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!"

MONUMENTS, DIXIE AND MONUMENTS IN DIXIE

I wish I was in the Land of Cotton.

Old times there are not forgotten.

Or in Mississippian William Faulkner's apt phrase referring to his home region, "The past is not dead. It's not even past."

For a couple of years now we have been distracted and agonizing over monuments, songs, buildings, books and other supposed desiderata that have compromised or downright unpleasant connotations. For the moment I'm going to limit myself to the discussions around race, racism and the fetishizing of the Confederacy. So let's get one thing out of the way immediately. 

The American Civil War was not a "War of Northern Aggression". The first shots fired in that war rained down on a Federal garrison at Fort Sumter in the harbor of the secessionist city of Charleston, South Carolina. Major Anderson did not fire on Charleston first. He was fired upon. Nor was the Civil War a "War for States Rights". The states kept their Constitutionally guaranteed rights but they had to acknowledge that they were parts of one nation and subject to the laws thereof. The whole point of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and the ratification of our Constitution was to knit together what had been thirteen fiefdoms at war with one another and often with themselves. Our Civil War settled the fact that we are one nation in which states have rights but not rights that supersede those of the Federal Government.

The American Civil War was fought over slavery and the preservation of the plantation system that could not exist without slave labor. Every one of the secession documents and secession constitutions of the Confederate States make it absolutely clear that slavery was the issue behind secession and all that followed so let's be clear about that from the start.

Here we are more than one hundred and fifty years later and the freedom that a northern victory conferred on former slaves has never been fully realized. Too often we see minorities, black, brown, Native American and others cheated, denigrated and abandoned not to mention the every lengthening list of murder victims: Trayvon Martin, Freddie Gray, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland, Philando Castille and on and on stretching both to past and future. We have forced African-American and other racial and ethnic groups into ghettos. Because Irish, Italians, Polish, Germans and Jews among other Europeans are considered "white" they assimilated quickly and within a century became part of the American majority. Perhaps the greatest assimilation factor was World War II during which members of many ethnic groups found themselves in the same foxholes trying to stay alive while fighting a common enemy both in the actual battlefield and in the movies shown at home.

African-Americans, unlike their pale, European cousins have always had their skin color to identify and exclude them. Too often they have been seen as Africans while their white sisters and brothers excise the "American" part of their group identity.

The past truly isn't even past. Lynchings now seldom involve a rope, at least outside of a jail cell. Today they involve a choke hold or an all too eager policeman's bullet. Yet it is those very bullets and the videos that allow bystanders to document the abuses of police and other citizens that have made the racism and discrimination obvious to those previously inclined to dismiss such claims. Thus having brought the Jim Crow past manifestly forward into the present we are also sensitive to the symbols of that horrible past that persist into our slightly less horrible present.

Much has been made of David Wark Griffith's Birth of a Nation as the inspiration for the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in the 20th Century. That's a facile and largely wrong identification. The U. S. Supreme Court handed down the decision in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896. For that decision to reach the Supreme Court there had to be segregation long before Homer Plessy was refused a seat in a rail car. If we are looking for a beginning to the Ku Klux Klan we have to look into the hearts of men who can observe another human being and find a difference that makes the observer superior to the person observed. We have to look at men and women who refused to accept freedom and equality for all human beings. We have to look at white women who valiantly fought for their right to vote but would not consider that their African-American sisters should have that right too. We have to look at men and women who refused to accept that the world that they knew and profited from was, to coin a phrase, "gone with the wind" and never would come back. We definitely have to look at "The Corrupt Bargain of 1877" that traded Reconstruction and Federal troops occupying the former Confederate states for the presidency of minority Republican Rutherford B. Hayes rather than the majority vote's choice of Democrat Samuel J. Tilden. Griffith's film and Woodrow Wilson's personal racism sure had an effect but the Klan hordes who came out from under their several rocks through the 1920s weren't new. They were just revealed. The Klan and other racist groups and individuals (e.g. the German-American Bund, America First, Westbrook van Voorhis or the popular Radio Priest, Father Charles Coughlin) were always lurking in the penumbra at the edges of our vision. They just came out into the centre of focus for a time. I am not defending Birth of a Nation. The script is an appalling racist screed and needs to be acknowledged as such. It is also, however, a work of art. The narrative may be vile but the skill and perception that went into making it is worth seeing. That is the dichotomy that I wish to discuss very shortly.

Much like Birth of a Nation is only one expression of the racism infecting our society, the statues now coming down or, more often, staying up long after their meaning gone from bad to worse have a complicated and fraught meaning. Many who want statues honoring soldier and figures of the Confederacy removed cite the fact that most were erected between the 1890s and 1920s, long after the Civil War was over and the battlefield dead turned to dust. That late advent is indisputable fact but I would suggest that we also consider that time in a slightly different light. The 1890s into the 1920s saw the passing of the great majority of the survivors of that war. The old veteran who might be seen at some local popular spot ready to tell stories of his youth in battle was no more. That his friends and neighbors and, yes, often fellow Klan members, might subscribe to erect a statue to their local veteran and all such veterans is no more perverse than the monuments to those who served in World War II, Korea or Vietnam that now stand on the National Mall. What is perverse is the cause for which that veteran fought.

When I was a boy and obsessed with Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War I found much that was admirable in Robert W. Lee, Thomas J. Stonewall Jackson, Joseph Johnson, Philip Kearney, Ulysses Grant and, perhaps the noblest next to Lincoln, William T. Sherman. As a Union man and admirer of Lincoln I could still feel the pain of Confederate General John Bell Hood after losing the Battle of Nashville and seeing his army destroyed. Hood had lost both an arm and a leg in the war. He had to be helped about the camp and strapped onto his horse. I have no sympathy for his cause but I do not have so stony a heart as to remain unmoved by this man, wracked with sobs, alone in his tent after the battle knowing that he had lost all of the Confederacy west of the Appalachians and east of the Mississippi River. Hood is as tragic a figure as King Lear and deserves a tear no less than Shakespeare's supremely tragic king despite his fight for wrong to his fellow men. He is not less worthy of remembrance than martyrs for the rights of all human beings like Medgar Evers or Fred Hampton. I am not about to set up a statue to John Bell Hood who is already remembered in Fort Hood, Texas nor will I oppose the removal of a single statue to him. His story, like those of the much more admirable Evers and Hampton, is worth remembering still.

The great problem for the Confederate symbols and statues and even the song, Dixie, is that they have been adopted by the worst of us, the new Klan, the casual racists and the neo-Nazi alt-Right, the white supremacists who, with every word and act, prove to the world and especially to this old white man that there's precious little that's supreme about being white.

The statues in question are tainted at the root from racism and they are further tainted by the inhuman and sub-human scum who cleave to them in support of their odious beliefs. Yet I can foresee a day, a day that the greatest hero of my lifetime, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., also foresaw. That day is one when the past is at long last past. When we have acknowledged that humanity, equality and decency are the birthright of every human being and we can go to museums and parks and public buildings and view statues and monuments to men and women who attempted what they believed were great things but in service of an odious wrong.

Thomas Jefferson owned slaves and fathered children by his slave, Sally Hemmings. Those actions are a great wrong yet Jefferson could also write that "all me are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." There is considerable irony in his authorship of those words but those words form the bedrock of all fights to realize every American's inalienable civil rights. We cannot pull down that larger than life statue of Jefferson in his Washington, D. C. Memorial without pulling down those words as well.

For our time and for a very long time we need to put away the Confederate battle flag, the statues and Dixie. Put them by, let them gather dust and be forgotten. Let the past finally be past. One day, however, let them be seen and heard again. Let the dust be removed when the white, black, brown or other child viewing those old symbols can look up at his or her grandfather who's just explained their meaning and say, "But, Grandpa, that was all wrong. Awfully wrong!" Then Grandpa can answer, "What a good, smart child you are! You make me so proud." Perhaps on that future day, should there be a band standing by, someone can quote the always generous Abraham Lincoln after receiving the news of Lee's surrender at Appomattox the day before, "I have always thought 'Dixie' one of the best tunes I have ever heard....I now request the band to favor me with its performance."

For the sake of our times and for all future times, let the old times there be forgotten so that we can one day remember them as part of history and not as part of current injustice.

A DECENT MAN

I have just heard the news that many have been expecting for months let alone the last few days, that Senator John McCain has died at age 81.

I am not a Republiscum nor am I a conservative. I am not of the alt-right neo-Fascist bent that now overwhelms the "Party of Lincoln". I'm not even a nice person much of the time. I have long paraphrased General Phillip Sheridan's horrible dictum about Native Americans by asserting that the only good Republican is a dead Republican. There are, after all, a lot of good, dead Republicans: Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Elihu Root, Margaret Chase Smith, Millicent Fenwick, Elliott Richardson and now John McCain. Even as I was being horrid in saying and writing that, I knew that William Ruckelshaus and Pete McCloskey are still with us, good men both. I also could be pressed to say that there may well be good Republicans hidden amongst the neo-Fascists here and there in Red States, even in Texas. It is the shame of our nation that few if any of them have made it to public office. Tonight, however, I want to mourn a bit for a decent man who was also a Republican and a good Republican even in life, John McCain.

For most people John McCain's heroism centres around his captivity in a North Vietnamese prison fifty years ago. What makes McCain a hero to me is his deciding vote to save the Affordable Health Care Act. In that moment McCain rose above party, ideology and those who buy and sell politicians like they were pot roasts. With his thumbs down gesture he did his best to be a senator for all Americans, to save health care for millions of our people.

I don't believe in gods or devils. I don't believe in heaven or hell or a purgatory between. Having been brought up in a Methodist Church, I believe that the injunctions to care for one another, even the least of my brothers and sisters, in the twenty-fifth chapter of the Book of Matthew represent the best way to live. But this night this old atheist, in reference to Senator McCain, finds himself recalling the story of the old woman and the onion in The Brothers Karamazov.

In that story a poor woman, starving, hollow-eyed comes upon the gate before the garden of a mean, pusillanimous old woman who's never been known to have a kind word for or show generosity to anyone. The poor beggar woman asks for food from the old householder who uncharacteristically relents and gives the beggar a small, shriveled, partly rotten onion. At length both the mean old woman and the blameless, poor beggar die. When the beggar woman arrives in heaven she stands before god and looks around for the old woman who gave her the onion that prolonged her life a little. God tells the beggar that the old woman is suffering in hell's lake of fire. The beggar pleads that the good act of giving her the onion should redeem the old woman. After considering this a moment god produces the very onion the beggar received long before. God then instructs the beggar woman to journey down to hell and drag the old woman up to heaven using the onion, the material symbol of that one good act. When the beggar woman reaches the shores of the lake in which all the damned are burning she holds out the onion to the old woman who grasps it. The beggar woman then begins her journey back to heaven drawing after her the old woman. When the rest of the damned see this they grab onto the old woman and to each other. Ultimately the beggar woman and her onion are dragging out of hell every damned soul ever condemned. Salvation looms for all sinners but at the last minute the old woman yells, "Get of! It's my onion!" In that instant the onion breaks apart and all the damned, including the old woman, fall back into their lake of fire.

I'm not sure who John McCain represents in that story. Perhaps he's both the beggar and the old woman but if this I am certain, that John McCain, at the critical moment for the American people, understood that it was not just his onion but that it belonged to us all. He thereby brought many of us a kind of salvation. John McCain was a decent man, a good man who has joined those many dead, good Republicans leaving us all the poorer for his passing and worse for those of his party that remain behind.

ONLY OUTLAWS WILL HAVE GUNS

I, Oliver Laurence North, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.

That is  the oath that Oliver North swore both verbally and in writing when he entered the Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland and, indeed except for a change of name, the oath which every Federal employee swears upon joining Federal service. Please note that those swearing this oath are swearing their allegiance to the Constitution of the United States. No one swears allegiance to a president, a flag, a senator, congressperson, or even Congress. Much less is there any reference to any religion or philosophy or political party. It is the Constitution of the United States to which we swear our allegiance, pledges to the flag not withstanding.

Yes, Oliver North swore that oath and then violated it. It is why Oliver Laurence North, the new president of the National Rifle Association is a traitor and a criminal, the very outlaw that the NRA for decades claimed to oppose having guns. By electing Oliver North to the presidency of the NRA that organization has finally acknowledged that their current management has no regard for the Constitution of the United States, the laws and traditions of the nation or anything but gun manufacturers' profits and neo-Fascist politics.

Let's look back at North's career to understand why he is a criminal and a traitor.

Before he left the U. S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland North had already killed a fellow classmate in an auto accident. North served as a Second Lieutenant during the Vietnam War and received a number of decorations. He also appeared at the trial of Lance Corporal Randall Herrod four other soldiers accused in the murder of sixteen Vietnamese civilians in the village of San Thang. Thanks in part to North's efforts Herrod and one of the other private soldiers were acquitted of murder though three of the four under Herrod's command on that day were convicted.

Once his tour in Vietnam was over North became an instructor at the Marine training facility at Quantico, Virginia. With its proximity to Washington, D. C. and frequent visits by major political figures as well as his contacts with fellow Annapolis classmates and rabid anti-communism, North parlayed his career as an instructor into an appointment to the National Security Council under Ronald Reagan.

It was at the NSC that North received his appointment as Lieutenant Colonel and reached the infamous height of his career. Under National Security Advisors Robert McFarlane and John Poindexter and with the cooperation of CIA Director William Casey, North managed the secret and unlawful sale of arms to the Iranian government and appropriation of the cash proceeds to finance that vicious Contras of Nicaragua and the spill over of that conflict into El Salvador. North was famously a friend of Panamanian Dictator and drug smuggler, Manuel Noriega, who spent most of the time from his capture in 1991 until his death in 2017 in U. S., French and Panamanian jails for a variety of crimes including drug smuggling, fraud and various human rights violations including murder.

North escaped prison for his treason, obstruction of justice and documented lying to Congress through the aid of his many ultra-right wing and neo-Fascist pals as well as the good offices of the American Civil Liberties Union. He's gone on to attempt a political career and then settled down to live off the largess of Rupert Murdock and those other alt-right pals alluded to above. And now he's the president of the NRA. Is there any wonder that the NRA is now tainted by Russian Spy Maria Butina and questionable money flowing into the NRA's coffers and thence out to the political campaigns of a lot of neo-Fascist candidates including one Donald J. Trump? It seems that once a traitor, always a traitor. Once a funneler of dark money, always a crook. The fact that the outlaw North is the figurehead for the organization making sure that outlaws have guns is just too ironic and delicious to let pass without comment.

This fanatic ideologue, North, who betrayed his oath of office, betrayed the Constitution and his nation has no criminal conviction on his record yet the absence of a conviction does not expunge the crimes against the United States that he committed. Thousands of people nationwide now have the voting rights withheld because they were convicted of felonies of infinitely less consequence than the treasonous acts of Oliver North but North, having escaped prison on a technicality is a darling of the neo-Fascist right and is now the president of the National Rifle Association. It seems perfectly consonant with the election of North, no fan of American democracy, that the NRA is now being investigated for ties to the Russian government and its attempts to undermine American democracy.

I am not opposed to firearms ownership. I was once a member of the National Rifle Association. I joined in the early 1970s. I was a gun owner with a small collection of replica black powder and more modern cartridge weapons.In 1977 when the neo-fascist lunatics led by Wayne LaPierre among others took over the NRA I dropped my membership rather than be associated with their misinterpretation of the Second Amendment and ultra-right wing politics. The idea that even my small annual dues might finance a legislative program and a political philosophy that was anathema to me was something I could not brook.

Let me be clear here. I believe that there is a right to keep and bear arms...for self-protection, for hunting, target shooting, trap (clay target) shooting and similar sports. I believe that the National Guard and similar official units such as police forces have a right to keep and bear military style weapons but I think that the weapons available for personal protection and those used by sport shooter and those used by the military and police are and should be different. The former group has no need of weapons similar to the AR-15 or AK-47 designed for military use and that, in fact, those weapons are completely unsuitable for home defense or hunting. The NRA, on the other hand, shilling for the gun manufacturing industry, promotes such weapons despite their unsuitability.

Let's consider that issue of suitability for home defense and hunting for a moment. Following the murder  of twenty-seven very young children at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut on December 14, 2012 Vice-President Joe Biden was roundly derided for suggesting that a shotgun was a preferable weapon for home defense to any assault rifle. No one managed to point out that pre-1977 articles in the NRA's magazine, The American Rifleman, and other gun sports magazines had promoted shotguns as the optimal home defense weapon. I have written in detail about this in a now lost post so let me briefly explain the logic here again.

We have all heard of children and adults wounded or killed inside a home during a drive-by shooting whose target was someone out on a sidewalk in front of the home. People inside a house get killed or wounded as collateral damage because the high energy bullets from an assault rifle or high-powered handgun penetrate the siding, insulation and interior wallboard of the house with enough energy to kill or wound. Most shotgun pellets, on the other hand, have significantly lower energy and are more easily stopped or slowed to less lethal force by intervening obstacles. So let's consider a home owner roused in the night by the noise of an invader in his or her home. The homeowner wakes, bleary, uncertain of time or what's going on. This homeowner may have to find glasses, decide whether or not to turn on a light (don't) and then retrieve a weapon. In the dim light and uncertain situation the homeowner is as likely to shoot a child up for a drink of water as a violent intruder. Still, we will suppose that the children are still in bed across the hall.

So the homeowner is awakened by an intruder in the house. He hears through his sleep some odd sound and is suddenly awake. First let's consider "suddenly awake". I have been awakened by odd noises in the night. I have to fumble for my glasses, put them on and blink a few times or wipe my eyes to get anything like clear vision. I have to get out of bed. If there's an intruder on the stairs or in the hall I need to be as quiet as possible. I don't want to turn on a light because my eyes, adjusted now to the darkness, are going to be momentarily blinded by any light source, a light source that could signal the intruder to either flee or take some violent action. I will not know which until one or the other actually happens so keeping the light off gives me something of an advantage.

If I have a handgun or an assault rifle, I need to be sure of my target but can I be in the darkness and confusion of my sudden waking? Have I managed to get my glasses on or my vision cleared when a figure looms in the bedroom doorway? If I aim and miss the high energy bullet from my handgun or rifle is going to travel until it hits something substantial enough to stop it's flight. In most homes built since the 1950s the walls are going to be wood or metal framing covered with sheet rock and filled with insulation of one sort or another. Unless the bullet hits a wood or metal frame member, it is unlikely to lose enough energy to stop or even be significantly slowed. You have a significant chance of killing the child or other relative sleeping in the room across the hall with your miss with that single bullet. In a worst case scenario your stray bullet might even manage to kill or wound a neighbor in the next house.

Now you may say, "I'm an excellent shot. I keep my cool in stressful situations. I'll get the bad guy." I'm sure that you think so but we are not in an ideal situation and, given all the deficits in the scenario, all your preparation and composure may be insufficient. So let's consider an alternative.

Let's say that you have a shotgun and let's suppose that you have loaded it using some foresight. The first shell to fire is full of number 6 bird shot and the second shell contains 00 Buckshot. You see the intruder and fire the first barrel or shell and the 394 .106 diameter #6 pellets from your 1¼ ounce load in your 3 inch shot shell. Those pellets spread out rapidly forming a wide wall many of which will hit your intruder unless your estimate of your aiming skills are exceptionally overrated. Your chance of 1 of 394 pellets hitting your target is greatly increased as is the likelihood of many pellets hitting the intruder. Unless this person is seriously trying to kill you or insane, the intruder is likely to think better of this intrusion and get the hell out of your home at this point. However, if he doesn't leave you have a second shell loaded with 10 .33 diameter 00 (pronounced Double Ought) Buckshot pellets, a blast that is likely to rip your intruder apart.

But aren't a lot of those many pellets going to miss and go flying across the hall? Many of them will miss, especially the #6 pellets but the energy of those pellets is low enough that they are likely to be stopped by 2 or 3 layers of sheet rock plus insulation. Your family members or guests in your home are far less likely to be killed or injured by lower energy shotgun pellets than by high energy bullets from rifles or handguns. Even the much higher energy buckshot is likely to be stopped or rendered relatively harmless by all the intervening materials through which the pellets would pass before reaching someone in another room.

So why does the NRA promote assault rifles for home defense if they are not ideal and liable to kill or injure unintended targets? Because the NRA was taken over in 1977 by a group financed by ultra-right wing gun manufacturers who were primarily interested in promoting their weapons. In 1977 the Vietnam War was lost. The demand for assault rifles was very low but manufacturers had lots of factory space committed to making parts for and assembling such rifles. Convincing the gun owning population that these were appropriate weapons for hunting and home defense meant that the assembly lines for AR-15s and the like could remain active. Editing out the reference to a "well-regulated militia" in the Second Amendment was also key to this nefarious plan. These fanatics knew that no one in the general population would bother to read the documents from the 1790s relative to the adoption to that amendment.

Corporations have the best lawyers that money can buy. Gun Manufacturing corporations like, Colt, Ruger, Remington and Winchester amongst others have the best and most craven lawyers that money can buy.  Of course those corporations don't have to buy the worst and most craven lawyers directly. They can funnel money through the NRA, Gun Owners of America, Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, the Second Amendment Foundation, the National Shooting Sports Foundation and the National Association for Gun Rights. They can even buy members of The Federalist Society and Judges like the late, but not late enough, In-Justice Antonin Scalia and current Supreme Court In-Justices like Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch.These bought and paid for shills for the firearms industry have managed to twist an amendment created in 1790 to protect the rights of states to maintain militias as a counter to excesses by a Federal standing army into an individual right to keep and bear arms which was never intended when the Bill of Rights was drafted.

For decades the NRA has promoted the bumper sticker slogan, "If guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns." Perhaps we now need a new bumper sticker. It should have a photo of North and the NRA seal with the slogan, "Guns aren't outlawed and now an outlaw has the NRA." Maybe throw in an image of Vladimir Putin applauding North too.

SUFFER THE CHILDREN

Not only have the neo-Nazis of the Donald Dunce Administration decided to use kidnapping children from their parents if those parents have the temerity to flee violence and disaster in their home countries and appear at our southern border, but they have gone further. They have ordered the staff at the detention centres to which these kidnapped children are taken not to pick up or hold or reassure or comfort the children in any way.

Donald Dunce insists that he's not responsible for these kidnappings but rather it's the fault of Congressional Democrats who won't kow-tow to him and his evil policies. Donald Dunce is a liar. That's well established but not the least so when he propagandizes that his policy is someone else's fault. To add to the obscenity of Donald Dunce's policy the detention and separation of these parents and children is a boondoggle shunting taxpayer money to Dunce's corporate friends who operate private prisons.

But let's look more closely at the policy of not having physical contact with these children. To look at it from an historical perspective allow me to take you back nearly eight centuries to the Sicilian Court of Frederick the Great Hohenstaufen, Holy Roman Emperor, King od Germany, Italy, Burgundy and Sicily and titular King of Jerusalem. Frederick was known as a scholar and something of a scientist in his time. He conducted a number of experiments all of which were inspired by the religious beliefs of his day. One involved sealing a man inside a cask in which only one small hole had been drilled. The object of condemning this man to death by starvation in the cask was to see if observers could perceive the soul as it escaped through the hole.

However, the experiment that Donald Dunce's horrendous policy toward migrant children brings to mind is Frederick's attempt to discover which language god gave us first. To do this Frederick collected infants from their mothers immediately after birth. I doubt that it's recorded but the "collecting" certainly wasn't done from the nobles of his court or voluntarily from mothers. Emperors can order things with impunity, something that I'm sure Donald "I could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and get away with it" Dunces most fervently wishes for himself. These infants were given to a convent of trusted nuns. The nuns were allowed to change and bathe and feed the children but they were strictly forbidden to speak to the children or even coo over them. The nuns had to maintain total silence while with the babies and their contact with the infants was limited to those necessary functions already mentioned. What Frederick discovered was not the "natural, first language given by god" but he discovered that without the vocalizations that parents make with their babies and with the minimal contact require by necessity all of the babies died.

I doubt the Donald Dunce has ever heard of Frederick the Great Hohenstaufen. I suspect that he has a few advisors about him who would like to duplicate Frederick's experiments. He has an Attorney General who claims that he's following the Biblical teachings of St. Paul when the only authority in this nation is our Constitution as amended and interpreted by our courts. Frederick at the very least had the religiose ignorance of his time in the early 13th Century as an excuse for his barbaric behavior. Donald Dunce's ignorance is certainly a factor in his barbaric behavior but even more is his craven appeal to the fear, the xenophobia, racism and venality of his supporters. He whips up fear of poor people fleeing gang violence or murderous husbands who are no different in their desire for safety than any of us.

When Jesus says, in 16th Century translation, "suffer the little children to come unto me" he is telling his apostles to let the children come to him despite their unwillingness and reservations. In the dark, blinkered, malfunctioning minds of Donald Dunce, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions and Kirstjen Nielsen "suffer" has the more modern meaning which they are pursuing to the nth degree. Not only is their heartlessness unAmerican, it is inhumane and inhuman. It is they who need to suffer in the modern sense something that, hopefully will be true once a new Congress is seated.

A STUDY IN CONTRASTS

So His Orangeness, our Prevaricator in Chief, Donald Dunce, has met with Kim Jong-un and everyone is puzzled by what Kim thought he would get out of this meeting. Being a pessimist I think I know and if in a few years this scenario comes to pass, remember that you heard it here first.

Kim Jong-un has had many conversations with Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin either in person or by phone and he knows that the United States and Western Alliance (NATO) will not confront a nuclear armed adversary who swoops in and invades an adjoining nation. There's ample evidence in Putin's annexation of Crimea and his on-going war in Ukraine. As another example there's China's pre-nuclear annexation of Tibet. Kim also has been clued in to the fact that Trump is a moron who has no sense of history.

Given these facts Kim can go into this Singapore Summit meeting smiling and deferential to Trump who loves nothing more than having his ego massaged. Kim makes a nebulous promise to denuclearize. The Dunce, with visions of a Nobel Peace Prize clouding his vision, hears and sees whatever he wants to hear and see. With this unverifiable and unverified, imprecise crumb from Kim, Mr. Dunce asserts that he's gotten a whole loaf and decides that he can dispense with joint war games with the Republic of South Korea. Donald Dunce now also has an excuse to remove U. S. troops from Korea.

Kim is aware that Donald Dunce will not be around on the world stage much longer. We all hope that he'll be shuffled off by January 20, 2021 if he's not impeached and jailed before. Kim, if his cholesterol and blood pressure hold, will be North Korean dictator for a lot longer.

So the maneuvers that Donald Dunce considers "a provocation" end immediately. Troop withdrawals commence and continue. In the meantime Kim conducts no further missile tests. He explodes no more nuclear weapons. He smiles a lot and issues promises that he's working on disarming. The minefields in the Demilitarized Zone are uprooted, more by the departing Americans than by the North Koreans. Then one November 11th or, perhaps Christmas Day when all the American troops are out of South Korea and those in Japan are on holiday leave, the North Korean Army comes rolling into South Korea, captures Seoul and pushes south in a blitz kreig to capture Gwangju, Daegu and Pusan. Because Kim has a grip on history significant forces capture and hold the port of Inchon. Mobile missile batteries in Pusan are a short distance from the Japanese main island.

Donald Dunce or a successor decides to send troops to Japan and scramble bombers from Guam. However, the North Korean government issues an ultimatum that if so much as a Cessna takes off from Guam in the direction of Korea, a nuclear missile will obliterate Guam. Japan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, Australia and New Zealand feel that they cannot take action against North Korea in the face of nuclear destruction and the hope that Kim's ambitions are limited to reunifying the Korean Peninsula. Despite a major influx of American troops, Japan, the former colonial power, hunkers down in fear of an invasion and the nuking of Tokyo. China offers to intercede with Kim in return for Japan's dropping of all claims to disputed islands between the two countries and Russia permanently asserts control of the northern Ryukyu Islands that it's held since 1945.

The end result is that the United States loses all influence in all of East Asia and extends its influence over India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and all of the mainland of Southeast Asia. Yet further, the United States is seen as a paper tiger. The East European NATO members leave that alliance and snuggle up to Russia as their protector. Germany, Austria and Italy once again find themselves the front line in Europe. The uneasy truces in the Balkan states breaks down and Russia intervenes as protector of the Slavic peoples of that fractious area.

The trade ties that China has established in what Donald Dunce has identified as the "shithole" countries of Africa make their relations with the United States more tenuous. Similarly the nations on the western shores of South America and Brazil find more interests in common with Kim's Chinese godfathers than with the United States. A world-wide alliance of pragmatism, fear and trade ties isolates the United States.

Into this dire situation will unquestionably step some narcissistic demagogue in the mold of Donald Dunce - a Ted Cruz, a Sean Hannity, an Oliver North, some televangelist, there are too many to list - offers to save the nation as long as Congress and the Courts grant him extraordinary powers. He will, of course, be truly in the mold of Donald Dunce, a Manchurain Candidate controlled by Moscow and/or Beijing. The new world order won't be United Nations black helicopters as the loonies of the far right fear. No. It will come from the loonie far right whose corrupt business deals, like Donald Dunce's, have placed him under the thumb of Russian and /or Chinese masters.

Having spun out this nightmare scenario, a nightmare that could far too easily come true, it is appropriate to note that Donald Dunce has abrogated the Iran nuclear agreement because it only stops Iran from developing a nuclear weapon for ten years. During those years Iran agreed to submit to the most stringent inspection regime ever imposed on any nation. For Donald Dunce a multi-nationally enforced agreement made by his predecessor was insufficient but an ill defined promise in a document that he and Chairman Kim signed after brief discussions is an iron clad reason to clear our military out of South Korea. Can we agree  that calling this fraud Donald Dunce is not pejorative? It is simply fact.

P. S. Donald Dunce came home and, as he is wont to do, sent out the tweet that "There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea." Thus Prime Minister Chamberlain...I mean Donald Dunce...has met with Chancellor Hitl...sorry, Chairman Kim...and declared "Peace in our time"...with a probably similar result

Our great observer of humanity, Mark Twain, gets credit for a line he might well  have written but didn't that, "History doesn't repeat itself but it rhymes." The philosopher George Santayana did observe, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." It seems that both observations apply in this case.

LITTLE BOYS AND THEIR HEROIC FANTASIES

[Note: This is an effort to both replace a lost post and bring that up to date with new information. I hope that it pleases you, my reader.]

Following the October 1, 2017 Las Vegas Mass Shooting (note that we have to have multiple modifiers just to focus on the particular mass shooting given the number of mass shootings before and since) Trump buddy and Michael Cohen client, Fox News' Sean Hannity opined that he had firearms permits in a number of states and had instruction in firearms safety then from those facts went on to the illogical next step saying of the Las Vegas shooter, "This guy had a machine gun. How they gonna take him on without a weapon? Or if it's happening within a crowd...if they were in San Bernardino, do you want Sean Hannity who's trained in the safety and use of a firearm in that room so when they drop the clip and they start to reload you've got a shot; you've got a chance?"

In a similar vein the similarly brave, tactical protector of Americans, Mr. Donald J. Trump opined following the February 14, 2018 shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, "You don't know until you test it but I really believe I'd run in there even if I didn't have a weapon."

I think that both Sean Hannity and Donald Trump have unintentionally revealed the origins of the myth of "a good guy with a gun" being the antidote to a bad guy with a gun. These little boys are still playing cops and robbers or cowboys and indians. In their fantasy lives they are heroes who will risk their lives to save others in danger, something that's very easy to say when you're unlikely to be in a position to act as they claim especially for someone surrounded by a multi-man detail of Secret Service Agents.

We all have fantasies of heroism. When I was a boy in the late 1950s I could be Bat Masterson facing down invisible bad guys with only my cap-firing cane. The fact is, however, that I outgrew those fantasies and reached a hard won adulthood in which I was, for a time, a gun owner. Yet even while I was a gun owner I never thought that I would be that mythical "good guy with a gun". I knew I would be afraid but, at best, I felt that I could face down an invader in my home. Even that I feared wouldn't be possible unless circumstances were exceptionally favorable.

The fact is that Sean Hannity with a gun would be standing well behind police lines with his television crew and Donald J. Trump would be hustled off by his various security details to safety in an active shooter situation exactly as happened at one of his rallies when someone called out a gun in the audience. They both know it but they both haven't grown sufficiently to adulthood to admit it.

Let's think about this a little bit. These armchair heroes locked in pre-adolescence whether it's Hannity, Trump or the little boys who open carry if they were really so heroic could apply to their local police force. They then would be certified and vetted officers employed to be the first line of heroes in dangerous situations. Why might these little boys (and there's an occasional girl too) not be part of their police forces?

1.  The police forces aren't hiring. Certainly possible. Still, in most urban areas some police force may well have programs for training and vetting potential officers. I wonder how many of these little boys and girls have even applied? Of those who have applied how many are like "Good guy with a gun" Robert Charles Bates currently serving time for the murder of Eric Harris in Tulsa, Oklahoma?
2. The little boys and girls have "better things to do". Certainly if you're a highly paid television and radio talking blockhead or a real estate developer running the United States on behalf of whoever is paying him handsomely the pay cut for being a police officer might be unattractive. Yet isn't there a certain "put up or shut up"situation here? If you want to open carry isn'r being a police officer the ultimate realization of your position? If joining the police force is the best expression of your "right to keep and bear arms" isn't the claim that you have better things to do or another career simply an excuse for not committing to what you claim to be committed to?
3.  The little boys and girls can't pass the police physical. O.k. So does that mean that this self-styled protector of his or her community instead of running toward danger may be jogging or limping toward danger and being out of breath and energy when he or she gets there? How useful is it if our self-styled hero confronts an active shooter and has to say, "Hold on a minute, man, while I catch my breath." Somehow I think that may not be the optimal protection those little boys and girls claim they would be.
4. The little boys and girls can't qualify psychologically for the police force. Hmmmm! So the "good guy with a gun" is going to be someone psychologically unfit for police service yet this is the person on whom we're going to rely to protect the community? Pardon me for asking but what separates someone who is psychologically unfit for the police force from the mentally deranged person shooting up a school or a night club, a movie theatre or a Christmas party? How many correctly firing brain cells separate the "good guy with a gun" from the "bad guy with a gun"? How eager are we to test for those brain cells in real world situations? I'm personally not very eager at all and I have been a gun owner so maybe that's a test to which we'd best not administer without close supervision and control.
5. What community are the little boys and little girls protecting? We have the tragic example of Philando Castile that a black "good guy with a gun" even who does everything correctly is likely to be seen as a "bad guy with a gun". I'm not even going to go into Trayvon Martin or Tamir Rice. Therefore, we can reasonably say that the "good guy with a gun" doesn't have black or brown skin. If the "good guy with a gun" is exclusively Caucasian are we not simply looking at one more expression of the racism pervasive in our society?

The little boys and little girls who insist on acting out their heroic fantasies are actually more likely to be a danger to their communities than they are to be the heroes they so childishly desire to be. Sadly this and other attempts to shoot down their fantasies are doomed to be ineffective despite so many direct hits.

(P. S. That last sentence full of shooting metaphors is meant to be ironic, just so there's no misunderstanding.)

PARANOIA OR MAYBE THERE IS SOMETHING TO WORRY ABOUT

His Orangeness, our Prevaricator-in-Chief wants a parade. His excuse is that he'd like to "honor our troops". Of course in more than a year in office he has not honored any of our troops on the front lines with a visit to boost their morale...well...perhaps this president had better go golfing and keep the troops' morale high by staying at Mar-a-Lago. The fact is that the little boy who likes to pretend to drive big rigs and fire trucks wants a parade in his honor because he thinks it makes him look powerful and momentarily fills that dark, endless void in him that demands constant attention.

While I am fairly certain the Autocrat st the Cheeseburger Wrapper is simply fulfilling a juvenile fantasy, I can't help but think that there may be a darker and more dangerous purpose in the minds of some of those who whisper Donald's thoughts into Donald's ear.

Let us say for a moment that the parade is scheduled for some date like May 19th (Armed Forces Day), July 4th or November 11th. Further let us say that the specific units assigned to this parade are commanded by officers of the ilk of Col. Oliver North, Admiral John Poindexter, Gen. John K. Singlaub or Gen. Stanley McChrystal. Let's also say that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had indicted a number of close aids to His Orangeness including Don Jr., Jared Kushner and named the Prevaricator-in-Chief himself as an unindicted co-conspirator. In the guise of the traditional parade fly-overs air wings commanded by some of those Air Force officers who have pledged themselves to Jesus Christ as their savior land at Reagan National, Dulles Airport and Andrews Air Force Base and assume command on orders from the president. The tanks and other armor units take up positions on the main highways into and out of Washington, D. C. after their review by His Orangeness. Another military unit shuts down Union Station and His Orangeness sends loyal commanders to arrest Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Special Counsel Mueller as well as many of the Democrat "traitors" who failed to stand or applaud for His Orangeness' State of the Union speech. Meanwhile FCC Chairman Ajit Pai invoking a state of national emergency that His Orangeness has declared to justify his coup takes over the broadcast and cable networks which begin sending out government sponsored messages requesting that people remain calm and assuring everyone that this state of emergency will last only a few days until the government is once again set to rights...far rights.

The shouters like Sean Hannity at the Völkische Beobachter (i.e. Fox News) have already defined the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election as an attempt at a coup. Even more such fevered nonsense comes from Alex Jones and his ilk. The neo-Fascist fundamentalist movement is busy informing its sheep that His Orangeness is the harbinger of the Second Coming selected by their bizarre take in the Christian god. Military units regularly get right-wing materials and are encouraged to believe in fundamentalist and ultra-rightist ravings. Our nation thinks of itself as a democracy but what "democracy" means to its citizens is not always anything like what it meant to our founders or Abraham Lincoln or even a majority of our current members of Congress. Militant Fascism supported by a military of questionable loyalty to our nation's principles and an imbecile president given to autocracy is not foreign to the United States. Whether our democracy can survive the next 3 or perhaps 7 years is not a given. The fact that ultra-right-wing groups and individuals have massive stockpiles of weapons while those of the Left and Centre have voluntarily disarmed does not bode well for any defense of our democracy either.

Wild paranoia? Perhaps. Something that His Orangeness and the neo-Fascists who surround him could not get away with? Perhaps. Might military units loyal to the Constitution mobilize to counter the coup? Probably but they might not be successful. Even if anti-Fascist military units succeeded in overthrowing the coup plotters including the president, vice-president and leaders of both the House and Senate who would then be the head of state? Who would have the legitimacy to assume the presidency? Might it not be another military leader whose taste of power might overwhelm his commitment to democracy? And what of plot sympathizers who hold the reigns of government in Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, Mississippi, Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas or the Dakotas, Wyoming and Idaho? Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania could form a wedge in the east and mid-west that would make a counter-coup difficult if not impossible. I'm sure that during the rending apart of the United States Russian hackers would be gleefully supporting Putin's man in the White House and spreading misinformation if not helping to coordinate the defense of the neo-Fascist coup.

His Orangeness' desire for a parade is probably just at one with playing in the fire truck and Peterbilt but an unnecassary expense is the least of the reasons why it should never take place.

A NOTE TO READERS

On Wednesday, February 7th, I was trying to delete a draft post that was no longer relevant when I inadvertently deleted all the posts after December 8, 2012. I have inquired at Google if theree is any way of retrieving those posts but have as yet heard nothing. I fear the worst. In any case I am going to continue for the present. I apologize for my ineptitude in managing this blog. If any of you may have copied or saved one or more of the more recent posts from the last 6 years, please contact me so that I may restore what was lost.

Some of what was lost can be found at this link

AT THIS FESTIVE SEASON – 2012

"At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge," said the gentleman, taking up a pen, "it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and Destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time.  Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir."

"Are there no prisons?" asked Scrooge.

"Plenty of prisons," said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.

"And the Union workhouses?"  demanded Scrooge.  "Are they still in operation?"

"They are.  Still," returned the gentleman, "I wish I could say they were not."

"The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?" said Scrooge.

"Both very busy, sir."

"Oh!  I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course," said Scrooge.  "I'm very glad to hear it."

"Under the impression that they scarcely furnish Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude," returned the gentleman, "a few of us are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the Poor some meat and drink and means of warmth.  We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices.  What shall I put you down for?"

"Nothing!" Scrooge replied.

"You wish to be anonymous?"

"I wish to be left alone," said Scrooge.  "Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer.  I don't make merry myself at Christmas and I can't afford to make idle people merry.  I help to support the establishments I have mentioned -- they cost enough; and those who are badly off must go there."

"Many can't go there; and many would rather die."

"If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.  Besides -- excuse me -- I don't know that."

"But you might know it," observed the gentleman.

"It's not my business," Scrooge returned.  "It's enough for a man to understand his own business, and not to interfere with other people's.  Mine occupies me constantly.  Good afternoon, gentlemen!"

Seeing clearly that it would be useless to pursue their point, the gentlemen withdrew.  Scrooge returned his labours with an improved opinion of himself, and in a more facetious temper than was usual with him.

                                   ~ A Christmas Carol, Stave the First, Charles Dickens

There were many in the England of the 1840s who cursed Charles Dickens. He was popular and he wrote discomforting things about the status quo, things that threatened the quo of those with status. How dare he? But time passes. We’re elevated the lessons of Dickens’ novella to canon taught us in many forms. Yet here we find ourselves 169 years later and the Scrooge of Scrooge and Marley is still alive and well, unreformed, unreconsiled with his nephew, uncaring that Tiny Tim will die, forging further links on that weighty chain of ledgers and cash boxes.

Let us consider, please the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. This treaty states that the signatories will respect and promote equal human rights for people with disabilities. It was modeled on the U. S. Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990. This Convention the United States signed during the administration of George W. Bush. However, as an international treaty our Constitution requires that it must be ratified by a two-thirds vote of the United States Senate. Thus it was that the Senate held a vote on Tuesday, December 4, 2012.

The treaty had the solid support of Senate Democrats as well as some notable Republicans including John McCain of Arizona, Richard Lugar of Indiana and even Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire. Former senator and Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, himself a disabled World War II veteran, came to the Senate floor in a wheelchair from his hospital bed at Walter Reed Hospital to support the treaty.

There was a time in our history when that support would have meant certain passage for the treaty but we live in greatly devolved times. Since the 1960s and particularly since the Reagan Administration the Republican Party has increasingly fallen under the thrall of the racists, bigots, John Birchers, NRA fanatics, “Objectivists”, “Libertarians”, religious fundamentalists and the lunatic subscribers to Human Events all of whom came out to oppose equal rights for people with physical or mental disabilities but who, unlike themselves, have a current diagnosis.

Senators Mike Lee of Utah and Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma led the opposition and brought in that paragon of logic and decency, former Senator Rick Santorum to argue both that because we already have the ADA the treaty is superfluous and that it would open the United States to interference with our “sovereignty” should other nations intervene to impose on us laws we already have. With the typical lunacy of this group of right-wing extremists they saw no contradiction in their arguments. They did, however, collect 36 other senators on the side of wrong and injustice to vote with Lee and Inhofe to kill the treaty. Passage required at least 66 votes but managed to garner only 61.

And lest we think of this as an aberration caused by 38 men whose tinfoil hats are protecting them from the controlling messages from those U. N. Black Helicopters that they are certain hover somewhere nearby I would offer the further embarrassment of the Republican lunatic fringe in the Senate. Where the defeat of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities was patently insane this next act is so thoroughly craven that it beggars all comparison.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky thought he had a surefire way to embarrass his Democratic colleagues. On Thursday, December 6^th he called up a vote on a bill which would have given President Obama authority to bypass Congress in raising the Federal debt ceiling. The vote would require a simple majority of senators. Most probably McConnell figured that the bill would quickly fail a Senate vote after which Republicans could taunt that even Democrats refuse to support the President’s proposals.

Majority Leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, took the matter to his Democratic caucus and returned to the Senate floor to say that he thanked Sen. McConnell for calling up the measure and that he was happy to vote.

Suddenly Sen. McConnell found himself painted into the same inescapable corner in which he’d thought to strand the Democrats. So what was his reaction? He mounted a filibuster of the vote on the bill he himself had called to the floor.

People are dissatisfied with Congress. The remarkable thing is that more people don’t understand that it is the Republican minority, especially in the person of Mitch McConnell, that has denigrated Congress thoroughly since 2009. We cannot have a Congress, House or Senate, that does the work of the nation as a whole while we have the craven partisanship of Mitch McConnell and the lunatic paranoia of Lee, Inhofe, Rand Paul, Eric Cantor and the rest of the escapees from the right-wing asylum. Luckily, if the Republicans continue bringing forward candidates like the crop in 2012 there’s some reason to believe that a House majority and a 66 Democrat Senate may be in our future and a period in which Congress can redeem its reputation should not be far behind.