populism 2

Nothing but a hound dog then Beagles, but you know that implies that you are crying all the time and that you ain’t never caught a rabbit.

I survived the info on the commodities market without my eyes glazing over and my chin smacking into the keyboard. But you know I have yet to see an explanation of how these contracts do anything for the market, how they make the life of the farmer or the baker or of the consumer any better. It’s like anytime you ask, suddenly the folks who claim that it does go into fast speaking fine print mode. It’s a little like when you ask the candidate if he is going to cut programs or raise taxes and he tells you he is going to um, cut waste, and, er, something else that he has a committee working on but he can’t tell you anything about it at the current moment.

Before I get into Napoleon who I didn’t really want to talk about, but I was just trying to get the subject away from the (big yawn) commodities market, I want to say something about those regulations to keep those fat cats from playing lose with our money. I think they are a good idea, because well, because of all the shenanigans that they pulled that got us into the trouble we are currently in. The fat cats (Republicans) fight them at every chance, and they also fight any money to enforce the regulations that we have now which is the reason the regulators have a hard time keeping up with the fat cat crooks.

I didn’t really want to talk about Napoleon, because I don’t know all that much about him. I had just seen a movie about the painter Goya where people are persecuted by the inquisition, but then Napoleon, under the guise of spreading the ideals of the French Revolution, invaded Spain and among other things kicked the inquisition to the curb. The other things consisted of killing a lot of Spaniards, looting the country of items of value, and just the greater glory of himself. But still it’s not like those Spaniards weren’t doing plenty of looting and pillaging themselves, and he did get rid of that awful inquisition, so isn’t that worth something?

Of course I get most of that out of the movie which played fast and loose with the facts to showcase it’s own little melodrama.

What I really want to talk about populism. Plato spoke of populism, I believe he thought there were three kinds of government possible: One was where all men were equal and all men had a vote. He dismissed this out of hand because he had no faith in Joe six pack. Then there was oligarchy which was where an elite ruled, but he didn’t like that because they would be squabbling all the time, and the third was an absolute king, which he thought was the best way if the king was a good guy, but he didn’t have much to say about what if the king was a bad guy.

Well he did have a little to say, I think he wanted potential kings to be chosen from an elite group who would be instructed in philosophy and would be philosopher kings, so you see way back then the new man concept was alive and well.

The United States didn’t have universal suffrage for the last hundred years, and in actual fact not until the civil rights act, fifty years ago. And some people are left out of the process now, but still we have something that looks like populism.

So let’s talk about populism.