Syria

The United States might blow things up and kill people from a distance in Syria because Assad bin Assad, a cruel wretched son of a cruel wretch, added sarin to the misery of Syrian's civil war.  The only correct thing to do, is indict Assad for war crimes and haul him off to The Hague for trial.  Removing him, though, gives too much advantage to the Islamic fundamentalist component of the rebellion.  What we want, is a true, democratic revolt that will overthrow the current regime and install a non-sectarian representative government with participation by all ethnicities and sects, and includes equal rights for women.  Zero chance for that.  Americans think they are looking through a window, but are really squinting at a mirror.  We think that rebellion against a dictator means replacing cruelty with fairness.  In Syria, as anyone who knows the area would have predicted, the battle segments to Shia, Sunni, Alawite, plus a few other groups.  Nothing Assad could do -- either good or bad -- is sufficient incentive for people to change allegiance.  We did not learn from Iraq where expected anti-Saddam fervor became Shia vs Sunni vs Kurds because it always was.

Back to Work

Writing again after an unexpectedly long hiatus.  Blame the day job.  No.  That's not true.  Blame the wingnuts.  Yes, they are demoralizing.  But, more importantly, they keep changing the landscape faster that I -- who writes slowly -- can keep up.  Call it the inverse dichotomy paradox.  The original Aristotlean paradox says that no one can reach a destination because first, you must get half-way there, then half of the half, and so on, with each increment half of the one before which, a couple of thousand years before Newton, seemed like a genuine constraint.  The inverse case has nutters moving twice as far from reality with each new step.  Try to respond cogently to one piece of conservative nonsense and, by the time I am ready to hit the "Publish" button, my writing is now off-target from the newest craziness.  Think of whack-a-mole played against mutant vermin that grow and grow and grow.