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Talking Politics

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As Thanksgiving Day approaches, millions of families will confront their weird uncles whose political beliefs are 180° away from yours. What makes it worse is that we are living during a period in which people take a position and vociferously defend it, thinking it is right because, after all, they believe in it. And their beliefs are, of course, sacred.

Looking back over my life, I do not recall ever having been convinced by anyone’s contrary political, religious, or other opinions. It seems that our times are not conducive to producing facts or cogent reasons. We can produce a great deal of heated discussions full of vituperation.

I have always been close to people whose opinions were contrary to mine. It began with my father, who supported George C. Wallace for President and voted a straight American Independent ticket. (I got back at him by dating a pretty young Black pediatrician with a Harvard MD).

Now I live with a woman whom I love, but who is a Republican who listens to right-wing shock jocks on KABC Radio and who, in all probability, votes for Donald Trump. (If you do not know me, Trump is a candidate I would have no compunction about stabbing in a vital organ with a knife liberally smeared with dog shit.)

Do I talk politics with Martine? No. Do I talk politics with my friends? Not if I can help it, even though my friends have similar beliefs like my own.

Life is too short to wreck it by engaging in political discussions that go nowhere. And nowhere is where most of them go.

So eat your turkey and mashed potatoes and present a smiley-face to relatives who want to establish a new Reich in Washington.

Hiding from the Gazpacho Police

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The Infamous Mug Shot of a Notorious Felon

Donald J. Trump is not the only problem we face. Its not even the biggest problem we face. The voters who support the ex-president are the major problem. Over the last several decades, the American people have grown progressively more stupid, aided and abetted by the lies of social media content providers. It’s gotten to the point that voters take a position (without thinking it through) and prepare to defend it against all comers, even if it’s as stupid as Jewish space lasers and the “gazpacho police.”

At present, the Republican Party controls the House of Representatives. I have no idea what is going to happen in 2024 with Congress. Will an increasing number of voters wake up after their drunken decades-long reactionary orgy and vote for representatives whose minds are not in the Asteroid Belt? Who knows?

I just know what I’m going to do. As always, I will vote for candidates whom I think will continue the American tradition of democracy. I have nothing in common with people who like to wave the flag at the same time they are ripping the guts out of what it stands for.

Not a Nice Guy

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Representative Jim Jordan (R, Ohio)

Ever since Donald Trump came down that escalator at the Trump Tower to announce his run for the presidency on June 16, 2015, American politics has changed from bad to nightmarish. The ongoing travails of the House of Representative beginning with the ouster of Kevin McCarthy and the failed attempts by Jim Jordan to become Speaker of the House resemble nothing so much as the early days of Nazi Germany.

It seems the Republican Party is crawling with Brown Shirts Are we are heading toward some ghastly Night of the Long Knives in which the extreme MAGA Republicans with their totalitarian tendencies will be violently repudiated?

Jordan thought it a nifty idea to authorize threatening phone calls to the wives (?!) of Republican Congressmen who didn’t vote his way. It’s a long way from the America of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson or the Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln. At the same time we are sanctioning Venezuela, we are becoming more like them.

Double ugh!

Jane, You Ignorant Slut!

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Saturday Night Live Had It Right Way Back Then

Early in the 1970s, CBS’ Sixty Minutes news show had a segment in which a liberal debated a conservative. I could just imagine that CBS News was all thrilled they they were being “fair and balanced.” Then, Saturday Night Live parodied the segment with Jane Curtin and Dan Aykroyd, with Dan always opening with, “Jane, you ignorant slut ….”

That same genuflection to “fair and balanced” reporting results in segments where the political philosophy (?!) of QAnon is discussed with the same seriousness as the Federal budget. Attempts are made to mirror all sides of an issue, even when the one of the sides has (1) no merit, (2) no appreciable following, (3) dangerous repercussions to the nation. If you can’t find an articulate spokesman, there’s always of the more incendiary members of Congress, like Marjorie Taylor Greene or Matt Gaetz. Hell, you can always find some bozo in a Missouri coffee shop whose word the media will treat as if they were engraved in stone on Mount Sinai.

The misguided attempt to treat all sides of an issue as having equal merit has resulted in the public not knowing where to turn. That was certainly the case in the days of the Tea Party a few years ago, and still an issue when some bonehead in or out of office says something flagrantly stupid that is picked up by the press and widely disseminated.

So many news stories are picked up from Twitter (or X or whatever) and splashed around because they sound likely to result in fear or outrage. Trump’s tweets were certainly in this category. And we all know that even if he had no idea of how to run the country, our former president certainly knew how to manipulate the media.

Nowadays I am not likely to give any credence to political farts from the right or left. I don’t care what some Texas congressman or Trumpian fellow traveler has to say. My life is too valuable to allow myself to be crassly manipulated by people I do not in any way respect.

Et Tu, Brute?!

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The Assassination of Julius Caesar by Mariano Rossi (1731-1807)

I have just finished reading an interesting book that sheds light on how rhetoric influenced the way people acted in ancient Rome. J. E. Lendon’s That Tyrant Persuasion: How Rhetoric Shaped the Roman World shows that public speechifying was the dominant mass medium of the time and affected the laws and, in many respects, the way people acted.

Lendon used as his prime example the conspiracy to assassinate Julius Caesar by Brutus, Cassius, and their associates. In Chapter Four, he discusses eight reasons why the whole conspiracy had been a shambles:

  • Decimus Brutus had armed gladiators near the Senate House of Pompey. Why did they not kill Caesar?
  • Why did all the conspirators in the Senate House want to stab Caesar themselves, producing a confused melee?
  • Why did the conspirators do nothing about Mark Antony and Marcus Lepidus, or any other followers of Caesar, not even arrest them for kid-glove treatment if the fastidious Brutus insisted? It was especially leaving Antony alive that Cicero later regarded as “childish.”
  • Why did Brutus think that after the assassination he would be able to address the Senate? Why did he not expect the senators, most of them loyalists of Caesar, to be terrified of the deed?
  • Why were the conspirators apparently surprised by the panic their deed caused in the city?
  • Why did the conspirators go up the Capitoline Hill?
  • Why did the conspirators spend March 16 giving speeches in the Forum?
  • Why, other than descending to give speeches, did the conspirators apparently have no plans for what to do after they ascended the Capitoline Hill, given that the reactions of Lepidus, Antony, their troops, and Caesar’s veterans could have been predicted?

In his book, Lendon deals with each of these questions in great detail. As I read his book, I suddenly saw that public speaking in ancient Rome was the equivalent of our social media, and that the conspirators who, at Donald Trump’s urging, marched on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 were being misled in much the same way that Brutus and his co-conspirators were by the conventions of ancient rhetoric.

You Are the Dirt Under My Fingernails

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Contrary to what some haters are saying, I am not only still the President of the United States, but also the best President this country has ever had. In fact, I am a better President than most of you deserve. You think you can convict me of a bunch of crimes the haters made up just to get even with me. It won’t work. I have been a perfect President, and everything I have done has been perfect.

Just look at my so-called mug shot. If you think you can have me convicted and put away, you are sadly mistaken. I will come for you: You are just the dirt under my fingernails!

So many weaklings who have worked with me have turned against me. Even my children, my wives, my lawyers, my political appointees, and women I supposedly raped. (Why would I have to rape any of them? They were attracted to me and gave their consent.) I am guilty of having been too perfect for the job.

Mess with me, and I will come for you. See who wins in the end, you pathetic losers! I have a 100% win record, and it will continue to be perfect.

There are millions of Americans who want to Make America Great Again (MAGA all the way!), and they will rise up rather than see me treated like dirt. See if it doesn’t happen!

I will bide my time and end up winning again. That’s what I’m all about. WINNING 100%

Orcs

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Halfway through my re-reading of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, I have come to realize that orcs really do exist. They are capable of only one feeling: Rage. And they meekly do the bidding of the Dark Lord, who is squirming in frustration at Mordor-a-Lago as further indictments attempt to break his power forever. They are distributed across the land, but most particularly in what has been referred to as the Red States.

Am I perhaps being too simple-minded? Perhaps. But the peace of Middle-Earth is in danger of being shattered forever. The land in which I was raised is being threatened by dark hordes who, while waving the same flag to which I pay allegiance, are quite satisfied to stomp on and destroy everything it stands for.

Somehow, over the last few decades, we have been nurturing a generation of thugs who have declared unending enmity with the elves and other libtards whom they feel have been sneering at them.

Oh, where is that ring of power now that I want to throw it into a white-hot dumpster fire?

Should Democrats Learn the Haka?

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The New Zealand All-Blacks Performing a Haka

According to a New Zealand website:

The haka is a ceremonial Māori war dance or challenge. Haka are usually performed in a group and represent a display of a tribe’s pride, strength and unity.

Actions include the stomping of the foot, the protrusion of the tongue and rhythmic body slapping to accompany a loud chant. The words of a haka often poetically describe ancestors and events in the tribe’s history.

Most people in the West have become aware of the haka through the All-Blacks Rugby Team of New Zealand, who perform the ritual before their games.Here, for example, is a video of one such performance:

I think the Democrats should perform a haka at political events, especially when they confront Republicans, such as at a debate or other event. It would take a bit of doing, as so many Democrats of the “Woke” persuasion come across as milquetoasts. And I suspect that Trumpists might be better at it, as expressing contempt is part of their standard repertoire.

Still, I think it would be a hoot.

Is It Curtains for Trump?

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No, It’s Not Biden or the Justice Department This Time

It was during the 2016 presidential campaign at a stop in Sioux Center, Iowa, when Candidate Trump said, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK? … It’s, like, incredible.” It was then that the Candidate began to believe in his own invincibility. All those rallies with adoring MAGA-hatted spectators must have further convinced him.

What Trump did not take into account were the people who did not like him. That number has been growing—slowly, perhaps—but steadily. So steadily that a grand jury delivered an indictment for 37 counts relating to the mishandling of archival materials that were stored at the ex-Prez’s compound at Mar-a-Lago.

Take note that it was not President Biden who indicted him, nor even the Department of Justice. It was a number of average citizens serving on a grand jury that were appalled by the Trumpster’s manipulative dealings with the National Archives, and by the fact that papers relating to the military strengths and weaknesses of the United States were being shown around to Mar-a-Lago visitors and members.

Was Trump showing any of these papers to his good friendsNorth Korean President Kim Jong Un? Recdcep Erdogan of Turkey? Xi Jinping of China? Vladimir Putin? Three of the above dictators may well be at war with us at some future date. Isn’t that espionage?

This could be bad news for the formerly thought-to-be-invincible former president. Am I surprised? No.

About That Militia

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Evzones: Traditional Uniform of the Elite Greek Guards

Everyone I know is sick to death of the multiple shootings appearing in the news every day. I look back at the text of the Second Amendment, so beloved of pudgy aged 50+ Texans and Midwesterners, and I wonder how we have come to this. Here is the entire text of the amendment:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Well, I say let them buy guns, but with one proviso: They must form a well-regulated militia, with frequent regular meetings, preferably scheduled during major sports playoffs, bowl games, and championships. Oh, and they must have a uniform. Otherwise, they can’t really be said to be a well-regulated militia, no?

As for the uniform, I prefer that of the Greek Evzones, illustrated above. Now although the uniform doesn’t look butch enough to most Americans, the Evzones were elite mountain and light infantry units that were tested in battle against the Turks in the 1920s and Communist insurgents of the 1950s.

Since I am opposed to cultural appropriation, I suggest that the skirts worn by the pot-bellied gun-toting militia be rainbow colored; and the pom-poms on the shoes should be pink.

The guards in the above photo are serious soldiers, which our NRA-loving militia would not be. But, by God, they would be well-regulated … to the point of complete exasperation and utter abashment.