Political Points in Peyton Prospective

Tags

Congress, corporations, GOP, gridlock, John Edwards, John McCain, Michelle Bachmann, Obama, personhood, right wing nuts, Roe v Wade, Sarah Palin, SCOTUS, State of the Union, teabaggers

It’s been a good two weeks of political this and that. Time for everything to marinate, blend, shake out, and the subtle themes and nuances to shake out. In other words. . . .time for a retrospective, Peyton style, of the news. We are after all, a hurry up, short attention span sort of species.

I can only conclude, as I always do, that I have been misplaced again in the universe, for surely I don’t fit in with what I consider to be the majority of Merikans and others around said globe. In other words, they are all nuts, I’m sane, and stop the world, I wanna get off. Preferably on the planet from which I was abducted, and am still Queen in absentia.

First on the docket is the SCOTUS disaster–personhood for corporations. This is indeed a sad day for democracy lovers world wide. It of course makes a joke out of the concept of “judicial restraint versus judicial activism.” As I’ve said, one is either one or the other, depending on whether the Court acts as you desire or not. Surely, no Founding Father could have anticipated nor condoned the idea that a “thing” a corporation would have personhood.

Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission bodes no good in many directions at once. Overruling decades of precedence, the reactionary and activist right, reset the playing field as election politics go. Now, it seems, corporations will be able to flood the market with millions to promote the candidate that best helps their cause of greed. And with a slight bit of finesse, foreign countries will be able to influence and perhaps control elections in this country.

While everybody is bemoaning this state of affairs, I see a much more sinister movement here. Declaring corporations to be persons for purposes of constitutional rights such as free speech, can only embolden those who see to reverse Roe v. Wade. After all, how can you sustain an argument that a corporation is a person, but a fetus (which will grow into a human being in time) is not? I suspect you will be hearing more about this “business” case than you might think.

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The tea baggers are proving to be about what we would expect from people who have spotty educations and basically little in the way of actual sense. Their convention seems fraught with problems, mostly stemming from the fact that the whole thing is a bit of a scam.

First they start with Michelle Bachmann and Sarah as their two-pronged assault team. These two are enough to make a grown man celibate for life, hoping to stop the generation of any more spawn from these two crown idiots. But Michelle has now pulled out, and Sarah is being impolitely asked to leave by a segment of the tea bagger nation.

The reason? Seems Ms. Moose is not quite right wingy enough to suit the multi-faceted tea brigade. People are also complaining about the exorbitant price for one of the Alaskan Artist’s prized tickets.

How did Sarah get too “mainstream” for the tea bagger cult? Why she’s agreed to stump for one John Sydney McCain, the poor old Senator from Arizona who is having a hard time being right enough against his primary challenger. The tea bag gang thinks McCain is decidedly NOT right enough, and therefore Sarah can’t be either.

Speaking of which, Johnny is sure showing his true colors–“Ideology be damned, I wanna be re-elected!” It seems John has privately at least expressed his mea culpa about hiring on the said Palin express in his failed presidency bid. Yet, when push comes to shove, the ideal-less get going and bring in what might work, much as he privately might despise the woman. So much for John and integrity. But we knew that.

Which all goes to show–picking through the trash just locates trash doesn’t it? A pox on all their house.

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Obama, following what was touted as a rather brilliant State of the Union speech, traveled to Capital Hill and met with the GOP. As you might expect, the cleaned the floor there too, making the Rethugs look like petulant children. One poor representative, was shocked that Obama had read his bill–though he quickly reverted to the usual handed out talking points that all Rethugs have come to know and love

What is at work here, and what the crazies in the GOP can’t get, is that, much as they try to deny it, Obama is a first class mind. And alas, they are holders of quite ordinary small minds. Thus the shock that he actually reads bills, even those proposed by lowly junior representatives.  I suspect in some sense, they truly cannot “get” him for just that reason.

It also points out just what we and they look for in candidates. It seems the GOP is not big on thinkers, but is very big on those that will faithfully mouth the GOP mantras of big business and low taxes for the wealthy.

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Last but not least. John Edwards. Oh my, what can we say? To be duped by a sleazeball of this size is really thought provoking. It can cause one to stop in mid-stride. How can I or anyone be so incredibly wrong about our take on the integrity of another human being? It utterly boggles the mind, and contributes again to the belief that politicians are all worthless scum who via for office as a means to personal power.

Can you imagine being his new daughter who will one day have access to the information out there today about what her daddy did to try to stay at arms length from her? From pleas for abortion to substituting another daddy in the breach. What an awful man. Elizabeth, whatever her personal failings (and we all have them), is well rid of the snake.

I Am and Am Not Simultaneously

Tags

contradition, mind, paradox, personality, personhood, psychology

I came across this post today and darned if it didn’t get me to thinking. I mean, obviously it doesn’t take much to get me in that frame of mind, but it was something I honestly hadn’t considered this idea before.

In case you didn’t know, I’m struggling a bit now with the weather and with a general malaise of ideas for blogging. I figure it’s just a blip on the radar screen and am not overly concerned that I’ve run out of topics, but who knows, maybe I am.

In any case, the post was about the concept of paradox and how we are, each of us, a motley assemblage of such seeming contradictions.

The point of the article was that rather than trying to reconcile these oddities, we should embrace them and live more fully through them. I’m not sure as I get that, but let’s proceed.

According to the dictionary, a paradox is:

A seemingly contradictory statement that is or can be true.

Something like this: I am deeply curious about the world, and I am a very lazy person.

That one applies to me. No one who reads this blog regularly would argue with the first claim. I am as eclectic as they come when it comes to topics. One of the appeals of this blog, so I’m told, is that one never knows what one might find here.

I’ve commented more than once that I’m a lazy person. I can think of all kinds of ways to avoid most anything, and I often reject things I like until I have completed a list of shoulds each day. The problem is, sometimes I never get to the things I like.

I’m a verbal crusader for things I believe in. But I’m not a person who is motivated to take up the placard very often. I’m too lazy for that. So, in a real sense, sometimes my actions don’t back up my rhetoric.

The upshot as I said, of the article, was that we are better off accepting these paradoxes about ourselves, for they truly reflect the authentic self. I’m not so sure. If the paradoxes suggest real opposites within ourselves, then it seems to me, something is being shortchanged.

I do think it’s a good jump off to better understanding oneself. This can lead to more effective choices to combat the limitations we structure into ourselves. I do think, as the author suggests that it can make us more tolerant of others. When we see seemingly contradictory behavior in another, we can sympathize, since we have recognized similar anomalies in ourselves.

No doubt the addictive personality has a life filled with paradox. The addict sees the damage that results from the over indulgence of the object, yet finds great comfort in the object at the same time. No doubt many relationships are also fraught with such enigmas.

I’m more of a mind to think that it is better to have a strong preference one way, and to work at reducing the effect of the paradox. To me, they seem to be pulling in opposite directions and therefore limiting the satisfaction one finds in some of our desires. I can tell you that I sometimes feel guilt at not “doing” more that I write about. I am angry at my laziness.

I don’t see a lot of ways of making these two things fit together. So I differ with the author that somehow we ought to be embracing these paradoxes as our “true” selves. They may be, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t engage in a self-help improvement to reduce the magnitude of those elements of ourselves that we find counter productive to the execution of others that we find meaningful and important to us.

Given my rather flat emotional response right now, this is a subject that I will spend more time on. First, I want to examine in greater detail all the paradoxes in my life, and I’m told, that for most of us, there are many. Then the next step is to see which ones I consider helpful to my being and which not. Then of course, the hard part, working out ways to reduce the effect of the those that are not helpful.

It’s a work in progress, but then, life is that isn’t it? Tell me your thoughts and lets muddle through this together.