We’re Gonna Rock Their World

Once upon a time there was a Hundred Year’s War, one of my old history professors said. That was whittled down to a Thirty Year’s War, then a Nine Year’s War, then a Seven Year’s War, and then, finally, a Six-Day War. “So that’s progress,” he observed.

Since we’ve been in Afghanistan for over seven years now, you could say we’re backsliding with regard to the good professor’s standard of progress. And, of course, it’s going to get worse:

The United States is sending 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan. President Barack Obama said in a written statement that the increase was “necessary to stabilize a deteriorating situation in Afghanistan.”

The additional troops will arrive during the spring and summer and will bring the total number of American soldiers and Marines in Afghanistan to about 55,000, along with 32,000 non-U.S. NATO forces.

In Imperial Hubris: Why The West Is Losing The War On Terror, the author recounts a conversation between a Russian intelligence official and his CIA counterparts in September 2001 about our upcoming invasion of Afghanistan:

“With regret,” the Russian said, “I have to say that you are going to get the hell kicked out of you.” One of the Americans responded in words that will someday be found in a U.S. military study about its failed Afghan war. “We’re going to kill them,” the U.S. official asserted. “We’re going to put their heads on sticks. We’re going to rock their world.”

Seven years and counting.

Notes From Underground ...

...or, “It’s not easy being a loser.”

I don’t know about all of you, but I’m sick of living in interesting times. I no longer care about exciting events, exotic experiences, or witnessing history. I just want three meals a day, frequent sex and a good night’s sleep, okay? I’ll make it even easier, since I’m getting older: two meals a day, occasional sex and at least six hours of sleep.

But we usually get the opposite of what we want in life. I offer, as proof, George W. Bush, who only ever wanted to be baseball commissioner but was appointed President of the United States instead; or Alan Greenspan, a former disciple of Ayn Rand who now concedes that partial bank nationalization might be necessary. Irony, you see?

So here am I, a shiftless dipsomaniac with a useless college degree experiencing the degradations of what’s euphemistically termed ‘marginal employment’. I still eat well, but the other two factors of O’Hollern’s happiness equation are drifting dangerously far out to sea. Sleep? Forget about it. These days, sleep consists of about four hours of restless hypnagogia in which nightmarish phantasms attack me: giant arachnids, bill collectors, that ShamWow guy, and CNBC hosts screaming about ‘personal responsibility’. Ai yi yi!

Oh well. What did Napoleon say? Six hours a night for the man, seven hours for the woman, and eight hours for the fool?

Sex? Well, you know how that goes. No job + no money = cold shower time, chief. At this stage, I’d probably be rejected by a Russian mail order bride (assuming I could afford one, of course). But that’s not really very important. Besides, my last adventure in affairs de amour drew blood and left scars. I could offer proof, but I’m a gentleman and a gentleman never tells. Suffice it say, she neatly conformed to what psychologists describe as ‘borderline personality disorder’, which is a condition more commonly known as ‘batshit crazy’. (Here’s a hint, fellas: the next time a woman tells you that you remind her of her father, don’t walk, run away.)

Anyway, relationships are overrated. One of my old girlfriends told me she liked me because I was so funny; then she dumped me because I was never serious! Go figure.

Ah, yes, life in interesting times. Who needs soft bourgeois pleasures like financial security, health insurance, a cozy home and a fat wife? Much better to stay lean and hungry, to suck the marrow from the bone of life and cry “carpe diem!”in the face of each new lay-off. When Chase Manhattan or Citibank calls, summon the spirit of Lord Byron and tell them what he told his creditors: “You’ll just have to wait one more year!” Ha!

As my old Pop Warner coach used to say, ”Tough times don’t last, tough people do.” And when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. If life gives you rotten lemons, throw them at something!

The Origins Of Communism, A Revisionist’s View

My seventh grade English teacher assigned Animal Farm to all of his classes. That’s the good news. The bad news is that he used the occasion to explain the origins of communism to us. Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin, he said, invented communism while sharing a jail cell together,“because they were nuts.”

None of us knew it at the time, but Marx died in 1883, when Lenin was only thirteen. That would have made it difficult for them to have been cellmates. At any rate, communism had already been ‘invented’ by then.

It makes me squirm to think that such blatant falsehoods can be taught in American schools, but then I remember that it doesn’t really matter anyway: nobody was paying a bit of attention.