Wednesday, September 17, 2008

HOW DO YOU SOLVE A PROBLEM LIKE MCPALIN

Obviously, I haven’t been posting about the momentous financial and political (interconnected anyway) events of recent days.

To keep my head and heart as sound and sane as I can, I’ve been spending more time than I even usually do with the arts—poetry events, music performances, movies, books, (hopefully soon a few galleries and museums)—and making my own.

It helps, I recommend it. I’ve received a lot of calls and emails from people who are angry, disturbed, disheartened, and all the other forms fear takes including just plain frightened, over the events on Wall Street and in the presedential campaign.

I’ve also been bombarded, as I’m sure you have, with all kinds of emails and links and articles etc. with ever more emerging facts about more lies from Palin and even more disappointing reversals and denials and flip flops and lies from McCain.

The fact that the BIG LIE technique works is obvious or Junior wouldn’t have been able to steal two elections, they would have been landslides in favor of the other guys. And the polls would be showing another landslide for Obama and Biden.

But we know it works. It’s working right now in China, where the younger generation has no political freedom but still feels the Chinese so-called “Communist” system should not be questioned or criticized and has become one of the most nationalist generations in China’s history. The same can be said for Russia, two places that mastered the BIG LIE technique.

Palin has said in her one interview in the weeks she has now been running for vice president, that Georgia, the country, should be protected by NATO even if it means a fighting war with Russia.

Somehow we were able to avoid a nuclear holocaust with Russia over their missiles in Cuba aimed at our cities, but we can’t avoid it over a country on their border they have a dispute with. Nor can we avoid the hypocrisy of Cheney claiming no civilized country can be allowed to invade another country, um, except if its us and we’re invading Iraq.

At least China has been smart enough to not start any wars outside its borders in the past fifty years and so has been able to husband its recent financial gains (much of it thanks to our gluttonous consumerism and debt) in ways that allowed it to rebuild Beijing, a lot of it in the last months before the Olympics, turning it from part ancient ruin and part “Communist” blocky utilitarian but ugly 20th Century city into a 21st century architectural wonder with an efficient mass transit system etc., while the USA under the Republicans who supposedly put “country first” can’t even rebuild a couple of small neighborhoods in New Orleans in the years since they failed that city in the first place.

Or the fact that Palin is seen as an emblem of patriotic and Christian rectitude, but we all know if Barack and Michelle had a seventeen-year-old daughter who got pregnant by a black teenage boy who bragged on his MySpace page that he liked to take guns and “shoot shit” and that he liked lots of ladies and didn’t want to get married—wait a minute, didn’t a black boy the same age, who didn’t brag about philandering or shooting guns but in fact was a local well-loved football star, get sent to jail for getting his steady teenage year younger girlfriend pregnant? Yep.

It’s a disgrace that a lot of people don't understand or even know all this and more, but it’s a result of a public educational system (and unfortunately in terms of colleges a lot of private educational institutions as well) that does not teach logic and how to reason and to think for yourself and how to avoid being manipulated by propaganda (whether corporate or political party or government generated), let alone history (a friend of mine taught his first college art class a few days ago and told me when he started talking about the Middle Ages he saw blank expressions on their faces so asked if anyone knew when the Middle Ages were, and only one student raised her hand, and when he pointed at her said “Back in the caveman times”) etc.

This is partly because of the lack of respect for the teaching profession and the underpayment for their services, which began under Republican administrations (as I’ve pointed out before by Nixon’s and his hatchet man Agnew’s relentless attacks on the “elitism” of the well educated and the rightwing anti-tax proposition 13 in California that led to property taxes not being used for public education there anymore—which reduced their public educational system from one of the finest to one of the worst, it’s no accident that where the rightwing Republicans are most actively supported is in states with public educational systems that rank near the lowest) that began classifying teachers as a “special interest” as if paying the people who teach our children is the same as giving oil companies that were doing just fine on $50-a-barrel days giant tax breaks even when they’re making over $100 dollars a barrel.

For those who consider themselves “liberals”—which despite the rightwing Republican propaganda means to be in the center in terms of political movements and beliefs—part of the reward is in living a life based on humanist principles, like the golden rule to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” including people whose styles and accents and ethnicities and looks and sexual orientation and jobs and etc. are different from yours, and even animals and all living creatures as well.

That’s actually the revolutionary idea that Jesus introduced into his own society and times and others have into theirs over the centuries. To live by that as best we can is its own reward. And that includes exposing Palin as the kind of hunter that believes its good sportsmanship to shoot defenseless animals from a helicopter and to deprive polar bears of their habitat if it will enrich oil companies even more, etc.

But it also means not calling Palin dumb or people who support her stupid, like Bill Maher has a tendency to do.

Palin didn’t get to where she is just on her smile and sarcasm. She understands the power of that smile and her looks and her image as a “hockey mom”—but she also understands politics, at least as its practiced in Alaska, and she understands maintaining power, replacing competent professionals in most of the top jobs in the state with loyal friends who have no experience for those jobs or understanding of democratic governance and therefore never question her orders—sound familiar?

Like “Brownie” and all the other incompetent political hacks Junior appointed to head government agencies that in most cases was a deliberate attempt to make those agencies impotent so that they wouldn’t be regulating the products and practices and industries they were created to, but instead would give them a pass so that people will die as a result and no one will be held accountable, and financial institutions will crumble and no one will be held accountable—was anyone at Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae fired? Let alone fined and/or jailed? Etc. etc. etc.

No she's not dumb, she’s politically and instinctually savvy about power, as Junior is, they’re just not intellectually curious. They have their beliefs and they understand their party’s politics and how to intimidate the media and even the Democrats into backing off any criticism or attempts to put any restraints on or try to control their drive to gain and maintain power.

Palin isn’t frightening because she doesn’t know zip about foreign policy or government or even obviously the Constitution or Bill of Rights or our country’s history, she’s scary because she knows how to get power and keep it, like Junior, but is even more to the right than he and Cheney on many issues and like Junior and Cheney doesn’t care to involve herself in a lot of important issues or even to ask experts but prefers to take the direction of handlers (Rove and now his minion in McCain’s campaign, and others even further to the right) otherwise there wouldn’t have been that quote from Westbrook Pegler in her speech, a man that despised any aspect of democracy that allowed anyone to the left of his neo-facist theories not just to govern or influence government but to even be allowed to live!

Robert F. Kennedy says it better: “Fascist writer Westbrook Pegler, an avowed racist who Sarah Palin approvingly quoted in her acceptance speech for the moral superiority of small town values, expressed his fervent hope about my father, Robert F. Kennedy, as he contemplated his own run for the presidency in 1965, that "some white patriot of the Southern tier will spatter his spoonful of brains in public premises before the snow flies."

It might be worth asking Governor Palin for a tally of the other favorites from her reading list.”

Pegler also wanted to see FDR and Harry Truman and even Ike suffer and die for not living up to his rightwing theories.

That’s who she, or according to all accounts, her handlers chose to quote, and if elected and she ascends either through the next election or through replacing McCain if anything happens to him, that’s who will be directing her in office. And McCain is even worse because he knows better, or once seemed to. But he too will be beholden to the furthest rightwing of his party and either through his own defects or failings or just through the pressure of needing them to stay in office and keep not just the party faithful but the party rightwing oligarchy satisfied, he has proven during the course of this campaign and before, as Palin has, that they will do whatever it takes to gain power, including misuse the power they already have.

8 comments:

Harryn Studios said...

amen, brother ...

art is an antidote - my heart goes out to those without an outlet to the kind of double-talk insanity we're being barraged with ...

in the not too distant future this will all be history - i just hope there's some evidence of truth that follows the threads of deceit and manipulation for the future to learn about - i guess that's why we have those wacky liberals - not just someone to tell us what brand of violin nero was playing ...
[for art history students - nero was kinda like a governor sometime between the cavemen and the bush administration]...

and mccain says our economy is 'fundementally strong' - i mean the work force of america is strong - i think pharoh thought the same -[that was a couple years before the middle ages and the guy named nero, and those buxom greek statues] ...
then he says he'll work across party lines to solve these problems - what the f--- has this idiot been doing for the past twenty some years - they're not in washington to work for the party - they're supposed to be working for the good of the people in america ...

staying on point - this bail-out wouldn't be that big of a financial burden if more scrutiny was applied to the enron mess, or the cost of this necessary war in iraq had been averted, and the re-tooling of security throughout this country to fight ghosts/terrorists wasn't bleeding the economy ...
and now i hear trump is endorsing mccain - huh ...

what's scary is that nobody has a long-term vision of how to put humpty dumpty back together again - how about clinton - bill clinton, doing some flemmingesque advisement mission to restore confidence in america's direction - woops - i forgot, he lied about a grievous and appalling act of misconduct that brought shame and embarrassment to the dignity of the oval office that could only be restored by the righteous ...

some great stuff at the jewish museum in nyc - abstract expressionism [ends sunday], and portions of the dead sea scrolls never displayed - great painter - cecily brown at gagosian on 24th street opens saturday, and the new david byrne/eno cd deserves an ear - saw his concert at lehigh on tuesday - some things change for the better ...
same as it ever was ...

JIm said...

If you like what Sarah did in Alaska, taking on corruption in her own party,pushing to expand our energy supply, you probably will like what McPalim does in Washington. If you don't like it maybe you will get used to it.

Harryn Studios said...

come on jim - you still listening to that ein-goebbels network - there's real news happening out here ...

what kind of solutions would you propose a candidate employ to solve some of the problems we're facing - be creative - you can reach across the aisle - i won't tell ...

-K- said...

As usual, I have to go out the door to work in about 15 seconds but I agree with so much of what you say and also acknowledge how difficult it is to strike a balance between being 'in the world but not of the world.' And for me that's where art comes in. It used to writing but now its in taking photos that I feel I'm both in the moment and somehow sending something out to the world that has a sort of magical (and I guess I mean that literally), healing effect.

And that's why, like you, I sometimes have a problem with Bill Mahr (sp?) and his new movie which is some sort of combination of Religious and Ridiculous; can't even begin to spell it out. Exactly the kind of snotty, alienating point of view that both sides are guilty of.

And now I must go out the door.

Anonymous said...

“Here's what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey. And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we're hooked on.”

Kurt Vonnegut

Not specifically tied to this post, but in general to this election. I think Kurt speaks plainly about what's going on right now.

I truly believe? hope? that what we are seeing is the last-gasp, desperate scratching at the coffin-lid by the old-guard, racist, xenophobic, WASP patriarchy that's ruled this country, this world, since...well, since the advent of the printed word. Because quite frankly, before that, it's all conjecture!

Harryn Studios said...

love it, kid ...

Anonymous said...

Mike,
You have interesting things to say, but they are so buried in your convoluted, multi-adjective, multi-phrase paragraph-long sentences that it's next to impossible to read.

Remember, the point is communication.
KISS.

Lally said...

Sorry Gail, I know mini-me kind of writing is popular lately (six word biographies etc.) and I sometimes can be quite concise myself (browse through my books or past posts on this blog) but sometimes the spirit moves me to be as complex (or as some might see it "convoluted") and extended (or as some might see it "prolix") as the times and/or events inspire. And I did dig Henry James when I was starting out. Still do actually.