SPRING THOUGHTS 2021

The Proud Boys have little to be proud of and much more that is their shame.

Are you really a "patriot" if you want to tear down the democratic government of your country?

The people who attacked the U. S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 and the lying scum who encouraged that attack are "PATRIOTS" in the same sense that right-wing Evangelical CHRISTIANS are Christians (i. e. they are not!).

Dr. Samuel Johnson defined patriotism as "the last refuge of a scoundrel." Ambrose Bierce, writing in America and over 100 years later, corrected Dr. Johnson noting that patriotism is the first refuge of a scoundrel. I think we need a new word for love of country. The word "patriot" has been so abused for 60 years that it has no positive meaning anymore when lunatics, fascists, cultists and assorted other scum can call themselves by that name.

If people like James Dobson, Jim Bakker, Creflo Dollar, Franklin Graham, Tony Perkins, Pat Robertson and Roy Moore are CHRISTIANS it is just as well that Jesus of Nazareth has been dead for more than 2000 years.

The Oath Keepers might want to look for an oath that's actually worth keeping.

If Stewart Rhodes is an actual patriot, I'm the Queen of Sheba. Please note: I have never been a queen in any sense of the term and have never visited "Sheba" in any sense of that term either. 

The Second Amendment to our Constitution reads as follows:

A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

We have only to look at the Capitol insurrection of January 6, 2021 to see that these self-styled militias are anything but "well regulated" and oppose "the security of a free State". In consequence of their NOT meeting the conditions set forth in the Second Amendment their right "to keep and bear Arms" needs to be "infringed" and actually curtailed in the same way that we would take a firearm away from any other lunatics.

When we're being polite we call Republiscum office holders, candidates and voters Republicans even though they can't. The Republiscum Party and its adherents have made a disastrous mess of the national economy causing a total of 22 Recessions and Depressions of the 35 Recessions or Depressions since the Republican Party was founded. In almost every case it is Democrats who have had the task of cleaning up the mess that Republiscum have left the nation. Please note that the Republiscum Party bills itself as the party of "fiscal responsibility".

We also call them "Conservatives" when "Fascists" is the correct term. Why?

Once upon a time there were Republicans and Conservatives but largely since the 1950s there have been Republiscum and Fascists with few notable exceptions.

Jeffrey Epstein, his girlfriend and abbetters Ghislaine Maxwell and fellow trafficer(?) the Failed Orange Führer, trafficed in underage girls. Now Rep. Matt Gaetz, who describes himself as the most dedicated of dedicated Failed Orange Führer supporters, is under investigation for trafficing in underage girls. One of the most basic lies of the QAnon Cult involved in the sexual exploitation of underage children. I wonder how the right-wingnuts came up with that idea?

Antifa is shorthand for anti-Fascist. Other notable anti-Fascists include Dwight D. Eisenhower, George C. Marshall, Mark Clark, Omar N. Bradley, Winston Churchill, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Josephine Baker, Frederico García Lorca, Berthold Brecht, Albert Einstein, Leo Szilard, Enrico Fermi, Niels Bohr, George Kistiakowsky, Alan Turing, Reinhold Niebuhr and most of the soldiers and sailors who fought in World War II. So what's not to like unless, of course, you are a Fascist?

About half of white, evangelical voters say that they will refuse to be vaccinated against Covid-19. While their decision is both stupid and a prime example of sheep being led by the Judas Goat of disinformation  to the slaughter by from Fox, OANN and other right-wing media outlets, look on the bright side: many idiot right-wing evangelicals will be culled from the national herd, an outcome devoutly to be wished. If that makes me a bad person, so be it.

Unfortunately, many of those unvaccinated imbeciles will go out and infect smarter people and some imbeciles will survive this pandemic. That is a tragedy.

One of the reasons that the Republiscum Party has been so successful in locking in the evangelical vote is that the majority of evenagelicals will believe any bullshit that's fed to them. They believe in The Rapture. They believe that mental illness is caused by demonic possession. They believe that they can tell who is possessed by nonexistent demons. In short, they believe the same utter nonsense that allowed 20 citizens of Salem, Massachusetts to be murdered in 1692 and 1693. Technology progresses but we remain the same ignorant apes  century after century.

THE MOST SPECIAL OF SPECIAL SNOWFLAKES

Dr. Samuel Johnson (1755) :

Patriotism, n. The last refuge of a scoundrel.

-Dictionary of the English Language

Ambrose Bierce (1911):

Patriotism, n. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name.

In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last refuge of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first.

 -The Devil's Dictionary

Let us now praise famous snowflakes...well, actually just one extra, most special and one and only notable special snowflake. Let us praise him "Bigly".

The American neo-Fascist right wing through its wholly owned mouth organ, Fox News, has peddled the idea that Liberals (in Fox's definition anyone a millimeter or more to the left of Mussolini or Francisco Franco) are "special snowflakes" (i.e. unique and delicate, easily destroyed by a breath of warm air) when violence, racism, bullying or unreasoning attacks evoke a counter-response in the individual or a group.

Now I give you the star in his own mind, Mr. Donald J. Trump who styles himself President of the United States of America and wraps himself around any nearby flag. This Orange Snowflake seems to invoke patriotism with every other breath while avoiding any patriotic actions himself. President Bone Spurs wants the U. S. Military to parade through Washington, D. C. for him solely because he thinks he personally deserves a military parade. What has he done to deserve such a parade? Well, let's see...he's allowed military personnel to keep their pay increase while withholding all pay increases for civilian government employees. He's appointed military personnel to several cabinet positions and so far only one of them had been forced to resign for criminal acts. He also says nice things about the military at every rally he conducts. Oh! I almost forgot; he saw a military parade on Bastille Day, 2017 while visiting Paris and thought that he should have one too.

Vladimir Putin's favorite American asset regularly rails against news outlets - other than Fox, of course - as "the enemy of the people". The Great Patriotic President has a problem with the idea of a free press. Under his view of democracy any organization that opposes him and/or publishes criticism of him is "the enemy of the people". Truth itself is "the enemy of the people" if it isn't the fictional "truth" that he and his Ministry of Truth cobbles up to aggrandize the Republiscum's Fearless Leader. Yet there's a glitch that Mr. Putin's asset forgets(?), ignores(?), edits out(?) of the First Amendment to our Constitution to wit: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people to peaceably assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." Those six injunctions were so important to our founders that they became the first items specified for protection in our Constitution. Nestled in there is freedom of the press. Therefore, The Great Patriotic President is railing against one of the foremost protections for our rights. Not especially patriotic and definitely the act of a scoundrel I think. 

Yet we should ask why he feels that the press is "the enemy of the people"? In every case that raises Mr. Putin's asset's ire, the material to which he objects is criticism of himself personally or of the government and/or political party he heads. The press is not "the enemy of the people". Rather to him it is an enemy of The Great Patriotic President himself. The press isn't criticizing Americans generally or any specific group except by implication those foolish enough to vote for and continuing to support The Great Patriotic President. They are criticizing The Great Patriotic President and his acts either direct or indirect through his government and party. I reject the idea that the press is the enemy of anyone. The press is, if anything, the enemy of lies, corruption, despotism and injury to the people. That is exactly why the first Congress decided to protect the press in that First Amendment. What The Great Patriotic President purposefully confuses is criticism of himself and attacks on the American people. 

Between 1933 and 1945 no German pledged support to the German state. The salute was not "Heil Deutschland!" The salute was "Heil Hitler!". Our democracy from the outset was one of laws and not of individuals. We had just, after all, fought an eight year war against a government of individuals, in that case a king. We are a representative government meaning that we elect people from among the ranks of the people to represent our interests in the government. Our Constitution begins with the words, "We, the People...." Notably it does not begin I, George Washington... or James Madison... or Alexander Hamilton... or Benjamin Franklin.... The Constitution does not begin with the name of any individual person because government of, by and for an individual person was one of the primary ideas we were against when trying to bring into the world a nation new to a world rife with kings, emperors and other dictatorial individuals. Herr Drumpf seems unaware that he is not the nation. If there are anythings antithetical to a government "of the people, by the people and for the people" they are an autocrat (one who governs for himself alone) or an aristocrat (one whose social rank makes him superior to all others). Those terms, derived from the French, are the diametrical opposite of a democrat. I would suggest that The Great Patriotic President has raised himself to the aristocratic status of the most special of special snowflakes.

In the few days preceding this writing this Orange Snowflake has suggested that a book criticizing his government and an op-ed piece in the New York Times are acts of "Treason?". The only way in which those publications could be "Treason?" is if President Putin's Puppet is the government and the nation. So far we have managed to retain the concept that the only treason we recognize is betrayal of our Constitution and laws. The Great Patriotic President now claims that he must know who penned the anonymous op-ed piece as a matter of national security. I have many reservations about that anonymous author but the only security endangered by the op-ed piece is the security of the Orange Snowflake himself. The only threat to the nation is The Great Patriotic President himself.

In a campaign rally in Montana The Great Patriotic President opined that the op-ed piece was a cowardly act. I would tend to agree with the charge of cowardice. At times I have said and written things that I would rather not have done on further reflection but regardless of my second thoughts I have always owned up to my mistakes as well as my successes. I think that the anonymous writer should own up to his article. Be that as it may, the Orange Snowflake pronounced that the article was "very unfair". Unfair? To whom? Unfair to poor widdle Donnie, The Great Patriotic President? The Orange Snowflake that cannot endure the faintest breath of criticism? Poor widdle Donnie! How sad he must be to be triggered by such a mean, vile blizzard of truth. 

I long for the day when he is no longer protected by the craven Republiscum in Congress, when the faintest breath of truth will dissolve this Orange Snowflake and send him to the oblivion of a prison that he has so richly deserved. Until that day I would amend a venerable warning and urge my fellow countrymen, "Don't eat the yellow or the Orange snow!"

The Glorious Fourth: Some thoughts on Patriotism, Jingoism, Chauvinism, and genuine love of country.

This Fourth of July, 2008, the 232nd anniversary of American independence, the news came that former North Carolina Senator, and life-long racist, neo-fascist, homophobe and vile scum, Jesse Helms, had died. Unfortunately for our nation he died 86 years too late. A statement from Dubya’s White House characterized the odious Mr. Helms as a “true patriot”. It’s a good thing that we’ve long since ceased to credit any statement from this White House gang else that characterization of Helms would confirm of Ambrose Bierce’s modification of Dr. Johnson’s definition of patriotism: that it is the first refuge of a scoundrel. Jesse Helms succeeded in a way that far too many before him had in embodying the worst characteristics of America. He was the poster boy for jingoism, bigotry and hate-mongering. The nation is better for his passing and would have been better still had he never lived. Yet calling him a “true patriot” calls up the question of what “true” patriotism might be.

Vladimir Nabokov said that we know that we’re in the presence of the sublime when the little hairs on the backs of our necks stand up. At some point on each July 4th those hairs stand up for me. I may be when I hear the Declaration of Independence read, occasionally by myself, or when someone plays Ray Charles singing America the Beautiful. They might stand up in the presence of the sublime manifest in a number of ways, including the utterly trite snap of a flag on the summer breeze. I respond that way when the Statue of Liberty fills the screen and someone reads Emma Lazarus’ The New Colossus or Francis Bellamy’s unadulterated Pledge of Allegiance.

Yes. I admit it. I love my country. I am not one of those doomed to be “unwept, unhonor’d and unsung” of whom Sir Walter Scott wrote,

“Breathes there the man with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
‘This is my own, my native land!’
Whose heart hath ne'er within him burn'd
As home his footsteps he hath turn'd
From wandering on a foreign strand?”

Yet I am loathe to call myself a patriot not least because it might associate me with the likes of Helms, Dubya, Cheney, Feith or some similar charlatan. There is nothing even casually patriotic about that gang of criminals. But what is it to be patriotic? Why is this crop of neo-fascists not patriotic while I think that I am?

Flags and flag pins, patriotic songs and gestures like rote repetition of the Pledge of Allegiance are simply trappings. They are not the nation any more than are my cats. Burning a flag may have symbolic meaning but it has nothing whatever to do with respect for the principles of this nation. Those things are gewgaws. They may be gewgaws that we treasure but they are not the core of the nation despite their being mistaken for such by far too many people.

What is the core of our nation is its Constitution as amended and, to a lesser extent, the statement of principle in our Declaration of Independence. Our public officials from the president, congress and the Supreme Court on down to the lowliest bureaucrat swear to protect and defend our Constitution, not the flag, the national anthem, or any particular item. It is the Constitution that is at the core of America and why we are a nation of laws not men. Yet few citizens and even fewer of those who wear their patriotism on their sleeves read the Constitution or understand the history and the debate that led to its adoption. I dare say that perhaps one in 50 of us have even heard of the Articles of Confederation that preceded the Constitution’s adoption. The so-called Libertarian Movement thrives on the ignorance of the Articles of Confederation because we tried their prescription for governance from 1777 through 1787 and it didn’t work. Out of that failure came our Constitution.

The ultra-rightists who currently run the Executive Branch, have a stranglehold on the Legislative Branch and have largely taken over the Judicial Branch are not patriotic because they violate our Constitution on a regular basis. The right wing that now has usurped the Republican Party may talk a good game, wrap themselves in the flag and the gewgaws of patriotism but their actions demonstrate that their entire program is one of undermining the Constitution by sewing fear and keeping the populace fragmented and distracted by meaningless issues like opposition to same-sex marriage or who does or does not wear a flag pin.

There is not a person serving since January 20, 2001 in the White House staff or above the Deputy Assistant level in the cabinet departments who is not just unpatriotic but a traitor to the Constitution.

So, I do consider myself a patriot. I’ve seen a great deal of this nation. I come of a family that came to New England on the Mayflower in 1620 and that had men in all this nations wars through World War II. Those hairs on the back of my neck stand in the presence of many of the symbols of my nation and in the significant places like the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials or on the hallowed ground of Gettysburg. Yet I am nothing so much as furious at those who trade in a shallow, triumphalist patriotism while trampling on the Constitution.

Says it all, doesn't it!

Generally I like to rant on about topics that interest me but a friend sent me the following link that is hilarious largely because it's so dead on. People, except in West Virginia, it appears, have learned to use euphemisms so that their ignorance and bigotry won't be glaringly visible. Yet strip away the linguistic acrobatics and this is what you get:

http://www.imvotingrepublican.com

The Glorious Fourth

The 4th of July, America's national day, the day on which we celebrate the independence of our nation, tends to descend into the wallow of militarism, jingoism and xenophobic triumphalism yet it never fails to move me deeply. I am, at ground, an American patriot but I use a definition of patriotism rather different from that prevailing amongst my countrymen, their definition being more in concert with the definitions of Dr. Samuel Johnson and Ambrose Bierce. As an illustration of my concept of patriotism, let me quote a Republican.

Carl Schurz was a German liberal who was forced to flee his country after the revolutions of 1848 collapsed. He settled in Wisconsin and became a friend and supporter of Abraham Lincoln. In 1862 he resigned his post as Ambassador to Spain and took a commission in the U.S. Army. After the war he was President Andrew Johnson's emissary to report on conditions in the South. He later was a Senator from Missouri. He was Interior Secretary under President Hayes and still later moved to New York where he became a distinguished writer and editor. In short, Schurz's history is one that might well define patriotism. So, without further ado or comment, let me quote him on this 231st 4th of July:

”Our country right or wrong. When right, to be kept right; when wrong, to be put right.”