Kakistocracy

Its really an interesting to think about how leadership has evolved. For a very long time families, clans and tribes collectively decided who among them was most likely not to get them all killed. Then after that it was whoever was best at outmaneuvering other ambitious sociopaths (frequently their relatives) to take the reigns of state; very often over the dead body of their predecessor. 
That last one is actually still pretty popular in the equatorial regions. 
What capitalism brought to the table is really rather amazing. A public spectacle of ridiculous proportions where the masses are pitted against each other in electoral combat and get into a sporting frenzy about who will wield power. I've never been able to get into it much, cynical bastard that I am. It's rather adorable how flustered some people I know get when they find out that I'm not one of the voters. 
"How can this be?!" they howl indignantly. 
Its pretty awesome actually. I don't like telling kids there is no Santa Klaus or religious adults their is no God, that shit is sad. However, telling an avid believer in democracy, especially the American variety, that its a complete farce intended to placate them into buying into the apocalyptic nightmare into which we are now descending... delightful! 
They'll always fight it, but the facts are an incredible cudgel to beat that nonsense out of people, assuming they don't retreat completely from reality. It almost always ends in the same argument, what I like to call the 'lesser of two evils' dodge. Not a bad fall back position. Much more defensible than the democracy is morally right and the only legitimate form of government position.
The problem with the whole vote for the not so openly evil people thing is that it still leads down the same path, it just lubricates the gears with false hope and naive bullshit instead of fiery nationalism and intolerance.  Obama doesn't speak about the "Axis of Evil" and invade two countries over made up shit, but he does use robot armies to massacre civilians and lock up people whose only crime was to tell the truth. The big difference then is that Obama spoke of hope, gave some people some more rights in the US and was a bit harder to hate as a person. 
At the end of the 8 years though, the world will still be no closer to anything substantial other than complete environmental collapse leading to an inevitable WWIII for sheer survival. 
Which brings me to the crux of my antipathy for the cult of democracy. We live in a world run by money, and the more money you got, the more power you can purchase. The whole voting game is as rigged in the US as it is in Zimbabwe, its just that the people in America have a lot more money spent on them to buy into the system. 
You don't vote for a position, you vote for a party or a person. No one would vote for corporate rule, massive pollution, the bombing of civilians in countries the government doesn't even care about enough to properly invade; yet that is what people vote for over and over again.   
I must concede though, I get pretty caught up in the drama of it all sometimes too. The elections in Turkey next week have me absolutely captivated. Erdogan pretty much started a war against the Kurds in an attempt to get them to lose an election. Ukraine's election that will be tallied and told in a day or two is also pretty good sport, with Pereshenko trying to out maneuver various Oligarchs in order to maintain a mandate to govern the partially disintegrated country. 

"In a democracy the poor will have more power than the rich, because there are more of them, and the will of the majority is supreme." -Aristotle 
"Democracy is the road to socialism." -Marx
"The new community which the capitalists are now constructing will be a very complete and absolute community; and one which will tolerate nothing really independent of itself." -G.K. Chesterson 

The Armenian Genocide

"He was so depressed, he tried to commit suicide by inhaling next to an Armenian." -Woody Allen

After living with the Armenians for 8 months I have come to know them fairly well. I've slept in their houses, ate at their tables, worked in their schools and spoken their language. For someone from California who spent the previous several years mostly living in Europe, Armenia is remarkably homogeneous country; both ethnically and psychologically. They are a big Caucasian tribe that the collapse of the Soviet Union unexpectedly turned into a country after centuries under the heel of great empires. 

A prouder people I have never met, nor one more obsessed with their history. They tend to wallow in it more than they revel in it sadly. As a historian I don't really think any people have the right to say they had it so much worse than other peoples that they deserve special sympathy. Sometimes, it almost feels like they love their misery and tragedy, that it gives them strength, binds them closer together, makes the hardships of the present easier to bear. Nationalism is a complex beast, and it definitely doesn't take to all lands equally. By channeling centuries of getting the shit end of the stick, they have, if nothing else, firmly defined what it is to be Armenian; and suffering is a fundamental component of it. Even the Armenian Diaspora, whose tie with their roots is often merely conceptual, have proven remarkably loyal to the national identity.
All this was on full display as these people observed their 100th anniversary of the most recent round of large scale slaughter in their history, which is widely known as the Armenian Genocide. After a massive display of unsatisfied rage they convinced the Soviet government to build them a memorial after the 50th anniversary. Thus is there now a massive basalt fortification surrounding an eternal flame with a big obelisk next to it meant to signify something that is suitably somber and serious.

So now, a 100 years after the Armenian population living in the late Ottoman Empire got caught up in the most violent period of human history (1914-1945) and as a result got slaughtered en masse, the Armenian Nation meditates on death. I think the horrific truth of the matter is that the Turkish leadership knew they would lose the war and with it their Empire, so they figured they might as well purge as many Christians as possible from their future country; it would just make things simpler in the long run. Given that Europe had colonized hard in all non-Christian lands, their ruthless extermination of Assyrians, Greeks and Armenians was as pragmatically in line with the logic of the time as it was savage.
Nowadays, after all those people who lived through those dark days in 1915 are taking their eternal rest, the holiday has become a very odd combination of honoring the fallen, pretending they can get retribution from modern Turkey, and just an all out nationalistic frenzy. For a country of 3 million with no natural resources and an economy that is just plain broke(n) to speak belligerently about the 90 million Turkic peoples living on either side of their country takes some balls. Most people here really seem to have a deep seated passionate faith in the cult of Blame-the-Turks. Their most recent confrontation with Turkic speaking people has rather ironically led to them actually gaining some territory, that of Nagorno-Karabakh, from neighboring Azerbaijan in the early 1990's. Of course that now means that Azerbaijan has been spending double the GDP of Armenia on its military and bidding its time until it sees a moment ripe for reconquest. Only thing really preventing it now is Armenia being satellite state of Russia, whose forces control the border with Turkey. 
The horrid truth is that to the south of Armenia things have become more barbaric and war torn than usual, and north of the Caucuses a tense ceasefire barely keeps Ukraine for resuming its civil war and potentially getting Armenia's protector, Russia, bogged down in so much shit that it wont be able to come bail out its little buddy if the Azeris make their move. Given the half assed response of the West to the rise of the Islamic State, pretty sure they wouldn't do a damn thing to a good old fashioned blood feud in the Caucuses. 
Its an amazing thing to get to know a people who are so cognizant of the horrors they have suffered but still willing to antagonize its larger more powerful neighbors all whilst being seemingly unaware of what terrible costs they might incur by doing so. Guess after so many times going down the consequences-be-damned road its almost instinctual for them.

"History does not always repeat itself. Sometimes it just yells, 'Can't you remember anything I told you?' and lets fly with a club."

-John W. Campbell Jr.

Insanity means you believe in sanity.

It's a bit insane. I'm ready to admit that right up front. I read the news and I like it. 

I know, that is not a socially acceptable response to the current state of affairs. You are supposed to read it, be indignant about the stories found therein, then go about your daily life slightly depressed that you took the time to inform yourself about the most recent chapter in this rambling tragedy called human history. 

For me however, just can't help myself, I really like the news these days. Sure, its some really twisted, convoluted madness and contains many horrors and few hopes, but its reality and its picking up steam. 

I think its horrible and terrifying for most people because they are blissfully ignorant of history, and thus how truly in line recent events truly are with this 6,000 year old adventure we got going here. The further down the road we go the higher the stakes, and the more interesting the wager.  

I'm the first to admit that humanity is strutting itself down a path to almost certain doom in a fashion that is one part supercilious runway model and another part jingoistic goose stepping lunatic. Its a sincerely distressing time and place to take stock of, but I say it must be done. It is just this dire situation that we have gotten ourselves into that makes me think we have some chance to reach escape velocity and launch into a new direction that might not be so savage and hard to accept. 

One thing is for sure though, ignoring/hiding/circumventing what sort of world we live in isn't going to help. So here is a daily dose of reality for you:

People are dying by the thousands at the hands of Neo-Caliphate in Syria, Iraq and Nigeria. As is typical, the West responds to this by aerial bombardment, giving people weapons and denouncing violence as wrong when other people do it. All meteorological indicators show that climate change is officially here and is going to really fuck with how all creatures survive through this century. The war in Eastern Ukraine is clearly escalating and Russian forces are for the first time openly operating there. The plunging price of oil has radically changed the geopolitical scene on many fronts, threatening instability for many nations that rely upon it for staying afloat financially. Its not getting discussed much but this is also likely to  cause some serious problems for America too, because the fracking oil boom is completely dependent upon oil being about $80 a barrel (it's down to below $50 currently) and the companies engaged in extracting oil in this way are borrowing massively to finance it; in so doing they have created another bubble that is certain to wreck havoc in the financial markets. Add to all this that global wealth is now so concentrated in so few people that around 80 people own more than 3 billion.
This is but a taste of the realness, there are many more courses. 

Truth, and that would be a capital T even if it hadn't started the sentence, is crucial at any phase, and especially so right now. My affinity for the news stems from my love of history. Every day I have the pleasure of sitting down to my computer and checking out whats going on in the world is an honor for me. It is possible that this wild ride we are on will end in complete annihilation, but the view out the window is breathtaking. What else you got going on in your life that could be even half as interesting as this incredible point in time where the fate of our species, and really all species, hangs in the balance?   

"Poets and beggars, musicians and prophets, warriors and scoundrels, all creatures of that unbridled reality, we have had to ask but little of our imagination, for our crucial problem has been a lack of conventional means to render our lives believable. This my friends, is the crux of our solitude." 

-Galleano