Calhoun’s Cannons for June 25. 2010
“. . . A penny for the Old Guy”
T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men
I understand. His war’s going badly, his men are getting killed in greater and greater numbers, and with every mistaken drone strike that takes out another wedding party a thousand clan members in a country of Hatfields and McCoys rise up as new enemies. It’s a tough job. Impossible, really, to nation-build in a corrupt, fundamentalist-ridden, narco-state, run by tribal war-lords, a country that not even Alexander The Great managed to subdue. Or the British. Or the Russians.
And maybe he and his small adoring wannabe staff of groupie-Aides have watched 300 too many times -- “This . . . is . . . SparTA!” – in between running 7 miles a day and eating like an anorexic runway model. It’s the warrior’s ascetic aesthetic. Way cool. I understand.
But Rolling Stone? That magazine’s always been bold and edgy and with Mat Taibbi’s recent breathtaking takedown series on the little piggies of Wall Street, that is the last magazine anyone in a position of power should sit down with to share a bottle of booze and have a gab fest. The story that results will surely rip your head off and hand pieces of it to you in 12 point type.
And a . . . general? A four-star one at that? Gossiping and sniggering with cronies, all dissing their civilian bosses like a 7th grade Mean Girl cat-party? What was he thinking?
Apparently, this was nothing new for General McBlabby, who used the press and very public venues before to break the chain of command and let the world know that he disagrees with civilian policy and that only he and he alone has The Way to solve the unsolvable. And if his civilian bosses aren’t listening to him, well, he’ll just up the ante in a way that can’t be ignored. After all, he’s . . . General McCrystal!
Which makes me think that maybe it’s time that we institute a new rule: Mandatory weekly attendance by ALL elected officials and government appointees and military brass in some sort of 12-step program, one designed to help people Get Over Themselves. Perhaps then we wouldn’t see this constant star-fall of bloated egotists blown off their lofty perches and crashing and burning all around us. It’s getting so the public can’t go outside nowadays without a hard-hat due to the constant rain of falling politicos and now a four-star general.
On the other hand, there was speculation that McCrystal had gone all Colonel Kurtz and was way, way up the dark river. Lord knows it would be understandable in the Mad Hatter Kingdom where killing al Qaida and Taliban allied with al Qaida has now morphed into killing plain old hard-core, bat-shit crazy Taliban who throw acid in the faces of young girls attending school, to killing angry run-of-the-mill Afghan patriots who only ally with the Taliban in order to get foreigners out of their country, joined by Pakistani-supported fighters sneaking across the border to play a deadly dual game for their own purposes. It’s all turned into a nightmare stew in a failed state run by tribal thugs. Dark river, indeed.
The President decisively settled McCrystal’s hash by removing him. He’s free now to go on the lucrative rubber chicken lecture circuit, get a fat book contract, and enjoy a luxurious retirement, even though it is a shame such an outstanding career ended so badly. Afghanistan is not only a human graveyard, it’s also the graveyard of careers as well as nations.
As General Petraeus will likely find out when he takes McCrystal’s place. Petraeus wrote the playbook McCrystal was using: COIN, [Counter Insurgency] a form of district by district “nation building” that can be costly to American soldiers and at this point is not going well in a country that (unlike Iraq) never really had a “nation” to build on in the first place. And if COIN is bogged down now, it remains to be seen whether the new General or his civilian bosses will have the time and will to figure out that Afghanistan is not Iraq and be able to change policy quickly enough to avoid a growing disaster.
One thing is for sure, Colonel Petraeus, a Spartan in his own right, will not be talking to Rolling Stone.
Showing posts with label Rolling Stone. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rolling Stone. Show all posts
Friday, June 25, 2010
Friday, February 26, 2010
A Man, A Plan, A Plane
Calhoun's Can(n)ons for February 26, 2010
The demagogue is one who preaches doctrine he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots. H.L. Mencken
It was a tragically perfect metaphor for our times: Average American, Joe Stack, angry at “the government” over his own self-created problems, burns his own house down then kills himself by flying his small plane into a Texas IRS building.
America has now self-devolved into a mook’s game. For over twenty years, a sufficient number of Joe Stacks believed the patent nonsense being fed to them by the carny barkers setting them up for a proper fleecing: Tax breaks for the rich would “trickle down” and make them all rich, too. Government is the problem, not the solution, which is why government needs to be starved until it’s weak and small enough to be drowned in a bathtub. The Free Market doesn’t need rules and regulation because The Free Market is never wrong and will solve all problems. Poor You are hideously, unfairly overtaxed! After all, Poor You shouldn’t have to pay taxes in order to pay for all the services you voted for. No, The Other Guy needs to pay for those things, not Poor You. Move your war-profiteering corporate and personal assets offshore into tax havens and you can still receive a standing ovation at a GOPAC convention. Question those tax same havens and you’re engaging in class warfare and are a bad American who wants the terrorists to win. The growing gap between rich and poor is a Good Thing because the American Commons is nothing but “French Socialism.” Our motto isn’t e pluribus unum, it’s “I’m All Right, Jack.”
And so, while the distracting carnival music blared in our ears and the Ferris wheel spun, our real national wealth – workers actually making things, including a living wage that created and supported whole communities -- was drained away offshore and our imaginary wealth – housing bubble Ponzi schemes and stock market gambling with imaginary money selling imaginary “products”—was finally revealed for what it always was: A mechanism to fleece the mooks.
And Everyman Joe Stack brooded. And all across the country angry citizens brooded, then put Hitler moustaches on posters of a President Obama oxymoronically labeled “Communist.” Or gathered in the thousands to angrily declare that they were tired of being overtaxed at the same time they had actually been receiving tax cuts via various stimulus packages. Inchoate anger being fueled by various demagogues – phony Astroturf groups fronting and funded by well-paid lobbyists for a variety of special interests – carny barkers signing best-selling books while preaching doctrine they know to be false to people they believe to be idiots, while the “idiots” sadly refuse to look behind the curtain.
And so it goes. Congress is now in self-inflicted gridlock because voters didn’t send a sufficient number of politicians to Washington with a clearly committed set of marching orders. Or, more accurately, didn’t send a sufficient number of politicians who weren’t already wholly own subsidiaries of Corporate America. And Congress itself continues to suffer from self-inflicted rules that have moved “majority” into “Supermajority,” procedural rules that virtually guarantee that nothing will get done. So here we are, two scorpions in a jar, locked in mortal combat, focused only on jockeying into deadly striking position, while polls now show a country adrift and best described by the phrase, “Yes we want no bananas . . . maybe.”
Over at Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi continues another hilariously brilliant report on “Wall Street’s Bailout Hustle,” noting, “Instead of liquidating the prosecuting the insolvent institutions that took us all down with them in a giant Ponzi scheme, we have showered them with money and guarantees and all sorts of other enabling gestures. And what should really freak everyone out is the fact that Wall Street immediately started skimming off its own rescue money. . . . ‘It’s evidence,’ says Rep. Kanjorski,’ that they still don’t get it.’ . . . More to the point, the fact that we haven’t done much of anything to change the rules and behavior of Wall Street shows that we still don’t get it. Instituting a bailout policy that stressed recapitalizing bad banks was like the addict coming back to the con man to get his lost money back. Ask yourself how well that ever works out. And then get ready for the reload.”
And so it goes. Self-ignited, Rome burns. Demagogues fan the lucrative flames that bring them riches while burning most fiercely their self-blinded adoring supporters. And the usual foxes grin and pick fresh chicken feathers out of their teeth while Joe Stack lights a match to his own house and heads for the airport. Get ready for the reload, indeed.
The demagogue is one who preaches doctrine he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots. H.L. Mencken
It was a tragically perfect metaphor for our times: Average American, Joe Stack, angry at “the government” over his own self-created problems, burns his own house down then kills himself by flying his small plane into a Texas IRS building.
America has now self-devolved into a mook’s game. For over twenty years, a sufficient number of Joe Stacks believed the patent nonsense being fed to them by the carny barkers setting them up for a proper fleecing: Tax breaks for the rich would “trickle down” and make them all rich, too. Government is the problem, not the solution, which is why government needs to be starved until it’s weak and small enough to be drowned in a bathtub. The Free Market doesn’t need rules and regulation because The Free Market is never wrong and will solve all problems. Poor You are hideously, unfairly overtaxed! After all, Poor You shouldn’t have to pay taxes in order to pay for all the services you voted for. No, The Other Guy needs to pay for those things, not Poor You. Move your war-profiteering corporate and personal assets offshore into tax havens and you can still receive a standing ovation at a GOPAC convention. Question those tax same havens and you’re engaging in class warfare and are a bad American who wants the terrorists to win. The growing gap between rich and poor is a Good Thing because the American Commons is nothing but “French Socialism.” Our motto isn’t e pluribus unum, it’s “I’m All Right, Jack.”
And so, while the distracting carnival music blared in our ears and the Ferris wheel spun, our real national wealth – workers actually making things, including a living wage that created and supported whole communities -- was drained away offshore and our imaginary wealth – housing bubble Ponzi schemes and stock market gambling with imaginary money selling imaginary “products”—was finally revealed for what it always was: A mechanism to fleece the mooks.
And Everyman Joe Stack brooded. And all across the country angry citizens brooded, then put Hitler moustaches on posters of a President Obama oxymoronically labeled “Communist.” Or gathered in the thousands to angrily declare that they were tired of being overtaxed at the same time they had actually been receiving tax cuts via various stimulus packages. Inchoate anger being fueled by various demagogues – phony Astroturf groups fronting and funded by well-paid lobbyists for a variety of special interests – carny barkers signing best-selling books while preaching doctrine they know to be false to people they believe to be idiots, while the “idiots” sadly refuse to look behind the curtain.
And so it goes. Congress is now in self-inflicted gridlock because voters didn’t send a sufficient number of politicians to Washington with a clearly committed set of marching orders. Or, more accurately, didn’t send a sufficient number of politicians who weren’t already wholly own subsidiaries of Corporate America. And Congress itself continues to suffer from self-inflicted rules that have moved “majority” into “Supermajority,” procedural rules that virtually guarantee that nothing will get done. So here we are, two scorpions in a jar, locked in mortal combat, focused only on jockeying into deadly striking position, while polls now show a country adrift and best described by the phrase, “Yes we want no bananas . . . maybe.”
Over at Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi continues another hilariously brilliant report on “Wall Street’s Bailout Hustle,” noting, “Instead of liquidating the prosecuting the insolvent institutions that took us all down with them in a giant Ponzi scheme, we have showered them with money and guarantees and all sorts of other enabling gestures. And what should really freak everyone out is the fact that Wall Street immediately started skimming off its own rescue money. . . . ‘It’s evidence,’ says Rep. Kanjorski,’ that they still don’t get it.’ . . . More to the point, the fact that we haven’t done much of anything to change the rules and behavior of Wall Street shows that we still don’t get it. Instituting a bailout policy that stressed recapitalizing bad banks was like the addict coming back to the con man to get his lost money back. Ask yourself how well that ever works out. And then get ready for the reload.”
And so it goes. Self-ignited, Rome burns. Demagogues fan the lucrative flames that bring them riches while burning most fiercely their self-blinded adoring supporters. And the usual foxes grin and pick fresh chicken feathers out of their teeth while Joe Stack lights a match to his own house and heads for the airport. Get ready for the reload, indeed.
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