Bretton Woods' Smoke-Filled Rooms

I have recently devoted considerable space on this blog to corruption in India and to India’s way of dealing with it once it came to light. We’ve seen that the Indian government had to be dragged kicking and screaming into cleaning up its act, largely by the efforts of one, Anna Hazare, who had begun a protest fast till death.

The Indian media jumped on it and splashed it all over the country, and the entire population – particularly its youth – mobilized to force the government to confront various issues. [Kudos to the Indian university professors who must have exerted considerable (positive) influence over their legions of ‘skulls-full-of-mush’ scholars.]

May I be so bold as to suggest that the corruption that has come to light in India so far – bribery, money laundering, dipping into the public trough, influence peddling; trial fixing, cover-up, etc. – is peanuts when compared to what’s going on in the United States today? Bluntly put, there is a cadre of crafty individuals who are working on stealing no less than an entire nation - lock, stock, and barrel. (Let’s just call a spade a spade.)

For a long time now, we’ve had a feeling that something is terribly wrong. It first showed up in policies that seemed utterly insane. It snowballed into the dubious results we are seeing today. These were entirely predictable but are somehow being summarily ignored. People who were beginning to smell a rat were systematically neutered, ridiculed and marginalized.

The things we presently argue about on blogs and on talk shows – the usual Democrat/Republican divide – are now utterly beside the point. This is pure diversion and blame-shifting fun. Even the Islamic vs. infidel argument, as well as the Socialism/Democracy debates we endlessly engage in, are hardly worth mentioning anymore. What is truly important is routinely hidden or swept into inaccessible places - like what’s happening as we speak up at Bretton Woods.

None of the usual left-wing rabble showed up to protest – only a handful to ‘tea party’ people. They were barred from the (closed door) proceedings.

What is going on in New Hampshire is a long way from having to hand a judge a few thousand rupees to get a favorable ruling in a traffic dispute. Though annoying to the individual parties involved, the outcome would hardly determine the fate of a nation.

We often wonder how it is possible to shred our Constitution in plain sight; how we can ignore our border security; how we can nullify contracts with the stroke of the executive’s pen; how we can allow our dollar to slip into oblivion; how we can elect a man to the highest office in the land about whom next to nothing is known; how we can tolerate a Congress that is predominantly ineffective except when it comes to rubberstamping outrage after outrage; how – with all that is happening around us – our media remains silent.

I’m not saying that the kinds of solutions to come out of Bretton Woods palaver are necessarily bad. It may well be the best thing since sliced bread. What is suspect, however, is that the public has been excluded. We are being shaped, and herded into taking positions without explanation. Thanks to our media, which have become pure, unadulterated left-wing propaganda mills; our universities, which have become (in essence) madrassas promoting hatreds and Pavlovian response – thanks to our educational system overall, critical thought in our nation seems to have run its course. We’ve all become victims of an uncertain scheme that, by my calculations, can only end up in servitude for most of us. This is not how it was supposed to be.

It is significant that the one man who had both an inkling of what is going on and the skill to impart its essence, has now been forced from the stage. His departure is being heralded by professional left-wing and right-wing talkers alike. Now, tell me again that we’re not being played by both sides; that there is not effectively only one side: Soros’ side.

Watch closely the choices we will be presented with in our next election charade. The whole thing will hinge on what Republicans manage to come up with. As it looks now, they’ll serve up losers. And even if some standard-issue Republican should catch the public’s fancy, he’ll most likely turn out to be a ‘schlemiel’ like the rest.

Look too at the ones who draw the lion’s share of the Left’s condemnation (Palin, Trump). It is they who, if given even half a chance, are most likely to buck the trends that have been carefully mapped out, and promoted for years - that are only now coming to fruition.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

Obama 2; Congress 0

Notch another victory for the Obama administration. Obviously, Congress has become dysfunctional to the point of irrelevance. The ‘change’ that Obama envisioned from the outset not only pertains to our nation’s fiscal health and social cohesion, it also involves our system of governance: elections; our two-party system, the Supreme Court, checks and balances; and all the rest. Clearly, Democrats have been cajoled into rubberstamping the president’s market basket, helping to push through deeply unpopular legislation - some say illegally - thus shattering the nexus between the voter and themselves. Washington is now seen as rogue. Voter view themselves as victims without recourse to traditional means of having a say in how their nation is run. As such Democrats are expected to reap the wrath of the electorate in November.

Republicans fare no better. They were content to stand by and watch Democrats literally hang themselves. Republicans are now eagerly awaiting their 15 minutes of fame in the shadow of the gallows, hoping (as JB suggests) to divide the spoils of majority among themselves. The problem is that there are no longer any spoils to divide. The nation is bankrupt. Republicans have stood by, licking their chops; and watched as America was being depleted of its essence. It now no longer matters who wins in November. A huge Republican landslide can only serve to animate talk TV and radio hosts who will find, as time goes by, that Obama will get his way no matter what; that the moment to actually have done something constructive has long since passed.

In a WSJ opinion piece today, L. Gordon Crovitz writes about Iran’s Ahmadinejad. He might just as well have been writing about Barack Hussein Obama. Crovitz begins: “There have been rogue leaders on the world stage before. In cases such as Hitler, Stalin and Mao, people were shocked to learn they actually meant what they said.“

Crovitz asks the question: “A leader who mocks all questions (and) is thumbing his nose at (the) core beliefs of our era, including that information wants to flow freely, and that no one is above this law of increasing openness - What to do with (such) an information pariah?”

Crovitz concludes: “In today’s world, a leader who consistently mocks, lies, (blame-shifts) and threatens deserves to be set apart. We no longer have the excuse of misunderstanding. We will (only) have ourselves to blame if (he)… achieves his ambition.”

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/