Category Archives: Politics

News Round Up

Politics, , ,

Just thought I would take a few moments and comment on some of the important news stories that seem to be in the news lately:

The Oil Spill: See here.  My initial comment is that this is one of those stories where I so much want to point fingers and laugh because I have been against drilling for oil on the coasts for about as long as the idea has been around. I was against it when Bush was in office, and I’m against it while Obama is in office. What shocked me was that when Obama changed his mind and suddenly was for it, a whole chorus of people who used to be against it were suddenly for it. Now, they get to experience the consequences of what happens when you drill for oil close to the coast. Not a good idea. Ever.

Country singer Chely Wright reveals she’s a lesbian. Story is here.  If this was Shania Twain, I’d cry. But it’s not. It’s Chely Wright, someone I’ve never heard of before. And I’m a big country music fan. Don’t know who she is and don’t really care. Judging from some of the comments I’ve read from others who have been following this same story, none of them know who she is either, and the consensus seems to be that this is generally someone who hasn’t been selling a lot of music who is now looking for a gimmick to sell more music. Probably not going to work because country music fans aren’t real open to diversity. Sorry, but most aren’t. I am, but I’m not the average country music fan, so I’m chalking her career up to being somewhat over, unless she somehow reinvents herself so that she is appealing to those who aren’t part of this genre.

Arizona’s Immigration Problem. Story is here.  I’m sorry, but why is this a problem or a debate? Honestly, don’t we have more important problems in this country to deal with than whether or not immigrants are sneaking over the border and taking jobs? Yes, there are crime problems, but I’ll let you in on a little secret. Fix immigration and you’ll STILL have a crime problem. The crime problem is caused by disparities in wealth, a desire to achieve something for little work, and very stupid people; none of these really has anything to do with immigration, both illegal and legal. Solving immigration doesn’t fix that anywhere else but in fantasies.

Apple’s New IPad. Story can be found here.  My only comment to this one is a source quotation, the source being P.T. Barnum, and the quotation being one that everyone should know by now. If not, I apologize for laughing at you.

Another week or so of very unimportant news masquerading as important news. We’re still at war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Rich people are still getting paid way too much money and upset that they can’t keep more of it while they employ the very poor to work for them and make them even richer. Politicians are still more interested in a photo op than they are in helping people but are willing to spend millions of our dollars pointing out how much money they saved us. There’s a lot more, but this is where people stop listening and go look for other “interesting” things to read.

Terrorists Win! War is over….

Politics, Television, , ,

For the last better part of a decade, the United States has been fighting a “war on terror” and this has involved sending a large contingence of US soldiers to Afghanistan, and even though there were no terrorists in Iraq, it’s been used as a continuous justification for the continued presence of US troops in that country. Since the start of those wars, the US has been involved in an ideological war against terrorism everywhere, even though it’s been pointed out many times before that you really can’t go to war against a concept, but war against terror is what we’ve been in, so minor points aside, that’s what we’ve been doing.

Well, last night the creators of South Park decided to push the envelope a bit and air their cartoon in which they have a depiction of Mohammed. Well, actually, it’s not really a depiction, but it’s a continuous lack of a depiction, which is a joke on the idea that it’s dangerous to have an actual depiction of Mohammed. As such, they put the religious icon into a bear costume and pretended that THAT was their depiction (because that way they wouldn’t have to actually depict him). I think you’re getting the idea.

Anyway, Comedy Central, the station that airs South Park has censored the episode to avoid showing any such depictions, or lack thereof. When they West Coast showed the episode, Comedy Central decided to show a repeat of an earlier, depiction-less episode instead.

The fear is from a semi-threat that was made against the creators of South Park and Comedy Central if they DARED to show the episode, depicting Mohammed, which for some reason automatically turns normally religious people into hotheads that kill people. The real world example of what happened to a Danish cartoonist is the threat they continue to make in case anyone forgets (cause they actually killed him).

What has happened as a result is that fans of South Park (and freedom of speech in general) are angry at Comedy Central for backing down on its freedoms. They say that Comedy Central has caved in. Just looking at CNN.com’s site is very educational. A posting from buddy198227 says in no uncertain terms:

What??? That’s it??? Some nutjobs who hide behind a website win??? If this is how America caves in, then we should lose. Muslim idiots aren’t going to win because they’re stronger, smarter or more durable. They’ll win because we act like pusses and fold like wet noodles when someone says Allah or Mohammed. Here’s my take…F#$% Allah and F#$#@ Mohammed.

That was just one of the nicer comments. Apparently, Comedy Central was supposed to air the episode in its entirety, and it is a blow to freedom if they don’t.

What isn’t being discussed is how all of these people are so comfortable from their anonymous postings, demanding that Comedy Central put itself on the line and risk the lives of its employees to bring forth freedom of speech that pretty much no one else is willing to risk themselves. Hell, they aren’t even willing to risk it in their own postings about how Comedy Central should risk its own skin.

It’s always a lot easier to ask of other people to take risks when one is not willing to do the same himself/herself. Oh, they’ll claim they’re willing to risk all, but that’s a fake claim when they haven’t actually ever done it themselves. It’s like the people who talk all tough about the military and what should be done with it, but when it comes to actually serving, they’re kind of silent, often announcing some ailment that makes it impossible for them to sacrifice their own lives and safety, even though they claim that if they could, they certainly would. I moderate on a current events boards where I hear that kind of boasting all of the time, and as a veteran it drives me nuts, but there’s nothing that can be done about it because people are always willing to be brave when they don’t actually have to put forth the risk themselves.

So what was Comedy Central supposed to do? Personally, I don’t blame them for what they did. Granted, the criticism will come down heavy on them because Trey Parker and Matt Stone (creators of South Park) were willing to take the risk themselves. Unfortunately, the risk didn’t end with them because crazy people rarely go after the more difficult target, often killing any easy target they can get their hands on, like low level people working for a television network, like Comedy Central.

What’s really going on here is a much bigger issue than the surface one that is being covered here, because the very nature of freedom is constantly at risk here. One of the first claims that came from the War on Terror was that terrorists want us to change our way of life to one of fear, yet when we are faced with a circumstance that invokes fear, the first thing we do is cave in and allow them to win. When faced with adversity, the first step we take is to give in, which immediately tells me that somewhere down the line we lost the war on terror mainly because when it finally came time to fight the first battle, we surrendered the entire war.

Sadly enough, our only recourse throughout all of our interactions with terror has been fear. When they blow up a plane, we go into fear mode and start doing all sorts of things with TSA we never would have done on our own. When we start to make cartoons, we stop making them because we fear the ramifications if terrorists don’t like the cartoons we draw or watch. In about every maneuver, we’ve been outmaneuvered by low tech, 16th century thinking while we pretend that we’re still the most powerful country on the planet.

Kind of makes you think. Although if that bothers anyone, I’ll stop cause I don’t want to upset anybody.

The Inalieable Right to Power

Politics, , , ,

I may be strange, but every now and then I’ll sit back and think to myself, “what must have been going through Charlemagne’s head when he convinced himself that it was appropriate for him to chase Guntram across Europe, destroying his cities until he finally managed to wipe him out and claim his lands as conquered.” What sort of gall does it take to convince yourself that you have the right to a particular territory, mainly because you have a larger army than your neighbor or because you don’t like the idols a particular civilization worships?

The funny thing about such thoughts is that people dismiss them as unimportant as they go about their normal lives, yet don’t realize that each and every day we live in an environment where such choices have been made for us. We just don’t think about it. Instead, we feel secure in the idea that we live in a democracy, choose our own leaders and no longer live in the barbarism that once existed where a more powerful foe could take your property just because he was faster with a sword or had more buddies that carried lots of weapons.

American society is predicated on the premise that somewhere in the past our forefathers decided these things for us, that we were somehow living in a Hobbesian nightmare of an existence and then banded together to put someone in charge of us to make our lives that much safer. Or we buy into the Lockeian fantasy (not the one where John Locke is a dead guy on an island leading the castaways to find out the “LOST” secrets of the island in hopes of escaping, but the John Locke where the name of that character really comes from) that we all accepted this governmental system because there are certain inalienable rights that we understand are being protected because we wish to avoid a state of war in contrast with our state of nature. Or we could argue that we’re all social beings, banded together because we all want what is best for all of us, and that we’ll do whatever is necessary to make such things happen, because we’re all in it together, holding hands and singing kum-bay-ya.

Or we could think of it all as Charlemagne did and realize that somewhere down the line someone took power and has been justfying that power grab ever since.

Oh, it’s easy to dismiss such a concept when you exist in a government where people “vote” for their leaders, but as Rousseau once argued, we’re only a democracy during the periods when we vote. The rest of the time, we’re some type of authoritarian government where people feel it is part of their privileges to tell others what they can and cannot do. They can usually back it up with “laws” or “needs” but in the end, there is someone who uses the status of power to tell other people what they can and cannot do. It doesn’t even have to be right; and often it may not be. An example is a stop light. If I am standing on a corner about to cross the street, and there is a red light that is in my path, I will generally  not cross the street because of several reasons. The first is the obvious danger to myself. If I cross the street, there is a good chance that I might get hit by a car that is going through the intersection perpendicular to me because that driver has a green light in his lane. I might die. But if there is no car there, and I’ve checked both directions to reveal that there isn’t a car for many blocks, I still cannot cross the street because there is also the fear of being fined for an infraction. Sometimes, it’s the fear of a police officer who might write me a ticket, a camera that automatically spits out a ticket when your car enters the intersection on a red light, or any other number of little nuances that might keep me from crossing the street.

But if I’m in a hurry, and the street is safe, I now take a chance on my own safety and personal freedom if I decide to break this law. Now, I didn’t negotiate at any time in my life to decide whether or not I would ever follow such a rule. That rule was made for me. Oh, they can say that I was part of the process because it was voted for, but think about that one for a moment. When was that last time anyone ever voted on whether or not a red light is an infraction that can be punished by law? Even if there was a heated debate between city leaders, chances are pretty good that the common citizen had little to no effect on the making of such a law. A citizen might be able to show up at a town meeting and announce his displeasure, but in the end, that citizen has zero choice whatsoever on that decision. As a voting citizen, sure that citizen can vote out someone who decided for that law, but that’s a pretty crappy argument when you realize that the majority of people in a democratic society have very little input in the choosing of a society’s leaders.

As a citizen of a city, I might be able to vote for my city leader, the mayor, or a couple of the council members, but I have very little say in what they do. Chances are pretty good that my vote isn’t even considered significant enough for them to listen to anything that I have to say. Most politics these days are coaxed in financial affairs, meaning that most people have access to the chambers of power if they have a stake in the huge money that gets moved into the system. If you’re not part of that elite group, you have no say so in what happens in government. Sure, you could run for office, but your chances of becoming a part of that elite are slim, if even that lucky. So, just being a part of your own city government is a pipe dream. Now push that even further and realize how unlikely the common person is able to influence county and then state governments. The people who make up the power halls at this level have almost no incentive to listen to the common people, and they don’t. Quite often, they care so little about what the people think that they’re willing to do some of the most despicable things, including serious corruption. And even when they’re caught, they don’t care. They’ll laugh it off and STILL manage to convince enough people to keep them in the halls of power. The incumbent effect has serious coattails.

So, let’s talk about some of these people who do get into the system. How many of them can be considered a Cincinnatus, the Roman dictator, who in 439 B.C. quit being dictator because “his work was done” so he went to retire to his farm? Way too often, people pursue power rather than get forced into it, which leads to an endless quest for more and more power, which then leads to massive corruption and complacency. I was reminded of this during the last run up to the 2008 presidential election when I examined the different people trying to become their party’s nominee for president. I kept asking, “why you?” and what I kept seeing was this ego-driven platform of people who were convinced they “deserved” power, and that because of some feature (education, intelligence, time of service, or whatever), they felt they should be put into a position of great power.

This got me thinking as to why does someone honestly believe that he or she deserves power. Quite often, the answer seems to be that they feel they are deserving of it because of intelligence. They feel they are smarter than everyone else, and thus, they should be the leader.

That’s the sort of leadership that scares me. I’m a big fan of the leader of circumstance, which is a rare entity these days. This is a person who becomes a leader by accident rather than by choice. He or she was at the right place at the right time, and when the crisis was over, that person went away. Imagine Guliani, or at least the hype that was put out for Guliani when 911 took place. You can argue back and forth as to whether or not he was REALLY a good leader, but a general consensus was that he took charge well and did a good job during this period. Then he tried to rely on that image to propel him to national prominence. Fortunately, it didn’t work, but he was definitely no Cincinnatus.

The same thing can be said for Boris Yeltsin in 1991 when he stepped up to the plate and literally stopped a coup d-etat from taking place in the Soviet Union. He didn’t back down, and he became a beloved leader because of it. He wasn’t a great leader after that, again failing the Cincinnatus test, but during that one period in time, he was a great man.

We don’t have that sort of behavior anymore. People are after the end game, not the lead up to it. People want to be perceived as having put in the time without actually putting in the time. It’s why every presidential election there’s this huge conversation about someone’s leadership past, and how much he or she has done before the nomination. It’s why someone can compare a senator with a governor and act like one has leadership and the other doesn’t, which is ludicrous to say the least.

The other rationale someone uses for why he or she deserves power is the infamous “I paid my dues”, as if a lifetime of continuous grabs for power makes someone a good leader. As much as I like Al Gore (being the inventor of the Internet and all), I used to laugh every time the argument was made that his vice presidential service was his paying his dues towards his run for the presidency. Being vice president is a huge power grab, and it should be considered a gift of power, not a sacrifice someone pays before getting the brass ring of the Oval Office, yet it’s often treated that way. Now, I could see someone having spent his entire life as a career enlisted soldier who then announced he or she has paid his or her dues, because THAT is paying one’s dues. I don’t even see someone being a general as someone who paid his or her dues, because that’s like being given a job as a CEO of a company and then claiming you paid your dues as well as the guy who scrubbed floors each day in the same building. I’m sorry, but I don’t see the huge pay off one gets from these types of positions as dues paying.

So, when Hillary Clinton was constantly being hailed as someone who deserved the presidency because she had paid her dues (several commentators even referred to the whole Monica Lewinsky blow job scandal as part of those “dues”), I just laughed and chose Obama when I saw a far better candidate. However, when the election was over, it didn’t surprise me that she was still “awarded” a position in government because people felt she “deserved” it.

The time of service argument is another one of those made that tends to get on my nerves because the halls of power end up becoming a social club where you pretty much have to be a member of that club in order to get in. They reward each other by continuing to promote within, and anyone on the outside is seen as an outsider unless someone does something outrageous to gain entry. Putting one’s time into politics is the opposite of what should be done. Politics should not be a career but a vocation of necessity. John Adams had it right when he looked to Athens for the framework for democracy but then he failed to bring along the most important attribute, and that was the lottery. People in government served by lottery (for the most part), not by election. You served in government because your name got chosen, like jury duty, and if you couldn’t figure out a way to get out of it, you were in that position for as long as was part of the process. With such a system, the corruption that comes with democracy would be almost nonexistent.

Instead, we have people serving their entire professional lives as politicans, constantly climbing the rungs of the ladder of power, because they don’t know how to do anything else. And we keep electing them because we recognize their names because they’ve been in power for so long it would be impossible NOT to recognize their names. It leads to one of those cycles that just doesn’t end.

So, next time you’re walking down the street and see the old crazy guy yelling at the stop signal, “Damn you, Charlemagne and your stop light power grabs!” it’s probably just me because I think I’m the only one who really cares.

Perfect Storm versus Continuous Apathy

Politics,

There was an article today in the Salt Lake Tribune that points to its poll that indicates 1 in 5 people in the US right now trust the US government. This is at a major low in this country, but what should really be concerning people is the apathy that exists from several perspectives.

First, there’s apathy in government towards the mindset of the people. Even though 4 of 5 people distrust the government, the people in charge of government don’t seem to care. Oh, sure they’ll use it to their advantage to get votes, but overall they’re apathetic towards the way people feel about them. And the reason for this is because they realize that no one can do anything about it. People are stuck with the representatives they have, and those representatives know that. There is never going to be an election to just “kick the bums out” because every election in this country is designed to put new “bums” in even if we get rid of the old ones. The people we keep trying to elect to change things, to shake things up, don’t ever do it and end up becoming part of the system and then corrupted by the very nature of the system itself.

However, the real apathetic factor that needs to be paid attention to is that of the people themselves. There’s a reason why things don’t change in this country, and that’s because the majority of the American people are generally too lazy, or just don’t care enough, to do anything to make a difference. Americans, for the most part, are apathetic souls when it comes to politics. And that’s been a benefit to the power brokers who keep going to work every day living off the trough they continue to award themselves as a part of their power base.

But the 2008 election should have woken up the politicians to the realization that something has changed. Up until this election, politicans were the power, and they pretty much set the stage for exactly what they wanted, when they wanted. In 2008, the normal power brokers were unable to push forth their usual candidates for president, which is a major reason why Obama was elected in the first place. A lot of grass roots organizations made themselves seen, and they got this somewhat unknown politican elected over the “accepted” candidate Hillary Clinton who years before was all but guaranteed the presidency at the end of President Bush’s 8 year debacle. It didn’t matter whether or not the politician being elected was the “right” politician; he was different, and that’s what they wanted.

Well, it turns out he wasn’t different enough. Once in office, he became exactly what every other politician tends to be, and his public opinion polls are diving into an abyss of never-ending freefall. He might pull things around, much like a Clinton-like turn around, but for the most part, he has destroyed the fiber of what it was believed he was: An outsider who was going to change the status quo.

So what does any of this mean? Well, it means that something happened in 2008 that may end up becoming very important over the next decade or so. People woke up and started paying attention. Now, a professor of government might think this is a great thing (they’re always wishing more students would pay attention to politics) but to a person who desires stable government, this might be a horrific time to be around because waking up this apathetic public might be the worst thing that could have happened for the current paradigm. Because nothing changed, and people wanted change. If people realize that they can do nothing to change the political system, one of two things is going to happen:

1. People become apathetic again and give up on changing their environment.

2. People become angry and look for alternative ways to get what they wanted in the first place.

The first alternative is what we expect. The second one is dangerous, the kind that leads to revolutionary thought. Now, not all revolutions are 1776 kinds of revolutions; sometimes they’re as revolutionary as the iPod in a sea of MP3 players. But there’s no predictability when it comes to an impassioned public. In 1787, the public sent representatives to a Constitutional Congress to fix the government and ended up with a brand new government instead. I seriously doubt that the people back home were actually expecting that to happen at the time.

But with a public that is rearing for change and no change actually taking place, the future might be a very dangerous one because revolutionary thought is never really a polite process. I was watching the miniseries John Adams over the weekend, and one thing I kept coming away with from the series was that the average American in the 1770s was a hot head, just looking to burn something down. Even the big names that we attribute to some of the greatest moments in US history were essentially just angry men and women who carried clubs with the intention to bash in someone’s skull if they didn’t get their way. And that’s just the enlightened ones. Underneath every revolutionary movement is a huge segment of the undesirables of society who use that time to do some of the most despicable actions imaginable, and they do it believing they are justified because everyone else is pissed and doing revolutionary things.

Unfortunately, the current civilized man and woman has no idea of what his or her neighbor is capable. But as people become less and less apathetic, some attention might be paid to those around you, because once a movement begins, there’s usually not a lot that can be done to contain it until it succeeds in running its course.