Category: Rant

I am showing my age here, but I remember vividly hating Reagan and his gang of buffoons. He was the Teflon President; nothing the press nor Congress (a Democratic Congress at that — there I go showing my age again) could say or do would diminish Reagan in the eyes of his handlers or the public. Reagan is now treated as a mythic, god-like president, an untouchable, redoubtable, unquestionable presence in the 20th-century world stage. And I miss him.

I haven’t changed my mind about his awful presidency. Nor have I come to believe the pundit-wisdom that he was responsible for the fall of the Evil Empire. He led the nation into an intractable conservative mode of thought that we haven’t been able to shake off, despite all reason and moral clarity otherwise, for nearly 25 years. Yes, he was bad and made my nation poorer in the process, but, Lord, I miss him, because he was original.
Now our puppet president is just a super-condensed rehash of the original. Want moralist Ed Meese? We’ve got fightin’ John Ashcroft. Want a dab of George Schultz, Al Haig, and James Watts? Hey, glom them all together in Dick Cheney. Sure, the cast today is more colorful than the pasty-white team that was the Reagan administration, but pound for pound W’s crew is just as reactionary as Reagan’s. Reagan, too, reduced our rights and invaded our privacy, and set it all to the sweet music of the dawning of a new morality. Reagan, too, blithely ran up deficits while cutting taxes for the wealthy, calling it economic stimulus. Reagan, too, deregulated industry just enough to feed the vultures, but never enough to ensure that trade was fair, nor that prices were truly market driven.

But this is all name-calling. So what? Who cares? The only reason that this is pertinent to me is that we’ve been issued what can only be called a Civil Defense warning, by our Office of Homeland Security, to duct tape our doors in case of terrorist attack. Department stores in Virginia have run out of stock, so if you live in that area, let me know. Long Islanders are apparently more blasé about the warnings. We have plenty in our stores. I’ll send you a roll or two at cost. No need to profit over groundless fears.

Groundless? No, that’s not the right word. Useless. Yeah, that’s the one. See the whole thing reminds me so much of the Civil Defense instructions that we received when we were sure that the end result of Reagan’s arms-buildup was nuclear war, that I just can’t take these warnings seriously. We were actually told, in the event that Soviets launched their arsenal of massive death, to dig shallow trenches in the soft earth and cover ourselves with something sturdy, like a wooden door. Yep. When over 10 feet of the Earth’s crust evaporates into fine dust particles to hasten a nuclear winter, we’ll all be very happy that we dug a shallow trench.

So, I’m thinking that duct tape around our doors won’t keep out the radiation or Anthrax or Smallpox or Halitosis or whatever those sneaky terrorists are going to unleash on us. I’m thinking that this is the media sideshow that takes away from what is really happening, and what really needs to be done. And what really needs to be done is voting these ingrates out of office, but it looks like it will be a long couple of years before we get to do that.

The Bushies are just so, so very funny. Please, join me in a hearty laugh.
John Ashcroft defends his civil rights record. Bwah-ha-ha! Oh, Lord, he says, “More eloquently than any attorney general before or since, Dr. Martin Luther King spoke of…” MLK was an attorney general? Ashcroft wouldn’t have thrown that rabble-rouser in jail a dozen times in as many days? Ha, ha, ha!

GW declares Sunday National Sanctity of Human Life Day. Oh, stop. No. No. Bwah, ha, ha! Non-Iraqi life for sure. Ha! No, get this, it’s the day before the 30th Anniversary of Roe v Wade! Whatta great joke!!! Mr. Fry-em-high-in-Texas is all for the Sanctity of Human Life! It’s a new holiday from the genius behind Jesus Day! Ah, ha, ha!

No, no, health care is too expensive, right? ::Giggle:: Why? ::Snicker:: Because of the amount that injured patients can win from their doctors in malpractice cases. Democrats charge that the changes would deprive patients of fair compensation, but Ari Fleischer, get this, says, “At a time when moms have to change doctors to deliver their babies, that type of division is not helpful.” Huh? What? Ha, ha, ha! Too funny!

But hey, GW is so compassionate that he listens to everyone in his administration. Especially Karl Rove. Oh, that’s not a joke. Damn. I’m done laughing. The biggest joke of the lot is that everyone says Cheney is president, but it’s all Rove. Try this little experiment: Do a Google search of Karl Rove and see how many times his grubby fingerprints are spotted on the Bushie agenda. Too bad we didn’t actually elect him. Hmmm… like shadow, like son.

Apparently, I, and everybody I know, are in a very small minority. So small, in fact, that we can’t get a couple of Democrats elected into the Senate. Not that Democrats are doing anything to dissent from the Bushie doctrine, but, at least with Democrats, there is a small chance that they will. Republicans will toe the line.

Every bit of news media that I’ve read in the past couple of weeks seemed to believe that Democrats were holding their own. Now it looks (as of 1:30 in the morning after election day) that the Democrats gained one measly seat in the House, lost the majority in the Senate, and that W will gloat that his ideals are America’s ideals.

Are they? Weren’t we, the thinking citizens of this country, supposed to send W a message that we can’t stand him in office? I thought so, but apparently, I am in the minority.

A small bit of good news. Here in my hometown, few bought into Joe Finley’s absurd notion of making America safe by electing him into the House. And Felix Grucci somehow lost to Tim Bishop, which is a huge surprise considering the giant political machine that Grucci is in charge of.
But that’s small beans compared to the Senate. Ah, but the Democrats there weren’t really doing anything to stop W anyway. Maybe that is why thinking Americans just couldn’t find it in their hearts and minds to vote for them. Maybe.

Or maybe I’m just a deluded minority in a blood-thirsty, ignorant nation.

I don’t understand what is wrong with my fellow countrymen. And, crap, I’m not even talking about war or false patriotism. But every couple of months, some stupid backwater school board has got to throw its two cents in on the subject of Evolution.
I’m not even going to provide links to the news stories, because the names change, and the method used to sneak in Creationism is tweaked, but it always the same old story.
Many scientists, someone will be quoted as saying, are doubting the veracity of Darwinism. Evolution, it will be noted, is a theory, not a fact. There are other theories on just how we got here, the school board demands. And so, stupid backwater myths are promulgated on children. As if they don’t hear enough bullshit from their ignorant parents.

Yeah, it gets to me.

Listen, in any other country with a half-way decent, non-religious education system, this isn’t even a topic. Modern biology is based on Evolution much like modern electronics are based on Quantum Theory. Some of the edges may be fuzzy still, and are vigorously debated by scientists, but no one doubts the core theory, and ANY scientist that says otherwise has an agenda. Some pip-squeak johnny-come-lately is always gonna gun for the quickest draw, but history rarely records his name. Call it evolution.

And here’s the thing: Theories are always based on facts, which are recordable, repeatable data. Theories are not opinion. The Theory of Gravity is not the opinion of Newton. They are the observable results from testing and testing and testing. The theory that Newton put forth worked for several hundred years, but was refined by Einstein. We still learn about Newton’s gravity in school, though, because it is very straight forward, and only breaks down at extremes not present on Earth. I hear no school board in Cracker, USA, demanding that kids learn about the alternatives to gravity.

So just what are the alternatives to Evolution? Surprise, surprise, but the only one available is an off-shoot of the totally ridiculous Creationist “Theory.” And that’s just a story in The Bible. The latest incarnation is Intelligent Design, which, amazingly enough, borrows most of its concepts from Evolution, but insists on a higher being to start it. It may be, after all, what most people believe at some level, but it is not based on any reproducible data, so it is not a theory. Maybe they’ll settle for a warning label on Biology textbooks that evolution is just one of a gazillion theories on the origins of humans. And maybe they’ll pay for all the frontal lobotomies that we need to perform on all those adolescents and their naughty, animal urges.

So what are kids supposed to learn, other than Americans are stuck in some bizarre, Puritan nightmare, where porn and guns and liquor are cheap, but God-damn the lesson that we’ve evolved from lesser stock? Learn this: Religion has no place in our schools or our science or our facts. Die out all ready, you ignorant fools, and let nature take its course.