Week in Review – February 21-27, 2010: Olympic bobsleds, Chile earthquake, Obamacare
01/March/2010 12:31 Filed in: Week in
Review
Three
obtusely related things peaked our interest this
week. Those three were an episode from the
Vancouver Olympic Games, the earthquake in Chile,
and Obama’s healthcare summit in Washington DC.
Now you may be asking yourself how these three events are related at all, even if the obtuse modifier is used? The thing that ties together all of our points this week, relate to how people respond to an opportunity or a crisis, in our terms stupendous change.
Our zenith of this report was the results of the four man bobsled event at Whistler in which the United States won its first Gold medal since 1948. While that was a worthwhile achievement, what I found really interesting was what happened after the medals presentation, where the Americans were joined by the Silver medal winning Canadians and the Bronze medal Germans.
Before TV cameras all three teams sort of scrunched together for a group photo and in the process you had over 1000 kilos (2200 lbs.) of competitive alpha males getting up close and personal, all smiling like they sort of liked one another. I have searched for a picture of that happening but it doesn’t appear to have gotten significant press attention.
Chances are that the same countries will be represented in a somewhat similar arrangement in four years, specifics to be determined by differences in probably less than half a second. Furthermore it illustrates the difference between competition and aggression. In our self centered world, the differences between competition and aggression blur our vision, so that aggression has somewhat become a social virtue and we have lost the true understanding of competition as a way to achieve excellence.
Earlier Saturday a magnitude 8.8 earthquake struck Chile. This was the worst quake in that country since 1960 and also shook up reporters in the 24 hour cable news channels. Forced to work without scripted reports to read, the handsome and beautiful talking heads confirmed the reality of the lame stream media.
With real news from the area, sparse due to the earthquake and distance from these media foci, the reporters were forced to concentrate their efforts. Using their meager real technical knowledge of anything, they tried to use the forecast tsunami to create a news catastrophe before it happened, which it didn’t.
Compared to the smaller 7.0 magnitude Haitian earthquake on 12 January, with confirmed deaths of over 200,000, the Chilean earthquake may reach only a thousand dead. An eight hundred times stronger quake with 0.005% of the dead will give the media analysis time for hundreds to thousands of reports for the days, weeks, and months to come, and this time they can read the introductions and break to the experts and pundits to tell us what really happened, again only from the media centers.
The point being, none of this really brings us together in any sense, but rather tends to develop fear in insecure people that something worse can happened to them, and worry is your best or only solace. What will not be reported is that Chile works, Haiti doesn’t. The difference being a much more free market orientation in the Chilean people and a poverty and welfare orientation in Haitians.
Finally, we come to last Thursday’s healthcare fiasco led by President Obama and attended by complete intransigents. This took up seven hours of bloviating, posturing, and lame antecedents all televised to the masses, who except for those paid to watch, no one did. This points to the contrast in our Olympic bobsledders and America’s politicians. This exhibition was not about the competition of ideas, or political parties, or the people, but aggressive worldviews, in which none of the healthcare theatrics show an understanding of the difference between power and authority.
This should come as no great surprise, in a half a century of me education and me influence, coming to a head is the aggressive conflict between the me elites and the me libertarians, and all those of more centrist persuasion, well you really don’t matter.
Authority comes from on high, power from the bottom up. As the President pointed out he is the President, he won the election, he has the authority. What he therein exhibited very pointedly is that he just doesn’t understand that he and his group of likeminded amigos; do not possess within their influence, the power to pull off his belligerent wishes. Sadly the nation will have to watch and live with his futile unworkable ambitions for the next few years directly, and indirectly for the foreseeable future.
The TEA Party movement is the source of that power, but the whole concept is too complicated for the media that covered the Olympic games, the Chile and the Haiti earthquakes, and the healthcare gathering. Furthermore that media is trying to force that movement into constructs the simple minded talking media heads can understand and therefore report to the dumbed down American people.
What is really missing in the world is not specialist alpha personalities, but rather leadership that understands that the world functions not because of me, but many times in spite of me. The Olympic games would not exist in a libertarian state. Likewise the totalitarian Soviet Union used to dominate both the winter and summer games, this year they finished sixth. What the world and the United States desperately need is team players and leaders that understand the complex differences between aggression and competition and power and authority.
This week the Olympics can give us hope for the future; the Chilean earthquake and American healthcare show that this will not be a simple task.
Now you may be asking yourself how these three events are related at all, even if the obtuse modifier is used? The thing that ties together all of our points this week, relate to how people respond to an opportunity or a crisis, in our terms stupendous change.
Our zenith of this report was the results of the four man bobsled event at Whistler in which the United States won its first Gold medal since 1948. While that was a worthwhile achievement, what I found really interesting was what happened after the medals presentation, where the Americans were joined by the Silver medal winning Canadians and the Bronze medal Germans.
Before TV cameras all three teams sort of scrunched together for a group photo and in the process you had over 1000 kilos (2200 lbs.) of competitive alpha males getting up close and personal, all smiling like they sort of liked one another. I have searched for a picture of that happening but it doesn’t appear to have gotten significant press attention.
Chances are that the same countries will be represented in a somewhat similar arrangement in four years, specifics to be determined by differences in probably less than half a second. Furthermore it illustrates the difference between competition and aggression. In our self centered world, the differences between competition and aggression blur our vision, so that aggression has somewhat become a social virtue and we have lost the true understanding of competition as a way to achieve excellence.
Earlier Saturday a magnitude 8.8 earthquake struck Chile. This was the worst quake in that country since 1960 and also shook up reporters in the 24 hour cable news channels. Forced to work without scripted reports to read, the handsome and beautiful talking heads confirmed the reality of the lame stream media.
With real news from the area, sparse due to the earthquake and distance from these media foci, the reporters were forced to concentrate their efforts. Using their meager real technical knowledge of anything, they tried to use the forecast tsunami to create a news catastrophe before it happened, which it didn’t.
Compared to the smaller 7.0 magnitude Haitian earthquake on 12 January, with confirmed deaths of over 200,000, the Chilean earthquake may reach only a thousand dead. An eight hundred times stronger quake with 0.005% of the dead will give the media analysis time for hundreds to thousands of reports for the days, weeks, and months to come, and this time they can read the introductions and break to the experts and pundits to tell us what really happened, again only from the media centers.
The point being, none of this really brings us together in any sense, but rather tends to develop fear in insecure people that something worse can happened to them, and worry is your best or only solace. What will not be reported is that Chile works, Haiti doesn’t. The difference being a much more free market orientation in the Chilean people and a poverty and welfare orientation in Haitians.
Finally, we come to last Thursday’s healthcare fiasco led by President Obama and attended by complete intransigents. This took up seven hours of bloviating, posturing, and lame antecedents all televised to the masses, who except for those paid to watch, no one did. This points to the contrast in our Olympic bobsledders and America’s politicians. This exhibition was not about the competition of ideas, or political parties, or the people, but aggressive worldviews, in which none of the healthcare theatrics show an understanding of the difference between power and authority.
This should come as no great surprise, in a half a century of me education and me influence, coming to a head is the aggressive conflict between the me elites and the me libertarians, and all those of more centrist persuasion, well you really don’t matter.
Authority comes from on high, power from the bottom up. As the President pointed out he is the President, he won the election, he has the authority. What he therein exhibited very pointedly is that he just doesn’t understand that he and his group of likeminded amigos; do not possess within their influence, the power to pull off his belligerent wishes. Sadly the nation will have to watch and live with his futile unworkable ambitions for the next few years directly, and indirectly for the foreseeable future.
The TEA Party movement is the source of that power, but the whole concept is too complicated for the media that covered the Olympic games, the Chile and the Haiti earthquakes, and the healthcare gathering. Furthermore that media is trying to force that movement into constructs the simple minded talking media heads can understand and therefore report to the dumbed down American people.
What is really missing in the world is not specialist alpha personalities, but rather leadership that understands that the world functions not because of me, but many times in spite of me. The Olympic games would not exist in a libertarian state. Likewise the totalitarian Soviet Union used to dominate both the winter and summer games, this year they finished sixth. What the world and the United States desperately need is team players and leaders that understand the complex differences between aggression and competition and power and authority.
This week the Olympics can give us hope for the future; the Chilean earthquake and American healthcare show that this will not be a simple task.