Bolton, Diplomacy & the Future of the World
I remember, when I was a kid riding in the backseat of my family's car during our cross-country driving vacations, seeing billboards in America's heartland that led to my first political discussions with my father. The billboards read: "Impeach Earl Warren" and "Get the US out of the UN".
Now, in full disclosure, my old man was a Reagan Democrat when Ron Reagan was still wearing his dumb cowboy hat hosting Death Valley Days. My Grandpa was a railroad man, and my Dad worked in a factory along with several of his brothers. He didn't care for Kruschev and the commies and Martin Luther King made him pretty uncomfortable, but his experience in the CCC camps during the Depression and his time in the China-Burma theatre during WWII made him a big fan of Roosevelt. He followed the rules, worked hard, and lived for me and my sister. When he came back from the War, he spent time in the VA hospital recovering from his wounds, and the GI Bill helped him pay for school and buy our house. A first-generation American whose parents came over on the boat from Italy, he loved the USA.
I asked my dad about the billboards. He thought for a long time and then gave me a serious, simple answer. "There are some nuts in this country."
Dad's words are just as true today, but there's one big difference. Today, those nuts are running our government.
If someone would have told me, back in 1978, while I was driving a cab and going to college, that the year 2005 would come and there still would not be any sort of meaningful worldwide governmental organization, I'd have laughed in their face. Of course, by the turn of the century we'd see that the unity of our planet was more important than the arbitrary national borders that have caused so much death and disaster, and our leaders would at least be able to sit at a table to solve problems like famine, health disasters, and to slap down the occasional mad man who'd want to rule the world. An international criminal court? At least we'd have that much, surely. What responsible leader would be so insane as to not want a mechanism for nations to enforce basic human laws, to put dictators on trial, to prevent the kind of horrors that even thirty years after the War, were fresh in the minds of everyone living on Earth.
When George W. Bush took office, mistaking his judicial appointment to the White House for a sweeping mandate, he immediately pissed in the international swimming pool. Kyoto Accord to try to turn around the destruction of Earth's environment? Bush said "Fuck you." The International Criminal Court? Bush said "Fuck you." And now, mistaking a second highly-suspect lightning strike election for a huge mandate, he nominates John Bolton as our ambassador to the United Nations. Once again, Bush shoots the world the finger.
I remember listening to "moderate" Republicans during the 2004 election, soothing the voters with talk about how in a second term GWB would look to building his legacy, bringing the nation together, and even though he had to give lip service to the Right Wing Nuts (RWNs), that was only to get elected, and after the inauguration we'd see how Bush would "govern from the center."
Well, bullshit. Here he is, ensconced in a comfortable second term, owning the House, the Senate and the Media, and his nominations for high offices in his cabinet and the judiciary can only be called "insane". Bush is trying to put our nation into a hole so deep that my great-grandchildren will still be cursing his name. In just a few short years, he's destroyed just about every progressive movement of the second half of the twentieth century. Social Security? "Fuck you, " says the President. Women's rights? "I got your "women's rights" right here." Education? The Environment? You know his answer.
To be sure, the United Nations is not a perfect organization. There are some fundamental flaws in way it's setup, and in an age of the ONE GREAT SUPERPOWER, the "Security Council" isn't really what it was supposed to be. But it's the closest thing we have to an organization where governments can look at each other over a table, as equals, and try to hammer out solutions to the worst of the world's problems. That George W. Bush, and his gang of fascist neocons are trying to destroy even this, would make my Dad cry. The nuts haven't gone away, they've taken over.
Now, in full disclosure, my old man was a Reagan Democrat when Ron Reagan was still wearing his dumb cowboy hat hosting Death Valley Days. My Grandpa was a railroad man, and my Dad worked in a factory along with several of his brothers. He didn't care for Kruschev and the commies and Martin Luther King made him pretty uncomfortable, but his experience in the CCC camps during the Depression and his time in the China-Burma theatre during WWII made him a big fan of Roosevelt. He followed the rules, worked hard, and lived for me and my sister. When he came back from the War, he spent time in the VA hospital recovering from his wounds, and the GI Bill helped him pay for school and buy our house. A first-generation American whose parents came over on the boat from Italy, he loved the USA.
I asked my dad about the billboards. He thought for a long time and then gave me a serious, simple answer. "There are some nuts in this country."
Dad's words are just as true today, but there's one big difference. Today, those nuts are running our government.
If someone would have told me, back in 1978, while I was driving a cab and going to college, that the year 2005 would come and there still would not be any sort of meaningful worldwide governmental organization, I'd have laughed in their face. Of course, by the turn of the century we'd see that the unity of our planet was more important than the arbitrary national borders that have caused so much death and disaster, and our leaders would at least be able to sit at a table to solve problems like famine, health disasters, and to slap down the occasional mad man who'd want to rule the world. An international criminal court? At least we'd have that much, surely. What responsible leader would be so insane as to not want a mechanism for nations to enforce basic human laws, to put dictators on trial, to prevent the kind of horrors that even thirty years after the War, were fresh in the minds of everyone living on Earth.
When George W. Bush took office, mistaking his judicial appointment to the White House for a sweeping mandate, he immediately pissed in the international swimming pool. Kyoto Accord to try to turn around the destruction of Earth's environment? Bush said "Fuck you." The International Criminal Court? Bush said "Fuck you." And now, mistaking a second highly-suspect lightning strike election for a huge mandate, he nominates John Bolton as our ambassador to the United Nations. Once again, Bush shoots the world the finger.
I remember listening to "moderate" Republicans during the 2004 election, soothing the voters with talk about how in a second term GWB would look to building his legacy, bringing the nation together, and even though he had to give lip service to the Right Wing Nuts (RWNs), that was only to get elected, and after the inauguration we'd see how Bush would "govern from the center."
Well, bullshit. Here he is, ensconced in a comfortable second term, owning the House, the Senate and the Media, and his nominations for high offices in his cabinet and the judiciary can only be called "insane". Bush is trying to put our nation into a hole so deep that my great-grandchildren will still be cursing his name. In just a few short years, he's destroyed just about every progressive movement of the second half of the twentieth century. Social Security? "Fuck you, " says the President. Women's rights? "I got your "women's rights" right here." Education? The Environment? You know his answer.
To be sure, the United Nations is not a perfect organization. There are some fundamental flaws in way it's setup, and in an age of the ONE GREAT SUPERPOWER, the "Security Council" isn't really what it was supposed to be. But it's the closest thing we have to an organization where governments can look at each other over a table, as equals, and try to hammer out solutions to the worst of the world's problems. That George W. Bush, and his gang of fascist neocons are trying to destroy even this, would make my Dad cry. The nuts haven't gone away, they've taken over.
posted by Nittacci at 11:36 AM
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