Not so fast, wise guy! That gay marriage thing was all over the news today. What happened was that one federal judge ruled our gay marriage ban unconstitutional. Then, at the request of our Attorney General, another judge put the ruling on hold until the appeals process is exhausted. According to our AG, there are something like eight other states in the same position. In the interim, about 300 gay couples got married in Michigan, but our governor proclaimed their marriages null and void, at least for now. The first judge based his ruling on the "equal protection under the law" clause, which surprised me. I thought he would base it on the "full faith and credit" clause, the one that says every state has to honor the laws of every other state. It occurred to me that we could weasel out of this thing by just not issuing any more marriage licenses to anybody, gay or straight, which would seem to fulfill the requirements of "equal protection under the law". I have said before that I would rather see the "benefits" of marriage denied to everybody than have them extended to the gays. Of course, I am just a lone reactionary, with no political party to call my own, so nobody takes me seriously.
I looked up the Ukraine situation again yesterday, and I now have a better understanding of what's going on there. It seems that the Ukraine has always been kind of a suburb of Russia, way back to the days of the czars. There used to be lots of Tartars in the Ukraine until Stalin kicked them out, and now the population is divided between Ukrainian nationalists and ethnic Russians. The Ukrainians want to join the European Union, and the Russians want to join the Eurasian Union, which is dominated by Russia. Right after Crimea jumped ship, the Ukrainian government signed a treaty with the EU. They aren't exactly members yet, but the treaty is about making them full members once they get their act together. Now another province or two is talking about jumping ship like Crimea did, and Russia stands ready to render military assistance if necessary. Meanwhile, the Tartars, who have been trickling back into the country since the fall of Communism, are kind of like the wild card, nobody knows what they're going to do. So far, I am standing by my original assertion that this whole mess is none of our business and we should keep the fuck out of it.
The Red Chinese don't make very good enemies because they are so inscrutable. Outside of that little scuffle in Korea, some 60 years ago, they have never really posed a threat to us. Mao, who is probably turning over in his grave right now, used to call us "the running dogs of capitalist imperialism" which, I guess, is some kind of Chinese insult that loses something in translation but, you know, "sticks and stones may break my bones.....". I don't think they've really given up Communism, but they've morphed it into some kind of state capitalism, which probably has Marx and Lenin spinning in their graves as well.
I looked up that Hegel guy, and I can see how Marx was influenced by his ideas. What they both seem to have overlooked is that people don't always think and act logically. Then there's the "Butterfly Effect", which we have discussed before, but wasn't even invented in their day. In the real world, history doesn't march inexorably towards a predictable conclusion. It might, if you could control all the variables, but you can't. No, history stumbles and staggers along like a drunken sailor. Sometimes it sprints ahead for awhile, then it slips and slides backwards, then it veers off on a tangent, bumps into a tree, says "Excuse me sir.", and lurches on it's way to the next crisis.
No comments:
Post a Comment