Midrange Weekly Aug 23

Your Weekly Round Up On What’s Got The Midrange Staff’s Attention

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Welcome back to Midrange Weekly, your go to place haphazardly formed opinions of which we are rarely informed on but at least we have some pretty good twitter excerpts. After heat waves, heat domes, wild fires, and melted crustaceans, the weather in Vancouver has finally cooled down. While this indeed provides respite for many of us, one can’t help wonder if this is just some interlude before climate change smokes us with some Day After Tomorrow style storm. In the meantime, Mickey is decomposing- errr, decompressing from his recent school semester, Jamie is looking forward to weather where he can wear pants without being fiercely interrogated, and Tristan got Covid and has to isolate for ten days or so. He looks like this now. If his opining seems more unhinged than usual, that’s why. Off we go.

 

The Cynical Reality Of The Afghanistan Experts

When it comes to the botched Afghanistan withdrawal the only thing worse than the twitter brigade of “experts”- the ones who went from vaccine epidemiologists to military foreign affairs advisors over night last week- is hearing from actual alleged experts. As we try and make sense of this clusterfuck of a situation in the Middle East journalistic publications and cable news channels are scrambling for in depth and insightful analysis from anyone that can feign expertise on the matter. The problem is the elite political class of foreign policy intelligentsia are all in one form or another complicit in this mess to begin with. 

Be it Fox News, CNN, the New York Times; they are interviewing or publishing op eds from individuals who either hubristically championed the Afghan invasion 20 years ago or worked for the very people who were the architects of it. In some cases, even individuals directly responsible for the sorry state of Afghan affairs either 20 years earlier or in modern iterations are given opportunities on air or in print to opine about how Biden screwed up, or how they could have done better. House Representative Liz Cheney is out there decrying Biden and his team’s many missteps, completely obviating the fact that her father is perhaps the principal architect of the Afghan and Iraq invasions and thus her family’s dynastic legacy is tied to how history interprets the various actors involved in it all. Former Bush speechwriter Marc Thiesson was recently on Fox blasting Biden’s tactical failures abroad. Again, Theissen and his ilk are all tied to the legacy and perception of the Bush administration, therefore it’s in his interest to transfer the blame of a 20 year forever war to anyone other than those he willingly worked for. CNN hosted General David Patreous who also needled the Biden team with critiques over Afghan strategy. This is the same general who oversaw a failed troop surge in Afghanistan in 2011 under Obama’s purview. 

Why are we listening to these people? Why are we taking their self-serving, ass covering, gas lighting opinions as meritorious statements to be added to the record? Why are we giving these people a platform to extol from when it was their cynical self-interest and craven hubris that got America into this mess to begin with? Noted and respected economist Tom Friedman wrote in Nov 2001 on the still nascent Afghan invasion, “Give war a chance. This is Afghanistan we’re talking about. Check the map. It’s far away”.

That’s pretty fucked up. Now 20 years later he is still somehow not ostracized from the discourse of foreign affairs, instead writing strange performance art style interviews as a metaphor for Afghanistan’s current quagmire. The arrogance to assume your opinion on the matter should still hold currency, and the journalistic negligence of publications that would enable him is galling. 

For a war that was spread across four presidential administrations there is plenty of blame to go around, but so many of the people asked to weigh in are not unbiased observers but directly involved and want to direct that blame anywhere but themselves. Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who is perpetually gearing up for 2024 presidential run (if Trump lets him that is) was on a particularly moral high horse on Fox as he blamed 20 years of Taliban intransigence on an administration that has been in power for 6 months. He also glossed over the fact the he negotiated a deal with the Taliban and freed their current leader from jail, accomplishing little more than allowing the Taliban to prepare for their blitzkrieg across Afghanistan. Trump even wanted these negotiations to take place at Camp David. This not just endemic of American ideologues. Former British PM Tony Blair chimed in as well and let’s just see how that’s going. 

Part of the problem with all of those blame gaming and performative virtue signalling is it give so much red meat to the negative partisans on both sides of the ideological spectrum. There’s no denying that Biden’s Afghan withdrawal has been a disaster with not nearly enough emphasis or pre planning going into evacuating at risk nationals. And yet Trump’s base and high profile supplicants deride Biden for this, completely ignoring that just a year ago this is exactly what Trump himself wanted to do; exactly how he wanted to do it. Trump’s strident defenders hypothesize ways in which he would have handled this better as if he wasn’t handling this for four years already.

Liberals can point to Trump’s idiotic engagement with the Taliban that had no real clear goal other than Trump’s explicit fetishizing of authoritarian regimes and his desire to cozy up to them. But Obama had 4 years after killing Osama Bin Laden to orchestrate a careful and measured withdrawal. Instead he wavered back and forth between aimless troop surges. And let’s not forget his predecessor George Bush was where this all started. One of the other principle actors responsible for rat fucking an entire nation, Bush’s Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld glibly argued that they didn’t even need an exist strategy at the time.  Sure.

There are no partisan or political points to be scored here. No massaging of the facts or timeline to deflect or redistribute blame. Everyone fucked up on this one. No one is an expert or in any position to lord their experience on the matter over anyone else. Those that attempt to do so are doing it for pure political posturing, which is obnoxiously cynical. It’s situations like this where media literacy is so important. When you see or read an expert opinion on Afghanistan these days, ask yourself what was this person’s relationship to the dilemma 20 years ago. What was there opinion on it back then? Who were they working for at the time? Chances are the answers to those questions are far less neutral and altruistic then they would have you believe. In other words, don’t believe them. -Tristan

 

BIV’S Unessential List Come’s Under Fire

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A local BC business magazine, BIV, came under fire this past week for how they handled a section of their list. What they published was a ranking of the 500 most influential business leaders in BC. This list covered all areas, from real estate and banking to my area of expertise, hospitality. It’s with this section where they found themselves in some hot water. 

Before I dive into this whole saga and give you my opinion on the matter, here’s a brief synopsis of what their list is all about. 

From BIV 500:

BC500 features business leaders who have a notable impact on B.C.’s communities, industries and economy.

They are visionaries, innovators and trailblazers. They embody the values of modern leadership: engagement, trust, corporate citizenship, inclusion and innovation. Some of them are household names; some of them are well known within their industries. All of them influence life and business in British Columbia.

Now here’s the list in the question that caused a lot of drama. 

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As you can clearly see by the headline and the list itself, it’s an all male cast. In an industry which is dominated by women workers, this is a major misstep by the BIV selection committee. Call it what you will and say that these are the most influential restaurant leaders in BC, in this day and age, to not understand or even realize the sexism here is just plain idiotic. What makes this even worse is most of the men on this list are either retired or barely in the game. Most of their contributions were over 10 to 15 years ago, some even more. Jeff Donnelly owns bars and nightclubs and he just sold off half of them. The only two people on this list who are relevant in some way are Angus and Ryan. The fact that Vikram made it on but his wife did not is shameful. She’s just as important as he is. 

Then there’s the elephant in the room group which says everything about this list. Stan, Matthew and Rob all own or work for basically the same company. Earls, Cactus Club and Joeys. These chain behemoths are sustained by the exploitation of young beautiful women. Full stop. Lots of makeup, short skirts and skinny as the bread and butter of this lot. BIV wants us to marvel at this list of men with awe for their contributions to our BC hospitality industry when it’s men and companies such as these which do their best to keep women from rising up and treating them as cattle to be paraded out for their hungry and thirsty patrons. There’s nothing trailblazing about that. 

In a city like Vancouver we have a tremendous amount of women who are at the forefront of our restaurant scene. Women like Karri Green-Schuermans of Chambar whose restaurant helped spawn and pave the way for so many of the top restaurants we love today. Without Karri, we don’t have Bao Bei or L’Abattoir and all the copy cats who’ve come around since. Speaking of Bao Bei, Tanis Ling has done more for the Chinatown community than anyone this past decade. Both of her restaurants have won numerous accolades and are still bustling every night. Then there’s Andrea Carlson of Burdock & co. whose stamp on the sustainable agricultural market is hard to ignore or what about Shira Blustein of Acorn? Miki Ellis of Dachi and Ugly Dumpling is another. I could go on and on. All of these women have brought this industry so much and their contributions are relevant as they are still very much hands on in their businesses. This oversight by the BIV selection committee cannot be overlooked. 

This leads me to my original opinion of this list which is why was it needed in the first place? Who is this for? Why should anyone care? There is so much more which could be said or done within our community this magazine could have spent their time on. Housing shortage. Affordability. Things that actually matter to everyday citizens. This list is nothing but a pat on the back for a lot of people who don’t need it or deserve it. 

Up until this list came out I’d never heard of this magazine. This saga has certainly changed that for a lot of people. Maybe that was their intention. Regardless, it’s an unessential list, one that should go up in fire and be forgotten as quickly as this magazine once was. - Jamie

 

Things From The Internet We Liked

 

It’s A Lightning Ninja

We’ll just be over here wondering how the hell this was never a weapon in any video game, but in the mean time please enjoy a fuckin’ lightning ninja.

 

The Robo Apocalypse Is At Hand (For Real This Time)

“I for one welcome our new Robot Overlords”.

 

How Hollywood Still Subtly Placates Toxic Masculinity

Over at Jezebel Tracy Clark-Flory has an excellent essay up on the Hollywood still tries to enforce hetero-normative stereotypes even as they embed them into supposedly progressive narratives. It’s a great read for insight into how seemingly passive themes can inform and color the intrinsic politics of a story, and how Hollywood production houses have manipulated this process as subtly as possible. Check it out.

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MIDRANGE WEEKLYdavid mcleod ringuetteAfghanistan, Twitter, BIV, JezebelComment