Has the Khmer Rouge Taken Over Congress?

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Pol Pot, Tea Party Darling

Pol Pot, Tea Party Darling

The news from Congress is so very strange these days that I am beginning to think that they have been taken over by some extreme guerrilla faction such as the Khmer Rouge or the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path). The Senate is about to host a three- or four-day pajama party—all night long!—just so they the GOP can express their snit about Harry Reid invoking the “nuclear option” on their right to filibuster Obama’s nominees. As for the House of Representatives, Speaker John Boehner is now aiming daggers at special interest groups that want him to oppose the budget deal put together by Paul Ryan in the House and Senator Patty Murray … even before the details have been released.

Why does it seem that the news from Congress is always bad? The legislative branch of government seems to be permanently broken.

But how does one fix it? Get Mitch McConnell a new burnished turtle shell? Get Boehner a better grade of liquor? Or more handsome and complaisant pages for the Southern senators? What about changing the cooking oil used to make Freedom Fries? (It’s been the same old stuff since Ike was President.) Softer toilet paper for the Congressional stalls? Something’s just gotta give.

One cannot run a government in which two of the three branches of government (yes, I’m including the Supreme Court) are dysfunctional. As Lincoln said:

A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become lawful in all the States, old as well as new — North as well as South.

We don’t have slavery any more, just a lot of snarky behind-the-scenes racism. Maybe Lincoln was right: One way or the other, Congress will cease to be so divided. But before that happens, we’ll all need some industrial-strength antacids,

Where Everbody Knows Your Name

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Not Always an Advantage!

Not Always an Advantage!

The theme song of the old Cheers TV sitcom touts the advantages of hanging out “Where Everybody Knows Your Name.” But what if you lived in a small city in an even smaller country where you can’t go anywhere without recognizing friends, acquaintances, and co-workers? Such is the case in Reykjavik, Iceland. The population of Reykjavik is only 199,000, and the population of Iceland stands at 322,000.

I was reading an interesting article on The Reykjavik Grapevine by Valur Gunnarsson entitled “Why Is There No Dating in Iceland?” according to which:

If you were to go out on a date with someone, say to the movies or a coffee shop, you would invariably bump into someone you know. Said person would give you a curious glance, perhaps followed by a smirk and then ask everyone you mutually know: “Are those two seeing each other?” The cat is out of the bag by now and your first and perhaps only date suddenly feels more like an engagement ceremony.

Much better then to wait until the lights go out, everyone you know has gone home, is too drunk to care or engaged in their own business. In other words, going out, getting hammered and then heading home with whoever happens to be standing next to you at closing time carries much less social penalty than meeting in broad daylight. It is widely understood that what happens at the bar doesn’t really count. Leave it until the morning after to figure out if you two really have something in common and if the same thing happens again next weekend with the same person, you have yourself a relationship.

One of the reasons the dating scene in Reykjavik is no notorious is that men and women can’t get to know each other in a social setting without being observed and commented on by their peers. Young Icelanders tend to hang out in bars and go home with one another for an “afterparty” around closing time. What happens at or after the “afterparty” is anybody’s guess, but the word is that it’s a pretty wild scene. There is even a book by the notorious Roosh Vorek entitled Bang Iceland: How to Sleep with Icelandic Women in Iceland, which is a popular item among the more randy international travelers.

(Allow me to say that I have had no such dealings with Icelandic women during my two trips to their country. I’m a respectable old man who needs his sleep.)

Gunnarsson continues:

The flipside of drunken sex is that Icelandic relationships actually develop quite quickly. Whereas in bigger cities the whole vetting process may take weeks or even months while you are asked about everything except your bank statements and family history of mental disease (and sometimes even that), people here tend to jump directly into a committed relationship right after the second sleepover, or thereabouts. In fact, it is generally considered bad form not to. Once doesn’t matter, but do it twice without following through and you start to get a bad reputation.

This all goes back to point two again. The smallness. Dating several people at the same time is socially impossible. Everyone would know. Fistfights would ensue. Better to do the trial and error one person at a time, which is why Icelanders tend to have a series of either one-night stands or serious relationships, but no overlapping dates. So now you know.

One result of this non-dating sexual behavior is that there is a large number of illegitimate children born on the island. Fortunately, there is little or no stigma attached to a single parent entering into a marriage. It does have the advantage of stirring up an otherwise rather static gene pool. (In 2013, it was estimated that 93.44% of the population is of Icelandic ancestry.)

The Ineluctability and Persistence of the Now

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Maybe Not So Smart

Maybe Not So Smart After All

I have frequently written about the distractions of modern life, especially with regards to all those convenient little electronic devices created to suck away all your moments of quiet contemplation. Meditation? Hah! It is to laugh!

As one who has ripped out all those little electronic tendrils that seek to ensnare me into an ineluctable and persistent “now” consisting mostly of advertising and various types of cultural noise, I try to be immune. But there are always billboards, loud advertising messages from the TV that Martine is watching across the room when I am on my computer, newspaper ads, and so on. Although I have a cell phone, it is probably one of the last LG models that are non-Internet, non-Smart, and non-Kim-Kardashian-compatible. And I have resolved not to buy a Smart Phone unless there is absolutely no other cellular option available.

According to Malcolm McCullough, a professor of design and architecture at the University of Michigan:

A quiet life takes more notice of the world, and uses technology more for curiosity and less for conquest [though I would ask, Who is conquering whom?]. It finds comfort and restoration in unmediated perceptions. It increases the ability to discern among forms of environmentally encountered information. It values persistence and not just novelty. It stretches and extends the now, beyond the latest tweets, beyond the next business quarter, until the sense of the time period you inhabit exceeds the extent of your lifetime.

I do not think I could write these blogs unless I had a more directed thought process. In fact, I fear that the generation now in school could have done permanent damage to their ability to concentrate. If this tendency is irreversible, welcome to a whole new world of barbarism. Not a pretty thought.

Is all that we are capable of concentrating on is Miley Cyrus’s nude body as she swings on a wrecking ball? If so, we are already a new lost generation. Excuse me while I try to find a nice quiet place in the past to hide and shut out all the noise.

South

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When Was the Last Time YOU Thought About South America?

When Was the Last Time YOU Thought About South America?

Let’s face it: Most Americans almost never think about South America. Oh, there are a few exceptions, such as when the World Cup comes around and we are reminded how many great soccer football teams there are “down there.”  Also, when Carnival Time in Rio comes close. Also, when we keep hearing about how the forests of the Amazon are gradually being clear-cut.

I think this is a fundamental flaw about being the world’s Number One military power. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), here are the world’s top ten for 2013:

  1. United States – $682.0 billion
  2. People’s Republic of China – $166.0 billion
  3. Russia – $90.7 billion
  4. United Kingdom – $60.8 billion
  5. Japan – $59.3 billion
  6. France – $58.9 billion
  7. Saudi Arabia – $56.7 billion
  8. India – $46.1 billion
  9. Germany – $45.8 billion
  10. Italy – $34.0 billion

Note that there are no South American countries in the list, though Brazil comes in at 11th place with $33.1 billion. (When was the last time they fought a war?) In other words, there are no major military players in South America. So we don’t have to worry about them, right? And that is the fundamental flaw about being Number One: You tend not to think about smaller countries because they simply don’t impinge on your way of life. In other words, you lay yourself open for a big unpleasant surprise.

I actually remember my first such unpleasant South America surprise. Dwight D. Eisenhower was President from 1952 to 1960. On May 13, 1958, he sent Vice President Nixon to Caracas, where his motorcade was attacked by an angry mob. As a 13-year-old in Cleveland, I was outraged that a no-name country like Venezuela had the nerve to insult the United States. This plus the subsequent insurgency in Cuba and takeover by Castro led to the creation of the Alliance for Progress during the Kennedy Administration. (But we had to undergo a baptism by fire at the Bay of Pigs first.)

Then there was more bad news to come. We were being inundated by cocaine being smuggled in from Colombia and other nearby countries. Then there was this matter of the FARC insurgency in Colombia and the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) in Peru. The whole continent appeared to be unraveling like a cheap suit. The Tupamaros in Uruguay and the disappearances in Argentina under Videla didn’t help either, nor did Pinochet in Chile.

At a certain point along the way, a certain positive influence from Argentina turned my life around. It was my discovery of the writer Jorge Luis Borges. Once I started reading his works, I began to see the world through his eyes. There was this battle called Junin that was fought in Peru. Then there were the Unitarios and Federalistas in Argentina. I began to get more interested, and then I actually went to Argentina in 2006 (only to break my shoulder by falling in a blizzard in Tierra Del Fuego) and 2011. Now I want to go to Peru in 2014, if I can swing it financially.

And, of course, I have been reading ever so much more about South America—so much so, in fact, that I look at the globe in an entirely different light. Perhaps South America will gain by all these years of benign neglect. Perhaps not. We still enforce the Monroe Doctrine after a fashion to keep Europe out, but we pretty much leave the continent alone unless our multinational corporations want to cut down their trees or extract their mineral wealth. Eventually, I see the nations down there nationalizing those industries and, with luck, putting the skids on some of the worst abuses. Until then, our corporations will be a stench in their nostrils.

 

How Elves Came To Be Born

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We’re Talking Icelandic Elves Here

We’re Talking Icelandic Elves Here

If your idea of elves comes straight out of Tolkien, you might not want to read any further. In Iceland, elves are not quite the smooth white-skinned Liv Taylor, Cate Blanchett, and Orlando Bloom types. Icelandic elves are much more grotty. The following was submitted by my favorite contributor to The Iceland Review, Jóhannes Benediktsson and is a direct quote from his November 14 posting:

There are few theories about where elves come from, according to the Icelandic folktales.

The one most commonly cited, describes God’s journey to Paradise. He visits Adam and Eve, who salute him and show him how they live. They introduce him to the kids, but leave out the dirty ones. God knows about this and states, that what is to be hidden from him, shall also be hidden from everyone else. The unclean children then go on living in hills and stones, and their descendants are what we call elves.

There are more stories about elves and their origin, all referring to some Bible events in one way or another. My favorite is a bit strange. It includes Adam and Eve, like the one mentioned above, but takes another approach. It describes their relationship problem.

I have re-written this story as a two-hander play. I call it Trouble in Paradise and have very high hopes that it will one day reach Broadway.

TIME: Close to midnight.
PLACE: Paradise.
MUSIC: Barry White.

The scene starts with Eve entering the room. Adam is lying on a bed of roses, running his index finger suggestively over Eve’s side of the bed.

ADAM: Hello, cupcakes! How about getting naked?

EVE: You mean lose the fig leaf?

ADAM: Yeah!

EVE: Knock it off, you idiot! I’m not in the mood.

ADAM: Oh, come on! You never are!

Eve starts to get into the bed and goes to sleep, leaving Adam heartbroken once again.  He walks away from her and talks to the audience.

ADAM: This is my life. God has sentenced me to live with a frigid woman for all eternity and calls it Paradise. That’s rubbish! I’m a passionate man, who needs a flame in his life – a fire!  Why didn’t he create someone like that for me? 

He looks at Eve, sights and then looks back to the audience.

ADAM: I guess I’ll have to do with some solo-action once again. Enjoy your popcorn.

Curtains fall.

[Part 2]

TIME: Nine months later.
PLACE: Paradise.
MUSIC: Not Barry White.

Eve walks back and forth on the stage. She is furious. This morning, a bunch of babies appeared out of nowhere on their doorsteps.  They all look like little versions of Adam.

EVE: Who is she?!

ADAM: Who?

EVE: That bimbo you’ve been cheating with!

ADAM: I promise. You are literally the only woman in my life.

EVE: I don’t believe you. How do you explain the children?

ADAM: A miracle of God?

Eve starts throwing apples at Adam, who runs in a silly manner around the stage.  A thundering voice comes from above, overwhelming both of them.  It’s God.

GOD: Stop this nonsense, both of you.  I’ll explain what happened.  Do you remember, Adam, nine months ago when you did that… guy thing?

ADAM:  Erm… are you talking about the …

GOD: Yes, yes!

EVE: What guy thing?

GOD (ignoring Eve): Well… some of that got into a hole in the soil. And that soil somehow got pregnant and… well… these are your children. Their descendants will be known as elves.

ADAM: What!

Eve starts shouting and the throwing of apples once again and Adam seeks a shelter behind a tree. Avoiding the missiles, Adam turns his head humbly to the sky with one final question.

ADAM: God. Can you tell me one thing?

GOD: Sure.

ADAM: Why did you make her like that?

GOD: It amuses me.

ADAM: I thought so.

Curtains fall again. The show’s over.

By the way, Gin unlike Tolkien, Icelandic elves can do nasty things. Perhaps I’ll tell you about some of them one of these days.

A Writer Who Understands People As They Are

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Anton Chekhov (1860-1904)

Anton Chekhov (1860-1904)

It started last summer, when I reread his novelette The Steppe in a Reykjavik guesthouse. I said to myself, “This is a writer who understands people as they are.” Tonight, I read his play The Seagull, which gives us a rural Russian estate and introduces us to a group of people of are dissatisfied with themselves and one another. If I have my way, I will read a good deal more of Anton Chekhov this next year. It is so easy to be cowed by Tolstoyevsky—as my late mother used to refer to the two giants of 19th century Russian literature—that one is prevented from reading their contemporaries.

This is a great pity, because there are so many great writers to choose from among their contemporaries. I am thinking not only of Chekhov, but also Ivan Goncharov, Nikolai Leskov, Ivan Turgenev, Mikhail Lermontov, and Alexander Pushkin. And I am sure there are half a dozen more that I just don’t know about yet.

Chekhov was a physician, a playwright, and perhaps the world’s greatest writer of short stories. In addition, he wrote a great travel book about a visit to the island of Sakhalin off the East coast of Siberia, which was an early prison colony. In addition to a description of the conditions there, we have his description of the trip there and back in the days before the Trans-Siberian Railroad was built.

Chekhov was a prolific writer who lived a short life. Like so many of his contemporaries, he was a victim of tuberculosis. As a doctor, he knew what was happening to him. Yet his writing never suffered any ill effects.

In addition to his plays, there are a handful of his stories that are well worth seeking out. My favorites are “The Steppe,” “The Lady with the Dog,” and “Ward Number Six.”

On Pretending to Be What You Aren’t

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NFL Jerseys

NFL Jerseys

Most of the spammers who are trying to break into the comments section of my postings are in the business of trying to sell NFL jerseys to guys built like me and Louis Vuitton handbags to women who have better things to do with their money. (One huckster is trying to sell people who need dialysis on a alternative non-invasive therapy, which I think could be even more sinister.)

For every legitimate comment to my posts, there are twelve spammers trying to push real or fake fashions to people, who, if they are anything like me, would not likely have anything to do with them. I take the time and spend several minutes each day vacuuming up the spam and dumping the ashes out in the ether. iI had never encountered anything like this on Yahoo360, Blog.Com, or Multiply.Com. Oh, there were always a few right-wingers who wanted to debate me—but I can hardly debate anyone for whom I feel nothing but contempt.

This Is All You Can Afford for Othing Clothing If You Buy a Louis Vuitton Handbag

This Is All You Can Afford for Clothing If You Buy a Louis Vuitton Handbag

As for the spammers, I don’t feel contempt for them so much as wonderment that they would make such an effort to sell their wares by making comments to photographs and illustrations belonging to old blog posts. Well, I guess it’s a living of sorts—but I can’t see how.

One Man Can Save a Nation

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Nelson Mandela (1918-2013)

Nelson Mandela (1918-2013)

I was saddened by news of the death of Nelson Mandela today.

Except, he continues to live in a way that few men live. He almost single-handedly saved his people from massive bloodshed when Apartheid came to a sudden end in 1994. There were voices in the African National Congress for revenge, but there was a strong hand at the helm of the ANC—a hand that the people of South Africa trusted. Where the rest of the continent suffers under the yoke of dictatorship or anarchy, South Africa has a future. And that is because of one man.

Just imagine what the world would have been like without Adolph Hitler, Saddam Hussein, Kim Il Sung, Pol Pot, Muammar Qaddafi, Slobodan Milosevich, and any number of national leaders who took the other path, the path of power watered by the blood of their own people. No one misses those people.

The whole world will miss Nelson Mandela.

 

A Do-Nothing Congress, Circa 1890

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House Speaker Thomas B. Reed (R-Me)

House Speaker Thomas B. Reed (R-Me)

Ours is not the only do-nothing Congress. Things were even worse around 1890 when Thomas B. Reed of Maine was Speaker of the House for the Republican majority. He had a lot more to contend with than semi-illiterate white senior citizens with teabags dangling from their tricorn hats: Back then, members of the House would loll around in their seats reading newspapers or filling their spittoons.

To avoid having to do anything, they had their own equivalent of the filibuster, which, as you know, is a Senate thing. They would ask for a quorum call. According to the Constitution, a predetermined minimum number of representatives had to be present for the business of the House to be conducted. But what if, when his name was called, a Representative didn’t answer. At the time, the Speaker just marked him absent, even though he was clearly visible fifty feet away doing a crossword puzzle. This practice was referred to as the “disappearing quorum.” Then, as now, a minority could stop the House cold.

What Reed did to break the quorum was very simple. According to National Public Radio, which interviewed James Grant on the publication of his biography of Reed (cover illustrated above):

Reed decided to take action. He was a master parliamentarian, Grant says, able to play the rulebook almost like an instrument. And he changed history with just 17 words: “The Chair directs the Clerk to record the following names of members present and refusing to vote.”

“That was it,” Grant says. “Those seventeen words were the invitation to perfect pandemonium,” as the minority Democrats realized their disappearing quorum tactic wouldn’t work anymore — and that the majority party would now be able to start expanding the size and scope of government. The changes meant business could be done more efficiently, so more and more business began to be done.

Back then, to be a Republican was a good thing. Why? Because the “Solid South” was 100% Democrat. After Reagan’s presidency in the 1980s, the Confederate states switched their allegiance to the Republican party and decided to apply a wrecking ball to it, which they proceeded to do.