Please re-read the bit there about “what goal endures through changes of regime.”
And yet, while Canada is very “nice,” it is not great. It does not change the world. it is content to be Canada.
That is not America. America was made to be a refuge from the world. When the world no longer allowed that, we decided implicitly to change everything else. Adn we’re doing it.
Yet the parallels are so very real: Genius in a multiple fields and styles (and combining them, a product of mixed ancestry and culture, embodying the change of eras, and often viewed as rather odd and not exactly high-culture anywhere.
raises hand
Although the opening verse given above is missing three syllables by my count? It should go:
Higgledy-piggledy
1-2-3 4-5-6
1-2-3 4-5-6
1-2-3 4
So:
Higgledy piggledy
Geostrategically
What will those crazy Ir
anians do?
Nuclear weapons could
Antisemitically
Land the Israelis quite
Deep in the poo.
EXACTLY. That is mentally healthier – and politically healthier, too – than positing some Canadian Mission or Canadian Pageant or Canadian Dream to live up to.
No, that was just New England, and maybe Pennsylvania if you squint. (Not Maryland – intended for an English-Catholic refuge, it was, but that didn’t last long.) Most of the colonies were simply commercial enterprises.
Great men make bad neighbors.
Even if I accepted that, which I don’t, Canada is America-lite. It lives as it does because someone else takes responsibility, and without America, Canada would live a much less pleasant existence.
And in that very thing, a world of change occurred. In fact, I consider rthe other colonies much more important that Massachusetts or Pensylvania, intending no disrespect to those worthies.
Yes, that’s the thing about greatness. Everyone wants its fruits, and noone wants its presence. The world needs greatness, even if it does not want it.
Technically, you’re right. But I was able to recite it thusly:
Higglety-Pigglety,
Geostrategically,
What(-) does I(-)ran re-a-lly want?
…where (-) stands for a beat or pause to match the necessary meter, and “really” is drawn out into 3 syllables. A poor-man’s meter.
Most excellent, also, and extra points for using a double-dactyl word.
But Gyrate’s doesn’t seem to scan right for a double dactyl at all, and rhyming “want” with “jerk” is a bit far-fetched:
This isn’t a hijack – we’re just expressing our thoughts a little differently than plain prose. 
Without America, Canada in its present form could not exist. But, we ain’t defending the Canucks from nuttin’. We are, in fact, the only foreign country in the world that has ever expressed the slightest interest in invading theirs.
No. You are confusing greatness with wisdom.
Iran knows what every other country knows: If you have nukes, you won’t be invaded. They saw what happened to Iraq. They saw the lessons learned from the Balkans. They know the history of Vietnam. And they realize that Kim Jong Il’s probably nuttier than a sack of cashews but he’s still in charge
Ultimately, I don’t really care if they have influence over their area of the world. If it wasn’t Saddam dropping gas on his population, then its Iran using Hizbullah to attack Israel, same shit, different people. People in the US pretending like its some huge violation and calling for sanctions or action are usually the loudest ones shouting that the UN can’t be trusted and going on about conspiracies of foreign troops in our cities, probably enforcing abortion or something, so I’m not inclined to listen to what conservatives have to say about Iran at all
I’m for Iran getting nukes. At least that cuts off one country we can invade. If Pakistan and all its craziness with terrorists and India hasn’t lost a nuke yet and NYC hasn’t gone up in a mushroom cloud, then I’m for letting Iran have one too. I hope they develop one quick, in case we get a Republican in 2012, so that there will be no more talk about attacking them no matter how uneasy Israel feels
They just want to feel safe in their own borders like all countries do. Having nukes is the easiest way to ensure that.
That’s all? Not any regional hegemony or primacy? Ya sure?
I think safety would be a first priority. The hegemony is a method to achieve that. I begrudge their methods, but not their desire. And since I don’t think Iran is crazy enough to commit suicide by using a nuke, I completely support them getting one to prevent invasions on their soil
I have to say I’m a bit surprised by this.
You’ve certainly supported censoring dissident political views in the US, but you never struck me as the type of guy who’d be supportive of giving Nuclear weapons to a government that regularly engages in mass murder against its own citizens.
Beyond that, they don’t just want nukes to “prevent invasions” but to increase their ability and influence in destabilizing the other government in their region and replacing them with extremist Shia governments.
Iran is just misunderstood. That whole wipe Israel off the map thing is just their way of making a joke.
Or a mistranslation which has been pepetuatef by those with an agenda.
No, it was apparently just a bad translation. Juan Cole says so, and an Iranian friend of mine agrees that it’s not what he said.
Note, I’m no fan of the Iranian government. As a fairly hardcore atheist and a fan of human dignity, it rather disgusts me. However, facts are facts.
That’s the text printed on the back of the Team America 2 DVD, dude.
Am I being whooshed or do I really need to explain the joke about why it doesn’t rhyme?
And I agree that the original double dactyl was incorrectly structured but I went with the flow, as it were.
Hardly. It’s encouraged conflict, sold weapons all over the world, and encouraged its proxies to engage in war when it isn’t bombing someone itself. It has encouraged corruption & exploitation, fought against freedom, trained torturers, encouraged greed and tyranny while fighting against freedom and civil rights all over the world. For all its self righteousness, America’s foreign policies have been no more benevolent or constructive than those of the USSR.
:rolleyes: Yeah, even if we have to send an army to slaughter and lay waste to some nation because they don’t appreciate our “greatness”. It’s for their own good! They should be thankful we regard them as worthy of receiving American bullets in their flesh.
I think that an awful lot of the world would be quite happy to do without the “fruits” of our “greatness”.
“Crackpot” doesn’t rhyme with “want”, either.
Kennedy and Khrushchev were sitting next to each other for a photo op in the White House and Nikki leaned over and said to John, “History is on our side, we will bury you.” What he meant was Russia will outlast the US, which was not the interpretation John first understood.
That was a cultural misunderstanding.
I have no doubt Ahmadinejad’s blustery rhetoric is completely intentional.
I guess so, or I’m being whooshed.
It occured to me that you might not be aware of the conventional structure of a double-dactyl, where the last word of each stanza rhymes.
Like, in our examples, “want/nonchalant”, “do/poo”. Your sample didn’t do this.
Perhaps you mean the joke is rhyming “want” with “cunt”, then chickening out, but even if you didn’t throw out a substitute, it doesn’t rhyme very well, at least not in English.