Happy New Year

Let’s get right to it, shall we, and report some apparent good news out of Sudan in the nature of a peace deal, a power sharing arrangement between the Khartoum government and its southern area rebels. This particular conflict is blamed for upwards of two million deaths, and is one of Africa’s longest-standing. It, like the conflict in Congo that has apparently killed nearly five million people, is, for whatever reason, less high profile than the conflict in Sudan’s west, the Darfur region. The Darfur conflict rages on, however, but we’ll take good news where we will find it.
This sort of “intra-mural” violence, along with guerrilla/terror attacks are, ostensibly, the wars of the present. Tanks rolling across the Marne… are not. We, as a nation, of course, gear up for… the latter, because, as Ike told us, we should fear the military industrial complex.
Anyway, my other thought for the day is that the basic “Republican” these days is, ostensibly, a businessperson. The key skill of businesspersons is, of course, sales. The best salesmen, of course, point out key features of your product you’ll like and features of the competition you won’t. Sadly, our electoral system is not governed by consumer fraud laws, so we can go way beyond puffery on both… and our candidates do. The basic “Democrat” these days comes from another model: either union labor (life ruled by the strict authority of contract terms), school teachers (authority in classroom paramount and sacrosanct), and lawyers (the great purveyors of authority). In short– far less “voluntary” models. True, the lawyer must “sell” the judge and jury, but is bound strictly by rules he or she must follow in doing so (and by personality, the lawyer tends to be… authority bound). Given a choice in these models of presentation, many people tend to prefer the salesman over the school-marm or the lecturing lawyer or shop steward. Is it any wonder, btw, that the nickname of the most successful Democrat of our generation– the one with the personality closest to that of a great used car salesmen– is “Slick Willy”?
Well, just a thought. Strangely lovely weather here in the Northeast… maybe a harbinger of a nice year? We can hope… Happy new year, everybody!