The Most Dangerous Game

For an example of the danger to civilization which the super rich can pose when they control too much of our modern politics, you need to look no further than right-wing casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson. This Richy Rich fellow bought Newt Gingrich during the 2012 Presidential election season, hoping to gain a chief executive in the deal, but fortunately for the survival of our species and all higher life forms on earth, Newt proved to be a bad investment. 

Now Mr. Addledbrain is shopping for a 2016 Presidential candidate, and what does he want? He wants someone who will make sure that a certain casino billionaire with the initials S.A. won't be prosecuted for bribery of foreign officials, which is against U.S. law and which the evidence suggests he may well have done, plus he wants someone who will outlaw online gambling, since this creates competition for the casino business. These two desires certainly run counter to the best interests of at least 99.99% of the remaining U.S. population, but it's SA's 3rd desire that should cause the greatest concern -- he wants someone who will nuke Iran.

It doesn't take a genius to foresee the probably results of such a foolish military action, but you do have to see further than the end of your own nose. Setting aside the callous suggestion of murdering multitudes of people -- and to be fair, Richy Rich has entertained the idea that perhaps we could simply drop a nuke into the Iranian desert as a kind of warning shot, and such a move might only murder a handful of innocents rather than millions -- following such a suggestion would lead step by step to a nuclear arms race in which there would be no winners, but in which human civilization could very well be the loser.

Dropping a nuke on Iran, even in a sparsely-populated desert zone, would send the message to the rest of the world that we as the most powerful military force on the planet could no longer restrain ourselves from using our most destructive weapon. Any nation considering itself a possible target for future U.S. military strikes would suddenly feel compelled to begin stockpiling nuclear weapons purely as a matter of self-defense. Rather than putting an end to a nuclear weapons program in Iran that may or may not exist, such a strike would guarantee that the Iranians would strive as mightily as possible to acquire nuclear weapons as soon as they could. 

We do not want to give Russia, or China, or Iran, or whoever, the idea that we might just drop a nuke on them some day. Or, at least, those of us who can think logically about the foreseeable consequences of our actions, we don't want to do that. Mr. Adelson does want to do that, though, and because he has so much money to spend on buying the candidate of his choice, he has a line of politicians who can't wait to sell themselves to him. For the good of all of us, we can only hope that he makes a bad choice once again. Also, for the future of our species, and all other higher life forms, we need to end this system of political pay-for-play as soon as we possibly can.