Foley's Friday Mailbag for 9/23/16
- Thread starter Tom McAndrew
- Start date
Dang, I have to kind of agree there. Of course, he writes like some PSU fans-a lot of words without saying anything worth reading!
I'll give him a pass for that because it was otherwise a good answer to the question; he's more aware than most people of just how intractable the corruption problem is, and that corruption isn't going to be cured by slapping wrists, you beat it by creating a system that's difficult to game. The fact that the Russians are unlikely to receive a tough punishment is a symptom of a system that guarantees smaller countries will be bought to serve as puppets of the countries willing to bribe them. Of course, fixing the system to guarantee less corruption is about as likely as finding a leader at the UWW to stand up to Russia.
That said, even though he's got a better awareness of the problem than most, he's not an effective advocate against it, which likely has a lot to do with his working for UWW, whose weak and/or compromised leadership is part of the problem, and obviously not something he's going to talk about. On Twitter he can come off like an apologist but I'll give him credit for engaging with just about everyone.
But even so, Foley's analogy falls flat on its face.
The problem with the UN isn't that tiny Trinidad gets the same vote as massive Russia. It's that corrupt, tyrannical, despotic, militant bully Russia gets the same vote as freer Trinidad, and gets a veto at the Security Council (at least), and throws its weight around behind the scenes, and is a bad actor in too many other ways to list (but for starters: political assassinations, de facto invasions, economic espionage, etc.).
Or, that the Norks get the same vote as Trinidad despite having half the national economy and being the consistently worst regime on the planet.
The problem with the UN isn't that tiny Trinidad gets the same vote as massive Russia. It's that corrupt, tyrannical, despotic, militant bully Russia gets the same vote as freer Trinidad, and gets a veto at the Security Council (at least), and throws its weight around behind the scenes, and is a bad actor in too many other ways to list (but for starters: political assassinations, de facto invasions, economic espionage, etc.).
Or, that the Norks get the same vote as Trinidad despite having half the national economy and being the consistently worst regime on the planet.
Or that despotic countries like Iran get to be on the human rights council. The UN is the original FIFA, UWW, IOC, etc all rolled into one. Always find it ironic that groups or people that are always pro UN complain about organizations like FIFA or the IOC.
Because people usually see things as they wish it to be, or how it sounds good in theory, but not how it is in real life.
Just like how everyone hates Congress but loves their own 3 -- the other 532 are the problem.
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