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.