From Mom's Basement

A lot of people may say that the United States was being unjustly imperialistic in 1898. I’m here to tell you that big time nations make big time plays for power.

Look, you have the Cubans right? The Cubans were a very consistent country. You had the sense that they just wanted to be free from Spanish rule. So sometimes, you send your best weapon out there. Sometimes it’s a decoy though. The USS Maine was the United States best weapon. The United States wrote the Monroe Doctorine awhile back, a big time policy on big time construction paper. You got the sense that they were trying to say “Hey, get out of our hemisphere!” to the Europeans, which was a very consistent policy. Sometimes it was used inconsistently, sometimes it was used consistently. But definitely, it was consistent.

You should never believe what they write in the papers. When you look at this yellow journalism, what it comes down to is that the populace got lied to. And that’s okay sometimes, because big time nations need big time support. You’ve got to have the fans behind you when third down comes around. The United States was doing exactly what they needed to do.

Spain on the other hand, well they’re a very inspiring country. Alfonso XIII tried to inspire his troops by rolling over and giving up everything they had. You get the sense that their time had just come, as the United States just kept feeding the ball to the USS Maine, then they got the Roughriders involved. They consistently won the time of possession. It was total domination on both sides of the ocean. I called the USS Maine out before the war, because I didn’t think it was doing what big time ships needed to do. When the USS Maine goes on course like it is supposed to, it is unblockable. Especially when it isn’t blocked.

But I definitely think that it took some load off of Alfonso, because he was still trying to learn things as king. How big the harem should be, how to please the subjects best, you can’t deal with all this and also govern a bunch of countries from afar. He just needed to develop some consistency. I don’t want to make excuses for him, but he managed the whole war with a broken right hand. That is the hand he points with. When you can’t do the very basic elements of giving orders, like pointing at someone, it’s going to be a rough few months. He’s had crowns, he’s had gold before, so he knows what it’s like to be there. He just needs to get a little more consistent so that Spain can be a big time country again.

I mean, Alfonso just calls the plays. You look at things on the ground, Valeriano Weyler was supposed to keep Cubans from being insurgent and he just didn’t get the job done. Came out sloppy. Maybe it’s the time difference between Spain and Cuba…I don’t know, I don’t like making excuses. They should have lost him, fired him. There was plenty of time left, so you can’t really question it too much. But I mean, you need to go to your hurry up offense to keep insurgency down, and they didn’t do it. They didn’t get the job done. That is what keeps your big time players back, when they don’t do their jobs consistently.

You have to at least make a great effort in that situation. You can’t just wait for the reinforcements to get to you, you have to try your best out there. They just seemed to tune out Alfonso. When you look at this war though, the big time country made big time plays. It was a total domination on both sides of the ball. Consistency was there. The support from the public was there. It’s just a big win for the United States, and all you can do is tip your hat to them. When their big time players needed to make big time plays, they stepped up. And from here, all they can do is play the next war on their schedule, don’t worry about who is behind or ahead of them in the standings. There is plenty of time left, they just need to go out there and compete.

~ by Rivers on 2009/12/15.

Posted in fiction
Tags: john lynch is a big time announcer, nfl