Monday, August 28, 2006
Mexico: worst possible outcome
Increasingly, elections are rigged so clumsily that anyone can see it if they only let themselves see.
Almost no one does.
The clumsiness seems to be just one more means to pour out contempt on people, to make them feel helpless. "If we thought you posed a threat," they smirk, "we'd take pains. But you people are total, helpless losers, so we can take this crap and rub it in your face... like this."
I am a pragmatist. I believe that reasonable concentrations of wealth and power are necessary and desirable. I think most utopian movements would be unable to feed the people they say they care about. But when wealth and power become too concentrated, leaders stop being careful. They become wasteful and cruel. At some point, their screwups become intolerable, even to their own Praetorian Guard.
And then we roll the dice again.
Mexico is, in my opinion, near the point where, in John F. Kennedy's phrase, revolution becomes inevitable. The US is still way too comfortable to endure the sorts of hardships that the PRD has done (much less the APPO). Heck, how many Americans are even aware that something is wrong in Mexico? But a breakdown in American society could come, too, especially if Mexico ceases to be willing to provide us cheap labor and cheap oil.
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