Carl Reiner on Twitter last week, worried about the current Government shutdown, said this was cause for great concern in the world\u2019s leading democracy.\u00a0 And I thought, leading?<\/i>\u00a0 Who\u2019s following<\/i>?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The answer would appear to be no one.<\/p>\n
After one of the recent school shootings a young mother said to me, \u201cWhat must you think of us?\u00a0\u00a0 You must think we\u2019re all mad.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Mad certainly, but not all of you.<\/p>\n
Half of America seems to be entirely enviable, movies, books, TV, arts, liberal democratic institutions, great centers of learning and research, gay marriage, social freedoms, etc. etc.<\/p>\n
The other half does seem to be, well, nuts.<\/p>\n
Currently you appear to be almost in a state of civil war.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 If one party can shut down the government then the social compact to rule is broken.\u00a0 In most other democracies this simply could not happen.\u00a0\u00a0 In the UK for example, the Government would dissolve and the Prime Minister would call for an immediate general election, which would be held within three weeks. (Yes that quickly.)\u00a0 With your fixed terms you do not have this benefit.\u00a0 You must limp on to the next overlong election cycle and then waste a whole year of execrable television and billions of dollars on it.\u00a0 This is a very expensive and not very flexible system of democracy that no one else wants to follow.<\/p>\n
The Mad Haters Tea Party throws everything overboard, not just the tea.\u00a0 The Captain, the crew, the ships dog\u2026 Pirates could hardly do worse.<\/p>\n
It seems especially perverse that people purporting to be Christian, a religion that vows to help the poor and heal the sick, should be so violently against helping the poor and healing the sick.\u00a0 Followers of a religion that preaches forgiveness and turning the other cheek, demand the right for the outright insane to own more and more weapons.\u00a0\u00a0 Nuts, I\u2019m afraid.<\/p>\n
Now some people get very angry when a non-American like me dares to talk about America.\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cWell piss off then, go somewhere else\u201d they say.\u00a0 Forgetting that we who live amongst you are the ones who like you the most, and if you don\u2019t listen to what we think then the Ostrichization of America will continue.\u00a0 Bend over, head in sand, hand on heart, salute flag.<\/p>\n
The great thing about America has always been your ability to rally round in difficult times, especially under attack and create new solutions to modern problems.\u00a0 Of your current state The Founding Fathers would be horrified and terrified.\u00a0 Nobody asked the Mothers.\u00a0 You may need to re-evaluate.\u00a0 The Constitution may need updating.\u00a0 It\u2019s not the Bible.\u00a0\u00a0 Then, neither is the Bible.<\/p>\n
We need you to prosper.\u00a0 You can rule the world, or you can ruin it.\u00a0 Time to wake up. \u00a0\u00a0We really need you.<\/p>\n
Pretty please.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Carl Reiner on Twitter last week, worried about the current Government shutdown, said this was cause for great concern in the world\u2019s leading democracy.\u00a0 And I thought, leading?\u00a0 Who\u2019s following?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The answer would appear to be no one. After one of the recent school shootings a young mother said to me, \u201cWhat must you think […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=507"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":509,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507\/revisions\/509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}