Prophets and Madness

In my state, we have gay marriage, or at least, we have it for the moment. Various groups are attempting to make it unconstitutional. Indeed, in the paper the other day there was the photo of a religious leader present in town to lead the fight the threat posed to heterosexual weddings by the other sort. The man had a striking face -- the features sharp yet solid, the eyes clear and piercing.

It was, in short, the face of a prophet. A specific sort of prophet. A fanatic. The sort who stumbles out of the desert, bearing with him sunstroke and spleen, declaring his the voice of God, and thus to trouble all humanity with his mighty, gnawing hatred of life.

Notes from the Academy:

It can be difficult for newcomers to understand the language of professors and scholars in the modern academy, particularly when they are progressive, advanced, and insightful. Therefore, I have decided to provide some degree of translation service. Below is a short list of terms and expression as they’re said in academy followed by what they really mean. This will, I know, prove invaluable to all incoming students.

When they say: They mean:

*Genocide : White Male
*Holocaust : White Male
*Racism: White Male
*Murder: White Male
*Rape: White Male
*Plague: White Male
*Famine: White Male
*Tooth Decay: White Male
* Integrity, Honesty, and Righteousness : White Female with an advanced degree from a prestigious women’s college and a small family fortune in the low, but respectable millions. Trust funds preferred.

Oh, and way at the bottom:

Child Care: non-white Female with a brown face and a funny accent who is paid under the table and doesn’t have a green card and whose opinions, of course, do not matter.

Bittermuch on The Professortariat

The late J.J. Bittermuch writes me from the fifth circle (the Wraithful) of Hell:

“The important thing to remember about the professortariat is that academics are strongly rewarded for saying whatever it is that the cultural elite wants to hear. That’s how you get grants and tenure.

“The problem is that there is sometimes a lag between the speaker and the message. That is, when the elite wants a new message, it has to somehow deal with the professors who are already in position, repeating the dogmas that had before been the keys to the kingdom.

“Thus, in much of the 19th century (and again, in the 1950s), it was the academic’s job to say that everything in Western culture was just ducky, thanks, and that the rest of the world should line up and fight Communism and/or learn how to use soap. Which we’d sell them. At inflated prices. Of course.

“Then, in parts of the 20th century, and particularly in the 1960s, when the children of the elite decided they didn’t want to head off to ‘Nam or where-ever, academics got their brownies by being the severest critics of America and the West.

“Now, in the 21st century, the cultural elite has new goals – specifically, to gain control of oil reserves and, if possible, prevent China from doing so. Ergo, we have a new message from the top, and it involves young men marching off to die in gawdawful deserts and maybe, given time, on Pacific beaches.

“The problem is that many of the academics at the Universities still haven’t gotten the word, and they’re out there preaching reform and revolt. So, we have the myth of the “tenured radical” as a result.

“But, of course, there’s no such thing. The ‘tenured radical’ is just trying to do what he’s always done . . . only, he finds himself with his lips puckered in the air, the derriere in question having mysteriously moved to some new location.”

d*amning Detroit

In the paper today I read that the Detroit car makers are concerned that with gas prices just a tad below $4 a gallon and climbing that people might, just maybe, stop buying their SUV, Hummers, and BIG trucks for guys with small wee-wees.

In a word, f*cking duh.

Look, guys, we’ve all known since the 1970s that eventually we were going to run out of oil, or that the Arab countries would get miffed at us and shut off the taps, or that some disaster (like Katrina) was going to take most or all of our production off line.

And what did you do in those thirty years?

Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

You have refused to develop more efficient cars. You have declined to give any but the most token effort to hybrids. You have staged PR campaigns about hydrogen vehicles, but — let’s be honest — you never had any real intention of putting them on the market or investing in the infrastructure necessary to make them possible. You’ve just gone and on, doing what you had always done, and getting us all deeper and deeper into a hole.

In short, you got yourselves into this mess, and if yours were really profit-making entities in a competitive free enterprise system, then we ought to just let you go chapter 12 the way you damn well deserve.

But there’s the rub. In spite of all your claims to the contrary, you’re not profit-making entities in a competitive free enterprise system. You’re members of a thinly disguised cartel which has managed to dictate how we use energy and how the economy functions. Thus, when you go down, you take us with you.

So . . . I got a modest proposal. Forget chapter 12. That’s for businesses. For you . . . we reserve the consequences of incompetence in government and state-craft.

You’ll love the prison at Guantanamo. It’s so tropical.

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?