Category Archives: Conservative

Worry OK; Panic not so Much

Capitalism, Conservative, Decline of the west, Social democracy

 

A friend of mine challenged what I have been saying about the super elites buying condos in a former missile silo in Kansas by suggesting it is not reasonable  to suggest that one crazy idiot buying a condo in a missile  silo does not mean we are doomed.

 

Of course, one rich guy does not establish that we are doomed. In fact, no single act establishes that.  Even 15 crazy rich guys who have bought condos in a missile silo don’t establish that. But the accumulating actions of many people, including those “idiots,” are increasingly suggesting that western society is in a serious state of decline and perhaps even on the edge of collapse. I don’t know about you, but I am getting increasingly more pessimistic. And I am increasingly doubtful that our leaders know the way out.

 

There are also many other indices of this decline. I will be posting about some of them soon.  I know I have been going on interminably about these nuts who bought concrete condos in the former missile silo in Kansas, but I think it is interesting and significant.  These were business leaders. They were people who earned a great deal of wealth and respect. Many of them were in the financial sector or the tech sector who made fortunes.  Interestingly, it is precisely these people who panicked and starting selling their investments in the recent Silicon Valley Bank fiasco when there was no need to do so. These are the people who have now brought our financial system to the edge of collapse as a result of their unjustified fears!  All of this shows that panic is seldom a valuable tool to deal with serious problems whether it comes to buying silos or selling investments. Fear is sometimes justified; panic is never helpful.

In the US in particular, business leaders are nearly worshipped. Look at Donald Trump. I don’t know how many Americans I have met in the past 2 &1/2 months in this country who hail him as a business leader who can make the country great again. I consider him neither a great business leader nor great political leader, but many here think otherwise. Business leaders get automatic respect in America and Canada for that matter. When a group of 15 of them go so far off the mark as the condo buyers did in Kansas, it bears consideration. What is up with that?

To my mind, there are signs of the decline of western civilization all around us, but yet I admit there are also positive signs.

I am particularly encouraged by the improvement in the fortunes of the LGBTQ community in an astonishingly short time. Though I hasten to add they had to overcome the battalions of opposition from Conservatives each step of that way. Why is that? In fact, now the American conservatives seem determined to make war on transgender people who are among the most marginalized and vulnerable people in the country. They like to pick on minorities. The weaker the better.  In fact, as soon as they are not in minorities the conservatives tend to give up quickly.  I will post more on this later.

So, I don’t know whether decline or improvement will win out. We are in the midst of gigantic political changes so it is hard to predict what will happen. We will just have to wait and see, but I am worried. Not panicking, but concerned.

The Religion of Huck Finn: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Classic Books, Conservative, Religious Quest in the Modern Age

 

Some of the absurdity in the novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is of course the result of taking religion too literally. Sometimes that means Huck and Tom and others times the civilized people. Taking religion literally is always risky. As Huck reported early in the book, after he got in trouble for failing to behave as he so often did:

“Then Miss Watson she took me in the closet and prayed, but nothing come of it. She told me to pray every day, and whatever I asked for I would get it. But it warn’t so. I tried it. Once I got a fish-line, but no hooks. It warn’t any good to me without hooks. I tried for the hook three or four times, but somehow I couldn’t make it work. By and by, one day, I asked Miss Watson to try for me but she said I was a fool. She never told me why and I couldn’t make it no way.”

 

How could it be that religion worked for people like Miss Watson and not Huck? He must be doing something wrong. So again, he did what he always did, he thought about it. As Huck said,

“I set down one time way back in the woods and had a long think about it. I said to myself, if a body can get anything they pray for why don’t Deacon Winn get back the money he lost on pork?  Why can’t the widow get back her silver snuff-box that was stole? Why can’t Miss Watson fat up? No says I, to myself, there ain’t nothing in it.  If I went and told the widow about it and she said the thing a body could get by praying for it was “spiritual gifts.” This was too many for me, but she told me she meant—I must help other people, and do everything I could for other people, and look out for them all the time, and never think about myself.”

 

Interestingly, this later of course turned out to be true, for Huck really did spiritual gifts when he ignored his own welfare and thought just of Jim.

 

Though Huck was not satisfied with this advice he actually soaked it in through osmosis for later that is exactly what he did when he saved Jim for the slave hunters and he won Jim’s freedom and in doing so won his own freedom as well! It was marvellous advice but it didn’t’ smell right to Huck.  Such advice always seemed like a con to a rapscallion like Huck but it really is the best advice he could get.

Pap, his father,  on the other hand gave him the worst possible advice. He taught him how to lie and steal as much as he could and only look out for himself.

Tom Sawyer on the other hand advised Huck to get his advice from books like Don Quixote because they were all about “enchantment.” I would have thought this would have been pretty good advice actually, but later in the book we learn how crazy it was when someone like Tom Sawyer takes his books as literally as the Bible Thumpers take theirs. Tom even said, “I judged that all that stuff was only just one of Tom Sawyer’s lies. I reckoned he believed  in the A-rabs and the elephants, but as for me, I think different. It had all the marks of a Sunday school.”

An independent thinker like Huck would avoid the traps of traditional belief if he could, but he found it very hard, as he later learns. He puts eternal life on the line! You can’t get braver than that.

My Country right or Wrong

Classic Books, Conservative, racism

 

Unlike the so-called modern patriots, exemplified by the insurrectionists on January 6 in the US, Mark Twain was not a nationalist.  As Azar Nafisi said,

“defending the Jews, women, the people of the Congo , workers, and all of the oppressed; claiming to be a revolutionary, already predicting the ideological wars to come when he declared not, “My country right or wrong, but “my country when it is right.”

 

Twain realized what modern conservatives often don’t—that his beloved country could do wrong. They were not exceptional. In many ways his countrymen and women were wrong. Even some of the maiden aunts like Miss Watson who seemed to be so perfect taking Huck into the closet to pray and making him go to Sunday School, but was actually utterly spoiled by their own racism. After all, she would decide to sell Jim, her slave, and then his wife and children to someone else. What could be more utterly degenerate than that?  No amount of church or Sunday school could wash away that sin! Yet people believed that was natural and good. How was that possible? America, Twain knew, must look the dreadful truth in the face and not shrink from its own sins.

 

Twain told a story from his youth when he saw a German hotel manager who mistreated his Indian servant who accepted  his punishment without a word of protest.  Twain realized that beatings were the way white people demonstrated their disapproval of actions of their slaves. Beatings were as natural as rain. Twain remembered how his own father, whom he had been raised to honour and respect, would cuff their slave boy. Again this was completely natural. Twain even admitted in his notebook that he had thought such actions were natural although he also “felt sorry for the victim and ashamed for the punisher.”

Of course, one cannot be a brilliant novelist like Mark Twain without having deep empathy. It is the stock and trade of the artist. Later in life Twain realized that his parents had mistaught him. Slavery and racism was profound sin. His parents were not always right. This is what he wrote in his notebooks:

“In those slave-holding days the whole community was agreed as to one thing—the awful sacredness of slave property. To help steal a horse or a cow was a low crime, but to help a hunted slave, or feed him, or shelter him, or hide him, or comfort him, in his troubles, his terrors, his despair, or hesitate to promptly betray him to the slave catcher when opportunity offered was a much baser crime, & carried with a stain, a moral smirch which nothing could wipe away. That this sentiment should exist among slaveholders is comprehensible—there were good commercial reasons for it—but that it should exist & did exist among the paupers, the loafers, the tag-rag & bobtail of the community, & in a passionate & uncompromising form, is not in our remote day realizable. It seemed natural enough to me then; natural enough that Huck & his father the worthless loafer should feel it & approve it, though it seems now absurd. It shows that strange thing, the conscience—that unerring monitor—can be trained to approve any wild thing you want it to approve if you begin its education & stick to it.”

 

The “conscience” is what we are taught by elders and others in authority in our society and it can be horribly wrong, as Huck discovered.

Huck felt miserable when he helped the slave Jim escape. It was in his world the worst thing anybody could do, because property, especially slave property was sacred. Huck felt “trembly” and “feverish” when he did that. He was to blame because Jim was almost free. He was rightly to blame for that and knew he had committed a horrible sin. He felt horrible that Miss Watson was deprived of her property because of him. This is the conclusion Huck’s conscience led him to:

“Thinks I, this is what comes of my not thinking. Here was this nigger, which I had as good as helped to run away, and coming right out flat-footed and saying he would steal his children—children that belonged to a man I didn’t even know; that man that hadn’t ever done harm to me.”

 

This shows  the abject poverty of  complete acquiescence with the conventional morality can be. We moderns must remember that.

 

Is Civil War in the US possible?

American Fascism, Conservative, Death of Democracy, Decline of the west, Extremism, Trump, Trumpism, Tyranny and Fascism, War

One of the two respected jurists William S. Cohen who wrote about the disappointing actions of Republicans complaining about the Justice Department warrants at Donald Trump’s home, is a former secretary of defense and former Republican senator from Maine who was such a moderate Republican that he served as Secretary of Defence in the Democrat Clinton administration. The other, William H. Webster is a former director of the FBI and the CIA and a retired judge of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit. He served under both Democrat and Republican administrations, including that of Donald Trump.  These are not partisans.

 

These men have pointed out that the Republican leaders, disrespect for maintaining law and order is serious, and can have very serious consequences.  They even suggested those actions might lead to Civil War! Remember these are not fringe leftists clamouring about the possibility of Civil War. These are respected lawyers who served both Democrat and Republican administrations in national security matters and they are not alarmists. They remind us that fears and warnings of Civil War are not outlandish, given the conduct of Republican leaders and the former president. They are real possibilities.

 

The opinion of Cohen and Webster was based on their personal experience and also their reading of respecting historian Barbara F. Walter who in her book “How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them,

 

“Walter raises valid concerns about the United States slipping into a place where civil war is possible. She writes about a netherworld of anocracy — between democracy and autocracy — a breeding ground for political violence, where the grievances and resentments of a large white underclass have greatly increased the potential for civil war.

 

These predictions once sounded like the fever dreams of far-right lunatics who would welcome such a bloody conflict; today, such predictions are coming from responsible voices such as Walter and others who have carefully studied this phenomenon around the world.”

 

 

Please note how Cohen and Webster refer to “these valid concerns” and that such opinions are not “the fever dreams of far-right lunatics.”  These concerns are brought forward by the upper echelons of American jurists and public servants. Again, this is serious stuff and should be taken seriously.

Some people have suggested Merrick and Wray should not have issued and executed the warrants at Mar-a-Lago, because the risk of causing civil unrest, which Trump in fact has been encouraging, again, but these two jurists rightly point out that, “our nation’s senior law enforcer, a man who has an impeccable record of fairness and impartiality as a distinguished jurist, cannot tailor his judgment to accommodate the rage of the lawless.”

Genuine believers in the rule of law, like Merrick and Wray, must do their duty, rather than bowing to the reckless cries of lawless insurrectionists and their Republican enablers. There was a time when conservatives were dedicated to law and order. This is not one of those times. If there are no longer many conservatives, the radical left or the radical right will the vacuum.

The Rage of the Lawless

American Fascism, Conservative, Decline of the west, Democracy, Populism, Trumpism, Tyranny and Fascism

 

 

Did you read the article in the Washington Post by two outstanding lawyers and public servants, namely William S. Cohen and William H. Webster? the y commented on the right wing hysteria that followed the Department of Justice issuing warrants to enter and seize government documents from Donald Trump’s home at Mar-a-Lago Florida.

William S. Cohen is a former secretary of defense and former Republican senator from Maine. He was a moderate Republican who served as Secretary of Defence in the Democrat Clinton administration.

William H. Webster is a former director of the FBI and the CIA and a retired judge of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit. He served under both Democrat and Republican administrations, including that of Donald Trump.

Neither is a left-wing radical. These are respected lawyers and public servants.

These two hard-headed experienced lawyers with deep knowledge of the law and national security issues have jointly issued a severe warning in the Washington Post. They commented how unusual it was for an Attorney General like Merrick Garland together with FBI director Christopher Wray to have  authorized the execution of search warrants of the home of the former president Donald Trump. Wray was a Trump appointee after Trump dismissed former director James Comey. Webster and Cohen said they both had full confidence that the warrants by these men who were “both honest and honorable men,” were justified.

.Even though it is clear to them that the warrants were rightfully issued, and executed, Cohen and Webster were highly critical of the actions of leading Republican leaders who together with the former president did their best to inflame the Trump supporters. As Cohen and Webster said,

“Prominent Republicans reacted with predictable fury and heated threats of retaliation against the attorney general — unprecedented acts of vitriol based on the belief the FBI’s conduct was politically motivated rather than legally necessary. In doing so, they recklessly and knowingly undermined respect for a “law and order” institution and the men and women who risk their lives to protect us.”

 

And that is the real problem. Republicans claim to be the party of law and order, but repeatedly, in service of their former leader and president, Donald Trump, they do all they can to “reckless and knowingly” undermine “respect for law and order.” Every who saw what happened in Washington D.C. at the Capitol on January 6th knows what the effect of disrespecting law and order can lead to—violence, chaos, and insurrection. This is serious stuff, but Republican leaders seem to have forgotten it in their rush to pay obeisance to Donald Trump at the expense of the country.

As important as this issue is because it could lead to violent insurrection, Cohen and Webster think it is even more important to consider what they called “the far larger issues surrounding the conduct of the former president.” These two respected jurists acknowledged that the House Select Committee investigating the Jan.6 2021 incident, which I call an insurrection and others call a riot, acknowledged that this committee

“…has produced compelling evidence that Trump and his supporters engaged in an orchestrated six-step plan to prevent the peaceful transfer of power, culminating with the assault on the Capitol.

We share disgust and deep disappointment that the Republican Party’s decency and respect for the rule of law has been defined down to a cultish devotion to a demonstrably unprincipled man of greed and blind ambition.”

 

As a society we must learn how to contain the rage of the lawless. If we can’t do that, everything else is pretty futile. Is that not what conservatism is all about?

Health Care workers say they love Jesus, vote Conservative, and abandon their patients

Conservative, Epidemics/Pandemics, religion, The Sleep of Reason

 

The number of Manitoba’s front line health care workers has been rising since Monday when they were required to show they had been vaccinated or agree to undergo test before working in the health care system. Here is the latest according to the Winnipeg Free Press:

“The number of front-line health-care workers who are on unpaid leave because they refuse to provide proof of vaccination or take a COVID-19 test has grown to 158 — more than half of whom work in the Southern Health region.

Management has had to redeploy staff from other programs in the region to Eastview Place in Altona and Salem Home in Winkler “to ensure ongoing quality care and services,” a Shared Health spokesman said Wednesday.”

 

In other words, even though the Southern Health region includes only about 1/5th  of the population in Manitoba, it still has more than half of the health care workers who refuse to get vaccinated and also refuse to take the Covid-19 tests to prove they are not carrying the disease. In fact, only 17 of the 158 of the workers who declined to get vaccinated and declined to get tested,  were employed by the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority and 83 in Southern Health. That means per capita the Southern Health region has 10 times as many health care workers refusing to come to work than Winnipeg had.  We should also remember that the Southern Health Region has a lot of Christians and Conservative voters.

So, they abandoned their patients instead, letting already badly over run fellow employees do their work for them so they could protest what they felt were unreasonable requirements. What is the reason for opposing tests? Many jurisdictions, unlike Manitoba, don’t give them an option. Manitoba is trying to accommodate them by giving them a reasonable option. I really am not sure what their objections to taking tests are.

As the Free Press reported,

“Last week, Salem Home and Tabor Home in Morden sent letters to residents’ families advising them of possible staffing shortages Monday when vaccination or COVID-19 testing became a requirement for direct-support workers, and they could be asked to help care for their loved ones.”

 

Once more this establishes that where there are Conservatives and Christians there are more likely to be people who don’t trust the science and are more likely to abandon their patients. In Winnipeg they just go about their jobs of helping vulnerable people. If Jesus were around here today he might ask, ‘which of these loved their neighbours?’ I think the answer is obvious.

 

It Sucks to be a Conservative

Conservative, Freedom, The Sleep of Reason

 

In Canada and in the United States many people, but nowhere near a majority of the people, are objecting to actions by the government that they see as “over reaching” or imposing duties on them that are not justified in a free and democratic society. Some have gone as far as to call the health restrictions imposed by governments as “authoritarian” or “fascist.” Protesters in Manitoba, particularly in southern Manitoba, a region deeply committed to conservatism, have been making very similar remarks.

As Max Boot reported, in the Washington Post,

“Republicans explode with fury,” noted Fox “News” Channel. Republican governors threatened to file suit to stop what Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp called “this blatantly unlawful overreach.” Fox News accused Biden of being “an authoritarian” and declaring “war on millions of Americans.” Breitbart claims he went “full totalitarian” and the Federalist called it a “fascist move.”

 

Blinded by partisanship and populism, Republicans have lost all perspective. The crux of their argument — to the extent that they have one — is that the Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has no right to tell companies with at least 100 employees that workers must either get tested weekly for COVID-19 or present proof of vaccination.

This is the same OSHA that has issued myriad regulations over the years governing such aspects of workplace safety as the placement of step bolts. (“The employer must ensure . . . step bolts are uniformly spaced at a vertical distance of not less than 12 inches (30 cm) and not more than 18 inches (46 cm) apart.”) I have no idea how many workers have been injured by misplaced step bolts — frankly, I’m not even sure what step bolts are — but I am guessing it is not many. I do know, however, how many Americans have been killed by COVID- 19: 655,000 and counting. If OSHA can protect against the menace of step bolts, I’m pretty sure it can protect against the deadliest pandemic in a century.

 

While I generally agree with these important points, I believe the last paragraph goes too far. This is not a perfect analogy. Placing bolts a certain distance apart does not impose a heavier burden on the citizen. Inserting a needle into an arm and injecting a substance that the individual believes will be harmful to him or her against his or her will, is a much more intrusive violation of the rights of the citizen and will require a higher burden of proof on the state to justify. Yet, I think it can be justified.

We know that conservatives in Canada and the US generally object to governments telling businesses what to do. At least they object when their political opponents impose their will. When their own party does it the objections are much less vociferous. For example in the United States, some governments such as the state of Florida have mandated (I use that word deliberately) that businesses are not permitted to demand vaccine passports from their customers. So far, at least 6 state governments led by Republicans, have passed laws prohibiting private businesses from doing exactly that. In Canada, and the United States, governments have in the past required students to demonstrate to school officials that they have taken a host of vaccinations for diseases such as polio, hepatitis, measles, mumps and rubella. They did that of course because those measures helped to prevent serious illnesses and these requirements were imposed without fuss or muss, because the issue of vaccinations at the time were not controversial. Nearly everyone saw the wisdom of such measures. The reason of course, is that vaccines were not political issues as they have become recently. President Trump played down the significance of the pandemic and told people it would just magically go away and they had nothing to fear. As Boot said, “His cult followers therefore felt compelled to echo his Panglossian outlook by falsely claiming that COVID-19 was no worse than the flu or promoting quack remedies such as hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin as miracle cures.”

As a result of identity politics, where people refused to take the vaccine or do take the vaccine, not on the basis of science, or analysis, or data, but on the basis of which political group they identify. As a result, in the US Boot reported that

“According to a Kaiser Family Foundation survey, 86 per cent of Democrats have gotten vaccinated but only 54 per cent of Republicans. That, in turn, translates into rising numbers of cases, hospitalizations and deaths in the red states. Over the past couple of weeks, the United States has been losing an average of 1,579 people a day to COVID-19. More than a third of those deaths (570 a day) are in just two red states: Florida and Texas.”

 

For similar reasons, Florida led by Republicans, where more than 3 times as many people per capita have been dying from Covid-19 than California which is led by Democrats. The rate of death in Florida is 10 times higher than New York which is led by Democrats. In fact, recently, where the US was suffering 1,579 deaths per day from Covid-19 and more than 1/3rd of them were in just two conservative led states, namely Texas and Florida. It sucks to be a conservative in the US!

As Boot said,

“Republican governors don’t seem to mind killing their constituents in the name of a twisted theory of “medical freedom,” but that doesn’t mean the president of the United States is helpless to protect the life and wellbeing of its citizens. In fact, as Washington Post contributing columnist Leana S. Wen argues, Biden still has not gone far enough — for example, he still needs to mandate proof of vaccination for airline and train passengers.

 But at least Biden has given up the hope that he could reason with COVID-deniers and anti-vaxxers. The Republican reaction to his sensible mandate shows that much of the right is beyond the reach of reason. It is now time to use federal power to protect the most basic of civil rights: the right to life.”

 

Although not every one will agree, I must say that I do agree.

 

When Ideology Swallows Sense

Capitalism, Conservative, Death of Truth, Epidemics/Pandemics, Evangelical Christianity, Politics & Religion, reason, The Sleep of Reason

 

I have been struggling to understand this amazing phenomenon that regions with a high prevalence of Christians and conservatives, such as southern Manitoba where I live, also have a high prevalence of vaccine hesitancy. Why is that the case?  What unites these two ideologies with nonsense? I think this is a very important question.

 

I have been surprised by the number of people that won’t take the Covid-19 vaccines because they don’t trust the government. To me that seems ludicrous. I have managed to dodge the prevailing political wisdom that assumes anything the government does is bad while anything the private sector does is good. I hear it all the time.  It is particularly prevalent here. That has been the prevailing political belief since at least the time of Saint Ronald Regan. Even left wingers are subject to this ideology; it is so common and so pervasive.

Some people blame the internet for this problem, and it is a partial cause.  But it does not explain enough. One of my favorite political commentators in my favorite newspaper (now a magazine), Nesrine Malik of The Guardian, pointed out something very interesting when she said,

“People with the wildest theories about the pandemic can be found in countries even where most people don’t have access to the internet, cable TV or the shock jocks of commercial radio. A common impulse is to write off those espousing conspiracies, consigning them to the casualties claimed by WhatsApp groups, disinformation or silent mental health issues. These things may be true – but vaccine hesitancy is a symptom of broader failures. What all people wary of vaccines have in common, from Khartoum to Kansas is their trust in the state has been eroded. Without understanding this, we will be fated to keep channeling our frustrations towards individuals without grasping why they have lost trust in the first place.”

 

Malik emphasizes that governments around the world, particularly in the developing world, have earned this distrust. Endemic corruption breeds justifiable distrust. I agree entirely with that. But what about countries like Canada with governments that are not as corrupt? Why is distrust of governments so common here? Not that our governments are perfect, but they have at least a modicum of integrity.

As Malik said,

“Vaccine rejection doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It’s easier to dismiss hesitancy and conspiracies as unhinged behaviour; it makes us feel less unnerved by displays of unreason from those who we think are, or should be, rational people. Sure, among vaccine-hesitant people are those who are simply stubborn, misanthropic or selfish. But, just as the pandemic exploited the weaknesses of our economic and public health systems, vaccine hesitancy has exposed the weaknesses of states’ bond with their citizens. There are no easy answers for how to deal with those who repeat conspiracy theories and falsehoods, but scrutinising the systems that lost their trust is perhaps a good place to start.”

 

I also want to point out that in the west since the 1980s during the reigns of Saint Ronny, Princess Maggie, and Prince Brian in the US. UK and Canada respectively, people have been fed a steady diet that the state is unreliable and predatory.  As Saint Ronald Reagan said, the most scary 11 words in the English language are, ‘I am from the government and I am here to help.’

 This is all part of neo-liberal dogma/propaganda that the government can’t be trusted only the private sector is worth our trust. Of course, this ideology has for decades served the interests of the wealthy who care more about minimizing their personal or corporate taxes than the plight of the less advantaged. As a result many of them  have used their wealth to convince us of its truth because it is in their interest to do so. This ideology is now so prevalent that even people whose best interests would be served by government are reluctant to accept its help. Vaccines are a case in point. Governments provide many things of enormous value that the private sector is unwilling or unsuited to provide including hospitals, roads, libraries, universities, parks, environmental regulations, health and safety standards to name only a few. For decades we have been taught and many of us believed that governments are bad and private enterprise is good.

Now we are paying a heavy price for blindly following that ideology.

Billionaires do Great; Poor people suffer

Conservative, Epidemics/Pandemics, politics, Social democracy, Social Justice

 

While billionaires like Jeff Bezos have seen their wealth explode (again) during the Covid—19 pandemic, poor people have suffered the most (again). Poor people are feeling the brunt of the ill effects of the pandemic. Funny how that happens.

I recently  heard a very interesting interview with Mariana Mazzucato Professor of Economics at University College in London. She  wrote a book called The Value of Everything. I assume the title is a reference to a famous  quote by Oscar Wilde, that “a cynic knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing.” I actually have used that line to describe some conservatives I know. With some justification I might add.

 

At the time she was speaking on the television show she said that just as 8 million case of Covid-19 have been experienced in the US, 8 million people have dropped down below the poverty line. At about the same the average wealth of billionaires had gone up by 25%. More than a million people had died and 38 million people infected (at the time of the interview). Many more since then, of course.  According to the Gates Foundation at the time 37 million people around the world had been pushed from poverty into extreme poverty! That means they earned less than $1.90 per day. Meanwhile the rich are getting much richer. Meanwhile conservative politicians think everything is fine and no changes are needed. That is what my own member of Parliament, Ted Falk believes.  with enthusiasm he believes that. In fact any suggested changes must mean the crypto-communists are trying to turn our country into a communist hell.  

Why does it have to work that way? The short answer is that it doesn’t have to work that way, it works that way only because we allow it to work that way.  We keep electing politicians like Ted Falk. That is the system the well to do, together with their political minions, want to conserve. That is the essence of modern conservatism. Everything is fine for us, so everything is fine.

USA: Is this a country without Honour?

Conservative, Decline of the west, Left Conservative, Modern History, politics, Trump

 

I love America; I love Americans. They are a wonderful people, but they have gone seriously awry. But sometimes they are seriously misguided. And when that happens a friend should be able to say that to the friend. This is one of those times. It is not enough to claim that you are honorable—you have to walk the walk and talk the talk.

Honor used to be an important value among Conservatives—genuine conservatives I mean. But increasingly among modern conservatives at least, honor is no longer important.

When Donald Trump realized what he had done in letting loose the Turks on his allies the Kurds, and realized that to some of his supporters, honor still meant something, this is what he announced, by tweet of course:

“As I have stated strongly before, and just to reiterate, if Turkey does anything that I in my great and unmatched wisdom consider off limits, I will totally destroy and obliterate the economy of Turkey (I’ve done before)”

Stephen Colbert described this as Trump going “full God Emperor.”  This is on a level with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un.  But ignore the incoherence of this quote. Ignore the corrupt and idle boasting. Just look for the honor. You won’t find it. This is what America elected as their President. A man without honor! And 63 million Americans seem to like it. Does that mean American without honor too?

I don’t accept that Americans can blame it all on an ill chosen President. 63 million people voted for this one and I have been told most of those who did, still support him.  This is not an issue about Trump. He is too easy a target. But what about the country? It is not as if Donald Trump ever concealed his lack of honor. He boasted about. He said that in the Vietnam War he served by managing to avoid getting a venereal disease. Then he dismissed John McCain as a poor war hero because he got caught. Trump escaped the Vietnam War the way many rich boys did, by getting dubious health deferments as a result of alleged bone spurs, so that he could stay behind and chase models and starlets, while other young men and women, usually poor men and women, risked their lives and fought the war. Americans knew exactly what they were getting, and although 66 million voted for Hillary Clinton, 63 million voted for him. That is no aberrant number. That is a lot of support. This is where the problem lies. Trump himself is easy prey, but not 66 million Americans. Is the country without honor? I think it is time for Americans to step up and be counted. I think it is time for Americans to think about this.