Both Sides (sic)
Posted: Mon Feb 04, 2019 11:40 pm
Long, Ranty, Political, full disclosure.
My father visited me at college one time, total, not for graduation nor dropoff, but to see a show I was in. He camped in for the weekend, saw the show, sat down for an extremely memorable D&D session, hung out in my suite, drinking and telling stories. Davy Lopes had crashed in his apartment for a month or so when he retired from the majors (His brother Al, Dad's bestie at the time, couldn't stand his snoring) Dad traveled a lot for the phone company, and was easy to drink with and talk to. He had lots of practice, and he hung out with lots of nearly famous people. The last story of the night was about his dinner with Chuck Colson, who bragged that it was probably his bullet that killed JFK.
This was a turning point in my political evolution. Dad was a Republican. I had written a paper in sixth grade explaining why Nixon was way better than McGovern (mostly because the kid who used to watch me when I came home from school died in Vietnam less than a year after he went, and getting rid of the folks responsible seemed like a good idea when I was 11.)
Without digging, but just finally paying attention, I totally soured on everything I had basically inherited.
Fun fact: The question of my parent's generation was "Where were you when JFK was shot?" Everybody remembered vividly. Two people I'm aware of have edited their original answers: Richard Nixon, and GHW Bush. Maybe just political parsing... Opportunity to release the files came and went last year. Just saying. Do I think RFK, and MLK too. ya. Not without data. At the time, it was our M.O. in every banana republic in this hemisphere and beyond. You don't think they tried it here? Then why does it seem like we're closer and closer to a banana republic?
You know how ex-smokers are the worst about smoking, because they taste that stuff on their teeth for years afterward? Ya. Betrayal does that.
I was not about to become a Dem. because Will Rogers has always been right about them. It's big news when they stick together. Having said that, provincial ideas and pettiness are ungodly annoying, but not fundamentally toxic.
Three recent presidents and/or the people around them have been factually implicated in functional treason, events where Americans specifically suffered or died because they conspired with a foreign power. With this last, we're not sure of American casualties, but certainly some CIA are among them. Mostly, it was to win elections. They have all been Republicans.
The real reason Clinton wasn't thrown out? Because they couldn't seat a speaker that hadn't done exactly the same, or worse, the last one is in jail for molestation. The double standard is disgusting.
I'm not pretending that Democrats are honest or smart or sensible or right. I'm objecting to the false equivalency that moves one party to boot a senator who has any taint of harassment, and the other party to appoint someone with a clearly worse record to the Supreme Court.
Whether the blackface guy resigns, or not, one party has the decency to be at least ostensibly upset. If he was a Republican, they would be closing ranks.
They are not ethically the same. One party is quantitatively responsible for deeper inequality, of every kind. One party is about moving us closer to plutocracy (Take a look at Koch brothers' manifesto).
I really couldn't care less about whether it's fundamentally a lie about race, or a lie about tradition, or a lie about protecting women, or Speaker Hindenburg (Paul Ryan's) contention that "This is family" regarding stonewalling on Russia. They are cowardly (where the F is Kasich?) or fundamentally disconnected and selfish, at best co-dependent, and they have been involved in a vast conspiracy to shove most of us into a Soylent Green situation for half a century now. It's about grabbing power and wealth for themselves. You/we are not invited. Regardless of how good a shot Colsen was, the joke's on him, he wasn't invited either.
The craziest democrat would be a better policy choice, if only because there would be an actual conversation, like in a public square. I love that they suck at keeping secrets. We're all safer that way.
My father visited me at college one time, total, not for graduation nor dropoff, but to see a show I was in. He camped in for the weekend, saw the show, sat down for an extremely memorable D&D session, hung out in my suite, drinking and telling stories. Davy Lopes had crashed in his apartment for a month or so when he retired from the majors (His brother Al, Dad's bestie at the time, couldn't stand his snoring) Dad traveled a lot for the phone company, and was easy to drink with and talk to. He had lots of practice, and he hung out with lots of nearly famous people. The last story of the night was about his dinner with Chuck Colson, who bragged that it was probably his bullet that killed JFK.
This was a turning point in my political evolution. Dad was a Republican. I had written a paper in sixth grade explaining why Nixon was way better than McGovern (mostly because the kid who used to watch me when I came home from school died in Vietnam less than a year after he went, and getting rid of the folks responsible seemed like a good idea when I was 11.)
Without digging, but just finally paying attention, I totally soured on everything I had basically inherited.
Fun fact: The question of my parent's generation was "Where were you when JFK was shot?" Everybody remembered vividly. Two people I'm aware of have edited their original answers: Richard Nixon, and GHW Bush. Maybe just political parsing... Opportunity to release the files came and went last year. Just saying. Do I think RFK, and MLK too. ya. Not without data. At the time, it was our M.O. in every banana republic in this hemisphere and beyond. You don't think they tried it here? Then why does it seem like we're closer and closer to a banana republic?
You know how ex-smokers are the worst about smoking, because they taste that stuff on their teeth for years afterward? Ya. Betrayal does that.
I was not about to become a Dem. because Will Rogers has always been right about them. It's big news when they stick together. Having said that, provincial ideas and pettiness are ungodly annoying, but not fundamentally toxic.
Three recent presidents and/or the people around them have been factually implicated in functional treason, events where Americans specifically suffered or died because they conspired with a foreign power. With this last, we're not sure of American casualties, but certainly some CIA are among them. Mostly, it was to win elections. They have all been Republicans.
The real reason Clinton wasn't thrown out? Because they couldn't seat a speaker that hadn't done exactly the same, or worse, the last one is in jail for molestation. The double standard is disgusting.
I'm not pretending that Democrats are honest or smart or sensible or right. I'm objecting to the false equivalency that moves one party to boot a senator who has any taint of harassment, and the other party to appoint someone with a clearly worse record to the Supreme Court.
Whether the blackface guy resigns, or not, one party has the decency to be at least ostensibly upset. If he was a Republican, they would be closing ranks.
They are not ethically the same. One party is quantitatively responsible for deeper inequality, of every kind. One party is about moving us closer to plutocracy (Take a look at Koch brothers' manifesto).
I really couldn't care less about whether it's fundamentally a lie about race, or a lie about tradition, or a lie about protecting women, or Speaker Hindenburg (Paul Ryan's) contention that "This is family" regarding stonewalling on Russia. They are cowardly (where the F is Kasich?) or fundamentally disconnected and selfish, at best co-dependent, and they have been involved in a vast conspiracy to shove most of us into a Soylent Green situation for half a century now. It's about grabbing power and wealth for themselves. You/we are not invited. Regardless of how good a shot Colsen was, the joke's on him, he wasn't invited either.
The craziest democrat would be a better policy choice, if only because there would be an actual conversation, like in a public square. I love that they suck at keeping secrets. We're all safer that way.