The Gospel According to Bloggingdino

Now, I know Senator Bernie Sanders is a self-declared soshalist and therefore must be ignored at all costs, but who else can you trust to bring up an indecorous subject like poverty in America?  Just as soon as you can find the time between sips of Chardonnay and truffle-bites, have a look at his Huffpost article http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-bernie-sanders/is-poverty-a-death-senten_b_960598.html.  Nothing so sickens me as the virtual banishment of the very words "poor" and "poverty" from American political discourse.  The only class-based reference permitted is to "the middle class."  Now, most of us know that the term mostly refers to working-class stiffs who are merely deluding themselves about their true standing and prospects in contemporary America, but let's leave that aside since it's a commie idea and we don't want to upset the delicate feelings of any of our dear brothers and sisters the 'Baggery who might stumble upon this Marxist-sociopath den of intellectual iniquity that is the SWASH ZONE.

I'm not in the mood for windy analysis this evening as I just want to watch a Shakespeare DVD and go to bed alongside the Jurassic Watering Hole.  (By the way, director Julie Taymor – who has already done a brilliant modern version of the revenge play Titus Andronicus, has a new production of The Tempest coming out on DVD towards the end of the year, starring Helen Mirren as "Prospera."  That should be excellent – strangely, we don't have enough versions of The Tempest, which is, along with Twelfth Night, among the Bard's most beloved plays.)  So I'll just suggest the following as a dino-scriptum to Senator Sanders' much cleverer post; to America's fond supporters of the nearly taxless megarich and the infinite perfection of The Market, verily I say, 

"Everybody else loves you, but Jesus thinks you're an a**hole" (Matthew 19:24).  

How's that for the perfect bumper-sticker as a riff on the persnickety atheist ones that run, "Smile.  Jesus loves you -- everybody else thinks ..."?  I may be a simple-minded khaki dinosaur, but you gotta admit, I have flashes of almost human insight now and then….

Creativity and the human spirit

Some people have shittier days than you. And still there's reason to hope...

Ron Paul: Liberal

Some people like to dismiss Ron Paul as a simple minded extremist loony. I don't think that's fair and not just because I'm often dismissed with the same simple mindedness by the same simple minds. Yes, I think Dr. Paul does take many things to an extreme point, but you know -- sometimes he's right and sometimes so far to the right that he comes back around the spherical universe and appears on the left.

When he was booed at last night's Tea Party "debate," he was booed as a Liberal, not as the dogmatic, theory obsessed, quasi-anarchist and not-too-bright demagogue he's been portrayed as. He was booed for not bleating and re-bleating the recorded message about why "they" hate us, which, if truth ever be told, isn't for our freedom: a thing which in fact has a larger following amongst Muslims that can be allowed by the Jingoistic braying of the party for which the jackass is not the symbol -- but for the reality.

The reality is and the reality has been that not only al Qaeda but others have hated the US government for interfering in Middle East, for rightly or wrongly supporting Israel, for building military bases in places they see as sacred and for supporting oppressive governments because they were "anti-Communist" and willing to exploit their resources for our benefit.

Who else in the Republican Party is willing to step outside the passion play and challenge the formula: they hate us because we're all good and always good and so we have to hate them -- all of them, all of the time?

“This whole idea that the whole Muslim world is responsible for this and their attacking us because we’re free and prosperous, that is just not true,”

he said last night. But what set the snarling beasts off their feed was

“Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda have been explicit, and they wrote and said that we attacked because you had bases on our holy lands in Saudi Arabia, you do not give Palestinians a fair treatment,”

which quite plainly is true.

The Tea Party picture of human and natural events needs to be presented in such high contrast that any smudge of darkness on our pure white character must be erased; there are no grays or colors and one is either the favorite angel of God or Satan's most foul smelling demon. To admit that any of our sacred military endeavors was not waged in defense of our alleged "freedom" puts one on the odiferous side and so yes, the Battleship Maine was blown up by the evil, freedom hating Spanish between bouts of raping American women and God really did want us to have the continent and our conquest thereof was just like the rape of Jericho only slower. It's anathema to suggest that we were not protecting our freedom by killing millions of Vietnamese or destroying Iraq and those who think and those who know must then be devils for suggesting that anything we ever have done might ever have made anything worse for us or anyone else of God's elect.

We have to believe, as we've been told, that "liberals" would have preferred to "psychoanalyze" al Qaeda than to retaliate, that Democrats unanimously voted against the odious Patriot Act when in fact their support was (sadly) unanimous. Facts don't matter and for the Tea Party only feelings matter and the only feelings they have are greed, anger and hate. If you're not unquestionably in support of everything we do; if you don't hate enough and hate whom we tell you to; if you don't think everything we do in anger isn't ipso facto God's will, you're our natural enemy even if you're Ron Paul and even if most people think you're so far right, you're wrong.

This time Ron Paul is right and it's time to question the people who say government is always wrong when they simultaneously say it's always right.

Want to eat? Pee in this, please.

As either of my long-time readers could tell you, I have held for quite some time that South Carolina just sucks. And they keep on trying to prove it.

Latest idiocy: Governor Nikki Haley (R-Obviously) wants to drug test people who get unemployment benefits.



In her words (and channeling her inner teenage cheerleader), "I so want drug testing. I so want it."

But, being a Republican, if the facts don't match the "common wisdom," she's more than happy to make shit up.

"Down on River Site, they were hiring a few hundred people, and when we sat down and talked to them -- this was back before the campaign -- when we sat down and talked to them, they said of everybody they interviewed, half of them failed a drug test, and of the half that was left, of that 50 percent, the other half couldn't read and write properly," Haley said.

Fortunately, the Huffington Post reporter did that thing we used to call "journalism" and asked somebody if she was right.

Jim Giusti, a spokesman for the Department of Energy, which owns the River Site, told HuffPost he had no idea what Haley was talking about with regard to applicants flunking a drug test.

"Half the people who applied for a job last year or year 2009 did not fail the drug test," Giusti said. "At the peak of hiring under the Recovery Act we had less than 1 percent of those hired test positive."

The River Site doesn't even test applicants. "We only test them when they have been accepted," Giusti said.

I'll give Haley a little bit of credit, though. She got the one thing right.

"That's what we have in South Carolina," she continued. "We don't have an unemployment problem. We have an education and poverty problem."

The rest is crap, but she's finally figured out one of the chief causes of unemployment. I mean, it's a shame that she couldn't have figured it out a couple of months ago, when she tried to slash education funding for the state so badly that the state Legislature, Democrat and Republican, overturned most of her budget and overrode her attempts to veto. But at least she knows it now, right?

Of course, Teabaggers don't care about facts; they care about ideology. Governor Rick Scott of Florida instituted a drug testing policy for unemployment, which didn't do the state a lick of good.

The law, which took effect July 1, requires applicants to pay for their own drug tests. Those who test drug-free are reimbursed by the state, and those who fail cannot receive benefits for a year.

Having begun the drug testing in mid-July, the state Department of Children and Families is still tabulating the results. But at least 1,000 welfare applicants took the drug tests through mid-August, according to the department, which expects at least 1,500 applicants to take the tests monthly.

So far, they say, about 2 percent of applicants are failing the test; another 2 percent are not completing the application process, for reasons unspecified.

Cost of the tests averages about $30. Assuming that 1,000 to 1,500 applicants take the test every month, the state will owe about $28,800-$43,200 monthly in reimbursements to those who test drug-free.

That compares with roughly $32,200-$48,200 the state may save on one month's worth of rejected applicants.

The paper went on to calculate that Florida will save $40,800-$98,400, an amount which will be eaten up in staff hours and other resources in administering the program. Oh, and they're going to spend over a million dollars defending it in court. So, Rick Scott just cost Floridians more money that they don't have. So that's some awesome leadership, right there.

Now, if you do the math, the national rate of drug use is about 8.9 percent of the population aged 12 or older. (The majority of those users are 18 or older, but that's like math and stuff, so screw that.) Now, if only 2-4% of the people applying for unemployment are drug users, that means that the unemployed population is actually using less drugs than the rest of America. (Maybe because they can't afford them - that might make sense...)

Obviously, Governor Haley can't do simple logic.

Thanks Rick

I didn't listen to the President's speech Thursday night, partly because I had a meeting to attend and partly because I've ceased caring. Of course not listening to the president's ideas about reviving the economy by putting people to work seems to a matter of pride in this part of the swamp and one squints when asked "didja listen to to President?" with that certain tone. The proper answer is of course, "hell no!" Why should I care about a country wherein this sort of idiocy is called "patriotism?"

Of course I didn't listen to Rick Scott, our Governor/Medicare Fraudmeister either -- hell no. I save such things for later and I prefer to read that kind of news rather than to be waterboarded with it. That way I can take a deep breath when I read that before the speech, he snarked that there wouldn't be anything for Florida in it and my TV was safe from having my foot through the screen when I read that it's likely he'll turn down 7.5 Billion allocated to improve and upgrade our infrastructure. That's money that would employ a lot of people who would spend their income in Florida and make Florida more attractive and accessible to the tourists upon whom our economy depends.

It wouldn't be the first time Ricky has turned away an opportunity. He refused to accept 2 billion to build a high speed rail line - you know the kind of thing other countries we feel superior to have. The kind of thing that, once again, would boost tourism and tax dollars. Oops - I used the magic word tax and Rick doesn't like taxes. Of course he doesn't like employment and he doesn't like the President and isn't about to let him do anything about employment because the only way to get out of a recession is to make sure the state doesn't take in a dime and to fire so many employees and cancel so many necessary projects that hardly anyone has enough income to require them to pay any taxes.

And then you cut costs more which puts more people out of work which means they spend less and so less gets made and companies go out of business and fire more people so there are still fewer with any money to buy anything -- and by and by everything gets better. Don't get it? you must be a liberal, or so the Teabrains tell me and I'd rather argue with a toadstool than with the kind of fungi and pond scum that make up that seething ferment. I mean, who can afford to care any more?

Suppressing Voters' Rights in the Fascist Republic of Wisconsin

In follow-up to my last post, A Damning Indictment of the GOP by a Former GOP Staffer, I quote Mike Lofgren again - this time on Republican efforts to suppress that most sacred and sacrosanct of American traditions - the right to vote:

Ever since Republicans captured the majority in a number of state legislatures last November, they have systematically attempted to make it more difficult to vote … This legislative assault is moving in a diametrically opposed direction to 200 years of American history, when the arrow of progress pointed toward more political participation by more citizens. Republicans are among the most shrill in self-righteously lecturing other countries about the wonders of democracy; exporting democracy … was a signature policy of the Bush administration. But domestically, they don't want those people voting.

You can probably guess who those people are. Above all, anyone not likely to vote Republican.  As Sarah Palin would imply, the people who are not Real Americans.  Racial minorities.  Immigrants.  Muslims.  Gays.  Intellectuals.  Basically, anyone who doesn't look, think, or talk like the GOP base … 

Among the GOP base, there is constant harping about somebody else, some "other," who is deliberately, assiduously and with malice aforethought subverting the Good, the True and the Beautiful:   Subversives.  Commies.  Socialists.  Ragheads.  Secular humanists. Blacks.  Fags.  Feminazis. The list may change with the political needs of the moment, but they always seem to need a scapegoat to hate and fear.

In the Fascist Republic of Wisconsin, voter suppression has entered the execution phase. Under a new law, all citizens are required to show a form of photo ID to exercise their right to vote, and the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) has been tasked with issuing the new cards.

However, the DMV instructed all employees, in this memo, to provide free ID cards only if people ask for the fee to be waived.  If citizens don’t ask, the charge is $28.  Why keep secrets from the public? To charge a fee is tantamount to …

A POLL TAX

… which is a violation of Federal voting rights laws. To avoid having their precious Jim Crow knockoff struck down in Federal court, state officials have decreed: “Let there be subterfuge!”  More than a scam, the new law is designed to place extra burdens on seniors, minorities, and students - those who vote for Democrats more often than Republicans - to suppress turnout.  Furthermore, the new law gives GOP snakes more wiggle room to game the system, as Lofgren explains:

… in Wisconsin, Republicans have legislated photo IDs while simultaneously shutting Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) offices in Democratic constituencies while at the same time lengthening the hours of operation of DMV offices in GOP constituencies …

At least one honest and forthright state employee was not about to let a good con job go unpublished. Chris Larson, an employee in the Department of Safety and Professional Services (DSPS), sent an email to all DSPS personnel notifying them of the fee waiver.  Here is the actual email sent by Larson:

Do you know someone who votes that does not have a State ID that meets requirements to vote? Tell them they can go to the DMV/DOT and get a free ID card. However they must ask for the free ID.  [A] memo was sent out by the 3rd in command of the DMV/DOT. The memo specifically told the employees at the DMV/DOT not to inform individuals that the ID’s are free. So if the individuals seeking to get the free ID does not ask for a free ID, they will have to pay for it!!  Just wanted everyone to be informed!! 

REMEMBER TO TELL ANYONE YOU KNOW!!  ANYONE!!  EVEN IF THEY DON’T NEED THE FREE ID, THEY MAY KNOW SOMEONE THAT DOES!!  SO TELL EVERYONE YOU KNOW!!”

Hours later, Larson was fired.

Republican Ideology and the FAA

RE: House GOP bill would cut FAA's budget 5 percent (HuffPo/AP 9/9/2011)

Now, before you go bellyaching and tooting your horns about the public safety and other abstractions of that sort, I would just like to say to you libs that I concur wholeheartedly with the GOP's approach to this meddlesome agency, the FAA. As a driver of automobiles who considers every stop sign in the Great State of Texas an unbearable infringement of his sacred personal liberties, I can empathize with all the hard-working commercial and private airline pilots out there who are faced with a perpetual stream of orders issued from a bunch of round-spectacled bureaucrats sitting comfortably up in some elitist controller-tower connected to the airport by government fiat. 5% isn't much, but it's a start, I say.

Yes, all government is bad and it's always the problem, not the solution. Because you know, if you're an airline pilot, the most dreadful thing that could possibly pass into your ears is one of those bespectacled bureaucrats' voices intoning, "Hello Captain, I'm from the government and I'm here to help you land that double-decker jumbo jet you've been flying for the last seven hours." Right! As if some guy sitting in a control tower is going to know anything of use to a busy, weary pilot tasked with transporting two or three hundred souls from one end of the globe to another! If you believe that, I've got a bridge in Brooklyn that Acorn wants to sell you.  You libs never learn!

Signed,

Baggasaurus Tex

(Name changed to prevent a punch in the snout)

A Damning Indictment of the GOP by a Former GOP Staffer (What the GOP Gains by Sabotaging Government)

First, a special hat tip to Libby Spenser of The Impolitic for focusing attention on this article:

Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult

by Mike Lofgren (Truthout, Saturday 3 September 2011)

If a Democrat, a pundit, or anyone else had written this article, it might have been dismissed as just another partisan polemic. As the work of a veteran GOP operative, it has authenticity and credibility, and it demands our attention. Here are some highlights:

It should have been evident to clear-eyed observers that the Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe …

Under the circumstances, it is no wonder that Washington is gridlocked: legislating has now become war minus the shooting, something one could have observed 80 years ago in the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic. As Hannah Arendt observed, a disciplined minority of totalitarians can use the instruments of democratic government to undermine democracy itself.

The Debt Debate as an Act of Political Terrorism:

I could see as early as last November that the Republican Party would use the debt limit vote, an otherwise routine legislative procedure that has been used 87 times since the end of World War II, in order to concoct an entirely artificial fiscal crisis. Then, they would use that fiscal crisis to get what they wanted, by literally holding the US and global economies as hostages …

Everyone knows that in a hostage situation, the reckless and amoral actor has the negotiating upper hand over the cautious and responsible actor because the latter is actually concerned about the life of the hostage, while the former does not care …

In recent polls, public opinion of Congress has sunk to a historic low: only 14% approve while an overwhelming 82% disapprove. Despite these dismal public approval numbers, Lofgren explains why the GOP always wins an incremental advantage from its own obstructive tactics:

By sabotaging the reputation of an institution of government, the party that is programmatically against government would come out the relative winner  (...)  A deeply cynical tactic, to be sure, but a psychologically insightful one that plays on the weaknesses both of the voting public and the news media. There are tens of millions of low-information voters … [their] confusion over who did what allows them to form the conclusion that "they are all crooks," and that "government is no good," further leading them to think, "a plague on both your houses" and "the parties are like two kids in a school yard." This ill-informed public cynicism, in its turn, further intensifies the long-term decline in public trust in government that has been taking place since the early 1960s - a distrust that has been stoked by Republican rhetoric at every turn …

How does our incompetent news media serve as a willing accomplice? Lofgren explains:

This constant drizzle of "there the two parties go again!" stories out of the news bureaus, combined with the hazy confusion of low-information voters, means that the long-term Republican strategy of undermining confidence in our democratic institutions has reaped electoral dividends. The United States has nearly the lowest voter participation among Western democracies; this, again, is a consequence of the decline of trust in government institutions - if government is a racket and both parties are the same, why vote? And if the uninvolved middle declines to vote, it increases the electoral clout of a minority that is constantly being whipped into a lather by three hours daily of Rush Limbaugh or Fox News.

Lofgren attributes the failings of our news media to right wing bullying, claiming: “the “respectable” media have been terrified of any criticism for perceived bias.” In my opinion, the problem goes far beyond timidity.

We know the script: A dispute makes headlines; there are competing claims of truth behind the headlines; a reporter reports the conflict but makes no attempt to check the veracity of either claim; the symmetry of talking heads creates an appearance of false balance. Meanwhile, liars and prevaricators gain an advantage when their deceits are legitimized before a national audience. Talking heads journalism yields what Jay Rosen calls a regression toward a phony mean.  Thus, our news media is deeply flawed to the point of gross incompetence, which the GOP leverages to maximum advantage.

Who are these low-information voters so easily suckered by demagogues and legitimized by our news media? Again, here is Lofgren …

Beginning in the 1970s, religious cranks ceased simply to be a minor public nuisance in this country and grew into the major element of the Republican rank and file (…) The results are all around us: if the American people poll more like Iranians or Nigerians than Europeans or Canadians on questions of evolution versus creationism, scriptural inerrancy, the existence of angels and demons, and so forth, that result is due to the rise of the religious right, its insertion into the public sphere by the Republican Party and the consequent normalizing of formerly reactionary or quaint beliefs. Also around us is a prevailing anti-intellectualism and hostility to science; it is this group that defines "low-information voter" - or, perhaps, "misinformation voter."

(...)

It would have been hard to find an uneducated farmer during the depression of the 1890s who did not have a very accurate idea about exactly which economic interests were shafting him. An unemployed worker in a breadline in 1932 would have felt little gratitude to the Rockefellers or the Mellons. But that is not the case in the present economic crisis … where is the popular anger directed, at least as depicted in the media? At "Washington spending" - which has increased primarily to provide unemployment compensation, food stamps and Medicaid to those economically damaged by the previous decade's corporate saturnalia. Or the popular rage is harmlessly diverted against pseudo-issues: death panels, birtherism, gay marriage, abortion, and so on, none of which stands to dent the corporate bottom line in the slightest.

Thus far, I have concentrated on Republican tactics, rather than Republican beliefs, but the tactics themselves are important indicators of an absolutist, authoritarian mindset that is increasingly hostile to the democratic values of reason, compromise and conciliation. Rather, this mindset seeks polarizing division (Karl Rove has been very explicit that this is his principal campaign strategy), conflict and the crushing of opposition.

I hope this liberal sprinkling of quotations will stimulate your interest. Although liberal writers have covered similar ground for years (writers of the Swash Zone have certainly touched on many of his points), his essay is comprehensive, brings the most important ideas under one heading, and minces no words. By no means comforting, it is at least helpful to have a GOP veteran of 28 years confirm our worst suspicions. Please have a look and share your thoughts.

Never Forget

This coming Sunday will be the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attack on Washington and New York and there's no way that anyone is going to forget it. After 10 years we're not only still mired in lachrymose and maudlin self-pity, but the incident has taken on a religious tone, complete with holy martyrs and holy relics. We still have cars with those plastic flag holders attached to the windows and we're reminded constantly that not only will we never forget, we'll never allow our grandchildren or their grandchildren to forget this dark day: the worst day in American history.

Of course I'll be condemned by some for hard heartedness, if not outright treason. I'm only arguing for a sense of proportion, but any balanced and reasonable viewpoint is so condemned in today's America. We're a radicalized, polarized nation choking and strangling on our own anger, yet cherishing it, nourishing it and hoping to preserve it in ritual, in perpetuity: a new anger for the ages. At least some powerful people hope that to be the case. Grieving people being so easy to manipulate and exploit, as some funeral directors know.


Some bits and pieces of the World Trade Center steel framework are being distributed to towns in my area. The Navy SEAL museum in Ft. Pierce now has a chunk and another arrived in my town a few days ago. The local paper printed photos of people kissing the rusty steel, touching their rosaries to it to make them extra holy and others simply hugging the metal, weeping.

The flag wrapped bits of steel arrived escorted by a motorcade over a quarter mile long. Military, law enforcement and veteran's motorcycle clubs accompanied it all the way south from the Georgia border like a funeral procession.

"Our objective is to eventually put this steel on every corner so that people never forget,"

said a retired New York homicide detective. That even includes my tiny, unincorporated crossroads town which has no other monuments of any kind. He expressed hope that one day there would be a holiday in every state honoring the policemen of New York. He promised never to forget.


Of course it wasn't all maudlin lamentation, there was plenty of anger still, even though bin Laden, most of his henchmen and all of those who perpetrated the attack are dead. Former detective Dennis McKenna promised that his son was soon going off to Afghanistan, where the perpetrators no longer dwell, to "whack one of them." Bagpipes were played, America the Beautiful was sung, Holy Water was poured on Holy Steel and then the bandwagon moved on.

"Let these pieces of steel remind us of the 2,973 men and woman who sacrificed their lives and, unknowingly, made our country and people become even stronger,"

said one Vietnam veteran. I wish it had done so, I wish all the other war memorials had made us more reluctant to make wars, but we're hardly stronger. We're far more divided, our economy has suffered from trillions of borrowed dollars turned to smoke. There is a bigger economic divide and the tear-shedders in their sackcloth and ashes want to sacrifice every bit of social progress since the 1860's, impoverishing the already debt-ridden majority while enriching the aristocracy.

Never forget that we're victims. Never remember how we victimized millions abroad in an uninvolved country. Always remember that "they" hate us and always complain when we attempt to make peace.

But how long will we actually remember and how long will we see this sad period in the same dim light? Surely half of our country no longer remembers 12/7/41 as the date that will live in infamy, nor the Battleship Maine on 2/15/98 or the burning and sacking of Washington DC on 8/24/14. People will forget. It won't be the worst thing that ever happened any more.

Some of those pre-teens who are too young to remember will absorb the tailored and fitted viewpoint they have thrust upon them at the moment, but their children will live in a vastly different world and one in which this country will not have the same status and those 3000 saints and martyrs won't really compare with the millions and millions dead in other places we wouldn't get involved in because "they hate us."

"I know that Osama bin Laden did the whole thing,"

said an 8 year old. Perhaps he'll remember that, perhaps not. Perhaps he will learn some more comprehensive history, perhaps not and it's more than likely there are events to come that will make the death of a few thousand seem insignificant in comparison. No, I'll never forget I won't forget going to the Red Cross office to donate blood and not being able to get there for the crowd. I won't forget the feeling of national unity that was so soon hijacked and exploited and used as a tool, and excuse to wage war at home and abroad. I won't forget the overwhelming, commercially distributed fear and xenophobia and lust for battle either, but I'm old and the world belongs to the young - or soon will and the myth of 9/11 will go where it goes, not where I predict it will go.

We Shall Overcome

I recognize that black people don't own oppression but we certainly know a hell of a lot about it first hand. I first understood what it meant to be black in this country the summer when I was 8. That was the big knee cutting incident when rubbing alcohol came in glass bottles. I tripped over my own feet while carrying a bottle to my mother, knelt down to pick up the pieces and sliced open my left knee. My mother scooped me up, grabbed my younger brother and sister and raced to the local clinic where she attempted to enter the emergency entrance, the white only entrance. As she tried to enter with me in her arms, a blood soaked towel wrapped around my knee, someone told her that she needed to go to the nigger entrance. She did.

What I learned from that experience was patience. No amount of language, foul or otherwise, no amount of defiant attitude impacts people who are driven by ignorance, hate, and downright stupidity. When Dr. King came along, he understood this. He preached nonviolence not because he was afraid but because he recognized that the real crazies were unreasonable and unreachable, but that the rest of American whites might still have enough of a conscience to feel guilt. Those peaceful marches weren't really peaceful except on the part of the protesters. They were beaten, attacked by dogs, fired upon with high pressure water hoses, murdered on dark highways and they met this violence with nonviolence. The other big factor was television. Images of people being subjected to violence were shown around the world and sympathy was with the nonviolent protesters.

Always image conscious, White America didn't suddenly acknowledge that all people are created equal but a significant number of them sought to disassociate themselves from the overtly racist extremists. Racism wasn't dead, but laws were passed that made its overt practice illegal. It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.--MLK, The Trumpet of Conscience, 1967.

I tend to think in analogical connections and our current battle against the unfettered conservatism that threatens to devour our country reminds me of the battle that was fought against that other voracious monster known as institutionalized racism . The feelings of powerlessness, frustration, and fear expressed by my fellow liberals are understandable and no Pollyanna pep talk is going to change those feelings. I don't believe that people are naturally good at heart, but from what I've seen in my lifetime, I do believe that change can happen. Forty-five years ago, I couldn't drink from a public water fountain unless it had a sign above it that read, "For Coloreds Only." The world of my childhood and today's world are as different as night and day.

We are far from a post-racial society. I'm a big science fiction fan and I think of racism as being a creature like that of the Alien movies, incubating in the chests of some people until it breaks forth screaming, spreading destruction everywhere. In the movies,  Sigourney Weaver kicks its alien ass. Alas, Sigourney isn't available except on the silver screen, so we have to do our own ass kicking when it comes to racism and the disease known as the Tea Party.

To do this, we have to be better strategists than they are. Like Dr. King, we have to determine how best to overcome. Venting our frustration may be necessary on occasion, but anger and frustration do not generate solutions. Our strength is our ability to act rationally in the face of irrationality. I don't find the use of vulgarity offensive, just useless. Anger is exactly what these people best understand. King and Ghandi understood this. Meet irrational hate with anger and you feed the fire of their hate; meet irrationality with reason and persistence and your enemy is confused and does not know what to make of your response. For that reason, we must keep our wits about us because our strength lies in our rationality, in our ability to reason and though the path be rocky, we must continue to traverse it, one step at a time.