The Conversation We Need to Have About Gay Rights

Tags

essay, gay rights, marriage equality

I have a friend who often wonders why people care about the personal lives of other people. Why does anyone care whether somebody chooses to be single or married, have children or not, wants to sleep with this one or that one? Yet, it is undeniable that some people do care. Perhaps it is nothing more than powerless people attempting to force their lives on others in some vain attempt to feel superior, because their choices are “right” and that makes them feel better about themselves.

Some small few no doubt have deeply seeded religious notions (however wrong I may adjudge them) that urges them to compel others to live as they do, while paying lip service to a “religious freedom” that they conveniently reserve only for themselves. A great many more use religion as a shield to their own perhaps unconscious fears that they have certain stirrings which occur when the subject comes up, stirrings contrary to their definition of fitting into their particular group.

As polling suggests, the country continues to move more and more strongly in the direction of marriage equality. And the small, but adamant religious right, continues to voice its disapproval. But if it were this alone, we could all be content to “let the hater’s hate” with their pretense of “hating the sin, while loving the sinner.” Life always contains such out of the mainstream extremes so it seems.

But it is of course not “this alone.” This vocal and increasingly violent speaking segment continues to come up with innovative ways of making their animus known and felt. In reddish states across the nation (some six at the present with another half-dozen who have recently turned down such legislation), Republicans attempt to legislate bigotry in the face of a growing certainty that marriage equality will soon be the law of the land.

Republicans in general and those who appear to be running for President, reel like drunken sailors attempting to negotiate a rational path that both satisfies the “law or the one anticipated” and their growingly hostile base which insists on purity on this issue as on others. Of course there ends up being nothing rational at all in their stance.

Bush, Rubio, and Cruz are more than vocal in their support of the new mantra, that somehow there must be laws to protect the “religious” rights of people not to engage with gay people in their businesses if they don’t want to. There is no doubt that Huck, and Christie and Paul, and certainly Carson and Jindal agree as well. The fact that the argument is farcical is of no import. It “sounds” good, and that is always enough for the Right to pursue against a populace usually too busy with daily life to seriously disassemble the argument.

It’s all about religious freedom and not discriminating against Christians they intone. But is it?

As Jon Stewart pointed out, the florist who can’t bring themselves to sell flowers to a gay couple for their wedding, doesn’t even ask the trice about-to-be married man or woman, whom arguably Jesus would call adulterers. It doesn’t inquire into the criminal background of the pedophile, or the swindler before selling them a bouquet for their home. It doesn’t inquire of the drug dealer, murderer, before selling them the “wedding special.” All these instances are surely as egregious to God as the couple who has the temerity to love without benefit of the “right” plumbing arrangements.

These pieces of legislation are simply ruses to make you and I abide by somebody else’s personal preferences or to guard against their personal fears. Naming it “God’s will” doesn’t change a thing.

People talk about “deeply held religious beliefs” on the part of the florist or photographer. How is one to make that determination? By asking? By church attendance? By tithing amounts?

People talk about “next church’s will be forced to perform marriages against their tenets.” Really? Who has ever asked for that? There is no law in this country that attempts to interfere directly in church operations. Is anyone stopping the Westboro Baptist church from preaching hate every Sunday? Has anyone suggested that we should?

People talk about forcing people to serve others against their religious views. Well, yes, they are being told that. They are serviced, those businesses, by fire and police, they pay taxes, they receive water and electricity, the meet building codes, and sanitation requirements. They are in a fact engaged in a public endeavor, using city and state services. They are in a phrase, engaged in commerce, a public event. As such, this is simply one more general requirement of engaging in a public business–NOT DISCRIMINATING AGAINST PEOPLE BECAUSE THERE IS SOMETHING ABOUT THEM YOU DON’T PERSONALLY LIKE. Live with it, or get out of public sector business.

People like Rubio and Bush and Cruz attempt to draw some lines, such as “well we don’t mean they can’t be served in a restaurant.” Why not? How is that different from a florist? Which businesses are magically exempt? Will Hobby Lobby and it’s fakery about being offended by contraceptive care when it buys most of its inventory from abortion friendly China get the exemption?

People say that being gay is a choice. The question always becomes, so when did you “decide” to be straight? But putting aside the “gotcha”, why do religionists insist upon this “choice” thing? The weight of the evidence is that there is a genetic component which probably is in some way triggered by one’s environment. Or perhaps it is all genetic. Whatever it is it is not a choice, for even in today’s liberalizing environment, who would choose gayness with all its inherent problems? Surely more gays today are happy with their gayness, but at the point of decision would they have chosen this fight? Precious few of us desire to be martyrs.

The reason the religionists need gayness to be a choice is that is simply solves a lot of theological problems for them, and thinking makes religionists heads hurt. If it’s not a choice, then God made gays that way and it must be good if you read Genesis literally. So explain why God makes gay people and then demands of them to ignore the most basic of human needs and desires–sex? They can’t of course, so therefore, it must be a choice. It keeps the theology tidy.

And of course, if Gay is not a choice, there goes the argument that “gays are out recruiting your children” argument. It makes as much sense as saying that people who love surfing go out recruiting your children to be surfers.

This is just painful to write. Because as I type away, laying out the arguments, I try to imagine what it must feel like to be the subject of such an essay. People talk about gays and blacks and browns and women, and all minorities fighting for equality as if they were subjects on a chessboard. I say “the gays” or “women believe” as if they were some homogeneous pat of butter to be added or subtracted to the mix of human stew.

This sort of thing needs to stop being discussed because we need to stop putting people in these awful categories of “people like me” and “people not like me.” It’s all artificial, all just a disguise for our own hates and fears, and confusion.

People are people. Love is love. Let people work out for themselves whom they love. Let them live as they choose with whom they love. Let them arrange their love in whatever form works for them, and mind your own freakin’ business. Nobody wants to watch you groping and rolling in your bed with your love.

Don’t get me started on “then somebody will want to marry a horse,” crap. Just don’t.

As my husband says, the doorbell has still not wrung with my government-issued gay husband that I have to marry. Isn’t that enough for you bigots?

 

Stop Projecting Your Crap on Me!

Tags

conservatives and liberals, essay, human nature, the mind

A couple of ideas got to floating around in my head, and the best way I know to get rid of them is to bore you with them. Think of yourselves as my therapists. Cheap treatment eh?

Anyway. You know for the longest time, I figured that humans, being humans, and not giraffes or hermit crabs, probably thought pretty much the same way. Not the same opinions, mind you, but they processed in similar ways.

You know the drill, gather the information (in your head), sort through it, categorize it, and in the end define your “opinion”. As you came across new facts, you tweaked your opinion, were happily confirmed in your opinion, or ditched it for a better one.

A couple of remarks by folks the last week or go, brought me to the utterly sure conclusion and “opinion” that that is simply not the case. Most people might operate as above, but whole groups of people do not, and I think they are identifiable.

Know thy enemy various sage warrior types tell us, and indeed it’s true. But one cannot do that if one just assumes that your enemy thinks like you do. Often they don’t.

It has happened more than once that a commenter on this or one of my other blogs will bemoan the fact that “the people who need to read this won’t.” And that seems undeniably true. I’ll explain further in a moment.

The other statement that struck me (because it was not at all true) went something like this: “You criticize everybody on our ‘side’ as wrong, and you think everybody on your ‘side’ is right.” Actually no.

So in trying to fathom these two statements I realized that indeed, we don’t think alike.

Now this is not a new concept I suppose, for it’s well documented that the certain minds do operate quite differently, yet I had never see it in how they process information.

The fundamentalist mind is a mind in terror. It doesn’t like the world as it exists, and finds it both chaotic and scary. So it creates an illusory perfect world that works for them. If everyone were to behave in the “right” way, then their lives could finally be happy and safe. They are prone of course to religious fanaticism, finding this a perfect vehicle for achieving the world they want. They also are, if you hadn’t noticed, unreservedly conservative.

In fact, they aren’t conservative by any known definition at all. They are reactionary in their outlook. And it is this that causes them to process information so very differently.

As we engage in the back and forth of normal dialogue and debate, one thing becomes obvious. Liberals and progressives read all the material offered up by the reactionary right. We read it, find the errors in it, check out the sources, check out the backgrounds of the writers. Then we make our objections and our arguments. Reactionaries don’t return the favor. They studiously refuse to read any material you offer to them as proof of the point you contend.

At first I saw this as a manifestation of passive-aggressiveness. And partly, that is probably the case. However, it goes much deeper.

The reactionary is on very unstable logic grounds. They somehow intuitively know this. The people I debate with are frightfully uninformed about basic information and what information they do have comes from unreliable sources that makes them even worse, mis-informed.  They tend to engage in hit-and-run tactics. They present the information, and when you show them the reasons why it is unreliable, they don’t argue the facts, they simply argue that you are “just against the conservative point of view.”

That is because that is how they operate. They read ONLY what pleases them and reinforces their predetermined beliefs (ones that serve their purposes). They are not interested and don’t want to contend with information that is contrary to what they believe, because they are comfortable in their world and don’t want it disturbed. Facts might do that.That might cause them to have to think. Horror of horrors they might find out (as liberals and progressives do every day), that they have to change their mind about something.

Talk about upset the apple cart! How is one to survive in this insane world without the anchor of truth, justice and the American Way on your side? How to live with a book that is the recipe for how to live?

The reactionary right will always claim that the liberal/progressive is the same as they are. They truly believe that. They believe that MSNBC and CBS are “just as bad” as Fox at telling lies. They believe that en mass the Democrats are just as evil as the Republicans.  To them, proving that Fox is an awful “news” outlet and not to be trusted, means nothing, because to them, MSNBC is no better. There is no distinction in their mind whatsoever, no shades of grade, not qualitative difference.

They cannot fathom for instance that some liberals on some subjects are very unhappy with the President. That some are very unhappy with Harry Reid. They don’t think we “know” that Democrats are often as guilty of self-serving greed as Republicans. When we agree with them that MSNBC is often lousy at news, they are taken aback and think we are lying.

They refuse to see a qualitative difference, because they don’t engage in any media EXCEPT right-wing blathering. They assume we are all alike, just opposites. We know they are not the same, because we engage in both.

It is true that the people who need to read things which would help them see themselves in a mirror, won’t. No amount of asking them to will work because it is just too damn dangerous. A created worldview is a fragile thing. It cannot bear the light of reason or facts. It crumbles in the daylight, and therefore  must be kept safe.

I believe what I believe because it suits me, and I read what tells me I am right. I do not read what threatens that. Ever. I simply project my own closed mind onto everyone else. They are just like me. I am not ignorant. Fox is really fair and balanced, at least it’s no worse than the rest.

Such minds are not reachable.

They are locked away, growing dusty and angrier by the minute.

They are more susceptible to demagoguery.

They are sure they are right, and no fact will ever be allowed to tarnish that shiny bag of beliefs.

A mind is a terrible thing to waste.

A lot of minds out there are being wasted.

 

 

It’s the DICKS!

Tags

conservatives, editorial, essay, tea party, The rich

A person I know has been known to say that being conservative is a difficult thing. What he means of course is that one must get past the emotional desire to help everyone (known as the bleeding-heart syndrome) and recognize that such a thing is economically impossible.

Of course the truth is that being a conservative is a very easy thing to be. No one put it better than John Kenneth Galbraith in his famous quote:

The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.

The difficulty is in fashioning a good excuse as it were. The excuses were helped along wonderfully by the Protestant work ethic (something to do with the devil finding good use for idle hands), rugged individualism, and pulling oneself up by one’s own bootstraps.  The work ethic comes from Calvin and his belief that successful people (i.e. hard workers) were the identifiable chosen of God. Rugged individualism arose during the Hoover administration and was some sort of plea to every day people who their success was in their own hands and presumably not in the disaster that was coming at them from a failed American and world economy. The last about the bootstraps arose from a tall tale that finally became another euphemism for working hard to succeed.

This of course was all immeasurably aided when a group of “elitist” Eastern scholars decided to expropriate Darwin’s evolutionary “survival of the fittest” to explain why some people succeeded and why others did not. Mix them all together and you have the perfect storm of excuses for why I’m wealthy, and you not only are not, but don’t deserve to be.

I would argue that the average business entrepreneur is anything but a true conservative. We like to think of conservatives as being people who don’t like change, who harken to the “good old days”, albeit as seen through rose-colored glasses. This cannot be true of the business person of course, since nobody who thinks like this is likely to risk their all on some belief that they have invented the new wheel of the day.  Business persons simple vote for and support those that promote the kinds of policies that most protect their interests.

Of course all these terms don’t explain anything at all. One may ascribe to the belief that some of the great titans were perhaps brilliant in some way, but more likely they are men who had an inordinate desire to (a) make fabulous sums of money, (b) acquire fabulous amounts of power, or (c) acquire fabulous amounts of accolades for being “successes”. Actually all three feed each other. And with that personality in tow, they happened upon the right idea at exactly the right point in history. The rest is as they say, history.  Imagine the poor hunter-gatherer who happened upon a pool of black sticky goo. He might have dreamed of using this substance in some way that would power his lifestyle, but without either the steel, refinery or car awaiting, it’s unlikely he would become Chief Rocker-negie.

These “conservatives” were a different sort of course than the ones we have today. They cared little about social issues, the rabble could act and interact within their tenements in whatever manner they chose. And they were and are not the same as those “new conservatives” known as the neo-cons, who have applied survival of the fittest to the very nation itself, and given our superior  American exceptionalism, the right to fashion the rest of the world to our liking, even if it means by force.

No, the “New” new conservatives suffer from a much different issue than the mundane guilt facing the average conservative of old, assuaged as was by the phrases above, expropriated to their cause of “me first, you probably never.”

I am of an age, when we were taught that each generation in America did better than the one before it. Each family wished better for their children than themselves, and they expected that. We are the first for which, for many at least, that was not so. In fact for most, staying even has been the best we could hope for.

This leads to the inevitable question of why. And that question scares the bejesus out of the rich. For if the rabble in mass discerns that it has lost at the hands of those who have profited by our misfortune, the wealthy cannot withstand the onslaught. They know it and they have worked tirelessly to avoid that question being turned to them.

The corporate interests, flush with their bulbous bank accounts, bought up the media, and in some cases created their own. The chants began. If you are feeling left behind by the American “dream” then look left.

It is the fault of the blacks who just maybe (hints are everywhere) aren’t as capable in the first place, and are genetically lazy. They are the “takers” the “lazies” the 47%’ers. The subsist on “freebies” and from the Santa Claus syndrome, making a “good” life while aspiring to be nothing more than they are.

It is the fault of the browns, the “illegals” who take our jobs from us, and are prone to being lazy and takers as well. It is all the more horrific because they don’t have any “rights” having entered this country by nefarious and illegal means.

Recognizing that there is a strain of Bible Belt Christianity, you can turn your ire upon the “non-Christian” especially those who look different, are brown, and follow Islam. They are intent upon bringing their hate religion to our shores, taking control of our government and forcing us into their mosques. They are out to destroy American and everything we hold dear.

It is the fault of uppity women and gays who demand equal rights and are surely a part of that “One World Government” thing, that sounds un-American and sinister to boot. It all means that white men are losing their grip on power and money in this world.

Throw in a good dose of government is bad because it just is, continue the mantras of work ethics, and you have a supper to be served to the rank and file American who spends little or no time reading books or articles that deal with real issues in the world.

Soon you have a strange mix of folks who don’t want to pay taxes for all those “others” and who have managed to extricate from their King James’ Bible, plenty of justification for blaming it all on everybody not white, not male, and not Christian.

YOU COULD MAKE IT IF YOU WORK HARD AND IF IT WERE NOT FOR THEM.

The angry mobs will elect people who spout this, and assure them that they are right in their new-found angers and hatreds. A new cadre of grifters are paid to stir the pot daily, assuaging your guilt that tugs at your heart from time to time, making you feel just the slightest bit petty and selfish.

State legislatures across the land become engaged in bizarre bills to destroying women’s reproductive rights, limit the rights of immigrants, legal or not, ban gays from equality, pass looser gun laws (just in case we need them against the government), and otherwise suggesting that life outside the US of A might be better for all, and other secessionist blather.

These bands of ignorance can be found all over America, calling themselves “patriots” and other misbegotten appellations. They are no party, but a band of misfits of no particular ideology other than “stop taking my money” and “it’s not my fault I don’t have the life I dreamed of.” Those two ideas drive all their so-called “opinions. They know nothing, and care to know nothing.

But to call them the Know Nothings is to do a disservice to  another time and place and to misrepresent the meaning of the term when used. They deserve their own name, these “new, new” conservatives.

I coin the phrase The DICKS© to define them. They are the Determinedly Ignorant Conservative Koalition, or DICKS.

Mental Hospitals are Packed to the Gills

Tags

Election 2012, essay, Humor

Headlines scream across the nation. Our insane asylums are filling up rapidly, especially in the swing states. Crazed citizens are seen throwing big screen TVs out of windows and smashing IPads, all in a frantic effort to get away from campaign ads.

Those in non-battleground states fare somewhat better, but they too are starting to call suicide lines in increasing numbers, mumbling “Rasmussen says Romney is up 2 points, NBC says Obama by 1, Gallup has Romney by 5, but that’s a tracking poll, (ignore?), Quinnipiac has it a dead heat. . . .HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELP!”

What to make of it all?

Who in hell knows and could they be trusted to tell the truth anyway?

What is for sure, is that the media is pushing the meme of “closer than gnats having sex on a head of a pin” and they change the gloom and doom for one candidate versus the other nearly every hour. This is what makes their little libidos tingle with joy and they are getting a whooping thrill out of making us crazy with worry or exaltation.

If you care, you are either up in the clouds or slogging through the cesspool of despair. And you are reversing course at least twice a day.

No wonder doctors offices are filled to overflow with demand for sedatives and tranquilizers. Booze is being sold by the truck load off street corners, and people are simply offering up the deeds to their homes in return for a joint. It’s THAT bad.

Everybody wants a definitive answer, and everybody promises one. The problem is that scroll down, get to the next corner, turn the page, change the channel, and the opposite view is expressed as just that–THE bottom line.

Round we go on the merry-go-round of presidential elections. The final two weeks. The candidates are hoarse, they talk louder and faster. They promise a chicken in every pot and a Porsche in every driveway. Fox is nearly talking backward promising Armageddon, World War III and IV to be fought outside your door, a plague of locusts, earwigs, and jello shot addiction, should *gasp* HE win.

Meanwhile, the stars? keep dancing, Steve McGarrett continues to yell “book ’em Danno” and  Alex Trebek continues to sigh, “you forgot to give your answer in the form of a question.”

The sun continues to come up in the east, although further to the south as we move toward the winter solstice. The moon continues to wax and wane and millions still have no idea which is which. Monday continues to come before Tuesday except in a Leap Year when it faints from the effort and mills around with out drugged out days of the week that didn’t make the cut.

The fool running in Indiana who beat out Lugar to carry the Re(ohyougottabekiddin’me)publican banner, just up and said that he’s had a long talk with God and feels most assured that women who become pregnant from rape are carrying the child because God wants them to. Great comfort for the rapist to know he is doing Holy Will. A conversation overhead between Mourdock and Willard the Lie, reflected:

“Richard, don’t worry, I won’t desert you. If these lumps of factory fodder haven’t figured out yet that we don’t mean hardly anything we say anyway, hey, they never will. My endorsement is yours still my good fellow. I personally don’t have a clue about all that morality stuff–just feed ’em what they want to hear I say.”

Some have suggested that perhaps God doesn’t want the GOP to have control of the Senate. Oh who can say?

And the beat goes on, but in slightly a different timbre since Uranus just lodged complaint #32,491 against the Galatic Center for having to bear the most embarrassing butt of all jokes kinda name in the entire Milky of Way. Sirius pointed out that there is a new star in the Pleiades that just got named PusayWip and Uranus should just shut the frack up.

This just in. Alabama has instituted an emergency voting law that says that you must bend over, and if you can’t read the eye chart between your legs upside down from thirty feet, you can’t vote in their state. Alabama is contemplating making everyone walk that way all the time since it helps to define who are the “illegals” since only Alabamians are willing to bend over that far for their government.

I’d have more to say, but my meds are fading and I have to I have to call and ask if it’s okay to take them only fifteen minutes apart. I’m doing fine–just another trip to the grocery story to buy aluminum foil. Got most of the house covered now, just the driveway to go.

Can you spell R O S W E L L ???? Did I spell it right? Who said that? Now you’re being just creepy.

 

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Tiny Memories of Constitutional History

Tags

Constitution, essay, founding fathers, gun regulation, Individual Rights, National Rifle Association, Second Amendment

It’s hard to know where it started. My guess is that it became a shrewd tactic of the neo-cons, Fox propagandists, the Koch brothers, et al, in forming the Tea Party movement.

“Throw in that the liberals are destroying our Constitution! Claim that they are taking away our freedoms!”

Yeah, that’s the ticket.

In short order, in a few dozens of months, the Constitution has become the rallying cry around which mostly middle-aged, fairly uneducated white men have danced to the tune of the Right Power elite.

The Constitution has taken on nearly a sacred aura. It is akin to scripture, on the level of the Bible or the Qur’an, the Upanishads, or other religious texts. One expects to find people kneeling before it in the Rotunda, whispering the holy of holies, the Words of the very gods themselves.

Indeed, talk to any TeaBagger, and no doubt you will hear that it is God-inspired at the very least, as were the *hush* Founding Fathers, revered as the Apostles of the American Way of Life.

Reading the document in the hollowed halls of Congress, the Republicans saw fit to omit the embarrassing parts, like when our Apostles considered that Africans were only 3/5 of a person, or our stumbling attempt to regulate morals through abstention from alcohol.

But, I am not here to say the document is somehow not important. No, indeed no way. It is and remains perhaps humanity’s best attempt to set up a government that was just and fair. And the wording was just general enough, just open enough, to allow for growth over the centuries.

But, alas, all is in the interpretation is it not? And the Extremist Right, much like any good fundamentalist, reads it like they wish it meant and not how it was meant. Laughably the Tea Baggers groan that our “rights are being eroded” when if anything they have been expanded as the 4th amendment has until recently been enlarged to encompass things unthought of by the Founders.

Similarly, there is an implied  right to privacy that has given people new rights to be left alone in areas of sexual matters and others. Curious that TeaBaggers, who decry our loss of rights, want this one deeply restricted.

As events unfold after the Tucson shootings, we see that there in all likelihood will be no tightening of gun control in this country. Pete King’s offering, to protect elected officials in Washington has been squashed by his party already. Other, more broad offerings appear to be faring no better.

Democrats seem resigned on the issue, the public for reasons that are unfathomable, want even more guns. Arizona legislators suggest they see no reason to back off continuing efforts to expand the right to acquire and carry weapons in their state.

All this is most curious. Jill Lepore, in the New Yorker, has an extraordinarily detailed piece on the Constitution. Including much history and interesting antidotes, she close-ups the 2nd Amendment.

From its inception up until the 1970’s! no one, liberal or conservative, seriously thought the amendment applied to anything other than the right of states to establish militias. Indeed, because of tightening gun law legislation, following the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., the NRA for the first time, interjected itself into politics with the then novel argument that the 2nd Amendment was an individual right to bear arms.

Think about that. Today, people like Senator Schumer, (D-NY) say on Meet the Press, that it is after all, “clear that the Constitution gives an individual right to bear arms.” Anyone who suggests otherwise is branded stupid.

To be sure, there are differences of opinion and always will be. But historians generally agree that the right was not intended for individuals. Lawyers see the issue a bit differently, but still, the general consensus was, up to the 70’s at least, that it was a state’s right’s issue, involving a militia.

I am and have been dumbfounded that one organization can have a stranglehold on this debate to the point that Democrats are even afraid to discuss it. The NRA is able to control the dialog perfectly. Any proposed law, no matter how rational (eliminating sale of automatic weapons and large clips for instance) are infringements on sportsperson’s enjoyment of their hobby and the beginning of a slippery slope, leading to confiscation.

Every major episode like Tucson, is met with a run on gun stores for the weapon of choice, sure that the government will ban the weapon. One crazed person on a comment, said that the gun laws were “so restrictive that only crazy people could get guns” and that everyone knows that a well armed countries have the “lowest crime rates.” The deluded of course are wrong on both counts. This is just how crazy the conversation has become. This is how knee-jerk  the reaction to any reasonable legislation pro-offered.

I am at a loss, since our legislators seem unwilling to even address the issue. Any ideas?

The Second Amendment Under Fire

The Second Amendment

The Right to Keep and Bear Arms

Wikipedia (a particularly thorough examination)

The History of the Second Amendment

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What is Going on With Alabama? #3

Tags

Alabama, essay, Humor, States on Parade

When a state needs four A’s in its name, you know you are dealing with an inferiority complex par excellence. I mean really.

Indeed, when your maps consistently place your state within a panoply of other states just so people will know where you are, that’s another sign of weak ego. Truly, could you find Alabama on a blank map? I surely couldn’t. Who would bother to learn?

I can testify that if you are on the Eastern Seaboard and have reason to head to Alabama that driving directions consist of “take I-95 south to Georgia, turn left and when you feel stupid, stop. You are there.”

What do I know about Alabama? Um, Joe Namath played college ball there?

The state flag consists of a big ol’ X. I’m advised that these are strategically placed throughout the state to assure its citizens that indeed “you are here.” Why they want to be here, is anybody’s guess of course.

Alabama was one of those Confederate states who, given the above, still figured they could govern themselves better than the US of A could. This of course raises the image of a state in utter delusion. It’s a good place for the military to have a lot of bases, and so they do.

This gulf state is nicknamed the Yellowhammer state after its bird. I have no clue what a Yellowhammer looks like, other than this:

Which is apparently what you are driven to locate after spending a whole day looking skyward for a yellow bird.

Anyway, like most every state in our union, Alabama is named after native Peoples (the one’s whom we stole the whole bleepin’ country from, remember?). The pronunciation was a bit more like Albaamo, from the Choctaw language. The interfering Spaniards first came across the name, and you know that the Spanish are notoriously bad at pronunciation. So another bastardized name emerged.

Just add another A, and drop an O and otherwise scramble. There were minor flirtations with U’s and I’s but the locals were adamant at likin’ only A’s.

Definitions range from “here we rest,” to “clean up those weeds.” And most Alabamians seem to do the former, but not the latter. If you’ve been there, you know that.

All manner of nations and other states at one time or another laid claim to various parts of what is today the unremarkable state lines of Alabama. No one is willing to admit why they ever wanted any of it today. There is a story there for sure, but I’m not interested enough to pursue it. Be my guest.

It’s first state constitution provided for universal suffrage–for white men–and when asked, most white men in the state think it would be better off if that were still the case.

Of course, cotton was the crop of choice. When you put on those cotton socks, you walk on Alabama. Remember that.

Alabamians are a rigid and stubborn people. They refused to redistrict their state preferring to have the rural areas dominate the state legislature into the 1960’s. There may have been other motives in mind other than purely love of the plow.

Most people figure that Alabama is just mad because it didn’t get much of a coastline. Florida stole most of it because it always knew it would be a tourist mecca. What did a cotton plantation need with ocean views after all?

The state boasts its own “great natural disaster” in a five-mile-round impact crater called the Wetumpka Crater. It is not thought that many died from the violent impact. But that’s not been verified yet. Records are pretty thin for 80 million years ago. Plans have been discussed of turning the entire crater into a giant skateboard track, but scientists object. (Don’t they always take all the fun out of things?) Anyway, you can’t see much of it, but there is a nice sign you can read.

Weather wise, it’s hot in the summer, and cool in the winter, with “copious” precipitation. This is probably not a good sign. Tropical storms, hurricanes and more thunderstorms than anywhere else in the US are definitely not drawing cards. Ducks are reported to even get sick of all the rain, and sneak into Georgia.

The state has a significantly high number of folks killed by lightning, which suggests that Alabamians don’t know when to come in out of the rain. Most tend to stay close to the “you are here” signs for reassurance, and of course they are made of metal. A bill has been introduced to have them made of wood, which would provide some jobs every few years when they need repainting. A pilot project noted that after three years most signs would end up with “yo r her” which is gender confusing to say the least.

It has two complete idiots for senators. Not an opinion. That’s a fact.

Alabama is in a race with Mississippi to see who can have the lowest high school graduation numbers. Some credit must be given to Mississippi, which has four i’s in its name, signalling a very egotistical population, and also one that likes a good joke.

I can’t think of anything else you need to know. All in all, I can’t think of any good reason to stop in on the state, unless you just plain want to see what it feels like to feel a bit stupid for a bit. People do smile there a lot, I’ll give ’em that. But then, they really don’t know they live in Alabama.

Muttering in Circles

Tags

Catholicism, Christmas, DADT, Democrats, essay, GOP, pets, poverty, teabaggers

I’m bored. I’m also, shocking I know, feeling lazy.  Okay, pick yourself up off the floor. I should have warned you.

I am not quite sure why that is. I’m not unhappy. Far from it. I’m rather serene actually. That is a word that seldom bumps up in a sentence next to I. Spooky.

I’m laid back. This too is “not me.”

I should be livid. I really should. I should be laughing up a storm at the Republicans. Do you know they managed in one 24-hour cycle to piss of huge sections of the electorate? Latinos, social security recipients, and gays. Wow, that’s some accomplishment. To say nothing of the fact that the “teasippers” are none to pleased with them either. I think an award of some sort is in order.

I’m not despondent. Frankly this is really scary, given the time of year. After all, there is white stuff on the ground, not the green I prefer, nor the brown I can tolerate. I am into live and let live as far as the weather is concerned. You KNOW that is not me.

I’m quite happy with my church. I feel good there. I feel “right.” I had a rare utterly spiritually elevating moment, my voice almost breaking at a Hallelujah. I was staring at the crucifix, and, well, how does one explain? You don’t of course, you just glory in the moment. You realize once again why you trudge twenty miles with temps in the teens to be in this place. Go figure.

The Contrarian is doing very well. Was it due to my unceasing prayers? I don’t know. But his balance, after YEARS is much much better. He sleeps later in the morning. Miraculous, or just a lucky choice? Does it matter? It’s all God to me.

We got that appointment at the Cedar Rapids VA. He likes his new doctor. She didn’t like the medications he had been prescribed in Iowa City. She changed them. He’s breathing a good 50% better now. She has him on Aleve for his rotor cuffs. He’s barely mentioning his shoulders now, and insists on “dressing himself” which entails finding armholes alone and fiddling with bib straps. He’s been out for going on two hours, pulling logs and cutting them up for splitting. Did the same thing yesterday. I’m relieved, and for the first time in months, don’t find myself worrying.

I’m proud of the House Democrats. Somebody has to stand up to power and say, “this is not right, and we are not going along!” A secret: Obama as the ability to convince me of just about anything. And he almost persuaded me to go along with this “deal”. But he’s wrong here. He has to stand for something. And if he won’t then we have to.

So, I’m bored in a good way. Friday is a good day to be bored on I think. The Contrarian has been threatening me with “Singing in the Rain” on Saturday. I trumped that with some disaster movies, about earthquakes and polar ice something or other. I like smash-em up disaster movies. I’ve told you that.

The opening page on WordPress is the featured blogs of the day. There are an inordinate number of writing blogs. I find that odd. They talk about writing. Isn’t that cheating? Writing about writing isn’t writing, it’s explaining why you are so bereft of ideas you can only talk about what you are doing. Egocentric? A bit.

Not what I do. I’m chatting with myself, in front of you. Intimate isn’t it? Get to see how the wheels turn and such? Fascinated, aren’t you? No? Well, excuse me. I’ll whisper.

We have one cat who will not go outside in winter. Hates getting his little paws into the snow. So we finally had to relent (you don’t want to know the alternative), and put in a litter box. Now the other freakin’ three are using it too. Have they no shame?

Actually, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a cat exhibit shame. Cats walk across a table, knocking a coffee cup off and smashing it, and look at you. “You might want to clean that up so I don’t cut myself when I jump down.”

Dogs know shame. They can look at you and you are sure they wish they could disappear down a hole, they are so embarrassed. Dogs are simply more human than cats.

We decided to have ham for Christmas. Then I added a potato casserole. Then some glazed carrots. Then the left-over dressing (now in the freezer–I haven’t left it since Thanksgiving!), then the cranberry sauce also left over. Then some raw veggies. Rolls. Sigh. . .you see how this stuff multiplies? It’s a freakin’ dinner. But I’m standing my ground on dessert–I’ll buy sumpin’ at the grocery store. Not baking.

But I’m sorta baking. Gotta do sugar cookies. I mean that’s required. And some truffles. They are easy. And some  nut clusters.

And some lights on my humongous umbrella tree. And maybe the crèche. Some candles for the table?

And then there is New Year’s Day. Finger food. Pizza, and chicken tenders with barbecue sauce or blue cheese dressing. And raw veggies with a chipolte-spinich dip.

Sigh. It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Now that IS depressing.

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