Right is Might and the Rest's what's Left.

Droning on About the State of DisUnion.

From Tutu's NYT letter, President Obama's State of the Union address, the NYT article on the bewildering timidity of the consumer, it is hard to tell if anything referred to as the 'news' is any longer comprised of anything but posturing.

Although I agree with the sentiments Tutu expressed on the deployment and use of drones, his question, "Do the United States and its people really want to tell those of us who live in the rest of the world that our lives are not of the same value as yours?", is pure hyperbole. What country doesn't believe the lives of its own citizens are worth more than those in other countries? They may state otherwise, but what good's having a State if not to protect its people's from the depredations of those who would take for themselves that which you've amassed? And that's really what the issue is about: judicial review and a Commander-in-Chief's right to deploy military power during times of War. And, it is on the record for anyone to see, the world is now at a constant state of War to maintain the peace. That is what Obama informed the Nobel committee in his speech when he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize as the discomfited European leaders stared at him in boggle-eyed astonishment. I don't believe even they were ready for such effrontery.

Now, if you want to argue with this stance, at least you have a leg to stand on, but to pretend to be appalled because one country holds the value of its citizen's lives in higher regard than those in other countries' is simply too ridiculous, especially coming from a man of the cloth. Because we all know what religions feel about those practicing other faiths, and the everlasting damnation to which they condemn their souls, no matter what they may say publicly.

Then we have Obama's State of Dis Union Address, which is simply filled with nonsense, and the rebuttal from Cuba's oh, I mean, Florida's Marco Rubio, waving his hands like he's using them for semaphores, as he spouts every trite cliched Republican rostrum as though he's addressing, if not still in, his high school sophomore assembly. All this talk about Republican opposition to big government is so much nonsense, and, if we really did have any shred of journalism left, would be dismissed as such when it is brought up by the real big government party: The Republicans. Nuclear power, and Nuclear Bombs, an overarching, aggressive War Department, Projection of Imperial power overseas, a never-ending Drug War, NSA surveillance of private citizens, and a private sector bloated with defense firms living off their fat government dole, I mean contracts, are all firmly nailed-in planks of the Republican Party Platform, every one of which takes big Government as a given.  But you'd never know that from the silence of journalists on this issue. Which is why I included the article from this morning's NYT's in my opening line.

That they have the temerity to refer to consumer's timidity is just a cynical ploy.  The NYT knows the reason as well as we do: High Oil Prices, High Housing costs, High Healthcare costs, and High Education Costs: all rising at an accelerating rate even as the private sector sheds jobs, jettison's benefits, and refuses to hire anyone without a degree, which translates into without a burden of intractable debt before they even walk in the door.

All of which derives from a Republican spending program, started under the Blight d. landscape Eisenhower's administration, using the rubric of Defense, to build the interstate highway system, which straddles every American Citizen with the onerous costs of providing their own private transit to their place of work. This transportation nightmare we dreamed up for ourselves, however, was built on the chimera of a never ending river of Black gold, or, the Devil's excreta, depending on your point of view, which has gone from $11/bbl at the turn of the century to more than $100/bbl currently, despite the most massive investment in drilling rigs, pipelines, oil tankers, refineries, even while more wads of cash and the greatest gobs of money are thrown into the development and delivery of substitutes such as ethanol and bio-diesel in the history of the world.

A populace that now has to plow every nickel they earn back into the ground just to dig up more energy to be able to burn more fuel in the search for then, even more energy, simply has nothing left for niceties like toilet seat covers and nonsensicals like pet-rocks, on which a moribund stagflating economy was rejiggered to cater to in the eighties. Instead, as the NYT article demonstrates, we scratch our nuts and stare off into space, usually while sitting in traffic burning the oil we burnt so much oil to get in the first place so we could not get to where we're going, which is usually to work so we can earn money, a crippling percentage of which goes to pay for the fuel, insurance, registration fees and maintenance for the vehicle needed to get us there, and collectively pretend we have no idea what's wrong.

Like the "Triumph", we're so convinced of our splendor, despite being bespattered by our own feces, and so brainwashed by the images constantly flashed in front of our eyes from an out of control dream machine, manufacturing one nightmare after the other, we float adrift fantasizing that life's a Carnival,wondering when, how, and by whom we'll be rescued, while the option to take matters into our own hands occurs only to a few lone madmen and wingnuts.

Obama very nearly touched on the answer at the end of his address when he said that we as citizens need to help one another. But that's not what citizens do; citizens stand up for the State first, often against one another; it is only Comrades that band together and take responsibility for each other. But as Occupy Wall St, demonstrated, and Egypt's Tahrir Square, such movements will always be quashed. Until we put the energy we put into gay marriage (just as an example), both pro and contra, into creating legally sanctioned guild's or societies or some sort of social cohesion outside of the intolerant gates of Church and State, there will be no forward motion in our struggle to help get our lives organized and sustainably wholesome. We don't need or want another Revolution, but we do need an Evolution, and a means to put a stop to what is clearly, to anyone who will see, a full scale retreat from all our most dearly held values, and that can only be described as a Devolution.