The World is a Stage? Fire the Actors!

If I was President-Elect Obama and I was inclined to paranoia (which I suspect he is not), I would think that a world conspiracy of gargantuan proportions was afoot to discredit my campaign of change and ensure the ineffectiveness of my first days in office.

Israel's current invasion of Gaza, the world financial crisis, America's dismal position within the financial crisis, Russian aggression in eastern Europe, genocide in the Congo. To say nothing of the domestic problems here in the US: public and college education, health care, impending lay-offs, home foreclosures, energy and waste. My god, how could I forget: our own Vietnam on two fronts, Iraq and Afghanistan. Add to that the war-in-waiting in Pakistan and our future president has waded into a military-domestic-environmental-diplomatic quagmire so thick it should come with a safety sign.

From the sideline perspective of an insignificant peon, these problems are frustrating, and at one time possibly preventable. (I don't ascribe to the lame "it's just human nature" argument. This argument is broad and valid enough to win any discussion of human foibles without actually thinking about the causes and effects of human behavior, or about humanity's capacity to transcend personal interest for the greater good.)
a. There's the credit crisis: I won't pretend to have great knowledge of finances, but come on people! Cut up your credit cards. Spend within your means. Stop being greedy. Stop putting crooks in positions of financial power. Stop putting people with personal investments in particular firms or industries into the SEC and the presidential administration. Cap corporate expense accounts and bonuses (and make the people who evade these caps pay a hefty fine). Require successful Wall Street firms to donate a specific percentage of their earnings to public welfare programs (and make the firms that evade this levy pay a hefty fine). Prosecute white collar criminals, starting with Dick Cheney and Henry Paulson. On a meta level, restructure the way money works in America so that people who work their asses off (and those who physically cannot) have access to housing and health care and food. The fact that "middle class" was defined during the campaign as households with annual incomes of $200,000 is ridiculous. If people in that salary range are truly having problems accessing basic needs--well, obviously capitalism has its limitations and it's time to implement some alternative governmental strategies for making wealth work.
b. Gaza. I don't even know what to say. I'm in an ambivalent position, because I care for both Israel and the Palestinians. But common sense tells me that invading Gaza, bombing and gunning down civilians (and this is what Israel is doing, so don't hem and haw about retaliation for Hamas rocket fire) is not the best way to broker peace. If peace is even possible, then those two peoples are going to have to shut up, lock up their weapons, and get along. Enough fighting over a desert strip of land and religious viewpoints that are not all that different when you read the Koran and the Old Testamant. Enough fighting over who is the most historically oppressed minority in the Middle East. And, quite frankly, enough of the U.S. supporting Israel every time it chooses to act violently. This conflict is so retarded on an elemental level, so based upon emotional justifications for violence, that neither Hamas nor Israel garner much sympathy from me. The people I do care about are the Israelis and the Palestinians who are getting hurt and dying because of two nations' inability to share. Why isn't the U.S. protecting them? Nations are concepts. People are empirical realities.
c. The Congo and everything else. We can't save the world, and neither can Obama. But we can become a nation that acts upon its supposed ideals of peace and liberty for all. If our nation made sure that all Americans had access to basic needs, including education and safety, and that we did not allow monetary and governmental and military corruption to occur un-penalized within America, then we would be a much more formidable foe on the world stage. If we stopped invading other countries and hurting their inhabitants, and if we stopped supporting other countries that do the same, we would actually have the moral and diplomatic authority to tell genocidal tyrants and other leaders that the U.S. has officially withdrawn all political and monetary support, and maybe that withdrawal would mean something. Also, all the money we pull out of supporting American wars and other aggressive countries like Pakistan and Israel could go to humanitarian and justifiable military efforts in the Sudan, Congo, and elsewhere.

But common sense is the new naivete. And humanitarianism is for those of us who don't get politics.