Facts, Shmacks

Many, it seems, mostly Republicans, have apparently attained an entirely new and surreal level of ontological existence, a level where “facts” have become irrelevant or may not even exist at all.

Marco Rubio, one of the many Republican village idiots with Presidential delusions, has given us what is perhaps the best example of this new state of being, by announcing publicly that he does not care what 97% of scientists say, he does not believe them. In other words, he does not believe in scientific facts, or at least considers his opinions to be on the same or even higher order of validity. He is thus entitled to his own facts even though they are based on opinion rather than scientific method. I guess his rationale for this, if pressed, would be that scientific facts are merely the opinions of scientists and thus one opinion is as good as another. Unhappily, Rubio (who I confess I can only think of as “Junior”) is not the only one who refuses to believe in science. Global warming deniers are trying to get us all killed, but don’t knock short-term profits.

Facts, if they truly exist, are almost completely irrelevant to the MSM and the internet. Facts are not needed  when the media is onto a potentially hot topic. Take the case of Sergeant Bergdahl, for example. Within hours of the announcement of his release by the Taliban he was already found guilty of desertion and cowardice, and there were suggestions that he should be shot by a firing squad, hung, or even left to the Taliban, hoping they would do the dirty work for us. His father was slandered as a Muslim, or at least a sympathizer,  because he had a long beard and spoke a few words of Pashtun, the language of those who were holding him captive. President Obama was immediately attacked for trading five dangerous captives for him, there were calls for his impeachment, claims he had broken the law, and, of course, the usual claims that he is himself a Muslim or Muslim sympathizer. Fox (non)News apparently went out of their way to find some of Berdahl’s fellow soldiers that accused him of cowardice and desertion, and even went so far as to claim some soldiers were killed as a result of having to search for him. Many politicians and others that had immediately tweeted congratulations for his safe return,  to immediately deleted them when the first signs of possible wrongdoing were suggestions. Bergdahl’s home town of Hailey, Idaho, had planned a hero’s return for him, canceled the event. His family has received death threats.

My point here is not that Berdahl is not guilty, or is guilty, the important thing to bear in mind is that all these accusations and suggestions were made BEFORE ANY FACTS AT ALL WERE KNOWN ABOUT THE SITUATION! This is standard operating procedure for the MSM. Whenever a story breaks they immediately cover it even while admitting none of the facts are known, but they promise to bring them to us when they do become available. Of course by the time the facts become known, if they do at all, the damage has already been done, the various speculations, rumors, and innuendoes remain in the minds of many who may or may not even hear the corrections.

The absolutely shameful news coverage of the Ukraine situation is another case in point. No one seems to care about the facts of the matter, Putin and Russia are guilty, are “bad” and solely responsible for the crisis in direct contradiction to the real facts of the matter. The same thing is true of the so-called Iranian crisis, now known to be a completely falsified claim of Iranian wrongdoing.

Facts, I am sorry to say, are no longer useful in this strange new and surreal world we are currently living in. If the facts contradict what it is we want to believe we just reject them, science is under fire for insisting on telling us things we do not want to hear. Congresspersons are assigned to the science committee in spite of their being anti-science, the potential damage to our nation, and even human life itself, is dangerous and unknown. The war between science and theology should have been over a hundred years ago, unfortunately it  lingers almost exclusively in the U.S. As the late great Jimmy Durante concluded his show, “Goodnight Miss Calabash, wherever you are.”

“The strong belief can make things out of imagination.
But that can also make facts as if they were fairy tales.” 
― Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity

Lost in the Past

I have been wondering why our foreign policy (in my opinion) has become so hopelessly, even excruciatingly and absurdly awful, to say nothing of unproductive and harmful to our once privileged position in the scheme of things. I have concluded that the reasons for this have to do with the fact that our “leaders,” including our Secretary of State, John Kerry, our Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel, and even our President, Barack Obama, as well as many others in the current administration. are simply lost in the past. They seem unable to comprehend that the “American century” is over, that we are no longer the “sole superpower,” the “shining light on the hill,” the “exceptional” and “indispensible,” “moral leader” of the “free world,” or that our hubris has now finally been exposed for what it is.

We once led the world in wealth, manufacturing, education, democracy, standard of living, technology, science, military superiority, and (perhaps) even moral authority. All of that has slipped away, especially, I think, during the Bush/Cheney nightmare years that began the present century. We no longer appear to lead in any category except apparently in military spending. But even our military superiority has proven illusory as we have lost repeatedly now to smaller countries with rag-tag armies and smaller weapons. Our billions and billions of dollars worth of nuclear bombs are basically useless and no longer separate us from other nations with the same shameful stockpiles of such weapons. Similarly, our billions of dollars worth of tanks and other armor are equally useless. We have undeniably lost power, influence, and control around the globe, even as we continue to pretend we have not. Our hypocrisy knows no end.

Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than our recent attempt to separate Ukraine from Russia and, more ridiculous than that, our apparent plan to somehow bring about regime change in Russia itself by making conditions in Russia so bad eventually Vladimir Putin would be removed from power and a ruler more to our liking would result. The hypocrisy involved in President Obama and others chastising Putin for attacking smaller countries, considering our own behavior in this regard, is so transparently foolish and dishonest as to be laughable. Our days of bringing about regime changes have come to an end in both Syria and Russia. Obama announced that “Assad must go.” Assad remains, just as Putin will, and just as Cuba and Venezuela have survived our repeated attempts against them. We have lost our control over Latin American countries and are losing it over other countries as well, naked exploitation just isn’t what it used to be.

 Russia and China are not going to be cowed or controlled by the United States, and combined they represent new international politics. Similarly, a German/Russian collusion would also mean a formidable threat to American hegemony. Besides, what the hell are we doing meddling in the affairs of Europe and Russia anyway? What business is it of ours what happens there other than our now feeble attempts to control the world? There is a good reason why we (along with Israel) are now considered the greatest threat to peace.   

But even as we have lost our last several wars, more and more control over others, and have sacrificed our own well-being in our futile attempt at a world-wide empire, we still have Hagel lecturing the Chinese on how to behave in the South China seas, and Kerry lecturing Russia on how to behave in the Ukraine, and Obama patronizing Putin, and Kerry pretending to be an equitable broker in the Israeli/Palestinian situation. It’s as if things haven’t changed in the past few years of the 21^st century. I don’t know if Obama and others recognize the changes and just do not want to admit it, or if they still somehow cling to their beliefs about our exceptionality. Of course no one wants to admit we lost our empire during their time in power (even as we are).  

	“I have not become the Kings First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.

Sir Winston Churchill

       

Misogyny

The recent terrible stabbings and shootings near Santa Barbara seem to have renewed the interest in misogyny as if, somehow, misogyny has just now been discovered. This is weird, I think, as misogyny is as American as apple pie. Actually, I should say, misogyny is a long-standing and integral part of the fundamental Western-European paradigm of belief that has served us for the past several hundred years. This is a topic that could easily be a lifetime of work and thought and is rather complicated as well as in a way inexplicable. But, in brief:

Start with the claim that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. That is, the development of an individual reflects the evolution of the species. When translated to cultural evolution this means that present day “savages” represent an earlier stage of mankind. There was an evolution from savages to barbarism to civilization. Carried a bit farther this was interpreted to mean that children represented an earlier stage, they were thought of as “little savages.” The art of children was believed to be a form of “primitive” art, and children’s thought was believed to be “primitive” like the art of primitive savages. Given the belief in ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny, and given the extension of this idea into the evolution of culture, this made sense at the time. It seemed clear that cultures had evolved from savagery to civilization and individual human development evolved in much the same way: the thought of children was similar to that of our “primitive” ancestors, their art was similarly “primitive” and as they matured they reached “higher” stages of thought and understanding. Australian aborigines, Bushmen-Hottentots, and other such Black people were lower on the evolutionary scale than, for example, American Indians, Asians, and so on up to the “highest” people of all, White people, especially White Western-Europeans. This was the “great chain of being” that culminated in White superiority.

Women did not escape their position in this fundamental belief system even though in a sense they were outside of it and could have been excluded from it. Although there was no obvious logical reason for it, women became part of it because it was claimed they were really like children, and, as such, also like “savages.” Consider what was written about them by noted authorities of the time:

 Cesare Lombroso was most probably the most  important criminologist of the nineteenth century and perhaps the first  to equate women with children and savages:

“We also saw that women have many traits in common with children; that their moral sense is deficient ; that they are revengeful, jealous, inclined to vengeances of a refined cruelty. In ordinary cases these defects are neutralized by piety, maternity, want of passion, sexual coldness, by weakness and an undeveloped intelligence. But  when a morbid activity of the psychical centres intensifies the bad qualities of women, and induces them to seek relief in evil deeds; when piety and maternal sentiments are wanting. And in their place are strong passions and intensely erotic tendencies, much muscular strength and a superior intelligence for the conception and execution of evil, it is clear that the innocuous semi-criminal present in the normal woman must be transformed into a born criminal more terrible than any man.”

Lombroso’s views on women were shared by others at the time. Paul Broca, an authority on brain size, argued that women’s brains were smaller than men’s, not only because they were smaller than men, but qualitatively. Gustave LeBon:

“In the most intelligent races, as among the Parisians, there are a large number of women whose brains are closer in size to those of gorillas than to the most developed male brains. This inferiority is so obvious that no one can contest it for a moment; only its degree is worth discussion. All psychologists who have studied the intelligence of of women, as well as poets and novelists, recognize today that they represent the most inferior forms of human evolution and that they are closer to children and savages than to an adult, civilized man.”

Even Darwin linked women to past stages of civilization:

“It is generally admitted that with women the power of intuition, of rapid perception, and perhaps of imitation, are more strongly marked than in man; but some, at least, of these faculties are characteristics of the lower races and therefore of a past an lower state of civilization.”

Like Aristotle, who believed woman had fewer teeth than men, but never bothered to actually count their teeth, these early authorities simply imposed their beliefs about women into the widely accepted paradigm of the time. When you consider that women only achieved the right to vote in the U.S. in 1920, and even after that were often legally considered children with respect to property rights, were expected to be subservient to their husbands and so on, it is obvious that misogyny survived for a long time, and still does in some respects. As the word misogyny first appeared (I think) in the 1600’s it has been with us for a long time.

An examination of the position of women historically as well as ethnographically would no doubt shed some light on this perplexing problem, but that is for another time.

No doubt exists that all women are crazy; it's only a question of degree.

W. C. Fields

Intolerant

in·tol·er·a·ble

 adjective \(ˌ)in-ˈtäl-rə-bəl, -ˈtä-lə-rə-, -ˈtä-lər-bəl\

: too bad, harsh, or severe to be accepted or tolerated : not tolerable

So just how bad does something have to be or become to be intolerable, even absolutely intolerable? And when it does what, if anything can be done about it? There are several things going on at the moment that I find intolerable. For example, I believe the continuing Republican whining about Obamacare, and their continuing nonsensical votes to repeal it, is intolerable. They have wasted hundreds, if not thousands of hours of time, and millions and millions of dollars of taxpayer money on this absolutely futile attempt and are still talking about it. Why have they not been stopped? Why has this been allowed to continue well beyond the point when it became obvious it was simply a complete waste of time and money? Is there no one who could have stopped this nonsense? Well, of course there is. John Boehner, the Speaker of the House, could have stopped it, but didn’t.

What about Benghazi? There have been multiple official investigations on this so-called scandal, at least 50 hearings of one kind or another, 25,000 pages of documents provided, testimony by relevant witnesses, and It is by now perfectly obvious what happened and what went wrong. There is nothing new to be learned. So why do we now have a new committee to investigate it once more, another complete waste of time and taxpayer money? Could no one have prevented this? Why, of course, John Boehner could have refused to set up this new committee, but he didn’t. Personally, I find this absolutely intolerable.

I am not citing these two examples simply to castigate John Boehner. There are many officials, including President Obama, who are refusing to exercise their authority even when they have it. Why is this so? I suppose the simplest explanation is “politics.” Our elected officials no longer do what might well be seen as the “right” thing to do because it is not the politically expedient thing to do. Political considerations are now more important than the interests of the people. Take gun control, for example. It is common knowledge that the vast majority of citizens believe in certain kinds of gun control, even members of the NRA, but we cannot have it. Minimum wage is another example. The citizenry is overwhelmingly in favor of raising the minimum wage, but we do not yet have it, and may or may not ever have it. Food stamps, unemployment insurance, Medicaid, Social Security, jobs, all favored by a majority of the people but apparently beyond the capability of our elected officials to manage in the public interest . There is an obvious disconnect between the public interest and what happens in the corridors of power. We know the reasons for this, corporations and the wealthy control our elected officials, and cause them to act for their private interests rather than for the public interest. This is, I submit, absolutely intolerable.    

The most obvious locus for intolerability has to be the Republican Party which has refused for the past six years to participate in government at all. It is, put simply, the party of “no.” They announced this would be their policy as soon as President Black (oops, I meant Obama) was elected and they have stuck with it with remarkable obstinacy. They have done everything possible to keep Obama from succeeding at anything, and because they have been relatively successful at this they now have the temerity to blame Obama for the very problems they, themselves, have manufactured. Just as they wasted much of the Clinton Presidency with false claims and outlandish opposition, they have wasted the six years of Obama’s Presidency. Whatever you may think of Obama, and he clearly has his shortcomings, there is no doubt our country would be far better off if the Republicans had not elected their near treasonous strategy to prevent him from succeeding at anything. The Republican Party has now succeeded in becoming absolutely INTOLERABLE. Unfortunately there is nothing in our (false) democracy we can do about it except vote them out of office at every opportunity. Where is a benevolent dictator when you need one?

A fascist is one whose lust for money or power is combined with such an intensity of intolerance toward those of other races, parties, classes, religions, cultures, regions or nations as to make him ruthless in his use of deceit or violence to attain his ends.

Henry A. Wallace

Voting in North Idaho

Yesterday was primary voting day in Idaho. I decided to vote even though I recognize that as a Democrat my vote is meaningless. The fact is, or so I am told by my friends, that if you do not vote in two consecutive elections you will be removed from the voter rolls. I don’t know if that is true but I assume it may be, and although I know my vote is meaningless I treasure it and would not want to lose it, especially with the Presidential election coming up in 2016. .

Apparently there are new rules about voting in Idaho. First, I had to display my photo identification. I never had to do this before. The nice elder ladies that volunteer year after year to man the polling places know who I am (I’ve been voting here in the same place for more than 20 years), but even so I had to display my driver’s license. This unnecessary bureaucratic nonsense aside I then had to tell them I was a registered Democrat so as to get a Democratic ballot (we now have three choices: Republican, Independent, Democrat). This means, of course, that I was immediately identified as a Democrat (an evil, disgusting “liberal”) to anyone within hearing distance, so much for a private, secret ballot. As there are rarely, if ever, more than one Democratic candidate for any given position, they know not only that I am a Democrat but who, precisely, I am voting for.   

If that is not bad enough, when I went to place my ballot in the box I was required to state my name, out loud, and my address! Thus I was not only identified as a Democratic, and a liberal, but they now know exactly where I live! So what, you might say, but when you live in an area populated by large numbers of ultra-right gun nuts who hate liberals it does make you nervous.

Frankly, I doubt this procedure is legal or even constitutional. But it was passed by our overwhelmingly Republican dominated state legislature that seems to pay little attention to such mundane things as federal laws and constitutions (even though they claim they will defend to the death the Constitution of the United States, a document I doubt most have them have ever read or understand).

Anyway, it was an interesting experience in voter suppression, if that is, in fact, what it was intended to be. I suspect the photo identification is a deliberate intent to keep some Hispanics from voting, but the requirement to state your name and address could conceivably be just a stupid idea that was not really intended to dissuade people from voting, even though it might. I have had at least two people tell me they would not vote if they were required to state their  address publicly. As we vote in precincts it is already obvious more or less where we reside and this requirement would seem unnecessary.I don't know if they intended this procedure to be a subtle form of voter suppression (I'm not at all certain they are that sophisticated), but perhaps they did. 

I gather these rules only apply to primaries and not to the general elections. But if they have already identified you as a Democrat they know you are harmless and can be written off as irrelevant. To be a Democrat in a small town like ours, surrounded by right-wing extremists, you might as well have the plague. To be a Democrat is to be a liberal, and to be a liberal is to be a socialist/communist/Obama-loving/ anti-American/atheist who wants to take their money and give it to others (even though virtually everyone in the county is on the “dole” in one way or another). And you certainly do not want to be a scientist. Scientists are people who devote their lives to preventing ordinary people from doing whatever it is they want to do. After all, who needs to worry about global warming, the environment, health care, schools, roads and bridges, food stamps, unemployment insurance, Social Security, jobs, and stuff like that when the End Times are coming?

“Representative government is artifice, a political myth, designed to conceal from the masses the dominance of a self-selected, self-perpetuating, and self-serving traditional ruling class.” 

 Giuseppe Prezzolini

On Equality

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”

These are the opening, often quoted lines of the Declaration of Independence, as written by Thomas Jefferson and edited by Benjamin Franklin. I often wonder what it is they were thinking when they wrote them as they are so demonstrably untrue. First, slavery still existed during the Revolution, but surely they did not mean Blacks were equal to Whites (perhaps they didn’t think Blacks were “men?”). And certainly they did not believe Blacks had a “right” to liberty (or even, I suppose, the right to the “Pursuit of Happiness.”

Second, I note also they said nothing about the rights of women. While it is true that “men” can at times be the generic term for “people,” it seems unlikely to me that was true in this case as women were still believed to be the property of their husbands and certainly did not have the same rights as men.

Third, they cannot have been unaware of the obvious fact that all men are not, in fact, created equal. There remains to this day the nagging belief on the part of some that Blacks are not equal to Whites. But even more obvious is the undeniable facts that some men are larger than others, some stronger than others, some smarter than others, some healthier than others, some more highly motivated, some more talented in some areas than others, some more creative, thoughtful, and some could work harder, lift more, last longer, fight better, and so on and on. These completely obvious conditions are undeniable, the Founding Fathers had to have been aware of them. They could not have been thinking about the equality of wealth as they were among the most wealthy people of the time and certainly were not thinking of dividing wealth up equally.

So what could it have meant to them when they thought it was “self-evident…” and what of “inalienable Rights?” It could not possibly have been self-evident, nor did every man have rights to liberty and the pursuit of happiness. If physically and behaviorally all men were obviously and demonstrably not equal, and if they were also not equally wealthy, what could they have been thinking?

I confess I have pondered over this for years and I still do not understand why it was written as It was. It makes no sense now and I suggest that in the context of the times when it was authored it made even less sense then. To me, extrapolating from “inalienable rights” and “consent of the governed,” I conclude the only interpretation that makes sense to me is that all men (men then, “persons” now ) have an inalienable right to vote (consent to be governed).But I don’t believe this is exactly what it meant to them as they must have had a narrow and idiosyncratic definition of “men,” probably having to do only with White men who were also property owners or some such thing.   

 In any case there are now Republicans who do not believe all persons have an inalienable right to vote as they are busily engaged in stripping away such rights wherever they can. Unhappily, at the moment it appears that no one truly has the inalienable right to life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness. When the President can kill you at his discretion, when your every move and conversation is recorded, and when you must work for wages that keep you in poverty, these so-called “Constitutional Rights” are no more than “pie in the sky.” Need I bother to say anything about the inequality of wealth? 

I don’t truly know what the Founding Fathers had in mind but I doubt it was anything like the current situation and I am not enough of a historian to pursue it. Just be careful when you hear various people spouting out loudly about constitutional rights.

“The dead should not rule the living.” 

 Thomas Jefferson

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Vintage Rove

I’m sure the few occasional visitors to Morialekafa are mostly unaware of my previous attempt to add a new verb to our language. It seemed to me that if a noun like quisling (the name of a Norwegian traitor in WW II) could be added to our language, there was no reason an additional verb could not be. Obviously I have not been successful at this. The word and definition I suggested to be added (6 -7-12) are as follows:

“roviate v. to smear, slime, malign, denigrate, and attempt to destroy an opponent through the use of innuendo, rumor, slander, outright lies and any other despicable means available. Roviation works more effectively when done in collusion with major media.”

Obviously Karl Rove was the stimulus for this attempt as he was well known for using such means against opponents, such as the rumor that John McCain might have fathered a black baby, a woman running for office might be a lesbian, another candidate may be a pedophile, and etc. This is somewhat reminiscent of a ploy once described by Lyndon Johnson who apparently said, “I could accuse him of having sex with a goat. It wouldn’t be true, of course, but it doesn’t matter as he’d have to work like hell to deny it” (this is not an exact quote but contains the gist of it. I confess I don’t even know if this was true). It should be obvious why I am now bringing this up again, at least if you have been following the news.

Rove is at it again, having suggested that Hillary Clinton may have suffered some kind of brain damage, claiming she had been in the hospital for 30 days and was wearing glasses that were meant for such conditions. Neither of these claims are true, of course, as she was hospitalized for only four days and they were not that kind of glasses. But not to matter, this is vintage Rove, and even though it will be perhaps a year before she even declares to run in 2016, it’s never too soon for the ”roviation” to begin. It is not hard to imagine how badly the 2016 campaign will become degraded thanks to Rove and his buddies (if, indeed, he really has any buddies).

Rove has attempted to backtrack a bit, claiming he didn’t mean it, but meant only to bring up the legitimate issue of her age and health. But whatever he might be, Rove is not stupid. The dirty bastard knows exactly what he has done. And now that he has planted the seed, no matter what Hillary does or says, or no matter what the doctors may say and do, there will be some on the brain damaged right that will always believe and say Hillary has brain damage. Roviation is a truly insidious technique that will be front and center from now on, presumably to discourage Hillary from actually running at all, and failing that, to defeat her if she does. Free speech, unfortunately, is easily abused.

 One of the problems with defending free speech is you often have to defend people that you find to be outrageous and unpleasant and disgusting.

Salman Rushdie

Me and Kati (17): Kati's Epic Battle

I didn’t think we would have another conversation so soon, Kati, but your behavior has been so completely appropriate (for a cat, that is) I feel I must speak up. It must have been quite a night. I can’t believe I must have slept through it.

Kati, there were tiny feathers everywhere, along the downstairs corridor, in the furnace room, and many more in the bathroom. It must have been an epic battle, there were feathers everywhere, on the counter, in the sink, in the bathtub where, I gather, the major battle occurred, as the towels were all pulled off the racks, the rug was wadded up in the corner, and it did resemble a battlefield. I fully expected to find the remains of some little bird testifying to your feline prowess. Imagine my surprise (and delight) when I slid back the shower door and found a tiny, somewhat bedraggled but still alive tiny sparrow, alert, (and I surmise very angry) and still able to fly perfectly. Kati, you lost. The sparrow outlasted and outfoxed you. I was a bit upset, especially as I was unable to catch the little creature and release it. Finally, I opened all the doors and hoped it would escape. I guess it must have as I have not seen it, or any trace of it, anywhere in the house. How do I know it was you, Kati, as I did not actually witness the event? First, you were the only cat around. Second, you have a tradition of bringing your victims into the house (Spencer leaves his outside or at the front door), and I have never seen Midnight kill a mouse or a bird (I think he may think it beneath his dignity as he engages in serious combat with nocturnal cats that usually tear him to pieces).

Of course I forgive you Kati, after all you just did what cats do, and as you have no concept of evil you were not motivated by that. There is no evil in nature. Animals and birds do not torture and kill each other out of evil desires, they just do as they are programmed by nature to do. Evil is an invention of humans, and while it may look like you are torturing your birds and mice that is not really what is involved. You might well say you are merely playing with them.

Human thought is often strange and one thought most often leads to another. The sight of that feisty tiny sparrow made me think, of all things, Benghazi. Why Benghazi, because Republicans have been attacking that tragedy and trying to turn it into a scandal, but like you, Kati, they have lost. Thinking of Benghazi then led me to think of our foreign policy. Whereas your basic nature prompts you to attack anything that moves, our foreign policy seems to be the opposite, if it doesn’t move (in the direction we want it to), attack. Following this completely insane idea, motivated by Hubris and the crackpot idea that we are exceptional and should therefore control the world (especially all the oil and other resources), we have managed in recent years to become a pariah nation believed to be the greatest threat to peace on the planet (along with the Israelis who seem to control our foreign policy in the Middle East while they continue to pillage Palestinian land and water).  

It does appear that as some have suggested, the “American Century” is over, and it will be downhill from here. We, like you Kati, have lost. We no longer lead the world in much of anything, having sacrificed our young people, infrastructure, manufacturing, morality, nation, and even our planet itself, to the one all-important, obsessive goal…PROFIT. Let’s all make money while the planet burns, continue to elect absolute know-nothings to office, ignore science and reality, and bask in the glow of the Tea Party nincompoops. It’s the American way!

And the way, Kati, I did not appreciate the half dead mouse under my chair this afternoon.

“I do not believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it,” Rubio said. “I think severe weather has been a fact of life on Earth since man started recording history.”

Presidential candidate Marco Rubio

Yes, Follow the Money

Now that the Supreme Court in its not very worldly wisdom has decided that money is speech and those who have it in abundance can spend as much as they want to try to buy the elections, there is an attempt by Democrats to keep up, to try to raise just as much as Republicans. They do this in large part by asking small donors to contribute as much as they can, even sometimes suggesting as little as $3.00. I now receive emails from Democratic candidates in states far from where I live. Perhaps they realize that I would not be donating to local Idaho Democratic candidates who are, to begin with, scarce, and also doomed to lose. If you are a Democrat in Idaho your vote, realistically, doesn’t count. But I digress.

Many of the solicitations I now receive on a daily basis start out by saying something like, “The Koch brothers have already committed X amount of their massive fortunes to defeat so-and-so, we have to raise similar amounts to try to win.” I’m not sure that trying to raise as much as the Koch brothers, Karl Rove, Addelson, and others is even possible. But even if it is this strikes me as a genuine “Suckers game,” a monumental scam.

Consider where all the money goes. Most of it is spent on expensive advertising on television or newspapers and such. But who owns or controls most all of the media? The very people who are offering up vast sums of their own money are the same people who own the media. This is, simply put, a situation in which they take money from one of their pockets and put it in another of their pockets. Basically, over time, they break even. So why do they bother to spend so much money, the more the better?

That’s where the suckers come in. When Democrats spend money it goes to the same media as Republican money does, but Democrats, for the most part, do not own or control the media. In their case they are basically taking money out of their pockets and depositing it in the pockets of their opponents. If this is true, and it seems to me it is, at least roughly true, it follows that the more money Republicans front, the more they stimulate their suckers to contribute. It’s the same basic principle that constitutes all of their activity, taking from the poor, so to speak, and giving to the wealthy. This seems perfectly obvious to me. I would like someone to explain to me why it might not be true. 

Given that Republicans control the major media they could, I suppose, simply make it more difficult or even impossible for Democrats to use it, and given their propensity for trying to deny the vote to Democrats, you might wonder why they do not do so (there could be laws against this, I do not know). But that would, of course, reduce their profits, thus they try to get Democratic suckers to spend as much as possible.

This would appear to be another example of “them as has, gets.” Under this arrangement Democrats are at a considerable disadvantage. Given the importance of the media in influencing public opinion Democrats cannot ignore it and must participate somewhat. This raises an interesting question, just how much does money and advertising actually influence the vote. It would seem clear that those who spend the most do not necessarily win, so why the emphasis on raising as much or more money than your opponents? Obviously there are other factors involved, it is not a matter of buying votes even though it might seem that way. If I had anything to do with it, which I certainly do not, I would suggest that Democrats not try to match the virtually unlimited resources of the billionaires and corporations, nor would I try to match them ad for ad. I would opt for quality over quantity and limit the number of ads but make them much more creative and focused (with so many ads by Republicans you can be sure most of them will be pretty stupid). I would also utilize the U.S. Postal service (not yet a privatized Republican controlled business), and I would spend tons of money on just plain old-fashioned getting out the vote. It is well known that if more people vote Democrats have an advantage, if fewer people vote the advantage goes to the Republicans. If Democrats do not vote in record numbers the Republicans could very well take the Senate, keep the House, and return us to the 19^th century. Power to the People!

You only have power over people so long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything, he's no longer in your power - he's free again.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Me and Kati (16): Weary...

 Kati, you are the only one I can talk with in this remote sea of right wingers, true believers, and other odd characters.  I have been for some time finding it harder and harder to blog. I’m not sure why this is, perhaps I am just getting too old, have little creativity left, am lazy, increasingly uninterested, or, I have finally just grown weary of watching the witless Washington warmongers wishing for more wars and, otherwise, for all of our real and important problems to somehow magically disappear without requiring and action or effort on their part. I realize they are too busy collecting their bribes to have much time for governing.

I confess, my little feline friend, I do not know what to make of it all. I certainly do not know what to think of President Obama, who seems to have a strange and complicated problem of bipolarity in both the domestic and foreign policy realms. 

Domestically, Obama appears to be on the right side of the general public as he is for jobs, a minimum wage, fair pay, unemployment insurance, universal health care, education, and infrastructure improvements, the environment, immigration reform, and even taking action against global warming. How can I not respect him for these priorities? On the other hand, he seems to be in bed with the Big Banks and Wall Street and is obviously in favor of pumping as much oil and gas out of the ground as fast as possible. He may even approve the ghastly Keystone pipeline. I think he also believes in nuclear energy although that is an issue that seems to be dying. And, although he talks transparency, he doesn’t “walk the walk,” has been very secretive and hard on whistleblowers, as well as on immigrants. Some of these latter interests do not seem to jibe very well with the former, and seem to me a kind of bipolar witlessness.

When it comes to foreign policy I am even more bewildered. He has managed to more or less extricate us from our two failed “wars,” and has even managed up until now to keep us from starting new ones, with Syria and Iran at least, this in spite of the attempts by the Neocon hawks and Israel to push him into such foolishness. I believe he should get much credit for this. But I had thought he and Putin were getting along reasonably well and cooperating in some important areas, but now the coup in Kiev seems to have ended that important relationship. Why Obama would have joined with the E.U. to overthrow a democratically elected (although granted, terrible) President in Ukraine (presumably to draw Ukraine into NATO), and is now supporting a new Ukraine government that includes neo-Nazis as well as anti-Semites, and is urging them to attack, murder and burn the pro-Russians in the Ukranian east, I do not understand. This seems to me clearly inconsistent with his otherwise foreign policy attempts, again apparently bipolar witlessness.

It has been suggested that Obama’s mistake was keeping on many of the Bush appointees and some of his opponents (as Lincoln is reported to have done). Thus while Obama might have been in favor of diplomacy his Secretary of State and others were more hawkish and have influenced him to do things he might not have elected to do on his own, the cases of Syria and Iran are good examples. Hillary Clinton and Gates apparently wanted to get militarily involved in Syria and damage Iran. I suspect, Kati, there may well be some truth in this explanation, and it may well be that Obama was not completely “in the loop” when it came to the coup in Kiev. It is also quite possible, I believe, that Obama and Putin may be secretly cooperating to keep the Ukraine situation from getting completely out of hand. Of course I do not know what goes on in the corridors of power. I like to think this Obama/Putin collaboration might be true. If it is true Obama is owed even greater respect.

Of course when it comes to witlessness nothing can compare with the behavior of Republicans. They have positioned themselves as being opposed to virtually anything that might help ordinary people. The polls are quite clear on minimum wages, unemployment insurance, jobs, and etc., but in spite of the obvious majority of support for anything the desires of common people are irrelevant and the desires of the 1% are favored by the GOP. Now they have even set up a new committee to investigate Benghazi even though the facts of that tragedy are already known and have more than abundantly been made clear. If their goal is to win elections this is witlessness carried to an obvious extreme. Kati, you are such a good listener. No matter what I say you just lie there on my lap and purr. I forgive you your occasional witlessness as you, being a cat, don’t know any better, and what you do doesn’t harm anyone. The witlessness of humans is not the same.

             

People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid.

 Soren Aabye Kierkegaard  

Benghazi or Banzai?

Banzai, during WW II, for anyone who might not know, was a Japanese term that referred to a kind of last ditch, human wave, more or less suicidal attack when everything else had failed.

It seems obvious to me that the current Republican obsession with Benghazi is nothing more than their last ditch, probably hopeless “banzai” attack on Obama/Hillary and the 2016 Presidential race. All else has failed for them, their belief that Obamacare would fail, the economy would fail, unemployment would rise, they could find an IRS scandal, and so on. So now, in desperation, it’s just Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi, all the time. They are doing this because they are at a loss for anything else to do, being intellectually bankrupt, having accomplished virtually nothing for the past six years, opposing Obama at every turn.

This obsession with Benghazi may very well backfire on Republicans as it occurred two years back and has already been investigated to death with several hearings, much testimony, documentation, and so on. It is clear what happened during this truly tragic event, and also clear there was no White House cover-up, and also clear that Hillary had little or nothing to do with it (other than being Secretary of State at the time).  Even so, Darrell Issa refuses to let it go, having failed miserably to find a scandal anywhere.  Someone referred to Issa as a “mangy attack dog.” I think that is unfair to attack dogs everywhere. Issa has managed to waste millions of dollars of taxpayer money and untold hours of time for the past six years and has accomplished nothing (except getting himself lots of publicity). One of the things I find the most disturbing about our political system is the lack of any overriding authority, someone, somewhere, somehow, to just make fools like Issa stop doing more obvious damage than they already have. You might think that his (so-called) peers in Congress would themselves have made him stop, but they are either helpless or are themselves delighted in such arrogantly stupid, wasteful, and unnecessary behavior. They are not called the greatest do-nothing Congress for no reason. Every time Republicans bring up Benghazi, Democrats in Congress should shout Banzai! Banzai! Banzai!

Now that Israel has (completely predictably) managed to destroy another attempt to solve the Israeii/Palestinian problem (which probably should be simply termed the Israeli problem),  where do we go from here? My bet is the answer will be nowhere. Kerry is said to be considering waiting six months and trying again, an idea so laughable as to be ridiculous. It could not be more obvious that Israel does not want a solution, preferring the status quo, and it is equally obvious the United States is so biased in Israeli’s favor it will never succeed in being an honest broker. The United Nations is going to have to wake up and take some truly meaningful steps to force Israeli compliance with a two state solution however painful it may be to Israel. Israel is and will continue to be a true apartheid state unless the world unites to prevent it from continuing, as happened with South Africa.

It looks like we are beginning to see the end of American hegemony, the American century, or whatever you want to call it. Putin is quite likely to put an end to how things have been for the past century. If, when the current unrest in Ukraine is settled (hopefully diplomatically), Putin might well opt for closer ties with the European Union, especially with Germany. Russia has enormous natural resources, Germany has all the know-how to exploit them. Thus if a Eurasian entity emerges it will be a world powerhouse to easily challenge American hegemony. If, on the other hand, Putin decides to turn eastward, to China and India, a similar world power would be created, also strong enough to challenge U.S. hegemony. Ultimately, our meddling in the affairs of Europe and Asia, will probably bring about one of these two results, Putin will emerge as the real winner. We may, indeed, have attempted one coup too many. 

 “One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards.” 
― Oscar Wilde

Proving the Obvious?

There is an old derogatory definition of a sociologist as being a person who needs a fifty thousand dollar Research  grant in order to find the nearest whore house (an anthropologist, being a participant-observer, would, of course, have already be there). You might say this is a case of someone discovering the obvious.

I do not wish to take anything away from Thomas Pikklety’s fine and controversial book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, that seems to have thrown Republicans and Libertarians into fits of hysterics, but in my simple-minded view of economics it seems to me Pikkety has demonstrated the obvious: basically, that to make money (capital) you to have money, and in a capitalistic system, left unchecked (by high taxes on the wealthy and restrictive inheritance laws), where money itself makes more money, you would ultimately and inevitably be left with a dysfunctional, harmful, massively unequal distribution of wealth. I confess this has always seemed perfectly obvious to me. I am amazed it took Pikkety years of masterful research and 700 pages to finally make our greedy capitalists (perhaps) get the point. I just heard of another study that after years of effort demonstrated that the “elite” have greater influence than others. Wow, that’s good to know.

However, pointing out the obvious, especially when the truth hurts, can cause resentment and even retaliation. Who knows how many millions, perhaps billions, The “One Percent” will spend to try to discredit Pikkety’s definitive work, and quite possibly the author himself.

Another case in point, hypocritically amusing, has to do with John Kerry’s warning that if no peace deal can be reached between Israel and the Palestinians, Israel will become an apartheid state. That this is obvious might well be seen in the fact that even many high-level Israelis have said the same thing. Given Israeli obvious racist attitudes towards Palestinians and their Arab second class citizens, an apartheid state will be inevitable. Given the reaction on the part of many Israeli supporters you might think Kerry had said something so terrible he should resign forthwith, apologize, and claim he didn’t really mean it. Unfortunately hypocrisy seems to be one of the prevailing characteristics of Republicans (if not, sadly, of the human species itself).

Probably the most common approach to things that are unpleasantly obvious is to try to just ignore them. It is, for example, perfectly obvious that Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld, et al, committed rather heinous war crimes. They have even admitted it and in some cases even boasted of it. These unpleasant obvious facts have simply been ignored for years and no doubt will continue to be, at least in the United States.

A similar case in point has to do with the Israeli/Palestinian situation. It is perfectly obvious that Israel does not want peace with the Palestinians, does not want a Palestinian state, and also does not want a one state solution. They prefer instead to let things remain as they are with the Palestinians increasingly shoved out of the West Bank and robbed of more and more of their territory, unable, realistically, to do much about it. Anyone could have predicted that Kerry’s recent attempt to mediate an agreement would fail. Indeed, the very idea that Kerry and the U.S. could honestly mediate an agreement between the two parties is basically absurd given our obvious bias in favor of Israel. This has been obvious for years and while not completely ignored a pretense is made periodically for change and the charade begins again and again until Israel, perfectly predictably, kills it.

Racism, too, is most often ignored unless it becomes so scandalously public to the point where it cannot be completely ignored. The case of Sterling is an obvious example. Everyone in the NBA, and even the wider community, has known for years that Sterling is an out-and-out racist, but nothing much was done about until his recent appalling statements became public. While Sterling is (sort of) being punished for his racism the obvious Republican racism directed at President Obama and Attorney General, Eric Holder, is mostly inexcusably ignored. It is also perfectly obvious that some of the Big Banks have committed egregious criminal acts, but here again, nothing is done about it. When it comes to things like this I guess the idea is that if they are just ignored they might somehow magically disappear. This appears to be the strategy with respect to education, infrastructure, taxation of the rich, global warming, and etc. Thus, if you don’t like something just put your head in the sand and hope it goes away. Unfortunately, this can have disastrous consequences.

 “If it weren't for the last minute, nothing would get done.” 
 Rita Mae Brown

Dumb and Dumber

Yes, Cliven Bundy is a deadbeat, criminal rancher, a racist, and possibly even treasonous. He has refused to pay the grazing fees other ranchers pay, now owes the government around a million dollars, but as he claims to “not recognize the federal government” he apparently thinks he will somehow get away with his criminal behavior. Someone labeled him a “welfare rancher,” which, I guess, sort of sums it up. Why he has been allowed to not pay the normal fees for ten years and is only just now being brought to task I do not know. And what might happen next I do not know but I am pretty certain this is not the last of it and he will not get away without paying (maybe a nice prison term will convince him).

Anyway, you all know the story by now: Agents of the federal government attempted to round up his cattle and sell them to pay off his debt. Before they could accomplish this task a number of militia members arrived with guns, some aimed at the federal agents, so rather than risk another terrible episode like Ruby Ridge the agents backed down. Of course Bundy and his militia followers claimed an epic victory over the wicked federal government “overreach,” and Bundy became an instant folk hero worshipped by not only his immediate militia friends but also by high ranking Republicans and right-wing radio hosts like Hannity who went overboard in his praise of him.

However, the euphoria over having bested the “feds” didn’t last too long as Bundy, given his 15 minutes of fame, went on a racist rant so unbelievably stupid that even Hannity and everyone else changed their tune and tried to distance themselves from him as quickly as possible. I suspect they probably privately agreed with Bundy’s racist nonsense but were put off because he was so dumb as to go public with his (and, by implication, Republican) racism.

Think about this. Even though Bundy was a deadbeat who had refused to pay his legal fees the right wingers immediately jumped on his bandwagon. Joyfully celebrating his criminality and carrying on about “government overreach.” Why it is overreach for the government to want to collect their legal due, the same grazing fees that all Nevada ranchers pay, I do not know, but the right wingers love to carry on about government overreach all the time although it would seem to have no basis in fact (they are not notable about accepting anything factual, preferring instead their fairy tales about how bad government is).

What I find the most interesting about Bundy as folk hero, and this rather absurd incident, is not his criminality or racism, but, rather, his incredible, even awesome ignorance and stupidity. Bundy is, to put it in a very general way, “dumb.” I say dumb because he is both stupid and ignorant. That is, it is possible to be smart and ignorant if you happen to just be uninformed about certain things and therefore ignorant, even though actually intelligent. But it is another thing entirely to be both ignorant and stupid at the same time. What this means to me is that Bundy immediately and without any apparent thought on the part of many, became an important figure for many highly placed Republicans and hate-mongers like Hannity and Limbaugh, even though he is as dumb as a post. He hates the federal government but rides around on a horse proudly carrying an American flag. His various rants about government and racism betray his complete ignorance of either subject, they are illogical, false, almost unintelligible, and stupid. None of this seems to matter to the right, except that he was dumb enough to reveal that which the right knows is best left unsaid. That he was against government (actually against paying his bills) is all those who immediately supported him needed to know. How do you explain this? It’s easy, they are even dumber than he is.

 “He had just about enough intelligence to open his mouth when he wanted to eat, but certainly no more.” 
― P.G. Wodehouse

Never Say Never

I guess we could only expect Joe (Big Mouth) Biden carry on in the best tradition of our childish foreign policy. On his recent trip to Ukraine he announced that “The U.S. will never accept Russia’s annexation of Crimea,” or words to that effect. I guess no one ever told him that never is a very, very long time. As Crimea (as well as Ukraine itself) was a part of the Soviet Union, until Nikita Khrushchev (a Ukrainian) arbitrarily assigned it to Ukraine after the breakup of the Soviet empire (some say in a drunken moment), that was apparently quickly accepted. And why would anyone be foolish enough to claim they will never accept an obvious fait accompli? Crimea is now part of Russia, Russia is not going to return it to Ukraine and everyone knows it (except perhaps Biden and the U.S.). It was a perfectly obvious move by Putin after the coup in Kiev, as he was certainly not going to allow his only warm water naval base to potentially disappear and a majority of the Crimean population wanted to be part of Russia rather than join with Europe. Crimea and the Eastern Ukraine were part of Russia since the time of Catherine the Great, so what’s the big deal that so many are upset about? Does anyone really still not accept our theft of Texas and California from Mexico?

One might well ask who really cares whether Crimea is part of Russia or part of Ukraine? The answer, I fear, is no one…except those corporate interests looking to profit by looting the Ukraine of its resources and rich agricultural potential  (just as Hitler wanted to do).  During World War II many Ukrainians fought on the side of Germany against Russia, a fact that has not been forgotten and at least partly accounts for the animosity between the Ukraine and Russia today, and also accounts for why Putin worries that he may have to defend Russians living in Ukraine.

Anyway, after the EU and the US provoked a coup in Kiev, Putin reacted in a very predictable way. But now, of course the story is all about Russian “aggression,” stoking fears that Putin wants to re-establish the Soviet Empire, he may move further into Ukraine, take over Moldova, Georgia, Latvia, Poland, even the arctic circle, and etc. As Putin disavows any such intentions, and has shown no signs of doing anything but protecting Russians living in Ukraine, this is all fear mongering on the part of the West. Putin and Russia are constantly portrayed as “bad” while we the West are, of course, all “good.” Thus we are reassuring our NATO allies that we will stand by them if they are attacked by the bad guys, we are sending one or more ships into the Baltic, 150 U.S. troops to three NATO allies, perhaps as many as 10,000 to Poland, and so on, foolishly beating our chests and baying at the moon, boasting that our military is superior to theirs, our god is better than their god, our Dad is tougher than their Dad, and our pee-pees are bigger than theirs, just as kindergarteners behave on the playground.  Putin and Obama apparently had a pretty good relationship and there was considerable mutual cooperation between the U.S. and Russia, but now, of course, with all this childish saber rattling and fear mongering it appears that relationship may be impossible to maintain. Unfortunately, our foreign policy demands that no nation on earth should have any national interests that might conflict with ours. This has worked for us (in a way, anyway) with most of the smaller nations we have bullied for years, but Putin is not going to stand for it, thus he is really “bad,” even super bad, possibly the only one standing in the way of the Neocons desire for world domination.

If Putin turns eastward and becomes part of a viable, united Eurasia, the “jig is up” for the possibility of world domination and the “Lone Superpower” myth will vanish, putting an end to the American Empire once and for all. Childishness is not a viable strategy when dealing with adults. If we don’t change our attitude and behavior with respect to Russia it may well lead to the very thing the Neocons fear most, a  united Eurasian power, Russia, India, China, and others with a majority of the world’s population and power.  I wonder, will Joe Biden be concerned about Crimea then? All of our sanctions and pressure on Russia may very well drive them eastward towards the development of the very thing we do not wish to see, a union that would dwarf the influence and power of EU/US axis and dramatically change international politics to the detriment of the West.  

 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.

Corinthians 13:11

Infantile, Puerile, Hostile, and Futile

This would seem to sum up our current foreign policy. Could there be anything more childish than refusing to allow Hamid  Aboutalebi, Iran’s choice to represent them at the UN, to enter the United States? This is silly, even stupid, almost beyond belief.  Aboutalebi is a seasoned, experienced, Iranian Diplomat, who has served successfully in several different countries, and is more than merely qualified to hold such a post. President Obama has apparently signed an order to prevent him from entering the United States, following the suggestion of that expert on foreign policy, Ted Cruz. Aboutalebi is considered persona non grata by Cruz because many years ago he served sometimes as a translator during the Iran hostage crisis. Coming at the very time we are trying pretty successfully to negotiate with Iran over their (imaginary) nuclear bomb threat this would appear to me to be designed to torpedo those negotiations, stupid, unnecessary, unhelpful, and unwise, everything you might expect from a poisonous, outside the box jerk like Ted Cruz. Why Obama went along with this absurdity I do not know. Perhaps he secretly does not wish a successful solution to our Iran (non) problem.

Not only has Obama gone along with this diplomatic nonsense he has also mocked Russia’s military might, with a claim almost beyond comprehension. He said Russia does not want a military confrontation with us because he knows our military might is superior to his. What the hell is that supposed to prove? Where, if not on a battlefield, could this be proven? Does hoObama envision a war on Russian territory where our military might would win against the Russian army? Does he believe that we could ship our troops across the Atlantic (or Pacific) to confront Russia on their own soil? Has he no idea what the hell is talking about? Does he know nothing about the Battle of Stalingrad? Boasting that our military might is superior to Putin’s is childish in the extreme, you might well think we were in kindergarten.

Then there is our gullible (or stupid) Secretary of State, John Kerry, who was apparently willing to accept as fact the anti-Jewish leaflets that appeared in the Eastern Ukraine without even waiting to learn they were produced by some minority group of dissidents with no authority whatsoever. This is just part of our basic infantile belief that Russia is bad, Putin is very bad, the U.S. is good, very good, and Obama is somehow good/bad. Whatever, we know that we (along with the racist genocidal Israelis) are exceptional and the entirely predictable failure of the “peace talks” is completely the fault of the Palestinians. Everyone with even a small bit  of brain knows that Netanyahu does not want a Palestinian state, does not want peace, and prefers to maintain the status quo forever if possible. Why John Kerry or anyone else believes the U.S. can act as a fair intermediary in this endless conflict, when it is obvious we are overwhelmingly on the side of Israel, is just another example of childish delusion.

When you start from the belief that Russia is all bad, and Putin is worse, especially when Putin holds all the cards, so to speak, you are not likely to successfully resolve your mutual problems. Similarly, when you start from the belief that Israel is all good and the Palestinians are all bad, you are not likely to get very far in resolving the basic problems of the Middle East. Our foreign policy, in my opinion, is indeed infantile, puerile, hostile, and will prove in the long run to be futile.

When only one in six U.S. citizens can even remotely find Ukraine on a map, and the farther they are from that, the more they think we should attack, it is pretty obvious we need to teach geography (remember that) in kindergarten, along with the necessity to “see ourselves as others see us.”

Hubris is one of the great renewable resources.

P. J. O'Rourke

  

"It"

“It”

What a remarkable word (pronoun) “it” is. While it generally refers to some particular object or behavior it also often refers to something much more general and, in some cases, may have virtually no meaning whatsoever. I am drawn to thinking of this because last night I had reason to believe that I may well be losing “it.” I was cooking dinner for us, baked chicken, some cranberry sauce, broccoli, asparagus, and dressing. I also intended to serve some French dinner rolls. When I removed the chicken from the oven I put in the frozen dinner rolls that supposedly take only 8 minutes to cook. I forgot them, didn’t serve them, and didn’t remember them until several hours later. By then, of course, they had turned blacker than the blackest of coal, and I worried that, indeed, I must be losing “it.” This could refer to my memory, my cooking, my timing, my sanity, or whatever.

Usually “it” refers to something in particular, something in context that the speakers are all aware of, like “where did you put it,” referring to the butter or paint or beer. But what about something like the recent Rachel Maddow documentary, “Why did we do it?” In this context the “it” refers obviously to the “war” with Iraq. This apparently expensive and time-consuming investigation concludes that “it” had to do with oil, something that anyone with a brain larger than a split pea already knew. But of course it is somewhat more complicated and the documentary does give us a bit more insight into why it happened. But this is not unlike asking why did “it” happen,”it” being WW II, an event that cannot really be described as an “it.”

We also might well ask, “Why did Putin do it?” The “it” in this context being his takeover of Crimea, and the answer being obvious to anyone not conditioned to believe Russia and Putin are simply evil, aggressive, empire builders with no important national interests. Then there is also the phrase, “kicking ’it’down the road,” usually referring to some decision Congress does not want to make.

How about “Let’s do ‘it’?” This could refer to any number of things, kissing, dating, going to the movies, even sex, or, more prosaically, building a chicken coop.  How about “she is the “it” girl of 2000? Or “you can’t do ‘it’ in the road because it might frighten the horses.”  Or John Lennon’s brilliant parody, “Why don’t we do ‘it’ in the road?” Then there are lyrics like “Birds do ‘it,’ bees do ‘it’, even little Pekinese do ‘it.’” How about “”’It’s’ the in thing to do,” or “’It’s’ not the right thing to do.”

“’It’ will happen when hell freezes over,” “’It’ will happen at the end of times,” “’It’ will be the end of the road,” “If you don’t mind ‘it’ don’t matter,” “We’re footing ‘it’ back to camp,” “’It’s’ a dirty, rotten shame,” “this is ‘it’,” “’It’s’ all in your mind,” “’It’ can’t happen here,””The Devil makes us do ‘it,’” “’It’s’ too late for tears,” “’It’s’ too much to bear,” How’s ‘it’ going,” “’It’s’ just politics as usual,” “’It’s’ just baying at the moon,” “What is ‘it’ and where did ‘it’ come from? “We don’t know what ‘it’ is, “We’re never going to find ‘it’,” and “When in doubt, kill ‘it.’”

Is there any other word in the English language with such a range of meanings and non-meanings, a word that can be so specific but also so general, a word than can simply gloss over complexity and reduce it to a simple two letter word, a word both precise and imprecise at the same time, a word that actually allows us to evade the complexities of the real problems facing us? There is a bill that would raise the minimum wage, vote against “it.” There is a bill that would help stop global warming, vote against “it.”There is a bill to stop voter fraud, vote for “it.” There is a vote to defund Planned Parenthood, vote for “it.” And so all of our decisions come down to voting either for “it” or against “it,” all nuances, facts, or complications aside. Don’t you just love “it?”

 By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth.

George Carlin