No Joy

“Duke of Germany” arrested
for breaking into a house
and taking a shower.

“And here we have Idaho, winning her way to” -- shame. It has recently been announced that Idaho now ranks 50th among the states in the amount of money spent on education. No doubt this is a source of pride in Boise where our ignorant Republican legislators are making sure they can stay that way. Hey, what was good enough for Pappy is good enough for me. Too bad there is such little demand these days for harness and cannon ball makers.

Boehner, you remember him, the minority leader who looks like he must have been dipped in henna, has just accused President Obama of being childish and whining a lot. I’m not completely certain Boehner knows who Obama is, he doesn’t seem to know much about anything else. Boehner criticizing Obama is truly like an ant taking on a nuclear bomb. Oh well, Boehner comes across as relatively sane when compared to many of the other Republicans these days. You know, the ones showing off their prowess with machine guns, others wanting to pay their doctors with chickens, still others apologizing to BP for asking them to be responsible for their total irresponsibility, and don’t forget those who are threatening to bring down our government with their 2nd amendment rights, doing away with Social Security and Medicare, to say nothing of civil rights, abortion, the EPA, the Department of Education, the United Nations, Federal Reserve, unemployment benefits, rescinding health care, and also demand we keep on drilling no matter what. It’s going to be an interesting few months until the elections. This motley collection of raving lunatics actually believes they might even recapture control of the House and Senate. And you know what, they might, the rest of us seem to show signs of becoming just as bonkers as they are.

This must be at least importantly the result of one of our strongest and most admirable values, free speech, turning out to be one of our most important vulnerabilities. After years of virtually unchallenged hate speech and non-stop lies from right-wing radio, television, and newspapers, what would one expect? When hate merchants like Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity, O’Reilly, Coulter, Malkin, and others go basically unopposed day after day it was probably inevitable that (1) whatever intelligence there was in the public has probably significantly eroded, and (2) our country has become divided to the point of relative helplessness. Nothing can be accomplished because the goals have changed. Where once our government attempted to look after public affairs in the best interest of the citizens, it now looks after the best interests of the huge corporations that control the purse strings and buy whatever outcomes they wish. This is not a battle between Republicans and Democrats, or between the Left and the Right, or right and wrong, it is primarily a battle between the Haves and the Have-nots. The Haves are winning by a large margin. It is doubtful the Have-nots can make a comeback. As someone (I have no idea who) once said, “Marx didn’t anticipate the poor could be bought off with a six-pack of beer and a long-legged whore on Saturday night.”

And so it is at mid-year of the 10th year of the 21st century. We seem to have abandoned progress and are, in fact, backsliding, devolving instead of evolving, regressing instead of moving forward. We still have those, even some with the audacity to run for President, who do not believe in evolution. Some are arguing about things that were supposedly settled long ago. The relative age of the earth, for example, was pretty much settled by the 1860’s, but some are still arguing about it. They are not arguing about the earth being 3 or 4 billion years old instead of perhaps 8 or 9 billion years, or even longer, they are arguing the difference between 6000 years and several billion years! This is absolutely shameful. And these same people believe people existed contemporaneously with dinosaurs. They apparently truly believe this utterly absurd nonsense. And the media actually treats them seriously. This has been brought about by the very people who have prided themselves on not funding education, who are not interested in academics, learning, or even books, and who pride themselves on not being “pointy-headed intellectuals.” They acquire their abysmal ignorance through the likes of Beck and Limbaugh and are proud of it. Having brought our fine country to its knees, they will apparently not rest until it’s finally destroyed.

Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright;
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light,
And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout;
But there is no joy in Mudville — mighty Casey has struck out.
Ernest Thayer