Politicians are besotted with their own narrow view of how democracy works. They think the People vote for a Party and therefore the Party Leader. Not true.
To forego my independence I need assurance and the trust that someone speaks for me, I am even prepared to give up my own limited view and accept the majority decision as to who is best to speak for all of us, including me. Not a Party. Not a Party Leader. A person, of our community, a person who reflects my own society and the people within it, who understands the working lives and concerns of all those around me in my locality. That is called democracy. Someone selected and able to speak on my behalf and my concerns.
Of course the Political Parties put forward a 'local candidate' but the candidate's first and primary loyalty is to the Party that sponsors them and the Whips ensure they pay their dues. I don't get or want to vote in a political party. That is a convenience for those once elected to arrange and organise their business once elected, nothing democratic about that. The Party is selected, elected and organised by party faithfuls, nothing to do with representation of the wider community there. The Party Leader is selected from within the faithful circle by the faithful as the person most likely to bring them electoral success. Nothing to do with democratic representation there either. The Party and the Leader are only about the promotion of a narrow view with a populist brief to make it attractive to a wider audience. Nothing about promoting a vision of the community I live within.
To win over voters and to give them the power they desire, a manifest is offered with a commitment, if successful, to fulfil it during their five year term of office but it is worthless, worse than worthless as it raises expectations of objectives impossible to ever realise. You cannot commit yourself to a course of expenditure today when tomorrow you might discover you are unemployed, divorced, made homeless or win a million pounds on the lottery of life. Life is just too uncertain to be able to offer any such meaningful commitments. As soon as they take up power they discover the actual position inherited is of a totally different magnitude than they envisaged and its a certainty that other world events will throw all their best intentions completely awry during the course of their term. But the 'manifestos' are easy on the ear sound bites that can promoted and taken up in simple terms by the various media where differentiation can be marked out and maybe win over those elusive voters.
This is a long way down from the path origins where men with a strong political view and vision on how society is and might be shaped offered to promote that goal whilst sustaining the community putting him forward. It was an administrative convenience that men of similar view grouped together, formed a collective, which became a Party. That Party found it had access to money, power and influence, something they never relinquished and subverted the men of vision in the process.
This total domination of the electoral process by non-representative Political Party's and now more recently quasi-Presidential leaders, (no longer collective decision taking then) have usurped my rights to democratic representation. Not from apathy or lack of political interest, this is why I shall not be voting.
Tuesday, 6 April 2010
Tuesday, 30 March 2010
Parenting
Fashions come and go but the one irrefutable constant is that parents have to prepare their child for entry into their society. As communal animals, whilst other aspects may or may not be true, to be socially acceptable as a minima the child has to acquire the skills of knowing when and how to get what it needs and judging when to let others have their way and to fit into this society to be able to queue and wait for a turn.
How best to pass on those skills depends on circumstances and absence of economic necessity. A well provided for parent with boundless time, energy, patience and an overwhelming passion for mothering may well be able to devote 24/7 to explaining, educating and showing the child by example how to progress, to the career mother who may only be able to grab a five minute slot to cram in the maximum impact into the child's development. Neither is right or wrong, one just driven from pure necessity and the other from an obsessive maternalism, with others occupying every possible degree inbetween these extremes.
Whatever the approach the inescapable factor is the child mind is not a mature adult mind. I will have to leave it to better authorities to mark out the development phases of the developing mind. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_cognitive_development Suffice to say as the child grows so do the skills of recognising space limits, reasoning, understanding of the unseen, awareness of others and their objectives, to the explosion of emotional responses, through to the blossoming of planning and strategy to, I would argue the final unrecognised phase of contemplative experience. A child cannot respond to the adult world until it has developed adult mind skills. A child can and does from within the womb, to the trauma of birth, from the earliest cries to the eagle eyed teenage exploitation, experience the outer world and learn how to manipulate it to its singular benefit and advantage. Woe betide the starry-eyed mother besotted with visions of immaculate innocence!
The good parent will be responsive to the child's manipulations and divert it to support the parents own agenda. Though there haven't been blind controlled trials and therefore it isn't science, therefore not proven, therefore can be tossed aside, the one thing all experienced successful parents do agree on is that all children respond best to regularity, consistency, quality attention and affirmation.
Makes sense, from the child's perspective the world is huge, unfathomable and full of weird unexpected and often unpleasant experiences. What you need as a child to cling onto, as your solid rock, is certainty and security from which you venture out to explore and make sense of this world or retreat back to to recover. With luck getting encouragement and appreciation for the explorations safely negotiated and quite time to reflect and blend into to past adventures. The best sacrifice the parent can offer is to postpone their pleasures and indulgences so that their child can enjoy regularity and consistency.
Simple but effective.
How best to pass on those skills depends on circumstances and absence of economic necessity. A well provided for parent with boundless time, energy, patience and an overwhelming passion for mothering may well be able to devote 24/7 to explaining, educating and showing the child by example how to progress, to the career mother who may only be able to grab a five minute slot to cram in the maximum impact into the child's development. Neither is right or wrong, one just driven from pure necessity and the other from an obsessive maternalism, with others occupying every possible degree inbetween these extremes.
Whatever the approach the inescapable factor is the child mind is not a mature adult mind. I will have to leave it to better authorities to mark out the development phases of the developing mind. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_cognitive_development Suffice to say as the child grows so do the skills of recognising space limits, reasoning, understanding of the unseen, awareness of others and their objectives, to the explosion of emotional responses, through to the blossoming of planning and strategy to, I would argue the final unrecognised phase of contemplative experience. A child cannot respond to the adult world until it has developed adult mind skills. A child can and does from within the womb, to the trauma of birth, from the earliest cries to the eagle eyed teenage exploitation, experience the outer world and learn how to manipulate it to its singular benefit and advantage. Woe betide the starry-eyed mother besotted with visions of immaculate innocence!
The good parent will be responsive to the child's manipulations and divert it to support the parents own agenda. Though there haven't been blind controlled trials and therefore it isn't science, therefore not proven, therefore can be tossed aside, the one thing all experienced successful parents do agree on is that all children respond best to regularity, consistency, quality attention and affirmation.
Makes sense, from the child's perspective the world is huge, unfathomable and full of weird unexpected and often unpleasant experiences. What you need as a child to cling onto, as your solid rock, is certainty and security from which you venture out to explore and make sense of this world or retreat back to to recover. With luck getting encouragement and appreciation for the explorations safely negotiated and quite time to reflect and blend into to past adventures. The best sacrifice the parent can offer is to postpone their pleasures and indulgences so that their child can enjoy regularity and consistency.
Simple but effective.
Tuesday, 16 March 2010
Right of passage
It would seem in this unwritten democracy of ours, our historic rights are being whittled away by those seeking to have greater control over us. Once it was a matter of pride and the object of considerable efforts to keep the Queen's highway open to movement, at all times. The unwritten right of passage at all times was acknowledged as a binding obligation. Unfortunately nowadays we have no champions of our freedoms left as we succumb unquestioningly to the tottering towers of control, constraint, restriction and retribution.
To 'protect the public' the police now routinely close off the motorways at slipways either side of an serious incident. If a life is at risk or a helicopter has to be brought in, fine, no-one would raise an eyebrow knowing passageway will be opened as soon as the situation is resolved, but no, it is a 'crime scene' that has to be investigated and the risk of rubber-necking accidents on the opposite carriageway means it is expedient to close the motorway until the police investigations are complete and wreckage removed, in two hours, five hours even twelve hours as it suits them.
At vast expense this country has invested in a motorway system to take the increase in traffic, spare our congested towns and villages from the heavy lorries and ensure the essential life of this country can continue to move quickly and efficiently from one place to another. Not every trip is essential but amongst all those trips of convenience are life changing trips for some, a last chance interview, completion on a once in ten year contract, a birth, an organ exchange, all the varied minutia of every day life that is dependant on quick reliable transport between our towns. Without which our country would grind to a halt, suffocate and stagnate. It is an absolute need for modern life. Yet a policeman on some spurious justification can just close this life line, leave people stranded without any clue as to whether for one hour or twelve hours, re-route traffic which is not trapped through routes which seize up as they cannot cope with the flow and be indifferent to all the personal tragedies and traumas that ensue, left alone the huge costs that have to be suffered by the motoring public. But that is alright because they are motorists and its all their fault, if they drove properly there wouldn't be accidents, seems to be the mentality. Wrong, we have a right of passage and a right to be spared the costs and inconveniences of extremes delays.
Its a balance, inconvenience to a great many to save a life or avert a national crisis. A crime scene report! When has any report been issued that illuminates the sequence of events upto an accidents or leads to all those numerous arrests of criminal drivers? Public rights and goodwill has been usurped by bureaucracy abusing what should be essential last resorts, because they can get away with it unchallenged.
It gets worse. Now roads are being closed for a day, a week, five weeks so it can be repaired. There must be the odd stretch of road where the only option is closure, exceptional. Most do not have to be but it is a money thing. Cash strapped council can save really large sums out of very hard pressed budgets by giving themselves and their contractors a closed road to work with. All those additional costs such as converting a stretch of road to two-way flow, traffic controls or night time working, all magically saved. Except of course the real cost is hidden, off anyones budget and can therefore be disregarded, it is huge and is borne by all those motorists and companies reliant on good transport and whose journey has now becomes a nightmare, trying to squeeze the diverted traffic through tight restricted congested towns with huge delays. By an administrative stroke denied their right of passage along the Queens highway with not a whimper in protest.
Friday, 5 March 2010
Insurance Scam
For any one type of risk, over a timescale the number of events and the costs to settle are averaged out and for a given pool of contributors the premium necessary to make a profit and pay out on the claims that will arise are calculated. Some years will be good with few and small claims and some years will be bad with many or very expensive claims. Just like roulette, over a period of time the banker, or in this case insurance companies, will always win because that is how the figures are stacked up. Fine.
Not content to make the just profit they anticipated increasingly nowadays the insurance companies are now arranging to cream off more than just a fair share of profits. If you tilt the average occurrence of events in your favour, by for example excluding know frequent or costly occurring events, cracking or water ingress in a property, young drivers or cancer, they win hands down. Just like stacking good cards into a hand, they can even further improve their profits by playing hardball with the small print, "fully reveal whatever reasonably might influence decision to insure", "only securely locked and alarmed premises or cars are insured against a break-in", "providing you have never ever discussed with your Doctor any health issue are you insured for a health problem". Even worse still, having put every word and clause firmly into their favour now, if you have to claim, your renewal premium will go through the roof, forget about protected no-claims discounts, in todays world they have become meaningless.
Is it so unreasonable that when an insured person experiences something extra-ordinary they should be able to claim in a supportive, not openly hostile and adversarial climate, for a speedy settlement, of, no more than what the words offered to do at the time the insurance taken out? Surely that is why they took out insurance, paid insurance premiums, all for the peace of mind that they are covered incase of the dreadful unexpected event actually occurring, even if, horrors of horrors, the event was triggered by an act human error. We do after all, all make mistakes from time to time and look to insurance to protect us from our own culpalbilty.
Now we know there are people who set out to abuse and claim for far more than their entitlement and make it their life's work to create and extort extravagant insurance claims. There are no doubt solicitors out there that will aide and abet them in their extortion. I fancy the insurance companies have the nonce and legal clout to see off multiple claims from self-evidently fraudsters but why should the ordinary man in the street be made to suffer and endure the harsh treatment metered out to cheats as if they too were a cheat.
It has reached such a pass where, if you have the misfortune to experience a claim event, your claim will be refuted, or even worse your insurance will be retrospectively invalidated, by hindsight manipulative interpretation of words, hiding behind a host of concepts such as "prior knowledge", "exclusions", "failure to follow notification procedures", "lack of corroborative evidence" or "failure to maintain or implement security".
A compassionate, supportive and a fair appraisal, all gone. Instead narrow and mean minded wriggles to find only the get out words and not that sympathetic look at the whole holistic picture. So instead we have total absence of certainty and full doubt whether the cover anticipated actually exists and will replace the loss. Why indeed pay the premiums, why take out insurance if, when it is needed, it fails to deliver the glowing all-embracing rosy promises of the insurance offer. Better off putting the premium money in a sinking fund and hoping your averages wont turn up for a few years, scarcely worse than taking out an insurance that, odds on, isn't going to pay out in anycase.
Not content to make the just profit they anticipated increasingly nowadays the insurance companies are now arranging to cream off more than just a fair share of profits. If you tilt the average occurrence of events in your favour, by for example excluding know frequent or costly occurring events, cracking or water ingress in a property, young drivers or cancer, they win hands down. Just like stacking good cards into a hand, they can even further improve their profits by playing hardball with the small print, "fully reveal whatever reasonably might influence decision to insure", "only securely locked and alarmed premises or cars are insured against a break-in", "providing you have never ever discussed with your Doctor any health issue are you insured for a health problem". Even worse still, having put every word and clause firmly into their favour now, if you have to claim, your renewal premium will go through the roof, forget about protected no-claims discounts, in todays world they have become meaningless.
Is it so unreasonable that when an insured person experiences something extra-ordinary they should be able to claim in a supportive, not openly hostile and adversarial climate, for a speedy settlement, of, no more than what the words offered to do at the time the insurance taken out? Surely that is why they took out insurance, paid insurance premiums, all for the peace of mind that they are covered incase of the dreadful unexpected event actually occurring, even if, horrors of horrors, the event was triggered by an act human error. We do after all, all make mistakes from time to time and look to insurance to protect us from our own culpalbilty.
Now we know there are people who set out to abuse and claim for far more than their entitlement and make it their life's work to create and extort extravagant insurance claims. There are no doubt solicitors out there that will aide and abet them in their extortion. I fancy the insurance companies have the nonce and legal clout to see off multiple claims from self-evidently fraudsters but why should the ordinary man in the street be made to suffer and endure the harsh treatment metered out to cheats as if they too were a cheat.
It has reached such a pass where, if you have the misfortune to experience a claim event, your claim will be refuted, or even worse your insurance will be retrospectively invalidated, by hindsight manipulative interpretation of words, hiding behind a host of concepts such as "prior knowledge", "exclusions", "failure to follow notification procedures", "lack of corroborative evidence" or "failure to maintain or implement security".
A compassionate, supportive and a fair appraisal, all gone. Instead narrow and mean minded wriggles to find only the get out words and not that sympathetic look at the whole holistic picture. So instead we have total absence of certainty and full doubt whether the cover anticipated actually exists and will replace the loss. Why indeed pay the premiums, why take out insurance if, when it is needed, it fails to deliver the glowing all-embracing rosy promises of the insurance offer. Better off putting the premium money in a sinking fund and hoping your averages wont turn up for a few years, scarcely worse than taking out an insurance that, odds on, isn't going to pay out in anycase.
Saturday, 27 February 2010
Self Image
Yet another chorus calling for government controls! The adverts, leisurewear, music videos and playstation games are all too sexually extreme for our children and we need some morale-master to control, restrict and limit what our children can have access too. First things first, parents bring up their children, it is upto them to set the boundaries of what is or is not acceptable for their children. In our complex society they may have to have some dialogue with the schools but essentially the buck stops with them. It is a cop-out to say the Government must. The Government has no idea what is best for you, your community, its children and how you relate to it with your child.
The commercial world has gotten very clever in plucking our deep, sub-conscious, basic instincts and responses to sell its wares. It knows exactly what works and how to play it to get the maximum effect that suits its purpose, to sell. It is time we grew up, too stock of ourselves and managed these gut basic instincts more maturely and not just accept being manipulated by others.
For girls it has been about appearance, just look "good" and people will like you and want to be friends with you. Stop presenting yourself and your daughters on such a crude and simplistic ideological model. It is really not what they look like but how they respond that matters, respond to dialogue and respond to companionship. Yes first impression do matter, and a lot, but that is not the end of the story, only the start. So throw away lipstick, hair-do's and sensuous clothes and just present yourself well that others might think you have something (other than sex) to offer but only so you can begin to engage but not by aping some idealised sexual desire phantom. Really the answer is that simple, ladies stop presenting yourself as a sexual desire object and start to value yourself. Present what you have to offer as a person not an object. Then your daughters will pick up on your clues and follow suit. And never, never ever project your failed aspirations of sexual allure onto your daughter, she can do without that guilt trip. Chances are in your new asexual look the males around you won't pick up on your underlying sensuality, probability is that they will no matter what.
For the boys it is a similar story but from that other dynamic. The perception is that to be 'attractive' to women, you have to be to seen to display wealth images and be assertive so others defer to you. Simple, crude and basic but denies the real story. You actually have to present yourself as someone worth engaging with, with something to say and with a confidence to manoeuvre your way around this challenging society.
Conduct yourself from these mature perspectives and the commercial world will follow you, giving up on those previously so successful gut reactions.
We do have to grow up as a society and begin to deal maturely with all those fraught aspects of sexuality. It is not about sticking the plumbing bits together. It is not about the momentary high following on from an ejaculation or orgasms but about nurturing the companionship that follows in the slow after glow. It is about building a relationship that will survive and gather strength through life's lows.
We also have to stop treating teenagers as adults able to handle complex inter-sex relationships, they simply cant. Their minds have not matured and they don't have enough experience to cope with the challenges and they still haven't found how to manage their hormonal responses to sexual arousal. We, the adults in society, have to tell them square on to grow-up and ensure offers of guidance are not brushed aside as an irrelevance. We adults have to re-discover our confidence and not be over-whelmed by their exuberance.
With the surge of hormone that the teens brings on and the weirdness of frequent sexual response daily encountered, we as a society to have to think how we suggest they handle it. We need to face up to the problems of life and not try to hide, restrict or control them . Maybe we as a society have to start and talk openly without embarrassment of distraction, relief, or even masturbation as a way of gaining control over those so urgent teen physical responses until the emotional control over relationship evolves and matures.
Better that than surrender to some arbitrary morale judge with a limited agenda deining for each every varied one of us what we can or cannot see, at what times, in which places.
The commercial world has gotten very clever in plucking our deep, sub-conscious, basic instincts and responses to sell its wares. It knows exactly what works and how to play it to get the maximum effect that suits its purpose, to sell. It is time we grew up, too stock of ourselves and managed these gut basic instincts more maturely and not just accept being manipulated by others.
For girls it has been about appearance, just look "good" and people will like you and want to be friends with you. Stop presenting yourself and your daughters on such a crude and simplistic ideological model. It is really not what they look like but how they respond that matters, respond to dialogue and respond to companionship. Yes first impression do matter, and a lot, but that is not the end of the story, only the start. So throw away lipstick, hair-do's and sensuous clothes and just present yourself well that others might think you have something (other than sex) to offer but only so you can begin to engage but not by aping some idealised sexual desire phantom. Really the answer is that simple, ladies stop presenting yourself as a sexual desire object and start to value yourself. Present what you have to offer as a person not an object. Then your daughters will pick up on your clues and follow suit. And never, never ever project your failed aspirations of sexual allure onto your daughter, she can do without that guilt trip. Chances are in your new asexual look the males around you won't pick up on your underlying sensuality, probability is that they will no matter what.
For the boys it is a similar story but from that other dynamic. The perception is that to be 'attractive' to women, you have to be to seen to display wealth images and be assertive so others defer to you. Simple, crude and basic but denies the real story. You actually have to present yourself as someone worth engaging with, with something to say and with a confidence to manoeuvre your way around this challenging society.
Conduct yourself from these mature perspectives and the commercial world will follow you, giving up on those previously so successful gut reactions.
We do have to grow up as a society and begin to deal maturely with all those fraught aspects of sexuality. It is not about sticking the plumbing bits together. It is not about the momentary high following on from an ejaculation or orgasms but about nurturing the companionship that follows in the slow after glow. It is about building a relationship that will survive and gather strength through life's lows.
We also have to stop treating teenagers as adults able to handle complex inter-sex relationships, they simply cant. Their minds have not matured and they don't have enough experience to cope with the challenges and they still haven't found how to manage their hormonal responses to sexual arousal. We, the adults in society, have to tell them square on to grow-up and ensure offers of guidance are not brushed aside as an irrelevance. We adults have to re-discover our confidence and not be over-whelmed by their exuberance.
With the surge of hormone that the teens brings on and the weirdness of frequent sexual response daily encountered, we as a society to have to think how we suggest they handle it. We need to face up to the problems of life and not try to hide, restrict or control them . Maybe we as a society have to start and talk openly without embarrassment of distraction, relief, or even masturbation as a way of gaining control over those so urgent teen physical responses until the emotional control over relationship evolves and matures.
Better that than surrender to some arbitrary morale judge with a limited agenda deining for each every varied one of us what we can or cannot see, at what times, in which places.
Wednesday, 10 February 2010
Review: An Education
The 'serious' newspaper reviews rated it worthy, best film of year (2009) so far and there is this Oscar buzz about it. Worth a visit, no not really, just much better than all the other dross out there.
Just light and frothy.
There was a scatter gun of cliches covering most of the familiar 60's issues. Poised at the brink of the changes the sixties swept in, they are all there, challenge to establishment, woman emancipation, life aspiration, sexual revolution, 'pop' culture, material consumerism, exploitation of the vulnerable, racism but in true soap-operaesque, having klaxtoned the emotional hook limply failed to get beyond or beneath the trite superficial observation, leaving us just with tabloid headliners.
Light and fluffy.
What a waste of talent and effort as the actors struggled to imply meaning deeper than the script offered them. It was not hammy but might as well been for all the absence of content and lack of conviction or empathy generated. I'm afraid no matter how well acted twenty three years doing seventeen does not adequately carry conviction in close-up and the snappy facing out of authority figures dialogue struck me more as wane nostalgia of a wistful middle-age woman looking to self-justify her lack of younger judgement than youthful emergent woman coming to terms with her sexuality, life and opportunities.
Light and fluffy.
Nothing wrong in light and fluffy, a bit of escapism, great, a soaring adventure, great, a fresh camper around familiar scenes, maybe, a step back in time to re-assess our path, maybe. It doesn't always have to have lasting impact getting deep under the skin of relationship issues but we, who have turned out and paid the front office, do deserve something to immerse ourselves into, to get carried away or taken to a fresh place or given a fresh view. A bit more than this soap-opera offering.
Light and fluffy, but lacking in substance.
Surprisingly perhaps our thin audience was fellow late middle-aged couples hoping for a nostalgic look back at their missed opportunities? All in all a couple of hours of pleasant but so wide of the mark missed opportunities.
Just light and frothy.
There was a scatter gun of cliches covering most of the familiar 60's issues. Poised at the brink of the changes the sixties swept in, they are all there, challenge to establishment, woman emancipation, life aspiration, sexual revolution, 'pop' culture, material consumerism, exploitation of the vulnerable, racism but in true soap-operaesque, having klaxtoned the emotional hook limply failed to get beyond or beneath the trite superficial observation, leaving us just with tabloid headliners.
Light and fluffy.
What a waste of talent and effort as the actors struggled to imply meaning deeper than the script offered them. It was not hammy but might as well been for all the absence of content and lack of conviction or empathy generated. I'm afraid no matter how well acted twenty three years doing seventeen does not adequately carry conviction in close-up and the snappy facing out of authority figures dialogue struck me more as wane nostalgia of a wistful middle-age woman looking to self-justify her lack of younger judgement than youthful emergent woman coming to terms with her sexuality, life and opportunities.
Light and fluffy.
Nothing wrong in light and fluffy, a bit of escapism, great, a soaring adventure, great, a fresh camper around familiar scenes, maybe, a step back in time to re-assess our path, maybe. It doesn't always have to have lasting impact getting deep under the skin of relationship issues but we, who have turned out and paid the front office, do deserve something to immerse ourselves into, to get carried away or taken to a fresh place or given a fresh view. A bit more than this soap-opera offering.
Light and fluffy, but lacking in substance.
Surprisingly perhaps our thin audience was fellow late middle-aged couples hoping for a nostalgic look back at their missed opportunities? All in all a couple of hours of pleasant but so wide of the mark missed opportunities.
Friday, 5 February 2010
War-Mongering
To start with I am a pacifist, no surprise there then? The one scenario that I doubt I would ever come to terms with was if I took someones life by a careless act of mine.
There is no justification, no provocation, no military goal, no realm that makes the taking of one, two, twenty, two hundred or two million lives excusable any more than I can make a distinction in the mode of taking a life whether by a car, knife, rope, bullet, gassing or nuclear bomb. The only pause for thought is the length and degree of distress experienced before the life taken finally expires.
Setting that aside I can still be objective, take an overview on war-mongering and be relevant. Here is the proof or lie to that!
We are now in a similar position to that that the great powers found themselves just before WWI and WWII. The mechanics of war had moved on by a considerable degree but they were still nostalgically and fatally bound to the war mechanics of their last great victory. So too now. The whole war dynamics has changed. Now nationstates are held to ransom by small highly mobile groups of people and a few readily accessible materials, providing those people have the support of their community.
Which city or field are your tanks to surround, or planes to bomb or army hoist their flag in to prove you have finally subdued that irritant rebel group that constantly depletes your artifacts of war. You might sweep in, replace one governance with your own style but the peoples mind you want to control remain, despite your worst, their minds that they control. In the end you have to deal with them and in doing so your own ethics become corrupted. In the global scale of things what is the point?
The bigger the ordinance, whether it is tank, bomber plane or aircraft carrier the greater the resource cost and the greater the significance in your fighting effectiveness if you lose it. So to protect your big ordinance you have to support them with a host of lesser ordinance with the sole goal of defending the big ordinance. A great lumbering war machine. Not exactly light footed, fleet of foot, bobbing ducking and weaving around those highly mobile groups of people out to scupper your every attempt.
Anything other than a national defense is political suicide. Scrap or more realistically hire out to Europe all the big ordinances, save a vast amount on your budget and replace with light, highly mobile vehicles. Train your people in the mechanics and psychology of sabotage and civic disobedience. Invest in disperse communications. But and a big but make sure your style of government is all inclusive, emphasises the united people so they never experience the need to rebel against you.
There is no justification, no provocation, no military goal, no realm that makes the taking of one, two, twenty, two hundred or two million lives excusable any more than I can make a distinction in the mode of taking a life whether by a car, knife, rope, bullet, gassing or nuclear bomb. The only pause for thought is the length and degree of distress experienced before the life taken finally expires.
Setting that aside I can still be objective, take an overview on war-mongering and be relevant. Here is the proof or lie to that!
We are now in a similar position to that that the great powers found themselves just before WWI and WWII. The mechanics of war had moved on by a considerable degree but they were still nostalgically and fatally bound to the war mechanics of their last great victory. So too now. The whole war dynamics has changed. Now nationstates are held to ransom by small highly mobile groups of people and a few readily accessible materials, providing those people have the support of their community.
Which city or field are your tanks to surround, or planes to bomb or army hoist their flag in to prove you have finally subdued that irritant rebel group that constantly depletes your artifacts of war. You might sweep in, replace one governance with your own style but the peoples mind you want to control remain, despite your worst, their minds that they control. In the end you have to deal with them and in doing so your own ethics become corrupted. In the global scale of things what is the point?
The bigger the ordinance, whether it is tank, bomber plane or aircraft carrier the greater the resource cost and the greater the significance in your fighting effectiveness if you lose it. So to protect your big ordinance you have to support them with a host of lesser ordinance with the sole goal of defending the big ordinance. A great lumbering war machine. Not exactly light footed, fleet of foot, bobbing ducking and weaving around those highly mobile groups of people out to scupper your every attempt.
Anything other than a national defense is political suicide. Scrap or more realistically hire out to Europe all the big ordinances, save a vast amount on your budget and replace with light, highly mobile vehicles. Train your people in the mechanics and psychology of sabotage and civic disobedience. Invest in disperse communications. But and a big but make sure your style of government is all inclusive, emphasises the united people so they never experience the need to rebel against you.
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