Reflection Day

Unless/until they make Election Day a holiday, or move it to the weekend, or otherwise do something sensible, I’d like to declare the First Wednesday after the First Tuesday after the First Monday in November of Election Years a National Day of Reflection.

In each election there is one winner and some losers, usually.  Whichever side one finds oneself on, it is a good idea to take a look at what just happened and ponder the great “why” of it all.

A few days ago such an election occurred, with an astonishing outcome. Astonishing to some, anyway. After which many were plunged into surprising and involuntary Days of Reflection. Some even proceeded to reflect without the aid of The Pundits.  Several got Really Angry, and Signed Petitions, and some even Went to Rallys to protest The Unthinkable.

Well, upon reflection, it was quite thinkable. It took a couple of days to get here, but here’s a bit of perspective that Smug the Pundit overlooked in the runup. 

It comes down to respect, really.  The folks whose lives and livelihoods were passed by in the 21st Century seem to be adrift, and apparently have had enough disrespect to vote about it.

The towns I drive through (when there isn’t an Interstate on the way to where we’re going) have a forlorn shabbiness to them that seems to be an indication of resignation, not neglect. I wonder what used to get made there, what it was that generated the money that paid for these modest and sturdy houses.  Sometimes there’s a mill building on the river, occasionally converted to cool boutique/studio/restaurant spaces that will never provide enough reasonably well paying jobs to support the folks who in earlier generations would have worked in the mill. This is not news.

At the end of my Days of Reflection, I remembered a song that hits our time fairly accurately, even though it was released 25 years ago.

People aren't saints
No people just are
They want to feel like they count
They want to ride in their own car

As deplorable as some positions held by some people might be, it doesn’t help one’s cause to use the word as a label, no matter how apt it might be or how it makes one’s smug self feel superior. Sometimes, apparently, it pushes people away.

Then, to reinforce the prescience, its chorus goes like this:

Buy low sell high
You get rich and you still die
Money talks and people jump
Ask how high low-life Donald what's-his-name
And who cares
I don't want to know what his girlfriend doesn't wear
It's a shame that the people at work
want to hear about this kind of jerk

 (Where the Bottles Break by John Gorka, from his album Jack’s Crows, 1991)

I don’t really know where I’m going to go with this, other than to connect it to a comment I received on a Facebook post about the #SafetyPin promise.  (Which is the real catalyst for this essay.)

• If you wear a hijab, I'll sit with you on the train.
• If you're trans, I'll go to the bathroom with you.
• If you're a person of color, I'll stand with you if the cops stop you.
• If you're a person with disabilities, I'll hand you my megaphone.
• If you're an immigrant, I'll help you find resources.
• If you're a survivor, I'll believe you.
• If you're a refugee, I'll make sure you're welcome.
• If you're a veteran, I'll take up your fight.
• If you're a LGBTQ, I won't let anybody tell you you're broken.
• If you're a woman, I'll make sure you get home ok.
• If you're tired, me too.
• If you need a hug, I've got an infinite supply.
• If you need me, I'll be with you. All I ask is that you be with me, too.

 I was asked, “Will you stand with a Trump supporter while they are being ridiculed and beaten by the tolerant left?”  It took a while, but I believe the answer would be, “yes.”  At first I thought about whether such an individual might deserve it, and then realized that nobody deserves to be ridiculed or beaten.  (I must admit to having ridiculed, but never beaten anybody.)  I’m not even going to demand reciprocity. That shouldn’t be a condition, should it? It’s all in that last line.

Trophies for all the Heroes.

It was inevitable:  when the generation that all got trophies for participating had a "war" everybody who enlisted is a "hero."

The GOP's Long Game

In the course of a single high school history class, I had an epiphany regarding the remarkable consistency that is the hallmark of the Republican Party's long game. They're in it not just to win, but to destroy any chance for the losing side to recover. Carl Rove's "permanent Republican majority" is not inevitable, but as the American Dream gets chipped away, with a small block here, a limitation there, a bit more cash diverted to private hands, it all plays toward a Doomsday scenario that looks more like China than is comfortable.

Think about it:  there is a remarkable consistency between the Chinese disregard for the environment and the GOP's war on the EPA. The Department of Homeland Security is now the third-largest entity in the United States government; an agency born in the wake of 9/11, built on the premise of unfettered spending on defense and security, the source of many private-sector fortunes, and reminds one of the Chinese security state.

If we consider the Chinese political and judicial systems, they might remind one of the GOP's ongoing efforts to ensure that only the right sort of people get to vote and have their votes count, thereby ensuring that the right

It saddens and dismays.

I'm still waiting for a meteor.

“It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see..."
"You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?"
"No," said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced down him, "nothing so simple. Nothing anything like so straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people."
"Odd," said Arthur, "I thought you said it was a democracy."
"I did," said Ford. "It is."
"So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why don't people get rid of the lizards?"
"It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want."
"You mean they actually vote for the lizards?"
"Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course."
"But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?"
"Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?"
"What?"
"I said," said Ford, with an increasing air of urgency creeping into his voice, "have you got any gin?"
"I'll look. Tell me about the lizards."
Ford shrugged again.
"Some people say that the lizards are the best thing that ever happenned to them," he said. "They're completely wrong of course, completely and utterly wrong, but someone's got to say it."
"But that's terrible," said Arthur.
"Listen, bud," said Ford, "if I had one Altairian dollar for every time I heard one bit of the Universe look at another bit of the Universe and say 'That's terrible' I wouldn't be sitting here like a lemon looking for a gin.”

― Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

Republican Disaggregated Reality

Independent observation suggests that in the case of many, many members the United States' Republican Party, and particularly among those who self-identify as members of the "Tea Party," the generally accepted rules of what encompasses reality have been disaggregated.

While they can't fight physics, it seems that pretty much everything else is subject to their whims. In the world of graphic facilitation, only M. C. Escher could visually represent their logic. From economics to biology and geology, the sciences seem to be in play as far as these folks are concerned.

Elsewhere in this blog, there is a post about Humpty Dumpty logic. Nevertheless, the abuses of the historic and noble art of rhetoric have become so egregious that one might well fear for the structural integrity of the very constructs which enable us, as a species, to function effectively.

Howling at the moon, or, in the case of a frightening large swath of the populace, picking and choosing which  parts of the scientific canon to accept, is pointless and to some degree dangerous. Famously, it is believedby many that the Earth is in the neighborhood of 6,000 years old. Nevertheless, millions of these ignoramuses (our would it be ignorami?) fuel their vehicles, heat their homes, and cook their food with fossil fuels that took significantly longer than that to convert from dead animals to oil and gas. Disaggregation at work. What do they think? That their god injected the oil and gas into the crust of the earth like jelly into a donut?

Denial of Inconvenient Truths is one thing, but when the deliberate and defiant ignorance of facts goes to work on economics, things become positively dangerous both to the body politic and global financial stability. Money is a shared illusion, but there are principles that make it work. Further, in order for the social contract under which a society ostensibly functions to accomplish its purpose, it must be funded, typically with taxes, and to hope otherwise is more folly.

When Ronald Reagan sought to bring his peculiar brand of political thinking to Washington, the man who became his Vice President decried it as "voodoo economics." Nevertheless, his foma comforted enough people long enough to metastasize and become dogma. The practical result as been that taxes, the ante for civilization, have come to be regarded as parasitical. And yet there remains unwavering support for any expenditures related to what might well be called The Fear Business (NSA, DHS, DoD, DoJ, etc.) and any other spending is anathema.

The result of these economic foma has been astonishing debt which must be repaid. The nation ran up the tab and should repay it. Indeed, it was well on the way to being repaid when the Supreme Court appointed George W. Bush as President, who immediately began dismantling the structure that had put the US on a path to repaying its debts and having a fiscally responsible government. An opportunity to take the military out and show the world Who's Boss (while simultaneously enriching a large contingent of politically connected people with borrowed money AND cutting taxes below levels needed to continue paying for existing expenditures, not counting the military adventures) came along and, not wishing to miss the opportunity, they made the most of it, nearly bankrupting the country along the way, as well as encouraging widespread fraud and outright theft in the housing and banking sectors that pretty much broke the economy.

Then they cashed in their chips and walked away.

Here are a couple of comics that sum up that lost decade.

 

and 

Those are the best summations of how we find ourselves, 13 years later, in such a state. The fantasists who live in a disaggregated reality have these and their ideological forbears to thank. Reality is non-negotiable. I'm just hoping for a meteor.

Imaginary or at least Greatly Exaggerated for Fun and Profit

On the twelfth anniversary of 9/11 I felt like rereading "The Cobweb" by "Stephen Bury" because of its representation of the Intelligence Bureaucracy, and how it provided the only explanation of what happens inside it that ever made sense to me. Wherein I found this in a chapter about a research center at a fictional university:  "(they) were thinking about how to replace all the DARPA soft money now that the Cold War was over." This parallel had never occurred to me before,  that the Cold War and The Global War on Terror have a great deal in common, particularly when it comes to money. I have a very good friend who has had a very firm grip on a government teat for many years. Although it's been said, many times, many ways, there's plenty good money to be made supplying the Army (et al) with the tools of the trade.

It's Humpty Dumpty's World

"‘When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.'"

Today the young man described in the previous post "graduated" from "college."

Yikes.

The same issue can be found in ladies' clothing. When she fits a Size Eight in one store and Size Twelve elsewhere, she buys more at the first.

Everybody gets a trophy, diploma, whatever.

The problem appears, then, when someone like Victoria Soto comes along. She's a hero, not because her only chance for finding gainful employment was joining the lowered-standards military, but because she gave her life heroically. Nevertheless, people in US armed forces uniforms tend to be indiscriminately labeled heroes, regardless their actions or character.

So, another group of ignorant and obese Size Eight college graduates are loosed on the world today.

In some ways it's a pity the Mayans were wrong about yesterday.

American Clutch

We all like to believe we're exceptional, that we stand out, that we have something the rest don't have.


Then there are the realities.


Both my parents and my wife's parents went to college. Their parents did not. They and their siblings did, and did what it took to get through and work to have a better life. Then something began to slip. Maybe the American clutch began to slip, because even though many of my cousins and siblings-in-law have degrees, there isn't a lot of promise for the future. AND IT JUST OCCURRED TO ME THAT THIS IS NOT ALL THAT UNUSUAL!


So we have a niece and a young cousin who both seemed to have opted out of the American Dream by (first) becoming pregnant at inopportune times with obviously no serious intention to avoid such a situation and (second) not exercising their Constitutional rights by pressing the "reset" button or even considering relinquishing the babies for adoption. One of them was mid-high school and the other in her first year after college WHILE SHE WAS TEACHING ELEMENTARY SCHOOL.


So the older one was, in fact, the first of that generation to receive a college degree (though, as with all her cousins so far, she did not complete sleep-away college). Nevertheless, she chose to couple with a heavily tattooed veteran with limited prospects. (A business owner friend has an entire riff on the fact that the more tattoos one has, and their locations, the more limited one's economic opportunities become.)


The other one continues a pattern set by her parents, being the fourth daughter to become pregnant out of wedlock. At least her sisters married the fathers. Mostly. She does hold the distinction of being the only one who was a high school student at the time of her impregnation. 


Neither has a statistical chance of achieving Middle Class.


Then there's the line that is directly descended from an American President.  Here's a series of Facebook posts (verbatim) from the scion:

Allmost whent two colege wid mi pj'z on lol im soooo tierd

[x] finals done

[x] celebrate because ik there all A's :) 

[ ] plans for my 2 week vaca

This is what happens when 1 bro is on fb, when ur sis is on the wii, when another bro is youtubing funjumps while his nurse is surfing the web and mom is playing with her new tablet. Ugh! lol

From the description page of this student's instituion of higher learning:

It may be impossible to transfer from ITT to a traditional university; per the ITT website, "it is unlikely that any credits earned at an ITT Technical Institute will be transferable to or accepted by any institution other than an ITT Technical Institute."

There is so much more to this story, and it may get filled in with later edits. The point is that I don't believe this is all that unusual in the United States of America in the early 21st Century. 


The logical conclusion is frightening. Maybe we need a meteor.

An Update Both Unfortunate and Hopeful

It's been a long time since there's been anything worth writing, but that doesn't mean anything has changed. The world goes 'round. There are still Americans and others occupying Iraq and Afghanistan. The Republican party has continued to work to ensure the continued decline of the United States. Defiant ignorance is not on the wane, its ascendance seems to be the driving force behind the inevitable decline of an occasionally great nation.

A decade has passed since September 11, 2001, and a wide swath of our fellow citizens remain convinced that the Saddam Hussein had something to do with the hijackings and attendant catastrophes. Some of the most profitable companies in the United States continue to be connected to oil and warfare. There is so much wrong with this that the analysis alone would fill volumes.

Discourse becomes ever more shrill and facts less and less valued.

It's depressing, but there remain pockets of beauty and joy. Seek them out. Revel in them. Praise their creators. Smile more than you think necessary, because it can make a difference in your own happiness. Plus, your neutral expression is how people who don't know you perceive you. Are you one of those angry folk or are you up to something wonderful?

"Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty." Really. It will make a difference.