The Right of the Insane to Have Guns

Or should I have entitled this, “The Insane Right Has Guns”?

The recent events in Tucson, Arizona will be argued – they are already being argued – by both sides of the gun issue. Nevertheless, all must agree that this event should not have happened. Was it the fault of Sarah Palin just because she labeled Representative Gabrielle Gifford’s district with a gunsight? Let’s not be silly, right Sarah? After all, just because Gabrielle complained about the gunsight  imagery and that it would have consequences does that really mean that anyone would have somehow been inspired by that? Does it? Surely no crazy person would have been influenced by that, right Sarah? Sleep well, Sarah. It was just a horrible coincidence – wasn’t it?

It would be easy to talk about the current political climate and how ever since the Tea Party spun itself up that politics have become ugly. There is a lot of nastiness in general, untrue accusations about the birth of our President, untrue accusations about health care and “Death Panels”, and untrue accusations about the disastrous state of the economy being due to President Obama instead of the insane economics of George Bush. It goes on and on. Gross lies and misrepresentations from the extreme right. Its proper name is propaganda. The question we must ask now is this: have they finally gone too far?

However, before we go there, we need to take a look at one of America’s sacred rights (it seems to have the same quality as a religious belief), the right to bear arms. The Second Amendment to the Constitution (apparently the writers of the Constitution had forgotten about this, so they had to put it in as an amendment). The entire extent of the Second Amendment reads simply, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” That’s it. A couple of years ago the U.S. Supreme Court demonstrated its knowledge of the English language by ruling that the right to bear arms has nothing to do with being in a Militia. This is the same Supreme Court that recently ruled that corporations have the same free speech rights as living people. Our Supreme Court is undoubtedly inspired by Humpty Dumpty in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, where he says, “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean – nothing more nor less”.

Speaking of the Constitution, would it be possible to talk about it rationally for a moment? Let’s face it. It is a document written by people who lived in the U.S. over 200 years ago and it was written to address their needs. They were intelligent people, these writers of the Constitution, and they knew that times change and needs change. So, they put in the ability to amend the Constitution by their successors. The people who wrote the Constitution did not believe they were writing as religious document that could not be questioned, modified, or improved. That is the whole reason they built in the capability to write amendments. They were sensible people. Unlike a lot of people we hear on far-right-wing television and radio today. You know who I mean.

We seem to have reached a point where we are unable to conduct intelligent discourse amongst ourselves. Everything is presented as a life or death decision. I guess that’s how you sell “news”. The problem is that this is poisonous news and it is poisoning our country. A case in point is the recent mass murder that took place in Tucson. The killer, by all accounts, is nuts. His classmates in school were afraid of him. One of them even said they thought he might bring a gun to class. He was, by all accounts, nearly incoherent. He couldn’t say a complete, meaningful sentence. Oh, and another thing – he had a gun. And he used it. Now, any sensible person would say that crazy people should not have guns – but not the gun lobby and the far extreme right. For these people guns are a sacred right enshrined in a sacred document – the Constitution.

“The time has come,” the walrus said, “to talk of other things”. Indeed. We Americans need to begin a sensible discussion about this subject, the subject of guns. I don’t want insane people to have guns. I also don’t want insane people to be brain surgeons or airline pilots. The airlines have figured out how to keep the insanity out of the cockpit. Same for the hospitals – there’s no insanity in the operating room. So why can’t we keep guns out of the hands of the criminally insane? And please, don’t tell me because it is our God-given right for all Americans to bear arms. The more we, as a people, persist in deluding ourselves about issues that only require common sense solutions, the more we will find that we are building an insane culture that can’t even make sense of the English language (sort of like the Supreme Court). It’s time for the ranting fanatics like Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and the rest of the Fox mob to just back off – they are stirring up the crazies – and I suspect they know it. It is time for a little civilization in America.

As Lewis Carroll said, “If you drink much from a bottle marked ‘poison’ it is certain to disagree with you sooner or later”.

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Gone Rogue – Could Sarah Really Be Elected President?

The book is in the bookstores, the crowds are eagerly waiting in line for autographs, the book tour is set to travel through a number of key battleground states. So is this it? Is this the beginning of Sarah Palin’s 2012 Presidential campaign?  Sarah’s supporters are already saying they would vote for her in the next election.  She is being compared to Ronald Reagan, the former movie star turned President of the United States.  Let’s face it, if Ronald Reagan, a man who got his inspiration for important government decisions and policies from watching old Hollywood movies, could be elected President – twice – there is certainly a reasonable chance that Americans might also vote to put Sarah in the White House. I know it is something that is hard to accept for a lot of people, but we have to consider it, just as scientists and policy makers contemplated the “unthinkable” many years ago when it seemed that there was a possibility of global thermonuclear war.

So what would happen if Sarah were elected President? Can we discern anything from her actions as a mayor of Wasilla and governor of Alaska?  Is there something in her speeches and interviews that provides us a foretaste of things to come, should the unthinkable come to pass? Most of her political experience comes from being the Mayor of Wasilla, a small town in Alaska. She was mayor for ten years and seems to have made several accomplishments, although in a heavy-handed way, that helped the town to prosper. She appears to have a record of trying to “clean up” Alaskan politics and is driven by an ethical concept that seems to be shared by a lot of Alaskans. She only served as Governor of Alaska for two years and her time as Governor was marked by significant friction with the political establishment. She seems to place little value on being a “team player”.

Interestingly, although she is officially a Republican, she has supported some initiatives that required major government intervention.  It would be hard to characterize her as a Libertarian in her deeds, regardless of her words.  She wholeheartedly supported and signed a bill that would provide government funding to build a trans-Alaska gas pipeline. She also signed an energy bill that gives $1,200 to every qualified resident of Alaska. The money comes from Alaska’s revenue from the oil and gas.  It sure seems a bit Socialist to me, hardly a Republican ideal, and certainly something that no pure Libertarian would ever dream of.  In her statement about the gift of government money to Alaskan families she said that these people needed the money to buy groceries and heat their homes.  An admirable thought, but hardly Republican ideology.

In an attempt to save money for the state, Sarah sold the governor’s jet plane and fired the governor’s private chef.  It seems, from her actions, that she has no problem with spending hundreds of millions of dollars for gas pipeline construction, some of the proceeds of which will then be given as a gift to the people of Alaska so they can buy necessities , but she is against spending taxpayer money for non-essential things, like jet planes and chefs.  Overall, it appears that her political philosophy is more aligned with the Democrats than the Republicans.  However, her religious views can only be viewed as deeply “conservative”.  And it is the clever alliance the Republicans have made with the conservative Christian movement that seems to be the principle reason she calls herself a Republican.

Now we come to the last election.  Sarah was quickly catapulted into the national limelight as John McCain’s Vice Presidential running mate. The infamous interview with Katie Couric clearly showed that she was in way over her head. And that is the problem.  The simple fact is this: if there is one thing the campaign showed us about Sarah Palin it is that she is woefully unprepared to be President of the United States. Her knowledge of foreign policy and geography, the fact that she seems to read almost no magazines or newspapers, her inability to respond intelligently on major issues of interest to Americans simply showed that she has not concerned herself with the world outside of Alaska.

So now she’s written a book – a best seller, even before it was in the bookstores. It shows what name recognition can do for you – the one thing that the American publishing industry cares about (but that is a subject for another time).  Now she is on the campaign trail, sort of pretending it’s a book signing tour. There is no doubt that she will find many supporters who love her down-home, simple, goldurnit, aw shucks logic.  The question we all have to ask ourselves though is this: does she really have the knowledge and skills to run the country? Could she be a good President? The thing to recognize is that while many people might have what it takes to be a good mayor of Wasilla, after all there are thousands of Wasillas and thousands of good mayors all over the U.S., it is quite another thing to be President of the United States. Well, what about being Governor of Alaska? Remember, she was only governor foe two years, and then she walked off the job there.  Remember also that she was continually at odds with the other politicians in Alaska.  She has a sort of “take no prisoners” way of doing business when she is in charge. It’s her way or the highway, it seems. Not exactly the way a competent and seasoned politician operates, and certainly not the way to be successful in Washington.  It is my guess that if she were elected, she would be the most ineffective president in our history, because she doesn’t understand how the U.S. system of government actually works. In a word, she is naive.  And that spells great danger for our country, because the same people who voted for the movie star, Ronald Reagan, might vote for her too.

Our forefathers anticipated this potential moment in our nation’s history. The knew that a time might come when the common people might be deceived; they knew that it is possible for a slick talker to convince people, based upon emotional arguments, that they are the best candidate, when in fact they are simply incompetent.  That is why we have the electoral college. It is our last hope – a group of people of learning and experience, who in the end have the ability, the right, and the obligation to overrule the people and protect them from a grievous error in judgment.

When I contemplate the unthinkable I am left with this: This small group of people, the electoral college, may well be the only thing that can save this nation from itself in 2012 –  I wonder if they will have the courage to do so.

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The Fundamental Error of the Republican Party

The leaders of the Republican Party are fond of pointing out that they are the Party of Lincoln.  Indeed, Abraham Lincoln did belong to the Republican Party, but the Grand Old Party is not what it used to be.  Once upon a time it was the champion of civil rights for enslaved Africans who were born and died on Southern plantations.  The Republican Party was a champion of the cause for human rights and equality for all.  On the other hand it was the Democratic Party that had aligned itself with the South, an alignment that persisted until President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, thus ensuring that Southern blacks received the rights that Abraham Lincoln had envisioned.  The point I am making here is that the Republican Party, at one time, was the party of the people, the party of the downtrodden, the party that wanted to help people who had been abused by the wealthy.

How times have changed. Today’s Republican Party is the champion, not of the suffering people at the lower end of the economic spectrum, it is the Party of Capitalism – the Party of the Wealthy.  It is this new alignment with the wealthy class of Americans that spells doom for the Republican Party, but they are blind to its coming.  Instead, they have crafted a new philosophy of self-determination, rugged individualism, every man for himself, complete freedom from governmental oversight, and absolutely minimal taxation – particularly for the wealthy.

It is an appealing philosophy for some – particularly the wealthy, i.e. the people who are at the top of the food pyramid of Capitalism.  The business owners, the bankers, the insurance people – anyone who is in a position to make a lot of money from scamming the average American citizen loves Republican philosophy. It can be summed up like this: you should be free to make as much money as possible with the least interference from government and you shouldn’t have to give a dime to the government for anything other than maintaining a strong army, navy, and air force that will protect our capitalist enterprises.  Republicans of today, unlike those of Lincoln’s time, are adamantly opposed to helping the poor in any way at all.  For them, the law of America should be “Every man for himself”.

There is, however, a fatal flaw in the philosophy of Sarah Palin and John McCain. There is a mathematics that doesn’t work in the world view of John Boehner and Mitch McConnell.  There is a lack of logic in the bluster of Rush Limbaugh, the rantings of Glenn Beck, and the befuddled musings of Lou Dobbs, the former Republican turned Independent basher of Hispanics.  The flaw in their thinking is their religious adherence to the purity of Capitalism. Why is this a flaw you might ask?  It is a flaw because, despite our nearly religious American fervor for the word itself, Capitalism is not perfect. Capitalism is not some sort of gigantic marketplace computer that always comes up with the right answer.  Capitalism, pure and simple, is more akin to the Law of the Yukon (I wonder if Sarah Palin could quote that?):

“This is the Law of the Yukon, that only the strong shall thrive;

That surely the Weak shall perish, and only the Fit survive.”

In pure Capitalism, as in the Yukon, there are a few really big winners.  There are also a whole lot of losers.  No doubt this works well for the wolves at the top of the food chain. But there is a problem for a political party that espouses extreme Capitalism, i.e. today’s Republican Party: it is inevitable that it will dwindle and diminish because eventually it will only be made up of the few who feed on the flesh of the overall population.  Uncontrolled, pure Capitalism leads to financial ruin for the majority of people.  It leads to the domination of the economy by a small number of mega-businesses, just as it leads to mega-banks that charge usurious interest rates because they can and they will not control themselves.  Ultimately, the Republican Party is doomed to become the Party of the Few.

This then is the error of today’s Republican Party. They are blind to the fact that they do not represent the vast majority of Americans.  They are blind to the fact that most Americans depend upon their government to help them make it through life, whether it is in education or health care or jobs or protection from criminals or so many other aspects of life.  It is the government that the American people turn to when in need. Yet, it is exactly this sort of government that today’s Republican Party wants to dismantle.

These people are blind.  They don’t see the inevitable lop-sided society that results from uncontrolled Capitalism, they only see the vast amounts of money that can be accumulated by the top dogs of Capitalism.  But everybody can’t win the game of Capitalism, just like everybody can’t win the game of Monopoly.  The result today is that the American people are leaving the Republican Party by the millions.

Yet the leaders of the Republican Party still don’t see their fundamental error: Pure Capitalism creates an economic pyramid, with the vast majority of people at the bottom where they will inevitably be unhappy.  These unhappy people, inevitably, will no longer identify with the Republican Party.  The Republican brand of Capitalism produces an unstable society and therefore it inevitably becomes an unstable political party.  It can never be the dominant party for very long in a democracy.  In the long run – maybe even in the fairly short run – it is doomed.

Even Glenn Beck should be able to understand that.

 

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Has America Gone Rogue?

I suppose Sarah Palin gets a bit of satisfaction from the title of her new book, Going Rogue.  It’s sort of an “in-your-face” taunt back at Tina Fey’s classic Saturday Night Live impression during the last election campaign, as well as at some of her other critics who also accused her of going rogue at the time.   I recall it all ended rather badly for the McCain/Palin team as the American public chose Barack Obama for President.  So, isn’t it just a little bit puzzling that Sarah’s new book is now number 1 on Amazon’s best seller list?  If so many American’s rejected McCain/Palin why are so many buying her book?  Do they even care what she thinks?  Even more puzzling is why so many are buying another book that is the #2 best seller on Amazon. I’m talking about Glenn Beck’s book, Arguing with Idiots: How to Stop Small Minds and Big Government.

Palin and Beck.  Number 1 and number 2 on the Amazon best seller list.  This is the list of best selling BOOKS I’m talking about, not video games. These are supposedly serious books that are read by serious readers, and this simple fact is something that should give the average American pause.  First, let’s consider Sarah Palin.  Clearly not noted for her shining intellect – remember her interview with Katie Couric? Time and again she proved that she had only the slightest knowledge of foreign affairs.  She couldn’t name a single newspaper or magazine that she read. She had, and continues to have, enormous difficulty in speaking the English language, preferring to speak in short, clipped phrases, often leaving out the subject of her sentence, and not overly concerned with being grammatically correct.  One can only wonder how she managed to write a book that bears any semblance of coherent thought… (Hmmm…maybe it doesn’t).

And then there’s Glenn Beck.  he is more of a carnival barker and shill for the Republican Party than a news reporter interested in getting out the truth.  He has a distinct gift for outrageously twisting and distorting facts, and then serving up his grotesque visions as insights for those members of the American public who believe that Fox television actually broadcasts news. His book, though it barely has a three star rating on Amazon, is in second place in sales.  Really.  Palin and Beck, number 1 and number 2 in book sales in America.  Frankly, I had no idea that the fanatical, extreme, right wing of America actually reads books.  So this is what they read…

The question that comes to mind though is this: is it only the lunatic fringe that is reading these books? If so, just how big is the lunatic fringe anyway, and should it still be called the “fringe”.  Could it be that lunacy has now become mainstream in America?  Could it be that the entire country, at least the majority of those who read books, have gone over the edge?  Have we, as a country, gone rogue?  Wait, maybe there is another explanation that makes more sense.  Maybe Americans just don’t buy very many books anymore. Remember when to be a bestseller you had to sell a million copies?  Maybe that’s not true anymore.  Perhaps people aren’t buying too many books during this worldwide Great Recession.  Maybe the rules have changed and you only have to sell a thousand books to be number 1 on the best seller list these days.  Could that be it?

Or wait, maybe there really are a lot of Americans from the center and the left who are buying millions of the Palin and Beck books too – but they are doing it just for all the laughs and chuckles they get when they read them – sort of like reading a joke book.  Could that be it?

Or, could the sad truth be that America has finally gone rogue?  Have we all sort of mystically drunk the Kool-Aid of the extreme right?  Has there been some sort of weird subliminal message campaign inflicted upon the liberal left to make us all order Sarah’s book a month before it even comes out and shoot it to the top of the charts?  Could that be it?  A vast right wing conspiracy to indoctrinate Americans as they channel surf past Fox news?  Come to think of it, doesn’t Glenn Beck have sort of weird hypnotic looking eyes?  And Sarah Palin, the way she talks so incoherently, could it be she is really just planting subtle and subliminal messages in our brains – a message simply saying “Go rogue, America…go rogue…go rogue”?  Could that be it?

I wonder what Glenn Beck would say about my theory, and even more importantly, does Sarah Palin have the courage to deny it?

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Don’t Cry For Me, Alaska

She said she was stepping down for the sake of her State.  There were too many investigations, too much of the good people’s money being spent on her defense. She would do the right thing and pass the Basketball of State to her lieutenant governor.  But she’ll be OK, Alaskans, don’t worry – she’ll find a way.  But what about Alaska?  What will Alaskans do when Putin rears his head and flies over Alaska and then where does he go?  What about that? What will the Alaska newpaper industry do now? Remember how she said she reads all the newpapers and news magazines? But then she couldn’t recall the name of any of them?  Of course not.  Could you if your mind was so chock full of facts from non-stop reading of every possible news magazine and newspaper available in Alaska?  Of course not, you would barely be able to think straight or even talk in complete sentences because of all the information overload you would be experiencing.  Think of the financial impact this will have on the news publishing industry – who’s going take up where Sarah left off , who’s going to buy the newspapers, I mean all of them, like Sarah did?

Sarah won’t be suffering, because, inevitably, she’ll be back.  Look at her poll numbers.  A recent Gallup poll said that 71% of Republicans would vote for her if she ran for President. It is here, in these statistics where we can get an idea of something far more ominous than the stepping down of Sarah Palin.  Our process for selecting our supreme leader, our President, is badly broken.  Sure, we elected Barack Obama – our candidate for change – but the jury is still out on him, and we have some time to go before we can say for sure if we will get the change we thought we were getting.  But leave President Obama aside for a few moments.  Just think back in time…

There was George W. Bush – a C student from Yale who managed to dodge combat duty in Vietnam.  He could stir people’s imagination by alluding to high sounding principles, but in the end had neither the intelligence nor the principles we thought he had.  Then there was Bill Clinton – a smart guy for sure – but his principles were a little shaky and his definitions of commonly used words, like “sex” weren’t the same as everyone else in the country.  If we go back in time we find that a good many of our Presidents were by no means the best and the brightest, nor were they the most honest and brave. Some,  like Richard Nixon had obvious character flaws, and others, like Ronald Reagan had a hard time distinguishing between reality and the movies – “Go ahead, make my day”:  a President ( a former Hollywood actor) who received his guidance for running the country from old movie scripts.

So is this our meritocracy?  This is the land where anyone – literally anyone, it seems – can become President.  Is this a good thing?  What does it say about America that approximately 1/3 of Americans have already said they would vote for Sarah Palin to be President?  We have so many truly gifted, intelligent people in America who could undoubtedly perform admirably as President.  We have so many principled, honest, and forthright people who would work tirelessly for our country. But where are they?  Where are all the truly gifted people who have what it takes to be a legendary leader?

There is a flaw in our democratic system – a very serious flaw.  Somehow we have evolved into a system where, more often than not, we are forced to choose, not between the better of two individuals, but the lesser of the evils.  Why?  Is it the hidden oligarchy that pulls the strings of our government via its enormous wealth?  Has our system become so corrupt with big business and lobbyists shoving money at candidates and elected officials that no intelligent person or person of principle can even be considered for our highest office?  How is it that in a country of 300,000,000 people that, not too long ago we had to choose between George W Bush and John Kerry for President?  Is that truly the best we can do?  That, in itself, is absolute proof that the wheels have come off our system.

Is it possible that the Republican Party, the party of Abraham Lincoln, has fallen so far that its guiding lights and inspiration are now Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, and Glenn Beck?  Is this some kind of a joke?   Is it possible that of all the potential candidates for President that Sarah Palin is the best the Republican Party can do?  Surely there are at least 299,999,999 other Americans better suited for the job.  But, it’s true – the majority of Republicans today want her.

The situation is truly sad, but Sarah is right, we shouldn’t cry for her, Alaska.

We should cry for ourselves.

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