The Babbling Corner: Bad President! Go to Your Room!

Hand me the toque, we're going beaver hunting, eh?

Bad President! Go to your room!

If we make it out of these next four years without a healthy radioactive glow and a third arm, I think we'll be doing very well.

I believe I've mentioned this before, but I hate the news. I don't watch it, and I do my best not to read it. Because whenever I turn it on, what I'm greeted with is either depressing or annoying. Or both. But even I can't remain wholly ignorant. I mean, I'm an Internet Junkie. Trying to keep myself unsullied by the nastiness of the world around me would be as difficult as not running into approximately 58,184,972 referrances to Zero Wing while on a simple web search to find a new pair of socks. There are just some things you can't escape, no matter how badly you might want to.

Big News is one of those things.

So yes, I already knew about the spy plane crap. For those of you who don't want to read all the sordid details of this laughably dim international incident (and who can blame you, I sure didn't want to), here's a basic run down of the highlights:

The US, under our shiny new White House administration, has decided that the best way to get things moving in the right direction is to bully our allies and threaten the rest of the world.

To aid in this sterling decision, and to help us immediately regret that we ever allowed George Jr airtime let alone to win the bloody election, our President starts picking on China.

Convinced that China is the new Russia of the 80s, they dispatch spy planes to hover over the country with the latest classified hi-tech Bond toys. In full sight. Repeatedly.

Something goes wrong (nobody can seem to stop pointing fingers and placing blame long enough to find out what exactly), and the US spy plane collides with a Chinese plane. The US plane makes a forced landing, and its crew is taken into custody.

The Americans have the nerve to get pissy about it.

Now this in and of itself is just cause for a rant. China being a threat or not, I was agog and agast at the blatant nature of this "spying". Is not the basic nature of covert ops to be ... well, covert? Spying on somebody who knows you're watching them seems to immediately defeat the purpose. True, the government couldn't realistically let their entire country know "Shhh! The Yanks are Up There!", but you know, that isn't really the point.

There have to be few things in the world so irritating as somebody doing something that they know they shouldn't, but having so little respect for you that they don't care if you know they're doing it. And that, for me, is what all this is about. If it was just once or twice, it would be a different situation, but for the US to send a spy plane over Chinese airspace so often that they were able to gauge a raise in hostility by Chinese planes, then you know we're talking about something that's been some time in coming.

Hell, I'd be pissed off too. The United States couldn't have been clearer on their feelings of "We're America, we'll do whatever we want to and there's nothing you can do about it, nyaah!" than if they'd had their spy plane sky write it over Beijing.

So yes, I was a little disgusted when I heard about this incident, but primarily just rolled my eyes, muttered something else about the approaching World War III, and tried to decend back into ignorance.

But then I woke up this morning and while downloading my e-mail, saw this little gem on Netsacpe:

U.S.: No Apology to China. Oh, for the love of John Lennon. Is anybody else struck with this almost irresistable urge to smack George Jr upside his little weasel-like head and say "Bad President! Now go up to your room and think about what you've done!"

"No apology"?! You freaking taunted them with your holier than thou attitude and self-righteous crusade launched without real provocation, and when they took humbrage, you get upset about it. More than that, we see international politics reduced to a schoolyard scuffle.

This is the exact behaviour that's going to get us all killed. The United States, contrary to popular belief, is not the world's watchdog. We have plenty of problems right here on our own turf that could do with some fixing before we go running off to "grace" the rest of the world with our unsolicited opinion.

Perhaps even more than that, I'm downright embarrassed at this point.

"Say you're sorry, Georgie."
"Nooo, I won't do it! I won't, I won't, I won't!!"
"Then it's bed without supper for you, young man!"
<stomps off to room, crying>

Is this what we've been reduced to? "Does this bug you? Does this bug you? I'm not touching you, you can't get mad. Does this bug you?" on a global scale.

Now I'll acknowledge that the Chinese brought it down there first. An apology? What the heck will that do? "Sure thing! Sorry, dude! Can I have my toys back now? Thanks!" and then tomorrow they're back where they started. But with Georgie on his high, white horse, you'd think that the administration would try to keep the situation professional. Instead, we're looking at cracking open a huge rift that's taken centuries to close, because the US refuses to say it's sorry ... for something that it did wrong.

Somebody please come take my nation by the ear and make it sit in the corner for a Time Out.