Tag: foreign

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Opinion Viewpoint

Idol Fancies

Sitting on a sofa on a Sunday afternoon,

Going to the candidates’ debate.

Laugh about it, shout about it.

When you’ve got to choose,

Every way you look at it you lose.

— “Mrs. Robinson” by Paul Simon

These traveling roadshows called debates have increasingly taken on the air of a TV reality program. I watched one Republican debate, but after seeing a majority of the candidates admit, en masse, that they questioned the validity of evolution, I didn’t need to watch another.

The Republican debates are equivalent to the summer replacement show America’s Got Talent. (The Democrats shade toward American Idol.) The contestants are carefully scrutinized as to appearance and confidence levels, and expectations run high each week over who will stumble and who will rise to the challenge. They even have judges posing as questioners. They critique the candidates’ answers and attempt to build rivalries within the group. The role of the intemperate asshole judge is played by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer (alternately, Chris Matthews). The flaw in the concept is that we can’t phone in each week and get somebody booted in order to thin this herd and maybe hear something of substance.

I took an online poll in which you were asked to match your opinions with the candidate who most closely holds your views. Mine came out Dennis Kucinich, which is good and bad.

I admire the congressman’s courage to call for impeachment openly and often. (He nearly got a vote to the floor last week.) I agree with him on ending the war in Iraq and holding the planners accountable. And he has been the single most consistent liberal voice in all these dark Bush years.

But I also know Kucinich hasn’t got a chance to win the nomination. I’ll happily vote for him in the Tennessee presidential primary to make a statement. Hell, I once voted for Prince Mongo for county mayor. I also voted for LaToya London on American Idol.

But once again, machine politics and corporate cash rule over procedure, and even though Kucinich’s rousing debate performances rival the American Idol appearances of Bo Bice, he’s going to lose to the blond lady who was mistreated when she was younger.

Before Hillary gets measured for crown and scepter, however, it would be well to remember that not a single vote has yet been cast and that the American voter is a famously fickle animal who will turn on you in an instant. How else can you explain Taylor Hicks winning American Idol, or George Bush winning anything, for that matter?

I’m sure Kucinich is at least as deserving as fellow ugly duckling Clay Aiken was. But if I had to review Hillary’s debate performances thus far, I would say, à la Randy Jackson, “It was just aw’ite for me, Dog. You’re a little pitchy.”

While this lite operetta continues, President Zero is neglecting some serious issues: The Chinese are trying to date-rape our children; Wal-Mart has been discovered taking out life insurance policies on its aged workers and collecting benefits when they die; Laci Peterson has morphed into Stacy Peterson; a discovered statement left behind by the still-deceased Saddam Hussein said his flim-flammery about WMD was not to threaten the U.S. but to fool Iran.

Barack Obama has promised to take off the gloves this week. And did I fail to mention our troops are in the middle of a foreign civil war with no end in sight? Too bad we can’t just vote the troops off the island.

Al Gore may have won his Oscar and his Nobel Prize, but Carrie Underwood and Daughtry kicked major butt at the AMA’s, and Fantasia was up for an award, too. With the current television writers’ strike, the mid-January start of the new season of American Idol might have to be moved up, just like those nervy upstart states want to do with their Johnny-come-lately primaries.

Then we could have five nights of nothing but American Idol and debates. But if the debates are going to compete, they have to really want it, Dog. This is, after all, a singing competition. And there is one lonely voice singing in the corner, crying, “Impeach now. Impeach now.” Can you hear him? It’s Dennis “The Dark Horse” Kucinich, and his spouse is better looking than Hillary’s any day.

Hey, no one believed Ruben Studdard could win either. Seacrest out.

Randy Haspel is, among other things, a Memphis musician and wit. He writes at bornagainhippies.blogspot.com.

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Opinion The Last Word

The Rant

CREDIT: AP Photo/HO,Warner Bros

The American government has come to resemble the characters in The Wizard of Oz. We have the Cowardly Congress, a president without a brain, and a foreign-policy establishment without a heart.

Our politicians are still trying to play the empire game long after the age of empires has ended. Blinded by arrogance, they cannot see that with every passing day, the world needs us less and less and hates us more and more. We are passing through that phase when the grandeur of the empire exists only in the minds of politicians who have insulated themselves from reality.

A friend of mine, a classical scholar, sometimes tells his students, “No one woke up one morning in 476 A.D. and said, ‘Gee, I’m in the Dark Ages.'” The transition from the heyday of Roman power to a stage of barbarism was a gradual process. We are in a process of change. No one is going to announce on TV that the U.S. is no longer a superpower.

Nevertheless, the signs are there if you look for them. A nation that was able to help crush the Axis powers in three and a half years hasn’t won a war since then. We have had four years of struggling with an insurgency in a small, poor, and broken country. Our economy is shaky under mountains of debt. Half of our people make less than 42,000 inflated dollars a year.

Where we were once the arsenal of democracy, today there is hardly a major weapons system that doesn’t rely on imports of one kind or another. Much of the industry that is left is foreign-owned. Japan, which once lay prostrate, dominates the American automobile market. It is extremely difficult to find anything today that is not made in China or some other cheap-labor country.

In the meantime, the cowardly Congress doesn’t have the guts to tackle any of the major problems confronting the American people. Our president continues to embarrass us practically every time he opens his mouth in public. The foreign-policy establishment is riddled with aging draft dodgers agitating for more wars — against small countries, of course.

True, we still have lots of nuclear weapons, but do you think any American president would want to get into a nuclear shooting match with China or Russia? Look at how we reacted to two airplanes crashing into two office buildings. What do you think we would do if San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Francisco became radioactive ruins with millions of casualties? We are not prepared mentally, spiritually, or materially to deal with a nuclear war.

We are like all empires in their final stages. We have grown soft. We like our comforts. We don’t wish to be inconvenienced. We like poor Mexicans to do our stoop work and poor Americans to do our fighting, provided they do it far away so we won’t be disturbed by explosions and screams. We enjoy our decadence, and there are always people in the media who can rationalize anything, no matter how sick and revolting it is.

As for trying to understand the world, we are just too busy being amused and following the adventures of Britney Spears and other celebrities. We like to let the TV and the politicians do our thinking for us. It saves energy. They tell us whom to hate.

The only way to avoid a bad end is to find some realists and put them in public office. We need a brave Congress, not a pack of cowards. We desperately need a president with a brain. We need to retire the warmongers in the foreign-policy establishment. Otherwise, we will join the other third-rate countries, once empires, on history’s discard pile.

Charley Reese has been a journalist for 50 years.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant

CREDIT: (AP Photo/Frank O. Braynard Collection)

The most important issue facing America is not even being debated by the presidential candidates. With the exception of Ron Paul, all of the candidates are acting on the assumption that America’s interventionist foreign policy should continue. They only differ on the details of the intervention.

Since Paul doesn’t have a chance of winning, I can therefore guarantee that regardless of who wins the nominations and regardless of who ends up in the White House, we will be saddled with the same failed interventionist policy. As in the past, it will preclude peace and result in conflicts that ultimately will bring America down. We can squander blood and treasure only so long before we collapse. Then we will join the heap of has-been empires like the British, French, Dutch and Soviets.

That’s why I have no interest in the presidential race.

The United States has no moral or legal right to interfere in the internal affairs of any other nation. It is not threatened by any nation-state and therefore has no need of allies. An ally is someone who fights on your side during a war. When the war ends, the need for alliances ends.

George Washington — still the wisest man ever to serve as president — warned us against interventionism. He warned us against the influence of foreign lobbies. As he said, there is no reason for America to involve itself in the intrigues, feuds, and wars that plague most parts of the world. Our only contact with the outside world should be in trade and commerce.

The problem of terrorism, which is a direct result of our interventionist policies, is not a war. It is a conflict with a few individuals. If we stopped our interventionist foreign policies, the problem of terrorists would gradually fade away. In the meantime, terrorism can be handled by intelligence and police work. It is not a fight the military can win.

The concept of a preemptive war should be an abomination to every American. Preemptive war is a war of aggression. It was the policy of Hitler’s Germany and of the Japanese imperial government. To our national shame, apparently many Americans support the concept. They should never again criticize the Japanese for Pearl Harbor, the Third Reich for the invasion of Poland, or the Soviet Union for the invasion of Afghanistan. Click your heels and salute. You are no different from the people who cheered for Hitler.

The concept of a so-called humanitarian war, trotted out by Bill Clinton to justify intervention in the Balkans, is a contradiction in terms. War itself is a crime against humanity. No sane person can justify inflicting death and destruction in the name of humanitarianism.

The great tragedy caused by the interventionists is that they sabotage the peaceful and prosperous country that America could be. It’s no mystery why the infrastructure is beginning to fail. It’s no mystery why public education fails in so many places. It’s no mystery why health care is becoming increasingly unaffordable. Look at the cost of the empire — the military and intelligence budgets, the cost of the wars. Between the military-industrial complex and the new war-service industry, the treasury is being sucked dry by the worst people for the worst reasons.

In the meantime, what are the presidential candidates talking about? A few social schemes. Different strategies for intervention. They are like the first-class passengers on the Titanic, sitting around discussing their business deals and various affairs. They show no sign of awareness of the real world outside the televised game show called Win the Nomination.

Who’s ahead? Who zinged who? Who cares?

Charley Reese has been a journalist for 50 years.