Category: Thoughts

Big Fish, Little Fish

I am still getting used to working at a Large Company: at my Small Company, it was a GOOD sign that content was just starting to come together more than a week in advance. At the Big Company, that counts as running perilously close to late.

Liberal is a Dirty Word

My grandfather, Adm. Parks, thought the NYT was too liberal and too influential. The only person brave or foolish enough to disagree with him was my father, who said, “The New York Times is the most influential paper in the country because it’s the best paper in the country, and you should read it.” I think about that whenever I read a well-reasoned editorial on religion and politics and wish it were published somewhere it’d do some good, like maybe the Washington Times. On the radio in Orlando I heard a talk show go on at length about the credentials of a guest author, which included his long-running gig at the Washington Times– not exactly a respected paper, given that it’s run by the Moonies, loses millions every year, and exists solely to push a dramatically slanted view of the world.

But really it’s all about the hypocrisy of moralists like Bill O’Reilly and its absurd mandates for a world which no longer comes close to fitting its rules. I’ve hoped for some time that the Republican party would have some sort of nervous breakdown, and Frank Rich seems to predict a similar outcome:

Mrs. Cheney and her surrogates are in effect doing exactly what Elizabeth Edwards had the guts to say they were doing: they are sending the message to Mr. Rove’s four million that they are ashamed of Mary Cheney. They are disowning her under the guise of “defending” her. They are exploiting her for the sake of political expediency even as they level that charge at Democrats.
…
Sooner or later this untenable level of hypocrisy is going to lead to a civil war within the Republican party. But this hypocrisy is not just about homosexuality – it’s about all sexuality, as befits a party that calls for the elimination of Roe v. Wade and the suppression of candid sex education that might prevent teenage pregnancy and AIDS alike.

Doublethink

Apparently, people’s heads don’t explode when they believe two contradictory things.

Actually I’ve often regarded it as an important ability– if you can’t believe things you know to be false, or believe two mutually exclusive things, you can’t really function properly in society. I mean– you’d never sleep at night. Lies are bad, but I am a liar. Gasoline is wasteful, but I own a gas-powered vehicle. Investors should be socially responsible, but I hold shares in Child Labor International. Now, I try to keep my contradictions to a minimum, but I know they exist. I believe in moral consistency, yet I am morally inconsistent.

I try especially to avoid counter-factual beliefs. Merely failing to meet my own ideals is forgivable, easy to rationalize. Rejecting the “reality-based community” in favor of ideology, or worse, insisting that black is in fact white (or that grey is in fact dark white, or maybe light black)… do I hold similarly untenable beliefs in my political fantasyland?

Yes, I know it’s a fantasyland. I drink at the People’s Republik. I don’t know anyone who actually favors the president. I am surprised when I see pro-Bush ads, when I hear the word “liberal” used as an insult (we say “progressive” nowadays, which reminds me of the disappearance of the words “negro” and “Afro-American,”) And yet I consider myself more reality-based than the crowds out in Ohio baying for the drawing and quartering of their gay neighbors because don’t you know what they’re doing to the soil?.

Shrill Accusations

Busy Busy Busy has a great summary of Max Boot’s commentary on the peaceful nature of democratically elected governments: if the US had a democratically elected government it would be far less likely to be involved in the Iraq war. You know, in the early days of the administration, people who pointed out how Bush was really screwing up were called “shrill.” Well, more and more people have gotten more and more shrill. And it’s all cataloged in the Shrill Blog. People are getting very, very upset about the political situation in this country. You have to remember, we’re being led by someone who lost the election and was appointed by Antonin Scalia & co. What on earth could possibly alleviate the anger of such problems?

Yesterday Mark Gordon suggested to me that baseball and beer was like bread and circuses. Which is pretty accurate. On the other hand, the Whole Foods subsidiary Bread and Circus is definitely all about bread and circuses. Which is to say, the aspiration to consume beautifully arranged expensive gourmet food is a pastime which can distract us from the troubles of our lives. And I am not opposed to that anymore. Why should I suffer? Why should anyone?

Bring on the soma, says I. Bring on the booze. Bring on the Valium, the Wega, the PlayStation, the Orgasmatron, the Buspar, the Viagra. Lower the standards, says I, open the floodgates for the dopamine-oriented culture of intoxication. I am not afraid of living in oblivion. I am afraid of not living in oblivion. I am afraid of having to feel. If I’m lucky I’ll get into Corian and cork and 10/15 ARMs and not scag and small arms, but it’s all the same in the end. As Margaret Atwood says in Happy Endings, John and Mary die. John and Mary Die. John and Mary die.

And as they say, every living thing dies alone.