Gongol.com Archives: December 2016
December 6, 2016
We are supposed to be better than this
(Video) It's very, very hard to face the reality that half a million children are starving to death in Yemen right now. HALF A MILLION. But that is the reality, and the civilized world needs to face it.
The organization says 93 million people are directly in harm's way due to violence, displacement, and natural disasters worldwide. 93 million people is a population larger than Germany, and would rank in the top 20 countries by population worldwide.
Make time to listen to Maggie Haberman's take on the President-elect
The New York Times reporter explains more of the "must-know" in an hour than any amount of social media has covered. The first 25 minutes or so of her interview with Glenn Thrush spend a little too much time on inside baseball, so for the listener truly in a hurry, skip forward to the 25-minute mark for the real meat and potatoes.
Don't read too much into this "post-ideology" thing
Donald Trump isn't the first vapid populist to hit the electoral scene -- not in the world, nor in America. He won't be the last, either. But ideas matter. As Margaret Thatcher's ally Keith Joseph once said, "We must fight the battle of ideas in every school, university, publication, committee, TV studio even if we have to struggle for our toe-hold there; we have the truth, if we fail to make it shine clear, we shall be to blame no less than the exploiters, the casuists, the commercialisers." In the short run, it's possible to win an election on empty promises. In the long run, something has to fill the void after those empty promises collapse under their own weight. People need answers, they need leadership, and they need something affirmative to believe in. It's up to sensible people on both the right and the left to define some sound intellectual foundations for what comes next.
America's isn't the only election that counts this year
Ghana is going through a rough economic patch, which is challenging to sound government no matter where you are
