Me, that is.
I have two things I need to write about.
I really meant to write about this (Voluntary Vixens Ep. 96) late last week, but I forgot. I guess my initial take is along the lines of where I am with so many other things lately.
People get so accustomed to preparing (for anything!) one way that they don’t take into account changes that’ve happened in the world.
The Emergency Preparedness information is certainly familiar to me. It sounds like my youth background is very similar in terms of the Boy Scouts.
But things have changed.
The US Army deactivated its last MASH unit in 2006.
There’s no need to do a ton of things in the field anymore. If shit really goes down, they get you to a place where you can be cared for away from the imminent danger.
The US just pulled out of Afghanistan after twenty years. If a servicemember was injured in the field there, he/she would be stabilized for helo transport to a place that’d be acceptable for transport to a full hospital somewhere else.
The corporate press here combined information from the first Gulf War in 1991 with the modern wars’ statistics.
We’re pretty damned good of keeping track of people these days. If someone is hurt or killed, they’re not just left on the battlefield like they were previously.
What I’m saying with the emergency preparedness efforts is: understand what modern tools entail. I traveled to NYC earlier this week. I had two credit cards, a debit card, my paratransit card, a $20 bill, and a phone. When I got back to DC the next day, I had the same.
Did I ever want for something that would have been in the gargantuan wallet I used to carry? No. Would that have been the same in 2005? No.
Out of curiosity, I decided to search back, and see if I’d mentioned Bob Zubrin here before. Yes. July 2014. What he was writing about was his inspiration for Martian exploration based on the historical examples from polar exploration.
You have to go light, and you have to be able to move. If there’s something you need along the way, you can probably find it if you look around.
This is almost antithetical to the ultra-prepared crowd.
Will you be able to get somewhere safe? Almost certainly. So unless there’s something you will die without, pick it up along the way.
It’s very difficult to communicate this sort of thinking.
Now I should write about the trip and the debate.
First, I did not carry my vaccine card with me. No, you don’t need to scan my card. Sorry. You can see a photo of it in my phone unlockable to anyone who doesn’t have my thumbprint. If they hadn’t let me in, I probably would have disputed all the charges for the trip with my credit card company.
But they were satisfied, so it was a non-issue.
As for the debate, itself, I registered my vote as undecided at the outset. As I wrote Saturday, I really was.
As a refresher, the resolution was: A willingness to intervene, and to seek regime change, is key to an American foreign policy that benefits America.
Despite a couple of notable questionable assertations, the neocon of all neocons cleaned the floor with Horton.
While Krystol didn’t really do a ton to support it, he did spell out some instances of American intervention that have benefitted humanity.
As my friend and I discussed later, were Grenada and Panama really black eyes for America? Did either really talk about those? No.
I was also thinking about where we didn’t even do the bare minimum, to loan Bradley Fighting Vehicles to end the slaughter in Rwanda.
The default position should be one of non-intervention
But can positive things come from military action? Absolutely.
I think a lot of that would be short of regime change.
Neither of them really argued to that. Horton was digging up things completely irrelevant to, well, anything.
I get earwormed by Duran-Duran’s “The Reflex” when I hear him speak about the Middle East; he’s reflexively pro-Shiite.
On balance, is the world a better place because the Shah was removed?
I don’t think so.
I’ve volunteered to discuss it with a few podcasters I frequently consume. We’ll see if any of them take me up on it.