Absurdist Political Theatre

S

capegoat Ted Cruz played his appointed role on the political stage by heaping the sins of the Republican party on his own head and ritually expelling himself into the desert. It was a remarkable performance, and the party appears all the stronger for it. Mind you, it has something of the “Songe d’Automne” or “Nearer, My God, to Thee” quality to it, given that the iceberg has been struck, the crew has abandoned the ship, and the oblivious captain is passing out toy boats and candy lifesavers on the sharply-tilted deck.

Somebody isn’t thinking straight here, and I’m pretty sure it’s not me.

Inviting the Corruptor himself to take the wheel seems like an odd way to protest corruption in government, but I suppose the body politic, like the hidden hand, knows what it’s doing. Who knows more about sin than El Diablo, after all? It’s like fighting fire with fire. There are those that think one of the other elemental forces might be more effective—earth, say, or water, maybe—but what worth are such notions when the will of the people has expressed itself?

So was Ted Cruz’s self-immolation entirely in vain? Or will he, like the phœnix, rise from the ashes of his humiliation? Will Trump soar like an eagle tonight? Or will he sputter like the Thunderbolt Grease-Slapper before conversion? These questions, and many others, will be answered in the next episodes of As the World Burns.

Quotation of the Day

I

n his blithe assertions that he can solve any problem just by the sheer might and glory of his presence, Donald Trump is no aberration. He’s the logical culmination of this trend. Really, how is curing diabetes with cinnamon, or building your own solar panels in your garage, any different from building a big, beautiful border wall and making Mexico pay for it? They may differ in scale, but all these ideas trade off the fantasy that there are easy, one-size-fits-all solutions to big, complex problems.

The Republican establishment has worked hard for a generation to foster this way of thinking, teaching their voters to scorn complexity and distrust expertise. Whether it’s ending teen pregnancy and STDs by just telling kids not to have sex, or ending crime and violence by bringing back prayer in schools, or curing poverty by pushing poor people into marriage, or unleashing massive economic growth simply by cutting taxes on the super-rich—all these ideas are conventionally respectable, but they partake of the same mode of magical, unicausal thinking. In exploiting this mindset, Trump is merely walking through a door that generations of GOP leaders have left wide open.—Adam Lee

[“How the Right-Wing Scam Economy Created Donald Trump,” Daylight Atheism, 23 March 2016]

That Old Benghazi Spirit

You can’t help but be impressed by the industry with which Congressional Republicans try to whip up a scandal soufflé from a handful of revised talking points and some cherry-picked emailed phrases. It’s an uphill battle, as Sisyphus could attest, but just like him, the Republicans can surely eventually succeed. It’s a matter of having high hopes—those high apple pie in the sky hopes.

Take some inspiration from the men’s rights activists. They’ve been having a lovely month, all things considered. A man’s right to sex on demand has been asserted by none other than Toru Hashimoto, mayor of Osaka. Holding women captive as sex-slaves is sometimes necessary, he says, “[t]o maintain discipline in the military”. Men have their needs, after all. “For soldiers who risked their lives in circumstances where bullets are flying around like rain and wind, if you want them to get some rest, a comfort women system was necessary. That’s clear to anyone,” Hashimoto explained. I bet it would be clear to Ariel Castro.

There’s a man who lived the men’s rights dream. “I don’t know why I kept looking for another,” Ariel wrote, adding “I already had 2 in my possession.” Young women, that is, women he kept locked in his basement on account of his need for sex on demand. Two women weren’t enough for those needs, though, it turned out, and he had to kidnap a third girl, his daughter's fourteen-year-old friend whom he thought for some reason was a lot older. And what business did they have walking around freely anyway? Ahmad Shafi, leader of the Bangladeshi political party Hefajat-e-Islam gets it.

He’s gone to the mat to defend Abdul Quader Molla and his fellow war-criminals who in 1971 were involved in the mass rape of the women of Bangladesh. Calling for the execution of anybody wanting the war criminals punished, he demands the end of such “alien cultural practices” as “free mixing of the sexes”. We see where he stands on this issue. I can only assume that he would give his blessing to Ariel Castro’s solution for keeping women apart from the rest of society, given his passionate defense of those who separated young women from their families and subjected them to sexual abuse that—assuming they weren’t murdered and left in mass graves—scarred them for life.

And apparently it is all the fault of feminism. As one Groot comments “What feminists fail to see is that as men are driven more and more by their agenda to the bottom of the power and privilege scale, more and more crimes like this will be committed. Unchecked hypergamy ensures that men like these have no real chance for healthy relationships and often take through criminal efforts what alphas and the elites have access to; that being multiple women.” There, you see? If only women voluntarily chained themselves in men’s basements, there would be no need for men to do it for them. Or something.

Yeah, keep on working on that sow’s ear, boys—you’ll get a silk purse out of it some day. There’s nothing quite like that old Benghazi spirit.

Quotation of the Day

Any ideology based on the premise that facts don’t count will eventually fail. You can coast for a while on false beliefs, just as you can drive for hundreds of miles with a faulty gas gauge. But there comes a point when the tank runs dry and the best bullshit in the world won’t convince that engine to turn over. Fortunately for us, the Romney machine sputtered and died before it was able to roll over the entire nation and run the ship of state aground.

Steven “DarkSyde” Andrew

(“Team Romney may have been hoisted
by their own willfully ignorant petard”)

My Crystal Ball Must Have Been Cracked

 

[From my pre-weblog of 12 April 1995]

There is supposed to be a sort of rip-tide of conservatism sucking the nation down at the moment—so we read in the papers anyway. A veritable conservative revolution is said to be in the works, with Newt Gingrich leading the charge and Rush Limbaugh sounding the bugle. Legions are prepared to reinvent government and create a virtual utopia. Yeah. Sure. I’ll believe it when I see it. So far what do we have to support this notion? Well, we have one slightly-used talk-show host, no different in essence from his predecessors Morton Downy Jr., William F. Buckley, or Paul Harvey. We have one skewed off-year election, characterized by record-low voter turnout, paper-thin victories by a party in the grips of a minority ideology, and all the uncertainties of recent redistricting. And we have an enraged and volatile public, ready to lash out at anything and everybody.

If the conservatives think they’ve tamed that tiger, they’re kidding themselves. When the people figure out that they’ve been conned—and this may not take long if the representatives in Congress continue to vote tax breaks for the rich at the expense of legitimate programs that benefit everybody—they are as likely to turn on them as anybody. Hell with it.

Quotation of the Day

A proper response needs to constructively direct anger where it’s deserved and properly assault the destructive principles inculcated within us: self-interest and self-indulgence even to the point of violence. When youths loot it’s “sheer criminality”, when the rich loot it’s “austerity”. Both are born of the same society, and both need abolishing. We don’t need austerity, and no-one should need to steal.

Tom Fox

To the Mad Tea Party

In a sordid slime harmonious Greed was born in yonder ditch,
With a longing in his bosom—and for others’ goods an itch.
As Christ died to make men holy, let men die to make us rich—
Our god is marching on.

Mark Twain

Quotation of the Day

Conservatives built this monster. It didn’t just wander out of the woods one day, or land here from another planet. The Wingnut Base—whatever teabagger, Colonial Williamsburg camouflage they’re sporting this week, and however hard the media tries to pretend they aren't who we know they are—was manufactured by the Conservative Movement to win elections. Made right here in the U S of A out of spare parts left over from the Segregationist South, Right-wing fundamentalism, Bircher paranoia and general Archie Bunker pig-ignorance. Conservatives built the unholy thing, programmed it, wounded it up and sent it out to do their bidding. And everyone knows it.

Driftglass (h/t Mike)

Backward and Downward with Captain Obama

From the rumblings I hear in the external universe I gather that the American people are not happy. No, I mean they are really not happy. Their ship is sinking, the crew is brawling on the decks, and the captain is staring glumly out to sea. A messenger approaches.

Messenger (played by Peter Leeds): Captain, sir, the mutineers have presented their new demands.

Captain (played by Stan Freberg): What—new demands? I’ve already agreed to everything they’ve asked for.

Messenger: Well, the thing is … uh … it seems they’ve reached a new compromise.

Captain: Compromise? What do you mean? Compromise with whom?

Messenger: With the mutineers.

Captain: The mutineers have reached a compromise with—the mutineers?

Messenger: Exactly.

Captain: Explain yourself.

Messenger: Well, you see, Long John Boehner has lost control over his men, and some of them are insisting that the ship be scuttled, sir.

Captain: Why?

Messenger: So history will blame you for it.

Captain: I’ll accept that. It makes perfect sense. But what about the rest of them?

Messenger: Well, they think they can get the holdouts to compromise if you’ll let them heave the paying passengers overboard, and begin drilling holes in the side of the ship.

Captain: Well, that sounds reasonable. Tell them I accept.

Messenger: All right.

[A pause]

Captain: You think they’ll go for it?

Messenger: I don’t know if it’s wild enough. It’s got to be wild …

Captain: Say—tell them if they go for this one, they can set fire to the engine-room as well. That should impress the lot of them.

Messenger (dubiously): I’ll try. But I'm not holding my breath.

Captain: You do that.

Messenger: Okay.

Quotation of the Day

Politics, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.

Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

Madness and Politics

You know—just a thought. Jobs. Let me say it again—jobs. That’s what the people of the United States are looking for right now. Nobody gives a damn about this debt-ceiling nonsense. Most people are prepared for a certain number of program cuts and tax increases, but what they’re really interested in is getting back to work. Seeing the economy running again. Bromides like only the market can create jobs aren’t going to cut it any longer. People are tired of praying to a Market God that never seems to listen. This is something that both Democrats and Republicans need to deal with, but it especially applies to the Mad Tea Partiers. Sabotaging the economy in the hopes of winning elections is probably not going to be a winning strategy. People tend to re-elect when their personal finances are going well; folk who surf the wave of economic discontent are likely to crash on the rocks of broken dreams.

Today's Crapfest

Being a Republican, I vote in the Republican primary. Please rest assured that no candidate that signs the idiotic “Candidate Vow” [PDF] put out by the group calling itself “The Family Leader” (and when exactly did “family” become code for bigotry?) is going to get my vote. This anti-science anti-humanity childishly-scribbled screed wants candidates to promise to support the so-called Defense of Marriage Act (which should never have been passed in the first place), to support a Constitutional Amendment redefining marriage as between one man and one woman (and why not add in “of the same race” while you’re at it?), to suppress “all forms of pornography and … abortion” (and to hell with the Bill of Rights, apparently), to reject “Sharia Islam” (which I include only because of the mind-numbing idiocy of the phrase), and to support overpopulation as beneficial to the American way of life.

Nobody who supports the continued over-population of the planet gets my vote. Nobody who calls scientific evidence “anti-science bias” or who uses a phrase like “complete absence of empirical proof” in that context gets my vote. And nobody who thinks that he (or society in general) gets to decide on what consenting adult I choose to marry will ever get my vote.

Incompetent Buffoon Bites the Dust

Having faded into irrelevance, locked in the dustbin of our memories, Osama Bin Laden today was executed by CIA operatives at a mansion near Islamabad, Pakistan, in which country he has been a welcome guest for some years. In real life a wealthy playboy heir to a construction fortune, Osama liked to dress-up as a super-heroic Qur’an scholar and defender of the faith with a secret identity that fooled no one. Puffed-up by his triumph in a walk-on rôle in the Soviet-Afghan war of the 1980s he returned to Saudi Arabia the towering hero of his fantasies, though unheard of outside of the tiny Arabian kingdom.

When Saddam Hussein sent troops to invade Kuwait, potentially threatening the kingdom, Osama made a comic-opera proposal to personally defend the borders with his troop of merry men who would fight the invaders with faith—and was stung when the king rejected him in favor of the most powerful military force in the world. What did the United States have that he and his little gang of misfits didn’t, he wondered. He made such a nuisance of himself that he was invited to leave the kingdom in no uncertain terms, and he stomped off in a huff to nurse his hurt feelings in Sudan, where, to add injury to insult, his family cut off his multi-million-dollar allowance.

Soon even the Sudanese grew tired of him, and he found it expedient to return to the scene of his fancied triumphs in Afghanistan. From there he helped finance a series of failed attempts to stir up trouble in Algeria, Egypt, and elsewhere. Still rankling over his rejection by the Arabian authorities, he blamed the United States for all his problems. Calling himself the World Islamic Front for Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders he announced his intention of killing Americans throughout the world. The 1998 attack on US embassies in Africa, however, resulted mainly in the deaths of Africans, and his inept plot to attack millennium celebrations in the United States was easily foiled.

Fortunately for him, however, this blundering boob met his match when George W. Bush entered the White House through an unlocked back door. Donning the mantle of the U. S. President, Bush declared Bin Laden and his friends to be no threat to the country, and called off the dogs. The result: nineteen conspirators, armed with box-cutters, hijacked four airliners and flew three of them into various buildings. (The fourth was easily taken down by the passengers, who unfortunately lost their lives in consequence.) The result was history, of a sort. Several thousand people died in the mayhem, but nothing of any military consequence was achieved, and this pipsqueak (and the world) now had an enraged idiot colossus on his hands.

Like a blind giant the United States started flailing about. An early blow took out one of Osama’s most hated opponents, Saddam Hussein, no doubt to his delight, but the destruction of his hosts in Afghanistan forced him to relocate abruptly. His network in ruins, he was reduced to crouching in the rubble of his dreams and issuing occasional rambling diatribes that the media dutifully carried, and operatives of the world’s intelligence services pored over for clues to his whereabouts. Fortunately friends in neighboring Pakistan took him in, and looked after him—until United States operatives under Bush’s successor, Barack Obama, stormed his hideout and executed him. It was an inglorious end to a futile and wasted life. Nobody is likely to miss him much—certainly not the Indonesians, Egyptians, Kenyans, and others whose family-members he had murdered to fuel his sadistic fantasies. The team that executed him dragged back his corpse as a ghastly souvenir. I suppose it will be returned to his family for burial or something equally civilized. Personally I hope they have his skull hollowed out for use as a visitor’s ashtray at the White House.

In the meantime, his spirit lingers on. News comes of an explosion in Afghanistan that killed four people, in addition to the human bomb. Somebody had strapped explosives to a twelve-year-old and sent him to his death. For politics.

Quotation of the Day

There are plenty of people who consider themselves Tea Partiers solely because they want to pay fewer taxes, just as there are fiscal conservatives who will always vote Republican even though they have no use for religion and climate-change denialism. Too bad—everyone wants to pay fewer taxes the last time I checked, and regardless of whatever the people behind the “real” teabagger movement supposedly wanted when they kicked the whole circus into action, it’s nothing but a teeming refuge of ugly hypocrites and the worst shitbags the United States has to offer.

Kemibe

The Dance is Over (Well, Maybe)

As a result of the gods know what arcane political calculations President Obama smoothed the path of his Republican opponents by releasing a certified copy of his long-form birth certificate, obtained through a special waiver granted by Hawaiian officials in deference to his position. Well, that, and they were tired of fielding the endless requests for it by every Tom, Dick, and Harriet with an axe to grind. Bankruptcy enthusiast and real-estate mogul Donald Trump claims credit for this development—will Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal be far behind?

Will this make any difference to hard-core birthers? It’s doubtful. First, Hawaii doesn’t count as American soil. Second, the Founders required that both parents be US citizens. (It does too say that in the Constitution! Use your magnifying glass, damn it!) Third, Barry What’s-his-name gave up his citizenship as a child when he chose to grow up in Indonesia. And fourth, he’s black. (Did I just say that aloud?) Anyway, however you stack it up, he has no business being president.

Personally, I was enjoying watching the birth-certificate shuffle the major Republican candidates were stuck with. Too bad somebody had to ruin the fun.

Quotation of the Day

A teabagger trying to get cuts that have absolutely no chance of getting through simply to raise his credit with voters is just kosher pork-barreling.

DingoJack about Paul Ryan's proposed budget

Quotation of the Day

[Michele] Bachmann is, in fact, a lot like Reagan. Bachmann is really good at repeating all the tired old cliches of conservatism while her actual votes and beliefs stand in stark contrast to those stated principles. Just like Reagan, who preached fiscal conservatism while driving up the national debt enormously; who swore that America never negotiated with terrorists while negotiating with terrorists, trading arms for hostages with Iran; who struck the "America never cuts and runs" pose while, in reality, cutting and running in Beirut after the attack on the Marines barracks.

Ed Brayton

Quotation of the Day

A salute to the two University of Akron scientists whose research contributed to a study reporting that some dinosaurs had feathers and stripes. The credits go to assistant biology professor Dr. Matthew Shawkey and postdoctoral fellow Dr. Liliana D'Alba. Lamentably, some dinosaurs without stripes and feathers were left out of the evolutionary process and wound up in the U.S. Senate.

Abe Zaidan

Running on Empty

Ed Brayton calls attention to this website devoted to the campaign of George Hutchins, a Republican from North Carolina. From the appearance I can only assume that the guy is both color-blind and insane. He has two mottoes that he features prominently; the first is:

Anyone who is not part of the solution, is part of the problem.

The unnecessary comma is his, by the way. I have not attempted to duplicate the eye-numbing colors. His other motto:

America is a Great Nation, due to our Diversity; but only when, This Diversity is voluntary.

Again, I have made no attempt to capture the clashing colors of the motto. And the random punctuation is all his.

And here is one last gem of wisdom from this character:

We must use all of our resources NOW, to prevent ALL future U.S. Generations from suffering under the same bondage which were forced upon all of us, due to the so-called 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Absolute Idiocy

This piece from CBS News (h/t Jennifer McCreight) contains an entire month's worth of stupid. Examples:

John Boehner claimed, apparently with a straight face, that "Republicans believe that all lives are created equal, and should be defended with equal vigilance." When did Republicans start opposing capital punishment, again? I missed that day. Gee, one of the reasons I remain a Republican (though In Name Only, I'm constantly told) is that I believe strongly that certain people (mass murderers, killers motivated by ideology or money, and people who poison wells, for example) should be put to death. Most Republicans will defend a person's right to kill somebody for breaking into his home, or even for breaking into a neighbor's home. Are they willing to defend the trespasser's life "with equal vigilance"? I doubt it very much.

John Boehner's spokesman (and I suspect soon-to-be former spokesman) Kevin Smith adds that Boehmer supports existing hate crime legislation based on immutable characteristics, like religion and gender, but not on changeable characteristics like (apparently) sexual orientation or disability. (Uh, fact check: gender isn't actually covered under existing law; its part of the proposed expanded legislation.) I am again surprised to learn that the Republican Party is apparently endorsing the extreme position taken by Islamic militants—a person who has once joined a religion is a member for life. Doesn't this conflict with the First Amendment—you know, that whole pesky "freedom of religion" thing? Oh, yeah, that's right—the words "freedom of religion" don't actually appear in the Constitution; that's some fantasy cooked up by historical revisionists and activist judges. God, it's getting harder to keep up with the lunacy.

Republican Tom Price (whom I've never heard of before, thank the gods) calls all hate crime legislation "a despicable and unconstitutional bill that penalizes thought and places a premium on some classes of individuals over others". He claims to believe that "All violent crimes demonstrate hate"—this in the teeth of common sense. You don't have to hate your grandma to murder her for her money; you just have to put your own wishes above her continued existence. And what about "premeditation"—the thing that distinguishes first-degree murder from its lesser cousins? Doesn't that penalize thought? I mean, the victim is just as dead whether he was killed in the heat of an argument or in cold blood with malice aforethought. Murder vs. self-defense, rape vs. consensual sex, theft vs. borrowing—all of these involve reading minds, as the pro-hate-crimes crowd looks at it, that is, determining the motives of the people involved. All of these in Tom Price's idiotic world must then be written off as crimes, since we don't want to penalize thought, or place a premium on some classes of individuals (women who don't consent to sex, say?) over others (women who do, for example?).

And Price's spokesman Brendan Buck added a further touch of lunacy: "We believe all hate crimes legislation is unconstitutional..." I'm not sure under what clause they think the absolute right to commit crimes motivated by hate falls, but no, there is nothing in the Constitution that forbids looking into a person's motives for committing a crime, and for judging the severity of the crime accordingly. Our entire penal code is shot through with just those sorts of issues.

And finally, another gem from Kevin Smith: the present changes in the law "could eventually invite the prosecution of Americans for their thoughts and religious beliefs, basic provinces protected by the First Amendment." First I would point out that thoughts and religious beliefs are not actually covered by the First Amendment, which protects only religious expression (the "free exercise" clause). Thoughts and beliefs are nowhere mentioned in the Constitution; they are protected only by an implied right to privacy without which the First and Fourth Amendments at least make little sense. I can think all I like about how much I'd like to go out and murder my noxious neighbor. I can believe, if I like, that he is a blight on humanity and the world would be a better place without him. I may even hold as a religious view that I am required to go out and eliminate this pestilence from the face of the earth. I can make plans about how I would go about murdering him. Hell, I even have the right to go out and buy the materials I'm going to need to carry out my plan, assuming that no illegal substances are involved. But fantasy is one thing, and reality another. If I carry out the crime, if I murder this obnoxious fellow, then my thoughts and beliefs and the actions I carried out in furtherance of my plans are all fair game to determine my motive, and in particular, whether the crime was premeditated.

I can see no valid reason why anybody who is not planning on running about murdering gay men or beating up women or whatever depraved fantasy turns him on should be opposed to this bill. If the idea is that it may have a chilling effect on people advocating violence against women (whether from the pulpit or from any other venue), or against various minority groups, well, yeah, I kind of hope it does. People shouldn't actually urge their followers to commit violent acts. And if your religion says that you should murder your daughter for bringing shame on her family, or that you have a right to beat a man to death for your perception of his sexual orientation, then maybe it's time to change your fucking religion.

Oh, yeah, I forgot—religion is one of those immutable things.