This is what happens…

Rarely am I compelled to shout curse words in public places. Today was an exception, and I had to struggle to keep an uncontrolled, despairing “oh fuck” erupting while running on a treadmill at the local gym. What nearly prompted an outburst – and, were I not mid-run, a tirade on totalitarian government? This report had popped up silently on a television screen in front of me.

The civil war in Syria has been simmering away on the back burner for most of the last few months. Since the intrigue surrounding the initial outbreak of the fighting, Americans have had their attention divided between a presidential election, terrorist attacks on American consulates, Iran’s nuclear program, and a potential war between Israel and Palestine. All the while, humanitarian agencies have made efforts to remind the global community of the continued destruction occurring in Syria, where government soldiers seem to kill indiscriminately in response to rebel soldiers who seem to kill indiscriminately.

But then a dessert pastry company announced it was shutting down, the CIA chief had sex with a person and a cop gave a homeless man some new shoes. “Brutal Government Continues to Kill its Own People.” That headline never stood a chance against “Inbred English Family Announces Next Child.”

Admittedly, the media sucks. It’s stupid. It serves the interests of the masses, and the interests of the masses are generally stupid. Would I rather read a detailed analysis of the Syrian conflict or a blow-by-blow account of Lindsay Lohan’s weekend bender? Well, I’d rather not say how I spent my Sunday morning...

The Syrian government has made things serious. They’ve made the whole situation a whole heck of a lot serious. Chemical weapons are a big no-no. UN treaties, Geneva conventions and general moral principles all agree that, although killing people in battle is totally cool, killing them slowly, painfully and en masse is not allowed. Even Hitler thought using chemical weapons in against Allied soldiers was as big a faux pas a commander could make.

And now Bashar al-Assad is preparing to deploy them in a war against his own people..

Unless this brutal dictator has a change of heart, or unless there is some intervention made by the international community, some bad shit is about to go down in the Middle East. So allow me to practice some demagoguery for a bit.

That the Syrian government had stores of potential chemical weapons ready to mobilize against its population was a pretty well-known fact. al-Assad even warned in July, says the Wired article linked above, that he would use these weapons to deter any international involvement in his war. So what happened? Did we just assume that, out of the goodness of his heart, a brutal, selfish dictator would simply choose not to use these weapons after all? “Don’t worry guys, he clearly said if someone intervenes. As long as we stay out of it, we’ll be fine.” Was that the thought process? That’s nuts.

Months ago, almost a year ago, someone could have stepped in to stop this. Planes and missiles were sent to blow up Gaddafi. The statements made in condemnation of Mubarak were at least strong, threatening and uncompromising, especially in comparison to the confusing and contradictory slew of statements made about Syria.

An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure, or so they say. The world is well past any preventative measures regarding the Syrian civil war. That boil has been left to fester for far too long. Maybe a quick lancing will do the trick. Unfortunately it may just continue to rot until it consumes itself.

I think we’ve fucked this one up.

Mercenary Politics

Hired Hands Fight to the Death in America’s Greatest Gladiatorial Showdown

I first became politically aware during the summer of 2004. My grandfather, who I believe was a wisely non-partisan, would spend his drive time by listening to the fart-filled zeppelin Rush Limbaugh rant about the upcoming presidential election and how, if Democrat challenger John Kerry were to squeeze out a victory, all that was American would come to an end. Unfortunately, obesity remains a dire issue in contemporary world health.

I remember that a most of the attacks Limbaugh and his fellow dirigible-shaped conservative colleagues centered around John Kerry’s “waffling” on the issues and that somehow he was given Purple Hearts for his military service that he didn’t deserve. He waffled and he lied. He lied because he waffled.

Upon reflection, and after taking into consideration my accrued experience with the decrepit political system of the United States, I have decided to pity John Kerry and his unfortunately doomed 2004 presidential campaign. Never the charismatic man, Kerry was unable to toss back the grenades lobbed towards him by the dipshit Republican media. When he attempted to fight back (see the aforementioned military service controversy), it all seemed to blow up in his face.

Interestingly, nearly all of the charisma involved in the current presidential race is being horded by one Barrack H. Obama, leaving only a shadowy residue of a personality for Mitt Romney. But that does not mean Mitt is not an interesting man to consider.

He burst onto the scene in 1994, positioning himself as a pro-business, socially moderate Republican candidate in the Massachusetts Senate race against Ted Kennedy. During the campaign, he stated that he was “committed to the belief that we can believe as we want, but we will not force our beliefs…and you will not see me wavering on that.”

Within a decade, he became governor of Massachusetts, where state instituted a landmark health care reform law, a law which would serve as the foundation for the Obama Administration’s Affordable Care Act, a law that Romney is now fundamentally opposed to.

I will repeat what I said earlier. Mitt Romney is a pro-business, socially moderate Republican. So how could he be running as a right-wing, Christian ultra-fundamentalist nut-job?

Because he wants to win.

In order for Mitt Romney to have won the Republican nomination, in order for him to have any support among what is unfortunately referred to as the Republican base, in order for him to have any support from the blowhard, but dominant Republican media – ultimately for him to have any chance to become president – he had to become what is now (unfortunately) the prototypical Republican. He has become a bigot who wipes his ass with thousand dollar bills. Before he was just a pro-business, socially moderate Mormon who wiped his ass with trillion dollar bills (I assume image-consulting firms lowered the currency value because shit-stained thousand dollar bills tested better with focus groups).

Count this as a reason the two-party system needs to be brought out behind the barn and shot in the head like a lame racehorse. In order for any individual to become successful in politics, especially presidential politics, he or she will have to fit nicely into one of two slots. To say nothing about group polarization, this ultimately comes down to money. There are rich people one either side of a line. The rich guys on the left side of the line get together and agree on some political viewpoint. This becomes the Democratic party’s platform, the first of two acceptable political slots. The rich guys on the right side of the line get together and agree on a different political viewpoint. Then they hear Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh jerking each other while shouting about communist feminazis and the businessmen begrudgingly shuffled a hundred yards or so to the right. And this becomes the second slot.

Like poor, old John McCain, whose true maverick moderateness was neutered by the toothless bible-thumpers in 2008, Mitt Romney has – just within the past few years remember – crafted himself into an ultra-conservative. And this very evident shift in his political pretentions denotes one thing: American politics has become a mercenary exhibition.

Romney and Obama are hired hands. They literally espouse the views of the highest bidder, ultimately doing whatever it takes for them to win. It is obvious in Romney’s case; during his history, he has gone from not wanting to use government to impose his more conservative beliefs onto others to vowing to use his presidential authority to enforce or strengthen bans “immoral” social practices like homosexual marriage, abortion and pornography.

It is less obvious in the case of Mr. Obama. But in my opinion, his meteoric rise from freshman senator to president of the largest superpower in the world, indicates that he has been groomed to become the archetypal democrat since the day he was discovered. All his billionaire handlers needed to do was slap on an easy to remember slogan and he became the perfect candidate.

In summation, politics is corrupt.

We’re fucked, aren’t we?