State of the Union
Thu., February 3, 10:52 PM
Conversation in the Empress household last night:
Husband: The president is on tonight.
L’empress: I’m not watching.
Husband: What are you gonna put on?
L-empress: My pajamas!
According to a survey taken at iwon.com, 54 per cent of its readers didn’t watch either. No matter – this morning I woke up to the news on the radio. (Sent me back to sleep.) There is, of course, no real news on that front. Do you think that man is really as dumb as he seems to be?
I haven’t yet figured out what the real agenda is on this social security “fix.” (I am pretty sure it won’t fix anything.) It seems to me like an attempt to fix the broken stock market. I don’t think that will work either.
A couple of days ago I mentioned in passing that I’m not sure democracy is the best thing for Iraq. Much of the Sunni terrorism of the past few months has been aimed at “persuading” people to boycott last Sunday’s election. It worked, to the extent that many Sunnis stayed home that day, rather than risk being killed at the polls. By Tuesday, the Sunni leadership was claiming that the elections were invalid because too few Sunnis had voted and therefore they were not represented.
I think that democracy – if it is to work at all – must grow upward from the people, not be ordered down from the leadership. Certainly, it cannot be forced by an outside power. The fact that it did work in some instances – because those societies were ready for it – has resulted in a false sense of success. I’m getting a certain sense that the United Nations may be suffering from the same syndrome: You cannot tell other people how to live their lives. All you can do is try to stop them from hurting each other. Unless, of course, you are Mr. Dubya. I would suggest that he read some of the history of Woodrow Wilson and the end of the Great War, but I doubt he would pay any attention. Some people never do.
And still people are getting killed. There should be a limit on how many of them are ours.
