July 01, 2003

Imagine there's no people

I'm sure this will get a lot of blogospheric play, and get run into the blogospheric ground in pretty short order, but it's still new enough to be funny to me.

According to the Associated Press, Dennis Kucinich has promised that, if elected (I know, I know-- stop snickering and wait for it), he will create a Federal Department of Peace to "prevent violence both domestic and internationally."

This has to be an intentional grab for publicity, a mention on Letterman, that sort of thing. No way he didn't know what he was doing.

There is a certain sort of person who will hear this and think "hey, a Dept. of Peace! What a neat idea!" And there is a certain sort of person who will laugh uncontrollably, perhaps saying a silent prayer of thanks that, no matter how sad the world gets, there's more chance of Andrew Sullivan getting married to Howell Raines than there is of Kucinich getting anywhere near spitting distance of the presidency.

These are mutually exclusive groups which include between them practically every single person of voting age, as far as I can tell, and he'll never convince any of the second group to vote for him no matter what he says. He may have a hard time persuading every single one of the first group to vote for him either, but at least he's maximizing the chances that they'll hear about him. I'd say he gets the "working with what you got" prize.

(via Inoperable Terran.)

Posted by Dr. Frank at July 1, 2003 08:17 PM | TrackBack
Comments

I wonder how many devoted members Masturbate For Peace has, because he'd prolly get close to 100% of that demo.

Posted by: JB at July 1, 2003 08:47 PM

The Dept. of Peace is a well-worn, decades-old, meme of the wacky left. Cause, see, if we have a whole department devoted to it (an outgrowth of the Institute of Peace), we shall surely, sooner or later, begin to bring about Peace on both a domestic and international length.

The current lack of peace, you see, is due to lack of attention on our part. We just need to devote more Buddhist-like attention to it, as well as, of course, more practical attention. It's all a matter of proper focus, until our goal is achieved.

And what better focus than a Cabinet level Secretary and Department?

It's just like how we solved "Homeland Security," after all.

Same old story, whether you're a lefty or righty. Beaucratic fixes are the best fixes, and lead to inner spirtuality and complete solutions.

Posted by: Gary Farber at July 2, 2003 09:28 PM

Gary, right now what I'm really interested in is a Department of Hot Dogs, a Department of Budweiser, and a Department of Seinfeld Re-runs. Or a Department of Pizza, that'd work, too.

Posted by: Dr. Frank at July 3, 2003 02:41 AM

Gary Farber's glib, condescending non-elaboration on the idea of a Dept of Peace isn't much help in this discussion. Kucinich first introduced this in July 2001. The idea is that peace won't just happen when people stop shooting at each other -- it's a condition you need to pursue actively and consciously, and, with so much human experience with warfare and oppression, we need someone focusing on creating systems and social structures that foster peace if we hope to achieve it.

Notice how everyone complains that American soldiers are trained to kill, not to be, what's the word, "peacekeepers?" How would we train them to be peacekeepers? How would real peacekeepers interact with populations they encounter? What kind of institutions would they have to set up? And who would train them to do all this? Donald Rumsfeld? Fat chance. The British troops whom we consider "experts" in this kind of work got their experience keeping the civilian peace in Northern Ireland, and you know how well that turned out.

You want people to learn how to settle differences nonviolently? You want nations to learn how to recover from civil war, ethnic hatred, and misery without reverting to more violence? You want to be able to spread genuine democracy across the world by fostering real grassroots democracy? Well, then let's commit some government resources to it. If you just want to let the Pentagon conquer and rule foreign contries to eliminate uppity, erstwhile allies like Saddam and Bin Laden and exploit their resources, then just drop the pretense of caring about peace and democracy and rename the Department of Defense the Department of Empire.

There's more to the bill than that. Before you respond (or maybe after you do, Gary) maybe you should actually check out Kucinich's explanation of the bill on his House website. The bill currently has 48 cosponsors. I don't know if they all masturbate together.

Posted by: Nick at July 4, 2003 03:07 AM

Not to imply that I know any of the details on these departments, but things seem to be taking a strange 1984 turn.

Posted by: Santi at July 6, 2003 05:35 AM