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LIES, MENDACITY, HATE, and OBAMACARE

6/30/2012

Lies, Mendacity, Hate, and Obamacare.
   In a hopelessly political Supreme Court, Justice Kennedy, the supposed “swing” justice, reverted to type, leaving some to wonder why Chief Justice Roberts reversed his expected position. It’s my hunch that in the heat following Citizens United, he hoped to deflect criticism that he’s a just another political hack like Scalia, Aleto, and Thomas.
   But the squirming motives of one justice are irrelevant compared to the squalling of those who seem to believe that something terrible has happened to them. Mitch McConnell calmly spews his usual lies while Mitt Romney, in his best imitation of fervor, promises to reverse it on Day One of his putative presidency. Both cater to the fears of those duped by lies, mendacity, and hate.
   Lie: Obamacare comes between doctors and patients. Patently false.
   Lie: Obamacare will raise insurance rates. Fact; it will lower rates by injecting millions more into the insured pool.
   Lie: There will be Death Panels. The only “death panel” exists in Sarah Palin’s alleged brain.
   Mendacity: People scream about not wanting to saddle grandchildren with debt. Our grandchildren will be major beneficiaries. U.S. health care is the most costly per person in the world. Obamacare will lower costs by providing child care, preventative care, immunizations, screenings, and early intervention, saving the hugely greater costs of severe illness. It also saves on those who otherwise show up in Emergency Rooms needing treatment costing millions.
   Hate: To some, “Obamacare,” is a code word for a shameful truth; racist hatred of a black President. Anyone openly anti-black, anti-Jew, anti-Hispanic, anti-Native American, etc., is an instant pariah, so they deny it. But does anyone believe that racism, sexism, ethnicism, etc, evaporated like morning dew after Obama was elected? The ugly truth is the notion that defeating Obamacare would strike a blow against our first black president. Like the Peaceable Kingdom where the lion sits with the lamb, a Post-Racial society is still a distant dream.
   Obamacare. already benefitting millions, is a precious advance in a country that for billionaires has the best health care in the world, sub-standard care for most, and no care at all for many. For the 99%, Obamacare is a blessing. Long may it reign.

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DOLLAR PATRIOTS

6/28/2012

Dollar Patriots
   On July 4, 1776, the date Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, our United States of America was born. This July 4th it will be 236 years old. Its Constitution and mostly two-party system has been through tough times and survived. But it may not be able to survive against greed posing as patriotism and conservatism.
   Napoleon Bonaparte – “Money has no fatherland, financiers are without patriotism and without decency, their sole object is gain.”
   Ian Fleming – “If I'd been alive fifty years ago, the brand of Conservatism we have today would have been damn near called Communism “
   Henry A. Wallace – “They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They follow power and the dollar wherever they may lead.”
   Andy Rooney. – “At no time do people work so well together to achieve the same goal as they do in wartime. Maybe that's enough to make patriotism eligible to be considered a virtue. If only I could get out of my mind the most patriotic people who ever lived, the Nazi Germans.”
   Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein – “Odd as it may seem to cite Jack Abramoff as a character witness about the evils of political money—a bit like citing the Marquis de Sade of the evils of torture—he may be the best eyewitness to the deeply corrosive and corrupting effect of the money culture. Abramoff believes that anyone who has or seeks a contract with the federal government should be prohibited from making campaign contributions.”
   Last week I wrote of missing the true voice of Conservatives (Invasion of the Killer Bee Body-Snatchers.) Norman J, Ornstein, of The Anerican Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, with Thomas E. Mann, has written, “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks,” dealing with “the new politics of extremism.” They are the voice of true Conservatism, and as refreshing as a walk in the woods after a spring shower. I’ll be turning to them again. And again.

ACTORS, ALTERNATE REALITIES, and OBAMABASH #2

6/26/2012

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ACTORS CREATING A WORLD

          Actors, Alternate Realities,
             and Obamabash #2
   You can take a person out of the theater, but you can’t take theater out of a person. For the umpteenth time, I’m struck with wonder at theater folk. What makes them work so hard, focus so powerfully to create worlds in their imagination? Imagination! That is the key. Does any animal besides humano sapiens have it? I think yes, as I watch our two cats play at fighting, stare each other down, whop each other with lighting paws, hiss and leap at each other. And they’re pals, arriving as kittens in the same carrier from Bide-A-Wee. Hours each day they spend sleeping inches apart, so when they put on their fighting act, what can it be but imagination?
   Humano sapiens takes imagination to amazing heights. Some live so completely in imagination we call them crazy. Yet everyone lives in a world constructed by his or her mind, using data the five senses gather from contact with the outside world. To each of us, that “real” world is only what our minds make of the data, and since we’re all different, we all live in different worlds.
   That’s why I can’t dismiss people who see things differently, even the Tea Party, although plenty of my posts express dismay at what they say and do. And yet, I can’t help respecting, even loving them. (Not the cynical politicians who push their buttons for their own sly purposes.) The world in which Tea Party people live is different from mine, but who is to say which is “real?” Most people are sure that the world as they see it is real, and what’s more, the only world. Actors, however, are adventurers in different worlds, and whole-heartedly jump into a new one with every part they play. Their grasp on multiple realities must certainly be closer to “truth” than those who have reduced it to one exclusive reality—their own.
   Speaking of actors, our apartment was jammed with them for our 2nd Obamabash last Sunday, 20 people plus an acting company of 9 in our tiny living room for a performance of Lillian Hellman’s portrait of a venomous family--The Little Foxes, Act I. (We’ll do Act II in August.) We raised $230, to go to Obama for America. Our first Obamabash was four years ago—songs monologs, stand-up comedy—and it worked! Obama was elected! This one will work too, by Heaven!

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H0W MY B-17 CREW GOT ITS BRAGGING RIGHTS

6/24/2012

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l-r Top row - Ike, the Navigator, Me, the Pilot, Moe, the Co-Pilot.

How My B-17 Crew Got Brqgging Rights
   There’s an old saying in the air force. “There are bold pilots, and there are old pilots, but there are no old bold pilots."
   I was a by-the-book and use-your -check-list pilot. (Surgeons doing life-and-death operations are just now learning to use check-lists.) But when Stage Training came along—where you get your combat crew—I learned another truth. You’ve got to give your crew bragging rights, which means you have to seem to be a bold pilot.
   When we first met I said, “Our primary aim will not be to win the war single handed, but to survive it. And we will do that by being the best crew that ever trained at MacDill Field.” Corny, but it went over.
   Next, I had to convince them that I could land the plane. On every training mission for a week I was extra extra careful to “cream it in.” which means making the tires hiss before settling without the slightest bump. One day, getting out of our gear I heard another crew guy say, “Our pilot creamed it in today.”
   My guy replied: “Our pilot creams it in every day!”
   Now I had to give them bragging rights. Here’s where bold comes in. Other crews would come swaggering in saying they’d buzzed a field of sheep or a fishing boat in the Gulf. One day we had a navigation training mission, Tampa, Florida to Charlotte, NC. My co-pilot and navigator were from Rock Hill, SC, about half an hour flying time from Charlotte. Both wanted to go to Rock Hill, dying to call home and alert their families. Ike, our navigator, said he’d fake the logs. Two other crews wanted to join us. Why not? We formed up in a loose V-formation, one left, one right. Usual altitude was 5,000 feet but as we approached Rock Hill, we tightened up and I took us down to 500, the lowest we could fly. Ike pointed out his girl friend’s house and I headed to it.
   I should mention that Ike had called the editor of the Rock Hill paper, told him we were coming, but not to write about it or we could be court martialed. I raised prop pitch to maximum revs to make more noise, and then, to my surprise, my right wingman peeled off. Fighters flying at 25,000 feet peel off. We were 4-engine bombers at 500 feet. Of course I peeled off too, skimming the rooftops maybe 50 feet over Ike’s girl’s house, she and her mother in the back yard waving pillow slips, Ike screaming “Emily!”
   Back at 500 feet we turned south toward Tampa, and I told our engineer to fire off the Very pistol (flare gun), glancing back to see the bright red flare in the dusky sky. Next day Ike called home to learn that they’d thought we were going to land, jumped in their cars and sped to the local landing strip and lined their cars up headlights on, because there were no lights. The local paper kept our secret, saying only that two local boys were “in the big B-17s that flew over Rock Hill yesterday."
   And that’s how my crew got its bragging rights.

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LAWLESS and DISORDERED, or, WELCOME TO DEMONCRAZY!

6/22/2012

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        LAWLESS and DISORDERED, or,
        WELCOME TO DEMONCRAZY
    Democracy Township elects an honest cop to be Chief of Police, scaring corrupt cops and a majority of Town Council. Things start to happen.
   A loose steering wheel on the Chief’s car causes it to go off the road. Town Council complains that the Chief can’t drive.
   An unknown prankster pours sugar into the Chief’s gas tank. When the engine seizes up, Council complains that the Chief’s carelessness is destroying township property.
   The Chief has a college degree in Criminal Justice. Half of Council sneers, calling him “elite.” The other half denies he ever got a college degree. When the local paper publishes a copy, the deniers claim it’s a forgery.
   The Chief asks for a law to arrest drug dealers who hang out near schools. Council blocks it, then accuses the Chief of letting drug dealers run amok around their children.
   Before the Chief was elected, Town Council had voted to install traffic lights in high accident locations. When the Chief came on board, Town Council changed its mind. Accident rates rise; they blame the Chief.
   The Democracy Tribune publishes an article about Township patrolmen who drive. Cadillacs Jaguars, and Mercedes. When the Chief demands to see their income tax returns, they stonewall, Town Council accuses the Chief of tolerating corruption.
   Democracy Township needs new police communications equipment. Council refuses. When police are late responding, Council blames the Chief.
   Democracy has a bottle factory, a rope factory, and a paint factory, all granted tax breaks when they arrived twenty years before. The breaks have long run out but Council keeps voting to continue them. In the budget crunch, Council cuts the police budget 12%. When townsfolk complain about lack of police presence, Council blames the Chief.
   A Super Pac named Safe Streets for Democracy runs TV ads smearing the Police Chief. People suspect it’s paid for by the paint, rope, and bottle factory owners, but can’t prove it because of Citizens United.
   Some townsfolk think about moving out of Democracy, but most hunker down to fight. They don’t have gobs of money, but plenty of people. Their first move is to plaster Democracy with posters.
                                                  DEMOCRACY or DEMONCRAZY?
                                                                Your Choice!

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DARK ENERGY, DARK MONEY, DARK DEMOCRACY

6/20/2012

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Dark Energy. Dark Money. Dark Democracy.
   Since the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Citizens United, organizations called Super Pacs may get unlimited amounts of money from anyone, even foreigners, no need to reveal anything, and use it for political ends. It is called “dark money,” after the scientific phenomenon of “dark energy,” because neither can be detected or measured. The only evidence that either exists are behaviors explained no other way.
   Dark energy explains the expansion of the Universe. Dark money, used stealthily and with lies to misinform and mislead, explains the election of politicians who act against the interests of constituents and pass laws disenfranchising people, depriving women of rights, favoring the rich, and penalizing everyone else.
   Dark money should lead to Dark Democracy, except there can’t be such a thing. Democracy needs light as urgently as a rain forest. If choosing leaders and enacting laws are secret, a government is not democratic. Dark democracy is an oxymoron, like what the Egyptian military calls democracy while reserving to itself basic rights, including the right to declare war. The Citizens United decision that allows unlimited money to pour into politics while staying hidden and out of sight desecrates and weakens democracy.
   Posterity will place the Citizen United decision of 2010 with the Dred Scott decision of 1857 that defined human beings as property. Children will study it in school, learn the names of dissenting justices, Stevens, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor. Those who perpetrated it will join Justice Roger B. Taney, who in 1857 wrote that blacks were “beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race” These pariah justices: Kennedy, Roberts, Aleto, Thomas, and Scalia, defiled the world’s greatest democracy. Their names will live in infamy.

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WE ARE ANONYMOUS. WE ARE LEGION... EXPECT US

6/18/2012

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            “We are Anonymous. We Are Legion,
   We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect Us.”
   On Halloween, when I was a kid, there was no “trick or treat.” just trick, nasty and mean.
   * Stuff mailboxes with dead leaves.
   * Find clothes drying on a back yard line. Yank down, trample.
   * Find a windowsill with a cooling freshly baked pie. Toss dirt on it.
   * Scrape up dog turd, wrap in newspaper, drop at a front door, light with a match, ring bell, vanish into the dark to watch someone open the door, stomp the burning turd.
   Just kids having fun.
   “We Are Anonymous,” by London journalist, Parmy Olson, follows a shifting coalition of so-called “hackers” who hang out in online chat rooms, form loose alliances for “pranks,” and sometimes rattle the “real” world,
   One victim was Westboro Community Church, a Kansas fringe group infamous for jeering at funerals of soldiers. Anonymous defaced its web site, Godhatesfags.com. Other victims included The Church of Scientology. PBS, SONY, CIA, and Lybia. They also stole credit cards, yet money was not the motivation. It was for lulz, fun from making others feel bad, a cousin of the German Schadenfreude, pleasure derived from the misfortunes of another—the Halloween imp 365 days a year.
   An 19-year-old male named William, posing as a 16-year old girl, sent a 17-year old boy a photo of “her” breasts (easily obtained from porn sites,) asking for a photo of his penis. When it came, William pasted it on his victim’s mother’s Facebook wall with the message, “Hi Mom. Here’s a picture of my cock.”
   Just kids having fun.
   The book concentrates on Topiary, a 16-year old boy from the Shetland Islands off the coast of England. Kayla, who assumed the identity of a 16-year-old girl, but turned out to be 25, ex-British army from South Yorkshire, and Sabu, a late 20s New Yorker who learned computers in high school, got online and stayed, also marrying and having kids. Their name is from a grandiose tagline: “We are Anonymous. We Are Legion, We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect Us.”
   Author, Parmy Olsen, calls Anonymous “more of ... an idea than a group.” It’s like a street gang with chat rooms as turf. The general public, police, and press, assume it is organized when in reality it’s an amorphous shifting assemblage of mostly young males, intelligent but disaffected, who spend much of their time online. They come together for particular pranks after which they may dissolve, perhaps to return for something else later.
   It is likely that few understand the Internet better than those who spend most of their time on it. And it is so rapidly developing that no one can predict what it will be like in as few as five years. Governments are already using it for war. Can anyone doubt that some future Anonymous-like group will discover such tools and use them for whatever purposes that occur or pranks they wish to play?

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INVASION OF THE KILLER BEE BODY SNATCHERS

6/16/2012

Invasion of the Killer Bee Body-Snatchers
   She was 18, tall, blond, long-legged, and bubbling with laughter. I’ll call her “Bubbles.” We were chorus dancers in a Broadway-bound musical. After it closed she married, raised kids, and gained too much weight. Now she tries to tune out the world. After a few of my posts she asked me to remove her name, saying “political stuff” raised her blood pressure. I removed it.
   My blood pressure goes up too when I listen to, say, Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity, not to mention Glenn Beck, the hot air equivalent of Timothy McVeigh, who blew up a federal building killing 168, and was executed for murder.
   Sixty years ago, raving radicals both left and right helped define the center. Nevertheless, my ire, if not blood pressure was raised by anarchists, Marxists, and the likes of Senator Joe McCarthy.
   Now the radical left is less than a whisper while the raving radical right masquerades as conservative, defiling Conservatism and mocking honest conservatives whose views are much needed. Conservative columnist/pundit, David Brooks, clear-headed and fair-minded, looks pained when forced to discuss radical right ravings.
   I have a friend, ex-military, another honest conservative. When attending War College, he was assigned to write an essay on the origins and history of war, a rich subject. If I had a crack at it I’d begin by defining war as an endeavor by a definable group to dominate, enslave, or eliminate another group. Two species of ants brought into contact will fight to the death. If ants are not close enough to human, early Humano Sapiens wiped out its rival, Humano Neanderthalensis, so war existed long before civilization. It’s a survival mechanism; to the victor belongs survival.
   Consider how Killer Bees do it; they’re a hybrid species now spreading and replacing ordinary honey bees all over the world. Angrier and more aggressive than friendly American bees, they are dangerous to bee keepers, passers by, and other beehives. They invade, sting the queen to death and replace her with their own queen, who thereupon produces tens of thousands of killer progeny. How’s that for a survival mechanism? (Invasion of the Body Snatchers!)
   Tea Party radicals are the human equivalent of Killer Bees. They feed on resentment, anger, and fear, and they gobbled up poor Bubbles. When I compare the laughing lithe 18-year old, with the tense, obese, eyes-wide-shut, recluse she became, I feel pity and sadness. It also raises a grim specter; if the only solution to radicalism is replacing misery with joy, there’s a long long road ahead.

IS ASKING THIS QUESTION DISLOYAL, EVEN SUBVERSIVE?

6/14/2012

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Is Asking This Question Disloyal, Even Subversive?
   I ‘m proud of our military. I know that in WW II, despite brilliant fighting units like the Tuskehee Airmen and 761st Tank Battallion, it was segregated. But it desegregated well before the rest of the U.S.A., leads private industry in opportunities for women, and is struggling toward fairness about sexual orientation. It’s towering virtue, however, is its solid tradition of a civilian commander-in-chief, never questioned, unless by General Douglas MacArthur who failed to salute President Harry Truman in Korea and was canned.
        Ever since George Washington resigned as a general to become President, we’ve had a civilian commander-in-chief. Separation of military and civilian authorities, along with separation of church and state, are pillars of American democracy despite those trying to insert religion into public schools, plant religious symbols on government property, and legislate from religious concepts. Maybe they’ll even try to undermine civilian control of the military.
   Medieval Japan had a warrior elite, the Samurai, lasting through WW II. Prime Minister and general, Hediki Tojo, planned the attack on Pearl Harbor. In the last century, military coups d’etat plagued countries in Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America. In Egypt today, there’s a deadly chess game between a military clinging to power, and a fledgling democracy. Syria’s military is fissioning, some sticking with murderous Assad and killing civilians while others defect into a desperate opposition.
   Before WW II, the German military had strong ties to the Kaiser, often pictured in his uniform with spiked helmet. But like British and American militaries, there was a civilian leader (fuhrer). On June 30, 1934, Adolf Hitler ordered his followers in the SS and SA, to murder his rivals on “the night of long knives.” It was naked criminality and presented the army with a deadly dilemma.
   German high officers are said to have despised Hitler. The failed plot to kill him, led by Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, has been dramatized on TV and in the movies. What motivated Von Stauffenberg? Loathing of Hitler, fear for the future of Germany, conscience, morality? Who does not wonder what history would have been had his plot succeeded?
   When President Herbert Hoover ordered General Douglas MacArthur to expel WW I vets from their “Hooverville” tent city in Washington DC, he used cavalry, tanks, and nauseating adamsite gas. Fifty-five were injured. Could such a thing happen again? If a U.S. President ordered the army to make war on Americans, would it obey? Or would it violate its long honorable tradition of taking orders from a civilian commander-in-chief?
   Is merely asking the question somehow disloyal, even subversive?

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I'M OUT OF WORK TOO!

6/11/2012

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                               I’m Out Of Work Too!
   “I’m out of work too!”
   That was Mitt Romney’s reply to a distraught woman on one of his early primary junkets. Unable to find a job, she’d blurted out her dilemma. He flashed a smile, said, “I’m out of work too!”
   Romney hadn’t yet released his 20 million dollar income for the prior year but being a wealthy business man is his basic pitch. The woman was plainly poor. Was his cold-blooded reply simply a desperate desire to be all things to all voters?
   One thing it had nothing to do with is being a Mormon. I spent two summers, 1958 and ‘59 teaching at Utah State University, Logan, Utah, in Cache Valley, an hour and a half drive from Salt Lake City, warmly welcomed by members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, LDS. With a wife and two infants, it was nice to see tots in restaurants, theaters, and meetings. It is still the most family-friendly place I’ve ever been, When you had to leave kids at home, there were always young baby sitters, who, by community consensus, would not accept more than 25 cents an hour (the NYC rate was then $1 to $1.50 an hour). We went to brunches in back yard gardens, barbeques in lush picnic grounds. I met a USU professor of religion who smoked, making him a “Jack Mormon,” meaning he’d lapsed from strict observance, yet was accepted and respected. There was world and national news on the radio and in the Salt Lake City Times and Logan Herald Journal. I came away with admiration and respect for deeply humane hard-working people. Mitt Romney’s religion has nothing to do with his cold-blooded insularity.
   Is it wealth or position? His father, head of American Motors, later Governor of Michigan, surely presented him with opportunities to expand his horizons, like sons of the Rockefellers, Fords, Kennedys. Yet Mitt Romney is able to stash the family dog on a car roof for a 12-hour drive, say, “I like to fire people,” and brush off a suffering woman with, “I’m out of work too.”
   Some people are born color blind, some tone deaf. Mitt Romney lacks empathy, the capacity to recognize feelings experienced by others. He tries to make up for it with intelligence, by working hard, and smiling a lot. As Massachusetts governor, he enacted a popular and successful health plan, now coldly repudiated to ingratiate himself with extremists and portray himself as a “serious conservative.” But one must seriously worry about a leader with a diminished capacity for empathy, especially in a world where war must never be more than a desperate last resort. With so little feeling for other people’s feelings, Mitt Romney in a position of power, would be a clear and present danger.

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Author (Yuma, AZ, 1944)

Being 90 years in this world, with great kids, great grandkids, great wives (two, one at a time) and great memories, I wonder why some people seem to have stopped loving the U.S.A.? I will wonder in print right here. If you wonder too, or can provide some answers, please comment.
Stuart Hodes

       With my friend, Nero.
             April, 2012.
    Photo by Ray Madrigal