Long Time, No Pee

Sorry. Chalk it up to writer's block. Here are some thoughts from my long nap:

In the age of Trump it’s become fashionable to fret about the imminent threat of authoritarianism in the US. But where is the threat coming from? On the right, of course, we have the rowdy band of outlaws that breached the Capitol walls on January 6, 2021, epitomized in the popular imagination by the Proud Boys, a small fringy group of angry white men, allegedly under the influence of Q-Anon, a small fringy social media platform. They would like to see a return to American founding principles like individual liberty and limited government (defined by the other side as “White Supremacy” and “Systemic Racism”). They have no power and zero influence over policy decisions in the United States, or anywhere else.


On the left we have Antifa and Black Lives Matter, but also the mayors, city councils, and school boards of virtually every major American city, nearly all the country’s universities, unions, government bureaucrats, corporate titans, community organizers, intellectuals, movie stars, late night talk show hosts, and the United States Senate, firmly in the thrall of the New York Times, the Washington Post, the AP, NPR, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, Facebook, Twitter, and the rest of our social and mainstream media (that is, the ones that haven’t been canceled). These people run the country, make the policies, and have declared a religious duty to erase any vestige or penumbra of racial, sexual, or environmental grievance, as well as any views to the contrary.

And they mean to keep it that way. So, again, where is the threat of authoritarianism coming from?

The Unbearable Lightness of Liberalism

In 2008, half the people who watched the Fox News Channel were over sixty-three, which is the oldest demographic in the cable-news business, and, according to a poll, the majority of the ones who watched the most strident programs, such as Sean Hannity’s and Bill O’Reilly’s shows, were men. All that chesty fulminating apparently functions as political Cialis. Fox News shows should probably carry a warning: Contact your doctor if you have rage lasting more than four hours.

Louis Menand in the New Yorker, Nov. 2, 2009

You’d never guess that, age, race, and gender-wise, Louis Menand is right in the middle of the demographic he holds in such contempt. In his rhetoric, and no doubt his estimation of his own virility, Menand is still the young Turk of his student days. And still, it appears, prone to the lazy logic of sophomore liberalism, which leads him to induce that Fox is bad because it attracts an audience of older white men; i.e., the bad guys.

I envy liberals the ease with which they are able to demonize their enemies while certifying their own moral machismo. Surely there’s no easier target than old white men; they’re the proverbial fish in the liberal barrel, the only ethnicity excluded from the Diversity Club. No need really to throw in the Cialis dig; New Yorker readers already share Menand’s scorn for these guys. That’s just piling on.

How nice it must be to be a liberal pundit or politician. No need to be funny or smart; all you have to do is toss off a few proper nouns from the party-approved punch list, guaranteed to put the tribe into hooting, stomping, fist-pumping delirium. Bush (Boo! Hiss!). Cheney (Aargh!). Haliburton (Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho!). Rush Limbaugh (Chortle! Snort!). In less than a dozen syllables, you can have the crowd up on their feet and ready to follow you out the door to the barricades.

Or, in this case, down to the Fox Broadcasting Studios.

Got My Bark Back

OK. I'm OK. I've calmed down. I think I'm getting my bark back. Sorry about that. Let's see, where to start? H1N1 hysteria? The Fed stimulus gusher? Presidential pussy-footing in Afganistan? Kulongoski's greening of Oregon (while fleecing the taxpayers)? Gay wedding bells?

Or how about the Issue du Jour: health care reform? Now there's something I know about. My most recent health care experience cost Mr. B. $87 for a rabies shot and a lecture from the vet about my, um, full figure (I think they're carrying this obesity thing a bit far, don't you? After all, I am a Newfie!). Health care costs at my house are going up faster than Al Gore's CO2 emissions, and I don't see anything in the 2,000 page "Affordable Health Care for America Act" that is going to reform that.

Aaargh. Grrugh. Uh oh. Starting to feel a little hoarse . . . .

Barf

That's what comes out when I start to say "bark" but end up with "arf." It happened again this morning as I was reading this alarming report in The O. Further proof, if any was needed, of the demise of intelligent life in Oregon. With our economy flatlining, public services bankrupt, and education system in the ditch, the poodles in Salem have decided to tackle a problem they really know something about: bullying. Courtesy, once again, of Corvallis Democrat Sara Gelser (see "Teechur tuchd mi brest," below), who is turning into a one-woman children’s crusade. Read House Bill 2599 and weep; words just fail me now.

The more things change . . .

Oh wait. Turns out Mr. O and the Dems do have a strategy after all: Declare war on Rush Limbaugh! That should fix things. Of course, Rush is not quite Bush. He’s not even a politician. But he is, says media muse and Clintonian Holy Man Paul Begala, “the bloated face and drug-addled voice of the Republican Party.” I guess any piñata will do in a pinch.

So the Party of Peace and Tolerance will now take a short time out from running the country to administer a good thumping to drugs, obesity, and conservatism. Democrats always were better at bashing things than fixing things. Some things never change.

Change We Can Believe In

It’s easier to be in opposition than in power, as Barack Obama and his team of geniuses are finding out this week. Heaping scorn on Bush and Halliburton was a great strategy for getting elected; not so much for running a country. It turns out that the economy, not Gitmo or warrantless wiretapping, is The Big Issue.

Alas, Democrats don’t have a clue about economics. Every word they speak and every bill they pass just reminds all the smart people to take whatever money they have left and bury it in the back yard until the grown-ups return to Washington. Fortunately, the editors of the Wall Street Journal are able to explain things (read it here), in language even Democrats can understand.

"Teechur tuchd mi brest"

Oregon school kids have a new BFF in the state legislature. Teacher’s mean? School’s boring? Dog ate your homework? No problem. Just say “He touched me there.” (Or, alternatively, “She touched me there.” We celebrate diversity in Oregon). That’ll show teacher who’s the boss, get you off the hook for any under-performance issues (spelling, for instance), and, with any luck, produce a tidy cash kickback for mom, dad and the family lawyer.

For this you can thank Sara Gelser (D-Corvallis) and the other poodles down in Salem who have bravely put aside the effort to salvage the state’s wrecked economy in order to rescue Oregon school children from a menacing horde of randy teachers. They’ve cooked up no less than seven new bills to broaden the reach of the sex police and prescribe “appropriate” behavior for the rest of us (example: “Don’t invade their personal space”). They also plan to raise the age of consent to infinity and do away with any pesky policies intended to protect teachers from having their lives ruined by unsubstantiated accusations. No more of that nonsense if this legislature has its way.

It’s a big problem. According to The Oregonian (don’t you love the way They capitalize the article?), a whopping .0002% of Oregon’s 35,000 licensed teachers were convicted of “crimes involving sexual or physical contact with a child” last year. Sexual or physical contact being rather broadly defined these days, that could include anything from sodomy to a sly wink. Of course the sleuths at the O, who have been dogging this issue for several years now, believe that’s just the tip of the iceberg. If we start monitoring teacher’s emails and dissecting their Facebook pages, we might be able to get that number up to .0004%.

Imagine what these people could do if they turned their guns on a real problem. Does it really make sense to be sermonizing about the need for quality teachers while making the profession toxic to any sane person? Or screaming incessantly for more money for schools while opening the floodgates to a tsunami of costly litigation? As they used to say in Oregon, that dog don’t hunt.