Checklist

Let’s check in on how the candidates in the Republican primary are reacting to the tragedy in France.

ü  Using it to attack gun control measures anywhere in the world.
ü  Using it to stir up anti-immigrant sentiment everywhere in the world.
ü  Trying to convince us that all two billion or so Muslims in the world are our enemies.
ü  Blaming it on Obama.
ü  Blaming it on Hillary.
ü  Strongly implying that it will happen here if a Democrat is elected president.
ü  Advocating for war against somebody, anybody.
ü  Basically attempting to use it to their personal advantage instead of expressing any sincere regret and honest offers of support.

Business as usual for modern-day Republicans:  trying their best to convince us that the world is out to get us and only they can protect us from it.  It wasn’t always like this.  But the days when there were some moderate, sensible, rational Republicans are gone, and it appears they’re not coming back.

I’m old enough to remember when Republicans were generally reluctant to send American troops abroad. Now that’s hard to imagine. Now they love to threaten war.  They seem to think it makes them appear tough.  Kind of like the weird little guy in the neighborhood who owns a pit bull.

If Republican politicians actually had to fight wars themselves, I suspect their attitude might be different, but that’s not the case.  Since most of the boots on the ground will be on the feet of individuals from the lower economic ranks, it’s a win-win from their point of view. Fewer takers means more for the makers.

Never mind that a nation can only truly go to war with another nation, not with a collection of individuals living in different countries among civilian populations, and that to effectively fight ISIS (or ISIL if you prefer) will require a long-term strategy of international cooperation, intelligence gathering and analysis, and judicious and often covert use of military and quasi-military force. 

Much easier to go to war with somebody.  It’s the epitome of Republican public policy: ineffective, counter-productive, wasteful, expensive, they and their friends can make money from it, and they can get away with not paying for it.  

There are no morals more relative than conservative morals, and no hypocrisy quite like conservative hypocrisy.

Black Lives Matter

To me, it’s self evident: black lives matter.  I don’t have any trouble saying it, or writing it.  Black lives matter.  And I mean it: black lives matter.  I don’t understand why so many have a problem with those three words, because saying that black lives matter in no way means that other lives don’t, or they matter less than black lives. It isn’t putting relative values on lives. Black lives matter. White lives matter.  All lives matter.  These statements are all true. It isn’t either/or.

But you don’t really have to say that white lives matter, or that male lives matter, or that cop lives matter, or that rich lives matter.  All those are understood.  In American society they are truisms, so obvious that it’s odd to even write them down.  Black lives matter, though, for many people seems to be  something different entirely.

Here’s a test to see if you are a racist.  Can you say black lives matter.  Just that, with no qualifiers.  No “Black lives matter, but no more than white lives.”  No “Black lives matter, but all lives matter.”   If you can’t say black lives matter and stop there, then you don’t believe that it's true, and you are a racist, and almost definitely a conservative, and probably a Republican.

There are no morals more relative than conservative morals, and no hypocrisy quite like conservative hypocrisy.

Deceivers and the Deceived

I recently received a very disappointing phone call from a woman with an adult son with special needs who lives at home with her.   Because of her advocacy for her son over the years, she has become involved with numerous statewide committees and advisory groups dealing with funding programs for housing and services for people with mental and physical disabilities.  And since I work in that field, our conversation turned to the cuts to those programs that have occurred over the past several years, and that continue to occur. 

She asked me several times who was responsible for the cuts and since I couldn’t help but assume that  she knew as well as I the group that was responsible, I responded generically that it was the fault of politicians.   Then she said something that made me understand where she was coming from.  She asked me if I knew Nancy Pelois’s salary as speaker of the house, and before I could respond she told me it was $250,000 I believe she said.  She went on to say that perhaps Ms. Pelosi should consider donating this amount to the programs benefiting people with disabilities that had been cut so extensively in recent years.    Now I’m not sure about the salary of the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, but the figure she mentioned sounded plausible, but I am sure that the Speaker is no longer Nancy Pelosi, so I commented that perhaps John Boehner might consider the same thing.   She mumbled something about his salary not being that much. 

So then I got it.  Like so many other people I’ve talked to in recent years, she was determined to blame Democrats for cuts in government programs and assistance that negatively affected her and her loved ones.  Evidently she has decided to be a Republican, and is prepared to ignore reality in order to justify the decision to herself. 

Cognitive dissonance this condition is called, and it appears in surprising places.  My own mother, who is not in good health and relies on Medicare and Social Security to survive, seems to be firmly convinced that President Obama is determined to do away with both programs and only the Republicans stand in his way.  She’ll say with great sincerity,  “I just pray they don’t let him get away with it.”  With “they” referring to the Republicans he battles on a daily basis to save these and other public programs on which the poor, the elderly, and the disabled depend for their very lives.   I sometimes point out to her that she was a Democrat until recent years, and she used to know that that this was the party that created and defended these programs from the Republicans.  But my comments make no difference, her mind has become locked into a permanent state of dissonance.  Like my friend with the disabled child, my mother believes what she wants to believe, and nothing I can say will change that. 

And the reason for this?  Part of it is surely the ability and willingness of Republicans to lie convincingly about their motives and actions, along with their substantial financial resources that they are more than willing to expend in the effort.  But to succeed, lies require a gullible and often willing audience, and if racism is introduced into the mix, then the capacity for seeing reality not as it is, but as they want it to be, is increased exponentially.   It’s an unfortunate partnership of deceivers and those that want  to be deceived, and the price is being paid by the ones least able to afford it.

There are no morals more relative than conservative morals, and no hypocrisy quite like conservative hypocrisy.

Regarding Juan Williams

Time to get this party started.  Lots to talk about as the Republicans try their ignorant best to drag this country back to third world status. 

But first a few words about Fox commentator Juan Williams.  I used to like him a lot.  He seemed basically Liberal, which is always a good thing, but then he got mixed up with the wrong crowd: Fox news.  I’m guessing that the lure of television face time and Fox money proved too much for him and his opinions and comments began to wander.  Then came his response to the comments on the View by the odious Bill O’Reilly. 

O’Reilly, of course, said while arguing against the construction of a mosque near ground-zero that Muslims killed us on 9-11.  Which was just another idiotic comment in the long history of idiotic comments made by various Fox news personnel. 

I googled, and there are over 1.5 billion Muslims in the world, including an estimated 2.5 million in the US.  There are approximately 50 countries that have  populations that are majority Muslim, most of them our allies.  If he had said that the people that attacked us on 9-11 were Muslim, that would have been an honest statement, but honesty doesn’t come naturally to conservatives.

So, since more than 99.9% of Muslims around the world  didn’t attack us on 9-11, including the business-owners, teachers, doctors, lawyers, cab-drivers and plumbers that live in the US, it becomes important for all of us possessing basic common sense and judgment to point out the idiocy of O’Reilly and the on-going conservative effort to convince Americans that all Muslims are our enemy.

At least you’d think so until Juan Williams, on the O’Reilly show, when asked by O’Reilly if his comments on the View had been wrong, replied that, in fact, he had been right and went on to say that he gets nervous on planes when he sees people dressed like Muslims.  It may be true that Williams gets nervous on planes when he sees people dressed in “Muslim garb” as he put it, even though I would guess that potential hijackers would be more likely to be dressed just like Juan Williams, but that was not the correct way to answer that question.    

The correct way to answer the question would have been:  “Damn straight you were wrong.  The Muslim world didn’t attack us, we were attacked by a few Muslim individuals.  And this insistence by conservatives that we are at war with all the Muslims in the world is dangerous, misguided, idiotic.”

But, even though he backtracked later during his response, this wasn’t his answer and NPR fired him.  Good, he deserved it.  He is now an unrepentant and unapologetic Fox news commentator, and as such has no credibility except in conservative world, where “fair and balanced” is a lie, and honesty is considered a weakness.