Misplaced Priorities

Professor J,

As I noted on our Facebook page, at first glance, I thought the title to your last post was "Idiot Day." I asked readers to supply their own jokes. 

Usually we want to throw all the other bums out but, I was referencing what happens every few election cycles now when the vast majority of voters are beyond disgusted with their own bums as well as the bums from the other side. People have so little confidence that anyone is going to go about getting the people's business done that they often throw up their hands in disgust. (But maybe that's just me.)

The article you referenced made many excellent points. "The United States has more musicians in its military bands than it has diplomats." That's a problem unless the belief that "music has charms to soothe a savage breast" is actually the basis of our foreign policy.

Somehow along the way talking has become a sign of weakness. "We don't negotiate with terrorists" has somehow come to mean we don't negotiate with anybody. Ever. Ron Paul's alluding to the fact that it isn't our democracy or freedoms that people around the world hate, but instead our, often abysmal foreign policy, was met with a visceral reaction from other candidates during the last presidential campaign. Rick Santorum's response reminded me of someone singing God Bless America at the top of his lungs with his fingers in his ears.

One of George Carlin's more famous rants comes to mind.

Our inability to see nuance, coupled with out mistrust and hatred of "the other" is strangling us. People, parties, organizations are divided up politically into "hawks" and "doves." The former never met a war they didn't like and the latter often think nothing is worth fighting for. What we need are peace loving hawks and doves who know that there are, sometimes in history lines that must be drawn in the sand, things that must not be allowed to stand. (That accidentally rhymed and sounds like a bad protest sign.)

The observation that we would rather spend on weapons and military power, that the article points out are not "sufficient to win" is telling. Because it isn't just true abroad. It's true at home too. The same group of people who think it's reprehensible that college students would want their astronomical student debt forgiven think nothing of spending billions on war toys.

Our misplaced priorities are a sad recurring theme...