Being dumb

*
[SYNTHESIS]

Two US presidents won Nobel Peace Prizes for making peace in the world. One was given a Peace Prize for helming efforts to establish the League of Nations after dragging the United States into a World War that he previously campaigned against. And one seems to have been given a Peace Prize as a stunt by the Nobel committee before he had filled his first ashtray on Air Force One.

A Google search on the term "dumb war" should show that lots of people are now full of sick glee or high dudgeon in pointing out that the president who denounced Dumb Wars has started one against an antagonist that is not a nation and that requires our nation to fight on several different sides of a foreign civil war at once. The remarks are true but probably also cheap, because there is no reason to expect any modern president to be a pacifist when there are a hungry armaments industry and security state to feed.

Earlier this week I read the column that I think explains the endgame most clearly, namely this.

Our current president, who may have begun his 2008 campaign as a reasonably good man is now, if the first half of this sentence is true, surely among the most miserable men in the world. I don't know what could compel a good man with (we suppose) more power concentrated in his hands than anyone else ever to intentionally consolidate and extend the hateful visions and policies of his neoliberal predecessors. Who knows? It may be related to this here linked thought experiment, which is the direction in which my own speculations have led me in recent years.

Some comedian (I forget who) has joked that the first thing on a new president's calendar the day after the Inaugural Ball is a meeting where they show him a special movie of the Kennedy assassination filmed from an angle never before seen by the public.