Middle-East edutainment.

I could write here and now that the north american media deserve to be dragged to a dark parking lot, nailed to a wall and beaten with a splintered baseball bat. But you already knew that. It's not that they lie to us often, though they do; it's not that they are biased toward big money interests, though they are; it's not that they provide useless sport activity facts mingled with useless star system news, though they do. It's their repugnant ability to talk about bombings and death and possibility of an end to all life war coming up for at least an hour, then without blinking, smile and talk about something asinine like regional cheese. And they all have that same sickly look of rotting inside, I mean, I know I would if I had to whore myself for a car company, after presenting a report on deaths caused by car pollution. That's another larky thing, watch the ads that follow deadly serious reports, the irony is blinding.
So today is again meaningless war time, from what I hear. I like soldiers. I think they have the worst job in the world. They bleed so old men with about 5 to 10 more years to live can make a killing in the stock market. They go to warm places, and they have to wear heavy equipment, and be surrounded by people they're told they came to help, but who only want to carve them a nice red smile under the chin. And then they come back after spending 4-5 years shoulder deep in the most horrible corners of human misery, and no one wants to hire them, or help them, because, half the population thinks they're murderers, while the other half is scared shitless that they'll snap and blow up something. So we let these guys, whom we taught everything they learned before boot camp was false, that it's ok to kill under certain conditions, wander around to see some of the country they thought they were protecting. But I like them anyway, because they live things and have stories to tell, and they're the closest thing we have to witnesses in the crimes our governments are committing abroad.
I had an idea once, for a new type of ruler. Let's say, instead of voting, which is boring and so Athens BC, we have a deathmatch between the candidates. They fight, bare fist in a ring, and at some point we can throw in knives to spice things up. Then, whenever the leader wants to declare war, he needs to charge at the head of the troops, always. If he's killed, the highest ranking member of his cabinet is next in line, and so forth. Of course, in the beginning, we'll get stupid brutes and our civilization might suffer for a few decades. But I believe that, at some point, we'll see strong and clever politicians emerging from the ring, after all the brine is washed away in previous, disastrous wars. And if our statesmen become respectable figures, then we won't have much of an excuse not to become one too.
Would make for better tv than the vomit-inducing electoral process we have now in any case.