It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

I've been so busy commenting on the 2020 presidential election campaign (which, alas, is still very much in progress) and other issues here that I haven't found any space for any one of the numerous rebellions against the established order in so many other countries around the world.  I had always hoped to get to the unrest in one country or another, but I never did.  There were simply too many distractions.  Now, I realize, after having struggled for something trenchant to say about Hong Kong, Lebanon, or some other place like that, I realize I don't have to. Because the takeaway is obvious.

The whole world has gone mad!

Actually, it went mad decades ago, but for the first time since World War II, the madness has gone beyond the pale.  In Venezuela, there's a situation not unlike our own - a fundamentally flawed leader with backing form rank-and-file military members - Nicolas Maduro - refuses to step down despite growing opposition to his rule.  The standoff between him and opposition leader Juan Guaidó continues, but the American media lost interest in the crisis months ago - and not for reasons you might think.  They've since been distracted by other hot-spot stories around the globe, such as the protests against the cost of living and economic strain in Chile and in Iran, the fragile, corrupt government trying to mollify angry citizens in Lebanon, and the pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong against its Chinese overlords, who want greater control over the administrative region even as Hong Kongers resist any threats to the autonomy granted to them by Beijing back when we Westerners were still calling it Peking, when the deal handing over Hong Kong from Britain to China was negotiated.  

And Iraq?  Well, as the former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said, democracy is messy!

Perhaps the world isn't really all that mad.  Perhaps this is an extension of what we have seen in America in the form of the rise of Trump, in Britain with Brexit, and with France with the yellow vest protests. People are getting sick and tired of the elites screwing things up to the point where people's futures are uncertain and they act out as a form of protest.  For the most part, as with Trump and Brexit, this has only made the problem worse, and in places like Iraq, all anyone is accomplishing is contributing to climate change by burning all of those tires.  Heck, in Israel, the system is so paralyzed that even after two elections, no one has been able to form a government, and there might yet be a third election that resolves nothing.  Still, the people of all of these various countries are onto something here - nothing is working for them, and they're making a desperate effort to get things to work right for a change.

Just don't expect anything to be sorted out any time soon.

Except, maybe, in Hong Kong, were pro-democracy council candidates won power in a free and open contest.