This. Is. Insane.

  

 

 

Seems to Me

5/28/23

 

This.  Is.  Insane.

 

 

May 24 marked one year since the horrific, grievous shooting deaths of 19 children and two of their teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.  So recent activities in that state seem somehow fitting, if tragically ironic.

 

Somewhat earlier this year, the Texas legislature, evidently not overwhelmed by the burdens of governing the state within its prescribed 140-day biannual session, managed to find time to consider a bill that would provide for third graders to receive annual training to man bleeding control stations in their schools the event of a shooting.  These stations would be equipped to render the same type of trauma care provided on the battlefield to U.S. armed forces.

 

The typical third grader is eight or nine years old.  That’s below the age to become a Boy or Girl Scout, organizations with form in offering rather less dramatic first aid instruction.

 

But not to worry.  Quibbling issues of age of its potential providers aside, the necessity of this training will doubtless be reduced now that Texas students as young as four are soon to be toddling home from school with Winnie-the-Pooh cartoon booklets teaching them to “run, hide, fight” if a gunman enters their school.  The “Hide” admonition comes couched in soothing rhyme – “If danger is near, do not fear, HIDE like Pooh does until the police appear” – and an accompanying illustration of Pooh with his head in a honey pot.  If the Uvalde Police Department’s response is anything to go by, 74 minutes is a long time for a four-year old to have their head anywhere.

 

Well, Texas.  Where a permit-less carry law took effect in 2021, allowing the good (and other) citizens to pack handguns in public without having to bother with a background check, obtaining a license, or the hassle of demonstrating any firearms proficiency whatsoever.  As predictable as sunrise, firearm mortality rate increased ten percent that same year while the state’s number of firearm deaths – 4,613 – led the nation.  Since the beginning of this year, Texas has suffered 18 mass shootings, being daintily defined by the Gun Violence Archives – what kind of country has such an organization? – as four or more victims, but not including the shooter. 

 

Not that Texas is, sadly – tragically -- by any means alone among states in its craven proclivity to rush right by the cause of the problem to get to the far easier, more agreeable and, most importantly, less politically risky business of just dealing with the consequences.  Far better when the roof leaks to line up the buckets than to climb on the roof.

 

Infringe on the holy right to own lethal warfare tools designed expressly for the purpose of causing the maximum harm in minimum time?  Why, no thank you.  Because, well, you never know.  Someday some poor soul might come to the door looking for some other address.  Or a carful of kids might use your driveway to turn around.  Or someone in a parking lot might mistakenly get into your car.  Or -- the horror! -- some pesky neighbor in the middle of the night might ask you to refrain from shooting your gun off so their kids can get some sleep.  

 

The Texas state motto is “Friendship.”  Much more appropriate, if equally ineffective, would be “Thoughts and prayers.”  For the rest of us, recognizing the utter insanity of the current situation – both causes and facile remedies -- would be a useful start.

 

 

 

1/23/21

 As the gale-force exhalation of held breath after the inauguration subsides, among the myriad questions is the near- and long-term future of the Republican party.  Having lost the popular vote for the Presidency in seven of the last eight contests and most recently turned the trifecta of Presidency, House and Senate (albeit a tie), the Grand (sic) Old Party clearly needs to revisit the “autopsy” it conducted in 2012 in the wake of Obama’s second substantial victory.  

 

Regrettably, the ability, let alone will, to honestly do any such thing is an open question.  This is, after all, the party home to 139 Representatives, over half its caucus, who voted less than 24 hours after the deadly the storming of their place of business by the beloved of Trump seeking to overturn the results of November’s election.  This is the party of the newly elected Marjorie Greene of Georgia, a Q-believer who has held among other bizarre propositions that Charlottesville was “an inside job” to “further the agenda of the elites,” that Blacks are “held slaves to the Democratic Party,” and that “the most mistreated group of people in America are white males.”  (Not content to rest on the notoriety of this nonsense, Rep. Greene filed articles of impeachment against President Biden on the day after his inauguration.)

 

The big Republican tent also manages to find room for the likes of Senator Lindsey Graham whose quick turn from rude dismissal of Trump to unrestrained sycophancy was head-spinning to the point of nausea and who said, arguing against post-presidential term impeachment, that it would open the door to impeaching slave-owning George Washington.  Room enough also for newly elected Congresswoman Lauren Boebert of Colorado who has introduced bills to prevent allocation of funds for the country to rejoin the Paris Climate Accord or the World Health As the As the gale-force exhalation of held breath after the inauguration subsides, among the myriad questions is the near- and long-term future of the Republican party.  Having lost the popular vote for the Presidency in seven of the last eight contests and most recently turned the trifecta of Presidency, House and Senate (albeit a tie), the Grand (sic) Old Party clearly needs to revisit the “autopsy” it conducted in 2012 in the wake of Obama’s second substantial victory.   

Regrettably, the ability, let alone will, to honestly do any such thing is an open question.  This is, after all, the party home to 139 Representatives, over half its caucus, who voted less than 24 hours after the deadly the storming of their place of business by the beloved of Trump seeking to overturn the results of November’s election.  This is the party of the newly elected Marjorie Greene of Georgia, a Q-believer who has held among other bizarre propositions that Charlottesville was “an inside job” to “further the agenda of the elites,” that Blacks are “held slaves to the Democratic Party,” and that “the most mistreated group of people in America are white males.”  (Not content to rest on the notoriety of this nonsense, Rep. Greene filed articles of impeachment against President Biden on the day after his inauguration.)

 

The big Republican tent also manages to find room for the likes of Senator Lindsey Graham whose quick turn from rude dismissal of Trump to unrestrained sycophancy was head-spinning to the point of nausea and who said, arguing against post-presidential term impeachment, that it would open the door to impeaching slave-owning George Washington.  Room enough also for newly elected Congresswoman Lauren Boebert of Colorado who has introduced bills to prevent allocation of funds for the country to rejoin the Paris Climate Accord or the World Health 

Organization and, in a final insult to common sense and decency, would overturn Biden’s mask mandate.

 

Special suite accommodations await House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy who while attributing some blame for the insurrection to Trump reserved another portion for “everybody across this country.”  Responsibility aside, McCarthy decries impeachment proceedings as contrary to “bringing our country together . . . on a path towards unity and civility” (characteristics cheerfully trampled over the past four years).

  

Space is available even outside Washington for such as the elders of the Republican Party in Arizona who pushed the censure of the state’s current Republican Governor as well as, for good measure, Cindy McCain and Jeff Flake, neither of whom presently hold elected office, but both of whom have had the temerity to offer some criticism of their fellow GOP party members.

 

Examples of this utter foolishness abound up and down the Republican ranks.  Yet for all its mendacity the party manages to cling to power and the means to preserve it.  For the great majority of Congressional Republicans, there is evidently no higher purpose, no goal greater than the preservation of elected power by any means available including, just for example, voting hindrance and grotesque gerrymandering.  But as evidenced by Democrats losing 13 House seats to Republicans in November, there is a substantial portion of the electorate willing to play the patsy in this running game of three card monte and continue to blindly support their Congressperson even if to their own detriment.

 

Still, for all its failings and failures, the prospects of the demise or even substantial diminishment of the Republican party should occasion some unease.  While there is unquestionably satisfaction to be had for those on the Left observing the trials and tribulations of those on the Right, a longer historical view might suggest the country would not be well served by the demise of one of its two major parties.

 

Since its founding, a two-party system of government has been this country’s norm.  Which should hardly be surprising as power in the British Parliament, the government most familiar to our founders, had been a contest between Whigs and Tories for a hundred years before the U.S. Constitution.  Since then, the names have changed -- the present Republican Party born in 1854 included supporters from the Whig and Democratic parties, while today’s Democratic party has its roots in the Democratic-Republican Party of Jefferson and Madison.  And likewise, the two parties have alternately fought both sides of the great issues of the day, perhaps most notably states’ rights.  (A pre-Civil War southern Democratic would be dumbstruck by the current hegemony of the Republican party in that region.)

 

For all that, the country has made at least uneven progress for over two hundred years with two parties regularly contesting control of the executive and legislative branches.  So it should be a matter of concern to all that the internecine conflict among Republicans threatens not only the diminishment or even dissolution of the party and with it any reasonable prospects of effectively addressing the myriad challenges we face.  Nature’s abhorrence of a vacuum is as true today as when postulated by Aristotle over two millennia ago.  And while the Republican party offers much to criticize, it admits no comparison to its potential successor, the Patriot Party headed by one Donald J. Trump.

1/12/21

Being hotly debated – well, not so much debated as the subject of the sadly typical political pie fight – is whether Trump’s second impeachment should proceed with all possible haste, or be deferred for 100 days, or just put off indefinitely.  Predictably, those arguing against imminent action are those very same worthies who bear most of the blame for our present lamentable state of affairs.  So, Senator Cruz: “We must come together and put this anger and division behind us.”  And Representative Jim Jordan: “Now the Democrats are going to try and remove the President from office just seven days before he is set to leave anyway.  I do not see how this unifies the country.”

And in a bid to retire the trophy for Political Cynicism, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy: “As leaders, we must call on our better angels and refocus our efforts on working directly for the American people.”  Special Delivery for Congressman McCarthy:  Your having torched them, the phone lines are down and anyway the angels, like Trump during the Capitol ransacking, are unwilling to come to the phone.

 

Doubtless more of these crocodilian tears are to be expected from Republicans now outraged and shocked – SHOCKED – at the results of their frantic efforts to overturn the results of the November election.  Well, let’s see here.  Since early last year, pandemic-driven efforts by various states to facilitate safer voting procedures – mail-in, drop-off, and so on – were bitterly opposed by Trump and his handmaidens who feared, rightly as it mostly turned out, that making it easier to vote would mainly advantage Democrats.  Given the Republican tradition in recent decades of clinging to power by disenfranchising its opponents, this was easily predictable. Except this time, the usual warnings of electoral fraud were picked up and amplified by the rightwing media to an unprecedented extent.

 

The actual results November 6th poured more fuel on the fire.  Led by Trump, who, depending on your assessment of his soundness of mind, might or might not have actually believed he could lose, a coterie of his supporters took up the “Stop the Steal” chant.  Who could blame them?  Even before Trump’s inauguration, a perceptive commentator pointed out his supporters and foes divided on whether to take him seriously or literally.  Four years on, it turns out a significant portion of his legion did both.

 

All of which led, in a laser-straight line to the horrific, tragic events of 1/6.  Led to believe that any result of the election other than a second term for their maximum leader would be entirely bogus, some thousands of his followers responded to his call to descend on Washington, then march on the Capitol and once there, somehow put a halt to the formulaic process of certifying Biden as the next President.  An effort which, in passing, would not have been facilitated by the hanging of the Vice President, as some caught up in the frenzy of the moment and the righteousness of their cause demanded.

 

So, what now?  Not four months ago, speaking of his nomination of Judge Barrett to the Supreme Court, Trump said, echoing Senator McConnell and before him President Obama, “Elections have consequences.”  Indeed.  As do, in the real world not more than in politics, the violation of laws and oaths.  To sweep Trump’s actions under the carpet for a couple of weeks, or 100 days, or forever is in no wise different from excusing the whole sorry episode as just one more in the long list of his depredations and so which any of his successors could feel free to replicate or even enhance.  

 

Contrary to the whining of Republicans seeing the neighborhood on fire as a result of setting fire to their own house asking the authorities to forgive and forget their crime, the body politic must rise with all possible urgency to the task of impeaching the President.  Again.  To do less is to sneer at the Constitution and set a precedent for what could well be an even more damaging future assault on the nation.  Some argue that the tasks facing Congress and the new President are so vast as to preclude any such distraction.  This Is to under-estimate both Congress’s capabilities and the necessity of an urgent, indisputable demonstration that we continue to be a country governed by laws and not the will of one individual or a mob.

1/10/21

 In Disney’s Fantasia, based on Goethe’s poem Der Zauberlehrling, an apprentice is charged by his sorcerer master with replenishing a well, a process requiring multiple tedious trips carrying buckets of water.  The apprentice, seeking a less arduous way of accomplishing his assignment dips into the sorcerer’s book of spells and finds an incantation that will command a broom to carry out the task.  Pleased with his clever avoidance of manual labor, the apprentice falls asleep.  Meanwhile, the enchanted broom diligently continues to fill the well, even as it overflows.  The apprentice awakens to a flood, seizes an ax, and reduces the broom to splinters.  Which, regrettably, re-constitute as full-fledged brooms, each intent on continuing their water-carrying task.  The apprentice’s efforts to find the spell to put a stop to the mayhem fail, the waters rise, and all seems lost until the sorcerer reappears, and utters the conjuration necessary to restore order.

 

This comes to mind in the aftermath of one of the most execrable series of events in our nation’s recent history.  Like the apprentice, Trump summoned up a horde of the disadvantaged, dismayed, disenchanted, disillusioned and just generally dis’ed to do his bidding and overturn the November election by storming the Capitol and putting a halt to the procedural reporting of the votes in the Electoral College.  But like the apprentice (not to be confused – much – with the lamentable television show of the same name), Trump found himself, utterly predictably, unable and most likely unwilling to control the forces.  Not that he demonstrated much interest in trying.  After exhorting the crowd to march from the White House to Congress and saying “I’ll be there with you” he scurried back to the safety and comfort of the White House where he cheered on his televised incitees, while occasionally disparaging their appearance and costumes.

 

The tragic results, as of the moment, are five dead, the Capitol and what it stands for desecrated, and the world’s respect and admiration for our country diminished.

 

But here fiction and fact diverge.  For unlike the tale, there seems to be no sorcerer, no rational figure of authority and wisdom to put matters aright.  Certainly not the invertebrates of the Grand (sic) Old Party, a strong majority of whose House members, even in the aftermath of the assault on their – our – House, voted to refuse affirmation of the Electoral College results.  This was suggestive of nothing so much as a dog chasing a car without the vaguest idea what to do if the pursuit succeeded.  The Legislator’s derisory justifications for this inanity varied somewhat member to member, but generally centered on the premise that citizens (some or many, depending on one’s political orientation) believe firmly that the election was irredeemably riddled with all manner of fraud, that the results were therefore invalid and that the election should at minimum be investigated, if not re-run, if not ignored altogether.  This pretzel logic and the cynicism underlying it are truly Olympic Medal-worthy.  Even before the election and with increasing volume and frequency since, the President, his flunkies, enablers and media supporters have been predicting and then proclaiming fraud.  Why then any surprise that a portion of the population, taking their leader both literally and figuratively, refuses to accept the results?  All in spite of 62 of 63 court cases brought against the election having either been dismissed or withdrawn before being adjudicated (there being penalties for lawyers bringing to court cases lacking any evidence).   

 

Fate’s bony finger of scorn and ridicule is now directly and one can hope will forever be pointed at these craven lawmakers (looking particularly at you, Senators Cruz and Hawley) whose political calculation was as singularly self-centered as any and all of the actions taken by our soon-to-be-former President.  By their rank opportunism, not to mention gross violation of their oath “to protect and defend” they have forever utterly disqualified themselves from any position of public trust.  As has the President to whom they sold their souls.  Goethe had something to say about that, too.  See Faust.