As Good As It Gets?

Humans are quite good at complaining. Humans complain about just about anything. Even when an objective observer might see that the persons have relatively little reason to complain, they still find plenty to complain about.

In a democracy, people express their displeasure through the election process. If a nation's economy is doing extremely well, if a severe threat of homeland terrorism has been reasonably controlled, if the nation's military is involved overseas in a conflict that involves relatively little bloodshed compared to other wars--even then many voters can become incited by incessant negative news coverage to view their nation's situation as "unbearably bad." Many people have relatively little "personal ballast", and are easily moved by outside opinion. (as opposed to objective data that has been placed in perspective) This is naturally true of young people with little real life experience. But it is also true of older people who fail to develop personal depth. People without personal heft are people who are easily affected by special interest morons including those who populate the newsrooms of North America and the western world.

The recent US election will have very little substantive effect on the actual situation of most US citizens. But the "stylistic" effect of the election will occupy the pseudo-journalists for months and years. That type of superfluous "analysis" is expected from the type of person who typically goes into journalism. As time goes by, people looking for alternative points of view, and more data-based coverage of the world, will find what they are looking for in the internet.

The mid-term election of 2006 is similar in many ways to the election year of 1992. In both cases, voters were tired of several years of republican domination of national politics, and decided to "send a message" to complacent republicans. This many years after 1992, the salient fact about that year's election is what happened in the mid-term election only two years later, in 1994. Not only a reversal, but a reversal with a vengeance.

The founders of the USA were wary of democracy, and mob rule. They tried to build checks and balances into the system, to limit the "madness of the mob" that afflicts democratic forms of government. The incredible madness of the Palestinian territories, where decent people are afraid of walking the streets for fear of being gunned down by different radical Palestinian factions, is an example of a society where democracy can not work. Iraq--with its deep ethnic and religious divides--may very well be another example.

Partition of Iraq into three near-autonomous regions may be in the cards. But it will not be the cure-all that many people anticipate. Iraq is merely a prominent symptom of the problems in the islamic world, and the undeveloped world in general. The US is there, holding a spotlight to the problem. Even after the US leaves, the problems will be there, just as bad or worse. That is how that part of the world is, without strong-arm dictators like Saddam, Assad, or the mullahs in Iran. Does the US experience a benefit by directing the world's attention to the endemic problems of that part of the world? Will withdrawing the coalition troops so as to re-direct the world's attention to other parts of the world mean that the problems are gone? Will the fact that fewer coalition military members are killed in combat be balanced by more civilian deaths in coalition countries--when the islamic combatants are freed up to travel outside their native regions? Maybe.

An interesting dilemma, and not susceptible to the easy solutions that any of the vocal critics are suggesting. Critics are a dime a dozen. But acting in the world, no matter what one does, necessarily brings mixed results. By focusing on the negative--as the media often does--without looking at the larger picture, humans who need to understand never will.

As good as it gets does not mean perfection. As good as it gets means that everything you do will have at least some negative results. Pretending that is not true is commonplace, but not very intelligent.