I’ll See Your Demagoguery, and Raise You a Revolution

Tags

demagogues, Right wing douches, Sarah Palin, teabaggers

If you ask your average Merikan about demagoguery, you’re probably going to hear about Stalin and Hitler and Mussolini. If you are specially lucky, you might hear reference to Joe McCarthy. A significant number of Merikans, perhaps most, won’t have a clue what you refer to, beyond a vague sense of “bad” floating in the air.

It’s no secret that American youth are fairly poorly educated in this country. While there are plenty of reasons and excuses for this, top of the heap is probably because they are taught lies. 

Such is underway in Texas anyway, where new textbooks will play down slavery as a cause of the Civil War, and emphasis a lie–states rights–as being its motivation. Now states rights had something to do with the Civil War, but not in protecting states rights–in actuality it was  the states rights of northern realms that they despised and set out to separate themselves from. In fact, up until the 60’s there were specific “southern” textbooks on these issues, not used in the rest of the land. We are returning to that era, when again, Southern kids will be taught a different “history” than the rest of the country.

A demagogue is one who through resort to fear and prejudice, appeals to the common people, in an attempt to manipulate their approval to gain personal power and influence. Lies are a common vehicle used to gain the support of lower socioeconomic classes which is then used to gain the ends (usually hidden) of the demagogue.

Americans think they are smarter than the average demagogue, and always have. We look at people such as Hitler, Stalin, and others of that ilk with a certain disdain, sure in our adolescent minds, if not our later adult ones, that such a thing could not happen in the good old USA, because we are “on to them” sorts. And the slightly smarter among the great unwashed will use Joe McCarthy as an example. Sure we toyed with demagoguery for a bit, but in the end we censured Joe and sent him packing, destined to go down in history as a rather sinister chap who in the end was admonished, “Have you no sense of decency sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”

So, we sit in smug superiority.

We of course were and are wrong. We are no better at ferreting out demagoguery than your average Athenian was when Cleon was stirring the people to behaviors we normally don’t associate with Athens in the classical period.

We live in a soup of demagoguery with any number of suitable candidates lined up to become the populist hero of the day. Fox Noise serves as the propaganda disseminator with plenty of minions named Rush and Ann and Rich and Sean ready and willing to spout the memorized script of why “they” are destroying America, and “we” must get out our guns and show them we will not tolerate their warped secular world.

We finally, at long last, sat down and watched Game Change the other night.  Sure, it was filled with lots of giggles and nodding, as we saw our Sarah entering the national stage. We saw the almost comical cluelessness on anything beyond the demagogue’s rhetoric. We watched as she puzzled over basic European history, attempting to take notes (on paper in the beginning, precursor to the famous hand writing), and figure out who was who, and what was what.

And we saw the debacle of interviews that broke open the wisdom of hirin’ Sarah wide open finally, and exposed what McCain referred to as the “dark side” of Populism–the degree to which it is based not on facts and well-thought out logic, but rather instilling and promoting fear and anxiety regarding “others”.

Sarah is pictured as sitting mesmerized listening almost spellbound to the criticism of her. Yet, either through brilliant acting, or truth, one sees a startling revelation. Sarah is not studying her detractors to learn what she is doing wrong, so much as she is carefully examining her detractors for weakness, and how she might better exploit it.

She studies, not foreign policy position papers, but what makes people smile or frown, what makes them cheer, what makes them nod in approval. She is all about one thing–how best to sell Sarah, and reap of course the benefits–fame, and more importantly fortune.

Sarah, as we have come to know, is really only about becoming wealthy. She forcefully and loudly proclaims that “they are boxing her in”, preventing her from doing what she does best–talk to the common folks. She ends up in a long and exhausting war with her handlers over who will control the agenda.

And of course, we have seen the fine results. After the election, Sarah made all her own decisions and she’s managed in six years, to not be the “new young leader of the GOP” that McCain predicted, but rather she has become a cipher in the conservative movement. A few thousands still shout her name, but largely the great uber right wing has moved on.

But the not surprising popularity of Ted Cruz, Donald Trump, and Scott Walker remind us all too well, that there are more than one ready to take over the mantle from Ms. Palin.

Cruz, following the SCOTUS decision regarding marriage equality enters the arena with the lie: a few people who were never elected by us have dictated to the rest of us how we must live. Now of course, Cruz leaves out that this is exactly how our constitution intended.  It is what was established in Marbury v. Madison.  Trump contends that Mexico is sending us criminals, and then sets out to find an example to make his case.

Walker advises he will do to the Middle East problems exactly what he did with unions in Wisconsin–destroy them. Santorum suggests that the rights of every real Christian are at risk if gays marry. Jeb, not quite as capable as demagogues go, wrings his hands and mutters the code words, but doesn’t exactly know how to utter them convincingly.

We need not fear that demagogues will become extinct. We must fear that we are perhaps more susceptible to them than we thought.

Look, we live in a busy world. As has always been the case, the vast majority ignore politics and worry about paying the electric bill and getting packed for that fishing trip to the lake. But while you sublimely watch fireflies at water’s edge, back in the recesses of taverns and game rooms in fancy townhouses and estates, grifters like Sarah are busy trying to figure out what will scare you into voting for them.

I’m not expecting you to spend two hours a day reading what’s going on in the world. It would be nice if you took that interest in the now and future, well mindful of the past, but that’s asking too much. Half  aren’t mentally up to the task, and half of the rest are just too bored by anything that doesn’t speak to the World Federation of Wrestling.

But I ask you to remember one thing. The better it sounds the more likely it is to be not true. 

You do not need guns to prevent the government from overreach. If the government wants to stop you from mouthing off, it will kill you, and no weapon you have will make a difference.

You’re way of life will not end because gay people can marry each other. I’m quite sure almost none of them will want to marry you and with good reason.

ISIS is not plotting to blow up your neighborhood. It is quite more likely that you will die from a bee sting or be blown up by your neighbor’s arsenal when it goes off in a house fire.

You are not being attacked as a Christian. Nobody has ever stopped you from reading the bible you want, interpreting it the way you want, and going to the church you want. There is no war on Christianity, and as much as you want to think of yourself as a martyr, you aren’t. You would piss your panties should the feds show up and demand you become a Sikh or Buddhist, and all to many of you would bow and ask for the rules of proper worship.

If it sounds good, and makes you feel vaguely selfish–it’s a lie and you are being selfish. Don’t fall for it, even though it would mean a cut in your taxes and some sort of wispy comfort that your way of life is being protected. It isn’t and won’t be. We are becoming both NON-white and NON-Christian. It’s a fact. Learn the word ameliorate and learn it well.

If in doubt, don’t vote. A stupid vote is worse than no vote at all. Remember the demagogue is not looking for a smart vote, but a stupid one. Don’t take the bait. There is really nothing in it for you. EVER.

But keep an eye out for Sarah. She’ll be opening a supermarket near you.

Drowning in a Sea of False Equivalency

Tags

comparisons, false equivalancy, GOP, teabaggers

Everywhere we look it seems we see the ugly head of stupid reasoning attaching itself to every issue we face today. Issues are not debated, they are attached. By that I mean velcro strips of “arguments” are thrown at statements that do nothing to actually argue the real point, or offer enlightenment in their own right. They usually obscure, deflect, and defeat real argument.

Case in point is false-equivalency, or as it is known in the GOP dumbed down inopposite: comparing apples to oranges. You see, a perfectly good way to end an argument is to just stroke one’s chin and utter, “ahh, but now you are comparing apples to oranges,” and then sagely walk away, while your befuddled opponent scratches their head and wonders how to respond to that.

For uttering the words, “apples and oranges” is not an argument, but rather a clever device to stop everyone in their tracks while they ponder how what they just said could be of no more worthy comment than to point out that you failed comparison class. But did you?

I know the term false-equivalency is a big mouthful, and something that requires neuronic interplay, so bear with me dear GOP friends. I’m writing this slowly in the hopes that by reading it slowly you just might get a hint of what we are talking about. I’ve been engaged in a couple of conversations recently and all seem to succumb to the “I really don’t have an argument, so hey, I’ll just throw this canard your way, and Good Day!”

Case in point:

The GOP has been Halloween scary when it comes to this Ebola thing. And as the GOP often does, it presumes its sad cadre of listeners/followers can’t remember last Saturday from Mother’s Day, so it says stupid things figuring it can get away with it. While all the GOP was running around in their clown cars lighting everyone’s hair on fire with the “WHO’S IN CHARGE” allegations, they conveniently forgot that they were IN CHARGE of blocking the obvious person to be in charge.

You see, they blocked the nominee for Surgeon General Vivek Murthy a good while back. Dr. Murthy drew this scorn because he had had the temerity to suggest that gun violence in this country was a national health concern. Even though, as SG Dr. Murthy would have zero control over gun laws, the NRA wizzed it’s collective pants and ordered its minions to put a stop to the nomination, which they did.

Now I would be the first to tell you that in all likelihood, the Ebola fright week would have happened in any case, since the GOP is firmly convinced that frightened Americans tend to vote Republican and thus will miss no opportunity to so terrify where possible, but rational people see the GOP walking into their own poop as it were.

Enter the equivalency provocateur, who told me, “aw shucks, you guys wouldn’t approve of Bork. So nominate someone who can get confirmed, and stop whining”.

Essentially, all denied nominees are the same.

This is false equivalency. Nominees have been rejected by  both sides in the past, but ostensibly it is because they are unfit in some manner for the office to which they are intended. Such was not the case in Mr. Murthy’s case–his medical credentials are unassailable. He simply was unacceptable to a small lobbying group. Murthy undoubtedly would make the same argument regarding the need for better safeguards in cars. And it would be as repellant for him to be dismissed from consideration by the auto lobby.

In fact, as regards the Consumer Protection Agency, the GOP was actually clear: Richard Cordray had been denied the job for years by recalcitrant Republicans, not because he was not qualified, but because they hated the agency and were trying to make it powerless, by keeping it headless. They fully admitted that Cordray’s credentials were impeccable.

Claiming that “both sides do it” is not an answer, its avoidance of the real issues of why one party has decided that not governing is the new way to govern as the minority. Instead of working with the majority and trying to tone down legislation that has majority support, they aim at obstructing all legislation and such has been their stated decision since a week or so after Obama entered the White House in 2009.

Case in Point:

Among the other asinine arguments about how we aren’t doing enough about Ebola, is the usage of it, as a means to whine about the border security issue again.

We can talk all day about border security, how more people have been deported under Obama than Bush, how more agents have been deployed under Obama than Bush, how more fences have been constructed under Obama than Bush and on and on, but of course, that doesn’t fit the meme the GOP wishes to pursue, so instead we talk about how terrorists who are carrying Ebola will be crossing our borders willy-nilly and infecting everyone before they die.

When we again remind them, then why aren’t we talking about the Northern border too then, we get the “that’s comparing apples and oranges”.

When asked to explain that, they figuratively, smile slyly and walk away.

Because of course it is not comparing apples and oranges. The Northern border is more than twice as long as the Southern, and as best I can learn is “secure” to about 1%, I’d hazard a guess that is mostly at the Great Lakes, which presents a sort of barrier itself and the St. Laurence, and at points of entry such as Sarnia, Windsor, Buffalo, and Niagara. Other than that, its wide open and as everyone knows, a few thousand of our citizens entered Canada to avoid Vietnam a few years back if you recall.

Who’s kidding who?

If you were a terrorist, might you consider it in fact easier to enter through the north than the south?

If you buy any of that nonsense in the first place that is.

Case in Point:

Some one posts about Cheney and Haliburton being responsible for the existence of ISIS in the first place.

Now that’s probably a stretch. I suspect that they have a part to play in the rise of ISIS to be sure, pushing a needless war that allowed war profiteering companies like Haliburton to make billions at the expense of over a 100,000 Iraqi lives to say nothing of our own losses. That is something we could discuss.

But the response we get is not a defense of Cheney and company, but rather, a “let sleeping dogs lie” kind of theory because “history can’t be changed”.

No indeed history cannot be changed, but that is hardly an argument. It’s not even rational good sense on it’s own merits. To know and learn from history gives us the hope at least that we don’t make the same mistakes. So said George Santayana however inelegantly he might have worded it. And as others point out, we are constantly learning it better;  we seldom write one definitive history of anything, but continue to gather information and reflect on the subject from myriads of angles.

But it does offer to shut down the conversation does it not?

And that’s all that the GOP seems good at.

At all costs, we must avoid what we don’t want to confront. I think you get that when you sign the card, “I register as a Republican,” along with your requisite button and US flag pin.

These are false equivalencies, or simply avoidance period. Don’t be confused. It’s the first line, and usually the only line of defense you will get. We don’t argue with the uber right to convince them, for that is usually not possible, we seek to inform the fringe who are listening in and actually want to learn.

Continue to be clear with your facts, scrupulous in your research, and quick to admit any mistake. You can count on the fact they won’t do any of these things, and a fair listener/reader will end trusting your version. The point is after all, truth.

Eric, My Dude, Wha’ Happened to Ya?

Tags

Eric Cantor, GOP, John McCain, men with no brains, stupid party, teabaggers, when old men need to lie down

Frank Luntz really got one thing right. “The GOP is lousy when it comes to doing polling.”

By all accounts, Eric was blindsided by his rather convincing loss to a third-rate “economist” called Brat. He dinna see it cummin’ as they say.

As all politicians do, they manage to put on a thin smile as they stumble to the podium to admit their loss and congratulate the nobody who was somehow good enough.

The punditry is all awash in ‘splainin’ how this happened.

Some say it was his flirt with immigration reform. Other’s his watering down of a bill that would have but a stop to insider trading by congress people, who are as you know, so danged overworked and unpaid that it’s only fair that they should be able to do what nobody else can do without going to jail.

Some say Eric was just a total shit, arrogant and dismissive, failing to act, ya know, like one of his constituents, on those “hanging out  in the district” times. He was in a word, (words actually) full to the brim with the sweet smell of his own poo.

He will likely be replaced by an even more odious (ideologically speaking) commodity, the Brat guy. Who is some sort of economist, but apparently not much of one, who when asked what his position was on minimum wage increases, said he hadn’t had time to work out a “fully crafted statement” on that yet, or some such bullshit. What freakin’ economist doesn’t have a thought on a subject that, ya know, DEALS WITH ECONOMICS?

But I guess one shouldn’t wonder since his economic philosophy seems to be “Brat believes in free-markets as run by some curious amalgam of Presbyterian theology and Ayn Rand’s economic sociopathy.” If that don’t make your head spin I don’t know what will. The atheist Rand married to a dude who claims that his win was a “miracle from God”. I can’t wait to see how it pulls that off.

It is however, most comforting to know that there are plenty of GOP tenderfeet waiting in the wings for their chance on the national stage.

As well as some old has beens who are still trying to be relevant to something that passes for significance in this political world.

Enter one John S. McCain. A meme last week on Facebook asked commentors to sum up Johnny in three words. My favorites were “still not relevant”, “still not President”, and “Sarah Palin, seriously?”. Fresh off his flopping like a dead flounder all over the Bergdahl mess, he ‘s moved on to utter more stale bullshit to an increasingly deaf audience.

You may not have heard, but Iraq is being overrun at the moment with Al Qaida–you know–the crazies who came into Iraq when George W, following orders from Cheney and Rummy, decided to invade it, because they wanted to? That war. The war that we sorta fought to a tie, which gave us our escape window? And we escaped. And like everyone on the planet knew that chaos (or more chaos I should say) would ensue until the damn country became a bloodbath? And a few hundred people have died in that country every month, but Syria was worse, so we didn’t notice? Until the deaths started being several hundred a week? Now ya remember?

Yeah, well, now Johnny, setting aside his blatant memory loss, has declared that we won that war, (more specifically George did after following John’s instructions), and now Obama has gone and lost it, and his entire group of foreign security advisors should be fired, and replaced by the old crew from George’s tenure, and hell, while you’re at it, let George take over, cuz God we all felt so much better and more secure when he was at the button. Such is the way John sees things, or forgets things.

Meet Jeff Miller, (R-FL).

Look carefully since Jeff, is a zombie. Not walking dead, but walking brain-dead. He is shown holding on to his head, for it would float off to the ceiling if he didn’t. It’s full of nothing but helium.

Florida, as you may know, if one of those areas of the country that will soon lose half its sovereign soil when the oceans rise due to climate change. It is of some minor concern to its residents not all of whom are ready to trade their land based homes for boats.

So in their brilliance, they, in part at least, elect this fool.

Jeff, make no bones about it, is a fool, in CAPITAL LETTERS.

Frank has that wonderful ability to hold lots of facts in his empty brain that are in utter conflict.

First, Frank says that scientists are not agreed about who is causing this particular climate change. That’s not true, of course, for they are, to a degree of more than 97%; the rest being dismissed as owned and paid for by Koch brother enterprises and others in the fossil fuel industry.

Frank chooses to side with the paid-for deniers, and of course reminds us that “the climate is always changing”, as indeed it is. The planet we call home has, over billions of years, undergone plenty of change, most of it taking millions of years to build up. No doubt Frank doesn’t believe this because he must stay on the good side of the funny-gelicals who don’t believe the earth is more than 6,000 +/= a few hundred years old. But, for purposes of this argument I guess he believes that climates change over time.

His proof? Oh the dinosaurs. How in the heck could the dinosaurs have been axed if climate change wasn’t a “natural thing”. After all, he says, man wasn’t there (oh no screams Ken Ham–he’s an atheist!), and they weren’t driving around cars and such.

So the fact that the dinosaurs disappeared means that climate change isn’t man made. (Get the ropes and pinions, that jump across that chasm of logic is mighty wide!)

What Jeff doesn’t have a clue about is that the climate was rolling merrily along in old dinosaur land, when a comet or asteroid hit the planet and threw up so much dust and dirt, that the climate changed massively in a very short time (hint, hint like today’s human activities), and produced an unlivable situation for the dinos quickly. (purists note that this is the Alvarez theory to which I generally adhere or the catastrophic extraterrestrial theory. There are other serious theories which we aren’t going to get into here, suffice it that it has no effect on the argument.)

In other words, there is climate change which is normal and then there is that which is abnormal. What is happening to the earth today is abnormal, proceeding much too rapidly, and is demonstrably man-made.

The point is, there is no connection between the dinosaurs and the reality of man-made climate change. Never was, never will be.

And so we end, “Your week in GOP shenanigans and really stupid stuff.”

 

What’s Up With That?

Tags

1st Amendment, dominionism, teabaggers, Ted Cruz

Never let it be said that a college education isn’t a good thing.  But it does not mean, gentle folks, that everyone that secures one comes out, well, . . . educated.

Some come out with better talents at manipulating the world they hope to rule one day.

Case in point is Canadian Ted Cruz, that stalwart Haaaavard educated douche from Texas whose daddy is still quite certain that President Obama was born in Kenya, which apparently is something less good than being born in either Canada or Cuba as the case may be.

It would be inappropriate to compare Ted to another well-known demagogue, so we won’t, but gosh Ted could give any of a host of world ogres a run for their money when it comes to using white-hot rhetoric in attempts to raise the blood of the great stupid hoards.

Truth? Not so much. Truth is not the providence of a demagogue; not that truth has no place at all in propagandizing. It does, but a minor part at best. Truth becomes the kernel which is then popped all out of its original proportions in order to reach the goal of making black white and thus creating the “new” rallying cry of the duped.

My very own Senator, Tom Udall recently introduced a constitutional amendment before the Senate which would try to put a stop the abuses that stem from Citizens United. As you recall, the SCOTUS held in that case that corporations were “people” for purposes of the 1st Amendment and that they could spend unlimited money denouncing or supporting various candidates for office.

This led to the creation of “super Pacs” which collected millions of dollars which were funneled to various campaigns supporting various candidates. The one run by Karl Rove controlled over $300 million dollars.

Of course, we all agree (or at least most of us) that such behavior amounts to actually a very few people being able to buy elections for candidates who we must conclude feel rather beholden to their benefactors. Money has become “speech”. Indeed in the McCutcheon case, limits on the total amount an individual could spend on election campaigns were removed. All agree, that the average person, as a result has less and less a voice in these matters, being unable, even collectively to meet these staggering amounts of money, all designed to elect those who will be favorable to one’s desires.

One must remember that Citizens United involved a film, one made about Hillary Clinton, which was in all respects nothing more than a campaign tool used by the Right to smear Mrs. Clinton. That was the argument made, that the film was funded by corporate funds for one reason and one reason only, to affect the election against Mrs. Clinton.

Mr. Ted has used this one fact, that it was a film to make the grandiose argument that the Democratic party intends to vote to eliminate the 1st Amendment.

He argues because this was a film (which has nothing to do with the decision at all, but is merely the vehicle for the principle embedded within it), that the very next thing to happen will be that Democrats will decide that you can’t read this particular book, view that particular movie, or go to that particular play.

Watch the video, and listen to the audible gasp by his Family Values audience as he announces this draconian fairytale. He then goes on to tell the audience that government wishes the authority to “muzzle you” if it doesn’t like your speech.

Of course this is not true at all. It is directed solely at the concept that a corporation can be a person with a political agenda, free to spend millions to do exactly what Ted decries as the eventual outcome–muzzling you. In fact it’s to keep your voice valuable, that the amendment is offered.

This all becomes the more sweet when we recognize that indeed Cruz is arguing that corporations are people in his view, a concept he shares with Willard Romney, who found that people were not really happy with his refrain, “corporations are people too, my friends.”

Indeed the irony is delicious here.

Ted is a dominionist by religious flavor, another of those Christianist offshoots that create their own theories about “what the bible means”. Ted’s daddy is a preacher who preaches this stuff through his ministry Purifying Fire International.

This ideology calls on anointed “Christian” leaders to take over the state and make the goals and laws of the nation “biblical.” It seeks to reduce government to organizing little more than defense, internal security and the protection of property rights. It fuses with the Christian religion the iconography and language of American imperialism and nationalism, along with the cruelest aspects of corporate capitalism.

Note that the ideology calls for “anointed Christian leaders”. Well as you may have guessed, Ted is one of those “anointed“. And if you are at all unsure about that, you need but ask his daddy:

Rafael Cruz indicated that his son was among the evangelical Christians who are anointed as “kings” to take control of all sectors of society, an agenda commonly referred to as the “Seven Mountains” mandate, and “bring the spoils of war to the priests”, thus helping to bring about a prophesied “great transfer of wealth”, from the “wicked” to righteous gentile believers.

So what we have here folks, is a man who is lying and making ridiculous claims about the Democrats being Fahrenheit 451 Democrats, determined to gut the 1st Amendment right to free speech, while at the same time, declaring that he has every intention of gutting the separation of church and state, and the right to freedom of religion, from the very same Amendment!

It pays to know what both hands are doing.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that perhaps the son doesn’t follow his father’s beliefs. He does folks, he certainly does.

Now, I recognize that normal people get Ted Cruz. The see him for what he is, and I have little or no doubt that he will fail miserably in his attempt to gain the GOP presidential nomination. You simply cannot hide all this stuff. It’s too well attested to by video alone.

But the antics of Ted serve to continually stir the pot of the crazy element in this country and that is a dangerous element, and becoming more so. One has only to examine the insane “open carry” nuts in Texas who even looked crazy finally to the NRA. Of course the NRA backed down, and that is even more worrisome. There is a level of crazy in Amerika that is increasingly willing, or so it seems, to use violence to achieve their goals however they articulate them beyond, “we don’t wanna pay for that” and  “we don’t want them people around us”.

Most will mess their pants at the first shot fired. But I’m afraid all too many are just nuts enough to bunker down and begin a “war”, one that will take no prisoners, but will mow down anyone who appears to be “not one of them”.

To the degree that Cruz and his ilk continually rile these folks up with blatant propaganda lies, we must all be very afraid.

 

 

The Rest is Just Commentary

Tags

Extreme right-wing, tea patriots, teabaggers

As one rows through life, (apt analogy notwithstanding), one does, at least once, come to  what seems to oneself at least, an original conclusion about this or that flotsam that crosses the bow.

See, right there, I probably wrote a sentence that is unparalleled in human history, if not for its brilliance, then at least for its collection of words before unknown in such conjunction.

Yet, I am torn between the fact that we humans probably talk too much (ala Hillel and his oft quoted remark ““That which is hateful to you, do not unto another: This is the whole Torah. The rest is commentary.”) and my own creative genius, “no original thought has occurred since December 14, 1963.”

Put together, they form a perfect indictment that is hard to avoid the next time you decide to open your mouth and spew forth with some sort of “wisdom” meant for the ages. You’re just whistling Dixie as it were.

Yet, in my endless quest for truth, I stumbled across a word that seems to me, “new” and so perfectly fit for today, that it required a few tingling fingerprints across the keys to bring this dose of enlightenment to you, my dearest reader of all readers. Alas, but a cursory “google” proved that this “new” word was hardly new, but had been bounced around for some time, proving again, my only original thought.

(By the way, my original thought, occurred sometime after December 14, 1963, for it must be in a linear time progression, so it is perhaps better not to think to hard on the subject. The December 14, 1963 original thought was “Oh damn, the music died,” uttered by Dick “Night Train” Lane upon discovering the dead body of his beloved Dinah Washington, dead by her own “oops” overdose of barbiturates. Not to be confused with “the day the music died, in the song American Pie written about the untimely deaths of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. “the Big Bopper” Richardson, in a plane crash on February 3, 1959.)

Back to the word.

The word was freedumb.

It seemed to encapsulate all that is Amerika these days. Dumbasses who spout “freedom” always with the slavering spittle of “I’ll die for it” flung from their lungs as their eyes cart-wheel and spin in ways that would make the average carny feel right at home.

Freeeeeee-dummmmmmb. Catchy no?

Ain’t nothin’ new under the sun as they say.

What has been will be again,
    what has been done will be done again;
    there is nothing new under the sun. (Ec 1:9)

Here’s a few notions ’bout freedumb you might have missed.

Don’t that just bring back fond memories? Old George was all about protectin’ them freedumbs from those A-rabs, when he wasn’t holdin’ hands with ’em. Lest we forget.

Damn facts as usual, getting in the way.

There was a man with a messed up head, fit for finger painting, which is where it all ended up.

It’s all been said so many times before.

It’s all be cried about, over and over.

It’s all frustrated the right good sense of the few, the proud, the thinking.

The word speaks volumes, leaving us the refrain, all else is commentary.

My latest entry?

Oh a someone who shall remain nameless who just posted one of those oh so obvious memes from Facebook that we all use because they say in few words what we think, even though often if looked at carefully, they are stupid? Those things.

It was a “oh, gosh, I feel so bad and so sorry for all those poor parents whose children were murdered by that awful kid who went on a rampage.” Except said person, had but a week or so ago, on MOTHER’S FREAKIN’ DAY, posted a meme of a purdy pink hand gun and at the ripe age of 65, moaned how much she wanted one of her very own.

How do your reckon with a mind that has warped itself into a slippery eel who no longer can tell head from tail? It has swallered its own head!

Such is the state of too much of Merika these days. Freedumb don’t begin to explain it.

In watching the badly done History channel’s marathon of the Great Wars, one noted that Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin, all managed to design and wear spiffy new “uniforms” to define themselves as something “new under the sun”.

The poor turds that banner themselves as Tea Patriots, will never see the demagogue coming, cuz, so far I ain’t seen Ted Cruz or Adam West, or any of the other high hyenas of crazy parading around in high boots and military garb. And ya know, that’s what demagogues wear. It’s a rule.

So much for sanity today. I’m all crazied out.

*Taking down the crazy, one stupid placard at a time*

The South Has Fallen Way Off the Edge of Stupid

Tags

GOP, How stupid are you?, Merika, right wing, teabaggers

Gather round children, it’s time to hear a story.

It’s a story about a land called Merika.

It was once a jolly place living in the delusion of self-congratulatory goodness.

Yes, these Merikans believed themselves not only special, but specially good.

They stood for apple pie, Mom, and freedoms which were countless in number, as many as stars in the sky.

People from all over Gaia did whatever necessary to get to the land of Merika and we welcomed the poor, and tired, although why they were tired from sitting on a boat is a question seldom asked.

Course, the People who lived in Merika (who never named it just calling it home) were not nearly so impressed with these new Merikans and their ways. Their “ways” including pretty much telling the People to go jump in the Pacific, for they needed the Merika for a thing called “capitalism”, which sounded capital but turned out to be just another scam for the rich to inherit the earth.

They stole some folks and made them work for no wages, which gave a pretty unusual cast to capitalism and gave new meaning to the concept of “good people”.

They then got nosy in other people’s business in other places not Merika by explaining with bombs and such that they too should be like Merika (as best they could, given they were not special).

Anyways, Merikans prospered (at least most and as long as most is more than other countries, it was accounted perfect), but the thing about this capitalism is that some very few Merikans got filthy filthy wealthy, and they didn’t share with nobody. They bought houses and visited them a couple of weeks a year, and maybe not even every year. They traveled to other lands, always remarking that these other lands were not as nice as Merika, but they bought stuff that reminded them of these inferior places anyway. They boat boats too, and sailed the oceans blue.

Meanwhile, lots of Merikans got dirt poor. So the rich grew a bit scared. “What if they blame us for taking all the money?”

So the rich invented stuff like “Protestant work ethic, and pulling oneself up by one’s own bootstraps” and explained that rich people work really hard.

So poor people worked really hard.

But it didn’t help. And they were getting really riled.

So rich people told them that it was because of all those freed people, and all those other-than-white people who were the cause of their misery. They were “takers” and the gov’mint was givin’ away all their hard-earned money to “those others.”

And Merkia got more and more split apart between the few haves and the enormous have-nots.

The haves decided that the best thing to do was to make it hard for the have-nots to vote.

And this reached the height of heights in a silly state called Florida which looks a lot like a flaccid penis, and when you stop to think about it, it’s a bunch of flaccid penises that promoted the new law they have. And when you add in that most of the people in Florida are really really old, then that picture of very very old wrinkly flaccid penises will sear your brain for all eternity.

Anyway, this law, says that if you go get in line to vote, you can’t have someone save your place while you go pee. They figure that given the relative age of voters in Florida, this will reduce the lines a lot.

It may of course just encourage a lot of very very old and wrinkly flaccid penises to be publicly exposed. Not to say about what it might mean to that phrase “trickle down economics.”

I don’t know how this will give the rich a boost at the polls however. Unless it means that rich people think that only they can afford Depends. I guess it depends on what you call poor.

Close by in the land of Louisiana, a land that like most in the South, spends a lot of time talking about the honored sacredness of the “Constitution”–a document that once upon a time, they sought to distance themselves from in the quest for cotton-pickers at no cost, has found time to reason together in an unreasonable way.

Seems they have decided that like having a state flower and a state bird, a state really oughta have a “state book”.  And although the CONSTITUTION suggests that the state should “make no law” that has the effect of favoring any religion, the crawdaddys there decided that that doesn’t mean what it says or say what it means, and the bible would be a fittin’ state book, because as we all know, it says what it means and means what it says.

No doubt it will be one and one only version of that book although there are hundreds, because as everyone knows, God spoke to King James and said, “go forth and translate my words and call it your version of my words” which is not exactly God’s version, but thinking any deeper than that makes my head ache.

 

And so my child, this is the story of a special land, a special people, and a special time.

And they all lived happily ever after in the land that everyone else called Stupid.

Amen, and good night.

 

A Serious Case of the Ass

Tags

teabaggers, women's rights

And you thought she would go quietly into the still dark night, returning to her lair, climbing into her sarcophagus, bidding adieu to Marcus, after relinquishing her role as beard to his hetero pretensions.

Nah.

Bat shit crazy don’t play that way.

She continues to play the game of stupid queen of the mountain better than such noteworthy rivals as Sarah, Phyllis, and Marsha, all rolled into one. Michele Crazy Eyes Bachmann once again wins the gold metal for craziest damn woman to ever have a vagina.

But then she doesn’t. See that’s the really fine thing about this new pronouncement by the bible in one hand, gun in the other, reparative theory is your friend, nut job, is that it truly is shocking. See, while Marcus has always been firmly wedged into his closet of gayness, his beard, was really a man all along.

Yes, Michele, nobodies, Belle, is a guy. It’s a fact.

Here’s how we came to know.

She spilled the beans…or shall we say she spilled the gonads for all to see.

She ‘splained it this way: See, your Barack…being all Black and all, now he was elected because there was all this guilt floatin’ around, and him being only “half” ya know, black, it was like getting rid of that black angst thing, without technically ya know, havin’ to actually elect one of them. (I had this explained to me by a couple of Christianist ladies, one of whom howled that Obama isn’t black, he’s only half-black, having a white mother. Another explained that  questioning his citizenship was not racist, because she had taken in a black girl to care for during her pregnancy’ and she was WAY darker than Obama, which proves I guess, in the mind of a racist, that well, only shades of color matter, but somehow that has nothing to do with RACE-ism)

But, Michele, intoned in her cutie little voice, tis not the same when it comes to women. Nah, America is not yet “ready for a woman President”, and for a coupla reasons. One, there ain’t no guilt in America over women, and two well, there is just no “pent-up desire” which is Michele’s way of saying there ain’t no stinkin’ hard-on for a woman.

And she oughta know, since she RAN FOR PRESIDENT. And since she did, and since she appears to believe her own slimy brain farts, well, it can only be that Michele is really Michael and no woman at all.

That’s the logic of it as far as I can see.

It all just was the “last straw” if you get my drift.

I’ve been reading an essay on a critical examination of the phrase “Sarah laughed” in Genesis. Done from a feminist point of view and gathering the linguistic evidence and the EARLIEST manuscripts, we learn that Sarah was actually laughing at the possibility that her old and dried up vagina might become that moist Eden once again and her old and flaccid husband might actually be able to get it up at his age. As such, it violated the shame/honor society of the Egyptian Jews who were translating the Septuagint into Koine Greek–the same version that would be used by the likes of Jesus and Paul as they read Torah in the synagogue of Jerusalem in the early years of the Common Era.

And if it were not for a long line of women starting with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who just oddly enough thought that maybe God and the baby Jesus thought as highly of them as it did about all the men it focused on, well, we’d still be in the kitchen, barefoot no doubt and with a child at each elbow and one on the hip as we prepared a feast for the menfolk who were out and about “important” business.

And then, just then, before that I have to contend with a Neanderthal male who,without a single modicum of biblical training purports to bolster his ill-conceived notion that it was solely the “Jews what kilt our Lord,” by suggesting that I was not the least bit attractive from his arrogant pig-oinking position, well, I’m getting the feminist juices all fired up again.

So Michele, pseudo-woman, and Phyllis Schafley and her idiotic “be a good wife” while I make millions writing books and speaking for large fees, and Marsha Blackburn, with her “I’ll say whatever you tell me to if I can just be on camera” drivel, you can all go take a massive flying leap cause ladies, and I do use that term most advisedly, you are FUCKING NOT HELPING HERE as some of us are trying to make a world where girls can grow up to be anything they want and make as much as any man, and that child rearing is EVERY BODY’S business and responsibility, and that women’s ideas about compromise, caring, and compassion just might, JUST MIGHT add a segment to the conversation that MIGHT, JUST MIGHT result in fewer wars and less death, and more freakin’ happiness for all.

So THAT’S what I’m thinking about today.

How ’bout you?