Friday, January 22, 2010
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Depressing thoughts
Okay, so it has been a while, and now all I have is a bunch of loosely related, depressing thoughts. Maybe somebody can offer some hope here. The world hasn't ended, yet.
So the recent disaster in Haiti shows how easily the barely functional countries of the third world fall apart. Here, luckily, it was just one country, but if we are unable to do anything about global warming, we should have problems of a similar magnitude across the board. And the developed countries' capacities and willingness to help, lukewarm at the best of times, will be noticeably diminished.
The chance of the United States doing anything meaningful about global warming just shrunk measurably with the Massachussetts election of Scott Brown (who, btw, for any social conservatives who may be reading this blog, posed totally naked for cosmopolitan in 1982). Even more irritating and ironic is the suggestion, probably real, that Massachusetts voters were fed up with debate on healthcare, since Massachussetts gained, under the leadership of former governor Mitt Romney, a more liberal healthcare plan than either of those being considered in congress. But, of the existing states with near universal coverage, Massachusetts plan is most like the one Congress is trying to pass, and polls suggest they are generally ok with it (slightly more in favor than against). So basically, we've got ours, but no one else should? I don't get it. Does independent mean ideologically incoherent? Winston Churchill's remarks on democracy seem particularly apt.
Also, I am reading about East Asian societies that basically imploded while rival factions in government kept anyone from instituting the meaningful changes. Even without the perfect hindsight of history, there were contemporaries who knew what needed to be done, but were prevented from doing it by conservative faction who were unable to do offer any constructive solutions to these problems, but just criticized and stymied those attempting reform. Tens of millions of people died.
So the recent disaster in Haiti shows how easily the barely functional countries of the third world fall apart. Here, luckily, it was just one country, but if we are unable to do anything about global warming, we should have problems of a similar magnitude across the board. And the developed countries' capacities and willingness to help, lukewarm at the best of times, will be noticeably diminished.
The chance of the United States doing anything meaningful about global warming just shrunk measurably with the Massachussetts election of Scott Brown (who, btw, for any social conservatives who may be reading this blog, posed totally naked for cosmopolitan in 1982). Even more irritating and ironic is the suggestion, probably real, that Massachusetts voters were fed up with debate on healthcare, since Massachussetts gained, under the leadership of former governor Mitt Romney, a more liberal healthcare plan than either of those being considered in congress. But, of the existing states with near universal coverage, Massachusetts plan is most like the one Congress is trying to pass, and polls suggest they are generally ok with it (slightly more in favor than against). So basically, we've got ours, but no one else should? I don't get it. Does independent mean ideologically incoherent? Winston Churchill's remarks on democracy seem particularly apt.
Also, I am reading about East Asian societies that basically imploded while rival factions in government kept anyone from instituting the meaningful changes. Even without the perfect hindsight of history, there were contemporaries who knew what needed to be done, but were prevented from doing it by conservative faction who were unable to do offer any constructive solutions to these problems, but just criticized and stymied those attempting reform. Tens of millions of people died.
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