President Lickspittle

Well, I’m back. Our trip to the book sale was a success. We did well. Except for about 15 minutes when the television was out of my control I was true to my goal of no television, no radio, no newspapers, no news. It was refreshing. I returned having avoided what I gather was the usual utter nonsense that passes for news these days.

Going over the various internet stuff I usually read I learned that the Republican debate must have been as absurd as usual (I would not have watched it in any case), Perry and Romney were up to their usual claims against each other, and Michele Bachmann is probably finished as a candidate. I thought Herman Cain’s victory in the Florida straw poll was hilarious. I suspect Floridians voted for him in such numbers mainly as a protest against both Perry and Romney rather than a genuine preference for Cain. Can you imagine a racist Tea Party accepting a Black candidate to run against Obama? I think it would be great but don’t look for it to happen. Given the overall quality of the Republican candidates they could just as easily run another know-nothing as they did in 2000, and probably will.

I guess the only thing I missed of note was Obama’s pathetic speech to the United Nations in which he disgraced himself and our country and made crystal clear to the rest of the world that he is Netanyahu’s lickspittle and will do whatever the Israeli government wants. I don’t suppose this comes as anything new to most of the world as it has been obvious for a long time but as of now there can be no doubt whatsoever that the United States cannot possibly be an honest broker in the Israeli/Palestinian problem. We are now on record as unquestionably supporting a racist, criminal, colonial, rapacious, greedy Israeli administration whose goal is to continue the status quo forever if possible. To say the Israeli/Palestinian problem can only be solved by negotiations between the two parties is to say it cannot be solved at all as the Israelis have never and will never negotiate in good faith for something they do not want to happen. Obama’s claim there are two equal parties to the dispute is quite simply absurd, as the Israelis hold all the cards and the Palestinians virtually nothing. Robert Fisk, an authority on the region I regard very highly went so far as to say Obama made it sound as if it were the Palestinians occupying Israel rather than the opposite. The U.S. claim to being an honest broker has been a terrible myth for years. How could a nation that gives billions per year to Israel and a relative pittance to the Palestinians be considered an honest broker? How could a country that has voted in favor of virtually every Israeli war crime and violation of international law be so considered? I hope Obama’s current admission of being an Israeli bootlicker will make it eminently clear that others will have to try to bring about a solution to what is the single most important issue in the Middle East, treating both Israel and the U.S. as pariah nations that need to be somehow brought into at least some semblance of sanity when it comes to this seemingly intractable problem.

I truly do not like being a conspiracy believer and I have pretty consistently avoided believing in such conspiracies, but having been both alive and sentient for the past few years I may be becoming more unable to ignore what appear to me to be unanswered questions about a number of things. It seems there is now some reason to believe members of Saudi royalty living in Florida at the time of 9/11 were in touch with the terrorists that flew into the towers and were allowed to leave the U.S. precipitously and without being questioned. As the Bush family has had long and intimate ties to the Saudis, and as George W. was President at the time I cannot help but wonder about this. Similarly, I have always wondered why Bush/Cheney could not, or at least did not, capture or kill bin Laden, and did not even seem to try very hard to do so. Osama bin Laden was a CIA “asset” during the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, George Bush Senior was not only President by also ex CIA director. Could it be that they did not really want bin Laden captured because he knew too much about the Bush’s and their involvement in Middle Eastern affairs? My increasing doubts about all this were not put to rest when bin Laden was finally captured, shot, and then hurriedly buried at sea. The excuse that we did not want to see a bin Laden tomb become a martyr’s grave does have an element of credibility to it, but would not an alive bin Laden been a source of information about many things, things the Bush/Cheney administration may well have preferred to stay buried? Frankly, I have come to the conclusion that we (the public) have no idea whatsoever is actually going on with respect to the Middle East, who is behind it and why, or even what is going on within our own government. There is no transparency whatsoever. We are left with either ignoring the situation of wondering incessantly who, what, where, when, and why. Truth seems to be a commodity that no longer exists, honesty is no longer considered a virtue, and ethics are a quaint concept from the past. I hate what is going on and want to run away, but there is nowhere to run. I would like to hide but there is nowhere to hide, I want to escape but there is no escape, I would like to no longer participate in this contemporary world of seeming insanity, but as I know that is what “they” want, I refuse to give up. There is, of course, the possibility of a “final solution,” but that is purely selfish and harms too many others. Thus we exist in a surreal world over which we have no control, observing the passing scene as if in a gigantic mental institution where the patients have taken charge and the attendants are helpless. This is not the world into which I was born and lived most of my life.

Where does the violet tint end and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colors, but where exactly does the one first blending enter into the other. So with sanity and insanity.

Herman Melville