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jellonailer
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Name: Loyal
Country: United States
State: Missouri
Metro: Springfield
Gender: Male
Interests: I was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.I was raised in Papua New Guinea.I now pay taxes in Springfield, MO.I want to warm my toes living near the ocean.My parents commute yearly to Africa.My brother commutes daily in Paris.I like to read, listen, think and take pictures. After that, I like to drink coffee, watch movies and talk. If you are lucky, I'll dialogue about politics, capitalism and the market. If the light is right, I'll find an excuse to go photographing.
Expertise: Post-relativism, smack-talking and occasionally discovering something beautiful.
Occupation: Photographer and digital imagi
Industry: Photography
Message: message meEmail: email me
Website: visit my website
Member Since:
2/14/2005
 Lifetime
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| Finally
This document arrived in my hands today.
 | Currently Watching
The List
By Pat Hingle, Malcolm McDowell, Will Patton, Nicholas Pryor, Tim Ware
see related |
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| Memories of Scheimpflug 02Early Scheimpflug Abstraction from 2006.
Black and White Medium Format Negative with a Graflex.
| Currently Watching
The List
By Pat Hingle, Malcolm McDowell, Will Patton, Nicholas Pryor, Tim Ware
see related |
| | |
| Memories of Scheimpflug 01Early Scheimpflug Abstraction from 2006.
Black and White Medium Format Negative with a Graflex.
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| Never bring a pocket knife to a chainsaw fight.I love my country! Do you? How much?
In the pissing contest over who loves America more I'm pretty sure I'll win. Not because your sincerity is any less focused than mine or your dedication for that matter. But you will probably make the fatal mistake of telling me that you love your country enough to die for it and I won't. You see, long after you're dead, I'll be using your corpse as a firing position to kill for my country and I'll be glad you donated your carcass for the cause.
Let's say that it's the end of the world as we know it and there are two men and one woman left from which to populate the planet. One man is a humanitarian and the other an anti-humanitarian. Which do you want passing on his genes and moral view to the generations that will follow? Good, so get this straight, unless the humanitarian is self-centered enough to kill off the man who will slit his throat if he doesn't secure his self interests, humanitarianism will go the way of the dinosaur.
No, there is no way to compromise or come to an equitable impasse. Yes, once the humanitarian kills off his enemy there's a fairly thin moral watershed between the two positions. No, in this little scenario there's a light year sized chasm between a living but morally compromised humanitarian and the dead alternative.
Just in case you haven't yet discovered the depths to which I will mock political correctness don't ask me about the woman's feelings in this hypothetical situation. The most humanitarian thing for her to do is stay healthily pregnant until she dies in child birth... or hits menopause. Hey it's my patriarchial paradigm and if you don't like it go start your own blog in any country on the planet that will uphold your right to free speech.
I ran into an acquaintance the other day who is a member of the academic community in Springfield. We talked of my plans after graduation and particularly of my decision to accept a commission in the U.S. Army Reserves. The dialog that followed seems typical of the one that I've been having these days because it felt so one dimensional.
Inevitably I'm asked if I've "processed," "come to terms," or "fully engaged the cost" of following the military aspirations of our political leadership, particularly in relationship to our foreign policy in the Middle East. Since no one wants to come out and say it directly, let me get around the passive aggression and tell you what you apparently don't have the courage or skills to confront me with directly. "Loyal, do you really condone the War on Terror?"
I used to tackle this with one of two possible strategies. The first was contemptuous sarcasm- "No, I just think we should put a lot of foreign people out of their misery because they are going to die anyway and it might as well be sooner than later and over oil they'll never need to use for themselves." The other approach was to subvert their implicit moralism- "Yes, Terror is unconscionable and I don't understand why you would question that unless you have sympathies with Terrorists."
I've begun to change my position lately. Instead when I face the variant of this question I look the person square in the eye and say, "With all due respect if that question is really what you are trying to ask, I'll be happy to answer it with the preconception that you really don't know enough about the world to even begin a serious discussion with me." I more or less took this track with my acquaintance when she asked if I had any problems with why we went in to Iraq in the first place.
"I'm surprised that you do," was my response. "I believe in the liberal freedoms that democracy offers to every human being. We are at war with a culture that not only doesn't share our values, it will not leave us in peace to live by the convictions of our own conscience. I am willing to participate in that war precisely because I believe in our way of life."
This wasn't good enough for my fellow academician. "Do you just believe then that people in the military should follow orders blindly? Because that's the only way it seems one is able to condone or justify our actions in Iraq."
"Not really." I retorted. "I just decided that I must be more of a feminist than you. Since women now have the right to vote in Iraq, the victory of Feminist ends justifies whatever means of the alleged indiscretions that arise from our methodology of entrance into the conflict."
At that point our conversation was cut short by the arrival of a shuttle bus. My last image from that encounter is of her face in a sort of confused "wobble." Like I said, not enough about the world to begin a serious conversation with me.
 | Currently Watching
Meet Bill
By Aaron Eckhart, Timothy Olyphant, Jessica Alba, Marisa Coughlan, Elizabeth Banks
see related |
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| Memories Of Glenrose 07Paddington Playing Medium Format Negative with a Hassleblad
photo by Tigpan
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See the world the way I do...
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