Thursday, November 26, 2009

Reality Denial Disorder




Once a rich politician, arch-conservative
Clinging to blind partisan dogmas, hallucinative,
Compelled always entirely to misstate
And implacably unable to play straight,
Became incredibly, regressively, degenerative.


* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
 "Is something wrong with the Senator?" asked the new intern of an aide to the senator.

"Waddaya mean?" said the older and far wiser aide.

"Well, I've only been here a few weeks I know, but it sure seems like he doesn't pay much attention to things, or what people tell him.

"Like what?"

"Well, like I spent over three weeks doing research for him on this National Health Act bill.  He just looked at the cover page on my report and threw it in the trash.  I haven't got much experience under my belt yet, but I do have my master's degree in political science and graduated #2 in my class.  I do know how to bear down and do good, solid, factual research."

"Oh that," said the more senior aide.  "He probably just doesn't like whatever real facts you uncovered.  It  was nothing against you personally, or your work."

"You mean the Senator doesn't care about facts?" asked the intern incredulously.

"Nah," said the aide.  "Not unless they agree with his own doctrine he doesn't. And, like always, his doctrine is strictly in line with that of his major campaign contributors.  My guess is the Senator's just trying to train you into his ways.  You know, he's been in Washington a long time now and has developed a pretty bad case of RDD."

"RDD?  What the hell is that?"

What's RDD?  Oh hell.  I guess you ARE still pretty wet behind the ears, aren't you?  RDD is "Reality Denial Disorder".  It's a very common disease, and almost all top politicians get it by their second  terms in office.  Damned few of them don't.  Their party doesn't matter.   It's pretty serious and clouds their judgement and affects their personal lives too.   Else, why would anyone ignore obvious cause and effect realities to pick up some queer in a public restroom or fly off to Argentina to meet some bimbo?  RDD can be pretty serious all right."

"Reality Denial Disorder?  I never heard of it!" said astonished intern.  Is it like a neurological disease?"

"Well, I don't know if there have been any formal studies on RDD or not, but everyone who's been around politicians any time at all time knows about it - and that's what we call it.  It's a lot like ADD - Attention Deficit Disorder.  You know, they just can't or won't get their minds around anything not in line with their own dogma.  It's a psychological impossibility for them."

"RDD!" mused the intern.  "Well, I guess I must still have a lot to learn."

"Oh yes," replied the aide.  "There's all kinds of things to learn about our senator.  Important things.  For example, he also has HPD, NPD, and worst of all maybe, GCD!"

The intern stared at the aide in dismay.  "What in hell is all that?" he implored.

"I guess I'm gonna need to get you a book." the aide replied.  "HPD is "Histrionic Personality Disorder".  You know, when someone gets all dramatic and works up an artificial passion.  NPD of course is "Narcissistic Personality Disorder", which is self-explanatory and pretty damned bad all by itself, but when it comes coupled with GCD, it's almost impossible to deal with. GCD is "God Complex Disorder" if you don't know that one.  Our senator has it all.  He's such a major pain in the ass, if I weren't trying to work myself up to a lobbyist job, I'd tell him 'sayonara' and 'kiss my ass' today."

"Well, I'm sure glad you enlightened me on all this." said the intern.  "In fact, right now I feel like I've just come down with a bad case of HWD myself."

"HWD?"  asked the aide.  "That's a new one on me.  What in hell is that?"

"Oh hell, you know." said the intern.  "That's that good old  'Hank Williams Disorder'." 

"I'm moving on!"

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Irony Versus The Art of Disinformation

(Click on photo to enlarge)

The caption beneath the picture of the glacier reads:

"TAKU GLACIER, ALASKA, IS A RIVER OF ICE STRETCHING 270 SQUARE MILES, YET THE PETROLEUM ENERGY HUMBLE SUPPLES AMERICA COULD MELT IT AT THE RATE OF 7 MILLIONS TONS A DAY!"


Perhaps a more prophetic ad was never run in history:   In 1962 Humble Oil ran a two-page ad spread in Life Magazine.  Humble merged with Standard Oil to become the oil industry giant EXXON, now EXXON-MOBIL.  Blogger David Roberts places this one in the running for "All Time Millenial Award for Maximum Irony".   I totally agree!

The ad itself reads as follows:

"EACH DAY HUMBLE SUPPLIES ENOUGH ENERGY TO MELT 7 MILLION TONS OF GLACIER!


This giant glacier has remained unmelted for centuries.  yet, the petroleum energy Humble supplies -  if converted into heat - could melt it at the rate of 80 tons each second!  To meet the nation's growing needs for energy, Humble has applied science to nature's resources to become America's Leading Energy Company.  Working wonders with oil through research, Humble provides energy in many forms - to help heat our homes, power our transportation, and to furnish industry with a great variety of versatile chemicals.  Stop at a Humble station for new Enco Extra gasoline, and see why the "Happy Motoring" Sign is the Worlds First Choice!"

The supreme irony is that EXXON-MOBIL is the same company which spent millions to disparage the idea of mankind cause climate change.  Using proven tobacco industry tactics, EXXON financed (even founded!) 'think tanks' with many millions of dollars to dispute scientific findings and muddy the waters over this issue.  The right-wing big business lobby is still at it today, using any means fair or foul to cast doubt over an issue upon which about 95% of all scientists agree.

Hackers recently got into computers at a legitimate climate change research center.   Emails and other documents stolen from there were then published  - in Russia of all places.  The attempt is to show a 'coverup' by scientists who agree on human influenced climate change - a huge majority of all scientists - and further muddy the waters.

The timing of this release of course,  has no relevance to the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference scheduled to begin December 7, 2009.  Yeah right.  Just like the timings of the current releases of new recommendations for the frequency for pap smears or breast cancer exams has no relevance to the national health care debate or the passing of the National Health Act.

Can we, the public, ever learn to effectively counter all the billions of 'influence dollars' spent by corporate vested interests?  Not bloody likely given recent history!

Thursday, November 19, 2009

On Becoming Non-Republican


I've never joined a political party, but I used to think I was more Republican than anything else. I voted for the occasional Democrat, yes.   I had great respect for what I read of Harry Truman who was before my time.  But the preponderance of my votes over the years went to Republicans, including more than once I  pulled the 'straight Republican' lever in the booth.   Republicans seemed to talk more my way and I eventually began to think of myself as 'Republican' even though I never formally joined the party.

I was cheered in the early 80's when my neighbor in New Bern, North Carolina was elected city mayor as a Democrat, and the very next day switched parties.   I did wonder a little at the time at the oddness of that.  It did seem a bit on the duplicitous side - but no matter.  Republicans seemed more like me, and therefore, her becoming one seemed justified.   I ignored the duplicity.

Then I moved to Alaska - a solidly 'Red State' then and now, almost.  I didn't move there because it was a Republican state, but didn't mind that either.  The people I met seemed more open and natural than the ones I'd known back east.  I think it's just the  'western' way.  I lived in a small island village in southeast Alaska and loved it.  We were in the midst of the largest national forest in the country - the Tongass National Forest.  I worked everyday with a guy who cheerfully identified himself as a 'tree hugger', and an officer in a small environmental group interested in protections for the forest.  He invited me to a meeting.  I didn't think I had much in common with the tree and bunny hugger crowds but went anyway out of curiosity.


The people I met at the first meeting - only a half dozen or so active folks - seemed salt of the earth and passionately dedicated to their cause.  There was a carpenter, a fisherman's wife, a couple commercial fishermen, a shipbuilder, a traveling fruit and vegetable trucker, a retired wildlife biologist and a few others.  Most were solid members of the local community and just plain folks.   One woman was the real spark plug and the cohesive glue holding the group together.  As an ex-Forest Service employee she had inside knowledge of how things worked in that peculiar bureaucracy. She was also one of the bravest people I ever knew.  In the interests of privacy, I'll simply call her 'Astra' here, after the Greek goddess of justice.

As an outsider from back east I was viewed with some suspicion, but I was intrigued and came to more meetings, eventually joining the group and becoming involved.  A year or so later I even became a vocal activist too and an officer of the group.  How did this come about?

At the time there were two huge pulp mills in the Tongass region, one of which was Japanese owned.  Both were multi-national corporations holding 'sweetheart' deals with the Forest  Service in the form of long-term contracts (fifty years!).   When the pertinent facts were boiled down to reality, particularly the fiscal ones, the stark result was the virtual corporate rape of a US national forest at American taxpayers' expense.  At the time, every timber industry job on the Tongass National Forest ended up  costing the US taxpayer $40,000 to $60,000.  Today it is even higher - much higher. As an actual, real fiscally conservative American I could not understand this.

But the timber industry, like all resource extraction industries maintains a powerful lobby.  The entire Alaska congressional delegation - all Republican at the time - were all doing the bidding of timber, oil and mining interests. They were vocal and strident in their defense of big  timber interests.  But,  American taxpayers were (and still are) being cheated at their own expense.  A real tragedy was that precious irreplaceable old-growth forests, valuable for lumber, were being chipped up to make toilet paper.  Trees not chipped up were shipped 'in-the-round' overseas to Japan and Korea. There was little effort to add value to the commodity.  Alaska, and the Tongass National Forest were treated as part of a third world country - no American jobs were involved beyond the acts of felling and transporting the timber,  and the taxpayer subsidized acts of building the access roads.


After I moved to Alaska also came Newt Gingrich's  'Contract With America' and the 'conservative Republican' capture of Congress.  If things were bad before they quickly got worse.  The final straw for me was when Gingrich as Speaker of the House  threatened to 'train wreck' and shutdown the US government over the budget - and partly did so in fact.  Apparently that was too much for lots of others too and Gingrich was eventually forced to resign as Speaker.  Roundly castigated, Gingrich  petulantly gave up his house seat and quit Congress altogether.  Nor was he the only one.  A whole slew of Republicans left Congress voluntarily (i.e., QUIT) saying it was 'no longer any fun' under a Democratic administration.  Incidentally, I've noticed the same phenomenon of Republican quitters lately too, with Sarah Palin being a prime example.

I contrasted the so-called conservative Republicans with Astra,  the head of our little environmental group.  Here was a person, an otherwise unexceptional wife and mother, who sacrificed most of her personal time, not a little money, and heroically faced a great deal animosity and slandering by powerful and ruthless forces arrayed against her.  She was publicly attacked in the local and regional papers, ostracized by many in the community and continuously threatened with lawsuits known as 'slap suits' designed to discourage opposition to the corporate rape of our publicly owned forest.   Specialists were hired by the industry group, 'Alaska Forest Association' to form opposition groups disguised as 'grassroots' organizations.   Local loggers and other industry employees joined up and held loud meetings, much like the 'Teabaggers' of today.  Some even physically threatened Astra and her family with destruction of her property, assault, personal injury and death.  Yet she persevered through it all.  As I said, she is one of the bravest people I ever met.

But, Astra was very effective, using every legal option available to her, including the support of major national and regional environmental groups.  Today, because of their efforts, those two huge pulp mills are gone from the Tongass National Forest, and some of the timber harvest there now receives at least a modicum of value added processing.  With the mills gone, the level of harvest is now down to about 10% of its former volume, although still very heavily subsidized by the taxpayers.  At least the old growth forests left aren't being slaughtered wholesale to make toilet paper anymore.  In my mind Astra is a genuine hero.

Through Astra's example, and with the scales falling from my eyes,  today when I see the label 'Republican' my reaction is to look the other way.  At my core I'm a moderate.  I've watched the GOP be captured by radical fringers intent on ridding the party of all moderate or progressive elements.   The end result is the GOP morphing into a club for an weird assortment of non-intellectual, belligerent southerners, evangelicals, militia types and disgruntled westerners who regard thoughtful deliberation with anyone as a social disease. And, my heretofore 'middle of the road' leanings are now considered by GOPers as 'liberal', 'socialist' and worse.  So be it.  The GOP 'Big Tent' of yore is now down to a doll house on the edge of a cliff. Fortunately for everyone,  I believe that to be a decidedly self-limiting situation.

Today's GOP extremism reminds me of the words of comedian Pat Paulsen who only half-jokingly 'ran for president' in Richard Nixon's time as a member of the STAG party (Straight Talking American Government).   When asked if he considered himself 'left-wing or right-wing', Paulsen's priceless and very apt response was:

"Well actually, I'm kind of a middle-of-the-bird.  I've always felt that if you have too much left-wing or too much right-wing, all you do is fly around in circles."







Tuesday, November 10, 2009

The Quitter who Twittered


There was once a dim witted twit who twittered,
She quitted her governor's job with all its glitter.
And, promised to never, ever leave Twitter.
But soon did so with nary a back-look nor  titter.
Then, later behold! About-faced and unquitted Twitter!

Yes, this dim-witted twit recanted and re-twittered,
She twittered about this and that and the other,
Death panels, Russia and Obama's mother.
Hoping everyone forgot the job so blithely quittered.

Oh, she twittered, and twittered and twittered,
On subjects she hardly knew quit from quinolla,
She expounded on Levi, McCain, Trig and Angola.
On Sesame, governments, church and pipefitters.

She shamefully twittered and twittered and twittered,
While the country grew quite weary and so jittered,
All tired of her nonsense and now sadly embittered,
While the sheen on her star dimmed and quite flittered.

Nonetheless, she persistently, mindlessly twittered,
Ignoring all pleas, imprecations and screams,
Plugging always her twisted, evangelical dreams,
Until husband Todd so wanted to jump up and hit her.

May we never hear again all those perfidious twitters,
Playing so to fears, paranoia, religion and bitters,
Plainly,  insanely, chasing her own lost fame and glitters,
Yes, next time give us at least a rational bullshitter!