Speak Out

I’ve been thinking about Republicans and why they are so clueless. Listening to Dickie Bird spout off in defense of torture I keep wondering what drives them. Then, last night we watched a PBS show on WW II, called “Behind Closed Doors”. Much of it is about Stalin and his approach to the Allies. Stalin was really another Hitler who probably killed more people over his career as Russia’s ruler than any/all of the Czars, and perhaps more than Hitler. Basically, he simply didn’t care about anyone else. Even his friends were not safe, as he demonstrated again and again after the war. He had no principles, save one-- win/preserve power at any cost. And that’s the apparent sole principle of Republicans. Dickie Bird, Rush, Newt, and the current crop of Obama opposers in Congress. All of them are focused completely on power and rescuing themselves from their own worst instincts. The fact that the American people so completely rejected them last November has been lost in the dim, foggy recesses of their little minds.
Even local Republicans seem driven by these issues that they use via coded language to awaken the party faithful--that hard core of Christian Taliban, and the super-rich who comprise their band of brothers. They continue to mouth off about Gay Marriage, as though it is a threat to the Nation, or even to the institution of marriage itself. Whereas, if you think about it, the real threat to the institution of Marriage is heterosexual weddings, half of which end in divorce and a considerable number of which end in domestic violence.
When people like Colin Powell speak out, to whom are they speaking? Certainly not to Newt, et al. And why I keep asking doesn’t the Republican literati ever speak out? I know that Billy Krystol is simply of a new breed—the first of its kind—Jewish Neo-Nazis. So, people like him will continue to support their hard core right wing. But George Will? He seems too smart to be in their court. And what about Susan Collins, and Olympia Snow in New England? How do they continue to associate with such thugs? It must be the intoxication of power and even proximity to power. Will, I suppose, simply makes too much money as the mob thinker/writer to quit. And the moderate pols are too star struck to extricate themselves from association with thuggery.
I am troubled by this association, because I worry about Dems, now in power. As I noted in my most recent posting, I worry about corruption, and how long it takes for power to corrupt. We need to watch for this—all of us who think. And we need to stand up and speak out when we see hints of corruption beginning to appear. The Nation cannot afford blind obedience to power. We must instead speak truth to power. On every occasion we get.
Speak out people.

Financial War Crimes Tribunal

These days, even when our President tries his best to put a smiley face on the Nation’s financial distress, we dig the hole a bit deeper. The stock market, seemingly a completely dysfunctional and non-rational system at best, takes a nose dive whenever President Obama opens his mouth.
Having been born during the depths of Global Depression I (The Great Depression) I am now left wondering whether this Second Great Depression—the one they said couldn’t occur any more-- will outlast me, or perhaps more to the point, whether we will outlast our money.
I still remember my Scottish grandparents literally running out of money. There of course was no Social Security system in the late 1940s, when they ran out of money. Family members were expected to care for their elders. That is still the case today, except that our elders are expected at least to pay for part if not all of their expenses.
I am left with this question, though. Do the perps (bankers, economists, and other financial detritus) who created the bubbles that have now all burst have any understanding of the true magnitude of their misdeeds? “Mistakes were made”, that plaintive cry of the Bushies, is simply not good enough. There really needs to be an accounting. Much as people are beginning to demand an accounting of Bush anti-democratic and unconstitutional mismanagement of our government during a time of crisis, we need some kind of Truth Commission, perhaps a Global one, since we are not the only nation affected, nor are our Perps, the only ones who committed these vast crimes against humanity.
We need something like the War Crimes Tribunal after WW II, this one concerned with global financial miscreants who have destroyed lives and perhaps even whole nations. We need an accounting of “who did what to whom” and who allowed these vast misdeeds to be perpetrated. We kept repeating over and over again that the Great Depression could never again occur because of the safeguards built in after that cataclysmic event. But then we slowly but surely eliminated the safeguards, because economists kept assuring everyone that private sector money managers the world over would never be stupid enough, or greedy enough to repeat the mistakes of the past.
But with the safeguards eliminated, they did precisely that. That they were both stupid and greedy now goes without saying. But this needs saying—such people will always be both stupid and greedy. ALWAYS.
Now they need to be held to account.
We need a Commission that will speak Truth to Power.
It is Time.