Morality and Foreign policy
Too much hypocrisy in politics and governance seems to have reached its peak in terms of sophistication, and most of the time just in your face outright lies. It is so funny, how politicians delude themselves. It is not that citizens are clueless to politicians’ stupidity, it is just we are too sarcastic, and we spend most of our time scornfully laughing at their screwy attempt to put one over us.
Forgive me, I am writing this while listening to Al Green. Green croons:
“ I,
oh I,
can turn a gray sky blue,
you see, I can make it rain when I want it to
oh I,
can build a castle from a single grain of sand
you see, I can make a ship sail on dry land.”
“I,
I can fly like a bird in the sky
I can buy anything that money can buy
Oh I,
can turn a river into a raging flood
I can live forever if I so decide.”
Typical politician, I can lower your taxes. I will bomb you back to the last century to bring democracy.
I can’t stop laughing. “Libyan PM accuses ‘political party’ of kidnapping him.” “Govt says Zeidan had been taken “to an unknown destination for unknown reasons by a group” of men believed to be former rebels.”Be serious. This can’t be true. What a farce.
Be that as it may, I have been trying to do some reading on morality and foreign policy. I have been pouring through George Kennan. Fantastic body of work. Then, I read Hans Morgenthau. Morgenthau in trying to reply to me wrote:
“Given the existential incompatibility between politics and… ethics, how must moral man act in political sphere? While he is precluded from acting morally, the best he can do is to minimize the intrinsic immorality of the political act. He must choose from among the political actions at his disposal the one which is likely to do the least violence. The moral strategy of politics is, then, to try to choose the lesser evil.”
In other words, politicians are expected to mess up (these were not the words I wanted to use) it is just like them. They are naturally debased. The “moral strategy of politics is” if it has any “strategy” to speak of, is to be less morally reprehensible, and less wicked. Thanks, Hans.
“Let me tell you that
I,
I can turn back the hands of time
you better believe I can
Oh I, you see, I can make the seasons change
just by waving my hand
Let me say,”
Go head, Green, the ultimate politician!!!
Have a lovely weekend.
Professor Mekonen Haddis
Political Snapshots 