Election Reflections

There's been a lot of speculation about what the Democratic takeover of Congress meant in the eyes of the American voter. Here at the Blue South we think we've reached a bit of a consensus. It has been said by many that people don't necessarily vote for something or someone so much as they vote against something. This sentiment definitely meshes with the efficacy of negative campaigning (despite being detested by us ideologues). And I don't think there's much argument from any side of the political spectrum that the Democrats never really formulated an affirmative message prior to the mid-terms. So what, then, were the American voters against?

The obvious answer here is the Iraq war. That idea has been beaten into all of our heads by the media, but we here at the Blue South think it's not entirely accurate. The real thing that the voters spoke out against, at least as far as we can see, is the specter of neoconservative thought as manifested in our foreign policy. Of course the Iraq war is exactly that, but it is important to point out that Americans have rejected an approach to foreign policy, not one instance of bad judgment and poor execution.

Beginning after WWII, as the Cold War began to rage, early neocons such as Irving Kristol (pictured above) began to formulate their opinions. The idea, originally, was all about the containment of communism and fighting an indirect war with the Soviet Union. We had the moral high ground at that point because it was the Soviets who were viewed as the ones with imperial aspirations, and we were merely fighting the good fight to contain their influence.

However, the Cold War has been over for a while now. Communism has exposed its fatal flaws, namely the social-engineering catastrophes that lead to the deaths of millions and millions of people. If any lessons can be learned from the failure of the communist utopia they must be that utopias don't, and never will, exist and that societies and governments are best left to evolve in their own ways without intervention from outside ideological forces.

This brings us to the tragic flaw of the contemporary neoconservative- the idea that America's best interests are served by spreading democracy throughout the world. On its face it seems like a good a idea. No one here will argue that Democracy is not a good thing. It has been a major contributor to the vast freedoms that we have grown to love in this country. However, the policy of spreading democracy at the barrel of a gun, toppling regimes and then forcing elections, has become the subject of the ultimate democratic criticism- the voter. The fact is that, while spreading democratic values is a good idea, it is not a good in and of itself. The method matters, as do the results and, most importantly, the will of the people being "democratic".

Oh, SNAP...In Yo' Face Pelosi!

In the coup of the century Steny Hoyer (D-MD) has defeated seemingly insurmountable odds to defeat Pelosi's man, Jack Murtha (D-PA) for the number two spot in the Democrat pecking order in the House. We at the Blue South obtained an exclusive interview with Hoyer, mere moments after his triumphant victory over the Pelosi Faction. Here's what he had to say:

TBS: Well, Steny, how's it feel to undercut the clear will of your party's leader in a self-serving power grab that potentially could divide your party before they get a chance to do anything at all in Congress?
Hoyer: Excuse me? Who the hell are you anyway?
TBS: That's beside the point, Steny, I just want to know how it feels to be a party-debasing, leadership-circumventing, snobby East Coast liberal power broker.
Hoyer: Pretty damn good....SECURITY!
TBS: But seriously, Murtha could take you in a bar fight, right?
Hoyer: Murtha's a patsy.
TBS: Whatever, man. He fights dirty- he'd take you.
Hoyer: Nonsense, Murtha's a lightweight. I'd break him in half. In fact, I just did, democratically speaking.
TBS: I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree. Thanks for your time, Steny.
Hoyer: My pleasure, jackass.

There you have it, an exclusive Blue South conversation with like, the 6th most powerful man in America (billionaires exempted). No where else could you find such hard-hitting journalism than here, at the Blue South.

King George's New Pants

With all the excitement of football in the air, although my beloved Gamecocks have gotten off to a somewhat lackluster start, as well as my new daily routine of reading page after page of silly torts cases, I haven't had a lot of time to spend with my blog...but I want you all to know I'm still out here, so I'll post a few of my random thoughts.

President Bush has apparently adopted a new strategy in his speeches these days, he's no longer denying things that we, the public, have known were true for quite some time. Take these secret CIA prisons...the Washington Post published a story about them in November of last year, and since that time, under Bush's omnibus excuse of national security, the administration has vehemently denied their existence. That is, until last week when Bush hit the speech circuit fessing up, not only to their existence, but to their moral objectionability as well. This change in strategy for Bush is nothing new in the Republican party, all of the '08ers have been distancing themselves from Bush for quite a while now. It was only a matter of time before Bush jumped on the bandwagon and started distancing himself from himself. Makes political sense, right?

In other news, Al Gore has earned pariah status for his power-point movie about global warming. I guess Americans have been too busy gassing up their Hummers and cutting donuts in the Wal-Mart parking lots to realize that Gore's video actually puts up some compelling evidence in a viewer-friendly format that the NASCAR moms and dads can understand enough to totally reject. Scientists have been calling global warming a problem for years, but nobody pays any attention to them. Why would someone who has spent their entire life studying Peruvian glaciers have anything useful to say about my life?

What else has been going on? Oh yeah, Mark Sanford still hates public schools and poor people. Glenn McConnell is still dry-humping the Hunley and leaving millions of public dollars on the nightstand. Mid-term elections are coming up and the buzz is that people are sick of the Republican incumbents and are going to vote for change this November...Yeah right, I'll believe that when I see it. Not to mention that my beloved Dems haven't put together a solid enough platform to be able to espouse any sort of political agenda. At least the Republicans can fall back on their hatred of gays and abortion to rally the troops. What do we Dems have, social justice? Welfare reform? Universal healthcare? Americans would rather attend a good ole gay bashing session than bother acknowledging the actual problems facing us.

Ooh, ooh, speaking of healthcare, these pharmaceutical companies disgust me. Do you know that they have instructions on how to "talk to your doctor" about certain pills. You can go to their websites and they will instruct you on why you need their drug, give you a list of ambiguous symptoms to aid in your self-diagnosis, and then tell you how to lie to your doctor to make her believe you're actually sick so you can convince your insurance company (assuming you have one, otherwise you couldn't afford to visit the doctor, much less actually pay for a prescription drug) that you NEED this pill. What a farce! There will be more to come on this problem, but for now I'm going to spend the remaining time I have before football starts (I've got about an hour) to put together some sort of visual aid for this post, because if there's one thing we Americans need in order to actually read anything, is a catchy picture to sex it up a bit.

My Favorite Quote of the Day

Ok, so I leave my radio on NPR all the time because commercial radio is crap and you can only find good music if you look for it. Normally I get a hard dose of news and commentary from the nation and world with only a small parcel of SC news...that is until Your Day comes on at noon. Today's show featured an interview with Mike Petrie, the maintence director for the city of Union, talking about his city's progressive energy policy. When asked about the contents of Biodiesel, Petrie was happy to oblige with his own expert analysis: "80% Diesel, 20% Bio." PRICELESS! Oh yeah and the picture is one from my camping trip this past weekend...for Mr. Petrie's benefit, we're burning 100% Bio.

Energy Woes (Pt. II)

So Bush tells us we're addicted to oil and that we have to do something to stop it. The problem is he's right and anyone who understands addiction knows that it takes tanamount to an act of God to kick one. Ever try to quit smoking? Try quitting plastic, driving, indoor lighting.

The fact is that petroleum products are ubiquitous in our society and our way of life relies on oil. I have had conversations with friends about this problem and they all seem to come to the same startling conclusion: technology will prevail. In other words, somebody will come up with some new solution or gadget that will save us all from oil dependence.

The problem with this point of view is that these people fail to see just how dependent our society is on oil. In the absence of oil, we won't have the ability to sustain a way of life that is conducive to technological advances. We would have to start from square one, something like the industrial revolution. Computers would be useless, cars would go nowhere, there would be little electricity.

So true believers in technology without limits, I submit to you a fast approaching deadline. You only have until the oil runs out (it is already running short) to produce your new gadget that will spare us our way of life. We are an oil-based society and are on the brink of losing the lynch pin of our economy and livelihood.

Energy Woes

I recently had the pleasure of finally graduating college and, even though I participated in the smaller, less guilded ceremony of August, I was surprised to find that our speaker would be Dr. Samuel Bodman, W's Secretary of Energy. Seemed like quite a high level speaker for a crowd comprised mostly of Van Wilder types who were more interested in the what bars they were headed to that night. However, I managed to stave off my own hangover long enough to notice something very interesting about Dr. Bodman's speech.

He began with a trip down memory lane, all the way back to the 1950's and the roots of his own political philosophy- the Cold War. Bodman proceeded to draw many loose parallels between the world of today and the world during the Cold War and he made it well known that many of the tactics utilized in today's energy policy were informed by Cold War experience.

So now it all makes sense. The problem with our nation's foreign policy, energy policy, and even domestic policy is not that our leaders are blind to the world around them. It has to do with their paradigm. These people see the world in black and white, good and evil, Soviet and American terms. Instead of recognizing our problems with terrorists as their own species of conflict, these leaders have chosen to swap them out for Soviets and to fight the good fight the only way they know how.

But I'll take one on the chin for my liberal friends and go ahead and denounce those naysayers to the Iraq war that call it another Vietnam. Iraq is Iraq, terrorism is terrorism, and neither of these things has the least bit to do with the Cold War, save some policy mistakes we made in the region during our stand-off with the Soviets.

The world I see is not a polarized, good and evil, Cold War world. The world I see is nuanced and difficult to explain. The lines of causality for the crises around the world are nebulous and sprawling. In truth, I imagine the people who were living during the Cold War saw it much the same way. It is only the mistake of these few remnants of Cold War era leadership to oversimplify their historical perspective and attempt to apply it to our modern world. That old saying that he who ignores history is doomed to repeat it may be true, but I would add that with the passage of time our perspective changes in such a way as to make it very dangerous to put too much stock in lessons learned from historical situations.

Solutions for modern problems need to involve logic and modern philosophies, not archaic aphorisms gleaned from a misunderstanding of the past. We need to take a long, cold look at ourselves and our environment and go forward together, with some sort of unifying principles that can apply to all people in the world if we ever expect to bring peace and stability to the forefront.

A New World Order

Photo provided by www.DownTheRoad.org the Ongoing Global Bicycle Touring Adventure


In this age of globalization and increased competition from foreign entities, our economy finds itself in a bit of a conundrum. One of the surest signs of a robust economy is the willingness and ability of companies to offer their employees benefits at what I will call the societal level. These types of benefits, pension plans, retirement, stock options, and health care are the types of things that make jobs worth the while. These benefits represent long term security for the worker and display the true magnitude of a particular corporation's economic clout.

The problem is that U.S. companies have been facing increased competition from foreign companies that can pay their workers much lower wages and offer little to no benefits. We are a rich country and, therefore, our people expect a certain amount of wealth from their jobs. Poorer people may be perfectly willing to accept their low wages that at least provide a little bit of food and material substance. The fact is, Americans don't want to give up their wealth, but companies are continually forcing them to in the name of competitiveness.

I see this phenomenon as a trend of global redistribution of wealth that will spread the limited amount of material well-being in existence more evenly around the globe. If it continues it will materially harm the average American. There will be less wealth to go around in this country. However, the upshot to this, at least on a grand scale, might be more prosperity in the rest of the world, alleviating many of the problems associated with poverty cycles, including the mass discontent caused by the anguish of living in poverty. In short, the redistribution of wealth around the globe, that results in a more even distribution of wealth and power might result in a more stable and, ultimately, peaceful world society.

The problem is that here in America, nobody wants to lose their way of life, nor should they. All productive members of society spend vast portion of their lives seeking material goods and the expected sense of well-being associated with their accumulation. That is one of the founding principles of our society and has been built into the very framework of our government, economy, and even our very lives. Proponents of globalization and worldwide free markets cite the need for new sources of labor, raw materials, and capitol in order to sustain the American way of life- and these people are not wrong. However, the expansion of our economy into a global one comes at a price and we, as Americans, must ask ourselves whether we are willing to pay it.