Tannishblog

So, where was I over the past weekend? Slumming.

The wife was accompanying our daughter in a road trip to Madison, WI, wherein, at the University the annual conference by the Richard Davis Foundation for Young Bassists. So here I was, a middling middle-aged batchelor for the weekend. Combine this with Passover which, in our house means they eat kosher, and I eat out a lot.

So off they went in the neighbor’s borrowed minivan, two jewish ladies, a double bass, and lots of kosher noshes to keep them satiated for the duration. And here I was with the two cats and a bit of laundry to do. So much for the batchelor fantasy…

I’m still hooked on Conquer Online. I find a (relatively) unpopulated server and start a new character and work it through the ranks until too many people join the server and bog it down. I’m such a big kid in some ways. Also I finally got Civilization IV a few weeks ago, the latest in my favorite computer game franchise, and with it I take care of my latent world-building-jones for a while. I’m a recovering Dungeons & Dragons geek, still.

All in all, Monday comes on too quickly, and the workaday slush is a bit irritating in contrast to a quiet weekend killing monsters and dominating planets. Life in meatspace is so mundane!

Keep an eye on Nepal. A real, honest-to-goodness Democratic uprising is occurring there. Our dyslexic leader should watch, too – he might learn how a people who truly want a Democratic government act like. Much like our president, King Gyanedra is loosing his grip on his nation. For the past few months, curfews have been established, and an abolishment of their parliament, in place since the last pro-democratic uprising in 1990, occurred in February. The world’s only Hindu monarchy rose to power amidst nefarious circumstances, and Gyanedra’s subsequent power grabs have been none-too-subtle. Now, instead of the usual suspects of politically active fringe groups acting up, the whole country is engaging in their version of a solidarity movement.

It’s not a pretty sight, but wresting control from an entrenched government rarely is. While the Maoist factions in the Himalayas act as catalyst for change – indeed, they endorse a change in government, the people rallying aren’t Maoists.

I pray our leader, and the people who wind him up, would watch this. They might learn how Democracy comes from the people, and not from other governments or from a military surrogate. Just as Poland shook off the shackles of Soviet influence, so too is Nepal shaking off an anachronistic form of governance, one that has less influence over the young population. People – honest working stiffs – form democracies. That is the only way it happens. Any other method is doomed to failure.

As we look around the globe, few nations are rising up for self-representation. Clearly, the Muslim states don’t want Western political thought to invade their culture. If they did, more would take to the streets in a concerted effort to oust their leaders. Iraq, as backward as it looked to America, was more or less content with tier lot. Life is less valuable to medieval societal structures like those still existing in the Middle East. I’m no expert, as you might guess, but it seems clear that those who would die for any cause, as the Muslim factions within destabilized Iraq are surely doing; and if democracy was on their agenda, they would unite within their borders instead of tearing their faltering nation to shreds.

In short, they would act more like the Nepalese. So don’t believe what you hear on the news. What our leaders would like us to believe is yet another lie. This, folks, is Democracy in Action.