I Admit It, I’m Furrocentrist

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Florida, Herman Cain, Humor, Maine, Osama Bin Ladin, Paul LaPage, Rick Scott, unions, voting rights

Yep, mea culpa. I confess, admit, and shamefully declare it. I have known it for some time, but it slammed me directly in the face last night.

We were watching a documentary called “Oceans” and enjoying all the beauty. I watched as green turtles swam through aqua-gorgeous waters off sandy beaches and dolphins racing all the waves in numbers that took one’s breath away.

I watched whales circle, bubble, and then raise large open maws to capture untold thousands of krill in one orgasmic feast. I saw birds diving for sardines and along shores picking off baby turtles racing for the safety of the ocean.

And then I saw orcas chasing baby seals to the shore and tossing them up in the air in fierce attacks. I heard the cries of disoriented and doomed little balls of frolicky fun, and I turned away.

“Tell me when it’s over,” I moaned.

And I realized that I could watch all manner of fish eat fish, or animals eat fish, or birds eat fish. I could watch anything gobble up reptiles, all manner of scaly things. I could watch chimps munch bugs of any description and never flinch. I never blinked as a bird slithered a worm down its gullet.

But, a furry thing be grabbed? A gazelle by a lion? A rabbit by a wolf? Oh no, no no no. My heart nearly breaks with the inhumanity of it all.

I am in a word, furrocentric.

I guess it’s wrong to be one. But in truth, I don’t intend to be treated for this malady. I will live with it. Thank you.

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You all remember good old Governor LaPage doncha? The one from Maine? The one who took out a mural in the state’s Department of Labor building depicting Maine workers? Imagine, a mural about workers in a LABOR building? It was because businessmen complained he claimed. Well, but of course, who shines their shoes? Mr. GOPer LaPage of to be sure.

LaPage is most noted for his brash, offend everyone (except business and the teabaggers). He has, while in office managed to be against all the things the right wingers are against, and for all the things they are for, meaning nobody likes him except big business and people who have no clue about much past what day of the week it is, and whether you want catsup with those fries.

Most recently the lovely LaPage has signaled his intentions to sign into law a GOP-passed bill that will end Maine’s same-day voter registration law. Yeah, and the reason for this is his firm belief that “Democrats steal elections,” so it’s fair to make it harder for people to vote. And of course, there is not one documented case cited for voter fraud. Never is. It’s all about a stinkin’ minority trying desperately to win elections against the will of the people, so they can continue to screw those same people.

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Political Irony has your late-night humor for the week. After you get through the interminable Weiner jokes, there are some others that are pretty darn good. Take a look.

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As you may have guessed, I’m thoroughly opposed to old step-‘n-fetch-it Herman Cain. I doesn’t surprise me that he was offered the opportunity as a youth to transfer to an all-white school to begin the integration process. He was offered the opportunity, and he wants his white audiences today to know he turned it down. My favorite blog and hopefully yours, We are respectable negroes has their take, or should I say the very very erudite Chauncey de Vega, has his.

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Can you hear me now? Or better still, “I just love the smell of falling Governors in the morning.” I think Walker in Wisconsin and Scott in Florida are racing to see who can be the most hated Governor. It’s unsure who might win, but I sure encourage them both to keep on doing what they are doing. Recall has a fine sound to my ears.

Scott, who just can’t stop trying to be a good GOPer, is pushing a “union dues deduction bill” through that would detour union dues to state agencies to avoid their use in “political” affairs. Yes, and the police in Florida are fuming and calling for a “leaving the party” event. Attacks on public employees is being met head on as it is in Wisconsin and elsewhere. People are indeed waking up.

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Just when you were positively sure that the planet could not support one single more STOOOOOPID person, well, another one comes along. His name is Bill Warren, and he plans on diving somewhere off the coast of India and swimming around to find the remains of Osama Bin Ladin. Ain’t that just ducky? Perhaps Mr. Warren will run into a nice big fat shark who will invite him to dinner and to see the bin Ladin remains up close and real personal–like inside his tummy. Talk about get a life!

Oh, and he said this, he really did. He’s going to look for the body “to see if it’s really dead.” If you find him alive down there, be sure to let us know. THAT would be news.

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What’s on the stove? Ribs, roasted parmesan potatoes and coleslaw.

Who’s Thinking for You?

Tags

critical thinking, Fox Noise, Media, Osama Bin Ladin, political discourse, psychology, right wing wackos, sociology, thinking

I’m forced to believe that we live in a mostly schizophrenic world. We are assaulted day and night by “news” however one wishes to interpret that. Mostly it’s not news at all, but one form or another of someone’s truth, deception, or best guess.

Add to that the never-ending drumming of product, product, product, and it’s no wonder we drown ourselves in food, drugs, alcohol, and any of a number of addictions, all intended to shut out the cacophony.

It’s simply too much. We try to make sense of it all, and we fairly cannot.

I’ve been reading Thomas Merton lately. A book called Seeds, containing paragraphs from his many writings grouped around common themes. Merton’s take on society is scathing, and frankly works today as it did in the 50’s and 60’s when he did much of his writing amid the “Cold War.” Supplant “terrorism” for Cold War, and nothing much has changed.

He suggests that one of our greatest illusions is that we think. We don’t he argues, we simply think that we could think if we needed to. But we don’t have to. We simply wait until someone says something that “makes sense” given our history, and then attach ourselves to it. Their thoughts become ours, their ideology ours. All the better if it is a group.

Our lives are now composed of slogans, formulas, ideologies, and declarations. We know the jingles to every advertising product. We want “things” because we have been carefully taught to want them. News passes by like a ticker tape, we have only a few hours, at most days, to digest, before another “event” captures our attention and must be fit into the drama of our lives.

Merton argues that we give up our responsibility to think because we want to. We believe the propaganda because it’s easy, it gives us the illusion that we are thinking while we devote our time and energy to living up to the “lives” we’ve been taught make us successful.

An example is the Iraq war. Now I didn’t buy the propaganda at all, I was pretty darn sure this was the wrong war for the wrong reasons. Yet, I was hopeful that all the claims about why it was necessary would be true. Why? Because like all Americans (or most I should say), I was deeply pained by 9/11. I wanted an “answer”, an enemy that could be grasped and throttled.

We may have an unease about a lot of the propaganda we hear and read, but we tell ourselves that “our” side is by and large better than the other side.

I’m about Bin Laden’d out. First I had to work through the issue of America’s jubilant response. But that was only the tip of the iceberg. Since then we have had to confront the “deathers”, those insidious and nearly legally insane folks who truly believe this is all a fake to deter us from the real issue–that Barack Obama is an illegitimate usurper in the White House.

These deathers are easily dismissed of course, since even Al Q!aeda has declared their leader is in fact dead.

Fox Noise, caught in a no-win situation, praised the action for about thirty-six hours. Then came their twisting of the facts to cast doubts about the whole affair. The White House handled the information “poorly”, even though “facts” were clamoured for well before any debriefing had occurred. As natural discrepancies on details emerged, Fox got more and more suspicious of the competence of “this President” The Blaze headlined: “Obama can’t make up his mind; Panetta gives order for mission.” The suggestion is obvious although it cannot be more of a lie.

Soon we were back into the issue of “enhanced interrogation” techniques, the propaganda euphemism, the polite way of saying torture. The right was bringing out its guns to “show” that Obama’s moment in the sun would not have been possible without the waterboarding that the Bushites were condemned for.

Suddenly, we are back to debating the relative “value” of torture. If torture lead to finding Osama, them of course, moral issues no longer matter. Really?

Just as quickly come the complaints that the American people should not give so much credit to Obama. Rather the great George W deserved the “real” credit. It was he of course who announced our “goal” of finding Bin Laden. No mention of course that he fairly laid that aside in his quest to take down Iraq for the neo-cons. No mention that we lost our opportunity to stay on the track while fresh.

The debate still goes on over the “pictures”. The right finds this a great argument–its cathartically necessary they claim. We must “prove” beyond any shadow of doubt. All the while of course, they know he is dead, but that is no reason not to *wink wink nod nod* to their deather base for whom the lack of pictures is just more evidence that it is all a lie.

And far in the background, barely mentioned, are those, like Michael Moore, and certain religious personages who remind us that we have not even begun to discuss the morality of this “assassination.” Everyone admits there was no real effort or desire to “take him alive”. That opened up a whole can of worms that few wished to take on.

How do we live with ideals when we so conveniently flout them for expediency’s sake? Is it any wonder than the world shakes its head in dismay at our wagging the moral finger at anyone else while we take the path of least resistance.

Yet, we make, at best passing offers of argument on all these issues. We don’t have time, we can already see a new event looming on the horizon. Clear the decks, make ready for our next round of “thinking” and don’t forget to pick up milk on your way home.

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