Posturing

McCain, Rush, and other conservatives have been ranting about Obama’s weak stance when he wouldn’t speak up about the elections in Iran. I’m sure they’re mature enough to know that posturing is not only childish but also dangerous when it comes to Iran.

There are people in Iran that would love to use the U.S. as a scapegoat and Obama knows it.

The trouble is the conservatives know it too. They can only be pandering to an ignorant base. It seems popular support is still more important than justice. I have at times thought McCain was an honest man. It’s obvious he is just after power.

There are a lot of Iranians that are convinced that we provided Saddam with the gas he used against them in the Iran/Iraq war.

Grow up guys!

I Stand Corrected

As Dominic commented in my last post, “These people are not sheep!”

The Iranians have endured water canons, tear gas and bullets. They’re still demonstrating in the streets in spite of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s threats.

Their ability to mobilize quickly has been credited entirely to Twitter. I have a new and profound respect for it now.

When I posted last week I didn’t realize the landslide was declared just hours after the vote. There were millions of voters and no computers. Votes were counted by hand!

Ahmadinejad

The posturing, homophobe, holocaust denier won by a landslide in Iran. It’s easy to sit here in the comfort of my apartment in the good old USA and say it was all fixed. The problem with that is the clerics that run everything in Iran have been embarrassed with Ahmadinejad’s antics for years. They say the elections were the cleanest they’ve been in 30 years.

No, I think the trouble is Iranian voters are sheep just like most voters around the world. (What I wouldn’t do for a benevolent dictatorship!)

They appear to have a culture that says compassion and willingness to talk through problems is a sign of weakness. They want someone with the balls to stand up to the west. Given the terrible things we’ve done over the years, it’s hard to blame them.

Social Evolution

I had to make my rounds with a trainee a few weeks ago. He immediately went into Republican-speak stating that FDR’s policies didn’t get us out of the depression, the war did. I told him he had better expect a passionate response if he kept it up.

 I told him we had 8% growth every year of FDR’s administration. We were so far in the hole that it took the massive spending of the war to pull us out. And that absolutely nothing was happening under Hoover.

I also told him I was no fan of FDR’s because of Eleanor’s futile attempts to improve his race policies.

He said, "I know what to do to make you like me, just agree with everything you say.” I told him about friends of mine that were part of the Tea Party protests. He was surprised.

We started talking about health care reform and he dragged out the old Socialism chestnut. “We have to keep government out of our business,” he said.

We are government. Are we afraid of ourselves?

We are a weak species and can not survive without each other. Just like dogs.

A huge spike in the evolution of our intelligence occurred during the middle of our stone age that coincides with our socialization. The thinking is that it took a lot of us to retain and expand on technological innovations where before new ideas just fizzled out.

I told my new friend the other side of the Socialism coin was Fascism. He decided I needed an education about Socialism. “Do you know what Nazi stands for, the National Socialist Party,” he said.

Right about here my mind drifted back to the futility of politics. The Nazis were throwing Socialists into concentration camps. Stalin and Hitler, while both enthuiastic, were hardly in agreement about an ideal society.