Category Archives: Politics

The God People

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We’re getting ready to move. It could be next month, or it might be next spring.

Mary has been going through piles of stuff that’s collected over the last two decades. She’s done a great job of winnowing down the clutter that grows over a lifetime of saving things, thinking that there might be a better use for them.

Some of what she pulled out over the weekend came from that period in our lives when we were God People. That was more than 30 years ago.

We actually moved halfway across the country to congregate with other God People at a place where we were supposed to learn new things about this God. The leader man sold us on his place by telling us one time that he knew more about God than anyone else.

The God place in Indiana

The God place in Indiana

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The Real Corporate Candidate

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A week ago, I received an invitation to attend a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton. It came from a relative on my wife’s side of the family. Apparently she figured I’d be an easy target, simply assuming I’d be supporting Clinton because of the alternative, Donald Trump.

This kind of thinking has galled me for months. The idea that we must vote for Hillary because of the specter of a Trump presidency is typical either/or thinking that I’ve been subjected to ever since I first started voting in 1980. It’s also more of the usual reasoning that you get from spineless liberals. More on that further down in the post.

Two pathologically-damaged choices for president.

Two pathologically-damaged choices for president.

I don’t run around touting faux socialists for president like some of my friends did prior to Bernie Sanders going in the tank for Mrs. Clinton. I’m also clear on Clinton’s neoliberal policies designed to further dash the hopes of working class people across the U.S., something that so-called working class advocates from Maine that I’ve written about on this blog seem to have missed. Democrats will be Democrats, however.

Oh, and do I need to do the usual kabuki dance and list all the Republican’s political peccadilloes? They should be fairly obvious, but then again, given the drivel I’m reading about “Hillary must win, no matter what,” I’m not so sure.

Hillary Clinton has long been seen as the heir apparent to an ineffective, two-term president. Mr. Hope and Change has delivered little and dashed any hopes thinking people may have had about America. What passed for change was negligible at best. Continue reading →

Hot in Cleveland

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I’ve never been to Cleveland. I did drive a U-Haul truck through the middle of the city on a couple of occasions between Mike Pence’s Indiana and Maine. They tell me that the GOP is having their convention in the place where rock and roll is lionized, at least by the arbiters at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

I do remember a night from Cleveland’s past, filled with smoke and burning records. That took place at a strange intersection where baseball and disco came together—at a stadium by the lake that’s a mere memory.

Rock and Roll and disco are like oil and water.

Rock and Roll and disco are like oil and water.

Not much to say today, at least nothing that I can say that won’t get me on the wrong side of the PC fence from the real fascists and censors.

I did have the strangest of dreams last night. I was at the Democratic National Convention and I was supporting Hillary in the most lukewarm sort of ways. Oddly, she had morphed from the frumpy and shrill, to slender (in a female volleyball player’s body) and unassuming. All the attendees were pudgy white males and women worshiping their queen. Bernie Sanders’ gang were not present, so no graying ponytails. Continue reading →

The 5th Always Follows the 4th

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While the candidates for president were out and about on the 4th of July, lying to American voters, I spent the long weekend uncharacteristically relaxing, even attending a wonderful family gathering and cookout hosted by “the hostess with the mostest,” Aunt Tomato.

Alas, another work week’s begun. There are still a few jobs to be done in what remains of the Republic.

In this age of truncation and Twitter, I thought something I read in Jay Parini’s biography of Gore Vidal was fitting and Twitter-ific. It was also noteworthy enough to break my silence on politics here at the JBE.

Vidal (just prior to the nation’s Bicentennial year, working on his new book at the time, 1876) was being interviewed by Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes, and he gave an answer to Wallace about the reporter’s claim that Vidal was being overly cynical about the nation’s fate at the time, 40 years before we’d suffer from an election choice of Clinton vs. Trump.

Vidal explained that “cheap labor and cheap energy” were gone, and the results would be dire. He continued, “We’re never going to have that again. We’re going to have to have less gross national product, not more.” Prescient, I’d say.

Promising things they can't deliver.

Promising things they can’t deliver.

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Claiming Your Deck Space

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A month ago, I decided to take a break from writing about anything overtly political. I’m glad I did, as the last few weeks have allowed me to step away from the shrill pitch and tenor of our national debate about which candidate (s) is less tainted than the others. Today, I’ll covertly brush up alongside the topic, albeit briefly.

Be careful where you place your deck chair.

Be careful where you place your deck chair.

Whenever you frame things in an either/or paradigm, you severely limit possibilities for change. Merely mentioning “hope and change” won’t alter a thing, unless you open up a dialogue vastly different that the current one centered on maintaining the American status quo. To do so would require all of us (not just the “other side”) to dramatically reorient how we think and ultimately, how we live. No one (save for a few) are willing to do this. Instead, we’re left with re-arranging deck chairs, to reference one of my favorite writers/bloggers, John Michael Greer. I’d highly recommend this week’s post, about merely “rearranging the deck chairs,” once more. Better, bookmark The Archdruid Report, and spend some time working your way back through what I consider some of the most thoughtful writing out there on the interwebs, about our present malaise. Continue reading →

Sitting on Our High Horses

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Politics often turn into morality plays. Each side sees their cause/candidate as morally superior to the other. That’s particularly problematic when the choice is a binary one.

In my opinion, it’s a shame how historically illiterate we’ve become. We seem to have forgotten our past. It shouldn’t be too hard to look back 50 years and see parallels between a candidate like Donald Trump, with appeals made to white, working-class people, and a Democrat (who later ran as an third party candidate) like George Wallace.

Of course, the brain-addled, responding like dogs to a whistle, immediately whip out their “racist” or “fascist” signs when presented with Wallace’s name because they’ve been trained to do so. Partly this is due to the small-minded lacking the ability to go any broader than that. You shouldn’t feel too bad. Wallace got the same treatment 50 years ago from the same groups of people, mainly the elite media, liberals, and other high-minded types.

There are several books that look at Wallace much more broadly than do leftist media heroes with an agenda—like Rachel Maddow at MSNBC. She’s probably one of the best at taking a thimble worth of history and turning it into that night’s hour-long screed against her chosen villain. Here’s the CliffsNotes version: Republicans were stupid before and now, they are stupid again.

Even Amy Goodman, who I once thought had some journalistic integrity, seems intent of painting with a brush designed to obfuscate rather than illuminate. Ah, the American media—mainstream or the alt-variety—as useless as they’ve ever been. Continue reading →

An Angry Nation Awaits

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I remember J.C. Watts as a nimble quarterback, running Barry Switzer’s Oklahoma Sooners’ wishbone offense around the same time I was firing fastballs past opposition hitters. This was 1979 or 1980, and OU played a brand of football that valued the run and a quarterback that ran first and passing was secondary. Much different than today’s throw-happy college and pro games.

Watts would later go on and play in the Canadian Football League after college. What he’s best known for however, is his time as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, where he represented Oklahoma’s 4th district from 1995 until 2003. A Republican and a conservative, Watts was the only African-American during the mid-1990s who did not join the Congressional Black Caucus.

It’s interesting how important it has become for blacks like Watts to toe some kind of political line and align monolithically with Democrats. They are supposed to be liberals, and favor government giveaways and all manner of shibboleths that have become the equivalent of commandments over the past 50 years.

I caught Watts being interviewed Wednesday morning by Greta Brawner on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal program. The topic was Trump and the damage that Il Duce is inflicting on the party that Watts is still a member of.

A former athlete and most recently, a politician, Watts is also an ordained minister. He’s articulate and soft-spoken—qualities that Mr. Trump hasn’t exhibited at all during his scorched earth tour for president. Continue reading →

My Mind’s Made Up

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Politics makes otherwise decent people take leave of their senses. Nowhere is this truer than during the horserace leading up to presidential elections. Discussions of religious matters comes in a distant second, I think.

I was reading something in the blogosphere and the writer mentioned that “Irrationality is the foundation of our national politics, fueled by subjective preferences.” I would agree.

What other explanation is there for the constant haranguing of the other side on Facebook? “My candidate is better than your candidate,” and vice versa. Liberals malign conservatives, and conservatives bash liberals. Back and forth it goes. There is a certain smugness that accompanies one’s choice, also. Continue reading →

Political Spectacle

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My inclination this morning was to talk about something other than last night’s Republican debate and the second rate nature of the candidates who showed up. It’s so easy these days, during the latter days of empire and covering its politics—whether you’re a famed journalist, or an obscure blogger—to simply talk about you-know-who, the presidential candidate in the room who garners all the attention, even when he decides to take his ball with him and not show up. I decided to go with the latter. I’m not proud about it, either.

After working last night at a part-time job I picked up in December, I got home after 9:00 and flicked on the television. Like millions of other Americans, I was intrigued to know how the debate was going without the star of this year’s presidential horse race. Also, I wanted to see how things were going wherever Mr. Trump took his ball, and went off to play with it.

On what was originally intended to be the evening’s big political event when it originally was scheduled by Fox News, Donald Trump again turned this year’s election protocol and rules upside-down. His fans loved it, as they always do, irrespective of what Mr. Trump says and does.

"Please vote for me!!"

“Please vote for me!!” (Doug Mills photo/New York Times)

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Bernie and the Bible

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Say what you want about Bernie Sanders, he’s determined to get his message out to a wide swath of Americans, even evangelical Xians. What, you mean that Hillary Clinton isn’t courting the vote of Bible-believing types? The answer would be a resounding, “no!” But I don’t want to talk about Hillary today (or any other day, really).

Bernie, the Bible expositor.

Bernie, the Bible expositor.

On Monday, the socialist Sanders was on the campus founded by Moral Majority leader, Jerry Falwell. Falwell’s the guy that said this about terrorists and also, Larry Flynt had this to say about Falwell and his mother. I’m not sure how either is related, exactly. I do know that any progressive Democrat campaigning for president must assume that they’re not going to carry the evangelical voting bloc, so most don’t bother to address it, period. So kudos to the socialist, running as a Democrat! Continue reading →