Fall                                                                       Samhain Moon

Read an article on how to respond to the shutdown.  Talk about it, the article said.  So I will.

1.  How can a Republican branded political cult conspire to bring the world’s most vibrant economy to its knees? Pretty easily apparently.  By easily I mean with no conscience for the real world fall out from their racist (stop this black president) and poorly conceived analysis.  The Affordable Health Care Act is not socialist.  I wish it were.  But it just isn’t.  It’s a market based, Republican conceived, Massachusetts advanced plan that goes about 1/3 of the way toward what Dave Durenberger (no commie) calls an American health care system.

2.  Appropriation of the word patriot.  While driving yesterday, I passed a guy with a sign on his car that read Premier House Inspections.  Taped to his back window was a red white and blue sign that read Tea Party Patriot.  The implication of the word patriot here, just like the wearing of American flag decals and the Love it or Leave it bumper stickers of the Vietnam era, represents a noxious form of civic self-righteousness.  We alone love America. We alone understand the Constitution.  We alone have the self-anointed right to do whatever we want in the pursuit of our pure and clean ideas.

No.  Arrogation of  virtue by claiming it is the same as a criminal saying, “I’m innocent.” As a pedophile claiming, “But I love children.” As an evangelical’s “You must be born again.” Bold letters on must in this sentence.  Virtue is not known by words but by deeds.

Threatening the economy and a system of government (which is in the constitution) that has served us well is not patriotism.  It is hubris masquerading as certainty.

3.  On this last point about our system of government.  Holding legislation hostage to matters necessary for the continuation of the government’s functioning violates the constitutional separation of powers, the contract with the American people who expect their congress to resolve public disputes, not create them as well as the tradition of our form of governance–tradition being a hallmark favorite of conservatives by definition.

4.  Final point.  Conservative.  I find a lot in the conservative philosophical position to commend it.  Retaining that which works is a key to civilization’s progress.  Not the only key, surely, but definitely one of them.  The world of religion and art, both containers for tradition, have been important to me my whole life, in particular for the reservoir of human wisdom and insight they preserve.  Likewise the conservative insistence on justifying a break with what’s working makes sense to me.  To paraphrase Carl Sagan extraordinary measures require extraordinary rationales.

The conservative-liberal dialectic is a necessary driver of human social life and it is a dialectic.  That is, the juice is in the tension between the two, the vibration that occurs when make it new, let’s just get on with solving the problem confronts we’ve always done it this way, let’s stop and think about it.  That tension is a good thing.

Radical positioning on either end of the dialectic snaps the tension and destroys the useful energy created as these opposing inclinations tussle.  Doing that requires an extraordinary rationale.  Not liking a President and wanting to stop legislation already law are not extraordinary save in one regard, their level of stupidity.

Fall                                                                       Harvest Moon

What the?

Politics has been a dominant thread in the fabric of my life.  If the fabric of my life were, say a tartan plaid, the bright red threads would form some of the whole blocks.  Political awareness for me surfaces for the first time during the Stevenson/Eisenhower election in 1952, the long night of November 4th and the early morning of November 5th to be exact.  That night my father and I sat up watching the flickering black and white screen of our still very new television as the votes came in from across the nation.

We, I followed my father’s preference here, assured that it was the best one, were Stevenson supporters.  It was not the last night my heart would beat fast as votes overwhelmed hope, but it was the first.  What I remember most is the television screen and staying up very late as sober voiced men reported votes “as they came in.”  And staying up late with my dad.  I was 5.

Given the strength of this memory I’m sure somewhere prior to this I’d become aware of politics.  As a newspaper editor, Dad had an important community role, sort of judge and teacher, sorting out candidates for endorsement and informing the town of what they all stood for plus the bare mechanics of the electoral process.

All this is to say that I consider myself an informed participant/observer of the political scene, locally, nationally and internationally.  Politics in all forms still fascinate me, 61 years later, and I’ve only recently (within the year) stepped away from an active role.

And I don’t get it.  I don’t get the train wreck happening in Washington right now.  Sure, I understood ideological purity and intransigence, I’m a card carrying 1960’s radical.  What I don’t get is that these guys are on the inside, part of the system, elected to Congress.  In that role ideological purity and intransigence have limits.  That’s what a legislature is for, the mediation of public disagreement.  The mediation.  Not the my way or no way politics of the Republican far right.

And I don’t get it.  The climate change deniers.  The science piling up and up and up and up.  A long time ago.  The evidence all pointing in the same direction: anthropogenic.

In both instances the far right remind me of Thelma and Louise, only in this case it would be pomade hair underneath those scarves and the scarves would be made from U.S. flag material and the top down convertible they’re driving would be an October, 1929 Nash.  There it goes, over the cliff.