Category Archives: Political Rants

Political Rants

Issues abound.

Just a few comments on some current issues, now that the presidential primary season is well underway. And since the entire GOP field – with the occasional exception of Jon Huntsman – denies the existence of climate change, let me start by mentioning that here in upstate New York, where the typical January measures snowfall in feet, not inches, and where January temperatures are often subzero for days on end, it is raining and in the 30s. There is no snow on the ground and there hasn’t been, really, any significant snow yet this season. I’ve lived here most of my life and I can say that this is unprecedented in my experience. And yet when I mention the words “climate change” to people in connection with the fact that we appear to be locked in permanent November, they look at me like I have six heads. “Do you really think that’s what it is?” a friend asked me. He home-schools his son, by the way.

This, my friends, is the power of the fossil-fuel industry. Through their marketing and their political surrogates, they have taken a nation on the brink of consensus regarding climate change back in 2007 and turned it 180 degrees into deep denial. The great recession has helped in this regard, of course – jobs versus environment has always been an effective diversion. It has particular resonance now that the Democrats are effectively missing in action on this issue, running scared on the threat of nastiness from the other side. Welcome to the Alice in Wonderland election year.

Would that climate change were the only matter about which the major party candidates appear to know nothing. Here, for instance, is an excerpt from Willard “Mitt” Romney’s New Hampshire primary victory speech a few nights ago:

President Obama wants to put free enterprise on trial. In the last few days, we have seen some desperate Republicans join forces with him. This is such a mistake for our Party and for our nation. This country already has a leader who divides us with the bitter politics of envy. We must offer an alternative vision. I stand ready to lead us down a different path, where we are lifted up by our desire to succeed, not dragged down by a resentment of success. In these difficult times, we cannot abandon the core values that define us as unique – We are One Nation, Under God.

Okay, sure… there’s a lot that’s wrong with this. I think the most flabbergasting part, though, is the “bitter politics of envy” gambit. Who is advising this geezer? Someone who’s been living in a cave for the last year? For one thing, free enterprise doesn’t need Barack Obama or anyone else to put it on trial – it’s been doing a pretty thorough job on itself these past few years. I’m always astounded by these so-called free market evangelists who insist that government intervention is detrimental to economic growth in a world where command economies like China are eating our lunch and “European-style entitlement societies”, as Romney puts it, offer a far better standard of living than us even in the midst of a major debt crisis. Can they point to a single example of an unbridled capitalist economy in which the vast majority of people enjoy a rising standard of living? Thought not.

Lookout below. Looks like we may have another idiot president in the hopper.

Political Rants

The elect.

All that run up, and such an unsatisfying result. What a pity the election process never takes a break here in the U.S. of A. We’ve been in a near-constant cycle of electing people since 2008, with whole cable networks devoting resources to consideration of the various candidates ad infinitum. Still, here we are with two primary G.O.P. challengers who appear to disagree on very little … and who mutually argue that we should go straight back to the same policies that landed us in the hole and the end of the Bush administration. It’s a wealth-protection strategy, to be sure – wealth as concentrated in the hands of the extremely well-to-do. There really isn’t anything else on offer by either Romney or Santorum, except an early commitment to war against Iran. (That should be good for the economy.)

We have reached a point where the Republican party is inhabiting an entirely separate reality from the rest of us. In their world, there is no global warming, no inequality, no corporate dominance, no limits to American military might. They mark the beginning of the recession in the Obama administration, not the Bush administration. They see the national debt as the cause of unemployment. On their planet, the only problem with our electoral system is fraudulent voting – i.e. people (perhaps “illegal” immigrants) breaking federal law to usurp a franchise very few Americans are inclined to exercise legitimately. All domestically produced fossil fuel, in their tiny minds, is somehow reserved for use by Americans alone, not simply dumped into the global market and snapped up by whoever pays for it (i.e. how it actually works).

This being the case, their standard bearer could be pretty much anybody. No specialized knowledge required – sorry, Jon Huntsman – just a willingness to carry water for the richest people in America and a corporate culture that is not only making more profits than it has since the great recession hit but is also paying less in taxes than it was in 2008. Mitt fits the bill; so does Rick “man-on-dog” Santorum. Both potentially good stewards of our national top-down economy. In fact, any one of them, all the way down to cousin Rick Perry, would be acceptable to the moneyed overlords, though I think it’s clear that the preference of the institutional elite is Mitt Romney.

Still, with such flaccid support, they must wonder if the right-wing rabble might be getting out of hand. Mitt’s pathetic victory demonstrates that winning this year is what losing was four years ago.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Look back.

Lots of news about official enemies this past week. Plenty of footage from the funeral of Kim Jong Il, showing legions of North Koreans – many in uniform – displaying their exaggerated grief. (Hey… those folks know what they need to do to get ahead.) And of course the Iranian threat to shut down the Strait of Hormuz if the latest round of draconian sanctions recently passed by the Senate – 100 to 0, mind you – become law. The latter is, naturally, the primary obsession of our news media and our government; the former a mere source of fascination and amusement. Both provide ample opportunities to perpetuate the official line on each of these societies, about which the less we know the better.

But let’s look a little closer. Why is North Korea such a strange, strange place? Lots of reasons. The hermit kingdom is a major thread running through Korean history. More importantly, though, is the experience of the last century – namely, that of the thirty year Japanese occupation, followed by occupation and subsequent destruction by the U.S. during the Korean War. Few Americans know the impact that war had on North Korea; we mostly focus on the fact that the North invaded the South – Korea invading Korea  – but not on the devastating attack we mounted against them. Christine Ahn of the Korea Policy Institute spoke to this fact on Democracy Now! last week:

When I went to North Korea, others-I had a very interesting insight, where I would travel around the country, and with our guides, you know, they would always point to this building. This was a restaurant. It was, you know, a very ancient-looking Korean building. But it was-I was wondering, why are-why do they always keep pointing that building out? And the thing that was really surprising is that was the only building that remained since the Korean War. Otherwise, the rest of Pyongyang was essentially leveled. And that was because of the devastating air raids. More bombs were dropped in the Korean War than in World War II. Napalm was introduced. I mean, the U.S. bombed dams, which was considered a war crime under the Geneva Convention.

It’s a similar story with Iran. Around the time we stopped drenching North Korea with napalm, we were fomenting a coup in Iran that brought in the Shah, who tortured his way through the next 25 years until the Iranian revolution. After that, we supported Saddam Hussein’s 8-year attack against Iran, which cost them about 800,000 lives. If Iran wants a nuclear capability, it’s likely as our own intelligence service estimates suggest – an attempt at building a deterrent. We invaded countries on both sides of Iran, neither of which had nuclear weapons. We did not attack North Korea, which does have nukes. What lesson should the Iranians draw from that?

There’s a tone of near outrage over the notion that the Iranians would threaten retaliation over sanctions. Fact is, they’ve seen what sanctions can do, both at home and in neighboring Iraq. Much as they are a repressive regime with a poor record on human rights, it is easy to understand why they would respond in this way. What I don’t understand is why we seem unable to anticipate that.

luv u,

jp