Definition of subversion:
the act of subverting : the state of being subverted; especially : a systematic attempt to overthrow or undermine a government or political system by persons working secretly from within.
I would like very much to label the Tea Party members of the House of Representatives in particular, and Republicans in general, as subversives, which I believe they are. They have been clearly out to subvert the government of the United States, represented by our President Barack Obama, at apparently any cost to the nation or its citizens. But according to the above definition I guess I cannot so label them because they have not been working “secretly from within.” In fact, they have blatantly been working publicly ever since Obama was elected President and Rush Limbaugh, unacknowledged leader of the Republican Party, announced he wanted him to fail. This was followed by Mitch McConnell, leader of the Senate Republicans, announcing that their (the Republicans) number one priority would be to see to it that Obama would be a one term President. Not only did they make these claims, they have faithfully done everything within their power to make it come true, opposing virtually everything Obama has attempted to do, even in cases where they themselves had first suggested it should be done. It is clear they have resisted all of the attempts by Obama to create jobs and improve conditions for our citizens for no reason other than the fact that Obama has wanted them. If this is not subversive I don’t know what is. I suppose that technically, because they have not done it secretly from within, you might say it is not subversive, but it seems to me that is basically mincing words.
There are other definitions of subversion as well. But they almost invariably define the act as having to involve physical or violent means, planning to overthrow the government by force. So here again, what the Republicans have done over the past three years is, strictly speaking, not subversion (although there have been random threats against the President, suggestions that he should be assassinated and so on). As these do not seem to be organized or necessarily involve the Republican Party as such, they, too, don’t count as subversion by the party. I’m pretty sure there must be laws against subversives, but they would never be applied to this situation. This Department of Justice (and Administration) has proven to be useless when it comes to prosecuting war criminals or fraudulent bankers. In any case they would no doubt say they haven’t done anything illegal. I guess subversion in the pursuit of politics is no vice.
There is clearly a bit of a problem here when it comes to behavior and language. Mitch McConnell, leader of the Senate Republicans, once said of their plans to bring down Obama, “Isn’t that always the case, the party out of power always tries to defeat the incumbent,” or words to that effect. As there is a bit of truth to this it might seem reasonable. However, I think you would have to suggest that while it is true, it has never before implied the party out of power would, in effect, simply stop governing for three years. There is no precedent for such a move on the part of a political party. The idea, at least as I would understand it, is that both parties have to be involved in conducting the nation’s business, looking after the welfare of the citizens as well as the welfare of the nation. You don’t just refuse to participate in government while trying to unseat the incumbent, at least as far as I know or can remember. This is genuinely subversive and makes a mockery of government.
There seems to be an example of this kind of subversion going on at the moment. The House of Representatives is apparently reneging on an understanding they had with the Senate, by refusing to agree to the compromise worked out in the Senate between Democrats and Republicans having to do with extending the payroll tax cuts. Someone pointed out that the Senate would not have gone home if they had known the House was not going to approve their bill. This makes sense to me. It makes me believe that Boehner had assured them the House would go along, but then when he was confronted by the Tea Party wing he had to renege. Knowing that if he brought it up for a House vote it would pass, and knowing the Tea Party did not want it to pass, he came up with the rather preposterous claim that he had not known it was only for two months, and that was not satisfactory for the House. This of course is utter nonsense and is nothing but an attempt to force the Senate to return to Washington to consider further the matter they had already settled on a bipartisan basis. It is a bluff to try to force President Obama into ordering the Senate back in session for a completely unnecessary reconciliation session. Reid and Obama have refused to do so, leaving the House Republicans in an extremely awkward situation. If they don’t back down and pass the bill, as of January first 160,000,000 million ordinary working Americans will see their taxes increase substantially. As Republicans are always opposed to any increase in taxes they will have egg all over their faces (or blueberry juice, according to the Reverend Al Sharpton). Boehner was apparently in favor of passing this bill and is being prevented by the Tea Party members of the House. You almost have to feel sorry for him. But Rachel Maddow suggested very early that Boehner may not be up to the job, and it seems to me that might well be the case. So what is likely to happen? Will the more traditional Republicans allow the Tea Party to lead them all to almost certain defeat in the coming elections? Will they cave in and finally pass the bill, however embarrassing it may be? Will they succeed in once more blaming Obama? Will Obama cave once more? Isn’t politics fun? Watch our country dissolve into a failed helpless giant begging in the streets while international corporations continue to slop their obscenely wealthy hogs.
Mighty hard to tell the people you love you’re a failure.
Laura Moncur
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Sunday, December 18, 2011
The Bear - book
The Bear History of a Fallen King, Michel Pastoureau (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge and London, 2011) translated from the French by George Holoch.
I found this an interesting book for several reasons. It is only marginally about real flesh and blood bears. It is a subject historians do not ordinarily spend much time pursuing (the history of animals), and it deals with periods of time about which I know very little. Similarly, it might as well have been sub-titled Bears versus the Catholic Church, something I would never have thought of at all until I read this book. The author is a cultural historian specializing, I believe, in the Middle Ages.
I knew, of course, there was a long history of the association of bears with humans. I had read A. Irving Hallowell’s work on Bear Ceremonialism in the Americas, and I was also aware of the importance of the bear among the Ainu, the ancient people of Japan. This work deals primarily with bears as they appear in European folklore, myths, ceremonies, the iconography and hagiography of the Middle Ages and somewhat before. It is obviously exceedingly well researched, the author clearly has command of the relevant materials, and it is a fine job.
Reduced to the bare essentials, bears, prior to about the year 1000, were thought of as closely related to humans, and were considered to be the king of the animals, as such they featured in rituals that more often than not had a religious connotation. They were the largest and fiercest animals on the European continent. They were also quite humanlike in their behavior as they could stand on their hind legs, use their paws much like hands, be taught to dance and do other tricks, they were omnivores, and in general resembled humans more than any other creatures. More importantly, in the folklore and myths of the time they were (erroneously) believed to engage in ventral/ventral copulation like humans and to lust after young women. There were many stories about bears capturing young women, taking them off to their dens and raping them, thus producing offspring that were part human, part animal. It was also believed that women were sexually attracted to them, partly because hair was believed to be sexually attractive to women. Bears, in short, had a mythical god-like aura and were venerated in different ways.
With the rise of Christianity, Catholicism, this came to pose a serious problem for the Church which could not tolerate animals, especially bears, to be compared with humans and worshipped. Thus the Church began a movement to not only eliminate bears by encouraging them to be deliberately killed, but also to insure they could not have a place in any way equal to humans. Bears that had been for centuries considered kings were now portrayed as inferior to humans. There were many stories of how bears had been dominated by Saints and had come to serve them in different capacities, as companions, beasts of burden, and helpers of various kinds, always because of the superiority of Saints that made it possible for them to overcome and make bears do their bidding. At the same time the Church was working constantly to get people to abandon their various forms of bear worship and trying to destroy any idea that bears were like humans. Bears were common in the menageries kept by Kings and came to lose their mystique and reputation.
After many years of this, and beginning about the year 1000, the lion slowly became considered the king of beasts. Where the bear had been featured on family crests, flags, banners, seals, and so on, they were slowly replaced with images of lions. Where formerly a man was ideally to prove his manhood by besting a clever and vicious bear in hand-to-hand combat, this theme disappeared and bears came to be seen as rather slow, dumb, obese, awkward creatures, that were no match for humans at all. Bears were demeaned, turned into entertainers, dancing, and doing tricks for people, greedily consuming sweets given to them, and acting as all around entertainers. Their position in the animal kingdom fell below that of stags, boars, eagles, and most other creatures.
And so it was that after hundreds of years the Church managed to replace the bear as king with the lion (that did not have the same human features as bears and were foreign to Europe as well). The destruction of the bear as quasi-human was very successful and bears even to this day are thought of as clowns rather than as kings. The bear mystique was always much stronger in Northern Europe than in the South, apparently because there were more bears in the North and they were much larger than those in the South (apparently these smaller bears were found as far south as Tunisia).
Pastoureau suggests the bear may have achieved a measure of revenge with the creation of the Teddy Bear, now beloved by children everywhere. As you may know this creation came about after an incident in which Teddy Roosevelt, an avid hunter, refused to shoot a tethered bear, saying that had he done so he would not have been able to look his children in the eyes. A family that had as their business making stuffed animals made a bear, asked the White House if they could call it a Teddy Bear, received permission, and the result, as you know, has been a monumental success.
There is, of course, much more to The Bear than I have been able to cover here. If you are interested in folk tales, hagiography, iconography, and the literature of the Middle Ages, you will find this book of more than merely passing interest.
I found this an interesting book for several reasons. It is only marginally about real flesh and blood bears. It is a subject historians do not ordinarily spend much time pursuing (the history of animals), and it deals with periods of time about which I know very little. Similarly, it might as well have been sub-titled Bears versus the Catholic Church, something I would never have thought of at all until I read this book. The author is a cultural historian specializing, I believe, in the Middle Ages.
I knew, of course, there was a long history of the association of bears with humans. I had read A. Irving Hallowell’s work on Bear Ceremonialism in the Americas, and I was also aware of the importance of the bear among the Ainu, the ancient people of Japan. This work deals primarily with bears as they appear in European folklore, myths, ceremonies, the iconography and hagiography of the Middle Ages and somewhat before. It is obviously exceedingly well researched, the author clearly has command of the relevant materials, and it is a fine job.
Reduced to the bare essentials, bears, prior to about the year 1000, were thought of as closely related to humans, and were considered to be the king of the animals, as such they featured in rituals that more often than not had a religious connotation. They were the largest and fiercest animals on the European continent. They were also quite humanlike in their behavior as they could stand on their hind legs, use their paws much like hands, be taught to dance and do other tricks, they were omnivores, and in general resembled humans more than any other creatures. More importantly, in the folklore and myths of the time they were (erroneously) believed to engage in ventral/ventral copulation like humans and to lust after young women. There were many stories about bears capturing young women, taking them off to their dens and raping them, thus producing offspring that were part human, part animal. It was also believed that women were sexually attracted to them, partly because hair was believed to be sexually attractive to women. Bears, in short, had a mythical god-like aura and were venerated in different ways.
With the rise of Christianity, Catholicism, this came to pose a serious problem for the Church which could not tolerate animals, especially bears, to be compared with humans and worshipped. Thus the Church began a movement to not only eliminate bears by encouraging them to be deliberately killed, but also to insure they could not have a place in any way equal to humans. Bears that had been for centuries considered kings were now portrayed as inferior to humans. There were many stories of how bears had been dominated by Saints and had come to serve them in different capacities, as companions, beasts of burden, and helpers of various kinds, always because of the superiority of Saints that made it possible for them to overcome and make bears do their bidding. At the same time the Church was working constantly to get people to abandon their various forms of bear worship and trying to destroy any idea that bears were like humans. Bears were common in the menageries kept by Kings and came to lose their mystique and reputation.
After many years of this, and beginning about the year 1000, the lion slowly became considered the king of beasts. Where the bear had been featured on family crests, flags, banners, seals, and so on, they were slowly replaced with images of lions. Where formerly a man was ideally to prove his manhood by besting a clever and vicious bear in hand-to-hand combat, this theme disappeared and bears came to be seen as rather slow, dumb, obese, awkward creatures, that were no match for humans at all. Bears were demeaned, turned into entertainers, dancing, and doing tricks for people, greedily consuming sweets given to them, and acting as all around entertainers. Their position in the animal kingdom fell below that of stags, boars, eagles, and most other creatures.
And so it was that after hundreds of years the Church managed to replace the bear as king with the lion (that did not have the same human features as bears and were foreign to Europe as well). The destruction of the bear as quasi-human was very successful and bears even to this day are thought of as clowns rather than as kings. The bear mystique was always much stronger in Northern Europe than in the South, apparently because there were more bears in the North and they were much larger than those in the South (apparently these smaller bears were found as far south as Tunisia).
Pastoureau suggests the bear may have achieved a measure of revenge with the creation of the Teddy Bear, now beloved by children everywhere. As you may know this creation came about after an incident in which Teddy Roosevelt, an avid hunter, refused to shoot a tethered bear, saying that had he done so he would not have been able to look his children in the eyes. A family that had as their business making stuffed animals made a bear, asked the White House if they could call it a Teddy Bear, received permission, and the result, as you know, has been a monumental success.
There is, of course, much more to The Bear than I have been able to cover here. If you are interested in folk tales, hagiography, iconography, and the literature of the Middle Ages, you will find this book of more than merely passing interest.
Saturday, December 17, 2011
Obsolescence
I think we can pretty much agree our political system is dysfunctional to the extreme at this moment in time. Many people seem to agree that one of the worst problems is the amount of money being poured into the elections, particularly after the absurd politicized Supreme Court decision that corporations are people and should be allowed to contribute as much money as possible. This means, among other things, the system is now corrupted beyond belief, and the fate of our elections rests in the hands of the corporations that can either buy them outright or inhibit anyone from dissenting by threatening to spend big money to defeat them. I grant this is an extremely important problem and needs desperately to be corrected. But as correcting it involves a constitutional amendment it cannot be corrected for a long time, if ever. This is, in my opinion, only one of the problems of obsolescence that seems to be in play.
Even if the money was taken out of the system, and even if it worked as a democratic system (which it doesn’t), it would still be dysfunctional because it is obsolete. Our democratic society, or Republic, if you will, was designed for a time that has long passed. It was all well and good at the time to pick leaders who seemed to be the best choices possible (mostly wealthy landowners). In those halcyon days most of the leaders were of about the same socio-economic level, and more importantly, knew much the same about the condition of the country both internally and internationally. You could vote for a Jefferson or a Madison knowing they knew as much or more about what was happening as anyone available. Not only that, things moved very slowly, there was always time to make necessary corrections, communication was primitive, and in the worst cases things had often sorted themselves out by the time anything could be done about it. Both domestic and international problems were well known by those “in the know,” and politics was much simpler then. But if the goal of “government” is to insure the well-being of the citizenry, and also to deal with international relations, things are very different in the modern world, fantastically more complicated, and thousands of times more difficult. The idea that one White landowner was much the same as another simply does not apply any longer. The requirements of office are much more demanding. That, I think, is where much of the problem lies. One candidate is no longer much the same as another, and none of the candidates are truly knowledgeable or suitable enough for the important offices they aspire to. We elect candidates who almost universally are not truly qualified. We do not have a large cadre of individuals with sufficient knowledge of either domestic or international affairs from which to select our leaders.
This can be seen clearly in the current crop of Republican candidates, but it is true of all candidates in general. I do not mean to be unkind but individuals like Sarah Palin, Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann, and Donald Trump are quite plain and simply not qualified for the Presidency. In fact, I would argue none of the candidates are qualified. Romney thinks he is qualified because he was a successful businessman, but is that really enough to be President? Running a large and complex nation is not the same as running a business. George W. Bush was certainly not qualified, even though he was a Governor of Texas, nor is Rick Perry qualified. This is because Governors, like Presidents, are not elected on the basis of their qualifications but, rather, on political grounds, who has the most money or at least access to the most money, and so on. In fact Governors as well as many others, can be just plain ignorant if not basically stupid.
Interestingly enough, in the United States there are no prerequisites for holding important offices, none. This is why you can have candidates like Herman Cain who basically don’t believe you have to know anything at all to be President, just be a “leader.” But a leader who knows virtually nothing cannot truly lead, at least not successfully. George W. Bush is a recent case in point. Nor do I believe being a lawyer is in and of itself a sufficient qualification for the Presidency, although knowledge of Constitutional law should help. This lack of expertise runs throughout the system. Presidents need to have the best advice available, but those in positions to advise are often no more knowledgeable than the President himself, such advisors can be chosen for very questionable reasons. Our Senators and House members are similarly elected for strange reasons and often know virtually nothing about what they should know in order to successfully decide on vital national and public issues. Many of them are lawyers, others are wealthy enough to get elected no matter how little they know, some are businessmen, and others are even exterminators or comedians. They may well be decent people, and even well-intentioned, but they simply do not command the knowledge they need to make reasonable and thoughtful decisions; witness, for example, those who oppose action on global warming or other environmental problems, or those who blindly follow their religious beliefs when it comes to Israel, or those who oppose stem cell research, and so on. This is not always merely just a difference of opinion, it is often a difference of opinion based on ignorance.
We do not take “governing” seriously. If we did we would not cling to this obsolete practice of electing people on the basis of whether or not we might like to have a beer with them, nor would we be so cavalier when it comes to examining their qualifications. You have to be examined to have a driver’s license, to own a gun, to become a plumber or an electrician, even a hairdresser, but you do not have to have any qualifications whatsoever to be the most powerful person in the world, with a nuclear arsenal and the most powerful military on earth at your disposal. I submit this is a ridiculous way to run a country. If we want to have a decent, intelligent, and smoothly functioning government, one that will look after our national interests in the best possible way, we should have a large cadre of people well trained for that purpose, perhaps a National University for those who aspire to enter government service at any level. They should be well versed in history, political economy, geography, management, science (at least to some minimal level), as well as ethics and government. They should know where to look for advice and be confident their advisors actually know their business. In the advanced years of their training they should be given internships and become familiar with the ongoing problems of the moment, international relations, domestic problems, and so on. Those who distinguish themselves should be able to move up in the system, run for office, and ultimately be able to make thoughtful, conscientious decisions about public welfare and international problems.
Yeah, I know, pie in the sky. This can never happen until: (1) money becomes unimportant in elections, and (2) we must get serious about the governance of our country. If we wish to continue as a nation and compete on an international scale we must get our house in order, educate our children, and speed up the decision-making process. This is not the 18th century anymore.
However much we talk of the inexorable laws governing the life of individuals and of societies, we remain at the bottom convinced that in human affairs everything is more or less fortuitous. We do not even believe in the inevitability of our own death. Hence the difficulty of deciphering the present, of detecting the seeds of things to come as they germinate before our eyes. We are not attuned to seeing the inevitable.
Eric Hoffer
Even if the money was taken out of the system, and even if it worked as a democratic system (which it doesn’t), it would still be dysfunctional because it is obsolete. Our democratic society, or Republic, if you will, was designed for a time that has long passed. It was all well and good at the time to pick leaders who seemed to be the best choices possible (mostly wealthy landowners). In those halcyon days most of the leaders were of about the same socio-economic level, and more importantly, knew much the same about the condition of the country both internally and internationally. You could vote for a Jefferson or a Madison knowing they knew as much or more about what was happening as anyone available. Not only that, things moved very slowly, there was always time to make necessary corrections, communication was primitive, and in the worst cases things had often sorted themselves out by the time anything could be done about it. Both domestic and international problems were well known by those “in the know,” and politics was much simpler then. But if the goal of “government” is to insure the well-being of the citizenry, and also to deal with international relations, things are very different in the modern world, fantastically more complicated, and thousands of times more difficult. The idea that one White landowner was much the same as another simply does not apply any longer. The requirements of office are much more demanding. That, I think, is where much of the problem lies. One candidate is no longer much the same as another, and none of the candidates are truly knowledgeable or suitable enough for the important offices they aspire to. We elect candidates who almost universally are not truly qualified. We do not have a large cadre of individuals with sufficient knowledge of either domestic or international affairs from which to select our leaders.
This can be seen clearly in the current crop of Republican candidates, but it is true of all candidates in general. I do not mean to be unkind but individuals like Sarah Palin, Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann, and Donald Trump are quite plain and simply not qualified for the Presidency. In fact, I would argue none of the candidates are qualified. Romney thinks he is qualified because he was a successful businessman, but is that really enough to be President? Running a large and complex nation is not the same as running a business. George W. Bush was certainly not qualified, even though he was a Governor of Texas, nor is Rick Perry qualified. This is because Governors, like Presidents, are not elected on the basis of their qualifications but, rather, on political grounds, who has the most money or at least access to the most money, and so on. In fact Governors as well as many others, can be just plain ignorant if not basically stupid.
Interestingly enough, in the United States there are no prerequisites for holding important offices, none. This is why you can have candidates like Herman Cain who basically don’t believe you have to know anything at all to be President, just be a “leader.” But a leader who knows virtually nothing cannot truly lead, at least not successfully. George W. Bush is a recent case in point. Nor do I believe being a lawyer is in and of itself a sufficient qualification for the Presidency, although knowledge of Constitutional law should help. This lack of expertise runs throughout the system. Presidents need to have the best advice available, but those in positions to advise are often no more knowledgeable than the President himself, such advisors can be chosen for very questionable reasons. Our Senators and House members are similarly elected for strange reasons and often know virtually nothing about what they should know in order to successfully decide on vital national and public issues. Many of them are lawyers, others are wealthy enough to get elected no matter how little they know, some are businessmen, and others are even exterminators or comedians. They may well be decent people, and even well-intentioned, but they simply do not command the knowledge they need to make reasonable and thoughtful decisions; witness, for example, those who oppose action on global warming or other environmental problems, or those who blindly follow their religious beliefs when it comes to Israel, or those who oppose stem cell research, and so on. This is not always merely just a difference of opinion, it is often a difference of opinion based on ignorance.
We do not take “governing” seriously. If we did we would not cling to this obsolete practice of electing people on the basis of whether or not we might like to have a beer with them, nor would we be so cavalier when it comes to examining their qualifications. You have to be examined to have a driver’s license, to own a gun, to become a plumber or an electrician, even a hairdresser, but you do not have to have any qualifications whatsoever to be the most powerful person in the world, with a nuclear arsenal and the most powerful military on earth at your disposal. I submit this is a ridiculous way to run a country. If we want to have a decent, intelligent, and smoothly functioning government, one that will look after our national interests in the best possible way, we should have a large cadre of people well trained for that purpose, perhaps a National University for those who aspire to enter government service at any level. They should be well versed in history, political economy, geography, management, science (at least to some minimal level), as well as ethics and government. They should know where to look for advice and be confident their advisors actually know their business. In the advanced years of their training they should be given internships and become familiar with the ongoing problems of the moment, international relations, domestic problems, and so on. Those who distinguish themselves should be able to move up in the system, run for office, and ultimately be able to make thoughtful, conscientious decisions about public welfare and international problems.
Yeah, I know, pie in the sky. This can never happen until: (1) money becomes unimportant in elections, and (2) we must get serious about the governance of our country. If we wish to continue as a nation and compete on an international scale we must get our house in order, educate our children, and speed up the decision-making process. This is not the 18th century anymore.
However much we talk of the inexorable laws governing the life of individuals and of societies, we remain at the bottom convinced that in human affairs everything is more or less fortuitous. We do not even believe in the inevitability of our own death. Hence the difficulty of deciphering the present, of detecting the seeds of things to come as they germinate before our eyes. We are not attuned to seeing the inevitable.
Eric Hoffer
Friday, December 16, 2011
Morally Reprehensible
I hate to say it, and I am not at all pleased about it, but I am finally forced to admit that I believe it is true, our country, the United States of America, is a morally reprehensible nation. I do not mean that only certain elements in it are morally reprehensible (although some are probably more so than others), I mean it is morally reprehensible from top to bottom, from corner to corner, from state to state, county to city, town to hamlet. Not only that, I believe our moral status in the world is not only reprehensible, it is irresponsible and indefensible as well.
We proudly claim to be the wealthiest, most powerful nation on earth, the wonderful “Beacon on the hill,” the land of opportunity, the model of democracy, the land of the free and the home of the brave. How do you reconcile such claims with the facts that one of every five of our children is living in poverty, one in every forty-five are homeless, and roughly one half of our population is living either in poverty or on the edge of poverty? We have children testifying they have been homeless all or most of their lives, do not have enough to eat, cannot see a doctor or a dentist, live in their cars or on the street, and have no hope for the future. Many of them realize their parents are doing the best they can, they work, but the best they can is not good enough because their wages are too low to provide an adequate living. This is true now, right now, right here in this country we profess to be so great. This is shameful, disgusting, reprehensible, immoral, and virtually unprecedented among the more industrialized, supposedly “civilized” nations on earth. And while we have the power to do something about it, we don’t, and haven’t for a long time.
I do not believe Republicans are uniquely responsible for the condition we currently find ourselves in, but at the moment they do constitute the single most important reason nothing is being done to alleviate the poverty and misery that now infects our country, taken over by a plague of greedy locusts consuming everything in sight. A small group of Republicans in the House of Representatives has managed to block every effort to improve the conditions of our lives. They have not themselves offered a single jobs bill, and they have opposed every effort on the part of President Obama and the democrats to create jobs. They are opposed to unemployment insurance, universal health care, a minimum wage, Social Security, and even a reduction in taxes for the Middle class where it is desperately needed. They oppose any effort to improve the lot of the Middle class and the poor while at the same time insisting that taxes cannot be raised even minimally on the wealthiest people in the country. And they repeatedly use blackmail to get their way, threatening to shut down the country if they cannot have their pounds of flesh. They are unmoved by the testimony of homeless children, impervious to the facts of poverty, and oblivious to the obligations of the offices they hold. They are beyond any doubt beyond shame, beyond guilt, beyond reason, and past all dishonor. They are morally reprehensible, human parasites feeding on the public trust, betraying their oaths of office, trashing the ideals upon which our nation was founded, and promoting completely unnecessary misery for millions.
Some of them profess ideological reasons for their sadistic behavior, but it is an ideology of greed, of the jungle, a primitive form of social Darwinism that decent people abandoned long ago. It is an ideology that basically denies the social foundations of human societies in favor of a “dog eat dog” system that pits individuals against each other in mad attempts to get more, more, more, always more. It is a belief in a form of unregulated capitalism that inevitably results in most of the collective wealth ending up in the hands of a few and the enslavement of the many. The basic idea of sharing, common to virtually all previously known human groups (that we refer to as “primitive”), has no place in such a system, morality becomes a foreign concept fit only for “socialists,” “communists,” and “suckers.”
Our country is not only morally reprehensible when it comes to domestic affairs, it is equally reprehensible when it comes to international affairs. Would you believe a candidate for the Presidency of the United States was roundly condemned for suggesting we should not bomb a sovereign country simply because we believe they might someday be a threat to us? Would you believe that one candidate actually said Iran was not only building a nuclear bomb (for which there is no evidence), but as soon as they had one they would use it to attack Israel and the United States, claims so idiotic they should have been uttered by someone already in a straightjacket. With one exception every Republican candidate has indicated they are not only willing but actually eager to start a war with Iran, ideas not only morally reprehensible but also completely irresponsible, totally thoughtless, and unworthy of anyone professing to seek the Presidency.
Congress consists of one third, more or less, scoundrels; two thirds, more or less, idiots; and three thirds, more or less, poltroons.
H. L. Mencken
We proudly claim to be the wealthiest, most powerful nation on earth, the wonderful “Beacon on the hill,” the land of opportunity, the model of democracy, the land of the free and the home of the brave. How do you reconcile such claims with the facts that one of every five of our children is living in poverty, one in every forty-five are homeless, and roughly one half of our population is living either in poverty or on the edge of poverty? We have children testifying they have been homeless all or most of their lives, do not have enough to eat, cannot see a doctor or a dentist, live in their cars or on the street, and have no hope for the future. Many of them realize their parents are doing the best they can, they work, but the best they can is not good enough because their wages are too low to provide an adequate living. This is true now, right now, right here in this country we profess to be so great. This is shameful, disgusting, reprehensible, immoral, and virtually unprecedented among the more industrialized, supposedly “civilized” nations on earth. And while we have the power to do something about it, we don’t, and haven’t for a long time.
I do not believe Republicans are uniquely responsible for the condition we currently find ourselves in, but at the moment they do constitute the single most important reason nothing is being done to alleviate the poverty and misery that now infects our country, taken over by a plague of greedy locusts consuming everything in sight. A small group of Republicans in the House of Representatives has managed to block every effort to improve the conditions of our lives. They have not themselves offered a single jobs bill, and they have opposed every effort on the part of President Obama and the democrats to create jobs. They are opposed to unemployment insurance, universal health care, a minimum wage, Social Security, and even a reduction in taxes for the Middle class where it is desperately needed. They oppose any effort to improve the lot of the Middle class and the poor while at the same time insisting that taxes cannot be raised even minimally on the wealthiest people in the country. And they repeatedly use blackmail to get their way, threatening to shut down the country if they cannot have their pounds of flesh. They are unmoved by the testimony of homeless children, impervious to the facts of poverty, and oblivious to the obligations of the offices they hold. They are beyond any doubt beyond shame, beyond guilt, beyond reason, and past all dishonor. They are morally reprehensible, human parasites feeding on the public trust, betraying their oaths of office, trashing the ideals upon which our nation was founded, and promoting completely unnecessary misery for millions.
Some of them profess ideological reasons for their sadistic behavior, but it is an ideology of greed, of the jungle, a primitive form of social Darwinism that decent people abandoned long ago. It is an ideology that basically denies the social foundations of human societies in favor of a “dog eat dog” system that pits individuals against each other in mad attempts to get more, more, more, always more. It is a belief in a form of unregulated capitalism that inevitably results in most of the collective wealth ending up in the hands of a few and the enslavement of the many. The basic idea of sharing, common to virtually all previously known human groups (that we refer to as “primitive”), has no place in such a system, morality becomes a foreign concept fit only for “socialists,” “communists,” and “suckers.”
Our country is not only morally reprehensible when it comes to domestic affairs, it is equally reprehensible when it comes to international affairs. Would you believe a candidate for the Presidency of the United States was roundly condemned for suggesting we should not bomb a sovereign country simply because we believe they might someday be a threat to us? Would you believe that one candidate actually said Iran was not only building a nuclear bomb (for which there is no evidence), but as soon as they had one they would use it to attack Israel and the United States, claims so idiotic they should have been uttered by someone already in a straightjacket. With one exception every Republican candidate has indicated they are not only willing but actually eager to start a war with Iran, ideas not only morally reprehensible but also completely irresponsible, totally thoughtless, and unworthy of anyone professing to seek the Presidency.
Congress consists of one third, more or less, scoundrels; two thirds, more or less, idiots; and three thirds, more or less, poltroons.
H. L. Mencken
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Interesting, at Least
However ridiculous the United States political process has become, and it does seem to me to have become ridiculous beyond belief, you have to admit it is interesting, in a kind of sick, nauseating kind of way. Consider the current situation: On the one hand you have Willard “Mitt” Romney, the candidate the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party can’t stand and refuses to support; on the other hand you have Newton Leroy Gingrich, the other leading candidate that the more conservative wing of the Republican Party (as it sort of still exists) cannot stand. The only other candidate in the lead at the moment is now exposed as a racist kind of Pa Kettle who would turn the clock back to the 19th century (maybe even the 18th). No one believes he has even a ghost of a chance of ever becoming President and the other two leading candidates are described merely as “average.”
This would seem to virtually guarantee that President Obama would be re-elected for a second term as even Republicans are dissatisfied with the slate of candidates they have. But once again, attempting to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, Obama’s recent boneheaded decisions may well give these Republican dolts a chance. Obama, for whatever reason, decided to block women’s desires to have easy access to the so-called abortion pill. This has enraged women throughout the country and they are bitter about it. More importantly, he has now decided not to veto the Military Authorization Bill (or whatever it is called), which will give him and the military unprecedented powers to arrest, incarcerate, and presumably keep forever (or until the end of the terrorist threat, whichever comes first) even American citizens considered to either be or aid terrorists. They will be able to do this in the U.S. (for the first time) and merely on the grounds of suspicion, with no requirement for a trial. In other words, you could be arrested and locked up forever with no right to Habeas Corpus merely on the whim of whoever is President. Fascism has now arrived just in time for Christmas. Needless to say neither of these Presidential acts is pleasing to the Progressive base, nor should they be pleasing to anyone with a brain larger than a walnut.
President Obama seems to have an enormous amount of luck when it comes to his political career. He was elected to the Senate easily because he was running against one of the looniest of candidates for office ever, Alan Keyes, who did not even live in the state at the time. As I recall this was because his original opponent had to drop out of the race at the last minute. Now Obama’s luck may hold, not because he might not deserve defeat, but because his opponent, if he or she is one of the current Republican candidates, will be so dreadful Obama will be seen as the only conceivable choice. Romney probably would have the best chance, but he’s a Mormon (which shouldn’t matter but will), an almost pathological flip-flopper, and has neither personality, charisma, or connection to the ordinary voting public. Gingrich is regarded by those who know him as basically hopeless as a leader, egomaniacal, and a “walking hand grenade,” not exactly qualities likely to help him get either the nomination or elected to the office. And both Romney and Gingrich, along with the others still in the campaign, are apparently eager to start another war (with Iran) as soon as possible. Their appreciation of international relations seems to be on a par with Herman Cain’s statement to Barbara Walters that he would like to be Secretary of Defense.
It is interesting that they seem to have no understanding whatsoever about the Iranians. They keep repeating how it is that Iran is a “danger” to the U.S. and, indeed, the entire world. Iran should not be allowed to have a nuclear bomb (that presumably they would immediately drop on either Israel or the United States), and we must at all costs follow the dictates of Israel whatever the consequences. This is beyond even bizarre. First, there is no evidence Iran is developing a bomb; second, they would clearly not use it if they did have one; third, Iran has not attacked anyone for more than 200 years; fourth, these accusations are the most nonsensical since those against Iraq; fifth, the Iranians have offered to negotiate with the U.S. on numerous occasions only to be consistently rebuffed. This warmongering over Iran is absolute hogwash. The only threat is that Iran obviously might like to have some influence in their own neighborhood which would be a threat to U.S. and European hegemony in the region. But imagine that, a country might want to have some influence with what goes on with their neighbors and don’t see why a nation 8000 miles away should take precedence. Some are saying war with Iran is inevitable. We had certainly better hope not and those who are promoting one should be considered as likely candidates for the men in the white suits with nets, looking for crazies.
Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to understand the game, and dumb enough to think it's important.
Eugene McCarthy
This would seem to virtually guarantee that President Obama would be re-elected for a second term as even Republicans are dissatisfied with the slate of candidates they have. But once again, attempting to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, Obama’s recent boneheaded decisions may well give these Republican dolts a chance. Obama, for whatever reason, decided to block women’s desires to have easy access to the so-called abortion pill. This has enraged women throughout the country and they are bitter about it. More importantly, he has now decided not to veto the Military Authorization Bill (or whatever it is called), which will give him and the military unprecedented powers to arrest, incarcerate, and presumably keep forever (or until the end of the terrorist threat, whichever comes first) even American citizens considered to either be or aid terrorists. They will be able to do this in the U.S. (for the first time) and merely on the grounds of suspicion, with no requirement for a trial. In other words, you could be arrested and locked up forever with no right to Habeas Corpus merely on the whim of whoever is President. Fascism has now arrived just in time for Christmas. Needless to say neither of these Presidential acts is pleasing to the Progressive base, nor should they be pleasing to anyone with a brain larger than a walnut.
President Obama seems to have an enormous amount of luck when it comes to his political career. He was elected to the Senate easily because he was running against one of the looniest of candidates for office ever, Alan Keyes, who did not even live in the state at the time. As I recall this was because his original opponent had to drop out of the race at the last minute. Now Obama’s luck may hold, not because he might not deserve defeat, but because his opponent, if he or she is one of the current Republican candidates, will be so dreadful Obama will be seen as the only conceivable choice. Romney probably would have the best chance, but he’s a Mormon (which shouldn’t matter but will), an almost pathological flip-flopper, and has neither personality, charisma, or connection to the ordinary voting public. Gingrich is regarded by those who know him as basically hopeless as a leader, egomaniacal, and a “walking hand grenade,” not exactly qualities likely to help him get either the nomination or elected to the office. And both Romney and Gingrich, along with the others still in the campaign, are apparently eager to start another war (with Iran) as soon as possible. Their appreciation of international relations seems to be on a par with Herman Cain’s statement to Barbara Walters that he would like to be Secretary of Defense.
It is interesting that they seem to have no understanding whatsoever about the Iranians. They keep repeating how it is that Iran is a “danger” to the U.S. and, indeed, the entire world. Iran should not be allowed to have a nuclear bomb (that presumably they would immediately drop on either Israel or the United States), and we must at all costs follow the dictates of Israel whatever the consequences. This is beyond even bizarre. First, there is no evidence Iran is developing a bomb; second, they would clearly not use it if they did have one; third, Iran has not attacked anyone for more than 200 years; fourth, these accusations are the most nonsensical since those against Iraq; fifth, the Iranians have offered to negotiate with the U.S. on numerous occasions only to be consistently rebuffed. This warmongering over Iran is absolute hogwash. The only threat is that Iran obviously might like to have some influence in their own neighborhood which would be a threat to U.S. and European hegemony in the region. But imagine that, a country might want to have some influence with what goes on with their neighbors and don’t see why a nation 8000 miles away should take precedence. Some are saying war with Iran is inevitable. We had certainly better hope not and those who are promoting one should be considered as likely candidates for the men in the white suits with nets, looking for crazies.
Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to understand the game, and dumb enough to think it's important.
Eugene McCarthy
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Consuming the Children
You will recall Jonathan Swift’s modest proposal that the Irish could solve the problem of child poverty by eating their children, a proposal I revisited not long ago (Morialekafa 8-27-11). With one child in every 5 currently living in poverty, and one in every 45 homeless, we obviously did not follow Swift’s sarcastic suggestion. But there are other ways of consuming the children other than literally eating their flesh. Here in the United States we have been pioneering these methods for years.
Let me begin with what (hopefully) may be the beginning of the end of this rather absurd pioneering, the trillion dollars our young people currently owe as a result of having to borrow money to attend Colleges and Universities. You see, instead of GIVING our young people an education, or at least making it affordable, as most decent advanced countries do, we hit upon the scheme of charging them large tuition fees, making it necessary for them to borrow substantially from banks and others, or not be able to attend or graduate. Then, having squeezed every bit of money we could from them (and their parents) we release them into a situation where there are no jobs, thus relegating them to the scrap yards of the unemployed (and quite probably to the scrap yards of history as well). A decent education is not only good for our young people as individuals, it is even more important for the continuation and success of our culture, but not, of course, if it interferes with profits.
Consuming our children in this way did not begin with the relatively recent phenomenon of large student loans, it actually began many years ago with our educational system in general. It has been true since the beginning of our country that a successful democracy demands a well informed (and by implication, at least) a well educated citizenry. But a well informed, well educated citizenry is basically a threat to the powers that be, those in control of government, if they wish to remain in control. Thus it is in the best interest of the governing class (if their desire is merely to stay in power) to minimize education and information. This is unfortunately what has happened here in the U.S. of A., where serving in the public interest has been all but forgotten in the desire to serve the corporate masters and thus stay in office. To this end (unstated, unconfessed, even in some cases perhaps unintentionally) our educational system at all levels has been grossly underfunded and neglected for years. Teachers have been terribly underpaid, classes have been enlarged to accommodate more students for less money, school buildings and equipment have been allowed to deteriorate, and education in general has been underappreciated. In the lower grades many children come so hungry they can’t learn (and have to be fed). Our schools, especially our Middle and High Schools have been converted into little more than holding pens for our children, keeping them off the streets and labor market, infantilizing them, and providing them with little in the way of genuine educational opportunities. Many High schools are so bad large numbers of students drop out and never graduate (as many as 50% in some places) thus dooming them to wasted lives of poverty and hopelessness. Most of them who do somehow manage to graduate do not go on to school either because they cannot afford it or are so disenchanted with education they do not wish to, and many who do go on never finish. The ones that do finish, if they are fortunate, may find jobs, but often far below their abilities. The slogan, “A mind is a terrible thing to waste,” doesn’t resonate in a culture that routinely wastes millions of minds year after year.
Not only is this true, the educational institutions at all levels have consistently declined in recent years. Our Colleges and Universities have been converted mostly into professional schools where one goes to presumably become able to get a job (or find a husband). There is no love of learning as such, no “intellectual osmosis with ‘great-souled’ minds,” and even fewer and fewer direct contacts between Professors and students. It is cheaper to use teaching assistants and part-time teachers than pay for the best. This terrible situation has even been exacerbated in recent years by the rise of more and more private universities, their goal being to make a profit rather than providing the best educations. Grades have been inflated (what difference does it make), requirements have been reduced, courses have been cheapened, those who do make it through have learned less and less. The money goes to the administration and the athletic programs while the Colleges of Arts and Sciences suffer.
This situation is virtually suicidal for any nation that wants to continue to exist and flourish. But now that nations are becoming more and more irrelevant while huge international corporations become dominant, some of them with economies larger than most countries, consuming our children becomes less and less of a problem. They can hire the talent they need from other countries that have not yet abandoned education, talent they did not even have to pay the educational costs for, and talent that is willing and eager to work for less money. If the nation and the children suffer, so what, profits are assured, the masses of unemployed workers will either starve or, in more enlightened places, be given some form of welfare to barely and begrudgingly keep them alive, but with no medical insurance and no hope for the future. People are becoming resigned to the realization their children’s lives and opportunities will be less than those they themselves enjoyed. Thus it is that we don’t eat our children, we merely chew them up and spit them out, without even realizing the nutritional value we might have gained from actually eating them.
America believes in education: the average professor earns more money in a year than a professional athlete earns in a whole week.
Evan Esar
Let me begin with what (hopefully) may be the beginning of the end of this rather absurd pioneering, the trillion dollars our young people currently owe as a result of having to borrow money to attend Colleges and Universities. You see, instead of GIVING our young people an education, or at least making it affordable, as most decent advanced countries do, we hit upon the scheme of charging them large tuition fees, making it necessary for them to borrow substantially from banks and others, or not be able to attend or graduate. Then, having squeezed every bit of money we could from them (and their parents) we release them into a situation where there are no jobs, thus relegating them to the scrap yards of the unemployed (and quite probably to the scrap yards of history as well). A decent education is not only good for our young people as individuals, it is even more important for the continuation and success of our culture, but not, of course, if it interferes with profits.
Consuming our children in this way did not begin with the relatively recent phenomenon of large student loans, it actually began many years ago with our educational system in general. It has been true since the beginning of our country that a successful democracy demands a well informed (and by implication, at least) a well educated citizenry. But a well informed, well educated citizenry is basically a threat to the powers that be, those in control of government, if they wish to remain in control. Thus it is in the best interest of the governing class (if their desire is merely to stay in power) to minimize education and information. This is unfortunately what has happened here in the U.S. of A., where serving in the public interest has been all but forgotten in the desire to serve the corporate masters and thus stay in office. To this end (unstated, unconfessed, even in some cases perhaps unintentionally) our educational system at all levels has been grossly underfunded and neglected for years. Teachers have been terribly underpaid, classes have been enlarged to accommodate more students for less money, school buildings and equipment have been allowed to deteriorate, and education in general has been underappreciated. In the lower grades many children come so hungry they can’t learn (and have to be fed). Our schools, especially our Middle and High Schools have been converted into little more than holding pens for our children, keeping them off the streets and labor market, infantilizing them, and providing them with little in the way of genuine educational opportunities. Many High schools are so bad large numbers of students drop out and never graduate (as many as 50% in some places) thus dooming them to wasted lives of poverty and hopelessness. Most of them who do somehow manage to graduate do not go on to school either because they cannot afford it or are so disenchanted with education they do not wish to, and many who do go on never finish. The ones that do finish, if they are fortunate, may find jobs, but often far below their abilities. The slogan, “A mind is a terrible thing to waste,” doesn’t resonate in a culture that routinely wastes millions of minds year after year.
Not only is this true, the educational institutions at all levels have consistently declined in recent years. Our Colleges and Universities have been converted mostly into professional schools where one goes to presumably become able to get a job (or find a husband). There is no love of learning as such, no “intellectual osmosis with ‘great-souled’ minds,” and even fewer and fewer direct contacts between Professors and students. It is cheaper to use teaching assistants and part-time teachers than pay for the best. This terrible situation has even been exacerbated in recent years by the rise of more and more private universities, their goal being to make a profit rather than providing the best educations. Grades have been inflated (what difference does it make), requirements have been reduced, courses have been cheapened, those who do make it through have learned less and less. The money goes to the administration and the athletic programs while the Colleges of Arts and Sciences suffer.
This situation is virtually suicidal for any nation that wants to continue to exist and flourish. But now that nations are becoming more and more irrelevant while huge international corporations become dominant, some of them with economies larger than most countries, consuming our children becomes less and less of a problem. They can hire the talent they need from other countries that have not yet abandoned education, talent they did not even have to pay the educational costs for, and talent that is willing and eager to work for less money. If the nation and the children suffer, so what, profits are assured, the masses of unemployed workers will either starve or, in more enlightened places, be given some form of welfare to barely and begrudgingly keep them alive, but with no medical insurance and no hope for the future. People are becoming resigned to the realization their children’s lives and opportunities will be less than those they themselves enjoyed. Thus it is that we don’t eat our children, we merely chew them up and spit them out, without even realizing the nutritional value we might have gained from actually eating them.
America believes in education: the average professor earns more money in a year than a professional athlete earns in a whole week.
Evan Esar
Sunday, December 11, 2011
Christmas
Yes, I fear it is that time of year, the annual celebration of excess and little restraint. I’m not crazy about Christmas, it’s okay, but very confused. I’m not a Scrooge, just a kind of semi-Scrooge. I don’t object to giving presents, provided I can order them on the Internet and never have to engage in ordinary shopping, a procedure I regard as close to a season in hell. After many years of marriage we have a system worked out that takes most of the problems out of shopping. My wife gives me a list of what she wants, I order it, and that’s that. At my age I only get two kinds of presents, socks and underwear and an occasional book. That is as it should be. Of course this takes away some of the mystery and all of the anticipation, but it’s worth it.
Of course there remains the problem of the Christmas tree. Buying a tree destroys my wife’s romantic view of how Christmas is supposed to be. Thus we have to find a cut a tree out in the “wild.” This is a bit easier said than done as really nice Christmas-type trees don’t exist in the wild except rarely. So every year at about this time we scour our six acres for a suitable tree, she in her knee length boots, me carrying the trusty “Swede saw” (it’s just not worth it to bother with the chain saw). Luckily this year there is almost no snow on the ground so the going was relatively easy. Unfortunately, most of the trees that grow on Sandhill are Ponderosa pines, not at all suitable for the purpose. But there are a few other evergreens and we usually find a tree that is satisfactory if far from perfect. But then the tree has to be put up in a stand of some sort that will keep it erect. This requires one person to hold the tree upright while the other crawls on their belly to tighten the screws. Although my wife insists on a wild tree she also has the strange idea that it ought to be perfectly symmetrical and stand perfectly upright. As this is an impossibility, it requires a long time and considerable effort to make it look exactly right (which it never really does). Eventually we reach a compromise and then the decorations have to go on the tree. Of course by now we have so many decorations this is very time-consuming, especially with the five cats who insist on “helping.” I saw a cartoon the other day that I wish I could reproduce for you, but I’ll just have to describe it as it is relevant to this problem: Two cats are sitting in a bar drinking. One explains to the other, “Every year they do this. They bring in a tree and they hang all sorts of bright dangling ornaments on it. But they freak out if I even go near it. That’s why I drink.” Anyway, you see the problem, especially if you have cats.
Then there is the problem of theology. Christmas, we are told, celebrates the birth of Christ, but for the vast majority of Americans I am quite certain this is not what they are celebrating. First of all, Christmas trees are a carryover from some more Pagan ceremony of the past. Second, I have never known anyone who seriously considered the birth of Christ while participating in this excess of commercialism without restraint. It is true that some people put out a plastic creche, but many more just string lights and decorations. These have little or no meaning to most people other than just another form of conspicuous consumption (he who has the most decorations and lights wins). Furthermore, I suspect many younger people have no idea what a manger is, and how many people know what frankincense and myrrh are, or even care? Given the performance of our Government in recent years I doubt they know even what a Wise Man is. It is true that as an Atheist I obviously do not celebrate the birth of Christ, but frankly, none of the religious people I have ever known pretended they were actually celebrating the birth of Christ. Christmas has obviously become a basically secular holiday, promoted by merchants who make a large percentage of their sales during this holiday season. The whole thing has become a farce.
For me, one of the worst features of Christmas is the dreadful music, Christmas carols. It is bad enough one has to hear them over and over for weeks but the lyrics are mostly either insipid or bizarre. “Round yon virgin, mother and child,” “Angels bending near the earth,” “And heaven and nature sing,” and so on. Actually, the lyrics to the original Christmas carols, although religious in nature and sometimes a bit strange, are far better than what passes for Christmas carols nowadays: “Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer,” “I saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus,” ”All I want for Christmas is my 2 Front Teeth,” “Rocking Around the Christmas Tree,” “Santa Baby,” and others even more dreadful. These newer “carols” seem to outnumber the traditional ones by far, but how on earth can they be reconciled with a celebration of the birth of Christ?” We have made a mockery of what was supposed to be a serious and meaningful celebration. We no longer praise the Lord, we praise the sales, the layaways, the bargains, while we buy junk imported from China for our children and items we don’t need or want for each other. Christmas has become an orgy of nonsense, a massive fraud, a time of gluttony, a period that represents our daily lives, only blown up by a thousandfold. And yet, paradoxically, there is still that little something about Christmas, a little spark that causes us to embrace it year after year in spite of everything else.
Even as an Atheist I regret what has happened to this holiday. I wish it was more serious and less nonsensical. As it no longer truly focuses on the birth of Christ, perhaps it could be renamed and broadened into a holiday that could be celebrated by all people simultaneously, people with true visions of the sugarplums of peace and good will to all, a period of reflection and thoughts of brotherhood and liberty and happiness and of a small world on a small planet where everyone works together for the benefit of all the wonderful creatures and plants that exist on it. Sigh!
In any case, Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, be of good cheer!
Of course there remains the problem of the Christmas tree. Buying a tree destroys my wife’s romantic view of how Christmas is supposed to be. Thus we have to find a cut a tree out in the “wild.” This is a bit easier said than done as really nice Christmas-type trees don’t exist in the wild except rarely. So every year at about this time we scour our six acres for a suitable tree, she in her knee length boots, me carrying the trusty “Swede saw” (it’s just not worth it to bother with the chain saw). Luckily this year there is almost no snow on the ground so the going was relatively easy. Unfortunately, most of the trees that grow on Sandhill are Ponderosa pines, not at all suitable for the purpose. But there are a few other evergreens and we usually find a tree that is satisfactory if far from perfect. But then the tree has to be put up in a stand of some sort that will keep it erect. This requires one person to hold the tree upright while the other crawls on their belly to tighten the screws. Although my wife insists on a wild tree she also has the strange idea that it ought to be perfectly symmetrical and stand perfectly upright. As this is an impossibility, it requires a long time and considerable effort to make it look exactly right (which it never really does). Eventually we reach a compromise and then the decorations have to go on the tree. Of course by now we have so many decorations this is very time-consuming, especially with the five cats who insist on “helping.” I saw a cartoon the other day that I wish I could reproduce for you, but I’ll just have to describe it as it is relevant to this problem: Two cats are sitting in a bar drinking. One explains to the other, “Every year they do this. They bring in a tree and they hang all sorts of bright dangling ornaments on it. But they freak out if I even go near it. That’s why I drink.” Anyway, you see the problem, especially if you have cats.
Then there is the problem of theology. Christmas, we are told, celebrates the birth of Christ, but for the vast majority of Americans I am quite certain this is not what they are celebrating. First of all, Christmas trees are a carryover from some more Pagan ceremony of the past. Second, I have never known anyone who seriously considered the birth of Christ while participating in this excess of commercialism without restraint. It is true that some people put out a plastic creche, but many more just string lights and decorations. These have little or no meaning to most people other than just another form of conspicuous consumption (he who has the most decorations and lights wins). Furthermore, I suspect many younger people have no idea what a manger is, and how many people know what frankincense and myrrh are, or even care? Given the performance of our Government in recent years I doubt they know even what a Wise Man is. It is true that as an Atheist I obviously do not celebrate the birth of Christ, but frankly, none of the religious people I have ever known pretended they were actually celebrating the birth of Christ. Christmas has obviously become a basically secular holiday, promoted by merchants who make a large percentage of their sales during this holiday season. The whole thing has become a farce.
For me, one of the worst features of Christmas is the dreadful music, Christmas carols. It is bad enough one has to hear them over and over for weeks but the lyrics are mostly either insipid or bizarre. “Round yon virgin, mother and child,” “Angels bending near the earth,” “And heaven and nature sing,” and so on. Actually, the lyrics to the original Christmas carols, although religious in nature and sometimes a bit strange, are far better than what passes for Christmas carols nowadays: “Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer,” “I saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus,” ”All I want for Christmas is my 2 Front Teeth,” “Rocking Around the Christmas Tree,” “Santa Baby,” and others even more dreadful. These newer “carols” seem to outnumber the traditional ones by far, but how on earth can they be reconciled with a celebration of the birth of Christ?” We have made a mockery of what was supposed to be a serious and meaningful celebration. We no longer praise the Lord, we praise the sales, the layaways, the bargains, while we buy junk imported from China for our children and items we don’t need or want for each other. Christmas has become an orgy of nonsense, a massive fraud, a time of gluttony, a period that represents our daily lives, only blown up by a thousandfold. And yet, paradoxically, there is still that little something about Christmas, a little spark that causes us to embrace it year after year in spite of everything else.
Even as an Atheist I regret what has happened to this holiday. I wish it was more serious and less nonsensical. As it no longer truly focuses on the birth of Christ, perhaps it could be renamed and broadened into a holiday that could be celebrated by all people simultaneously, people with true visions of the sugarplums of peace and good will to all, a period of reflection and thoughts of brotherhood and liberty and happiness and of a small world on a small planet where everyone works together for the benefit of all the wonderful creatures and plants that exist on it. Sigh!
In any case, Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, be of good cheer!
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Death, Slavery, and Maximizing Unhappiness
• Death, Slavery, and the Maximization of Unhappiness: I take this to be the current Republican Party’s Credo, their Bill of Non-rights, superseding the original statement in the Declaration of Independence: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. While I am sure they will deny this, it seems obvious to me that both their words and acts of the last few years indicate it is a perfectly adequate description of what seems to be their agenda.
They have been and still are opposed to universal health care (unless you are wealthy enough to afford it). This means that many, many people will die sooner than necessary and inevitably in unnecessary pain as they lack proper health care. They support the Health Care Insurance business that basically makes their profits on the misery and death of their clients. You will no doubt recall some of their famous statements on this question. Ron Paul, for example, explaining that if you don’t have health care it’s your own fault and you should just be left to die. There was applause. Then there was that Nevada Republican Bimbo who suggested if you were sick you should see if your Doctor would take a chicken for his fee (lots of people have chickens these days). When it comes to death more broadly conceived, remember how they cheered when it was announced how many people had been executed by Rick Perry as Governor of Texas. And don’t forget they are opposed to regulations having to do with clean air and water, pharmaceuticals, workplace safety, and virtually anything that might protect people from environmental dangers, including global warming. And, of course, they are generally in favor of permanent war, sending our young people around the world to die for oil and other industries. The death of others, especially non-Westerners, seems not to bother them in the least. I remind you of Alan Grayson’s terse description of the Republican health care plan: “If you get sick, die quickly.”
As far as slavery goes, it now exists in a somewhat different form than it did in days of yore. Nowadays we have “wage slavery” and other forms of slavery as well. Republicans are opposed to a minimum wage, insisting the market should determine wages, and thus laying the foundation for wages so low as to keep people virtually enslaved to the low-paying job they are lucky to have, as there are masses of people with no jobs to replace them if they leave or get so uppity as to suggest anything as terrible as forming a union. If you don’t have a job they do not want you to have unemployment insurance. One of them famously said, “If you don’t work you shouldn’t eat.”They want you to have to accept the most demeaning jobs ever for the lowest wages ever. Most ordinary working people are also slaves to the banks because of usurious credit card rates. These high rates are basically the functional equivalent of slavery as once you fall into their debt they make it as difficult as possible to get out of it. Credit cards exist for the purpose of making profits for the “Masters,” just as slaves on the Plantations did. The only difference is they are not allowed to beat or rape you whenever they feel like it. When you are forced to work for what are basically slave wages it is difficult to stay out of debt, and once you’re in debt you’re in their clutches and have to struggle mightily to ever prosper. I am speaking here of ordinary credit card debt, they also have so-called “Payday Lenders” who at times manage to get as much as 300% interest. Republicans resist changing the laws to prevent this, just as they resist changes to the Credit Card industry in general and Bank regulations as well.
It should be obvious that all of the above contributes to the maximization of unhappiness. But there is more. They are opposed to Gay marriages, thus making probably as much as 10% of the population unhappy. They are opposed to women having a choice when it comes to their own bodies, thus forcing them to have children they cannot afford and possibly do not want to care for. This means that not only the mothers are made unhappy but their unwanted children are doomed probably to a lifetime of unhappiness as well. They don’t support subsidized child care thus making it as difficult as possible for poor women to work and buy food for themselves and their children. Similarly, when it comes to immigrants, they oppose citizenship for children born here and see no problem with splitting up families in order to enforce the law, the same laws their benefactors break to attract cheap labor in the first place. They are also attempting to create onerous laws making it more difficult to vote, especially for older and younger voters, and minorities as well. I cannot imagine this makes their lives any happier. They also oppose any restrictions on gun ownership, apparently believing it makes everyone happy to be able to carry their guns to school, church, and even into bars. I doubt this makes most people happy. They seem to seek out ways to make people unhappy, it’s like they fear that some Middle Class or Poor person, somewhere, somehow, someway, might actually have a moment of happiness. They even want people to abstain from sex, trying to ban contraception, birth control and even Planned Parenthood, and demanding “abstinence only “advice to teenagers (which seems to make them have even more sex). They insist that drugs be criminalized, filling up our jails with non-violent pot smokers (and lots of minorities), making anyone happy? You can be certain if there is anything designed to make the Middle Class and the Poor more unhappy than they already are, Republicans will be in favor of it. Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness be damned. Their solution to all our problems: more of the same.
The object of government in peace and in war is not the glory of rulers or of races, but the happiness of the common man.
Lord William Beveridge
They have been and still are opposed to universal health care (unless you are wealthy enough to afford it). This means that many, many people will die sooner than necessary and inevitably in unnecessary pain as they lack proper health care. They support the Health Care Insurance business that basically makes their profits on the misery and death of their clients. You will no doubt recall some of their famous statements on this question. Ron Paul, for example, explaining that if you don’t have health care it’s your own fault and you should just be left to die. There was applause. Then there was that Nevada Republican Bimbo who suggested if you were sick you should see if your Doctor would take a chicken for his fee (lots of people have chickens these days). When it comes to death more broadly conceived, remember how they cheered when it was announced how many people had been executed by Rick Perry as Governor of Texas. And don’t forget they are opposed to regulations having to do with clean air and water, pharmaceuticals, workplace safety, and virtually anything that might protect people from environmental dangers, including global warming. And, of course, they are generally in favor of permanent war, sending our young people around the world to die for oil and other industries. The death of others, especially non-Westerners, seems not to bother them in the least. I remind you of Alan Grayson’s terse description of the Republican health care plan: “If you get sick, die quickly.”
As far as slavery goes, it now exists in a somewhat different form than it did in days of yore. Nowadays we have “wage slavery” and other forms of slavery as well. Republicans are opposed to a minimum wage, insisting the market should determine wages, and thus laying the foundation for wages so low as to keep people virtually enslaved to the low-paying job they are lucky to have, as there are masses of people with no jobs to replace them if they leave or get so uppity as to suggest anything as terrible as forming a union. If you don’t have a job they do not want you to have unemployment insurance. One of them famously said, “If you don’t work you shouldn’t eat.”They want you to have to accept the most demeaning jobs ever for the lowest wages ever. Most ordinary working people are also slaves to the banks because of usurious credit card rates. These high rates are basically the functional equivalent of slavery as once you fall into their debt they make it as difficult as possible to get out of it. Credit cards exist for the purpose of making profits for the “Masters,” just as slaves on the Plantations did. The only difference is they are not allowed to beat or rape you whenever they feel like it. When you are forced to work for what are basically slave wages it is difficult to stay out of debt, and once you’re in debt you’re in their clutches and have to struggle mightily to ever prosper. I am speaking here of ordinary credit card debt, they also have so-called “Payday Lenders” who at times manage to get as much as 300% interest. Republicans resist changing the laws to prevent this, just as they resist changes to the Credit Card industry in general and Bank regulations as well.
It should be obvious that all of the above contributes to the maximization of unhappiness. But there is more. They are opposed to Gay marriages, thus making probably as much as 10% of the population unhappy. They are opposed to women having a choice when it comes to their own bodies, thus forcing them to have children they cannot afford and possibly do not want to care for. This means that not only the mothers are made unhappy but their unwanted children are doomed probably to a lifetime of unhappiness as well. They don’t support subsidized child care thus making it as difficult as possible for poor women to work and buy food for themselves and their children. Similarly, when it comes to immigrants, they oppose citizenship for children born here and see no problem with splitting up families in order to enforce the law, the same laws their benefactors break to attract cheap labor in the first place. They are also attempting to create onerous laws making it more difficult to vote, especially for older and younger voters, and minorities as well. I cannot imagine this makes their lives any happier. They also oppose any restrictions on gun ownership, apparently believing it makes everyone happy to be able to carry their guns to school, church, and even into bars. I doubt this makes most people happy. They seem to seek out ways to make people unhappy, it’s like they fear that some Middle Class or Poor person, somewhere, somehow, someway, might actually have a moment of happiness. They even want people to abstain from sex, trying to ban contraception, birth control and even Planned Parenthood, and demanding “abstinence only “advice to teenagers (which seems to make them have even more sex). They insist that drugs be criminalized, filling up our jails with non-violent pot smokers (and lots of minorities), making anyone happy? You can be certain if there is anything designed to make the Middle Class and the Poor more unhappy than they already are, Republicans will be in favor of it. Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness be damned. Their solution to all our problems: more of the same.
The object of government in peace and in war is not the glory of rulers or of races, but the happiness of the common man.
Lord William Beveridge
Friday, December 09, 2011
The Rich Kid
Why is it so many people just do not seem to like Willard “Mitt” Romney? My belief is, it’s because he is a perfect example of the Rich Kid trying to be “one of the guys” without knowing the culture well enough to become one of them. By trying to become something he isn’t he attempts to ingratiate himself with them. For example, he claims falsely to be a hunter when he has perhaps hunted only twice in his entire life, pretends to be a member of NRA when he’s not, and so on. Similarly, in his ambition to be President he uses the same technique of ingratiation, changing his position whenever he thinks it might help him. He seems not to understand that by doing this he is accomplishing the exact opposite of what he intends. By flip-flopping on every issue he makes himself even more of the Rich Kid trying to belong. When, for example, he claims that he, too, is unemployed he comes across as totally inauthentic, phony, and this is quite apparent to everyone. He doesn’t know how to talk with ordinary people, working people, and always appear either stiff or condescending or both. You don’t, for example, walk into a restaurant full of customers and say “what’s going on here.” He is, in short, the equivalent of a political “Nerd.” He neither talks the talk nor walks the walk. He doesn’t know how. He cannot possibly know how ordinary working people live.
In his obsession with becoming President he is willing to say anything, take any position, if he thinks it will help. In his latest embrace of the absurd Ryan budget, he seems to be pursuing it only because it is the opposite of the Gingrich position, a wonderful case in point. Paradoxically, and as unfortunate as it may be, even his emphasis on his stable 42 year marriage, and his belonging to the same church all his life, makes him suspect as that is not the typical life career of most Americans, it is in fact relatively unreal. If he were to proudly claim he was an Eagle Scout it would not work to his advantage (I am not saying he did claim this distinction). Most American boys do not become Boy Scouts, and few that do achieve Eagle Scout status, however desirable this may be. Having lived such an exemplary life is more likely to get you accused of being a “Goody, goody, two shoes,” than a “regular guy.” The fact of the matter is, in my opinion, Willard “Mitt” Romney is every bit as much the “Other,” as Republicans have tried to make Obama. Even his using “Mitt” rather than Willard is evidence of his trying desperately to be “just a regular guy.” I am not suggesting that Romney is a bad person, or that he has not lived an exemplary life, or that he suffers from a bad character, or is living a lie. He is, unfortunately, for himself, and perhaps even for the rest of us, too far out of the main stream of American culture to be a very convincing candidate for the Presidency.
I attribute Romney’s inability to connect with ordinary Americans (including other politicians) to his life history. Born into wealth and a Mormon family, sheltered, attending a prestigious Prep school for the very wealthy (he was not athletic), spending time as a missionary in France (where he was not very successful with the wine-loving Catholics not amenable to Mormonism, admitting what he was doing was rejected), later a year at Stanford (where he was opposed to the opposers), BYU, and eventually a special Harvard program in Business and Law (he was an excellent student whose classmates considered him “guilelessly optimistic). All in all he seems to have been the epitome of the “button down” conservative. While this experience no doubt fitted him splendidly for a career in business, it also kept him well apart from the mainstream of American culture. Thus it is true that from the standpoint of most ordinary Americans he lacks authenticity, he is not “one of them.” He is too perfect, too straight, too privileged, and too unable to “relate.” Strangely perhaps, Newt Gingrich with all his warts and baggage, is someone ordinary people can relate to, however sleazy he may actually be. Even more interesting when it comes to Gingrich is the fact that people do not seem to consider him what he actually is, or at least claims to be. That is, while he considers himself Professorial, a Historian and an Intellectual (and Professors and intellectuals do not usually fare well in American politics), people either overlook this or forgive him, seemingly thinking of him as basically a politician, or even a kind of “hustler,” someone who is more like themselves only smarter (he has successfully conned people into believing this over his many years of promoting himself). In any case, he is certainly not the “Other” that Romney is. Obviously you would not even consider having a beer with Romney, a non-drinking Mormon, but Gingrich might be entertaining.
Thus we have this bizarre situation where someone who has the background, experience, and means to become President, probably won’t, because he simply doesn’t relate well to others, whereas someone who is demonstrably unethical, only marginally moral, pompously egomaniacal, and disturbingly unpredictable, may have a better chance. Who says life isn’t stranger than fiction?
When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.
Mark Twain
In his obsession with becoming President he is willing to say anything, take any position, if he thinks it will help. In his latest embrace of the absurd Ryan budget, he seems to be pursuing it only because it is the opposite of the Gingrich position, a wonderful case in point. Paradoxically, and as unfortunate as it may be, even his emphasis on his stable 42 year marriage, and his belonging to the same church all his life, makes him suspect as that is not the typical life career of most Americans, it is in fact relatively unreal. If he were to proudly claim he was an Eagle Scout it would not work to his advantage (I am not saying he did claim this distinction). Most American boys do not become Boy Scouts, and few that do achieve Eagle Scout status, however desirable this may be. Having lived such an exemplary life is more likely to get you accused of being a “Goody, goody, two shoes,” than a “regular guy.” The fact of the matter is, in my opinion, Willard “Mitt” Romney is every bit as much the “Other,” as Republicans have tried to make Obama. Even his using “Mitt” rather than Willard is evidence of his trying desperately to be “just a regular guy.” I am not suggesting that Romney is a bad person, or that he has not lived an exemplary life, or that he suffers from a bad character, or is living a lie. He is, unfortunately, for himself, and perhaps even for the rest of us, too far out of the main stream of American culture to be a very convincing candidate for the Presidency.
I attribute Romney’s inability to connect with ordinary Americans (including other politicians) to his life history. Born into wealth and a Mormon family, sheltered, attending a prestigious Prep school for the very wealthy (he was not athletic), spending time as a missionary in France (where he was not very successful with the wine-loving Catholics not amenable to Mormonism, admitting what he was doing was rejected), later a year at Stanford (where he was opposed to the opposers), BYU, and eventually a special Harvard program in Business and Law (he was an excellent student whose classmates considered him “guilelessly optimistic). All in all he seems to have been the epitome of the “button down” conservative. While this experience no doubt fitted him splendidly for a career in business, it also kept him well apart from the mainstream of American culture. Thus it is true that from the standpoint of most ordinary Americans he lacks authenticity, he is not “one of them.” He is too perfect, too straight, too privileged, and too unable to “relate.” Strangely perhaps, Newt Gingrich with all his warts and baggage, is someone ordinary people can relate to, however sleazy he may actually be. Even more interesting when it comes to Gingrich is the fact that people do not seem to consider him what he actually is, or at least claims to be. That is, while he considers himself Professorial, a Historian and an Intellectual (and Professors and intellectuals do not usually fare well in American politics), people either overlook this or forgive him, seemingly thinking of him as basically a politician, or even a kind of “hustler,” someone who is more like themselves only smarter (he has successfully conned people into believing this over his many years of promoting himself). In any case, he is certainly not the “Other” that Romney is. Obviously you would not even consider having a beer with Romney, a non-drinking Mormon, but Gingrich might be entertaining.
Thus we have this bizarre situation where someone who has the background, experience, and means to become President, probably won’t, because he simply doesn’t relate well to others, whereas someone who is demonstrably unethical, only marginally moral, pompously egomaniacal, and disturbingly unpredictable, may have a better chance. Who says life isn’t stranger than fiction?
When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.
Mark Twain
Thursday, December 08, 2011
Sleazy
Sleazy - definition
a : lacking firmness of texture : FLIMSY b : carelessly made of inferior materials : SHODDY
2
a : marked by low character or qualityb : SQUALID, DILAPIDATED
What a fine word, "sleazy." I haven’t heard it much lately. I find this a bit strange as it is by far the finest one word description of Newt Gingrich you will ever find. In fact, I find it hard to believe it was not first coined with him in mind. I was also surprised to learn his picture did not appear with the definition.
I don’t say he is sleazy because he has been married three times, lots of people have been married more than once, but when you confront your first wife with your demands for a divorce while she is lying in a hospital bed suffering from cancer, that’s sleazy. And then when you announce she was not pretty or young enough to be the First Lady, that’s pretty sleazy. Similarly, when having finally ditched your first wife, you marry your second, that’s not necessarily sleazy, but when you admit to having had an ongoing affair with her while still married to your first wife, that’s sleazy. And then again, while married to your second wife you are having an affair with who is to become your third wife, that’s sleazy. And what is super sleazy is leading a charge to impeach President Clinton for an extramarital sexual affair while you are engaged in exactly the same thing at exactly the same time, hard to beat that for pure sleaze. One might wonder how many other fine “adventures” one might have with a half million dollar line of credit from Tiffany’s.
Then, when you have made millions of dollars peddling influence, you claim not to have been a lobbyist, that is sleazy. If you are collecting money from clients you represent to members of Congress, claiming your influence there, and attempting to influence decision making on Capitol Hill, you are in fact working as a lobbyist. Trying to claim you were really acting as a historian while collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars for your “advice” is sleaze, pure and simple, to say nothing of a lie so transparent as to leave you gasping.
Then, when Speaker of the House, you are charged with ethics violations (a mere 84 of them), fined $300,000, and forced out of your position in disgrace, that, too, is pretty sleazy, especially when you are the only person in the history of the country to be so disgraced and thrown out of office by your own party. Threatening to shut the country down unless you get your way is even more sleazy. You tried, and lost, but that doesn’t make it any the less sleazy. Of course making up a list of bad words to provide to your party for use against the opposition party is not exactly a procedure lacking sleaze, and dividing the country for political gain is equally if not even more sleazy.
Denigrating poor children as lacking a work ethic, having parents who likewise don’t work, unless in criminal enterprises, is almost below sleaze. It might help if you had any idea what the hell you were talking about, but that never seems to keep you from blurting out your spur of the moment idea that is going to solve our problems. It would, I suppose, seem obvious (at least to Republicans) that poor children should clean toilets and scrub floors, a truly brilliant idea to combat unemployment and the deficit. And claiming to be the only person to keep us safe from the fantasy of a “secular fascist takeover” is egotistical sleaze run wild, besides being utter bullshit. Constantly telling us how wonderful you are, how intellectual, how brilliant, how only you have the know-how to save the world, is in itself sleazy. Lying is also sleazy, although we all recognize politicians regularly lie. But your lying goes beyond the ordinary, being so fanciful and exaggerated that even a small child recognizes them for hogwash. President Obama is a socialist, for example, or he hates capitalism. Your description of your contribution to the defeat of communism and contribution to the Contract for America would make us believe you were one of the Founding Fathers. I’m surprised You haven’t claimed to have been with Hannibal when he crossed the Alps.
In short, there could not possibly be a better adjective than sleazy to describe Newt. He is a walking, talking, living manifestation of sleaze, the personification of sleaze, the Poster Boy of sleaze. It oozes it from his pores, it surrounds and envelopes him, it slides from his tongue so readily it can be mistaken for erudition by the morons he has convinced of his remarkable brilliance, he is Newton Leroy Gingrich, the King of Sleaze! It is remarkably fitting and symbolic, perhaps even inevitable, he be chosen to represent the Republican Party in the coming election. Rest assured, he will not hesitate to tell President Obama what’s what. I can hardly wait.
I was not lying. I said things that later on seemed to be untrue.
Richard Nixon
a : lacking firmness of texture : FLIMSY b : carelessly made of inferior materials : SHODDY
2
a : marked by low character or quality
What a fine word, "sleazy." I haven’t heard it much lately. I find this a bit strange as it is by far the finest one word description of Newt Gingrich you will ever find. In fact, I find it hard to believe it was not first coined with him in mind. I was also surprised to learn his picture did not appear with the definition.
I don’t say he is sleazy because he has been married three times, lots of people have been married more than once, but when you confront your first wife with your demands for a divorce while she is lying in a hospital bed suffering from cancer, that’s sleazy. And then when you announce she was not pretty or young enough to be the First Lady, that’s pretty sleazy. Similarly, when having finally ditched your first wife, you marry your second, that’s not necessarily sleazy, but when you admit to having had an ongoing affair with her while still married to your first wife, that’s sleazy. And then again, while married to your second wife you are having an affair with who is to become your third wife, that’s sleazy. And what is super sleazy is leading a charge to impeach President Clinton for an extramarital sexual affair while you are engaged in exactly the same thing at exactly the same time, hard to beat that for pure sleaze. One might wonder how many other fine “adventures” one might have with a half million dollar line of credit from Tiffany’s.
Then, when you have made millions of dollars peddling influence, you claim not to have been a lobbyist, that is sleazy. If you are collecting money from clients you represent to members of Congress, claiming your influence there, and attempting to influence decision making on Capitol Hill, you are in fact working as a lobbyist. Trying to claim you were really acting as a historian while collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars for your “advice” is sleaze, pure and simple, to say nothing of a lie so transparent as to leave you gasping.
Then, when Speaker of the House, you are charged with ethics violations (a mere 84 of them), fined $300,000, and forced out of your position in disgrace, that, too, is pretty sleazy, especially when you are the only person in the history of the country to be so disgraced and thrown out of office by your own party. Threatening to shut the country down unless you get your way is even more sleazy. You tried, and lost, but that doesn’t make it any the less sleazy. Of course making up a list of bad words to provide to your party for use against the opposition party is not exactly a procedure lacking sleaze, and dividing the country for political gain is equally if not even more sleazy.
Denigrating poor children as lacking a work ethic, having parents who likewise don’t work, unless in criminal enterprises, is almost below sleaze. It might help if you had any idea what the hell you were talking about, but that never seems to keep you from blurting out your spur of the moment idea that is going to solve our problems. It would, I suppose, seem obvious (at least to Republicans) that poor children should clean toilets and scrub floors, a truly brilliant idea to combat unemployment and the deficit. And claiming to be the only person to keep us safe from the fantasy of a “secular fascist takeover” is egotistical sleaze run wild, besides being utter bullshit. Constantly telling us how wonderful you are, how intellectual, how brilliant, how only you have the know-how to save the world, is in itself sleazy. Lying is also sleazy, although we all recognize politicians regularly lie. But your lying goes beyond the ordinary, being so fanciful and exaggerated that even a small child recognizes them for hogwash. President Obama is a socialist, for example, or he hates capitalism. Your description of your contribution to the defeat of communism and contribution to the Contract for America would make us believe you were one of the Founding Fathers. I’m surprised You haven’t claimed to have been with Hannibal when he crossed the Alps.
In short, there could not possibly be a better adjective than sleazy to describe Newt. He is a walking, talking, living manifestation of sleaze, the personification of sleaze, the Poster Boy of sleaze. It oozes it from his pores, it surrounds and envelopes him, it slides from his tongue so readily it can be mistaken for erudition by the morons he has convinced of his remarkable brilliance, he is Newton Leroy Gingrich, the King of Sleaze! It is remarkably fitting and symbolic, perhaps even inevitable, he be chosen to represent the Republican Party in the coming election. Rest assured, he will not hesitate to tell President Obama what’s what. I can hardly wait.
I was not lying. I said things that later on seemed to be untrue.
Richard Nixon
Wednesday, December 07, 2011
Why Do They Hate Us?
For the purposes of this blog when I say “they” I am referring to Republicans and the very wealthy people and corporations they represent. I realize, of course, there may be some rare exceptions to the generalized “they.” When I refer to “us” I mean ordinary working people, the Middle Class and the poor, what might well be described at the moment as the 99%.
Why do I believe they “hate” us? Because when following what they say and do I think that best describes the situation, and I have no other better explanation. For example, they do not want us to have a living wage. In fact they want us to have the least amount of wages possible, even if that means living either in poverty or on the margin of poverty. They do not want us to have universal health care. They do not want us to have Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, or unemployment insurance, nor do they want us to have even food stamps. They do not want us to have an Environmental Protection Agency or even a Consumer Protection Agency, and they also do not want us to have clean air and water if that in any way interferes with their profits. They do not want women to have a choice when it comes to their own bodies and lives, even to the point of wanting to deny basic contraception, and they do not want poor women to even have basic health care. Basically they do not even want us to own homes and be able to feed our families. They do not want us to have a tax break by allowing an extension of the Payroll Tax deduction, in effect raising taxes on us rather than on those making more than a million dollars a year. In this case they have previously argued that tax breaks for the wealthy do not have to be paid for whereas tax breaks for us do have to be paid for. The promise they made to the illegitimate Clown Prince of taxes, Grover Norquist, never to raise taxes under any circumstances suddenly doesn’t apply when it comes to raising our taxes (either they do not understand hypocrisy or they just don’t care). They apparently do not really want us to have jobs, beyond a basic labor force working for minimum wages, as they have consistently blocked any attempt on the part of President Obama to create jobs (while criticizing him for not creating jobs). They also do not want any regulations that might interfere with profits no matter how egregious the results may be. In short, they do not want us to have anything whatsoever that might possibly make our lives easier or more pleasant. As I believe this is demonstrably true (just look at their behavior for the past few years) I conclude they must just basically hate us.
Well, upon reflection, perhaps hate is not the most precise description of their feelings toward us. It is probably more precise to say they “despise” us. In order to hate someone you at least have to be aware of them, know them at least minimally, and actively hate them. It is easier and probably more correct in this case to say they despise us, as that way it doesn’t matter if they know us or not, they can just despise us in general as a group. The obvious question that arises, whether it is actual hatred or merely a matter of despising us, is why? This is not a very easy question to answer, and certainly cannot be answered here. The most basic answer probably has to do with the change from living in small scale societies where relations are mainly between kin and friends, face-to-face, and tradition-based, to more formal large scale more dehumanized societies based more exclusively upon legal contracts between anonymous individuals. But I think it also has to do with the change from bartering to a society based upon monetary exchange, and ultimately, in our contemporary case, a form of unregulated capitalism whose only goal is profit. In such a system, as Polanyi so brilliantly pointed out, everything has to be perceived as a commodity, so land, labor, and capital all become commodities. But as labor is just another word for behavior, in this case work, it is itself dehumanized. Workers have no existence outside of the market place, they, like other commodities, are for sale and are easily replaced, just part of the larger system like nuts and bolts. As such it is easy to denigrate and dehumanize them, forgetting they are also human beings. Their only value is as labor, something convertible to capital.
Marx, of course, perceived this clearly, and pointed out, rightly I believe, that capital is essentially dead labor. Even Abraham Lincoln, surely not a communist sympathizer, perceived this situation clearly:
Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.
Abraham Lincoln
This is precisely the very opposite of the situation facing labor at the moment, and, indeed, throughout the history of capitalism. The history of violence between management and labor is well known, as is the difficult history of the 40 hour work week, the 8 hour day, paid vacations, retirement benefits, and so on. All of these hard-won concessions are even now subject to the ravages of management, as in Wisconsin and other states. Workers and their families are occupying the streets of our cities protesting the loss of their wages, homes, retirement benefits, and lack of health care, still despised by those with capital, a strange non-commodity with the ability to reproduce itself. It seems to me that once someone has accumulated enough capital they become creatures on another level of society. It doesn’t matter how they came by their capital, in some cases it is inherited, in years gone by some acquired it through crime and prostitution, in more recent years some acquired it through illegal drug sales, but once acquired it allows one to live a different life:
“Tis a common proof,
That lowliness is young ambitions ladder,
Whereto the climber-upward turns his face;
But when he once attains the upmost round,
He then unto the ladder turns his back,
Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees
By which he did ascend.”
Julius Caesar
Act II Scene I
Why do I believe they “hate” us? Because when following what they say and do I think that best describes the situation, and I have no other better explanation. For example, they do not want us to have a living wage. In fact they want us to have the least amount of wages possible, even if that means living either in poverty or on the margin of poverty. They do not want us to have universal health care. They do not want us to have Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, or unemployment insurance, nor do they want us to have even food stamps. They do not want us to have an Environmental Protection Agency or even a Consumer Protection Agency, and they also do not want us to have clean air and water if that in any way interferes with their profits. They do not want women to have a choice when it comes to their own bodies and lives, even to the point of wanting to deny basic contraception, and they do not want poor women to even have basic health care. Basically they do not even want us to own homes and be able to feed our families. They do not want us to have a tax break by allowing an extension of the Payroll Tax deduction, in effect raising taxes on us rather than on those making more than a million dollars a year. In this case they have previously argued that tax breaks for the wealthy do not have to be paid for whereas tax breaks for us do have to be paid for. The promise they made to the illegitimate Clown Prince of taxes, Grover Norquist, never to raise taxes under any circumstances suddenly doesn’t apply when it comes to raising our taxes (either they do not understand hypocrisy or they just don’t care). They apparently do not really want us to have jobs, beyond a basic labor force working for minimum wages, as they have consistently blocked any attempt on the part of President Obama to create jobs (while criticizing him for not creating jobs). They also do not want any regulations that might interfere with profits no matter how egregious the results may be. In short, they do not want us to have anything whatsoever that might possibly make our lives easier or more pleasant. As I believe this is demonstrably true (just look at their behavior for the past few years) I conclude they must just basically hate us.
Well, upon reflection, perhaps hate is not the most precise description of their feelings toward us. It is probably more precise to say they “despise” us. In order to hate someone you at least have to be aware of them, know them at least minimally, and actively hate them. It is easier and probably more correct in this case to say they despise us, as that way it doesn’t matter if they know us or not, they can just despise us in general as a group. The obvious question that arises, whether it is actual hatred or merely a matter of despising us, is why? This is not a very easy question to answer, and certainly cannot be answered here. The most basic answer probably has to do with the change from living in small scale societies where relations are mainly between kin and friends, face-to-face, and tradition-based, to more formal large scale more dehumanized societies based more exclusively upon legal contracts between anonymous individuals. But I think it also has to do with the change from bartering to a society based upon monetary exchange, and ultimately, in our contemporary case, a form of unregulated capitalism whose only goal is profit. In such a system, as Polanyi so brilliantly pointed out, everything has to be perceived as a commodity, so land, labor, and capital all become commodities. But as labor is just another word for behavior, in this case work, it is itself dehumanized. Workers have no existence outside of the market place, they, like other commodities, are for sale and are easily replaced, just part of the larger system like nuts and bolts. As such it is easy to denigrate and dehumanize them, forgetting they are also human beings. Their only value is as labor, something convertible to capital.
Marx, of course, perceived this clearly, and pointed out, rightly I believe, that capital is essentially dead labor. Even Abraham Lincoln, surely not a communist sympathizer, perceived this situation clearly:
Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.
Abraham Lincoln
This is precisely the very opposite of the situation facing labor at the moment, and, indeed, throughout the history of capitalism. The history of violence between management and labor is well known, as is the difficult history of the 40 hour work week, the 8 hour day, paid vacations, retirement benefits, and so on. All of these hard-won concessions are even now subject to the ravages of management, as in Wisconsin and other states. Workers and their families are occupying the streets of our cities protesting the loss of their wages, homes, retirement benefits, and lack of health care, still despised by those with capital, a strange non-commodity with the ability to reproduce itself. It seems to me that once someone has accumulated enough capital they become creatures on another level of society. It doesn’t matter how they came by their capital, in some cases it is inherited, in years gone by some acquired it through crime and prostitution, in more recent years some acquired it through illegal drug sales, but once acquired it allows one to live a different life:
“Tis a common proof,
That lowliness is young ambitions ladder,
Whereto the climber-upward turns his face;
But when he once attains the upmost round,
He then unto the ladder turns his back,
Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees
By which he did ascend.”
Julius Caesar
Act II Scene I
Tuesday, December 06, 2011
Trump Trumped?
I think the Republican circus has now gone completely bankrupt. I can’t see how things can get any worse. If the previous dozen or so Republican “debates” have not been enough theatre of the absurd, the supposedly scheduled December 27th “debate,” to be moderated by of all people, Donald Trump, has now reached the lowest level of political silliness ever. Hopefully, to spare them any further humility, it may not even occur. It seems that Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman have already declined to participate, and as of today it appears Mitt Romney has also declined (unless he flip-flops again). So will this “debate” actually occur? Perhaps it will turn out to be a real hit, something like “Springtime for Hitler.” I suppose it could go on, with Bachmann and Santorum versus “Idea Man” Newt Gingrich, but somehow that does not seem promising. The MSM have now carried the concept of “Infotainment” to a level not previously even imagined. But not to worry, Trump has already announced that if the “right” candidate is not chosen he will sacrifice himself for the good of the world and re-enter the competition. This is, dear reader, the end of the line for Republicans, proof positive they have given up any serious attempt to defeat Obama. Not only should they call off this proposed “debate,” they should probably just withdraw from the 2012 election, concede defeat, admit they are too stupid even to compete. On the other hand, perhaps their base will take it seriously, I mean, after all, they did elect George W. Bush, probably one of the most comical choices ever.
I cannot believe that even the current Republican leadership is stupid enough to refuse to pass the Payroll Tax Extension and continuing unemployment benefits. President Obama has cleverly maneuvered them into a corner (with perhaps some help from the Occupy Wall Streeters) where it seems to me they will have little choice but to agree. But with the ideologically insane it is hard to predict.
I can’t explain it, even to myself, but I find myself strangely optimistic for the first time in years. The stock market is up, unemployment is (at least statistically) down, Europe may be getting its Euro in order, the battle lines are now clearly drawn between the haves and the have-nots. If Obama keeps up the current pace and doesn’t agree to some stupid and unnecessary compromise, things may actually pick up for a time. There can never be a long-term solution to our problems of unemployment and the deficit without a complete makeover of our current economic system, the ridiculous myths of trickle- down economics, free market capitalism, free of regulations and hence “government,” the ridiculous ideas that brought us to our current problems. But maybe if we can get our house in somewhat better order we might eventually manage to govern ourselves more intelligently.
Maybe (and a really big maybe it is) we will also give up our militarism and attempt to rule the world and realize that diplomacy rather than constant “war” is more appropriate for the 21st century. We could slash our absurd “national defense” budget by half, withdraw our troops from the hundreds of bases we maintain around the world, use that money to rebuild our infrastructure, work on global warming, begin to truly educate our children, give everyone the health care they need, reduce our deficit, and perhaps even regain our international stature that was destroyed during the Bush/Cheney nightmare years. You see, even I, cynical as I have become, never abandon hope entirely (no matter how silly it may be). After all, what is the alternative?
There is only one optimist. He has been here since man has been on this earth, and that is "man" himself. If we hadn't had such a magnificent optimism to carry us through all these things, we wouldn't be here. We have survived it on our optimism.
Edward Steichen
I cannot believe that even the current Republican leadership is stupid enough to refuse to pass the Payroll Tax Extension and continuing unemployment benefits. President Obama has cleverly maneuvered them into a corner (with perhaps some help from the Occupy Wall Streeters) where it seems to me they will have little choice but to agree. But with the ideologically insane it is hard to predict.
I can’t explain it, even to myself, but I find myself strangely optimistic for the first time in years. The stock market is up, unemployment is (at least statistically) down, Europe may be getting its Euro in order, the battle lines are now clearly drawn between the haves and the have-nots. If Obama keeps up the current pace and doesn’t agree to some stupid and unnecessary compromise, things may actually pick up for a time. There can never be a long-term solution to our problems of unemployment and the deficit without a complete makeover of our current economic system, the ridiculous myths of trickle- down economics, free market capitalism, free of regulations and hence “government,” the ridiculous ideas that brought us to our current problems. But maybe if we can get our house in somewhat better order we might eventually manage to govern ourselves more intelligently.
Maybe (and a really big maybe it is) we will also give up our militarism and attempt to rule the world and realize that diplomacy rather than constant “war” is more appropriate for the 21st century. We could slash our absurd “national defense” budget by half, withdraw our troops from the hundreds of bases we maintain around the world, use that money to rebuild our infrastructure, work on global warming, begin to truly educate our children, give everyone the health care they need, reduce our deficit, and perhaps even regain our international stature that was destroyed during the Bush/Cheney nightmare years. You see, even I, cynical as I have become, never abandon hope entirely (no matter how silly it may be). After all, what is the alternative?
There is only one optimist. He has been here since man has been on this earth, and that is "man" himself. If we hadn't had such a magnificent optimism to carry us through all these things, we wouldn't be here. We have survived it on our optimism.
Edward Steichen
Sunday, December 04, 2011
River of Darkness -- book
River of Darkness Francisco Orellana’s Legendary Voyage of Death and Discovery Down the Amazon, Buddy Levy (Bantam Books, New York, 2011)
In 1541 Gonzalo Pizzaro and Francisco Orellana, cousins, both at the time important landowners of huge blocks of Peruvian land, embarked on an expedition over the Andes and into the unknown in search of further gold and treasures, the fabulous but mythical El Dorado where it was said their leader was coated each day in gold dust that he deposited on the lake bottom after his daily bath. They also sought cinnamon that was also worth fortunes in those days. Thus began an adventure of exploration unique in the annals of such explorations.
The plan was for Gonzalo Pizzaro to leave Quito first with an army that consisted of 220 soldiers, 200 horses, ammunition and powder, a herd of more than 2000 swine, llamas as pack animals, 2000 war dogs trained for battle, and 4,000 Indian porters shackled to prevent escape. Franciso Orellana was to follow soon later with his own smaller army. They were to meet at the confluence of two rivers on the eastern side of the Andes. They soon learned that horses were virtually useless in the Amazonian jungle, that conditions were much more difficult than they could ever have imagined, food was difficult to come by, and were forced to split into two parties. Orellana was to proceed down the river to find food and then return with it to save Pizzaro and his starving army. This proved to be impossible as the river flowed so swiftly Orellan knew he could never make it back, so he decided to continue downriver as his only alternative, even though this made him vulnerable to accusations of desertion and treason. Pizzaro eventually made it back to Quito, having eaten his horses and dogs, virtually crawling back in rags with the remnants of his army, not knowing what happened to Orellana but convinced he had deserted him. Orellana, after the most incredible hardships, managed to make it all the way to the Atlantic and eventually back to Spain.
This is, as the sub-title suggests, an account of Francisco Orellana’s incredible journey down the Amazon River, the first (and quite likely still) the only person to have ever completed such a journey. That he managed to complete this journey at all is quite miraculous, a combination of luck, unusual ability, determination, and yes, more luck. In 1541 Gonzalo Pizzaro and Francisco Orellana, cousins, both at the time important landowners of huge blocks of Peruvian land, embarked on an expedition over the Andes and into the unknown in search of further gold and treasures, the fabulous but mythical El Dorado where it was said their leader was coated each day in gold dust that he deposited on the lake bottom after his daily bath. They also sought cinnamon that was also worth fortunes in those days. Thus began an adventure of exploration unique in the annals of such explorations.
There were left written accounts of this fantastic journey, by Orellana and one of the Priests that was with him, and a few others as well. There are also records of interviews he gave after returning, and there is also an extensive literature on this period and voyage as well. Levy has used the available materials to reconstruct Orellana’s journey in an interesting and enjoyable book, interesting and enjoyable if you find some 250 pages of almost unremitting misery to be such (in all fairness that is basically what it was). There is no doubt such a journey was made, and no doubt that it was unbelievably difficult, and also no doubt that Levy’s research among the available materials was thorough and scholarly. He also obviously did his research on the area in question, including a trip to the Amazon to see for himself what it was like.
Buddy Levy is a journalist rather than historian. He wrote this book to entertain as well as to tell the story of this incredible adventure. I believe he did a truly wonderful job, the book is well written, a delight to read, and also informative. But of course in order to make it so Levy had to fill in details that he could not actually know were true. This is completely understandable but in a book of this kind, also risky. Consider something like the introduction to the prologue: “Conquistador Francisco Orellana stood on the sodden riverbank and regarded the ceaseless roil of the river, uncertain where the dark waters were heading. In the dying light the water appeared black as it slithered downstream, moving like the skin of some gargantuan dark snake disappearing into an endless jungle. Orellana turned and beheld his bedraggled troops…” There is a danger here in this type of reconstruction because if not done well you risk losing verisimilitude and thus the reader, you cannot write passages with no credibility, they have to lend authenticity to the account. I believe Levy has managed this exceedingly well and at no point did I have the sense he was damaging the account. This is no mean achievement.
The author also uses quotations taken directly from the written accounts that validate the authenticity of his own account although sometimes most unpleasant:
“…Pizarro determined to torture a better response from the Indians. Soldier Cieza de Leon recalled the dark and brutal process: ‘So he (Pizzaro) ordered some canes to be fixed across poles, like rather thin hurdles, about three feet wide and seven in length, and the Indians to be put on them and tortured until they told the truth. The innocent natives were promptly stretched on these frames or barbecues…and some of them were burnt.’ Of course even after having been tortured with flames, the unfortunates could offer nothing but their cries of agony. Disgusted, Pizzaro then threw the victims—some from the racks and others, including a few women, torn from their pleading families -- to the dogs, ‘who tore them to pieces with their teeth, and devoured them.’”
Gonzalo Pizzaro had a reputation for unusual brutality. Orellana, according to Levy’s account, was a very different sort who tended to treat the natives much more gently (although at one point he hung a number of them for no reason as a warning to others). He was also apparently a rather skilled linguist and managed to learn some of the native languages which helped make it possible for him to bring what was left of his command home. But even Orellana, with his interest in the natives, had no idea how to exist in the jungle, what foods were fit to eat, which not, how to hunt game, and so on. It never occurred to the arrogant Spaniards to even try to learn such things, one of the reasons they endured the hardships they did. Mostly they were given food by friendly tribes and when that failed they simply stormed the villages along the way and took it. The accounts of this almost unbelievable achievement I believe were dismissed as true for a time because among other things they reported the existence of Amazonian women warriors and a land where only women lived, bringing in men when necessary. I believe that Orellana and others did believe this. But in all fairness, I think Orellana only reported encountering a few women fighters and “stories” of such a land. I do not see why, for the Spaniards, this was any more fantastic or far-fetched than the belief in El Dorado. Anyway, it seems clear that as recent scholars have argued, and as Orellana’s account indicates, there were millions more Indians living along the Amazon that previously imagined.
There is of course much more to this book than I can mention here, including Orellana’s acquittal from treason and his doomed attempt to return to the Amazon and seek the riches he believed were there. I found this work interesting, informative, and convincing. I believe I learned quite a lot about an area I had previously little knowledge about. I would certainly recommend it to those with such interests.
In 1541 Gonzalo Pizzaro and Francisco Orellana, cousins, both at the time important landowners of huge blocks of Peruvian land, embarked on an expedition over the Andes and into the unknown in search of further gold and treasures, the fabulous but mythical El Dorado where it was said their leader was coated each day in gold dust that he deposited on the lake bottom after his daily bath. They also sought cinnamon that was also worth fortunes in those days. Thus began an adventure of exploration unique in the annals of such explorations.
The plan was for Gonzalo Pizzaro to leave Quito first with an army that consisted of 220 soldiers, 200 horses, ammunition and powder, a herd of more than 2000 swine, llamas as pack animals, 2000 war dogs trained for battle, and 4,000 Indian porters shackled to prevent escape. Franciso Orellana was to follow soon later with his own smaller army. They were to meet at the confluence of two rivers on the eastern side of the Andes. They soon learned that horses were virtually useless in the Amazonian jungle, that conditions were much more difficult than they could ever have imagined, food was difficult to come by, and were forced to split into two parties. Orellana was to proceed down the river to find food and then return with it to save Pizzaro and his starving army. This proved to be impossible as the river flowed so swiftly Orellan knew he could never make it back, so he decided to continue downriver as his only alternative, even though this made him vulnerable to accusations of desertion and treason. Pizzaro eventually made it back to Quito, having eaten his horses and dogs, virtually crawling back in rags with the remnants of his army, not knowing what happened to Orellana but convinced he had deserted him. Orellana, after the most incredible hardships, managed to make it all the way to the Atlantic and eventually back to Spain.
This is, as the sub-title suggests, an account of Francisco Orellana’s incredible journey down the Amazon River, the first (and quite likely still) the only person to have ever completed such a journey. That he managed to complete this journey at all is quite miraculous, a combination of luck, unusual ability, determination, and yes, more luck. In 1541 Gonzalo Pizzaro and Francisco Orellana, cousins, both at the time important landowners of huge blocks of Peruvian land, embarked on an expedition over the Andes and into the unknown in search of further gold and treasures, the fabulous but mythical El Dorado where it was said their leader was coated each day in gold dust that he deposited on the lake bottom after his daily bath. They also sought cinnamon that was also worth fortunes in those days. Thus began an adventure of exploration unique in the annals of such explorations.
There were left written accounts of this fantastic journey, by Orellana and one of the Priests that was with him, and a few others as well. There are also records of interviews he gave after returning, and there is also an extensive literature on this period and voyage as well. Levy has used the available materials to reconstruct Orellana’s journey in an interesting and enjoyable book, interesting and enjoyable if you find some 250 pages of almost unremitting misery to be such (in all fairness that is basically what it was). There is no doubt such a journey was made, and no doubt that it was unbelievably difficult, and also no doubt that Levy’s research among the available materials was thorough and scholarly. He also obviously did his research on the area in question, including a trip to the Amazon to see for himself what it was like.
Buddy Levy is a journalist rather than historian. He wrote this book to entertain as well as to tell the story of this incredible adventure. I believe he did a truly wonderful job, the book is well written, a delight to read, and also informative. But of course in order to make it so Levy had to fill in details that he could not actually know were true. This is completely understandable but in a book of this kind, also risky. Consider something like the introduction to the prologue: “Conquistador Francisco Orellana stood on the sodden riverbank and regarded the ceaseless roil of the river, uncertain where the dark waters were heading. In the dying light the water appeared black as it slithered downstream, moving like the skin of some gargantuan dark snake disappearing into an endless jungle. Orellana turned and beheld his bedraggled troops…” There is a danger here in this type of reconstruction because if not done well you risk losing verisimilitude and thus the reader, you cannot write passages with no credibility, they have to lend authenticity to the account. I believe Levy has managed this exceedingly well and at no point did I have the sense he was damaging the account. This is no mean achievement.
The author also uses quotations taken directly from the written accounts that validate the authenticity of his own account although sometimes most unpleasant:
“…Pizarro determined to torture a better response from the Indians. Soldier Cieza de Leon recalled the dark and brutal process: ‘So he (Pizzaro) ordered some canes to be fixed across poles, like rather thin hurdles, about three feet wide and seven in length, and the Indians to be put on them and tortured until they told the truth. The innocent natives were promptly stretched on these frames or barbecues…and some of them were burnt.’ Of course even after having been tortured with flames, the unfortunates could offer nothing but their cries of agony. Disgusted, Pizzaro then threw the victims—some from the racks and others, including a few women, torn from their pleading families -- to the dogs, ‘who tore them to pieces with their teeth, and devoured them.’”
Gonzalo Pizzaro had a reputation for unusual brutality. Orellana, according to Levy’s account, was a very different sort who tended to treat the natives much more gently (although at one point he hung a number of them for no reason as a warning to others). He was also apparently a rather skilled linguist and managed to learn some of the native languages which helped make it possible for him to bring what was left of his command home. But even Orellana, with his interest in the natives, had no idea how to exist in the jungle, what foods were fit to eat, which not, how to hunt game, and so on. It never occurred to the arrogant Spaniards to even try to learn such things, one of the reasons they endured the hardships they did. Mostly they were given food by friendly tribes and when that failed they simply stormed the villages along the way and took it. The accounts of this almost unbelievable achievement I believe were dismissed as true for a time because among other things they reported the existence of Amazonian women warriors and a land where only women lived, bringing in men when necessary. I believe that Orellana and others did believe this. But in all fairness, I think Orellana only reported encountering a few women fighters and “stories” of such a land. I do not see why, for the Spaniards, this was any more fantastic or far-fetched than the belief in El Dorado. Anyway, it seems clear that as recent scholars have argued, and as Orellana’s account indicates, there were millions more Indians living along the Amazon that previously imagined.
There is of course much more to this book than I can mention here, including Orellana’s acquittal from treason and his doomed attempt to return to the Amazon and seek the riches he believed were there. I found this work interesting, informative, and convincing. I believe I learned quite a lot about an area I had previously little knowledge about. I would certainly recommend it to those with such interests.
Saturday, December 03, 2011
Themes of Culture - Greed
There were (and perhaps continue to be) a variety of attempts to characterize cultures as being distinguished by patterns or themes of behavior. Ruth Benedict comes to mind when she spoke of “Apollonian” as compared with “Dionesian” cultures. She also discussed “Shame” as opposed to “Guilt” cultures. Roughly similar notions were suggested as “Cultural Configurations” by Clyde Klukhohn, and “Value Attitudes” by Talcott Parsons. Many others have toyed with similar ideas, some much better defined or delineated than others. Margaret Halsey, whom I mentioned previously spoke of “Dominant Institutions,” declaring that Business was such an institution in the United States. For my purposes here I have decided to use the following definition:
“The term “theme” is used here in a technical sense to denote a postulate or position, declared or implied, and usually controlling behavior or stimulating activity, which is tacitly approved or openly promoted in a society.” (Morris Edward Opler, 1941).
With such a definition you could, for example (and if you wished) say that “Order” is a defining theme of German culture. There has been such a claim, Ordnung ist das Erste Gebot,” (Order is the First Commandment {ofGod}), (Linda Langness, PhD dissertation, 1992). In any case, having lived through the past few decades, I have come to the conclusion that the dominant theme of 21st century America is almost beyond question: “Greed.” I do not say this happily or lightly about my own culture, but I believe it is true, and it pervades almost all aspects of our lives.
Consider, first of all, the current controversy over the 1% versus the 99%. This is a claim with a factual basis. We have many millionaires and even billionaires who, for the most part, resist having to pay increased taxes or even taxes at all, if possible. As they cannot possibly use all of their money their dogged insistence on having even more is difficult to classify if it is not greed. The same thing is true of many, perhaps most of our celebrities and professional athletes. Even when already having accumulated huge fortunes they cannot possibly exhaust they continue to make commercials, collect huge speaking fees, and etc., again difficult to describe as other than greed. It seems for those that have so much, there can never be enough.
As another example, consider the banking and especially the credit card industry. Most people with credit cards, almost everyone nowadays, pay over 9% and often as much as 30% for the privilege. By most standards this is usury, pure and simple. And not only do they charge exorbitant interest rates, they tack on other fees and use devious means to get more of your money, like offering to reduce your rate, but not telling you there is a fee for doing so, and so on. Banks, too, are absolutely shameless about ripping off their customers, using hidden fees, illegal foreclosures, and other techniques. They are never content to just earn a reasonable profit year after year for providing a service, they constantly create new ways to make more and more. I believe this is actually institutionalized greed. Insurance companies are just as bad and in fact get most of their money through unmitigated greed. If you have ever had to deal with an insurance company over an automobile accident, or even health insurance, you must be aware of what I mean. They will try most anything to get out of paying a claim, no matter how legitimate it is. No one is surprised when confronted with these problems, we have been so accustomed to them we now (however regretfully) consider them just “business as usual.”
Pharmaceutical companies are even more shameless, advertising drugs that are not always even approved, keeping drugs on the market as long as possible even when they know they are harmful, advertising shamelessly for ailments that sometimes are created out of thin air. They also typically overcharge for their products here in the U.S., the same products they sell elsewhere for less. As this is protected by the U.S. Congress one can only conclude it is “tacitly approved or openly promoted,” just as is all of the above.
Even our ordinary day to day lives are permeated by this theme of greed. We live in a consumer society where we actually have sayings like “shop until you drop,” “he who has the most toys wins,” “keeping up with the Jones’s,” and so forth. A few years ago a man won a huge lottery, many millions of dollars, when asked what he would do with his money, he replied his ambition was to become a billionaire! In fact our entire system, predicated as it is upon competition, is a constant attempt to get more for yourself, a more lucrative contract, another raise, the highest salary yet paid for something, and so on. Professional athletes are in some ways the worst offenders. They argued they deserved more money because their playing careers lasted only a short time, but now they make money so far in excess of what they need to live comfortably for the remainder of their lives, this is an argument that makes no sense at all. They, like most everyone else, want to be paid more than anyone else, apparently just for the sake of it, the prestige and recognition of being the highest paid. It is true there are a few exceptions to the dominance of greed as a value, a few companies, for example, are employee owned and the workers share in the proceeds. In such companies you can be sure the CEO’s are not receiving 400 times the salaries of the other employees. But in companies where the CEO’s are receiving such outrageous rewards you are facing nothing less than greed gone wild. Similarly, when a single trader or manager on Wall Street is raking in millions, or even billions a year, you are seeing naked greed in its most obscene form.
Yes, we live in a capitalistic society. But “American Exceptionalism” is such that we are the only advanced, industrialized, Western-European capitalistic society where a virtually unregulated capitalism exists. Where other countries at least try to make provisions for the poor and the unemployed, we apparently would prefer them to starve or otherwise disappear. Greed has come to permeate our culture to the point where it is even more American than apple pie. If Margaret Halsey were alive I believe she would be horrified to see just where the “Business Ethic” has finally taken us. Greed is the very antithesis of a harmonious and decent society and culture. But greed in America is not only “good,” it is tacitly approved and openly promoted, its “The American Way.”
One of the weaknesses of our age is our apparent inability to distinguish our need from our greed.
Author Unknown
“The term “theme” is used here in a technical sense to denote a postulate or position, declared or implied, and usually controlling behavior or stimulating activity, which is tacitly approved or openly promoted in a society.” (Morris Edward Opler, 1941).
With such a definition you could, for example (and if you wished) say that “Order” is a defining theme of German culture. There has been such a claim, Ordnung ist das Erste Gebot,” (Order is the First Commandment {ofGod}), (Linda Langness, PhD dissertation, 1992). In any case, having lived through the past few decades, I have come to the conclusion that the dominant theme of 21st century America is almost beyond question: “Greed.” I do not say this happily or lightly about my own culture, but I believe it is true, and it pervades almost all aspects of our lives.
Consider, first of all, the current controversy over the 1% versus the 99%. This is a claim with a factual basis. We have many millionaires and even billionaires who, for the most part, resist having to pay increased taxes or even taxes at all, if possible. As they cannot possibly use all of their money their dogged insistence on having even more is difficult to classify if it is not greed. The same thing is true of many, perhaps most of our celebrities and professional athletes. Even when already having accumulated huge fortunes they cannot possibly exhaust they continue to make commercials, collect huge speaking fees, and etc., again difficult to describe as other than greed. It seems for those that have so much, there can never be enough.
As another example, consider the banking and especially the credit card industry. Most people with credit cards, almost everyone nowadays, pay over 9% and often as much as 30% for the privilege. By most standards this is usury, pure and simple. And not only do they charge exorbitant interest rates, they tack on other fees and use devious means to get more of your money, like offering to reduce your rate, but not telling you there is a fee for doing so, and so on. Banks, too, are absolutely shameless about ripping off their customers, using hidden fees, illegal foreclosures, and other techniques. They are never content to just earn a reasonable profit year after year for providing a service, they constantly create new ways to make more and more. I believe this is actually institutionalized greed. Insurance companies are just as bad and in fact get most of their money through unmitigated greed. If you have ever had to deal with an insurance company over an automobile accident, or even health insurance, you must be aware of what I mean. They will try most anything to get out of paying a claim, no matter how legitimate it is. No one is surprised when confronted with these problems, we have been so accustomed to them we now (however regretfully) consider them just “business as usual.”
Pharmaceutical companies are even more shameless, advertising drugs that are not always even approved, keeping drugs on the market as long as possible even when they know they are harmful, advertising shamelessly for ailments that sometimes are created out of thin air. They also typically overcharge for their products here in the U.S., the same products they sell elsewhere for less. As this is protected by the U.S. Congress one can only conclude it is “tacitly approved or openly promoted,” just as is all of the above.
Even our ordinary day to day lives are permeated by this theme of greed. We live in a consumer society where we actually have sayings like “shop until you drop,” “he who has the most toys wins,” “keeping up with the Jones’s,” and so forth. A few years ago a man won a huge lottery, many millions of dollars, when asked what he would do with his money, he replied his ambition was to become a billionaire! In fact our entire system, predicated as it is upon competition, is a constant attempt to get more for yourself, a more lucrative contract, another raise, the highest salary yet paid for something, and so on. Professional athletes are in some ways the worst offenders. They argued they deserved more money because their playing careers lasted only a short time, but now they make money so far in excess of what they need to live comfortably for the remainder of their lives, this is an argument that makes no sense at all. They, like most everyone else, want to be paid more than anyone else, apparently just for the sake of it, the prestige and recognition of being the highest paid. It is true there are a few exceptions to the dominance of greed as a value, a few companies, for example, are employee owned and the workers share in the proceeds. In such companies you can be sure the CEO’s are not receiving 400 times the salaries of the other employees. But in companies where the CEO’s are receiving such outrageous rewards you are facing nothing less than greed gone wild. Similarly, when a single trader or manager on Wall Street is raking in millions, or even billions a year, you are seeing naked greed in its most obscene form.
Yes, we live in a capitalistic society. But “American Exceptionalism” is such that we are the only advanced, industrialized, Western-European capitalistic society where a virtually unregulated capitalism exists. Where other countries at least try to make provisions for the poor and the unemployed, we apparently would prefer them to starve or otherwise disappear. Greed has come to permeate our culture to the point where it is even more American than apple pie. If Margaret Halsey were alive I believe she would be horrified to see just where the “Business Ethic” has finally taken us. Greed is the very antithesis of a harmonious and decent society and culture. But greed in America is not only “good,” it is tacitly approved and openly promoted, its “The American Way.”
One of the weaknesses of our age is our apparent inability to distinguish our need from our greed.
Author Unknown
Friday, December 02, 2011
Failing Politics
I am somewhat loathe to admit it but I think I am failing politics, the reason being simply a lack of interest. The current political situation in the United States has now become so completely ludicrous as to no longer be worthy of interest. It’s just the same old stuff over and over, day after day, week after week. Part of the trouble is that Republicans have consistently taken positions that are not only false but basically immoral. They are completely nonsensical, and for reasons not entirely easy to understand no one seems to do anything about it. It is, for example, patently absurd to keep defending millionaires and billionaires from even modest tax increases when the nation is so obviously suffering and desperately needs an increase in revenue. They base their opposition on the grounds that these are “job creators,” a claim that is itself absurd. They also claim taxes are too high when, in fact, they are at historic lows. They say we can’t have tax increases during a recession but have no problems raising taxes on the Middle Class and the working poor. They claim the lack of jobs is President Obama’s fault when in fact they have blocked every attempt he has made to improve the situation. They claim he has not provided leadership, a claim so ridiculous given their refusal at every step to cooperate it is basically laughable.
As far as their list of candidates for the Republican nomination goes, comparing them to clowns is a terrible disservice to that profession. They have had several so-called “debates that are not debates at all and make them without exception look stupid. One doesn’t seem to know the voting age or even the date of the next Presidential election, another doesn’t know China has had a nuclear bomb for forty years or so, still another claims she would not allow an Embassy in Iran when we already lack such an Embassy. With one or two exceptions they all want war with Iran, believe the criminal Israelis deserve all out unquestioned support no matter what war crimes they are committing. Still another thinks our children should be made to clean toilets and mop floors after the unionized janitors are fired, and still another believes we should be teaching Creationism in our schools (he is apparently unaware we are now in the 21st century). Another one has assured us that corporations are persons and seems to be blissfully unaware there are other countries on earth we must deal with, with something less than war. Most of them also seem perfectly willing to have us engaged in permanent wars wherever we choose. I could go on but I can no longer bear to think anymore about it, the collective ignorance of these egomaniacal jerks is absolutely stunning. You might think they were running for President of the eighth grade rather than the United States. Now to add insult to the injuries they have already inflicted on ordinary political discourse their next “debate” is going to be moderated by the one person capable of turning it into nothing but the epitome of cheap entertainment, Donald Trump, the King of Greed. Trump that for idiocy if you can.
On top of everything else the positions they espouse for the most part would have us return to the conditions that existed at the turn of the 20th century, or in at least one case, conditions that existed in the 18th century. They are all basically opposed to “government” and apparently think a form of primitive Social Darwinism would be the best way for us to live, not one for all and all for one, but each only for him or herself and the hell with the rest, “I’ve got mine, you get yours” would seem to be the mantra. They want to do away with virtually everything that serves to make the lives of ordinary citizens more livable: Social Security, unemployment insurance, health care, Planned Parenthood, the EPA, regulations in general, and preach such a thoughtless bunch or utter nonsense as to make you think perhaps they really don’t have any brains at all. They certainly have no understand of appreciation of the basic concept of “governing.” I confess I have now reached the point where I can no longer stand to listen any longer to their mindless prattle that seems to represent the rote memorization of a few simple minded principles, mostly “lower taxes, less government” over and over as if somehow they think that is really a solution to all our problems. It’s disgusting. It has become so bad that I have almost completely stopped watching the news and when a Republican appears I turn it off. I’m sure I won’t but I feel that I should just go into hibernation at least until about a year from now when the worst of it is over. Perhaps a prayer to the Great Mystery for mercy might help, or maybe just for a serious Republican candidate?
You are not here merely to make a living. You are here to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, and with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world. You impoverish yourself if you forget this errand.
Woodrow Wilson
As far as their list of candidates for the Republican nomination goes, comparing them to clowns is a terrible disservice to that profession. They have had several so-called “debates that are not debates at all and make them without exception look stupid. One doesn’t seem to know the voting age or even the date of the next Presidential election, another doesn’t know China has had a nuclear bomb for forty years or so, still another claims she would not allow an Embassy in Iran when we already lack such an Embassy. With one or two exceptions they all want war with Iran, believe the criminal Israelis deserve all out unquestioned support no matter what war crimes they are committing. Still another thinks our children should be made to clean toilets and mop floors after the unionized janitors are fired, and still another believes we should be teaching Creationism in our schools (he is apparently unaware we are now in the 21st century). Another one has assured us that corporations are persons and seems to be blissfully unaware there are other countries on earth we must deal with, with something less than war. Most of them also seem perfectly willing to have us engaged in permanent wars wherever we choose. I could go on but I can no longer bear to think anymore about it, the collective ignorance of these egomaniacal jerks is absolutely stunning. You might think they were running for President of the eighth grade rather than the United States. Now to add insult to the injuries they have already inflicted on ordinary political discourse their next “debate” is going to be moderated by the one person capable of turning it into nothing but the epitome of cheap entertainment, Donald Trump, the King of Greed. Trump that for idiocy if you can.
On top of everything else the positions they espouse for the most part would have us return to the conditions that existed at the turn of the 20th century, or in at least one case, conditions that existed in the 18th century. They are all basically opposed to “government” and apparently think a form of primitive Social Darwinism would be the best way for us to live, not one for all and all for one, but each only for him or herself and the hell with the rest, “I’ve got mine, you get yours” would seem to be the mantra. They want to do away with virtually everything that serves to make the lives of ordinary citizens more livable: Social Security, unemployment insurance, health care, Planned Parenthood, the EPA, regulations in general, and preach such a thoughtless bunch or utter nonsense as to make you think perhaps they really don’t have any brains at all. They certainly have no understand of appreciation of the basic concept of “governing.” I confess I have now reached the point where I can no longer stand to listen any longer to their mindless prattle that seems to represent the rote memorization of a few simple minded principles, mostly “lower taxes, less government” over and over as if somehow they think that is really a solution to all our problems. It’s disgusting. It has become so bad that I have almost completely stopped watching the news and when a Republican appears I turn it off. I’m sure I won’t but I feel that I should just go into hibernation at least until about a year from now when the worst of it is over. Perhaps a prayer to the Great Mystery for mercy might help, or maybe just for a serious Republican candidate?
You are not here merely to make a living. You are here to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, and with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world. You impoverish yourself if you forget this errand.
Woodrow Wilson
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Great Republican Ideas
Whaddya mean Republicans have no ideas? They have all kinds of great ideas. In fact I will be sad when the election is over as I would like to see how some of their ideas might come to fruition. One idea I am particularly interested in is Herman Cain’s idea that in order to be President of the United States you don’t have to know anything. This great idea seems to rest on the assumption that if you don’t know everything about everywhere you don’t need to know anything about anything (you just listen to your advisors and presumably do whatever they say). This is an idea that has had at least some confirmation in the person of Rick Perry who has demonstrated pretty clearly that you don’t have to know anything to be Governor of Texas. He’s having a bit of trouble transferring his know-nothingness to the national stage, but he’s still in the running. He has the idea that if you are 21 years of age you should vote on November 12th (three years after you are eligible and six days after the election is over). Great idea!
Rick Santorum’s great idea, I’m not sure he has more than one or two at most, is that we should be teaching creationism in our schools (and trying to prevent Gay marriages). Surely these are ideas whose time has come. It’s true that the 19th and 20th centuries have come and gone, but there’s no reason we shouldn’t use the 21st century to make up for lost time by just turning the clock back on whatever progress science and culture have to offer. I guess Michele Bachmann might be considered here as well, she seems to have no connection with facts or reality. She has the idea she has never said anything inaccurate during the campaign, and also that God has instructed her to run (I wonder where she has been all this time).
Ron Paul is a more difficult case. He does have one truly super idea, no more “wars.” But when you consider his more basic ideas you have to imagine what life would be like living back in the 18th century (or before). For example, his claim there is no natural right for health care and that people are entirely responsible for their own health care, employment, and everything else. He is right, of course, on health care, but he seems oblivious to the human need for health care. There are, as far as I know, no natural or god-given rights of any kind. The various rights humans possess, like health care in particular, are rights they are granted by their governments, they possess them by being members of civilized societies that have as their responsibility the health and well-being of their citizens. Paul seems to envision a group of people living basically without government, a situation that has never prevailed in human society. Indeed, it is generally the purpose of human society (government) to organize and provide for the citizens. As far as returning to the gold standard goes, another Paul idea, that is not even as realistic as teaching pigs to fly and breed with creatures from outer space. No human society has ever existed without “government” no matter how “primitive.”
Of course the really great idea man of the Republican Party (if you don’t believe it just ask him) is Newt Gingrich, self-proclaimed intellectual, number one egomaniacal hypocrite, con man extraordinary, and flip-flopping hired gun. You pay for it, he delivers. Among his more recent great ideas is firing union janitors from the schools and making children do the work. He also has an idea for treating Mexican drug dealers, simply execute them (I don’t know if he has cleared this with the Mexican government). He also thinks Singapore has the proper approach to the drug problem, just execute anyone found with a tad too many drugs. This is a great idea, especially if you have no knowledge or understanding of the problem, treat all drug users the same, deny that it is basically a medical rather than a political problem, and etc. Gingrich also has the idea that if he, personally, is not elected President, it will only be a short time until a Gay and Secular Fascism will take control of our country. He has other ideas, too numerous to mention, all of which are predicated on the assumption that only he possesses wisdom in any form and that whatever he says must be taken as gospel. I can’t wait to see him as President.
We must not forget Mitt Romney. I’m not sure he actually has any ideas of his own, other than getting rich and becoming President. He seems to select whatever ideas seem to fit his needs of the moment. I will not comment on his religious ideas as he has assured us they have nothing to do with politics. A glance at Romney’s ideas (I gather taken from others) on Foreign Policy are enough to make you want to run and hide. John Huntsman may or may not have ideas, decent or otherwise, but he is not allowed to participate as he thinks science is meaningful and at least some knowledge of Foreign Affairs is helpful.
The latest great Republican idea has to do with paying for the extension of the payroll tax exemption. Democrats, and Obama, have the crazy idea it might be paid for with a 2% increase in taxes paid by those making more than one million dollars a year, money they would almost surely never miss, and money that many of them think they should pay. Republicans have a better idea. While they begrudgingly will agree to the payroll tax extension, they insist it should be paid for by freezing the wages of Federal employees and taking more from ordinary working people. See, I told you, they have all kinds of great ideas. The Divine Right of Kings was child’s play compared to the new Divine Right of the Obscenely Wealthy.
At least two-thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity: idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religous or political ideas.
Aldous Huxley
Rick Santorum’s great idea, I’m not sure he has more than one or two at most, is that we should be teaching creationism in our schools (and trying to prevent Gay marriages). Surely these are ideas whose time has come. It’s true that the 19th and 20th centuries have come and gone, but there’s no reason we shouldn’t use the 21st century to make up for lost time by just turning the clock back on whatever progress science and culture have to offer. I guess Michele Bachmann might be considered here as well, she seems to have no connection with facts or reality. She has the idea she has never said anything inaccurate during the campaign, and also that God has instructed her to run (I wonder where she has been all this time).
Ron Paul is a more difficult case. He does have one truly super idea, no more “wars.” But when you consider his more basic ideas you have to imagine what life would be like living back in the 18th century (or before). For example, his claim there is no natural right for health care and that people are entirely responsible for their own health care, employment, and everything else. He is right, of course, on health care, but he seems oblivious to the human need for health care. There are, as far as I know, no natural or god-given rights of any kind. The various rights humans possess, like health care in particular, are rights they are granted by their governments, they possess them by being members of civilized societies that have as their responsibility the health and well-being of their citizens. Paul seems to envision a group of people living basically without government, a situation that has never prevailed in human society. Indeed, it is generally the purpose of human society (government) to organize and provide for the citizens. As far as returning to the gold standard goes, another Paul idea, that is not even as realistic as teaching pigs to fly and breed with creatures from outer space. No human society has ever existed without “government” no matter how “primitive.”
Of course the really great idea man of the Republican Party (if you don’t believe it just ask him) is Newt Gingrich, self-proclaimed intellectual, number one egomaniacal hypocrite, con man extraordinary, and flip-flopping hired gun. You pay for it, he delivers. Among his more recent great ideas is firing union janitors from the schools and making children do the work. He also has an idea for treating Mexican drug dealers, simply execute them (I don’t know if he has cleared this with the Mexican government). He also thinks Singapore has the proper approach to the drug problem, just execute anyone found with a tad too many drugs. This is a great idea, especially if you have no knowledge or understanding of the problem, treat all drug users the same, deny that it is basically a medical rather than a political problem, and etc. Gingrich also has the idea that if he, personally, is not elected President, it will only be a short time until a Gay and Secular Fascism will take control of our country. He has other ideas, too numerous to mention, all of which are predicated on the assumption that only he possesses wisdom in any form and that whatever he says must be taken as gospel. I can’t wait to see him as President.
We must not forget Mitt Romney. I’m not sure he actually has any ideas of his own, other than getting rich and becoming President. He seems to select whatever ideas seem to fit his needs of the moment. I will not comment on his religious ideas as he has assured us they have nothing to do with politics. A glance at Romney’s ideas (I gather taken from others) on Foreign Policy are enough to make you want to run and hide. John Huntsman may or may not have ideas, decent or otherwise, but he is not allowed to participate as he thinks science is meaningful and at least some knowledge of Foreign Affairs is helpful.
The latest great Republican idea has to do with paying for the extension of the payroll tax exemption. Democrats, and Obama, have the crazy idea it might be paid for with a 2% increase in taxes paid by those making more than one million dollars a year, money they would almost surely never miss, and money that many of them think they should pay. Republicans have a better idea. While they begrudgingly will agree to the payroll tax extension, they insist it should be paid for by freezing the wages of Federal employees and taking more from ordinary working people. See, I told you, they have all kinds of great ideas. The Divine Right of Kings was child’s play compared to the new Divine Right of the Obscenely Wealthy.
At least two-thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity: idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religous or political ideas.
Aldous Huxley
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
What Am I Missing?
What am I missing: a few brain cells? Perhaps a few synapses? Maybe some grey matter? Spark plugs? Maybe an oil change? I confess I absolutely cannot understand what is going on, with respect to the Republican plans for the 2012 election, that is. What on earth can they be thinking? Or are they even thinking? It is a complete and total mystery to me.
The Republicans announced long ago they would vote “no” for anything Obama wanted to do. They have been faithful to that pledge even though it has been extremely harmful to the country. They have alienated Black voters to the point where Obama is assured of the vast majority of their votes. They have alienated Hispanic voters with their stand on immigration. They have attacked the unions. More importantly, I should think, they have engaged in a war on women, on abortion, and even on contraception. They have consistently voted in favor of the 1% and against the Middle and Lower Classes. They have opposed universal health care, unemployment insurance, a minimum wage, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, the EPA, education, infrastructure, the arts, humanities, and anything that would in any way help ordinary people live more fruitful and happy lives. As I recall, we supposedly live in a democracy (even though perhaps merely a sham democracy) where one person equals one vote. The 99% represents just that, 99% of the voters. So just who do Republicans think are going to vote for them? Granted there are quite a lot of millionaires these days, and even some billionaires, but do they collectively have enough votes to elect the next President? Somehow they seem to think they do. I cannot understand this. I cannot understand how Republicans could possibly believe they are going to defeat Obama. I agree he is vulnerable, especially because of the unemployment problem. But really: Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Herman Cain, Ron Paul, Michele Bachmann, or Rick Santorum? Please, how about even a modicum of reality. But what is truly frightening is that large numbers of voters actually will probably vote Republican in spite of their absolutely abysmal behavior of the past few years. I find this every bit as mysterious as how the world was formed.
This current bunch of Republican clowns, and I mean that quite literally, have stretched my credibility to levels never heretofore even approximated. Romney a flip-flopper so extraordinary it almost amounts to a bad joke; Gingrich, every bit as much of a flip-flopper and almost surely the world’s greatest hypocrite; Herman Cain, a cartoon character mocking the system; Rick Perry, who doesn’t know when the election is scheduled or how old you have to be to vote; Michele Bachmann, only borderline sane, if that; Rick Santorum obsessed with sex and homophobic. You could shuffle all of these candidates together and still fail to have a full deck. The more mainstream Republicans (remember them) just stand by idly and let these nitwits represent them and their party, apparently just helpless and afraid.
President Obama seems to have finally outwitted them on at least one issue, the Payroll tax. If Republicans had not caved on this and apparently agreed to continue it they would have in effect raised taxes for some 160 million working class Americans. I guess that would have been too outrageous and too obvious even for those who would otherwise just as soon bury us as not. It seems to me that much of the American public has (finally) caught on the criminal conspiracy that has been ripping them off for so long and may well be preparing to make some much needed changes in the way things work, (up to now almost exclusively for the wealthy and the corporations). This is going to prove extremely difficult and will no doubt take quite a while, but I believe the worst may be behind us. True justice will probably never be attained, full accountability will evade us, but I am beginning to actually once again have hope for the future. In the meanwhile let’s get this charade of a democratic election over with, get rid of the morons that managed to get elected in 2010, and begin again with what will hopefully be a Congress of at least the moderately sane and a President in his second term, free of the Tea Party, more able to govern. Perhaps with a bit of luck we might be able to get Arizona and Texas to secede.
When it comes to elections I am usually wrong. With my record of predictions (Nixon, Reagan, George W. Bush, Schwartzeneger could never be elected) I wouldn’t be too surprised if we end up with a Gingrich/Cain ticket and a platform of adultery for everyone (but no Gay marriage, abortion, birth control, gender equality), and “a chicken in every pot,” two cars in every garage, and unsupervised erotic play on Sunday.
I think we agree, the past is over.
George W. Bush
The Republicans announced long ago they would vote “no” for anything Obama wanted to do. They have been faithful to that pledge even though it has been extremely harmful to the country. They have alienated Black voters to the point where Obama is assured of the vast majority of their votes. They have alienated Hispanic voters with their stand on immigration. They have attacked the unions. More importantly, I should think, they have engaged in a war on women, on abortion, and even on contraception. They have consistently voted in favor of the 1% and against the Middle and Lower Classes. They have opposed universal health care, unemployment insurance, a minimum wage, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, the EPA, education, infrastructure, the arts, humanities, and anything that would in any way help ordinary people live more fruitful and happy lives. As I recall, we supposedly live in a democracy (even though perhaps merely a sham democracy) where one person equals one vote. The 99% represents just that, 99% of the voters. So just who do Republicans think are going to vote for them? Granted there are quite a lot of millionaires these days, and even some billionaires, but do they collectively have enough votes to elect the next President? Somehow they seem to think they do. I cannot understand this. I cannot understand how Republicans could possibly believe they are going to defeat Obama. I agree he is vulnerable, especially because of the unemployment problem. But really: Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Herman Cain, Ron Paul, Michele Bachmann, or Rick Santorum? Please, how about even a modicum of reality. But what is truly frightening is that large numbers of voters actually will probably vote Republican in spite of their absolutely abysmal behavior of the past few years. I find this every bit as mysterious as how the world was formed.
This current bunch of Republican clowns, and I mean that quite literally, have stretched my credibility to levels never heretofore even approximated. Romney a flip-flopper so extraordinary it almost amounts to a bad joke; Gingrich, every bit as much of a flip-flopper and almost surely the world’s greatest hypocrite; Herman Cain, a cartoon character mocking the system; Rick Perry, who doesn’t know when the election is scheduled or how old you have to be to vote; Michele Bachmann, only borderline sane, if that; Rick Santorum obsessed with sex and homophobic. You could shuffle all of these candidates together and still fail to have a full deck. The more mainstream Republicans (remember them) just stand by idly and let these nitwits represent them and their party, apparently just helpless and afraid.
President Obama seems to have finally outwitted them on at least one issue, the Payroll tax. If Republicans had not caved on this and apparently agreed to continue it they would have in effect raised taxes for some 160 million working class Americans. I guess that would have been too outrageous and too obvious even for those who would otherwise just as soon bury us as not. It seems to me that much of the American public has (finally) caught on the criminal conspiracy that has been ripping them off for so long and may well be preparing to make some much needed changes in the way things work, (up to now almost exclusively for the wealthy and the corporations). This is going to prove extremely difficult and will no doubt take quite a while, but I believe the worst may be behind us. True justice will probably never be attained, full accountability will evade us, but I am beginning to actually once again have hope for the future. In the meanwhile let’s get this charade of a democratic election over with, get rid of the morons that managed to get elected in 2010, and begin again with what will hopefully be a Congress of at least the moderately sane and a President in his second term, free of the Tea Party, more able to govern. Perhaps with a bit of luck we might be able to get Arizona and Texas to secede.
When it comes to elections I am usually wrong. With my record of predictions (Nixon, Reagan, George W. Bush, Schwartzeneger could never be elected) I wouldn’t be too surprised if we end up with a Gingrich/Cain ticket and a platform of adultery for everyone (but no Gay marriage, abortion, birth control, gender equality), and “a chicken in every pot,” two cars in every garage, and unsupervised erotic play on Sunday.
I think we agree, the past is over.
George W. Bush
Monday, November 28, 2011
Gingrich the Humane?
I do not believe even for one minute that Newt Gingrich is any the less inhumane that the rest of the Republican capitalistic cutthroats he represents. When he says we should treat immigrants humanely he is really saying to Hispanics, vote for me. While the Republicans have universally condemned any attempt whatsoever to deal humanely with the immigrant problem, Gingrich is at least smart enough to know that Republicans cannot win without a substantial Hispanic vote. Thus he took a calculated risk by saying what he did, and he can probably convince Republicans that it was a wise thing to say, whether he meant it or not. He can now argue that one reason he should get the nomination is because he can get Hispanic votes. Of course it probably isn’t going to matter much as Gingrich has little chance of getting the nomination and no chance of ever becoming President. Gingrich as the Republican candidate would be virtually suicidal for Republicans as he has all the baggage of Romney plus several additional freight cars more. In fact it is virtually incomprehensible that he is the current leading candidate. He is a known hypocrite (actually a hypocrite’s hypocrite), an admitted adulterer (virtually an adulterer’s adulterer), a big time lobbyist (a lobbyist’s lobbyist, even though he denies actually being a lobbyist), a failed and disgraced Leader of the House, and, like all other Republicans, a chronic (but consummate) liar, a self-proclaimed intellectual (in the land of mental midgets anyone with even one idea is an intellectual). If I were Obama I’d say “Bring him on.” I doubt he will stay on top long enough for that to happen. But, then, strange things are done in the midnight sun (and in the dark secrecy of corporate boardrooms). Why would anyone name their son after a semi-aquatic salamander in the first place?
Ho hum, just another sexual problem for Herman Cain. If several accusations of sexual harassment are not enough, now he is charged with a 13 year adulterous relationship. She says she has proof. His lawyer says it is no one’s business what his private sex life has been or is. Someone should remind them the Republicans started this insidious business of invading someone’s private sex life when they introduced it as a totally unprecedented attempt to bring down Bill Clinton. What goes around, comes around. It doesn ‘t matter anyway, as Cain is finished as a candidate even though he somehow hangs on, as do Bachmann, Santorum, Huntsman, Paul, and Gingrich.
Try as they might Republicans cannot find a suitable non-Romney candidate. It seems the only way they can avoid his candidacy is if their convention deadlocks and someone as yet unknown and undeclared can emerge triumphant. Some say it might be Jeb Bush. Who knows what goes on in the minds of baboons? You almost have to feel sorry for them, stumbling around like Keystone Cops in an old comedy. I don’t feel sorry for them, I believe they deserve all “their bad” and more. By all that is right and just and sensible and honest and true, Republicans should be voted out of office en masse, perhaps even deported to regions so “nether” as to never be seen again. Of course that won’t happen, the American electorate, at least substantial portions of it, are apparently too dense to even vote in their own best interests. Don’t forget all them Gay marriages, abortions, birth controllers, Obama socialists, communists, fascists, immigrant loving, gun hating liberal atheists trying to take away our right-to-work laws and make us eat more healthily. We can’t have them in charge of the country, they might destroy the free enterprise culture that has reduced us all to poverty and despair.
That motley drama- oh, be sure
It shall not be forgot!
With its Phantom chased for evermore,
By a crowd that seize it not,
Through a circle that ever returneth in
To the self-same spot,
And much of Madness, and more of Sin,
And Horror the soul of the plot.
Edgar Allen Poe, from ”The Conqueror Worm”
Ho hum, just another sexual problem for Herman Cain. If several accusations of sexual harassment are not enough, now he is charged with a 13 year adulterous relationship. She says she has proof. His lawyer says it is no one’s business what his private sex life has been or is. Someone should remind them the Republicans started this insidious business of invading someone’s private sex life when they introduced it as a totally unprecedented attempt to bring down Bill Clinton. What goes around, comes around. It doesn ‘t matter anyway, as Cain is finished as a candidate even though he somehow hangs on, as do Bachmann, Santorum, Huntsman, Paul, and Gingrich.
Try as they might Republicans cannot find a suitable non-Romney candidate. It seems the only way they can avoid his candidacy is if their convention deadlocks and someone as yet unknown and undeclared can emerge triumphant. Some say it might be Jeb Bush. Who knows what goes on in the minds of baboons? You almost have to feel sorry for them, stumbling around like Keystone Cops in an old comedy. I don’t feel sorry for them, I believe they deserve all “their bad” and more. By all that is right and just and sensible and honest and true, Republicans should be voted out of office en masse, perhaps even deported to regions so “nether” as to never be seen again. Of course that won’t happen, the American electorate, at least substantial portions of it, are apparently too dense to even vote in their own best interests. Don’t forget all them Gay marriages, abortions, birth controllers, Obama socialists, communists, fascists, immigrant loving, gun hating liberal atheists trying to take away our right-to-work laws and make us eat more healthily. We can’t have them in charge of the country, they might destroy the free enterprise culture that has reduced us all to poverty and despair.
That motley drama- oh, be sure
It shall not be forgot!
With its Phantom chased for evermore,
By a crowd that seize it not,
Through a circle that ever returneth in
To the self-same spot,
And much of Madness, and more of Sin,
And Horror the soul of the plot.
Edgar Allen Poe, from ”The Conqueror Worm”
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