"I Need Thee Every Hour"

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Insufferable Facebook-isms

I'm tempted to post this article (linked below) called "7 Ways to be Insufferable On Facebook" on my Facebook page. However, if I did, I suspect that might make me insufferable. 

Here's a snippet.

A Facebook status is annoying if it primarily serves the author and does nothing positive for anyone reading it . . . To examine this a bit, let’s start by discussing the defining characteristics of statuses that are not annoying.

To be unannoying, a Facebook status typically has to be one of two things:

1) Interesting/Informative
2) Funny/Amusing/Entertaining 

You know why these are unannoying? Because things in those two categories do something for me, the reader. They make my day a little better.

Ideally, interesting statuses would be fascinating and original (or a link to something that is), and funny ones would be hilarious. But I’ll happily take mildly amusing—at least we're still dealing with the good guys.

On the other hand, annoying statuses typically reek of one or more of these five motivations:

1) Image Crafting. The author wants to affect the way people think of her.

2) Narcissism. The author’s thoughts, opinions, and life philosophies matter. The author and the author’s life are interesting in and of themselves.

3) Attention Craving. The author wants attention.

4) Jealousy Inducing. The author wants to make people jealous of him or his life.

5) Loneliness. The author is feeling lonely and wants Facebook to make it better. This is the least heinous of the five—but seeing a lonely person acting lonely on Facebook makes me and everyone else sad. So the person is essentially spreading their sadness, and that’s a shitty thing to do, so it’s on the list.

The author then provides examples of insufferability, nearly all of them falling under the general heading of "image crafting." Rather hilarious, not to mention embarrassing. I wonder how often I've been insufferable. I think I was pretty insufferable during the 2008 election of he-who-shall-not-be-named.

The scary thing is, if the entire concept of social networking is designed to promote, propagate and perpetuate narcissistic behavior, why do I continue to skulk about in this community? Yet when I think of closing up my account once and for all, I wonder what I'll miss out on. And so I linger.  

Anyway, here's the article. Very funny. Not sure who the author is, but it's from a blog called wait but why. 

"7 Ways to be Insufferable on Facebook"

Prager U: "Why America Invaded Iraq"

I'm posting this 5-minute video, "Why America Invaded Iraq," presented by British historian Andrew Roberts (bio here). 

People who are still convinced of the "Bush lied/people died" meme will find something to criticize about his analysis, but I'm of the opinion that there was both logic and sound analysis behind the decision to go to war.

This brief presentation addresses the argument that Saddam Hussein presented a huge obstacle to peace in the Middle East, that the goal of removing him in order to allow a "functioning democracy" a chance to spread in the region made sense, especially since Hussein refused to comply with U.N resolutions, dismissed U.N weapons' inspectors, had a history of using poison gas during the Iran/Iraq war, and refused to back down, even after having seen his military defeated in 1999 when he invaded Kuwait.

Even the argument about Bush being wrong that Hussein had WMD's falters when examining the facts known at the time about Hussein. Not only did Hussein have a history of using these weapons, he tried to convince the world that he would use them. Bluffs like this (assuming it was a bluff) cannot be ignored. Bush was not alone in taking him seriously. The decision to go to war came with the agreement of our allies, and members of Congress, including key Democrats like Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Joe Biden, and others.

 

Source: Prager University

Back to the present. It's fascinating to see John Kerry, Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, etc. arguing in favor of bombing Syria and punishing Bashar al-Assad for using poison gas. Putting aside the question of whether or not this is a good idea, I can't help but wonder if at least some of the WMD's being employed by al-Assad were at one time used by Saddam Hussein. 

During the heated debate over whether or not Hussein actually had WMD's, culminating in the conclusion that he did not, I recall some mention of whether it was possible that he had possibly smuggled the weapons out of the country during the time weapons' inspectors were evicted. Where might the weapons have been concealed? None other than Syria. 

Here we are, a decade later, watching Barack Obama (he of the Bush lied ilk) being forced to make the hard decisions that his predecessor confronted. How ironic would it be if the very weapons al-Assad is using today are the very ones that Hussein used during his reign?