Katrina and Perfect Symbolism

From the Department of Absolutely Perfect Symbolism:

I heard on the radio yesterday (9-Sep-05) that FEMA — the government agency which was supposed to deal with horrors and disasters, but which was disemboweled by the Necons and Bushites so they could pump more pork into their secret police qua scam racket known as Homeland Defense — has a webpage for folks trying to get assistance after Katrina.

The kicker?

As of the date of the report, it would only work with Microsoft software. Anyone running anything else is up a sh*t creek with a CENSORed for a paddle.

So, given a choice between genuine competition plus free enterprise, and a vast de facto monopoly . . . well . . . let’s just say that the Bushite heart (not to mention several other organs) belongs to Big Daddy.

Katrina and Guns

Note to NRA:

Did you notice that now and then helicopters had to abandon rescue efforts in New Orleans when they were shot at? That’s right. Some nutcase thought it would be fun to bring down the aircraft that were trying to save babies and old people, not to mention everyone else.

Tell me, just one more time, about how good unrestricted gun ownership is for America.

Katrina, God, Justice

Okay, the Religious Right has the interesting habit of blaming bad things on God. That is, when something nasty happens to the country, they say, it’s cause the Big Guy In The Sky is punishing us for our sins. Thus, after 9-11, the Rev. Pat Robertson announced that the terrorists were the fruit of Feminism and Liberalism, and then, more recently, Rev. Fred (“Kill a Kweer For Khrist”) Phelps claimed that American war deaths in Iraq were the Lord’s judgment upon us for tolerating homosexuality.

Yet, consider the logic . . .

All of these terrible things happened when the nation was actually voting for conservative Christian figures. The attacks of 9-11, the war in Iraq, and now, the horrific “act of God” known as Katrina all occurred at the precise moment when the nation was ruled by the Religious Right . . . when the most homophobic administration in the recent history is in Washington . . . and when Christian fundamentalists stalk the streets hunting down proponents of Gay marriage, evolution, and stem cell research . . .

Ergo, judging from the all too abundant evidence, the Lord God Almighty hates Republicans and Evangelicals, and sends fire and flood to scourge those nations and peoples who support them.

Katrina 3

I see that the GOP/Necon Junta has released a fuhrer-directive from the bunker warning moderates and liberals not to “play politics” with the human tragedy of Katrina.

Really? Like the way they “played politics” when they spread rumors that the tragic death of Ron Brown was a murder? And the way that they “played politics” when they dragged the country though a useless impeachment of a sitting President? Like the way they “played politics” when they exploited the horrors of 9-11 to invade the wrong country? Like they way they “played politics” when they claimed that anyone who disagreed with them was a traitor?

Gee. Golly. Gosh.

With moral leadership like theirs, how could we fail to follow?

Katrina 2

You do know, of course, that even as I write this, there is . . . somewhere . . . some part of the Necon Junta’s mindfuck machine is gearing up to prove that Katrina is all Clinton’s fault.

Katrina

Katrina . . .

If anyone in the world believes that the Necon Junta and the smirking chimp in the White House really give a damn about the American people, then they should read the following article from the Associated Press, currently available on Yahoo:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050901/ap_on_re_us/hurricane_katrina_52

Smear Boat -- cont.

Turns out, actually, that someone did do a little research into the Swift Boat Vets for Truth. In May, 2004, Joe Conason had a fascinating piece in Salon entitled “Smear Boat Veterans for Bush” (http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2004/05/04/swift/index.html )

In the piece, Conason presented extraordinarily compelling evidence that the Swift Boat group was, in fact, the wholly artificial creation of a band of professional ultra-Right dirty tricksters and Bushite operatives (including some of the people who managed to sabotage McCain’s run for the White House).

Yet, did you hear a word about that in national press at the time?

Could someone explain, one more time, about the Liberal Bias in the media? I promise. I’ll take notes.

Swift Boats and Sheehan

So I see in the paper that the Right is attempting to discredit Cindy Sheehan by “exposing her Leftist politics.” Apparently, or so we’re told, her past statements and beliefs invalidate her current ones.

Interesting.

Say, did anybody look into the previous political opinions and backgrounds of the “Swift Boat veterans for Truth” when they were torpedoing the Kerry campaign?

Just curious.

Giving the Left a Farping Clue

The political Left in America fascinates me. From the Reagan years to the present (I write this in 2005), Liberals have been rendered impotent by the seemingly boundless appeal of the Right. They ask themselves again and again: How could such a thing happen? How is this possible?

Let me offer these bewildered people a clue.

For nearly forty years, you told the American people in general, and white males in particular that they were a revolting band of sheep-rapists who tortured dogs and napalmed babies and ought to pay extra taxes just for breathing.

And you expected them to like you?

Ideology 2

More on ideology and idealists . . .

I believe that most idealists are actually rationalists, and that most ideologies are, at base, founded on purest reason. For example, some years ago, I read an article in a major publication regarding the human tragedies attending one of Africa’s endless wars. The article concluded with the description of a boy that the reporter had seen at a hospital. The child had been struck by shrapnel and had lost, among other parts of his body, a testicle.

A few days later, the same publication ran a letter it had received from a reader about the article. The reader, a woman of strong opinions, pointed out that if the reporter had bothered to examine girls in the region he would have noticed that many had been subjected to “female circumcision,” that is, the removal of external genitalia. Compared to this crime against an entire gender, she wrote, one boy with a little metal in him was hardly worth discussing.

It was an interesting letter . . . though, I must confess, at first, I didn’t follow the logic. What the writer was saying, after all, was that one innocent victim’s personal tragedy was rendered (by magic?) less significant by other victims’ personal tragedies. It didn’t seem to follow, in other words, that one bit of agony should be made less by more.

But, then, I realized I had misunderstood. The writer was, in fact, speaking as an ideologist, and what she was really saying was “The pain of people who are like me is more important than the pain of people who are not.” Or, more precisely still, “Your pain is less significant than my pain” – a sentiment, which, I think, is at the secret core of all ideologies, no matter nobly it may be otherwise expressed.

And, you must confess, it is entirely rational.

Not particularly attractive.

But wholly rational.

Drill, ye ideologists, Drill!

I’ve discovered that most ideologies are sort of like sitting on a dental drill.

You’re pretty sure they have a good point, but you also have the feeling you’re getting scr*wed.

The Late J.J. Bittermuch

I received sad news the other day. An acquaintance of mine, J.J. Bittermuch, quite possibly the world’s most astringent man, passed away suddenly when his bile glands exploded from excessive capacity. However, shortly after being translated instantly to the fifth circle of Hades (the Wraithful, if you’ll consult your Dante), he re-established contact with me via Magic 8-Ball, Ouija Board, and Internet email.

Last night, around midnight, he sent me the following:

“I’ve been reading that banal little exercise that it pleases you to call ‘explosive-cargo,’ though ‘toxic waste’ strikes me as the better title. But, anyway, it warms my heart to see that you’re still the reasonably dimwitted troglodyte you were before. Nice to know that some things remain inviolate.

“For example, you remain clueless about life in the academy. Let me, my dear fellow, put your pointed little head in the right direction . . . and explain the obvious.

“The thing to remember about ‘higher education’ is that the ‘higher’ is theoretical and the ‘education’ a myth. Professors are rewarded not for their ability to convey information to students, but rather for the capacity to impose turgid prose on learned journals and score grants from bounteous foundations.

“And so, we have the result—Educators . . . who couldn’t teach a rectum to defecate.”

Eurotrash

Notes from the Academy:

What would European intellectuals do without Americans? Why, they might have to go back to being anti-Semitic.

Assuming they ever stopped.

All Mama Rand's Chillins

I love Libertarians. They’re so sincere. So earnest. So serious. So full of sh*t.

~

No. Really. I love ‘em. Libertarians remind me of what socialists were like in the 1960s—-absolutely certain that they have the future under control, assured of their own intellectual superiority, convinced of their moral authority . . .

And, most of all, like the Left of my youth, they are beginning, now, ever so uneasily, to wonder if (as Geo W and the Neocons install a petro-theocracy in America), that maybe . . . just maybe . . .

They’ve been scr*wed.

Mo PoMos

Notes from the academy:

Reading a postmodern historian is like going to a blindfolded dentist for a filling. You get a number of holes and rather a lot of screaming . . .but remarkably little progress.

Bushwhacking

Is it just me, or . . .

Does it seem like the Administration is more interested in protecting the President from having to talk to one, middle-aged, middle class, unarmed woman who happens to be the mother of a dead boy . . . than in protecting American boys and girls from snipers, chemical weapons, and roadside bombs?

Nukes, Terrorists, Hearts of Darkness

The previous entry might make you think I’m a foe of “the war against terrorism.” Untrue. Yes, I think the invasion of Iraq was a complete and total muck up, but I also think the war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda was justified, necessary, and even moral . . . or, anyway, as moral as war can be. Nations and governments have an obligation to defend their citizens when they are attacked.

Indeed, in the shadowy recesses of my dark heart, I have sometimes wondered if it wouldn’t have been better if we’d taken the affair nuclear right after 9-11 . . . say, toss a few sub-kiloton devices at the Al Qaeda camps, which tended to be fairly remote. Non-combatant deaths would have been minimal, and more importantly, the world would have been given notice that anyone contemplating the mass murder of Americans (and, further, citizens of any Western nation) faced instant and total obliteration.

Of course, afterwards, the United States would have been roundly denounced for its actions. But, come. Let us be frank. What difference would that make? Right after 9-11, and long before Geo-W’s ill-conceived invasion of Iraq, a glance at the editorial pages of newspapers around the world . . . even in Western Europe, even in the English-speaking world . . . revealed that the opinion of a whole lot of Heavy Thinkers was that the ole US of A had dang well got what it deserved, thank-you-very-much, and that we, as a culture, should respond to the slaughter of our people by dropping our collective pants and saying, “Please, Sir, may I have another?”

The point being that we could curry the favor of the People Who Know Best the world over . . . or we could just bash ourselves in the head a few times with a 2x4. It would achieve just about as much, and be a whole lot quicker.

Bushwar Two

Regarding the previous posting. “Bush-War.” I like that. Great term. Very descriptive. “You can almost taste it, can’t you?”

Bushwar One

This one I got from my father.

It has been fascinating to watch as the justification for the Bush-war in Iraq has changed with time. First, it was because Saddam had WMDs (he didn’t); then it was because Saddam was a tyrant (he was, but so is Robert Mugabe, and we don’t seem to bombing the sh*t out of him at the moment); and, now, at least as of this writing, we’re told we’re in the Gulf as part of the war against terror.

Except . . . well . . . you see . . . what’s filled the power-vacuum in the Southern part of Iraq seems to be a number of Islamic Fundamentalist militias heavily influenced by Iran. In other words, we have put into power the very people who would just dearly love to fly the not-so-friendly skies into a few more of our population centers. Those people hadn’t been effective before because Saddam was shooting and gassing them, along with anybody else who even remotely threatened his position.

Ergo, viewed from the perspective of a cold hearted, self-interested, realpolitickin’, son of a CENSORED, the invasion was a waste and it would have been a lot more profitable to have left Saddam where he was.

He was killing the people we wanted killed, and doing it more cheaply than we could ourselves.

Postmodernists (PoMos)

One of the BIG THINGs in the academy for the last couple of generations has been postmodernism (a.k.a., that stuff they had in the Matrix but with a French accent). Boiled down to elementals, the postmodernists (PoMos for short) teach that we are all sealed into our little bubbles of perception and therefore can never share a common reality. Nor does any one single “reality” exist. In fact, what we think of as “Reality,” is really a “hegemonic narrative” imposed by an exploitive and oppressive social elite to maintain its dominance over the rest of us.

Thus – and I’ve actually heard this said – whether or not there really was a Holocaust is both un-provable and irrelevant. What matters is who tells the tale and why. The answer is – or so say some of my professors – the Jews, who employ the “narrative” of genocide to justify Zionism and gain a privileged position in social interactions.

On reflection, I’ve decided there is a proper response to PoMos.

It involves an Uzi.