"Regime Change" We Don't Want to Believe In

In the past week or so, the talk in Washington among journalists and think tank wonks outside the Obama Administration has been bubbling with the phrase "regime change" in reference to Iran. We've seen that movie before, new euphemism notwithstanding, and it has no happy ending.

As much as I would prefer an Iranian president with a name that was easier on the English-speaking tongue (5 syllables is way too long!), I don't think that a Western-inspired, or much less funded, overthrow or a coup, or any of the names we use for the forcible removal of a ruler, is what we want to do. Here's why:

• the coup d'etat is most un-Jeffersonian and never a good path to democracy;
• pushing for "regime change" in another country invites reciprocity and, last I heard, folks in the Middle East would like to turn ours into ... ahem ... an Islamic theocracy; and
• the cure is almost always worse than the disease (think Chile 1973, Brazil 1964, and oh, Iran 1954).

Let's stop there. I like triads. Thank goodness the jabber I've heard does not come from the Obama folks. But, frankly, if they are in the least tempted, this short post ought to help.

Whither Romance

Playing with etymology I chanced upon the origin of the English word romance: it comes from the Old French romanz ("verse narrative"), related also to the modern French roman ("novel"), gaining its modern sense only in the 17th century. So is everything romantic at the core a fiction?

Did the relatively modern sense related to matters of the metaphoric heart, come to be accepted just in time for the industrial revolution to turn romance into prosaic mating?

Indeed, it strikes me that the industrial age brought about the most intense denial of such a scientific development in the form of something known as Victorian mores or customs, the Manicheism of the 19th century that survived into the 20th. The major change brought about by the sexual revolution, in whose ramparts I valiantly fought, was the beginning of an admission that a lot that happens with regards to romance is actually biological.

Romance involves a temporary suspension of the brain's critical functions, induced by what must no doubt be a flood of pleasure-inducing chemicals, so that we become convinced that this one other person, suddenly encompassed within our ego's expanding boundary, is astoundingly special and even necessary to our survival.

Thus, I would argue, the claim that certain public figures whose sexuality has become known are "sex addicts" is absurd. Once we have experienced it, we are all to some extent "addicted," or uncommonly willing to seek, the pleasure of romance.

The label gets flung at men -- Bill Clinton, Tiger Woods, etc. -- largely because women have different biological goals.

Men are biologically set to impregnate as many women as possible, a goal that is fulfilled in sexual consummation. Women are biologically set to become impregnated, carry the potential human being to birth and then provide at least the indispensable nurture needed for the infant's survival, a goal that is best fulfilled in marriage or some form of long-term commitment.

Such a set of mechanisms explains why men move on quickly and women hang on.

Similarly, the pattern explains why men are eager to call a taxi right after orgasm, while women keep up the romance until they get a ring around their fingers. Biology also explain why the romance ends early in courtship for men and on the honeymoon's first night for women.

Women are just as "addicted" as men. Except ... can one really call what seems to me a natural process an "addiction"?

A therapist I know, who has no direct personal knowledge of either Clinton or Woods, claims that not only is there such a thing, but that the former president and the golfer are prime addicts. Funny, no women ever get mentioned, even though if there were such a thing as sex addiction, I might have postulated my friend, who is of the female persuasion, as an exemplar.

All of which is apropos of nothing more than writing a new post finally giving expression to an idea I have been mulling for some time. You may disagree. Of course, you would be wrong.

Argentina, Land of Insanity

I have closed the associated Ñoñario blog (all visitors are blocked) at the request of the author, who no longer wishes an Internet presence. He has concluded that Argentines -- his prime audience -- are so insane that even trying to comment on current events and history on a factual basis is an Augean task not worth the time and effort.

Let Argentina sink to yet new astounding new levels, through the ever inventive self-destructiveness of Argentines. I am not kidding.

This is a country that, around 1910, was still had one of the top ten economies in the world. Today it is probably the 150th or so.

In the 1920s and 30s the Argentine elite fought tooth and nail to keep its feudal and largely agricultural society intact and its economy a net exporter of cheap commodities and a net importer of expensive manufactured goods.

In the late 1940s and 50s, Perón turned needed attention to the nascent industrial union movement, but he misspent the nation's then-vast gold reserves on patronage pet projects.

In the 1960s and early 1970s, the country was split between Peronists fighting for the return of their exiled leader and the middle class and oligarchy, ushering in military coup after military coup to prevent the return. Meanwhile, the peso lost value and the economy began to go to hell.

Unsatisfied with chaos, Argentines once again welcomed military rule in 1976. This time, the generals weren't kidding around: they made a proven 9,000 people disappear, kidnapped and tortured thousands of others, led the country to a disastrous war with a NATO member (the UK) and helped raise annual inflation to above 1,000 percent (that's thousand, not a typo).

By 1983, tired of military disasters, Argentines chose civilian ones instead. After the Mexican peso effect collapsed the Argentine economy briefly, a charlatan offered a supposed dollar-parity of the peso.

How was this illusion maintained? By selling off the state-owned airline, merchant marine, telephone company, oil company, etc., until all the family jewels were gone.

In 2001, the spell vanished and peso went from 1=1 peso to dollar to 3 pesos per dollar. One day you had a dollar, the next you had 33 cents. That's what Buenos Aires taxi drivers mean when they mention "the events of 2001" -- not 9/11.

So, having kept the country backward, devalued its currency and destroyed its economy and taken the country to a disastrous war, not to mention egregious human rights violations, what did Argentines elect new leaders to do? Of course, to incur an unpayable foreign debt in the billions!

Every time I've thought, "well, now, they've learned their lesson," they manage to surprise me by sinking to new and unsurpassed depths. They sank below hell decades ago!

Of course, try to tell that to an Argentine ... in Spanish. So now you know why my associate and I are sticking to English. The hell with them!