Rush and Pat are Right!

No, of course they’re not. Not about anything. Not right in the head.

Pat Robertson, for those of you with a score card, says something outrageous every eight months or so. He’s just being opportunistic and playing to his audience of shut-ins. There is considerable power in the pariah message. It re-emphasizes the ‘us versus them’ mentality so needed in an organization such as his. The matter of fact citing of a pact with the devil is typical cult talk, playing up the leader’s special powers. Pat’s pronouncements are not for us in ‘the world’ at large. In order to be saved, you must come out of this world. And, Pat says, into his.

As for Rush, I think his negro hatred has just brimmed over as it does from time to time. I don’t know who watches Fox News or listens to Rush anymore. It’s some level of secular crazy: people willing to suspend disbelief in order to have their often unspeakable opinions coddled. Mind you, I speak as a conservative. I’m not much pleased with National Review of late, either.

Opposition to populism is problematic in the best of circumstances. You really have to pick your spots. Selling the free enterprise system as the be all and end all in and of itself is a hollow pleading. Whatever the system is, it has to work well for most people and somewhat well for all people. No one should die from a lack of health coverage in the richest country in the world. Saying otherwise just makes you look goofy.

Jumping up and down at every populist noise, as Rush does, becomes incoherent at some point. Are we now against clean air, motherhood and apple pie? If the president says it, we are. There is no President of the United States that can be rationally conceived who would turn a blind eye at the crisis in Haiti. Any reasonable model of President would do exactly as Obama has done.

The real, unasked question is: What do we expect to accomplish with our aid. Here’s where I have to somewhat side with Rush and Pat. The place is utterly damnable and no amount of money flowing in from the outside is going to make it less so. We cannot impose an economy on Haiti. We cannot wave a magic wand and make everyone there literate. Our morality, our values are no mystery to the people of Haiti. They have their own morality, their own values and have largely made their own mess. You need only look at the other side of the island to see what is possible.

It also occurs to me that the full power of the United States government has failed to restore New Orleans after all these many years—and that city was arguably in much better shape. Many cities over the course of human history have not come back. It’s actually something of a rarity when they do. Chicago came back, but it’s a natural rail hub. San Francisco came back, but again the town’s location was key. New Orleans, by contrast, was in decline as a port hub and the disaster removed the inertia people naturally have for living where they were born. I’m not sure what case the capital of Haiti falls under, but it is a stretch of imagination to say that there ever was much there there in the first place.

By all means, let’s dig them out and help them recover people. But then let’s get out. Another US occupation of Haiti is no more likely to have a positive result than any of the last ones. Haiti will join this century when it feels like it.

Coda

So I brought my new computer in to be fixed for its overheating problem. Two hundred plus dollars and a week later, I get it back. It works for a day and then goes entirely splat. No functionality whatsoever.

Now everything is backed up, in several places. It just becomes a massive pain to reinstall it all, if I do get the puter back in any sort of working order. This sort of delays any replating of the website. So my Christmas lights are going to stay up for some time.

At least I still have this laptop. Until my pact with the devil expires and it too is taken away.

(Again, no visuals for this post. Sorry.)