This Was the Species that Was

I just got into the city and do dearly hope to see you. When and where should we meet up?

Post-Traumatic Retail Disorder

Zapped by its isotopes, drowned by its seas,
Japan convulses while the world, as one,
Stands mumbling to its several deities
To let Gojira sleep, to let be done
What's done; and in the bargain, let it stay
A strictly Japanese apocalypse!
That's how—methought—one given to prayer would pray;
But humans sink their lowest when the chips
Are down for someone else: e.g., "The Nips
Purchased their karmic doom when they attacked
Pearl Harbor." So to God's ears from my lips:
Smite Thou the pestilential cataract
Of humankind and all that it pollutes!

Who fucking cares. I love my phat new boots.

Who was it in the early days of Trek
Decided that the captain's shirt be wrought
In toilet paper, like to rip from neck
To elbow at no more than violent thought?
Did Roddenberry covet Shatner's tits
Such that he sought the flimsiest excuse
To put them on the screen? What else befits
Their flagrant cinematic overuse?
It's widely put how well Gene loved his women;
But such does not preclude a taste for men,
For plucking, as it were, the ripe persimmon
That Kirk's shred blouse displayed time and again.
The other possibility, of course:
Takei to Shatner's wardrobe had recourse.

Like everyone else, I've been observing (without really trying) the media hoo-ha surrounding the attempted assassination of Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the murder and maiming of a bunch of people in her vicinity. Colbert ran a single (and disappointingly safe) joke on the subject last night, insisting that 'Now is not the time to play the blame game' and immediately running a news clip montage of everyone and her Aunt Myfanwy doing just that. 'Oh. I guess I'm wrong. Have we picked someone to blame? Well, get on it, I look like an idiot out here!'

The usual suspects in my own blogosphere—Joe. My. God., Americablog, et al.—have spend the last four days rending their garments and tearing their hair over the likes of Sarah Palin, whose vacuity, blithe viciousness, and amorality have somehow gotten her promoted to a job she's even less fit for than Governor of Alaska: revolutionary visionary. Foundering Father, or, I suppose, Foundering Mother. Mother Jones, in fact, reincarnated on the side of fascism. You betcha she can raise hell, darnit!

And make no mistake about it, Palin's a fascist. She never equivocates when it comes to the sole natural and acceptable role of government: partnering with industry to facilitate the enrichment of rich people. We use 'fascism' now almost exclusively to mean 'totalitarianism' but that's a lamentable lexical drift: historically, all fascism was was the formalized clusterfuck of government and industry with its aggregate tongue way, way up the asshole of Mammon, who squirmed dutifully.

So I'm sure we've all seen by now how Minuteman Palin put rifle crosshairs on a map showing 'targeted' Democratic congressmen and women. B'ar-skinnin' Sarah (and others) long ago adopted the rhetoric of armed militias ('Don't retreat—reload', etc.) resisting a government that no longer serves the interests of the people.

(One thing, and let me just get this out of the way first: I don't care the shooter was a bugfuck, drug-addled tweaker with delusions of deity. You (we) do not get to chalk up any and every such massacre as an oddity, an outlier, the work of a certifiable loon. By that sort of system one could discount the entire presidency of Richard M. Nixon. Listen: When political rhetoric is involved and invoked, political rhetoric counts. Crazy and sane people both abound like lice in the crotches of this planet; public prescriptions for Lindane do NOT happen in a vacuum.)

But back to the main point: the handgun rhetoric of Palin et al. has the liberal end of the spectrum apoplectic and crying about blood on people's hands. And there's been a clambake-sized clamor out of quarters I seldom if ever hear from—foundations and institutes and think tanks for peace/non-violence/a modicum of civility/can't we all just get along/WWJAHLSID¹. Misanthrope that I am, I'm not quite prepared to claim that these folks' heads or hearts are screwed up; that they're part of the problem; that their righteous indignation is just the bleeding-heart-socialist flipside of the Palins and Becks. No, I do not believe that to be the case.

Nonetheless, in the wake of the Tucson tragedy, something still seems... off with the tenor of the debate. In simplest terms, it's the fact that Sarah Palin is, in some essential way, correct—in form if not in content. The architects of this country did fully recognize that independence from Britain would not manifest without taking up arms and risking life and limb. Jefferson did talk about watering the tree of liberty with the blood of patriots and tyrants. He did say a little revolution every so often was a good thing. Hifalutin revolution rhetoric sounds good on paper, but it's not particularly pleasant to ruminate their showing up at our doorstep—nobody really wants to imagine bloody revolution, civil war, or terrorism across their own country. Still, I can't think of a more indisputable proposition than that humans have always, always, always needed to employ aggressive if not forthrightly violent means to secure their freedoms from other humans who consider them chattel. Anyone who thinks the humans they're making today are different is a fucking idiot.

Granted, I couldn't be more ideologically opposed to Ma Palin. In this crazy age, she and her companions have pulled off an astonishing feat: convincing the citizenry to shoot the Minutemen and invite the Redcoats in for a cup of increasingly expensive tea. She rails against the evils of a government empowered to protect its citizenry. Individual liberties are government overreach; corporate liberties are sacred and must be preserved at gunpoint.

Codgers like me will realize this is just down the rhetorical road apiece from Ronald Reagan, who (fittingly in 1984 and thereabouts) convinced America that penury (for regular Americans) is prosperity (for armorers, financiers, etc.—which of course meant eventual prosperity for all); that lawlessness is legal—e.g., true patriots like Ollie North are not subject to the rule of law; that cruelty (of Jim Crow laws and socialist witch hunts) is kindness (of Donna Reed and June Cleaver and your very own mumsie-wumsie in her mythical, pastoral American farm kitchen).

So here's the Tea Party Revolution, convincing a scarily large number of citizens that the very persons in the federal government most likely to have their interests in mind are not just their enemy, but an enemy purgeable with Second Amendment remedies. Shooting Rep Giffords and the crowd around her had zero to do with 'taking back the government'; it was a warning shot (another one; not the first) from a steamrolling coup of American billionaires who are not going to get their tongues out of Mammon's ass without a bitter fight.

Perhaps what makes this entire discussion uncomfortable is not so much that we can't believe what happened in Tucson, but the fact that, with every such incident, it seems less and less likely the rest of us will get through our lives without having to defend ourselves and our liberty at peril of shedding some of our own red, red Miracle Gro.

——
¹ 'What Would Jesus and His Long-Suffering Ilk Do?'

Anybody wanna give opinions and/or recommend some specific tunes for me to check out from any of the following artists?

Delorean
Wild Beasts
The Mountain Goats
Bear in Heaven
The Morning Benders
The National
St Vincent
Antony and the Johnsons
TV on the Radio
Fleet Foxes

that's not in question. Some years ago, in Dallas, I me hied to Moby Dick—a gay bar, not the best one—whose evening's entertainment was supplied by the spiritual offspring of Chuck Barris: a Gong Show, wherein purveyors of song (or lip-synch, feh!) would earn the judges' harassment, laughter, and eventually, the gong. Exhibitionist that I am, I rose to sing "Three-Minute Hamlet"—which so foiled the room that bartenders were throwing anything they could find at the gong to seal my doom.

And now! I find my name, its letters wrong-adjusted, can also spell 'Derisory Gongage'!

Sometimes it's good just to let somebody else do the smacking down:

[over at The Guardian]

OK nishville, I'll bite:

1. How do we persuade scientists to stop making nuclear weapons?

Vote for people who want rid of nuclear weapons. (Incidentally, there's been no new science involved in nuclear weapons for about half a century, so anyone working on them isn't doing science. I mean, I'm building an H-bomb in my basement, but that's just a hobby).

2. How do we persuade scientists to stop making biological weapons?

Don't vote for people who would overturn the BWC (in force since 1975).

3. How do we persuade scientists to publicly admit that scientific progress is destroying the planet as we speak?

Waterboard them on live TV till they admit that they created global capitalism, are forcing people to buy 4x4s and go on long-haul flights, and don't recycle.

4. How do we persuade scientists to stop spending ridiculous ammounts of money on projects that were never approved democratically?

Write to your MP. Tell them to put on a tinfoil hat. Its the only way to stop the mind control rays that are forcing your elected representatives to fund science.

5. How do we persuade scientists to at least consider the posibility that science might not be the sole measure of progress?

Tricky. I'll get right on that after I work out how to convince them that your worth as a human being is not best judged by how many hotdogs you can eat at a single sitting.

Anyway, while your remarks are pretty tediously indicative of a mindset that lumps together a bunch of vague dissatisfactions with modern life and chooses to call them science, they do strike me as in one way rather dangerous. Its a quite effective way of avoiding thinking about your own personal responsibility for all the things you mention.

Now to lance the pestilential boil that keeps referring to scientists as a 'new priesthood'.

[pasted in its entirety]
Dear Friend:

Thank you for writing. We must stand united to protect liberty and justice for all our citizens, and I appreciate your perspective on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights.

My Administration has taken a number of steps to address issues affecting the LGBT community. Leading by example, I extended benefits to same-sex partners of Federal employees in the Civil and Foreign Services. I also signed a Presidential Memorandum directing hospitals receiving Medicare and Medicaid funds to give all patients the compassion and security they deserve in their time of need, including the ability to choose who can visit them and make medical decisions. To help take on discrimination in all its forms, we are working to ensure that core Federal housing programs are open to all, and I signed landmark legislation that strengthens protections against hate crimes based on gender identity or sexual orientation. We also ended the ban on entry to the United States for people living with HIV/AIDS, and we issued the first comprehensive National HIV/AIDS Strategy.

While we have made great strides, much work remains to achieve full equality for LGBT individuals. I stand by my commitment to repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and Pentagon leaders are ensuring we can change this in a way that strengthens our Armed Forces and national security. I have urged Congress to pass the bipartisan Domestic Partners Benefits and Obligations Act, and I support extending the over 1,100 Federal marital rights and benefits to same-sex couples. I also support the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, as well as legislative repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act. Adoption rights must also be secured for LGBT families, and we need to ensure our children are free to learn in supportive environments in school. For information about my commitment to preventing bullying and harassment, along with resources for those facing bullying, visit: www.wh.gov/itgetsbetter.

To learn more about my Administration's efforts to create a more open and tolerant society, please visit: www.WhiteHouse.gov/Issues/Civil-Rights.

Sincerely,

Barack Obama

A copy of my recent email via whitehouse.gov:

"LIFESTYLE CHOICES"? Are you kidding me? Valerie Jarrett referred to the "lifestyle choices" of the many kids who have committed suicide after being bullied relentlessly for being gay. This is the most egregious, appalling slip I've ever heard from Mr. Obama's doorstep.

DOES THE WHITE HOUSE THINK HOMOSEXUALITY AND HETEROSEXUALITY ARE CHOICES PEOPLE MAKE? Does the White House actually think youngsters make a choice to be the very thing that will get them mocked, beat up, disowned, etc.?

This is central. This is seminal. This is rudimentary: Sexuality is not chosen.

Those who claim it is are at the forefront of all anti-gay thought and action, from failing (for nearly two years) to act on any measure or in any way on behalf of gay people, as Mr. Obama has done, to active bullying, to murder.

Your administration, Mr. President, has the blood of every queer suicide on its hands. You ought to be profoundly ashamed.

I have a spare $75 ticket to the Braves @ Nats game tonight at Nationals Park. 7 p.m. Anybody wanna go with me?