Tuesday
Well, anybody can be just like me, obviously
I've found the below map useful, though I don't know anything about its sourcing, so a grain or two of salt is recommended. It's especially helpful because if you try to use the street map view in Google Maps for Georgia you'll find that it's essentially virgin territory as far as Google cartography is concerned.
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When I said yesterday that “Russian aggression in Georgia is evil” I meant that Russian aggression in Georgia is evil, and I was reacting to news of Russian war aims outside of simply taking away Georgia's ability to use force in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, in particular to their troop movements in incontestably Georgian territory, their naval blockade, and demands for a new regime in Tbilisi. That, in combination with news of Russian provocations which led Georgia to begin it's original offensive against Tskhinvali had me very disposed to see things as Russian aggression. I still see those as Russian aggression, and still don't trust Russia's motives, but Dan Nexon's post is a useful corrective on the difficulties in keeping a detached perspective on developing events before making judgments of them.
Another example of this difficulty with perspective, or the mendacity of many U.S. conservatives if you're feeling less charitable, can be found at the Weekly Standard blog, here, in which the blogger says that, “[Obama] seems to have internalized the cult of celeb-worship” and throws a couple of similar insults in for good measure. He cites as evidence the following facts: his children were interviewed on Entertainment Tonight and he appeared with them, he gave an interview to US Weekly, he exchanged e-mails with Scarlett Johannson (a story I've covered here before, though Jaime Sneider is, as far as I know, making up the idea that the e-mails were controversial. No controversy about them ever took place.), and a number of other celebrities support Obama and have offered to fund raise for him, including George Clooney, who, according to anonymous sources in the Daily Mail, regularly advises Obama. Anyway, what I want to say about that isn't really about that absurd post, but rather that I worry that I too let the fact that I support one candidate and oppose another cause me to view otherwise neutral and/or trivial events in the progress of the campaigns as more interesting and damning than they actually are.
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View Larger Map
When I said yesterday that “Russian aggression in Georgia is evil” I meant that Russian aggression in Georgia is evil, and I was reacting to news of Russian war aims outside of simply taking away Georgia's ability to use force in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, in particular to their troop movements in incontestably Georgian territory, their naval blockade, and demands for a new regime in Tbilisi. That, in combination with news of Russian provocations which led Georgia to begin it's original offensive against Tskhinvali had me very disposed to see things as Russian aggression. I still see those as Russian aggression, and still don't trust Russia's motives, but Dan Nexon's post is a useful corrective on the difficulties in keeping a detached perspective on developing events before making judgments of them.
Another example of this difficulty with perspective, or the mendacity of many U.S. conservatives if you're feeling less charitable, can be found at the Weekly Standard blog, here, in which the blogger says that, “[Obama] seems to have internalized the cult of celeb-worship” and throws a couple of similar insults in for good measure. He cites as evidence the following facts: his children were interviewed on Entertainment Tonight and he appeared with them, he gave an interview to US Weekly, he exchanged e-mails with Scarlett Johannson (a story I've covered here before, though Jaime Sneider is, as far as I know, making up the idea that the e-mails were controversial. No controversy about them ever took place.), and a number of other celebrities support Obama and have offered to fund raise for him, including George Clooney, who, according to anonymous sources in the Daily Mail, regularly advises Obama. Anyway, what I want to say about that isn't really about that absurd post, but rather that I worry that I too let the fact that I support one candidate and oppose another cause me to view otherwise neutral and/or trivial events in the progress of the campaigns as more interesting and damning than they actually are.
