Category Archives: 1-Politics

Parent category for politics
Sub categories – theory, strategy, practice, discourse, American, Canadian

A miraculous disaster

As I was pondering the nature of our health care, some interesting questions came to my mind.
Mentioning them as part of a serious discussion could have made them look like conspiracy theories. While I am not a fan of conspiracy theories, I do believe in the power of incentives.
Incentives make the world go around. Money and power are just the most obvious ones.

So here is the scenario:

Let’s suppose that a miraculous new invention, a pill that costs pennies to manufacture would add an extra 20 years to the life of anyone who takes it.

Not every day, just once. What would happen? How would the world react? What would politicians do? What would the drug industry do? Continue reading →

Political Chassé

Chasing the elusive notion of political correctness

The word chassé means two things. It is the past participle of the French verb ‘to chase’ and it is a noun describing a ballet step, in which one leg is sort of ‘chasing’ the other.

Watching the last Munk debate gave me a visceral demonstration of the two meanings. The CON side hopelessly chasing the pro side which was consistently chasseing away from the real subject. The subject, which was supposed to be political correctness. The resolution of the debate was:

“Be it resolved, what you call political correctness, I call progress…” Continue reading →

To the Viktor go the spoils

There were massive protests in Budapest last weekend (2018-04-14). The people were protesting the results of the election a week prior. They were asking for:

In a Facebook post before the rally, organisers called for a recount of ballots, free media, a new election law, as well as more efficient cooperation among opposition parties instead of the bickering seen in the run-up to the vote.  (The Guardian)

The organisers of the anti-Orban protests have demanded a recount of all ballots, a new election law, a non-partisan public media, and better organised co-operation among parties opposed to the Fidesz government.  (BBC World)

Continue reading →

An autopsy of the dialog – part one

The title of this post is not a mistake. Even though it is ‘the’ autopsy of some dialogs, I would not share it with you if they were not such perfect examples of what is going on in ‘THE’ dialog between the left and the right. The dialog at this point is pretty much dead, and there are many ways to dissect it. Mine is just one attempt.
Doing it feels very much like the situation in the picture above – as if I was dissecting something from another world.

Continue reading →

Donald Trump and his coat stealing business

Let me share a joke with you.

News from the society pages of the Pleasantville Courier:

In the beautiful spring weekend we just had, the Corso was filled with the cream of Pleasantville society. The only unpleasant moment of the day was the discovery that Mr. Stein’s beautiful new coat was stolen while he was having dinner with his family. The police are investigating the unseemly crime.

Continue reading →

Communism will never die

This post is the continuation of the arguments presented in my previous posts: “Where did it go wrong?” and in “Where did it go wrong #2.”

I grew up with the idea of political permanence.  I was listening to and singing songs about Lenin, the hero who “sacrificed his faithful life” for us. The heroes of the communist revolution were always pictured and talked of as mythical, heroic demi-Gods. Continue reading →

Where did it go wrong?

After he read the Prostitution Principle, a gen Xer asked me: How did we get here?

It’s a good question. How did we get to these insane situations, these crazy legal decisions? How did feminism, the civil rights and the gay rights movements go so badly overboard? How did decent ideas turned into such ridiculous demands and deplorable practices? Where did it get so out of hand?

Continue reading →

The long view

I had a conversation with a friend a few months ago about immigration. We are both immigrants, but with clearly differing views on it. The conversation quickly moved on to culture and demographics, but maybe it started with them. I laid out my angst that he countered with……… I don’t even know what.
Continue reading →

Political Pimpology

Analogies abound comparing the state to the mob; the welfare state to drug pushers; taxation to highway robbery. Writing my post about the prostitution principle I realized that the best analogy to illustrate the nature of the relationship between the political class and favoured identity groups is that of the relationship between prostitutes and their pimps.

Continue reading →

A tale of two maps

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”

(Charles Dickens: A tale of Two Cities)

Continue reading →