The Civil War Won’t Last That Long

This is personal, so I’ll just say it flat out. “I don’t love this country enough to try and save it from the new angry and resentful breed of Republicans”. I haven’t been what you’d call, “a patriot” since the 1950s, and seeing as how the American public has some input into the fate of the country, I feel that The United States pretty much deserves what it gets. And what America will probably get in 2012 is an all-Republican government with a Republican president, but this is better than the alternative.

The alternative isn’t Obama. He wouldn’t last that long if he was re-elected. The alternative to Republicanism is civil war. No president in United States history has been as aggressively hated as Obama, and it started the day after his inauguration when conservatives across America went out and stocked-up on hand guns and assault rifles and ammunition. To their credit, they haven’t opened fire just yet.... outside of Arizona, but if they can’t get their way at the polls next year— if Obama beats their guy or gal in the election, then In Rick Perry’s popular shit-kicker vernacular, “they’ll get ugly on him”. No way in hell would they peacefully tolerate another four years.

I could actually vote Republican in 2012, if I could vote for Chris Christie or Jon Huntsman, but Christie is too intelligent to even want the job of president, and Huntsman is too intelligent to get the nomination from the party of Perry, Palin, and Bachmann. Most Republicans now seem to value only angry fundamentalism and extreme conservatism, which means that their candidate will be an extreme conservative fundamentalist, and almost certainly angry and ignorant as well. So I won’t be voting Republican. I will vote again for Obama as I did three years ago, but this time I really don’t want him to win. I don’t want the street riots to start. Not that the civil war would last that long. It would be over in a day or two. The Republicans have all the guns. And I wouldn’t be anywhere in sight. I don’t love this country enough to resist angry Republicans when they have guns in their hands.

A Doomsday Feedback Loop

The men who signed the Declaration of Independence initially reserved the vote for white male property owners, and while some of them might have harbored their own sexism or racism, the majority of the Founding Fathers were simply acting on the assumption that only white male property owners could inform themselves sufficiently to vote intelligently. Slaves and women (for the most part) didn’t read newspapers. A slave master was in the position to tell a slave how to think politically, and the same was true for husbands and wives, and only property owners were deemed to have the kind of stake in the governmental system that would motivate them to stay abreast of national affairs. The intent was always to have our democracy guided by an educated, well-informed electorate.

Fast forward to the 21st century, and a focus-tested world where opinions about pretty much everything— including politics— are shaped by what appears on electronic screens of every conceivable shape and size. When it’s time to vote, the 50% of the eligible voters who choose to cast their ballot will do so based on what they’ve been told by the heads that appear on their screens. For the most part, this means that their vote will mirror the opinion of someone else (probably a politician), and will most likely have little to do with their own understanding of the issues. The system has worked this way for at least half a century, ever since the advent of television, and it wasn’t previously much of a deal breaker because the elected politicians, once in office, had access to the kind of information necessary to govern intelligently. Quite simply, a public vote cast in ignorance didn’t guarantee ignorant governance.

Now that’s changed. The politicians, especially Republicans, and especially Michele Bachmann in particular, are perfectly candid in saying that they shape their opinions and voting positions based on what “the voters” tell them. And, of course, the voters tell the politicians only what the politicians have told the voters. In the sciences of chemistry and physics and biology, this is known as a feedback loop, and it doesn’t allow for much, if any, variance based on new input.

The current economic deterioration of America is the biggest single problem we’ve ever faced. Our fate is now being guided by “the people” who know nothing about the staggering complexities of tweaking the largest economy on earth, and this guidance is channeled through elected representatives who know little more than “the people” they claim to listen to. These forces are reinforcing each other in a feedback loop with almost no input from economists or any kind of outside experts who might actually know something about money and finance and business and international banking.

The thing about feedback loops is that they always magnify any imperfection, and— lacking a correction mechanism— when left alone for sufficient time, each and every component of the loop will eventually self destruct.

The Perfect Icon for Our Times

Hats off to Newsweek Magazine for its cover photograph of the wide-eyed, looney-looking Michele Bachmann. More than any other single visual image in the last few years, this Pulitzer-worthy photo captures every nuance of America’s flirtation with true collective mental illness. Whether or not it was Newsweek’s intention, the magazine has given us the perfect icon for our times. We're so messed up now that we can't even do rebellion in a rational way.

Looking back to the early years of Vietnam, governmental failures at that time coincided with the Civil Rights movement, and the summer of love in San Francisco, followed by Woodstock two years later. Back then, we knew how to rebel against a constrictive and dysfunctional Federal government by celebrating our own version of freedom. Our icon then was Bob Dylan who wasn’t electrically mesmerizing in any wide-eyed way. He was just simply brilliant in a thoughtful way. Fast forward 40 years. After ten years of Iraq and Afghanistan and Democrats and Republicans, our newest version of rebellion takes the form of the Tea Party, with Michele Bachmann as their standard bearer. They gravitated to her because they thought Sarah Palin was too intellectual. You know that a nation is crazy when the rebellion against the national insanity is crazier than the national insanity itself.

Not All Breiviks Live In Norway

It was a lone self-described Christian conservative (his description, not mine) who perpetrated last week’s lethal rampage in Norway to highlight the erosion of culture by the infiltration of those who are “different.” In this case, the “different” meant the Muslim immigrants moving into Europe in increasing numbers. Clearly, as a dramatic statement about maintaining a certain cultural purity, this deranged killing spree was different from anything that had come before, but the dirty little secret is that Oslo was different only in degree, not in essence.

To justify his insane murders, the homegrown Norwegian killer, Anders Breivik stated that he was offended by the prospect of Muslims “mixing in.” Thus, Breivik joins the long list of other Christian conservatives who have been offended by “different” people “mixing in.” Christian conservatives fought against equal rights for Negros right up until the 1972 passage of the Equal Rights Amendment because they didn’t want people with dark skin and kinky hair to be “mixing in.” When the KKK would set their chosen symbol on fire to intimidate and threaten Negros, it wasn’t the symbol of the swastika, or the symbol of the star and crescent. It was the symbol of the Christian cross. And today, the Christian conservatives have targeted homosexuals as the latest group to be prevented from “mixing in.”

Readers of this blog know that I’m not a fan of Christianity, and my reason for this is that I see Christianity— at least in its conservative fundamentalist version— as exclusionary and elitist. It’s all about deciding who is offensive to God, and deciding who should be prevented from “mixing in.” But mostly, it’s all about making the fundamentalist Christian conservatives feel like they’re “special.” Swelling their ranks are evangelists like James Dobson and Ted Haggard, and politicians like Michele Bachmann, and self-appointed “therapists” like Michele’s husband, Doctor Bachmann Ph.D.— all claiming to speak the mind of the Lord when they oppose gay marriage, and as they work to marginalize homosexuals I see a little bit of Anders Breivik in all of them.

Why Michele Bachmann is Fortunate to Live at This Time

If you’ve ever watched someone suffer a severe migraine headache, it can be outwardly obvious that there’s something going on inside their skull that you don’t want going on inside your skull. It’s hard to hide intense pain. That’s probably why migraine headache symptoms were routinely interpreted as a sign of demonic possession 300 or so years ago in America. I happen to know a little bit about this. A distant relative of mine, Elizabeth Clawson, was one of the last women to be accused of witchcraft, and she stood trial in Stamford Connecticut in 1692. She was actually acquitted, which is why she survived to raise a family that cascaded down through the generations until I could finally join the tribe 250 years later. I mention this now because I’ve done a fair amount of research on the witch trials in New England (there were other locations besides Salem), and I can report with absolute certainty that more than one woman was burned at the stake simply because she was seen by other people while displaying outward symptoms of what was certainly a severe migraine headache.

Migraines are in the news this week because Michele Bachmann is reported to suffer occasionally from this affliction, but this blog isn’t a rant about the prospect of a female U.S. President having a migraine while her finger is on the nuclear trigger. That wouldn’t be my problem— not unless Boulder Colorado was on her target list, which— come to think of it— might be the case. No, that’s not why I’m raising the subject. I mention Michele Bachmann and migraine headaches because she needs to be ever thankful that she lives in the 21st century instead of the 17th century. Back then, suffering with migraines, she might very well have been suspected of communing with Satan as a witch. And living as she does with a hardcore bible thumper it would’ve been hard to hide the signs, which he would have immediately recognized as something offensive to God. Deciding what’s offensive to God and then inflicting that decision on other people is what bible thumpers do, and Michele Bachmann’s husband is notorious for this. He’s even built a cottage industry abound it. Doctor Bachmann Ph.D. spends his time these days “curing” homosexuality which he’s decided is a curse from God, but three hundred years ago he would most certainly have been building fires under the feet of some women with severe migraine headaches. Michele is fortunate to have been living at this time.

How Would Jesus Solve the U.S. Budget Problem?

In all four gospels there’s a written account of an episode where Jesus chased money changers and livestock merchants from the Temple of Herod by the use of his own physical force. So from the gospels we know this about the Lord and Savior of All Mankind— he was not above pitching a good old fashioned fit in the pursuit of political activism when confronted by an intolerable economic situation. Good for him. This documentation stands in stark contrast to what the gospels say about the actions of Jesus when confronted by homosexuality and abortion (both of which were as common in biblical times as they are now). Quite simply, the gospels say NOTHING about this. Zippo. Zilch. Notta. Jesus, as far as we know, never uttered one single solitary word about homosexuality or gay lifestyle or abortion. These issues may or may not have been off his radar, but they were certainly absent from his talking points.

I bring this up now because I believe the Republicans are missing a great opportunity. For the last 40 or more years, the Republican Party has regularly found someone on their team with a special relationship to Jesus— somebody who could tap into the infinite mind of the Son of God, and report to us what the Big Guy really and truly feels about things like gay marriage or abortion. How else can you explain all the right wing rhetoric about God’s opposition to such practices? The GOP position is clearly not taken from the gospels which are silent on the dreaded sex-related topics.

The newest GOP favorite with a channel (albeit an indirect channel) to Jesus is Michele Bachmann. Her husband, Doctor Bachmann Ph.D. runs the family business— a Christian Counseling service that offers to change a person’s sexual orientation from gay to straight by filling them in on God’s negative opinion of their behavior. I think Doctor Bachmann Ph.D. is squandering a huge opportunity here. If he can climb inside God’s head to get the lowdown on homosexuality, why wouldn’t he also try to get some divine inspiration about topics like budget deficits or how to avoid national bankruptcy? Biblical history tells us that Jesus actually cared about financial malfeasance and economic impropriety enough to get physically involved trying to make things better. I’ll bet Jesus would be more than willing to talk about raising the debt ceiling if only some special person like Doctor Bachmann Ph.D. would ask the right questions during their next discussion. And then Doctor Bachmann Ph.D. could tell his wife, Michele, and she could go to Waterloo and tell the rest of us.

Taking Back America

I'll admit that I just don't seem to understand codes, particularly the codes used by political parties to say things internally that will stay under the radar of those outsiders who might take offense or dispute the messages. Case in point is the Tea Party call to take back America. I flat don't get it. Take back America from what? Or from who? And most importantly, take back America how? "Take Back America" is the kind of shorthand that looks good on a bumber sticker, but since the meaning is so ambiguous I have to assume that it's code for something deeper and perhaps more sinister. Could it be that there are patriotic Americans who want to take their country back from a colored man who got himself elected President?

"Taking back America" seems to be a favorite theme (always unaccompanied by specifics) with Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann, and I confess that each time I hear it from them it reminds me of the cheerleader who sleeps with the entire football team, and then goes off to college announcing that she intends to take back her virginity.