Stop Me Before I Vote Again

So who really won the cold war?

(After the polling booth squalor of last night, like a soaring full-chested pigeon, this dawn I wax world-historical.)

The answer really is obvious: besides the United Ogres of Amnesia, why of course it was -- people's China. And it was won by none other than -- Mao and Nixon. Yes, these two endlessly vilified titans were the architects of that massive victory. The rise of people's China under Deng was the direct, otherwise impossible product of the Sino-American entente engineered by Mao and grasped like a miracle potion by der Dickster.

Its endlessly curious how Clio uses her masterbuilders like pawns, eh? The continuing story of mankind's progress malgre-soi is obviously shot full of ironies of all shapes and sizes, but these biggest ones are so vastly, so intentionally self-contradictory as to make a flatiron dance.

And yet there we have it: today was produced by an arrangement reached back in the early 70's by these two shrewd and checkered statesmen: shrewd and checkered and ultimately mad -- I might add, like history herself.