A Modest Proposal For January 2014

Soooo…. the news.  The NEWS?  The gnu’s? The newz?

I am reasonably well read.  I take the St. Louis Post Dispatch out of sympathy and sense of obligation.  I read the Wall Street Journal Every Day.  I get the New Yorker Weekly.  I listen to NPR almost incessantly in my car and in a vain effort to understand my brother I listen Glenn Beck several hours a week.  I watch “Meet The Press” every Sunday and follow it up with Fox’s weekly news show.  Sometimes I scramble home from work to watch the national news at 5:30.  Historically, I try and stay away from the freestanding silos of cable news but there was a dark period during the last election where I would watch FOX or MSNBC as I got dressed but that was too depressing on all counts.  The point is, historically, I  like the news.

But that seems to be changing.  I really enjoy the local NPR station, The provide a lot of news and although they are not “Fair and Balanced” they provide different voices and often illustrate that there are two sides to issues and that some have “nuances’. I do not find them particularly liberal but understand myself well enough to realize I have become indoctrinated.  I generally believe that:

1.  Everyone should have health care

2.  Immigration, even illegal immigration has made our country great and we need to let this latest group of criminals in.

3.  Government holds the potential of improving peoples lives in some limited situations.

4.  I do not believe that corporations have constitutional rights or that the founders intended same.

5.  I do not believe that money is “speech” or that the founders intended same.

6.  I think I live in the greatest country in the world at the best possible time to be alive.

7.  I think my children’s future and the countries future is what we, and they make it.

So I guess that makes me a pinko but as I said, I have some awareness of my socialist/communist/progressive/Christian leanings.  The Post Dispatch I am told is a liberal publication but I just think of it as a shitty publication.  Their own editorials are all liberal, some stupidly so but they publish Krautheimer and George Will and David Brooks as well as the liberal columnists.  Almost every day they publish a letter from a reader  going off on the President so, they try and show some other sides but more than anything, it is just a bad paper with a lot of Associated Press stories, no analysis and trivial local coverage.  As I have stated in the past…”you can wrap fish in it.”

The Wall Street Journal is awesome for international coverage and runs a steady drumbeat of “the colored boy is ruining the country” in it’s domestic reporting and editorials.  But I like it as far as providing a more intellectual right wing point of view as well as the best international coverage.  Better than the Times.  I do not agree with their editorial page much but it is well  written and often well argued.  I believe that The Hoover Institution at Stanford exists solely for the purpose of turning out Wall Street Journal Editorial page fodder.  But I like it.  It challenges me.  This is good.  Rupert Murdoch and Fox own the Journal but it still has a modicum of journalistic integrity. Murdoch's ownership and his influence has compromised that as any owners politically leaning effect the editors who have their paychecks signed by them.  I can live with that.

Fox is less than useless.  A drum beat of pretty and angry woman and spluttering, overcompensating, self important, effeminate, angry men.  They are fair and balanced like a lynch mob and their “We Report, You Decide” along with “Fair and Balanced” provide the best example of Orwellian NewSpeak, other than “The Affordable Care Act” and “Operation Freedom”.

Glenn Beck is a demagogue and an entertainer who makes money by making people frightened.  I guess in a free country that is acceptable but as a Christian American I abhor the politics of fear that he spreads.  It is not a source of news and his “Blaze” web site and TV channel are more than shameful but… it is a free country.  The “fat man on the radio” Rush Limbaugh is no different.  They set up false narratives that support their agendas but never be confused, their agenda is to make money by feeding the people in their silo.  A false narrative is something along the lines of citing a school in Omaha sending a kid home for waving around a picture of a gun as evidence of the FACT that America has become irrationally intolerant of guns and violence.  

http://consortiumnews.com/2013/04/18/the-power-of-false-narratives/

But lately I have been suffering fatigue.  It has been building since 2008 but the 2012 election capped it and since then it has been once again a steady drumbeat and it is starting to fill me with anxiety… and a little dread.

Obamacare

Debt Crisis

Shut Down

Sustainable Energy

Iraq

Benghazi

Nuclear Option

North Korea

Climate Change (go ahead and argue it’s made up...I dare you)

The next debt ceiling increase

Fill in the blank

_____________________________

Everything is a pile of shit.  Government has failed, the Fed has failed, big banks have failed, “Mainstream Media”...FAILED, FOX...failed, our schools have failed, curtailing gun violence, FAILED, Mid Eastern Policy, FAILED… it goes on and on with everyone attacking everyone else and no one listening or working with anyone who disagrees with them because listening and compromise are SIGNS OF WEAKNESS! The idea that all of these problems are complex and do not allow simple solutions are an anathema to the way all these media/news/entertainers make their livings.  

It is starting to make me mentally ill and all who know me would say MORE mentally ill and no one needs that.  It literally makes me jittery to turn on NPR and when I switch over to FOX it is worse.  Everyone is so earnest and so genuine and everything is not just a disaster for me and my family but is a disaster for our grandchildren AND OUR IMMORTAL SOULS!  

Really?  Can anything be that important?  More to the point, is EVERYTHING so important?  Can EVERYTHING be threatening our democracy, our environment, our morals and of course OUR CHILDREN!?!?  The answer is obvious and the answer is no.  I like being informed but these guys have screwed the pooch.  I am a Christian.  My hope is for the future and my faith is in God and his plan.  I cannot continue to be thrashed by this litany of “EVERYTHING IS HOPELESS AND WE NEED TO BUY GOLD, STORE FOOD AND BUY GUNS”!  It seems wrong to me but it also seems wrong to rail against the people who believe this.  There a time when we just ignored crazy people in our country.  Now we elect them, give them microphones and we read their blogs and often give them money.

I am not going to create the answer but as a news junky I am going to try 30 days without news.  No Post, No Wall Street Journal, Music in my car and perhaps some time alone with the Bible on Sunday mornings before church.  Maybe some books on tape or TED talks or something...anything.  I do not know if I can do this.  Also, if there is news on in my vicinity I will try not to listen.  I will be happy to discuss things with people who are tuned in but I really am going to try to read some of the books that have stacked up on my shelf and spend a little bit more time in contemplation. It is going to take some planning and I am inviting you to do the same thing.  Opt out.  30 days.  We can encourage one another if you're brave enough.  Let’s reclaim our anxiety and breathe deeply and avoid these earnest, well intentioned new sources predicting our doom. Just for a month.  Unless it feels too good to stop.  If you are of a mind join me.  

I would like to say, “See you in the funny papers” but I think I am going to duck those too.

Peace.

Election Irritability: What Program Will You Cut and How Much?

Soooo....one week to go. As regular readers (and I do thank all 7 of you) know I have been rather silent lately. Part of the reason has to do with starting a new law practice and traveling a lot like I do not even need to make a living. Trips to Austin, Cancun, Michigan etc... leave little contemplative time and when coupled with trying to work enough to keep body and soul together there is very little time to watch and observe food, travel, music, life and of course politics. Which brings us to the real reason I have not written...politics.

We are just coming off the long dark tea time of the NPR pledge drive where I listen to Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Jamie Allman... the angry cynical chick on talk radio around lunch... and the whole sick experiment has left me even more tired then ususal and more hopeless then I have felt since the start of W's second term. Never has the discourse been so vile, low, stupid and without hope and all of this in the greatest country in the world.

Roy Blount and June Carnahan... What programs are you going to cut and how much? And don't tell me healthcare... it has not brought us here.

I feel for the arguments that are supposed to be at the core of the tea party. Smaller government. Living within our means and self reliance are all great traditional American values. Not religious values but really, REALLY good things. But seriously, where were you fucking people when Ronald Reagan, Bush the Elder and the born again moderate Bill Clinton and then Dubya were ramping up spending at a monstrous level and even Saint Reagan increasing governments size and budget deficit (with the exception of a few Clinton years every year? And every year we elect the same people who say "I am going to cut waste and fraud". That is bullshit. The political class makes it's bones every day on waste and fraud. THEY NEVER CUT WASTE AND FRAUD! But we are going to elect Christine O'Donnell and re-elect Michelle Bachman and elect that crazy chick running in Arizona because these people are serious? These are the ones who will do it?

Ed Martin and Russ Carnahan, what programs are you going to cut and how much? Ed, I don't care that you were a politcal fixer for a governor who was smart enough to quit before his secrets made him a target and Russ... well Russ, i do not care about you at all.

I want to believe it. I am a bleeding heart liberal. My religion causes me to think that Jesus would want all people to have health care (even illegal aliens) but I know the government cannot afford it, anymore then it can afford wars of choice in the middle east. I like health care more then war with a couple of trillion but it is not affordable and sustainable BUT if we can send a few thousand American boys off to be killed and in the process destabelize a region so hundreds of thousands of their people can be killed and they can legitimately blame us for it while paying trillions to do it... I will take health care (even for illegal aliens).

And now we have this silly, silly election. In my life they have always said the same thing about election cycles. In every non presidential election 40% of the country dictates their displeasure and in the next election cycle 60% decide they did not like what the 40%. Well we are in a 40% year. I will vote but many of the crazies who voted for Obama will not come out and cheer for their local congressman and Senators. I do not blame them. they are an uninspiring bunch. the only thing less inspiring is their Republican dopplegangers who are there to rescind, remand, undo, unfund and stop Obama Care. Reinstitute tax breaks for everyone and shut down government. That will work well. The minute someone's mom misses a social security check... heads will roll.

And therein lies the lie of the tea party. They want to cut government but not the government that serves them. they decry socialism but take social security, unemployment, medicare and every tax break they are entitled to and they ARE entitled to their breaks. But the others...the LAZY ones who "take advantage" of the system.... their support needs to be cut. If smaller government is the goal (and it is an honorable goal) there is only only question EVERY candidate should be asked. Which programs will you cut and by how much? The follow up being if you are going to cut taxes what dollar for dollar cuts will you make in programs to justify those cuts. But forget the follow up. Ask you candidate, which programs will you cut and how much? Which programs will you cut and how much? Which programs will you cut and how much? (Repetition is a rhetorical device). If they cannot answer and if they answer with bullshit platitudes like they are going to stop earmarks and cut waste and fraud... then they are the frauds. Call them out. Republicans, Democrats, a pox on both their houses. I will vote Democrat again and hold my nose because their politics seem slightly less stupid, slightly less selfish in concept and frankly slightly less mean.

20 years of Republicans enlarging of government (the last 20) but it takes a black President to unite the anger over big government and the self righteous bullshit about selling out our kids futures. Now the Tea Party wants us to believe that their politicians have gotten religion. Being co-opted by the Republican party illegitimizes their goals. I get the anger, I am angry too, but until our culture changes, the institutions cannot change. Changes at the top are pure laziness. If you cannot pull our country together by it's core values of inclusion, hard work, charity, self reliance and compassion then we will keep electing leaders who reflect our broken sense of values.

Change youself and become a better person. train your kids to be better persons, discuss being a better person with your friends and what you (and they) can do to make a better Country. Then our leadership can make a meaningful change. In the interim...ask these hypocritical son's of bitches...which program would you cut and how much? Then wait for a real answer.