I Aim to Misbehave. (Or... "A lovely little political fantasy.")

"Right now I'd like to do my Joe Isuzu impression.  I impression Joe the best.  He's my new secretary of transportation."

So I just imagined a thing.  It made me very, very happy.  I'll imagine neat little scenarios like these to amuse myself when I hear the news sometimes.  It's a fun game to play in the car if I'm listening to the news.  "Now here's how I'd have addressed congress, dumbass.  Here's how you do this-"  It's a healthy mental exercise for an actor.  Practicing one's skills with public speech and oratory is never a bad idea.  I'm sure you know of at least one politician right now who could stand to practice a bit in that regard.  It also helps to see if there's a facet of current events I'm not thinking of, or if I'm thinking of it, can I come at it more intelligently than the regime du jour.


Now... I'm not sure what the rules are in congress for creating a disruption during a presidential address.  I'm sure I get escorted out.  But I'm pretty sure I could ensure my re-election with a simple outburst.  Just wait for a nice opportune time while Cheeto Von Clownminge is saying something particularly untrue, patronizing and disrespectful to the suffering of our countrymen.  And then do one of those high school *COUGH-BULLSHIT!* at the top of my lungs.  Then apologize quite loudly.  "So sorry!  I've got a terrible alternative cough!  Also, that was an alternative apology!"

"Ah do believe he's comin' down with a case a' th' vapours!"

What's the rest of congress going to do?  Send me a sharp note?  I'll cop to it.  Sure.  "We are very very upset that you behaved this way during the presidential address.  It was disrespectful in the extreme, and reflects poorly on the district that elected you.  Professional congressmen do not act this way."

Oh yeah?  My official public statement on the 'incident' would need to be, "Professional congressmen nowadays are gutless profiteers who are only concerned with getting re-elected, and how much they can sell their vote to the corporations for on any given issue.  I called the president on a lie and I'm not sorry about it.  Get bent.  I'd also like to say to congress, get bent.  As well, I'd like to ask my fellow congressmen who signed onto this censure to get bent.  And one more thing.  And I am now addressing both the president and his cowardly appeasers.  Get bent.

"Impeach me if it suits you.  I misremember if it's legal to impeach someone for hurting your feelings and calling someone on a lie.  I'll show you proof the president was lying.  All I need is an internet connection and a few more brain cells than the president.  Two ought to do. 

"And unlike hurting your feelings, lying to congress IS a crime.  More interesting still, you don't even have to be under oath for that.  But what's a little swearing between government representatives, eh?  It was good enough to impeach Mr. Clinton, wasn't it?  So how about we start swearing in the president so that he has to give his addresses under oath?  Presumably he swore an oath when he took office, but we've seen how serious he takes that.  How about we make him swear an oath with some consequences in it should he lie to our faces again?  And if he doesn't WANT to swear an oath, why should I trust a damn thing he says?  Was his intention to come up here and lie a lot, and now he has to rethink his speech?  Yes or no question.  Would the president care to deliver his address under oath so that we may be sure of the truth of his statements?  I await his reply.  Yes or no, Mr. President.  Yes or no.  Trustworthy or lying coward, Mr. President.  Which is it?

"Oh.  And in closing...  Get bent."

I can hear my wife even now.  "THAT'S A MICHAELS FRAME!"

Assuming no term-limit reforms, I'd be re-elected into my 90's

One For the History Books. But Probably Not the One We Wanted...

It came up a little earlier today for me.  A writer friend of mine posted a tweet about a thing I've wondered about frequently about our current America.  (see below)  And I do wonder about how history will remember us. I'm thinking those of us presently alive and drawing breath will be remembered unkindly. Not for being fascists. But for putting up with the current fascists we have for so long. I wondered this weekend how Herr Fuckstick von Clownminge thinks he will be remembered. I mean on some level, he has to know that he will be reviled. Like Adolf Hitler reviled. A historical example of how not to human being.

I mean we got a nice period of prosperity for a while here in the US. After WWII, Korea and Vietnam, we grew fat and complacent as the beginning of the information age settled onto us. Quite a lot of the activist generation of my parents to a large degree were either pacified, marginalized, or sold out into the kind of 'I got mine, so the hell with you' Yuppie generation who enabled quite a lot of the problems we have today.  You know.  The ones that helped re-elect Reagan in a literal landslide, then Bush 1.

The fascists and bigots who'd been waiting for this opportunity to advance the 'southern strategy' and break the unions pounced with the Reagan administration and took every inch they could get while we whinged about inclusivity, compassion and understanding.   And it's not that we shouldn't be inclusive, compassionate or understanding.  These angels are what separate us from the horrors we have in office and their creatures now.  But one must also be vigilant WHILE being compassionate.  you remember.  Just cos the fire in your village has kept the wolves away for a while, you don't let it burn out. 

That's quite an infestation of republican fascists you've got there.  We can help get rid of that.  But it's going to cost.

The yuppies forgot this.  The fascists didn't.  They took advantage when the yuppies forgot that you never give a fascist an inch. Ever. It's like getting fleas in your house. Once you've got em, you need to unilaterally bomb the place with poison every week to keep from getting bit. Or burn the house down to be sure.

That prosperity, like with the onset of the industrial revolution in the UK, is done with. Now we're beset with robber barons the same way we were at the cusp of the 19th/20th century. And we've let them get such a foothold we may well need a second civil war or revolution to bomb them the hell out. Hopefully it will be that damnable compassion that will be our saving grace. We outnumber the fascists, but they're better armed. It's my home that when the modern day fascists start ordering their blackshirts to start firing on Americans and their loved ones, they'll know where their duty actually lies.

I can hope.

The Origins of the Modern Oligarchs... erm... Species. Totally Meant to Say 'Species'.

So I've been reading 'The Day the Universe Changed' to Jenn when it's time to take her make-up off at night. We manage about 3 or 5 pages a night. And last night, we came to a chilling bit. The book (and companion TV Series) is about discoveries that change the way we perceive the world around us, and changes our points of view. What drove us toward or away from different memes in our collective consciousness and the like. And last night, we hit the bit where James Burke was discussing the fallout of Darwin's 'Origin of the Species'. And how it led, through fuckups like Hegel and Haekel in Germany to the rise of the Nazi party.

And to give you a chill, that was NOT the most fucked up bit.

Over in America, it didn't so much give rise to Nazis, but to 'Social Darwinists'. Now, I would seem to have been using the term Social Darwinism wrongly. I always considered it to be how stupid people tend to select themselves out for extinction. You know... like the sort of thing you used to see when The Darwin Awards were a thing.  And I'm kind of fine with that. The less stupid people in the world, the better, says I. Take the warning labels off the coffee lids and chainsaws and we'll all be a few car lengths further in traffic to work tomorrow, says I. But according to those that coined the term in the first place, this really isn't the case at all. And it's certainly not what the people who coined the term meant.

Not that this kind of thing is happening today...  oh heavens no.  Except it is.

In accordance with Darwin, these early robber barons like Carnegie and Rockefeller, as well as their Nazi supporting descendants, like the Drumpfs and the Kochs cleaved to the idea of life as a struggle for resources, and that intelligence wasn't so much a survival trait. Aggression and power were seen as the things necessary to 'improve the species', and were the qualities ideally suited for accquiring as many resources as possible to continue one's line toward a more perfect human race. That it was cruel in the extreme to help the poor, disaffected, and weak as you were only removing the impetus for them to struggle and grow as individuals. That people ought to be subservient to the strong, and be pleased to work themselves to death as long as it improved the community on the whole. That those too weak to survive in adversity ought to select themselves out for extinction and die for the betterment of the whole. That positive change for the human race can only come out of violent struggle.

Sound familiar?

Do you want to know more?  Read the book.

As I read to Jenn last night, we both kept looking at one another. Stunned. Had we found the lodestone around which our current oligarchy of cruel old white men have planted their tree of truth? They actually subscribe to this self-serving cruelty. You hear it every time they talk about creating a nation of takers, even as they take the food and medicine out of the mouths of the hungry and sick. They put guns in the hands of people full of hatreds and selfish ignorance. Arming the strong, victimizing the weak, taking all the resources for themselves... And then they pat themselves on one another's wrinkly backs for doing God's work and laughing that the 'intellectuals' are too fractured to do anything but discuss how bad things are getting.

These fossils grew up on this. They were fed and raised on it while they were little fascist larvae by people who bought into this Social Darwinist crap in the first half of the 20th century. Our present oligarchs are the direct descendants of robber barons that bought into this Aryan and Social Darwinist bullshit. Never mind they'd have been Anarchist Buddhists or whatever creed they could use to justify their greed and ambition. I have to imagine that the christian fundamentalists they pander to nowadays would be horrified to find out that their Rand-ian darlings' philosophies are based (however wrongly) in Darwinian science. That's us Americans for you. Like the man said, "We take what we want... and leave the rest. JUST LIKE YOUR SALAD BAR."

My own view is that we have surpassed Darwinian biological imperatives with our sciences. The violent struggle is no longer necessary when resources of power and production can be had from the very wind and sunlight. The energy from those resources turned into the production of necessaries from more efficient raw materials and reclaimed waste, the collection of which we can automate with machines. We can literally craft and guide our species' evolution toward something greater with deliberate intent. And we can do it with science and compassion for all as our tools. No one gets left behind. ... Okay... not even the stupid people.

The greedy, hoarding philosophy of 'I got mine, so fuck you.' is UN-necessary in the 21st century with the powers our minds can bring to bear on the problems of our continued existence. If we could but unchain ourselves from the failed philosophies of the robber barons and the Aryans, brought forward into our time by the corporate oligarchs who prey on the weak. Wrapping themselves in whatever flag or dogma they can find to help the uneducated swallow their poison pill.

And it's about to come to a breaking point. That bit where very real and noticable numbers of people are going to start dying to support the greed of a mere 400 or so people while the rest of the world burns. Will we finally reject how they're using our differences to divide us? It's not going to come by means of some enforced epiphany. We're not going to make them see sense. In their flawed social darwinist view, they fully believe that they SEE sense. They're convinced of the rightness of their claim to the keys to the kingdom. Your health. Your life. Your children.

So... maybe there is ONE use for violent struggle. To show them the mercy of the guillotine so savagely that generations throughout the following centuries will remember that their meme was an evolutionary cul-de-sac for the entire human race. That we will take to heart the compassion for one another that the whole needs to survive the ruinous cancer of our 'social elites'. And should they continue to grow at our expense? Then we take to heart that other maxim.

Sic semper tyrannis.

Thus always to tyrants.

Anyway, have a look at the episode of the companion TV show that goes with the chapter I was reading to Jenn last night. He manages to cover some of the points made in his book rather well.