H.P. Lovecraft Nails Republicans To The Wall

I came across H.P. Lovecraft's opinion of Republicans recently, in a letter he wrote in 1936. He gets it just about right, I think:

"Republicans . . . a frightened, greedy, nostalgic huddle of tradesmen and lucky idlers who shut their eyes to history and science, steel their emotions against decent human sympathy, cling to sordid and provincial ideals exalting sheer acquisitiveness an condoning artificial hardship for the non-materially-shrewd, dwell smugly and sentimentally in a distorted dream-cosmos of outmoded phrases and principles and attitudes based on the bygone agricultural handicraft world, and revel in . . . mendacious assumptions . . . utterly contrary to fact and without the slightest foundation in human experience."
 
He finishes up the rant with:

"Intellectually, the Republican idea deserves the tolerance and respect one gives to the dead."
 
Guys don't get much more interesting than old H.P.  He never graduated high school but he turned himself into a very educated fellow.  Science, philosophy, literature, the man was erudite.  Maybe with a touch of the monomania though, he knew what he liked and he studied it.  

And he wrote about it.  Almost everything he ever wrote concerned the unknown spaces beyond ordinary reality, or at least the dimly perceived corners of the universe itself.  

I think that he got the Republicans just about right.  They were just as bitchy in the 1930's as then are now.  You know, the New Deal is the end of freedom and property rights in America; Roosevelt is an agent of the Soviet Union.  What a bunch of Johnny-One-Notes!  Nothing new under the sun!   

A Survey Of The Country's Problems

America has problems, numerous problems.  Some of them get a nod, some get a wink, and some of them are ignored all together.  Here’s a list.

You will notice that abortion is not on the list.  That’s a problem for one woman at a time, and the best way to handle it is to just leave them to it.  Guns are not on the list.  Addressing some of the problems that are on the list would go a long way to eliminating the gun problem.  Gay marriage?  That’s not a problem, and you know it.  The ACA, Bengazi, Obama’s birth certificate, video games, Hip-Hop . . . no, no, no, no and no. 

This is a list of REAL problems, problems that have the power to create negative outcomes for the entire nation, if not the world.  Some already have.  Some are natural; some are man-made; and some lie somewhere in between. 

Which one is your favorite?

Problems:

1.  The Permanent Emergency.  Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared a state of emergency in 1940, and it has existed continuously ever since.  It allowed him to gear up for the coming war, with massive increases in military spending and the institution of a draft.  After the war, the emergency was transferred to the Soviets; after the Soviets it was transferred to “Terrorism.”  There was a small interregnum between the Soviets and Terrorism, but the state of emergency persisted.  This is why we still have ridiculously high levels of military spending and a national security state;

2. The Shadow Executive.  The executive branch of the government includes the Federal agencies.  By now it effectively includes the military as well.  It includes all of the national security agencies, like the CIA, the NSA and others, no doubt, that we are still unaware of.  That’s a huge amount of manpower, on a career basis, completely unelected.  Does anyone think that it matters anymore who is the president?  Can you imagine two more different people than George Bush the Lesser and Barack Obama?  Any new president, on his first day, discovers his situation when it is explained to him by this unelected bureaucracy;

3.  Militarized Police Forces.  The police forces of any large urban center are unrecognizable from the quaint police of my childhood.  They come now in large groups, in armored vehicles,  wearing helmets and vests and carrying assault rifles.  There are a lot more shootings and ass kickings by police too.  Lots of stop and frisk, and lots of invading the wrong premises, and very little “excuse me.”  I recall mocking other countries because their people had to fear their own police.  That’s the boat that we now find ourselves in;

4.  The Privatized Military.  Private contractors building bases, cooking and cleaning, and fueling planes and vehicles.   Private detective agencies are providing security.  This increases costs and transfers tax money to corporations, it also dulls the chances for oversight;

5.  Corporate Prisons.  This is such a terrible idea that I’d like to meet some of the politicians who support the idea.  These corporations charge by the head, and they demand quotas that are written into the contracts with the states, and they insist on very high levels of occupancy.  If the prison population falls below the prescribed levels, penalties must be paid by the state.   I keep waiting for this scandal to blow up in someone’s face, but I remain disappointed;

6.  Health Insecurity.  Americans live with such enormous health insecurity that it amazes me every year that goes by without a revolution.  America is almost alone among the developed countries of the world in not having a single-payer system.   No, we prefer an adversarial relationship with predatory health insurance providers and various other medical entities.  Most Americans are one medical catastrophe away from financial ruin and/or actual death.   In return we spend, as a nation, about twice as much in terms of GDP as the other, more sensible developed countries.  For this we get no increase in the quality of care.  Even if you have good insurance, the co-pays will kill you.  It’s the worst health care in the world.  And don’t go off about the “takers” either.  Sure, someone with no money and no assets can get free treatment in a hospital, but it’s no alternative.  They are merely stabilized and sent home.  This problem really galls me;

7.  The Death Of The Oceans.  The oceans are warming up, they are being over-fished LAMF, and the waters are acidifying.  The only ones who like the state of the oceans of the world are the jellyfish.  They are thriving to a degree that is shocking, colonizing new areas by hitch-hiking around the world in the ballast water of commercial ships.  We’ll need to start writing jelly-fish cook books pretty soon;

8.  Global Climate Change.  A separate problem from number 7.  Whether you believe that Global Climate Change is man-made, or whether you believe that it’s cyclical and normal, or whether you deny that it is happening at all, it is a very real phenomenon.  It is observable and measureable, and the negative effects are already being seen.  It’s going to be a real party in forty or fifty years, if not sooner;

9.  Compound Interest.  Not often thought of as a problem, I admit.  I appreciate the benefits of it myself, at least when the banks are offering interest that is not just a joke.  Now, though, we have a situation where virtually all of the money is being sucked up to the top of the benefit chain.  Don’t the Walmart heirs alone have twenty something percent of all of the money these days?  As the rich get richer, and compound interest works its magic, money will have to be printed at a frightening rate to keep some of it available for wages for the rest of us.  What happens then?  Prices go up?  You’ll have to be a Walmart heir to afford food;

10.  Politicians Selling Their Asses Ridiculously Cheaply.  I almost understand politicians benefiting financially from their positions.  Within reason I could tolerate it pretty well.  I find it annoying, though, that instead of selling off a little bit of benefit for good money, we elect guys that are such piss poor negotiators that they sell off the whole game for a pittance.  They cheerfully give away billions of dollars of benefit for a few measly hundreds of millions of dollars.  Then they preen around like hot shots while they are begging for rides on private jets that most of them can’t afford for themselves.  Pathetic;

11.   The Death Of Privacy.  Oh, I know, just the idea of “privacy” is so quaint by now.  How can it be a problem when it doesn’t even exist anymore? 

12.  The Death Of Compromise.  Democracy cannot exist without compromise.  We are now discovering the truth of that statement.  Nobody’s interested in finding the middle ground these days.  Remember arguing with the Soviets?  They started out with a list of demands and if you asked them to forego the dot over one “I” they would scream like you were killing them and claim that they could not possibly abandon their principles to accommodate you.  This lesson was learned by the Republican party, to our detriment;

13.  High Productivity/Low Wages.  In the last thirty years, human productivity has gone through the roof, it has exploded to levels that would have been science fiction back in the 1960’s.  What have workers gotten from all of this productivity?  Lower wages in real terms.  Unions destroyed, benefits eroded, and all of the old covenants between labor and management abrogated by the corporations.  The productivity itself has led to higher systemic levels of unemployment, which also serves to lower wages.  All of the money generated by the high productivity has accrued to the benefit of the investment class;

14.  Income Inequality.  Think of the Willard Romney family and Honey Boo Boo’s family.  Get the picture? 

 

15.  Our Unbalanced And Regressive Tax Structure.  Over the last thirty or forty years the tax structure has been altered to lower rates on income derived from capital gains while raising them on  wages.  So Warren Buffet’s secretary pays a rather higher percentage rate on her income than he does on his.  Add in the more recent infatuation with sales taxes and fees for everything imaginable and you get a tax system that oppresses the lower income ranges while giving the upper ranges a virtual pass; 

16.  The Threat To Public Education.  I never went to public schools myself, but my children did.  I believe that managed correctly they are the great levelers that can be so important to a democracy.  In a simpler age they functioned to homogenize the diversity of America, rendering all students “Americans” with a common experience.  They could serve this purpose again.  And they already provide as good an education as private schools or so-called charter schools.  I believe that private schools should be subject to a luxury tax, and that charter schools should be done away with all together.  Charter schools have not demonstrated any superior ability to educated students, and they just suck up public money and hand it to corporations who do nothing to earn it;

17.  Religion.  I mean religion in general, all religions, all around the world.  Religion needs to sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up;

18.  The Democratic Party;

19.  The Republican Party;

20.  The Illusion Of Being Well Informed.  Thanks to the Internet, everyone thinks that they are a genius these days.  This is a problem.  Everyone feels like they are just so well informed, because, after all, they watch TV news, listen to talk-radio, and read news accumulation sites on the Internet.   This state of high-quality intellectual readiness gives everybody an apparent license to have an opinion, which will be promptly Tweeted or otherwise distributed.  To this new genius class I say, paraphrasing Oliver Cromwell, “I beseech you in the bowels of Christ, please consider that you may be wrong.” 

Well, my fingers are tired.  That should be enough reading for now anyway.  Maybe you could transfer it to your Kindle!  That would be modern! 

For anyone who makes the heroic effort required to read this whole thing, please accept my sincerest thanks. 

"Meet The Press" Must Be Code For Something Else

I really shouldn’t watch these shows, these “political discussion” shows.  To say that Fox is the worst is a cliché that happens to be true, but shows like “Meet the Press” are more disturbing in some ways.  With Fox, you get just what you expect.  With “Meet the Press,” you might expect a more balanced and serious discussion, but you’d be disappointed.

Bobby Jindal was on yesterday.  He’s a failed organism, politically speaking, but that doesn’t stop him from getting booked and getting his talking points out there.  Other media report on his appearances, blandly repeating the talking points.  That’s what they are for, the talking points, they are intended to shape the dialog and move public opinion in a certain direction.  Unfortunately for the country in general, and for most of us in particular, guys like Bobby Jindal are very good at what they do. 

Most unfortunately of all, many of the talking points are outright lies, and the moderators of these shows almost never call the talkers on it.  Moderators!  Another cruel euphemism.  Facilitators is more like it. 

Who’s in charge of “Meet the Press” these days, is his name David Gregory?  Did I get that right?  Would that we could buy back our introductions to the likes of him.   He sat there nodding his head respectfully while Bobby Jindal let go a whopper. 

The Lie:

“Health insurance rates are going through the roof all over America because of Obamacare,” said Mr. Jindal with a disarming, crooked smile. 

It is possible that some researchers in a think tank somewhere discovered places where this has happened.  I don’t do research, I wouldn’t know.  It is also true, however, that in most places the rates have gone down, and things in general have gotten much better for most Americans.  So the quote, as delivered, is a bald faced lie.  A talking point, crafted to induce people to believe that the Affordable Care Act is bad for them, bad for their families, and bad for the country.  Which is not true.  It’s not perfect, not by a long shot, but it’s a small step in the direction of addressing a real problem. 

Anybody out there drinking the Kool Aid?  Anybody buying the lie that America has the best health care system in the world?  Loving that freedom to choose your own doctor and your own care?  Obviously you don’t have a child with Muscular Dystrophy; obviously you haven’t come down with some terrible malady soon after losing a job. 

But “Meet the Press.”  The only question is: do they know that they are working for the opposition?  Or are they just stumbling along trying to sell advertising?  Are they in on the joke?  The negative effects of their failure to engage on the issues are much less ambiguous.  Lots of people think that they are watching a genuine political discussion, and many of them will believe Mr. Jindal and repeat what he said.  That’s what talking points do. 

Bobby Jindal is, unfortunately, a lucid and articulate man.  This is unfortunate, because the vision that he lucidly articulates is Satanic.  It is based on lies that are carefully crafted to create benefit for a very few people at the expense of the vast majority. 

Luckily, not all of these guys are as talented as Bobby Jindal.  After all, Pat Buchanan is still making the rounds.  Talk about a failed political organism.  Obviously, these people will flog any dead horse that they think will help them convince people to go against their own best interests. 

Another example of the failure of lucidity was also on “Meet the Press” last night, David Brooks.  It is a mystery to me why anyone would care what he has to say on any subject.  He doesn't seem to care very much himself, it's a pretty vague web that he spins. He has the values of a loan shark, and the gall of a burglar, all in a faux academic package and wrapped in a Brooks Brothers suit. 

Oh, that there could be an actual discussion!  Oh, that we could have a health care system as wonderful as the one that is working so well in Taiwan, even as we speak!  But if you even say the words, “single payer,” various people-under-the-influence will shout you down as a socialist troublemaker.

 

Oh, that there were a God that answered prayer!  We certainly need a lot more help than we’re getting.  

Those Demonic Bastards, The Liberals

Are Liberals being demonized these days or merely dehumanized?  The answer depends upon whose eliminationist language you are listening to.  Plenty of it is being directed at Liberals these days. 

I’m reading a book by D.J. Goldhagen called “Worse than War: Genocide, Eliminationism and the Ongoing Assault on Humanity.”  It’s very interesting, I’ll give it that, the quality of the analysis is generally very good.  It’s a tough read though, not for the feint hearted, the presentation is very dense and the style is (faux) academic.  The sentences themselves can be grammatically maddening.

The victims of the various murderous eliminations of the Twentieth Century are divided into categories and examined.  Some are dehumanized; some are demonized.  Some can be rehabilitated; some must be exterminated.  Some of the analysis describes the treatment of Liberals in America right now, although the question of Liberals is not reached in the book.  In my reading, Liberals seem to fall into the category that Mr. Goldhagen calls “Heretics,” people who are demonized without being dehumanized.  Heretics are “conceived of as not biologically different from other people, they, for some articulated reason-usually in the grip of a pernicious religious or secular ideology-willfully dissent from the hallowed creed and seek to harm you or prevent humanity’s salvation.”  P. 332. 

(See what I mean about those sentences?)   

The whole situation is comical for several reasons.  For one thing, what is a Liberal in Twenty-First Century America?  The best definition might be anyone who does not completely agree with the popular Conservative orthodoxy.  For another thing, somebody like me could turn that “Heretic” definition right back on the Conservatives with approximately equal justification.  (Without, I hope, resorting to eliminationist rhetoric.) 

As usual, nothing is simple.  Quite a few ideologies are competing for attention in America.  It’s not a simple question of “Right” v. “Left.”  There’s the Right of congressional Republicans, the Right of Senate Republicans, the Right of the Christian Dominionists, the Right of the Tea Party, the Right of the militia crowd, the Right of the Rand Paul/Ayn Rand Libertarians, and even the slightly gentler Right of President Obama and most Democrats.  Yeah, I said that. 

What’s happening on the Left?  The Left is far less vigorous but it does encompass some activism and considerable diversity.  Oh, excuse me, “diversity” is a code word, I mean diversity of political opinion.

What most categorizes the current political debate in America is that there is no debate.  There is only a lot of sloganeering and shouting across the chasm.  Almost everyone claims to be protecting democracy, or expanding it or something, restoring it maybe.  To me the almost universal truth is that democracy is suffering, at best, and, at worst, disappearing.  Given the choice of voting for either one side of a coin or the other side of the same coin, you get the coin no matter who wins.

I am not, however, suggesting some kind of “they all do it” argument.  There is one important difference between the modern American Right and the modern Left.  The Difference is the degree to which the Right embraces violence and eliminationism. 

So far this comes in the form of violent language and eliminationist rhetoric.  There’s very little of this on the Left, just some open mocking, and lots of sarcasm, nothing as serious as what you find on the Right.  The content of Right Wing media is bad enough in itself, but what you find in the comment sections is frightening and extreme.  The writers of these fantasies are not scholars, they are largely uninformed and they are, like most people, of average intelligence.  Somehow, from someplace, they are being fed an agenda of fear, hatred and eliminationism. 

A truly delusional world view is prevalent, a view in which Liberals are actively conspiring to deprive people of their rights, their freedoms, to take away their guns, or even their children, to put people in camps for some reason, to turn the United States over to the United Nations or some other international group, to put America’s black people in charge and subjugate the poor white folk, really strange, unlikely stuff for which there is no compelling discoverable evidence.  It’s all very “Turner Diaries.”  Some individuals, like Timothy McVay, have even taken this paranoid novel as their blueprint for reality. 

Faced with this perceived reality, how else can the Right respond but with violence and extremism?  As Mr. Goldhagen says, “if a being willfully threatens all that is good, the Volk, God, a world of justice and plenty for all; if a being is evil incarnate, then it follows that one must eradicate the disease, squash the bug, kill the wild animal, expel or slay the barbarian, destroy the threat, or extirpate the evil.  Not to do so would be negligent folly, like leaving your young child in a bear-or devil-infested forest.”  p. 330.

Note that Mr. Goldhagen is not suggesting this as a rational course of action, no, he’s just stating the position that has been maintained by lots of groups in the recent past, right before they up and killed a lot of their demonized enemies.  In each case, the pot-stirring that preceded the horror bore disturbing similarities to the current anti-Liberal rhetoric. 

Let’s hold this thing up to the light.  Liberals, if they even exist anymore, are no threat to freedom and justice, no enemies of liberty, nor of the family or the American Dream.  So maybe we can back up on the word play here. 

I don’t think anything like that is going to happen though, not the backing up thing, I’ve given up already on anything like common sense prevailing.  This particular Genie is hard to get back in the bottle.  The denouement, when it comes, may not reach the fever pitch of that episode of Tutsi v. Hutu in Africa, but whatever it is, it won’t be pretty. 

P.S.  I read that Bryan Fischer is afraid that “Homofascists” will soon treat Christians in America like the Nazis treated Jews during the Holocaust.  (Raw Story, April 12, 2013.)  And Janet Mefferd, who evidently is some kind of syndicated host on Christian Radio, has very similar fears, also couched in Holocaust language.  (From the blog, “Brilliant at Breakfast,” which coined the phrase, “Holocaust envy.”)  Point made!  

Being The Other

There’s a lot of talk now about the “other.” Talk by some of “real Americans,” bitter complaints that our president does not share “our” values, or even understand our “Anglo Saxon” traditions. Killings of Sikhs, burnings of mosques, and that’s just this week, and just in America itself. What is going on around the world, in our names, doesn’t bear too much thinking about.

Who is this “other?” And what is this “other” thing?


The Prototypical Other: Me

I’ve been in Thailand for eight years now, so I’ve had plenty of time to experience being the “other,” the foreigner, the Farang. That’s what the Thais call us, Farang. I’m sure that it comes from a few hundred years ago when some of the first Europeans that they saw introduced themselves in French and it sounded like the Thai word farang, which means the fruit, the guava. (“So, you guys are the guava people?”) That’s so gentle that I never object to it at all, not even being compared to a Frenchman. It’s a lot nicer than the Japanese calling us “White Devils” (Gaijin).

Some aspects of being the other in Thailand are positive. I am seen as a citizen of a very developed, advanced industrial country, and I am imagined to possess all of the advantages that might come with that status. I am perceived, for instance, to be rich, wise in the ways of the world, savvy in business, and enormously practical of mind. I am assumed to have an adventurous nature, after all I have traveled half way around the world and decided to stay. I have resources, a good job, and a comfortable lifestyle. I get additional credit for having white skin and a high nose, and not only by virtue of being a White man. Both things were esteemed by Asians before we showed up, the fashion for whiteness and noses is an ancient tradition here. Thais find my blue eyes fascinating as well. But being the other has a darker side too, another side to the coin altogether.

Prejudice is involved. There are hostilities real and imagined. I know what it is to be handled in bulk, judged as a type, a category. When it is working in my favor I humbly accept the fruits that it offers; when it is working against me I try to remember that I am a guest here, and that after all I am genuinely the other in this situation.


Khun Fred, The Other

Without laboring the point . . .

Here, I am a big smelly thing. Different races, with different diets, have different smells, and different is not a good smell, usually. Look up some cartoons from post-war Japan featuring depictions of White, American soldiers, you’ll get some idea of how Asians perceive White people. Big, hairy, bestial things. Here, I try very hard to be polite but I get it wrong sometimes. The intricacies of Asian etiquette can be hard to master. Here, if something goes wrong I am likely to be blamed; if something goes right, someone else is likely to get the credit, because after all I am just a foreigner who doesn’t know shit from shoe polish. Here, I am liable to be hated because a Thai man, or his friend, or his cousin, was once dumped by his girlfriend after she decided to go with a Farang. Or, hated because the Thai man or woman knew a woman who was treated badly by a Farang. Or, just on principle, hated for coming to Thailand in the first place and expecting Thai women to fall all over me (which would be silly; nothing is further from the truth in my case, neither in my expectations nor in the actions of Thai womanhood). Here, Thai English teachers hate it that native speaking foreigners, with no teaching experience, can come to Thailand and immediately get a job teaching English for considerably more money than they are paid, and even those teachers that don’t know me hate me because they assume that I am an English teacher, which I’m not. Here, I am immediately grouped with all of the foreigners who come to Thailand and expect everything to be much more like their home countries; who expect all Thais to speak good English; who expect to be waited on hand and foot. Grouped with all of the rude, White foreigners who come to Thailand from countries that I will refrain from naming and who walk around drunk at 10:00 a.m. pulling at the clothes of modest Thai girls and asking in broken English, “how much!” I’m sure that I could go on, but this is a blog, not “War and Peace.”


The Real Lesson

Being the other has reminded me to be generous when considering the other and to wonder about all of the issues related to the entire other thing. The current situation in my miserable country begs the question: why is there now such a fury of vituperation about the nature of realness and otherness in America?

The simple answer is that a Black man is president. A justly elected Black man, not like that fool W, who had the election stolen for him by some close family friends.  Our current president is a legitimate winner of a national election for president. And people of all races and creeds voted for him, this Black person. This President of the United States.

Does it matter that his father was an actual African? Not constitutionally, because the president himself was born in America. Does it matter that his mom was a White woman? Or that his antecedents did not experience the slavery days in the old America? Not in the least. He is Black by the only test that matters, the mirror test. If your face shows enough of Blackness that you suffer from anti-Black discrimination in America you are a Black American as far as I am concerned. And he’s the president by the only test that matters, a properly won election. Now it is strongly hinted to us, by the people that he beat in that election, that his Blackness is a problem. The problem is phrased as anything from “socialist” to “anti-colonialist,” anything but the blunt statement: “duh! he’s a nigger!” Message received, thank you.

There is, obviously, a terrible streak of something beneath the surface of White society in America. Something that was exposed by the mere election of a Black president. Sure, evil forces have nurtured it, and financed it, and publicized it, forces that would do anything at all, literally, to push their selfish agenda. Does anyone think that his Blackness would be such a problem if he’d been elected as a Republican president, with solid Republican goals? No, then he’d be their . . . oh, jeez-Louise I almost said it again. But if he were on their team, it’d all be coolsville. As a Democrat though, it makes a wonderful fulcrum for the lever of Republican anti-everythingism. It’s the greatest gift they ever got. His Blackness will allow them to pick up some of the stupid vote on the cheap. The people in charge of this effort may not even be anti-Black themselves, as individuals, but they’re sure not above using it as a tool at their disposal.

I say the stupid vote, and I mean it. Let’s be real here, I mean we’re all friends, I have so few readers that I’m pretty sure I know all of you personally. Anybody who doesn’t like President Obama, considering that he inherited a seat in the modern Imperial Presidency, I just don’t understand it except at the level of racism. And racism is stupid. I mean, what’s not to like? He’s a good man. If I have to explain that to you, you’re not so good yourself. Except maybe the drone thing, but I’m pretty sure that whoever happened to be the president that stuff would be going on (that’s another blog post altogether; see “Shadow Executive;” see “Permanent Executive.”). He’s a mensch, for Christ’s sake, if I may mix my metaphors.

The disloyal opposition attack President Obama as being somehow alien to the American way of life, they paint him as the other, they use coded language like, “take our country back,” with stupid smiles, like they were getting away with some very clever ruse. What, I ask you, is so “other” about Black Americans?

I’m a White American, mea maxima culpa. It’s a group that I’m not particularly proud of these days, frankly. You would be forgiven to think that I was a “real American,” but you’d be less than totally correct. Oh, I’m White enough, it’s the American part that’s a little dodgy. One of the secret advantages of being White in America is that you might actually know what countries your antecedents came from. Overrated as an advantage, but it’s true. My families, the whole list of them, only got to America in the mid-Nineteenth Century, so I can safely say that the furthest south in Europe that any of my blood came from was Switzerland, and German Swiss at that. So White it is, not even a Frenchman in the mix. But coming so recently, how American is that? And a bunch of Catholics in there too, how American is that? Are those papists even Christians? All of my great-grandparents were born in old Europe, how American is that?

This America as a White country, a White Christian Country, is a terrible illusion and it leads to strange results. Now we are to believe that somehow Black Americans are not real Americans? But somehow I am? How’s that work out? The families of most Black Americans got to America long before any of my people did, and worked harder too, on average, and with quite different incentives. If Black Americans aren’t real Americans by this time, they never will be. Is that the point? They’re sure not real Africans anymore, just ask an African if you don’t believe me. They’ll tell you in a heartbeat (“Nope, not Africans.”) Shit, I’d get a warmer welcome in Ireland than a Black American would get in Africa.


My Ass

America is a White, Christian country my ass. Wake up, all you Iowans out there, you have nothing at all to do with America except for the couple of weeks every four years that the real Americans pay attention to about one hundred and seventy five of you eating giant breakfasts before starting the whole farm work routine. America takes place on the coasts, and maybe Chicago, where the money, the culture and almost all of the people are. And the coasts are diverse, DIVERSE, population wise, so get over it. We get along with Black Americans, Hispanic Americans from about fifty different countries, Asians from countries that you never heard of, and about seven ‘Stans. Religions you never heard of either, like you’ve actually heard of any to mention. You couple of thousand White people out in Kick-Stump don’t matter anymore, and no amount of taking-back-America hysteria is going to put you on top, where you never were to begin with. Those million plus Koreans out in Los Angeles, and that’s just Los Angeles mind you, they’re not going anywhere, and they’re as American as you, so get over it, get over yourself.

And if people at you church, or on your TV, or on your right-wing echo-chamber web site are telling you otherwise, it’s just because they’re convinced that you’re stupid enough to go for it. Wake up, smell the coffee, and vote for your actual interests for a change, vote for someone who will do something to help you. Sure, the drone strikes, endless detention, yadda, yadda, yadda. Anyone who still expects a perfect world should be committed to a mental institution, if they can find one that they can afford.

President Obama is us, the real us. Maybe if we can join forces, the real us, we could do away with these bullshiters who are trying to convince American voters to “take back their country” from the legitimately elected president. And get on with the real business at hand. Take my word for it, there’s plenty of it, work to do that is. Issues, real ones.

So let’s go! What’d’ya say?

Vote For The Best Man

Sure, vote for the one that you think is a good man, the best man available in the choice as it stands. Easier than it sounds.

Am I a good person? Am I one that can be trusted to judge others? My favorite joke is from a movie, “The Long Kiss Goodnight,” a Geena Davis vehicle featuring Samuel L. Jackson. Ms. Davis’ movie husband, on the occasion of his own birthday, offers a toast to himself: “. . . a toast to me, because I’m a good man, I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, and I don’t curse.” After a pause, he says with mock horror, “oh shit! I do smoke and drink!” What makes a good person, after all?

Me? Good? To begin with, I drink, I smoke, and I curse. Any qualities that you may see as good in me are probably there mostly for purposes of expedience and manipulation. Just give me the lightning, ye gods, for only half an hour and the world will quickly see how good I really am, to its horror. That may be true for all of us though, and I am happy to be judged by the qualities in me that you can see, rather than by the content of my heart.

Americans will be voting for president before too long, and on the surface the choice is a stark one.

Vote For Willard

Go ahead, see if I care. Furthermore, see if I care if you all vote for Willard and put in a Republican congress too. Go ahead! I dare you. At least things will get exciting.

It’s no mystery what an all Republicans, all the time government would do, they’ve made no secret about it. Amazingly, like Hitler in “Mein Kampf,” they are only too happy to tell you. And there are two people on the Supreme Court who could go at any moment, either by retirement or in a pine box. Who would Willard appoint? Who would the new congress ratify? Oh, yes, that would make a seven to two Supreme Court backing the Republican supremacy. What would they do? Think about it for a moment, you already know, I don’t have to tell you. If one or two of the seven suddenly developed an independent streak, one or two of the two would have to be very, very careful crossing the street, and flying in private planes would be out of the question (he said, with meaningful innuendo).

And Willard, do you think he is a good person? Is there one shred of evidence to suggest that he may be? I don’t see it. Plenty of signs though, that he is not.

Vote For The President

Before he took office there were many signs that he was a good person. He is certainly charming and polite, almost to a fault. He graduated from Columbia University and from Harvard Law School, where he was the president of the law review. He had his choice of where to go at that point, the world was his oyster, an almost limitless income was open to him. He chose, though, to spend the next years voluntarily poor, struggling even, with student debts dragging on for a decade or more. He chose service. That’s a good man right there. He’s a good family man too. Not like some of them who seem hardly to remember their children’s names. There’s more evidence of goodness, you either know it already or you can find it.

Whether you are disposed to evaluate him fairly, or not, is a real question for us this year.

After a term in office, there’s more evidence that we need to look at. On balance, he still looks like a good man, but maybe now like a good but imperfect man in a difficult situation. The family thing is still solid. Sure, there’s a lot of what is going on that I don’t like, the whole drone thing, the creeping imperialism, the ascendency of monied interests, the casual threats to the social safety net, and the primacy of financial considerations in every single controversy or societal choice, to name a couple.

Yes, I am one of those who is loathe to criticize the President. There’s plenty of people singing that song already, they don’t need my voice to help them. Mostly, though, I am deeply afraid of the alternative. So go ahead, if you so choose, vote for the President. There are more reasons to do so than not. Unless you can’t get past that Elephant-In-The-Room, that devilish threshold issue, you know the one, unless there’s just something about the man that sets you against him. Or two things, if you count his name. Search your consciences America, you’re better than you are acting this year.

A Choice Between Bad And Worse

Or maybe between "good/bad" and "bad/bad," or even "bad/worse."  An easy choice, when you look at it like that.  So really, there are more than two possible outcomes, and it’s the choice between the bads and the worses, with maybe a good in there somewhere if you have a generous spirit. Mr. Obama and a Republican congress? Willard and a Democratic congress? Mix and match. Any old way it gets sliced, however, the new politics of obstruction and polarization will remain with us.

I read blogs and news sources outside of my natural sphere, and the comments on the right wing sites are appalling. The divisions that have cynically been engendered over the last twenty or thirty years have calcified into a very dangerous opposition of forces. The unembarrassed racism and eliminationalism are really frightening. “Wookie” jokes about the first lady and claims that Liberals want to kill Conservatives and must be killed first are common. The language of the old John Birch Society sealed its dominance with the addition of “communist” to descriptions of everything that the new right wing extremists are told not to like. Is this what we’ve become?

Gentle reader, my sincerest wish for you and your families is that this impending, new reality does not fall too heavily on you. Falling it is, may the saints preserve us.

Cognitive Dissonance And The Damage Done

I write in a serious mood. I am distressed about the state of my country, and my society, less so but still distressed about the state of the entire world as we know it. The major reason for all of the interlocking directorate of problems that plague us is that people are believing what they are told, and not thinking for themselves.

No less of a great man than Dung Chow Ping once advised the Chinese people to “discover truth from facts.” It was good advice then, and it served the Chinese people well, as they were waking up from the hypnotic phantasm that was Maoism. It’s still good advice.


Modern American Politics

In our benighted epoch of history, otherwise intelligent Americans are drinking the Kool-Aid of their choice and turning themselves into credulous robots. Any meme that enters the political discourse, from whatever side of the battle, becomes tomorrows firmly held belief among great masses of people. Many of these beliefs are deeply antagonistic to the best interests of the people who hold them.

I love the Internet, and I love to read people’s comments on matters great and small. I do not only frequent sites that mirror my own point of view, I take great pleasure in reading a great variety of the opinions of ordinary Americans. I regularly read progressive news sites and blogs, but I also read, semi-regularly lets say, the Breitbart sites and Weasel Zippers, among others.

The Leftie sites have their own Kool-Aid of course, knee-jerk Liberalism is alive and well. So is the phony Liberalism, the “Not-In-My-Back-Yard” Liberalism that was so prevalent in my youth. Phony anti-racism, don’t even get me started. The Rightie sites take the cake though, in matters of the monolithic adoption of weird, counterintuitive, destructive ideas, hook, line and sinker, by people whose real interests lie elsewhere. The new Conservative media, and its adherents, represents the full flowering of cognitive dissonance in American politics.


Take Willard Romney, Please

The truth about American politics is out there, you don’t need to be an ivy league PhD to discover it. Most people ignore it though, most sign up for voluntary ignorance, preferring to stick with the talking points issued by their echo-chamber of choice.

I’m not here to explain it all to you, but let’s look at a prime example in the person of one Willard “Mitt” Romney. Willard is an obnoxious rich-kid with a weird sense of entitlement, a man who accumulated a king’s ransom in the private sector through dubious financial chicanery. He tells colossal lies on a daily basis. (Don’t believe me? Google “Romney” “lies.”) He runs away from any of the political successes that he can point too, there are a few, because they do not align properly with the new Conservative orthodoxy. He provides no descriptions of his plans for the country or the economy, sticking instead to generalities like “lowering regulation of business,” “cutting taxes,” and “restoring America.” He offers nothing but a more mean spirited version of the policies of the Bush years, now famously understood to have been profoundly destructive. He does this down to the last details, like school vouchers and the privatization of this and that. Oh, and “on my first day as president, I will take steps to repeal Obamacare.” Which of course the president has virtually no power to do, there is no mechanism for him to use to accomplish the banishment of a law that was passed by both houses of congress, signed by the acting president, and then validated by the Supreme Court. Maybe he plans to immediately declare a state of emergency? You couldn’t tell by him, he’s not talking. Oh, and flip-flopping, etc. And no one likes the guy. And his wife says crazy shit like “Obama wants to kill my husband.” She also keeps million dollar horses as an investment. It’s quite a list of what-not-to-like.

But, somehow, he’s running close to the current president in “the polls,” which themselves are a challenge for any thinking person to take seriously. And people repeat these silly things as good ideas. As might a parrot, after careful training.


Going To Canada

Does anyone believe that people are thinking for themselves? What is your evidence? Certainly not the rash of “I’m going to Canada!” comments that followed the recent Supreme Court decision in the ACA case.

Some misguidedly admired pseudo-conservative or other must have Tweeted that as a result of the decision he couldn’t stand it anymore, he was moving to Canada. This idea caught on like those Colorado wildfires, and suddenly the old Intertubes were full of comments and Tweets parroting the sentiment.

Think about it for just a moment: America (read: the Black President) is taking away my freedom! I can’t live in this new Socialist America! I’m going to Canada! Which of course is a genuinely Socialist country, with fully realized socialized healthcare. Which works, by the way.

“I hate Socialism!/I’m going to a Socialist Country!” “I hate Mitt Romney/I’m voting for Mitt Romney.” Or, if you ask me, “I hate losing my freedoms!/I’m voting for someone who will limit my freedoms!” Cognitive dissonance.


The Various Myths Of Jesus

This willful ignorance, this credulous preference for received truth, is not some new thing under the sun. It is nowhere more apparent than in the modern Christian religion, in its thousands of conflicting versions.

There is no doubt that Jesus was an interesting guy, and worth remembering fondly. If you focus on the things that he is credited with actually having said, as Thomas Jefferson suggested, the record is full of good ideas. He was a good teacher at the very least, and rates as a genuine prophet of social progress and tolerance. In this, he was in the mainstream of Jewish prophets, continuing an expansion of social consciousness that had been going on already for a thousand years.

Then he died, a very conventional human death due to blood loss, asphyxiation and shock, a typical crucifixion death. A wealth of literature grew up around him in the period that followed. The big question initially was whether Jesus was a Jew or was he some new thing, some other thing. Jewish officialdom lost interest, the Romans were tearing up the place, and the “some other thing” argument carried the day.

The divinity question arose later, and took on increasing significance. Within three hundred years, Christianity had become the official religion of the Roman Empire and Jesus had been declared divine, probably following the long standing tradition of Rome in the honoring of its great men. Of the early Christian writings, examples that were useful to this mythologizing were declared to be official; marginal or inconvenient texts became anathema and were forbidden, and where possible, destroyed.

Jesus then spent one thousand plus years mostly as a sword of power for the controlling elite. Since the Reformation, Jesus has become all things to all people, depending upon whom you ask. The good works and progressive ideas of a decent, straightforward, intelligent man were thusly co-opted and corrupted, mostly by men who’s prosperity depended on telling the masses of people what to believe, and then enforcing that belief.

By now the concept of “Christianity” is so malleable that the name of Jesus can be used to justify anything from helping the poor to demonizing the poor; from mere intolerance to murder and torture; from Brotherhood to Ethnic Cleansing. Those who accept these far ranging positions almost all do so on the word of someone else, without independent consideration. “Jesus hates Fags!” In a pig’s eye. “Jesus wept,” indeed.


Thus Endeth The Lesson

So my advice, whether you are choosing a religion or deciding whom to vote for, is to think for yourself. As that Chinese fellow said, “discover truth from facts.” You can do it! If you are in the guilty majority, please stop taking directions from unscrupulous, self-serving people who probably have their hands in your pockets as we speak.

Now That Makes Me Mad

This was a Facebook post by a fellow named Joe Madison, so whatever you do, don't give me any credit for it.  I found it on a blog that I like called "The Book of Cletis." I do wish that I'd written it though, and I endorse the concept, and the feeling:

"You Didn't Get Mad"

Since Obama's regime, all of a sudden, folks have gotten mad and want to take America Back...BACK TO WHAT/BACK TO WHERE?

After the 8 Years Of The Bush/Cheney Disaster, Now You Get Mad?

You didn't get mad when the Supreme Court stopped a legal recount and appointed a President.

You didn't get mad when Cheney allowed Energy company officials to dictate Energy policy and push us to invade Iraq...

"You didn't get mad when we illegally invaded a country that posed no threat to us.

You didn't get mad when we spent over a trillion dollars (and counting) on said illegal war.

You didn't get mad when Bush borrowed more money from foreign sources than the previous 42 Presidents combined.

You didn't get mad when over 10 billion dollars in cash just disappeared in Iraq.

You didn't get mad when Bush embraced trade and outsourcing policies that shipped 6 million American jobs out of the country.

You didn't get mad when they didn't catch Bin Laden.

You didn't get mad when Bush rang (unintentional deletion)

You didn't get mad when you saw the horrible conditions at Walter Reed.

You didn't get mad when we let a major US city, New Orleans, drown.

You didn't get mad when we gave people who had more money than they could spend, the 1%, over a trillion dollars in tax breaks.

You didn't get mad with the worst 8 years of job creations in several decades.

You didn't get mad when over 200,000 US Citizens lost their lives because they had no health insurance.

You didn't get mad when lack of oversight and regulations from the Bush Administration caused US Citizens to lose 12 trillion dollars in investments, retirement, and home values.

You finally got mad when a black man was elected President and decided that people in America deserved the right to see a doctor if they are sick.

Yes, illegal wars, lies, corruption, torture, job losses by the millions, stealing your tax dollars to make the rich richer, and the worst economic disaster since 1929 are all okay with you, but helping fellow Americans who are sick... Oh, Heck No!"

Back to Khun Fred here . . . 

I usually steer clear of politics, I'm depressed enough as it is.  This caught my eye though, and I thought that it was worth sharing.  

My Other Life

I have a comment life outside of this blog, and sometimes I wonder if it rises to the level of "blogging by proxy."  The reason is that I generally wish to keep things here in a lighter vein, unless the anger really rises within me and I vent too strongly without taking time to check the impulse.

Here's an example of a recent comment that I made on another blog:

"Sabrina makes good points, as usual. "The powers that carry over . . ." indeed. My point would be that these powers now exist outside of the body of the president, they have an independent life of their own.

So maybe the questions this year, or any year, when judging candidates, is who might do the most to cooperate with this super-executive, and who might take steps to mitigate the problem?

And the idea that there is no difference between the parties does not, I think, hold water. They, and the politicians that they put forward, do still tend to push the polity in different directions. There is still a choice. Not, perhaps, the choice that we would hope for, but the choice that we have.

So Steven: I do not believe that these are powers that President Obama has taken for himself; rather they are powers that existed before him and to which he is bound. Yes, I hold against him the drone strikes, and much else, and the collateral damage, but I believe any new president these days has the riot act read to him immediately, and is shown a line to toe. We wouldn't want to experience any unanticipated helicopter crashes, now would we?"


So yes, I think there is a choice between President Obama and Mr. Romney.  An important choice.  It may be akin to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, we might be sunk already, but we need to stay to our due diligence and do the little bit that we can to avoid the future that many of us are afraid is coming.  

And yes, to be clear, I'll be voting for the president.