Extreme

Extreme is one of the words that defines our time. Extreme sports, for instance -- ordinary sports just aren't enough, but it's not just popular entertainment that needs to be as wild and crazy.  The safer things get, the more we seem to need the excitement of battling danger with passion and with that passion come extreme precautions, and extreme laws -- and extreme stupidity.

Take the danger of child abuse -- it's real, but really, do we need to define the normal and harmless so that it can't be told from the abnormal and harmful?  Of course we do because so much depends, in our totally politicized nation, on hysteria, on showing everyone that we're "proactive" and that any grotesque manifestation of our crusading nature is justifiable "if only one ____ is saved."

It's hard to know what was saved when 7 year old Josh Welch of Baltimore was suspended from school for having chewed his Pop-Tart into something that looked to a teacher like a gun, but it's not unique.  Kids get into trouble for things that seem to someone of my age as if teachers are simply looking for any bizarre excuse to define a nail clipper as a "weapon" or a cough drop is "drugs."  As with so many indefensible things, it's usually defined as "protecting the children."

Again it's hard to know who was protected when an Arizona couple had their children taken from them and their lives arguably ruined for taking bath time pictures of their three toddlers on a towel, hugging each other.  Some Wal-Mart watchdog saw the photos and called the cops. Although a judge eventually determined that the parents weren't thinking about sex when they took the pictures (that's apparently all that's needed) the kids were traumatically  "protected" by being put in foster care and the parents on one of those "sexual offender" lists that essentially render one an outlaw and unable to live near civilization for the rest of their lives. 

So do we wonder that some people think it's not really silly to think that in some ways we have an intrusive government?  Can some be excused for speculating about having lost some essential  freedom because extremism in defense of some thing or another is no vice?  The hell it isn't!  Those who argue that the ends sanctify the means and never mind who gets hurt, can't rightly be called Liberals or Conservatives.  I call them cowards when I'm trying to be gentle and understanding, but I've pretty much run out of those two things these days.

Defending the Faith

I hesitate to write about this, since everyone and his horse will undoubtedly pick up on the latest Republican hilarity.  It's an easy target, but it says so much about what the Republican party has been party to: the degradation of truth, logic, decency and freedom.  Yes, we have another Republican telling us that women probably can't get pregnant from being raped.

Denial, as I've been saying ad nauseam, is the flip side of belief and every belief requires a denial.  Denial of what you know to be true, is hypocrisy and to avoid hypocrisy, too many Republicans will defend what they know to be false and tell themselves it's heroic; tell themselves that lies are not lies if they're useful in defending the faith. Some of what one needs to defend in order to gain party support is immoral, indecent, mean-spirited and nasty too. Much of it is just a series of damned lies, but that's another story. 

There's just no truth to the idea that God or biology protect a rape victim from pregnancy but the creed demands that one oppose terminating a pregnancy, whether unwanted or repellant or dangerous, so you -- forgive my technical jargon -- have to make shit up in order to defend the belief and deny the truth, be it incontrovertible truth about evolution, cosmology, geology, economics, law, mathematics or history. In many cases, being a Republican requires that you park not only your brains, but your honesty, your decency in the alley behind the GOP bar next to the dumpster, lest any of the clergy see it.

I won't deny that I take a certain satisfaction in presenting this one small, relatively unimportant demonstration of the mental processes that produce and direct the American Opera Buffo.  I delight in airing their dirty laundry, not because I like the rancid smell of batshit, but because it's time to burn it and bury the ashes.  It has been time forever.  

TSA backs off

So you think the TSA has finally come to its senses and smartened up its ban on deadly weapons like nail clippers and pool cues?  Most people, if they bother to think about it, aren't all that terrified that some 12 year old carrying his Little League bat or hockey stick is going to commandeer a 747, nor is the woman with that tiny Swiss Army knife on her keychain.  The TSA has at least recognized that the hijackings of  9/11/01 were facilitated by cabin doors without locks, thanks to the refusal of our  regulatory agencies to force that level of security on private business. Box cutters were secondary.


Your tiny knife with tweezers and nail file isn't really going to allow a terrorist incident or some adolescent to take over an airplane with a plastic hockey stick and so the TSA is going to acknowledge the laughter and relent -- in some cases.  In customary ban-it writing style however, the descriptions of the newly permitted items seem to have been written by people being forced to relent at gunpoint or people from Mars who have never seen and are terrified of sharp objects.

So what can you take on the plane that you couldn't last week?  Cigarette lighters, although you can't smoke,  up to two golf clubs,  ( three would somehow be too dangerous) toy bats or other sports sticks and small pocket knives with blades up to (wait for this) 2.36 inches.  2.37 is too scary to allow and a fixed blade is out for some reason known only to Martians and most mysteriously, if the handle has any curve to it, it's still a terrorist assault weapon and prohibited.  My tiny mustache scissors?  Sorry Osama, you and your beard don't get on the plane.

Box cutters?  Even though the evidence from 9/11 really doesn't support the newspaper story, a 1" box cutter blade, half the length of  Uncle Fogg's Victorinox is just too al Qaeda for the TSA.

You'll suspect that I'm going somewhere with this, but I don't need to, you already guessed that I think people who write and most passionately defend regulatory descriptions  tend to be fond of tin foil haberdashery, or at least that's my opinion -- and I'm sticking with it.

Suffer the Children?

Want to know what ticks me off?  Of course you do -- it's that so many of us who think we're out of the woods because the Republicans lost the last two presidential elections   have resumed the idiotic posturing and bickering, hyperbolizing, fear mongering and in-fighting about our often worn out  liberal issues.  Does anyone really think that right wing extremism has slunk away like the loser in a dog fight?

Is the Democratic party going back to being the ban-it party, the baby-on-board ' can't trust anybody party that can't agree with each other enough to get anything done? Are we back to 'ban-the-bomb' naïveté while real evil marches on? Of course, that's what we do, but guess what bucky, Limbaugh still draws ratings and the Fox is still alive -- or at least undead.

Remember when Obama's little talk about patriotism to schoolchildren was "just like Pol Pot?"  Well when Obama cancelled some White House tours, it was only so that he could "maximize the pain" for children says grimacing Gretchen the witch of Fox News.  "Can we be adults about this?" she asked while meanwhile back at the fortress of evil, a Republican (Texas of course) Rep was proposing that Obama can't play golf again until the Republicans say so. Is Louie Gohmert old enough to remember when Eisenhower was accused of playing golf while the Russkies missle-gapped us?

Meanwhile, while Carlson and the Doocebag are trying to Fox Block Obama, inquiring minds are asking whether the Evil Empire will discuss the effect the sequestration gambit will have on American Children.  That's right, children.  They're such useful tools and they're great for breakfast too.  Just ask the Fox.

Disheartening Defense of a Crime of Violence Against a Woman

I was fully aware of the steep decline in journalistic integrity that has plagued the once respected weekly TIME magazine, but was not ready for this disgusting piece of yellow journalism. TIME sort of plays the thing from all sides. The most obvious side being that the white ruling class in South Africa must protect itself from the violent, criminal masses yearning to break into their private compounds, or laagers, read gated and heavily armed communities or clusters of mansions. I think that the photo of Pistorius on the cover will sell very well at the grocery store and drugstore checkout stands across the U.S., but TIME magazine may not be ready for the negative fallout that they will receive after publishing this sickening apology and justification for the cold-blooded murder of an innocent girlfriend by a gun-wielding, yet insecure, egomaniac. The entire article seems to be a plea to accept Pistorius's implausible explanation of shooting his own woman through a bathroom door. Absolutely disgusting. As Pistorius serves out his term in prison, he won't have to worry about killing anyone else with a gun again. I hope that my link to the article works.

Duelling with the dummies

I've become rather tired of railing on and on about how idiotic and venal one Republican politician and pundit after another are.  After all, if another guy is stupid and  crooked it doesn't mean I'm a genius and free from error, nor those with whom I agree. I'd like to say I stay calm and rational and analytical or I stay quiet, but sometimes. . . sometimes the things you hear them say just take your breath away like a sudden blast of 25 below Chicago wind and you've just got to say something and call an idiot an idiot.

Washington State Rep. Ed Orcutt (R), who would like to tax bicycles (what, you really thought they don't like to tax things?) would like to justify it by telling constituents that bicycles, or at least people who ride them, give off more carbon dioxide than they would driving a car.  OK, so you passed middle school science and I don't have to tell you that even Honest Lance in his prime wasn't sucking in 400 CFM of air and oxidizing several gallons of gasoline an hour moving a couple tons down the road, but Eddy boy here either is grossly uneducated, dumb as a doorknob, a damn liar  -- or all of the above. Am I repeating myself here?  I guess so, I already mentioned that he was a Republican politician.

He doesn't need to be otherwise. He doesn't need to be truthful or make any kind of sense when flatulating to the fold. Republicans will believe anything as long as it's part of the creed or think it will save them or their owners a buck, which is pretty much the same thing.  No, as you might suspect, and like the bulk of the things Republicans rant and rave about, it's not true.

In a way, you and I can smile and act dismissive of such idiotic antics but there's a danger in it. Fighting with idiots can make us lazy and it can make us smug and sometimes we get caught with our pants down and our dunce caps on.  The Nietzsche thing about fighting with monsters applies to arguing with idiots. We still have to be as careful as ever to be sure of our facts, not to sound like idiots ourselves and sometimes when you look into the abyss of stupidity, the abyss looks into you.

Oh Really?

I parked next to a new Lexus at the bank yesterday and my car being as low slung as it is,  a magnetic sign on its door was right in my face.  I had to think for a while, wondering if the state of American education was really that defective or if the owner simply wished it were.

Now I'm assuming the Lexus driver, an elderly women was referring to Roman Catholicism and not to some abstract universality of taste -- an assumption aided by the iconography -- and if that assumption is correct, she must assume that Jewish followers of Jesus as the Messiah became a universal church based in Rome in the year of Jesus' crucifixion.

I don't want to seem like I'm picking on Catholics, after all a good portion of this fine Southern Community are convinced and would argue a little too heatedly that the entire universe was established in 4004 BC, or at least our infinitesimal mote.

Funny how organizations that use history as a justification, have to tailor it to fit -- with an occasional taking in or letting out of the seams.  Somewhere along the line Constantine and perhaps Athanasius of Alexandria were patched over or removed as you might eliminate a pocket or a buttonhole, but who's going to argue with the old lady Lexus driver.  It's Florida and she's probably armed.

Droning on and on

I usually describe myself, when it comes up, as a born-again liberal: I was one of Rush Limbaugh's original audience, back when he started out on KFBK out of Sacramento.

The Trophy Wife spent the first years of our marriage dragging me out of Neanderthal status and up to a level where I wasn't flinging poo and grunting, and I was probably almost there, when George Bush sent me to Iraq. I got back, and started noting the discrepancies: the "weapons of mass destruction," the central argument in favor of invading Iraq, not only didn't exist, but the evidence that they did was openly fabricated.

Yes, to be honest, Iraq had once had chemical weapons which they'd used on their own people. We knew that, because we sold it to them.



Saddam and his government were cooperating with the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, when Bush finally pulled out the inspectors and invaded anyway.

As I learned more and more, I reached a point in 2004 when my wife came home to find me in tears. It had finally come home to me that George Bush had made us a rogue nation, and we'd invaded another country just because we wanted something from them. Exactly as Saddam had in the first Gulf War. (Admittedly, the tears might have been helped along by the lingering remains of the weakest case of PTSD on record, but there it is.)

But overall, I'll admit publicly to being what Stephanie Miller calls a "happy-clappy liberal." I think Obama has done great things, despite a Congress full of Republicans who would rather watch the country burn than let our first black president succeed.

I like that he dismantled "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." I had a number of good friends in the military who happened to be gay, and their life was not a happy one.

I like that he managed to get health-care reform started, so that poor people don't have to die in pain. Despite what Fox "News" wants you to believe, Obama has managed to do a lot of very important things in the face of uninterrupted Republican obstruction.

I've got to say, though, that of all the policies Obama's put in place, the one I disagree with the most is the badly-targeted killing of civilians using unmanned drones. It reeks of Orwellian CIA assassinations: the actions of a corrupt dictator, killing his enemies with impunity.

I'm also a realist. I understand why it's being done. We do have enemies around the world (moreso since we burned down big chunks of the Middle East), and they would like nothing more than to score a symbolic victory by killing a good-sized group of Americans. But I also believe in these weird foreign concepts like habeas corpus, and "innocent until proven guilty."

I think that murder is a bad thing. So the whole subject leaves me a little torn.

In the end, though, I see nothing good about drone strikes. Are you aware that only one out of every fifty people killed by drones have been terrorists? Instead, we're killing wedding guests, innocent schoolchildren, people attending funerals, or even rescue workers:

Based on interviews with witnesses, victims and experts, the report accuses the CIA of "double-striking" a target, moments after the initial hit, thereby killing first responders.

I understand the popularity of the program: no US forces are in any danger of being harmed. But somewhere along the line, we seem to have lost sight of the bigger picture: we're murdering innocent people.

But Democrats don't want to say bad things about Obama, and this program is the only thing Obama does that the GOP actually supports. So nothing gets done.

Weirdly enough, American bigotry is suddenly showing itself to have a stronger moral base than the American government. As long as the deaths were just foreigners and Muslims, nobody cared. But when word got out that the US government was also killing Americans, the possible backlash might just cause the government to rethink their policy.

(The idiot end of the political spectrum, of course, feels an obligation to overreact to this, as it does to everything that the Kenyan usurper does: they're already shrieking about "Drone strikes on American soil!!"

To be honest, if it makes the US rethink its drone program, I don't mind the overreaction this time.

Handling the Truth

One of those movie quotes that may well long outlive not only the actor who spoke the lines but those who saw the movie when it was first released, is Jack Nicholson's "You can't handle the truth."  As a general statement about Americans, it may well be true and we don't really need to in many cases since media corporations from Hollywood to Newscorp are there to give us tuned up, revised, redacted and sanitized version with beautifully produced happy endings. Take Argo, for instance.  Will history reflect tendentious interpretations of what happened during the Iran Hostage crisis the way Happy Days or those Austin Powers flicks reflected the 50's and 60's -- in a fun house mirror? People who remember the times clearly and as adults may not think those days were so happy and the buck toothed Powers dressed up as Friedrich Schiller may seem bewilderingly irrelevant.

It's hard -- hell it's impossible to imagine how the early years of our new century will be portrayed whether in thriller or sit-com form in 20 or 30 years.  I'm almost glad I won't be around to see it for fear of some George Bush as the Fonz with his flight suit and aircraft carrier musical.  Heyyyyy.  Or perhaps George and Cheney and their adventures in saving the world from Liberals and terrorists.  But if my worst fears come true, if we descend into what I hope is only a nightmare from which one awakes to the smell of coffee and the morning paper,  how will today's crazies look on tomorrow's TV?  Will we even acknowledge the Survivalists and Preppers stockpiling weapons for an apocalypse that still hasn't happened, the revolution they still dream of. The Tea Party, the Homophobes, the Fundamentalists, the immigrant haters, the white supremacists. . . 

 Will we watch Springtime for Limbaugh on Broadway or will he just fade away like Father Coughlin? Will Osama have been caught through the use of torture and by George Bush while the Recession was caused by the president who inherited it?   Ask some scriptwriter and director yet unborn.

Who knows, but I doubt we'll have ceased to be a war worshiping nation of swaggering Chauvinists and self styled saviors of "freedom,"  So maybe we will have saved freedom at least in the movies and won't notice that we have a government that knows every breath you've taken and every thought you've had and doesn't trust you with cash or nail clippers of liquids in more than 3 Oz containers and tracks you with GPS and micro-drones and will arrest you for having bad thoughts.

I hate to sound like one of those "everything is getting worse," wolf crying, Chicken Little types you find on the Right and the Left.  I'm not, but I think it's always been bad and we just hide it and explain it away and paint it over with murals.  It's human nature and it's the nature of nations and creeds.  The only truth we can handle is the stuff we make up.

Vacating the Vatican

Now that the annual movie industry festival of self adulation and fulsome self promotion is over, a world that likes to speculate can't help but turn its attention to the scheduled departure of Pope Benedict XVI this Thursday -- and the reasons behind it.  Yes, of course he's 85 and it's quite possible his heart is failing in the metaphorical and medical sense, but with the apparently never ending story of child molestation and cover-ups and lawsuits and more cover-ups, one can't help entertaining  the suspicion that what we have is a Ratzinger leaving a sinking ship.  Is the resignation of Scotland's Archbishop  Keith O'Brien now embroiled in another sex scandal and the moving up of his scheduled departure from March 17 a hint that there is something going on below the surface, like the base of a huge iceberg?  We'll have to wait.

"The Lord is calling me to go on top of the hill, to dedicate myself once more to prayer and meditation," 

said the Pope at his final public prayer Sunday last.  As with all such calls, nobody but he can tell us about it and nobody but God can tell us why. I don't think he will tell me.