Take the broom to the gloom!

Events in the country, and everywhere in the world, have cast a pall of gloom
over what is meant to be a season of love, hope and good will to all. The media in
all forms has fed us a steady stream of violence and despair, all of it real. This blog has also been, with only a few exceptions, a catalogue of ills, which I regret,
but wouldn't change. So in keeping with the season let me remind myself and my
loyal readers of some positives to celebrate.

In the face of an unprecedented worldwide recession America survives, and a compassionate people and government have mobilized to pull ourselves from the brink.
A raucous and angry debate over health care reform indicates that there is still
dynamism in our democracy. Community and individual acts of charity have rescued
many from extreme hardship. We are a nation which gives of our treasure to
people in many less fortunate lands, despite our own national needs.

When frightened or bitter zealots produce hate tracts or commit acts of violence
or vandalism against people with whom they disagree, or look for someone or group
to blame for their condition, voices of reason and amity arise to give the lie,
and to urge harmony in place of rancor. There is a foundation of mutual altruism
which undergirds our national diversity. Thankfully the bad times haven't eroded that.

But the most hopeful sign is many of us realize the danger bad times pose for our
democratic system, and have avoided extreme measures which would threaten it.
America, the land of immigrants, the melting pot of humanity, the once light unto
the nations, still holds its light up to the world. We are a work in progress,
but our eyes are on the stars. We shall overcome, and thrive once again.
,

VIETNAMISTAN

Our war in Afghanistan is not only unwinnable, but there is no definition for
Victory that would be realistic. Afghanistan is not a country. It is a space
inhabited by scattered primitive tribes whose only 21st century skill is producing heroin. We have imposed as a central authority a RICO criminal enterprise under
Karzai. To change the tribal structure would take decades. There is no infrastructure that defines nationhood. The overwhelming majority of inhabitants are illiterate. A national identity is beyond their capacity to accept or understand.

We are perceived as one more in a long line of alien invaders. As long as we continue to pour in money for development, which developes only the foreign bank accounts of the Karzai mafia, the tribes will tolerate us. They will not assist us against the Taliban, who live among them.
They know from experience that we will eventually
become exhausted with the thankless tasks we have undertaken. When we finally leave
they know the Taliban will exact revenge against anyone who cooperated with us.

Pres. Obama's compromise tactics may calm some of the right wing zealots but only
delay the ultimate denouement of the problem. During that interval more precious
lives will be lost, more treasure will be squandered, and the deteriorating
economy at home will be further weakened. It took the educated colonists
200 years to build our nation, against only natures obstacles. How long would it
take us to build a nation in Afghanistan? Get the hell out of there now.

Senators, Have you no Shame?

That now famous question electrified the Senate when it was flung at Sen. Jos. McCarthy during the hearings on his censure, and possible expulsion. The "prosecutor", appalled and fed up with McCarthy's continual
falsehoods and bluster, used it to finally make clear to the assembled senators
the reasons for the hearing, and the dangers to our liberty that
McCarthy's tactics posed.

The Republican National Committee is planning to impose a "loyalty oath" to
the most hard conservative party line for any candidate who seeks their
support. Their tactics in the Health Care reform debate depend on false
and misleading accusations about the administration's intent and what the
consequences of the bill will be. They have reincarnated McCarthy!
The hearings have become a comic opera with the libretto composed by the
insurance industry. If reform fails the insurance industry will have a pipeline
to siphon even more money from the pockets of government, businesses, and private
citizens. Having sold their souls for a pocket of gold, I ask "Senators, have you no shame?"

The Futility of Power

Dear reader, come with me on a journey to the past which holds a moral for our journey to the future.

The great ship Titanic was sinking. On deck a doomed string quartet was serenading
the passengers who had been unable to get into the lifeboats, and who were also doomed.
All the ship musicians had vied for the privilege of playing in that final quartet.
They imagined something noble in that symbolic gesture. But their playing could have no effect on the events to come, and history bestowed no fame upon them.

Now let us visit the congress of the United States. The members are engaged in vicious partisan competition with the end that their party will control congress after the 2010 elections. That control will be purely symbolic, because congress will
be in the grip of events beyond their power to affect. The difficulties they will face---two winless off budget wars, an economy in shambles with unemployment hovering around 10%, our military in tatters, and our standing in the world severely diminished. It will be the responsibility of the controlling party
to deal with these intractable problems, and after a brief interval they will be blamed for the failures which they inherited. So it has been with Obama, and so it will be with the Republicans if congress returns to their control.

The solutions to our difficulties will be very painful, will impact
disproportionately on various sectors of our society,
and will reign in the power of the vested interests that now control congress.
Resistance to change will be so fierce that only a unified,
non-partisan approach by both parties will succeed in reversing our decline.

If each party continues to fiddle to its own music they also will founder with the
rest of the nation. The trend of world events is not in our favor. Our politicians
must at last see where the broader interests of the nation lie, and get at them.
If not now, when?

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

At last we have a health insurance bill up for consideration. The proposed bill
does much more than tinker around the edges of the health insurance problem. It
addresses the uninsureds, the arbitrary limitations on who is covered, for what and at what cost. It may even result in reigning in the runaway costs of health care.
All that is good. It could be better by addressing the pay for procedure system but hey, we can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Sad to say the conservatives among the Dems, and the Repubs will do all in their power to defeat any reform. That is as their paymasters require. They maintain that
it is better to stick with the failed system, which rewards and subsidizes the for- profit insurance industry, because we know what its defects are and wont be surprised
if it doesn't work. That the present system will destroy our economy in less than a decade is for future congresses to deal with. As for the public interest, sorry, wrong number. That is the bad.

The ugly, is the vicious campaign of lies, distortions and threats which the
insurance industry, supported by the right wing thugs, has foisted on the public.
They are selling poison disguised as public welfare announcements, and large numbers
of the public are buying. If they succeed in defeating reform it will be a huge
step in the decline of our quality of life. We have more than enough of those
already.

The Banalization of Horror

Wars up to the present have been horrors, but at least they contained within themselves certain restraints. Combatants know they can be hurt, maimed and killed. Non combatants know they can suffer the same injuries, plus destruction of their homes, livelihoods, displacement, starvation and refugee status. Combat is a very
personal experience, often involving face to face confrontation or observation of the effects of aerial and artillery bombardment. Survivors of war have deep motivations to avoid repeating the experience for themselves or their fellows.

The advances of science are gradually converting war into an electronic contest in which attacks will be conducted from afar, managed by computers controlling robots
at the command of operators who have not even the remotest physical contact with the resulting deaths and injuries, and are at no risk to themselves. It is becoming a
computer game, but with real, not virtual victims.

Roger Cohen, in an opinion column in the Nov. 12 issue of the New York Times entitled
"Of Fruit Flies and Drones" gives a vivid analysis of this scenario. He explains how science, using information about how Fruit Flies orient themselves in their space, have developed drone planes which, directed from afar can inflict death and injury on
an enemy in some remote location, with the operator who pressed the button then going home to dinner as if after a round of golf. The director of the operation is
godlike, sending a thunderbolt from the sky to extinguish a life, as easily as turning off a lamp switch.

At that point in the descent of man, war will become a banal pursuit, with the
most highly developed scientific society determining the fate of mankind. Perhaps the
extinction of our species will come about in that fashion, instead of by ecological
destruction?

The Demise of Reason

That is what we are witnessing in Washington at this moment.

A widely held definition of a Democracy is a system of government and control whose purpose is to assure the greatest good for the greatest number with the fewest
blatant inequities. Government will not choose winners and losers: it will make available to everyone the opportunity and tools to make themselves a winner.

Over time the winners buy/or gain control of the apparatus of government and exploit it for selfish interest. To prevent this perversion of purpose, regulations must be emplaced to control predatory or dishonest practices. Without due diligence even
regulations can be diluted or evaded, as occurred in our current breakdown in the
financial system and resulting recession-depression. Even in our present state
some winners, including those who caused the problem, still profit. Their control of media even makes the people most injured by the collapse of the economy into supporters who then oppose any real reform for their benefit.

In recent days measures to control risky investment practices such as derivitives,
sub-prime mortgages, etc have been, with Democratic connivance, weakened to impotency. Banks have used bail out public funds to acquire other financial institutions instead of issuing business credit essential for recovery. The obscene
compensation for the malefactors have even increased. All that without any sanction
by the agencies responsible for protecting the public interest.

The health care "reform" process is a massive offense against the public. Private,
for-profit health care insurers are middlemen. They provide no health care, fund no
research, serve no public purpose. They collect premiums, skim off a large share, and
pay claims. In order to protect their share they limit who will be insured, what
treatment can be covered and how much they will pay for that, and even who lives or dies by their fiat. No other developed country permits such a wasteful, anti public
system to exist. Most of them are not Socialist governments, just reasonable.