Charles and Bob

To Charles Blow:

You're worried too much about the polls, Mr. Blow. Have faith, for the Democrats hold the levers of power and they will use power for the most part wisely. The political strategy has not been optimal for the healthcare rollout, but there is no reason to panic. Obama's team will find their feet, and I am certain that this ridiculous fisaco will make them stronger even as right-wingers invite more and more well-deserved reproach upon themselves. Purely on historical grounds, one cannot believe that the newly empowered left will self-destruct so severely and so soon--no, that sort of humiliation will take at least another decade to unfold, and maybe more. However, Afghanistan IS cause for worry, without a doubt. But most of Obama's domestic reforms will be accomplished to high approval.

To Bob Herbert:

Obama and the liberals are doing with healthcare essentially what Bush's clan did with the Iraq war--taking advantage of a momentous and unusually rare circumstance to realize a huge political agenda that has long been on their radar. It was terrifying to witness the success right-wingers enjoyed in hoodwinking people through mind-numbing repetition of outrageously simplistic lies. It will be satisfying to witness--after all the wrinkles are smoothed out: guaranteed, I believe--the ultimate victory of reform realized by people who seem for the most part incapable of advocating enthusiastically against the democratic process under cover of false, stupid patriotism, who are fundamentally against employing brazenly immoral toxic knavery and cunning to enact what is a straightforward and simple agenda: improving average citizens' quality of life.

President Barack

Let it be known how I was feeling about the whole mess at this point.

Currently the news, which I am entirely unsuccessfully trying to black out (unsuccessful due to my own interminable tendencies), is awash with toxins seeping out of the many holes Republicans are poking into the pending healthcare reform legislation. At this point it seems that some sort of reform with measurable teeth will happen, but the maniacal throngs are incensed and screaming at full throttle and a shrill pitch. Dick Cheney might say the noises are merely the last throes of a hapless zoo of odd and unhappy ducks and a byzantine assortment of mental phlegmatics and political rheumatoids from the nethersphere, if he cared to comment.

Despite having suffered psychological and intestinal trauma as a direct consequence of imbibing the requisite data-sets and info-points necessary to feel empowered on the topic, I feel optimistic as ever about the chances for preferable outcomes and assorted victories on the margins, and, yes, even further inland where the air is misty and silky. Nevertheless, it does certainly look like Jon Stewart is on to something when questioning whether the President is getting his ass kicked by the whole healthcare thing. Is he looking presidential right now? Well, no. Nor was it a good idea--well, let me rephrase that: I would say it did not look very good, although it was probably not a bad idea, for Bill Clinton to retrieve two idiots from North Korea. Sorry, but those two "journalists" are fools, and Clinton sadly gave them a microphone. But that's a small thing.

Back to healthcare: I feel very optimistic. The end.

About Iran... I predict that Iran will remain fairly set in its despotic ways. I do not have the orb to predict what might happen regarding its nukes, but I believe there is a good chance that they will relinquish them voluntarily, and I base this on the belief that there is a good chance the US will use military force to destroy their reactors. I may be completely out of line here, though, for it's a pickle, a malodorous pickle.

Iraq will turn into a decentralized state that will continue to practice some sort of semi-fake democracy, probably doing it a little better than Iran, and it will not devolve into a centralized military dictatorship with a theocratic veneer, aka Iran. Iraq will be decentralized but still remain together, although it will not be fun for some Iraqis who will die. Politically the country will probably engage in die-hard factionalism and periodic low-grade civil war akin to Lebanon, which is similarly torn between the influence of great Western and Middle Eastern powers, terribly divided religiously and factionally, and so periodically it simmers with anger.

Europe will continue to consolidate its power. In the medium and long term, I am looking for greater cooperation between the Anglophones of the former British Empire, led by the US, and the European mainlanders, with Russia as the seemingly wild-card, or cad. Generally I do tend to think that the old racial mindset is not so old, but in fact quite current. Looking at the world in big sweeps, I cannot help but observe a future rooted in enhanced collective economic and military security for the so-called Western cultural domain. As stated eloquently and repeatedly and inelegantly in its mocking simplicity, "the white man" will have his say. As China expands its influence, the Europeans and American elites--regardless of color of course since Western elites do not pay attention to such crude oddities as color, I do say--will increasingly find themselves huddling as closely together as sheer panic and necessity shall dictate. But, some ask while trembling, what will Russia do? Russia, being a European power par excellence, not to mention rightful heir to the mighty Eastern Romans (Greeks), will do the same as the rest of the Europeans--except more violently and racistly.

Here I grant a caveat to a precise and penetrating analyst and past aquaintance whose previously expressed vision of the future still remains insightful and raw: the consolidated European power will compete for natural resources with the American power by engaging in proxy wars on the African continent. We already see a low-grade competition for African resources by the Chinese and the Russians, while the Westerners are already very-well entrenched. Colonialism by proxy, anyone?

China will grow. One hopeful analysis I have heard is that its authoritarian nature will be the ultimate constraint on its power. China will not be able to develop its full potential without opening up politically, and if it does open up politically, it will not pose catastrophic risk to the rest of the world order by threatening war. If it remains authoritarian, it will bark but have no bite. Well, China is certainly encircled by the West, by Japan, by India. But I'm going to be almost unreasonably optmistic as usual, and predict that in the long term, China, due to its sheer size, will become ungovernable through pure authoritarianism. There are certainly quasi-democratic structures available to the Chinese that may serve as seeds and future repositories of power. But that is just too broad and optimistic, nearly. It is going to happen, I believe, but before that happens, will catastrophic upheaval strike in the medium term? One scenario I envision will be the gradual, nearly unstoppable sickening of the Chinese political mind due to the soulless, numbing and evil stupidity of the semi-Orwellian state. As showcased excellently by the fascist powers and many many others, a techologically productive and generally educated populace can be psychologically twisted to insane means and ends by degenerate and inhuman ideologies. Chinese nationalism certainly has buckets of self-esteem--after all, the Middle Kingdom is the most ancient, glorious and supremely continuous civilization known to Earth--along with buckets of resentment--after all, martial Western powers led by the British prostrated and humiliated the country, and might try to do so again--along with plenty shiverings of just-referenced foreign-oriented suspicion. However, it does seem quite a feat to predict what lies on the Chinese horizon for the medium term. It is too commonplace to mention the rise of communication technology and its democratizing power, possibly because its influence is so new, and in my opinion, still somewhat unquantifiable. Overall, I come down on the side of a generally peaceful if not totally uneventful Chinese rise to political and economic mightiness.

India is on a quiet path to expansion in my view. The gigantic cultural mass that produced some of the most enlightened religions has been fairly quietly trodding along, more or less, for at least three thousand years. But I haven't forgotten about the untouchables; thanks to British colonialism aka increasingly entrenched democratic values, the untouchables too are starting to have their say.

Sub-Saharan Africa is another quiet cultural mass, so unlike and yet alike to India. It is massively decentralized, sleepy and steady--more or less. It will remain that way for the long term. Latin America will continue to consolidate its extraordinary racial and cultural heritage/hodgpodge. These two giant physical spaces of the Southern Hemisphere are staggeringly underpopulated, almost like Siberia in northern Asia. Essentially, these three huge spaces, giant expanses, giant rainforests, giant ecologies are far far removed politically from the whirlpools of statecraft and economy and technology and war located on either end--and along the length--of that ancient artery and cultural network, the Silk Road. The Silk Road, of course, went from Europe to China via South Asia: the Middle East, Persia, India.

But the far western end of that now-allegorical global trading-route is the United States. And this is a country possessing many oft-unrecognized attributes that make it startlingly similar to the three physical masses mentioned above. It too is an astoundingly gigantic space, but it is located in a very fertile and traditionally agreeable climate unlike much of Africa, South America, and Siberia. I suppose we could add the arid wasteland of Australia as a fourth beastly-huge global terrain, but why? While deserts certainly play a vital role in the ecosystem, "lungs of the planet" they are not, potentially hospitable to masses of people they are not. As far as political consolidation, of the three Siberia has the major advantage mainly because it is administered by one polity, Russia, with no foreseeable change, although Brazil is not trivial. However, all these considerations only serve to show the awesomely unrivaled long-term potential of the United States. It is already the global hegemon and third most-populated polity. It attracts immigrants probably unlike any other in history. It has the physical space and agricultural fertility to fit as many people as want to come. It could easily house and feed the population of China, and possibly the entire planet. It is the self-styled nation of immigrants, culturally more welcoming than any other major shit-factory, socially and economically dynamic like no other global hot-house sharpener and seller and user of pointy sticks.