The Dark and The Light

The Dark
Seven years ago, this very moment, I watched the unfolding drama taking place in New York City (read here for my recollection of that morning). I have always been interested in world affairs, reading Boston Globe from front to back each morning and watching the news each evening. After 9/11 I have had a heightened awareness of the United States standing in the world and developed a cynical view of our governments overall foreign policy.

Grease makes things run smoother. That's what our current administration does not understand. The Bush doctrine runs in absolutes. Terrorist attack... go to war. Political disagreement...disengage diplomacy. That's not how the world works. Back in prehistoric times how could members of different tribes interact without conflict? By shows of good faith. Offers of food, shelter, resources, assistance were ways to indicate that tribes were friendly and trustworthy. Nothing has changed in thousands of years.

Being that we are the world's preeminent power don't you think we would improve our standing, develop new allies, strengthen out existing relationships by spending on our money helping other countries, especially those who currently despise us? Look at it this way. When Ben and Jerry's has a "free ice cream" day they are advertising their product in the hopes that the money they lose in giving away product with be recouped and future business will increase. If they spent their money on running ads putting down Friendly's Ice Cream and spent money trying to undermine the Friendly's corporation, they still have to spend money to sell their product, because the destruction of Friendly's does not guarantee that people will buy Ben and Jerry's. You catch more flies with ice cream.

War should always be used as a last resort. In WW II we stayed out of the war until knew all the players and knew that we had to go to war or lose everything. After 9/11 we knew very little, but fabricated intelligence in order to appear to be doing something. We still haven't found the people responsible. Why? Because we haven't greased the wheels, we blew up the car.

The Light
I was reading Rolling Stone magazine while doing cardio at the gym yesterday. The issue was dedicated to comedy and there were a couple of jokes that made me laugh so hard that I almost fell off the Precor machine.

Joke #1:

A guy's having sex with his wife. All of a sudden he looks over at the door and there in the doorway is his eight year old son standing there. The kid looks horrified and runs away. The guy says to his wife "Well, I better go talk to Jimmy". He puts on his clothes and goes down to Jimmy's room. He opens the door and there's Jimmy nailing Grandma. The father goes "Oh, my God!" and the kid goes "Not so funny when it's your mom, is it?".

Joke #2:

Guy goes to the doctor and the doctor says, "Sir, you've got to stop masturbating!" and the guy was like, "Why?" and the doctor says, "So I can examine you".