Musings from Southern New Mexico

Month: November 2012 (Page 2 of 3)

Congratulations, Bibi

Binyamin Netanyahu is a lucky man. For once, he is only the second worst human being in Israel. Recently, Ariel Sharon’s son, [I would put the name in here if I bothered to google it, but I won’t since each of the headlines I read on today’s intertoobs just referred to him as Ariel Sharon’s son] declared in favor of genocide as an appropriate response to the recent attacks originating in Gaza.

Aside: while I will grant that Hamas is worse than Likud in terms of its rhetoric, Likud’s ability to follow through with its vile plans gives it a definite leg up.

It would almost seem as if Mr. Ariel Sharon’s son is calling for an ultimate resolution to the Palestinian issue. Or, perhaps one could say, a final solution to the Palestinian question.

Destroying America (for the 100th time)

I recall thinking, in 2004, that the reelection of the lesser Bush spelled doom for our country. Within a short time, I came to realize just how naïve that idea was. In fact, it betrayed an absurd lack of confidence in the robustness of the democratic system. For this, I am a bit embarrassed. I have seen emails passed around that sounded like this one (from urbanlegends.about.com):


“At about the time our original 13 states adopted their new constitution in 1787, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinborough, had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years prior:

“A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse over loose fiscal policy, (which is) always followed by a dictatorship.”

“The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:

From bondage to spiritual faith;
From spiritual faith to great courage;
From courage to liberty;
From liberty to abundance;
From abundance to complacency;
From complacency to apathy;
From apathy to dependence;
From dependence back into bondage.”

Aside from the attribution probably being bullshit (or, for that matter, the entire thing demonstrably being bullshit), I wonder at the absurdity of the premise. The basic claim made by anyone who spends their free time forwarding such tripe is this:

Other people (certainly not ourselves) are parasites, living off the fruits of our labor.

A modern day Cassandra, the email forwarder frantically issues the warning to anyone willing to listen (and many who would really rather not). That warning, of course, is that the moochers and looters are going to destroy our country. If anything, though, we should recall that the tragicomic performance of the Bush, Jr. Administration did not bring down this nation. Indeed, the debts rung up during that time period are the source of the silly “fiscal cliff” off which the Republican House has been threatening to drive us. But no one on the planet questioned the safety of American national securities (except Standard & Poor, who took time out from helping its corporate partners defraud consumers to give Congressional saboteurs political points at the cost of many millions of dollars to U.S. taxpayers). Our country was able to withstand elective wars drenched in corruption and criminal incompetence. It survived the use of high positions in important agencies as sinecures for the benefit of ridiculously unqualified political operatives. And now the claim is made that the paltry sums spent on social safety nets will ruin us.

Someone should inform the English civilization that its having failed to collapse multiple times since the reign of William the Conqueror is only postponing the inevitable. Also, I must not have been paying attention the horrifying day late in the Reagan Presidency when America collapsed.

I Believe I Just Earned an “Unfriend”

I was following the twitter stream at Balloon Juice during the election coverage. John Cole announced that his commanding officer from Desert Storm had unfriended him on facebook when the election was called for Obama. That really sucks. But in that spirit, I would like to proffer a facebook friend (with whom I served in the Army many years ago) the same opportunity. He is an obnoxious public-largesse-reliant deadbeat who divides his abundant free time between vocally god-bothering and aggressively decrying liberals. All the while, of course, he is sucking shamelessly at the government teat.

I read this:

The irony is painful, but only if you can see it.

It was worthy of comment, but I thought better of it. Then I read this:

I left the comment shown. Let the countdown to “unfriend” begin…

The Courage of my Convictions

The two party system is really quite fabulous in its own way. One should vote for the individual whose policies most are most beneficial to one’s own financial interests. If the Peasant Party moves too far in favor of the peasants, the middle class will vote with the Lords Party, and vice-versa. That is how is ought to be, that is. Owing to easily manipulable human nature, this is altered into something somewhat less practical: The idea is to elect the candidate whose ideology most closely resemble one’s own. In this way, some of the rubes members of the middle class can be convinced that voting in favor of his caste will benefit negroes queers sluts who had it coming meskins Messukins wetbacks some out group.

I have heard some claim that it is better for the opponent to win. In that way, the rubes misguided voters will be outraged at the cruel and disastrous policies implemented and see the err of their ways. There exist millennia of evidence to the contrary. In the last century, murdering millions of people while invading all your neighbors didn’t effect a revolution in Germany. The Gulags did nothing to harm Stalin’s regime. Mass starvation and cannibalism in a period of peace and typical weather didn’t loosen Mao’s grip on power. What makes people think a few hundred deaths caused by forcing dangerous pregnancies to be carried to term will cause anyone to bat an eye? Does anyone get up in arms when, say, a lack of inspectors or lax enforcement (or tossing out regulations altogether as “anti-business”) causes a few dozen deaths due to fungal meningitis?

No.

I’m sure the smelly hippies can smugly enjoy their moment of having “stuck it to the man.” Just don’t expect anyone to give a shit about the “courage of my convictions” you display when you announce you are “taking my ball and going home.”

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