In less than eight months we will witness the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the Great War, a war that began with almost complete incompetence on the part of almost every general of every army, who through sheer incompetence threw away the lives of hundreds of thousands of soldiers. The first six months of the war saw the French army dressed in bright red pants and blue blouses attack machine guns with massed infantry, flags and bands. The Germans did the same, though without the bright red pants and blue blouses. The Russians were even more profligate with the lives of their mostly untrained conscripts, but the lesson of the machine gun was finally learned, and by 1915 incompetence had been succeeded by stupidity. And so it goes, even to the present day, as it has gone from time immemorial, and not just in military affairs. Except for the celebrated brief and rare spates of competence, history is replete with incompetence followed by sheer stupidity followed by vacuous inanity. Take your pick. Has the Obama White House moved on from sheer incompetence to sheer stupidity? Are we seeing the beginnings of inanity? In my view the Obama administration admits of all three, and usually on the same day.
The competent are with us
Though they rarely get elected
For voters like the stupid and inane
Together they both drive the bus
Genetically selected
To screw the rest of us and inflict pain