Please pass the koolaid.

 I suggest that there are more similarities between organized domestic criminals and hostile foreign powers than is commonly understood.  Furthermore, I believe that the only effective way to deal with both relies on the exact same principals and those are effective counteraction and effective developmental assistance.  Finally, I believe that those principals can not be made fruitful unless they have the full support of the majority of individual members of society over sufficiently long periods of time for them to become effective.  I suggest that the America that I was born into was clumsily trying to do both, but the America, that I am now living in, is adamantly not.

We pretty much all agree that America is, today, divided into two major groups that choose to see the world around us through different glasses.  We usually define the two groups as being liberal and conservative, each of which have subgroups with varying degrees of divergence from their respective parent groups.  I accept that description of American society today, and believe that neither group is intelligently pursuing their own principals, because they are fundamentally inadequate unless blended wisely.  Societal harmony can only be achieved through the effective application of the right mix of both conservative and liberal concepts.  This iron clad rule applies to both domestic and foreign relations.  It applies to the drug cartels that are obliterating the lives of far too many Americans and to the current axis of evil that threatens nuclear holocaust.

The liberal prosecutor that releases the felon is following the exact same path that the president that gives away a chunk of the Free World to a dictator and the president that calls a poor country a shit hole is the same idiot that is filling our jails with expensive dead beats.  It is not cost effective to lock up more and more people interminably, just as it is stupid to fight endless wars.  At some point we humans should be able to grasp the thought that it would be better to live together in harmony than to try to have a bigger bank balance than the poor slob next door that is also trying to live a decent life.  Why do we need our own private jet?  Why is it alright to ignore the poverty that haunts far too many people inside and outside of our precious, non-existent, borders?  Why do we use “eduction” to justify our wealth and diminish the plight of far too many people living in our own ghettos and in the “shit hole” countries?  What is the difference between you and me and the people living on the brink of starvation all over the world?

Some idiot wants to take over another chunk of wherever and we sit back and calculate how that impacts our bank balance rather than telling the SOB that he can not do that without triggering war with us.  Thousands of years of history provides an extremely accurate description of what is going to happen down the road and we keep doing it while simultaneously “improving” our ability to kill each other.  And you keep telling me that we are not stupid.  Wow.  I really do have to replenish my kool aid and start following whoever you are watching on Ticky Tok!  I need to get with it!