Tonya Harding School of International Diplomacy

 

I'm always looking for clever, incisive, powerful ways to characterize complex ideas, compact little nuggets that sum it all up, say everything that needs to be said, a summation perhaps captured by a short and snappy phrase, a zingy meme, a stark self-contained image or dramatic self-evident diorama, which steers clear of the boredom and excess of dense and convoluted explications, conflated with histrionic exposition and other contrived manipulations.

Actually that last sentence is a lot like the kind of thing I'm try to avoid.

Too many words and too much self-indulgent grandstanding. 

Use a Thesaurus, go to jail.

Anyway, I was trying to think of a clever way of summing up America's foreign policy.

And by golly, I think I have it!

Remember the competition between Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan at the U.S. Nationals for two spots on the American Olympic team.  This was back it 1994.

It was obvious to Tonya she had met her match. Nancy was giving her a real run for her money.  So what did Tonya Harding do?

She hired a thug to bludgeon Kerrigan's knee cap with a huge pipe.

And that anecdote, ladies and gentlemen, sums up America's approach to international diplomacy!

If you get in our way, expect to get whacked!

Sometimes we just bomb the shit out of a country.  Whoever crawls out of the rubble tends to have a more conciliatory disposition.

If that proves inconvenient, or might lead to too much condemnation by the international community (there are a lot of wimps out there who just don't "get it") the U.S. will resort to secretive special ops units, color revolutions, weaponized diseases, hybrid warfare -- propaganda, NGOs, social media, cyber attacks -- to the same effect.  Once chaos has properly taken root in the targeted nation, down a civilian airliner, throw in some random assassinations, blockades, economic sanctions, create no-fly zones, engineer currency devaluation, invoke shrill comparisons to Adolph Hitler, blow up a hospital, and BINGO!  Mission accomplished!

 

I'm sure there are others who would like to claim credit for the U.S.'s our-way-or-the-highway approach to working with other nations, but let's at least give a visible nod of appreciation to the young lady who best epitomizes this exceptionalist philosophy.

Tonya . . . you will always be a true winner in our eyes, regardless of how grotesquely fat and ugly you've gotten over the years.

After all, it was you that boldly exemplified what has become the fundamental tenets of America's current foreign policy:

1.  We make the rules.
2.  Winning is everything.
3.  Preemptive attacks are awesome.
4.  All is fair because we say it is.
5.  Playing nice is for pussies.

If I can be so bold as to suggest it, I believe that it's high time that Harvard or Princeton or other equally prestigious institution of higher learning, set aside the resources and proper institutional setting for perpetuating and promoting this visionary philosophy of imperial order, and appropriately call it the "Tonya Harding School of International Diplomacy".

I'm already feeling the public excitement building for this and imagine that shortly after this article appears, crowdfunding on Kickstarter or Rockethub for this idea will get off to a rip-roaring start.




[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . http://jdrachel.com ]



Tonya Harding School of International Diplomacy

The Case For Female Circumcision

There is no case for female circumcision.

But we live in a very sick world.

We've come to expect the worst.

So here you are . . . reading this.

I’m not being judgmental. I would have clicked on the link too.

Curious . . . confused . . . offended . . . appalled . . . outraged . . . sickened!

I would absolutely have to see what some psychopathic individual had to say
about such an inhumane, degrading and completely offensive practice,
what twisted justification some misguided misanthrope was proposing for
perhaps the ultimate assault on the dignity of females __ the mutilation
of their genitals.

But isn’t that the way things work these days?

There’s always some outrageous headline, some teaser being dangled, some
grotesque manipulation of our reality using loaded phrases and
press-your-hot-buttons language.

It’s not just the sensational stuff either. It’s often fluff, feel good blather which
plays on sympathies or compassion, fantasy or nostalgia, offering
hearts-and-flowers stories or syrupy melodrama, maybe patriotic anthems
and tales of alleged bravery and heroism    __ which dramatically slant
and obscure the truth.

Anyway . . . here we are: “The case for female circumcision.” 

Yup . . . that’s how it reads.  Sucked you right in!  I do understand . . .

 

You wanted to see some demented asshole try to stick up for grotesque and degrading mutilation. What would he look like? Maybe you wanted to both disdain and savor his depravity?

Why?

So you could gag? Hate someone for being so pathologically and sadistically ignorant?

Then share it on Facebook? Send out indignant Tweets?

Really show that bastard!

Yes, letting people know how we feel gets the job done, and more importantly, establishes that we're morally superior . . . because you and I could never support something so foul and inhumane and repulsive, right?

How about these photos? You and I paid taxes and that money went toward this . . .
 
I rest my case.

We all live in a glass houses. I’m not going to pretend I’m any different.

But that’s not the end of the matter, is it?

I am confident that most of you __ like me __ would like to do better.

We’d each like to turn things around and become the person we always 
believed we could and would be.
But to do that, we must first answer this question . . .

How did we become so numb?


[ This originated at the author's personal web site . . . http://jdrachel.com ]

Irony Deficiency Anemia

Our government has become oblivious to the ignominious irony of its policies and actions. Therefore, it blunders on, never questioning why often much of what it does produces the very opposite of either its stated or actual intentions.

Without intended irony, it arms the rest of the world to make it safer. Anyone with a checkbook can obtain weaponry from America. The U.S. is by a huge margin the biggest supplier of military hardware to the international community. We are then shocked when these same weapons end up pointing at us, now in the hands of bin Laden, al Qaeda and other militant extremists.

Without intended irony, it incentivizes corporations to export America's jobs, reasoning that the healthier these corporations are, the sounder will be the economy of the country, evidence of spreading poverty and grotesque income inequality be damned. TPP and TTIP are the latest virulent initiatives toward transferring national sovereignty to multinational corporations, strengthening America by draining it of its self-determination and economic vitality. These so-called trade agreements are NAFTA on steroids. We just hope there's an open seat at future Third World economic
conferences and those countries don't despise us for plundering their natural resources all these years.

Without intended irony, the President declares himself the "environmental president" while promoting the greatest surge in domestic oil and gas production in our history, including the use of fracking and opening up vast stretches of pristine land and fragile offshore sites to ruinous exploration and drilling. The U.S. still refuses to sign the Kyoto Treaty, only marginally participates in world conferences on the environment, and most certainly fails to provide much-needed leadership on issues like climate change and the rapid and dramatic decline in the health of the oceans. The only environment we have protected is a business environment which worships plunder for profit.

Without intended irony, America holds itself up as the beacon of democracy in the world while supporting ruthless despots and grotesque tyranny throughout the world, likewise tolerating the corruption of the electoral system in America itself. Welcome to a world where money buys politicians and the voice of the common citizen is silenced both by oligarchical monopoly of the national conversation and voter disenfranchisement.

Without intended irony, the U.S. promotes democracy in the Ukraine by encouraging the overthrow of an elected government and replacing it in a coup with neo-nazi thugs and plutocrats, who then rig the next election which they of course claim validates their rule, then training and supplying the neo-Nazi National Guard with weapons. As we should suspect, this is part of a bigger plan
which has nothing to do with spreading democracy, and in fact reignites
old antagonisms with Russia and puts us all at risk for World War III.
Nice work, eh?

Without intended irony, the U.S. affirms its commitment to ridding the world of nuclear weapons by spending more now on upgrading our existing stockpiles and R&D on new more destructive nuclear devices, than we did at the height of the Cold War.  With over 4,800 nuclear warheads in its current arsenal __ enough to destroy life on Earth many times over __ we negotiate agreements with our allies to expedite the efficient use and deployment of our bulging arsenals of collective mass suicide.

Without intended irony Obama promised to foster transparency in his administration, yet has increased secrecy, prosecuted whistle blowers at a record rate, has fanatically clamped down on leaks, drastically curtailed freedom of the press by attempting to force journalists to reveal their sources, classified more government documents and communications than any president in our history, has overseen massive and intrusive surveillance by the NSA and other national security agencies of innocent Americans, foreign nationals and even heads of state of America's allies, and continues to
expand the capacity of government agencies to unconstitutionally monitor and record every interaction by U.S. citizens.

Without intended irony, it honors its "responsibility to protect" by attacking other nations, killing a lot of innocent people, creating fear and animosity in the rest of the world, and as a result it fails
its responsibility to protect the people it is most responsible for, American citizens. With our cavalier use of military force, we are more feared, resented, despised than ever. Serious blowback is inevitable. How ironic, eh?

Without intended irony, we scold other countries, like Russia and China, for being bullies, while we ignore resolutions and concerted efforts of the United Nations, refuse to join the ICC or acknowledge its legal authority over us, reserve the right to use our military at any time and place of our choosing, skirt the Geneva conventions by using torture, harass and bomb countries we are not at war with using drones and special ops troops, and talk about needed cooperation among members of the international community while economically strangling with sanctions any country which does not bend to our unilateral dictates.

Yes, we fail to see the irony in all of this. We choose to turn a blind eye to the deceptions and self-sabotaging contradictions. This has indeed made our country sick, an anemic and feckless nation of sheeple, vis-a-vis the noble ideals we once held and now unconvincingly espouse. We struggle with buckling knees in an increasingly futile attempt to prop up the political house of cards we've built of self-deception and delusions.

No house of cards can rise forever. The longer we pile rationalizations and faulty logic on imperialistic hubris and sociopathic fantasies, the closer we come to its ultimate collapse.

It's no longer a question of 'if' but 'when'.

It will collapse.

Let's hope it doesn't take the foundations of our once great nation with it and we are still left with something upon which to rebuild.


[ This originated at the author's personal web site . . . http://jdrachel.com ]