Drifting

Just finished a delightful book, “The Village By The Sea” by Anita Desai. It tells of a family in rural India - the father is a drunk, the mother is sick and dying, their 13-year old daughter is running the household, her 12-year old brother runs off to Bombay; there are also two young (school-age) girls - life looks very bleak indeed for this unfortunate family.

However, things change. And when things can’t get much worse, they often get better. The trick to survival, the author tells us, is keeping the faith. As long as you have hands and fingers to work, there’s hope.

America has had it pretty good for a long time. There’s nothing here even close to approaching conditions that exist for many Indians even now. We are often told that poverty leads to crime; that religion is all that enforces the ‘goodness’ of man; and if not religion, it is the state that must be the final arbiter in any matter.

In Desai’s book, religion plays practically no role, and neither does the state. People are ‘good’ by nature, despite their faults.

We know where Obama stands on the issue of poverty. For him, the ultimate solution is always the state. It is a philosophy he shares with Hu Jintao, his current White House guest.

Americans are almost evenly divided on the issue. Many believe that rolling back the state will bring about untold disaster. Slightly more believe that the state itself is the cause of disaster.

It is likely that we will keep vacillating between the two extremes for some time to come. Meanwhile change is inevitable. This is another theme of “Village”. Change must not necessarily be bad. It can be neutral. When Obama answers a reporter’s question by saying that “China has a different political system than we do…” he is absolutely right. He was also speaking honestly when he said that he intends to transform America.

Americans should have been astute enough to ask what exactly he meant by that. Did he mean to ease America into the Chinese system, or the Islamic system; or did he envision himself as the author of a brand-new system that has never been tried before?

We are perplexed as we watch our president work. He seems to dismiss the American system entirely. To him it is a hated relic of the past. And yet, much of what he ends up doing is following along in our previous president’s footsteps - clearly without conviction.

Perhaps Obama is impatient. He cannot wait for the changes that will come naturally. He pouts and threatens perceived enemies. He pushes and prods. And yet, he is most popular when he’s on vacation.

As far as the public is concerned, Obama’s principle problem is that he has told us nothing. He hasn’t articulated his plan. We seem to be drifting. He tells us “we’re going there“, and we end up here. And then he tells us “here is there”. It’s not something that inspires much confidence.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

Would You Marry Him?

A little girl I once knew would always ask when someone said they liked so-and-so, “Would you marry him?” The truth be told, I don’t much care for Putin. I know he’s corrupt and vindictive. There’s not very much that speaks in his favor.

What I do care about is my own government spouse, the one with her hands perpetually in our pockets: Barack Hussein Obama. I used to think that Obama and Putin were very much alike. My only published article (on another website) made the point that Obama was not so much a Marxist as he is corrupt. I have since tempered my assessment somewhat; recognizing that, in the end, it probably comes out to the same.

Obama, unlike Putin, appears to be ideologically driven. Does that make him less or more dangerous than someone like Putin? Hard to say. In Obama’s case it only complicates things. No one rightly knows where Obama’s corruption ends and his ideology begins. The two appear to run parallel. Whereas ideology can be excused by the faithful (and even by those in the loyal opposition), corruption remains a crime in any language.

What is surprising is that Putin appears to be getting away with it. The mechanisms he has put in place are virtually foolproof. Only the truth seems to be leaking out albeit at the edges.

Whereas we can ague openly amongst ourselves as to Obama’s true motives (obviously, ‘socialism’ does not scare anybody anymore), we waste precious time while the dissolution of our nation continues. In Russia, the argument is over. The only thing left is government spin with an occasional endorsement from outside.

Russia is in deep doo-doo. That is, its people are not free. That is to say, it’s people are poor and destined to remain so. There is no ideology to cushion their pain.

It’s winter and it’s cold in both Russia and America. It is of no benefit to share a bed with either one of their leaders.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

Everyone Is Guilty

The temptation to turn WikiLeaks into a wedge issue is an indication of the state-controlled media attempting to make yet another statement in support of its overall agenda. We saw the same thing happening in response to the killing of employees at a Connecticut beer distributor; and, before that, the shooting of military personnel at Fort Hood. In each of these cases, the media went out of its way to cast the criminal as ‘victim’. (There are innumerable other such examples.)

This, of course, obscures the fact; first, that a horrendous crime has been committed; and, second, that there already exists a well-entrenched history of emphasis and intent, ceaselessly being stoked by both our government and its propaganda appendages.

There can be no doubt that our current political class feeds on division. Therefore, division and disharmony is promoted on every level of officialdom. Our reflex response to any incident has become so thoroughly conditioned as to immediately seek victim status for the aggressor, and aggressor status for the victim.

The gun violence this past weekend in the Bronx (NY) immediately becomes a debate about the second amendment, to further the cause of those who would challenge it. Lost in all this is the appreciation for the obvious fact that a crime has been committed by someone who deserves to be punished.

‘No fault crime’ has become the focus of the game. When something goes down, everybody must be made to pay equally. Everyone is guilty. No one escapes scrutiny. We live in a land where everyone is a suspect; where everyone must be watched and kept on a short leash, and no one is trusted; most especially the press, which we all have come to know has a singular agenda of shilling for our present government which, in turn, demands ever greater control over our lives, extending now even to what we can and cannot do in our bedrooms. I’m surprised JB fell for it.