McConnell's Greece Analogy

Mitch McConnell has recently received some criticisms from the supposed elite know-somethings-about-economics based on his comparison of the United States to Greece. Now, in the context, it appears that McConnell is trying to say that the U.S. economic situation, with respect to its debt, is like that of Greece, which is facing near economic catastrophe. And, of course, McConnell is then, crazily, justifying creating an economic catastrophe in America by comparing it to one in Greece. Some have even gone so far as to say that McConnell's statement is so far into the realm of fantasy that it reveals him to be unsuited to any position of authority in the Republican party. We, of course, know that ignorance can never, no matter the topic or the importance of the issue, disqualify someone for leadership in the Republican party.

We can snipe all day at McConnell for nothing more important than ignorance that ought to embarrass a failing 12-year old in a middle-school civics class. Or we could really attempt to understand the sort of comparison McConnell has in mind.

For one thing, McConnell may have merely been noting the increased availability of feta cheese and stuffed grape leaves at his local grocery store. I know I see more of that than I ever did when I was younger. That looks a lot like Greece to me.

For another, McConnell may be pointing out that we've been embroiled in an approximately 9-year long war in a Middle Eastern country, based on unclear reasons personal to our leaders, which is costing far too much, needlessly killing young Americans and Iraqis of every age, and which is of no benefit to anyone except those who loot their country and our treasury for their personal gain.

For a third, McConnell may be pointing out that our democracy makes decisions based more on emotion and impulse than one any sound foundation in reasoning, that its people are susceptible to the crassest flattery, fear-mongering, and other sophistical appeals. McConnell ought to know; he's one of the biggest beneficiaries of that tendency.

For a fourth, McConnell may be arguing that the government is deviously embracing a set of policies that are rightly unpopular among the vast majority of people but which can be achieved by electing a cadre of ideologues who, while selling themselves as advocating for more jobs and as protectors of medicare (as a Trojan horse, of a sort), they in fact pursue policies destructive of the lives and the values of the people who invited them into the government in the first place.

For a fifth, McConnell may be claiming that powerful interests will act to destroy anyone who upsets their comfortable way of life by, for example, pointing out the dangers of unlimited consumption of fossil fuels or attempting to get them to value the good and act unselfishly to benefit the city-state rather than themselves.

Or maybe he's either a moron or a fraud who either doesn't recognize the obvious differences between the economic catastrophe in Greece and a large but sustainable deficit in America or thinks we cannot tell the difference, and so is confident no one will ever correct him about the sheer, dumbfounding ignorance of his statements.

Freedom from Speech is What You Want

You may have heard recently about the Supreme Court case (McComish vs. Bennett) that found that when I disagree with you, I am violating your right to free speech because you then have to speak more, you see, to express yourself. You see, more speech is actually less speech. This goes along with Antonin Scalia's homage to 1984's Ignorance is Strength mantra in the stay of the Florida recount in Bush v. Gore. ("Count first, and rule upon legality afterwards, is not a recipe for producing election results that have the public acceptance democratic stability requires.")

Now, you might say, arithmoquine, that's totally unfair to the Roberts court because, after all, they surely found some flimsy pretext by means of which to protect the interests of the wealthy and the powerful, and that's a lot of work, so let them have a little peace and quiet so they can listen to that small, quiet voice of their consciences and then drown it with a fifth of tequila. What is the law, anyway, but flimsy pretexts for outcomes predetermined by the ruling class?

The reason, you see, my speech is not violating your right to free speech when they are inconsistent is that my speech is not government-subsidized speech. And it is completely obvious--what are you, a pinhead?--that only the government can violate anyone's rights. I, to take just one example, held a pizza delivery guy captive in my basement for six months, slowly feeding him his own body parts until nothing was left but his mouth, and that was completely legal, and not a violation of some namby-pamby prohibition against torture that all those whiny, East-coast, elite, birkenstock-sipping, latte-wearing liberals believe in. My freedom ends, as they say, when I've punched you in the face and the police have arrested me, but not before.

It's a testament to our free society that only the government can violate a right or take away our freedoms! If I break into your home without warning, shoot your dog and your spouse, and then take your pot, that's freedom. But if the government does that, it's (waitaminute, isn't this in the conservative handbook somewhere?) murder and theft (or perfectly ok if today is Wednesday).

I think you acquire my drift.

So, you see, we need to protect the rights of the wealthy to say whatever they want without fear of contradiction, except by other wealthy people, and most definitely not let the government subsidize any speech that might contradict it. It is only when the government gets involved with our freedoms and rights that we might lose them, so we have to limit the government's power to do anything of the sort (provided that's not strip-searching 14 year old girls, which I understand is totally hot and constitutional).

The best thing about this is that, as a hate-filled bigot and certifiable moron, I frequently like to spout off about things that I know nothing about and which are factually false. And that's my God-given right. And since the government has various offices devoted to publishing accurate information, about the budget or the dangers of fluoridation in the water or what have you, they are violating my freedom of speech to say that fluoridation is a communist plot or that Area 51 contains several alien spacecraft, just because those things happen not to be true. This means these government offices must be shuttered. Down with big government information-dissemination (which totally sounds dirty)! Down with the tyranny of accurate information!

I know what you're thinking: the government has a "compelling interest" in providing accurate information about fluoridation and Area 51 and preventing widespread panic in the streets by countering inaccurate information that may stoke people's fears. Maybe so, but maybe not. If free and fair elections that are open to everyone are not a compelling government interest, then it's not obvious what could be.

Anyway, a lot of my exercise of free speech is about things that don't really do any harm: when John Quincy Adams was born, the use of "Under God" in the original pledge of allegiance, the date of the abolition of slavery or whether we clone animals to have human brains. The government currently publishes information on these harmless topics as well. The government cannot take away our right to free speech and tell us what to think! If I want to say that a monkey with John Quincy Adams's cloned brain abolished slavery and wrote the pledge of allegiance, then I have a right not to have the government contradict me. That's what free speech is all about.

Besides, the government cannot have an interest in public safety. I'm looking at the Conservo-Constitution, and I can't find anything in it that gives the government an interest in maintaining the general welfare. (I'm pretty sure we edited that part out when we said that Obamacare was unconstitutional. By now it only contains national defense--bombing people--and not taxing the rich.)

And what's government, anyway? Isn't it only a fiction, supported by a complex set of social contracts and agreements, both explicit and tacit, in order to achieve something that we individually are unable to achieve on our own? How can it have interests of any kind? It's not like it's a corporation or something.

My point is that, even if the government does have an interest in promoting the general welfare or providing for a safe and secure environment for the American people, that general duty has exceptions for the fundamental rights of individuals. We couldn't put people to death we knew to be innocent, could we? Of course not, not even if this promoted the general welfare. (Exceptions made for promoting the welfare of certain Southern politicians.) If it really is a violation of my free speech for a government-sponsored entity to disagree with me, then the presumption ought to be in my favor, and it would have to take a strong counterbalancing interest to violate the rights of all Americans to say things that are known to be untrue just because their saying them is false and harmful.

Of course, if I decided to exercise my free speech rights, for example, by spreading fear about the safety of eggs produced by America's corporate egg-titans, Roberts would surely discover that the government had an interest in supporting the egg community, and the Egg Council (a government entity supported by taxes on egg producers, but a government entity all the same) would be free to drop a PSA on us faster than a de-beaked Leghorn strapped to a nest and pumped full of antibiotics and growth hormone can pump out those little white oblongs. Then, I guess, the yolk would be on me.

On the Anniversary of My Mother's Death

Wandering at random around the internet, I came across this post, and it reminded of the original impetus for my blogging: the death of my mother. It reminded me that every second we have with each other is precious and we should spend it loving and caring for each other. How this led to blogging sounds like a mystery, but at the time I wanted to scream to the heavens my frustration and anger. The heavens, I knew, would not listen. So, I talked to myself or the aether of the internet.

[That Man’s] origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins -- all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. (Bertrand Russell, A Free Man’s Worship)

The universe is pitiless—not cruel for it neither knows nor cares for anyone—but without concern for our hopes and dreams. But sometimes we can snatch some joy from this world and find love and goodness. Every year at this time I remind myself of these facts and try to live my life accordingly.

I rarely live up to the ideal. Trivia always intrude on my life and turn me from concerns about those I love, and even those I barely know, but that knowledge is always there. Like “Time’s winged chariot”, or the inexorable grinding of a mill, our lives disappear, day by day, week by week, month by month. Sometimes the time goes so quickly you hardly notice until your aching joints and gray hairs bring it all to consciousness. You wonder how it happened, how you turned from the youth in your mind to the middle-aged person you’ve become. I’ve chosen this time of year to remind myself and renew my desires to live for each day. So I want to commemorate my mother, as I try to do every day in things large and small. And I want to mourn her loss and the loss of everything I or anyone else ever has loved or ever will love. My mother, my father, my spouse, my child, my animals, my friends, and I will all ultimately be gone and we will be nothing but dust. But for now, for me, there is something more. And my mom can only live on in our memories.

The surreal feeling of the day she died has not yet fully receded. Everything since has felt just a little like a dream.

It was around three years ago this month (I forget the day) while my brother was visiting, helping me get my house in order to be sold so we could move out when I started a new job. My dad called and said that he’d come home and found Mom collapsed and he’d called 911, that the paramedics were trying to revive her. We weren’t sure what that meant exactly. We stopped working and waited, everything else now seemed pointless and empty, and wondered and talked, thought about our mom and what she’d meant to us and tried not to think about what we all thought had just happened.

And she died.

Just like that, she was gone. None of us knew; none had a queer presentiment of impending doom (aside from the one I always carry inside). Nothing said this was the day when everything would change, when the light would die for one we loved. After, there was nothing even to do, from so far away, but to sit together and reflect, and eventually to go home and try to help Dad. When I reflect now on her life, a life I really knew little enough about, I hope that she was happy and fulfilled.

I think she accomplished a lot of what she wanted in raising her kids. For the most part, we grew to be reasonably intelligent, autonomous, self-sufficient, compassionate, conscientious adults. She was a schoolteacher, was politically active, and spent some of her retirement volunteering. She didn’t have money or fame or wealth, and, while she often struggled to make ends meet, she would not have traded her life for that of anyone else. She had thought about a life traveling and living adventurously, but her best friend from college had chosen that path, so Mom knew what the alternative was and she was happy with her choice. Oddly, most of what makes our lives—and possibly makes them worth living—resides in contingency, the things that don’t happen according to plan, the things that accumulate on our souls without our notice. One day we wake and think about who or what we have become. And she had become a wife, a mother, the glue that held together a fractious family, a caring member of a community. She had never intended to stay, to take up residence in our place, to marry as she did and raise kids, but that became who she was. Or maybe it was just the world in which she revealed who she always had been. She lived an admirable life, and, in the end, I think she had few regrets.

But that does not mean I don’t feel regret. I regret that I could not be there for her to save her somehow, to be with her at the last, to tell her that I love her, to feel her love for me in return. I understand and sympathize with those who cannot face this fact, whose denial leads them to religion. But for me that would be a lie that would dishonor her memory and her life. No one lived her life for her; she was good, not because some magical being wanted it so, but because she, and others who loved her, worked hard to make her so. And that’s why I try to remember, to feel the loss as keenly as before, and to honor her memory by living the kind of life she would have wanted me to live.

Long before the stars burn out from the sky, long before the sun expands and ends all life on earth, long before the earth freezes over, and long, long before the universe goes cold and dark and dead, I will be gone and no one will remember or care about you or me or anything else. But for now and for as long as my synapses can still fire together, Mom, I will love and remember you.