Rosie O'Donnell's view has been obscured by the top brass at ABC, and now she will have to find a different vista from which she can divine truth, and dispense her happy bromides. Curiously, a Rosie cohort, Charlie Sheen, is apparently seeing some sort of light at the end of his nose: He admits he might be wrong about the conspiracy-laden 9/11 film, "Loose Change." The good news is that he might have doubts; the bad news is that Rosie, who has also touted the film, has not had such doubts. Change comes slow, no doubt, and change, like wits, can even sometimes come loose.
Stepping into the news to eclipse all this is Cindy Sheehan, the indefatigable anti-war protester who has, apparently, finally tired out. She is heading back to California to reconnect with her remaining children. News has it that she is selling her land (Camp Casey, named for her fallen son) near President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas.
It is hard not to pity Ms. Sheehan. Her own words (found here in her "resignation letter"), which are very much worth reading, are filled with pain. Perhaps the most telling line is the one about her son, who died -- freely -- while serving the American armed forces in Iraq. Ms. Sheehan writes simply, "I failed my boy and that hurts the most." [emphasis mine]
Ms. Sheehan has admitted something to us all in her resignation letter posted at The Daily Kos. She has admitted that the most painful thing is not the Iraq War or partisan duplicity or partisan betrayal. The most painful thing is not even the death of her son. The most painful thing is that she feels she let him down by buying "into the [American] system."
One can only grieve for Ms. Sheehan, for it seems she has not yet had the chance to really grieve. Her cause, her passion, and her many minions kept her, or so I believe, from truly addressing her deepest sorrows. Today, she is finally returning to California to try to restore relations with her surviving children, to try to regain the things she has lost. But what things are those, one might ask, if not the very things that are most valued in the system known as America?
If I was a friend of Ms. Sheehan's and I received a letter from her like the one she posted at The Daily Kos, I would be concerned that my friend was contemplating suicide. I am not her friend, and yet I am still concerned. For it is clear that she feels she failed. If her greatest pain comes when she considers that her failures led to her son's death, then she is not really blaming America or war or Iraq or Democrats or Republicans or even Casey for his death, she's blaming herself.
That is too much for any mother to bear.
Ms. Sheehan strikes me as exhausted and disoriented. Someone needs to get her home, hide her from the world, and give her lots of silence. She should stay away from TVs and radios and newspapers and the Internet; she should be given lots of love, hot tea, and pampering. She needs a long holiday from the world and, perhaps most importantly, her own persona needs to be exorcized. Her resignation letter proves that she teeters on the edge of sanity. Her words are those of a martyred messiah, a snubbed prophet. She sees things better than the rest of us; she knows more than America. That sort of inflated sense of self is not healthy. It is the very stuff of craziness. It is the sound of exhaustion, of collapse.
May God give her the healing and peace she seeks. Let us all pray.
Peace to you.
©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.
(A related Contratimes essay, "Weapons of Miss Direction", which addresses Ms. Sheehan's quasi-gnosticism, can be found here.)
Showing posts with label Rosie O'Donnell. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rosie O'Donnell. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Saturday, May 19, 2007
Reason Is Not So Fooled: Al Gore's New Book
I am back, and I am mad as fire ants on skin. Actually, I am merely back.
Let me ask you a few questions. If I write a book entitled Freedom From Hate: Rejecting intolerance, bigotry and prejudice, and the psycho-social constructs that protect them, wouldn't you expect me to be free of hate, intolerance, bigotry, and the psycho-social constructs that protect them? If I write a book called Loosed At Last: Self-delivery from addiction, would it be imprudent of you to ask whether I was the one photographed last week puking with Christopher Hitchens outside Circa Tabac?º What if I pen the best-selling Regular As Sunrise: 10 sure steps to overcoming diarrhea? Would it be proper of you to presume that I did not write that fine book while sitting at a desk in my bathroom?
Just asking.
_______________
If the writer of Ecclesiastes is correct, that there is a season for everything under the sun, then there is a time for scoffing, for sarcasm. A friend of mine once said that she could not embrace Christianity because there was not a single reference in the whole Bible to God laughing. One wonders what she meant: the Bible has several references to God laughing at idols, scoffing at vanities, mocking false and phony gods. In other words, there is a time for scoffing, and the time is now.
You may have already garnered from my many essays about Al Gore that I am incurably Algore-aphobic. I am very discomforted by the over-crowding inside Al Gore's head. But that is the least of my phobias. I am much more phobic that Al Gore is presenting himself to the world as deity.
Surely you have heard that Mr. Gore is about to release a new book called (I am not making this up), The Assault on Reason. No, this is not autobiography, nor is it a confession or tell-all foisted upon the world to generate sympathy for his reckless rhetoric, his own sins of the mind. Those of us paying attention find just a hint of delight, an almost arthritic mirth, in the irony of it all: Al Gore is going to pontificate on the world's flight from reason. We giggle, but with some pain: our joints rattle and grind, joints battered by years if not decades of twists and sprains and hyper-extensions earned while fighting the fallaciousness of mass hysteria, even mass opinion.
Let us recall for the moment that Al Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth, is from credits-to-Oscar one long fallacy: the film unrelentingly confuses or, if not confuses, conflates correlation and causality in an almost insouciant non causa pro causa polemic. Of course, this is not to suggest that the conclusion is right or wrong; Mr. Gore may be infallibly correct in his conclusion that humans† are killing the planet and that the need for green living is of moral imperative. But his method is utterly irrational. His method is an assault on reason. Even his appeals to "most scientists" or "scientific consensus" are fallacious, as is his appeal to experts; both are fallacies, the former, the fallacy argumentum ad populum (or consensus gentium, the appeal to majorities), the latter, the appeal to authority.
In 1987, I had the pleasure of hanging out with Al Gore at a house party held on the edges of a tiny New Hampshire town. He was just beginning his bid for the White House; the twenty or so folks gathered in the kitchen and living room were remarkably interested in his words. But they were not sufficiently interested to give him the Democratic nomination in 1988, nor were they overly awed by him. My impression then (vague as it is now), was that the only person sufficiently awed by Mr. Gore was Mr. Gore himself.
Alas, I find he has not changed at all over the last 20 years. I also find that his current fans are giving him a pass. But since I am not a fan (nor am I at all current), he does not pass my way without receiving a jeer and a tomato (both the jeer and the tomato, by the way, are certified organic and totally carbon neutral; the jeer is also free-range). My incredulity slips into sarcasm at the idea: Mr. Gore has come to the rescue; he is going to enlighten us all to the true value and blissfulness of reason. He shall demonstrate logical perfection; he will rise above the profanum vulgus and model proper thinking. But one look at his unintentionally hilarious essay on economics from 2006 will give you a sense of Mr. Gore's vast skills in clear thinking. Perhaps my reference to that essay is unfair; perhaps lucidity is not one of reason's predicates. Perhaps muddied and abstruse prose is the crown jewel of reason. Perhaps.
The Gore Advantage
The advantage to writing a book called The Assault on Reason (TAR) is that the author instantly presents himself as the Most Reasonable Human. For surely the man who writes such a book could not be the most assaultive force on reason, could he? No, he could not. He can only be reason's protector, exemplar, purifier. He must be reason's very template.
And this is proven (I use the word the way Mr. Gore uses it) by TAR's description at Amazon. I would be remiss not to demand that you read it. Please! Go check out this most-reasonable description of this important bulwark against anti-rationalism. It is eye-opening: you will be aghast at your own benighted reasoning skills. A light will shine in your darkness, I am sure.
I just pray that the light shining in your darkness is not a bullet coursing through your incredulous head. I hope that, instead of inflicting any injury upon your lovely self, you will turn toward the light through derisive laughter. It is surely where and how I must turn. Laughter, for me, is the only reasonable alternative to suicide.* A high school friend of mine published next to his yearbook picture a veiled dig at the interminable laughter of a girl he thought he loved. He wrote, "Laughter is the air release of all one fears." But my friend was wrong. Laughter is not the release of all one fears. It is the release of all one hates. I either laugh at Al Gore or I kill myself; I either open my mouth and release my hatred or I open my cranium some other way in order to let out what I loathe. And I do loathe "Al Gore"; I hate him.ª But I do not hate Al Gore the man, the gentleman I met in 1987 or the man that holds his wife's heart. I do not hate the Al Gore loved by God. No, I hate Al Gore the commodity, the product. The merchandised. And the only passage to sanity I can find is one that demands -- for a season -- derision, mockery, scoffing, laughter. I laugh at Mr. Gore, at his absurd over-reaching.
(OK. Let me grant that there's nothing more irrational than for me to critique a book I have not yet read. I admit it is hard to read a book that is not yet even in print. But I am not sure it is unreasonable of me to make a wild prediction: In his new book, Mr. Gore is not going to be elucidating his many intellectual mistakes. Nor do I expect his book to consist of one long string of apologies. And I also do not expect Mr. Gore to admit that he is, of all people, quite eminently dis-qualified to write this book. This is a book that is, above all else, committed to promoting Al Gore.)
Al Gore's book is, like so many deeds and screeds of too many today, mere psychological projection. Mr. Gore is going to point out the sins of others not knowing (apparently) that such sins are his own. (I am reminded of what I wrote to Open Ide, a cowardly visitor to this site a few weeks ago.) And the only sins any one of us is truly expert in is the sins that are indeed our own. The Assault on Reason is a child's game of distraction: Look! What's that behind you?! Mr. Gore hopes you will ignore what is in front of your face, just so he can slink away, unchallenged, but nonetheless beloved for his commitment to "dialogue," to "reasoned conversation."
But Al Gore writing to us about reason is a bit like my lecturing Fabio on hair care. Al Gore promoting reason is not unlike Madonna promoting chastity. It's like Bill Maher telling the pope to cool down his opinions. It's a bit like Rosie O'Donnell advising Steven Wright on paradox, or Paula Abdul coaching Melinda Doolittle on how to be more vocally dynamic. It's a bit like George W. Bush giving tips to William Safire on how to pronounce nuclear (which, as we know, is just a variant spelling of unclear), or Eddie Van Halen telling André Segovia to be more subtle, or Anna Nicole Smith appearing at Fatima and urging women to remember her temperance.
In other words, Al Gore's book should be a failure before it even hits the editor's desk. Instead, it will be wildly successful.
Laugh your way to light. It's the season.
Peace and true mirth.
ºI mean this as a joke, of course. I do not know if that was Mr. Hitchens partying with me in Soho. But I do recall smashing rounds with a British atheist.
†Christianity has unflaggingly agreed with Mr. Gore since time immemorial, but with a twist. Humans are not going to destroy the planet. Humans already have destroyed the planet.
*I mean this facetiously, really.
ªMy hate is purely a rhetorical device.
©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.
Let me ask you a few questions. If I write a book entitled Freedom From Hate: Rejecting intolerance, bigotry and prejudice, and the psycho-social constructs that protect them, wouldn't you expect me to be free of hate, intolerance, bigotry, and the psycho-social constructs that protect them? If I write a book called Loosed At Last: Self-delivery from addiction, would it be imprudent of you to ask whether I was the one photographed last week puking with Christopher Hitchens outside Circa Tabac?º What if I pen the best-selling Regular As Sunrise: 10 sure steps to overcoming diarrhea? Would it be proper of you to presume that I did not write that fine book while sitting at a desk in my bathroom?
Just asking.
_______________
If the writer of Ecclesiastes is correct, that there is a season for everything under the sun, then there is a time for scoffing, for sarcasm. A friend of mine once said that she could not embrace Christianity because there was not a single reference in the whole Bible to God laughing. One wonders what she meant: the Bible has several references to God laughing at idols, scoffing at vanities, mocking false and phony gods. In other words, there is a time for scoffing, and the time is now.
You may have already garnered from my many essays about Al Gore that I am incurably Algore-aphobic. I am very discomforted by the over-crowding inside Al Gore's head. But that is the least of my phobias. I am much more phobic that Al Gore is presenting himself to the world as deity.
Surely you have heard that Mr. Gore is about to release a new book called (I am not making this up), The Assault on Reason. No, this is not autobiography, nor is it a confession or tell-all foisted upon the world to generate sympathy for his reckless rhetoric, his own sins of the mind. Those of us paying attention find just a hint of delight, an almost arthritic mirth, in the irony of it all: Al Gore is going to pontificate on the world's flight from reason. We giggle, but with some pain: our joints rattle and grind, joints battered by years if not decades of twists and sprains and hyper-extensions earned while fighting the fallaciousness of mass hysteria, even mass opinion.
Let us recall for the moment that Al Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth, is from credits-to-Oscar one long fallacy: the film unrelentingly confuses or, if not confuses, conflates correlation and causality in an almost insouciant non causa pro causa polemic. Of course, this is not to suggest that the conclusion is right or wrong; Mr. Gore may be infallibly correct in his conclusion that humans† are killing the planet and that the need for green living is of moral imperative. But his method is utterly irrational. His method is an assault on reason. Even his appeals to "most scientists" or "scientific consensus" are fallacious, as is his appeal to experts; both are fallacies, the former, the fallacy argumentum ad populum (or consensus gentium, the appeal to majorities), the latter, the appeal to authority.
In 1987, I had the pleasure of hanging out with Al Gore at a house party held on the edges of a tiny New Hampshire town. He was just beginning his bid for the White House; the twenty or so folks gathered in the kitchen and living room were remarkably interested in his words. But they were not sufficiently interested to give him the Democratic nomination in 1988, nor were they overly awed by him. My impression then (vague as it is now), was that the only person sufficiently awed by Mr. Gore was Mr. Gore himself.
Alas, I find he has not changed at all over the last 20 years. I also find that his current fans are giving him a pass. But since I am not a fan (nor am I at all current), he does not pass my way without receiving a jeer and a tomato (both the jeer and the tomato, by the way, are certified organic and totally carbon neutral; the jeer is also free-range). My incredulity slips into sarcasm at the idea: Mr. Gore has come to the rescue; he is going to enlighten us all to the true value and blissfulness of reason. He shall demonstrate logical perfection; he will rise above the profanum vulgus and model proper thinking. But one look at his unintentionally hilarious essay on economics from 2006 will give you a sense of Mr. Gore's vast skills in clear thinking. Perhaps my reference to that essay is unfair; perhaps lucidity is not one of reason's predicates. Perhaps muddied and abstruse prose is the crown jewel of reason. Perhaps.
The Gore Advantage
The advantage to writing a book called The Assault on Reason (TAR) is that the author instantly presents himself as the Most Reasonable Human. For surely the man who writes such a book could not be the most assaultive force on reason, could he? No, he could not. He can only be reason's protector, exemplar, purifier. He must be reason's very template.
And this is proven (I use the word the way Mr. Gore uses it) by TAR's description at Amazon. I would be remiss not to demand that you read it. Please! Go check out this most-reasonable description of this important bulwark against anti-rationalism. It is eye-opening: you will be aghast at your own benighted reasoning skills. A light will shine in your darkness, I am sure.
I just pray that the light shining in your darkness is not a bullet coursing through your incredulous head. I hope that, instead of inflicting any injury upon your lovely self, you will turn toward the light through derisive laughter. It is surely where and how I must turn. Laughter, for me, is the only reasonable alternative to suicide.* A high school friend of mine published next to his yearbook picture a veiled dig at the interminable laughter of a girl he thought he loved. He wrote, "Laughter is the air release of all one fears." But my friend was wrong. Laughter is not the release of all one fears. It is the release of all one hates. I either laugh at Al Gore or I kill myself; I either open my mouth and release my hatred or I open my cranium some other way in order to let out what I loathe. And I do loathe "Al Gore"; I hate him.ª But I do not hate Al Gore the man, the gentleman I met in 1987 or the man that holds his wife's heart. I do not hate the Al Gore loved by God. No, I hate Al Gore the commodity, the product. The merchandised. And the only passage to sanity I can find is one that demands -- for a season -- derision, mockery, scoffing, laughter. I laugh at Mr. Gore, at his absurd over-reaching.
(OK. Let me grant that there's nothing more irrational than for me to critique a book I have not yet read. I admit it is hard to read a book that is not yet even in print. But I am not sure it is unreasonable of me to make a wild prediction: In his new book, Mr. Gore is not going to be elucidating his many intellectual mistakes. Nor do I expect his book to consist of one long string of apologies. And I also do not expect Mr. Gore to admit that he is, of all people, quite eminently dis-qualified to write this book. This is a book that is, above all else, committed to promoting Al Gore.)
Al Gore's book is, like so many deeds and screeds of too many today, mere psychological projection. Mr. Gore is going to point out the sins of others not knowing (apparently) that such sins are his own. (I am reminded of what I wrote to Open Ide, a cowardly visitor to this site a few weeks ago.) And the only sins any one of us is truly expert in is the sins that are indeed our own. The Assault on Reason is a child's game of distraction: Look! What's that behind you?! Mr. Gore hopes you will ignore what is in front of your face, just so he can slink away, unchallenged, but nonetheless beloved for his commitment to "dialogue," to "reasoned conversation."
But Al Gore writing to us about reason is a bit like my lecturing Fabio on hair care. Al Gore promoting reason is not unlike Madonna promoting chastity. It's like Bill Maher telling the pope to cool down his opinions. It's a bit like Rosie O'Donnell advising Steven Wright on paradox, or Paula Abdul coaching Melinda Doolittle on how to be more vocally dynamic. It's a bit like George W. Bush giving tips to William Safire on how to pronounce nuclear (which, as we know, is just a variant spelling of unclear), or Eddie Van Halen telling André Segovia to be more subtle, or Anna Nicole Smith appearing at Fatima and urging women to remember her temperance.
In other words, Al Gore's book should be a failure before it even hits the editor's desk. Instead, it will be wildly successful.
Laugh your way to light. It's the season.
Peace and true mirth.
ºI mean this as a joke, of course. I do not know if that was Mr. Hitchens partying with me in Soho. But I do recall smashing rounds with a British atheist.
†Christianity has unflaggingly agreed with Mr. Gore since time immemorial, but with a twist. Humans are not going to destroy the planet. Humans already have destroyed the planet.
*I mean this facetiously, really.
ªMy hate is purely a rhetorical device.
©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.
Thursday, May 03, 2007
Better An Honest Grief
It is not writer's block. That sort of thing assumes a writer has something to say, to pass along. The metaphor implies obstruction of an otherwise glorious flow of verbiage; it implies a log jam interrupting the normal flow of a sure and powerful river.
What is it called when the river itself is empty, dried up? Writer's drought? What if there is nothing to block, no flow to impede? Or what if the writer's well is filled with dust? What do we call that?
I have nothing to say. At least, I feel like I have nothing to say. The Virginia Tech shootings were my last real reason to craft anything resembling an essay, a poem, something literary. How sad that I should only find a muse in grief. But is that even true? Did I find inspiration in sorrow and tragedy?
Perhaps. But today I've found something else in my gnawing gut; I've a belly full of disgust. I am sickened by the transitions. We humans, or most of us, seem to move from issue to issue, tragedy to tragedy, searching for smooth segues from bit to bit, from pod to pod (as news/documentary items are called on "Current TV"): We want something. We move from pod to pod like rats from switch to switch; we will electrocute ourselves for a new bit of bitter cheese. And I recoil at the thought that we are DONE with Virginia Tech, or Don Imus, or 9/11. That we have "moved on," emotionally, intellectually, spiritually. That we are hunting for the next big distraction, the next Beltway sniper or car chase or racial slur or outrageous political misstep. We look through blogs and news feeds; we grope about, snickering as we dismiss x and y and z; we take hold of A, and we write or film or opine in harried insistence that we have to say something, we have to move the debate, to push the national conversation. We must have A, we must shape it just so; and we shape it so we can have, as quickly as possible, B.
I walk through bookstores, I scroll through blogs and search engines; I sift through news pages and flip through YouTube clips or newsreels and I see nothing but words: words and words and words. We jam words into every void, every crevice. Windbag thinkers tell us that bad speech is fought with more speech; advertisers jam words into scoreboards and dashboards and every readable surface on the planet. We have so many words offered as answers we cannot see that words serve as cataracts to our eyes: we cannot make out the form of the questions that we ever even asked. There is just a dull, hazy light, double, triple vision: two moons in the night sky in our waning, aging light.
What is the solution to Don Imus' alleged racial slurs? Words. What is the solution to Seung-Hui Cho? More words. What to do with Iraq, Harry Reid, Rosie O'Donnell, Bill O'Reilly, Randi Rhodes, poverty? Words and more words. What is the solution to the estrangement of man's existence from his essence? Words. Declarative statements. No question marks.
My word.
Immediately after 9/11, TV networks went days and days without running any advertisements. Why? What purpose did that serve? Did it suggest that to hawk one's wares in sight of thousands of dead people was too tawdry, too decadent and heartless and rapacious and mercenary? How many dead people DOES it take for the networks to stop advertising, two, three? Why 5,000, 4,000, 3,000? What is the magic number necessary for a nation to stop and grieve properly? Who sets that number? What number tells us we can move on?
And how long must I wait before I can write about anything other than all that has preceded this moment? How long, really, do I have to forget the martyrdom of Peter or the destruction of Jerusalem or the Black Plague or the desolation of the American Indian or the savagery of the fur trade or the decapitation of infidels or the garroting of babies or gunshots in a classroom, before I can call myself au courant?
Yesterday I wept at a funeral for one of my dearest friends. Afterwards, as I approached my friend's now-empty house where a luncheon was to be held in her honor, I stopped to talk to Barbara, another friend who had moments earlier eulogized (so boldly, so elegantly) our dead friend. In the midst of our gentle, teary conversation, I said, "Better an honest grief than a dishonest joy." I shocked myself with the sentence, having no idea where it came from, or why exactly I had said it. But in a moment's pause both Barbara and I knew that it fit the moment perfectly; it was the very summation of her wonderful eulogy and what we were searching for on the shoulder of Lookout Hill Road.
Better an honest grief than a dishonest joy.
It is the sort of sentence one might find in Bartlett's, if only its author were noteworthy. It is also made up of mere words. It is more words, words that blind like tears, the cataracts of grief flowing over cheeks, pouring from the dulled eyes that search for a friend who is now a question mark.
Sometimes the only word we want to hear is not a word at all.
Peace.
©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.
What is it called when the river itself is empty, dried up? Writer's drought? What if there is nothing to block, no flow to impede? Or what if the writer's well is filled with dust? What do we call that?
I have nothing to say. At least, I feel like I have nothing to say. The Virginia Tech shootings were my last real reason to craft anything resembling an essay, a poem, something literary. How sad that I should only find a muse in grief. But is that even true? Did I find inspiration in sorrow and tragedy?
Perhaps. But today I've found something else in my gnawing gut; I've a belly full of disgust. I am sickened by the transitions. We humans, or most of us, seem to move from issue to issue, tragedy to tragedy, searching for smooth segues from bit to bit, from pod to pod (as news/documentary items are called on "Current TV"): We want something. We move from pod to pod like rats from switch to switch; we will electrocute ourselves for a new bit of bitter cheese. And I recoil at the thought that we are DONE with Virginia Tech, or Don Imus, or 9/11. That we have "moved on," emotionally, intellectually, spiritually. That we are hunting for the next big distraction, the next Beltway sniper or car chase or racial slur or outrageous political misstep. We look through blogs and news feeds; we grope about, snickering as we dismiss x and y and z; we take hold of A, and we write or film or opine in harried insistence that we have to say something, we have to move the debate, to push the national conversation. We must have A, we must shape it just so; and we shape it so we can have, as quickly as possible, B.
I walk through bookstores, I scroll through blogs and search engines; I sift through news pages and flip through YouTube clips or newsreels and I see nothing but words: words and words and words. We jam words into every void, every crevice. Windbag thinkers tell us that bad speech is fought with more speech; advertisers jam words into scoreboards and dashboards and every readable surface on the planet. We have so many words offered as answers we cannot see that words serve as cataracts to our eyes: we cannot make out the form of the questions that we ever even asked. There is just a dull, hazy light, double, triple vision: two moons in the night sky in our waning, aging light.
What is the solution to Don Imus' alleged racial slurs? Words. What is the solution to Seung-Hui Cho? More words. What to do with Iraq, Harry Reid, Rosie O'Donnell, Bill O'Reilly, Randi Rhodes, poverty? Words and more words. What is the solution to the estrangement of man's existence from his essence? Words. Declarative statements. No question marks.
My word.
Immediately after 9/11, TV networks went days and days without running any advertisements. Why? What purpose did that serve? Did it suggest that to hawk one's wares in sight of thousands of dead people was too tawdry, too decadent and heartless and rapacious and mercenary? How many dead people DOES it take for the networks to stop advertising, two, three? Why 5,000, 4,000, 3,000? What is the magic number necessary for a nation to stop and grieve properly? Who sets that number? What number tells us we can move on?
And how long must I wait before I can write about anything other than all that has preceded this moment? How long, really, do I have to forget the martyrdom of Peter or the destruction of Jerusalem or the Black Plague or the desolation of the American Indian or the savagery of the fur trade or the decapitation of infidels or the garroting of babies or gunshots in a classroom, before I can call myself au courant?
Yesterday I wept at a funeral for one of my dearest friends. Afterwards, as I approached my friend's now-empty house where a luncheon was to be held in her honor, I stopped to talk to Barbara, another friend who had moments earlier eulogized (so boldly, so elegantly) our dead friend. In the midst of our gentle, teary conversation, I said, "Better an honest grief than a dishonest joy." I shocked myself with the sentence, having no idea where it came from, or why exactly I had said it. But in a moment's pause both Barbara and I knew that it fit the moment perfectly; it was the very summation of her wonderful eulogy and what we were searching for on the shoulder of Lookout Hill Road.
Better an honest grief than a dishonest joy.
It is the sort of sentence one might find in Bartlett's, if only its author were noteworthy. It is also made up of mere words. It is more words, words that blind like tears, the cataracts of grief flowing over cheeks, pouring from the dulled eyes that search for a friend who is now a question mark.
Sometimes the only word we want to hear is not a word at all.
Peace.
©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.
Monday, April 30, 2007
Watch Out For The Death Blow!
A simple truck driver did more than disturb -- and distort -- this morning's commute in Oakland, California. He dealt a fatal blow to those 9/11 conspiracy theorists who believe that fires in the World Trade Center could not have "melted" steel.
That such foolishness is contradicted by countless blacksmiths everyday does not stop such theorists' wild fantasies. But maybe James Mosqueda's close scrape with death will quench the flames burning in the hearts and minds of far too many souls who stubbornly refuse to believe the simple truth, namely, 9/11 happened exactly the way they saw it happen. When Mr. Mosqueda and his 8,600-gallon gasoline tanker crashed beneath an overpass in Oakland, the result was the undeniable melting of massive steel girders and the collapse of one of Oakland's vital thoroughfares.
Not that the steel actually melted; it just weakened enough to lose its strength and collapse after three hours of raging fury. Which is, of course, identical to the official statement regarding the WTC towers: the fires, along with the brutality of two planes traveling hundreds of miles an hour slicing through both buildings, weakened the structures enough to render them incapable of supporting their own weight.
But, as I said, we only needed to talk to a blacksmith about steel to come to conclusions the 9/11 theorists could not, in all their scientific inquiries, discover for themselves.
Perhaps we will now learn that Mr. Mosqueda wasn't driving at all; witnesses saw a grey-headed middle-aged man from Texas leap from the tanker into what looked like a Washington, D.C. motorcade. It is reported that three hours later, using a reconfigured cell-phone from inside Air Force One, some person called another phone at the Oakland underpass, which triggered a series of thermite bombs to detonate.
It's all just to throw the conspiracy theorists off the trail.
©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.
That such foolishness is contradicted by countless blacksmiths everyday does not stop such theorists' wild fantasies. But maybe James Mosqueda's close scrape with death will quench the flames burning in the hearts and minds of far too many souls who stubbornly refuse to believe the simple truth, namely, 9/11 happened exactly the way they saw it happen. When Mr. Mosqueda and his 8,600-gallon gasoline tanker crashed beneath an overpass in Oakland, the result was the undeniable melting of massive steel girders and the collapse of one of Oakland's vital thoroughfares.
Not that the steel actually melted; it just weakened enough to lose its strength and collapse after three hours of raging fury. Which is, of course, identical to the official statement regarding the WTC towers: the fires, along with the brutality of two planes traveling hundreds of miles an hour slicing through both buildings, weakened the structures enough to render them incapable of supporting their own weight.
But, as I said, we only needed to talk to a blacksmith about steel to come to conclusions the 9/11 theorists could not, in all their scientific inquiries, discover for themselves.
Perhaps we will now learn that Mr. Mosqueda wasn't driving at all; witnesses saw a grey-headed middle-aged man from Texas leap from the tanker into what looked like a Washington, D.C. motorcade. It is reported that three hours later, using a reconfigured cell-phone from inside Air Force One, some person called another phone at the Oakland underpass, which triggered a series of thermite bombs to detonate.
It's all just to throw the conspiracy theorists off the trail.
©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.
Friday, March 30, 2007
On 9/11: Rosie O'Donnell and Building 7, Imploding
It may very well be true that we in fact battle against those in high and lofty places, but it is clearly not true that those who sit in such esteemed heights are one whit lofty. Take Rosie O'Donnell, for example. There is nothing particularly outstanding about this woman; there is nothing that would lead any of us to think that she is even particularly gifted. When I think of Rosie, I think of luck more than I think of brains, talent, or even brawn. One wonders where Ms. O'Donnell might be without her connection to Madonna, that diva known widely around the world for her nice, tight, erudite acumen.
In the truest expression of the spirit of this age, Ms. O'Donnell brings to us her perspective on the World Trade Center "attacks" of September 11, 2001: the buildings did not fall according to the laws of physics (or something like that). Instead, it appears that the buildings were felled by internally-placed explosive devices (not that Ms. O'Donnell knows much about internally-placed explosive devices [Sorry. Dreadful joke].) But we can at least find humor in the seriousness of this comedienne; the court jester is earnest. Of course we all know what trouble there is in being earnest, but we shall leave that for another time.
At issue, or so Ms. O'Donnell points out in her blog entry, wtc7, is the curiously aberrant collapse of World Trade Center Building 7. Conspiracy theorists and other 9/11 "scholars," you see, have pointed out that the building could not have collapsed on its own footprint because the fires afflicting it, which have been officially cited as cause of the collapse, were not symmetrical. In other words, for a structure like Building 7 to collapse so perfectly into itself by fire, the fire would have to be evenly distributed throughout the steel-framed building.
Also at issue are assertions that fires of the sort that ripped through the building could not melt steel framing. Add to this reports that witnesses saw plumes of smoke billowing out from the building during collapse, plumes allegedly compatible with detonations, and then blend in some emergency radio comments transmitted during the day, and, well, you've got a major conspiracy.
I will not venture into the science here, though it seems that even a lay person could come up with some pretty compelling explanations. What I would like to focus on is the simple fact that the building collapsed at 5:30 pm, more than eight hours after the very first whiff of jet fuel wafted over Church and Liberty.
And I also want to point out, if but for a second, that not a single person was killed -- or even reported injured -- when that building finally fell.
_________________
What Manner Of Conspiracy Is This?
Let us ignore the fact that if 9/11 occurred at all like it is suggested in the paranoid internet documentary, Loose Change, (see this, or this) then we're dealing with a conspiracy that included hundreds, if not thousands, of people. This requires us to suspend our adherence to what we know to be the cardinal law of crime: If you want secrecy, do your dastardly deeds alone. I think we would all agree that if O. J. Simpson had 1,000 accomplices assisting him with his wife's beheading, he would be serving time in San Quentin right this minute.
We can suspend or accept all the truisms and facts we want, but we cannot suspend the very real fact that this conspiracy proves only one thing: What a lousy conspiracy this is.
Let me ask you: If you have rigged a building with bombs intent on killing and maiming as many people as possible, why would you choose to detonate those bombs when everyone was safely away from that building? How is it that you could only manage to generate a great cloud of dust and a silly conspiracy theory? Why, pray tell, would you not drop the building when its occupants were spilling onto the streets, or when tens of thousands of people stood on the pavement looking skyward? How, too, do you broadcast your intent so blatantly; how is it that the fire department was able to declare that the building was going to collapse and that everyone should clear the area? And how do you manage to drop the building when nary a newscaster had his or her camera trained on the area?
Ah, perhaps there is a reason for such bungling. Perhaps the charges failed to go off at the proper time; perhaps there was a problem. Fair enough, we might conclude, but then we have to ask how it was that the bombs could be later detonated so sequentially, if, as everyone knows, ALL THE ELECTRICAL POWER was shut off for hundreds of city blocks.† Did some stealthy crew spool out wire disguised as a fire hose; did a crew spend some 8 hours (climbing over rubble, too!) reconfiguring the schematics -- and the scheme -- so that the buildings could be plunged down manually?
Really, the view from Rosie's high seat is breathtaking.
__________________
Let us ignore the fact that over 210 acres of debris fell from the sky that September morning. Let us forget that when those first buildings fell in Manhattan, they did so with such force that seismographs moved in Maine. Let us forget that the World Trade Center plaza was built on fill; let us forget that the entire plaza was built over six floors of malls, restaurants, garages, and subway tunnels; let us forget that the ground moved like jelly. Let us forget that each of the buildings was designed to implode by architects who knew that someday the buildings might need to be removed. Let us forget that jet fuel burns away nearly instantly; that fires burned bright that day from gases released from countless carpet fibers, sheets of paper, plastics and woods and varnishes; that fires, drawing torrents of rushing air through narrow passages like elevator shafts, will generate heat aplenty, heat like a blowtorch, local and lethal to flesh, bone, and steel.
Let us forget all this and ask the simple question: Why drop Building 7 at all, and why at 5 o'clock at night?
_______________
Why, Of Course! (Or is that "way off course?")
According to Ms. O'Donnell, there is an answer to our question: the collapse of Building 7 was meant not to destroy people. It was meant to destroy evidence. You know, papers, files, tapes, you know the deal. Come on, you know! Data was destroyed, data that would NOT AT ALL BE DESTROYED IN A COLLAPSE!
Isn't it the case that FIRE destroys the very things Ms. O'Donnell would have you believe were ruined in an intentional implosion (one that could have easily smothered the very fires that would be most effective in destroying incriminating evidence)? It seems obviously true that fire is a vandal's best friend. Why implode? Ah, we'll never know.
And, lastly, who is it that is (most likely) responsible for this great conspiracy? That's right. George W. Bush.
(Alas, not that anyone has ever wondered if the Clinton Administration could have orchestrated 9/11. I mean, it is clear at the very least that the 9/11 attacks were being planned well before George W. Bush stole the presidency. Clinton minion Sandy Berger scooted off with what from the National Archives?! Never mind.)
Here's the fact about 4 planes crashing on the American landscape that fateful day in 2001, written in language Ms. O'Donnell will understand: Bush flied, people died.
Peace.
©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.
†Perhaps the building was rigged with bombs set to trigger with a mere cell phone call, or some other remote device. That cell coverage was gone in Lower Manhattan is well-known, so we'll have to rule that out. But even if the building was detonated via remote switches, we must ask how it is that the master-minds would have been comfortable with their plan: In the fiery chaos of 9/11, a series of linked bombs could have been -- and surely must've been -- compromised. This problem remains even if we accept the idea that the bombs were on a timer: surely some part of the layout of bombs had to be damaged by fire and debris. But if we admit this, then we admit that if only some bombs detonated, they would have done so asymmetrically. If that is the case, how could asymmetrical detonations cause a building to fall straight down if we have already concluded that only symmetrical explosions could have that effect?
In the truest expression of the spirit of this age, Ms. O'Donnell brings to us her perspective on the World Trade Center "attacks" of September 11, 2001: the buildings did not fall according to the laws of physics (or something like that). Instead, it appears that the buildings were felled by internally-placed explosive devices (not that Ms. O'Donnell knows much about internally-placed explosive devices [Sorry. Dreadful joke].) But we can at least find humor in the seriousness of this comedienne; the court jester is earnest. Of course we all know what trouble there is in being earnest, but we shall leave that for another time.
At issue, or so Ms. O'Donnell points out in her blog entry, wtc7, is the curiously aberrant collapse of World Trade Center Building 7. Conspiracy theorists and other 9/11 "scholars," you see, have pointed out that the building could not have collapsed on its own footprint because the fires afflicting it, which have been officially cited as cause of the collapse, were not symmetrical. In other words, for a structure like Building 7 to collapse so perfectly into itself by fire, the fire would have to be evenly distributed throughout the steel-framed building.
Also at issue are assertions that fires of the sort that ripped through the building could not melt steel framing. Add to this reports that witnesses saw plumes of smoke billowing out from the building during collapse, plumes allegedly compatible with detonations, and then blend in some emergency radio comments transmitted during the day, and, well, you've got a major conspiracy.
I will not venture into the science here, though it seems that even a lay person could come up with some pretty compelling explanations. What I would like to focus on is the simple fact that the building collapsed at 5:30 pm, more than eight hours after the very first whiff of jet fuel wafted over Church and Liberty.
And I also want to point out, if but for a second, that not a single person was killed -- or even reported injured -- when that building finally fell.
_________________
What Manner Of Conspiracy Is This?
Let us ignore the fact that if 9/11 occurred at all like it is suggested in the paranoid internet documentary, Loose Change, (see this, or this) then we're dealing with a conspiracy that included hundreds, if not thousands, of people. This requires us to suspend our adherence to what we know to be the cardinal law of crime: If you want secrecy, do your dastardly deeds alone. I think we would all agree that if O. J. Simpson had 1,000 accomplices assisting him with his wife's beheading, he would be serving time in San Quentin right this minute.
We can suspend or accept all the truisms and facts we want, but we cannot suspend the very real fact that this conspiracy proves only one thing: What a lousy conspiracy this is.
Let me ask you: If you have rigged a building with bombs intent on killing and maiming as many people as possible, why would you choose to detonate those bombs when everyone was safely away from that building? How is it that you could only manage to generate a great cloud of dust and a silly conspiracy theory? Why, pray tell, would you not drop the building when its occupants were spilling onto the streets, or when tens of thousands of people stood on the pavement looking skyward? How, too, do you broadcast your intent so blatantly; how is it that the fire department was able to declare that the building was going to collapse and that everyone should clear the area? And how do you manage to drop the building when nary a newscaster had his or her camera trained on the area?
Ah, perhaps there is a reason for such bungling. Perhaps the charges failed to go off at the proper time; perhaps there was a problem. Fair enough, we might conclude, but then we have to ask how it was that the bombs could be later detonated so sequentially, if, as everyone knows, ALL THE ELECTRICAL POWER was shut off for hundreds of city blocks.† Did some stealthy crew spool out wire disguised as a fire hose; did a crew spend some 8 hours (climbing over rubble, too!) reconfiguring the schematics -- and the scheme -- so that the buildings could be plunged down manually?
Really, the view from Rosie's high seat is breathtaking.
__________________
Let us ignore the fact that over 210 acres of debris fell from the sky that September morning. Let us forget that when those first buildings fell in Manhattan, they did so with such force that seismographs moved in Maine. Let us forget that the World Trade Center plaza was built on fill; let us forget that the entire plaza was built over six floors of malls, restaurants, garages, and subway tunnels; let us forget that the ground moved like jelly. Let us forget that each of the buildings was designed to implode by architects who knew that someday the buildings might need to be removed. Let us forget that jet fuel burns away nearly instantly; that fires burned bright that day from gases released from countless carpet fibers, sheets of paper, plastics and woods and varnishes; that fires, drawing torrents of rushing air through narrow passages like elevator shafts, will generate heat aplenty, heat like a blowtorch, local and lethal to flesh, bone, and steel.
Let us forget all this and ask the simple question: Why drop Building 7 at all, and why at 5 o'clock at night?
_______________
Why, Of Course! (Or is that "way off course?")
According to Ms. O'Donnell, there is an answer to our question: the collapse of Building 7 was meant not to destroy people. It was meant to destroy evidence. You know, papers, files, tapes, you know the deal. Come on, you know! Data was destroyed, data that would NOT AT ALL BE DESTROYED IN A COLLAPSE!
Isn't it the case that FIRE destroys the very things Ms. O'Donnell would have you believe were ruined in an intentional implosion (one that could have easily smothered the very fires that would be most effective in destroying incriminating evidence)? It seems obviously true that fire is a vandal's best friend. Why implode? Ah, we'll never know.
And, lastly, who is it that is (most likely) responsible for this great conspiracy? That's right. George W. Bush.
(Alas, not that anyone has ever wondered if the Clinton Administration could have orchestrated 9/11. I mean, it is clear at the very least that the 9/11 attacks were being planned well before George W. Bush stole the presidency. Clinton minion Sandy Berger scooted off with what from the National Archives?! Never mind.)
Here's the fact about 4 planes crashing on the American landscape that fateful day in 2001, written in language Ms. O'Donnell will understand: Bush flied, people died.
Peace.
©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.
†Perhaps the building was rigged with bombs set to trigger with a mere cell phone call, or some other remote device. That cell coverage was gone in Lower Manhattan is well-known, so we'll have to rule that out. But even if the building was detonated via remote switches, we must ask how it is that the master-minds would have been comfortable with their plan: In the fiery chaos of 9/11, a series of linked bombs could have been -- and surely must've been -- compromised. This problem remains even if we accept the idea that the bombs were on a timer: surely some part of the layout of bombs had to be damaged by fire and debris. But if we admit this, then we admit that if only some bombs detonated, they would have done so asymmetrically. If that is the case, how could asymmetrical detonations cause a building to fall straight down if we have already concluded that only symmetrical explosions could have that effect?
Thursday, September 14, 2006
Hurting My Back, Uplifting Rosie O'Donnell, Without Question
[Today's topics: Rosie O' Donnell, Republicans' inability to "Question Authority", and back pain.]For the past few days I've been standing while writing. You see, I injured my back the other day while doing the Herculean task of lifting a small stone from my yard. So now I stand typing at the keypad of my Mac, letting my back settle into place.
For those of you with back problems, the nagging kind that do not include blown or ruptured disks, I encourage you to do what your body was really made to do: I encourage you to stand. I have found that, even if I am in full blown spasm, if I force myself to walk, I will eventually cease being in spasm. Relief may come at the two mile mark; it might come at the six mile mark, but it always comes. Seriously. The second you know you've hurt your back (assuming you have decent clothes and shoes on), get walking. My experience is the worst thing you can do is sit or lie down, both of which are very tempting. Humans were made to be erect; it is a good position. One walk, of course, will not do the trick; and you just can't keep walking forever. You will need to start a walking regimen if you want to keep things in good shape. When I start cutting my walking or increasing my sitting time, I am destined for trouble.
But I know nothing about any of this. I only know what works for me.
THE END OF THE WORD
Yesterday on "The View", Rosie O'Donnell, that profound professor we all have come to respect for her trenchant insights into, and incisive analysis of all things geo-political, offered us her astute view that "[r]adical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam in a country like America where we have separation of church and state." And, of course, she is thoroughly right. Radical Christianity is as much a threat as radical Islam. But we are left, not so much with Rosie's View, but our own. Since Rosie does not define for us what radical Christianity is, we can only guess that she means things tautologically, you know, in an "all bachelors are unmarried males" sort of way. Rosie must mean that radical Christianity IS radical Islam; for if, as she says, radical Islam -- which we know -- is as threatening as radical Christianity -- which none of us knows -- then they must be the same thing.
And, indeed, they are. Tour any Catholic church during a high holy feast and you will hear Catholic priests call for jihad against all those outside its folds. Go to any evangelical college and hear professors call for a holy war against all things non-Christian, inciting students to take up arms so as to lop off arms, and heads. Go to any Protestant church and watch Christians huddle together in back rooms, soldering switches to bombs as they strap C-4 to their chests. Watch tonight on "The 700 Club" as Pat Robertson shoots an AK-47 or an AR-14 at a cutout of some unfortunate infidel abortion doctor; watch Billy Graham urge the masses to convert from lives of sin, calling them to work as covert operatives for their personal warrior, Jesus the Christ.
Of course, no one dare point out that Christianity's Christ is a known pacifist; nor should anyone be allowed to remember that God's "final prophet" Muhammad was an absolute warrior with blood on his hands. Not one single Christian disciple (of The Twelve) is known to have once led an attack on a desert city; Muhammad is not known for once raising someone from the grave. He is only known as someone who put people there and then gave the living loads of stern advice on how to avoid the same fate.
One can only imagine that Ms. O'Donnell is convinced that George W. Bush is a radical Christian. Indeed, indeed, Ms. O'Donnell, those nasty Methodists are known for their bellicosity and insatiable lust for blood. Even Bob Jones University, that bastion of pugilistic fundamentalism, is merely renowned for its misguided stand against miscegenation. Odd, though, that it has no reputation for decapitation. But it is, in Rosie's View, as much of a threat as those who cut off human heads on videotape. "Praise be to Thee, Lord Christ" may not be the same as "Allah Akhbar," but it is somehow, in Rosie O'Donnell-fiction-land, "just as" threatening.
What this all means for us here is that the words "threatening", "radical", and "Christian" have finally lost their meaning.
AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL FACT
Yesterday, during a weak moment, I listened for a short while to the ever anemic Mike Barnicle show, a radio talkshow on 96.9 FM in Boston. Barnicle, as some of you know, is that master of sarcasm who lost his Metro section feature column at The Boston Globe because he was accused of reckless misuse of copyright when he failed to give credit to comedian George Carlin after publishing some of his jokes. His talkshow, curiously, strikes me as a cheap derivative of the "Imus in the Morning" show, which immediately precedes Barnicles' own two hours. In fact, Barnicle imitates Imus so often (in my opinion) one is tempted to think his diluted show would be better named "Imus with Water."
Barnicle's guest yesterday was journalist and pundit Martin (Marty) F. Nolan (I think I have this right).
Well, Mr. Nolan pontificated rather broadly, so to speak, even to the point of suggesting that Republicans, by nature, "do not question authority." I presume Mr. Nolan reached this conclusion on the secure fact that Republicans -- in Nolan's world, at least -- generally do not have glued to their cars that notoriously daring bumper sticker, "Question Authority." He averred that Republicans generally do not think for themselves; it is something of an "anthropological fact", something in their wiring, that prevents them from doing anything but conceding to overlords.
Despite the absurdly self-promoting posture of Mr. Nolan; and despite the ludicrous attempt at being scientific, Mr. Nolan's opinion -- as ugly as racism as it is -- is simply not supported by the facts. And the facts are that Republicans despise authority. But it is not that they hate the authority of experts; they accept expertise with a properly sceptical humility. Republicans know enough about certain things to know that they don't know enough about those things; if the President is in the Oval Office with the head of the CIA, Republicans know enough to be convinced that -- if they themselves are absent -- they do not know what was shared, said, or accomplished. And if it is true, as Democrats CONSTANTLY proclaim -- that this is the most secretive administration in the history of the very universe -- then Republicans are even quicker to accept that they are not authorities of all things Bush. But the sort of authority that Republicans do despise is the authority of the mere common man. Republicans know that if you walk up to any war protester holding a sign on any town square, you will be assaulted by an authority unlike any of us has ever seen in the White House. Stop any anti-Bush Democrat in a local pub; read any Democrat's op-ed in the Letters to the Editor pages of your local paper, and you'll see authority dripping from tongue and pen. Nay, you'll see infallibility in every phrase; you'll hear total inerrancy in every word. Democrats are rife with certainty, with authority. Just listen to Howard Dean. The man is certain about everything.
Moreover, the facts are also in the favor of Republicans when it comes to thinking for oneself. Michael Moore, we'll recall, rose up as an authority on the REAL causes of 9/11; he pushed the "chicken hawk" term to the forefront of anti-Bush railings. Democrats followed Mr. Moore en masse, never once questioning the authority of his sources. Paul Begala, the whiny, petulant little fuss-pot who is James Carville's political siamese twin, published a silly little book called, It's STILL The Economy, Stupid! One Democrat I know liked it for its massive citations found at the back of the book. I, of course, had already read the book; would it matter if I pointed out that the citations were nothing more than quotes from newspapers? No, it would not.
Al Gore, who is neither a scientist nor an expert, is jet-setting around the globe to tell us that jet-setting is bad for the atmosphere. However, the entire DNC has hooked its wagon to this rising cloud, and nary a Democrat has risen to challenge Gore's authority on all things climatological. My best friend, a meteorologist whose grad school professors are those guys at the National Hurricane Center, told me recently of a conversation he had with someone touting Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth", Gore's lecture film on global warming. My friend reports that his interlocutor said that he should see the film, especially "since it was not at all political." Of course, if there is a proven anthropogenic source of global warming, it is the loud guffaw such a remark elicited. Not political? Is not Al Gore a politician? Is he NOT trying to influence policy?
Democrats accept as authoritative that the Vietnam War was not a Democratic failure, even though it was the Democrats who escalated that failed conflict. Democrats accept as authoritative that it was their party that freed the country of racism in the 1960s, when in fact it was the Democrats who stood on the floors of Congress and sought to bring down equal rights legislation. Democrats accepted as authoritative that Bill Clinton's sin was merely about sex; they accepted that he was not bombing the HELL out of Iraq or the Balkans as a wag-the-dog distraction. Democrats hear one or two (out of hundreds) of U.S. generals speak against the Bush Plan in Iraq, and they accept those generals' authority as absolute. Democrats hear John Kerry denounce tax cuts for the rich, and they accept his authority without once noting that Kerry and his beloved wife did not -- as Massachusetts law permits -- voluntarily pay their taxes at a higher rate. Democrats accept as authoritative the news that hybrid cars are "better", and they rush out to acquire them without once asking whether Toyota and Honda are using MORE ENERGY to produce those cars and get them to market (neither company is hauling their many orders to market in anything but diesel-powered trucks). Democrats defer to an authority -- like Rosie O' Donnell, Sean Penn, or Tereza Heinz-Kerry -- merely because they are rich (which is the only reason any of us listen to such folks).
But Republicans listen to Al Gore with loads of doubt. Republicans are even sceptical of their leaders; one can see that in countless polls, Republicans are in fact less happy with President Bush than they once were. Apparently, Republicans DO think for themselves. But the one group I bet has not shifted much in the Bush Sucks category is the all-knowing, never questioning Democrats. It's a biological thing, I guess.
Really, let's be plain about this. Democrats knock on your door and tell you with all authority that gun control is a must; you are called a yahoo if you doubt them. Democrats knock on your door and tell you with certainty that oil is bad to burn; they call you a fool if you think it's at present the best choice for fuel (and if you point out that they drove to your house to tell you this). Democrats knock on your door to tell you with all authority that Republican leaders are fascistic fundamentalists trying to scare you to vote for them; and yet they call you a blind follower when you point out that Democrats themselves are trying to scare you into voting against scaremongers. Democrats knock on your door with much conviction about there being no connection between Iraq and terrorism, and you chuckle when you watch them denounce you as a lunatic for pointing out that Osama bin Laden's 1998 fatwa listed America's relations to Iraq as the "best proof" why Americans should be killed and their money stolen. The boys driving big trucks in hillbilly-land are "rednecks" because they reject the authority of The Boston Globe; congressional Republicans are denounced as ingrates for thinking for themselves that a brain injured woman might still have the right to life. You get the picture, and it is a sad one.
Seriously, you are all invited by Democrats to think for yourselves on the one thoughtful condition that your thoughts conform to the thoughts of Democrats. This, I bet, is one anthropological fact Democrats will not question.
Peace.
©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
Technorati tags: Democrats, Bush, Republicans, Authority, Question Authority, Rosie O' Donnell, The View, Radical Islam, Radical Christianity, Mike Barnicle, Marty Nolan, Al Gore, Global Warming, Bill Clinton
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