Recently in Civics Category

It has been said over and over that it is the delusion of the young that they believe much of what transpires in the world is in any way new. The technologies, personalities, and names may change across the ages....but we're all still human beings and as groups of human beings we tend to have roughly the same dreams, arguments and conflicts whether we were born 3,000 years ago or today.

For me, I always look back to ancient Rome. After all, our government was founded to actually be a modern version of Rome. I don't think I'm alone. In fact, I'm pretty sure that was the whole reason Latin and ancient history were required courses for most of American History.

So, how does one interpret current political events in light of roman history?

Anyone who knows anything of Roman history, knows that there were essentially five stages:

a) Pre-Rome (Government is ad-hoc and essentially hereditary with frequent changes and violence, focus is on survival and growing faster than neighboring cities over a ~300 year period.)

b) The Roman Republic (The civilization that America's founders wanted to emulate and which relied on a culture that valued liberty, reasoning, rhetoric, universal military service, and human achievement. Not that everything was perfect as there was a constant class warfare, but the society as a whole was dynamic enough to take on any challenges thrown against it for almost 350 years).

c) Civil War ( Shortly after the Roman Republic reached it's peak, the classes of society became increasingly polarized and over a 100 year period decided that they couldn't stand anything but the total subjugation of the other...... The winning side killed off the leaders of the other and shredded the equivalent of their constitution, resulting in the death of the republic and birth of the empire. )

d) Emperors ( Except for a few exceptions, the emperors who ruled Rome presided over a 500 year decay of its power and the loss of cultural identity/virtues which had kept the civilization together ) .

e) Living Dead ( Various external powers, especially in Europe, fight until the renaissance (~1000 years) over the remains of Rome and pretend to bring it back to life (the most notable being Charlemagne), but what was undone could not be brought together again. )

I would argue that if the life of the United States mirrors the life of Rome in general form, then the Presidential Election of 2000 signaled the move from the Era of the Republic to Civil War. Note that in Rome, this was almost a 100 year process, which could have been stopped at any point.

The year 2000 is when Americans first started hearing signs of "The victor is not our president" from a losing party, which is as good a sign of real polarization as any.

In 2004, after losing again, moderates in the Democrat party were essentially thrown out (Lieberman/etc) and a more extremist message proved to be a winning strategy in 2006 and now 2008. This message was accompanied by thuggish actions of Obama supporters and directly encouraged with statements from party leaders that they should "Get in the face" of their opponents.

Also, in 2008, the golden American standard that politics ended at its borders was eliminated for good. The chance of using the worldwide popularity of a candidate became a political yardstick (whether the candidates positions are good for his country, or even correct, becomes irrelevant.) There appears to even been a silent effort to accept cash from anyone, whether they were a foreign power at war with the United States or not, as long as it gave one a political edge.

I have the feeling that now the Democrats are going to suffer the same vilification (within the USA) as Bush did. Whereas it might have been bearable for Republicans to lose the Presidency to a moderate democrat who might compromise as needed, they will not suffer having the presidency and both houses of congress in the hands of the non-compromising extreme side of the Democrat party. Therefore, they will not provide any honeymoon to Obama and will work harder than they ever to obstruct him. Remembering their treatment by Obama "thugs", they're also going to loosen the definition of acceptable behavior of a "Loyal Opposition." And, since the have now lost nearly all power in blue states (including the entirety of New England), they will no longer be required to "moderate" their positions. Indeed, you can already see the complaints being made by extreme republicans, that McCain lost because he was too "bipartisan".

It is certainly possible that we will see an ever expanding cycle of each party attempting to nullify the accomplishments of the other over the next 20-30 years (Society is certainly not growing any more cohesive, and I have no reason to believe their Obama ever meant his bipartisan overtures as anything more than a way to score political points for his side.)

Furthermore, consider that in Rome's case, once a party loses it becomes harder to win again, therefore losing becomes an unacceptable option - a situation in which we are doing our best to replicate via:

a) Each decade, the winning party exerts ever more control over the drawing of voting district boundaries.

b) With each election, Money becomes more important, and the loser having lost influence with lobbyists has less of getting it.

c) More and more of Government employees are politically chosen, meaning that the government functions more on behalf of the parties than the people.

d) The winning party attempts to exert more and more control over the media to stop the distribution of the other sides message.

e) The winning party does not moderate its goals and attempts to destroy those things which are "sacred" to the other party.

We're still far from being stuck in a loop, and up until the last minute, we can step back....but I have no reason to believe that the US populace will not continue down its current path.

After all, look how easy it was for us to think of ourselves in terms of "red states" and "blue states".  And, due to hyper-partisanship, a renown novelist (Orson Scott Card) has recently written a plausible novel about an American Civil War that gathered significant attention.  

Just this week, Obama's current victory was being described as a "non-violent revolution".

If America had wanted to avoid this pessimistic future, the GOP could have nominated McCain in 2000 - but they thought it was more important to gain power than to have a qualified man to use it.  Likewise, the democrats could have nominated a moderate in 2004 or 2008 (Instead they killed off the moderates).  I was hoping their strategy would backfire this year, but it didn't (another article on that later).

Regardless, Seeing their success, the GOP is sure to mimic the democrats tactics in 2012.   Short of a repeat of the carter years and a new highly popular candidate, the GOP will have no choice but to do so if it wants to regain any power.

A study of history does make one optimistic about human nature. I'm still waiting for my change that I can believe in.

A little history:

A few years ago, VMware suggested that all ESX Linux guests standardize on the pcnet32 driver. Then, shortly afterward, a vmxnet driver was released which was supposed to be faster. We all dutifully migrated.

When x86_64 VMs became supported, we were told to migrate again to e1000.

And recently, ESX 3.5U2 unveiled a new "enhanced vmxnet" driver. I've been investigating for a few months the benefits of switching, and indeed found that the new driver seemed to perform better and have fewer bugs.

So, it was no surprise to me when I read today in the vmware communities that VMware is pushing a migration to enhanced vmxnet:

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/150790?tstart=150

http://hotair.com/archives/2008/06/20/how-to-speak-democrat-a-lecture-by-rep-thad-mccotter

I was 9 years old when I first started to read the newspaper daily. My parents had assigned me the chore of ensuring the paper was picked up from the driveway and placed in my dad's favorite spot by his living room chair before he woke up (rain or shine, 7 days/week), and I started using the 10-15 minutes of time before they were awake to find the comics page and when I could the front page. I became really good at listening to all the sounds in the house, and knowing exactly a minute before anyone else was awake.

By the time I was 12, I was learning how to read the entire paper w/o leaving any evidence that it had been opened/unfolded. By 15, I had advanced to sneaking a read of the mail before anyone in the house saw it. When the economist, new republic, aviation weekly, business week, scientific american, or psychology today arrived...I usually had about 90 minutes to steal, read, and return it to the mailbox before anyone noticed. Yes, all you young ones....we didn't have the Internet then, and weekly journals were the closest you could get to the blogging experience available today.

Perhaps my parents knew about it and looked the other way. All I knew was that once they got the journal or newspapers, they were either left unorganized or I never saw them again....so my only chance of getting a comprehensive and unbiased feed of information was to get it myself directly from whatever source was available before anyone else.

By 21, I was reading the front sections from 3 newspapers rather than just one because I didn't want to get biased coverage. Reading the news in the LA times was completely different than reading it in the Wall Street Journal. All of them made good points.

Why I am bring these events up now to an anonymous audiance? I guess it's become I'm genuinely annoyed at you all.

There, I said it.

What the hell are you all smoking?

I did all those things when I was young because I realized that knowing what was going on in my country and the world, in an unbiased and comprehensive way, was one of the key requirements of being an adult. I honestly don't care what the sociologists say, what seperates human beings from animals is not that we can talk, socialize, and form groups but that we take responsibility for our long term future. We open our eyes at the world and shout "Tell me the truth!" and we pay the piper when he comes or make those sacrifices that we know we should to make the world a better place for ourselves and our kids 10-30 years down the line.

That's also one of the differences between being a boy and a man, or a sheep and a man. Sheep are nothing but men who've given up on their responsibilities and refuse to plan for the future.

Honestly, I think the American leadership class in general thinks the populace is sheep. And, I can't honestly blame them.

Consider the following:

I first heard about the "future social security crisis" when I was 10 years old which was ~1982. It wasn't a made up problem...just obvious mathematics...families weren't having as many kids as they used to and some generations were going to be much bigger than the rest meaning that the original assumption of having 7-10 workers paying for each retiree wasn't going to work out. The ratio of workers to retirees is the whole financial backbone of the whole system, and anyone who claims there isn't a problem when the ratio falls to 5-1 or 2-1 as its currently expected just isn't being honest.

Now, as economists are happy to point out, long term economic problems are easier to resolve when tackled early. Social security, in particular, was so paramount and the picture perfect example of the "less pain the earlier you fix" ideal that it was extremely obvious that we could all solve the issue by simply adding 2 years to the minimum retirement age every 5-10 years to reflect advances in life expectency and everyone would have enough time to prepare w/o having to pay higher taxes.

There I was 10 years old, and I assumed that America was such a great country that we would have the problem solved by the time I had to start planning for my own retirement. Hah. What a sucker, I was!

Yes, some steps were taken but always in such a way that once every 10-20 years it would just enough to push the problem back by another 5-10 years so that the people in charge wouldn't have to make any hard decisions or cut their own retirement. Way to go.

Of course, during this time, as records now show, public companies were also starting to underfund and overpromise on pensions. So, the problem was in more than the public sector. Everyone just decided to lie their way out of the problem and kept on at it until companies and cities started to go bankrupt (I'm just astounded that our leadership class could have exhibited such cowardice over such a prolonged period. Bravo! Can I spit on them now?).

Of course, our leaders during the period did know what was going on and wisely decided to stop offering any pensions at all to their "younger" workforce. I guess they decided that the joy of making the next generation eventually pay much higher taxes while getting fewer benefits was too good of a "screwing" to pass up. The result of course is that the American currency is falling and we may see a return of 1970's stagflation where interest rates are in the double digits and everything costs tremendously more each year. It's pretty easy to see why doctors are now predicting for the first time in recent american history, the current working force generation is likely to live a shorter less-prosperous and healthy life than the generation that brought it into the world.

To make matters worse, Boomers apparently have the wonderful delightful gal to call "Gen X'ers" depressing in recent mainstream publications and media, including a the "60 Minutes" TV show which "documents the love and respect Boomers are showing for the new Millennial generation!"

I'm wondering if its genuine, or the Boomers are just happy to see anyone in their country who isn't disappointed in them? Who knows, perhaps its all a clever ploy to build trust before screwing over someone new.

OK. Now, I know you young guys/girls out there are chanting "right on" on the whole social security thing but are seriously turned off by anyone calling you "Easy to deceive" or anything approaching "clueless"...let alone writing a bleak article about people in general.

You've apparently got this thing for "change" right now.

News for you, change would be Americans facing reality, sacrificing benefits, reducing spending first, raising taxes as a measure of last resort....not the other way around. Nearly every year of the last 30-40, spending has increased faster than revenue...even during periods when taxes were raised sharply.

OK, time for some history. Hopefully I haven't totally lost my entire audiance yet.

Remember Perot? Maybe you don't...maybe all you know is that he was a wierd high pitched guy...but when us Gen X'ers supported him in 1992 much like 20 somethings are supporting Barrack now, we actually did make a difference. The period from 1994-2000 was probably the only period in the last 50 when the federal budget was even slightly balanced or some fiscal intelligence in Washington. The result was the huge economic boom during the dot com period and the innovation and companies that are still powering whatever growth there is in the US economy.

So, my point:

American's have tried raising taxes ...yeah, I know all young people have seen the last 10 years is hypocritical GOP arguments for cutting taxes to the rich and the wonderful experience that has resulted in for the middle class. Happy, happy...joy, joy.

I guess if I was still in my twenties, I might think the same thing. I'd probably be perfectly willing to do anything, even be an idiot or vote for one, if it kept those corrupt bastards out of power.

But honestly, we've tried raising taxes many times over the last thirty years to solve financial issues... When the democrats did it, the results were so bad that the public hated carter as much as they hate bush today. (BG Reference -- "All this has happened before").

The GOP of the 80's/90's was born as a reaction to Carter, much as Democrats have returned to power after Bush. The unfortunate truth is that the Democrats in power haven't changed since. The solutions are still the same. Carter said no to the military, and increased taxes whenever budget issues occured. There we go again. The lessons of Clinton's narrow win in 92 have been lost.

If the next American president imitates carter, the country is going to be in an even worse world of hurt.

Yeah, I know ..."The Iraq war".....it costs a lot of money. But, crap, the war is only a few years old and this problems with finance and facing reality have been going on for 30 years now so lets get some perspective. Politicians, of either parties, are not going to do what is in the best interest of the country unless we force them. Republicans on one side and democrats on the other just have too many blinders on.

Every time we raise taxes, our leadership class just puts off solving problems and actually spends more. I mean look at it, the current generation in charge, "the boomers", want to die before they've payed off their mortgages. They'd be happy with inflation to solve problems as long as their benefits are indexed for information. It doesn't matter to them if the dollar dies or if younger people have to work harder.

Similarly, cutting taxes is just absolutely stupid w/o cutting expenses/benefits yet that's what Bush has tried to do.

I say keep taxes where they are....maybe adjust them a little bit to be more progressive on the high end, but nowhere near the 10-25% increases that Mr. Obama's and others seem to have planned. We're going to be in enough pain as it is w/ cities and states also raising taxes and future entitlement benefits being cut during the next 20-30 years. Honestly, We're headed for deep shit.

So, democrat or republican, don't believe anyone who tells you the next 20-30 years are going to be easy or normal. Definitely don't support anyone who has an instinctive desire to raise taxes when facing a problem. We can solve problems if we face problems like adults and refuse to be sheep. If social security benefits are cut 40% 30 years from now, we'll make do. Maybe, we'll even come up with something better.

Cut expenses first, if we have to raise taxes or restructure things further...fine, but only after we've honestly tried to solve problems and not put them off.

Just whatever we do, America - open your eyes. I'm getting really tired to listening to crap and lies fron on one side or another of the political spectrum whenever anything important in the county is discussed. The future is too important to look the other way. The opinions of economic professionals and anyone who has seriously and impartially reviewed history always seem to be selectively filtered by either party.

It's been over 30 frigging years now. If we're not strong enough to honestly face our problems in that amount of time than lets just call ourselves what we are - sheep.

As for me, I plan to be vocal and be a Man about it, regardless of how annoying it is to others.

Note to myself: Next amendment to constitution should be a requirement for "generational accounting/equality" in social programs and taxes perhaps requiring that all future benefits be paid for in advance. Also, all federal references to GDP and economic growth should include ecological damage in the liability section (might take another 20+ years to figure that all out).

For the record:

My first vote when I was 20 was for Perot because Clinton gave off bad vibes on his character (Remember, I read newspapers).

Apparently, Perot scared Clinton enough that he became a balanced budget convert so I voted for his re-election 1996.

In 2000, I supported McCain in the primary since he was the only candidate in the race that seemed to care about Budgets and Defense while not being a stooge of the left or right. Bush at the time was obviously unqualified and Gore was scary in a different way so I left my general election presidential choice empty.

In 2004, I voted to re-elect Bush because Kerry seemed to be a horribly weak candidate and Bush seemed to be committed towards making congress at least discuss Social Security. Still, it was a narrow decision. Of course, Congress had its way with SS and refused to discuss any serious reform proposals and simply yelled "Bush wants to cut SS" whenever the topic was brought up. How adult of them. Of course it makes perfect sense when you realize that they didn't want to solve the problem unless it was on their terms....e.g. raising taxes, not cutting benefits. Obama is just perfect for them as he is popular and everyone can be distracted by Iraq while taxes go up and reform is ignored.

In 2008, I'm tentatively supporting McCain. I don't buy all the people who say McCain has changed from what he was in 2000. Too many people get their news from "The Daily Show" and "MoveOn.org, et al" which have tiltered totally leftwards over the last 8 years. Those who say McCain has changed don't realize that they remember him as being middle-of-the-road, but their perception of the middle has changed and not McCain's own policies. As Lieberman pointed out, the Democratic party left him...not the other way around.