Culture

21 X 2017: No right to be heard

I found on CNN this headline:

Bannon delivers blistering attack on former President George W. Bush

Why does the press continue to report drivel designed to shock?

George W. Bush’s criticisms of the selfish, pusillanimous kind of state that Bannon advocates apparently came too close to home, and Bannon, like his puppet Trumpy, was compelled to counterpunch. Wannabe-fascists like them ought really to have thicker skins, but there it is. Bannon launched a very nasty personal attack on Mr. Bush, asserting, in effect, “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” Now who is it who really does not know what he’s talking about? Why report this piece of ugliness from a public enemy like Bannon? Why allow him any standing beyond that of a radio-show host like Rush Limbaugh, a cunning man pandering to the ignorant?

19 X 2017: Unlimited free speech

Read about racist Richard Spencer’s attempts to make himself heard at the University of Florida. In a piece from the Associated Press that reported estimated cost of security for the event at $600,000, it was said that public universities “are compelled by the First Amendment to provide a speaking forum.” This is news to me. I believe the First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech, but it surely does not guarantee an audience. State universities must restrict access to some who demand to speak on campus. Otherwise they would have to accommodate speakers who assert the moon is made of green cheese, that the earth is flat, and that there is no human-caused climate change. University of Florida was silly to be suckered in by an appeal to free speech.

Once Spencer was there and given a venue, he was prevented from speaking by the hecklers who made up a majority of the audience. These were suckers also, for I’m sure Mr. Spencer gets a lot more points with his base by being shouted down than by actually speaking.

Right-wing nutcases and publicity hounds should not be allowed to speak on university campuses. “But if the students invite them ….” The students are students. They are not adults and show that they are not with some regularity.

“Oh, but we are trying to have a diverse campus.” We really ought to get rid of diverse and diversity. These terms have no commonly agreed upon meaning in political discourse. If diversity is truly insisted upon, and any group of students can invite any speaker, the number of abusers of women, liars, egomaniacs, adulterers, cheats, and frauds on campus will increase, and in addition to this familiar group of reprobates, absolute diversity would require that a place be made for sadists, cannibals, and pederasts if a student group invites them.

Will common sense and moral authority ever return to America’s universities?

17 X 2017: “Thy banners make tyranny tremble”

This is a line from the first verse of the old patriotic song “O Columbia, Gem of the Ocean.” The entire verse is as follows:

O Columbia! the gem of the ocean,
The home of the brave and the free,
The shrine of each patriot’s devotion,
A world offers homage to thee;
Thy mandates make heroes assemble,
When Liberty’s form stands in view;
Thy banners make tyranny tremble,
When borne by the red, white, and blue.
When borne by the red, white, and blue,
When borne by the red, white, and blue,
Thy banners make tyranny tremble,
When borne by the red, white and blue.

This is rather frothy stuff, but still it would have been a better national anthem than the impossible “O say, can you see.”

What I’ve been thinking about is the line: “Thy banners make tyranny tremble.” The United States of America is forsaking its role of leadership of the free world, reneging on its promises and treaties, and colluding with tyrants of every type. Pretenses to “Moral Leadership,” already called into question by torture of prisoners and “collateral damage,” are made truly ridiculous by our President’s expressions of admiration for and uncritical association with tyrants world-wide. Who is it trembles at our banners now? The upright, I would say, the idealistic, those who collaborate in service of justice and peace. They are the ones now afraid of the United States.

3 X 2017: The Las Vegas slaughter, wholly predictable. Get over it.

The surprising thing about the shooting in Las Vegas is not that it occurred, but that such outrages do not occur far more frequently. Could anyone lead an active, half-way observant life in the U.S. without realizing how many crazies there are out there? Get out on the road, go to a football game, go to a Trump rally, go to a white supremacist or survivalist gathering, visit a  local gunshow, and you will see crazies “as thick as hasty pudding.” I’m not talking about your foam-at-the-mouth, hatchet-swinging crazies. I’m talking about your road-ragers and your internet trolls, about the crowd that wants to make the USA all white and all Christian again, about the willfully ignorant and subrational, about the multitudes that blame their own errors and deficiencies on the imagined malice of others. And firearms circulate freely in this this mental institution of a nation in incalculable numbers. We are addicted to firearms, and crave more guns and bigger guns, really ugly ones! Go to a gun show, go to a gun shop. You will not find graceful fowling pieces, single-shot target rifles, or weapons suited to the defense of house and home. You will find military grade firearms whose only real purpose is slaughter, although, thank goodness, they are more often used only to enhance b-movie inspired masturbatory fantasies. No, Vegas should be no surprise.

And yet, events like that in Vegas, thanks to our astounding capacity for denial, afford us days of 24-hour coverage of shock and surprise, hand-wringing, thrilling emotional catharsis, and political posturing, none of which ever does anything about the national maladies that create this atmosphere so conducive to mass shootings.

America has grown pathetically soft. At the time of 9-11, when we were treated to a nation-wide orgy of grief, terror, and mindless rage, I was studying at an institute that hosted a number of Israeli scholars. These Israelis offered America their condolences, up to a point. But they stopped when they saw us refuse to get over it and get on with responsible living. They observed that if Israelis went into such a paroxysm after every terrorist attack, the community and state would collapse altogether.

Whether the shooting in Las Vegas was “an act of pure evil,” or an act of mixed evil, or an exercise in self-indulgent and cowardly lunacy, we had better get past the emotional posturing and honestly confront our national sickness, hoping to prepare for future generations a more honest and rational community.

23 IX 2017: The dotard on the campaign trail: God, Flag and Football

Trumpy is down in “the great state of Alabama,” as George Wallace used to call it. He is campaigning for one of the tweedle-dum/tweedle-dee misfits running there for the U.S. Senate. Of course, he cannot limit himself to this silliness, but has to air his opinions like so much dirty laundry while he makes his pitch.

He wants the football barons to fire any player who fails to ‘respect the flag.’

I hate this flag cult – it is as morbidly sentimental and mindless as Cohan’s “You’re a Grand Old Flag.” Of course, pseudo-patriots like Trump can’t stop mentioning the flag, and are keen to burn any flag-burners, but they say nothing when the flag is degraded and insulted by its use in commerce, sports, and other unsuitable venues. Some years ago I was out walking near the Univ. of Notre Dame a couple of blocks away from where during the week earlier there had been a big used car sale on the campus. I saw something colorful being blown across the dust of the road, and found that it was one of the small U.S. flags used to decorate the tent at the used-car sale. A silly slice of life, but it made a profound impression on me.

Trumpy also wants to bring good old extreme violence back to football. Well of course! His favorite sport is professional wrestling. Everybody knows that though the wrestlers bash and gash and slam each other, no one is really hurt. Right? And Trumpy assumes that football is just the same. Come on, they’re not really hurt that bad!! I suppose Fox Schmooz does not report the very alarming discoveries of brain damage to football players.

The proven causal connection of football to brain damage is already seen as a potential threat to the multi-billion dollars industry of the NFL. Just wait until it becomes an issue in the colleges and universities that also exploit players and derive so much of their revenue from football. And when it filters down to the high school level, the fat will really be in the fire. We will see outrage, anger, and denial, denial, denial. Parents, grandparents, and whole communities and states find much of their identity in games played by teen-age boys with a football. A criticism of sacred football is, in fact, far worse than any “disrespect for the flag.”

13 V 2017: Comey the new Fegelein?

Trump wanted Comey to pledge his loyalty – not to the Constitution, but to Trump himself. This is redolent of the personal oath to the Führer that the German military had to take during the Nazizeit. There is an additional mime in Trump’s vilification of Comey, for it makes me think of episodes on hitlerrantsparodies.com when Hitler denounces “Fegelein, Fegelein, Fegelein!”