Plumping for a Reason

I know there haven't been any new posts around here (In ages! Jesus.) on the Days, but in the twilight of this electoral season my mother wanted to know how it is I'm leaning.  More than just a 'who you vote for' question, I guess it gives me pause to think more deeply about what it is I believe in, a 'why' sort of thing.  A good think for any of us to ask of ourselves, from time to time.


I guess I'd have to preface all this by saying that I can't believe in immutable rights, beyond those that are agreed upon as societal norms (which for better and for worse, do change with time). I trust that there are certain values that are almost universally held, which may seem self-evident when thought about objectively. But as there isn't any compelling evidence for a god (or gods), there really isn't anything proscribed or impossible except that which society will crush one for in reprisal. Moral values are then a product of human coexistence and the changing dynamics therein, rather than being a simple given. The nature, means, and measure of power - which to my mind is a thing of inevitability in any social grouping, the implementation of who gets what, how and when - isn't just innate; one can argue it to be beholden to a number of factors, like technology, economy, and even geography.

From that viewpoint then, I'd say our current, past-century set of circumstances make government the arm of the common good, ostensibly there to protect and better society in ways individuals can't or are unwilling to do, modern society being large, complex, and as a unit fairly unwieldy. The tumultuous nature of the free market system upon which we base our daily existence lends itself to conflict, inequality, and discord - conditions that the nature of said system cannot thrive in. This isn't medieval Europe, where power is measured by the crops you grow and your ability to wrest what you will by force. Force is still a potent means of control, but is by no means the end-all appropriation.

In terms of governance, the problems I have with the private sector are absolutely borne from a personal cynicism held that a for-profit motivation is inherently going to be selfish; when one tries to apply free market principles (which are great, from a business perspective) to what one might call the 'social good', you necessarily find gaps where there's no profit to be had. Worse yet, conflict of interest dictates that a money-making approach to government invites corruption and further solidifies the placement of 'haves' and 'have-nots', simply because people who can afford to invest and turn a profit (call them 'producers') will become the focus and primary beneficiaries of any such government. 

Conversely, one can make the same argument that governments are poor at running businesses. This is generally true because the motivations and goals of government are intrinsically different from those needed to successfully maintain a business. In a successful economic system such as ours, it wouldn't be too insane to suggest the existence of a symbiotic relationship between the two, the one being the engine powering the other, which maintains the stability the former requires to do its thing.  Kind of the essence of Keynesianism, really.

So I voted Democratic because I believe in people, and in society. There's a disparity that has been widening in America over the past forty years, and I believe our democratic virtue requires us as a society to redress them. That's my problem with the Tea Party, in that they are actively working to redefine those values that make us 'American'. Not that there's any problem inherent in evolving public interest, or with debating policy. But it's the cheap political tactics and fairly transparent self-interest that I disagree with the most strongly.  No system is perfect, just as our very bodies - while standing the tests of time and selection - are neither perfect nor even well-suited for all contingencies. But at some point we need ask what best serves the greatest common denominator.

What's New, Pussycat?

Dear, but how time flies!  March to May in what seems like a week; of mold, of shit, of utter decrepitude.  My life finally feels consumed by the job, that most dreadful of all nouns.  Up at six, fix a to-go salad and eat my yoghurt.  The daily walk to 4610 26th Avenue - I've calculated that as of last Wednesday I've walked five-hundred miles exclusively to and from work since starting in October.  It's two miles each way, so I suppose it adds up.  But my god!  I could have (very slowly) walked to San Francisco from here, rather than the punch-in and early morning meeting that begins each and every weekday with unflinching regularity.

I dream about work now, so far gone are my free time aspirations.  Sometimes I'll wake up and think up a way to go about a particular job that hadn't occurred to me before.  I'll return those two miles, feeling utterly efficient and utilitarianally clever.  Meanwhile my writing notes grow into a small stack of of yellowing paper.  My blog (poor blog), untouched for nearly two months that felt as a week.  Before I know it I'll be in my mid-thirties, wondering where it all went, dreaming my workaday dreams (if I dream at all, by then) and crawling into a bottle after every second set of two miles in the evening.

Whole lives are sometimes used this way, and it frightens me. 

Hunting the Hunter Within

            So maybe the art of debate is dead in America.  Lord knows it’s been missing in action so far in the presidential debates, has perhaps never seen any air time on talk radio, and suffers insurmountable stupidity on the forums and comment swathes of the internet.  Reminds me of a recent conversation I had about the deficit, tax loopholes, and a budget slash.  Try as I might to employ logic, reason, and ( yawn ) sourced facts against what I consider broad generalizations and gut instincts, we just couldn’t come to any suitable conclusion on the matter.

            Maybe that’s the problem with American politics – or possibly politics in general, or even humanity today – that the overload of noxious talking heads and the seemingly endless supply of information available to anyone with internet access suddenly makes everybody feel knowledge-empowered.  Masters of various subjects.  Intelligent, I suppose one could say.  But rather than actually trying to answer questions, a terrifying many people seem to go about picking out fact blurbs and twisting figures (and the very question) to suit their predispositions.

            And I wonder, has it always been this way?  I can recall the bitter (at time acidic) arguments of the Federalists and Anti-Federalists two-hundred and twenty-some years ago (eleven score, by Lincoln’s reckoning).  Yellow journalism, caricatures, inquisitions, libel and name calling and Elijah Lovejoy.  McCarthyism and countless panics.  Are people generally stupid?  Or is there more to debate than knowing your stuff and presenting it in a straightforward fashion?  Many tools in the arsenal, maybe...

            So if the art of debate is alive and thriving, I wonder if there was ever a real spirit of acquiescence and grace.  It could be those were just bullshit ideals too, Jesus preaching meekness sort of thing so that basilicas could be built and empires forged.  The information revolution has not only freed the people to boundless porn, but has given them the tools to be obtuse experts of most everything.  It’s the end of empires, the harbinger to the end of human progress.  It’s alive in politics on the floor of the House, on the angrily-lettered or else overly-worded pickets carried by protesters and occupiers and tea partiers.  It’s soon to be an end to bipartisanship and compromise.  Just wait – we’ll be living in an overbearingly effective dictatorship by the decade’s end, democratic principles having died the previous winter. 

            Not as bad as all that, perhaps, but it makes me wonder.  An example of things to come, conversing with a future leader in the world of business:

[Guy 1]  Ok, so I have $100 debt and will decrease spending by 50 ($50) and will increase spending by $50 ($100). So we are left with a grand total of $100! That is a Democrats idea of cutting the budget.

[Guy 2]  Hold up, Mr. Specious Reasoning; you'd lower your spending by $50 (freeing up $50 that you normally throw away - say on designer socks) and you'd be bringing in an additional $50 (Christmas card from your grandma). $100 debt would be paid in that scenario.

[Guy 1]  100-50+50=100???  [eyes boggling facetiously]

[Guy 2 shakes head, fist at God]

            

Rudian Days Gone By

            My, but how the days have flown!  October gone and nearly halfway into November at the blink of an eye, I come back and see my last entry was nearly a month ago.  Cliché as it sounds, I've been tied down traversing the ropes of my new job.  A far cry from fixing sandwiches, I inspect folks’ homes for water damage, jot it all down into a file folder for insurance purposes, then harvest up the unsalvageable remnants of hearth and comfort with a keen brutality.

            An interesting line of work though, a steady 8-5 (or 8-17 by the Rudian reckoning) M-F sort of gig with overtime and benefits.  My first ‘real’ job, one might be inclined to say, two steps shy of a 401k account and family to stabilize my days into a steady trickle toward antiquity.  Up before dawn, cup o’ tea, commute thither, morning meeting, endless coffee, world’s-your-oyster service calls and the accompanying paperwork, clock off, back, and retire – a dizzying array of routine that is both comfortable to fit into yet unfamiliar to me in its rigidity.

            Steady and good, but already I’ve found myself cast into previously unimaginably detestable tasks – navigating the Portland highway system in a bulky yellow crate with a shitey-at-best GPS navigator to gods-know-where, crawling about on my back in the dank darkened crawlspaces pulling abrasive fiberglass insulation, gutting the charred remnants of a lethal apartment fire (unenthusiastically wondering the while where it was the unfortunate gal’d died), stepping on nails and picking up innumerable splinters and bruises on the way.  A knockabout fashion to experience the Portlandia, say.

            But what an experience!  A month and I’ve already seen most every corner of Portland and its surrounding burbs and near-off neighbors.  Posh mansions of West Linn and decomposing tenements off North Killingsworth, tax-dodge Washington communities across the river, countryside burb-ettes, and all the forests and hills and mountains in between.  A glorious state, this, and such a happening little corner of it I happen to currently find myself in.

            So my, how the days have flown this crazy month.  Not much of anything by way of writing in the meantime, but lots of little notes here and there, lots of time to think and mull and ponder et al.  About houses, mostly; the American Living Space.  I’ve worked most every variety of dwelling our society has to offer, and in all – from mansion to studio – they’re all built of the same cheap shit.  Pine beams and papered gypsum walls, staples and particle board and plastic odds and ends; less homes than cardboard cut-outs of an ideal, a grand keeping of appearances.  Wastefully without any hope of lasting a hundred years, if even twenty.

            Like everything else housing is simply another commodity, a thing to pick up, use or patch up, then shell off for a profit at some future date.  Or if it’s an apartment the aim is to pack as many people in as possible, charge the living hell out of them with as little maintenance as necessary, and find every which way to cling on to their deposits with cyclical regularity until the structures eventually cave in on themselves or the HUD buys them out.  With such a crassly impermanent mindset driving the market there’s really little wonder the ‘housing bubble’ ever happened, or the real estate crash, or any other geo-financial tragedy that has befallen us.

But I dunno.  Days flown by, this boyo needs to fit a bit of writ into the malaisey mix.  More to come, eh?

Call Me a Communist, But...

So another weekend skiffles along full-pat, a stomach full of shepherd's pie and a mug of wimpy tea to salve a crampy cold I've succumbed to.  Uncharacteristically of me, for the first time in perhaps a week I've finally looked at the online news stories - Times Square and various city spaces around the world have been occupied by protesters decrying wealth disparity and a perceived lack of representation in government direction, Steve Jobs has suddenly passed on, Sonic Youth fronts Moore and Gordon separate (marriage now, band soon?), and the Treasury has delayed its final ruling on the fairness of China's currency valuation.

And then in lighter news, there's an interview with presidential-candidacy-hopeful Herman Cain on the NPR.  When asked by interviewer Scott Simon about the economic ramifications of Cain's proposed 9-9-9 tax scheme - in this case, instancing the proposed nine-percent sales tax on the price of bread paid by both prince and pauper - the Godfather's Pizza magnate responded:

On a gallon of milk or a loaf of bread, Bill Gates and every rich person is going to pay the same tax as someone who's on the lower end of the spectrum. But Scott, I'm not going to play the class warfare card. You have to compare the taxes they pay today. If you pick a certain income level — and I'll pick one and walk you through it, OK?  (Simon: "Sure.")  I'm going to use $50,000 a year, since that's approximately what the median income is for a family in this country. [For a] family of four, $50,000 a year. Under the current system, based upon standard deductions and standard exemptions, they're going to pay $10,200 in taxes. Under the 9-9-9 plan, the middle 9, they're going to pay $4,500. That leaves $5,700 to apply to that milk and bread in terms of the taxes. You have to go through the numbers of each individual situation.

Golf clap, Mr. Cain.  As suggested, going through the numbers every rich person will pay the same tax, in dollar amounts rather than proportionally.  The $5,700 that average family may save still has to go towards the mundane (and now more expensive) task of paying for the groceries, the wares, the thingamajigs.  That average American family spends nearly all its cash on (you guessed it) these expenditures, with little by way of money to save.  An overall raising of the levy on purchased goods will really do little by way of a tax break for the Jones', and in many cases will end up being a tax hike.

Believe it or not, but beyond the investment of assets and grandiose luxury purchases, the very wealthy consume roughly the same by way of living necessities as their less-than-wealthy peers.  Check out this informative graph.  The top fifth of American earners spend roughly $65K a year of their average $145K income, proportionally less than the middle fifth's $35K/$45K or the bottom fifth's deficitous $18K/<$10K.  There's only so much money a family can really spend on consumer goods before the rest of that money simply piles up to multiple zeros on a banking ledger.  Rather than further improving the affluent's quality of life any, beyond a certain point the money apparently makes no difference.

Not that I'm a commie!  But I'm simply saying that a consumptive-based tax plan is a bad shake for the majority of Americans.  9-9-9 - basically a flat tax scheme - is just another thinly veiled proposal to make the wealthy wealthier at the spending class' heavy expense.  You (dearest reader) and I are essentially indentured servants in this life, scraping together the dough (by serving the proverbial Man) to buy the essentials, enjoy/discard/replace the baubles, and live in the apartments of (or pay the mortgages to, if You are a home-owner) said loosely-defined and still very metaphorical Man.  Mind you, that's just one way to look at it.  Negative lens, mayhap.

But that's largely what the Occupy Your-City-Here movements are so miffed about, for those who've until now not 'got it'.

Misplacing My Ire?

So the other (week, was it?) I furrowed a single brow at news that a CIA drone had successfully found and killed Anwar al-Awlaki, the charismatic talking head of al-Qaeda.  Not because of who he was or what he stood for, but because of his American citizenship.  I'd been similarly nonplussed back in May when another drone strike targeting al-Awlaki instead killed a couple of others (reputedly al-Qaeda operatives themselves).  I'm not the only one ruffled by this incident:  the ACLU and CCR have launched lawsuits against the United States government, and a slew of literary ire has been pulled from the quivers of bloggers and op/edders.

Citizenship bears with it certain obligations, but it also yields certain unalienable rights- although then I have to second-guess myself when I remember the rationale of Rousseau's Social Contract, that those bonds can be broken.  But then bearing in mind al-Awlaki's location (questionably neutral but neutral Yemen), the lack of due process, the mode of execution-  I don't know!  My opinions are all in a bally muddle in this somewhat singular set of circumstances.  Because the man was undeniably inflammatory and rather possibly linked to the operational doings of al-Qaeda.  But is that worthy of targeting him for assassination?  Is it assassination, in this instance?  Again, a muddle.  Is this a precedent for wantonly targeting American citizens for courtless death, or is al-Awlaki's citizenship merely a side-note in a larger campaign?

In any case, I posed the question on the Facebook (while generally an open invitation for vitriol and disappointment, I have faith enough in the friends I keep that the conversations will be insightful and interesting) for a bit of discussion, citing the instances of Kaczynski and McVeigh as examples of home-spun terrorists caught and tried.  Perhaps a more apt comparison might have been David Karesh, but I received some good responses from a variety of sources, including a professor from my old college days.  Most notable among these was the lengthy and I'd say well thought out series of arguments posed by my friend Nate:

It's a tough call. Kaczynski and McVeigh were caught alone in the U.S., not hiding in a foreign country with a lot of protection. If it is true he was waging war against the U.S., he becomes a combatant. This doesn't forgo his citizenship, but open war against the U.S. does put you a bit beyond normal due process. And as compared to Osama, Al-Awlaki moved around a lot more, preventing a planned raid of the same scope. Unfortunately in the current global threat scenario some information simply won't be fit for public consumption. There is certainly a line in which government can and cannot infringe on a person's rights. It is my opinion that those rights may be infringed upon when that person makes war upon the people that government represents. To try and make a point of paramilitary ignores the forest for the trees. Surely lives are being diddled with on both sides, in the end it mostly washes out. I would agree as a concept a bombing should be avoided when civilians are at risk, but there are things to consider beyond that one angle. There are equally many scenarios in which more civilian lives are lost in other ways of dealing with Al-Awlaki. Take for instance the infamous Blackhawk Down, in which a raid meant to reduce civilian casualties ended up creating tenfold. In a perfect situation Al-Awlaki would have been arrested and brought to trial with full due process. It is not a perfect situation, and I believe the situation warranted the loss of that privilege. I will say that I would have supported the same tactic used were McVeigh hiding in Generic Lawless Christian nation attempting further attacks against the U.S. Or Generic Liberal terrorist in Lawless Socialist state. Unfortunately, many of the people who agreed with the death of Al-Awlaki would have disagreed were he White/Christian. There is definitely an anti-Muslim undercurrent in the public support of the War on Terror.

While I can't argue with many of his points- well, precisely because I cannot fully argue with many of his points without that vague sense of doubt, I wonder if this may be a waste of time on my part.  Another panic worth abandoning, like so many others cast aside in this decade-old War on Terror being waged.  Besides, there may well be more important things afoot, like the Occupy (Your City Here) movement sweeping the nation or the impending reelection of Vladimir Putin.  Or ending the death penalty.  Yet as I move on I cannot help but wonder in what ways this undermines the value of citizenship, or if (like patriotic buzzspeak 'liberty' and 'freedom' and 'democracy') it really hasn't any intrinsic value at all.

What strange and odious things does this abandoned panic portend?

Training Day

            Now numbered among the rising ranks of America’s underemployed (up from the ashes of being un-such, as it were), I find myself jumping through an unpaid eleven-hour hoop of online training that my imminent employment hinges on.  The road ahead is a daunting, joyless sort of one; the employee manual is a goopy honeysuckle nod to corporate policy, to nameless and excruciating servility unto the appetites of a populace largely living on the quick.

            A few things come to my embittered mind as I indifferently peruse the customer handling policies.  Upselling orders or ‘suggestive selling’, obfuscating values, and shuffling patrons back out the door as quickly as possible:  a policy blending the gloss of a Pudong silk marketeer with all the seamy charm of a Solwezi black market bazaar, tinged with the murky grey edges of a con about it.  It’s really little wonder that the procedure regarding all and every confrontation or complaint is to bend over backwards and right oneself in a spineless kowtow, to shower the offended customer with saccharine and coupons and promises.  Caught with the second ace of spades in a game of Three-card Monte, what can one do but slither appropriately away?

            And that’s if the complaint is justified.  By and large I’ve seen the Platinum Rule – that ethos of the infallible customer – to be a hearty jest at reality, if that at best.  The prejudice of my experience indicates that most normal people don’t complain, even when posed with the most unforgivable of trivial inconveniences.  Most don’t even remember the slight when they return, week or the day next.  It comes down to those rare few who pump their egos and desperately earn their bread raising hell at various establishments, who would sooner crucify the manager and flog the staff than leave without a free handout or special discount.  It’s economic extortion, really.

            Extorting the con-man, devil and Daniel Webster like.  Black on black in a world created by the piecemeal dissolution and outsourcing of American industry and the foundation of this fatuous service economy.  Held at the mercy of minimum wage, right-to-work, bottom-line troglodytes and ends-damn-the-means profit margins.  Two jobs, first-strike termination, overcrowded prisons, the undermining and privatization of federal services, and rampant personal debt.  A system taxed upon by the shameless profit-siphoning of corporate egomaniacs and the unstable three-legged race against regulation for that next questionable market.  All bricks in that merry old wall some people like to call Capitalism.  Really it's a noxious slur to the notion, if ever there was; it’s less a system than a case of bad management and systemic misuse, of short-sighted opportunism and hypocritical bootstrapped indifference.

            Once I’d started an article project for Arbor Day entitled “So You Love The Environment,” subtitled Then You’re Already Doing… with a list of things – some surprising, some not so much; the article was scrapped after all – every green-blooded child of the soil should be doing/eschewing.  One of these bullets was to never, never eat in a restaurant again.  The sheer waste churned out on a daily basis by these establishments borders the remarkable and jumps into the tragic.  Some are better than others of course, but chains and fast-food franchises are the worst.  Ironically, a large dose of waste is due to following health code guidelines; those paper towels and endless latex-free gloves go someplace, invariably to the dumpster at day’s end. 

Likewise, used/spoilt food (which I’m certainly not going to argue needs to be served anyway) and the considerable amounts of water needed to maintain even the smallest commercial kitchen are a consideration.  It was hard to even find a figure showing the average water consumption; for a while the best answer I could find was really a poorly written yet rather telling non-answer.  Could it be that restauranting is America’s latest in a long slew of dirty little secrets, as had been the rampant use of DDT and other pesticides some fifty years ago? [i]

Not that the industry hasn’t felt its share of arrows in the past decade, from the groundbreaking documentary Supersize Me to an apparently rising anti-restaurant movement as the price of nigh-on everything rises.  Is it so hard to cook a meal for oneself, I ask?  My roommate certainly seems to think so.  But I dunno.  Is it so wrong to live and work and look about in this world of ours and ask the immortal question, “Why”?  If nothing else, have the decency to pay a bloke for hours served… own-time online training, my ass!

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[i] A problem that of course has since been solved.  Really though, check out Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring at your local library the next opp you get.

Debilitatingly, My Vas Deferens!

Here's something that takes the air out of my ass:  the nerve... the very gall of that damned red underlining spell check squiggle trying to dumb down my fucking English!  Every goddamn paragraph it would seem, naysaying (ooh! there's one!) every blithering shite-encrusted bit of verbage (another, there) I see fit to type down.  Earlier today, while working on my 9/11 article I encountered a number of such inconveniences.  Distillated, archaeity, prattlings, and acerbic were among them, not to mention the understandably unrecognized slurry of foreign words, like djinn and burqa.  It happens and I've got to double guess myself, count my t's and look up the placement of my i's and e's.  It happens on the Facebook, as well.  Just now, debilitatingly (hey, even now) rings up red, as does vas deferens.  Scrote-squelching faggotry afoot in the world of online editing, it seems like.
I dunno.  It's damned stultifying... which oddly enough seems alright to say.

Raising the Price of Tea?

It positively burned my bollocks yesterday to see a headline highlighting fresh complaints that members of Congress aren’t paid enough.  As I was following the link I thought to myself that they better not be newly-elected members of the Tea Party circuit, who so egregiously dickered up this month’s mammoth budget slashings while maintaining the tax loopholes unnecessarily protecting America’s wealthiest.  I suppose it shouldn’t have been such a great surprise to find that three of the article’s four citations came from Rep. Steve Southerland (R-FL), Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI), and Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-NC), all three indeed recently elected in the 2010 midterms as self-styled Tea Party juniors.

The comments the article cites speak pretty poorly of Southerland in particular; somewhat in Duffy's defense Talking Points Memo shows him to be among Congress' poorest peers, though his family's wealth is still considerably greater than those of his average constituents.  (Although in an act of informational whitewash, Duffy and the GOP attempted to strike all evidence of his comments from the internet.)  It is also important to note that comments made by Ellmers and by Rep. Linda Sánchez (D-CA) were both in the context of forgoing their salaries completely in the event of the potential government shutdown earlier this year.

But Steve Southerland, what gall!  Complaining publicly that he ought to return to the private sector, and this after striving his hardest to drive the near-ruin (well... tarnishing might be a less loaded, more accurate phrasing) of America's economic standing, and the decimating of its fiscal obligations and social programming.  I suppose all I can say is "Go, sir!"  Your ilk is not what America needs now, or ever.

Now is Our Time {to Go Forth and Vomit}

So I saw a recent Levis ad running online.  I’m not even sure where to begin, so simultaneously amused, awed, and irritated was I.  But I’ll start with awe; beautifully shot, a tender panoply of color and effect and subtle razzmatazz.  The contrast of each pants-wearer’s scenario, well woven into the next transition with fire and petals and water and Batman-era colorful tear gas.  And throughout comes the soothing voice of the narrator droning on in the background amid the sounds of waves crashing and upliftingly light music.

Makes for pleasant effect but by the end I was a tisch vexed, “how dare they” and such.  I think my underlying point of contention was their campy use of the rebelliousness of youth to sell clothing, and of their taking what really is a rousing little poem and somewhat cheapening it thereby.  Not that those social offenses are anything new, or those subjects sacrosanct.  But I think it was the young Ewan McGregor wannabe swaggering up defiantly towards the riot line, and the commercial’s trite fluff-and-gloss of rebellion (more specifically, of rioting and civil unrest), their equating this rebellion to a resurgence in punk youth fashion.  Maybe it was poor timing, now that Libya is finally winning its war on Gaddafi.  If more than mere coincidence, it strikes me as a sort of band-wagoning cash-in not unlike recent statements made by current Republican candidates.

Now don’t get me wrong, I like Levis.  In point of fact, I only wear Levis (527s) so far as jeans go, which are inevitably the only things I wear on my legs when in public.  Solid.  Dependable.  Well-fit.  Et cetera.  And so far as commercials go, it was easier to watch than some of the new Geico ads or any number of deodorizing spray commercials.  But it begs to ask, who does Levi Strauss & Company want its clientele to rebel against?  So far as the rank and file go, Levi is the establishment, the devil-may-care buy-buy-buy corporate steam engine the Man rides to work every morning. 

I dunno, I’m prolly looking too deeply into it.  Nonetheless, it rubbed me against the grain that something as truly brutal and violent (and real, if you will) as rioting/unrest/civil discord can be passed off as something light and cool to sell a few pairs of slacks.  Smacks distasteful.

Of Gods and Central Planners

So an interesting thought occurred to me as I slurp my morning cuppa, perusing Governor Rick Perry's website as I always do on Sunday mornings.  In the top banner there're blurbs of inspiration and facial likeness splashing across the screen, memorable quotes and so forth.  He keeps them simple:  "Don't spend all the money.  Keep taxes low.  Make regulations fair and predictable.  And stop the frivolous lawsuits that paralyze job creators."  "Getting America back to work starts with laying off our current president."

But the one that really made me sit up and smile this morning went along the lines of:

"It is up to this generation of Americans to take our future back from the grips of central planners who would control our healthcare, spend our treasure, downgrade our future, and micromanage our lives."

It strikes me that there's a wealth of information to be gleaned from this statement.  At first glance I'm scoffing at a man painfully out of touch with 'this generation,' though perhaps the Texan Young Republicans aren't such a hep set themselves...  Perry's use of terms like "central planners" and "treasure" seem taken straight out of McCarthy's* red scare lexicon and biblical parables, respectively.

Even in prayer, the governor has his eye on the presidency.

Particularly though, there's a glowing ire emanating from the statement's tone, a prickling of ego that at first glance seems out of place from such an outspokenly god-fearing man.  'How dare anyone control me,' all the while publicly (and arguably unconstitutionally) throwing himself and the fate of his constituents "in[to] God's hands,**" prayer circles and all.

It's a paradox, the god-and-caesar power shenanigans people play at; on the one hand professing to be in the wholesale throes of the whim of an omnipotently fearsome thing, yet all up in arms that a mere bureaucrat would dare to control what is rightfully God's sort-of-like.

Y'all get the picture, even if I don't really feel the need to paint out every last stroke.  At length I'd contend it's indicative of another political sociopath at work, a potentially opportunistic millionaire shamelessly shirking our social responsibilities while shielding himself and the poor feebs who vote for him by vague obligations to an at most distant superauthority.

A superauthority who clearly hates Texas, heart seemingly still unhardened by Perry's impressive prayer gathering earlier this month.

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* On a side rant, fuck the Cold War; our pyrrhic victory forever besmirched the idea of a national health care program. 

** For all my online scouring, I couldn’t find an actual link to cite.  It’s ‘common knowledge,’ apparently.

And Then Along Comes Perry

For what it's worth, I'm glad longtime Texas governor Rick Perry has thrown his ten-gallon hat into the national ring.  Because now that he's in (and rather popular, according to the most recent polls) Perry's no-nonsense, candid-by-the-grace-of-God approach helps clarify the crossroad America again finds itself at in this upcoming election.

Now call me young and foolish, but the proverbial crossroad I'm referring to looks an awful lot like the one the country found itself at in 2008.  And 2004.  2000.... 1980....  Every election since 1820, and a few before.  In terms of direction, American voters have been grappling for quite a while over the roles of government and the private sector.

More than that, there is the vision of America voters will have to (again, try to) choose next November.  The electoral hiccup of last year's midterms notwithstanding, America had largely voted for Change and Hope (and that sort of thing) in 2008.  People voted for more accessible health care, for a more stable foreign and economic policy, for tightened regulation and market oversight; for bigger government, basically.

Feeling a bit young and foolish after the somewhat dismally slow (and at times, recidivist) executive movements churned out since '08, I nonetheless feel certain that despite the recent upsurge of Tea Partyist activism the majority of Americans remain moderate at the least, and at best are still hoping for something more out of their government.  Getting back to Rick Perry, I'd say as a candidate he epitomizes what America is really voting for or against:  a Christ-makes-White, apple pie, saccharine-neighborly and judiciously vindictive, bootstraps NIMBY amalgam of xenophobia and foreign tax shelters, of marginalized infrastructure and codified indifference.  A Dawn of the Working Poor sort of scape, where wide-o corporations do as they will with the privileges of unjailable people and the circus act of state legislatures, laughable state constitutions, and introverted local politics have free reign to rule the day.

Not quite that maybe, but in no uncertain terms the Tea Party banner is an anti-system movement, the monkeys wrenching up the apparatus (as so wonderfully put by NY Times columnist Charles M. Blow) so to speak.  But no critics can put the message better than candidate Perry himself, who recently promised (among other things) that "I'll work every day to make Washington, DC as inconsequential in your life as I can."  And that's the platform embraced by nearly all of his Republican peers currently vying for the presidency.  In 2012, a Republican vote will very likely be a vote cast for an idyllic non-president running a non-government.  

Serious changes are afoot, rumblings within the Grand Old Party that - if nothing else - will make the choice next November a lot more clearly defined.

Straw Dogs in the Political Manger

So in an admittedly underwhelming bit of news, Michele Bachmann won the first of many symbolic rites of passage for Republican presidential hopefuls, an ever-expanding array of candidates including Tim Pawlenty, Mitt Romney, Jon Huntsman, Newt Gingrich, libertarian pillar Ron Paul, gourmand and restaurateur Herman Cain, and the recently-added Texas governor and Bush sound-alike, Rick Perry.

Bachmann celebrates her hard-won triumph as 
Ames locals prepare their autumnal wicker man.
(photo from http://images.politico.com/global/news/110813_bachmann6_reut_328.jpg) 

At the risk of chiming in with the rest of the online world, I wonder aloud what's so damned fascinating about today's Iowa straw poll.  Boiling it down, it's essentially been a glad-handing affair involving a dozen thousand of the GOP's staunchest fans, more than half of whom singled out Tea Party frontispiece Bachmann and fringe-politician Ron Paul as their top choice.  Comparing this to national poll ratings, it places this majority of straw poll voters proportionally into a much narrower subgroup of actual, national voters.  Also taking into consideration Bachmann calls Iowa home, it's little wonder she took the victory ('narrowly' at that, says CNN).

Anyway, all I'm saying is that the media romance with Iowa (and yes, New Hampshire) should come to an end.  Not only are the states woefully unreflective of the nation as a voting whole (and relatively unimportant electorally), but using this flawed mechanism to weed out the candidates (adieu, Tim Pawlenty) in this day and age of instant telecommunication is our Old Sarum of the American political edifice.  It's a goddamn bit of misinformation and a colorful one at that, and like all misleading flashes of color it's the thing latently interested people look to first.