It’s Just Another Saturday

Slobodon Milosevic is dead. Died in his jail cell in the Hague without ever having to answer for his crimes. In many ways he was lucky. He stood accused of a great deal and had been on trial for four years, but he was never judged and never found guilty. All signs point to a nice, quiet death by natural causes, by all accounts the best end we can hope for. Granted he was being held against his will, and wasn’t, in the words of Jenny Calendar, “surrounded by fat grandkids,” but he also wasn’t bulldozed into a fog-filled ditch on the side of some wooded Balkan road with all his friends and neighbors. But I’m not complaining.

See now, here is where I could launch into a rant about how “capital punishment is wrong and backwards and we’re dumb for using it and all the civilized countries in the world gave it long ago and all it proves is that we’re no better than the criminals we seek to punish.” I’m not going to, but I could.

Instead, I would point out that there’s really a fine line between an asshole and a hero. Does a hero take charge, rally the population to protect the country from threatening elements and stick to his guns no matter what his critics try to throw at him? Or does he consolidate power, sow fear and anger toward a minority group in order to distract the population from domestic problems and refuse to take responsibility for his crimes and failures? Am I comparing our President to an accused genocidal madman? Certainly not. But let’s not pretend that it couldn’t happen here.

See now, here is where I could launch into a rant about how “democracy is a flawed concept that allows opportunistic asshole like Milosevic and Hitler to ride populist feelings of xenophobic fear and jingoistic national pride to despotic and autocratic regimes run by tyrants and cults of personality.” I’m not going to, but I could.

But the truth is, representative democracy isn’t so bad when you consider the alternatives. We pick leaders and they make decisions. Oh my goodness, they do make some fucked-up decisions. But what are our other options? I don’t really know, but I do think that as we become more educated and more aware as citizens, voters, and even consumers, we will make better and more informed choices. I have to believe that will lead to better results.

Well, that’s all for now, except to let you know that Ram Bahadur Banjan, the Nepalese boy who would be Buddha I wrote about earlier, has gone missing. There are concerns that he has been taken by “robbers” since yesterday. Search parties have been dispatched to the local woods and surrounding areas. May he have a safe return, or at least a gentle end to this part of his journey.

[Ranting at windmills at biblebeltbabylon.blogspot.com, xanga.com/moontos, and blog.myspace.com/moontos]