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A Belated New Year’s Resolution

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On Retiring from Politics

On Retiring from Politics

I have finally decided to stop writing about politics. I find I get too involved reacting to idiocies, mostly from the Right—but I do not exempt so-called Progressives either. I think I’ve already said just about everything bad I can think of about the people, parties, and media that, over the last thirty years, I have come to detest. So, to hell with them all! Bad cess on them and their vile progeny!

The world is a wondrous place: I don’t want to spoil my enjoyment of that wonder by venting my bile at the slightest provocation.

Oh, I will still actively participate in politics by voting, signing petitions, and so on—but what passes for political discourse in this country will henceforth be closed to me.

And this on a day when there were so many stupid things said or proposed, any one of which could have set me off. I don’t care any more if an Idaho legislator wants to make Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged mandatory reading in order to graduate from high school in his state. It no longer matters that an Alabama legislator wants to ban abortion because his interpretation of the Bible is that the souls of aborted fetuses will wind up in hell. I no longer care what Wayne La Pierre and his pasty crew of gun collectors say about anything—it’s bound to be crap in any case.

Let these simpletons stew in their own juices. I just refuse to take them seriously any more. Life is for living, not for crass stupidity.

Nasty and Pungent

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To What Extent American? To What Extent Hungarian?

To What Extent American? To What Extent Hungarian?

A few days ago, I went into one of my Hungarian moods, most likely from feeling extremely dissociated from the Scotch-Irish Confederates that seem to be making so much of the political news. My old friend Lynette commented that she felt I was mostly an American who just happened to think of himself as a Hungarian.

To be sure, if I stepped off the plane at Budapest’s Ferihegy Airport, I’m sure I would think of myself as mostly American, especially if I got a whiff of Hungary’s own Right Wing, the (un)worthy descendants of World War Two’s Arrow Cross, which bid fair to out-Gestapo the Gestapo.

I find it helps to think of myself as a Hungarian whenever I take a sustained look at America’s ugly politics. Think of it as a distancing maneuver. Here is the America of Donald Trump, Wayne La Pierre, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, John Boehner, and the Tea Party—and there I am, off to the sidelines, with an expression on my face of having stepped into something particularly nasty and pungent. Me? I’m a Hungarian, folks: I had nothing to do with this stramash except, perhaps, to admit to having nothing to do with it.

Some people might say that instead of standing off to the side, I should be more directly active politically. Here’s where I must sadly shake my head and say, “Sorry, folks! I’m not really a people person.” I’m fully as capable of damning Progressives as I am of damning Tea Partiers, except that I hate the latter even more.

Some day, the last raggedy elements of the Confederate States of America will sink into the mire. I will probably no longer be around to celebrate. Besides, knowing American history as I do, I am sure it will be replaced by other tendencies equally repellent.

 

 

Nothing But Short-Term Solutions

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Eric Cantor and John Boehner

Eric Cantor and John Boehner

It now looks as if the House GOP leadership will allow the debt ceiling to be raised—but only temporarily. In the meantime, they will hope that the Democrats will undergo some type of old-religion conversion, allowing them to see the light and cut back on spending. And the spending they want to cut back on are for the most part social programs that benefit people.

Is there any plan to cut back on military spending? Well, no! Between guns and butter, it’s butter that’s going to have to go. In the meantime, we will be facing the same discussion in a few months’ time, with hundreds of hours of the legislators’ time being wasted because no Republican is interested in yielding a millimeter on their [anti-]social agenda.

I have a suggestion. Perhaps this is the right time to cut down on our spending on Congress. Cut their stipend by 80%, rent out the Capitol Building for weddings and funerals, and make Congress meet in a hangar at Dulles Airport—a hangar that is neither heated nor air-conditioned. My prediction is that Congress would move faster, and there would even be a modicum of cooperation, especially inasmuch as the Democrats would be in the same boat.

 

Gooble Gobble, One of Us!

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Scene from Tod Browning’s FREAKS (1932)

Banquet Scene from Tod Browning’s Freaks (1932)

I’m going to talk about some tricky concepts here, and I’m not altogether confident that I can explain them to everybody’s satisfaction. I read an interesting review by Thomas Nagel entitled “The Taste for Being Moral” in the December 6, 2012, issue of The New York Review of Books. In passing, it takes up the difference between Liberals and Conservatives in a way I found to be interesting.

According to Nagel, American Conservatives tend to follow the norms of their own group, especially in the light of categories that the author refers to as Loyalty, Authority, and Sanctity. Liberals, on the other hand, tend to extend their aegis to all fellow men. According to Jonathan Haidt, author of The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion:

It would be nice to believe that we humans were designed to love everyone unconditionally. Nice, but rather unlikely from an evolutionary perspective. Parochial love—love within groups—amplified by similarity, a sense of shared fate, and the suppression of free riders, may be the most we can accomplish.

The “free riders” referred to can be Hispanic immigrants, African-Americans on welfare, single mothers, gays, people on Social Security and Medicare (according to Paul Ryan), and environmentalists. Even though the Catholic catechism tells us we were all made in the image of God, not all Catholics, let alone Evangelicals,. take this to heart.

The title of this blog comes from Tod Browning’s classic film Freaks (1932). It is part of a sung toast at a banquet attended by circus freaks and normal people sympathetic to them: “Gooble, Gobble! Gooble, Gobble! One of us! One of us!” We tend to place a higher value on the groups to which we belong than to outsiders or the general public as a whole—irrespective of what Christian teaching tell us to do.

Conservatives tend to view people outside their group as either “free riders” or as some unspecified threat to the values they hold dear. Think of the gun fanatics facing some unspecified threat to their God-given right to own assault weapons and enough ammo to blast all their enemies into the next world.

I, on the other hand, believe with Immanuel Kant that “the only thing that is good in itself and without qualification is good will—a will that obeys universal laws of morality…. It is in virtue of their capacity for morality—as both the authors and subjects of the moral law—that humans are ends in themselves and must always be treated as such.”

Of course, one has only to read my blog posts to note that I, too, am a member of a group, one that views American Conservatives with alarm and loathing. In my heart of hearts, which is in there somewhere, I would like to effect some sort of reconciliation with them. That will, however, be a long process. I’m only human, after all!

 

Fighting for Their Rats

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Are We Still Fighting the Civil War?

Are We Still Fighting the Civil War?

I cannot help but think that, in a way, the surrender of Lee to Grant at Appomattox Court House never really happened. The South has decided, instead of surrendering, to fight to the death for a set of beliefs that are irreconcilable to those of most Americans. And they are becoming increasingly more irreconcilable. Now, although “irreconcilable differences” is frequently used as grounds for divorce, in this case I think something else will happen in this course of time.

The biggest enemy that Republican Conservatives from the South will face in the decades to come is demographic change. The Bible-thumping old white people will gradually die out, to be replaced by some fewer young people with the same values, but still more African-Americans, Hispanics, and Asians. This is a trend that is happening in most parts of the country, but I expect that its results will be most strongly felt in the South.

I think Faux News pundit Bill O’Reilly had it right when he said: “Obama wins because it’s not a traditional America anymore. The white establishment is the minority.” He concluded by adding that “people want things.” Of course they do. We all do. And what Tea Party Southerners (“the white establishment”) want is very different from what the new emerging demographic majorities want.

There is something pathetic about these old Confederates still acting as if they were the only game in town, when in fact they are not. And they will grow even fewer, but not before fighting to the last man for their principles.

In Ted Turner’s film Gettysburg, there is a scene in which a Union officer interrogates three Southern prisoners captured during the early fighting skirmishes. The Yankee asks the prisoners why they are fighting. The answer comes back, “for their rights.” Except, the young officer mishears them because of their drawl and thinks they said, “for their rats.” Even when this misunderstanding is cleared up, it is clear that that was not the answer their captors expected. The North thought that the South was fighting for slavery, whereas the South was fighting for the right to do what they believed in, irrespective of what those beliefs were. If those beliefs included slavery, then so be it!

It is somewhat unnerving to think that issues we thought had been decided back in 1865 are still affecting the American political scene. They are, and will continue to do so until a whole lot more water has flown under the bridge.

 

 

Eating Crow

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Eat That Crow Now! It’ll Only Smell Worse Later.

Eat That Crow Now! It’ll Only Smell and Taste Worse Later.

The New Yorker does it again in this hilarious cartoon by Peter de Séve in the November 26, 2012 issue.

Instead, what does the GOP do? They discount the results of the November 6 election and pretend they won it in a landslide. They not only lost it, but they are just-this-close to losing their reason for existence altogether.

The Tea Partiers will die off (remember they don’t like ObamaCare); the Libertarians will never amount to anything but a small, noisy minority; and the remaining wing nuts will gravitate elsewhere when the circus train rides out of town.

 

Throw the Guilty Parties Off the Fiscal Cliff

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Make the Guilty Parties Pay For It!

Make the Guilty Parties Pay For It!

Metaphors are dangerous things. During this month we have enough to worry about with the supposed end of the world on Friday, December 21, according to somebody’s misinterpretation of the Mayan calendar. And we also have the so-called “Fiscal Cliff,” a series of Draconian cuts that automatically go into action if Congress does not act by the New Year.

Now getting Congress to act quickly—even if there is widespread agreement that failing to act would have dire consequences —is well-nigh impossible. So naturally, I have a modest proposal.

Since approximately half the members of Congress are millionaires, the obvious solution is to make them pay for the mess out of their own funds. Those Senators and Representatives who are unwilling to pony up and make good should be deprived of their civil rights and sold into slavery. Perhaps they could raise a crop of sugar cane in Guantánamo or be sent to political re-education camps in some Blue State that would be willing to take on such a liability.

I think we have been mollycoddling Conservatives for far too long. They are making everything worse for the majority of us and should be made to pay. They could talk secession all they want, but I think that, for these Traitors (and I truly believe they are such), they should be given the “Man Without a Country” treatment.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Edward Everett Hale’s 1863 short story, it tells of a man who repudiated the United States and was sentenced to be passed from ship to ship, never landing on American (or any foreign) territory as long as he lived. Also, he was deprived of access to news about his country. You can read the story at Gutenberg.Com by clicking here.

Unregenerate

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Speaker of the House Boehner

Speaker of the House Boehner

Excuse me, but didn’t the Republicans just lose a major election because they were as out of touch with their people as Louis XVI, the Tsar Nicholas II, Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi, and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak ever were? Doesn’t that imply a period of self-examination, of wondering what they could have done wrong?

But no! The Republican house leadership is pretending they won the election. Speaker of the House John Boehner is pretending that Americans want billionaires and millionaires to pay less taxes because—by golly, by gosh!—most Americans want to be millionaires and billionaires. And where should the money come from that fuels the government? Just take it away from the poor and the Middle Class! Oh, you know, those 47-percenters who are such a drag on the rest of us.

I would urge President Obama to take Boehner out to the woodshed and liberally apply a two-by-four to his orange face. Nothing else seems to be getting through to him.

Look, if the Republican Party has a massive suicidal urge, that’s all fine and good. But don’t let them be like those inarticulate bastards who take an arsenal to their workplace and blow everyone in sight away before pointing a gun to their own empty heads. I think it’s time for an intervention.

The Frogs Who Wanted a King

When the Log Is Not Enough

When the Log Is Not Enough

The Frogs were living as happy as could be in a marshy swamp that just suited them; they went splashing about caring for nobody and nobody troubling with them. But some of them thought that this was not right, that they should have a king and a proper constitution, so they determined to send up a petition to Jove to give them what they wanted. “Mighty Jove,” they cried, “send unto us a king that will rule over us and keep us in order.” Jove laughed at their croaking, and threw down into the swamp a huge Log, which came down splashing into the swamp. The Frogs were frightened out of their lives by the commotion made in their midst, and all rushed to the bank to look at the horrible monster; but after a time, seeing that it did not move, one or two of the boldest of them ventured out towards the Log, and even dared to touch it; still it did not move. Then the greatest hero of the Frogs jumped upon the Log and commenced dancing up and down upon it, thereupon all the Frogs came and did the same; and for some time the Frogs went about their business every day without taking the slightest notice of their new King Log lying in their midst. But this did not suit them, so they sent another petition to Jove, and said to him, “We want a real king; one that will really rule over us.” Now this made Jove angry, so he sent among them a big Stork that soon set to work gobbling them all up. Then the Frogs repented when too late.—Aesop, Fables

The Great Benghazi Conspiracy

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Attack on Benghazi, or Is It Just a Homecoming Weekend Bonfire?

It does not seem as if the Republicans have learned much from their decisive loss in the November 6 Presidential Election. A few Republicans have repudiated Grover Norquist’s insane no-taxes-under-any-circumstances pledge—and that is all to the good! But the continuing drumbeat on Benghazi and all the swirling conspiracy theories relating to who said what when continue to crowd the Right’s media noise machine.

That all doesn’t matter, does it? Talking points are not deeds. What matters is what is done. In the meantime, the various U.S. embassies and consulates in Islamic and some non-Islamic Third World countries will continue to be targets of opportunistic terrorists. Now Susan Rice is under attack by John McCain and his fellow senatorial troglodytes because she only passed on what she was told by intelligence sources. Of course, that puts her at the epicenter of this conspiracy which has gone on long enough.

I think that the sane half of the country should come up with its own conspiracy theories. Here are just a few possibilities:

  • Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity are paid agents of the DPRK (that’s the Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea).
  • Grover Norquist is a traitor and turncoat who is deliberately attempting to sabotage the political and economic future of the United States.
  • Mitt Romney is a robot created by the Chinese and programmed to take over the country; but, like many Chinese products, it was defective.
  • The House of Representatives is infiltrated by the descendants of Nazis who fled Germany in 1945 and who are attempting to build a Fourth Reich based on the teachings of Ayn Rand.

I have always thought that the obvious solution for failed U.S. Conservative wing-nuts is self-deportation to some tiny airless asteroid on a collision course with the planet Uranus. And I say that only because I’m basically a nice guy.