BANFF 2009: MENSA IN THE MOUNTAINS

 

Roughly forty days till a superb Mensa gathering. Amidst soaring peaks and world heritage sites, visit the Banff Regional Gathering (September 11 through 13, 2009) where world-class scenery, unique fossil fields, the low Canadian dollar and top minds will create an experience you won’t quickly forget. Visit the RG web site at www.mensabanffrg.com for detail, but in a nutshell do you like music, the arts, math, science, politics, games? Book through Vicki (vherd@shaw.ca) to attend this superb RG, the best of the best.

 

        

 

 

In this month’s MensaMag, see how the military lulls reason with an avalanche of acronyms that disguise failure. The long-term goal, we’re constantly told, is to create a free and democratic Afghanistan. If you believe the re-election of President Karzai and an increase in foreign troops will move us closer to that end, there’s a wonderful bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to show you. And this reminds me that we seem to learn nothing from history. Everything we’re chewing on, ad nauseum, about the Afghan campaign was debated in Soviet circles during the nine years they took to lose their own war there in the 1980s. But analysis and scrupulous ethics or criticism of governments never sold a newspaper or TV ad. 

 

Then there’s the PR fraud that substitutes for reality in the business columns of newspapers. Nobody has the heart or time to research how the bankrupts and junk of today were lauded to the sky just last week. We’re asked to take seriously the jeremiads of self-interested bloggers without the slightest shred of self-disclosure, and the analyses of commentators who refuse to publish their record of accuracy or inaccuracy or who shrewdly avoid more precision in forecasts than any self-respecting astrologer. Business is entertainment, no more, no less.

 

In any western country, China’s policy toward the Uighur would be described as cultural genocide. How else to paint a deliberate effort to overwhelm a native population, formerly the healthy majority, with immigrants from the Han ethnic group? But heaven forbid that Canada would take a strong moral stand. Conservatives are cowards, it appears, at everything except struggling to make a buck, and the Liberals will flounder until they rediscover their own moral roots. It’s all so predictable to watch Tweedledum struggle in outrage to paint himself as utterly unlike that wretch and rogue Tweedledee. But we get the politicians we deserve.

 

Which takes us to Sarah Palin, the only politician who unashamedly pursues celebrity and doesn’t let truth or reason create logjams in her path. I suspect that’s her real attraction. We sense that she’s authentic. Whereas other politicians pretend that they’re serving the public, Sarah doesn’t bother. She lies and fabricates at the drop of a hat. She knows it and we know it. But the object of the game is fame, not truth. It’s the weaving of dreams, not painting the real world. Our shame is that Sarah is like our other politicians, only more so. Would we vote for her? Of course not, but the reasons are painfully thin to behold.

 

One reason not to vote for Sarah Palin is her woefully thin grasp of issues. We like a thick paper with our coffee in the morning. Sarah can’t tell us that America’s present health care costs were bankrupting the country, not the subprime mortgage crisis. We’ve skated clear of the crazy bubble in real estate, but can anyone tell me that Americans understand they have the highest health care costs in the world and results maybe below the top ten, certainly below the top half-dozen? Sarah just can’t command respect. Visceral appeal, perhaps, respect, no. But is politics about respect? Read further and find out.