So, Romney wins disappointing liberals and hard conservatives everywhere [that these two constituencies are united in grief says all one needs to know about this primary]. Although I suppose a win is better than a loss, in reality, as Pyrrhus showed, it all depends on the context - and still the context suggests that if Romney cannot get a knock out win that removes the GOP base from the equation and thereby kicks the idiotic musings of Santorum and Gingrich from the front pages, musings which do nothing at all but drag Romney into the swampy vortex of unelectability, then a win really ain't that much of a win. He has another chance of a knock out next week with Super Tuesday - Gingrich probably takes Georgia, but the key will be Ohio - Santorum takes Ohio and once again he'll be viewed as 'viable' even though he is entirely and quite obviously not viable. A measure of just how absolutely absurd this primary has become will be if Romney takes Ohio, which should push him beyond the pestilential clutches of the others, and yet because Gingrich takes Georgia he again climbs in the national polls - if that happens, the GOP is dead and we might as well just give the election to Obama now in order to expedite the great moving on.

Hmmm - are my predictions on Romney already starting to show themselves even before results from Michigan are in? Apparently today he expressed frustration at the right wing base, indicating that the reason he's in such a dogfight in Michigan is because, unlike his opponents, he's not willing to say outrageous, absurd, reactionary things in order to attract extreme voters [like suggesting that the notion of separating church and state is emetic] - which is basically akin to calling the GOP base 'outrageous'. So, is this him losing his cool, running out of patience and letting slip something he's sure to regret? Or is this him doing what I predicted, separating himself from the uber right, possibly in preparation for an independent run? The key, as I said before, is that unlike his competition who win just by being on the national stage, for Romney anything short of the presidency amounts to a waste of his time - being constantly forced to appease the uber right makes winning the presidency less, not more likely - ergo, lose Michigan and the logic of things starts to become obvious.

Apparently David Brooks has a piece in the Times today about this reality - I'm out of free Times articles for this month so can't read it - but apparently he's urging Romney to confront the base and stop trying to court their favor - argue the case for moderation I guess - I have trouble seeing that as a winning strategy - but Brook's seems to be hunting with the same dog I am - the left wing base [and their media enablers of course] gave us Obama [whom Brooks originally cheered but has since soured on] - and now the right wing base looks set to give us Obama again - continuing dysfunction and deadlock will be the result - the interests of the majority middle are being abandoned in order to serve the minority interests of the extremes of both parties - what's worse, those minority interests represent no intrinsic value for the country as a whole: they're either too impractical or otherwise unsound to deserve implementation; or they're merely rhetorical props, existing only for the purposes of driving a partisan ideology towards some idealized end regardless of any countervailing objective truths. It's really no way to run a country, let alone an empire.

Maybe  Brooks is thinking a third party presidential run is something the country needs in order to begin the process of reining in the outsized power of the grassroots of both parties - certainly, if Romney were to repudiate the GOP base, split off as a third party candidate and then win - well, gotta believe that'd send a shock wave of common sense down the spines of ideologues everywhere - would also give the president a lot of power, since the only way you're gonna get anything done is by marshalling a functioning plurality amongst moderates in both houses - and if deadlock remained, by electing an independent to the presidency the people would in effect be granting him 'war powers' like authority to supersede it, no? What are we to say if the system self corrects by becoming more autocratic? On the surface, one's inclined to think an independent executive would act to mitigate partisanship - it seems it would be much easier for moderates to meet in a middle and agree on something if neither party had to swallow the bitter pill of having to cross a well defined ideological line at the executive level.

I wonder at the likelihood that the allegedly accidental alighting of Allah's big book becomes a watershed moment in the propping up of America's patience [that word seems ill-fitting] with the Muslim world. There's this from Commentary, the sentiments of which I generally agree with - although those who supported the effort in Afghanistan and are only now reflecting on the irremediable nature of Islamic polities I tend to scorn [some of those now questioning the Afghan mission were champions of involvent in Libya and are now most eager it seems to get it on with Syria]

But regardless of that there's a definite sense that many Americans, long now lulled into a fine stupor viz the increasingly hard to define erstwhile war on terror, have suddenly startled from their slumbers, fixed faint eyes on those dark lands, and found themselves asking aloud "tell me again what the fuck we're doing over there?". It'll be interesting to see how Gingrich does in the primaries tomorrow since he's been the most strident in his evinced disdain of Afghanistan, going so far as to demand that they apologize to us. If you see a significant bump in his numbers tomorrow that might say something - certainly with Santorum saying yesterday that the notion of the separation of church and state made him want to throw up, you might see a little mini migration back to Gingrich, who at least has going for him as recompense for being entirely unelectable the fact that he's entertaining.

[the scourges ask, but didn't I support the invasion of Iraq? Little hypocritical, no? Well... yes I reluctantly supported the invasion but made it very clear at the time that anyone who was anymore than 60/40 for or 60/40 against was not adequately paying attention - it was not at all a clear cut thing, a fact which I think has been obscured by the botched occupation - the entirely insufficient phase four of the war left all us who supported the invasion looking like fools whereas the reality is when you compensate for poor planning the rightness of the decision is still a debatable thing, still a 60/40 proposition I think - I never thought the war was anymore than tangentially about WMDs - its prime purpose was about ending the first gulf war and getting rid of Saddam as a highly destabilizing actor in the region and then possibly as consequence instantiating progressive change in the Muslim world based on the belief that Iraq represented a 'special case' ie possessed the semblance of an educated and comparatively secular middle class - in the shadow of 9/11 not at all absurd notions - but even if I simply concede that I miscalculated on Iraq, wouldn't that mean similar miscalculations in the light of Iraq are much worse? That's my point- I believe there was a legitimate albeit tentative case to be made for Iraq - but even if I accept that there really wasn't, I have at least learned from my mistakes and drawn appropriate conclusions - a great many people apparently have not done likewise]

[interesting that I haven't seen any analysis out there on what things would be like in the Mideast right now, what with the goings on of the last year, if ol' Saddam were still strutting his stuff 'round Mesopotamia. Iran's reach in the region of course has been enhanced by the liberation of Iraqi Shiites - but on the other hand, has Saddam's departure made it more or less likely that they get the bomb? Certainly Saddam wouldn't have sat idly by while Iran nuked up - nor, one imagines, would Iran have nuked up had the occupation gone well - there were intelligence reports that suggested Iran halted work on its nuclear program after the Iraq invasion because they feared they were next. My guess is there'd be convincing arguments on both sides of that question. One thing for sure, the current mess in Syria would take on a very different aspect if Saddam, great defender of the Sunni faith, were still around - hard to imagine we wouldn't be straddling the precipice of a major war if Saddam were still around to intervene on behalf of his abused brethren - gotta believe Saddam's absence dramatically alters the dynamics of the region given current upheavals - whether for better of worse would make for an interesting argument - how come no one's jumped on this?]

"... as for the Koran burning incident, my tendency is to think people aren't asking quite the right question... yes, it's legitimate to wonder why it happened... a simple screw up? a misunderstanding?... or an indication that the rank and file of the US military are fed up with Afghanistan and the burning is an expression of that contempt?... and yes it's legitimate to wonder why in the hell we're bothering with a country that after years of effort and billions spent still unbelievably can't manage to stand-up an even remotely half decent army to defend itself, but some idiot burns a Koran and they're all out on the street crying for bloody vengeance... these questions are understandable as is the frustration born of counter insurgency's tendentiously syllogistic approach to war making... but my feeling is the right question would address not so much the cause of nor the hysterical wrath churned up by the burning but rather the fact that there's no native and natural Afghani voice in particular or Muslim voice in general willing or even able to stand up and proffer the counter point of why all the fuss?... if you can't mock the most firmly held beliefs, regardless of how just or unjust that mockery may be, then freedom remains a dark stranger to whom the door can never be opened... and if we can't open or insist on fooling ourselves into imagining there's no need to open that door, then why are we there?..."

Suppose I should revise my judgement that Santorum was only the third most dispiriting if not frightening potential republican nominee behind Cain and Gingrich - after a string of truly disturbing statements dug up from his past or made by the man over the last couple of weeks - like comparing the coming battle against Obama's America to the Allied effort to defeat Nazism, declaring that the work of Satan is obviously evident in the decline of America, suggesting that contraception hurts women - with statements like these Santorum can safely take his spot right alongside Cain and Gingrich as absolute embarrassments to any sane and reasonably positioned conservative looking for a viable alternative to the liberal agenda. Hell, with the 'Obama is Hitler' analogy, he possibly deserves top billing. Bravo!

At least as depressing as the three stooges themselves are those members of the right wing intelligentsia that are attempting to rationalise or reframe in a more anodyne form Santorum's inanities - these people are so desperate to avoid the possible disquieting reveal [what cache can extremism have if moderation proves viable?] that Romney represents that it's as if there's no delusion they won't embrace in order to provisionally save themselves or the thing they imagine themselves to be.

Interesting, on that point, is the success of Scott Brown, the republican who won Ted Kennedy's old seat - he's been successful in a liberal state by presenting himself as a reasonable moderate, a true independent when measured against the standard of these highly partisan times - apparently he's leading the much heralded uber lefty Elizabeth Warren who is challenging him for the seat by about 10 percentage points - in other words he's being rewarded in a very liberal state for coming across as non-partisan and reasonable - exactly the way Romney tried to serve when he was governor of Mass - the right wing will cheer the pragmatism of Scott Brown if he beats the reviled Warren even as they damn Romney for having governed the state in much the same manner - it's flat out absurd.

Iran vows pre-emptive action if they feel themselves threatened - a silly sabre rattling since they're already threatened - the only way they do something 'pre-emptive' is if they feel the resulting upheaval would benefit them - which of course it might, but not one imagines if they're the ones to start it, especially since the only way they could do something pre-emptive is through their terrorist proxies, and those assets are better used in response to a provocation, not as initiator [I discount closing Strait of Hormuz - that draws America into any conflict which Iran wants to avoid if it can - I tend to not think closing the strait a credible or likely option].

So then, why this threat? I'd say it's either a manifestation of Iran's immaturity or lack of sophistication when it comes to this kind of diplomacy - or they sense an imminent attack is on the table - in which case this threat likely reflects desperation or alternatively possibly an opening albeit clumsy it seems gambit to reset negotiations. My gut tells me it smacks a bit more of desperation, even confusion, than anything else - which of course would mean they sense a strike coming - which could actually be a good thing if it makes them more open to negotiations - but then I tend to think Iran has backed itself into a corner that it can only get out of if we give them what they want [or close to it] - which, again, is the very reason Israel would attack ie, they don't trust Obama.

The odd or interesting or disturbing thing is that whether or not Israel attacks will be based on something none of us can know for sure - do they have a plan they view as viable and do they feel confident it would address their strategic concerns more effectively than doing nothing? I find it amusing when those who oppose Israel's apparent resolve here suggest there's nothing to recommend an Israeli attack because it may only forestall Iran's plans by two or three years - sorry people, but if Israel thinks that two or three years is good enough then that's all that matters if they think they have a viable plan. Surely the people who make this absurd argument understand its limitations - so once again the idiotic rhetoric of innate bias struggles to define the issue in a most unsatisfactory way.

"Electability is really a function of the dysfunctional way we go about nominating presidential candidates – how it discourages the best and brightest and then forces the legitimate few who do take on the challenge to jump through ideological hoops that have little to do with running a country as diverse, discursive, clamoring and proximately omnipotent as America – electability is a function of how badly an electoral base has distorted reality in order to satisfy its own little cloistered view of the world."

I seem to have lost interest in the GOP primary - probably because it seems to be going down the depressing road I thought it might and I just wanna jump to the end to see how much I got right - I'm especially curious to see, should Romney lose the upcoming Michigan primary, if my wildest prediction comes true - namely, that ol' Mitt gives up trying to please the republican base and splinters off to form a third presidential party. I don't know the logistics of such a thing so I have no idea if it's even possible - but it makes sense. Certainly the talk is ramping up about the possibility of a contested or brokered convention that results in a late entry candidate like Daniels being installed - but from what I've read that's a long shot, hard to do - just forming a third presidential party may make more sense. Since Romney's flaws are so primary specific, the optics on him would become a lot more pleasing freed from the idiocy of the GOP base - you're seeing happening to him exactly what happened to Hillary in 2008 - the more she was forced to reach out to the liberal base in response to the Obama tide, the less appealing she became as the 'serious' candidate - and then at that point the base is controlling the narrative - if Santorum wins Michigan the social conservatives and their allies will be in control of the narrative and Romney can only diminish himself in trying to satisfy that wretched lot.

Sure, he could still go on and win the nomination - but the risk of that becoming a pyrrhic victory rises sharply - plus, like I said, his flaws are very primary specific - the more he has to reach out to the uber right, the more he confirms their opinion of him as being a phoney - I don't know game theory but I assume there's a game that applies here - there comes a time, and that may be Michigan, when if he wants to be president there's nothing to be gained by remaining in the GOP primary - everything becomes a loss if even in winning the presidency recedes further from view - Santorum's a winner no matter what because no one expected him to do anything - but for Romney it's win the presidency otherwise it's a huge waste of time. Which is why a third party run makes sense to me [assuming the logistics of it are doable] should he lose Michigan. Either that or just get out of the race - I mean, he's a very successful man - why would he need this shit if it isn't going to end in the presidency?

"It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force. If there be any truth in the remark, the crisis at which we are arrived may with propriety be regarded as the era in which that decision is to be made; and a wrong election of the part we shall act may, in this view, deserve to be considered as the general misfortune of mankind."

Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers.

Excellent interview with Peter Thiel. If our politics cannot start to resemble or mimic or take on the characteristics of the kind of practical rationality displayed in this dialogue then it's hard to see how we move forward as a nation. It's natural for people with extreme conceptions to think only extreme actions or gestures or rhetoric will do - to imagine otherwise would be to subvert their beliefs and drain their passions of meaning - but of course democracy is about mitigating extremes, finding consensus, exploiting dynamic avenues opened up by the flexibility of freedom - extreme positioning driven by ideological rigidity is counter intuitive to the very idea of the democratic principles the hyper partisan claim to be an expression of.

Of course, bitter ironies abound - they're not necessarily wrong in thinking that - you wonder if maybe it's a function of the nature of modern media - in the sense that, the ubiquitousness of simplistic messaging has resulted in too much democracy, which is a sentiment that is both hard to defend and hard to ignore as possibly being true - I mean, when does it become a sort of alchemy to think that crude opinions are somehow made golden by being freely expressed? Certainly Obama was a slavishly superficial media creation and liberals accordingly prostrated themselves before him for the most idiotic of reasons - and now with a sort of counter-idiocy the republican nominating process, fearful of a great liberal Caliphate cresting over the horizon, tramps from one supposed 'true' conservative to another in a desperate attempt to avoid the evil moderateness of Romney - and this disgruntled peregrination is fed by the uber right media organs of talk radio and dyspeptic blogs which basically preach the gospel that any hint of ideological timidity is akin to leaving the door open to satan.

Alas, even as I scorn the right I have no choice but to empathize with them because Obama is too liberal, has been an awful president and is deliberately fanning the flames of hyper-partisanship and a ruinous class war because he's obviously decided that's the only way he can get re-elected - and it's working since the more enraged the GOP base becomes the more damage is done to Romney and the closer you get to someone like Santorum being the nominee and I see no way that an arch social conservative like him beats Obama [or that you'd want him to even if he could - I mean, put aside the problematic nature of his social views and the flawed reasoning and cloistered conscience they reveal - and forget that the aggressive way he talks about Iran and 'Islamo-fascism' suggests his opinions are grounded more in religious fervor than strategic clarity - the fact that he's so closely tied to extremist right wing thinking can only one imagines lead to more partisan rancour and deadlock in Washington, not less].

No doubt Obama's huge ego allows him the delusion that of course the republic is improved by his re-election - but, c'mon, is this anyway to run a supposedly great country? The system is becoming a caricature of the values and principles it professes to encompass. Now, I know Aristophanes made great fun of Athenian politics - but was Pericles ever reduced to such sad displays as this? What would Locke have said could he see this? What about brilliant men like Madison and Alexander Hamilton - hard to imagine them not feeling ashamed to see the great enterprise born of their keen intellects and noble passions reduced to this side show.

So then the question becomes why the dysfunction and is there anything we can do about it? If the system is a reflection of the prevailing culture and it's the culture then that's broken, then I don't know how you 'fix' that - short of I guess a revolution or upheaval that resets the parameters. If the system is independent of the prevailing culture then I suppose it can be reformed - but that's a huge undertaking that would be undermined and possibly undone by the same problems that afflict the system now, namely hyper-partisan rancour, dishonesty, demagoguery, populist pandering and a press and other media that often don't even attempt to feign objectivity anymore. If it's simply a case of bad leadership, then that's a bit more of a fixable thing - sure, bad leaders can be a reflection of a flawed system and therefore possibly just as indicative of a broken culture - Obama and Bush may be exhibits 1 and 1a in that scenario - but one could certainly envision that a wise leader with a real gift for reaching people could still manage to do wonderful and far reaching things despite the system's shortcomings - just have to find him or her and convince them to run [no one had to convince Pericles of the value and purpose of leading Athens - but then Pericles didn't have to run in no god damn primary where a media drone like Wolf Blitzer would with an accusatory tone ask his opinion of something as silly and of little consequence as say gay marriage which would be the equivalent of asking Pericles in the middle of the Pelopennesian war if slaves should be freed and made citizens and he has to somehow come up with an answer that offends neither the idiots on the right nor the idiots on the left who conveniently have diametrically opposed ideas of what a good answer should sound like - and sure, a cunning boy like Pericles just might be able to craft a perfectly reasonable and logical answer that left each party a wee bit consoled and a whole lot enlightened - but ya know old Wolfy and Rush and the NY Times etc etc etc ain't gonna let you wriggle away by just being reasonable and logical - boring! - which is a long and confusing way round to say gov't and the ideological vermin that feed off it increasingly seem like agitated, annoying, yapping, delusional little dogs chasing after a runaway train without the slightest little clue in their heads of what they might do should they catch it - because you see it's all about the yapping]

[now, of course, Pericles failed too - well, I guess one can argue that, Thucydides certainly wanted to - but assuming he miscalculated viz Sparta it raises a sobering point: if even the Pericles' of the world fail and make mistakes, what does it say about a nominating process that gives us inept, flawed or otherwise ill-suited commanders in chief like Bush and Obama? A process that has offered up the truly scary likes of Herman Cain and Gingrich and now possibly - although admittedly somewhat less scary than those two but still troubling regardless - Santorum? It's not a happy thought. And yet people still make the claim that the tough primary process makes for better candidates - where's the proof of this? The process may in some nominal way make the candidates better campaigners - but where's the positive connection between campaigning and governing? If you look at Obama, the two things are actually in opposition - great campaigner, horrible president]

"To a man, the U.S. officers in that unit told me they had nothing but contempt for the Afghan troops in their area."

 Read this.

When I used to argue with people about the war in Afghanistan I'd say "go ahead, let's talk about winning it, let's talk about victory - but understand, when you talk about winning that war what you're really talking about is changing the prevailing culture - without a modification of the inherent culture, any victory achieved will be short lived. Because the enemy isn't really the Taliban - the Taliban is just a symptom - the Taliban exists because of a bankrupt culture, of a society weakened and made vulnerable by specific cultural traits and attributes and tendencies that are determinative and identifiable. You wanna talk about victory, start there - and don't be cloaking it in the phony optimism of counter-insurgency theory."

What I found was that no one wanted to talk about culture. Thus the article cited above doesn't surprise me at all.

The Economist sums up, apres the Santorum sweep of last night, by saying exactly what Ive been saying for months now: a long, tiresome, drawn out primary that keeps forcing Romney to dance with the devil [the republican base] and pretend he likes it, serves the interests of only one person, Obama:

The contest is thus turning into the party elders’ nightmare. They have begun to unite behind Mr Romney, hoping to focus all attacks on Barack Obama. Instead, Messers Romney, Gingrich, Santorum, and even Mr Paul, must now attack one another. Many of their one-liners are good, meaning dangerously memorable even in November. Mr Gingrich, for example, delights his crowds by calling Mr Romney a “Massachusetts moderate” and belittling him as “little Food Stamp” next to Mr Obama’s “big Food Stamp”.

All this prevents Mr Romney from following his preferred strategy. All along, he has tried to look presidential by attacking Mr Obama rather than other Republicans. But each loss is forcing him to descend into the gutter of attack ads against his Republican rivals. He hopes to do well in the next several contests, from Maine to his native Michigan and Mormon-friendly Arizona. But if he can’t seal the deal by March, things could get ugly.

If Romney was battling against another credible candidate, in the manner of Obama vs Clinton, maybe this dance of death doesn't get everybody killed. But when you have one electable candidate getting pulled into an uber right mud fight with a bunch of unelectable candidates... well, what you end up with is a bunch of unelectable candidates covered in mud.

The Economist article also points to something else I was talking about a few months ago, ie a looming civil war in the republican party between the base and the intellectual elite - since 2010, when Tea Party extremes led to the nominating of several senatorial candidates that were unelectable and ended up costing republicans the senate, a conflict has been hinting at it's presence - if this ridiculous primary leads to an Obama second term when the man's first term is virtually crying out for a sound drubbing, an irrefutable repudiation, then hostilities could definitely break out in GOP land.

Now, sure, you could argue that if Romney were a better candidate these problems would have been mitigated or even nowhere in sight - but is that true? After all, I considered Daniels a better candidate and yet you can trace his loss of interest in it to the giant shit the base dumped on him after he had the nerve to suggest a truce in the culture wars - and I think Christie and Ryan might have been better candidates but I believe they decided against runs for two reasons: one, they were confortable with Romney as the candidate; and two, they had no stomach for putting up with the nonsense Romney is now stuck with. Certainly Christie strikes me as a guy who would have bristled at having to please the Limbaughs et al.

I suppose it's legitimate to think Jeb Bush would have had a much  better chance of navigating this uber right minefield - but is America really ready to vote for another Bush, even if he might prove the best of them all? Good chance no.

The whole mess raises the spectre of a troubling thought that keeps returning to me - namely, what if Western democracy has reached a watershed moment that could lead to either decline or renewal, with decline being the most likely outcome since it requires no fundamental change? The problems we face are complex yet the actions required to address those problems depend on ratification by voters who, even when well intentioned and sufficiently motivated, can rarely hope to understand the complexity involved to a degree necessary for the making of good decisions - and then this problem is compounded by cynical politicians and other scoundrels feeding off the beast who play to the ignorance, play to peoples vulnerabilities or worst instincts. Perfect example - apparently Santorum did well in Colorado yesterday because his daughter's been sick and this humanized him which of course allowed the average voter to excuse themselves from actual thought and just feel their way to an answer. When the electorate is engaged in such a simplistic and superficial way, at what point does the system just stop working? At what point does confusion and apathy and ignorance and cynical self interest and blind partisanship and the demagoguery that serves it weigh the system down so much with nonsense and bull shit that not even idiot momentum is enough to carry it forward anymore?

[and then when you consider that Santorum's daughter is ill because she was born with birth defects stemming from fact her mother was 48 years old when she conceived and that happened I'm guessing because Santorum thinks contraception is evil, evil enough to be made illegal if he only could - well, how does the absurdity of this not leave a person incapacitated by despair? A guy who thinks contraception is a plague upon the nation, thinks that intelligent design should be taught alongside evolution in science classes, who thinks Catholic priests raped children in Boston because liberalism has turned that city into a modern day Sodom, a guy who is so fanatical about pro-life issues that he took the corpse of his still born son home from the hospital so he could show it to his living children - a guy like that has no chance of being elected president - I mean, there are definitely a lot of stupid people out there,  but still not enough I think to do something like that. Although, we did elect a guy president simply because he was black - and some of our most intelligent people swore up and down that not only did this make complete sense, was fucking brilliant man, but also claimed that this simple act was just so incredibly inspired, just so utterly awesome, that the whole freaking world would become infatuated with the brilliance of it and usher in a new age of, ya know... awesomeness. We did do that - so who's to say how stupid we can get]

"... democracy is a function of culture, not the other way around... it is begotten, not made... it is not a thing you simply impose as if all the good therein will forthwith manifest itself according to some mysterious natural law... it is of a piece with the whole from which it emanates and that whole is the culture otherwise known as Western civilization... we saw with the putative Arab Spring how easy it is for people to forget this... but then that was likely just as much about creating false but convenient narratives than it was about forgetting one's history... I imagine because it's easier in a world narrowed by the intolerance of political correctness to simply focus on a mere procedural matter like voting and thereby avoid having to make value judgements, avoid having to wonder if Islam as a culture is maybe incompatible with democracy, incompatible with free speech... for certainly it is free speech and a respect for open debate, the rudiments of which were evident even in the early history of the poleis of ancient Greece, that mark the well spring of democracy, and not any notion of universal suffrage per se... voting was merely an after thought, a byproduct of a much more fundamental something else..."

Am I the only one who found it extremely odd that China vetoed the UN censure of Syria? Don't get me wrong, that China's sympathies lie in that direction I completely understand - but they usually read from the Sun Tzu playbook when it comes to stuff like this which means they want their strategy to sail along relatively unnoticed beneath the radar - which is why I assumed China would abstain and let Russia make itself the leading edge of criticism viz the veto. This seems like very odd behaviour by China to me - if so, what's the motivation? - is it that the veto amounts to a de facto vote of support for Iran [again, nothing in itself surprising about that] and therefore this an indication that China sees a looming attack by Israel on Iran a very real possibility? That's the way I'm reading it - although, what they hope to gain from it is less clear. Are they hoping to dissuade Israel? Do they perceive some advantage in making their strategic aspirations apparent ahead of the act? Is it an indication of some as yet unclear quid pro quo with Russia? Or is it simply a miscalculation - or maybe even just evidence that China's old foreign policy calculations no longer add up and this veto represents an emerging new normal? If the latter that would be just as interesting, and disturbing, as my 'Israel on the verge' interpretation.

With Gingrich seemingly coming undone thanks to a demonstrated talent for narcissistic ugliness that parallels his approach to marriage, the oh so depressingly inevitable move to Santorum begins [the only truly conservative not-Romney choice left in the race, or so goes the mind numbingly stupid incantation of the uber right]. I'd just like to turn the whole sad spectacle off - if Romney wins tune back in to see if he can beat Obama - if Romney loses [very hard to see that happening] wait for a third party challenger to rise up since there's no way in hell Santorum beats Obama [at least I hope there's no way - and I can't stand Obama, so...] - I mean, the guy wants to make it possible for states to criminalize contraception should they so choose - heck, why not just take the right to vote away from women too while you're at it!

"... I was in the corner market resupplying my stock of eau d'hops and found myself lined up at the checkout behind a burly, gruff looking fellow who was vying with fain success against a distinct wobble and slur of speech... seems he was attempting the return of a half used twelve pack of strong beer that had sorrily disappointed him... he was pleading with surprising earnestness to an increasingly unamused cashier a case of I know exactly how drunk six extras should make me and if I ain't that drunk then the beer's defective and if the beer's defective you owe me... for a moment I mused that once you got past the absurdity of it it wasn't an entirely unconvincing argument... and then I found myself thinking it's striking how many people there must be in the world that I have absolutely no desire of ever meeting or, once having met, ever meeting again... and then I thought a bit disturbing no how thin the line can sometimes be between cunning and gross stupidity... and then I thought given current circumstances I wonder if there's a sillier, more hollow sounding evocation than God Bless America... as he wobbled away, having failed to melt the cold heart of this most severe of magistrates, I cast one last look over his cursing decay of flesh, flirted briefly with mordant sympathy, and then with a cruel smile concluded bet he voted for Gingrich..."

I liked this essay - some will find it offensive possibly, wrong headed, intolerant or illiberal a bit maybe - but as far as I'm concerned if you're thinking about the future of the West and the idea of enlightened democracy which the West gave birth to and you're not framing the argument in terms similar to those raised by this essay, then you're either engaged in naive ideological obfuscation or you haven't been paying adequate attention to these threads in the historical pattern that are starting to fray and unwind towards an end state that is increasingly difficult to predict.

A ramping up of chatter, rhetoric viz Israel attack on Iran - hard to to tell if US and Israel acting in concert here in sense of trying to dramatically ratchet up pressure on Iran to relent - or possibly Israel and US working at cross purposes in sense of Israel making very public its grave concerns in attempt to increase pressure on Obama to treat the crisis with much more urgency - and then possibly US speaking out in attempt to stoke public fear of an Israeli strike and thereby I guess dissuade Israel from taking action? - it's a bit hard to make sense of things here - I mean Panetta publicly stating he thought there was a high likelihood of an Israeli strike by spring? - that seems damn odd - why make a public statement like that? I really can't see israel believing that such dramatic language works as intimidation and therefore I tend to doubt this rhetoric a joint effort at talking Iran to death. No, I get the feeling that this is about the possibility I raised before - Israel doesn't trust Obama and they're setting the table for action - I mean looking at it logically, if Israel has come to two conclusions - namely, they can't trust Obama and Iran with the bomb is not an acceptable option - then they really only have one choice here - strike while they can.