Sixteen Years Later

It's been sixteen years since we entered the war that will never end. What happened on 9/11 was not okay, it was not something you should accept. But, and this is going to be hard for you to swallow if you're the sort of small mind that voted for Donald Trump: war will not prevent it from happening again. No matter how much war you bring.



As a friend of mine who's much more of a pacifist than I can be put it, if rockets and bombs were going to fix the problems of the Middle East, those problems would be fucking solved.

Ani's 'Self Evident' bit is my favorite piece about the whole affair. I don't think she gets it all right, for a start trains are not necessarily so much less carbon intensive than cars, they can actually be much more so. You're moving 100 tons of steel before you move a person, so while I'm not immune to the charms of the rails, you need significant density and ridership to make them ecologically better than an oil well fire.

It's become a sort of third rail thing in American politics. A football player sits out the National Anthem and he might not have a gig even if he's demonstrably better at his position than 20 or so of the alternatives. I am not anti-Murica, but why do we even have the national anthem at sporting events? We don't have it at concerts or movies or any other entertainment, and that's all the NFL is, goddamn entertainment. Why should I care if a black man refuses to stand for an annoying song written by a slave owner about how awesome America is? If America is great, and I generally thing it is, why does it need the approbation of an athlete?

What does it say for your great nation if it constantly needs to use the opening of sporting events to remind everyone who's turf they're on?