Powder Kegs

Pravda may want to 'move on' from Iran and the climate change bill, but the people are locked on...

The Beltway elite, including their counterparts in the Pravda media, are wishing, hoping and hurrying to believe that (1) the Iranian ‘situation’ is ‘stabilized’ and can be hustled off the front pages, so that Obama’s abysmal performance throughout will not be so visible, and (2) the ‘climate change’ bill has passed, and can also be taken off the front pages as (in their grotesque misread of the mood of America) Americans accept the glorious operation of our democracy and gracefully accept the vote of the majority. Their belief is delusional. These two items are powder kegs, and both are already lit.

The stirring that was visible in Iran is a stirring of the heart that cannot and will not be extinguished. In simplest terms, the iranian people hate being governed by radical Islamists, and they would throw out the government in a heartbeat in a truly free and open election. This doesn’t mean they are rejecting the entirety of Islam (though there are no doubt many who would privately do so), but they are rejecting the oppressive and ruthless way it is being applied to them. In this context, the mullahs cannot win. Because even if the streets are freed of demonstrators, the anger has not subsided. The result is like a union strike that is resolved through coercion and bad faith—these tactics may result in something Pravda can call a ‘settlement’, but if the terms are unjust and simply jammed down the throat of the strikers, they will figure out a way to get even, and they will covertly but relentlessly undermine the ‘settlement’ until it is undone.

We’d guess that the Iranian nuclear weapons program may have actually taken a hit as a result of the regime’s handling of dissent. The fact is that nuclear weapons development cannot be done by slave labor—it takes a lot of very bright engineers and scientists to get the job done. When they see their fellow countrymen being murdered in cold blood, they may just cease to be motivated to work feverishly. Under the point of a gun, technical glitches may proliferate, and unexpected problems may impact the reliability of development equipment. Yes, we know this sounds like a spy novel theme, but it’s really just human nature. Humans universally do not respond well to fellow humans exercising authority over them in brutal and capricious ways. They may not always have the means or the courage to fight back visibly, but they can adopt a myriad of silent protests, including simply poor work.

The overall point is that Iran is now a powder keg, and it will remain so until major changes are made in the ruling machinery. Obama’s arrogant and foolish ‘outreach’ has been exposed for the stupidity it was and is, and he has been nakedly exposed as anything but the ‘leader of the free world’. As Iran continues to churn, Obama will likely be an impotent spectator at best, and more likely an international and American embarrassment. The American people have not been impressed by Obama’s performance, but contrary to Pravda’s wishes, the stage for this horrible performance is still operational, and his ignorance, arrogance, and absence of traditional American instincts are going to continue to eat away at his ‘approval rating’ and stall his entire agenda.

The same prognosis in a different context is found in the House of Representatives’ passage of the ‘climate change bill’. The American people did not support this bill; they are way ahead of the Political Class in understanding the bogus science behind global warming; they made known their opposition to this bill through phone, fax and email at what was reported to be a 20 to 1 ratio against it—yet the Pelosi Congress went forward with another abomination of the legislative process by ramming through a bill that none of them had read. The engaged American people are seething at this collective flipping-of-the-bird to the people by an out of touch imperial Congress. This will surely stoke the July 4 tea parties that are already in the works, but the real reaction will run far deeper and much longer.

The American people are fed up. They have never seen a Congress so brazen, defiant and out of control. They are not going to sit back and keep taking it. We don’t wish for violence and don’t advocate it. Our point is simply that the outrageous passage of the 1,200 page climate change bill (following in the tradition of the $787 billion stimulus that no one in Congress had read) has changed the metaphor from boiling water for a tea party to a powder keg for something much larger. Pravda can tsk, tsk all they want about what they will see as an isolated, temporary ‘sore loser’ mentality, but they do not have their finger on the pulse of normal Americans, and simply don’t know what they are talking about. The anger is spread across party boundaries (which is why 44 Democrats voted against the bill), races, genders, you name it—because every American with an ounce of intelligence and an ounce of decency knows that a responsible legislature does not act this way. So Pravda can try to move along as if the vote represented the will of the people, but in truth it violated the will of the people.

Just like the Iranian mullahs...

Keep an eye on both of these powder kegs.

Paul Gable

June 28, 2009