Skip to main content

Guns, Germs, and Stealing Land

Mr. Mitt Romney tried to credit Jared Diamond's book--"Guns, Germs, and Steel"--to explain why the Israeli's are richer than the Palestinians.  Mr. Mitt said it was their culture.  Mr. Mitt did not say that the Israelis have more guns than the Palestinians, and that they control much of what happens in Palestine.


I can understand why Mr. Romney had trouble reading Jared Diamond's book:  it is a book filled with big words and bigger ideas.  In fact, Mr. Diamond says he doubts that Mr. Romney actually read the book:  "That is so different from what my book actually says that I have to doubt whether Mr. Romney read it," he wrote in the New York Times.  


Mr. Romney said it was the culture of Israel that was so superior.  Mr. Diamond's book says that what is often attributed to culture rests on the influences of geography; on environmental differences which are amplified by positive feedback loops.  It is obvious that both Israelis and Palestinians share a geography.  The Israelis have better guns.  What is happening in Israel and Palestine has very little to do with the thesis of Diamond's book.  It has a lot to do with World War II racism and politics, and the power of European nations versus Middle Eastern Semites.    


Mr. Romney says he does not know much about horse dancing, and that he wasn't going to watch his wife's horse dance (I know:  it isn't dancing), but I will bet he knows more about horse dancing than he does about Israel and Palestine and Jared Diamond.  He as already said he knows quite a bit about automobile racing because some of his best friends own racing teams.  


I can hardly wait for Mr. Mitt to explain why white people in American are richer than black people.  Or why tall people are better pro basketball players than short people.  Or maybe why rich people should have a lower tax rate than poor people.  Maybe, how Barack Obama, before he was born, arranged to be born in Kenya and telegraph his birth announcement to Hawaii so that someday he could be President of the United States.  What a kid!  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Friends-- My step-father of 35 years died this morning. His name was Conrad Royksund. He was 86 years old. He was born into poverty on a farm near Puyallup, WA. He was the first member of his family to attend college and earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. He paid his way through all of that by fishing in Alaska. He spent his professional career as a college professor. I met him when I was just 3 years old and don't actually have any memories of my life befor e he was in it. He was intimidatingly smart, funny as hell, and worked his ass off. He taught me to meet people with kindness and decency until I was certain they could not be trusted. He taught me to meet ideas with carving knives until I was certain they could. I will remember him as one of the bravest, most curious, and funniest people I have ever met. He left this world with a satisfied mind. We are so grateful. Dan Hubbard
1 comment
Read more

That's all we want: fairness! Not more guns and more war! Fairness!

The five police officers who were killed in Dallas are certainly not the officers who killed innocent citizens. There is more than enough tragedy to go around. "What is happening to our country?", Mari asked this morning. I had no answer.  We do have an answer.  We do not want to say it. There are lots of answers, all of them pertinent. We are a racist society, like most human societies. We are a society in the midst of enormous changes-- social, political, economic--and we do not know what to do about it. We are divided unsustainably into absurdly rich, and an enormous number of crumbling middle class families, and poor. We have guns everywhere; military guns, guns just for killing people, cheap guns, heroes carrying guns into churches and supermarkets, idiots who think guns ought to be allowed in bars and schools and ball games and beauty parlors and political rallies. Our political process is almost useless. There are good people in Congress, but there...
Post a Comment
Read more

On Watching a Formerly Sane Man Descend into Abject Religion

If you read the previous post, you know the apparatus, pictured here, is a torture machine. There are ten of them in our house, purportedly to circulate air to dry out all the problems caused by a water leak. We live in Tucson:  it has not rained in Tucson since the Gadsden Purchase. A mudslide the size of the one in Washington State could course through our neighborhood and it would be bone-dry and stone-hard before it quit moving. I suspect it is the CIA, and probably the Border Patrol! We are, after all, only about a hundred miles from the border. I fully expect a large suburban assault vehicle to pull up to the house, and for lots of people with UPPER CASE LETTERS on their shirts to interrogate us, and I will have to explain that all the drugs I use come from Walgreens and Total Wine. But it won't work.  Our minds are going. We are getting short with each other and, if they promise to turn off the fans, I will confess to having invented the Arab...
Post a Comment
Read more