote for sole significant "satellite state"), except that was UN action. And then there's our satellite states Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Haiti, and Vietnam. There is also, of course, a large chunk of Central and South America. I suppose Panama might be our satellite state.

Some empire we are. All these military interventions, and hardly any useful satellite states to show for it. I mean, they aren't nearly as useful to us as the Soviets' satellites were to them. I wonder how Hobsbawm felt about Soviet imperialism, by the way?

In fact the present US policy is more unpopular than the policy of any other US government has ever been, and probably than that of any other great power has ever been.

There's the sort of thing we like to see in our Marxists---complete disconnect from reality. More unpopular than Hitler? Than Stalin? Than Mao? Than---gasp!---Israel?

Here comes another broadside from a parallel universe:

The sudden emergence of a ruthless, antagonistic flaunting of US power is hard to understand, all the more so since it fits neither with long-tested imperial policies nor the interests of the US economy. But patently a public assertion of global supremacy by military force is what is in the minds of the people at present dominating policymaking in Washington.

Hello? September 11th? Remember that? Airplanes, terrorists, thousands dead in Manhattan? Ring any bells at all? Even if he thinks military action in Afghanistan was the wrong response to that; even if he thinks that Iraq is completely unrelated, and so its invasion was ill-advised, illegal, EEEEEvil---surely he has to realize that's what's behind this sudden spurt of "imperialism".To completely ignore these facts is to concede utter irrelevance.

In military terms, the Iraq war was successful. But it neglected the necessities of running the country, maintaining it, as the British did in the classic colonial model of India.

This paragraph is shocking for more than one reason. Firstly, the Iraq war is barely over (having barely begun, of course). I think it's a bit early to decide that the US has "neglected the necessities of running the country"---in essence, lost the peace. This would be an unremarkable bit of disingenuity for a mere pundit---for a Fisk or a Pilger or a Monbiot. But Hobsbawm's supposed to be a historian, and at least a competent one. You'd think a historian would have a better grasp of timescales, and how much time is required to help a country recover from three decades of misrule.

The other, more shocking thing is that apparently Hobsbawm is comparing the British rule of India favorably with the American occupation of Iraq. Presumably Hobsbawm would be happier if we treated Iraq as an outright colony. Behold---a Marxist approves of imperialism, and it's not even Soviet imperialism!
More shocks ahead:

Iraq was a country that had been defeated by the Americans and refused to lie down. It happened to have oil, but the war was really an exercise in showing international power.

Did you see that?! It's NOT all about the oooiiillll. I'm stunned that Hobsbawm rejects this beloved theory, and the only explanation I can see is that he's determined to be unfashionable. If all those third-rate minds are convinced of it, I can hear him thinking, it must be wrong.

But, really, "an exercise in showing international power"? Bush looked around, said, "Hmmm...we have to show our power somehow," and decided to invade Iraq?

Apparently so:

In real terms they mean that the US can invade anybody small enough and where they can win quickly enough. The consequences of this for the US are going to be very dangerous.

I've seen this in any number of punditry venues, and I always wonder how literally the authors take it. The US "can invade anybody small enough and where they can win quickly enough". Well, it can, but will it? Will it invade Belize? Burma? Bolivia? Burkina Faso? Does Hobsbawm fret that the US might invade Saudi Arabia or Indonesia? France? Canada? What would be the point?

Domestically, the real danger for a country that aims at world control is militarisation.

No, domestically the real danger is that the public will get sick and tired of paying for war and the upkeep of conquered countries, and elect someone new to office.

Internationally, the danger is the destabilising of the world. The Middle East is far more unstable now than it was five years ago. US policy weakens all the alternative arrangements, formal and informal, for keeping order.

Hobsbawm must belong to that new political party, Revolutionaries for the Status Quo.

In Europe it has wrecked Nato - not much of a loss, but trying to turn it into a world military police force for the US is a travesty. It has deliberately sabotaged the EU, and also aims at ruining another of the great world achievements since 1945: prosperous democratic social welfare states. The crisis over the United Nations is less of a drama than it appears since the UN has never been able to do more than operate marginally because of its dependence on the security council and the US veto.

Wrecked NATO---if I recall, the major (or sole) objections to NATO involvement were the French, who did not want to do so much as protect Turkey. I don't think that NATO should have been involved in Iraq (or Bosnia or Kosovo), but protection of Turkey is clearly within NATO's avowed purpose. Seems to me the French have wrecked NATO, if it is wrecked.

Sabotaged the EU---Er, how? By asking Eastern European countries for help directly rather than going through the Fr---I mean, Brussels?

Ruining "prosperous democratic social welfare states"---er, huh? Maybe we're ruining them by taking on their burden of defense, thereby allowing them to grow ever more bloated. Unless he just means the Soviet Union.

And apparently the UN was never hampered by a British, French, Chinese, or Soviet veto---only an American one.

How is the world to confront - contain - the US? Some people, believing that they have not the power to confront the US, prefer to join it. More dangerous are those who hate the ideology behind the Pentagon...

...which is...what? We are not to know.

...but support the US project on the grounds that it will eliminate some local and regional injustices. This may be called an imperialism of human rights...There is a genuine case to be made that there are governments so bad that their disappearance will be a net gain for the world.

Be sure and read Oliver Kamm's response to that. Snork.

But this can never justify the danger of creating a world power that is not interested in a world it does not understand, but is capable of intervening decisively with armed force whenever anybody does anything that Washington does not like.

First, to say that the US does not "understand" the world would be to suggest that somebody, somewhere, does.

Secondly, think of all the countries which have done "anything" Washington didn't like. Think of how many of them remain unbombed (by us) since Bush became President. Maybe it'd be easier to make a list of those we have bombed.

How long the present superiority of the Americans lasts is impossible to say. The only thing of which we can be absolutely certain is that historically it will be a temporary phenomenon, as all other empires have been.

In the interests of fairness, I'll note he's correct about this.

The weakness of the US economy is such that at some stage both the US government and electors will decide that it is much more important to concentrate on the economy than to carry on with foreign military adventures.

Indeed, as I mentioned above. However this would be true whatever the state of the economy. I don't believe the economy is particularly weak by historical standards, but only by the standards of the tech bubble of a few years back---another thing a historian might've known.

And Bush's existing international policy is not a particularly rational one for US imperial interests - and certainly not for the interests of US capitalism. Hence the divisions of opinion within the US government.

Ah, yes---the famous squabbling of the Bush administration.

But the major preoccupation is that of - if not containing - educating or re-educating the US. There was a time when the US empire recognised limitations, or at least the desirability of behaving as though it had limitations. This was largely because the US was afraid of somebody else: the Soviet Union. In the absence of this kind of fear, enlightened self-interest and education have to take over.

That first sentence is not only not a sentence, but it doesn't tell us for whom this is "the major preoccupation". For Hobsbawm, presumably. However, having failed to note (or notice) any reason for this recent American "imperialism", he also must fail at demonstrating what sort of "education" is now lacking.

This next bit tells all:

This is an extract of an article edited by Victoria Brittain and published in Le Monde diplomatique's June English language edition.

I must say that this is very much in keeping with the flavor of other Le Monde articles I've read, whether translated into English by other bloggers, or (with great difficulty and heavy assist from Babelfish) in French. They tend to be densely constructed on a foundation of air, propped up here and there by cryptic (often irrelevant) assertions, and decorated with hyperbole. How they manage to keep from crashing under the weight of their absurdities, right there on the page, is a mystery to me.

Truly, it concerns me that this represents the best of our supposed intellectual and cultural betters.

Posted 8:14 AM by Angie Schultz

Happy Blogday to Me

Today is this blog's first birthday. I started it a year ago today, which seems like a hundred million years ago (and not because of the blog). I didn't let it go public until the end of July, though, if I recall correctly.

I've been in sort of a writing quagmire recently. I write stuff and don't post it, and then I feel the moment's passed. Or I write something long and halfway through it I figure no one gives a damn, not even me. Still, though, as long as there are idiots to smack, I'll keep it up.

Posted 4:31 PM by Angie Schultz

BBC Bashing

Ahhh...my favorite sport. We ought to form leagues, and have a big year-end competition.

Today's tidbit is from Silent Running, which unearths this smug Guardian (but I repeat myself) editorial on the rapacious Rupert Murdoch and how he seeks to infest Britain's clean green shores with Fox News-style corruption.

Mr Murdoch's news network used Oliver North, a former US colonel and neo-conservative firebrand, as an embedded reporter in Iraq.

Ah, good. We now see that "neo-conservative" is being used as shorthand for "icky warmonger". I'm sure that North is a Republican, but I don't think I've ever heard him explain his politics carefully enough to be labelled "neo-conservative", as opposed to paleo-conservative, or meso-conservative, or whatever. He doesn't strike me as the kind of guy who's interested in political subtleties. "Republicans good, Democrats bad" is probably about as subtle as it gets for him. (As you might've guessed, I do not have a great deal of use for Mr. North.)

The network referred to "our troops" and to anti-war protesters as the "great unwashed".

The entire network, as policy, not just one commentator. Actually, I'm pretty sure most of the anchors did refer to---horror!---"our troops", as in "Our troops were fired upon by..."; but I don't remember them regularly referring to protestors as "the great unwashed", as in "Today in San Francisco, the great unwashed held a 'puke-in' to protest..."

As for this:

When Baghdad fell, the news anchors addressed those who opposed the "liberation" with the words: "You were sickening then, you are sickening now."

That was Neil Cavuto, speaking on his "Common Sense" spot. Whatever one might think of Cavuto, he's an opinionator, and that spot is for his opinions. It's not meant to be straight news.

(The only thing Google turned up on foxnews.com for "great unwashed" was in these letters.)

In fact, I'll point out that most of the "worst" examples of Fox bias one reads of come from their analysis shows (which is practically all their shows, as far as I can see). You know, when you watch them, that you're watching someone's opinion rather than straight fact.

As opposed to the BBC, where they slip the opinion into straight news. For example, in August or early September of 2001, their environmental series "Earth Report" (if I recall correctly) ran a spot on global warming and Kyoto which contained the phrase, "Even when global warming hit George Bush's home state..." (he still didn't sign the Kyoto treaty). Under the voice-over they ran footage of the (then) recent floods in Houston due to Tropical Storm Allison. It's a hard fact of geography and meteorology that here on the Gulf Coast there are hurricanes and tropical storms, and the place floods easily. It's not like the region was tundra until the 1880s. Global warming had nuttin' to do with it.

The ads for Earth Report on BBC World used to say things like, "As environmental concerns ravage our homes...[something I've forgotten]. So we all live well today...who's looking out for tomorrow?"

And that's not editorializing?? (Not to mention poor grammar---I'm quite sure that their sentence broke down to the assertion that it was the "concerns" that were ravaging our homes---perhaps a truer statement than they intended.)

British viewers have confidence in television news because it is delivered free of rants or bias.

How nice for the British people that they have all these laws dictating that you can slant the news anyway you like, as long as you're pretending not to.

Posted 4:36 PM by Angie Schultz

Star Trek's Department of September 12

I started number 3) in the previous post, below, by saying that sometimes Lileks seems to be reading my mind, as happened the other day. Well, he did it again Friday. Get out of my head, James. You won't like it in there, I promise you. There are dark spaces with pools of unknown substances and rats and things that...feed...upon them. Whatever you do, don't talk to the woman with the yellow eyes.

He does basically what I've done here, except he relates the various guises of Star Trek to the culture at large, rather than to the face that liberalism wears in each, which I think is more accurate. After all, the dull gabby diplomats of Next Generation were launched in 1987, during the Reagan era. The writers of the show tend to be liberals. I know that Roddenberry was (for his time) a very liberal fellow. (Maybe us more hawkish liberals ought to start calling ourselves the James T. Kirk Brigade, or sumpin).

Lileks begins by talking about the season finale of the latest franchise avatar, Enterprise.

AVAST! HERE BE SPOILERS.

As he says, in this episode there's been a suicide attack against Earth, with seven million killed. Through a dumb deus ex machina, Capt. Archer finds out who's behind it. They're called Xindi, and live in "the Delphic Expanse", a mysterious and unexplored region that Capt. Kirk never visited. And they're planning another attack with an even more powerful weapon.

I thought this was a bit too much copying from reality, although the episode was well done, and gripping. The hard, cold expression that Archer and Tucker wore was familiar to me; I wore it for months after 9/11 and could feel it settling on my face again as I watched.

Lileks describes a scene between them:

Captain Archer and his First Officer [sic---major geek failure here; Trip's not the First Officer] are sitting up late at night drinking scotch. (!) The First Officer lost a sister in the suicide attack. He's not exactly the cheerful fellow he used to be. He kills his drink and glares at the captain with angry, haunted eyes. "Tell me we're not going to pussyfoot around when we get in there," he says. "None of that noninterference crap."

Archer stares out the window. "Whatever it takes," he says, and he drains his glass.

This is not your father's Star Trek, you might think. But it is. We're back to the sixties' vision of the future. All Kirked up and ready to roll.

As much as I hate to, I disagree with Lileks' diagnosis. When Archer said, "Whatever it takes", he kept it very ambiguous. I took him to mean, "Yes, if we have to destroy them, we will, but if we can get to know them and come to some understanding, somehow prove to them that we mean them no harm, while, we'll do that instead." He looked a bit disturbed at Trip's bloodthirstiness.

After all, throughout the episode they have a pesky Klingon buzzing about, and it's only on the third encounter, the third time the Klingon endangers their crucial mission, that Archer finally orders him destroyed. But before he does, Archer wastes some of their precious new photon torpedoes on trying to discourage the Klingon without destroying him.

But more importantly, the reason the Xindi attacked earth is that they learned that the Federation would wipe them out in four hundred years. Therefore, obviously we are the aggressors and we must ask ourselves how we can prevent such a horrible catastrophe and atone for this genocide which we didn't even do yet. That kind of resolution is still possible.

(I wondered if I was mis-hearing the name of the attackers, and they were acutally the Kzinti, but this site, among others, spells the name "Xindi". My first guess was Zindi; I've changed it now. Supposedly, chasing after the Xindi is going to be the major activity of the series for at least the next season.)

It remains to be seen what the crew of the Enterprise will do. If Star Trek is a reflection of the current thinking of liberalism, and if Archer unleashes his inner Kirk, it may mean that liberalism can be rescued from the Chomsky choir.

Posted 4:35 PM by Angie Schultz

The Klingon in the Mirror: Star Trek as Reflection of the Zeitgeist

This began as a quick list of peeves, and turned into a boring rumination. You're warned. The title is an extremely obscure reference.

Happy Fun Dan missed war so much he tried to get a new one started with his Top Ten Things I Hate About Star Trek.

I love Star Trek. The original series saved my life. No, really. Remind me to tell you sometime.

But, that said, there are certain flaws. Steven Chapman points out one of my least favorite ones:

6. # Every planet the Enterprise crew encounter just happens to have only one culture.

Well, actually, I think it's the result of unchecked globalization, myself.

In the original series, you didn't have to worry about this. Most of the time, the crew was dealing with particular people (or beings), and took their culture as they found it. They usually didn't have to bow down to the entire notion of cultures, kicking themselves in the ass to demonstrate that they treasured each and every alien culture more than the last one.

Now for my feral (not tame enough to be pets) Star Trek peeves:

1) Everyone got lumpy. I don't mean that the original actors began to bulge---that's only natural. I mean their heads. Back in the original series, when there was no budget, Klingons were just muddy-colored humans with big eyebrows. Romulans were, like Vulcans, aquiline greenish humans with pointed ears and Moe Howard hair. In TNG, the Klingons grew great lumps (I think they got lumpier over the years), and even the Romulans (and the Vulcans, I think) began to swell a bit at the temples.

Perhaps they got a special budget for make up, and had to use it up or...er...else. But this doesn't explain the fact that every subsequent species was just humans with cheek quills or nose plates or ear fungus. Why no tails, or horns, or extra limbs? Laziness, that's why.

2) Enemies were outlawed.

This is a large and hungry peeve.

In the beginning, you had the Klingons, and they were nasty bastards. They'd burn a hundred innocent villagers just to get two men the village was allegedly hiding.

You also had the Romulans, and while they were no cream puffs, they didn't have the commitment to viciousness and cruelty that the Klingons had.

Then came Next Gen, and we actually had a Klingon on the Enterprise bridge, and we had to be all worshipful about his precious Klingon culture, which led inevitably to us "understanding" the Klingons. Then the Klingons somehow needed Picard's help to hold their empire together, and after that they changed from fearsome equals to posturing, whining brats always threatening but never able to do anything without the Federation's help (hmmm...). By the end of Deep Space Nine they were operatic (comic and dramatic) figures, spending more time on declaiming how sweet and fitting it is to die for the Empire, and less on slaughtering innocents wholesale.

The Romulans lay low for a while, put in a brief appearance which showed they'd been boning up on cruelty and oppression, and then just sort of faded away.

Oh, and there were the Ferengi, who were vicious little bastards when they first slithered on-screen in TNG, using electric whips on Riker and Co., but by the end of Deep Space Nine they were much more cuddly and comical than the Klingons.

The Cardassians, now, were initially the series' Nazis, what with oppressing and murdering the Bajorans. And they were pretty sinister at first, but they were soon too involved in spying on and imprisoning one another to be very good villains, and then they got taken over by the Dominion.

Then, in Deep Space Nine, came the unnecessarily-apostrophated Jem'Hadar, unstoppable, unflinching warriors. But, oops. Turns out they are merely the poor drug-enslaved pawns of the Dominion, who, actually, are a subject race of the Founders (the shapeshifters).

Ah, but the shapeshifters really are bad guys, right? After all, they hate and fear the "solids". Nope, turns out they're all just sick, and when Odo cures them they stop their war against, er, everybody.

Wait just a damn minute, you say. I've forgotten the biggest baddies of all: the Borg. They are the implacable enemy, right? There is no understanding, no negotiation, no compromise with them, true? Er, no. In TNG we first find that, after all, the Borg are only Hugh-man (or whatever), and with sufficient cuddling and hand-holding, they can return to what they were. This, of course, is what Janeway is doing throughout most of Voyager with 7 of 9.

My point here is that Star Trek has become uncomfortable with the idea of enemies. We are no longer permitted enemies, except for the purposes of demonstrating that they are only our enemies due to a sickness in their society, or in ours. When we make the effort to Understand them, we see that there's really not so much difference between us after all. Hurray!

Um, however, a universe without enemies of some kind turns out to be dull. So every few years we have to show that our enemies are paper tigers, or linen lions, or whatever, and they are replaced by new enemies---races whose names are only legends, fearful whispers in seedy dives. Then, after we've fought them a time or two, and there's been a lot of talk about this most terrible threat to the existence of the Federation ever, they too become pussycats, and a new bunch takes their place. No doubt if Voyager had continued a few more years, Species 8472 would have revealed themselves to be fluffy bunnies who were only afraid of the big, bad Borg.

3. Star Trek as Zeitgeist

I guess, technically, this isn't a peeve, but a !peeve. (That will make sense to none of you; just roll with it.)

Sometimes I'll be writing or thinking about some topic, and then I'll find that Lileks has been thinking along the same lines. This happens fairly often, and it scares me. It happened again on May 16th. Lileks says,

[Anthony] Burgess saw the two poles of political philosophy at work in the West, and beyond. Augustinian philosophy, which saw man as flawed and sinful and basically hosed when it came to perfectibility in this mortal plain, was the conservative view. Pelagius was liberalism: our nature is not only perfectible, we can perfect ourselves here and now. Burgess saw governments as shifting back and forth between the two - the excesses of one would push people to embrace the other, and vice versa, and so on.

I would say that the two poles are not as far apart as they seem. When I think of what Lileks is describing as Augustinianism---"man as flawed and sinful"---I first think of rigid Christianity (or, if you'd rather, the Taliban): dedicated to punishing "sinful" behavior, or anything that might lead to sinful behavior, or anything that might make someone, somewhere, think a naughty thought. Mankind is weak and foolish, and the pious must take extreme measures to see that society is kept pure.

But this would equally well describe the direction the pious Left is taking. Having eradicated great societal sins (e.g. segregation)---for which I say, Hallelujah!---they are now trying to ensure that everything that even looks like sin (in the dark, if you squint) is ruthlessly irradicated. A good example of this are the Lexicops, moving to make sure you don't use the word "niggardly", or Making A Statement by spelling "women", "womyn" (or, $DEITY help us, "wombyn").

Or, as we see, opposing American policies for no other reason than they American policies, even if that opposition violates every principle the Left (supposedly) holds dear.

Instead, I would say the two poles are those who believe that whatever perfection man can reach, he must do himself; and those who believe that man is corrupt, but that his society can be made perfect by outside force. That outside force might take the form of religious deities with numerous rules for mankind, or the form of laws made by the Right-Thinking elements of society, who have only the best interests of society as a whole in mind.

I doubt that history swings between these two poles; perhaps instead it's a constant struggle of the do-it-yourselfers against the rulegivers. Or, if you prefer, the individualists against the authoritarians.

So, how does this relate to Star Trek? Well, the direction that the Left has been taking recently mirrors the evolution of Star Trek. The original series was a (relatively) sunny, optimistic series in which our heroes fought barbarism, not only in the dark corners of the galaxy, but in themselves. Is a machine controlling the thoughts of humans; is a society forcing certain of its members to work in an environment which makes them stupid and violent; Klingons preparing to attack a peaceful and primitive society? Well, the Enterprise will put a stop to that!

They had few rules to constrain them, and they often ignored those they did have. After all, it's a big universe, and the established rules don't always fit new situations.

In The Next Generation, this version had triumphed over the bad guys (at least locally). Picard's crew didn't need all that vulgar Kirkian muscle; they knew that all lifeforms and all cultures are to be respected and cherished, so that if we just talk things out we can come to some sort of accommodation. This was the Age of Peace Through Gabbing. The Federation was thoughtful, peaceful, smug, and dull.

But in Deep Space Nine, it began to turn upon itself. DS9 had wheels within wheels, plots within plots. Starfleet was not the hopeful group of explorers who sent Kirk out, nor was it the dull statesmen who dispatched Picard (even though it was supposedly contemporaneous with him), but a bloated, corrupted organization, its leaders more interested in consolidating their own power than in exploration (or whatever it was that Starfleet was supposed to do). This was the X Files Era.

Then came Voyager. I was among the few who liked Voyager (I hated DS9). It reminded me more of the original series, in that it was not above looking a bit stupid in order to arouse a sense of wonder (this is the most important thing in science fiction, in my opinion---more so than characterization or plot or explosions). Unfortunately it was a bit directionless, and to make up for this, it embraced dogma.

I don't think Voyager got through an episode without using the word "protocols" (always plural). If it wasn't computer "protocols", it was Starfleet protocols. "Starfleet protocols clearly state that we sit here and do nothing, Captain." Thanks to Kirk and his merry band, the Alpha Quadrant was a safe and peaceful place, and Starfleet had developed "protocols" which assumed the entire infrastructure of Starfleet close behind every decision a captain made. Then Voyager was thrown into the Delta Quadrant, and couldn't count on the support that would make those rules work. (Janeway supposedly knew she had to throw away the rulebook, but as time went on she only seem to cling to it more tightly.)

Perhaps Voyager is Star Trek's Department of September 10th: people used to peace and order, clinging desperately to rules that no longer apply lest they face the fact that they live in a fundamentally dangerous world. But Voyager started in 1995, ending in May 2001. If Voyager reflected the coming catastrophe, why, that would mean...Brannon and Braga knew!

Or perhaps my analogy is breaking down. Perhaps we need a bit of temporal distance between us and the era, to see what exactly was the defining quality. But I did want to point out the difference in outlook between the cheerful swagger of the original series, and the sweaty paranoia of Deep Space Nine.

To be continued...