Al Cowda
I'm reading a new book, "Freakonomics", in which an economics professor asks a lot of seemingly unrelated questions and then attempts to offer answers that show that they are, in fact, related. It's unique because he's got a wildly different point-of-view from the average person. In fact, so far I like it for that very reason. I seem to have a wildly different point-of-view from the average person, too, and even though I don't necessarily agree with everything he says I'm not upset about it because he's not arguing for a political or religious agenda. He's just saying, "I think this and this are related like this."
That's sort of what I was thinking with the blog I just did about Latchkey kids. Whether it's good or bad, it's just the way it is. And by the way, here is what I remember happening along the way ... blah blah.
I'm bothered about the terrorists in London, not only because the fuckers killed so many average people who were simply minding their own business, but also because terrorism often works.
What?! No it doesn't! We'll never give in to terrorism!
In "Freakonomics" he gives some specific examples of how terrorism has been used in the past and how it worked. And it did work. People got scared and changed their behavior, trying to avoid any further conflict, just as they did in Spain when they ousted their anti-terrorist government and voted in a more terror-friendly group just a year or two ago following a bombing very similar to the one in London.
Yeah, but terrorists are too stupid to cause this kind of regime change intentionally. It was just luck.
No, it wasn't. It was no coincidence that the Spanish train was bombed immediately prior to the election. It was bombed specifically because of the election. And it worked. Enough people changed their vote to shift the results the other way.
I don't know what's happening in London right now. I know Tony Blair is sinking in the polls, just like George Bush is. And I know that just prior to the presidential elections in the U.S. in which George Bush was up for re-election our Department of Homeland Security was on high alert, with our whole Department of Justice fully anticipating an attack. Whether we headed off some attacks or not I have no idea.
Believe it or not, despite how it appears, our government does not tell us nearly as much as we think about things like this as they are happening. We have a million conspiracy theories to explain what is happening right now, and that's all great for people like Oprah and Al Franken and Rush Limbaugh, but truthfully we really don't know as much as we think we do. Most importantly, we don't know the big picture.
I hope whomever is to blame for the bombings in London gets caught. I hope they get caught and pushed in front of a speeding London train. I hope they are stripped to their underwear, painted up with "French Football Forever" and then pushed out into the street in front of Manchester United's field during a playoff match. I hope they are dressed up in pink miniskirts and bras, bound and gagged, and dumped in a London gay bar on a Saturday night. I hope they're dressed in T-shirts that say, "Bitch, get in the kitchen and make me some pie" and dropped off in a lesbian pub during "domestic violence month." I hope they're tied to the front of London double-decker buses and crashed head-on into one another.
But I also hope that the people in the UK aren't so rattled by the terrorists that they allow the terrorists to win. People in England are supposedly pretty tough. After all, they've had 400 years of this sort of thing from the Irish separatists to deal with. They had German bombs falling all over England to deal with. Maybe they'll tough it out? I don't know. I just hope there's still some English 'stiff upper lip' left over in the UK and that the terrorists go home with nothing accomplished. I'd love to see a video of Osama bin Laden cursing the English and vowing never to waste another bomb on them again because they're too stubborn to let a coward like him win.
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