Republican Madness

It would be unendingly funny if it were not so serious.


Arianna Huffington: Sunday Roundup
This week, the Grand Old Party continued its march into madness -- and irrelevancy. Rep. Spencer Bachus pegged the number of Congressional socialists at 17. Rep. Michele Bachmann said she fears the Obama administration will use "volunteerism" to create "re-education camps for young people." Sen. James Inhofe responded to news that Obama plans to increase military spending by $31 billion dollars by claiming the president "is disarming America." And Rick Santorum penned an op-ed accusing Obama of having "disdain for American values." Elsewhere, proving that stupid has no borders, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said the 17,000 survivors of Italy's deadly earthquake "should see it like a weekend of camping" -- a lovely companion to Barbara Bush's memorable observation that Katrina victims housed at a relocation center in Texas "were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them." Happy Easter, HuffPosters.

G.O.P.: R.I.P.

BY Steven Weber
April 11, 2009

So there it stands: a naked, pigeon-chested old man, random strands of white hair on its boney shoulders; its swollen-knuckled hands clasped over its dead genitals, looking at once forlorn and menacing, shivering with self-loathing and xenophobia, raging pathetically at its timely and appropriate defeat at the hands of Reason.

Ladies and gentlemen: The Republican Party.

With every passing day, the people who stubbornly, maddeningly cling to an obsolete ideal and who stand in the way of the cultural advancement of this country, this America, spew the base reality of their caustic ideology into the air.

The Republican Party is like a dying tyrant, mad with syphilis, ironically like that very Stalin they would accuse their enemies of associating with. How else to account for their desperation to resurrect the wraith of Joseph McCarthy; the hammy and baffling utterances from high level party officials like Boehner and McConnell; the blatant desire on their part to let the country fail out of sheer resentment... ranging from the quasi Madame Defarge Michele Bachmann to the porcine, pill-popping porcine propagandist Rush Limbaugh?

It is an all out assault on reason, on progress, on truth. What is the difference between the Republican Party and, say, the Taliban? A rogue by any other name would smell as rank. Their frantic accusations all churned out in a futile effort to explain their current pariah status is as pathetic and draconian as stoning a woman in the street.

I feel I must apologize for my own particularly febrile anger. It's unseemly and ugly. But finally, the enemy is clearly outlined. We can see it for what it is and what it always has been. It exists not in myth but in a reality which has plagued humanity for millennia: utter, hateful ignorance born from a fear of truth, indeed a fear of life itself; a mad and impotent pursuit of some long-forgotten ecstasy having spawned generations of paranoid power addicts who chase the past at the expense of the future, cloaking their real intentions in perfumed patriotism and the seductive swoon of religion.

It's so fitting that we are living in an age where beheadings, torture, piracy and now unbridled power mongering are all common place. Perhaps that element of humanity is going back into hibernation and is snapping at any and everything before its eyes finally close. In our lifetime the choice has never been so stark.

Don't be intimidated by that naked, pigeon-chested old man. His party's over.

Spencer Bachus

I have tried to keep this blog on literary topics and away from politics, but I cannot help but comment on this. Driving back into town today from Troy, I hear on CNN (satelite radio) that MY congressman, Spencer Bachus, is claiming that he has a list of 17 socialists in the Congress. CNN has contacted both his Washington and Birmingham offices for an explanation, but, of course, they have not received a response.

First of all, Spencer Bachus wouldn't know a "socialist" if one hit him upside the head. Secondly, he will never release such a list because he has no list. This is just classic Republican red-baiting that goes back to Joe McCarthy in the 50's.

Spencer Bachus is a Class A idiot. I say this reluctantly since he is an Auburn graduate. I suppose not all AU grads are smart.

The Politics of Rage by Dan T. Carter

I discovered this magnificent biography of George Wallace by accident at a local bookstore and what a great reading experience it was! No one who grew up in Alabama the 50's, 60's, & 70's can fail to come to terms with George C. Wallace. Like him or hate him, and I am in the latter category, you have to deal with this man.

I can still remember Wallace speaking in Winfield during his first run for Governor in 1958. Wallace would lose that race to John Patterson, but he would never lose a race for Governor again.

Wallace would go on to serve as our state's Governor for 16 years and his first wife Lurleen served 2 years before dying in office of cancer in 1968. So Wallace controlled this state for 18 years.

He was the precursor of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and the politics of the white backlash to the modern civil rights movement. These people, mainly Wallace, always tried to insist that their politics was about states rights and getting the federal government out of our lives, but it was always about race, and everybody knew it.

Wallace's politics was blatantly racist; that of Nixon and Reagan had to be muted and coded, but it was there nonetheless. Wallace was the first and the greatest of the modern day racist demogogues.

The Economy

We've had the recent upsurge in the stock market. Is this the beginning of an improving economy (the economy improved in 1931 and President Hoover mistakenly said that the worst was over) or is Wall Street playing us for suckers?

The G-20 meeting in London resulted in concrete plans from the world's leading economies. Do we have reason for optimism or is this economic situation worse than we are realizing? Is what the G-20 is planning enough?

One thing is for sure: nobody knows for sure.

Literary Term of the Week (2)

IRONY - A figure of speech in which the actual intent is expressed in words which carry the opposite meaning. Irony is often confused with sarcasm but it differs from sarcasm in that it is usually lighter, less in its wording though in effect probably more cutting because of its indirectness. It bears, too, a relationship with innuendo. The ability to recognize irony is one of the surest tests of intelligence and sophistication.

Jonathan Swift is a great ironist; his "Modest Proposal" for saving a starving Ireland by suggesting that the Irish sell their babies to the English landords is probably the most supreme example of savage irony in the English language.

From A Handbook to Literature by Thrall, Hibbard, and Holman

Quasi Luddite

I consider myself a quasi Luddite. Since I was not raised in the digital world, I like to think I know how to live properly in these technological times.

First of all, I've decided to have at least one off-day per week: one day in which I do not look at a computer screen. At least one day a week I say STOP THE INTERNET: I WANT TO GET OFF! So far it's done me a lot of good. My focus is better. My disposition is better. My mood has stablized.

I do not Twitter and will never Twitter.

I recently joined Facebook and though I like it, I've discovered it's mostly the same people posting trivial stuff day after day. It gets tedious after a while. It is mostly superficial.

I do not own an iPhone, an iPod, or a Blackberry nor do I ever intend to own any of these items. I believe I can be a happy and productive person without any of these electronic toys.

The virtual world is not the real world. The real world is family, home, work with real people, and flesh and blood friends in my physical presence.

So far I like the way I am living, properly balancing the virtual and what I call the real world.