Who Leads the Free World?

 

The United States has for the time abrogated their right to be the leader of the free world. Despite the United States military being the most capable and well-armed and trained that the world has ever witnessed, they have been relegated to sentry duty and policing their own areas and otherwise been retreating from the world scene. The rumors that President Obama has recognized his error and is about to send some troops to fight against the Islamic State is but fifty troops who are not to engage beyond being spotters for air strikes and possibly performing training the indigenous troops will only cause the Islamic State to shift their positions more often, set up more dummy camps which look and sound on radio chatter as if they are an actual base and also doing a similar thing with tank formations in order to get the United states to waste their ordinance striking decoys just as was done in the Balkans.

 

Where next to look? Europe might be a logical place when one judges solely by history, but after World War II the United States basically neutered the Europeans such that their navies basically were relegated to the strength to perform coastal patrols and little more and their armies were basically reduced such that to field an effective army sized assault would take a combined force of much of the European Union nations which would lead to numerous other problems such as unit cohesion and command and control protocols and division of risk and other minutia some of which would still be important. Oddly enough the two nations in the free world who might have the resources militarily might be Canada and Australia but both currently have governments which would preclude their taking such grand risks. India has a respectable sized military but their equipment and training would likely need upgrading and the time to teach their commanders throughout the ranks how to utilize the features of modern command and control with which warfare becomes more effective and individual units with the right support made available in a timely manner and knowing how to anticipate such requirements through analysis would take quite some time. Much of the rest of the world are beyond consideration simply due to their voting records in the General Assembly which also would make a number of Europeans suspect as well. If one were to record all the votes taken in the past seventy-five years in the United Nations General Assembly one of the countries, the very few and possibly only nation, that had voted nearly if not perfect with the United States is Israel.

 

There are a few others which vote most often with the United States both in the Security Council and in the General Assembly. Those are Canada, Czech Republic, Israel, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Panama, and Palau. Together the army they could raise even if the rest of the European Union nations were added as well as Australia, Japan, India and the Philippines and your fieldable force would not exactly be formidable. The only nations to actively challenge United States President Barack Obama and the rest of the nations in backing the horrific Iran nuclear deal, which guarantees Iran developing and becoming a nuclear armed state in approximately an even dozen years should they obey the terms and if they do not obey the terms and simply go as fast as they are able then, by this time next year probably the Iranians will have produced three to ten deliverable weapons depending on how much Highly Enriched Uranium they have already stored at some undisclosed location plus the amounts they can produce running all their centrifuges running full-speed in long cascades all the time. But wait, it could be worse and in many ways it already is.

 

There are other major problems around the globe and more specifically across the Arab world of the Middle East and extending through Northern Africa (MENA). Taking the lead in this troubled region are Syria and Libya, not a total surprise. Another contender would have been Egypt if not for the secondary protests which demanded the army take control and run new elections where more parties which formed as a result of the initial efforts of the Arab Spring, an idea which implicitly bore witness to the chaos which has swept other regions as well emanating from the lack of the guidance and “interference” by the United States. The leading from behind was more like leading from within the gates of the White House as President Obama was leading from so far behind the United States almost had no influence and was of little assistance after the governments started collapsing. What was supposed to be an Arab Spring rapidly became the Arab Winter. The fracturing in Libya into tribal enclaves and Islamist sects, all of which take little note of those claiming to be the nation’s government though they control only most of the capital city of Tripoli. Syria has presented the world with the spectacle of a bloodbath which has claimed the lives of approaching half a million civilians and large numbers of military and militia casualties. The entrance of an overtly strong and well organized group took such advantage to grasp large tracks of lands in both Syria and in another area where death and chaos reigned in central Iraq’s Sunni areas. This group is of course the Junior Varsity, as referred to early on when if the United States President had entered the battle in strength for a brief period in the early stages they could have struck the forming Islamic State inflicting serious damage and death and possibly have captured or killed much of their leadership returning the forces into the disarray they suffered from before being organized by the Islamic State. Now this group commands lands greater in size than the United Kingdom and will likely grow stronger and gain more followers swearing their fealty all across the central Arab Middle East. The United States response had been an extremely weak and ineffective bombing campaign where often pilots return with their ordinance still in place as their target area had no targets and their search for suitable targets were unsuccessful and they were forced to return to base when fuel ran low. The fifty man force about to be unleashed by President Obama will likely prove the greatest military farce of his Presidency.

 

 

Display of the Muslim Nations of the World in the Middle East, Asia and Northern Africa in Green with Israel depicted in Red

 

 

The Middle East is not the only problem though when the problem is financial; its effects are more readily concealable. The difficulties in Europe can also be traced back to the United States as when the American public’s buying power becomes strapped, then every market in the world loses their primary market. In Europe the economic situation grew so severe in a number of states with Greece and Spain being unable to cover their difficulties and Greece even having riots over the difficulties and many police departments turning to foot patrols in the neighborhoods closest to the station houses as their vehicles were out of gas and the precinct out of funds. Some Fire Departments ran on crews who were often unpaid but had firefighters who refused to allow such an inconvenience to leave the people unprotected from fires. These were the modern heroes.

 

Meanwhile, even with the encouragement of President Obama who has signaled through unofficial channels which have included members of his administration have encouraged former allies of the United States of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the rest of the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to actively seek assistances and alliances with Soviet Russian holdover of the old ways and now President of modern Russia Vladimir Putin, though some of his actions prove his throwback to a former age and desiring to force things back to the good old days with success while the United States remains almost inert, as the United States has taken a pull back on all fronts as the United States imposing militarism was declared by President Obama to be one of the two most damaging influences causing all the strife in the world with the mere existence of the state of Israel being the other evil influence which may explain the cold treatment of Israel and her Prime Minister by the American leader and many in his cabinet and shadow cabinet of Czars. It never occurred to the Obama Administration that the United States presence in near every hotspot was as those tasked to address the situation and as repair and assist and not causality.

 

This misperception has also been expanded to the Arab/Israeli conflict. President Obama and many of his advisors, particularly Susan Rice, Valerie Jarrett and Samantha Power were known anti-Israel, anti-Zionist and probably anti-Semitic problem children. The near universal denials of the slant to Israeli against Israeli security through supporting even the most absurd of Arab Palestinian demands and claims might be causes for concern for Israel and her security and being just one more administration to take the position that it is Israeli settling their ancient homelands and fulfilling Torah that are the problem and the Arab Palestinians are an oppressed indigenous peoples despite the Jewish presence documented to reach back near four-thousand year history and constant existence in Jerusalem since David took the city thirty-five-hundred year ago. This position has slowly been eroding as more and more leaders and people throughout the world have begun to realize that Arab intransigence and demanding that Israel be destroyed and that the destruction of the Jewish State and the genocidal slaughter of her peoples are the primary desire of Mahmoud Abbas and the rest of the Arab Palestinian cause. The next realization that will hopefully hatch within their consciousness is that Israel had already given up the entirety of the Gaza Strip in August of 2005, which was soon taken from Mahmoud Abbas and his Arab Palestinian Authority by Hamas and a host of terrorist Islamist entities; returned the entirety of the Sinai Peninsula, which is easily three times the size of Israel itself; plus the Zionist Congress when working to form the Jewish State agreed to permit the British to form Transjordan (Jordan) from over three-fourths the lands of the British Mandate surrendering the lands east of the Jordan river and reaching to Iraq on the east, Syria to the north and Saudi Arabia to the south; so all told, Israel has surrendered sufficient land mass to have increased the actual size of Israel close to ten times. So, do not claim that Israel has not returned or released their claims to land; that is a total myth and quite fallacious a myth at that.

 

 

Eretz Yisroel from back in the time immediately after Exodus and before the additional conquest by King David and King Solomon with the original division of the lands between the Tribes covering both sides of the Jordan River. The Israelis and Jews in general could attempt to demand that Eretz Yisroel, the Land of Israel be made whole as was First Apportioned by Hashem.

 

 

So, with the United States Executive Branch under President Obama and reflecting his beliefs which reflect with great credit the church he and his family attended for twenty years under the anti-Israel, anti-American, anti-Judeo-Christian ethic and beliefs Pastor the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, it is little surprise that in President Obama’s foreign policy has reflected his animosities and complete lack of foreign policy expertise. This has led to the retreat by the United States on all fronts and allowed for the brash adventuresome actions by American adversaries of Russia and China, amongst others which have bordered on being temerarious, risky and posing a serious threat to any President who follows these policies and their implications if and when such a foreign policy focused President might be elected. The foolhardiness of the American populace who are well permitted to ignore the outside and greater world and simply be concerned with their domestic situations, pretend that economics were their driving passions and even appear to have fallen for an idea whose time was claimed had come and the first Black President be placed in the White House and for his catchy and easily remembered themes of “Yes We Can” and of “Hope and Change”; though there never was anybody asking what changes are we presumably hoping for? The change has mostly been quite destructive in the world’s stage and a complete abrogation of the traditional importance to the world, strategic positioning of the United States military forces, the American political model being represented as the preferred model for good governance with concern for the people over and above the concerns of the political class and as the guarantor of order, human rights, civility and against the most disastrous proclivities of mankind such as genocide, oppressions, and the many other presumed actions the United States could provide the world at large when she is enforcing those principles under which she herself presumably performs her domestic policies. Some might claim that the United States internal policies have also suffered since the start of the Twenty First Century which was preceding the withdrawal and suffering of the rest of the world from the United States reduction of both interactions and direct actions across the globe and especially in the MENA areas which have suffered the most from this abatement.

 

This is what has led to the situation where the free world had no real or active leadership. Canada’s Stephen Harper took up some of the challenge as did Britain’s David Cameron; but even combined, the two men could not equal even the most minimal actions usually taken by the United States. Additionally, the only nations who are capable of deploying troops across the globe are China and, to a lesser extent, Russia. The pullback of American forces has permitted some adventurism by these two powers which would never have been undertaken had there been a remaining presence in force of the United States. Russia adventurism has extended to as far as Syria and even negotiating got permission for a naval base in Northern Africa. China has been even more interesting as they have been adding to their territories and expending their claims to the waters of the South China Sea by building new islands stretching well into this vital commercial water causeway through which much trade by shipping takes place.

 

So, who will take up the mantle of leader of the free world? Of all the potential candidates, it is likely that one of the smallest of nations and one which many would claim they would never look to for such directions, still it is Israel which may end up with the mantle due to her location as the cork in the bottle of the Middle East which appears ready to once again explode on the world’s stage starting with Europe. The explosion of “refugees” into Europe over the past weeks is in reality an invasion and not an influx of oppressed refugees. Despite the great care and effort of the media to find groups with children and women to snap their pictures defining the refugees flight into Europe but there have been a few news sources which have shown the reality of large and even overly common numbers of men between the ages of fifteen to forty and extremely able of being a deployed army which is now injected throughout continental Europe and a large number had gathered across Germany. If Europe is going to be capable of managing the troubles to come, they will very likely look to Israel as their model on how to handle their newly found problems. There is one result from this which will serve Israel as well as Europe as Israel will be forgiven taking control of all of Israel as promised in the British Mandate but limited by the later Churchill White Papers where Transjordan was taken out of the lands originally promised and the promise to keep the remainder sacrosanct for the Jewish State for a promise of all the lands west of the Jordan River. This newly found freedom of action will permit Israel to finally take the steps which has been obvious since the Second Intifada from 2000 through 2005 which claimed over a thousand Jewish and Israeli lives and many tens of thousands injured with all too many having life altering injuries with which they have been forced to live with as their injuries were too serious for modern medicine to repair and only to make things as best as the physicians were capable. The memories and witness of the pains still felt resulting from the last Intifada has cast a pall over Israel where people are determined to take any and all necessary steps to assure that no such situation comes into the violence which has been escalating since late last winter and finally made the world news with the stabbings. These attacks have become so permeating Israel with a half dozen to dozen daily and have become the new normal which means they will soon become considered everyday events in Israel and therefore no longer of any importance for the media to grant coverage. Those who choose to mention these attacks will come under criticism for saying the same thing day after day and as the media is no longer covering these events including the daily rioting on the Temple Mount there are no new pictures and as a Jew in Israel I would face certain injury or death were I to attempt to take my own pictures and videos and as such I am not that adventurous. Still, once Europe realizes that they are in the same boat as Israel and that boat is taking on water at an alarming pace, then Israel will be freed of her shackles and freed to do what should have been done ten to twenty years ago. This will put an end to the miscreants, actually murderous swine, who have indoctrinated their children so to send them on suicide missions as their deaths are to their propaganda media’s advantage and must be born witness by the Western Word for being what it truly is, child sacrifices. Their acts are no different than the idolaters from who Joshua led the initial conquest of Israel by the Jews who had come out of Egypt almost thirty-five-hundred years ago leading to the initial founding of the Jewish State which was recently reestablished restoring what is the only indigenous peoples to return from exile twice with one approaching two-thousand years and to retain their language, code of laws (Torah) and remained a peoples avoiding intermarriage for much of their centuries of life amongst other peoples as they resided in their Diaspora. This is the miraculous nation which may soon become a “Light Unto the Nations” as written in her historic Torah and kept alive in her oral laws as well, to quote Fiddler on the Roof, her “Traditions!”

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

A World Without America Revealed Through President Obama

 

I hope all those people throughout the world who complained for years how the United States was behind all the strife and warfare in the world are happy and are enjoying a world more to their liking. They claimed that wherever there was war, wherever there was trouble, wherever the world was falling apart, there you would find America and that was because America was the cause of what was wrong with the world. For the last six year we have had a world where America did not answer the alarm, did not take the lead, did not come when trouble settled in and made life impossible and the world started to unravel. President Obama called it “Leading from behind.” What he meant was that America would not answer the call unless others took the lead role. Did you notice any difference? We have.

 

The first difference was that even with America holding back she was amongst the first to show up with supplies and manpower whenever the problem was so large that it could not be ignored. Such as the 2011 Japan earthquake, tsunami and nuclear plant meltdown or the 2010 Haiti earthquake where the United States was either the first or second nation to be there and set up health care and other hospital services as well as search and rescue and virtually anything else which was required to help. Fortunately for the world the United States was still there in the lead when natural disasters struck. But for what President Obama referred to as “Manmade disasters,” the United States held her hand and waited for somebody else to rush in and for a special invitation before doing anything. The United States was not going to rush all over the globe putting out fires and responding to every emergency leaving the world to face its own problems, especially when the world as a force of nature was not the cause, we the human beings were the cause. Look around and see if this is the kind of world you want, the kind of world you desire. Probably the best example of what a world without America will become is plainly evidenced by ISIS which has metastasized and like a cancer has spread well beyond merely infecting much of Syria and Iraq and now spreading across Northern Africa, especially in dysfunctional Libya and now having Boko Haram claiming fealty to ISIS has now started to spread its terrorist claws beyond Nigeria and into Cameroon, Chad and beyond. The Islamist terrorist who struck the Paris kosher deli Hyper Cacher claimed to have ties to ISIS and there have been signs that ISIS has begun to infiltrate Gaza, Judea and Samaria with plans on replacing Hamas and Fatah and taking over the terror war with Israel. The fight against ISIS has really displayed the problem of a world where the United States does not take the lead.

 

The United States was still the first responder but just not as active as in the past as she was only willing to supply some of the air cover and air strikes aimed at supporting the Kurds and Iraqi military and in gathering a coalition, something the United States demanded be done before she would even join in giving air support missions. What is missing is having the United States supply the lion’s share of the fighting forces. Now in facing off against the threat of ISIS we have the entire world, especially those in the crosshairs of ISIS such as Saudi Arabia all waiting for the United States to provide troops on the ground before they will even consider sending their forces to fight. Instead they stand poised to defend their land should ISIS come knocking at their border but are loathe to fight ISIS where they are instead of waiting for ISIS to threaten their lands and people. What is wrong with such a strategy? Well, first off that means you will wait until ISIS feels they have the forces to take you on, on your own soil. That means allowing ISIS to grow in strength, numbers, equipment and training all before you take a stand and even then you wait for their assault, never would you go and strike them where they live, just as long as they do not invade your home. The exception thus far being Jordan, who is responding to the brutal and inhumane execution of their pilot by burning him alive in a steel cage by ramping up their air attacks against ISIS and is considering placing forces in the field to fight ISIS and destroy them. The United States President has promised to weaken ISIS and degrade their abilities and eventually weaken them to the point that the forces against ISIS will have the upper hand and will vanquish them. The notable part is the lack of American forces on the ground for any part of this conflict; the world is on its own.

 

There is more to this new order in the world that should frighten the average citizen who lives anywhere in the world where the norm had been the United States taking the lead and doing that which needed to be done, that world may have passed on by forever going forward. The United States has her own difficulties of which supporting an army spread throughout the globe and fighting in every theater even those which do not make the daily news has passed. Facing a monumental debt which can no longer be ignored and must be trimmed down, even if at the cost of a military force capable of being the world’s policeman thus the United States may be facing become more like the European nations and guarding their closest interests and hoping the other problems remain far from her shores. There is no new sheriff and the old sheriff has handed in his badge and retired, or at least taken a long holiday. For at least the next two years the world is going to have to find its own way and hold off the bad guys all by themselves. And to make matters worse, the next President of the United States might have a similar view of riding to the aid of every last cry for help as too high a price or even not America’s problem. There are Republicans as well as Democrats who feel the world will just have to get along without the United States to lean upon for support every time an ill wind blows by. Rand Paul is a noninterventionist and we know very little about Hillary Clinton or Senator Elizabeth Warren when it comes to foreign policy though we know that Hillary Clinton is more proactive than President Obama has been, though that should not be taken as too much comfort and almost anything would be more proactive than lead from behind Obama. We very well may have seen the end of Pax Americana and be entering a new phase for the world, the world beyond American interventions, so how do you like that idea?

 

We foresee some real problems and difficulties as should the United States step down from the role of leader of the free world, then who does the free world turn to to take up the role? It might be possible that the most outspoken leader of a Western power might be Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada. But this role is not a normative role and Canada will be getting a new Prime Minister in the upcoming elections, or at least that is what the pundits have predicted. We probably should not look to Canada to become the new leading nation with troops spread all over the globe in a leading role of protecting the realm from all harms. Canada has paid an outstanding role as best ally and we will put our shoulders to the stone along with the rest of the world and even be one of the leaders to speak up, but act as the savior of the world, probably not. Then there’s Britannia which once ruled the waves, but perhaps her last stand was her holding out against the Nazi assaults long enough to provide the United States with a jumping off point in the war in Europe during the last world gone mad war known as World War II. Even in that war the British relied upon every ship, boat, raft and rubber dingy to retrieve her embattled troops from Dunkirk in what became known as the Mosquito Armada and which very likely saved the war for the British as they could have lost the better part of their military had they not been pulled off by an armada which included far more civilian craft than anything else. For those needing reference, May 27 through June 4, 1940, the “Mosquito Armada” had managed to evacuate 338,226 allied troops while leaving almost all of their equipment abandoned on the beaches at Dunkirk. For more reading this is a good reference on what was officially referred to as Operation Dynamo. I guess we might look to either the European Union (EU) or possibly the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) though the latter often was simply another term for the United States. We could look to the United Nations (UN) though I have my reservations about troops wearing baby-blue helmets operating in an actual war zone as they would more likely make grand targets more than anything else. Apparently there is no ready and capable replacement for the role the United States has played for approaching a century, some might say since she entered World War I breaking the standoff which had raged for years with horrific tolls on both sides, tolls which were exceeded in World War II which makes any prospect of a World War III one of the most frightening prospects of all times.

 

So where does the world go if the United States has retired from their role of Guardian of the Realm, so to speak. Obviously there is no other Guardian of the Realm ready to step forward and the major coordinated alliances such as NATO, EU, UN, SEATO or the Anglo Alliance (English Speaking Nations of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Britain, and United States) which is an unofficial alliance of convenience made by speaking a similar language, many have noted the subtle differences and as was said by Winston Churchill, Oscar Wilde, or George Bernard Shaw depending on your preferences, “The United States and Britain are two nations separated by a common language.” The one thing which can be noted is that only one of the above entities is presumed to be empowered to settle any world problems which are brought before it, the UN. The EU and Anglo Alliance are more referred to as trade alliances which set up favorable treatment between nations for trade and commerce. SEATO and NATO have remained but is a treaty reliant on the powers of the United States largely and might still have sufficient bite as the United States is bound by treaty to come to these nations’ aid when called upon and theoretically this come to the aid part also presumably works in the opposite direction should the United States need assistance and saving from an attack on her shores. That brings us back to the United Nations and all one need ask is does anybody out there honestly believe the United Nations can be counted on to save the day? Us neither.

 

That returns everything to square one. Obviously the United States filled some massively large shoes which no other nation or group of nations seem able to or even willing to give it a go. That obviously means that the world is going to have to find some new way of opposing the ills which plague it from time to time and pray the United States gets out of bed after her slumber and puts on those unimaginably huge shoes and returns to guarding the gates against the barbarians and miscreants. In the meantime, the rest of the world will, by necessity, need to gird their collective loins and go forth and slay the trolls and ogres which threaten the peace and security of the nations of the world just in case the world is going to need to hold its own for the time being. The United States actually may have exhausted herself by the overextending its forces between Iraq and Afghanistan and need time to recuperate and renew her military. There is a chance that renewal of the American military might not be possible and the United States be relegated to playing just a supportive role and not take the fore on every charge going forward. I realize that is a sobering thought but it is a thought we must face just in case it becomes the reality with which we all must live. We may be facing not just a world without America but a future without America and that is the scariest thought of them all. This all depends on the next Presidential election and of all the candidates who have been discussed, not a one has what is needed if the United States is to raise back to her former glory and fulfill the role of Guardian of the Realm. There is one person we can recommend but alas they are not actually a politician, something which might be a recommendation for the next person to be President of the United States. Perhaps we should say the name but prudence says to remain quiet and hope his conscience wakens him to the call to come and repair what needs repair so that the world can once again depend on the United States to rescue those in need of rescue in times of peril. Without that hope the perils will only grow exponentially. One thing we learned, Hope and Change was not exactly what most of us thought it was and now we simply hope for a change back to the United States we once knew and often criticized and detested publically for her overbearance and brazen chutzpah, but now we have had our eyes forced open wide and glimpsed a view of a world without America, and do we like what we see, we do not and believe the vast majority agree with that view. Should the sleeping giant reawaken and return to that ever so difficult role, we must remember these times without America and welcome her lead rather than detest her greatness as her greatness is the world’s hope and we do not want that to change.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Political Styles of Fancy, Function, Fantasy, and Far Futures

 

In case you just awoke with a ringing headache and returned from the woods to find your sleepy little town had grown exponentially and your house replaced by a strip mall and everyone when you told them your name queries where have you been, you were reported missing years ago and your tail includes dwarves bowling in the woodlands, the Republican money machine just won the midterm elections again. If such news is distressing, simply remember back to the last Presidential elections when it was rumored that the Democrat machine and money bought another Presidency for Barack Obama. Simply put, whichever side wins the election was the one which was bought by their big money contributors and political machinery. Have you ever bothered to stop and wonder what happened to the other side’s machine and money when they lost the latest round of elections? Do you really think that one side spent all the money one election cycle and in return allowed the other side to spend in the next election, something that an alien watching elections news coverage might be honestly trying to figure out. The truth is that they both spend about the same every election and the sore losers have to find some small factoid on which to blame their loss; as anybody who is, thinks, in the know, or however one defined reasoned and rational, which makes their political views the sole and superior choice, would most certainly have voted for their candidate allowing them to have won except for the illegal money spent by the other side, thanks to some loophole which must be closed immediately, and paid them to vote against their better knowledge or whatever. What is remarkable is that this line of thought is universal wherever people are fortunate enough to actually have governments chosen through proper elections where one’s votes are capable of affecting change in the government through legal elections; so be glad if after every election cycle there are those complaining that the other side bought the elections.

 

But what do we really mean when we claim the elections were bought? The phrase originates in times when buying an election actually meant buying an election by paying people to vote for a particular candidate. This was not a regular occurrence and was only feasible before there was the existence of a freestanding media which was not dependent upon the whims of the local governments. This slowly became the reality as the media started merging and coverages reached beyond a single city or borough thus beyond being owned by an interesting party or collection who were capable of owning the media in the same manner as they owned the politics as represented in old westerns where the people finally found an honest sheriff or entity who ended the evil cattle baron and his ranch hands who were all second rate gunslingers, most of which ended up dead by the end of the movie or left town after the Lone Ranger and Tonto road into town. There are stories whose validity is often questionable of elections where political bosses, whatever or whoever those amorphous entities might be, would give people a hundred dollars to vote for their candidate. There may even be people claiming such in elections today though such would be even more difficult to believe as even the most politically driven media would expose such. The truth is that even if you believe that FOX or SKY news is biased or that CNN or BBC are biased in the opposite direction, both sides are held to task and kept honest as whichever side which employed such boorish tactics would be revealed by the other side’s media thus the free press has ended any possibility of money for votes frauds. Despite this there are still claims that elections are bought, be it by the Koch brothers, George Soros or Sheldon Adelson. How is it possible for such claims to still exist?

 

Elections are bought the same exact way that everyday products sell their wares, an attractive advertising campaign. Basically the golden nugget in any campaign, political or otherwise, is a catchy phrase or concept which captivates the attentions of the public. In the 1950s the golden political nugget in Presidential campaigns was a catchy little slogan of “I Like Ike.” Call it the “Where’s the Beef” or the “Pause that Refreshes” of the political era. Of course it did also help that Eisenhower was also the man who defeated Hitler. Still, had General Douglas MacArthur run for political office, something feared by those thinking he might run on the other party’s ticket, there would have been a need for a different slogan though it would have fell to minds more inventive than mine to concoct such a slogan. Basically politics is the ability to influence people to support your candidate by making them appear to be the person of the hour or the solution to all society’s ills. In the United States the slogan of “Hope and Change” titillated the minds of the American public, especially the younger voters who turned out like never before. This was despite the fact that very few actually understood what the Hope was and what Changes it would incur. The secret was that “Hope and Change” allowed each individual to substitute whatever they desired for hope and thus define what the hope would change. If many of candidate Obama’s speeches are analyzed his definitions for hopes and changes were often amorphous and undefined allowing for those listening to still be able to define these terms to fit their desired outcome. Eventually such undefined terms become defined, and when they are defined through the actions and policies enacted by the politician who gets elected by such terminology, that becomes history which makes them rather difficult to alter going forward, something President Obama’s opposition is finding out as time passes in the United States.

 

Sometimes the election revolves around the personality where the candidate becomes the definition of the campaign and thus causing a cult of personality. This situation often results in a warping of the electoral processes and even an end to the electoral processes altogether. One example of such would have been Hitler who once he became Chancellor of Germany proceeded to consolidate all political power and became a dictatorial ruler ending the necessity for future elections. Another example of a cult of personality has been Russian leader Putin who has been Prime Minister or President of Russia where the real power of governance followed him from one office to the other and back again without anybody challenging his absorbing the right to rule no matter the office he held. With Russia hitting some difficult periods economically his future holding of power may hit a crucial test. It will remain to be seen how long Putin will remain in power and exactly how far he might be willing to go to retain power no matter the consequences.

 

Then there are the different forms of elected governments, the forms of democratic governance. There are Presidential systems where the President is chosen directly and the parliament or congress is elected separately. There are Parliamentary systems where the parliament is directly elected by voting for parties which present lists of candidates in lists to fill the slots depending on the numbers of positions they are awarded as their percentage of votes received and then the parliament has some system by which the Prime Minister is chosen to lead the coalition. There are also different forms of the elected house or houses of power. The United States has the House of Representatives and the Senate where the House of Representatives are elected with each state given their share of the four-hundred-thirty-five seats according to their population and the Senate is comprised of two positions per state. Then there is the parliament in many nations where the entire nation elects representation by voting for parties or there may be parliamentarian seats assigned to districts where individuals are elected. Parliaments can be unicameral, bicameral or possibility of any numbers of entities. Some parliamentary systems have two houses, one elected by individuals and the other by party lists. As for which form of democratic representation is superior is probably still being determined. The only thing we have established is a truth best put into words by Winston Churchill, a somewhat common situation here, where Winnie said, “Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” Who can argue with that?

 

Actually, that is where mankind has shown the prerogative to constantly believe that their new idea has to be better than the previous as it comes reflecting on all the errors and difficulties previous attempts by man had failed with their efforts. But the latest is not always the greatest and the old tried and true may prove to have been false in all manners except that as the old and true it was what had become comforting as it was known and accepted. The British once thought they had attained the ultimate in governance with the enacting of the Magna Carta as now the King’s power was no longer absolute and deigned as coming from G0d but to be bent by the advisings by the other men of position and stature, the barons from whence the power of the military was formed when the crown required defending against foreign foe. The United States believes they have struck the perfect balance between popularist governance and select governance of a wise body of the chosen; and they may have been correct but that will never be known as they perverted their governance with the passing of the Seventeenth Amendment (Amendment XVII) to the United States Constitution and established direct election of United States Senators by popular vote. This removed the representation of the States themselves who had previously chosen their Senators through appointment by their elected bodies, some appointed by the governor and approved by the legislators while others were elected by the legislators. What was unnecessary about the Seventeenth Amendment was that the states were already empowered to choose their Senators by whatever means they saw as preferable which did not rule out their using direct elections had they believed such was to their advantage. But instead the Federal Government instigated the new requirement for Senators to be elected in a similar method as were the Representatives in the House. Some historians have posited that the Seventeenth Amendment was not properly ratified by sufficient numbers of states but was rushed and enacted despite this small problem as eventually sufficient states did ratify the amendment, just not within the time period set forth in the Constitution. Whatever the best form of governance, perhaps someday it will be found and when it is, my bet is the United Nations will be left to be wanting and hopefully dissolved and replaced with a body noble enough to realize its power should be wielded only responding to lengthy and tempered debate which has exhausted all avenues of investigation of alternatives and ramifications and then allowed for adjustments inspired by admissions of former inadequate thought which had seemed prudent at the initial time.

 

Beyond the Cusp