DEFEAT FASCISM

One observer of the American experience believed that the “… the main reason for the quiet sway of religion over [America] was the complete separation of church and state.” This was Alexis de Tocqueville in the 1800s.

A modern writer believes that the current instability of our government derives from the meddling of a powerful religious cult—right wing evangelicals—into politics. This author, Tim Alberta, examines the cult thoroughly in “The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism."

The book details the movement of vast numbers of so-called “Christians” who moved their emphasis from spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ to spreading the power of a political party. It was not the Democratic Party.

No, in fact Alberta points out that one of the results of the right-wing evangelicals was to make the Galilean the “mascot of the Republican Party.’

Another delicious observation rests on how the cult achieved “The Christianization of Donald Trump.”

That was the trick of all political tricks. It rested on the mythology of “the flawed messenger.” They are quick to use King David as an example citing that even though he sent his best friend to die in battle because he, King David, could hook up with his friend’s wife, he nonetheless became a famous religious icon.

We should overlook the flaws of one who achieves  the goals that we seek.

Oh, so that would apply to President Bill Clinton as well, considering his dalliance in office while balancing the national budget and reducing the national debt.

“Oh no,” the evangelicals cry,” the flawed messenger” tribute only applies to Donald Trump among our presidents. Others can go to hell.

This is not the first book written about “the scorched-earth spirituality” of modern evangelicals. What makes it different is that the author is, himself, a born again evangelical. He mourns about what the right wingers have done to his church, crediting them with doing more than any group in making some Americans distrust Christianity and others despise it.

America is not the only institution in danger these days.

EPIPHANY OF THE DAY

 STEREOTYPES

Interesting day yesterday was. A sitting president finishing his first term and actively campaigning for a second ended his effort. He endorsed his vice-president who is female and of a mixed-race heritage. Most Americans know little about her other than her party affiliation.

That’s all that matters to many.

For the sake of argument, we might for a moment consider that she is, in fact, the chosen candidate to run for the seat in November.

How will the press stereotype her?

The press does that. It stereotyped Gerald Ford as a harmless, but clumsy, nobody when he tripped exiting Air Force One.

It stereotyped Jimmy Carter as a clueless, hardheaded outsider.

It stereotyped Ronald Reagan as America's favorite old uncle.

It stereotyped Bus the Elder as America's rich uncle, but invisible.

It stereotyped Bill Clinton as a lovable rogue. (Yes, they do get close on occasion.)

It stereotyped Bush Jr. as a cowboy. (Go figure.)

It stereotyped Barrack Obama as cool, except in the South. The South viewed him differently.

And Joe Biden as dottery.

Then there was the one who defied stereotyping, one who simply, like a pinball, bounced from one display of idiocy and malevolence to another so quickly that labels didn’t stick.

Now what?

An angry woman out to avenge her sex?

A liberal icon who will sacrifice the future of working families in order to protect the least of those among us?

An accidental president?

A surprise?

A sheep among wolves?

It would be a simple matter of speculation if the future of our planet didn’t depend upon it.

EPIPHANY OF THE DAY

 RESEARCH

Sometimes I read Harper’s Index and dream that if I happed to be younger, smarter, and more educated, I would consider my own topics, such as:

The percentage of the terrorists who attacked the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021 who were card-carrying drag queens.

The ratio of women who said, in 2016, that they didn’t like Hillary Clinton but now say they analyze their voting decisions more carefully.

The percentage of evangelicals who affirm reading the Book of Numbers in its entirety and feel concern for the Midianites.

Percentage of affirmed MAGA voters who voted against Bill Clinton only because of his sexual misconduct.

Percentage of voters who feel multiple divorces is not a concern of Christians in selecting a president.

Who believe that the sexual orientation of married couples is.

Number of Trump supporters now in prison who worked as librarians.

Percentage of Americans who believe Lyndon Johnson personally fired the shots that killed John F. Kennedy.

Percentage of American registered voters who can name the U.S. Presidents in order since Herbert Hoover.

Percentage who can name the last ten Grammy winners for female vocalist of the year.

Percentage of mass murderers in the U.S. who were transgender.

Percentage of Americans who believe that the percentage of Americans serving in the military is greater than 25 percent.

If By Whiskey

Was talking to a friend yesterday and remembered this. Hadn’t thought about it, but then I realized that it fits perfectly with the attitude of the MAGA crowd about impeachment, i.e. Donald Trump and Bill Clinton. Enjoy this bit of history trivia. It’s supposed to have really happened.

IF BY WHISKEY

On Friday, April 4, 1952, a 29-year-old Mississippi state representative named Noah Sweat delivered a speech at a dinner banquet for his fellow legislators. He was nearing the end of his only term in office. Mississippi was debating the legalization of liquor at the time and the young Rep. Sweat (whose nickname was “Soggy,” by the way), was invited to speak to the controversy.

The speech he delivered that evening took him several weeks to compose, and has gone down in the annals of rhetorical history. He spoke passionately, brilliantly and with great conviction… for both sides:

“If when you say whiskey you mean the devil’s brew, the poison scourge, the bloody monster, that defiles innocence, dethrones reason, destroys the home, creates misery and poverty, yea, literally takes the bread from the mouths of little children; if you mean the evil drink that topples the Christian man and woman from the pinnacle of righteous, gracious living into the bottomless pit of degradation, and despair, and shame, and helplessness and hopelessness, then certainly I am against it.

“But, if when you say whiskey you mean the oil of conversation, the philosophic wine, the ale that is consumed when good fellows get together, that puts a song in their hearts and laughter on their lips, and the warm glow of contentment in their eyes; if you mean Christmas cheer; if you mean the stimulating drink that puts the spring in the old gentleman’s step on a frosty, crispy morning; if you mean the drink which enables a man to magnify his joy, and his happiness and to forget, if only for a little while, life’s great tragedies, heartaches and sorrows; if you mean that drink, the sale of which pours into our treasuries untold millions of dollars, which are used to provide tender care for our little crippled children, our blind, our deaf, our dumb, our pitiful aged and infirm; to build highways and hospitals and schools, then certainly I am for it.

“This is my stand. I will not retreat from it. I will not compromise.”

Morning Thoughts: February 18, 2018

President’s Day. Lots of things on which to dwell. I’ve been around since FDR but only aware since Truman. Even as a child, I wondered why some people hated him so.

For example, there was the time our family attended a rodeo in my hometown. Remember those “fill-in” jokes where the clown and the announcer bounce lines back and forth? Try this one:

Mary had a little lamb.

Its face was almost human.

And every time she raised his tail,

She’d look at Harry Truman.

I can’t remember what I had for breakfast yesterday, but I remember that joke. There were others, like the postcard that pictured a man just knocked to the floor by a cowboy, the man saying “I said Truman was raising taxes. I didn’t say Truman was raised in Texas.”

Years later, I learned the source of much, if not most, of the hatred: fair housing and the integration of the military.

I don’t remember much about Eisenhower. He didn’t get to be a good president until sometime in the 1980s.

We viewed John Kennedy as a great president from the day he was elected. His star has dimmed a bit over the years but, hell, he just looked like a president.

It was easy for me to hate Lyndon Johnson. I blamed him for my having been sent to Vietnam. With more reading, (I’ve read all of Caro’s work so far, along with Dalleck, Doris Kearns Goodman, Arkansas’s own Richard Wood, plus others). I probably know more about him that I do any other president. He gets more complicated with each paragraph. He’s what I call an “Ansel Adams” figure. Like Adams’ photographs, Johnson’s image in history goes from pure white to pure black, with all tones in between. The result is a masterpiece of contrasting elements.

Richard Nixon would have been a good man had he not been such a despicable person. He left many legacies for us to untangle. We’ve accepted the bad ones and we are now dismantling the good ones.

Poor Gerald Ford got the “double-whammy” of history. The first was being typecast as dense and clumsy by Saturday Night Live, and the second was for pardoning “Tricky Dick.” I, for one, thought then, and still do, that he did the right thing. We had, as a nation, been through enough.

Jimmy Carter was, without a doubt, among the best human beings we’ve had in the White House. He walked into a partisan ambush, the first of many to come and he was an unlucky president, in my opinion. He didn’t handle it all well, particularly when his upcoming opponent seems to have been working behind the scenes to bring him down. I suspect JC, like U.S. Grant, had a hard time believing in the baseness of some people.

His opponent, Ronald Reagan was … what can you say? He may have been not only what the country wanted, but what it needed at the time. He was the crazy old uncle that tells funny stories at family reunions and then goes behind the barn and teaches the kids bawdy sea songs. Of all the conspiracies this country is supposed to have endured, his administration actually had one, called “Iran-Contra.” It unfolded in short order, and still stains our national conscious. He further proved, to our current dismay, that Americans don’t mind deficits and a huge national debt as long as they get what they want. He left his next-in-line an economy in tatters.

Thus, the Elder George Bush had to raise taxes to clean up the mess. America has never forgiven him.

Then there was Bill Clinton, the man from Arkansas. If he had only “kept it in his pants,” they might be carving his image on Mount Rushmore by now. He had the opposition party warning us of a coming economic catastrophe if the deficit and debt got too low. This I remember: if you couldn’t make money during the Clinton Administration, you’ll never make money. I’m financially comfortable today because of the peace and prosperity of those years.

What next? When the Supreme Court of the United States elects your president, you have to take what you get. I still imagine that a look of complete surprise comes across his face when the Junior George Bush learns that he was President of the United States for eight years. He was the first to establish what I call a “Salvation Date.” That’s when you have had a checkered past, but find the date of your last arrest and claim to have found salvation next day. Then the press can’t ask any questions about your life before that date. Its value in politics is that it allows religious fundamentalists to vote for scoundrels and say their god told them to.

Then America elected a man referred to around here as “our n****r president.” Among other things, he inherited a “credit card” balance that had paid for the cost of two wars off-budget. For eight years, members of his opposition party used political ads showing a photo of their opponent on one side and a photoshopped-darkened photo of Barrack Obama on the other with a few code words translating as “they are coming for your daughters.” His election shook the foundations of our country with such fury that entrapped racial rage spewed to the surface like a volcanic gas, soiling and staining the very heavens. Its noxious fumes are still settling upon us.

Those fumes helped get us where we are today.

Just my take on things. Ignore it if you don’t agree.

From this to "I'm the
Greatest" in one lifetime.
Remarkable.

Reconciliation: 15

We Arkansans who remember the assault of Kenneth Starr and his army upon our state are amused at the current party leader who’s whining about being “mistreated.” The tragic trail of families disrupted, reputations defamed, and lives destroyed by this man and his legions, will remain in collective memories for years to come. They include those of a dear lady who witnessed her personal library subpoenaed because some books “contained coded messages,” according to a Starr operative. These consisted of dates with suspicious lettering beside them, such as “tg, pc, mp, ml, and fc.” The worst James Bond villain couldn’t have posed a greater threat to our national security. The only thing missing was crime-scene tape.

Not a soul offered an apology after discovering that the cryptic offenses referred to the daily menu at our state capitol’s cafeteria.

I’ve only eaten breakfast there and then only a couple of times, but I’ve heard the meatloaf was delicious back in the day.

So, I ask all my friends, those on both sides of the political spectrum, to claim the right to elect politicians who understand that there will always be “heat in the political kitchen.” It’s best to withstand it or get out.

When we hear a sitting president say, “No politician in history — and I say this

with great surety — has been treated worse or more unfairly,” simple astonishment isn’t enough. Starr and his clan spent $70,000,000 attempting to destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton. Trey Gowdy spent another $20,000,000 on Hillary alone, we are told. Only Roger Ailes knew how much he spent. And the Koch brothers? They are still at it. The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, to mention only two, had daily editorial fodder for more than a decade. Fair? Who’s to say? It just happens, that’s all.

Mistreatment? Were theirs the worst? Ask Abe Lincoln who, on his best day, was only compared to a gorilla.

When I was but a youth, Harry Truman suffered greatly for, among other things, his sin of integrating the military. I well remember attending a rodeo on my home town at which the clown presented the following ditty, repeated over the speakers by the announcer:

Mary had a little Lamb,
Its face was almost human,
and every time you raised its tail.
You'd look at Harry Truman.

It’s too late to ask President Eisenhower how many adoring editorials he received from the Southern news media, with the notable exception of the late Arkansas Gazette.

It might help us heal as a nation to moderate our language. It is no more proper to paint Donald Trump as Adolph Hitler than it was Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barrack Obama, or Hillary.

I’ll even start by toning down my resentment of the Starr episode. I’ll just refer to it as that "that late unpleasantness." Original enough, eh?

Let us also strive to deal in facts and not internet-inspired “truths.” Facts such as: the sun came up this morning. And, though predictions are difficult, especially when they involve the future (a phrase I coined myself although some folks wrongly attribute it to Yogi Berra), the sun will probably come up tomorrow morning, barring one of Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s “Black Swans.” (Recommended reading).

It is up to us to determine what kind of world that sun will shine upon.

Old Harry came out all right.
Will we?

Survivors

Early morning thoughts while listening to the Brahms Violin Concerto in D Major.

I know it gets old to hear people drone on about the New Year and all, but it does make one think. I always remember going to the movies this time of year as a child and seeing the cartoon where the Baby New Year chased out the Old Man Past Year. I always felt sorry for the old man. On the other hand, I’ve probably stayed up, by choice, until midnight on New Year’s Eve maybe a dozen times in my life. Never saw much sense in it.

Sunday will mark the 44^th year since I reported to work (the day was a Monday in 1971) on my first real job after military service. It was with a planning firm and, since they didn’t really have an opening but took a chance on me, I took a chance on them—a job paying $400 per month, not really much even back then.

A year and a half later, when I met and married Brenda, I was making $900 per month, the equivalent of maybe $60,000 per year in today’s dollars. A few years later, I was a partner in the firm, not a major partner, but a partner nonetheless and my annual salary was the equivalent of close to $100,000 by today’s standards. I think it was a chance that paid off well.

It’s been an enlightening experience. I often think of the first secretary the firm hired after I arrived. The mother of a small child, she was kicked out on the street by her husband and “Bambi” at nine o’clock one night, child in hand. During the divorce proceedings, the (male) judge awarded her a child-support payment that was $12.00 per month less than her child-care cost. For that she tended, doctored, fed, and nurtured the child except for an occasional weekend when the “dad” would take him to ride horses at the farm of Bambi’s parents. That mother, our secretary, through no fault of her own, needed the help of her community and government. It never came, and this new batch of legislators seems hell-bent on making sure it never comes for her modern counterpoints. She, nevertheless, survived as did hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, like her. There should be a monument erected someday.

I owe the fact that we are financially independent to two presidents, I suppose—Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. Reagan fouled the economy up for local governments almost beyond redemption, and, just as I started my own consulting firm, Clinton came into office. The subsequent financial boom was exacerbated for me because most cities were in such a state of disrepair that they were quite willing to use their new financial stability to pay someone to help update their planning system. It was a glorious eight years and coincided with my peak earning period. One can’t ask for much better than that.

I suppose we should also thank the current president Barack Obama. Although I now only work sporadically when I want to, our net worth has nearly doubled while he nurtured the economy from its almost total collapse. Life is good for us. I wish it could be for everyone.

We are lucky though, for we both have enjoyed good health. I’ve been sick enough to miss work only once since 1971. We’ve never faced the ordeal of some of our brothers and sisters who had to deal with an obscene, until now, system of providing health care. Blessed, we’ve been so blessed.

I will die happy if I am wrong, but I fear now that our country has begun its long slide into historical obscurity. If so, I’ll probably be able to watch it from the sidelines as they must deal with the minorities, the poor, women, and the immigrants before they come for the white, male, college graduates.

After all this time, I plan to pass on still harboring the belief that government be a force for good if used wisely, that religious institutions can be a force for evil if used poorly, and that the salvation of America may rest on the strength of our women.

 

Only a mother could teach a child goodness
from a heart that knows only misery.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

See also www.travelswithanalien.blogspot.com