Political Interlude
Stockblog, stockblog, stockblog. I keep telling myself that. But you just can’t help noticing things…
All the libertarians (getting to be an ambiguous term… I prefer the more specific “Anarcho-Capitalist”, see Bill for clearer explanations, or Wikipedia, but Bill is more entertaining) who had hoped Ron Paul would at least make a ripple in the scum-covered pond of sewage that is national politics, well, that hope ended with the collective harrumph echoed across the nation during the most recent debate when he tripped over what may have been a valid point and instead produced a sound bite that allows him to be portrayed holding hands with Rosie O’fuckingDonnell chanting, “It’s all our fault, it’s all our fault.” That’s not what he meant, but that’s irrelevant now. It’s how it sounded, and it gave Rudy a bit of a “Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy” moment to run with. Paul is toast.
And BNJ, in this post over at CynicalNation, puts a spotlight on the blatant facts which will eventually lead to the atrophy of John Edward’s chances. We’re a pretty ignorant bunch, but his lies are insulting to anyone with the independent thinking ability of even the average third-grader. Although the third-graders would probably vote for him because his wife has cancer and that makes them feel sad for him. Plus his hair is so pretty.
I have a running bet with a buddy at the hospital that Obama will have a Howard Dean moment and vanish from the running like… Howard Dean. I’m not sure when that moment will be, or under what circumstances it will unfold, but I have a Griff’s Hamburger coming when it does.
(By the way, I have another hamburger bet that Paris Hilton won’t serve one day in prison… the news today- that she is to serve “half” the sentence, 23 days, in a soft fuzzy place that’s “sort of” like a prison- may mean that neither of us wins).
Politics nowadays is a great big farce, not unlike healthcare, which creates diversions about payors and affordable insurance while in the background it quietly funnels hundreds of billions of your tax dollars to drug companies and white collar millionaires. Red Herrings and Straw Men everywhere.
One political “side” offers to get us back to when God was alive, when everyone worked for GM or Ford or IBM, and when “the country was strong.” The other side promises to pursue the “ideal” of realizing the dream of the hippies, creating a land where we all wear fig leaves, live in adobe houses, and get a check from our benevolent paternalistic government once a month (a dream which, if you think about it, makes Santa Claus the perfect president).
The truth, of course, is that neither of these possibilities exists. Our society is following the historical cycle that empires and democracies follow, with minor deviations from that path along the way (still well within the Bollinger Bands of history, we stock types might say). Following the Kyklos of anarchy, monarchy, tyranny, aristocracy, oligarchy, democracy, rinse and repeat.
And somewhere around the 60s, around JFK, around Viet Nam, and LBJ and RFK and MLK and Jimi and Janis and Jim. Medicare. Nixon. Fiat money. OPEC. Stagflation. And on and on. Somewhere back there, within just a short decade or so, our society jumped the shark.
And the next President, or perhaps the one after that, will preside over a country which, after all the years of milk and honey and entitlement, begins to suffer the massive hangover of the consequences of its citizens’ collective decision to ignore reality for generations, the consequences of 300 million people looking left and right for someone to save them, but wholly without the ability to look in the mirror.
Whew. Time to switch to decaf, I suppose.