Category: Liberal Rants

Thoughtful posts on why the neopaleolithic viewpoint, while perhaps valid for its adherents, is yet not the way I want my country run.

Five tails

Posted on by Dale

Recently on Facebook I posted three “rules” for anyone wishing to discuss the “controversy” over the Park51 project, popularly but erroneously known as the World Trade Center Mosque.

The first and most basic rule was “It’s not a mosque.” And it’s not. It’s a community center, both a YMCA, if you will, and an interfaith study center.

The results were gratifying: many people cheered on my bluntness, while my right wing friends tied themselves into knots trying to continue their outrage. Again and again I would reject their “but it’s a controversy!!!!1!” with “It’s not a mosque.” Like moths to the flame, however, they could not stop themselves from arguing from the premise that someone was building a triumphalist mosque on sacred ground. Sorry, it’s not a mosque.

“But why does even the liberal media call it a mosque?” they cried. The short answer is that someone went into the monkey house (Pam Geller, I’m looking at you) and made a face, and now the monkeys are hooting and flinging poo.

However, before I used that metaphor, I referred us all to Lincoln’s little riddle: “How many legs does a dog have if you call its tail a leg?” One of my right wing friends, who is not unread, wittily replied, “Five tails,” knowing that the correct answer is, “Four. Calling a tail a leg does not make it one.”

So now I have a really great shorthand for labeling that crowd’s specious and poo-flinging debate style: the “five tails crowd.” Even when shown the stone cold facts, they will continue to shriek their misinterpretation, and in fact go even further afield in their outrage. “If it’s not a mosque, why is everyone defending their First Amendment rights/???>?”

Honey, please.

Like your freedom?

Posted on by Dale

I saw —yet again—one of those bumper stickers the gist of which is “Like your freedom? Thank a veteran.” These things drive me nuts.

Let me see if I can parse this whole thing. First of all, I find the sentiment to be a snide bit of conservatism. (Hold that thought.) The implication is that without our armed forces deployed in Iraq, we would soon find ourselves without freedom of the press; that unless we use our soldiers to invade and occupy somewhere, we will no longer be able to hold free elections.

Such thinking is of course incredibly bad thinking. Our armed forces have not been engaged in any kind of conflict the outcome of which would have affected our system of government since 1865. Everything since then has been wars of empire or wars of strategy. Even the invasion of Afghanistan, which could be justified in terms of self defense, was not occasioned by any threat to our actual constitutional structure, nor would we have lost any of our rights had we decided not to tackle the project. I will say nothing of Iraq.

I think it likely that the teabagger on the other side of that bumper would offer the rejoinder that, in our current two wars at least, we’re “fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here.” To which I would reply, that’s not freedom you’re worried about, sweetheart, it’s safety. Those are two different things. You know, the things Patrick Henry was quick to distinguish one from the other: “Give me liberty, or give me death.”

And even that kind of thinking is ludicrous, not to mention cowardly. No one in their right mind suggests that any of the Islamic extremists are prepared to invade us. What are the teabaggers thinking is going to happen, Baghdad Dawn? I suggest those people check under their bed every night, and then sleep tight and leave the rest of us alone.

Yes, certainly, the extremists are constantly plotting to harm us. No question. But it’s also true that all such plots have been foiled by careful police work, not by armed incursions either “over there” or here. And it’s also true that our military response to the problem has served as our enemies’ greatest recruitment tool. So thanking a veteran for keeping us safe is offbase as well.

So does this mean I hate our military? Of course not. The men and women who choose to serve in our armed forces are mostly people with a vision of service. I respect that more than a teabagger would believe possible.

However, I distrust our military, and in that I don’t think I am alone. It seems to me, from my reading of Max Farrand’s Annals of the Constitutional Convention, that most if not all of the founding fathers were of the same opinion. And certainly our greatest general-Presidents believed as I do. Can you imagine George Washington or Dwight Eisenhower suggesting that patriotism required us to, in effect, idolatrize our army?

Our founding fathers were clear on the subject: funding is to be restricted and controlled by the Legislative; the armies and navies are to be commanded by the Executive, a civilian. There is no independent military, and this arrangement is the source of our liberty, not the use of firepower. One only has to think of places such as Turkey, Pakistan, Chile, to realize that our liberty excludes our army from our freedoms. And that is why we remain free.

Oh, and how am I so sure that it’s a conservative bumpersticker?

You’re welcome.

Rant

Posted on by Dale

Today at school we received one of those forwarded emails that are ludicrous on their face but which a certain portion of the population treats as gospel. It was this one, about the U.S. Mint removing the slogan “In God We Trust” from the new dollar coin.

IT HAS BEGUN! the email shrieks, and the person who sent it to the whole faculty prefaced it with “I know at least one of you will go to Snopes, and it has already checked out.”

Well, I can take stuff as personally as the next Teabagger, so with narrowed eyes and wrinkled lip I headed straight to Snopes, where of course the entire email is reproduced in its entirety and debunked as completely false. Quel surprise. I replied to all, which is what I always do. I never, but one day I’m going to, say, “I dare you to forward this!!!1!1!”

I also did not write nor send the following email:

Dear troops:

This is ridiculous. Every single one of these emails y’all forward so breathlessly is FALSE. Every. Single. One.

Has it not occurred to you that you are being lied to? That someone is lying to you? For reasons of their own? And those reasons include keeping you riled up, angry, outraged at what “they” are doing to “our” country?

I cannot be the only person on this campus with a BS detector. For Moloch’s sake, people, we are educators, and it behooves us to be more skeptical than it seems many of us are. You should immediately question any email that comes to you that contains anything that is “outrageous.” Because, as I’ve already stated: Not. One. Of. Them. Is. True…. Ever.

More than that, you should be teaching our students to be just as skeptical as you are. Hell, you should be teaching them to be as skeptical as I am. That is our job as educators in a free nation.

The people who create these emails are counting on your being gullible idiots. I don’t know who they are (although I have suspicions) and I don’t know what they want you to buy or vote for (although I have suspicions), but I know they want you to buy or to vote for something. And they’re willing to lie to you to keep you outraged enough to do it. The only question now is, how gullible an idiot are you?

Cheers,

Dale

Thank you, dear reader, for listening.

Honey, again, please

Posted on by Dale

This has been floating around for a couple of weeks, I think: Camille Paglia, always good for a chuckle, in an interview with the Globe and Mail:

This whole thing about global warming, I am absolutely incredulous at the gullibility of people. What is this hysteria over drowning polar bears? And finally I realized, people don’t know polar bears can swim! For me, the answer is always more facts, more basic information, presented without sentimentality and without drama. To inflict this kind of anxiety on young people is an outrage.

Mercy. Has Ms. Paglia gone all Emily Litella on us?

I think Ms. Paglia is entirely correct in thinking more information, presented without sentimentality and without drama, is our saving grace here. So here’s what I propose: assuming Ms. Paglia can swim, we drop her in the middle of Lake Michigan. That way, she gather more facts at her leisure and can tell us what her conclusions are when she gets back to Chicago.

Honey, please

Posted on by Dale

So Rand Paul, teabagger extraordinaire, wins the Republican senatorial primary in Kentucky and goes on Rachel Maddow’s show to do his victory lap. (I know, right?)

So Maddow asks him if he would have voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act. He says no. While he is in fact not in favor of discriminatory practices, the government, he says, has no bidness telling restaurants whom they must serve.

Well. Hilarity ensues, of course, but my favorite rightwing burble is Senator John Cornyn (R, naturally-TX, of course) He said

Maddow’s inquiry was a “gotcha question.” “If I’m walking down the street minding my own business and somebody sticks a microphone under my nose about a law that was passed 40 years ago, without more detail — I think it probably caught him a little bit by surprise,” Cornyn said in Paul’s defense.

Honey, please. Paul had 15 minutes to explain himself, and this is after giving the same answer to a newspaper and to NPR, and he acquitted himself admirably. He said exactly what he believes. As for his being “caught by surprise,” if that is so, then I say good on Rachel Maddow for exposing this guy for an even bigger idiot than he already appeared to be.

My question for Cornyn at this point: Do you seriously want this specimen on your team in the Senate? Really and truly, do you??

Idiot.

Posted on by Dale

I think I’ve found our problem.

Senator Lindsey Graham, who was a JAG and even serves as a Senior Instructor at the Air Force JAG School, on the idea of legislation to strip citizens accused of terrorism of their rights as citizens:

Even if you’re an American citizen helping the enemy, you should be viewed as a potential military threat, not some guy who tried to commit a crime in Times Square.

No, Lindsey, no, you’re missing the point. That’s exactly how it should be viewed: as a crime in Times Square. Such a violent act does not require that we elevate its perpetrator to some holy-warrior status. Nor does it require that we cue “The Star-Spangled Banner” and smear our faces with Special Forces make-up and scream, “Wolverines!” (Look carefully at that quote page, and be very afraid.)

Idiot.

A scathingly brilliant idea

Posted on by Dale

Here, in its entirety, is my letter to the editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which was printed in edited form yesterday:

Dear Editor:

As an educator, I have followed with alarm the various cuts to the education budget in the General Assembly: larger class sizes, less support for the arts, fewer teacher aides, and now, in the Senate, the complete elimination of the Governor’s Honors Program, the crown jewel of the DOE.

I believe, however, I have found a solution to at least part of our funding woes.

The Republican governor of Puerto Rico has submitted a bill to slash the size of their legislature by 30%, saving nearly $11 million in the process.

Surely we could do the same thing here? I’m thinking it would be easier, math-wise, to cut the Assembly by 50%, so that all you would have to do is have each remaining legislator double up on his or her district. I haven’t done the math about how much we would save, but surely it would be enough to fund a few teacher aides, and maybe tide Governor’s Honors over until the economy picks up.

As for the increased duties the legislators would face, it’s the same as increasing class sizes for teachers, isn’t it? If larger numbers in the classroom is not supposed to have any real impact on instruction and learning, surely it won’t hurt our representatives to double up for the people they represent.

After all, times are hard, and we all have to make sacrifices.

Dale Lyles, educator

Hm.

Posted on by Dale

Ron Kirkland, Republican candidate in Tennessee’s 8th Congressional District, and a Vietnam vet, commenting on why repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell would be a bad thing:

“Things don’t go well in military barracks when you have 50 guys sleeping on top of each other.”

Yes. Well. There you have it.

New blog to read

Posted on by Dale

Go read.

http://juanitajean.com/2010/04/01/hummm/

It’s short, and if you don’t click on the Previous or Next button, you’ll back here in a few seconds. Don’t close that window, though, because you’ll want to go back and read one of Juanita Jean’s real tirades.

I came across this blog via alicublog.blogspot.com, who is always entertaining in a snarky kind of way. Juanita Jean is not quite Molly Ivins, and don’t you think Molly Ivins is kicking at the gates of heaven to be allowed back?, but she’s ‘pert-near close,’ as we say in Lubbock.

Missed opportunity

Posted on by Dale

I had a scathingly brilliant idea this morning, but unfortunately I think it’s too late to get rich off of it. Because I could have made a bundle.

The idea is simplicity itself: from my CaféPress store, sell t-shirts that say, “Count Me Out: just say no to the Census.”

See? Wingnuts would have purchased them by the gross. I probably could have sold at least 1,000 to the Teabagger Express or whatever they’re calling it. Heck, as long as the Koch brothers are paying for it, I could have sold them 50,000, and then they could claim they had that many participants in their dog-and-pony show. As opposed to the 500 who actually show up.

It is beyond me, of course, why these people have suddenly taken it into their heads that the Census is an unimaginable governmental intrusion into their privacy. First of all, they spend their days screaming about how Obama, the Antichrist, is robbing us all of our personal freedoms. (Exactly which freedoms those are is a little unclear to me. And to them: I’ve never heard any teabagger actually enumerate a constitutional freedom that we’re in danger of losing. Hold that thought, though, I’m coming back to it.)

So if their rallying cry is “Bring back the Constitution,” I truly don’t understand why they’re suddenly against one of the very clear items in that estimable document. You don’t even have to read very far into it:

Article I, Section 2:

Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct. The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative; and until such enumeration shall be made, the State of New Hampshire shall be entitled to chuse three, Massachusetts eight, Rhode-Island and Providence Plantations one, Connecticut five, New-York six, New Jersey four, Pennsylvania eight, Delaware one, Maryland six, Virginia ten, North Carolina five, South Carolina five, and Georgia three.

And no, the questions on the form are not new. They’ve been asked for over a hundred years, at least. And it’s the friggin’ law, people.

All of this is especially astounding when you consider that this very same subset of the population leapt to the defense of George W. Bush’s flagrant violation of the Fourth Amendment, and still do. Surveillance of U.S. citizens without a warrant? No problem. No problem at all. Apparently that’s governmental intrusion into our privacy we can all believe in. (However, once they realize that Obama is continuing this vile practice, they may decide it’s an outrageous violation of all we stand for.)

So yes: a built-in market for a wonderfully simple idea. If only I had had it two months ago, I could have suckered these pitiful, delusional, fearful pawns of the right wing power structure into giving me all their money while promoting a self-defeating idea. It’s a win-win for all of us.