Some old friends are apparently avid supporters of Ben Carson’s candidacy for the presidency. They are devout, conservative Christians, perfectly nice people, but who clearly have a blind spot where this man is concerned. As far as I can tell, they want us to vote for him because he’s a virtuous man who can “bring this country back to God.”

I have some questions for them.

What does that mean, “bring this country back to God”? What kinds of policies do you expect him to enact in order to do that? How would those policies square with the pluralistic country we live in? Or would that become United States policy, to privilege Christianity over other faiths (or non-faith)?

Is the God you hope he will bring the country back to the God he worships as a Pentecostal? Or is there some other mutually agreed upon version you’re hoping for? Do you understand that there are different versions of even the Christian God in this country? Do you understand that there are versions of God that lie outside what you consider the “Judeo-Christian tradiiton”?^[1]

Do you think that if we elect a devout Christian to the office that the nation’s problems will resolve themselves? Do you think that a Congress would naturally fall in line with this person’s policies?  Or will God simply intervene in our affairs?

What do you think Ben Carson’s policies actually are? How much do you understand about his take on the issues.^[2] Is it possible that his understanding of some of these could be simplistic and based on erroneous information, or worse, magical thinking? Are the issues he lists enough to run a country, or are there other problems facing this nation which he does not address? How important are those problems?

Do you think that “bringing the country back to God” is the President’s job? Do you think that if we elect a devout man to the office that God’s protection will return to the United States? What do you mean by the phrase “God’s protection”? Is this different from sports figures thanking God for their victory?^[3]

What, exactly, is it that you hope that will change about our country through divine intervention? Have you considered that your vision of a virtuous life and a virtuous nation might not be universal, i.e., that others have different ideas about what is virtuous and godly? Have you considered that these changes might be unwelcome in other people’s lives? How will that work absent change in legislation and policy?

Have you been praying for this country to achieve the results you hope Ben Carson will effect if elected? Has your church? How long have you been doing so?^[4] If so, then why do you think those results haven’t already occurred? What do you think God has been telling you all this time in response to your prayers?

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^[1] Do you understand that when you say “Judeo-Christian,” everything you associate with that term indicates that you actually mean “Christian”?

^[2] Have you compared his issues page to other candidates? Trump’s? Sanders’? Clinton’s?  Does his list of issues seem more or less comprehensive to you than the others?

^[3] Have you read Mark Twain’s War Prayer?

^[4] Has it been since Jan 20, 2009? Why is that, do you think?

No one has ever accused the Tea Party of being intellectual giants. In fact, most of them would deny the accusation themselves.

But David Brat, the rabid weasel who ran against and defeated rabid weasel Eric Cantor because—incredibly—Cantor was not rabid-weaselly enough for Virginia voters, has set a new standard. After President Obama’s State of the Union address, Brat took to the airwaves to object:

“He’s using the Christian tradition and trying to bring about compassion by bonking Republicans over the head with the Bible,” Brat said. “It’s almost a comedy routine on what compassion and love is. He’s mocking his enemies in order to compel a larger federal state using the tradition of love.”

“Our side, the conservative side, needs to reeducate its people that we own the entire tradition,” Brat said. “If you lose the moral argument, you lose the policy argument every time, so we need to reclaim the moral argument, where we’re so strong.”

(full story here)

To which the world replied:

I mean… It’s just that…

I can’t even.

I have to vent.

On Facebook this morning, a now-unfriended person paste-posted an image of what looks like a newspaper article outlining the deeply nefarious “Rules for Radicals” by Saul Alinsky.  Even if I hadn’t read “Rules”—which I have—this artifact didn’t pass the too-outrageous-to-be-true test.

So I commented that it wasn’t true, linking to the Wikipedia article on “Rules” and the Snopes article debunking the artifact.  (I also uploaded the graphic to the left; this is now my standard response to these idiocies.)

Another commenter then commented on the original, “Good to know, may I repost?” AFTER I HAD ALREADY DEBUNKED IT—but this is not my first time observing a rightwing nutjob’s blindness to the facts right in front of him.

Here’s why I’m seething: the next time this exchange percolated through my newsfeed, the original poster HAD DELETED ALL MY LINKS, leaving only my comment that it wasn’t true. He then commented, “To all my liberal friends—gotcha!”

WTF, dude.  “Gotcha?”  You posted a lie, I discredited it as a lie, and you have concealed that.  You have not deleted the post, you have not acknowledged that you slipped up and allowed your rabid weasel-brain to get the better of you, you have deliberately spread a lie as the truth.  Son of a bitch.

This person—it almost goes without saying—a fine, upstanding Christian in this town.

As the article says, “The Useful Idiots have destroyed every nation in which they have seized power and control.  It is presently happening at an alarming rate in the U.S.”

So this was on a friend’s feed today on Facebook:

I have a thought experiment here.  Let’s say that you go out on the playground and there’s this one kid who has a stick and he’s whacking the other kids in the face.

1. Do you

a) bemoan the lack of discipline in his home
b) take the stick away from him

2. Do you

a) take everyone back to class and ask them to bow their heads
b) take the stick away from him

3. Do you

a) give the other kids sticks and tell them to whack him in the face too
b) take the stick away from him

Such a dilemma, isn’t it?

You have probably looked askance at the crew occupying a bird sanctuary in Oregon and wondered who the hell those guys are and what the hell they want. You are not alone.

Ammon Bundy, son of welfare cheat Cliven Bundy, sums it up for us:

“We’re going to be freeing these lands up, and getting ranchers back to ranching, getting the loggers back to logging, getting the miners back to mining where they could do it under the protection of the people and not be afraid of this tyranny that’s been set upon them.”

What are they yammering on about?

The basis of their argument is that the Constitution, in Article IV, Section 3, Paragraph 2 states:

“The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to Prejudice any Claims of the United States, or of any particular State.”

…which they have interpreted to mean that the United States government cannot therefore actually “own” any land belonging to a state and so all that public land they’ve been grazing/logging/mining on needs to be “freed” from the control of the United States. (Many of these people are part of the III% movement, i.e., it only took 3% of the population of the colonies—according to them—to free us from Britain. Such patriot, much liberty.)

Here’s why they’re full of shit.

You may dimly recall that after winning independence, the thirteen former colonies had their eye on the land to the northwest of their boundary (hence, the Northwest Territories), but there were some disagreements on how it was to be added to the United States, or whether it could be added, and all that stuff. Much of the property was already in dispute between the bigwig states of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, and Virginia,^[1] and so a radical idea was proposed: everybody give up all your claims and cede the land to the United States, aka the federal government.^[2]

This was the famous Northwest Ordinance , a brilliant piece of legislation passed in 1787 and a document that is, as far as I’m concerned, should be considered part of the Constitution itself. The deal was that Congress would set up rules about how that territory—and all future territories ::cough Manifest Destiny cough::—would be administered, packaged, sold off, and finally admitted as states to the United States.

In other words, all land not already part of a state was land belonging to the United States.

Let’s take a moment to ignore the fact that this property was already occupied when we got here. Even as we fast forward through the timeline, ignore the fact that the Louisiana Purchase and the Mexican Cessions were of land that didn’t actually belong to the people from whom we bought/wrested it.

So, ignoring all that, as we added those vast swaths of territory^[3] to our purview, Congress kept doing its job of drawing boundaries and selling off the land as they could.^[4]

Oops—almost missed that there, didn’t you? The III% crowd certainly has.

All land belonged to the United States. It was sold off as they went. That which was not sold remained in the possession of the United States, even after the territory became a state. That’s part of the deal of becoming a state. Strange, but true. About 47% of western lands is still public lands.^[5]

So the III% shibboleth that the United States is constitutionally prohibited from owning land is bullshit in every way, both de jure and de facto. (See Update below.)

Most of the western territories remain public because no one wanted to buy it, back when we were selling it. (Or letting people homestead it.) In the last 100 years, of course, we’ve begun to take a more custodial view of those lands. (Thank you, Teddy Roosevelt [R-Really?]!)^[6]

Which brings us to grazing rights. For 150 years, public lands were absolutely public. You could homestead a ranch, which gave you a certain amount of property, and then you just let your cattle roam as far as they could go to survive. Total freedom—no tyranny here nosirree!

If you are familiar with my oeuvre, you know that the Tragedy of the Commons is a recurring motif. We have in our present circumstance a perfect example.

As pointed out in this tidy summary at The Wildlife News, by the 1930s the grazing lands were a disaster. Introduced by a Colorado congressman, a rancher (!), the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934 was designed to “stop injury to the public lands by preventing over-grazing and soil deterioration; to provide for orderly use, improvement and development; to stabilize the livestock industry dependent upon the Public Range and for other purposes.”

The U.S. Grazing Service—and its successor, the Bureau of Land Management^[7]—instituted grazing fees to help control overgrazing of the public lands. It’s that simple. It’s not tyrannical overreach (thanks, Obama!), and no one has “taken away” any rancher’s lands. It’s a sometimes complicated contractual agreement into which ranchers/loggers/miners enter with the United States, but the bottom line is that it is simply that: a contract.

Further, the fees charged by the BLM—by the United States—are far below market rate. The United States will charge you $1.35 for per AUM (the amount of land needed to support a cow and her calf for a month); the market rate out west, i.e., what a private land owner will charge you, is $20.10/AUM.

So when the Bundys whine about tyrannical government, remember that they’re whining about a 93% discount in what they’re charged to use our land, and that discount is provided by you, the taxpayer.^[8] Cliven Bundy and his sons are welfare queens.

Or when they proudly proclaim they’re holed up in a remote bird sanctuary to free these lands up, to get ranchers back to ranching, loggers logging, and miners mining, remember that the whole reason the BLM exists is that unrestrained use of public land was a disaster—the idea that present-day corporations and welfare queens would be better at land use now than they were 100 years ago is risible.^[9]

The irony is that if they got their way and the United States divested itself of the land, the Bundys couldn’t afford to buy it. Speculators and corporations would snatch it up and would charge the boys full market rate. And how do you think it would work if Cliven Bundy chose not to honor his contract with those people?

So you will pardon me if I mock these mighty patriots holed up in a bird sanctuary, fighting against a tyrannical government that exists only in their imagination—an evil entity which, for the rest of us, is simply the United States. The U.S. Us.

Update: Further insight at RawStory. [back]

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^[1] Georgia once claimed all the land west of the colony, first all the way to the Pacific, and then more modestly to the Mississippi. Part of the deal of joining the United States was giving up those claims. (Virginia was not about to allow that cracker state to supersede it in empire building.)

^[2] The conservative nutjobs have done an effective job of making “federal government” into a bad word, a shibboleth that gives them tingles down their legs as they imagine it hiding in their closet or under their bed. I will therefore use “the United States” instead to remind these yahoos that what they’re talking about is our country.

^[3] Oh, all right. Huge tracts of land. There, are you happy?

^[4] For a hugely interesting and entertaining look at the process, see Mark Stein’s How the States Got Their Shapes

^[5] This Salon article is a great overview of the issue.

^[6] Let’s see you wrangle punctuation like that, bucko!

^[7] Yes, the same BLM that manages the Playa where Burning Man takes place.

^[8] FiveThirtyEightPolitics has a very good article about it.

^[9] The Salon article points out that even if the United States wanted to devolve the property onto the states, the cash-strapped—and need I add, deep Republican red—states would be loath to accept the gift. They couldn’t afford it.  Talk about a welfare state!

Merciful heavens.  It’s time once again to rant here on my blog rather than on a Facebook friend’s post.  This time, it’s not the friend who posted the insanity—it’s one of her associates. My friend was telling about being in the Rose Bowl Parade crowd while the skywriter was bashing Donald Trump over their heads.

Her point in posting was to note that everyone around her essentially agreed with the skywriter, which was enough for her squirrelly friends to pile on.  One of the comments was as follows:

If Trump was in office…
#1 We’d have jobs back
#2 No more outsourcing
#3 Sanctions strengthened
#4 Veterans taken care of
#5 Hostages in Iran back
#6 The 1% will be taxed
#7 No teleprompter speeches
#8 No lobbyist & SuperPac control
#9 We would stop submitting to other countries that we give handout after handout to with nothing in return
#10 The border would work more efficiently & end a lot of modern day Mexican slavery

What floors me about these people is their seeming refusal to do any real thinking about their candidate or their country.  Let’s look at the results, shall we?

If Trump was in office… Subjunctive voice, dearie.  “If Trump were in office…” is your lead.  Always use the subjunctive when the issue is contrary to actual reality.

We’d have jobs back.  How, exactly?  In what areas of the economy?  Would the unemployment rate be lower than it is now?  No details on this, because Trump hasn’t given us any.  “All those jobs that got lost to Mexico, to China?  I’ll bring them back.”  Perhaps he’ll use his Ring of Power.

No more outsourcing.  Like Trump does? (Also.  And also too.)

Sanctions strengthened.  Against whom?  And why?  I imagine this commenter is talking about Iran, which is of a piece with the ideology of Trump supporters: why use a carrot when you can use a really big stick?  It’s much better to hit the other guy instead of negotiating, right? It’s very important to these people that we be the biggest badass in the world.

Veterans taken care of.  How, exactly?  What would President Trump do that his predecessors haven’t?  And how exactly would President Trump convince a Tea Party Congress to spend that money (since unfortunately most of his supporters are also going to vote for the most rabid, brain-damaged weasels on the down-ballot)?  Other than that, great goal.

Hostages in Iran back.  I had to stop and think what hostages this person is concerned about.  Hostages?  A quick websearch shows that there are four Americans imprisoned in Iran at the moment, and that the recent negotiations did not include the fate of these people.  Naturally, the rabid weasel faction seized on this as evidence of the Obama administration’s fecklessness.  Could it be that the main goal of the treaty was hard enough to get without loading it down with additional challenges, and that perhaps the prisoners’ fate is being dealt with by other ongoing negotiations?  Nah, it’s because Obummer is a traitor—the only possible explanation.  What Trump would do instead?  Use his Ring of Power, I guess.

The 1% will be taxed.  This is astonishing, because the rabid weasel faction usually will die on the hill of “less tax/smaller government,” but somehow the whole income inequality thing and how it contributes to the downward pressures on the income of the middle class appears to have made it into their brains.  More power to them, but I’d suggest that they take a look at Bernie Sanders if they want to see that happen.  (Although, again, they’ll vote for a Tea Party Congress and completely doom our government to a death spiral.)

No teleprompter speeches.  Jebus on Melba Toast.  What is it with the weasels and TelePrompter?  Do they honestly believe that only weaklings (i.e., incapable of using Rings of Power to bully the world) use this handy device to keep their public address on track?  Do they not understand that everyone on the teevee uses a TelePrompter?  Do they honestly believe that Trump simply speaks from his heart (or other part of his anatomy)?  And when he does, do they really think that’s the kind of thing we want to hear from our President?  (Spoiler alert: yes.  Yes they do.)

No lobbyist & SuperPac control.  Cool story, bro.  Actually, what are they talking about here?  No outside money in the Donald’s campaign because he’s paying for it himself?  Or no outside money influencing our legislation?  If it’s the first, it clearly has not occurred to them that if he’s rich enough not to be beholden to special interests, he’s rich enough not to be beholden to the voters either.  If it’s the latter, good luck with that.  What’s he going to do, issue an executive order???  (Spoiler alert: it’s OK if the Fearless Leader does it.   With his Ring of Power.  Which that feckless Obummer is too weak to use.)

We would stop submitting to other countries that we give handout after handout to with nothing in return.  Ah, “submission.”  As if the U.S. has submitted to any other country in the last 100 years.  “Handout.”  You would think, listening to the weasels, that for some reason our country is shoveling your tax dollars right out the door to those ungrateful furriners.  This of course has nothing to do with reality.

The border would work more efficiently & end a lot of modern day Mexican slavery.  The commenter’s concern over the working conditions of our immigrant laborers is touching.  Would they, I wonder, agree to laws which a) punish with jail time anyone who hires undocumented workers; and/or b) require the minimum wage to be paid to all such workers, and taxes collected from same?  Because if we successfully drive the Brown Peril out of our country—with Rings of POWER!!—it’s going to be their children’s asses cleaning hotels and picking lettuce.

So here, in 1000 words, I have given more thought to the realities of the Trump candidacy and potential presidency than any of his supporters have.  Have mercy.

Why didn’t I post any of this under the comment?  Because none of the facts have any impact on weasels.  They really do believe in the Green Lantern/Ring of Power theory of governance.  Actual facts are trifling details which can be blown away with a blast from any Leader worthy enough to wield the Ring of Power.  Trying to show them the details only makes them gnaw at the cage more ferociously.

BONUS: The millionaire who paid for the skywriting is also the owner of anybodybuttrump.us.  Buttrump.  Heh heh…

Makes me sick knowing that this silhouette will soon be gone & the view of this “yet-to-be-named” Square will forever be missing Jackson’s statue. Boggles my mind that the Square was built in 1721 & Jackson’s statue erected in 1856, yet in 2015 it’s going to be removed by people with an agenda following a prescribed agenda.

This was the comment under a lovely photo of Jackson Square in New Orleans, in the fog with the equestrian statue of Andrew Jackson silhouetted against the cathedral.  It was posted by a Facebook associate—I refuse to call them “friends” anymore—and I had to come blog about it here rather than be rude over there.

It’s in response to the city of New Orleans deciding to divorce itself from its Confederate past.  (You can read about it here if you like.) This kind of thing is always problematic, because no one likes the idea of trying to erase the past. It smacks of Stalinism at its propagandistic worst.

However, I don’t think that’s what New Orleans is trying to do.  I think they are simply voting to disengage from the part of their past which celebrated the ill-conceived (and even more ill-executed) Confederate States of America.  There is no way we can ever erase our embarrassing rebellion, but I don’t think anyone would ever deny that since our defeat in 1865 our region has clung to the Glorious Cause as if it were an unmitigated good.^[1]

So good for the city council of NOLA in trying to put all that behind them.  Better to put it in the closet than sweep it under the rug, I think.

But in regard to the comment above, eyebrows must be raised and lips pursed.  I am always astonished at how un-self-aware persons of this ilk are. His mind is boggled that the Square existed for 135 years before the city honored the hero of the Battle of New Orleans, which occurred at the end of the War of 1812,^[2] and then laments that the city has decided to make another change.  Because that’s an “agenda.”  The “agenda” that renamed Tivoli Circle to Lee Circle^[3]… well, that’s not an “agenda.”

And there we have it: the mentality that the privileged history of the commenter is the default reality and everything that deviates from that is actually deviant.  It’s the source of much butthurt in our rightwing brethren these days.

Because here’s the clincher: this is pure butthurt.^[4] If you go read the article in the footnote below, you’ll see that the monuments that are being removed do not include Andrew Jackson’s statue in Jackson Square because Andrew Jackson, whatever his other heinous faults, was not a Confederate general.^[5]

How does a brain like that remember not to leave the house without pants?  Jebus.

—————

^[1] Yes, I am aware that many among us still consider it an unmitigated good.  They are as wrong as their ancestors.

^[2] Technically it occurred after the end of the War of 1812, but news about peace treaties traveled slow in those days.

^[3] The white New Orleanians who put up the Lee statue in 1884 and renamed Tivoli Circle for him didn’t hide their motives. “We cannot ignore the fact that the secession has been stigmatized as treason and that the purest and bravest men in the South have been denounced as guilty of shameful crime,” The Daily Picayune wrote. “By every appliance of literature and art, we must show to all coming ages that with us, at least, there dwells no sense of guilt.” [The Editorial Board, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune. (2015, December 18). With vote to remove Confederate monuments, City Council embraces New Orleans’ future: Editorial. Retrieved December 18, 2015, from http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2015/12/confederate_monuments_new_orle_7.html ]

^[4] Yes, I see what I did there.

^[5] That would have been difficult for him, since he died in 1845.

This quick rant is brought to you by the Lichtenbergian Precept of Task Avoidance: by writing this, I’m avoiding work on the Easier Piece #5.

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During a recent Facebook discussion about tax rates—and it was a discussion, not an insane bout of poo-flinging—we were treated to the old rightwing shibboleth of not wanting a higher, progressive tax rate on the wealthy because it would “punish success,” somehow disincentivizing the ruling class from being productive members of society.

I have never understood why people believe this kind of thing, other than they’ve had it hammered into their brains by the very people whom it benefits.  It makes no logical sense.

I am supposed to believe that a class of people who are distinguished by their rapacious and never-ending greed would suddenly stop their money-making activities if we forced them to contribute more of their income to the common welfare?  Leaving aside any worldviews about whether the government can even because reasons, that’s just stupid talk.

Why would the opposite not be true?  Why, if we suddenly confiscated more of their income through progressive taxation, would the ultra-wealthy not double down to make more to keep?  Seems to me that would be the more logical outcome, given what we’ve seen to be true about that class.

So we raise tax rates back to where they were when we had a strong middle class, and the upper classes contribute more, the government reduces the budget deficit, the economy improves, the middle class gets more money to spend and the upper class is more productive.  What’s not to like?