Archive for April, 2015

Friends of Bill

Over the last 25 years republicans have gone from disingenuous jerks to complete assholes. From occasional forays into dirty politics and smear tactics to a no holds barred enterprise of fear, hate and racism.  From a tacit deployment of bigotry, to a stentorian campaign of disenfranchising minorities and marginalizing women.

From stupid and selfish to mean and vicious.

From conservative to teabilly.

The worst of you don’t care. You actually believe Obama is a communist, Muslim, Kenyan that just wants to reward lazy, shiftless blacks and Mexicans with food stamps, welfare and endless unemployment benefits on your dime.  You don’t care that it’s all thoroughly baseless crap and you can’t possibly back any of it up.

It doesn’t matter at all to you that the bastards who are actually in your wallets are the same bastards you vote for every time.

The worst of you think he wants to overthrow or undermine America.

The worst of you only care that the next president is a white republican Christian male. It wouldn’t matter to you if this required violence.

All this stupidity causes visions of getting my gums scraped to dance in my head.

The punchline is that these are the reasons the worst of you are still relevant.

Having said that, shifting demographics, social evolution and all things actuarial point to the extinction of the worst of you.

Any remaining republicans aspiring to be taken seriously in the real world, and by that I mean outside the absurd right wing echo chamber, have to learn to respond and participate with some civility and dignity or party on ignorant toward that extinction.

So here’s a primer for all of you who would be left behind.

The best of you.

Normal people, regular people, the best of you, don’t call for president Obama to be executed, impeached or incarcerated because you realize it’s fucking silly and it embarrasses you that the worst of you can never produce a legitimate reason for any of it.  You understand it is hyperbole to distract the lowest common denominator of rotting mouths and vanishing prospects.

The best of you realize that the president is a decent man,who at least has in common with you the best of intentions for our country. The best of you differ with him, you don’t agree with his execution of the office. You don’t agree with his policies. You don’t like his priorities.  You just don’t like him. But the best of you understand that he isn’t out to destroy you or this country or your way of life.

The best of you feel no need to demonize him or resort to the very worst of human nature by analogizing he and his wife to primates. The best of you want simply to disagree and be taken seriously for doing so. You realize he is but a man, not a king, not the anti-Christ, but merely a man who was elected by a solid majority of the voters twice who’s transgressions are certainly no more egregious than his predecessors.

You hope to elect a republican next time around but simply don’t feel the need to impugn this president’s character or disparage his integrity to accomplish that. You realize that you would be horrified to see those sorts of tactics applied to your candidate or president.

The best of you get that this president exemplifies “family values” way better than any of the goofcocks that run for your political party.

The best of you just want political discourse to return to comity and respect. The best of you sincerely wish your already elected representatives would ascribe to at least as much.

The best of you want no part of what goes on here. You would be more comfortable where responsible ideas are dealt with responsibly, without the vitriol and invective. You want a venue where you’re not called names and attacked for no more than disagreeing.

The best of you are grownups.

This blog is dedicated to my friend Bill, for whom I genuinely bear no ill will, but who I wish would just stop posting such incredibly callow bullshit that he just refuses to take responsibility for.

My sincere hope is that my friend Bill will grow the fuck up.

This is not only about your beliefs Bill, it’s about your behavior.

Drinks for my friends.

 

 

 

Andrew Markoff

This a new thing for me. A new feeling.

People you knew but never met, dying.

I knew Andrew. We were friends.

When I saw that he’d posted I went right to it and ate it up. I feel like I knew him. When he shared his thoughts he was thorough and profound. He cared. He actually really cared. He commented on my blog often. His was often the first comment. It flattered me because he was such a passionate writer.

We were often on the same facebook posts. Sometimes when I was battling some asshole bigot. I never met him but I felt like he was right there sometimes. He was a force. I felt him.

I’m just so sorry about this. The idea that he took his own life digs at me. I don’t know what to make of it but it scares me. The idea of it has haunted me a little since I learned of it. It’s hard not to take the world too seriously. It can be really hard.

Thanks Andrew, very much. I’ll miss you for sure.

All my best to your family and friends.

Drinks for my friends.

 

Boiling Frogs

I just ate macaroni and cheese out of a pull top  can with a big ass spoon.

Forty years ago Sarah Palin would never have been chosen as a presidential running mate. Not because she’s a woman but because she’s dumb as a goddamn stick. Forty years ago, you would not have seen the lineup we’ve seen for the last two presidential elections from the GOP.  And yet again, the whack jobs cometh.

For what it’s worth, democrats aren’t much better. Their excellence is viscous populism while ignoring the eight hundred pound gorilla as it shits on the main course.  No different than republicans.  One party distracts with fear while the other accomplishes it with hope.  Black and white hats.  It’s exactly that stupid.

Politics in America is nothing more than reality television. Lowest brow common denominator entertainment. It’s a pageant where we all vote for the equivalent of Miss Congeniality as long as she’s able to sucker punch and back stab that commie liberal or fascist conservative and keep up appearances. It’s a joke that not all of us are in on. The electorate plays the straight man,  each side blaming the other side for everything while the burlesque of consequence dances on all our heads.

Consider as an example that we are all living on the same planet experiencing dramatic and destructive climate change. The current pissing contest is over whether it’s caused by human industry or the cyclical nature of mother earth. Nobody bothers to admit that it doesn’t fucking matter. Our only chance is to exert control over the impact of our footprint and the shuffling of our feet.

Or water will become as important a commodity as oil in a mere few decades.

Once that happens, plutocrats and oligarchs will be at play in the fields of the lord.

All the while, wealth concentration continues apace globally. In America we’ve gone from a middle class that was robust and could afford a house, cars, health insurance and college educations on a single income, to one that can’t afford any of these things on two incomes.

The ideal of an educated populace is openly mocked.

Prisons are for profit.

Our infrastructure crumbles. Bridges, roads and tunnels decay.  Electrical grids deteriorate.  The very things we used to fund as devices to bolster the middle class, things we understood would pay dividends for decades, are things that are now maligned as socialism or utopian.

We never wanted to suffer the poor and disadvantaged falling through the cracks.  We took pride in equality and opportunity.  We were flawed but worked to erase it.  We owned that most people if given the chance, would rather work hard toward self sufficiency and prosperity than wallow in pity and dependence.  These were once popular ideas.

Now we trip over the sick and homeless in our urban areas with disgust and we accept abject poverty in our rural areas while media shows us how to loath and despise people not like us for being weak and undeserving.  Racism and classism flourish.  It’s stupid that we waste a single worry over immigration.  It’s goddamn ridiculous that we actually debate marriage equality.  It’s been an amazingly methodical implementation of economic policy symbiotic with social engineering and cultural warfare.  Concerted.  Awesome.

We are losing ground.

We have arrived at cheering the divide between the undeserving takers and the virtuous makers instead of the purpose of closing the gap between the haves and the have nots.

America has lost its goddamn mind.

Multinational conglomerates rape and pillage, stealing and hoarding resources and wealth without the threat of law. There’s nothing new about this except the most powerful advent of technology as a catalyst ever.  Lunatic greed in broadband HD with surround sound after a bump in the bathroom.

We can access validation for any belief no matter how crazy.

If you fuck with our government it sends drones.

We are told that we can no longer afford to simply help people.  Bullshit.  We spend a trillion dollars a year on making war, planning more war, inventing new ways to make and fight new wars and new enemies.  As we speak at least half our political representatives are chomping at the bit to mingle us in yet another war in the middle east.

This our cancer. This is our disease.  This is the addiction that will kill us all.

Humans are losing.

America used to be an example. Other countries agreed. Now we’re barely able to stand our own smell.  America is the preeminent historical example of absolute power and how absolute power corrupts absolutely.

The rest of the world reasonably expects that America will be its demise.

What’s it going to take?

How bad does it have to get?

America is a frog in a pot on a stove.  I hear you can literally boil a frog if you just start the poor thing out at room temperature.  He’s a cold blooded amphibian and it seems he can’t really sense the heating as long as it’s gradual. He won’t jump out or anything.  He’ll die in that pot before it boils and he won’t see it coming.

Drinks for my friends.

 

 

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