Category: Politics

A Greek Tragedy

acropolisI’ve got nothing against the Greeks.  After all, democracy is still one of the biggies and you can’t argue with Socrates, Aristotle and Plato.  Plus, there’s Herodotus, Pythagoras, Euripides, Archimedes etc. etc. etc. and Venus de Milo still has the best ass known to man.  Okay.  That said, there’s been a lotta sunshine on the Acropolis since Pericles and the boys were calling the shots in Europe.  These days, aside from Adrianna Huffington, nobody takes the Greeks seriously.  Why?  They don’t pay their bills.

I don’t care what your particular pet theory on the current Euro/Greek monetary fiasco is: call it First World waste, corporate banking greed, aliens, Elvis back from the dead — it doesn’t matter — nothing escapes Economics 101.  Here’s the deal.  Whine all you want about the evils of modern capitalism, it’s still just a pumped-up version of the barter system.  I work for you; you give me coloured paper.  I give the coloured paper to KFC; they give me chicken.  And on and on.  It’s that simple.  You can complicate it with mutual funds, venture capital, bonds, debentures, George Soros and Bill Gates, but at the end of the day, it comes down to coloured paper.  And if you don’t manage your coloured paper properly, you’re going to get screwed and some faceless banking vulture is going to drop by and pick your bones.  Don’t believe me?  Quit paying your credit card for a couple of months.  This has been our monetary system since before Diocles was counting his drachmas.  The thing that astounds me is the Greeks, who basically invented it, have now decided the system doesn’t apply to them.  They believe they can spend what they want, when they want, and somebody else should pick up the tab.  It’s kinda like they’re giving anyone who actually pays their bills the financial finger.

I wonder what Aesop would have made of this whole mess.  I’m certain that he would have come up with some kind of a tale.  Unfortunately, it’s been a lot of years since Greek thinking and innovation shaped the world.  Today, Aesop wouldn’t have a voice because Greece has become just another silly little country living on the kindness of strangers — and very pissed off with themselves because of it.

Republicans: Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way!

centreWay back when George Dubya was still compassionate, I predicted that the Democrats would take a veer to the left.  The ensuing liberal civil war would create a political vacuum in the centre and the Republicans would naturally slide on over and dominate American politics for the foreseeable future.  I was wr-wr-wr, not right.  9/11 came along, Dubya got trigger happy and suddenly it was Hope and Change that was priming the political pumps.  Whatever else you want to say about President Obama (and I’ve said a bunch) he’s a dynamic centrist and while he and Hillary are staking out the high ground in the middle, it’s the Republicans who are going nuts.  The war is on in the GOP, and it looks as if it’s going to end up in a loser-take-all victory for the raging right.  Never, in the history of human politics, have so many been so screwed, so thoroughly by so few.

Shutting down the American government, just because you can, is such a willful act of childishness that I refuse to give it any room in a reasonable discussion.  Who the hell do you people think you are?  You have one job – One Job! – to ensure that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.  And what do you do?  You shut it down.  No wonder you’re getting outwitted by the clowns at the New York Times.  And this isn’t just a rant about those Tea Party nitwits, either.  John Boehner, you need to give up being a full time cry baby and get your people in line.  You’re plucking your bum in the same chair that Henry Clay, Sam Rayburn and Tip O’Neill sat in.  The least you could do is look the part.  But enough about that.  The American government has survived worse than Ted Cruz and his motley crew, and serious people have bigger fish to fry.

Here’s the deal.  The Republican Party has been hijacked by a bunch of folks who obviously flunked out of Political Science, quite possibly as far back as kindergarten.  In an absolute tour de force of WTF logic, they’ve decided that the reason Mitt Romney didn’t make it to the White House is because he wasn’t conservative enough.  So, in order to rebalance the equation, they’ve launched themselves on an epic flight to the far distant political right.  Presumably, this is because, despite a century of voting records to the contrary, they believe America wants, needs and deserves a conservative government that lands just short of wearing a tinfoil hat.  While no one would suggest America is a hotbed of socialism, this kind of thinking is seriously delusional.  However, don’t take my word for it.  Let’s take a look.

In 2012, Romney lost the election by five million votes.  That’s four percent; not a lot by presidential election standards.  Historically, presidential losers get their asses kicked.  However, those five million votes are significant because they come from the political middle.  Like every election since Pericles ran for Afentiko of Athens, Presidential 2012 was an electoral Bell Curve.  The ideologically committed left and right wing voters anchor both ends of the political spectrum, and the great wad of the rest of us is stuck in the middle.  President Obama remained President Obama because he won more of those middle votes than Romney did.  Push Romney to the right, the far right or nothing but the right so help him God, and he wouldn’t have gained a single vote!  However, push him to the middle and he might have started siphoning votes off Obama’s juggernaut.  It’s not impossible: Ronald Reagan did it (twice) and two or three percentage points is not a lot to ask.  It could have been that simple.  Now, it’s becoming way more difficult.

The Tea Party and their ideological wannabes have seriously damaged the Republican Party.  First of all, they’re singing tocentre1 the choir.  I haven’t heard of one Democrat who changed his (or her) mind over Tea Party policies.  Secondly, their song is nonsense.  Their only message is “Obama’s being mean to me.” — the political equivalent of “Louie, Louie” on a loop.  But finally, and most importantly, they’re singing so loud nobody else can get a word in edgewise.  They’ve taken centre stage, and whatever good stuff Republicans might have to say is getting lost in the godawful noise.

Moderate Republicans need to quit being scared of these yo-yos and get organized.  They need to take back the primaries and start finding candidates who will be electable beyond the Barack Obama era.  (He’s going to go home, you know.)  But more than that, they need to tell guys like Ted Cruz to stick a sock in it and either lead, follow or get out of the way.  Otherwise, people like me are going to be looking at Hillary in 2016.

The Huckleberry Hounds of War

autumn2As Bugs Bunny once said to Yosemite Sam, “Of course, you know this means war.”  Yeah, I’m talking about the comic book opera being played out between London, Washington, Congress and Damascus.  Don’t get me wrong. I’m the first guy in line to see a smartass like al-Assad get slapped.  However, let’s put things into perspective: there isn’t a schoolboy alive who hasn’t seen this playground scenario a hundred times.  Some kid thinks he can get away with murder (in this case, literally) and some other kid says, “No, you can’t.”  Good luck trying to talk that one out over a juice box.

But I’m also declaring war on all those wishful thinkers out there who wouldn’t recognize reality if it dropped an Acme anvil on their heads.  Get the message, you wily coyotes: the hard truth is, you’re never going to catch the roadrunner and bullies exist.  They’ve been living on our planet since Fred Flintstone had to defend himself against the Neanderthal hillbillies, two caves over, who kept stealing his fire and peeing in the water supply.  From that primeval moment until the present day, human history has been a running battle between those of us who want to be left alone to grunt and scratch as we see fit and a bunch of scuzzy buggers who never seem to see it that way.  Wake up and smell the Sarin, people!  Bashar al Assad is one of those guys who thinks the rules don’t apply to him.  We all know these folks; we’ve met them a million times.  He and his Ba’ath Party buddies are simply pumped-up versions of those morons from grade school who got their kicks beating up the little kids.  They’re bullies, and no amount of pink shirts is going to change that.

However, it’s not actually the bullies of our world who are the problem.  They’re easy to spot: just follow the blood stains.  Our real problem is those misguided Good Samaritans who are controlling the agenda.  They are somehow under the delusion that we’re just one honest dialogue away from a political solution with Bashar and his ilk.  They are convinced that reasonable people can reason with a guy nasty enough to spray paint an unsuspecting population with poison gas.  It boggles the mind.  Unfortunately, these pie-in-the-sky debaters are part of the problem not the solution.  And, let’s be clear, this isn’t just the Barack Obama’s Sylvester and Tweety Show.  I’m looking at you venerable Parliament of the UK.  Remember what happened the last time the British decided not to take action over “… a quarrel in a far away country between people of whom we know nothing.”  You Brits ought to be ashamed of yourselves.  My point is, as we theorize and chatter about who did what to whom and how many dictators can dance on the head of a bloated corpse, the bad guys are taking time to reread their ruthless manual and reload.  Then, when, invariably, push comes to shove in Syria, it’s going to take twice as much time, three times as much energy, and four times the body count to finally get rid of these clowns.  Regime change on the ten year plan isn’t pretty; just ask the marines in Afghanistan.

The fact is, the Pollyannas of our time, and their abhorrence of history are condemning our children and/or our grandchildren to eventually die in that same “far away country.”  Their abject ignorance is just as deadly as al-Assad’s poison gas.  Therefore, let it be known, that I, for one, am no longer willing to let you off the hook just because you’re dumber than the average bear.  After all, Yogi never got it right even when Boo Boo pointed it out to him.  So, get out of the way, or, as the man said, I will “Cry havoc and loose the Huckleberry Hounds of war.”