CSotD: All is Chaos

Dear Leader is set to address the nation this morning, but, since Fox and Friends is still on for the better part of an hour as I write this, Darrin Bell’s explanation will have to do in the meantime.

And it may continue to be the most clear and concise version, though the Washington Post reports:

Vice President Pence is preparing a speech slated for next week on Iran policy, one official said, in an attempt to provide a more cohesive explanation of the president’s strategy.

Which will not only reassure the nation but provide a bit of interest for those who have not heard his voice since the vice presidential debates in 2016.

Which, in turn, is a lot more recently than anyone has heard Colin Powell’s voice, from which we got the straight scoop on Iraq back before our war with Eurasia which never happened because we’ve always been at war with Eastasia.

 

But, as Jeff Stahler notes, you have to give Trump credit for bringing the nation together.

One of the reasons that all those nations, including us, were willing to simply put a cap on Iran’s nuclear programs and try to live with its other activities was that, for all the madness of the Guardian Council and the Revolutionary Guards, there were moderating brakes built into the government and there was substantial opposition in the street, at least in the streets of urban centers like Tehran (the rural areas there, as here, remained vulnerable to populist saber-rattling).

And perhaps if the major media here had covered Iran in a way that anybody who had access to Google could discover in three minutes, we wouldn’t have so many people convinced of the “mad mullah” stereotype.

I suppose we should hope the rest of the world is covering us in a way that makes clear that, while we also have madness in charge and a compliant guardian council consisting of the Republican party, there are substantial numbers of citizens who don’t march in lockstep.

 

Meanwhile, Steve Greenberg poses an interesting, but sadly irrelevant question.

 

After all, we can turn to Stahler again for some of the answer to that question, because it doesn’t matter whether people are acting on the direct orders of the president or simply acting in accordance with the atmosphere he has created.

Not only does it not matter in terms of the effect on the people directly impacted, but it doesn’t matter in terms of our national image. Using Uncle Sam in this cartoon is valid, because what a border guard does — despite, or perhaps because of, denials — is going to be seen as representative of our nation.

We can take some comfort in Gov. Inslee’s response, but you have to wonder if anyone overseas will hear it.

We can be pretty sure it won’t rock the halls of Congress.

 

What to do, what to do? Well, aside from wishing our media would be more complete and accurate in the way it portrays the Iranian government, we could wish it would get off the horserace coverage of our upcoming elections and, as Ted Rall suggests, focus on some issues.

As Jennifer Rubin has noted, the media has spent entirely too much time navel-gazing on social media and ignoring the fact that not every voter hangs out on Facebook and Twitter.

She focuses on the fact that Joe Biden is a lot more popular in polls than he is on-line, which is true but his particular pluses and minuses are less crucial than the underlying notion that we’re heading to the election without a clear vision.

Even the polls are more skewed by who answers them than by what the numbers suggest. A lot of people who won’t be reached by pollsters will find their way to the voting booths in November, as they did last time around.

Well, we can wish for all sorts of things. We can wish for Citizens United to be overturned and to get money out of our elections.

We could also wish we didn’t have election dates so firmly set in the Constitution, but rather were on the system in parliamentary systems, where suddenly someone decides it’s time and you’ve got this many weeks — not months — to get your message out before people vote on it.

And, while we’re at it, we could wish that frogs had wings so the poor things wouldn’t keep bumping their asses on the ground.

 

Meanwhile

Back when we were young and believed things, we were used to running into parts of Lao Tze or Confucius that didn’t seem quite as congenial as the other parts we had embraced, but the real conflict came with Plato’s attitude towards the arts, lovingly ridiculed here by Existential Comics.

We loved Plato, and yet we loved the arts and it was quite a problem.

I suppose I could build some conceptual bridge back to the topic of elections, pointing out that I never did find a philosopher with whom I agreed on every point, nor a candidate either.

And I suppose I just did.

But I mostly pass this along because it cracked me up and we could all use a few laughs at the moment.

 

Here. Tom Heintjes has uncovered a half dozen examples of a most unusual feature from years gone by. Go enjoy that instead.

Every item is completely true, just like that political crap you’ve been reading on the Internets.