And that's the way it is . . .

The editor said if it bleeds,

it leads . . .

talkin’ bout them newsworthy stories

when journalists  were in their glory,

back in the day

before this present cranked-up fray.

Oh, but

that newsworthy rule was back in the former times,

when readers paid in nickels and dimes;

reporters had a pencil tucked o’er their ear,

and readers held our heritage dear.

Nowadays, if it provokes,

it’ll stoke

the facebook fire

and whip up tweeter ire,

as our frantically repulsing extremities

drum up crank polarities.

I hate to break it to ya

but here’s our newsworthy brouhaha:

The user who insults

gets results.

Read ‘em and weep

I said;

watch a talking video creep

instead.

Now fake news and hyped-up spin

constitute our gravest social media sin.

Meanwhile . . .

and I do mean mean,

Journalism gets lowered to the grave,

final resting place of the brave.

In this land of the free,

internet froth is mainly

what we see . . .

in this republic, if we can keep it,

'though as we sow

we'll surely reap it.

And that’s the way it is

in  21st-century democracy shobiz. . .

(as Cronkite might have said

if Uncle Walter were not dead.)

Glass half-Full

Barcelona v. Berlin in 1936

When it comes to European civilization, Greece is where the  legacy originated about 2500 years ago.

Among the many enduring contributions  by which the early Greeks set Europe into cultural motion, I find two, in particular, that have demonstrated incredible longevity:

Democracy, and Olympics.

Those early Greeks were incredibly active in their sporting competitions, and also in their zeal to launch the world’s most notable experiment in governance by “the people.”

Their idea of Democracy was later amended by the Romans as a form of governance known as Republic, which was perhaps a more practical working out of the egalitarian concept, because groups of citizens could, by vote, select representatives to do the actual decision-making.

Many centuries later, the notion of democracy ascended on a fresh new wind of modern life. Most notably in the 1700’s, certain forward-thinking individuals in America and central Europe used the ancient democratic ideal as a basis for updating and improving human governance. The working out of it has been, over the last two or three centuries, somewhat messy and unsure, but the idea of government by the people for the people is still widely considered to be the best and fairest framework for doing collectively whatever it is that we humans are trying to do to improve our situation here on earth.

A lot could be said here but I’ll just toss up an example of how the idea of democracy continues to capture Euro imagination. Here’s a photo I snapped a few days ago while walking through a public square in Barcelona.

As we can see here, democracy seems to be a readily attractive notion, worthy of public mention. However, the prospect of promoting democracy has not always been easy here in Espanya. Spain has had a rough history in which Democracy and Authoritarian governments have bloodily contested each other.

Following their rejection of a King in 1931, the Spanish people fought a civil war, 1936-39; it began in a political competition between zealous advocates of these two opposing models of governance.

But during those tumultuous years, the people of Spain were not the only nation who were grappling with such controversies. A few European borders away, the people of Germany were in a similar contest.

After the Germans suffered the defeat of World War I, they had a massive reconstruction project going on, as they were striving to re-assemble not only their physical nation and its infrastructure, but also their way of governing themselves.

During the 1920’s and ’30’s, both the Germans and the Spanish  wrestled with themselves to establish a democratic Republic. Both attempts ended in failure.

When the Nazis took over Germany in 1933, they ditched the Weimar Republic and degenerated into Third Reich bellicosity. Also in the 1930’s, the people of Spain ousted their King and declared a new Republic. But in 1936, the Franco-led Falangists attacked their own people. By 1939, they had driven the Republicans out of office.

Meanwhile, back at the crunch, there was an athletic contention going on between these two violence-torn countries--Germany and Spain. This  competition gets back to the other great contribution that I mentioned earlier from ancient Greece:

the Olympics.

At the meeting of the International Olympic Committee in 1931, Spain had proposed that the 1936 Olympics take place in Barcelona. But, by a process of democratic voting among the member nations, the IOC awarded the hosting to Berlin.

That was an ill-fated turn of events. Germany was at that time being taken over by the Nazi Third Reich. Hitler and his Nazi thugs were striving to use the Olympics as a showcase of their supposed bullshit Aryan supremacy.

Down in Republican Spain, the leftist government caught wind of what the Nazis were up to. They smelled a rat in Europe. So they launched an attempt to conduct an alternate Olympics, which they thought would express more appropriately the sporting competition of  classic  events.

But the so-called Olimpiada Popular in Barcelona never happened. As it turned out, the Spanish people were having a war among themselves in 1936 instead of inviting the world in for some friendly sports.

Later, during and after the Second World War,  the civilized world  awakened to the disastrous truth of what Nazi Germany had been doing behind the scenes while they had been hosting their facade of pseudo-Olympic propaganda back in '36.

Spanish Catalunya Barcelona did, however, ultimately have its day in the Olympic sun. That came 56 years later, in 1992.

A few days ago, here and now 2018, we visited that Olympic site in Barcelona where the competitive events were conducted in '92;  quite an impressive sight it still is:

My hope is that both ancient institutions—Democracy and Olympics will survive and thrive in this century we live in now—the 21st.

 Smoke

Derelictic Dialectics

While surfing the web today in the usual way

I stumbled upon a dispute in some political fray;

seems it was a matter of some current politics,

rendered hot and bothered by fringish  dialectics.

 

The dispute’s gravity has been magnified beyond repair

due to polarizing factions that foment both fair and unfair.

Populists spurt rants irresponsibly in fact-check neglect;

indignant apparatchiks would impose politically correct.

 

Who’s to say what’s a fact and what is not

in the midst of this politico-cultural polyglot?

Fact-checking technocrats want censoring rules

assuming the populist rabble to be unschooled fools.

 

If I had to choose between political correctness

and uninformed opinion  that’s incorrect  and reckless,

I’d opt for the unrestrained, the free and eclectic

instead of the censured, the tamed and restrained derelictic.

 

Some say democracy will end in chaos and confusion

with too many fringies spurting fake news and delusion,

but really, the slide toward our enslavement will commence

with self-appointed fake-checkers who in fact are quite dense.

 

Because freedom to think, to speak and to act, is the stuff of liberty,

more essential than cubicles of fact-checking drones who decree

that this or that fact is not fact but in fact it is fake

and thereby impose conformity that the people can’t take.

 

While surfing the web today in the usual way,

oh, let me stumble into some free folk at play,

where the ass and the elephant freely roam

to make fools of themselves ’til the cows come home.

 

King of Soul

The Rights of Humankind

Twelve score and one year ago Thomas Jefferson submitted an innovative set of political principles to a congress of delegates from thirteen American colonies. The gathered assembly, known as Continental Congress, debated the contents and the merits of Jefferson's proposal. The document began with these words:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness--that to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. . .

The world has changed a lot since those words were adopted as the philosophical basis of a new experiment in civil government. Here are just a few of the ways our world has changed since those revolutionary days:

~ Our fledgling national legislature, known at that time as the "Continental" Congress, is now called the Congress of the United States.

~ We Americans now associate the world "Continental" with Europe.

~ On the "Continent" of Europe, citizen-groups are now struggling to form a workable political basis for a European Union.

~~ Whereas, In the year 1776, when our American Continental Congress adopted a plan for a United States of America, we had a nominal consensus for the basis of our Union; and That consensus was based, rhetorically, upon "certain unalienable Rights, . . . Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness; which Rights that had been "endowed" by a "Creator,"

~~ In the year 2000, the European Parliament adopted a Charter of Fundamental Rights of European Union, by which the peoples of Europe are resolved to share a peaceful future based on common values. . . indivisible, universal values of human dignity, freedom, equality and solidarity. . . based on the principles of democracy and the rule of law.

We see, therefore, that the American Union was initiated during an historical period in which faith in a Creator God was still, at least rhetorically, allowed to be a basis for political consensus.

The European Union, however, is coalescing in a post-modern, humanistic age in which their unity can only be expressed in terms of human agreements and motivations, stated above as common values.

As we Americans ultimately divided ourselves into two primary political identities, Democrats and Republicans, with one side being generally associated with progressivism programs while the other is based in conservatism,

We notice that in Europe, in what is now a churning crucible of 21st-century economic constraints, the divisions seem to be congealing toward two uniquely Euro polarities. On the Right side, we find the Austerians, whose values are based on fiscal responsibility and the austerity that is thought to be necessary for maintaining economic and political stability. On the Left side, we find the Socialists, whose values are based on equality that is assured and managed by the State, which should produce solidarity among the people.

As Thomas Jefferson had proposed a declaration based ostensibly on the zeitgeist of the so-called Age of Enlightenment, so has a spokesman stepped forth, in our age, to propose for the Europeans a document that aspires to manifest the zeitgeist of this (perhaps) Age of Equality.

Toward that end, Mr. Yanis Varoufakis, former Finance Minister of the Greek Syriza party, has proposed a five-point plan by which the Europeans would collectively assure the rights of persons as they are understood in this, the 21st-century.

https://www.socialeurope.eu/2017/01/new-deal-save-europe/

Stated simplistically, those rights are:

~ a collective investment in green/sustainable technology

~ an employment guarantee for every citizen

~ an anti-poverty fund

~ a universal basic dividend (income)

~ an immediate anti-eviction protection.


So we see, now, that in the 200+ years since the inception of American Democratic-Republicanism, the zeitgeist that was then seen as inevitable has changed. In the so-called Age of Enlightenment (c.1776) we were demanding a Government that would Protect our Unalienable Rights, defined broadly as Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of happiness.

The modern zeitgeist, however, as it appears to be evolving in the Europe of Our Age, is demanding: a Government to Protect our Basic Life Necessities.

Instead of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, citizens of the World now appear to be demanding Life, Security, and the Pursuit of Equality.

And that's the way it is, 2017. We shall see how this develops as the 21st-century unfolds.

Smoke

Is that over the Top?

So did you hear the one about the Over the Top President?

No. Don't think so.

Guy walks into a starbucks . . .

and he says to the barista, "Why do they call the the Donald the 'over the top' Prez?"

So the barista says, Ya got me. Why do they call him that?

Cuz he's over the top of everything! Haha! You get it?

Uh, I'm not sure. . .

All the so-called chaos that's going on--he's right on top of it! You get it?

Uh. . . you mean he's in charge of it?

Yeah, not to worry, he's got it under control! It's just gonna take a while for media people to come around to his take-charge leadership style-- he's actually got it all under his thumb. My cousin Molly says he's just got a higher tolerance for chaos than most people do, and he feels that it's, on some level, productive.

Well, that's comforting.

Yeah! oh yeah. And my other cousin, Gregor, says the Prez may be living in his own world, but millions are right there with him, living right beside him.

Maybe so, Greg, but . . . he seems a little paranoid, like he takes everything personal, even belligerent at times. . . you think he's stable?

Oh yeah. As a matter of fact, I think he owns a bunch of 'em. I think he's got some high-quality stables somewhere out there in the hinterlands. . .

Like in flyover country?

Yeah, like I said, he's over the top.

Well that's good to know.

Oh yeah, and he's got some good people, right on top of the situation, like a good hound on point. You can relax and feel better about it. So you feel better about him now?

I guess so, as long as all the so-called judges and the so-called reporters and all the other so-called Americans can get used to the way he does things.

Oh yeah. The Prez has got it covered. You can take that to the bank. I mean . . . look around, the stock market agrees, it's all good, not to worry.

Oh yeah? Sounds like a bunch of bull to me.

No way. Relax. The Prez has got it covered.

Really? Got it covered?

Oh yeah, not to worry. Eventually he'll get all the leaks stopped; he'll get 'em covered, and his people will be running our .gov along like a fine-tuned machine.

I thought machine politics went out with the Democrats.

It did. Well, yeah, their machine went out because we won the election. You realize, of course, we won the election? You did get the news, right? in spite of all the fake news. . .

Fuhgedabowdit.

. . . and the machine will be fine-tuned, like a fine-tuned machine is what he said. Why can't the Dhemmis and the Media get that through their heads? They need to get with the program.

Excuse me, I just think we are in a struggle for the soul of our democracy here. At least, that's what my cousin Elijah said.

No way, Hosay! Oh, here's my Uncle Tom here. What do you think, Tom? Is that over top?

I don't know. Let's ask Steve. Steve, is that over the top?

Oh, no. It's not over the top at all . . . when you consider his behavior at the press conference, and . . . all the things that are not working, the things that are signs that the administration has not even found its footing yet in Washington. People should be very very concerned about what's coming next and whether the administration will ever be able to actually govern, which we haven't seen it do yet. I don't think there's anything that's over the top in terms of what the response would be to this kind of signaling from the chief executive of the United States . . .it's all really mind-boggling. . . none of us I think has ever seen anything like this . . .

Hey, hey, hey, Steve, relax, man! Take a chill pill. Like candy, man. The candy man can. This ain't no ratpack; this ain't no disco, ain't no jive He's right on top of it. Not to worry, man. You need to lighten up, man. What you need is a little humor to leaven this heavy-duty trip that the so-called Press is trying to put on you. Let me help you, man. Did you hear the one about the Over the Top Prez?

Uh, no. Don't think so.

Guy walks into a starbucks and he says to the barista . . .

Glass half-Full

Reminds me of the kids' whisper game

Honestly, I think we can do better this this, but maybe not.

The horserace groupthink has taken control of our TV people this year. It happens every election year, but this year worse than ever.

A perfectly deplorable example of how tribal infighting trivia has taken over vid-journalism has been dissected by Michael Brown, writer for Townhall.com.

I'll not explain the whole ridiculous chain of events; his exposition is quite sufficient:

http://townhall.com/columnists/michaelbrown/2016/02/05/draft-n2115304

Now what I'm thinking is this: It would seem appropriate that the voting citizens of our nation would be considering, in this election year:

~ why our .gov owes so much more money than it can repay to its creditors,

~ and what can be done about it,

~ how we can minimize pollution without being ruled by climate-banging control freaks,

~ how we can reconstruct a manufacturing sector that is relevant to 21-century needs and economics,

~ how our great, unprecedented military capability and its supportive infrastructure cannot be put to good use in making the world a better place for our people and for the nations,

~ how to help men and women stay married so they can raise their children together,

~ why we cannot effectively educate all our children and prepare them for life-well-lived in the 21-century

~ how to judiciously keep the golden door of opportunity open to the homeless huddled masses of this strife-torn world

~ how to get people fed and housed without castrating nor sterilizing their personal independence and initiative,

~ how to encourage, by our policies, personal and collective responsibility instead of systemic dependency,

~ how to make peace, and encourage constructive cooperation, between cops and citizens in our cities,

~ how to enrich, through our common efforts, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all our people who care to make an effort to improve themselves and their children and neighbors,

~ how to select a President and Vice President without all this fluff and bullshit.

So it would seem appropriate that we would build and patronize a communication system that would enable us to talk about these problems in the context of national politics, instead of:

why one candidate tried to take a few days off from the rat race and how it has no effect on what's happening in Iowa or New Hampshire or Peoria or Pennsylvania or even Pennsylvania Ave.

Maybe some of you hyped-up vid-journalists need a break. Take some time off, go home, like Ben did. If you need someone to replace you in the interim, give me a call. I'm currently unemployed, and gladly will I take your mic and your twitter feed and show you it could be done better. Besides, I've never been to New Hampshire.

King of Soul

Vietnam in US

We were there for a long long time.

Our military presence there was a sign:

America would uphold capitalist resistance

against Viet Cong communist insistence.

In the end it didn't work out that way:

The North moved onto the the South to stay.

Sound familiar?

After years of war hemophilia.

We started with an idea to protect the world

against communist incursion that swirled

throughout Asia and Europe and South America,

so dominoes wouldn't fall on US in America.



Kennedy had good intentions,

as Cold War assumed gargantuan dimensions.

He sent in the advisors and trainers,

as if the whole project were a strategic no-brainer.



Johnson stepped up the escalation,

had his guys doing all the right calculations.

But when McNamara found doubts and resigned,

then Cronkite and New Hampshire consigned.

Old Lyndon's stress and strain were now showing.

He could see where this whole damn thing was going.

So Ho and his insurgents unearthed new determination

to turn Vietnam into a Communist nation.



Along came Nixon with all that American bluster,

and the waning resolve that a silent majority could muster.

Although Nixon was stubborn, he got paranoid and stumbled.

I guess he, and we, needed to be humbled.



There began, during that time of our national distress,

a cultural fissure we find it hard to redress:

there's them that went, and them that didn't go.

As one who didn't go, I want you to know--

you who fought in the shadow of the Ho Chi Minh trail--

you went and you fought; you did not fail.



In some lessons we stand, but in others we fall;

the truths you taught us were the hardest of all.

You were the brave; you who bore the burden, the few.

We couldn't have known what to do, but for you.

The battles that men make and the wars that we fight

are borne, in our own American way, in the desire to do right.

Looking back on it, I think it's plain to see:

all we were wanting was to make the world free.



That old war began with us in Vietnam,

but it ended with Vietnam in us,

a haunting memory that'll never go away: jungle patrols long gone,

body counts and trumpets that end in a hush.



If you visit the Vietnam War Memorial today,

you'll see Washington's Memorial beyond the long wall, granite gray.

At the end of the other angled plane, set your sights on Lincoln's dedication:

to honor those who bled and died for our upstart nation.

Remember those brave slain at Gettysburg, Verdun, the Bulge, Korea, Saigon,

who lifted freedom's defense at Iwo Jima, Ia Drang, Hue and Khe Sanh.



Yes, now it's time, our old grievance to acknowledge:

some served in hell while others were in college.

But hey, let us now endeavor,

because we hope our noblest intentions can live forever.

Let us give honor to those brave souls who, in firefights across the ocean,

paid the dear price of our liberty with their last full measure of devotion,

whether they be now dead,

or with post-traumatic stress instead,

still alive.

That aint no jive.

Strive.

Don't ever give up.

Now wha'sup?



Glass half-Full

The Grand Bargain Inquisitor

Let us stop then, you and I,

this great experiment in democra--(sigh!);

let us arrest it and possess it;

let us attest it and caress it,

as if it were a thing for the history books to dwell on

as if it were a commodity for us salesmen to sell on:

you give me this; I'll grant you that;

she be lean and he be fat.

I shall I will I won't I shan't.

I used to could, but now I can't.

Let us spend it and suspend it, you and me.

"But I have no money," said the tree.

So let us appropriate it from thin air;

let us print it without care!



"For they have cut me, don't you see?"

said the the money tree to the bee

they have gut me; they have shut me.

they have bled me; now they will shed me

they've hacked me up one side, down the other

they've raked me o'er the coals, made me smother

they put me up wet and hung me out to dry.

So let us go then, you and I.



I am a museum piece now, dontcha know

as the hurlyburly burkas come and go

and twurky bitches put on utube show.



"Oh let us not take this to extremes

let us not let the end then justify the means!"

Let us stop then, you and I

this great experiment in democra--(sigh!)

said the grand bargain inquisitor guy

said the squirmy worm to the flitty fly

"Let us go then, you and I."



Glass Chimera

I am the 50%

Our hard times polarize us, but I am the 50%.
Pat and I deplaned this afternoon at Sea-Tac airport, caught the rail to downtown Seattle. We ascended the stairs from Westlake Station up to street level, and walked, as chance would have it, into Occupy Seattle. Imagine that. I saw a crowd of people there and heard some speeches.

America used to be a young democratic republic, starting 235 years ago when those upstart colonials convened in Philadelphia and cut the tether that George III had used to keep us bound in unrepresented taxation.
But now we are aging, becoming every day more and more like our European forebears, taking upon ourselves those classic ideological divisions of left and right. With hard times upon us, its not really about democrats and republicans any more. Its about socialists and libertarians, and everything in between. Just let me say: I am the 50%(ile).

Being a baby boomer, happenstancing today upon the Occupy crowd at Seattle, I caught a whiff of, and recognized, the old 60s counterculture zeitgeist. I remember it from back in college days, but of course it is different now. The spirit of anti-war anti-establishment discontent is the same, but the issues are different; the costumes are different. Whereas we were flower children back in the day, all about peace and love, these days the mood is edgy and punky, and definitely socialist. A little more threatening, or maybe thats because I'm older, and more comfortable, and Christian.

The first speaker was actually a rather pleasant surprise. A young fellow named Michael started out his message speaking of Moses and delivering his people from slavery in Egypt. I can relate. I do not want want to diminish the passionately eloquent appeal about very real economic issues that he made to the hundreds of mostly young occupiers gathered there. He was encouraging the people to get involved with the movement.

But what this old guy (me) appreciated at the end of Michael's speech was his exhortation to keep it peaceful. I appreciated that, although Michael said much more about what's happening now than just work in the system and be non-violent.

Not all the speakers were as peacefully oriented.

I am, btw, a person whose worldview is defined by the original non-violent resister, Jesus. Athough Y'shu haMeshciach was much more than that, since he was also the redeemer of all mankind, or the redeemer of, all those mankind who are inclined to receive his redemptive, resurrected grace.

Anyway, once the Occupy rally got cranked up, and they got the microphone going, I'm just old-fashioned enough to appreciate speakers who can be heard and have something to say, which is better than the un-amplified call and response drill that I had earlier seen on the news of Occupy Wherever a few days ago.
Bottom line about the speakers: We are definitely dealing with a brave new paradigm here, of socialism vs. conservatism in America. And so I say it again: I am the (of) the 50th percentile. I'll walk the middle road as long as I can, even though after every speaker a young very attractive Latina got on the mic, and she would lead, exuberatly, the crowd, in chants about the gathered ones being the "99%.

In spite of the anti-establishment mood, one young man encouraged the gathered protesters to work toward passage of a new Glass-Steagall Act in Congress. I was impressed with the constructivity of that. I think the basic message there is let the bankers and the wall street crowd eat their own losses, instead of hitting up the taxpayers for the bill, based on the "too big to fail" bluster. Yeah, right. I never did appreciate that midnight deal that Hank Paulsen talked the Congress into bailing out the banks back in '08. I would think even some Tea Partiers out there would find common ground on that.
In a way, I guess that's what got this whole thing going, that bank bailout in '08. Its what the Republicans call crony capitalism, as opposed to true capitalism, which is what mom and pop used to do on main street, not wall street, back in the day, before Disney co-opted Main Street as a theme park in Orlando and Anaheim.

Next, and olf guy, Joe, older than me, went up to the mic and spoke of his dad and mom raising him in the socialist movement in New York City back in the 30s. This fellow had later gone on to a career in the movies. He worked with Ronald Reagan in the movies, in the movie Hellcats of the Navy. He spoke glowingly of Reagan , and how friendly and charismatic Reagan was (surprise! at Occupy Seattle) but said that Reagan had changed and gone over to the other side, to follow "the money" instead of his heart.
Joe also spoke about F.D. Roosevelt--who has taken on a kind of sainthood in this retro-new-deal environment in which we are now finding ourselves. According to Joe, Franklin sent his wife Eleanor out to scope out the country, shortly after he was elected. She went all over the country and talked to a lot of folks, came back and, according to Joe, reported to her husband FDR that the communists would be taking on a bunch of support among workers during those hard times if something wasn't done to relieve the desperation and unemployment and poverty that was so rampant during that time, the "Great" Depression. And that's where the New Deal came from.

Sounds familiar doesn't it. Our present President is in the same predicament, and that's why this whole Occupy thing is going down now.
And I'm thinking of John Lennon, the working class hero who's dead, but really it reminds me of Ringo, in his post-Beatle role. He did a commercial in which he told some young lady "this is not your father's Oldsmobile."
This is not your father's politics either. This is something new and different. America, get ready. The times they are a polarizin'. And I'm just praying there's no Kent State thing that's gonna happen.
These Occupiers may the 99%, and the Republicans may be the 1%.
As for me and my house, we are the 50%ile, and proud of it. As we southerners used to say: Well, shut my mouth.

CR, with new novel, Smoke, in progress

Let them come to New York!

In 1944, as the combatants of World War II crept wearily toward their blood-bought peace, economist Friedrich A. Hayek wrote:

"Contemporary events differ from history in that we do not know the results they will produce. Looking back, we can assess the significance of past occurrences and trace the consequences thay have brought in their train. But while history runs its course, it is not history to us. It leads us into an unknown land..."

Three years earlier...

It had been the unprecedented wilderland of World War II that provoked, in 1941, Dr. Hayek to wrestle his incisive thoughts down onto some kind of intelligible mat. He began to jot some observations about that death struggle embroiling Europeans in ferociously destructive warfare at that time. What emerged from his typewriter three years later was an historical opus which he named The Road to Serfdom.

But back in '41 on this side of the Atlantic, you (or your grandparents) may remember...

After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, we Americans joined the Allies in their war to defeat Germany, Italy, and Japan. Together with the British, Russians, the resisting French, and a few other courageous nations, our brave soldiers collectively ran the Nazis into the European ground, and then chased the defeated Japanese back onto their island.

From 1945 onward after that terrible war, a widening political rift developed between us Americans and our former comrades-in-war, the Russians. We are a freedom-loving, constitutional democratic republic. The USSR was at that time a communist state. We wanted to make the world safe for democracy. They wanted to foment a worldwide revolution in order to overthrow what they considered to be our corrupt capitalist system, and replace it with a dictatorship of the proletariat, the working classes.

For several decades the defeated Germans were thereby divided into two countries, one on each side of this politico/philosophical struggle. The dispute was known euphemistically as the Cold War. West Germany was being rehabilitated according to our democratic traditions, beginning with our American leadership as provided through Presidents Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower. East Germany was being ruled by the communist Russians, led by Josef Stalin and then Nikita Kruschev. Those Germans in the western half of their country joined us western Allies as advocates of free democratic-republican government. Their countrymen in the east part of Germany were stuck with being occupied by the USSR communists.

The strange treaty arrangements that had followed negotiations after WWII divided not only the German nation, but also its capital, Berlin. This bizarre situation was further complicated by the fact that Berlin is located geographically in eastern Germany. Since the Allies insisted that the German capital not be yielded totally to the Russians, Berlin became a divided city of east/west, even though it was located in the midst of eastern Germany. West Berlin, or the western half of Berlin, became a (literally) isolated enclave city-state of western political freedom in the midst of communist East Germany. The freedom-seeking citizens of West Berlin were totally surround by communist, Russian-dominated East Germany.

But many Germans of the east were not content to stay on the totalitarian side. So many fled to West Germany, and many escaped to West Berlin. But the Russian overlords didn't like this, so they built a wall in 1961 to keep the imprisoned east Germans from getting over to the free side.
But then along came, also in 1961, John F. Kennedy. Formerly a naval officer in the Pacific part of WWII, he had since been elected our American President. He took the mantle from President ( and former Commander of the Allied troops) Eisenhower. Jack Kennedy had kept his eye on Germany; he had been in the Oval Office less than a year when he decided to visit the Germans and give them some much-needed encouragement.

Those wall-ensconced west Berliners extended an enthusiastically fond welcome to President Kenndy. Standing at the Brandenburg Gate, in the very shadow, as it were, of the odious Wall, he told the eager Berliners:

"There are many people in the world who really don't understand, or say they don't, what is the great issue between the free world and the Communist world. Let them come to Berlin. There are some who say that communism is the wave of the future... Lass' sie nach Berlin kommen. Let them come to Berlin. Freedom has many difficulties and democracy is not perfect, but we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in, to prevent them from leaving us."

A very good point, that, Mr. President.

He also told them:

"When all are free, then we can look forward to that day when this city will be joined as one and this country and this great continent of Europe in a peaceful and hopeful globe. When that day finally comes, as it will, the people of West Berlin can take sober satisfaction in the fact that they were in the front lines for almost two decades."

That day of liberation did come for the Germany people, and for all the citizens of Berlin. Twenty four years later in 1987, another American president, Ronald Reagan, stood in the same Brandenburg Gate location and spoke boldly to the Germans gathered there. He used the occasion to challenge the top-dog Russian wall-keeper:

"Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"

In 1989, the Russians did tear down the Berlin wall, and the divided Germans were united once again--this time not in a nazified third reich-- but in a democratic nation.

The great tide of freedom as expressed in democratic, constitutioanl government, and led by our American republic, achieved at that time, along with our freedom-generating allies, another landmark victory. The USSR gave up the abusive Stalinist ghost and decided to join the free world. I'm hoping the Chinese government will one day permit, or be required to enable, such political liberty.

However, as Friedrich Hayek had been trying to express back in the '40s, history and its struggles are never as clearcut as we would like to think.

The 9/11 attack on World Trade Center and its ensuing terrorism may be a harbinger of a new death-struggle between ancient worldviews on the global horizon. While its true that developed nations have conducted a century of economic debates and political wars--both hot and cold--over freedom vs.totalitarianism, now that old ideological kamph is synthesizing. Communism (and fascism, as two peas in a rotten statist pod, whether they admit it or not.) are reconciling with "democracy"as strange bedfollows into a dialectical tension of constitutionally-arbitrated political battles: socialists vs. libertarians, democrats vs. republicans.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, or back at the caliphate, the real death-struggle among humans has reverted to guess what?--religion!

Go to New York City and see the hole in the ground. It was not dug there by communist workers, nor was it blasted by fascist fanatics. That rapacious gap was inflicted as an airborn, calculated casualty careening waywardly on a fateful collision course--a path plotted between Islamic hegira and liberty-hugging westerners. Let the world come and see. Let them come to New York! Let them come and see the hole in the ground.

We've got a new brave-new-world morphing here. The once-new brave-new-world is devolving back into an old brave-new-world. Its a different kind of beast we're dealing with, much more vindictive than the animal spirits on Wall Street. And its zealous vehemence is much older than either communism or democracy. Now is the time for citizens in this land of the free and home of the brave to reach deeper into our spiritual heritage than politics or youtube will propel us.

Turn or burn.

Glass half-Full

Is this not exactly what the founders had in mind?

Uncle Sam got his hundred-year check-up. The doc's diagnosis was obesity.

Big brother Senate, being himself a little pudgy with too much of the good life, hadn't really noticed Uncle's steadily spreading overfed condition. But lean-and-mean little brother House had seen what was happening, and demanded that the old guy be taken in for the checkup.

Sure enough, the examination revealed a debilitating sclerosis and some alarming diabetic tendencies. The doc called for a low-fat diet and a high-exercise regimen.

It is a good thing that lean and mean little brother House was paying attention, and pressed the issue of old Uncle Sam's widening girth and indolent lfestyle. Is this not exactly what the founders had in mind when they prescribed one half of the Congress to arise directly from the districts of the people?

Thus does the restlessly critical little brother assure that big brother and their rich Uncle do not lapse into a fattened lethargy, and ultimate demise. The process is, yes, a little messy, a little scary, but that's a healthy democracy for you.

Glass half-Full

Birth of Democracy in Islamic lands?

We Americans are caretakers of a noble experiment that goes back 235 years. Since 1776, we have attempted to govern ourselves through consensual politics that is enabled and protected by a constitution. When it comes to democracy, we are perhaps grand old masters of the game; but when it comes to fledgling democratic impulses in a 21st-century world, we are the new kids on the block, trying to puzzle out what is going on while the rest of the world moves too quickly for us to assimilate.
During the fiery days of our revolutionary birth, the urges for freedom had been squeezed out of a painful crucible of Christian Reformation and Enlightened humanistic Rationalism.

But now we are witnessing, through media, nascent democratic movements in Muslim North Africa and the Persian Gulf. We must understand, however, that we see this amazing roll of events only through a myopic, self-deceiving lens of electronic images and theoretical biases.

We must not deceive ourselves into thinking we know anything about what is going on over there, although the consequences can be huge for us and for the world if things go wrong. There is a lot at stake, including, just go ahead and admit it, the frigging oil supply.

With or without full understanding, we as Americans must necessarily support the democratic movements that prove to be authentic, even if the resultant chaos is scary as hell.
In Egypt, for instance, the united front of idealistic, young reformers emanating from Tahrir is now fracturing into a collection of disparate groups. Which faction will emerge with the mantle of leadership?
It needs to be all of them, and none of them. What do you expect from a democracy?

Look at our own inception. We had the Patriots and the Tories, then the Federalists and the Democrats, the Whigs (whatever they were), then the Republicans and the Democrats, which we still have today. Who came out on top? Both of them, and neither of them, and that's the way it should be. What do you expect in a democracy?

In contemporary Egypt, they have--let's just say for the sake of rhetorical simplicity--two poles of political possibility. On one end are the "democrats." That's the broad, generic meaning of the word. They're the ones who got on Twitter and Facebook and made this whole thing happen. But they are young and disjointed, zealous but politcally inept, and certainly naive when it comes to dealing with the army, the police, and entrenched political structures. Charles Levinson offers, in the Wall Street Journal, an initial inventory of some leaders who may emerge there:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703561604576150604132131990.html

So, on one end of Egyptian political possibilities we have these liberators. On the other end are the Islamists, aka known most commonly in that particular country as the Muslim Brotherhood. They are well-established, well-organized, legalistic, and (to this American Christian) scary as hell.
But in a free society you can't have one without the other. You're always going to have the wild-eyed democrats on one end and the fanatical legalists on the other. I mean, look at Wisconsin.

Anyway, we Americans need to support the thrust of democratic reform in Egypt. And if we must take sides as events further unfold, I say it is necessary for the cause of freedom that we support fully the young secular whippersnappers with their tweets and facebooks.
http://blogs.aljazeera.net/middle-east/2011/02/15/live-blog-egypt
When the time comes for Egyptians to select between them and the Islamists, the young democratic-republicans need to have our full support, lest the "brotherhood" muscle their way into a new repression based on Khomeini-style religion instead of human (and I believe, Creator-endowed) rights.

There are of course many dark clouds on the horizon.

Daniel Greenfield opines on the Bahrain situation, which is very different from Egypt, for numerous reasons, the two major ones being 1.) puppeteering hegemony between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and 2.) the labor constituency in Bahrain being largely foreign ( ie Pakistani) imported labor, instead of native citizenry.

Mr. Greenfield also links to a report on a Tunisian mob gathering vindictively outside a synagogue in Tunis, which is quite alarming when you think about it from an historical standpoint, pogromically speaking. And Mr. Greenfield also mentions the emergence, back in Egypt, of one Qaradawi, whose high-profile leadership in the Muslim Brotherhood could indicate what direction that well-organized force will take in politics along the Nile.

The energetic impulse for political reform in the middle east is forged, like ours was, partly upon religion. But this time the religion is not a blooming protestant Christianity tempered with latent humanistic rationalism, but rather a fierce Islam that considers itself restricted by the historical dominance of Europe and USA.
The rolling revolutions in North Africa and the middle East--are they Islamist or democratic?
They are both. But for the sake of true political freedom, that's a chance we'll have to take.

Glass half-Full

The Camel of Tahrir

For a camel to stand
atop the great pyramid of Egypt
he would have to drag his knobby knees
across those windblown stacked-up stones
a thousand times, i guess.
He would have to heft his humpy back
along that blocky incline steep
so dry
and high
so as to maybe even see
across the blue mediterranee
to the birth of democracy
in ancient Gree--
c
stands for a camel
creeping up to the apex of history--
so unprecedented the dromedary
to be
beyond fear
in Tahrir.
For a camel to boldly do that
was just about as likely
as a million of Egyptian citizenry
gathering peacefully
to throw off tyranny
to make their nation free.
And yet that is what we,
the world, did see--'twas about as likely
as a camel through a needle eye
could be,
so high
so dry
in that land thirstee,
panting for liberty.
Yet its what the world did see
the eleventh of Februaree,
the day they toppled old Hosni.

Glass Chimera

The dynamics of revolution?

The cynical realist says: After what has happened in Iran since 1979, you cannot blame vigilant observers of history for harboring a skeptical wariness about popular revolutions.

The idealist says: On the other hand, there are some very real societal injustices and inequalities that legitimately demand periodic restructuring of governments, and this can be accomplished.

The debate that arises between these two perspectives, as pertaining to Egypt, is persuasively represented by two opposite perspectives:
~ Daniel Greenfield, aka Sultan Knish, http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2011/02/friday-afternoon-roundup-pulling-back.html
~ Max Ajl, in Truthout, http://www.truth-out.org/egyptian-protests-grounded-decades-struggle-portend-regional-transformation67425

A third voice in our analysis appears as the voice of experience:
~ Kasra Naji, on NPR, 2009 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111944123

To facilitate your thinking about this, I'll furnish two quotes from each above source:

Daniel Greenfield says:
~"The fundamental difference between the protests in Iran and those in Egypt, is that Iranians were protesting a stolen election, and in Egypt the protesters want to steal an election before it actually takes place."
~"The Egyptian 'Bread Riots' of 1977 which rocked most major cities in Egypt from January 18-19 of that year, were a spontaneous uprising by hundreds of thousands of lower class people protesting World Bank and International Monetary Fund-mandated termination of state subsidies on basic foodstuffs. As many as 800 people were wounded, and the protests were only ended with the deployment of the army." (Mr. Greenfield's source was an Associated Press report.)

Max Ajl says:
~"The January 25 protests that began the current stage of social revolt were organized by several groups, including the April 6 movement, a wide-based group with overwhelmingly young leadership that emerged to mobilize support for the April 2008 strikes at Mahalla al-Kubra, a textile manufacturing center in the Nile Delta. In Mahalla, 25,000 workers went on strike amidst deteriorating standards of living as the prices of basic foodstuffs careened upwards. The workers won their demands - their strike was the crest of a massive wave of labor unrest that has hit Egypt hard since 1998. Between 1998 and 2008, two million Egyptian workers participated in over 2,600 factory occupations. In the first five months of 2009, over 200 industrial actions took place, a trend that continued through 2010. Stanford historian Joel Beinin calls it the "largest and most sustained social movement in Egypt since the campaign to oust the British occupiers following the end of World War II."
~"Predictably, Western media is misreporting the role of both labor and the Muslim Brotherhood, understating the role of the former and overstating the role of the latter. The agenda is to obscure socioeconomic grievances and promote the narrative that the choice is between an authoritarian but secular government, or a democracy that will bring Islamists - code for the Taliban - to state power. The corollary is that people are not in the streets struggling for social revolution but to put in place a variant of Islamofascism. Thus, people shrug, the revolt must be drowned in blood. This narrative is indefensible."

Kasra Naji says:
~"He (Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979 Iran) played a very clever game. Those days, before he returned to Tehran, all he would talk about was democracy and freedom. He would not talk about a religious revolution. He wouldn't talk about a religious state, and democracy and freedom worked for us too, on the left, in a sense that we wanted to have a say. And freedom and democracy would provide that."
~"This whole (revolutionary) establishment is divided into an extremist wing and a moderate wing, and they fight each other, and the moderates are eliminated. And then you'll have the extremists taking over."

Let's take an abbreviated look, though, at my oversimplified assessment of modern revolutionary history. It shows us that:
1.) The human race is caught up in cyclical tides of history; one of those tides is the never-ending exploitation of the have-nots by the haves.
2.) In any given society, nation, or empire, when that cycle of labor expolitation reaches a critical mass of hunger/deprivation, the oppressed workers revolt.
3.) Although the victims of oppression are mostly poor people who suffer a dearth of food/shelter, their discontent is propelled by the theoretical and rhetorical support of some comfortably educated symathizers.
4.) Those literate supporters are fundamentally idealistic. In modern history, their idealism has manifested as, first, communism, and then secondly, as socialism. These days, both of those camps are appropriating the more viable and elder "democratic" rationale.
5.) The rhetoric and politics of literate, idealists can, and does, eventually motivate the hungry masses to effectively assemble and attempt to overthrow the powers that be.
6.) But--and here's the rude awakening lesson of history--those idealists whose rhetoric and politics have fueled a revolution become powerless to implement their theories in real government.
7.) In the wake of their failed theory-driven revolution, intrepid strongmen commandeer the disputing factions and manipulate their naive aspirations into new channels of abusive power.
8.) Think about it:
~The fraternité, legalité, egalité, of the French revolution was overtaken with a brutal, guillotining mob led by Robespierre.
~The rose-colored bolshevism of the Russian revolution was manhandled by Stalin through his gulags.
~The reactionary pride of German defeat after WWI was manipulated by Hitler to become the Nazi wehrmacht.
~The peasant revolution of China devolved into humiliating Maoist forced communilization.
~The nascent democratic impulses of Iran were strangled in the bondage of Islam fanaticism.
9.)~~ Exception to the rule: The American revolution produced a reasonably democratic republic, albeit with some serious structural deficiencies. Slavery was the most reprehensible of those defects. Nevertheless, perhaps our enterprising contributions to human progress could be construed as evidence of some kind of American exceptionalism. Haha

But hey--let this optimistic American pose a rose-colored question: Can the fatalistic degeneration of revolutionary dynamics ever be amended to yield a reasonably favorable outcome?
In light of present Egyptian hopes for systemic reform, can the alleged Muslim Brotherhood and Kafayah extremism lurking beneath modern Islam be tempered with consensual democracy? Who knows?
Not me, but there may be a twitter of hope in this predicament somewhere.

Glass half-Full