the defeatists!

We're all goin' done to Dixie...and Walmart

We are at a cultural moment when living in close proximity and having many close friends and a ceaseless embracing community are thought to be unalloyed goods. "Bowling alone" is our shorthand for personal despair and social disintegration. However, as I dare say you - like Jean-Paul Sartre - have noticed, people can be annoying. We need distance from, as much as we need association with, one another. Thoreau tried for both: he would walk from Walden Pond to Concord, hang out with his dear friends the Emersons and the Alcotts, and then retreat to his hovel to be fairly happily alone.

If on such occasions Thoreau was thinking in his reflective way that human beings are animals and that what we do is natural, then he did not consider his stroll into Concord a departure from nature but an exploration of a bit of it. And this is the way I feel about Walmart, which - big-box island in a blacktop sea - is a perfectly natural object, as much an environment as my woods.

Walmart is no Concord. And if Greg will pardon my saying so, he is no Emerson or Alcott, though possibly he is a better golfer than either. Then again, he is also not my dear friend... 

Crispin Sartwell  is  a friend of mine. We are supposedly both charter members of the Defeatists as well as my being an occasional commentator on his blog, Cheese it, the Cops. Crispy is a philosophy professor for Dickinson College, a former rock and roll critic, a retired environmental terrorist and a fairly interesting guy for a lot of reasons, including his part time job as a blackjack and three card monte dealer in an alley in back of Trump's in Atlantic City. He has kids, college looming and teaches philosophy at a private college. Cut the man some slack OK!

This is an interesting piece for a lot of reasons. Although some of the Defeatist-Malcontent collective and carp fishing gang professed confusion at what he was saying, I think he was being kind of cynically lyrical. Crispin appears to be going through a phase...I kind of like the idea of Walmart as our Walden, since except for pithy phrases here and there, I despise Walden...The Transcendentalists were smug, self-satisfied bourgeois Babbits who inflicted themselves on us ever since. Emerson, Longfellow, Thoreau are not and never were Tinker, Evers and Chance. Or, Burroughs, Kerouac and Ginsberg. The insufferable rightness of the Yankee ascendency irritates me -- concepts do have dates, citing another philosophical friend of mine, Mary Hunt.

 

However, it says a lot about the leveling experience of our current distribution of wealth. The wealthy are really wealthy and the middle-working-under classes are going shopping for Guatemalian Strawberries and Pride of Gwangzhou Blu-Ray players.

I picture Thoreau in a Lime Green UnderArmour  T-shirt with khaki shorts and Birkenstocks with anklets...with some bacon flavored tofu and Miller beer as well as the blu-ray and socks...they'd probably be white, with colored strips at the top of the ankle. He's also got a 20 pack of toilet paper, some duct tape and a couple of HelloKitty training bras...he nicked himself shaving, and uses too much Aqua Velva. He whitens his teeth, and sells real estate. He has a Blackberry. He goes by "HD" or "Davie" and takes antidepressants.

 

Alejandro is the guy with the sunglasses...in a radio studio in Seattle. Chuck, in this case, looks kinda like Thoreau...or, Crispin. 

 

Alienation is a helluva drug

Last night I dreamt of you, Abbie Hoffman peddling your books, I gave five bucks to you, the other kids just gave you dirty looks.

 I said "I'm sorry it didn't work out quite the way you planned."

You said, "That's silly boy, the revolution is at
hand."

And if you got a ten spot brother, I got a dime,
These are desperate,
desperate times.

Last night I dreamt of you, Pepe Lopez strung out on a stage, It don't even look like you, smiling like sawed-off twenty gauge.
I still remember the
Telecaster down around your knees,
It's late November and I think I smell tequila on the
breeze.

And if you got the Cuervo honey, I got the lime,
These are desperate,
desperate times.
And if you got the shotgun honey, I got the crime,
These are
desperate, desperate times.--Rhett Miller

Crusader AXE has been too busy dealing with family issues to write or think or do anything really coherent of late. Mrs. AXE retired from Federal Service after 35 years of helping to make the state function, if not optimally, at least better than if she were not there. The afternoon of her last day, she got the diagnosis of colon cancer...so, by mid-month she was in the hospital for surgery, and there she remains. Friday will be three weeks...the words rehab facility were spoken last night. I am not exactly happy about this -- I have no complaints about the quality of her care for the most part, or the professionalism or kindness of the staff. I have concerns about the quantity of the staff...I think this is a problem nationwide, but probably more acute in Southern California because there are so goddamn many people... 

Things haven't gone well. They appear to be unable to actually get the bag to seal to Joyce's skin, which results in her constantly leaking. She remains in the hospital; her surgeon was there last evening and found himself helping try to get the illeostomy bag to work. They had had five iterations earlier, all failing. Which results in linking shit all over everything. On Tuesday,  I had had a brain fart when I left the Crossroads of Opportunity to go to the hostpital after getting home at 1130 Monday night  and had to stop in Target and buy her clothes to come home with. Well, that didn't work as planned...Had gotten her a stuffed animal for a comfort thing, and that got to come home tonight along with the socks she'd been wearing, all of it shit stained. Surgeon is confused since this is a "good stoma" since the hunk of intestine that's leaking into the bag is what he can do with what's available to him. For some reason, they can't seem to get the base of the bag to seal correctly with her skin, and as a result it leaks out the sides. Now, the surgeon does not want her coming home until they get this to the point where she has some faith in it, and the topic of nursing homes came up. I noticed that they do not seem to have a standard procedure, and are experimenting. They have 1 (ONE) colostomy nurse on staff and one brand of stuff with not all the possibilities covered. Anyway, the surgeon had them get some surgical adhesive from the emergency room -- if they can get that to work, and keep the base fully closed on the body, she'll be able to come home. If not, the word nursing home was used tonight. She would prefer that to having her small intestine leak all over her home, but she'd prefer to have the bag work and be able to come home. To finish healing, so she can go back in and have the ostomy reversed and go back to a normal set of solid waste disposal equipment.

I thought that I'm pretty much ok with this. After all, I'm a tough guy, it's not fun or easy, but I'm just lending moral support and helping her when I happen to be there. And, washing the stuffed big eyed Zebra she's got for company. I'm starting to come to grips with the fact that it's a lot harder on me than I thought. Just beat all the time. I go in there, help her get out of bed to use the commode and such stuff, and feel if not helpless at best incompetent. 

Did I mention that getting her to eat is hard? Today she had a hard boiled egg, a piece of toast, and two bottles of Boost Clinical Strength. Well, since whatever she eats is leaking out of her side all over her within an hour or two, she's probably not all that interested...So, at some point this will get resolved but I'm not feeling comfortable with how it's going. She's still in a lot of pain although a lot of it is from the irritation on her skin. They were using something as a binding agent that was largely alcohol. Great...the woman has inflamed skin caused by chemical burns and part of their solution is rubbing it with alcohol. Surgeon is getting incensed...wonder why? Shit. 

Medicine could stand to have some statistical process control and analysis. Got a call from a rep at one of three companies that manufacture and distribute colostomy supplies. There are drying agents, it turns out, that do not involve alcohol. If you have what are basically chemical burns over an area and they need to dry the skin to apply something, using an alcohol drying agent is a pretty bad idea. Unless you're trying to wring out a confession....the gal apologized for the hospital, saying that "a lot of times the product works first time but a lot of times it's a process of trial and error." Sure, let's look at new, non asbestos options for brake pads. Let's start with cheese....nothing is a better stopper than curdled milk products!" 

I've always been a fan of Tiberius Caesar, pre-Capri. I know that my friends IOZ and Captain Capitualtion probably prefer him at Capri, IOZ becuse of lifestyle appeal and Crispin because he just said screw government...but pre-Capri, he was kind of a Julian John Adams.  Grumpy old bastard following Augustus who just quietly went about making the state work. Would be welcome today -- I think that is where dictators come from, the inability of representative systems to work adequately. Or at all, over time. 

 

I don't care about gay marriage.  I'm not that concerned about using predator drones, Gitmo as we sweep up the ashes of the Bush administration, and so on.  I want the state to work. Jobs,food, schools, infrastructure...I want to turn the ignition on my car and not have the fucking thing blow up because there's no requirement to make a car that won't blow up when the car is started. I want to eat a cheeseburger assured that it's not made of horse or rancid meet. I want the ideal society of 1950s Eisenhower Republican America only with racial and gender equality. The curiously fucked up world that I was alienated by/against doesn't look bad at all as a baseline. 

Reading a book on my KIndle while visiting Mrs. AXE  called The Angry Buddhist. Involves California celebrity politics, dog murder, and various forms of madness. Poor protagonist is trying to use the Dharma to keep from ripping the head off a lot of people. It ultimately seems to have the theme that, well, make a list, motherfucker. And keep making it -- you'll never run out of vacuous, vicious and verminous assholes needing to have their heads ripped off. 

 One of my brothers sent out this note about Genesse Cream Ale going back to retro packaging. Upstate NY had some pretty good local beers. Utica Club, Genesse...Utica Club had talking Beer Steins in commercials when I was a kid -- Shultz and Dooley; Genny talked about the sparkling waters of Hemlock late. Far better than 'Gansett or, for that matter, Coors or Strohs. Of course, there had been the Haverly-Congress line, that I still recall a joke of my dad's after they closed down. He said that it happened because they sent a sample in to be tested in the State Lab regulating such stuff, and got an emergency call saying, "Shoot the horse, it's got diabetes..."Still remember the song for the singing beer mugs -- "Brew me no brew with artificial bubbles, those carbonated beers of today/Cause Utica Club'll still take the trouble to AGE BEER THE NATURAL WAY! Utica Club, UC!!"

 

Walking the walk as opposed to being full of shit...

When it comes to the Vatican’s crackdown on women religious, I believe it’s time to declare that for the purpose of this struggle:we are all nuns…if you can spell Catholic, you are probably asking: how dare they go after 57,000 dedicated women whose median age is well over 70 and who work tirelessly for a more just world? How dare the very men who preside over a Church in utter disgrace due to sexual misconduct and cover-ups by bishops try to distract from their own problems by creating new ones for women religious?--     Mary E. Hunt, Theologian, Catholic Activist and Academic

I don’t really have a dog in this hunt anymore;  as an anti-theist who has reached the conclusion that the only way there could be a god would be if God was a very arbitrary and angry teenage girl named Tiffany who was primarily interested in Justin Bieber and whether or not her jeans make her ass look fat, I’m not a logical choice to defend the various orders of Nuns from the Holy See. Except, of course, that I remain a cultural Irish Catholic and a recovering victim of 16 years of Catholic confinement, most of which was largely under the attentions of the good Sisters of St Joseph and then of the good Sisters of St Francis. And, I have to admit, that the Sisters provided more encouragement to me than anyone else did. In many ways, the various orders of Catholic nuns were instrumental in most of what’s good in terms of Catholic teaching and social justice. The priests generally got all the “press” but while Father Damien gets the historical kudos for the colony at Molokai, the good sisters of the third order of St Francis – the ones who taught me from 4^th through 8^th grade – provided the nurses and the necessary assistance to make the leper colony actually work. At present, and one of the primary distractions I have been dealing with this past month, my wife is recovering from a colon resection at St Mary’s Medical Center which is managed jointly by an order of Christian Brothers and the Sisters of St Joseph of Orange, a spinoff of the Order of St Joseph that taught me how to read and cipher and make marks on paper. Now, Nuns seemed arbitrary and overwhelmingly dictatorial to a lot of Catholics over the decades. But, beginning with Vatican II, the number of nuns has steadily decreased. Those who have maintained their communities are primarily involved in social and medical work and advocacy as well as in education and foundations. I find them very admirable; in fact, I think we can say with a certain degree of certainty that Sister Mary Twinkle Toes has long since vanished from the scene, and has been replaced by what was really always there – smart women who were dedicated to a cause and a belief in caring for others and trying to live the gospel as they understood it. So the current nonsense by the Catholic hierarchy to try and “discipline” these women or drag them into compliance is a really difficult piece to justify. Nicole Brodeur of the Seattle Times does a good job of laying out the story as does Ms. Hunt. The Conference of Women Religious, basically the American Nun equivalent of the NCAA, isn’t doing what the bishops want them to do. The Sisters aren’t complaining about abortions, god, guns and gays and contraception. They’re arguing about the need for more attention to health care, poverty, education, hunger, the environment. Who the hell do these women think they are? Uppity bitches…They need to get back in their convents and bake some more wafers, say some more rosaries and iron some more Albs. Andrew Sullivan has an interesting piece on this; I find it interesting that Drew has moved from a Republican apologist to someone to the left of, well, me on a lot of things. It actually gives me hope – people like Andrew Sullivan and George Will are really too smart to go along with that right wing crap as presented these days.  Of course, I say that conscious that Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene had no public complaints and that Teilhard de Chardin remained loyal to church and order despite intellectual persecution and religious toment.  Sullivan wrote in an article in the April 2 edition of The Daily Beast  that The Catholic Church’s hierarchy lost much of its authority over the American flock with the unilateral prohibition of the pill in 1968 by Pope Paul VI. But in the last decade, whatever shred of moral authority that remained has evaporated. The hierarchy was exposed as enabling, and then covering up, an international conspiracy to abuse and rape countless youths and children. I don’t know what greater indictment of a church’s authority there can be—except the refusal, even now, of the entire leadership to face their responsibility and resign. Instead, they obsess about others’ sex lives, about who is entitled to civil marriage, and about who pays for birth control in health insurance. Inequality, poverty, even the torture institutionalized by the government after 9/11: these issues attract far less of their public attention. I am no fan of abortion, but at the same time, since I could never bear a child myself don’t really think that I should have a say in the decision of a woman to terminate her pregnancy, and if that termination occurs, then it should probably be under the most humane and medically safe conditions possible.  The subject to my mind is open to debate, but contraception provides an alternative more palatable than unfunded orphanages and foundling homes or back alley abortions or the type I’m hesitant about. The good enough is enemy to the good, but the perfect is enemy to the good as well. I also have come to a position which for an ubermale old soldier and Holy Cross Grad is perhaps odd – but, I really don’t care about homosexuality.  Hell, I’ve had close friends who were gay and lesbian and they never threatened me in any way, except possibly in college with a forcing bid in bridge.  Their sex lives don’t interest me --Not my business, not my concern. Now Pedophilia is my business as a citizen of the civilized world who believes that we have a duty to protect those unable to protect themselves; the abuse of power is my business, as a guy sworn to uphold the constitution and to uphold the gospels. I’m a not a priest, or a minister, or a theologian or a Catholic anymore. But, I was confirmed, and I did swear an oath to do that. Since I feel very comfortable with the parts of the New Testament that are not batshit crazy, like Jefferson, I think it’s something I can and should support as the basis for the way we treat each other. There are a lot of things in the New and Old Testament that are batshit crazy. They deserve to be treated with the same respect we treat Gilgamesh. Interesting, but not really instructive. But, the things that in the New Testament are real are certainly more direct and as articulated in the traditions of Catholic Social Justice and the Social Gospel as preached by folks as diverse as Reinhold Niebuhr and Dorothy Day, more applicable to our lives as human beings responding to St Augustine’s imperative question of “How then shall we live together? “ than any other approach, tradition or set of concepts floating around. The princes of the Church pay lip service to this and then focus on issues tangential and to do with their own power. It lies in the Sisters, the priests who defend them and the poor, the orders of nuns, priests and brothers dedicated to serving the poor, the destitute, the abandoned, the condemned to live that code. Jesus knew about homosexuality; it was not only a subject of condemnation in Leviticus but was a pretty common practice in the ancient world. He didn’t have anything to say about; he didn’t have a lot to say about sexuality; he did say a lot about love, and care, and concern for others. While I’ve seen articles that indicate the author believes that the Sermon on the Mount is like some Delphic statement or Sybilline book filled with ambiguous and confusing stuff, it’s really  not. Nor is there a lot of room for argument over what the many parables about the virtues of the poor and the need to help them. Yes, Judas complains that the oil used by the repentant hooker to tend to Jesus’ feet should have been sold to raise money to feed the poor, but Jesus’ response “The poor are always with us” seems pretty obvious to me. Leave her alone, she’s trying to do what she thinks is right and it harms no one, while doing her soul good. Judas, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Rich, the Bankers, the Moneychangers, the Tax Collectors who cheat the poor get a lot of the back of Jesus’ hand…or, as Maureen Dowd put it in her column on Sunday, a sharp rap across the knuckles.  The Bishops and the Church Hierarchy joined the plutocracy of wealth and power when Constantine took over the rule of Rome and decided that everybody would be a Christian…or else. The Bishops have always sought that kind of ecclesiastical power; the Richelieus, the Borgias and the rest of the figures in Catholic history along with the Pat Robertsons, Ian Paisleys and Benny the Rat provide cover…Jesus has damn all to do with organized Christianity. I’ve written of this before, of course, but I remember talking with a parish priest in College Station 20 plus years ago who spent his vacations in India, working with Mother Teresa. He told of being there when a journalist asked her, “How can you expect to win?” and she replied with a smile, “It’s not about winning.” I expect that the good Sisters will continue to do what they are doing, ignoring the hierarchy when they can and doing what they think is right. And, in focusing on doing good instead of telling the world, that they are good and holy  and everyone should listen to them, they show what should have been Catholicism in practice. And sadly, is not and never has been. We probably should reflect that on Easter morning, the Apostles, those first Bishops led by Simon Peter, the first Pope, were hiding or trying to get out of Jerusalem as quickly as possible. Mary Magdalene and probably Mary and Martha were on their way to the tomb to anoint and care for the body, trusting that God would convince the soldiers, Roman soldiers, to move the stone aside so that they could tend to their duty…not because they had to, but because it was the right thing to do. Odd, but in a way, both bishops and nuns are fulfilling their roles in Christian tradition. (In the spirit of full disclosure, I’ve known Mary Hunt for over 45 years, and have followed her career with interest and occasional snark. We met as sophomores in the diocesan high school where we haunted the halls and occasional classrooms, identified by some of the good sisters as the “brilliant and obnoxious one” (Mary) and the“brilliant but erratic one,” (me.) I concede her brilliance and I guess I accept my erraticism. We agreed about a lot of things, disagreed about a lot and took very divergent paths. I have a lot of respect for her, and she’s an interesting person and author. And, probably still consistently obnoxious to people in authority. Go for it, dear.)

Allen West climbs the shit pile of historical disgrace and crows about it

 

One of the benefits of the profound ignorance of a large swaithe of the American people lies in their inability to recognize irony. So, when a first term member of congress who is probably looking at being a one term member of Congress pulls something out not from the Karl Rove playbook but the Joe McCarthy playbook, people will miss it. Our political discourse has skipped self-satire and gone straight to slapstick. As Gibbs rule number 7 puts it, "when you lie, be specific."  Allan West, Congressman from Mesron and Florida, is now trying to win a redistricted, largely Democratic district by railing against the Democratic Progressive Caucus as "Communists' announcing that he's "heard that 80 member of congress are communists." You see, the American Communist party, the old Gus Hall powerhouse, has said that the Congressional Progressive Caucus is reasonably close to endorsing their goals. (In the spirit of full disclosure, this website endorsed Gus Hall for President in 2008. Mr Hall died in 2000)I'm not sure what those could be, since the Communist Party of the USA was a wholly owned subsidiary of the Soviet Union of Socialist Republics which...no longer exists. Well, the language is degraded by more than West's blathering, but come on. Read something written by somebody not John Birch or J. Edgar Hoover that explains what Communism is as opposed to what you think it is...a vague threat to take your guns, your government health care, your government pension and your government roads, schools, infrastructure and pollute your precious body fluids while letting your children run wild having abortions and contraception and stuff. Dude, Democrats are to Communists in much the way that the Republicans are to the Freemen of Montana.

West also babbled that Barrack Obama is afraid to debate him. Really?  Loudmouthed first termer thinks that the President of the United States should get on a stage in South Florida and debate him?  Seriously, if the President has a few spare minutes to waste on West, he should devote it to shooting some hoops with his secret service detail or giving Bo a bath with the girls. Total lunacy... Seriously, the man is a deranged, meglomaniacal dweeb and needs to be kept in government cusody to protect himself and his loved ones from his next over the top appearance or action. 

Now, as I listened to the video (let's hold the musing on that trope for another time), I got the sense that a good number of Mr. West's constituents were laughing at him. It's possible that this is gem came out not so much as a Michelle Bachmann unsolicited bit of insanity as a response to poking the bear. West is not exactly known for reasoned discourse, a sense of balance or proportion and measured response to provocation. 

Now, the guy could have been court martialed for war crimes instead of being given a slap on the wrist and allowed to retire -- should have been court martialled for war crimes, since he fired a pistol at a prisoner of war in order to make him provide information -- and has disgraced the nation ever since. He was a Lieutenant Colonel in Army; he was in a command position in combat; and he ended up relieved of command and given the opportunity to retire -- which he took. I think West is suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder of an incredible magnitude and should be treated with respect for his service, compassion for his condition while being protected from himself and his demons. Well, Gulf I gave us Timothy McVie; Gulf 2 is giving us Allan West, Republican congressman from Florida. 

This is where the Republican leadership needs to step up, get West under control or expect a far rougher response than the sort given so far. This is pretty funny, actually. "Chellie is a Democrat, a farmer and a Lutheran but no, she is not a Communist," said Willy Ritch, spokesman for Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine), also a vice chair of the caucus." 

(Note: In the spirit of full disclosure, and as a one-time student of Luther and the Protestant Reformation, I should point out that Luther had some commie-pinko-tendencies prior to the Peasants Revolt. The whole concept of grace in the Pauline-Augustinian-Luther tradition has  a pretty strong egalitarian twist to it. But in general, in Wisconsin, yeah equating Lutheran Deomocrats to Communists is like equating Allen West to Allen A' Dale, which I guess would make Boehner Robin Hood and Cantor Little John.)

As that great American political commentator Bugs Bunny would put it, "What a maroon!"

No terrible beauty, just falling apart...

 

When did Florida become Ulster or Pretoria 20 years ago?

When I say the name Trayvon Martin, does it mean anything to you?" Melissa Harris-Perry asked her MSNBC audience on Saturday. "If it doesn't, it should."

Harris-Perry then took some time to explain who Trayvon Martin is: a 17-year-old, unarmed black teenager who was allegedly shot and killed by a man in Florida in late February, after the man saw him walking down a street and thought he looked suspicious. The case has attracted substantial attention, in part because the man, George Zimmerman, has admitted to shooting Martin but has not been arrested or charged with any crime. 

I enjoy listening to Melissa’s work and discussions with her guests. I’m not sure why she was denied promotion to full professor at Princeton – They have a quota on attractive women, Black, Liberal Political Scientists who get opinion gigs on MSNBC and PBS? They still have investments in slavery? Paul Krugman scares them – but their loss is Tulane’s, the nation’s, and MSNBC’s gain. I was steaming over the Trayvon Martin situation anyway, and her commentary pushed a lot of buttons.

 Usually at this time of year, I’m writing something about the Irish, or Ireland or Catholicism.  I’ve been following An Problacht, (The Republic) and watching Rugby on both BBC and The Rugby Channel. Caught a brief bit of  Young Cassidy  last night on the way out to a very non-Gaelic supper that did include roast beef and cabbage. I wore a dark green  t-shirt, a tweed jacket and a plaid scarf. I looked something like Rod Taylor in the damn movie. I saw some wild pictures of Shane McGowan looking like a punch-drunk old man and heard a bit of the Rocky Road to Dublin.  I’ve got a copy of  Fox Crow  on  my kindle that seems to be  set in a cross between the Land of the 7 Kingdoms and Donegal. I’ve been getting primed, but what the hell, what for?

 

If you’re not sure of the story, or  missed it with the important stuff about Seamus the Irish Setter, transvaginal probes and March Madness, Trayvon Martin was a black  kid with his dad visiting a relative in a nice, gated community in Florida. He was wandering around the neighborhood, and some neighborhood busy body named George Zimmerman decided that there was something wrong when a Black Teenager is walking around his neighborhood. He followed the kid, confronted him, hilarity ensued and this fine representative of white middle class values– Mr. Zimmermanis 28 years old and the “Neighborhood Watch – drew down  on the kid and shot him. Zimmerman supposedly was “in fear of his life” which makes it ok in Florida to kill somebody. Irony does abound amidst tragedy.

 Now, the kid was going to the 7-11. He was after a can of soda and a bag of skittles. Anyone is normally allowed the right of self-defense; the idea is appropriate self-defense, balance. Somebody cuts in front of you in a line at Walmart, you probably don’t get to use the excuse that you capped the motherfucker because he was an immediate threat. Zimmerman had been told by the police that they had dispatched a car, and to not pursue him. Zimmerman in fact ignored the order from the police, provoked the kid and killed him. Thuggish behavior of a white wannabe against a black teenager…maybe his pants were too low? He was wearing “gang colors”?

 

In 1842 a mob of clowns in Boston – Brookline, actually – burned an Ursuline Convent because there were Catholics there. Teaching Catholic stuff…the response of the Bishop of Boston was to call his fellows, the Jesuits, and have them start a high-school and college in Worcester, a joint called College of the Holy Cross. I was kind of surprised to read a piece  on Huff Po that managed to list the top ten Irish schools and skipped us; we were diverse, of course. We had 27 black students, Irish Jocks, Italian Jocks, Polish Jocks, some Hispanics, two Greek kids and three Jews.

The Great Draft Riots of New York City made famous in The Gangs of New York were provoked by the idea that Irish immigrants were treated terribly and now were being drafted to free  slaves while the Micks were being treated at least as badly by the Nativists. This has continued – I was told in a bit of openness by a professor that the reason I didn’t get into a prestigious graduate school was because the chairman had said that he already had enough Irish-Catholics. That was 40 or so years ago, and probably is not so obvious now, but it’s still there. 

The Italians, the Poles, the Blacks, the Jews and the Hispanics are all facing the same thing. As generations become accepted, they then become more and more like the intolerant bastards that stood in their way. Hell, while I suspect Zimmerman might be Jewish given the name and ethnicity attached, he’s probably big in the local Tea Party and may even be getting toasted at the local VFW for showing that kid… 

I am Kilrain of the 20th Maine and I damn all gentlemen
Whose only worth is their father's name and the sweat of a workin' man
Well we come from the farms and the city streets and a hundred foreign lands
And we spilled our blood in the battle's heat
Now we're all Americans

I am Kilrain of the 20th Maine and did I tell you friend I'm a fightin' man
And I'll not be back this way again, cause we're all goin' down to Dixieland

 

WHEN THE FUCK DID IT BECOME ALL RIGHT TO KILL CHILDREN BECAUSE THEY LOOK DIFFERENT? THEY”RE KIDS!! If A GAGGLE OF EMOS OR GOTHS HAD BEEN WANDERING DOWN THE STREET, WOULD HE HAVE FOLLOWED THEM?

 Now, in Ulster, there was a tradition of the Protestants controlling the cops and having an auxillary, the B-Specials who were empowered to go into the Irish neighborhoods and “keep the Paddies in line.” Yeah – that worked fine until 1968 –then things changed in a mass explosion of violence, hatred, blood and atrocity, in the name of keeping the strangers down because they were dangerous.

 

For 150 years in South Africa, it was possible for a white settler to shoot a kaffir (black) or mixed race person. South Africa’s treatment of the Indians resulted in a fellow named Mohandmas Ghandi becoming radicalized.

  

There is no excuse for this idiot. There’s a prima facie case to indicate that there is at least a problem with civil rights abuses – no equal protection under the law.  Any cop worth his badge should have run him in for any number of things up to and including murder. Certainly hard to prove equivalency of force to threat – however, if Zimmerman found himself driving through a Black neighborhood, would they be entitled to shoot him because he was suspicious? 

This is what the bastards have wrought. We are back in Emmett Till territory. We’re back to the burning of convents/mosques and we’re less civilized and tolerant than Ulster or South Africa.

 

If Florida doesn’t act decisively to prevent this sort of crap, then in the dock of God’s justice, Zimmerman should be joined by Wayne LePierre and the Board of the NRA, Rick Scott, and the Tea Party. When Anne Coulter advocates less craziness, you know you have a problem.

Well, when political leaders with a rock solid 30% of the country behind them and the rest of us staring in disbelief, well, strange and sad things happen. No terrible beauty born, just the center not holding…by the way, if Barrack Obama  is a Muslim, going to the Dublin City Pub, hoisting a Guinness and singing Danny Boy would probably be considered apostasy. Drinking alcohol is a violation of Sharia of course, and Islam requires adherence to the rules in a way that would make my Nun-programmers in the 50s and 60s think about the advantages of liberty and freedom.

That said, we need to open our hearts and minds to some of the stuff in the Bible that doesn’t lend itself to believing God is blessing your righteous cause so go smite the sinners, the heathen, the others.

And, Trayvon Martin joins a long line of young  people gone for no reason except ignorance, hate and stupidity by ingrate-inbred-liars and thieves. A line that includes Kevin Berry, Steve Biko, Emmett Till and Jesus Christ.

 

 

 

Say wha? This is Gotham City on Meth...

One of the things that binds loose collectives of malcontented malevolent dissidents, anarchists and soldiers, political thinkers and intellectual dilettantes that make up my small circle of freinds is our general aversion to the impact of the totalitarian mind on life, language and discourse. Particularly when afraid -- when they're afraid, they come unglued with weird explanations of events...Orwell could have had fun with that realization because it is when under pressure from the unknown that the basic spiritual bankruptcy and ontological void that is the totalitarian way becomes most obvious. Case in point, China.China has the potential to explode at any time. It's fairly obvious to anyone with a basic knowledge of Marxist thought that the victory of the Communist Party in 1948 preceded the rise of the industrial proletariat. Pretty much the way that Communism has spread everywhere, by the way, except for the countries in eastern Europe that were conquered by the Soviet Union. So, given the fact the Party still rules the country as a vicious oligarchy, it should not be surprising that the government is terrified of anything that might blow it all up. Tibet, Western China, displaced living lives of misery in Guangzhou and Shanghai...labor unrest, the incredible imbalance between rich and middle class and middle class and poor...disease, famine, water impossible to drink, etc. etc. The place is an economic dynamo sputtering away on top of a volcano. 

Which presents a fair amount of hilarity masquerading as WTF? Not unlike Rush Limbaugh confusing contraception with the adult film industry and Israeli fellow-travellers eagerly sounding the drums for a war with Iran because our last religio-WMD-"Make the world safe"-enterprises have gone so well, the Chinese government is definitely after the root cause of problems at all levels. Jezebel picked up a story from The People's Daily that really makes it obvious that fantastic explanations for things is not just a Republican plutocratic art but one shared by totalitarians univerally. 

Ok, girl one loses a "remote control" to a rolling door for her home. Girl one is obviously fairly rich for China since this looks like a really bad translation of "Garage Door Opener..." although I suppose it could have been a rolling steel shutter door to a patio or perhaps a French Door with a remote to the patio but, WHAT THE HELL?  The silly damn Khardasians don't have remote controlled French doors; Trump doesn't have remote controlled French doors. That makes no sense...even in China, which at some levels, times and places is really like Batman's Gotham City, on meth...So, the kid lost a garage door opener. She decides to kill herself, so she hides in a closet -- another sign that we're dealing with some level of wealth here, there's actually a closet that is not so much in use that hiding in it is possible -- until her little friend comes over. She says she's going to commit suicide, the little friend says, OK, me too and Girl 1 writes down a note saying that she's killing herself over the garage door opener and Girl 2 is doing it because, well, they're friends and it's Tuesday and there's nothing on TV and...they are planning on visiting the Qing dynansty to make a movie of the emperor -- any emperor -- and then going to outer space. Girl 1 tells her sister to "Take Care of the Parents" because it's all about the parents, and they jump in a pool and drown. 

Sister? The Chinese still have their one child rule. Only the very well to do and party elites get to have multiple children. WHAT THE HELL? This passes no reality test...but, the inspiration for the suicide is ...TV shows about people travelling in time and marrying royalty. 

Yeah, and comic books caused juvenile delinquency and rock and roll and teenage pregnancy and communism. Ask your great, great senile grandmother!

Imagine the dialogue in the TV movie...if you've ever listened to the dialogue in a Chinese TV show, as I did by reading subtitles while there -- you'll recognize it. 

Chechette: I lost the garage door remote and have brought dishonor on myself and my family. I must kill myself! 

Chongette: I am your best friend. I will also kill myself. 

Cheechette:Well, if we kill ourselves, we can go back in time and make a movie of the emperor in the Qing dynasty!

Chongette:Oh, good. Then we can travel in space.

 

Cheechette: My parents will be so proud...let's go drown ourselves in the pool!

Both: All hail the Glorious People's Liberation Army and Chairman Mao!"

Yeah. Now, they could have blamed this on Falung Gong because everybody knows that weird calestenics and such make you crazy. They could have blamed this on the influences of capitalism. They could have blamed it on a lot of things. Hell, blame it on Guy Clark ...Time travel on the Chinese equivalent to The Gilmore Girls? Jezebel has an excellent point, by the way.  

This sounds like a cautionary tale about parenting — if your kid thinks killing herself is a good response to losing the remote control, you might not be sending the right message about the value of everyday objects. But Sun Yunxiao, deputy director of China Youth and Children Research Center, has a different moral in mind:

Schoolchildren are rich in curiosity but poor in judgment, so this kind of tragedy happens in every era. I have heard of children jumping from high buildings after watching an actor flying in a magic show. This kind of imitative behavior is in the nature of young children, but it's very dangerous. So we should give some sort of warning for children on TV programs.

I'm actually not sure that killing yourself so you can travel back in time and film an emperor (where do you get the camera?) is a tragedy that "happens in every era."...

Being not so sure about the impact of TV on suicides -- childish deaths from imitating superheroes, pro- wrestlers and such in the west aside -- and being slightly alert to conspiracies and coverups, I gotta say, this looks more like a cover-up of something else. There are lots of possibilities -- a spree of mass murder of children with or without child rape, a problem with some powerful "Big Bucks" in the local or regional Party-Wealthy Complex, drug-crazed People's Liberation Army veterans of the unpleasantness in Western China which dwarfs what we are seeing in Afghanistan or saw in Iraq -- but TV is a convenient scapegoat. Always has been and always will be...Dr. Who, in Mandarin drag, seducing the young with opium and time travel. 

My money is probably on some sort of Child 44 coverup  but who the hell knows about these things? Totalitarian countries are weirder than weird and China's internal dissension, cultural dissonance, and Commie-Confucian-Oligarchic messiness kind of makes it all seem possible, and that's funny in a weird way...and sad. 

Another possibility is that this is just some Politboro thug having a shit fit at time travel TV. Again, the oddities of totalitarianism...

 

 

It was 36 years ago yesterday,,,and today

So, in the proper spirit of the thing.  Ok. Yesterday was our 36th anniversary. We are very fond of each other and have a reasonably complex financial life that would make disengaging difficult. We don't want to cause the other pain or even inconvenience. I rate this as a successful marriage. We don't hate each other, wish the other grevious harm, and try not to act contrary to our mutual best interests. 

That said, we got married on Friday the 13th. My thought, being a strategic thinker, was that this way I would not forget both Valentine's day or the Anniversary and hopefully, one would key my brain as to the other. Generally has worked...I see the Valentine's bullshit in the stores, and it triggers the response that I need to do something to commemorate the day so as not to violate the "first, do no harm or cause unnecessary pain" part of my ethic. It does not make me happy. This makes me happy... 

I hate Valentine's Day. It is part of the conspiracy of the consumer society that begins in pre-school to make us all ready for a life of disappointment and conspicuous consumption. 

Educated Arrogance

Among the many abominations foisted on us is the merging of Lincoln's Birthday with Washington's and calling it President's Day. Frankly, we need more holidays, and Federal Holidays should be made mandatory paid holidays. Like in civilized countries – double time for workers and everybody else is off doing their thing. Now, celebrating Lincoln and Washington makes a lot of sense – but, Jerry Ford? Grover Cleveland? Warren G. Harding? John Tyler? James Buchanan? Seriously, give us back our holidays and make the bastards give them to workers…

There is method in my madness, by the way. Reduce work hours and you'll spur hiring to maintain productivity. It's a fairly simple idea and works very well especially when you're trying to maximize employment. If you have an idle assembly line, well, if you need a hundred employees to run it, and you cut the hours of 1000 employees enough to reduce productivity to where profit is affected, it will make economic sense to hire more workers. It probably does on a macro scale anyway – as Paul Krugman and other non-Friedmanesque economists keep saying, it's demand, stupid. No demand, no need for supply to keep up. No money, no demand…why is this hard?

I was wandering through various interweb sites this morning and discovered a number of things at places I don't always visit. Probably the best way to be exposed to new thought and new thinking is to just go out and look. I recommend Twitter for that – follow some of the links that are twittered and be prepared to be amazed, enlightened and generally entertained.

The inevitable end of the beginning of the end...

This is the Romney Bot 10000 or what Mitt Looks Like with the Makeup Removed...Is it too early to point out that Romney's big win of barely meeting expectations in Iowa and New Hampshire have netted him a total of 6 possible delegates. ( The Iowa delegates can actually do any goddamn thing they want to do...they're not bound to the candidate at all. So it's about 6, +/- human nature? Or have two small to medium somewhat oddball places solved the problem of democracy? Who the hell knows? But the media seems to see Romney as a jaugernaut just chewing up the terrain in a Harvard Business School Blitzkrieg. Yeah...Well, things can happen, if we let them...

 

There is a marvelous article online at the Economist that makes a really simple suggestion -- stop worrying about the dogfight in the Republican party and pay attention to and force Romney to say in simple declarative sentences what it is that he intends to do as president. Since I personally think he is absolutely clueless as to what he wants to do in general, I suspect that it could be a far more enlightening exercise than wondering about how Newt Gingrich can paint himself as the populist opposing a malefactor of great wealth. Won't happen, but it is an interesting idea...

 But then, so is this. They're making a porn parody of Star Wars... I'm wondering how this will impact the world of nerds, nutcases and plain old fashioned strange people who obsess about it. Some of these folks are exceptionally smart; some are exceptionally strange; some of them, as Leonard says of Sheldon in The Big Bang Theory, " one lab accident away from being a super-villain." Most are harmless, since the whole Star Wars/trek/thor/comic book thing is a way of handling their subliminated and frustrated sexuality and drive for power in a world that really doesn't fit them. (Note how easy it is to unintentionally pull the chain, so to speak, when writing about porn.) Given the whole Mormon, holy underwear thing that Romney has going against him, it's possible he might be able to inspire some of these folks...but, probably not, since he doesn't really seem to see himself as and that whole Master of the Universe -Venture Capitalist thing leads to something rather different indeed....

THE ROMNEY BOT HAS A RADICALLY DIFFERENT SELF IMAGE AND DREAM IN HIS ELECTRIC SLEEP!

 Since Porno films today tend to go straight -- wouldn't a Star Wars porn film need a lot of homosexual overtones, undertones and so on?--to video anyway, we'll probably be spared a raft of stories about nerves flogging the old dolphin in theatres...or, maybe not. 

THIS IS ROMNEY BOT BETA VERSION! 

On a vaguely related note, Hostess Bakery is filing for
Chapter 11, again. What is Mitt Romney going to do to save the Twinkie? (Actually, this kind of ties into the Star Wars porn thing, if you think about it...and, has anyone noticed how much Mitt actually resembles Max Headroom?) Let the market take it's course? But, what will Karl Rove and Grover Norquist wash down with their bottles of virgin blood and Dr Pepper as they plot the destruction of the social welfare net and the ability of the poor to afford toilet paper while the Koch Bros industies destroy the environment making it impossible to obtain leaves, corn cobs and so on for use in lieu of...) 

It's really not fair for me to pick on Romney for being an artifical, androidal rich bastard replicant who has devoted a life to strange cults and oddities like Capitalism and Joseph Smith. Granted, their religious ideology at it's basis is sufficient to make Scientology seem at least companionable and the 72 Virgins thing seem a reasonable alternative. Hell, Catholicism and Buddhism and Unitarianism and any religion has a lot of oddities. I was reading -- finally, I've been inspired by the hype and the Swedish versions of the movies -- to read The Girl With the Dragon Tatoo and was kind of amazed to find out the importance of the Apocrophya to motivation behind various characters. Not as amazed at Calle and Lisabeth, but then, they were kind of sucked into this madness by that point. For the none theologically minded, the Apocrophya are the books that the Jews left out of what became the Old Testament but that survived and continue to influence thinking on these issues. Not unlike the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Gnostic gospels...except maybe weirder. Now, religion does odd things. It can do wonderful things, but when you get into all that messy miracle, divine, intervention, afterlife shit, things get strange. Unfortunately, it's difficult to not take that stuff seriously when you're dealing with people who take two years of their lives out to prostelytze and annoy. (Being accosted by American Mormons on McConnell Street in Dublin was an excellent excuse many years ago for some Bushmill's in the coffee...for the next decade!) They believe this stuff... Rick Santorum scares me and his madness is something I grew up with...Pat Buchanan scares me, and his madness is something I actually can relate to quite well...

 

But, we should really follow the whole Romney thing not as a personal thing -- although it is worthwhile from a satirical point of view to do so and I'm all for satire -- but from a hard policy point of view. Governor, what exactly do you propose to do about -- jobs? And then follow-up -- there is a rule of thumb in interrogation, quality and so on. There is a significantly limited number of questions about anything that someone who may want to dissemble or is stuck in some ideological world view that they can answer without inadvertently discovering the truth of their beliefs or revealing their lie.

"Yo, Mitt-face, what are you going to do about the Middle East?

"I'm going to put troops back into Iraq, take down the Mullahs in Iran, and support Zion...err...Israel. Yeah, Israel, that's the place.

"So, you're going to re-invade Iraq? 

"They'll welcome us with open arms to protect them from al Quieda and the Sunnis and the Shi'ites and the Kurds and the Iranians!

"Sure about that? They told us to leave, you know because we wouldn't agree to their idea of a status of forces agreement. Do you want American soldiers subject to Iraqi criminal justice?

"Nobody wants that."

"Well, that was what the Iraqis wanted to have us stay." 

"I'd use more diplomacy..." 

"Yeah, ok, now Iran...How are you going to take down the Mullahs? Are you going to invade? Bomb? Use Nuclear missiles? Pray a lot? Keep using sanctions?"

"That's more than one question."

"Not so much questions as a precis of your options to take down the Mullahs? Maybe diplomacy? And, what gives us the right to impose regieme change again?"

"The people of Iran want to be free!"

"Just like in Iraq?"

The problem with the Romney-bot beta version was that it was toooooo smart. Kerry had actually thought about these things. Romney hasn't...and it shows. As Molly Ivins said, and we really miss her and need more people like her and pretty goddamn soon! "Nothin' but good times ahead."  

 

 

 

Merry Christmas to the official Defeatist Cat

Fleshy, the Defeatist's Official Cat, displays an odd aspect of catnip on Cats...they are suddenly in need of Marshall Amps, Fender Telecasters, and bandannas.. 

On a related issue, the Great Old Ones drowsing beneath the sea have sent us all a reminder that the true meaning of Christmas is that CTHULHU WILL EAT YOUR SOUL!

 
Of course, I'm waiting for all this nonsense to be over. The world still sucks despite the best wishes of the mega-corporations. I am looking forward to catching The Girl in the Dragon Tatoo -- I spent a good part of Christmas watching the Swedish version, and it was excellent. Incredible, given that it held my interest and was in Swedish...which is like German, kinda and kinda not. I'm not so sure that they had to go with Trent Raznor for composing the score -- there are a lot of Swedish emo-rock-garage-punk Celtic bands. And, if you go beyond Sweden, there's always our friends at Lordi!

 

Actually, a lot of really great music is coming out of Scandanavia. From Denmark, there's The Ravennettes, who have a lot of music that would fit the movie, especially something like The Last Dance which is an incredibly ironic piece of material...catchy, pretty, perky until you listen to the lyrics. "Every time you overdose, I rush to intensive care..."Lisabeth would approve.  

Norway has the Cocktail Slippers among others, and they're pretty amazing as a group, whether covering some Girl Group piece from the 60s or doing one of their originals. They are in Steven Van Zandt's Wicked Cool stable, and they're excellent. Again, there's a lot of irony in their stuff -- "Who'll be the last lover standing, come St Valentine's Day?" Particularly for the scene with her walking down the promenade at the end in the Swedish version; sure there's an equivalent moment in the Mara-Craig version. 

So, Happy New Year from AGI, ELS, Mr. Fun, Capt C at Defeatist Central and from our fellow travellers, Montag, Culture Ghost and all the rest at Guys From Area 51. Have yourself a very Tiffany New Year... and, if you aren't a machine and want to drop a comment even a la Rush Limberger "", well, we live for that crap. Actually, we don't...but it makes for a more fun conversation!