I joined legions of fellow Americans and refused to watch Obama's "State of the Union" performance last night. I have had enough of the nose turned up to the sky, the wagging finger, the tiresome cadence, the empty rhetoric--"We are the change we are waiting for!"--and the refusal to deal with reality and not the bowdlerized Obamabotic Hollywood progressive version of it.
I just didn't want to hear how our Dear Leader will rule without need of the Reichstag, er, uh, Congress. Do I smell smoke?
Fired up my ROKU, and spent a wonderful evening watching the magnificent David Suchet as Hercule Poirot--the world's most famous Belgian since Peter Paul Rubens, or, maybe, Jacques Brel--solve one absurdly complicated crime after another.
If I have to put up with a couple of hours of unreality, I rather spend them in a world where the good guys win over the criminal and the stupid.
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
Making Citizenship Meaningless: Thoughts on the Coming Great Electoral Fraud
Our progressive friends make many predictions and promises. Most, of course, fall flat. Look, for example, at Obamacare. Where are those millions of deprived uninsured Americans yearning to have health insurance so they can get that desperately needed medical care now denied them? Where are those healthy youngsters desperate to get off their parents' insurance dime and to fork out their own cash for the high premium and high deductible plans offered by Obamacare? Wherever they are, they are not overwhelming the Obamacare exchanges with their plaintive petitions. We have a mystery worthy of Hercule Poirot.
The multi-decade, trillion-plus-dollar war on poverty was another great promise. According to the progressives' own numbers, however, more Americans are now poor or near-poor than ever with more than ever dependent on taxpayer largesse. This is the result of fifty years of war on poverty. The progressive solution? More of the same policies that have produced the current disaster, with the added twist of addressing a "new evil," i.e., unequal income distribution. It seems that more progressivism means more poverty--except for the bureaucrats and academics plugged into the programs.
There exists, however, one promise on which the current gang of progressives running and ruining our nation will deliver. We will see a massive electoral fraud in the 2016 elections, at the latest. The signs are there. This will be much beyond past ACORN phony voter registration, "vote early and often" schemes, and having the deceased cast ballots. It will be on a scale never seen in the US.
The plot underway is nothing less than to make US citizenship meaningless.
Let's recognize that a hallmark of progressivism is to degrade any institution over which it obtains power. Be it in the name of fairness, equality, or the all purpose "righting of old wrongs," once progressive ideology and ideologues grab an institution, that institution becomes transformed and degraded as to make it almost unrecognizable. We have many examples of this, but perhaps none illustrates the process better than what has happened to higher education in the US and the West. A university degree has become as worthless as the education it certifies. Throughout the Western world we have legions of university graduates unqualified for anything gainful. They, however, are full of self-righteousness, arrogance, and a sense of entitlement. I doubt that today's average university graduate has the level of basic knowledge of the average high school graduate of 60-70 years ago.
Most universities have fallen under the rule of progressives, who reject the traditional canon of higher education, and replace it with a mishmash of politicized courses on feminism, sexism, racism, whacky environmentalism, and so on. A good example is my old school, UCLA, the University of California, Los Angeles. This once noble institution has eliminated the requirement for its English department grads to read Shakespeare for which they may substitute gender/race classes. In fact, they can graduate as UCLA English majors without reading Shakespeare, Chaucer, or Milton. You can see here the snarky defense of this change by a progressive "education expert," who notes helpfully, that "single-author courses are tough to teach, and can be murder to take (guess what? Not everybody likes Chaucer enough to spend 15 weeks on him, and that’s OK.)" In other words, Chaucer is hard. Now, therefore, when ordering coffee at Starbucks, you will find that the "highly educated" barista operating the espresso machine cannot quote from "The Pardoner's Tale."
The universities underwent the classic progressive two-pronged attack now used on other institutions. The progs bemoan the elitism and the bias against certain "victims" by the institution. The progs try with legislation, court rulings, street agitation, any means really, to modify admittance practices, and then once that is achieved to transform the institution into something else. Remember, for example, the debate over the voting age? "If you're old enough to get drafted, you're old enough to vote!" I always noted, of course, that women did not get drafted so that meant they either should, or they should not get the vote at eighteen. What if you didn't get drafted? Do you still get the vote? Anyhow, eighteen-year-olds got the vote; the draft got eliminated--eighteen-year-olds, however, still have the vote, as do women and draft-dodgers, one of whom even became President. The same process is underway with other traditional institutions such as marriage, the Boy Scouts and, of course, the military which is being subjected to social experimentation that has nothing to do with its core mission of defending the nation.
Now we see US citizenship under the same assault.
The Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security tells us that the eleven million or so illegal aliens in the US have earned the right to be citizens. Secretary Johnson states,
The multi-decade, trillion-plus-dollar war on poverty was another great promise. According to the progressives' own numbers, however, more Americans are now poor or near-poor than ever with more than ever dependent on taxpayer largesse. This is the result of fifty years of war on poverty. The progressive solution? More of the same policies that have produced the current disaster, with the added twist of addressing a "new evil," i.e., unequal income distribution. It seems that more progressivism means more poverty--except for the bureaucrats and academics plugged into the programs.
There exists, however, one promise on which the current gang of progressives running and ruining our nation will deliver. We will see a massive electoral fraud in the 2016 elections, at the latest. The signs are there. This will be much beyond past ACORN phony voter registration, "vote early and often" schemes, and having the deceased cast ballots. It will be on a scale never seen in the US.
The plot underway is nothing less than to make US citizenship meaningless.
Let's recognize that a hallmark of progressivism is to degrade any institution over which it obtains power. Be it in the name of fairness, equality, or the all purpose "righting of old wrongs," once progressive ideology and ideologues grab an institution, that institution becomes transformed and degraded as to make it almost unrecognizable. We have many examples of this, but perhaps none illustrates the process better than what has happened to higher education in the US and the West. A university degree has become as worthless as the education it certifies. Throughout the Western world we have legions of university graduates unqualified for anything gainful. They, however, are full of self-righteousness, arrogance, and a sense of entitlement. I doubt that today's average university graduate has the level of basic knowledge of the average high school graduate of 60-70 years ago.
Most universities have fallen under the rule of progressives, who reject the traditional canon of higher education, and replace it with a mishmash of politicized courses on feminism, sexism, racism, whacky environmentalism, and so on. A good example is my old school, UCLA, the University of California, Los Angeles. This once noble institution has eliminated the requirement for its English department grads to read Shakespeare for which they may substitute gender/race classes. In fact, they can graduate as UCLA English majors without reading Shakespeare, Chaucer, or Milton. You can see here the snarky defense of this change by a progressive "education expert," who notes helpfully, that "single-author courses are tough to teach, and can be murder to take (guess what? Not everybody likes Chaucer enough to spend 15 weeks on him, and that’s OK.)" In other words, Chaucer is hard. Now, therefore, when ordering coffee at Starbucks, you will find that the "highly educated" barista operating the espresso machine cannot quote from "The Pardoner's Tale."
The universities underwent the classic progressive two-pronged attack now used on other institutions. The progs bemoan the elitism and the bias against certain "victims" by the institution. The progs try with legislation, court rulings, street agitation, any means really, to modify admittance practices, and then once that is achieved to transform the institution into something else. Remember, for example, the debate over the voting age? "If you're old enough to get drafted, you're old enough to vote!" I always noted, of course, that women did not get drafted so that meant they either should, or they should not get the vote at eighteen. What if you didn't get drafted? Do you still get the vote? Anyhow, eighteen-year-olds got the vote; the draft got eliminated--eighteen-year-olds, however, still have the vote, as do women and draft-dodgers, one of whom even became President. The same process is underway with other traditional institutions such as marriage, the Boy Scouts and, of course, the military which is being subjected to social experimentation that has nothing to do with its core mission of defending the nation.
Now we see US citizenship under the same assault.
The Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security tells us that the eleven million or so illegal aliens in the US have earned the right to be citizens. Secretary Johnson states,
“An earned path to citizenship for those currently present in this country is a matter of, in my view, homeland security to encourage people to come out from the shadows, to be accountable, to participate in the American experience, the American society."The good Secretary cannot tell us what exactly these people who have broken our laws have done to earn citizenship except to demonstrate an ability to defeat the half-baked efforts of our Keystone Kop immigration services to apprehend and deport them. It seems that being a successful outlaw did not form part of the citizenship test when my parents and my wife took it. We see calls for amnesty and "pathways" to citizenship coming not only from the usual Democrats and their crony capitalist allies and lobbyists, but from the RINOs who populate the ranks of the GOP. We hear lachrymose speeches about how an illegal alien who fought for our country in the military should have the right to become a citizen--these speakers "forget," of course, that, for now, it is illegal for an undocumented or a nonresident alien to enlist in the US military. We do not have Gurkhas. This is a variation on "if they're old enough to fight, they're old enough to vote," and is equally as bogus.
It gets worse. If it were "just" an effort to get citizenship and the benefits and obligations that go with it, it might earn a little more respect from me. It is nothing of the sort. It is a smokescreen for electoral fraud. Citizenship is under assault from another direction, as well. Voting I.D. Yes, that is the main weapon being used and the one which reveals what is really going on. Our Attorney General Eric "Fast and Furious" Holder tells us that his agency will be very vigilant re attempts by states to use voter identification requirements to "suppress" turn-out. The DOJ has been filing lawsuits against states with voter I.D. requirements (here and here, for example.) The justification? The progs conjure up an imaginary poor rural black too stupid, too poor, and living in such a remote place that he or she just cannot afford or otherwise get valid state identification. Nonsense. Many states offer free identification cards, and, more important, poor, middle class, and rich black people have valid identification documents for driving, buying property, getting bank loans, voting, etc., just like everybody else. Progs have a Hollywood version of race in America which they sell to the willing media, and seek to turn into public policy.
I have served as an observer in several elections overseas: Guyana, Guatemala, Bolivia, Panama, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia. In addition, I have seen elections in other countries where I lived or temporarily worked, e.g., Spain, France, Switzerland, Mexico, India. In all of them, voters had to prove their identity and citizenship. Only in the USA is this a controversy. The progs, as noted, use a two pronged attack: one seeks citizenship for illegal aliens, and the other seeks ways for them, and resident aliens, to vote even without citizenship. The already lax regulations on official identification are being furthered loosened. In California, for example, the state now issues I.D. cards and driver's licenses to illegal aliens; in California, of course, as in many other states, one can register to vote when applying for a license or I.D. card. In addition, in California the state now licenses illegal aliens as lawyers and allows them to serve on juries. In virtually every state I can think of, illegal aliens already receive public benefits, including food stamps via programs which the USDA advertises in Mexico. When I lived in northern Virginia during the 2008 elections, I can tell you from personal observation that clearly ineligible people voted without challenge. As a former election observer, I would have a hard time certifying US elections in much of the country as free and fair. Basically, almost anybody can vote, and do so more than once, and it is getting easier and easier to do so.
We will see massive electoral fraud by 2016, at the latest. The manufactured "controversy" over voter I.D. and "pathways" to citizenship is really about getting millions of new Democratic voters casting ballots. It has nothing to do with black Americans, who demographically are in decline vis-a-vis other minority groups. To get this result, the progressives are more than willing to degrade the concept of citizen by making it available to just about anybody, while at the same time giving people without it the same rights and benefits.
I have served as an observer in several elections overseas: Guyana, Guatemala, Bolivia, Panama, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia. In addition, I have seen elections in other countries where I lived or temporarily worked, e.g., Spain, France, Switzerland, Mexico, India. In all of them, voters had to prove their identity and citizenship. Only in the USA is this a controversy. The progs, as noted, use a two pronged attack: one seeks citizenship for illegal aliens, and the other seeks ways for them, and resident aliens, to vote even without citizenship. The already lax regulations on official identification are being furthered loosened. In California, for example, the state now issues I.D. cards and driver's licenses to illegal aliens; in California, of course, as in many other states, one can register to vote when applying for a license or I.D. card. In addition, in California the state now licenses illegal aliens as lawyers and allows them to serve on juries. In virtually every state I can think of, illegal aliens already receive public benefits, including food stamps via programs which the USDA advertises in Mexico. When I lived in northern Virginia during the 2008 elections, I can tell you from personal observation that clearly ineligible people voted without challenge. As a former election observer, I would have a hard time certifying US elections in much of the country as free and fair. Basically, almost anybody can vote, and do so more than once, and it is getting easier and easier to do so.
We will see massive electoral fraud by 2016, at the latest. The manufactured "controversy" over voter I.D. and "pathways" to citizenship is really about getting millions of new Democratic voters casting ballots. It has nothing to do with black Americans, who demographically are in decline vis-a-vis other minority groups. To get this result, the progressives are more than willing to degrade the concept of citizen by making it available to just about anybody, while at the same time giving people without it the same rights and benefits.
Sunday, January 26, 2014
Happy Australia Day
I loved Australia Day when I was overseas. The Aussies had the best gatherings.
I hoist one to you, Australia. You have a great country. Keep it that way!
I hoist one to you, Australia. You have a great country. Keep it that way!
A Little Benghazi
I am working on something else but ran across this little gem over at The Gateway Pundit .
Citing a report in The Blaze, The Gateway Pundit tells us that,
On December 27, 2012, I predicted this would happen; that only would nobody be fired, but that promotions would come,
All unfolds as foretold by Diplodamus . . .
Citing a report in The Blaze, The Gateway Pundit tells us that,
Charlene Lamb, cited for failures in leadership from the Department of State’s own Accountability Review Board report, has been promoted to Regional Security Officer. We’ve heard rumor that she’s slated for international duty in Canada. She started the security officer training last week, much to the dismay of many within the State Department.
For those not keeping track, Charlene Lamb was in charge of the office that denied extra security personnel to the U.S. Ambassador in Libya before the Sept. 11, 2011 attacks.To the seven or eight readers of this blog, this should come as no surprise.
On December 27, 2012, I predicted this would happen; that only would nobody be fired, but that promotions would come,
Once even the little dust created by the scandal has dissipated, the four bureaucrats asked to take the mini-spear for Chicago will--mark my words--get monetary awards. They will be written up for showing courage and fortitude under difficult circumstances. The senior people will evade all responsibility; ol' whats-her-name will slip out of the building and leave her desk to John "Xmas in Cambodia" Kerry, the dead will be forgotten, the Islamist Morlocks will lick their fingers and get ready for another helping of Eloi.
All unfolds as foretold by Diplodamus . . .
Soon, Soon
Working on a piece but it is being delayed by my drug-induced haze. Ravages of old age. Hope to have something up in the next day or so.
Tuesday, January 21, 2014
The Legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Yesterday was Martin Luther King Day in the US; the TV and other media were full of stories about King and his times, and what it all means today. He has been compared to Gandhi and Mandela, become an icon for American "progressives," and, of course, a historical symbol of the nonviolent civil rights struggle of the 1950s and 1960s. He won the Nobel Peace Prize, almost every major American city has a thoroughfare named for him, and, as noted, we have a national holiday in his honor--making him and Columbus the only ones to have such holidays. Gunned down in 1968, at the age of thirty-nine, he left the civil rights movement to less capable and less visionary successors who undermined his legacy and his goal of a color-blind nation.
Was he a great man? He showed great courage, commitment to his cause, insistence on nonviolence, strong political and leadership skills, patriotism, and became a highly eloquent spokesman for civil rights. "I Have a Dream" is one of the great speeches in the English language. King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" more than equals any Thoreau or Gandhi writings, and is not something that today's civil rights leaders, such as they are, could match, nor could the typical graduate of almost any university in the world today. (The letter's pacing, erudition, and, above all, the surgical preciseness with which it takes down opposing arguments bring to mind General Sherman's letter to the Mayor of Atlanta.) King's life made a difference to millions of people. The answer, therefore, to this paragraph's question is yes, he was a great man.
That said, serious problems exist with some of the narrative spun about King, in particular, and the civil rights struggle, in general. Part of the problem, of course, is that King died young, enabling others, as with the two Kennedy brothers, to fill in the rest of the story and use it to further certain political agendas. King died short of his fortieth birthday; had he lived longer, presumably he would have evolved and, possibly, become a very different man than he was when he died--we will never know. What we do know is that the Democratic Party and their "progressive" media and education machines have rewritten the history of the civil rights struggle. This was driven home to me some years ago while visiting a college campus. The students assumed King was a Democrat, and the segregationists confronting the peaceful marchers, and using fire hoses, snarling police dogs, and truncheons, and wearing white hoods were Republicans. They assume a Republican killed King--today's college kids probably believe the Tea Party had him killed. That the exact opposite is true, shocks many. King came from a staunchly Republican family--his father, a prominent leader in his own right--openly endorsed Richard Nixon against JFK in the 1960 presidential election. The Democrats had a one-party lock on the South. The party of slave owners and secessionists, had become the party of Jim Crow, school segregation, anti-miscegenation laws, poll taxes, and on and on.
Many Americans, not to mention foreigners, do not realize not only that the Republican party was formed in opposition to slavery and that Lincoln was a Republican, but that the famous Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, whose rulings dismantled the legal basis for segregation and put serious limitations on the power of police, was a former Republican Governor of California. It was, furthermore, war hero and Republican President Dwight Eisenhower who sent troops to Arkansas to enforce court-ordered desegregation at Little Rock Central High School. Congressional Republicans were the main supporters of civil rights legislation; their votes ensured passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, over the opposition of a significant bloc of Democrats--let us also not forget that Congressional Democrats for years blocked Republican efforts to pass federal anti-lynching legislation. All this, of course, is history, but an important chunk of American history that is being lost, distorted, or otherwise flushed down the memory sewer--along with the fact that anti-leftist J. Edgar Hoover proved the most formidable foe of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), an organization founded and staffed by Democrats, such as long-time Democratic Senator Robert Byrd.
Before I get back to King, let me address another issue that has been badly distorted and become something of a meme among the quasi-literate left. I refer to the idea that the parties have "switched places." This is something I have heard from some lefties who, knowing the true history of the Democratic and Republican Parties when it comes to race and civil rights, try to argue that that was then, and this is now. Since FDR or so, they argue the Democratic and the Republican Parties "switched" places on the race issue, with Republicans taking the role of protecting white privilege and keeping minorities, especially blacks, down. The truth is quite different. What happened was that the old party of slavers, segregationists, lynch mobs, and secessionists figured out that government programs and intervention were the means to deprive Republicans of a significant voter bloc. The aim was to keep black Americans dependent on the largesse of government and Democrat-run urban political machines. Anyone who doubts that should read the crude comment in which President Johnson revealed the real purpose underlying his massive social program expansion, i.e., to keep black Americans voting Democratic. The Democrats have succeeded admirably at this objective.
Back to King and the civil rights movement. By the time of his death, King was losing control over the movement. It was fragmenting. King's vision of a nonviolent effort was under assault by increasingly violent and radical elements. The message of non-violence and concentration on individual liberty was losing attraction. The thirty-nine-year-old King seemed old, thundering out a message from another time. A new generation of black activists, inspired by the increasingly confrontational and violent atmosphere in the country were challenging King for the spotlight. They found allies in violence in the largely white anti-Vietnam War movement. The civil rights struggle was becoming increasingly part of the noise of the very bad closing years of the 1960s, which saw violent race riots shake nearly every American city, and numerous incidents of domestic terrorism. In addition, what had been a largely grass-roots, private sector movement was being sabotaged by growing government involvement. Many black leaders were being syphoned off by government programs to "fight poverty." Black activists increasingly focused on getting handouts to their followers rather than, as noted above, on King's more lofty, ancient-sounding focus on liberty, and the goal of having people judged not by their color but by the "content of their character." This new generation of government-oriented and dependent leaders did not fit in with King's conservative Southern and church-based movement. They needed racial turmoil, not racial harmony. We need also remember that Attorney General Robert Kennedy had put King under FBI surveillance, including the making of compromising tapes of King having liaisons with women not his wife, providing the government excellent blackmail material against him.
All these factors, in my view, had begun to take a toll on King; he aged dramatically in appearance, and had begun talking about issues not directly related to the civil rights struggle, e.g., the Middle East, Vietnam. Had he lived longer, I suspect we would have seen King becoming increasingly radicalized, pushed leftward as he sought to retain control of his movement--but, as noted before, we will never know.
In sum, he was a great man with a great vision. His successors, many of them frauds of the first rank, largely have not been faithful to that vision of liberty and color-blindness, and we all have suffered for it.
Was he a great man? He showed great courage, commitment to his cause, insistence on nonviolence, strong political and leadership skills, patriotism, and became a highly eloquent spokesman for civil rights. "I Have a Dream" is one of the great speeches in the English language. King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" more than equals any Thoreau or Gandhi writings, and is not something that today's civil rights leaders, such as they are, could match, nor could the typical graduate of almost any university in the world today. (The letter's pacing, erudition, and, above all, the surgical preciseness with which it takes down opposing arguments bring to mind General Sherman's letter to the Mayor of Atlanta.) King's life made a difference to millions of people. The answer, therefore, to this paragraph's question is yes, he was a great man.
That said, serious problems exist with some of the narrative spun about King, in particular, and the civil rights struggle, in general. Part of the problem, of course, is that King died young, enabling others, as with the two Kennedy brothers, to fill in the rest of the story and use it to further certain political agendas. King died short of his fortieth birthday; had he lived longer, presumably he would have evolved and, possibly, become a very different man than he was when he died--we will never know. What we do know is that the Democratic Party and their "progressive" media and education machines have rewritten the history of the civil rights struggle. This was driven home to me some years ago while visiting a college campus. The students assumed King was a Democrat, and the segregationists confronting the peaceful marchers, and using fire hoses, snarling police dogs, and truncheons, and wearing white hoods were Republicans. They assume a Republican killed King--today's college kids probably believe the Tea Party had him killed. That the exact opposite is true, shocks many. King came from a staunchly Republican family--his father, a prominent leader in his own right--openly endorsed Richard Nixon against JFK in the 1960 presidential election. The Democrats had a one-party lock on the South. The party of slave owners and secessionists, had become the party of Jim Crow, school segregation, anti-miscegenation laws, poll taxes, and on and on.
Many Americans, not to mention foreigners, do not realize not only that the Republican party was formed in opposition to slavery and that Lincoln was a Republican, but that the famous Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, whose rulings dismantled the legal basis for segregation and put serious limitations on the power of police, was a former Republican Governor of California. It was, furthermore, war hero and Republican President Dwight Eisenhower who sent troops to Arkansas to enforce court-ordered desegregation at Little Rock Central High School. Congressional Republicans were the main supporters of civil rights legislation; their votes ensured passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, over the opposition of a significant bloc of Democrats--let us also not forget that Congressional Democrats for years blocked Republican efforts to pass federal anti-lynching legislation. All this, of course, is history, but an important chunk of American history that is being lost, distorted, or otherwise flushed down the memory sewer--along with the fact that anti-leftist J. Edgar Hoover proved the most formidable foe of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), an organization founded and staffed by Democrats, such as long-time Democratic Senator Robert Byrd.
Before I get back to King, let me address another issue that has been badly distorted and become something of a meme among the quasi-literate left. I refer to the idea that the parties have "switched places." This is something I have heard from some lefties who, knowing the true history of the Democratic and Republican Parties when it comes to race and civil rights, try to argue that that was then, and this is now. Since FDR or so, they argue the Democratic and the Republican Parties "switched" places on the race issue, with Republicans taking the role of protecting white privilege and keeping minorities, especially blacks, down. The truth is quite different. What happened was that the old party of slavers, segregationists, lynch mobs, and secessionists figured out that government programs and intervention were the means to deprive Republicans of a significant voter bloc. The aim was to keep black Americans dependent on the largesse of government and Democrat-run urban political machines. Anyone who doubts that should read the crude comment in which President Johnson revealed the real purpose underlying his massive social program expansion, i.e., to keep black Americans voting Democratic. The Democrats have succeeded admirably at this objective.
Back to King and the civil rights movement. By the time of his death, King was losing control over the movement. It was fragmenting. King's vision of a nonviolent effort was under assault by increasingly violent and radical elements. The message of non-violence and concentration on individual liberty was losing attraction. The thirty-nine-year-old King seemed old, thundering out a message from another time. A new generation of black activists, inspired by the increasingly confrontational and violent atmosphere in the country were challenging King for the spotlight. They found allies in violence in the largely white anti-Vietnam War movement. The civil rights struggle was becoming increasingly part of the noise of the very bad closing years of the 1960s, which saw violent race riots shake nearly every American city, and numerous incidents of domestic terrorism. In addition, what had been a largely grass-roots, private sector movement was being sabotaged by growing government involvement. Many black leaders were being syphoned off by government programs to "fight poverty." Black activists increasingly focused on getting handouts to their followers rather than, as noted above, on King's more lofty, ancient-sounding focus on liberty, and the goal of having people judged not by their color but by the "content of their character." This new generation of government-oriented and dependent leaders did not fit in with King's conservative Southern and church-based movement. They needed racial turmoil, not racial harmony. We need also remember that Attorney General Robert Kennedy had put King under FBI surveillance, including the making of compromising tapes of King having liaisons with women not his wife, providing the government excellent blackmail material against him.
All these factors, in my view, had begun to take a toll on King; he aged dramatically in appearance, and had begun talking about issues not directly related to the civil rights struggle, e.g., the Middle East, Vietnam. Had he lived longer, I suspect we would have seen King becoming increasingly radicalized, pushed leftward as he sought to retain control of his movement--but, as noted before, we will never know.
In sum, he was a great man with a great vision. His successors, many of them frauds of the first rank, largely have not been faithful to that vision of liberty and color-blindness, and we all have suffered for it.
Saturday, January 18, 2014
Yearning for the Bush League
Sorry for the lag in posting. I have had a health issue to deal with, nothing serious, but it has consumed a lot of Ibuprofen and time, and has led me to reflect, again, on "Saber-tooth Tigers and the Design Specifications of Life." It also serves as a reminder that when young, you know why something hurts; when old, it hurts, and you have no idea why.
On to matters more glum than getting old. Yes, yes, I did make a quasi resolution to fight pessimistic tendencies for the new year, but I give up. Going around with a moronic smile on my face makes me look like I am going around with a moronic smile on my face: I am not convincing anybody, least of all, me. Just about seventeen days into this new year of 2014, and things are bad, real bad, and not getting better. Can't pretend otherwise, or wish it away into the cornfield.
Before I get to the gist of today's message, let me reflect on the past. Back when I was a useful citizen and had a job, I got a good close up look into how foreign governments actually view the USA and its President. My best time in the foreign service was under Reagan and the Bush father and son presidencies. The worst time was under Obama, followed by Carter, and further back, Clinton. I particularly liked George W. Bush. I had a lot of respect for him as a leader, and as somebody who actually cared about his country, and the people in the field. Some foreign leaders liked Bush, some did not. Some agreed with his policies, some did not. None, however, dismissed him, laughed at him, or failed to take seriously any request or comment coming from him. This was a man not afraid to pull the trigger. That quality, unfortunately or not, is critical in foreign affairs. Working overseas, when I would go see a foreign official and say, "President Bush wants this," those were powerful words, backed up by the demonstrated power of the United States and the willingness of President Bush to use it. As I said, some people did not like Bush, did not like what he tried to do, but he was a serious president who needed to be taken into account.
Those were the Good Old Days. Who takes anything President Obama says seriously? The United States is increasingly irrelevant to major developments in the world. We fritter away our power and influence on nonsense, and on endless lecturing of others on residual issues such as global warming and gay rights. We undermine our network of alliances and disregard our friends' core interests: be it Israel's right to security; the abandonment of of our hard-fought victories in Iraq and Afghanistan; the sell-out of allies such as Mubarak; promoting the Muslim Brotherhood; sabotaging the UK on the Falklands; pushing for mindless regime change in Libya; the Benghazi fiasco; conducting a bizarre zig-zag policy towards Syria; helping make Russia a prominent player in the Middle East; paving the way for Cuba's return to the OAS; acquiescing to Iran's nuclear ambitions; ceding ground to China; and selling guns to Mexican drug cartels. Those are a few examples; I am sure you can come up with more.
We see members of allied governments openly expressing dismay with Obama. Prominent military historian, and senior advisor to the British Ministry of Defense, Sir Hew Strachan, tells the press that Obama is "incompetent." As reported in The Daily Beast,
As I write this, President Obama is on TV (when is he not?) trying to put out the NSA fire. Much of what he says is blame shifting nonsense but even what he says that is true comes across as nonsense because of the messenger. When Obama tells us we need an intel apparatus to defend our country from real enemies, we can probably all agree with the President. The problem is that we know the President does not really believe it and with his deliberate gutting of our military and economic strength, there is increasingly less we can do about those enemies, anyhow. It's the difference between a threat by Clint Eastwood and one by Don Knotts. The words might be the same, but the message is quite different.
Enough said for now. Off to take my Ibuprofen and rage against old age.
On to matters more glum than getting old. Yes, yes, I did make a quasi resolution to fight pessimistic tendencies for the new year, but I give up. Going around with a moronic smile on my face makes me look like I am going around with a moronic smile on my face: I am not convincing anybody, least of all, me. Just about seventeen days into this new year of 2014, and things are bad, real bad, and not getting better. Can't pretend otherwise, or wish it away into the cornfield.
Before I get to the gist of today's message, let me reflect on the past. Back when I was a useful citizen and had a job, I got a good close up look into how foreign governments actually view the USA and its President. My best time in the foreign service was under Reagan and the Bush father and son presidencies. The worst time was under Obama, followed by Carter, and further back, Clinton. I particularly liked George W. Bush. I had a lot of respect for him as a leader, and as somebody who actually cared about his country, and the people in the field. Some foreign leaders liked Bush, some did not. Some agreed with his policies, some did not. None, however, dismissed him, laughed at him, or failed to take seriously any request or comment coming from him. This was a man not afraid to pull the trigger. That quality, unfortunately or not, is critical in foreign affairs. Working overseas, when I would go see a foreign official and say, "President Bush wants this," those were powerful words, backed up by the demonstrated power of the United States and the willingness of President Bush to use it. As I said, some people did not like Bush, did not like what he tried to do, but he was a serious president who needed to be taken into account.
Those were the Good Old Days. Who takes anything President Obama says seriously? The United States is increasingly irrelevant to major developments in the world. We fritter away our power and influence on nonsense, and on endless lecturing of others on residual issues such as global warming and gay rights. We undermine our network of alliances and disregard our friends' core interests: be it Israel's right to security; the abandonment of of our hard-fought victories in Iraq and Afghanistan; the sell-out of allies such as Mubarak; promoting the Muslim Brotherhood; sabotaging the UK on the Falklands; pushing for mindless regime change in Libya; the Benghazi fiasco; conducting a bizarre zig-zag policy towards Syria; helping make Russia a prominent player in the Middle East; paving the way for Cuba's return to the OAS; acquiescing to Iran's nuclear ambitions; ceding ground to China; and selling guns to Mexican drug cartels. Those are a few examples; I am sure you can come up with more.
We see members of allied governments openly expressing dismay with Obama. Prominent military historian, and senior advisor to the British Ministry of Defense, Sir Hew Strachan, tells the press that Obama is "incompetent." As reported in The Daily Beast,
President Obama is “chronically incapable” of military strategy and falls far short of his predecessor George W. Bush, according to one of Britain’s most senior military advisors. Sir Hew Strachan, an advisor to the Chief of the Defense Staff, told The Daily Beast that the United States and Britain were guilty of total strategic failure in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Obama’s attempts to intervene on behalf of the Syrian rebels “has left them in a far worse position than they were before.”
The extraordinary critique by a leading advisor to the United States’ closest military ally comes days after Obama was undermined by the former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who questioned the President’s foreign policy decisions and claimed he was deeply suspicious of the military.
Strachan, a current member of the Chief of the Defense Staff’s Strategic Advisory Panel, cited the “crazy” handling of the Syrian crisis as the most egregious example of a fundamental collapse in military planning that began in the aftermath of 9/11. “If anything it’s gone backwards instead of forwards, Obama seems to be almost chronically incapable of doing this. Bush may have had totally fanciful political objectives in terms of trying to fight a global War on Terror, which was inherently astrategic, but at least he had a clear sense of what he wanted to do in the world. Obama has no sense of what he wants to do in the world,” he said.We have Israeli Defense Minister Yaalon saying about John Kerry's obsession with the Palestinians,
"Secretary of State John Kerry – who has come to us determined and is acting out of an incomprehensible obsession and a messianic feeling – cannot teach me a single thing about the conflict with the Palestinians," Mr. Yaalon was quoted as saying in the country's largest daily, Yedioth Ahronoth. The paper said theLikud member's comments were made in private. He was also reported to have said that "the only thing that can save us is if Kerry wins the Nobel prize and leaves us alone."That is stunning language for a senior Israeli official to use about the American Secretary of State. It shows you how relations between the two countries have suffered during the Obama misadministration. North Africa is imploding; the Saudis are furious over the sell-out to Iran; the Iranians are gloating about their victory over the USA and the West; nobody knows what is happening in Syria; Al Qaeda has taken Falluja; Iraq is slipping into sectarian war; and the Taliban feels confident of victory. And our ahistorical Secretary of State? Well, he's obsessed with the phony Palestinian issue. As I wrote before,
The whole Palestinian homeland bit is a massive scam. Palestinians are Arabs just like the folks in Jordan and Egypt--Arafat was born in Cairo. When the Arab states invaded the nascent state of Israel in 1948, they did not do so for a Palestinian homeland. They just wanted to kill Jews, drive them into the ocean, and eliminate Western influence from the region. Egypt, Jordan, and Syria intended to take the tiny parcel of land allocated to the Jews by the UN and keep it. No Palestinian homeland, no "two state solution," just another "final solution" which would have seen tens-of-thousands of Jews killed, including those born in "Palestine," yes, Jews were also "Palestinians." That's all. Period.
After the Arab states got their clocks cleaned, we began to hear the baying about a Palestine homeland which just so happened to coincide exactly with the boundaries of Israel. Amazing how that happens! Wherever Jews lived, THAT formed part of the Palestinian homeland. Jordan, of course, had the West Bank from 1948 to 1967; at no time was that then considered part of this definition of the "Palestinian" homeland. It was part of Jordan. There were no international cries to free that portion of Palestine from Jordanian occupation. The West Bank became part of the "homeland" only when Israel took it from Jordan in the Six Day War.
We also saw the amazing phenomenon of Palestinian refugees. Arabs displaced by fighting started by Arabs were dumped by Arabs on the tender mercies of the UN. The Arab countries wanted nothing to do with them. The UN being all about programs, of course, created the monstrosities known as Palestinian refugee camps, and established a massive money-sucking bureaucracy to administer them and beg for ever greater amounts of money--most of it from Western countries, including the USA.And it goes on. I have just ordered the Gates book, so I won't comment on it until I have read it except to say that from excerpts in the press, our former Secretary of Defense does not apparently hold the Obama misadministration in high regard when it comes to foreign policy and national security issues.
As I write this, President Obama is on TV (when is he not?) trying to put out the NSA fire. Much of what he says is blame shifting nonsense but even what he says that is true comes across as nonsense because of the messenger. When Obama tells us we need an intel apparatus to defend our country from real enemies, we can probably all agree with the President. The problem is that we know the President does not really believe it and with his deliberate gutting of our military and economic strength, there is increasingly less we can do about those enemies, anyhow. It's the difference between a threat by Clint Eastwood and one by Don Knotts. The words might be the same, but the message is quite different.
Enough said for now. Off to take my Ibuprofen and rage against old age.
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