The Rise of Nationalism: We Never Seem To Learn

World War I was supposed to end all wars. Shortly after it was over, the League of Nations was formed. Within 20 years, the worst conflagration, ever, World War II (WWII), broke out. After it was over, the United Nations was organized. Each of those two bodies of nations was founded to put aside our nationalistic tendencies and to start acting like a world of people. Those goals have never fully materialized but now, some 75 years after the end of WWII, the flames of nationalism are being stoked again by cheap politicians and we, the people, are buying into it.

Brexit. Hairball Trump and his psudo-Americanism (i.e. United States-ism because there are plenty of “Americans” besides us). Marine Le Pen, that misguided French woman, who is stirring up trouble in her country. Belgium. The Netherlands. Andres Behring Breivik, the Norwegian Fascist  mass murderer who killed 77 people a few years ago. My own native country, Hungary, who are “guardians of  Christianity” (but wait: weren’t we so anti-religious Hungarian Communists not such a long time ago? And now, all of the sudden, religion is more important than accepting frightened and hungry refugees? — but I digress).

Maybe, a world of peaceful coexistence and cooperation is a pipe dream. Maybe, we are too tribal. Maybe, it’s hard-wired in our DNA to be clannish. Maybe, it was a survival strategy in our early Hominid existence and the genes are still there, as it is in our other animal relatives, like ants, wolves, baboons, and others. You can clearly see evidence of that in everyday life: we are proud to be from a Polish neighborhood from Cleveland, or identify ourselves as Lutherans, or passionate about the soccer club, RealMadrid. And those things are fine, but there are more thing at stake when we start this nationalistic nonsense again.

There have been three/four generations of people born since the end of WWII. We read books, look at grainy footage of battles on the History Channel, but we don’t appreciate the pain, the carnage, the utter madness of war. Because all of this nationalistic sabre-rattling is really only a prelude to the next conflict — five, 10, 20 years from now? Who knows. And even when we see evidence of the destruction and killing and suffering in places like Syria, we turn our faces away from it.

Psychologists have clearly shown over and over that people make many choices not from their own best self-interest, but form a much more visceral and primitive decision-making process, which includes this propensity for tribalism. This is the only logical explanation for the otherwise totally illogical rise to prominence of  the Trumps, Le Pens, Putyins, or Assads of this world.

 

 

Ringling Bros. Circus Is Going Out Of Business…Not To Worry!

According to a New York Times story this morning, Ringling Bros./Barnum and Bailey is going to end its circus performances this coming spring, after a 146-year run. Fortunately, we have a replaceme…

Source: Ringling Bros. Circus Is Going Out Of Business…Not To Worry!

Ringling Bros. Circus Is Going Out Of Business…Not To Worry!

According to a New York Times story this morning, Ringling Bros./Barnum and Bailey is going to end its circus performances this coming spring, after a 146-year run. Fortunately, we have a replacement coming to the White House on January 20, 2017, so there will be no interruption in the clowns and circus animals for your entertainment. Hoorayyy!

The Affordable Care Act (ACA)/Obamacare

What would you say to someone who got a new car, it had some problems that needed fixing, but, instead of taking it back to the dealer to work out the problems , this person started to vandalize the car. Not once or twice, but 63 times. Well, that’s exactly what the Republican led Congress had done to “Obamacare” over the years. They did not try to fix the problems (yes, there were many). Instead, they did everything in their power to sabotage, derail, vandalize, and repeal it. Not once or twice, but 63 times.

Now, they say that it was a failure and they are going to repeal it. And take away health insurance from millions of American who did not have it before ACA. All because they, and their cronies, don’t like it. The richest freaking country in the world (?) and millions are again going to be uninsured. Because, folks, the Congress and your new administration don’t really have a good plan to replace it with meaningful programs.

Your Hairball President-Elect wants tax credits to replace the ACA. That’s fine if you have money or income from which you can deduct the credits. But the very people who signed up for Obamacare are also among those folks for whom tax credits are going to be meaningless because they don’t earn enough money.

Shame on Congress, shame on Republicans, and shame on us who not only tolerate this nonsense, but keep electing people whose hearts are not with us. Once again, I stand for the TRUE Libertarian principles: freedom, opportunity and RESPONSIBILITY. It is the last that is sorely lacking today. If you want to “Make America Great Again,” the current way is not the path.

Whores, Not Bedfellows

They say that politics make strange bedfellows. That may be true, but what Sean Hannity did the other  day with his “interview” of traitor Julian Assange can be described only as a prostitute’s trick. It was painful to watch him practically fellating (or video sex masturbating?)the Wiki-leaks founder hiding in London at the Ecuadorean embassy. Of course, Hannity did this to please his pimp, Donald Trump. The pimp-boss in all of this, however, is none other than that manly mensch, Vlagyimir Putyin.

Can you just see The Donald foaming at the mouth about a “fixed” election if he had lost? As it is, he just wants to “move on,” and let’s forget about the Russians fixing our election.  What a joke. Thank you, Comrade Trump! or maybe I should say it in Russian: sposiba, comrade Donald !

The Lady and the Trump

I just watched Oprah Winfrey’s interview with the First Lady on CBS. Michelle Obama is a charming, intelligent and gracious woman. What a contrast the Obamas are with the crass rabble about to take over the White House. Americans, what were you thinking? ‘nuf said.

Israel and the Trumpkins

Hairball Trump seems pretty committed to Israel. It is, therefore, pretty strange that a substantial part of his “base” is made up of right-wing, Jew-hating bigots. These so-called “alt-right” or “Breitbart”, or whatever they call themselves, are only thinly disguised Neo-Nazis.

Even the religious right/Evangelical Christians, another group of Trumpkins, is at heart antisemitic. Their support for Israel is simply  self-serving and disingenuous, as they hope one day to re-claim the Holy Land for themselves. Many of them are waiting for some “Rapture,” and they figure that it would be easier to take the land, when the time comes,  from a few million Jews than from tens of millions of Arabs.

I am sure that the leadership of Israel is aware of these things. They are smart and savvy. For now, they cling to the U.S. as the only country that props up their economy, and the only country that supplies them with the latest and most sophisticated weapons. Unfortunately, this has also led to a kind of arrogance, in which Prime Minister Netanyahu and his cabinet keep thumbing their noses at the other inhabitants of the region. I am talking about continued expansion of Israeli settlements into Palestinian neighborhoods, and the most recently revived attempts to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, a symbolic slap-in-the-face for the Arab population.

Why would Israel do these things? Why alienate the non-Jewish population of the region even further? How will peace ever be achieved in the area, if gasoline is continually poured on the fire? Hairball Trump may be on Israel’s side, but the foundation of his power is not on the side of the Jewish people.  Israel’s leadership should periodically remind itself of that .

The Maiden and the Asp

There is an old tale of a young maiden who came across a poisonous snake. Now, this snake was in a bad way: it was  lying in the path, hungry and cold and in need of help. The maiden gathered up the snake and held it to her breast to warm it. The snake gradually got better and enjoyed being carried around on the warm bosom of the young girl. One day, after it completely recovered, the snake bit the maiden and his fangs released their poison into her blood. The dying maiden looked at the snake and whispered, “But, why did you forsake me so? Why did you bite and poison me?” The asp replied, “I’m a snake; that’s what I do!”

Republicans better remember this story. The asp is Vlagyimir Putyin.

Fill the Swamp!

I have to wonder what the former steel worker in Pennsylvania, the factory worker in Wisconsin, the coal miner in Kentucky, or the farmer in Iowa thinks now that Hairball Trump is stuffing his proposed cabinet with misanthropic billionaires who have absolutely no connection to the working man other than sucking his blood dry.

In my 60 plus years of experience with politics ranging from communism to “Reaganomics,” and from my readings of history, I have learned that when one group wants to “drain the swamp,” it is for the purpose of re-filling the swamp with their own putrid kind. The most egregious models of that were Leninism/Stalinism in 1917 in Russia, and the so-called Tea Party movement in the waning days of the 20th century in the U.S. but, of course,  one could cite dozens of other examples, as well.

I hope that I am wrong for the sake of the United States, but I have this bad feeling that the people who were seduced by this showman, Hairball Trump, are going to have “buyer’s remorse” soon.  I fear that we are going  to go backwards on wages, human rights, environment, finance, and most other fields.

Like I said, I hope that I am wrong.

A Freakish Chimera

Question:

What would you get if you combined into one creature the worst parts of Andrew Jackson (the Indian-hater, boorish cretin of a president), Huey Long (the big-mouth, insensitive, lying populist governor of Louisiana), D.W. Griffith (the film maker who glorified the Ku Klux Klan), P.T. Barnum (the circus showman), and Joseph McCarthy (the Wisconsin senator who persecuted people and ruined their lives for being alleged communist-sympathizers)?

Answer:

Donald J. (“Hairball”) Trump