August 31, 2010

The More Things Change...

... the more they stay the same, or why I am bored with the hyperbolic squabbling over the Ground Zero Mosque.

Namely, because despite the hysteria and demagoguery and posturing, the same arguments in slightly different forms are the same ones heard all the bloody time in every city in America. It's a land use flap over a by right usage, and I've heard it all countless times before.

Hells' bells, you (literally) don't have to go farther than the morning news to see this same dynamic at work all over the nation. From today's headline feed, out of the first dozen stories I find ...

Casino proposed near battlefield splits Gettysburg

Proposed pot farm on countryside angers residents

If you want to build something and some people don't like it, they will throw everything they can think of at it. Tully's Corollary™ to Kaplan's Law of the Instrument states:

"When you really want to drive a nail, everything starts to look like a hammer." It doesn't matter if it's a rock or a wrench, a blender or a board or a baguette. If you really really want to drive that nail, everything suddenly looks like a hammer.

At no time is this more evident than during election season.

Here's a couple of useful acronyms for such situations: "CAVE people" and "BANANAs." Citizens Against Virtually Everything" and "Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything."

August 25, 2010