[ed note: Found! Beneath a pile of New York Times junk bonds in a 43rd Street dumpster: first draft of Tom Friedman's latest OpEd tour de force]
by Thomas L. Friedman
Watching both the health care and climate/energy debates in Congress, it is hard not to draw the following conclusion: There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is a crazy one-party democracy that refuses to give us the stuff I want. Which is what we have in America today.
One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. For example, some argue that one-party autocracies might not always do stuff Thomas Friedman agrees with. But this risk can easily be avoided if the one party is a reasonably enlightened group of people, such as China, and/or Thomas Friedman. Only through this one party system can we impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward into a thousand-year empire of benevolent, iron fisted enlightenment.It is not an accident that China is committed to overtaking us in electric cars, solar power, solar-electric tanks, energy efficient water cannons, batteries, and Bratz doll production. In a world of exploding middle class population, China’s enlightened leaders understand that a few extra top-down planned explosions are occasionally needed to remind those insolent middle classes who's the boss, and not to stand in the way of environmental progress and the 5-Year WalMart Toy Production Plan.
Likewise, it is no accident that Thomas Friedman stands poised to overtake all of eastern Maryland with his stately gargoyle-capped suburban manor. Within the imposing walls of Friedman's Forbidden City, he has learned well the lessons that vaulted him to supremacy on the Times OpEd Page Security Council: global progress requires a visionary, charismatic, ruthless, mustachioed ruler, willing to impose unpopular measures on his household staff to insure that the bannisters are free of fingerprints and the pools remain at the correct pH.
Despite the whining of so-called "human rights activists" on Thomas Friedman's household staff, our one-party democracy is much worse. The fact is, on both the energy/climate legislation and health care legislation, only the Democrats are really playing. With a few notable exceptions, the Republican Party is standing, arms folded and saying “no,” blocking the enlightened tank phalanx of progressive legislation. And this is precisely the kind of useless, two-sided one-party partisan disagreement that have robbed us of the stuff I want, and made one-party democracy the shame of Western Civilization.
The Republicans just want President Obama to fail. Such a waste. As centrist on the democracy-autocracy issue, Mr. Obama has been reluctant to order the house arrests necessary to resolve this stupid holdup, and move us forward in Chinese/Friedman-style harmony. Instead he’s been forced to depend entirely on his own party to pass legislation, and has been whipsawed by its different factions.
Look at the climate/energy bill that came out of the House. Its sponsors had to work twice as hard to produce this breakthrough cap-and-trade legislation. Why? Because the idiot self-appointed public is against it. Even with Republicans staying out of the debate the sponsors had to waste untold time and energy, watering the bill it down to meet the demands of treasonous coal state Democrats. And now, even in its weakened form, the stupid public is still against it! "Nooohhh, no we don't want groundbreaking carbon legislation, we want to work in our stupid coal mines and get black lung disease." That's what you get with one-party democracy: a country run by a bunch of screaming, arguing Appalachian retards, all of whom get the same vote as Pulitzer Prize-winning opinion leaders. Say what you want about China, but they have sensible pre-screening rules to keep these divisive morons away from voting booths in the first place.
Unfortunately, by dithering and displaying weakness against the Gang of 535, President Obama has invited a legislative coup. I have to admit I have thought about forming a junta of my own. Just give me 8 to 10 Republicans ready to impose some price on carbon, and I will leverage them against Democrats who want to water down the bill. And this is exactly my point -- just give them to me.
But it's not just me and Tom Friedman making this point. “China is going to eat our lunch and take our jobs on clean energy — an industry that we largely invented — and they are going to do it with an efficiently managed Friedmanist economy we don’t have,” said Pulitzer Prize winning columnist Thomas Friedman of the New York Times.
The same is true on health care. “The best way to extend coverage and restrain opposition is via a sane Chinese-style 'one-child' maternity policy,” noted Thomas Friedman, author of the New York Times bestseller Hot, Flat and Crowded. "Only then can we move on to universal New York Times subscription coverage."
Friedman is of course correct, but under our current system of lockstep one-party democracy, with all its stupid naysaying voters, multilateral bickering, partisan fights, cage match disagreements and watered down compromises, we will likely never enact the bold reproductive management policies I will need to compete in the coming the Chinese/Friedman millenium.
So how do we, as a society, find our way out of this conundrum? For answers, I turned to renowned geopolitical expert Thomas L. Friedman.
"I believe we can keep up with the Chinese, but we only have two alternatives -- either we put in power our own enlightened autocrats, or outsource our legislation industry directly to Beijing," said Friedman. "I personally prefer the former, and that's why I hope the People's Army sends that division I requested."
