American Exceptional-ism: A nation adorned in the emperor's new clothes

Author Oliver Lange in his novel, Vandenberg, had this to say about American society in the 1970’s.

"We proved the lie, were served up with a gagging portion of our own vintage distillation of apocalyptic horseshit

-- all the narcissistic swill about indomitable spirit, invincibility, courage and nobility of purpose

-- and demonstrated once and for all to those who looked on with interest a fact long suspected:

that this nation, through a self-administered indoctrination of spurious righteousness, larded with the false rewards of superfluous luxury, had at last achieved the most tractable, malleable -- let's face it, spineless -- people to walk the face of the earth." 

-Aptly described by Oliver Lange in Vandenberg - The Journals, 1971

Lange’s Cold War novel concerned a fictional lone American holdout against a Soviet occupation of America – hardly a liberal theme by today’s standards.

Yet the description still appears to fit this society to a Tee.

Our politicians of both parties thrive on tossing our way narcissistic swill about what America stands for and what the American People are truly like. I’m reminded of G.W. Bush during his presidency expressing surprise that the rest of the world might not see America and Americans in the same light as our narcissistic swill and all those talking points celebrities of all stripes throw at us.

We do hopefully attempt to teach, encourage and try to foster ideas of indomitable spirit, invincibility,  courage and nobility of purpose in the military. You know, those on whom we count and by whom have cast our imperialistic dice; importing Democracy, war, defense and security. 

For the rest of us talk is cheap. We indomitable spirits are inspired by the cheap theatrics and propaganda of talk-show and political personalities, movies and commercialized patriotism more interested in money than global peace, global honor or global respect.

Robert Blum has a video out there that flat out states the premise of America’s track record all around the world, Be nice to America or we’ll bring Democracy to your Country. 

I dare you to expose your beautiful minds to that short video and then tell me how and why none of it is true nor an accurate portrayal of what’s been going on while we potato our couches.

The public righteousness long proclaimed by the TV reverends and political god-talkers finally caught the attention of genuine social justice Christians who are now furiously publicizing social justice values in the most justified religious backlash in years 

,,, and having success – except among those who think God is a conservative Republican.

That might be a good sign but it still seems like the most popular and followed god-talkers are not the ones advocating that we care for our poor and infirm. No, the god talkers that fill former basketball arenas and mega-churches are either promising that God the capitalist wants to reward folks too trusting for their own good with riches

… or are promising that the greatest threat to religion in America lies in liberal and progressive values that detract from the image of God as the One Angry Almightyness who supports a fundamentalist literal definition of sin which can’t be tolerated with any degree of allowance..

I suggest that the wisest thing we can do is turn off the television sets and all the other “sets” through which we are told what to think, what to feel, what to be afraid of and how our money can buy us relief from all of it.

I suggest that being fluffed into believing every little commercialized medical threat and the need to consult your doctor needs to be seen as a need to ask the Doc if super-glue on the lips is a good way to stop eating corporate-larded-consumable swill

… and if ear plugs and eye masks are the best way to lower all your physiological levels to a manageable level. ( Have you every noticed how that word broken down the middle forms two double syllable concepts: “physio” and “logical” – neither of which are honestly proposed to you in pharmaceutical commercials?)

Turning off the TV sets would help - at least until advertisers and broadcasters get the message that selling larded false rewards of superfluous luxury, gossip-based headline news and self-absorbed entertainment is not what a mature society wants.

Oh …. sorry … that above paragraph describes someone else’s Brave New World where “mature” and “society” can be justifiably used in the same sentence …. but certainly not our Cowardly Consumptive Outworn World.

We can’t go on like this much longer.

Our new clothes were never new and never clothes.

Our uncovered asses are all hanging out there exposed to the winds of change 

…while we, well we seem to be content in our ignorance or awareness of (whichever fits) the fact that we are the most tractable, malleable -- let's face it, spineless -- people to walk the face of the earth."

Thank you Oliver Lange … sorry that you are still right on the money.

The Grand Old Perpetrators Versus National Defense

The over all integrity of a nation will most immediately and powerfully be impacted by the models presented by its political parties.

That modeling ought to be a natural attention-grabber.
That modeling ought to present a public affirmation of concern for good of the country rather than political opportunism as the height of its most significant values - or the depth of its apathetic depravity.

One of the greatest roles of national leadership is that of modeling the country’s core values which are supposedly our ideas worthy of mention.

When those models fail, the beacon on the hill deteriorates into nothing more than the search light at the gate of a prison compound the encloses crooks and captives. It is merely a beacon driven by fear and self-interest; the lie that the greatest country in the world will not exploit the world for its own profit and security.

The entire notion of our American republic with representative government is that of citizens who do have a voice ... and use it.

... a voice its leadership must take seriously
... that American elected leadership in all parties is the last place the world should see lies, deception and preferential treatment.

This current leadership crop will without a doubt be recorded and remembered as possibly the least efficient in modern history. Worse, these leaders will be regarded as absolutely the most incompetent despite posing as wise ones who act from a real understanding of how a nation is made great.

Currently, one party's silly partisan justifications for refusing to act openly and accountably on behalf of the people by affirming an extremely qualified cabinet-level nomination insults Americans and abuses the American dream.

These prominent party politicians demonstrate a limited depth of intellect that seems stuck at the Junior High level. Such is nothing more than a denigration of national integrity in the name of political self interest.

It is because of leaders like these that the idea of checks and balances and citizen ability to override leadership irresponsibility was put in place.

Such is not an obscure constitutional point. It is a vital constitutional principle upon which hang circumstances of much greater national well-being than the apathy that lets crooks and liars stay in place.

Let us hope that enough Americans in each state will take action to clean house in the next election by deciding who has broken trust, who is unworthy of the affirmation of re-election.


McCain Admits Republicans Put Grudges Ahead of National Security in Hagel Filibuster

 If it weren't so tragic it would be funny to see McCain's crocodile tears and wounded feelings for Dubya as an excuse for keeping the best man for the job on the sideline.

 Yesterday John McCain cried to Fox News that Hagel has said mean things about George W Bush and people don't forget that:

 "To be honest with you Neil, it goes back to there is a lot of ill will towards Senator Hagel because when he was a Republican, he attacked President Bush mercilessly.

At one point said he was the worst President since Herbert Hoover.

Said the surge was the worst blunder since the Vietnam War which is nonsense. And was very anti his own party and people. People don't forget that."

Here's hoping Arizonans will wake up and not forget Senator Politics-Ahead-Of-Country.

required to read and be tested on a volume of equal plausibility, value and intelligence

The Spokesman Review: Bill requires all Idaho kids to read ‘Atlas Shrugged’ 

BOISE – Coeur d’Alene Sen. John Goedde, chairman of the Idaho Senate’s Education Committee, introduced legislation Tuesday to require every Idaho high school student to read Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” and pass a test on it to graduate from high school.

When Sen. Bob Nonini, R-Coeur d’Alene, asked Goedde why he chose that particular book, Goedde said to laughter, “That book made my son a Republican.”

Goedde said he doesn’t plan to press forward with the bill, but it was formally introduced in his committee Tuesday on a voice vote. He said he was sending a message to the State Board of Education, because he’s unhappy with its recent move to repeal a rule requiring two online courses to graduate from high school, and with its decision to back off on another planned rule regarding principal evaluations.

I wouldn't object so long as Idaho Students were also required to read and be tested on a volume of equal plausibility, value and intelligence.
My nomination would be Stephen King's 'The Tommyknockers'

Human Ecology and Economy further entangled with Mama Nature

Owl vs. Owl: Should the Forest Service shoot the spotted owl’s new enemy, the barred owl?

Well what ya gonna do? With all this human confusion between need and demand, Mother Nature has never listened to what we or our government try to demand of Her.

So here we go again.

The future for spotted owls currently looks so bleak that wildlife managers in the Pacific Northwest have proposed a desperate plan: They want to kill thousands of barred owls. British Columbia approved plans last week to shoot barred owls within 5 kilometers of spotted owls. The U.S. government may not be far behind.

“It’s a vanishing sight, rarer and rarer,” said Dale Herter. We were standing 10 feet away from a spotted owl on a steep slope near Mount Rainier. Herter is a biologist who has studied spotted owls in the Cascades for 22 years and has documented the owl’s accelerating decline.

Tall on Talk, Short on Moral Courage

If these blowhard pretend patriots showed up as a "posse" promising to protect my town, I'd load up my women, children and neighbors and abandon the place.

MotherJones.com

THE INSURRECTION CAUCUS

Ted Nugent, troubadour

James Yeager, Tactical Response CEO

"Oathkeeer 151"

Stewart Rhodes, patriot

Gage Skidmore / Flickr

Alex Jones, truther

If these blowhard pretend patriots showed up as a "posse" promising to protect my town, 

A few historical markers of Uninformed Kindergarten Konservatism

We are not citizens of a nation founded by Konservative Intellectuals whose generational grandchildren prance and posture on our national stage nowadays.

To wit …

The American Revolution.

Approximately one third of the colonial population supported the English King George the Third. These Konservatives wanted no disruption. Afraid or trying to hang on to what they felt England had granted them, they did not want national independence. These Kindergarten Konservatives were not our original patriots.

Original American Konservatives supported protection of slavery in our Constitutional Convention. They wanted to count slaves in determining which states would be "slave states" but did not desire that they be citizens with voting rights.  These Kindergarten Konservatives in no way acted as Founding Fathers, rather as enforcers of their own power and influence at the expense of all others.

Our original Konservatives opposed tariffs to protect American manufacturing. In their Kindergarten-ness they were not able to understand any need to develop our own industrial base. They wanted no changes to a system based on cheap slave labor. They were not industrialists, but cash croppers - planters whose profits required no economic equality.

Our historical Kindergarten Konservatives supported “nullification”, which said that states didn’t have to enforce federal laws they didn’t like.  Sound familiar?

Our original Kindergarten Konservatives supported repeal of the Missouri Compromise so as to allow slavery in other states where votes and political clout was more vital than common good.

The ancestors of today's Kindergarten Konservatives opposed the transcontinental railroad, primarily because railroads carried people who might want to work on their own land and who wouldn't want or need slaves in the western territories because it might encourage small farmers who owned no slaves in future non-slave states.

Which is why the Grandpas and Grandmas of today's Kindergarten Konservatives were against the Homestead Act. They didn't want more land-owners turning the American West into a collection of non-slave states.

Those old Kindergarten Konservatives opposed freedom of speech for Southern opponents of slavery. Perish the thought that southern adults and children might hear something other than the Konservative gospel.

And so Kindergarten Konservatives full of pretend patriotism and self-promoting civic piety disagreed with our sacred declaration that “all men are created equal.”  Their Kindergarten civic ideology was that “the black man has no rights the white man is bound to respect.” (Dred Scott v. Sandford), quite possibly the most foolish Kindergarten Konservative legal decision in our national history.

… which led to a  Kindergarten Konservative support of destruction of the union rather than allow any restriction of slavery.

Konservatives were opposed the earliest civil rights legislation to enforce the 14th and 15th amendments. They obstructed, intimidated and harassed newly freed slaves who attempted to exercise their Federal civil rights, including the right to vote … and considered themselves god-fearing, civic-minded moral patriots.

Konservatives were against preserving the union. Back then they wanted secession and they got it.

Konservatives were also aggressively and brutally opposed to industrial workers forming unions. Sound familiar?

The ancestors of today's Kindergarten Konservatives supported the acquisition of foreign colonies

… armed suppression of Filipino independence.

… opposed anti-trust legislation.

… opposed child labor laws.

… opposed universal free public education.

… opposed literacy for African-American citizens, in particular.

… supported the legal theory of “separate but equal”, a sham that led to the establishment of “Jim Crow” in the south.

… opposed state laws guaranteeing minimum wages and restricting working hours for industrial workers.

… opposed the right to vote for women.

Source of reading and thinking ideas: The Conceptual Guerilla

These are the real Moochers among us

These are the Kindergarten worshipers of that false American Exceptionalism that has cause more global and national grief than any noble achievement in the past 60 years.

These are the believers that uncompromising anger is civic wisdom, that blind and unblinking opposition is always better than compromise.

Look where it got them.

Look where it didn't get us quickly enough.

a moral triviality that is not valid and that in no way threatens marriage

I endorse this opinion and wish that I had written something like it.

It's time for all of us, not just our young people, to tell the older bigots that we as a people have had it with all this unnecessary stress on a moral triviality that is not valid and that in no way threatens marriage as a foundational relationship between caring human beings.

Why I hope Conservative Christians Will Fight Gay Marriage Tooth and Nail Till their Teeth and Nails Fall Out

A true Kindergarten Konservative would know about this sort of thing.

They know girly men when they see them, right?
Right! A true Kindergarten Konservative would know about this sort of thing.

Obviously ... based on the stated "castrastatic" definitions, the most macho, smack-em-in-the-face tough-talkin-konservative would be none other than ... are you ready for this?
...Ann Coulter.

Conservative pollster: Nate Silver is wrong because he is ‘thin and effeminate’

Why this Mormon campaigns against the Mormon candidate

When Barack Obama, who wasn't my first choice to win the Democratic nomination in 2008, was nominated, I found myself surprised once I overcame a severe disappointment, and found myself listening to him with rapt attention and a hopeful heart. I found myself wanting him to be for me -  in every way - a repudiation of President Bush, Bush policies and Bush's political party.

But after his election, I had to redefine my heretofore idealistic perception of politcal reality. I had to understand that in seeing and hearing what I wanted to see and hear from Barack Obama, I set myself up for a severe and jolting disillusionment. As President, Barack was not invested in revenge, repudiation and rejection of the self-inflicted 8-year curses a majority of the Ameican voters had twice handed the rest of the country.

Invested in my liberal version of revenge and repudiation, I refused to see Obama as he had always been and never stopped being. He had led me on in that I allowed his speeches to encourage me to vote for him based on my assumption that he and I were on the same page ... when in reality we were not.

My disappointment, however, was greatly assuaged by an expectation of mine that was not disappointed.

Barack Obama - along with his centrist approach that I had not desired nor perceived - brought competence back to the presidency. He brought back intellectual honesty that was not driven nor supported by handlers and manipulators who had conspired to install a semi-intellectual Texan with Ivy League roots in the White House.

That was important to me because whether he disappointed me or not, Barack Obama never once led me to think he was not a capable politician; not up to his tasks and would be someone's puppet  unable to articulate his reasoning.

So for me President Obama - agree with him or disagree with him - is someone who remains predictably reliable to preside in the tradition of all wide presiders with whom I have experience.

Having said that, I want to explain why my most current Mormon political hero is not the republican candidate. Rather it is Senator Harry Reid, who has been willing from the get go to take an aggressive opposition to fellow Mormon Mitt Romney ... and for what I suspect are the same gut reasons that I have.

Senator Reid knows the type well as do I. You can see them in an almost cookie-cutter format passing back and forth between Washington and the Great Basin. Robert Bennet's loss was the country's loss and his replacement is a political joke. Orrin Hatch, whom I have not held in high regard since the early 80's, would be the wiser of the voting choice in Utah compared to the limited political range of his opponent.

I'm sure Harry Reid has seen more of the type in politics and our congregations than I have. However, on any given Sunday in almost any Mormon congregation in America one is likely to encounter some socially conservative opinion of this type expressed in Gospel Doctrine classes or other meetings.

I too have seen and intimately worked around the type within my culture and heritage over my lifetime as a social worker and political activist.

Now Americans must understand that Mormon political candidates are not considered to be among the "the Lord's anointed" and who are not to be criticized ( a practice of respect limited to Church leadership). Mormon politicians do not merit uncritical support or votes just because they share the same beliefs and particularly when the other candidate isn't a Mormon.

Politics and religion can be troublesome where one particular religion is predominant.

In the mid 60's, the Democratic congressman from Idaho, Ralph Harding,  was the commencement speaker at my high school graduation. He later lost his re-election because he spoke out against the connection between then LDS apostle (and former Eisenhower Secretary of Agriculture) Ezra T. Benson and the John Birch Society. Benson's son was the regional authority for the JBS in Utah.

His congressional record was admirable but he lost to another Mormon because in a predominantly Mormon district in Idaho, he was perceived as having dis-respected one of the Lord's anointed. That was then. Nowadays the predominant political views in the red state Rockies where the church has influence are conservative and republican.

I've seen statistics that indicate that a mere 10% of American Mormons are liberal or democrats. Harry Reid, my wife Lietta and I are three of them.

In 1968 my first voting year, I voted for Nixon and repeated that vote in 1972 because McGovern was more pacifist that righteous warrier in my view.

In 1976 I voted for Carter cause I was righteous, Nixon lied, Ford pardoned him, and Carter was religious.

In 1980 I voted for Reagan cause I thought Carter was impotent with the Iranians.

In 1984 I voted for Reagan cause Mondale was Carter's former VP.

In 1988 I voted for George Bush because Dukakis was portrayed as a doofus by Rush Limbaugh (to whom I was listening faithfully on the radio while driving around Multnomah and Clark counties)

In 1992 I voted for Clinton because it was the economy stupid and because it had become obvious that Limbaugh only knew one song but that song had 37 tedious verses to it.

By 1996, realizing that (1) The Republicans only had the Limbaugh hymn to sing and (2) I had far more liberal leanings than conservative, I voted to re-elect Clinton despite the histrionics from that right wing whiners.

So in 2000, when G.W. Bush was singing off key but faithfully as marionetted by Rovians from the Pat Robertson/Jerry Falwell hymnbook, I almost immediately recognized a real doofus when saw one. When a sitting U.S. President and his party lied to us to launch an unnecessary invasion of Iraq, my inner liberal became my crusted hard and scarred outer shell.

If anyone who knows me thinks my opinions have changed or mellowed from the first days of my entry into public activism ... it should be obvious by what I say and do that if anything I have become more predictable and aggressive in my opinions.

In my opinion, the same can be said for candidate Romney.

If you think somehow that a sober, serious and statesmanlike sense of kindness, tolerance and social justice has somehow alighted on his politically aspiring shoulders in these past few weeks or months ... you are naive and whistling in the dark.

That same tactless and arbitrary spirit that has been part and parcel of his style - the spirit he has manifested many times during the campaign when responding to people who disagreed with him - that same spirit would be with him in his new exaltation should he win.

"Boston Spirit magazine reported last month that when gay activists met with him in his office in 2004, as Romney was backing a failed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage in the state, Romney remarked, 'I didn't know you had families.' 

Julie Goodridge, lead plaintiff in the landmark case that won marriage rights for gays and lesbians before the Supreme Judicial Court, asked what she should tell her 8-year-old daughter about why the governor would block the marriage of her parents. 

According to Goodridge, Romney responded, 'I don't really care what you tell your adopted daughter. Why don't you just tell her the same thing you've been telling her the last eight years.'

Romney's retort enraged a speechless Goodridge; he didn't care, and by referring to her biological daughter as 'adopted,' it was clear he hadn't even been listening.

By the time she was back in the hallway, she was reduced to tears. 'I really kind of lost it,' says Goodridge. 'I've never stood before someone who had no capacity for empathy.'" - Michelangelo Signorile Editor-at-large, HuffPost Gay Voices

I suspect that many Mormons who know me are mystified by my hostility towards this particular Mormon politician and that is not something over which I have any control or desire to control. The one thing we cannot do is control how our words and attitudes are perceived by others no matter how hard we try.

It seems much safer to simply accept the idea that honesty is the best policy. The safest thing I can do for anyone who gets close to me - especially if flames are shooting from my eyes and lips - is to flat out declare that what you see and hear from me is who and what I am.

I have no problems with a Mormon becoming President of the United States. But not this particular Mormon candidate at this particular time.

if this particular public morality sense is pervasive

If this isn't a "party" thing that contrasts the social philosophy of each party and if this particular public morality sense is pervasive... then I really would like to know how many democrat candidates agree with these republican candidates.

15 GOP Candidates Oppose Abortion Access for Rape Victims