Our country is hated abroad, and frightened at home. We have reached a point where we could reasonably refer to the great American Republic in the past tense. We have edged into a post-constitutional era, no longer a nation of laws, but an autocracy run by law evaders and law ignorers, a culture in which corruption is no longer a form of deviance, but the norm.
We all live in a Mafia-run neighborhood:
By now, everyone knows about the evils of bankers and their Washington facilitators: Wall Street lobbies Congress for favorable deals, Congress then approves them at taxpayer expense. When things are this bad, the very structure of our society is threatened, and voters have to stress fundamentals over issues. We need to move beyond the divisive cultural issues, all the single issues, even critical things like the environment, war and peace, and the “economy”, and focus on structural issues. We have to leave the culture wars and even big political differences behind, and make alliances among voters–because right now, none of us are being heard.
Will White House security improve with new leadership?
However, a new threat jumped the fence:
For months, the Ebola outbreak was confined to West Africa, a region more than 8,000 miles away. But this week a patient was diagnosed with the deadly virus in Dallas, Texas, bringing Ebola hysteria right on home. We have heard typical reassurances from the CDC, while some politicians have engaged in fear-mongering. But, unless lots of Americans plan on exchanging bodily fluids with people who live or work in West Africa, we’ll be fine.
Politicians talk about terror and say: “we could all be killed”. They speak about Ebola and say: “we could all be killed”. Mothra could also come back, and you know the nation isn’t prepared for Mothra. Where will we get enough Raid? Do we have Godzilla’s cell number? OK Obama, what are we supposed to do?
Meanwhile, the actors in the Middle East continue to mis-hear each other:
And in HK, not only no hearing, there is no listening:
It is hard to overstate the point made in the cartoon about mid east talks. Each one tells his “unique” story of ill treatment, or if not ill treatment, of how, if the US does this, or did this, it would be much better. But it won’t. If we had misplayed our hand in Germany or Japan after WW2 ended, they still would have re-established many of the institutions that they had before and that were needed to rebuild. Both, however flawed, had a unified sense of self and the ability to subordinate personal will for the group. While that sounds like a bad thing, it is the only way to rebuild. But in the middle east, tribalism and some real bad facts make establishing an effective polity impossible. FYI – the website is my take on our fat gasbag of a governor (in NJ)