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A marvelous rant by Cat Valente on the death of something she loves
Careful what you wish for
Nov. 2nd, 2017 07:09 amAlternate history: Imagine, if you will, that the DNC had managed to figure out that disenfranchising large numbers of poor people and POC is Bad for the Democrats, and had successfully opposed it. President Clinton would now be facing a massive gridlock in which the Republicans would not let her appoint a Supreme Court justice because she might lose next time and by the way, once we do have a Republican president, he’ll fix everything.
They got what they wished for. President Trump is everything we knew he was, plus senile, but that’s not the bad part. They got the chance to install their program, only to make it obvious that they don’t have a program. What they have is an effort to pander to a set of mutually incompatible hatreds & greeds. That became painfully obvious with healthcare, where a couple of Republicans temporarily saved the party by having the courage to vote against a bill that everyone knew couldn’t work.
And now, as Charles Pierce points out, they have a tax plan which likewise will work if and only if Jesus comes back and overturns the Law of Noncontradiction. Basically, if they please their wealthy owners, they will produce something so transparently awful that the electorate would turn to the proverbial yellow dogs. Now if only we could trust the DNC to find yellow dogs.
They got what they wished for. President Trump is everything we knew he was, plus senile, but that’s not the bad part. They got the chance to install their program, only to make it obvious that they don’t have a program. What they have is an effort to pander to a set of mutually incompatible hatreds & greeds. That became painfully obvious with healthcare, where a couple of Republicans temporarily saved the party by having the courage to vote against a bill that everyone knew couldn’t work.
And now, as Charles Pierce points out, they have a tax plan which likewise will work if and only if Jesus comes back and overturns the Law of Noncontradiction. Basically, if they please their wealthy owners, they will produce something so transparently awful that the electorate would turn to the proverbial yellow dogs. Now if only we could trust the DNC to find yellow dogs.
Living in a country that threatens to elect Donald Trump, I cannot specifically look down my nose at the Brexiters.* We too have a number of people capable of voting their way out of the European Union and then frantically Googling to find out what the European Union is. Numerous voters are shocked to learn that voting actually had consequences and was not merely a way of saying, “Foreigners are big doody-heads.” Their leaders are no better; the Conservatives appear to have had no idea of what they would do next (besides going back to unwholesome acts with dead pigs) if they won, while the worst of the lot, Nigel Garbage, has practically said in so many words that his big economic argument was a lie. (Richard Nixon, who gains more and more relative appreciation all the time, would have said, “Inoperative.”)
*I can’t help thinking of the limerick: They looked at Europa and waved the distinguishing mark of their sex at her.
Even this will not kill the great fantasy of populism, that pious hope that under proper guidance the masses can be made to beat up on the rich instead of the minorities, the queers, and the geeks. I realize this is a horrible thing to say about anyone, but it looks as if vox populi really is Vox Day.
*I can’t help thinking of the limerick: They looked at Europa and waved the distinguishing mark of their sex at her.
Even this will not kill the great fantasy of populism, that pious hope that under proper guidance the masses can be made to beat up on the rich instead of the minorities, the queers, and the geeks. I realize this is a horrible thing to say about anyone, but it looks as if vox populi really is Vox Day.
A gang of people who think women should be baby machines made a dishonest movie pretending that Planned Parenthood is in the business of selling baby parts. Business failure Carly Fiorina found it insufficiently horrific and made up some worse stuff. The Republican faction that chased John Boehner out for being too reasonable is taking it from there to conclude that the government paying for abortions (which it isn't doing but should be) is every bit as good a reason to bring the government to an ass-grinding halt as Obamacare or Newt Gingrich not getting a good seat on Air Force One, which they may be right about. I hate living in a satirical dystopia.
Nobody's perfectly awful
Apr. 12th, 2013 07:28 amMargaret Thatcher’s funeral will have a Falklands War theme. Of course. When you're burying someone who did precisely one thing right, emphasize that. I do not follow de mortuis nil nisi bonum, but those who do need almost never remain totally silent, since the deservedly deceased probably encountered someone even worse. Example: Hugo Chavez really pissed George W. Bush off. Further deponent saith not. When Noam Chomsky goes to the place he thinks is Heaven because nobody suffers less than anyone else, we can point out that he once kicked B.F. Skinner's behaviorist ass around the block.
Mother's day
May. 13th, 2012 08:05 amOn this auspicious occasion I remember my own mother, who passed along to me a number of ideas that have educated and enlightened me, one of which is that Mother's Day is a commercial shuck. I also remember the man we called Benno Brutalheim.
Mother is half the word I imagine the Rude Pundit applying to Dr. Bettelheim, who had some good ideas (fairy tales should not be bowdlerized, Freud was ill served by his translators), but also some really awful ones, the worst of which may have been the idea that autism is caused by "refrigerator mothers" not loving their children enough.
Today that idea has fallen into well-deserved disrepute. One of my favorite psychologists, Jerome Kagan, listed it next to masturbation-induced insanity as Dumb Things We No Longer Believe. But it was not always thus; I have read of mothers forced to wait in the cold outside the doctor's office as symbolic punishment.
One unintended consequence is that a woman whose child has autism may seize upon any scapegoat, no matter how implausible, so it's Not My Fault. In particular, Jenny McCarthy was presumably relieved to learn of a Scientific Study that blamed vaccination for her child's condition.
It wasn't much of a study. At first it seemed to have been done with insufficient caution and controls, but it has since turned out to be deliberately fraudulent. It was enough, and now the state of Washington, among others, is faced with an outbreak of pertussis that could have been prevented by vaccination.
What makes it worse, of course, is the way government has been starved of the funds needed to deal with the crisis by the Gospel of St. Ronnie, with its dogma that Government Is the Problem (unless it's messing around in Asian countries we don't understand or making sure that Jamie Dimon is covered if he rolls snake eyes). Sometimes I think humanity will stupid itself to death.
Mother is half the word I imagine the Rude Pundit applying to Dr. Bettelheim, who had some good ideas (fairy tales should not be bowdlerized, Freud was ill served by his translators), but also some really awful ones, the worst of which may have been the idea that autism is caused by "refrigerator mothers" not loving their children enough.
Today that idea has fallen into well-deserved disrepute. One of my favorite psychologists, Jerome Kagan, listed it next to masturbation-induced insanity as Dumb Things We No Longer Believe. But it was not always thus; I have read of mothers forced to wait in the cold outside the doctor's office as symbolic punishment.
One unintended consequence is that a woman whose child has autism may seize upon any scapegoat, no matter how implausible, so it's Not My Fault. In particular, Jenny McCarthy was presumably relieved to learn of a Scientific Study that blamed vaccination for her child's condition.
It wasn't much of a study. At first it seemed to have been done with insufficient caution and controls, but it has since turned out to be deliberately fraudulent. It was enough, and now the state of Washington, among others, is faced with an outbreak of pertussis that could have been prevented by vaccination.
What makes it worse, of course, is the way government has been starved of the funds needed to deal with the crisis by the Gospel of St. Ronnie, with its dogma that Government Is the Problem (unless it's messing around in Asian countries we don't understand or making sure that Jamie Dimon is covered if he rolls snake eyes). Sometimes I think humanity will stupid itself to death.
