She's a sweetie and I love her dearly, but she's also become a paranoid goober about my posting her picture here (as if any of you, assuming anyone actually READS this stuff which I'm inclined to doubt given the stats Facebook shows me, give's a rat's ass) so you're just gonna have to imagine what she looks like today.
Funny story about that, actually.
Back in...oh, some time around 2014 or so, I think, I ran into a guy who ran a little soccer site called Slide Rule Pass. It's gone, sadly, because The Internet, but back in the day is was one of the more thoughtful and incisive Portland soccer sites. I went on as a commentor, got into some give-and-take with the blog owner, and tl:dr ended up writing about the Thorns, the women's professional team here in Portland. Another long-time follower and commentor came on board to write about the men's team, the Timbers, and off we went.
A couple of years later - in late 2017 - along comes the guy who was the then-editor of the "big" Portland soccer site, Stumptown Footy, who poaches us away to do the same thing for his site we were doing for SRP. The original Slide Rule owner is busy downstate, loses interest, stops paying the hosting fee, and the site just dies.
So I end up writing a column called "Thorns FC" for Stumptown for the 2018 season while my compa writes "Six Degrees" - it's a fun column and it's still going. Here's a link to him, in case you're interested. Whatever.
Anyway, I do my thing, the same thing I've been doing all along; analyzing teams, tactics, and results, discussing what I think is working and what isn't. I call my shots, and this doesn't impress a lot of the club's officials or some players, and I don't really give a shit about the "newsy" stuff; I'd rather write a deep dive into league goalkeeping metrics or comparing the play of the Thorns' midfielders.
And this, apparently, isn't what the Stumptown editor wants (despite 1) me doing the same thing I've been doing all along when he hoovered me away from Slide Rule Pass, and 2) my having warned him that I wasn't going to change, and not changing). After the end of the 2018 season, I have the dubious distinction of getting canned from a non-paying hobby gig, which is kind of ridiculous when you think about it.
So I took my soccer ball and went...well, not home, but to another website, where I do the same irritating things only for myself rather than for SB Nation.
The problem with "politics" as it currently exists in the United States is that they are effectively stymied.
"Politics" is, as bottom, simply the civic discussion about how goods and services are distributed. Who gets what, how much, and how that happens. In a rational polity that process is a sort of give-and-take, with the various factions agreeing, disputing, or (often) fighting over those questions. There's typically a "liberal" or "left" side that wants more distribution of a greater share of private wealth for public goods (meaning a more "level" society with more collective activity), and a "conservative" side that wants less of both, that is, less confiscation and distribution of private wealth (meaning more concentration of wealth, a more hierarchical society, and less collective actions).
But the "conservative" side of the U.S. public is no longer a "conservative party". It's a nonsensical cult addicted to magical thinking like "trickle-down economics" and "taxes are theft" that have been proved ridiculous any and every time they are actually attempted, as well as a lunatic cult of individuality that is perhaps best embodied in the utterly mad insistence on the Right of foregoing protective masks in the face of a lethal respiratory pandemic.
There's no discussing or arguing for or against that nonsense. There is nothing I can do, or say, that will ameliorate that sort of idiocy. The American "Right" is utterly lost, they are impervious to reason and discourse, they are obviously, openly, loudly out-and-proud looney cultists. You can see that as well as I can, nothing I can say will change that, and nothing I can say will help. They're just fucking nuts, and repeating "Jesus wept, they're just fucking nuts!" is the ultimate in wasting breath.
So I'm not really bothering anymore, other than the occasional snark at the idiocy-of-the-day, like the whole "Blue Lives Matter" bullshit I talked about the other morning.
I'm still picking my way slowly through military history though I've largely run out of events that intrigue me. I'm thinking of adding one final entry to the "Imperial Japanese Army - What Went Wrong" series this August with a short diversion on "August Storm", the Soviet offensive through Manchuria in 1945, but beyond that...hmmm. Any other suggestions?
I try and keep this from being a daddy blog, so I don't see doing more family stuff, despite the brutal reality that I'm turning out to be a Suburban Dad. Yesterday, "Father's Day"? Moved the lawn. Cooked hamburgers on the grill while sipping a beer.
Christ, I'm a meme.
So that's kind of where this place has gone as an early teenager. At least I'm here and it's still here; long-form blogging is going the way of cuneiform, but I'm going to try and make it run as long as I can.
Any suggestions for subject matter, though..?
Oh, wait...
Cats!
12 comments:
I really want to hear more thoughts about rocks and dirt. The few articles you have written about geologic oddities (tsunami's, glaciers and mudslides) have been fascinating. I am sure that every different spot you stand, the rocks have a different story to tell.
Sorta-kinda. A lot of geology is just, well, boring rocks and dirt. And I don't feel like I have the chops to talk a lot about the geology of elsewhere; I know the Pacific Northwest intimately, but, say, Colorado? Indonesia? Nope.
But, yeah...I'll see what I can come up with that I know and that sounds interesting.
I enjoy your writing, even if not every article may capture my interest most (or more than most) do. So indulge yourself - this is your platform afterall.
If you put up just 1 "acting 1st SGT" a year I would still check for it every day.
I'd second Ael. You've written about your army days, how about how you got into your day job? Most geology is boring (like most history or anything except football which is never boring obv), but sometimes you can find a story about a place that's worth telling.
About the Japanese Empire ...
I ran across a couple of books that clarified their insane roller-coaster ride from pre-industrial Shogunate to the brilliance of the Meiji Restoration to the absolute nadir of complete incompetence by the mid 1930s.
I suspect neither will be new to you, but in case I'm wrong ...
"Curse on This Country: The Rebellious Army of Imperial Japan", by Danny Orbach, takes up the "peculiar institution" of the Japanese Army between 1870 and 1945: rampant insubordination. Taken to lengths that'd earn the miscreant anything from prison to a bullet, in most other armies.
And this one's a real prize: "The Japanese Empire: Grand Strategy from the Meiji Restoration to the Pacific War", by S. C. M. Piane. She argues that that precipitous decent, from the sort of competence that wrecked Chinese arms in 1894 and drove the Russians to a humiliating peace agreement in 1905, to the utter lack of anything even distantly related to competence, was a consequence of a state structure that was run up in far too much of a hurry, during the Meiji transition itself. The senior oligarchs who did that job acted as organizational "glue" binding the separate bureaucracies to a common and well considered strategic vision, but their activities and positions were not institutionalized.
So when they started retiring and/or dying off, about the time of the Meiji/Taishō transition, the entire government lost cohesion. Inside of another 15 years, the Army had fallen so far that it was resorting to assassination to advance its own agenda, without any input from the sort of people who'd steered course prior to 1910 or so.
DigFred: I'm glad you enjoy those A1SG things. They're fun for me to write and I get to live my old sergeant self again only with the license I was never able to have IRL. So there will definitely be more of them.
DF: Well, that's actually not much of a story, other than the beginning. I was in grad school having just got out of the service, and one of my professors knew someone in the soils biz who was looking for a hydrogeologist - a groundwater guy - and recommended me to them. So I went into the interview and said, basically, "I'm not a hydro specialist but I know the basics and I will learn anything you want me to" and they bought that.
Ironically, I never DID become a hydro. Instead, they pushed me into their geotechnical side; doing soil and rock exploration, nannying construction, that sort of thing. So I managed to completely avoid the "environmental" trap that catches about 95% of all geologists - the "pure geology" route in private industry is nearly always through dirty site work. It's nasty and boring and just full of paperwork, so I'd have hated it, and I got lucky. But that was almost 30 years ago and I'm STILL doing the same things, so, there...
Stormcrow: Both the IJA and the IJN were deeply flawed institutions, so far as I can tell. The IJN never really figured out that their "decisive battle" at Tsushima was largely the result of appalling Russian incompetence and not the natural results of putting two high-seas fleets together or assessing strategic priorities. So when they were asked to help the IJA secure fuel supplies for the war in China they didn't say "Well, ok, but nothing that risks bringing the US into the war against us" but "how can we best start a war against the US?. The Gunreibu asked the wrong question and got the wrong answer.
The IJA was even more appalling, and I'll go even further than you and Plane do; it was largely down to one joker; Field Marshal Prince Yamagata, the mook who was the honcho in putting down the "Satsuma Rebellion" in 1877.
I wrote about that mess, and him, here: http://firedirectioncenter.blogspot.com/2011/09/shiroyama-shiroyama-no-tatakai-1877.html
(con't)
Here's what I said about him:
"The eventual-Field Marshal Prince Yamagata first established the character of the Imperial Army. He was instrumental in the production of the "Imperial Rescript to Soldiers and Sailors", the 1882 document that made the Japanese military the emperor's personal weapon; Japanese servicemen were expected to memorize the document, which stated that each soldier and sailor was expected to be personally loyal to the Emperor rather than the nation.This reflected Yamagata's personal convictions, which were deeply militaristic in a truly feudal sense, and fiercely antidemocratic.
He was one of the seven genrō(元老), who (ironically, given the help the Satsuma/Chōshū rebels gave to the consolidation of Imperial power, largely came from Satsuma and Chōshū) led Japan as the most influential but informal Imperial counselors. The genrō made most of the important decisions of the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries - war, peace, policy...they were the de facto rulers of Japan. And it was Yamagata's intent - and his success - that the armed forces should be the instrument of the Emperor and the most powerful faction in Japanese politics.
He is as much as any of the Meiji leaders, the founder and father of Japanese Twentieth Century militarism.
During his tenure as Prime Minister of Japan - two terms in the 1890s - and later as head of the Emperor's privy council Yamagata ensured that Japan's path lead almost directly from Shiroyama to the deck of the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.
As Prime Minister he ruled that only a serving officer could be either War Minister or Navy Minister; this had the effect of making the services control over the cabinet. But perhaps his most pernicious act came in 1912.
In 1912 then the army minister, General Uehara, resigned when the cabinet refused his budget request (which, according to historians of the time, was, in fact, well above what was in line with Japan's financial situation). Then-Prime Minister Saionji wanted a pliable replacement, but Yamagata's influence over the military was so great that no serving flag officer would accept. Saionji couldn't form a cabinet and was forced by the Meiji constitution to resign. This so-called "Taisho Crisis" proved that the military could eighty-six the civilian governments at a whim.
By the Twenties and Thirties, as we know, this led to the openly military regimes that led the country into WW2.
By the time Yamagata finally popped his clogs in 1922 the nation was running on rails towards the unimaginable disasters to come."
So...yeah. The IJA was perhaps the single most critical factor that led to Japan's suicidal charge into WW2.
There's an naval historian who did a series on the Russian 2nd Pacific Squadron, the journey and the battle. It's an epic tale of incompetence, lost binoculars, and cloaking Japanese torpedo boats...
https://youtu.be/9Mdi_Fh9_Ag
https://youtu.be/BXpj6nK5ylo
Dunno about your YouTube guy, but that story is told by some joker named Pleshakov who I read for the post on Tsushima back in 2011:
"Perhaps the most interesting, certainly the most curious, and possibly the most infuriating work I encountered is "The Tsar's Last Armada; The Epic Voyage to the Battle of Tsushima" written by one Constantine Pleshakov.
Mister Pleshakov has the tremendous advantage of being a native Russian speaker who thus has access to the old Imperial records in the original. Mister Pleshakov has the disadvantage of being perhaps the worst writer I have ever read outside of slash fiction and juvenile prose. It's hard to do justice to the true level of awfulness Pleshakov manages, but I'll try. Here he is describing the political maneuvering between the Tsar of Russia and the Emperor of Germany in 1897:
"The tsar's cousin, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany ordered his troops to land on Shandong Peninsula in the Yellow Sea. The two monarchs were competing in politics like boys comparing who can do more pushups or whose genitals are bigger."
I have no idea what Pleshakov's youth was like, but mine wasn't ever THAT much fun. But you get the idea; the man has something less than a gift for expression.
What he does have is a nose for gossip and the willingness to chatter away about it. You may not learn much about the military capabilities of the Borodino-class battleships from Pleshakov, but you'll certainly learn who was screwing ADM Rozhestvensky. And he does a decent job of telling the story not of the battle itself but of the incredible journey of the Second Pacific Squadron, all 18,000 miles of it, to their fate at Tsushima.
If you don't have to purchase it, it's worth a look just for the smut and the sea story."
So, yeah...ADM Rozhestvensky's mob was kind of a floating clusterfuck...
I'm getting caught up on your posts after six months of working from home (still there, too.)
I have missed A1SG Lawes very much.
Oh, and PLEASE do that August Storm piece!
I wrote a longish article on it for a magazine years ago but it was nothing like the j-o-b you would do on the campaign.
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