politics

The after-dinner conversation drifted to politics, as it sometimes will, despite the best intentions of its participants.

I mentioned a Thai man who had complained to me about repression in Thailand. Speaking out against the king will land you a jail term or worse, he claimed.

“But it’s the same all over,” my British companion said. “The king is sacred there. In America, if you called Washington a sod—”

“As in George Washington? Nothing would happen. You can say just about anything you want in America,” I said, feeling a bit sheepish about giving so obvious a civics lesson. For good measure, I added: “You can burn a flag on the Capitol steps if it makes you happy.”

“You can?”

“Well, of course. Can’t you in England?”

I was reading Uri Avney the other day. For me, that's almost always a pleasant and thought-provoking experience. The thought that this article ("An End Foreseen? The Arc of Insurgencies" http://www.counterpunch.org/avnery02112008.html ) provoked in me is this.

If Americans want to end our current rule of the corporations, by the corporations and for the corporations, they can.