As usual, NBC's coverage of the Olympics really sucks.

O.K., I am going to start out by giving NBC a few props here at the beginning.  They do have some extensive, live coverage available on line.  That's really nice.  Plus, during the day (when most people are at work, of course), they have three or four channels going of live sports, including ones we don't see a lot (e.g., archery, team handball, water polo) and they don't exclusively focus on Americans.  So, hats off to NBC for those developments.  Those are good things.  Thanks.

But your prime time coverage is still that same crap that you always do.  You want to watch the Olympics?  Then you are going to do it on our terms.  It's like they think they are showing the Outer Limits.  "We control the horizontal.  We control the vertical.  We control all that you see and hear...."  They seem to believe that they Olympics must be presented as a reality show.  It's just all a bunch of raw material that they can slice, dice, omit, re-order, etc., however they feel like it.  They are going to show you all Americans, all the time, except for some events which they obviously can't do that, like diving.  But even then, they have already decided which countries they are going to show and not show.  They never, ever show all the competitors in diving.  They recently received a bunch of criticism for not showing a very dramatic moment involving Russian gymnasts.  They wanted to keep the audience in suspense about whether or not viewers would keep watching, which would keep them watching.

I see the same criticisms, over and over, every single Olympics that NBC broadcasts.  Yet then never change.  Hey, NBC!  Pay attention, dammit!  The Olympics are not some reality show that is open to your own interpretation.  It contains its own dynamics and drama without you trying to insert your own manufactured drama.  You should not be screwing around with the content just because you think you can "maximize eyeballs" on TV sets.  And I have news for you.  A lot of people I know have to go to be before 11 p.m. (that would be 10 p.m. for me) as they have to go to work in the morning.  Would you PLEASE get over yourself!  You are not the show here!  They Olympics are!

Jeez!

And while I am at it, I detest Comcast as well.

I've been dealing with a "hi speed internet" connection problem on my home network that has been getting progressively worse. It's now to the point that, at many times, it's no better than a dial up connection. Bad, in other words. Bad and slow. So, I finally work up the energy to call Comcast, because I know it is going to be an ordeal. I sit through their damn automated menu system and push the right buttons, and I finally do get someone to talk to. Lo and behold, this is actually a nice, seemingly helpful person who wants to help me with my problem. Looks to me to be a bad wireless router. If the computers are right next to it, everything is fine. You get 40 feet from it, and things barely work at all. OK, I think I need a new router. After all, this is Comcast's property, they are "leasing" it to me or something. It's their equipment. Finally, the guy on the phone transfers me to someone else called "Xfinity Signature Support." I figure it's now their arm that supports the high speed internet stuff. After talking with this nice, helpful lady for about 10 minutes, I finally figure out that she is attempting to SELL me a support package, which I will have to pay about 20 bucks a month and a one-time sign up fee of $79. All to fix a problem with a service (high speed internet) that I am already paying for from Comcast, that doesn't work, and I want them to fix it. That's all. I am buying something from them that doesn't work. I want it to work. And they send me to some other "fee for service" part of their company that wants to sell me a 20 buck a month, plus a sign up fee, to fix something that doesn't work!

FU, Comcast. Jesus Christ, what happened to a customer focus in American business? Can't they do ANYTHING without trying to soak their customers just a little bit more? Goddamn..... Once I get my energy back, I am going to call back Comcast, and sit through their stupid automated phone menu that takes five minutes before you get to actually talk to a person, and demand someone come out and fix this without requiring me to sign up for some sort of "Signature Service."

The American business mentality sucks so bad. All they can do is think about how to make more money.

Thoughts on Lunatic America.

I will try to force myself to write something here. Blogs, by their very nature, need quite a lot in the way of care and feeding on a daily basis. This one hasn’t been receiving much of that in the last year or so. If my blogs were pets, they would both be lying in their own poop in a corner somewhere, quietly wimpering, hoping that someone will be nice to them or at least give them some clean water now and then.

What a nice visual… I don’t know why it is so difficult to write anything anymore. It may be that my job is mostly writing and reading. Not for their own ends, of course. There is a purpose in all that writing and reading, which usually takes a fair amount of mental concentration to do them correctly. I don’t seem to have any spare mental concentration to go around anymore. Sorry, blogs. Tough noogies, as we used to say back in the 6th grade in the Manitou Springs Jr. High School. I just am having a very difficult time on focusing in on anything that requires some amount of concerted effort and disciplined logic.

But, as I have mentioned before, I think most of my problem is that I am finding myself unable to deal with the insanity that is the United States of America. That is my main problem, I believe. I have college degrees in engineering and science and therefore tend to approach most aspects of my life with some logic and rational thought behind my approach. This approach completely falls apart when attempting to deal with or understand people who constantly exhibit the ultimate antithesis of logic and rationality.

When Barack Obama was elected president, I was very happy for a number of reasons. First and foremost, I suppose, was the fact that there would be a Democrat back in the office of the President. Secondly, John McCain and his pet showmoose wouldn’t be in power. But I was actually looking forward to the right-wing freak out because there would a Democrat AND a black man as President. I just thought it would be really fun to see the wingers go nuts. Sit back and enjoy the show, folks! Plenty of entertainment coming right up!

How wrong I was about that. The expected freak out did happen, but a) it was much, much worse than I every imagined it could be, and b) it wasn’t fun in the slightest. What it did was really make me come eye-to-eye with the fact that there are a huge number of people in this country who, from my perspective, act completely crazy when it comes to politics. They may be very nice people when not being political, but they are just crazy. Logic, facts, and rational, thoughtful approaches are not part of their repertoire. What seems to drive them are extreme tribalism, hate of “the other”, xenophobia, winning every single contest, no matter how small, at all costs, rage, and the obvious need to have an enemy, even manufactured ones, on which to take out their rage.

But to them, I am the crazy one. I don’t see the universe exactly as they see it, so, by definition, I must be crazy because it certainly isn’t them.

Here’s a little discussion, back from during the Bush administration, courtesy of Balloon Juice.

John: Hey, Bush is now at 37% approval. I feel much less like Kevin McCarthy screaming in traffic. But I wonder what his base is—

Tyrone: 27%.

John: ... you said that immmediately, and with some authority.

Tyrone: Obama vs. Alan Keyes. Keyes was from out of state, so you can eliminate any established political base; both candidates were black, so you can factor out racism; and Keyes was plainly, obviously, completely crazy. Batshit crazy. Head-trauma crazy. But 27% of the population of Illinois voted for him. They put party identification, personal prejudice, whatever ahead of rational judgement. Hell, even like 5% of Democrats voted for him. That’s crazy behaviour. I think you have to assume a 27% Crazification Factor in any population.

John: Objectively crazy or crazy vis-a-vis my own inertial reference frame for rational behaviour? I mean, are you creating the Theory of Special Crazification or General Crazification?

Tyrone: Hadn’t thought about it. Let’s split the difference. Half just have worldviews which lead them to disagree with what you consider rationality even though they arrive at their positions through rational means, and the other half are the core of the Crazification—either genuinely crazy; or so woefully misinformed about how the world works, the bases for their decision making is so flawed they may as well be crazy.

John: You realize this leads to there being over 30 million crazy people in the US?

Tyrone: Does that seem wrong?

John: ... a bit low, actually.

That’s pretty much the conclusion I cam to. 30 million crazy people in this country. People to whom facts and logic mean nothing. 30 million…. That’s a lot. And they are certainly making themselves felt these days. Put a nice label on your movement, say, oh, “The Tea Party”, scream and shout down anyone who doesn’t agree with you, be supported at every turn by a major television outlet and several billionaires willing to spend all sorts of money to support their agenda, threaten and actually succeed on occasion to throw out members of your own political party if they don’t toe the “crazy” line that you have established, well, you can find yourselves with a lot of power. People have to listen to you, even though you only make up a 30% of the voting population of the country. The “liberal” media is too concerned about appearing liberal to point out the craziness. The leaders of their own political party are terrified that the monster that they created will turn on them, so the keep upping the stakes every single chance they get.

Our President, the one that I was so happy to see elected, has turned out to be a terrible negotiator, in that he seems to continually capitulate to these crazy people. Negotiations in good faith with sane people who disagree with you is one thing, but attempting to negotiate with crazy is a losing prospect every single time.

The crazy people appear to believe that science is just opinion, that global climate change is some sort of hoax, and the United States of America is the bestest, most wonderfulist country that has ever existed, on this world and any others that happen to be around. But they are adamantly against helping anyone who isn’t one of them, who (probably through no fault of their own) are having a difficult time of it. They do not want to make any investments, none, in the infrastructure of this country. They do not want to make any investments in education for the youth of this country, upon which the “greatness” of this country will depend in not that distant future. Republican governors are turning down money from the federal government for high speed rail projects that would help their state’s infrastructure, not to mention bringing in sorely needed jobs, just because they don’t like the President and his agenda. Other governors manufacture budget crises and then use those crises to push their own agenda, which is to crush unions. Other countries are beginning to eat our lunch in terms of investment in their economies and their future.

The United States ranks among the lowest in developed nations when it comes to infant mortality and their healthcare system, but among the highest when it comes to money spent per person for that same crappy healthcare system.

Real income for the lower and middle class workers has not budged in 30 years. Real income for the upper 10% has increased about 400% in those same 30 years. Businesses are sitting on huge amounts of cash reserves, but are not investing in themselves or hiring people. Huge companies have found loopholes by which they are able to avoid paying any corporate income taxes. But when it comes to budgetary woes, the people who are being asked to “share the pain” are always, without fail, the ones who have the least ability to give any more. Families who make over $250,000 a year are “poor” when it comes to taxation, but for all other considerations, teachers who make $50,000 a year and have a good dental plan are somehow greedy and overpaid. But by God, those oil companies, the ones that have made ONE TRILLION DOLLARS PROFIT in the last ten years, they need all those subsidies they are getting from the federal government!

None of this is new to anyone, of course. This isn’t really what I started out to write. This is just a litany of the craziness which has taken over this country.

I just can’t begin to imagine where this all might lead. I am almost to the point of just keeping my head down and hoping that my foxhole is a good refuge. I hope it all holds together for another seven years until I can retire. After that, I have no idea. I have toyed with the idea of moving to another country, although who knows what the situation might be in seven years.

Given all this, I just find it difficult to write another silly movie review or post funny pictures. It feels forced and wrong, like putting on a puppet show in your garage when your house is burning down.

I am REALLY tired of seeing headlines about Jennifer Anniston's new hairdo.

Who gives a f*ck!?! Jeez!

If you are going to have items on blogs (including Yahoo) about celebrities, at least make them interesting! A new hairdo? On an actress who was nominated for this year's worst actress?

If the country is in such a state of crisis, why is increasing taxes on upper 2% off the table?

And why can't we make corporations pay their taxes? That seems to be all that those who are supposedly "in charge" can agree on; we can't increase taxes on rich folks and we can't make corporations pay their taxes. That's it. We could NEVER allow that, for some odd reasoning. And forget oversight and regulations! Heck, the invisible hand of the market will take care of any abuses by insurance companies or major polluters...

But yet, when it comes to everyone else, boy, everything is on the table. Takeaways in wages and benefits, raising the retirement age, doing away with Medicare, Medicaid, "privatizing" Social Security, breaking unions, laying off teachers, government workers, police, etc... Anything and everything that can be heaped upon those who actually have to work to survive and make ends meet is automatically something that "must be done" in order to avoid this future catastrophe.

How did this happen? Why is this country so obviously set up to benefit rich people and richer corporations? Aren't those the very people who have benefited from living in such an open and democratic society? When did actual people become the enemy that must be vanquished?

I suppose this is THE major issue of the day that I do not understand. What the heck is this country for if not to benefit all who live here? Why is it that the powerful always seek more power and the rich will never be satisfied with all the riches they already have? They must have it all, even to the detriment of the rest of the 95% of the country? Is that what this is really about?

I am becoming more and more disenchanted with human beings as a species every single day. I am very attached to very many individuals. I am really becoming to detest my species, however.

UPDATE: Check this out from Whiskeyfire:

Compare income taxes received by the federal government from individuals and from corporations (their profits are treated as their income), based on statistics from the Office of Management and the Budget in the White House, and the trend is clear. During the Great Depression, federal income tax receipts from individuals and corporations were roughly equal. During the second world war, income tax receipts from corporations were 50% greater than from individuals. The national crises of depression and war produced successful popular demands for corporations to contribute significant portions of federal tax revenues.

US corporations resented that arrangement, and after the war, they changed it. Corporate profits financed politicians' campaigns and lobbies to make sure that income tax receipts from individuals rose faster than those from corporations and that tax cuts were larger for corporations than for individuals. By the 1980s, individual income taxes regularly yielded four times more than taxes on corporations' profits.

Since the second world war, corporations have shifted much of the federal tax burden from themselves to the public – and especially onto the middle-income members of the public. No wonder a tax "revolt" developed, yet it did not push to stop or reverse that shift. Corporations had focused public anger elsewhere, against government expenditures as "wasteful" and against public employees as inefficient.

Organisations such as Chambers of Commerce and corporations' academic and political allies together shaped the public debate. They did not want it to be about who does and does not pay the taxes. Instead, they steered the "tax revolt" against taxes in general (on businesses and individuals alike). The corporations' efforts saved them far more in reduced taxes than the costs of their political contributions, lobbyists' fees and public relations campaigns.

If Republicans and conservatives yearn for the "good old days", how about we take a step back to the 1940's on this issue? That's when America was truly great, wasn't it? When we were exceptional? How about American corporations start sharing the load?

No, of course not. I didn't think so.

Well, that whole conversation about gun control sure vanished quickly, didn't it?

Not that I expected anything different. An assassination attempt that was incredible not for the fact that it happened but in that it didn't succeed on a sitting U.S. congresswoman, but did manage to claim the lives of a number of other people including a 9 year old girl and a District Judge was just a few weeks ago. It appeared that we MIGHT actually finally getting around to addressing issues like how an unstable person managed to get a gun at a gun show, and maybe that clips that hold 30 bullets maybe aren't really all that necessary. But no. That is now "Old News." It is been overtaken by Egypt and whether or not Republicans are still going to try to satisfy their base by trying to repeal "Obamacare." We are now talking about whether or not Obama "lost" Egypt and that Bill O'Reilly believes that God causes the tides and not the moon.

Jesus, what a country. We deserve every single thing that happens to us.

End of the Year Blogpost: Don’t let the door hit you on the butt on your way out, 2010!

What is to be said about 2010? Certainly not much good on the political side, if you consider yourself to be a progressive. Mordor appears to be gathering its forces once again to unleash all out war on the forces of Truth and Light…. Which is a totally over-the-top metaphor, but it encapsulates the way I feel about things.

On a purely personal level, though, I really can’t complain. My career seems to have “arrived”, in that I have a good (albeit very frustrating at times), stable job that pays pretty well for engineering. I am actually held in good esteem by my management and I am considered as something of a knowledgeable expert on several subjects. We finally finished up the four year long process which saw our family adopt our new daughter, which culminated earlier this year in getting her a U.S. passport and social security number. She’s getting settled in with her new high school. The finances are in good shape, we will have the house paid off in less than a year, and we have our health (with the exception of a pre-existing condition which may or may not ever cause a problem). So, on that front, life is probably as good as I have ever experienced. Given where I have been in my life, both literally and metaphorically, I have no reason to complain and every reason to thank both myself and Lady Luck (or whatever deity who would like to be thanked).

When I started this blog a number of years ago, I imposed a rule on myself and the occasional guest bloggers that I might coerce into making a post now and then that I would not talk about me. This wasn’t going to be personal therapy disguised as a blog. I wanted it to be about topics that people might actually be interested in looking at, at least for more than about 45 seconds. The use of the personal pronouns “I” and “me” were not allowed. Politics, humor, history, movies, interesting visuals, those were all part of the game. But this wasn’t going to be about me as a blogger. Opinions were to be expressed as some “greater truth”, because opinions that don’t really belong to anyone aren’t really opinions, are they? I wanted this blog, whenever, someone did stumble along, to be interesting. I don’t find myself a very interesting topic….

But over the last few years, and especially 2010, I have become more and more despondent over the entire sorry state of affairs that is The United States. I have come to the very unfortunate conclusion that a very large percentage of the population of this country is comprised of complete and utter ignoramuses. Oh, many are ignorant because they don’t have the education, which is not always their fault. You certainly can’t pick the life circumstances into which you are born. You have to play the hand you are dealt. It’s a tragedy, of course, that you only get one hand per life. You can’t really say, no, I don’t like this hand. I fold. I’ll get it on the next hand. Sorry, but as we all know, life doesn’t work like that. But I digress… Which is a nice way of saying that I am blabbering and forgot my main point. The point I was making is that many people in this country incredibly gullible and are easily manipulated (let’s just call them, for the sake of a label, IGEM) by the more intelligent, the more devious and the less moral. And those people make up another large percentage of the population “Greedy, Egotistical Assholes”, or GEA. The rest of us, although we still make up a substantial percentage of the population of this country, just feel overwhelmed by the others. It feels as if we are being sucked down into a black morass of stupidity, greed and hubris, a’la the La Brea Tar Pits. The more you fight against it, the deeper it sucks you in.

This is where it has become increasingly difficult, to the point of total rigor mortise, to write anything resembling a rational, unemotional blogpost. I can’t keep myself out of it anymore. I have never felt so despondent about anything in my entire life. Oh, I went through some extreme depression in high school and college. But that was focused inward. It was me. This is about the country, where it is going and where we might end up. I can’t help but feel that this country is on a long, downward trajectory. I don’t see a soft landing anywhere. It could be very bad and end up in some nightmarish scenarios envisioned by writers like George Orwell or Aldous Huxley. At the very best, I see the U.S. sliding into irrelevancy and becoming the largest Third World Country on earth, with lot of nukes and a huge, undereducated, largely unemployable mass of people that will make up the non-privileged class.

I won’t bother going into detail on all these various scenarios I could possibly envision. It wouldn’t mean anything and would probably just depress me further.

It is possible, I suppose, that 2011 will see the beginning of a slow return to rationality. It’s possible, but not very probable. Fox News will still be with us, as will Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, etc. etc. The GEA’s will still be in control and more than willing to do whatever they can to manipulate the entire setup such that they will become even that much more rich and more powerful. There will be many people, both big and small, that will try to fight back but ultimately, they will fail. Just ask all those Saber Tooth Cats at the bottom of the La Brea Tar Pits. Oh, you can’t. They’re extinct.

There are many aspects of our current society that are contributing to my despondency, but I think one of the biggest ones is the fact that we, as a country, are purposely devaluing learning in general and the importance of science in particular. We are purposely becoming a nation of dumbasses. Education is now something we don’t aspire to. We now snort derisively about education and use it as something to show our distain for “elitists.” Our social and political discourse reminds me of nothing more than those knuckle-draggers everyone knew in high school, those “good old boys” who sat in the back row, never paid attention in class, usually got failing or near failing grades and yet, found it within themselves to ridicule the “eggheads” in class, saying that we might “have good book learnin’, but don’t know nothing.” That’s what this all reminds me of. There’s no use arguing with people who don’t even know enough to understand how stupid they really are.

If you profess a believe, say, of global warming and climate change, what you normally get in return is a response that contains nothing but utter contempt and a retort comprised entirely of made up “facts” and even louder opinions. Fundamentalist Christians are doing their part, of course, to undermine science, because anything that might cast any sort of doubt on their interpretation of a book written by a large number of people over the period of several hundred years, based on verbal stories handed down from generation to untold generation, and has been edited and revamped on who knows how many occasions, cannot possibly be accepted without extreme pushback. Many people are more than willing to rewrite history in order to suit their particular reality. Reality, facts and conclusions reached by the scientific process no longer matter. All that matters is opinion. This is what I find most disturbing. We are actively trying to become ignorant, and we are succeeding. We are even demanding ignorance in our elected officials. I find this inexcusable. We might as well all go to the local hospital, en masse, and demand a frontal lobotomy.

Sarcastic humor and satire just aren’t funny anymore. I can hardly watch The Daily Show anymore. This isn’t because Jon Stewart isn’t funny. It’s because of the subject matter, the idiocy that is this country, seems to be beyond satire. It’s like trying to satirize Through the Looking Glass. The truly absurd and nonsensical is beyond satire, and any attempt at it is, by definition, absurd and nonsensical by itself. Who could have possibly imagined scenarios such as sitting senators complaining about being asked to vote on a nuclear arms treaty with Russia, because it was somehow sacrilegious to be voting on that during December, which is also the month that contains Christmas? That is just insane, but yet, it happens and hardly anyone blinks an eye anymore. The ridiculous is now so commonplace that hardly anyone blinks an eye anymore.

Another aspect of our society that appalls me is that the quest for every greater “profits” is paramount. Nothing else matters. Oh, I am not so blind as to not know this has been true for every single year this nation has existed. That’s the entire point of capitalism, as far as I can tell. Let the drive to make money be the primary purpose of the country and everything else that is good will follow along. The personal well-being of the population isn’t the primary reason our economy exists. It just sort of is expected that it will happen as a result, sort of the way a large boat generates a large wake wherever it goes. It’s a by-product, not the point. But now, anything that takes away one single iota of “earning potential” from those who already are very well endowed is something to be banished by whatever means. Minimum wage law? Must get rid of that! Protections and safeguards that protect workers and investors, not to mention the entire well-being of the economy? Too much of a burden on free enterprise! Begone! Pensions? Can’t afford them, too expensive! But if we would like to try to close some legal loopholes, such as not allowing giant corporations to locate their shadow headquarters offshore with the sole purpose of not having to pay taxes, that’s strictly verboten! Increased tax levels for millionaires and billionaires? Heavens, what are you trying to do, destroy the economy?

I really hate this society. We swallow camels and strain at gnats as a normal exercise. We fixate on the truly trivial and are oblivious to the truly horrific. State-sanctioned torture is now a fact of life. We are still involved in two wars that no one understands the purpose of. It is likely that many thousands of Afghans and Iraqi civilians have been killed, many on purpose, but since only American lives matter, then it is not a problem. You can’t have a war without breaking some eggs, you know. Global climate change may be the most single significant issue that this country will have to deal with in the future, and yet, it is treated as some nefarious plot by evil liberals to destroy the economy. Why liberals would want to actively try to destroy the economy, I have no idea, but that’s how it is portrayed these days. I feel like a good historical comparison for this particular time might be Rome during Nero.

So much for the rantings of an aging Boomer. I have a few more years until I can realistically consider retiring. I hope the fabric of society holds together until then. Perhaps I can then just check out, sit back on my proverbial porch and watch the show from a dispassionate place. I also might try looking in to relocating to another country. Who knows what this place might look like in eight to ten years? Even retired, I might not want to reside here. Until then, I have a feeling I am not really going to enjoy the next seven years. And, as things stand, I will be one of the fortunate ones. There will be many people who will experience significant pain and anguish for no other reason than that is how our society is set up. This doesn’t sound like a place I will really want to call home.

And now, a word about American Exceptionalism.

There are many incredibly silly political conversations that are going out there right now, but I find this one about how exceptional America is to be one of the more silly ones.

Apparently, anyone’s patriotism and ability to be an effective leader can be called into question, in no uncertain terms, if that person does not express his or her heartfelt belief that the United States of America is the best country on the planet, both in the present and in the entire history of human civilization. Anything that falls anywhere short of that kind of unequivocal declaration can questioned on national television and in print without any hesitation or sense of embarrassment.

I have several thoughts about this. First, this seems like a different flavor of the same kind of thing that went on before the 2008 election where politicians were heavily criticized for not wearing a label pin of the American flag. That was enough to question the non-wearer’s patriotism and love of the flag. This is not some over-the-top charge on my part. I heard my older brother say exactly this.

This is just so extremely silly, I can’t find it within myself to come up with a serious attempt at refuting this nonsense. How can we people put such stock in such a superficial measurement of patriotism? Of course, the truth is that this is, yet again, one more blatant and transparent attempt to smear President Obama and Democrats with anything that Republicans can lay their hands on. If not this, then it would be something else.

The second point is that, even if all this stuff about exceptionalism is true, does that mean we should go around trumpeting it whenever we get the chance? Doesn’t that sort of fit the definition of a braggart? Whatever happened to being humble? Can’t someone (including a country) be great and humble at the same time? Going around, telling everyone who will listen about how great and exceptional you are seems to me have the stink of desperation and, more than likely, a deep but strong inferiority complex. Who, exactly, are we trying to convince that we are exceptional? The British? The French? All of the Arab world? More than likely, they are all laughing at us. No, it is much more probable that we are desperately trying to convince ourselves that we are exceptional and will go after anyone with a steel bristle scrub brush who doesn’t come out and say exactly what our pride demands. Our self-image must be maintained at all cost. Otherwise, who knows what might happen if people really started asking questions?

But here is the aspect of this stupid argument that I wanted to comment on. What, exactly, have we got, right now, to feel so damn exceptional about? What? We have a huge military, of course, with a yearly budget that is larger than all the countries of the rest of the world combined. So, with that, we could claim to be the biggest bully in the schoolyard, giving proverbial wedgies to anyone who might question our claim to superiority. But past that, what have we got?

Here’s where I think we are. We have a massive deficit. We owe many countries in the world lots and lots of money. Our country’s infrastructure, while once impressive, is now crumbling to the point of bridges falling down and electrical grids suffer massive failures because of relatively minor events. Some of our water and natural gas pipes are approaching their second century. There is hardly any investment going on in the country itself. All profits are funneled toward already rich owners and less rich “shareholders.” Everything is geared in this country toward making money for individuals. There is hardly any investment going on. What investment is occurring might actually be criticized as “pork.” Or it is said that the economic stimulus money has never produced a single job? Stimulus money from the federal government intended to kick start the economy and provide some badly needed upgrades in our infrastructure – such as high speed passenger trains or new tunnels between New York and New Jersey – are being turned down by state governments who believe that scoring political points is more important than investing in the country’s future by upgrading our infrastructure.

What do we have to be proud of at this moment? We have a scientifically illiterate population who think that loudly shouted opinions are better than facts and science is somehow the same as reading of palms or astrology. Most of our manufacturing base in this country has disappeared, and some on the right were arguing that we should let our domestic automobile industry fail, in order to placate their God of the Free Market. Our production of raw steel is very low now compared to the rest of the world. We have been surpassed by countries in Asia and elsewhere in the manufacture of electronic devices, both assembled ones such as flat screen televisions and the integrated circuits that drive them. We don’t produce cameras.

The only thing that we seem to be good at is building houses and selling them to each other. And, because of greed, hubris, mismanagement and lack of government oversight, our housing industry drove our financial system to the brink of total meltdown, which requirement immediate government intervention. We have no more customers for houses.

Certainly, there are some things that America still does that are world leaders. Boeing makes pretty good jet airplanes, although this last attempt has been pretty much a fiasco to this point, once again to due myopic fascination with the bottom line. Our automobile industry has certainly recovered and produces much better cars than it did in the 1970’s. We do really good military weapons. Lots of them, and at very expensive prices. And I will admit we are very good at building multi-million dollar sports palaces. The American people must have their circuses to go along with their bread, as long as the circuses are equipped with luxury boxes for the rich and powerful. So, I will agree that there still are areas where American ingenuity and productiveness are still cutting edge. But those seem to be getting pretty few and far between.

So, I will repeat my question. What, exactly, have Americans got that we should feel so self-confident and smug about? What? The rest of the world is eating our lunch in a number of other areas. Our attempts at being “the good guy” on the world stage haven’t done too well since Vietnam. I can’t see that anyone but the totally naïve or those with a political agenda could argue that our ventures into Iraq and Afghanistan have been anything but unmitigated disasters. We have spent over a trillion dollars in our wars with very little to show for our pains, other than thousands of American and ally causalities and hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths. Because those didn’t work out, we apparently have people like Bill Krystal who argue that we should go bomb yet another country in Iran.

Cities like Colorado Springs are so strapped for cash that they are letting parks fall into neglect and can’t afford to run street lights at night. Some places are replacing paved roads with gravel roads, because gravel roads are cheaper to maintain. A fire department in Florida sat and watched a fellow American’s house burn to the ground because he hadn’t paid his yearly fee to the fire department. Our colleges and universities are cutting staff and programs, yet charging more to the privilege of getting a higher education. Many conservatives are openly advocating defunding or abolishing outright the Department of Education. There is almost no interest in trying to upgrade and improve what is admittedly a sorry state of affairs in our public education system. A very large percentage of our post-graduate slots are filled with foreign nationals who will take their education back to their own country to improve it, rather than improve the United States of America.

What have we got to be proud of? Our constitution and democracy as a form of government? Many people on the right seem intent on tearing that apart while, at the same time, accusing Democrats and President Obama of doing just that. Many in our population cannot understand a simple, fact-based argument, or refuse to if it doesn’t fit in with their preconceived view of the universe. The earth is 6000 years old and mankind lived at the same time as the dinosaurs. Global climate change is some nefarious plot by the left-wing of America, which has also apparently enlisted many environmental and climate scientists from England, Germany and many other countries. The irrefutable truth is based on an observation that it continues to snow and be cold in the winter in places that are usually cold and has snow.

Misplaced pride is a very ugly thing, and this “debate” we are having in this country is an indication about how ugly and divisive it can be. I think I am paraphrasing this, but remember that saying, “Pride goeth before the fall”? That certainly seems like, to me, to be very applicable for the United States at this point in our history. Yes, we probably did have a lot to feel rightly proud of in our history. I think both World Wars are a great example. Although we did have a stake in the global picture, we also got involved where we might not have had to. The United States armed forces were a major player in helping to defeat Hitler’s Germany and all the atrocities is held. As an aside, we always seem to forget that the biggest battles were on the Eastern Front, between the Soviet Union and Germany. If those battles hadn’t happened, if Russia had fallen or had sat on the sidelines, there probably wasn’t any way the Allies would have beaten Germany. But that’s a different story for a different post that probably won’t get written.

My point was that, even if the United States was very damn exceptional in the past, that does not automatically bestow greatness upon us from now to eternity. Super Bowl champions must try to repeat their success every single year. Why should we assume that we, being once-exceptional, will always be exceptional? And how in God’s Name could anyone use that to beat upon their political opponents? It just makes them look like opportunistic, narcissistic morons who are too blinded by their own self-righteousness to see how silly they look.

There are several ways that the once-great can become less than great. One obvious way is for a total collapse due to some catastrophe, such as famine or war. Another one, less sensational but no less effective, is a long, slow slide into total irrelevance all the while believing they are still great.

“I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille.”

Boy, I hate Christmas commercials on television.

When I was a kid, Christmas commercials used to be kind of cute or silly.... "Noelco! Even our name says Merry Christmas!" I am old enough that I still remember the stop animation Santa riding down the hill on a three headed shaver. But it seems that a vast majority of the commercials we see today are for two, very high-priced items: jewelry and automobiles. The ones for jewelry, I am sorry to admit, really kind of make me want to hurl. Ultra-romantic, everything just perfect. Oh, how your lady's eyes will glow with love and complete adoration when you give her this expensive bauble. Who in their right mind would go out into the woods or even in their own yard and put up literally thousands of Christmas lights just so they can give their wife/girlfriend a necklace? Cripes. Maybe I am just a total unromantic, but these things are so stupid in their overwhelming desire to make the watcher try to emulate the "Perfect Christmas Gift." Ugh.

And the ones for cars... It's now apparently expected that people will go out and buy expensive cars at Christmas. One commercial even had a wife surprising her hubby with a brand new car, and she somehow contrived to have the damn thing inside in the living room with all the Christmas decorations.

At a time when 10% of Americans are out of work and a larger percentage have either given up looking or are what we euphemistically referred to as "under-employed", it doesn't seem terribly appropriate to be rubbing the fact that there are still some people (the ones who want Bush tax cuts for the top 2%) who can buy this really unnecessary but terribly expensive crap.

Yeah, I know that I write a variation of this post every single Christmas... But that doesn't lessen my feelings any.

Bah-humbug.

Image from The Golem Universe.

Mid-term election, 2010: The bestest, most definitive post-election analysis, bar-none, that you won’t find anywhere else. Period.

See, it’s like this. Much of the population of the United States is deeply confused. And misinformed. Deeply confused and misinformed. And angry. Deeply confused, misinformed and angry. That’s us. Did I mention angry? Keep your filthy government hands off my Medicare! Socialist! Taxes are evil! It’s my money!! And why hasn’t anyone filled that big pothole in my street yet?

This, by itself, explains much of what happened during the mid-term election. Why else would the country go out of its way to reward a political party who had the most to do with the problems that we all experience and yet are not offering any viable solutions other than to scream “No!” at the top of their collective lungs? And “Boo!”, of course. Can’t forget “Boo!” Must keep everyone scared out of their wits every minute of every day. “No!” and “Boo!”

Besides, you can’t show your displeasure in How Things Are Going by voting out a party if they are not in power already, can you? No, you most certainly cannot. You can only show your displeasure in How Things Are Going by voting out a party that holds the power. Give the other guy a chance, even if we are relatively certain they are going to screw things up even more than they are now. It somewhat the same when your favorite NFL team is 2 and 12 and mired in last place. What do you do? Fire the coach. What an easy call. That’s what you call a no-brainer. The team may be down to the third string quarterback who might have some specific difficulty in not throwing the ball to the team in the other colored jerseys at least four times in a single game, not to mention that the offensive line has been decimated by injuries and non-performers, but the coach, well… It’s his own fault that he inherited such a crummy team, isn’t it? Fire the bastard!

So, the heavy lifting part of my analysis being done (aren’t you impressed?), lets talk about some specifics. Tea Party types did really well in their respective House races, but pretty much failed miserably when it came to the Senate races. Sharron Angle in Nevada, Chris O’Donnell in Delaware and Ken Buck in Colorado all lost, which looks, on its surface, as a resounding victory for sanity. Nevadans apparently detested Harry Reid and yet he won a convincing victory over Angle. And, as a bonus prize, it appears that Joe Miller, Moosehead Sarah’s personal pick, is losing in Alaska to someone named “Write In Vote.” I only hope that people in Alaska knew how to spell Murkowski’s name.

This is one of the few silvers lining in the entire mess that I can come up with. The voting population, when they really get a chance to look at their particular candidates, seems to say, “No, this person is too crazy for me to vote for, even though I really, really don’t like the other guy either.” That’s a hopeful sign, when you think about it. We are willing to elect some pretty insane people to high office (think Michele Bachmann), but there are lines that maybe we aren’t ready to cross just yet.

I guess that last statement is true at least in the Senate, anyway. Well, Marco Rubio did win his election for Senate, in pretty convincing fashion, in Florida. But Floridians are kind of crazy to begin with anyway, right? Old white retirees and Cuban exiles aren’t your normal voting block. And there’s that whole 2000 presidential election thing which we all remember. And perhaps, just perhaps, Rubio isn’t really all that crazy. Hopefully. We will see. I will admit that he does look very photogenic on television. I wonder if Republicans are going to criticize him, like they do President Obama, of having his head on a swivel when flipping between the teleprompter screen on the right and the teleprompter on the left. His acceptance speech, while it sounded very heartfelt, did seem a bit contrived when it was obvious he was reading every single word. But that’s O.K. with me. I’m just looking for consistency from the media types.

The other thing of note that we might consider is that we, as voters, aren’t very consistent. Voters in New York decided to not elect a very hot-tempered individual with a rather shady past, shall we say. Yet, in Florida, that is exactly who they elected to be their next governor. I mean to say, running a healthcare company that had to plead guilty to overcharging both the state and federal governments for Medicare payments and taking the 5th Amendment 75 times during a deposition about his role in that scandal isn’t really conducive to trustworthiness, is it? Yet, he is going to be the next governor in Florida. I’m not sure what the difference between Florida voters and voters in New York. You can’t tell me that New Yorkers have higher standards than do Floridians. Many New Yorkers root for the damn Yankees, for gosh sakes!

The overwhelming impression I came away with from the midterm elections is that the vast American electorate can be compared to a petulant four year old with a penchant for throwing tantrums and holding his breath until he gets his way, even if he (or she) has completely forgotten the reason why he (or she) is throwing a tantrum in the first place. All he (or she) knows is that they are throwing a tantrum and, by God, it’s going to be a good one! Everyone in earshot will know that he (or she) is Displeased! No, little sister cannot play with my toys! No, I don’t want to eat my dinner! I hate dinner! I’m hungry! No, I don’t want to go to bed! I want to watch TV! I hate this show!

Maybe one day we, as a people, will grow out of this difficult phase. More likely, we will just grow into another one.

Maybe puberty.

Unorganized, completely random non-political thoughts on a dreary, overcast Sunday morning.

- I think that all the television networks should just go ahead and get where they obviously want to go, which is to take over the lower third of the television screen and broadcast commercials 100% of the time, even while the main programming is ongoing. They are almost there anyway. They might as well go ahead and go that last mile right now and get it over with. Hey, they could even run commercials DURING commercials! Just think of the additional revenue!

- Why does the Sci-Fi Channel (excuse me, SyFy) show professional wrestling? Does anyone actually watch those Ghost Hunter shows where all I can see happening on the previews is a bunch of people filmed with night vision equipment whispering to each other and yelling “What was that?!?” Why does the Arts and Entertainment Channel show absolutely nothing related to the arts, or even entertainment? Why doesn’t the History Channel show any history? Why is there a goddam reality show on every single specialty channel on television?

- Airlines are now charging 40 bucks if you would like “UP TO six more inches of legroom”, a chance to get in line early and if you want to pay more money to earn more frequent flyer miles so you can subject yourself to more of the same torture you are currently going through sometime in the near future.

- My computer keeps asking me if I want to download a new version of this or that, such as iTunes or my e-mail, without telling me what the new version is going to do for me or any existing problems that I might currently have that this new software will fix. Why would I want to install something that I don’t even know what it does for me and the current version works fine? Is our society now so spring loaded to accept anything new related to electronics or software that we don’t even ask WHY first?

- Do the voice actors and actresses that do English dubbing of Japanese anime feel stupid or foolish when they are making those really stupid, squeaky voices? The overbearing, highly authoritative and/or menacing voices sound pretty silly, too.

- Speaking of feeling silly, did Jimmy Johnson of NFL and NASCAR fame feel ridiculous when he was filming those commercials for Extendz, those “penis-enhancing” pills with that young, really nice looking female “reporter?” Because if I were to try something like that, I believe I would have died of embarrassment right there, on the spot.

- Except for people who own stock in the huge corporations that own movie studios, why does anyone care how much money a movie earned on any given weekend? Is this any indication, at all, about how good a movie this might be? Whatever happened to critical reviews as an indicator of the worth of any particular film. Money? That’s all it’s about, even for the audiences? “Ooohh! Iron Man 2 earned eighty trillion dollars this week! I have to go see that one!”

- Players fighting during a baseball game garners the participants a fine and a suspension. Players fighting during a hockey game earns them five minutes in the “penalty box.” Football players will do almost anything rather than admit they are hurt. They will continue to play through all sorts of pain and blood. Soccer players (the OTHER football players) will scream, collapse on the field (sorry, pitch) and writhe around for minutes, sometimes requiring people to come out and carry them off with a stretcher, all because they got bumped or clipped by a player on the opposing team. Universities pay millions of dollars for coaches’ salaries and for upgrades to stadiums, which mostly include luxury boxes for those wealthy corporate interests. Those same universities get millions of dollars from television contracts, wealthy donors and requiring “donations” for those sports minded individuals who would like season tickets. Yet, the players get absolutely nothing other than a chance at a mostly free education. Cities, communities and states build huge, lavish sports arenas and stadiums with all or mostly all public funds, all to benefit obscenely rich team owners. I have no real observation here, other than to say, not only are Americans way too into sporting events, we aren’t even consistent. But then, we apparently don’t care. Go team! Rah!

- eBay really sucks. I refuse to use Paypal, but they now require it. Why? Because they can make more money, as they just happen to own Paypal. What a surprise. Is there anything in this country anymore that isn’t driven by the desire to extort the maximum amount of money from the general public as humanly possible?

- And finally, a bit about the Hardy Boys. You know, those brilliant kids who solved every sort of mystery that came their way and apparently stayed in high school for about 45 years? Those books were one thing that really got me through childhood and also taught me that reading was enjoyable. I know that the target audience of those books were, shall we say, less than critical. But really... Frank and Joe were not all that brilliant. They were extremely lucky. “Clues”, as they called them, just fell into their laps. They happened to be walking along and hear a conversation that just happened to relate to the case their famous dad was working on. They just happened to find a notebook with everything that the criminal they were chasing had every written down or thought of. Everything that happened to them was related. And their parents! What terrible parents! Sure, let them go out at all hours of the night and end up getting tied up or shot at by desperate criminals. Sure, go explore some abandoned mines in the hope you might find some gold that has been missing for 40 years. Just be careful, don’t get caught in any mine collapses and be sure to be home for dinner. Sheesh.

Ignorance is patriotic!

It must be, for a huge percentage of the population of the United States to believe what they do. I just do not see how people with any sort of power of rational thought to believe what they do and to be so easily manipulated by ignorant or immoral people. I knew that many people in this country were going to go bonkers when Barak Obama, a Democrat and a black man, was elected president. I actually thought at the time that this would be rather fun to watch. A right wing meltdown! Ha! Boy, do I regret that feeling now. I have never felt less like I am having fun, ever in my entire life. This is like watching the entire country go down Alice’s rabbit hole.

I was watching a number of older Daily Show episodes last night using the “On Demand” feature of my cable television. That’s kind of nice, as you get to fast forward through the commercials. I also don’t really like watching the interviews that he does as the last segment. I usually just watch the first and second segments, as those are the ones that contain the gems. But I was getting more and more depressed as I watched these last night. Yeah, Stewart is as funny and biting as always. But the targets of his derision were getting to me. John Boehner, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, tea-partiers, on and on, ad infinitum. That’s really depressing that we have so many seemingly crazy and/or moronic people (and, in Beck’s case, add “messianic”) in positions of power and influence. After watching about four or five shows, I couldn’t take it anymore, I was so depressed.

Democrats may be resigning themselves to losing control of the House in November, and the Senate now appears to be in play as well. This is beyond insane in my rational, logic-based universe. How can anyone possibly vote for Republicans, especially of the tea-party variety, after what happened during the Bush years? I cannot fathom how this can possibly be.

My erstwhile posting partner here at Barking Rabbits and good friend has expressed her opinion, when I have made similar plaintive wails in the past, that my problem is exactly because I am looking for answers in the rational, logic-based universe. The answers are not there.

That’s really what is the problem here and why this feels, to me, to be such a hopeless situation. There are essentially two camps out there, neither one of them understanding the other’s position. To me, many of the statements made and positions taken by the right-wing these days seems to be completely and utterly insane. Yet, they think the exact same thing about me. I had a conversation, and I use the word “conversation” in the context that words were exchanged, but exactly zero understanding was involved, with an old friend recently. He has turned out to be hugely conservative and I am pretty liberal, when measured against the rest of the country, I guess. When we were younger, perhaps our worldviews hadn’t coalesced to this point, or maybe it just didn’t matter, as we were concentrating on other things. We talked, and it got a little heated. Even several weeks after, I still do not understand his position, because many things he said seem to be completely contradictory. Yet, even though he is a very logical person in his engineering career, these contradictions either didn’t bother him or else he didn’t think they were contradictory. We had no understanding of each other’s positions, and never will.

That’s why I feel the current situation is so hopeless. It seems as if the polarization will only continue to grow. I see no way out of this, except for some not very pleasant resolutions. The one that I believe to be most likely is that our arguing, infighting, trying to minimize each other, will continue to grow until physical violence becomes the norm. We are on the brink of that right now. There are many good examples, almost all coming from the anger and hatred of the rightwing. The most recent example of this is the attack of a Muslim cabdriver in New York by a drunk, angry white guy who apparently harbored a deep grudge against Muslims. This is only going to continue to escalate until this country is so involved in our conservative vs. liberal free-for-all that this country will continue its slide toward complete irrelevance on the world stage. Our rich people will continue to get richer, our middle class will continue to disappear and our poor will continue to get poorer. In the absence of a French Revolution-style uprising against the gentry of this country, our society is going to evolve into this stratified, wealth/class based system of haves and have-nots. That it what I see as a likely outcome. That is, unless the looming catastrophe of global climate change doesn’t get us first.

Enough of this maudlin attempt at prophesying a very uncertain future, and back to more current, but still incomprehensible, events. Today, Glenn Beck is holding his “Reclaim Honor” rally at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. I won’t go over everything that has gone on to this point. I am sure, if you are reading something like this and have made it this far, you are well aware of what I am talking about. I just cannot fathom how Beck and his followers can possibly think that they are “reclaiming” the civil rights movement. A white guy with both national radio and television programs and who makes millions of dollars a year is actually comparing himself to Dr. Martin Luther King. This is the guy who said that our first black president has a “deep seated hatred of white people” and who thinks “social equality” is some sort of socialist plot. My reaction, in my rational, logic-based universe, is “What kind of lunatic is this guy? Does he know nothing of history?” Yet, he has sold this vision to thousands if not millions of his followers.

Back stated that he is not going to have a long prepared speech, but only going in with a few notes, so that if “He” wants to speak through Beck, “He will have the opportunity.” That is what Glenn Beck said on his radio program. I am presuming that Beck is saying that he is going to channel God during this rally, so that Beck will be the instrument of God’s will, or something like that. Again, my reaction is, “This guy is a messianic megalomaniac.” But hardly anyone except for people like Keith Olbermann points this out. Everyone else apparently either agrees with Beck or else prefers to just let him skate on this point. In my universe, Beck would be nothing more than one of those crazy people in need of a bath, shouting about the end of the world on a downtown street corner and a few passersby throw a few coins in the bowl in front of him. Yet, thousands of people are traveling a long way to here this guy speak.

I really thought I was overwhelmed with this insanity of this situation during the Bush administration. I didn’t realize that all these crazy people were being relatively well behaved, as “their people” were in power. I didn’t realize how much they could dial up “the crazy” when a black Democrat was elected to the presidency. I just didn’t realize how insane this situation could become.

This is why I haven’t been blogging recently. I feel overwhelmed, and cannot even begin to wrap my head around what is going on in this country. It is beyond my comprehension and therefore, I find it very difficult, as well as futile, to try to write anything about it. I am about to the point where all I am doing is hunkering down in my foxhole and keeping my head down. I am to the age where I can now see retirement from my job as a very real concern in a few years. Not for a while, but it is no longer a nebulous concept. I hope our society holds together for the next 20 years or so. After that, I suppose I can say that I had a good run and I was relatively lucky not to experience the huge upheavals that human culture goes through with more regularity than we would like to admit. I missed the Vietnam War. I was not in Europe during the first half of the 20th Century. I didn’t live during in the Middle East during the Crusades. I was not a Native American during the time that European settlers were taking their land and isolating and killing their population. No, I have had a relatively easy life. I never have had to worry about where my next meal was coming from and whether I was going to have a warm, dry place to sleep that night. I guess I shouldn’t complain too much.

But I am very concerned about what kind of world my daughter is going to find herself in when she becomes an adult and has to face these issues for herself.

Facts, data, opinions, yelling really loudly and multiple alternative versions of reality.

I'm sorry, but I seem incapable of writing anything. "Not being able to write" and "blogging" don't really seem to fit all that well together. Sort of like "wanting to be an actor" and "being overcome with stage fright." It doesn't really work.

I suppose part of this is due to the fact that my job mostly entails reading and writing stuff, all day long. It's rather difficult to work up the enthusiasm anymore to come home after work or get up in the mornings on the weekend and think, "Hey, I really want to write more stuff!" After eating spaghetti three meals a day for six weeks straight, you really don't want to have any more fu*king spaghetti.

But my big problem, as I have said before, is I am just overcome with the vapid stupidity (is there another kind?) of our society, and the devisions within in it that don't even seem to dwell in the same reality as each other, much less talk coherently and be able to find common ground. Facts are not facts anymore.... Facts are subject to whether or not they fit in with your current philosophy. Facts are now just heartfelt opinions. There is data out there on the internet that supports any damn position that you would like to take. Earth is warming up? Sure, there's lots of data to support that. Earth is cooling down? Yep, there's data for that. Unless someone takes the time to go track any piece of data (which I guess would be a datum) that they are using back to its original source, then you just stop looking when you find something that works for you. We have gone way past that old joke about lies, damn lies and statistics. You can no longer try to use data and facts to try to convince someone of the validity of your argument, because the person you are arguing with is probably armed with more "facts and data" than you are that are in complete opposition.

Is there even any such thing as "truth" anymore? Was there ever such a thing? I always believed there was. However, I am coming to believe that I was wrong. I have degrees in engineering and physics. There is a certain kind of thinking that is required to get a degree in engineering, one that starts with a set of facts or data that everyone can agree on in order to come up with a solution to any particular problem. But now, all that's out the window. It's like you got every single answer to your final exam wrong, just because your professor disagreed with your starting data points. "The Laffer Curve tells you everything you need to know about taxation!" "No, the Laffer Curve is widely discredited!" What is it? It depends on what you go read and want to believe in the first place.

The consequences of these dueling sets of realities is that the two sides, or however many there are, will never, ever be able to agree on anything. Never. We are all now obligated to view whatever facts and data might pop up in front of our faces through the filter of our already preconceived notions. It is fits, then great. We can absorb that new one for future use. If it doesn't fit, then you toss it out without thinking anything further about it, or else maybe chalk it up to the partisanship of the "other side," who are obviously a bunch of malicious liars and/or complete morons.

In my universe, Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck are morons, Beck is more unhinged than Palin, but morons all the same. Others, however, think that both of them are saviors and conveyors of the absolute and unvarnished truth. How can this be that people can have this big of a difference of opinion about something that I think is so cut and dried? How could ANYONE with an education over about the fifth grade thing that Sarah Palin is anything other than a lazy attention whore who usually has no idea what they hell she is talking about? It's beyond me, other than to go back to my original assertion that there are no absolute truths anymore. There is no such thing as unbiased, rational thought. Every single thing must be seen through the filter of preconceived ideas before any sort of judgment is passed. If your particular reality requires that Sarah Palin is some sort of Goddess for Truth, Justice and the American Way, then that is what she is.

This is not how I think a civilized, thoughtful society should function, but that's how it goes these days, even for most of our mass media. And without a responsible mass media that doesn't use those same filters as their target audience, I must admit, there is very little chance of this country ever having a knowledgeable population that elects intelligent and knowledgeable people to political office in order to solve the huge problems facing this country if our society that does not have an active, truthful media that will accept the notion that they are there to help uncover the truth and not just to report that every story has two sides. No, partially because of our incompetent media that loves conflict, juicy scandal and playing to the audience in order to make as much advertising dollars as they possible can for their corporate masters, we can't even agree on whether things are even problems anymore, much less come up with ways to fix them.

To get back to my original starting point for this point, it is a very long way of saying, of course, that it is extremely difficult for me to blog about much of anything anymore when I have completely given up hope for our society. I have absolutely no idea where it might be headed. It could be headed for some 1984-esque world where facts are things to be manipulated and no dissent or even appearance of non-conformity is tolerated. We could be headed for some complete meltdown of orderly society when global climate change disrupts our food and energy supply and distribution to the point that we have no functional government at the national or even state level, a la The Road Warrior or the myriad of other post-apocalyptic films of the past 40 years. We could keep stumbling around just like we are, slowly sinking into the morass of our own stupidity and inability to see past the ends of our collective noses in order to maintain the purity of whatever vision of reality to which we subscribe. It could be a combination of little bits of all of those, or it could be something completely different. Probably the one thing that won't happen is what everyone was worried about in the 50's and 60's, there won't be a global thermonuclear exchange by two or more superpowers that wipes civilization off the face of the planet. That's probably not going to happen anymore. But, whatever happens, I firmly believe 1) it isn't going to be pretty, and 2) nothing we can do now can change it and only part of that is due to the fact that we don't want to change it.

So, that's why my blogging has fallen off to a whisper these days. It's pretty difficult to write something snarky or insightful or hopeful or full of passion if I have given up hope. What's the point? The last few weeks, I have engaged in active isolationism, and I have found myself being a lot less unhappy, frustrated and angry than I have been. If our society wants to commit suicide by mass stupidity, then who am I to complain about it?

I am just going to go bury my head in the sand over here for a while. Poke me in the butt if something happens that you think I might need to know about.

Conservatives in this country want to be lied to.

I had been rolling this concept in my mind around for a bit, trying to get up the initiative to actually write a blog post about it. Of course, to quote Uncle Bonsai, “There’s no such thing as an original thought.” Doug J of Balloon Juice has it all right there.

I used to believe this sort of thing, that it was shameful, for example, that Fox provided such a low level of journalism to its captive conservative audience. My thinking was that conservatives watched Fox and listened to crazy conservative talk radio not because they enjoyed being lied to, but because they enjoyed overtly conservative media and Fox/Rush/etc. was what they had to choose from; the lying and low level of discourse, I reasoned, might very well be bugs rather than features.

Well, I was wrong, they’re features. Compare the ratings of Shep Smith with the ratings for Glenn Beck. Compare the traffic numbers for Hot Air, Drudge, and Instapundit with those of FrumForum, The American Scene, and Eunomia. And note that the Daily Caller traffic went way up with when they started in with the JournoList silliness (whatever one thinks of JournoList, the way that Daily Caller is presenting the story is extremely dishonest).

Given the choice, conservatives as a group will go for the dumber, more dishonest, more insane option. There’s a market for good-faith conservative media, but that market is liberals. Who watches/reads the faux-good faith propaganda of David Brooks? Totebaggers. Who reads The American Scene and Eunomia? People like me.

Conservatives, by and large, have no interest in what you or I or actual journalists consider journalism. It’s telling that when Clark Hoyt and Andy Alexander muse about pleasing conservative readers, they don’t talk about covering legitimate stories that conservative readers are interested in, they talk (exclusively) about following ginned-up Breitbart controversies.

And that about sums it all up, I think. There really isn’t any market for the truth these days, because somewhere between 25% and 50% of this country doesn’t want to know the truth. They really don’t want to know what was really behind the Iraq war, or how the United States of America came to be one of the world’s foremost proponents and practitioners of torture. They don’t want to know what caused the financial meltdown of a couple of years ago, and whether or not the policies enacted by some Republicans and then taken up by the Democrats really helped or not. They don’t want to know the truth that ACORN was a small, underfunded organization trying to help low-income people get their voices heard in government and was in no way some giant secretive monster manipulating elections behind the scenes.

No, apparently most conservatives of this country want to hear stuff that feeds into their already formed ideas and positions. Government is evil. Democrats are evil. Guns are great and everyone should be allowed to carry them anywhere they want. Big business can really do no wrong, and when something bad does happen (e.g., the huge oil spill in the Gulf, 29 miners killed in West Virginia coal mine explosion), then it was just “an accident”, “God’s Will” or, once again, the fault of the government for too much regulation. All events, everything that anyone has ever said or done, all can be manipulated to fit into these narratives, so that everything, absolutely everything, confirms to the conservative mind what they already “know.”

Now, this is not to say that there are not liberals and progressives that exhibit these same traits. No doubt, there are. I am always questioning myself about this. I don’t actually find anything that makes me change my mind on certain questions, I must admit, but at least I am asking myself the right questions. I think most liberals and progressives really do want to know the truth about their government and their country. If a Democrat is behind something underhanded, then I firmly believe that most of us would want that person gone, immediately. Mostly… Right now, many of us are torn by the Obama adminstration. They are making it mightily difficult for liberals and progressive to give their unbridled support to an administration that seems determined to always “go for the middle,” even when that means shortchanging the very people who supported them in the first place. And we really don’t like the fact that President Obama is intent on ignoring the wrongdoings and lawlessness of the Bush administration, and even carrying on some of the worst of the previous administration’s policies.

But, to go back to my original point, when conservatives will never, ever make any concessions of wrongdoing and try to use every single thing that happens as some sort of cudgel to bash the other side over the head, even at the expense of the country as a whole, then, ladies and gentlemen, we have an ungovernable country. We simply cannot fix the huge problems we are facing because one side doesn’t want to admit they are problems, or else they do believe they are problems but don’t have any policy that would actually address those problems other than to attack the Democrats for actually trying to do something.

I can’t say that President Obama and the Democrats haven’t gotten anything done in the face of this overwhelming opposition to everything. There have been a number of amazing achievements made since Barack Obama took office. But what could have been has been significantly watered down, and with the Democrats a sure bet to not have anywhere near the required “super-majority” in the Senate after January of next year, then it’s a good bet that major achievements will be few and far between.

I am extremely disgusted and disappointed by the almost everyone in our society today. I suppose I should consider myself some sort of wild-eyed idealist, as what I believe in seems to be so far out of the mainstream these days. By looking around the blogosphere, I can see I am not alone. There are many knowledgeable, educated and well spoken people that seem to believe in the same things that I do. But I have come to believe that we are not going to get there. Not in the time of Barack Obama, and not ever. The tide is just that overwhelming. Huge Money, in the form of powerful lobbyist groups, mega-corporations and wealthy donors that want to see their own agenda enacted, is just too much to deal with.

This country is on a path to mediocrity, and maybe even worse. But at the very least, we are on the downside slope of the curve. Yes, the United States will remain a power in the world, just because of the money and power that is concentrated here, along with a huge consumer market. (How long that huge consumer market lasts is an unknown, given all the forces that are at work undermining the capacity of 90% of the population of this country to actually be consumers of anything past the essentials for living.) The argument for “American exceptionalism” will become less and less persuasive, if it ever were a real argument, and more and more just some myth that hardly anyone believes in but keeps telling each other anyway, just like Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny.

We need a moratorium on the word "slammed."

As in "Momsen slammed for smoking onstage", "Euro Drug Makers Slammed In Midday Trading", "Failure to prepare: Government slammed over health payroll bungle", "Stocks slammed by global slowdown fears", etc. etc. And those are only today's headlines. A few days ago, I saw three separate headlines at Huffington Post about someone slamming someone else. This has to be the most overused word in the English language in the electronic media. You can't just "disparage" someone anymore. Disparaging someone is lame. You must SLAM them. Someone slams someone, who slams that person back. Slammer and slammee become one. We are all slammed at one time or another, and we probably don't even know it. Unless we put a halt to all of this gratuitous slamming, it will worm its way into all sorts of places we would rather not see any slamming. "Winnie The Pooh Slams Tigger in Poohsticks!"

Feh....

Who the f*ck is Momsen, anyway?