Happy Cinco de Mayo! Most people don’t know the history of this day, which celebrates Ignacio Zaragoza Seguin, the Mexican general who defeated the French at the Battle of Puebla on 05 May 1862. But the hidden history is even more intriguing. General Seguin was placed in command the day prior as his boss General Cesar Delgado became ill after consuming bad sardines with salsa. Interestingly, Mexico has a long history of naming famous victories after the favorite condiments of the general in charge of said victory, and General Seguin’s favorite condiment, much to the chagrin of his troops, was not salsa, but mayonnaise. Had Delgado not been struck ill by his afternoon snack on 04 May, we may well have been celebrating Cinco de Salsa! In the spirit of Seguin’s victory, today is the day which all good and decent people should consume a Fifth of Mayonnaise! Use it on sandwiches, or in a good potato salad.
It is possible that, because I do not speak Spanish, I may have mistranslated “History of Cinco de Mayo,” which is in Spanish. Comprende?
The Rise of Post-Americanism:
I’ve lately read a number of articles on what I suppose should most accurately be called post-Americanism. Apparently, this topic is en vogue at the moment. In all of these articles, the author discusses the “post-American world” but always spins it in one particular way; every single article discusses how this “post-American world” isn’t something to be feared, but welcomed.
What does a post-American world look like? Well, according to most of these authors, the US still has political and military hegemony over the nations of the world, but these nations are achieving parity in areas such as economics, cultural influence, personal affluence, individual prestige, and grandiose public works. Basically, the US is still dominant militarily, but it no longer has the most impressive buildings or most impressive billionaires.
This article, by Fareed Zakaria of Newsweek, describes some of the seemingly superficial areas in which the US has lost its once prodigious lead. Zakaria contends that the post-American world is not so much the depression of the US might, but the rise of the rest of the world. He also contends that US hegemony, which he calls Pax Americana, has been the enabling factor for this rise of the rest.
Is all this a good thing? Zakaria posits that it is. I’m obviously skeptical. I am a patriot, but more importantly, I suppose I could be qualified as a nationalist, which means that I am very “pro” my nation being superior in all endeavors, to include the superficial. Foolish as it may seem, I want my nation to net the greatest haul of Gold Medals at the Olympics. I want my nation to have the most impressive buildings. I want my nation to have the most billionaires even. To cede the lead in any area is to me a further erosion of civic pride and virtue. I do not mind losing so long as we don’t throw our arms up and then give up. Because such apathy is much like any disease: viciously contagious. Zakaria reports that 81 percent of Americans believe that the country is “on the wrong track.” Eighty-one percent. Presented differently, that’s 19 percent that may or may not believe that the US is on the right track. Granted, a lot seems to be going badly at the moment, with gas prices and a “sputtering” economy and a massively unpopular war. It’s not surprising then to see such numbers. But maybe the situation is deeper than that. Perhaps our nation is mired in some sort of national malaise; some sort of melancholic rut from which we can not easily extricate ourselves.
When I am an old man, I fear that I will be able to look back and recognize that I saw my nation’s power peak, and that I lived the last half of my life in the waning stages of that power. We must remember that things are never as clear in the present as they are through hindsight. Will we be able to pick specific events that eroded American might as we can with the Romans? Will we look back with regret our unwillingness to oppose the growing might of China? Will we look back longingly at the wealth squandered on ill-conceived conflicts? Will we wish that we would have done things differently? Let’s hope that we can avoid such a fate altogether, at least for another 100 years. I want my son to be able to grow up in the nation I grew up in, and if he can say that of his son, and then that son to his, perhaps the future won’t look so troubling.
Hey, at least we’ve still got nukes, right? They can’t take those away from us…yet…
Poor, Poor Pain:
Ladies and Gentlemen, if you make less than $30k a year, you will spend 20% of your life in moderate to severe pain. But if you make more than $100k, you’ll have to spend a mere 8% of your life in the same type of pain. And you thought that money was the only thing that separates class. Okay, this is nearly the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever read, and I can’t read it anymore. Its absurdity is causing me moderate to severe pain.
Word of the Day: Fustian (noun): 1. A kind of coarse twilled cotton or cotton and linen stuff, including corduroy, velveteen, etc.; 2. An inflated style of writing or speech; pompous or pretentious language. (Adj): 1. Made of fustian; 2. Pompous; ridiculously inflated; bombastic.
On This Day in History: Columbus lands on Jamaica, and to the dismay of the natives, claims it for Spain (1494). Afrikaans is established as an official language in South Africa (1925). West Germany gains full sovereignty (1955). The 27th Amendment is ratified, 202 years after its initial submission (1992). Strange that it took so long to ratify a simple amendment governing Congressional pay…
“We find that the Romans owed the conquest of the world to no other cause than continual military training, exact observances of discipline in their camps, and unwearied cultivation of other arts of war.” – Flavius Renatus Vegetius.
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