{"id":3646,"date":"2021-10-06T16:06:07","date_gmt":"2021-10-06T21:06:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/control-h.org\/?p=3646"},"modified":"2021-10-06T16:06:07","modified_gmt":"2021-10-06T21:06:07","slug":"oh-bother","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/control-h.org\/index.php\/2021\/10\/06\/oh-bother\/","title":{"rendered":"Oh Bother"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Me, that is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have two things I need to write about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I really meant to write about this<\/a> (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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

People get so accustomed to preparing (for anything!) one way that they don’t take into account changes that’ve happened in the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Emergency Preparedness information is certainly familiar to me. It sounds like my youth background is very similar in terms of the Boy Scouts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But things have changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The US Army deactivated its last MASH unit in 2006<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The corporate press here<\/a> combined information from the first Gulf War in 1991 with the modern wars’ statistics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Out of curiosity, I decided to search back, and see if I’d mentioned Bob Zubrin here before. Yes. July 2014<\/a>. What he was writing about was his inspiration for Martian exploration based on the historical examples from polar exploration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is almost antithetical to the ultra-prepared crowd.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s very difficult to communicate this sort of thinking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Now I should write about the trip and the debate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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 <\/em>the charges for the trip with my credit card company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But they were satisfied, so it was a non-issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for the debate, itself, I registered my vote as undecided at the outset. As I wrote Saturday, I really was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite a couple of notable questionable assertations, the neocon of all neocons cleaned the floor with Horton.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Krystol didn’t really do a ton to support it, he did spell out some instances of American intervention that have benefitted humanity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As my friend and I discussed later, were Grenada and Panama really black eyes for America? Did either really talk about those? No.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The default position should be one of non-intervention <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But can positive things come from military action? Absolutely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think a lot of that would be short of regime change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Neither of them really argued to that. Horton was digging up things completely irrelevant to, well, anything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I get earwormed by Duran-Duran’s “The Reflex” when I hear him speak about the Middle East; he’s reflexively pro-Shiite. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On balance, is the world a better place because the Shah was removed?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don’t think so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[36],"class_list":["post-3646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/control-h.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/control-h.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/control-h.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/control-h.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/control-h.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/control-h.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3646\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/control-h.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/control-h.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/control-h.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}