bmck

i'd expect your support, you get to be metaphorically right although shroomz'll hate you for being a neocon

I was reading Andy's responses in the 'feel ashamed about your support' thread, and it reminded me of Pericles in the Peloponnesian wars. I thought a bit more about it and there are a number of interesting parralels. So I thought I'd reconstruct that war for us gersnetters, with the dominant opinions getting to play leading roles. I'm not sure how many people know their classical military history, and about the Peloponnesian wars (the Athenian empire versus Sparta and her allies) but I've tried to pad it out enough to be a something worth reading even if you haven't heard anything about it. Anyway, here goes: Andy’s approach to the media is like Pericles’ stance towards the Spartans in the Peloponnesian wars. Pericles persuaded the Rangers supp... sorry, Athenian people that there was no point in fighting the celtic-minded-Spartans. Although the Spartans had control of the media, sorry, land, with their vast, incomparable hoplite army, they could do no lasting damage to Athenian power because Athens was self sustaining. When the Spartans marched into the countryside in Attica, all the Athenians had to do was to retreat behind their walled city, with walled links to the harbour, and count on their incontestable domination of the seas to provide all they needed. The Spartans could huff and puff, and destroy the countryside all they liked, but in doing so they could win no lasting tactical advantage, and could not ultimately touch Athenian power. As evidence he pointed to the last all out battle with the Spartans – the Spartans won the battle, but ended with lots of dead Spartiates and no significant gain, as no-one in the ancient world could take a walled city. Likewise, Andy_Steel as Pericles, realises that all this huffing and puffing from salaried-dullards in the media might be aggravating, it doesn’t do any tangible harm. If you maintain a sense of self-sufficiency without provoking them further, they are going to realise eventually that all their vitriol and big words don’t make a blind bit of difference, and that life will go on irrespective of their petty little crusade. I think Andy represents the best version of this most moderate course – take it on the chin, because in the end it just doesn’t matter. I think he also represents the majority of Rangers supporters, even if they haven’t thought about it. However, things didn’t turn out well for Pericles even though the principle ancient writers thought he was right. Eventually he was ousted by radical conservatives, played in our Gersnet reconstruction by maineflyer, and Norris Cole, and the Vanguard Bear sort. While the Spartans didn’t win any tactical advantage, they did win in other ways as they ravaged the Attic countryside. The Athenians had to look on as their honour was disparaged by mocking Spartans, and as it progressed on for years, Pericles found it harder and harder to suppress the radically conservative Athenians who were not willing to cower behind the walls and suffer dishonour. The backbone of Athens, and the life of the polis, was the hoplite landowners, who loved their land, and hated seeing it ravaged. They reasoned that the Athenian democracy was the greatest of the polis and it was unseemly for them to hide behind their walls. They pointed to Pericles’ policy and said it wasn’t working, as year on year, the Spartans came back and ravaged the countryside. The conservative element played this up and eventually the dominant opinion in Athens changed, no longer willing to stay Pericles’ course, and they went on the attack. They actually done well at first and gained a few significant victories, but their reactionary temperament, and fury, made them ill suited to preserving power. The confidence won by their victories kept them going on the attack in ill-considered regions (like Egypt) and they overstepped their bounds. I think any all out attack on the media from these more radically conservative elements, if their statements and their wording are anything to go by, will go on this way because, although their anger is justified, anger is rarely an astute place to wage war from. They eventually pissed off too many people, and all support for Athens crumbled and they lost the war. So who’s right? Well, both are clearly partly right. Pericles was mostly correct in his assessment that the Spartans could not win the war if they pursued his course, and that Athenian power was untouched by their harsh words and farm-burning, just as Andy is right that Rangers wont be better or worse off for petty media attacks because ultimately we are self-sufficient. But Andy will find it harder and harder to encourage fellow Rangers fans to pursue this moderate course, not because he isn’t correct in his understanding, but because it’s hard to endure dishonour. The longer the media keeps provoking, the more likely they are to draw out the ultra-conservative element, and in doing so win the war. That said, the ultra-conservative element, when they went on the attack, looked like they could seriously win the war, and Athens regained a sense of its identity. If they hadn’t overstretched, they may very well have won the war. Likewise, if Rangers on mass started attacking the media, we would soon see its vulnerabilities (ie: its need to make money) and would probably see a change in attitude. This would be no tactical advantage, but it would be good for morale and identity, which, the conservatives know is important. So what’s the answer? The final characters to be introduced are the Frankie/Bluedell contingent. They don’t get to be contemporaries of the Peloponnesian wars like Andy and Norris, but get to play Yale neoconservative scholar Donald Kagan. He agreed most fundamentally with Pericles, but his one criticism was that a purely defensive policy never works. Although he was intellectually right that just ignoring the Spartans attacks would mean they would lose nothing, he had no plan to actually win the war. With Athenian power at sea, he could’ve launched raids all over the Spartan territory, and made them think twice about ravaging the Attic countryside. But because he was interested in peace, and maintaining Athenian high-ground, and not giving the Spartans what they wanted, he essentially invited them on to keep making more and more attacks. If he had chosen, as a wise and moderate sort of first-among-equals to have an offensive policy that was fair, thought out, and, above all, not reactionary and angry, he might well have won the war without augmenting his fundamental principle that the Spartans, if ignored, couldn’t do anything to them. I think Frankie/Bluedell advocate this moderate approach to response – they agree with Andy that it doesn’t actually matter a fuck one way or the other what the media say, but, like Norris and the radical conservatives they realise that these sort of attacks, especially over sustained periods of time, have effects on solidarity, morale and confidence. If we had a, Murray-down policy of contesting only the grossest of mistruths, without becoming petted-lipped reactionaries towards anything bad said about us, we might remind them that we have a big stick too, and though we’re not interested in petty wars, and prefer a moderate approach, we do have some sort of response, and aren’t going to take shite. So there we go.

i think (though i'm not sure) calscot's point is that the term self-loather assumes what it attempts to describe. it sounds like it's a word like 'tall' or 'fat' but it's more like 'bigot' or 'handwringer': it expresses the attitude of the person using it, rather than any actual state of affairs. a debate like that, as calscot and norris have just proven, could just go round in circles. calling a rangers supporter a self-loather's is just to insult them and assume, without actually saying clearly, what rangers really is and what rangers supporters really are. anyway, all that shite aside - the point is not whether rangers supporters who get embarrassed about things like this are self-loathers, but whether there is any point in getting embarrased. i personally don't think so. humans are intolerant, beligerent, violent and contradictory; some football violence and bigotry is hardly the biggest problem facing the world at the moment. we have laws that take care of all this stuff; arrest the criminals, let the innocent people go, and we'll all be fine for not having made a big deal out of it.

yeah, such high wit really makes our making them all jump up in emphatic exclamation because they thought they were onto the league look piteable. "i made a rangers player say something about the ira by taking advantage of his kindness, aren't i just so funny?" straight out the top drawer.

why do you think this is, though? who's to blame? it's certainly not labour or the SNP themselves.

naismith is a fine young player. his scoring record at killie was excellent. looking forward to him building up some fitness and being played up front or just off the strikers in his actual position

whats boyds goalscoring record at international level like? that might be a good indicator of whether he is likely to score at "that level", as there are almost no diddy international sides, even if most arent as good as the highest in europe.

history moves so quickly. rip harry. we will remember.

i think its possible - i think the way the money has went there's now a few teams its impossible to beat, and everyone else is fair game. i think that's why rangers and celtic have got to the last 16 in recent years with poorer squads than those we got punted out with.

to be honest, i will come down with s_as analysis if i need to give a good reason, but the truth is that i want celtic to lose in every game they play in. i love my parochial outlook.

damnit, i just wrote a post saying the same thing but 7 hours later, cant be arsed deleting it now

agree on all accounts. though i think what is happening here is normal. i am not sure how many scottish based players were considered legends at the time they played. even davie cooper got a hard time from fans, or so i heard. i think foreign players become legends quickly because of their foreigness. its hard to place someone you think as too much like yourself on a pedastool. i think as the years go on, and we dont see other players like fergie emerging the (genuine) mixture of good and bad we feel at the moment will fade and we will get to remembering mainly the good - we wont remember the press saga as harshly because we will forget that it all happened at a time of recession, general bad feeling about the club, when we could have been losing the league, and the backroom staff seemed in turmoil. kind of like the same way some people enjoyed and didnt enjoy their teenage years as they happened, but by the time they get to 40 start thinking they were a golden age.

thanks for that, man. you see, i understood that perfectly, and when you think about it that is the real story here, if there is one at all. give up yer sports science mate and get into journalism

cheers for that man. i think a better article would have maybe tried to explain it, as that's the news surely, but then they couldn't use the word 'mystery' in the title

Aye, I suppose it's his agent's fault, if anyone. He seems like a player you should be able to sell fairly easily to championship sides.

The thing is that we're getting to the stage where we're now the financial minnows who can afford to bloat their prices when selling to clubs with more disposable income in richer leagues. The mentality that we're a massive club offloading dead weight, while true, isn't a proper representation of the new financial relationship between the clubs we're dealing with. 1m is not too much for a player who's played regularly in, and played well by all accounts, the Champions league. We'll be 500k better off, and that's good, but I'm not convinced we couldn't get more if we didn't seem so desperate.

yeah, you're right. didn't see the 'hopefully' first time i read it.

that seems like a bizarre story. he has an injury with no physical symptoms? it sounds a bit weird that he cant tell it from pre-season stiffness, and im not sure how he can say it is a "type of injury" if he doesnt know what it is, much less its causing other stuff to flare up. it seems to be that he just thinks he should be able to run faster. maybe its the insomnia making ordinary things seem weird, but there is something not right there. the parting dig at the fans is pointless as well. a) he should be smart enough to play down the opposition to him coming back, and shouldnt be arrogantly assuming opposition has gone because they won the double, because he didnt play that big a part in it. odd interview. s_a, you are our resident expert on the physio stuff - does he is sayng sound plausible about the injury?

there is only one choice in an ian versus walter standoff around these parts mate. if he had played 442 more often it could be closer, but you would still be ahead

i think its good that these come up, as it gives a constant topic of discussion. too much of its promotion though. and who is walter smith to take over ians role? need to have a think about it.

that is the key point. my celtic-supporting-mate tried to show me bill leckie ranting that no other spl club would share an old firm monopoly (clearly not even listening to anything but the headlines), btu the truth is that they'll accept anything that makes them more money.

i believe 100% in freedom of protest. doesn't matter the context. if the polis had kicked these cretins heads' in i would have stood in their defense. but as much as i defend a citizen's right to protest - no matter how stupid it is to protest against the people who are doing what a democratically elected government ask them to do, making the protestors as responsible for their being there as anyone else - i defend other citizen's right to kick protestor's heads in if they are offended by it and willing to accept any punishment. people were spontaneously offended by their filth and done what they felt is necessary; i can only applaud them. in a natural justice sense, these cretins got what they deserved.

Walter, it's not polite for new members to start so many threads and then not respond to them. Consider this your warning.

its good that they breathalise them while exercising them. multitasking!

welcome!