Tag Archives: Republicans

Platitudes, attitudes, and fortified pillows…..

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Ffolkes,
Once all the bugs are eliminated, I believe I am going to enjoy the new format here. So let’s dive right in…..

“We have a presidential election coming up. And I think the big problem, of course, is someone will win.” — Barry Crimmins

I have previously written many diatribes on the subject of politics, and more specifically, on politicians. While I have no particular problem with the first, I have a number of reasons for mistrusting the latter. And unfortunately, we have put ourselves into a situation where no matter who we elect, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, or Bozoid, they are going to gleefully start lining their pockets, because they are not acting in your best interests. Why? That one is easy; they all lie to us. Every politician has a single characteristic they share with all their peers, and that is the willingness to say ANYTHING to get elected. I regard it as a given that they all do this, and it won’t change until we, the voting public, the great unwashed masses make the first change by holding another American Revolution, and toss them all out on their cheating, lying asses. That’s right, I am suggesting we stop voting. Just say no to their chicanery. Indicate your displeasure with all politicians by shunning them.


Anyone who WANTS the power over others that elected office brings is, by evidence of their very interest in acquiring that power, completely insane. It isn’t mentally or emotionally healthy to need that kind of control over others, and indicates a person whose sole purpose in life is to satisfy their own interests, aka sociopathic. It’s a very passive-aggressive way for them to express their disdain for all the ignorant voters who continue to buy into their bullshite; first they lie to get into office, then they are free to cheat and steal from the public treasury, as long as they cheat and steal for the benefit of their own constituency while they’re about it.

     Our forefathers fought a war to obtain the rights we supposedly enjoy, a war that began because the people here were tired of being governed by people who had no interest in their welfare. Well, here we are again, folks, back in the same boat as in 1760, being oppressed by the very people who are supposed to be protecting us from that very thing. And I say it is time to put a stop to it…. what do you think?….feel free to comment, because this is one I will enjoy discussing in more depth…..

“Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you help them to become what they are capable of being.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

I enjoy a lot of what Johann von Goethe wrote, and regard him as one of the clearest thinkers of his time, or any other. I don’t always agree with him; he tends a bit toward conservatism in some areas, but those ideas are straightforward in their inconsistency, and generally can be discounted as cultural prejudice, as he lived in a quite repressive era in terms of human rights. But for the most part, he had a clever mind and a powerful writing style, consistent with the Teutonic roots of his modes of thought, and possessed a very deep insight into human nature.


I like this quote, both for its insight, and for its depth of compassion. We are all familiar with the Golden Rule; it is a phrase common to ALL cultures, and could be considered as the basis for all the laws made by humans to regulate their interactions with one another. In that light, this becomes a corollary aphorism to that rule, a corollary that points the way to a life well-lived. Treating others with the respect and dignity we desire for ourselves is taken one step further on the path to enlightenment, by leading one into right action. When we help others, we improve ourselves, and everyone is better for it…..

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that ‘s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellow’d to that tender light
Which Heaven to gaudy day denies.
— Lord Byron (1788-1824)
— Hebrew Melodies, She walks in Beauty

As yet, I’m a bit uncertain as to how to approach the discussion of a poem, or excerpt from a poem, without making it seem either pretentious or emotionally labile. What I do know is that each poem is the world-view of another person, condensed from its seemingly infinite size into more palatable portions, that yet connect the spirit of the reader to the greater design. I first looked at the selected piece from Lord Byron because of the subtitle, “She walks in Beauty”. It reminded me of the common farewell phrase spoken by the Navajo tribes, uttered when parting company with another member of the tribe, or anyone else for that matter. The phrase, ‘Ya teh hey’, loosely translates as ‘Walk in Beauty’ expressed as a wish, i.e., ‘may you walk in beauty’.

     Then I read the poem itself, and my mind was transported to India, where the goddess of the night, Ratra, is worshiped by devotees of Hinduism, as she has been for several thousand years. You’ve seen the words of Lord Byron here before; I particularly enjoy his view of the world, and his unique way of stringing words together in a logical, yet beautiful style. “Thus mellow’d to that tender light, Which Heaven to gaudy day denies”  Is that not perfect? A multitude of layers, a fountain of emotion, joy and gratitude, and much more, made plain in two lines. I don’t know if the ability to make and enjoy poetry has any significance from an evolutionary standpoint, unless you count the unlimited power of imagination, so necessary to making poetry, and so essential to us in creating  Beauty, both real and imagined…….

Well, two down now, and I like it! Until tomorrow, ya teh hay! And….y’all take care out there….

—
Sometimes I sits and thinks,
and sometimes
I just sits.
gigoid

Kowabunga!

Unassailable Grace, Impervious Beauty….

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Ffolkes,
As mentioned yesterday, today’s offering will assume the new position. With no further ado, I give you the Pearls of Virtual Wisdom (remember, kids, don’t try this at home)……

“I may not understand what you say, but I’ll defend to your death my right to deny it.” — Albert Alligator, in Pogo, 26 September 1951

Pogo, the comic strip by Walt Kelly, was still being drawn by Mr. Kelly when I was a kid. However, being just a kid, I was often confused by the things that Pogo, Albert, and all their  swamp-mates would say, and often wondered why people thought the strip was so funny. Later, when I went away to college, I was re-introduced to the strip, and came to understand why Walt Kelly was considered a genius. His droll sense of irony and his keen wit had, in the swamp society he created, a perfect outlet for all his sharp observations of American culture and politics, delivered in a down-home, laid-back way that belied the depth of his cutting wit. This Pearl, from Albert Alligator, is a perfect example of that wit, and how he used one single line to portray a number of concepts. This particular phrase sounds as if it could have been uttered by almost any of our modern talking heads. It is certainly no less potent a point than those being brought out by the group of Republican presidential wannabees; it actually sounds like something Rick Perry might blurt out, then spend the next three days “refining” his meaning. Though today we have our own modern version of Pogo in the characters of Doonesbury, I would love to have seen some of the strips Mr. Kelly would have drawn on the subject of today’s culture, were he still alive, especially those that would poke gentle fun at what I like to call the Motley Crew (Perry, Cain, Romney, Bachman, etc.)……

I care not, Fortune, what you me deny:
You cannot rob me of free Nature’s grace,
You cannot shut the windows of the sky
Through which Aurora shows her brightening face;
You cannot bar my constant feet to trace
The woods and lawns, by living stream, at eve:
Let health my nerves and finer fibres brace,
And I their toys to the great children leave:
Of fancy, reason, virtue, naught can me bereave.
— James Thomson (1700-1748) — The Castle of Indolence, Canto ii, Stanza 3

IMHO, (in my humble opinion, for the uninitiated) poetry is possibly the one divine attribute that mankind can truly claim as his own. There is some unique part of the human psyche that is able to take the most complex, powerful emotions we experience and, in just a few well-chosen, gracefully arranged words, give powerful expression to what otherwise would take hundreds of words to explain. Love, death, betrayal, honor, independence, sorrow, joy, all of the most powerful of human feelings, all are perceived by the fertile minds of poets, who then, by some unknown inner process, give back to the world what they perceive and feel, in a form that inspires and illuminates. This particular excerpt, from James Thomson, is one I had never come across before, and before I even understood what it was saying, I knew I’d be using it, because it is just plain beautiful to read. When reading it, try reading it aloud; it’s got a wonderful rhythm to it that is just fun to speak out loud……and the message I get from it is pretty inspiring as well. What did you see or feel when you read it?…….More on this subject in future missives…..

Nuke a gay whale for Jesus. — an attempt to be as politically incorrect as possible, of unknown origin

Like most of us probably have, I’ve seen this floating around the net (there’s a phrase you wouldn’t have seen even as little as 20 years ago); whether it made you smile, frown, or just groan is immaterial for the purposes of this discussion, plus I don’t really care. 🙂 What I’m interested in just now is the phrase ‘politically incorrect’. I have serious misgivings when I consider the societal gestalt that created the whole idea of ‘political correctness’; the phrase alone is suggestive of an idea that keeps cropping up, an idea that Mrs. Grundy has been promoting for centuries, to wit: morality can be legislated. (Mrs. Grundy, for those of you who don’t know her, is that old lady across the street whose curtains twitch all day long as she takes note of all her neighbor’s activities, so she has ammunition for her busybody opinions and critical judgments of the rest of us. Also known as Nosy Parker) Trying to tell people how they should act is not the function of government, and what goes on in my house is MY business, not anyone else’s. This is another subject that we will explore again, when I’ve gotten the hang of this new format. So far, I’m being a bit too long winded (surprise!)…..

“For a man can lose neither the past nor the future; for how can one take from him that which is not his? So remember these two points:
first, that each thing is of like form from everlasting and comes round again in its cycle, and that it signifies not whether a man shall look upon the same things for a hundred years or two hundred, or for an infinity of time; second, that the longest lived and the shortest lived man, when they come to die, lose one and the same thing.”  — Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121-180 AD) — Meditations, ii, 14

The author of this little statement of philosophy re: reality and life was born one thousand, eight hundred and ninety years ago. I think we can agree that that is a long time ago. He lived without TV, without radio, without air-conditioning, cars; hell, they didn’t even have toilets yet. (Put THAT picture in your head; 10,000 or so people in ancient Athens, no toilets!) We modern folk tend to look upon those times, when we think of them at all, with scorn or amusement for what they had to put up with (or without). We have theoretically made a lot of progress since those days, but I can think of very few modern thinkers who have come even close to such insight into human nature, and the proper alignment of that nature in the universe. I actually find this to be the case in a large number of instances, and can only regard it as more data that points toward Armageddon in the not-so-distant future. Mankind as a species is in a period of grave danger, and that danger lies within our own nature, for we are quick to deny that which doesn’t fit our conception of how things should be, and turn our attention elsewhere. This denial will end up, I believe, as our Achilles’Heel…..

Well, that’s enough doom & gloom for one morning. Wow…..in looking back over today’s piece, I am underwhelmed, but hopeful. There was no lack of subject matter, but this format seems to feed into my tendency to fall into pedantry (see?), so we may have to make some adjustments. Here, then is your final Pearl for today, more wisdom from the ages, and sans comment……

‘We give to necessity the praise of virtue.” — Quintilian (42-118 AD) — Institutiones Oratoriae, i, 8, 14

Y’all take care out there…..

—
Sometimes I sits and thinks,
and sometimes
I just sits.

gigoid

Dozer

Kowabunga!

Marvelous mountains of popcorn…..

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Ffolkes,
On a day following the last two, this morning’s subject for discussion would naturally progress into a political rant. After all, one can only take so much BS before having to spew. Who am I to go against tradition?….. So, for a while there, watching the Republican circus in the news was getting to be a little scary. I don’t think I’d enjoy having a person in charge of this country who insisted on maintaining the degree of ignorance on display in those debates. A person who questions evolution, and at the same time questions global warming, does not have the intellectual strength necessary to carry out the duties of the job. I consider deliberate ignorance to be the biggest problem we have in today’s society, because it affects everything else. How can I justify giving control over nuclear weapons to a person whose most intellectual pursuit is Saturday morning cartoons?


Yes, it was scary for a time, but I forgot a critical factor, that of natural selection. As time goes by, each of the eight or ten Republicans who have declared their intent keeps on talking with the media. Even though some of the campaigns try to limit access to the candidate, they eventually have to speak out on the national stage, or risk being forgotten. And every time they open their mouth, out comes another little verbal bomb, some statement that shows the public just how stupid and greedy they are. It’s been kinda fun, watching them implode their own campaign by the mere act of speaking their mind. I couldn’t ask for better comedy…..if only it weren’t real….


It is unfortunate that there is nobody in the public arena who speaks sense, whether Democrat or Republican, though it shouldn’t surprise us. We voters are the ones who keep electing these schmucks. It’s almost shark-like behavior, performing time and again the same idiotic actions that let these idiots into office, and then complaining because they lied to us. Of course they lied; they’ve been programmed to lie, as history shows it to be the best way to get elected. Lie to the voters, then reverse positions once in office; it’s a time-tested sure-fire method of how to steal from the public, and convince them they like being screwed over. If you think you can explain it any better, feel free to write back and show me some evidence of intelligent life in D.C……meanwhile, here are some pertinent Pearls. Enjoy!….

How you do anything is how you do everything. — Zen proverb

He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknell’d, uncoffin’d, and unknown.
— Lord Byron (1788-1824)
— Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto iv, Stanza 179

“Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot.  In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.” — Oscar Wilde

Only the educated are free. — Epictetus

“The ultimate evil is the weakness, cowardice, that is one of the constituents of so much human nature.  When, rarely, unalloyed nobility does occur, its chances of prevailing are slim.  Yet it exists, and its mere existence is reason enough for not wiping the name of mankind off the slate.” — John Simon

“One of the annoying things about believing in free will and individual responsibility is the difficulty in finding someone to blame your troubles on. And when you do find someone, it’s remarkable how often their picture turns up on your driver’s license.” — P. J. O’Rourke

In light of today’s political scene, the last Pearl is downright frightening…..y’all take care out there…..

—
Sometimes I sits and thinks,
and sometimes
I just sits.

gigoid

Kowabunga!