I was shown a book recently, that went over all the omissions in American history books (ok some of them, he he). Now sure, it would be easy to gloat at this point, being non-american, but that would be missing the greater point I'm afraid. Really in the end, it was a study of self incrimination, or the lack thereof (in spite of the author probably not agreeing with me here). To me the whole point was,

1) people do things that are not on the up and up.
2) they sure hate to admit it.

Well no shit. The thing is, to establish this, the book needed to look no further than itself. Here is a book with an painfully obvious 'agenda', yet it goes out of its way to try to show how 'honest' it is with history. Never once does the author come out and be honest about the agenda of the book, not even close in fact.

I'm sure if you read any history book in the world you'll find the same - people hate to tell the truth about things that don't make them look good. And in fact, you'll probably find the same in any book that critiques the problem, such as this one I was shown.

So in an attempt to break this terrible cycle, as the critique of the critique, I will try to lay the ugly intentions of this blog post on the table. I thought the guy was a whining hate-my-culture/love-my-SUV type, who expected his good intentions would make the world a better place, but in fact just added about 400 more pages of one sided bullshit to the pile. Just what the world needed. You hero.

And what about my bare intentions? Pure as gold my friend. You can bet I'm feeling noble - or as noble as you can get with a few paragraphs of effort and two beer. Sure it ain't so, even I see that, but my only parting thought is: People don't need one sided commentary any more! We are all grown up, we understand that people masturbate and occasionally kill each other (though rarely at the same time, what does that tell us?). This happens over and over in fact. What we really need is to figure out wtf our collective problem is here, not whether is it right or wrong. I'm sure the answers aren't difficult, just difficult to admit. Well, difficult without throwing out any noble notions about humanity we may have at least. Wait, that isn't right. Throwing out noble notions about humanity is easy, fashionable even. I guess it is more throwing noble notions about yourself that is the tricky part.

Yourself that is. Not me of course. I see through it.

But you for sure.

And here is an old joke, that describes something so common it must be a design pattern in at higher level of abstraction:

Interview for a Membership in the Communist Party.
Q. What would you do if you owned two houses?
A. I would keep one for myself, and donate the other to the party to distribute, for the greater good of the people.
Q. Good comrade. What about if you had two cars?
A. I would keep one for myself, and donate the other to the party to distribute, for the greater good of the people.
Q. Wow, you are going to fit right in here comrade! Just one more question. What would you do if you owned two pairs of pants?
A. I would... uhh wait a minute - I DO own two pairs of pants!