When I Was Young I Looked At Maps

     Because I'm tired and preoccupied, I don't the feel the sense of discipline now in writing a well-organized essay.  I'm just going to write.
     The Libertarian presidential candidate, Gary Johnson, once the Governor of New Mexico, was asked on MSNBC's Morning Joe, "If you're president, what will you do about Aleppo?"
     "What is Aleppo?"
     Once it was explained to him that it's a Syrian city, one of the most brutalized places on Earth at this time, Johnson shifted into recognition mode.  He described the Syrian war as "a mess."
     Right now there are clothes all over my bedroom floor, disordered bank statements and oddments on my dresser, lots of books lying around--that's a mess.  Carnage is something else, Mr. Johnson.
     He said at one point he thought he was hearing the questioner say some acronym.  I thought maybe he heard, "a lepo," and wondered, "Lepo?  Is that a slur to describe lepers?"
     Everyone, it seemed, in the cable news business, latched onto this boner (as in "stupid mistake"), predicting Johnson's withdrawal from the presidential race, a political contest characterized by the unpalatability of two abominable candidates in the main parties.  Johnson was polling at around ten to fifteen percent favorability, trying to get that up to the somehow magical number, fifteen, so that he'd be accepted as a debater sharing stages with Shit Candidate One and Shit Candidate Two.  Getting the Libertarian magic out there to the TV watching masses on debate nights as we enter the final two months of this seemingly never-ending campaign season.
     I thought Johnson's lapse (not knowing the name of a city terrorized by Bashar al-Assad, the Russian Air Force, and American warplanes, in a civil war so complex, with so many actors, it's impossible to speak of a solution before going to a commercial break) isn't that big of a deal, if one expects a presidential candidate to know anything about the world, anyway.  Trump (and oh, how I wish he had flubbed on Aleppo instead of Johnson) doesn't know anything about foreign policy, doesn't care about anyone except himself and his daughter Ivanka's looks, and is lacking any skill required to understand real political matters other than rabble-rousing.  Johnson's failure to notice the slightest headline relating to foreign matters in any newspaper or news-website shows him up as a typical American dumbass when it comes to foreign affairs and geography, but does a president really need to be intelligent?  
     Nicolle Wallace, an MSNBC commentator, declared that Johnson, because of his Aleppo bafflement, isn't qualified to be president.  She was Special Assistant to the President and Director of Media Affairs at the White House during George W. Bush's first term.  Bush, in 2000, when asked, "Who's the leader of Pakistan," responded, "General."  Pervez Musharraf was the leader of that country then, a nation with an intelligence agency connected, possibly, with 9/11, and also with the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.
     Nicolle Wallace also spent time as a senior adviser on the McCain-Palin campaign.  Bush, Palin...yes, Nicolle Wallace has learned how to identify dimwits, so I guess we must take her assessment of Gary Johnson seriously.  Wallace herself is not stupid; she has, I think, a fine mind.  Her commitment to right wing goals over the years, however, limits her vision because she's committed to a failed ideology.  Interestingly, that ideology has been changing before our eyes, for those with eyes to see.
     The conservative/Republican philosophy is no more.  It's been replaced with ferocious capitalist doctrine that uses up and grinds people to nothing in order to make a few thousand people extremely wealthy and powerful.  This punishing doctrine has existed for quite some time.  Under Reagan, the extremities of its adherents' positions were confined to fantasy as they bowed to the necessity of popularity.  Now, as we've seen with the selection of Clinton and Trump as our main possibilities for leader, popularity is no longer required.  I well remember Reagan's, and the first Bush's, undeniable popularity in the 1980s and first two years of the 1990s.  They managed to seem like decent people.  Reagan was lovable.  He'd starred in King's Row, looking up from his missing legs and crying out, horrified, to Ann Sheridan, "Where's the rest of me?"  In the world of pretend, Reagan was effective.  Americans told themselves lies about his communication skills, which were well practiced and had been honed in radio and in Hollywood.  They were as phony as the myth that grew up around that hollow man, the myth now believed by nearly every politician and journalist in Washington: he was a great president.  He is not regarded as such in Nicaragua, but, like Aleppo, who cares about places with funny names where people suffer due to the decisions made by powerful evil fucks as they exercise their arsenals to keep arms merchants and manufacturers satisfied.
     The first Bush reached the peak of his popularity in January 1991, because he attacked Iraqi forces and seemed like a tough, patriotic son of a bitch.  Hillary Clinton, seeming, to me, increasingly imperious and self-important, has been speaking of her steadiness, contrasting that quality with Trump's impulse-driven child behavior.  The problem with Clinton running the country is that she's convinced that she'll do it well, when there's no evidence to suggest she will.  No one knows what kind of president one is going to be.  Lyndon Johnson showed his good intentions with his attention to civil rights, but then he committed himself to killing millions of people in Southeast Asia, something carried on by his successor, Richard Nixon, who also, I suspect, had good intentions and was convinced, going into the job, that he'd be great at it.
     Gary Johnson didn't recognize the name Aleppo, even after it was repeated.  Is that worse than knowing about that city, but doing nothing effective, beyond increasing the damage, to help it?  That's been Barack Obama's Syrian policy: solve problems with bombs.  Hillary Clinton, a militarist, won't be any different.  Trump, a vicious psychopath, would probably try many things when dealing with the Middle East, but none of his methods would help anyone who desperately needs help, but he would magnify hatred towards the United States, something this country really wants, like surprise bombs at a marathon.
     What is Aleppo?  For that matter, news media assholes, what is Yemen?  What are refugees?  What is a non-functioning American political system?  What is climate change?  What are cluster bombs?  What are malnourished children in Venezuela?  What is Gaza City?  What are Black victims of police violence?  What are liars with agendas?  What will Hillary Clinton say the next time Israeli Defense Forces slaughter Palestinian civilians?  What is the importance of a Gary Johnson ignoramus compared with a Trump ignoramus?

                                                                              Vic Neptune