pain et cirques

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It is now know that the Twitter account of one Pierre Delecto is owned by none other than the coffee-abstaining Senator from Utah, Mitt Romney.

After my co-workers and I wore out the litany of jokes regarding adult entertainment actor names, baguettes as innuendo, and saying ‘hon hon hon’ suggestively, we boiled this down to one of the most absurd things we’ve heard so far this week…then realized that it is Monday.

In all due honesty, the stories going around on news sites are positing this as “brave” and “necessary”.  I call shenanigans.  Mitt Romney was elected by the traditionally defined landslide in the politically safe state of Utah.  Having a ghost account, originally used to keep an eye on his family without those communications and likes being watched by thousands of followers, seems rational.  Slowly using this ‘family’ account to start attacking the President, a fair and legal thing to do without fear of legal repercussions, seems like he found a throwaway from when he was hip and communicating with his kids on the regular and thought he could get some mileage out of it.  Ironically enough, it was this history that would eventually lead a reporter to call him to confirm.  Points to Senator Romney for realizing he had been found out and replying, “c’est Moi”.  The fact that he failed to mention Inspector Clouseau was disappointing, but I would have been fumbling for words, so good on him.

This is where we get into the meat of the issue.  This is a Senator, Presidential candidate, businessman, and overall early 21rst century fixture in the Republican party.  At any point he could have walked down to the podium, asked the Chair for a few minutes and prattled off, most likely to an empty room, about how he felt.  Less Delecto, more Mr. Smith, but he didn’t try that.  The position and authority (some would daresay privilege) that he has as a member of the senate who won’t be up for election until 2024 gives him a unique opportunity to lay out, on the record and kept for all posterity, the moral and legal arguments he believes are valid.  His challenges to the behavior and beliefs of not only his President but the party writ-large.  Instead he took his shot on the fetid morass of human anger, bile, and malcontent known as Twitter.  A place he knew it would be buried under the literal millions of comments and tweets that are created every day on the subject of American politics.  That is unless someone, such as a bored politics reporter who had the time to sift through nearly 500 twitter connections, decides that the whole list of followers on one of his granddaughters’ accounts needed investigating.

Now we have a cheeky cowardice on display.  Microphones have been lain in front of him multiple times and he has demurred.  He defended himself with a ghost account while deriding others.  One could say I’m doing the same right now but I can’t mosey up to the podium in the Senate building, ask for time, and put on that hallowed record, my thoughts and ideas on the state of the Union, the direction of our nation, or the concern I have for the continued degradation of communication and sense of community spreading like a blight across this country.  So, I’ll post that here.

On another, cheeky note, I’ll offer up a donation to Romney’s campaign, up to the full legal limit, if he changes the profile picture of the Pierre Delecto account to one of him at Halloween wearing a fake mustache, beret, black turtleneck sweater, kerchief wrapped around his neck, and thick-framed glasses while carrying a baguette.  The basket of wine and cheese would be a nice touch, but not necessary.

Nothing to fear but fear itself…

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16 million Americans live with a smoking related illness. 480,000 die annually from cigarette related illnesses with 41,000 being associated with secondhand smoke.  That rounds out to  1,315 deaths a day from cigarettes.  More than the total number of people shot by officers in the US, and accounting for roughly 1 in 5 deaths in America.

But six people die from using black-market vaping pens with black market cannaboid products over the period of several weeks and the government and political entities are screaming to ban flavoring and the Center for Disease Control has said vaping should be stopped writ large.

Disregard the millions of users who are ADULTS who use these products, purchase them from reputable sources and businesses who operate above board, who post chemical test reports of what is in their vape juices just so the consumers can make informed decisions.  Let’s talk about the fact that those who are currently sick were using products that were purchased on the black market, or not initially designed to work  with vaping hardware, or they looked up a tutorial by a questionable source on YouTube and tried to make their own juice.  Disregard the fact that it appears that the solutions that were purchased by the 450+ affected users (but by god we’ll use “think of the children” as an excuse to punish all consumers) had a chemical that is known to be dangerous by the legitimate vaping community and is widely avoided specifically because of the medical conditions we are seeing.

That chemical, a medically dangerous high does of vitamin E, just happens to have fuck all to do with the flavoring by the way, but, remember, “think of the children”.

Disregard the fact that some of the victims have long standing health issues and that their onset of lung failure was not possibly in part due to their lifetime history of abusing their lungs with traditional cigarettes.

Six….six dead in the period of weeks when 22 veterans end their lives every day, when roughly 100 people die a day in preventable car accidents, when 1,300 die from cigarettes (which has been a known carcinogenic killer for the better part of seven decades), and this is where our government stands.  This is where our energy is being focused.  On condemning a tool that has been used by tens of thousands to quit smoking, remove the tar of traditional cigarettes from their lives when they can’t kick the nicotine habit, and a slipshod condemnation when a proper investigation into who sold the bad product and what the bad product is.  The vitamin E is a shared vector, but possibly not the cause.

Quality control and government regulation is non-existent, but the leaders of moral busybodies of physical purity moved forward to say that something should not be used to sate the craving of nicotine, but, hey, those cigarettes over there with the smooth Virginia tobacco taste are still approved (even with the warning label and decades of research saying they cause nothing but death and financial strain).  As Rham Emmanuel said, “you never want a serious crisis to go to waste”.  When you don’t have a crisis available you just manufacture one and try to scare Americans.  I’m not surprised.  It’s standard practice.

The pillars still stand

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It has been an interesting five days since the 2016 election.  Taking another swing at this blog after another extended absence.  Thoughts and views haven’t changed much so a lot of the older content is still accurate, the only difference being the current roster of miscreants and demagogues have changed to match a world two years on.  Here’s to seeing what happens next.

The Congress shall have power to…

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I have been gone for awhile.  I have several unpublished posts from the last year that are all too dated to publish.  It’s been a weird road, watching the nation go on, watching the ups and downs, and not talking about it. I was comfortable writing thousands of words, critiques on the matters of State, and deleting them because, honestly, I was vain and empty.  The world, I believed, wanted flash.  Shining lights bright colors in streamers at the bottom of the television set.  Well dressed hosts in $5,000 suits quantifying matters of international concern one moment and then tittering about puppies the next.

It is grotesque, and will continue to be so because they have the money, the advertisers, and the professionals that pour through reams of data that tell them this is exactly what their viewers want.  I was fine with this.  It is their money, it is their channel, and their viewers.  I can go without that.  I have disagreed with their tactics, but that is theirs, and there are bigger fish to fry.

http://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/white-house-confident-in-legal-basis-for-expanded-fight-against-islamic-state-without-congress-1.2004451

The link above goes to an article from CTV News regarding the President’s bid to expand the American military presence in Iraq.  The president and his “legal team” have attempted to craft a legal maneuver around the restrictions of the War Powers Clause of the Constitution and War Powers Act of 1973 and a host of international standards regarding national sovereignty and international war.

I am not fond of snippets.  However, the scope of the section I will post the relevant text of the enumerated powers from Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution:

The Congress shall have power…to declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water.

It is a fundamental thing.  A simple idea that the people of a nation, not a single man or woman, should decide when and why the nation goes to war.  It was the desire to remove the absolute authority of the king that prompted the declaration of war to be put in the hands of the people and their representatives in the Legislative, rather than Executive, branch.

We have seen challenges to this power time, and time again.  From The Gulf of Tomkin to the invasion of Iraq in 2003.  As a matter of fact, scholars have spoken on this very matter:

What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne…

That’s what I’m opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics. Now let me be clear — I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power. He has repeatedly defied UN resolutions, thwarted UN inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity. He’s a bad guy. The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.

But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history. I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaida. I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.

Granted the speech is from the buildup to the second Iraq War, and if the word choice and tone sounds familiar, it should.  President, then Senator, Barack Obama delivered this address on October 2nd, 2002.  The most poignant words of his speech apply just as much to his actions as Commander in Chief as they did to President George Bush when he was decrying the impetus by the Executive Branch to to follow the unwise course of action that would, eventually, embroil the American military in one of it’s longest running military actions:

Let’s fight to make sure our so-called allies in the Middle East, the Saudis and the Egyptians, stop oppressing their own people, and suppressing dissent, and tolerating corruption and inequality, and mismanaging their economies so that their youth grow up without education, without prospects, without hope, the ready recruits of terrorist cells. You want a fight, President Bush? Let’s fight to wean ourselves off Middle East oil, through an energy policy that doesn’t simply serve the interests of Exxon and Mobil.

Those are the battles that we need to fight. Those are the battles that we willingly join. The battles against ignorance and intolerance. Corruption and greed. Poverty and despair. The consequences of war are dire, the sacrifices immeasurable. We may have occasion in our lifetime to once again rise up in defense of our freedom, and pay the wages of war. But we ought not — we will not — travel down that hellish path blindly. Nor should we allow those who would march off and pay the ultimate sacrifice, who would prove the full measure of devotion with their blood, to make such an awful sacrifice in vain.

Since that time we have followed through on practically none of these issues.  ISIS/ISIL is loaded with young men from Saudi Arabia.  Their government wonders how we, not they, will stop ISIS/ISIL from arriving at their door because they have, for decades, done exactly what was warned against decades before, and elucidated by President Obama when he put pen to paper in 2002.

Here we stand twelve years later.  Still beholden to the rampant policies of the Middle East.  Policies and movements rooted in religious bigotry rather than rational discourse.  National well-being discarded in lieu of perceived religious bias.  Our nation, weary from two, decade-long wars that have claimed the lives of thousands of countrymen, and countless civilians.  What fruit have we seen from these wars?  None.

A broken nation stands, still fighting with itself.  A region that is progressing further into chaos because of selfish policies set decades ago, and being overseen by petty dictators.  Armies without parent countries formed from the most zealous, uneducated, and blood-thirsty.  We, as a nation, failed to step up onto the world stage and engaged in statesmanship rather than showmanship.  We negotiated with the sword rather than with an olive branch, or bread basket.  We remain the most powerful solely because of “investment” in a military that’s purpose is to project the promise of violence.  We have deferred diplomacy in lieu of the capacity to annihilate those who stand against us.

Have we used these powers judiciously, to an extent.  We have destroyed with one hand, but in the other there should have been honest cooperation with those who remain.  To allow nations to decide how they would rule themselves instead of listening to the Young Turk who believes they know all.  Here we stand, here our President stands.  Seeing, hopefully, all the follies we have committed, and, hopefully, learning from them.

Limited action against ISIS/ISIL has been successful, but the time of Presidential operation without the purview of the electorate is at an end.  The notion that lawyers are working around the clock to further stretch the President’s capacity to operate without the consent of Congress, and by proxy the people, is a distasteful indication of a desire to operate outside of the realm of the Constitution.  A need to push the letter of the law as far as it can go, knowing that those who would punish in the case it breaks are firmly in your pocket.  It dishonors the spirit of the law, and the notion that the representatives of the people should decide when we are to go to war.  It was the firm notion 227 years ago that no President would ever have this nations army  at his beck and call for extended use.  If this is to be another war, let it be a war America chooses, rather than the occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Dead air, white noise, and when you’ve lost control of the signal

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My mother recently visited from parts out west.  It’s always a joy to have her visit for a week.  She loves visiting the sites in DC, then heading home and saying that she’s been to a particular location when it shows up on television or in conversations.  Honestly, I do the same thing when I travel.  There are inherent bragging rights about DC, but, I digress.

During a shuttle ride we were talking about the sheer number of PAC’s and how they muddled the message of the Republican party, and I did what I do best.  I just started talking a mile a minute and in the middle of my mini-dissertation on communications and messaging in campaigns it hit me like a lightning bolt.  Citizens United  was the worst decision to roll down the pipe for the Republican party in, I’d say, the last few decades.

During the last Presidential cycle PACs were resplendent in their causes and number.  In my personal experience working with one PAC there were at least 20 other children organizations working under a parent group, and that was just in Virginia.  We drowned the electorate in calls, with my phone bankers getting complaints that voters had been called dozens of times.  Different organizations, but the same script.  A Hispanic outreach organization was using the same script that was being shared by a tax policy revision group and an organization that touted itself as the “conservative counterpoint to the AARP” (without the insurance, benefits, etc).

This saturation killed the messaging.  It became an irritation.  A reminder to the voters that the candidates, and by proxy, the parties were not running the show, but some separate entity; not voted in, not voted for, and not replaceable by elections or political machinations.  No, these entities, churning out messages tailored for specific candidates, walked the thin line between social activities and political activities, most of the time saying ‘to hell’ with the line and marching right over it.

There was the rub though.  The presidential candidate didn’t have a Koch Brothers logo next to his name.  Halliburton emblems were not resplendent on his bespoken suit jackets.  No, next to his name was an (R) like every other candidate that runs for the Republican ticket.  They’re using the family name, but they’re not using the family prayerbook, as it were.

This is were Citizens United comes in.  It opened the doors and wrested control of the message of the candidates away from the candidate and the political party they are representing and put it in the hands of, literally, anyone who can afford to file the paperwork for a 401.3(c); which, by the way, is not all that much.

The sudden wide scale access to the ability to put out a message in support of a candidate, or, if you want to be safe, a ‘social agenda’ was jumped on by any entity that had an iron in the fire or wanted one there.   The result, the splash damage effect.  Romney’s people weren’t making calls for Romney, Political Action Committees were, but because PACs and the political campaign cannot communicate (and I believe with all my heart that they didn’t do so…/sarcasm) the messages became disparate.  Phone bankers who were not part of the official campaign were answering questions for voters in an official capacity regardless of access, propriety, or authorization.

PACs, in effect, diluted the message of the core agent, the candidate, and wrest control of the process from the party for whom the primary candidates were fighting for.  Newt Gingrich should have been toast after the failures in Iowa and New Hampshire, but even while his campaign was failing, a PAC stepped in and played the part of a campaign for him, allowing the train wreck candidate who speaks of Christian virtues but is on his third marriage with his second mistress.  Go down the list and the weak candidates clung to the primary process not by their own moxie and skill, but by the hand of entities that they supposedly had no connection to.  When your campaign isn’t having to raise money to pay for commercials it tends to make your fundraising numbers look better, and when that happens to be one of the barometers that campaigns are measured on, it gives a false impression of how strong a candidate is.

That obfuscation of ‘real’ political value allowed the Republican primaries to drag on for months longer than it should have, handing truckloads of political ammunition to the loyal opposition who watched on and tittered in utter glee at the monumental fluster cluck that was our Primary.

Our Primary.  The Republican primary, and the crux of the problem.  The party has been neutered by Citizens United.  Originally hailed, by very few, as a way for individuals who had a vested interest in the process to provide more financial support to candidates they liked soon discovered that the rigid structure and quality control that was instituted by state level Republican parties and the Republican National Convention were no longer applicable.  After all, is the RNC going to tell a multimillionaire to stop supporting a candidate?  Don’t spend your millions on adverts for our candidate in swing states?  Take your cash and spend it elsewhere rather than buy us a new auto-dialer system.  Nope, the party took the bait, bit the hook, and was reeled in like a whopper that it is.  In a few years the Republican party organization acquiesced control of the message, control of the candidates, and the discipline of a time tested political organization to the free wheeling of individual agents.

Now candidates are not being selected on their political credentials, but their savvy and speech crafting.  Policy knowledge and party relationships are being replaced with noxious war cries of ‘anti-establishment’, which I’m fairly certain even those who bark it out can barely define what makes someone establishment outside of the fact that they just happen to have been in the political game longer than those making the accusation.

I would suggest to the Republican party to reign itself in.  For five years we have had individuals run under our banner who spit on our establishment, abuse our history, and ignore the hideous damage that ill-thought comments do to themselves and fellow republicans.  It’s time to to start holding back that (R) for those who play the game and meet the criteria set forth.  Something that has bothered me for the last five years is that the “Tea Party” candidates don’t have their own party.  There were no (TP) candidates on the Presidential ballot in 2012, no were there any at the Federal or state level positions.  In 2012 the same thing occurred.  I saw no (TP) candidates.  I saw members who claimed Tea Party association, but demanded that they be given the Republican mantel after talking about how corrupt we’ve become, how vile we are, and how the RINOs, and the establishment needed to go.  You’ve been handing the coveted (R) to those who turn around and, politically speaking, piss on your shoes.

You’re the party.  That position as the arbiter of who represents the party falls on your shoulders.  It is not found in the checkbook of a wealthy businessman or in the ridiculously home crafted hat with teabags dangling from each fold of a tricorne.  You are, as far as it can be estimated, political professionals.  Maritime Lawyers do not allow Ambulance Chasers to march into their courts and dictate how the rules should be.  I’ll put it another way; you want the best of what you can get.  Need Surgery, you’ll want the best doctor.  Need a lawyer, I know a guy in Hampton who can hook you up.  The short version is that you are professionals, and you’ve let the quality of your product slip right off the side of a damn cliff.

Joe the Plumber can run for congress, but he’s not going to win.  If Joe reads up on the issues affecting not only his district but the nation as a whole, puts deep thought into policy positions, communicates these ideas with professionals in the respective fields and gets some feedback, develops plans of action, and learns to communicate those plans in an articulate and meaningful manner to the masses.  Well, then he has a shot.  By the way, that process above, it’s going to take some time; a few years of dedicated time at least.  Candidates don’t come out of the woodwork.  They earn their chops by working in the system you want them to manage.  Again, Joe Schmoe doesn’t walk off the street and take over a legal firm or a Fortune 500 company (unless you want a repeat of 2008, then be my guest).  This notion that the big tent philosophy allows for those not vested in the moral obligation of long-term policy for the betterment of as many as possible rather than those who can pay for a television ad in the major districts and tolerating political mistakes bordering on negligence is, frankly, bullshit.

This is why we can’t have nice things

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Seriously guys, where’s your speech writers?  How about your office managers?  Wives?  Do you consult with anyone before you belt this nonsense out?

The Congressman that said pregnancies aren’t that common from rape as a justification for not providing protection rape, incest, and life of the mother in their latest neanderthal-esque attempt at controlling reproductive rights decided to raise money from his base by saying he won’t back down.

Then we have this gem rolling out today:

Texas Republican Congressman says…*sigh* that fetuses might be masturbating at 15 weeks, and therefore should be protected from abortion

I really, really wish I was making this stuff up.  I’m working on a piece that I feel strongly about, and these…*things* that slither into suits and call themselves representatives of the vox populi keep feeding me ammo.

I would prefer even to fail with honor than win by cheating

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It’s a cheap shot today and return after a long absence.

The Primaries are going on today in Virginia.  So far it looks like a par for course run; the races that are close are going to be driven by the grassroots support that is drummed up during these off-season primaries while strong incumbents and those who are historied within the wall of their respective parties will clinch their nominations with little difficulty.  That doesn’t bother me.  Shenanigans bother me, and I’ve been listening to them for months.

The purpose of the Republican Primary was to ensure that there was ‘purity’ in the selection of the candidates that were chosen last month.  There was the need for this to be ‘honest’ and ‘clear of meddling’.  Rush Limbaugh refers to these yet to materialize, and oft worried about, efforts at tampering ‘Operation Chaos’.  The gist is simple: open primaries mean that Democrats can roll in to the polling station and supposedly pick the weaker of two candidates, effectively setting up their “strong” candidate with an easy win.  If the yarn sounds familiar, it was kicked around in 2008 when McCain was winning much to the chagrin of the Republican party.  It was rolled out again in 2012 when Mitt Romney was facing supposedly impossible odds against the titanic political powers of Newt Gingrich, Michelle Bachman, and (seriously?) Rick Santorum.

Therein lies the problem.  Since the end of the Primary, and the wretched result that has me wincing each morning I have to listen to John Fredericks talk about the latest train wreck of a video someone has dug up on the Virginia Lieutenant Governor nominee E.W. Jackson, the discussion has shifted from the need for purity in the selection process to encouraging our team to go out and vote during the open primaries for the other side.  Granted, there are primaries today for Republican candidates, and to those I say go nuts, have a ball.  For the Democratic candidates and races I wonder where the wagging tail ends and the dog begins.

Now, I enjoy Mr. Fredericks’ show, and have so since I discovered it on a drive to work one morning last year, but I take pause with his notion that voting in the Democrats open primary is perfectly acceptable after our party went to such great lengths to prevent such actions.  It is, of course, his choice, and he chose to exercise that, and in no way am I saying it’s bad.  I’ve met Senator Northam, at the end of election night where I was working for the team that was trying to take his seat, and found him most agreeable, articulate, and, to borrow common vernacular, very real.  As Fredericks said, and so I shall reiterate, what you see from Northam is what you get.   No, I have no problem with his selection, but I’m saying the action of voting for a democrat after you’ve selected your Republican candidate feels…awkward.  It invites analysis by others, and recognition of the inherit weakness of the primary system; any Tom, Dick, or Harry can roll into a polling station and vote for a rep from their state or district.

After the utter, pardon the following, shitcan mess that was the Republican primary in May, why on earth would we advertise, nay, encourage our huddled masses, who were terrified of the bogeyman of cross-platform voters, to go out and do the very thing we decried as fouling the process?  It is hypocritical to demand a pure representation of a party, then to encourage our team to go out and muddy the waters for the other side.  There is no honor in it.

Stars out of the eyes, I understand that, mathematically, the Republican turnout for a Democratic primary is going to be low (maybe 0.25-0.5% of the Republican voting block, so 0.10-0.35% of the overall voting block for the district), but the notion is noxious to me.  If we are going to claim moral high ground it means constant diligence.  Moral strength comes from the ability to act consistently, and in the political world consistency, if measured in gold, would be worth the national debt and a few dollars more.  Lastly, if Mr. Fredericks is going to champion the notion of selecting a candidate based on his authenticity and amicable nature in working across the aisle, maybe closing a post out by talking about the unique opportunity to take Senator Northam’s seat in a special election should probably be saved for another day.  Especially when you are reminding folks that Northam’s vote, if taken, would tip the balance to 21-19 in favor of the Republicans who, at the moment have a very, very weak candidate running for the coveted tie-breaker known as, you guessed it, the Lt. Governor of Virginia.  I would be remiss if I didn’t tell you, Mr. Fredericks, to cover yourself; your machinations are showing.

Political history gap and the modern talking points

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Originally written 04/11/2013, it’s been sitting on the back burner, and something I wanted to get off my chest.

Rand Paul recently visited the hallowed grounds of the largely black Howard University and delivered a speech that some would call foolish.  Others would call it ballsy, or ‘bold’ if you’re in polite company, and I tend to agree with them.

Since the monumental loss of the 2012 Presidential elections the Republican Party has been in, not quite a tailspin, but one of the four engines is out and numbers two and three aren’t looking too hot.  We have an internal war going on that should be internal, but is getting played out on every medium imaginable (be you blog, newspaper, website, television, or radio).  It’s not cloaks and daggers, but ad campaigns and public statements about how Tea Party X doesn’t agree with Congress member/ Senator/ Attorney General Y.  These sorts of condemnations use to be behind closed doors, where negotiations could be done, and grandstanding was reserved for both parties to bask in the credit of compromise and a job well done.

Those days are damn near dead.

While the efforts to re-brand the Grand Old Party go on, Rand Paul is marching to a tune of his own.  Speaking at Howard University he talked about issues that were both relevant to the audience but elucidated on the principles of the Republican mindset while doling out a bit of history.  The snagging point: That Democrats were responsible for the Jim Crow laws of the day, and, ultimately, responsible for the monumental disgraces of racism and segregation in America.

History, as it turns out, is not a monolithic collection of information, painstakingly gathered by individuals who have devoted decades to the logging of the actions by those who have come before us.  No, rather it is a whimsical land of talking points gathered and quantified by not what is right, but what is convenient.  Welcome to Politics 201.

The “Republicans are Racists bastards” dialogue comes from a key point in the party’s history.  A bleak and hideous time known as the Presidential election of 1964.  Ignoring the internal power struggle that was going on years before and the first real rise of the ‘Conservative’ movement in the United States (yes, the modern conservative movement is a little older than the tea party to the tune of a few decades), this campaign cycle saw the rise of Senator Barry Goldwater to the stage of Republican candidate for President.  Quick, go google “presidential election 1964” and look at the electoral college map, I’ll wait.  Once you’ve seen the monumental failure that 1964 was for the Republican party come on back, and we’ll continue.

Pretty rough ‘eh.

I’ll go into Goldwater down the road, but there are some specifics to the election of 1964 that need to be pointed out to flesh out the Democratic talking points.  Goldwater made a deal with the devil, lovingly referred to as the “Southern Strategy” where he would sally up next to the segregationists of the southern states, like George Wallace, in an attempt to free up some votes from those states, and, by their logic, win.  The result, as you saw above, was that Goldwater did two things: 1) he effectively turned off an entire nation to the Republican party, which suffered massive losses in both the Senate and House of Representatives  and 2) gave the loyal opposition a talking point that has lasted nearly five decades.

How does this all fit in to Senator Paul’s statement?  Republicans, going back to post-Civil War reconstruction through the mid 1960’s, were largely in favor of equal rights amendments.  Prior to 1964 the Republican party enjoyed roughly 30% of the black vote in America.  This would all change in 1964 when it dropped to a mere 2%, peeking under Bush in 2004 at 11%.

Republicans were identified as the party of Lincoln, fighters for strong moral values, and the American way of pulling yourself up by the bootstraps, etc.  In that vein they have faltered, focusing more on screaming about regulation rather than small-business tax credits.  They haven’t addressed how General Electric and other mega-corporations can drop their cash in off-shore tax havens, but haven’t given a thought to creating business incentive zones in major metropolitan areas to encourage growth a new businesses in blighted areas.  The party, rather than standing on the principled idea of a representative republic, swings for big dollar corporations (least we forget the god awful Citizens United decision and subsequent abuse) and align themselves with a rogues gallery of religious leaders, social engineers, and, frankly, hideous people who appear to have agendas that appeared nowhere on the ticket of common sense, but have a seat at the table regardless.  The ‘Big Tent’ as it were, is big enough to fit in the beast we’ve become and we have to excuse some folks from the table and clean up a bit (okay, a lot) before we can begin to change the perception of an organization.

Senator Paul was right in stating that our history is different from what is said about us as a party, but there is validity to the talking points of today.  There were stronger representatives back then, with a greater sense of purpose not only to the constituents that voted them in, but to those who voted against them as well.  The talking points exist because our history, that noxious cloud from 1964, still looms over us, and until we exorcise our demons, and apply some good housekeeping, then we will suffer the slings and arrows of not an outrageous fortune but, rather, one all too well deserved.

Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.

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A recent discussion between friends had me pondering a well-worn topic covering the Westboro Baptist Church.  While I am loath to give this repugnant organization any more lines in the massive universe of online and paper text I feel that the notion they were positing was not the best course of action.

It is the standard argument that crops up each time there is a tragedy and these vultures, nay ghouls, crawl out from their miserable crypt and threaten the world with their mere presence.  The subsequent ballyhoo over these vile, barely passing for, human beings feed into their hopes of either 1) spreading their woefully misguided message of monumentally ignorant hate with little understanding of their source material, or 2) getting someone worked up enough to do something irrational enough to warrant a lawsuit that will fill what has to be dwindling coffers.

However, I believe, and have argued, that the desire by the masses to simply ignore these individuals, or to refer to them in some offhand way that does not recognize them directly (such as ‘they who shall not be named’) does not retract from their capacity to continue these repulsive acts.  If anything, I believe it encourages them.

They are not deterred by legions on Facebook or twitter from referring to them as ‘those wackos’, but those who attend these services and stand in direct opposition of them and their message.  The Patriot riders who lined military funeral processions and revved their bikes so loudly that the WBC packed their things and left because they could not be heard.  The hundreds of students who mass against a planned protest on a college campus to face off against the WBC when they came to picket, or more likely celebrate, the death of a gay student.

Our society has picked up this notion that an evil ignored dies on the vine of ignominy.  We forget that terrible thoughts and hideous acts must be met with thoughts and actions in opposite.  Where there is truly misguided hate and disgust, there must be compassion.  Where praise of violence against the soldiers or against the children, there must be the solemn respect for the deceased and those still suffering from the loss.

The quote above is from one of my favorite authors, Terry Pratchett.  I won’t go into his fiction, and how it should be read by all who can spare the time, but I want to point out that in this scenario we are the darkness.

We contain the ever-present capacity for humanity to care, to feel, and to have compassion in times of our own suffering as well as the suffering of others.  The WBC may think they will get there first, that they will be the loudest voice, but the light, as is not often stated, only illuminates the area around it, leaving the rest into darkness.  Is it not too much to hope that the darkness is not the evil of the universe, but that which is all-encompassing.  That compassion for the injured, physically and mentally, the wounded, and the deceased fills the void that their ‘light’ would so like to dispel.

In that vein, should that light die, to turn a phrase on Dylan Thomas, I doubt there will be many that rage against it, but until it fails, until the abomination that is the WBC is stripped of its undeserved title as a ‘religious’ institution, and crushed under the heel of both judge, jury, and social executioner it should not be forgotten.  No evil that is forgotten dies.  No evil that is unchallenged shrinks.  if history has taught us anything, it is that.