While I'm busy recapping my various feelings, Silva's loss means that all the nonsense around "superfights" is off.
Mostly, superfights are a stupid idea. If Silva wanted to fight at welterweight, he would have fought at welterweight. If GSP wanted to fight at middleweight, he would . . . assuming either fighter could either cut the weight or gain it to meaningfully participate in the other weight class. We will no longer be subjected to the spectacle of Anderson Silva wanting to fight GSP, while dodging Jon Jones. We will no longer see GSP make excuses about why this isn't the time to fight Anderson Silva, where he'd probably have twenty or twenty-five pound weight disadvantage . . . which is, no doubt, the same reason why Silva wasn't so hot to fight the bigger Jon Jones.
Now that lynchpin is pulled. Silva is no longer desireable as some sort of superfight contender. GSP won't be dodging him, Silva won't be dodging Jones. The fighters can fight at their own weight classes and I'm, generally, comfortable with that.
(Yes, I KNOW that boxers often fight above their weight classes. But boxing isn't like MMA in some serious ways, in this regard. In particular, there are several promotions that have a fair bit of credibility and because boxers have so much control over their opponents, they can sorta . . . pick and choose. And they do. Which has it's good points and bad points, but boxers fighting above their best weight is often akin to something that can never happen in MMA - it would be like GSP going over to Bellator and kicking Alexander Shlemenko's ass. It changes the complexion of fighting at different weight classes entirely if that sort of thing was possible. The UFC dominated top talent in MMA, so there's no fudging around the different promotional championships to look for different kinds of championship fights. I'm not judging the way boxing does things, but boxers do have this privilege. So when Manny Pacquiao goes up in weight, he decides, more or less, who he's going to fight, not the guys who run the promotion. This is a huge difference between how fights are made in boxing and how they're made in MMA.)
So, now Silva can either focus on a rematch with Weidman or take other fights, almost certainly as a middleweight, GSP can worry about dudes like Hendricks, Ellenberger, MacDonald - he's got things to do at welterweight, which has a large talent pool. Jon Jones can beat up more people at light heavyweight, if they can find them, or go up to heavyweight without the specter of a "superfight" looming. Let's set about that business.
Monday, July 8, 2013
Anderson Silva did not fight most of the best middleweights
As part of my series about burying Anderson Silva, I think it is important to realize that Silva didn't fight many of the best middleweights in the world, because arrogance kept them up at light heavyweight.
Fighters who SHOULD have been fighting at middleweight but can't resist the allure of being one of the big guys include: Shogun Rua, Lyoto Machida and Rashad Evans. All of these guys are about normal sized for middleweights. Much of Silva's best competition never fought him because of, well, ego and an unwillingness to cut weight.
It's hard to emphasize enough how bad Anderson Silva's competition has been. Even guys like Sonnen, who had the skillset to beat him, suffered this bizarre contempt for BJJ and a kind of mental weakness - watch the second fight, after Sonnen misses with the spinning backfist, he falls down and sits there. Like you can take a break in a championship fight! And even guys like Dan Henderson - I mean, I love you, Hendo, but I'm going to be frank, here - well, he's 6-4 in the UFC . . . and if you discount his UFC 17 wins, back in 1998, he's 4-4; that's not the profile of a great UFC fighter, Dan's best years were in Pride). And so many of Silva's fights have been against downright bad fighters, because so many of the best middleweights weren't fighting middleweight. Not just Shogun, Machida and Evans, but guys like Michael Bisping and Tim Boetsch were wasting their time at light heavyweight for far too long. But when Yushin Okami or Thales Leites seems a convincing championship title fight choice, let's face it, your division sucks.
(Even Vitor Belfort, who has been looking like a beast in his last two fights, well, we should remember his pretty . . . mediocre UFC record. If you look at his fights after his first run in the UFC (when the sport was almost nothing like what it is, now), he's 7-5 and has never had more than a two fight winning streak in the UFC. Sure, he's a good fighter, but thinking of him as a great fighter requires a lot of slight of hand.)
Compare to, say, GSP's opponents. Jon Fitch was 15-4-1 in the UFC. Josh Koscheck is 15-7. Matt Hughes is 16-6. GSP's next opponent, Johny Hendricks, is 10-1 in the UFC. But even when you compare the best fighters in Silva's fightography you find that . . . their records are pretty mediocre.
Compare THAT to the UFC records of Lyoto Machida (11-3 in the UFC) and Rashad Evans (13-3-1) - bearing in mind both fighters are fighting above their weight class!
Silva is a very good fighter. But when you look at the relative level of his competition, it really stinks and, specifically, key fighters who should have been fighting at middleweight were fighting at light heavyweight. This tendency for fighters who should fight at middleweight to fight at light heavyweight has made LHW a very interesting division, but drained MW of most of it's best talent. In many ways, MW is where fighters who can't win at LHW go, since so many LHWs are small for the weight class.
Fighters who SHOULD have been fighting at middleweight but can't resist the allure of being one of the big guys include: Shogun Rua, Lyoto Machida and Rashad Evans. All of these guys are about normal sized for middleweights. Much of Silva's best competition never fought him because of, well, ego and an unwillingness to cut weight.
It's hard to emphasize enough how bad Anderson Silva's competition has been. Even guys like Sonnen, who had the skillset to beat him, suffered this bizarre contempt for BJJ and a kind of mental weakness - watch the second fight, after Sonnen misses with the spinning backfist, he falls down and sits there. Like you can take a break in a championship fight! And even guys like Dan Henderson - I mean, I love you, Hendo, but I'm going to be frank, here - well, he's 6-4 in the UFC . . . and if you discount his UFC 17 wins, back in 1998, he's 4-4; that's not the profile of a great UFC fighter, Dan's best years were in Pride). And so many of Silva's fights have been against downright bad fighters, because so many of the best middleweights weren't fighting middleweight. Not just Shogun, Machida and Evans, but guys like Michael Bisping and Tim Boetsch were wasting their time at light heavyweight for far too long. But when Yushin Okami or Thales Leites seems a convincing championship title fight choice, let's face it, your division sucks.
(Even Vitor Belfort, who has been looking like a beast in his last two fights, well, we should remember his pretty . . . mediocre UFC record. If you look at his fights after his first run in the UFC (when the sport was almost nothing like what it is, now), he's 7-5 and has never had more than a two fight winning streak in the UFC. Sure, he's a good fighter, but thinking of him as a great fighter requires a lot of slight of hand.)
Compare to, say, GSP's opponents. Jon Fitch was 15-4-1 in the UFC. Josh Koscheck is 15-7. Matt Hughes is 16-6. GSP's next opponent, Johny Hendricks, is 10-1 in the UFC. But even when you compare the best fighters in Silva's fightography you find that . . . their records are pretty mediocre.
Compare THAT to the UFC records of Lyoto Machida (11-3 in the UFC) and Rashad Evans (13-3-1) - bearing in mind both fighters are fighting above their weight class!
Silva is a very good fighter. But when you look at the relative level of his competition, it really stinks and, specifically, key fighters who should have been fighting at middleweight were fighting at light heavyweight. This tendency for fighters who should fight at middleweight to fight at light heavyweight has made LHW a very interesting division, but drained MW of most of it's best talent. In many ways, MW is where fighters who can't win at LHW go, since so many LHWs are small for the weight class.
Dana White is the UFC's big daddy, alright
One of the things I like the least about the UFC is how Dana White act the role of big daddy to all of the fighters. Not only do I dislike that on a personal level and think it should be, well, illegal (and I think that many UFC fights have a real case to make for workplace harassment, which I believe is related), but it has hurt the career of fights I like, who have no interest in playing into Dana's daddy issues. Fights like Jon Fitch and Roy Nelson have had their careers effected in large ways because of their unwillingness or inability to treat Dana White like their big daddy.
It can be hard to pin that down, though, that Dana sees himself as the patriarch to his fighter employees. But, recently, he's showed his hand more than a little with Chris Leben.
Talking about Leben, Dana said, "His fight style isn't healthy for him, the way that he fights. He's getting up there in age, and the big layoffs don't help him either. I don't know. I've got to figure. I've got to figure out what I think will be best for him, which people hate when I say that and do that."
So, Dana has to figure out what's best for a 32 year old man, because White thinks that Leben's lifestyle isn't healthy for him? Where does Dana White get the moral authority to make those kinds of decision for another adult? Oh, he's the UFC's big daddy.
Look, Dana, I dig it that you love Chris Leben. But you're not his father. You're his boss. And the right choice is easy. Leben is shot. He doesn't have what it takes to be in the UFC. We all knew this day would come, and that it would come sooner rather than later because of his problems with substance abuse and his fighting style. Yes, if you fire Leben, he'll have to cope with that, but he's an adult. Yes, he has had problems with alcohol and drugs but there's nothing you can do to fix that. Chris Leben has to fix it. Like you, Dana, I wish him all the best, that he can find it inside of himself to stay away from booze and drugs. I absolutely wish him the best and I recognize the road is long and hard. But you're his boss.
If you really want to be his friend and help him, fire him. Then still be his friend, but don't expect it to be the same when you're not the guy signing his paychecks, when he's got no reason to think of you as an authority figure. But it is cruel to keep him in the UFC to maintain your paternal hold over him.
Anyway, the idea that Dana White feels the moral authority to make decisions about Leben's health and well-being, rather than sticking to his fucking job as the president of the UFC, making decisions based on athletic and business criteria, is a pretty clear indication that Dana sees himself as more than his employee's boss - that he sees himself as a father figure to the fighters in his employee.
It can be hard to pin that down, though, that Dana sees himself as the patriarch to his fighter employees. But, recently, he's showed his hand more than a little with Chris Leben.
Talking about Leben, Dana said, "His fight style isn't healthy for him, the way that he fights. He's getting up there in age, and the big layoffs don't help him either. I don't know. I've got to figure. I've got to figure out what I think will be best for him, which people hate when I say that and do that."
So, Dana has to figure out what's best for a 32 year old man, because White thinks that Leben's lifestyle isn't healthy for him? Where does Dana White get the moral authority to make those kinds of decision for another adult? Oh, he's the UFC's big daddy.
Look, Dana, I dig it that you love Chris Leben. But you're not his father. You're his boss. And the right choice is easy. Leben is shot. He doesn't have what it takes to be in the UFC. We all knew this day would come, and that it would come sooner rather than later because of his problems with substance abuse and his fighting style. Yes, if you fire Leben, he'll have to cope with that, but he's an adult. Yes, he has had problems with alcohol and drugs but there's nothing you can do to fix that. Chris Leben has to fix it. Like you, Dana, I wish him all the best, that he can find it inside of himself to stay away from booze and drugs. I absolutely wish him the best and I recognize the road is long and hard. But you're his boss.
If you really want to be his friend and help him, fire him. Then still be his friend, but don't expect it to be the same when you're not the guy signing his paychecks, when he's got no reason to think of you as an authority figure. But it is cruel to keep him in the UFC to maintain your paternal hold over him.
Anyway, the idea that Dana White feels the moral authority to make decisions about Leben's health and well-being, rather than sticking to his fucking job as the president of the UFC, making decisions based on athletic and business criteria, is a pretty clear indication that Dana sees himself as more than his employee's boss - that he sees himself as a father figure to the fighters in his employee.
Sunday, July 7, 2013
Chris Weidman does not need a rematch with Anderson Silva - that's absurd
Sometimes, it's vexing that only ten people read my posts, but I'll say it anyway: Chris Weidman does not need a rematch against Anderson Silva. Weidmen, okay, I'm going to say this but it's true, Weidman dominated Silva. When Anderson held up his hands, Chris took him down. When Anderson kept his hands down, Weidman knocked him the fuck out. I am not here to praise Silva but to bury him.
Silva is, without doubt, a great MMA fighter. But let's face it, he's had just about as much luck as a man could have in his opponents. Most of his opponents would have been gatekeepers, at best, in other weight classes - and we have examples of this, such as Demain Maia and Nate Marquart. While Maia has done well at welterweight, Marquart has done less son; neither looks like championship material. The subsequent careers of people like Patrick Cote and Thales Leites should indicate, as well, how absolutely mediocre many of Silva's opponents have been. Travis Lutter didn't make weight for their championship tilt - he didn't make weight for a championship fight! - and he was weak and slow during the whole fight. Yushin Okami has always been a C+ fighter, good at nothing in particular, but he's big and strong.
His notable wins are against Dan Henderson, a fighter whom I adore but has never been able to do as well in the Octogon as in other promotions, a pre-TRT Vitor Belfort and the workmanlike champion, Rich Franklin. When one looks at the killer's row that every other champion (with the exception of heavyweight, which has always been the weakest division) has faced, Silva's opponents have been, generally, a sorry lot.
The only person who had Silva really threatened, before Weidman, was Chael Sonnen. But Sonnen's contempt for Brazilian jiu jitsu cost him the first fight with a bare two minutes to go and Sonnen's mental collapse during their second fight lost him the battle, there. Sonnen had all the physical skills to beat Silva but few of the mental ones. Sonnen chokes at the highest levels of competition.
Silva's non-middleweight fights are worse. James Irving? Who cares? Oh, then there is the mediocre Stephan Bonnar - an amusing fighter, at times, but why on earth was he in the same fucking cage as Anderson Silva? Silva's luck abounds with his opponents. (As it did with Forrest Griffin, too, who fought a stupid fight, winging shots, overreaching as Silva danced around him, rather than using his greater size and strength to take it to the ground where Griffin could have won the fight. But, nope, Griffin dispensed with the kind of strategy that allowed him to beat Rampage and decided, instead, get into a fist fight with Silva! If he'd fought that way against Rampage, the fight would have ended the same way. Lucky, lucky Silva.)
Furthermore, what Silva did he did for a reason. It was not hubris or arrogance. In the first round, when Silva had his hands up, Weidman took him down and beat the shit out of him. Silva has had, traditionally, good head movement, and with his hands down, he was in a much better position to stuff Weidman's takedowns. Silva has won fights with shadow punches but it was clear Weidman had trained against that - he was not hurt by Silva at all. But the strategy that Silva employed was out of necessity. He needed his hands down to stay on his feet, which he needed to do to win, and he clowned around to try and get Weidman to charge in, swinging, so he could catch him with a shadow punch. Alas, because for perhaps the first time in Silva's career, he fought a fighter who had actually prepared to fight him (including, apparently, dealing with Silva clowning him), one who had prepared to fight the fight that Silva fights . . . and he dominated. Weidman dominated on the ground, he dominated standing up. Weidman is the better fighter, or at least he was this time.
Rematch with Silva? Yeah, Weidman beats Silva up in the first round, knocks him out in the second. There is no need for a rematch. Weidman ran away with it.
Silva is, without doubt, a great MMA fighter. But let's face it, he's had just about as much luck as a man could have in his opponents. Most of his opponents would have been gatekeepers, at best, in other weight classes - and we have examples of this, such as Demain Maia and Nate Marquart. While Maia has done well at welterweight, Marquart has done less son; neither looks like championship material. The subsequent careers of people like Patrick Cote and Thales Leites should indicate, as well, how absolutely mediocre many of Silva's opponents have been. Travis Lutter didn't make weight for their championship tilt - he didn't make weight for a championship fight! - and he was weak and slow during the whole fight. Yushin Okami has always been a C+ fighter, good at nothing in particular, but he's big and strong.
His notable wins are against Dan Henderson, a fighter whom I adore but has never been able to do as well in the Octogon as in other promotions, a pre-TRT Vitor Belfort and the workmanlike champion, Rich Franklin. When one looks at the killer's row that every other champion (with the exception of heavyweight, which has always been the weakest division) has faced, Silva's opponents have been, generally, a sorry lot.
The only person who had Silva really threatened, before Weidman, was Chael Sonnen. But Sonnen's contempt for Brazilian jiu jitsu cost him the first fight with a bare two minutes to go and Sonnen's mental collapse during their second fight lost him the battle, there. Sonnen had all the physical skills to beat Silva but few of the mental ones. Sonnen chokes at the highest levels of competition.
Silva's non-middleweight fights are worse. James Irving? Who cares? Oh, then there is the mediocre Stephan Bonnar - an amusing fighter, at times, but why on earth was he in the same fucking cage as Anderson Silva? Silva's luck abounds with his opponents. (As it did with Forrest Griffin, too, who fought a stupid fight, winging shots, overreaching as Silva danced around him, rather than using his greater size and strength to take it to the ground where Griffin could have won the fight. But, nope, Griffin dispensed with the kind of strategy that allowed him to beat Rampage and decided, instead, get into a fist fight with Silva! If he'd fought that way against Rampage, the fight would have ended the same way. Lucky, lucky Silva.)
Furthermore, what Silva did he did for a reason. It was not hubris or arrogance. In the first round, when Silva had his hands up, Weidman took him down and beat the shit out of him. Silva has had, traditionally, good head movement, and with his hands down, he was in a much better position to stuff Weidman's takedowns. Silva has won fights with shadow punches but it was clear Weidman had trained against that - he was not hurt by Silva at all. But the strategy that Silva employed was out of necessity. He needed his hands down to stay on his feet, which he needed to do to win, and he clowned around to try and get Weidman to charge in, swinging, so he could catch him with a shadow punch. Alas, because for perhaps the first time in Silva's career, he fought a fighter who had actually prepared to fight him (including, apparently, dealing with Silva clowning him), one who had prepared to fight the fight that Silva fights . . . and he dominated. Weidman dominated on the ground, he dominated standing up. Weidman is the better fighter, or at least he was this time.
Rematch with Silva? Yeah, Weidman beats Silva up in the first round, knocks him out in the second. There is no need for a rematch. Weidman ran away with it.
Facile reporting interpretations of Silva vs. Weidman
I also find it very interesting how superficial the fight analysis is - no one is really saying that Silva put his hands down for a reason, to help him sprawl out against Weidman's shot. When Silva had his hands up, Weidman took him down. When Silva had his hands down, he was able to sprawl out from the shot. It's the dilemma that a striker fights a grappler. If a striker unloads on the grappler, they've basically got one chance to win - a "puncher's chance". Alternately, they can try to develop a strategy to stop the takedown from happening. Silva did something he'd done before, something he did against Chael Sonnen and Forrest Griffin. Put your hands down to push against the shoulders of a wrestler coming in for the shoot while trying to goad them into a fist fight.
They are also saying that Silva was arrogant (someone even used hubris) in the fight. It wasn't arrogance on Silva's part. He had done this very successfully in the past. (And with middling results, too. Demian Maia and Thales Leites refused to fall into the trap, which gave us weird, boring fights with Silva clowning to the point of absurdity.) The difference between the clowning with Demian Maia, Thales Leites, Chael Sonnen and Forrest Griffin is that Chris Weidman has knockout power. This dude hits hard, he can knock dudes out. But the strategy Silva used he used against other fighter's, too, guys who definitely had the ability to beat him, like Sonnen.
Almost no one seems to have seen this. It's the mystique of Silva. The UFC has told us so often, it's been a constant loop, that Anderson Silva is an unbeatable killing machine, the greatest fighter of all time, blah, blah, blah. This mystique has been a tremendous boon to Silva's career but as a result we don't really talk about the giant hole in Silva's game - wrestling - and how really good takedowns and a really good takedown defense change a fight. We talk about it all the time with other fighters. GSP fights a great striker, they frequently aren't that great because they're always worried about the takedown. Or how Johny Hendricks can really swing bombs at dudes because he's so hard to take down. Likewise, it is taken as normal when a very good striker fights a takedown artist that the striker's striking is going to be messed up. This dilemma is well-known and well understood. It's why Sonnen did as well with the striking as he did against Silva, it's why Weidman knocked Silva out, it's why Silva didn't put away Maia and Leites. But to mention such things is to ice skate uphill against the UFC hype machine who has presented Silva as immune to the normal forces that shape fights.
Of course, it is no news to me that reporters suck. Most of my posts are about how badly reporters suck, one way or the other. You're probably not going to get very far as an MMA writer if you critique the UFC's hype machine. Since almost no one wants to talk about the extent to which they are effected by advertising, to go against the UFC's hype machine is to align yourself against ideas that have been internalized not only by the audience but by other writers and editors of MMA journals. You're stuck, like me, out here in the fringe.
They are also saying that Silva was arrogant (someone even used hubris) in the fight. It wasn't arrogance on Silva's part. He had done this very successfully in the past. (And with middling results, too. Demian Maia and Thales Leites refused to fall into the trap, which gave us weird, boring fights with Silva clowning to the point of absurdity.) The difference between the clowning with Demian Maia, Thales Leites, Chael Sonnen and Forrest Griffin is that Chris Weidman has knockout power. This dude hits hard, he can knock dudes out. But the strategy Silva used he used against other fighter's, too, guys who definitely had the ability to beat him, like Sonnen.
Almost no one seems to have seen this. It's the mystique of Silva. The UFC has told us so often, it's been a constant loop, that Anderson Silva is an unbeatable killing machine, the greatest fighter of all time, blah, blah, blah. This mystique has been a tremendous boon to Silva's career but as a result we don't really talk about the giant hole in Silva's game - wrestling - and how really good takedowns and a really good takedown defense change a fight. We talk about it all the time with other fighters. GSP fights a great striker, they frequently aren't that great because they're always worried about the takedown. Or how Johny Hendricks can really swing bombs at dudes because he's so hard to take down. Likewise, it is taken as normal when a very good striker fights a takedown artist that the striker's striking is going to be messed up. This dilemma is well-known and well understood. It's why Sonnen did as well with the striking as he did against Silva, it's why Weidman knocked Silva out, it's why Silva didn't put away Maia and Leites. But to mention such things is to ice skate uphill against the UFC hype machine who has presented Silva as immune to the normal forces that shape fights.
Of course, it is no news to me that reporters suck. Most of my posts are about how badly reporters suck, one way or the other. You're probably not going to get very far as an MMA writer if you critique the UFC's hype machine. Since almost no one wants to talk about the extent to which they are effected by advertising, to go against the UFC's hype machine is to align yourself against ideas that have been internalized not only by the audience but by other writers and editors of MMA journals. You're stuck, like me, out here in the fringe.
Saturday, July 6, 2013
The BBC's offfensive lines
It happened, again, a story so bafflingly stupid that it makes my toes curl. In the BBC, there is a story, "The offensive line", that is about crime and NFL players. In it, they conclude - mind you, conclude - that because the arrest rate of NFL players is 1 in 47 (instead of 1 in 6 for their age and gender cohort) that NFL players behalf considerably better than the average person.
At no point does anyone consider, even briefly, any intervening hypothesis as to why NFL players should be arrested 1/7th as often as men of their age. Such as, perhaps, that NFL players are not likely to be arrested because they're professional sports figures, not to mention rich.
I grant, that sort of questioning requires both the ability to ask questions and the desire to do research, but both seem in slight demand in newspapers. Still, the idea that professional athletes, along with other rich and famous people, are given numerous breaks by law enforcement isn't a real reach, not to mention the ability to hide many crimes that comes along with wealth - when you live in a big house with good soundproofing on a large lot and all your neighbors do the same, well, not a lot of calls get made when you disturb the peace . . . or beat the shit out of your girlfriend. (All NFL players are rich. Their base pay is around $400K a year.)
I mean, every time I read a biography of a sports figure, I'm just stunned at the crazy shit they get away with, shit I am quite sure would get me arrested for everything from rape to assault if I did it. Likewise, my friends who have been college athletes just have crazy stories of fights and crazy parties where the cops came by but, well, it's the college football team, so they just got off with a warning. So, both in sports biographies and according to my personal experience, yeah, athletes get off real light from the authorities.
So, it isn't reaching to say that perhaps there's a reason why NFL players aren't arrested as much as their poorer, less famous cohorts. Yea, verily, an obvious reason. But why bother actually researching something. It's much easier to find some raw data and write a couple of hundred words off the top of your head.
At no point does anyone consider, even briefly, any intervening hypothesis as to why NFL players should be arrested 1/7th as often as men of their age. Such as, perhaps, that NFL players are not likely to be arrested because they're professional sports figures, not to mention rich.
I grant, that sort of questioning requires both the ability to ask questions and the desire to do research, but both seem in slight demand in newspapers. Still, the idea that professional athletes, along with other rich and famous people, are given numerous breaks by law enforcement isn't a real reach, not to mention the ability to hide many crimes that comes along with wealth - when you live in a big house with good soundproofing on a large lot and all your neighbors do the same, well, not a lot of calls get made when you disturb the peace . . . or beat the shit out of your girlfriend. (All NFL players are rich. Their base pay is around $400K a year.)
I mean, every time I read a biography of a sports figure, I'm just stunned at the crazy shit they get away with, shit I am quite sure would get me arrested for everything from rape to assault if I did it. Likewise, my friends who have been college athletes just have crazy stories of fights and crazy parties where the cops came by but, well, it's the college football team, so they just got off with a warning. So, both in sports biographies and according to my personal experience, yeah, athletes get off real light from the authorities.
So, it isn't reaching to say that perhaps there's a reason why NFL players aren't arrested as much as their poorer, less famous cohorts. Yea, verily, an obvious reason. But why bother actually researching something. It's much easier to find some raw data and write a couple of hundred words off the top of your head.
Thursday, July 4, 2013
Bad news and the case of Morsi in Egypt
Generally speaking, the new reporting, newspapers, news TV and news blogs are bad. I don't delude myself into thinking it was ever any good, generally. Newspapers have always been owned by people who shaped their papers according to their interests - from William Randolph Hearst to Rupert Murdoch, from the New York Times to the BBC.
The BBC is where I am starting this little adventure. In Egypt, they have had a lot of anti-democratic protests that have lead to the Egyptian army ousting the legally elected President of Egypt, suspending the Egyptian Constitution and installing a stooge. As of me writing this, the BBC, nor any news source I've seen, has called this an anti-democratic military coup that demonstrates the lack of both democracy and the rule of law in Egypt. The Egyptian army is now in the business of deposing civilian leaders as they see fit. Egypt is a de facto military oligarchy, a banana republic, with elections and the rule of law a farce.
For some reason, the BBC - my primary news source - doesn't seem to recognize the banana republic nature of Egypt or the generally recognized belief that military oligarchic dictatorships are horrible forms of government even when they seem to be supporting populist causes. That support is entirely coincidental. Almost always, military oligarchies end up in civil war as either they shift from supporting populist causes to opposing them for their own gain and/or the colonels who run the military carve out their own private fiefdoms and start squabbling with each other. The fact that Egypt is quite likely set on a course of protracted civil strife and/or warlordism is simply not brought up because, I think, the narrative that the recent populist uprisings in the Middle East - the so-called Arab Spring - are essentially benevolent and democratic in character, rather than the horrible clusterfuck that has made Egypt, in whole, an even worse place than when under more stable forms of dictatorship.
It's like when we in the West don't like a government, we have this incredibly, just shockingly naive view that any revolution is a good one. Which is why in Afghanistan we supported al-Qaida and the Taliban, why we supported Saddam Hussein against Iran, why we supported the brutal Shah of Iran in murdering Mossedegh, why we propped Manuel Noriega's rule in Panama, the list just goes on and on. We think that because we don't like a ruler that anyone resisting that rule must be a-okay.
We're currently making the same mistake in Syria, too. Is Assad a tyrant? Yes. But there's a lot of reason to think the rebels are every bit as tyrannical as Assad and anti-West. Oh, plus, it could start another cold war with Russia and China. But here we are, supporting crazy religious zealots against a secular tyrant because we dislike Syria's persistent autonomy and it's unwillingness to line up as a client state of the US.
Likewise, we're praising the Egyptian army's impending warlordism and Egypt's civil strife even as the supposed Arab Spring turns more and more into an Arab Winter as sectarian violence grips the area. Even as religious hostilities in Iraq increase, and the American withdrawal from Afghanistan highlights how little power the Kabul government has, even as our missile strikes into Pakistan continue to destabilize that country socially and politically, as war rages in Syria, as demonstrations get violent in Turkey, the newspapers are essentially reporting that the destruction of the rule of law and the rule of colonels in a banana republic in Egypt are a good thing.
The BBC is where I am starting this little adventure. In Egypt, they have had a lot of anti-democratic protests that have lead to the Egyptian army ousting the legally elected President of Egypt, suspending the Egyptian Constitution and installing a stooge. As of me writing this, the BBC, nor any news source I've seen, has called this an anti-democratic military coup that demonstrates the lack of both democracy and the rule of law in Egypt. The Egyptian army is now in the business of deposing civilian leaders as they see fit. Egypt is a de facto military oligarchy, a banana republic, with elections and the rule of law a farce.
For some reason, the BBC - my primary news source - doesn't seem to recognize the banana republic nature of Egypt or the generally recognized belief that military oligarchic dictatorships are horrible forms of government even when they seem to be supporting populist causes. That support is entirely coincidental. Almost always, military oligarchies end up in civil war as either they shift from supporting populist causes to opposing them for their own gain and/or the colonels who run the military carve out their own private fiefdoms and start squabbling with each other. The fact that Egypt is quite likely set on a course of protracted civil strife and/or warlordism is simply not brought up because, I think, the narrative that the recent populist uprisings in the Middle East - the so-called Arab Spring - are essentially benevolent and democratic in character, rather than the horrible clusterfuck that has made Egypt, in whole, an even worse place than when under more stable forms of dictatorship.
It's like when we in the West don't like a government, we have this incredibly, just shockingly naive view that any revolution is a good one. Which is why in Afghanistan we supported al-Qaida and the Taliban, why we supported Saddam Hussein against Iran, why we supported the brutal Shah of Iran in murdering Mossedegh, why we propped Manuel Noriega's rule in Panama, the list just goes on and on. We think that because we don't like a ruler that anyone resisting that rule must be a-okay.
We're currently making the same mistake in Syria, too. Is Assad a tyrant? Yes. But there's a lot of reason to think the rebels are every bit as tyrannical as Assad and anti-West. Oh, plus, it could start another cold war with Russia and China. But here we are, supporting crazy religious zealots against a secular tyrant because we dislike Syria's persistent autonomy and it's unwillingness to line up as a client state of the US.
Likewise, we're praising the Egyptian army's impending warlordism and Egypt's civil strife even as the supposed Arab Spring turns more and more into an Arab Winter as sectarian violence grips the area. Even as religious hostilities in Iraq increase, and the American withdrawal from Afghanistan highlights how little power the Kabul government has, even as our missile strikes into Pakistan continue to destabilize that country socially and politically, as war rages in Syria, as demonstrations get violent in Turkey, the newspapers are essentially reporting that the destruction of the rule of law and the rule of colonels in a banana republic in Egypt are a good thing.
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