Wednesday, September 24, 2014

A scorecard and an extra-large beer, please, vendor

I admit I was only half paying attention the first time I heard it, and I thought Khoresan was a commercial for yet another drug.  ("Side effects may include drowsiness, nausea, dry mouth, and if you're John McCain, an erection lasting right through the Sunday talk shows.")  Then President Obama went to the UN to announce that the Axis of Evil has been re-named the Network of Death,  so apparently our foreign policy is still being branded by Marvel Comics.  This is not encouraging, or enlightening.

The New York Times, sensing my confusion, stepped up with a sort of chart describing the current permutations of the Death Network, so now I know that the Nusra Front operates in Syria, Shabab is Somalian, and Qaedat al Jihad can be found in and around Pakistan, while ISIS or ISIL (nobody seems quite sure) is all over Iraq like a rash.  Not to forget Boko Haram of Nigeria and its perverted  production of "Seven Brides For Seven Brothers," or our old friends Hamas and Hezbollah.  And really, don't they seem like old friends at this point?  Familiar faces like Joe McCarthy and Barry Goldwater, from the good old days of the GOP?  All I remember about Khoresan is a really angry-looking beardy guy who appears ready to blow up everything twice.  He may in fact be dead now.  This is why I need the scorecard.

None of this is funny -- some poor French tourist lost his head today, preceded by the usual vile rhetoric.  ("The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter."--  Samuel Spade)  When this happens, I admit to wishing someone would napalm these ISILs from the inside out, but this is a passing visceral response and not the basis for a national policy.  Luckily, I don't have to formulate one.  That task has fallen to the President because the Constitution fails to spell out what happens when the House of Representatives is controlled by resentful idiots whose consensus seems to be "Don't ask, don't tell, do whatever you want and we'll back you up and then impeach you.  And climate change is a myth.  Derp."  The Senate has not been much more helpful.

Tasked with fighting a war without Americans in actual combat, John Kerry has logged thousands of air miles lining up another Coalition of the Reluctantly Willing.  It's an impressive list, but thunderingly absent is our plucky little ally Israel.  The recipient of so much American money and weaponry apparently isn't answering the phone these days.  Which is odd, because they certainly seem to have a table down front and a large stake in the outcome, so you might expect them at least to match the token contribution promised by, say, Bulgaria.  If ISIL gains control of Iraq or Syria, or both, it won't be Bulgaria they target next.

As always, this is The Most Important Thing In the World, and it isn't.  Bad weather and misbehaving athletes get equal time on the nightly "news".  Terrorists are at work here -- one of them shot two state troopers in Pennsylvania, while another started a massive wildfire in northern California.  What?  No, these are white men.  Not terrorists?  My mistake.  Where's that scorecard, son?  Make it two beers.

        

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Monday, September 01, 2014

Late summer thoughts

If I were a Jungian, I might suggest that America's racist collective unconscious is trying to kill Barack Obama by killing people who look like him:  Trayvon Martin, Victor White, Eric Garner, John Crawford, Michael Brown, Kajieme Powell, Gregory Towns, even Renisha McBride.  After six years of watermelon cartoons, rodeo clowns, Birther idiocies and barely coded complaints about "laziness," white-on-black violence has spiked and shows no signs of abating, even among police.  Fifty years of progress means tanks and tear gas instead of fire hoses and police dogs.  Frankly, I'm surprised only a few young men have been enraged enough to follow the path of Douglas McArthur McCain.

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George Carlin was more explicitly political, but I don't recall that he evoked the bile-spewing commentary that followed the death of Robin Williams.  Williams must have led an exemplary life to earn  the loathing of Pat Robertson, the Westboro Baptists (no funeral to disrupt) and Jabba the Rush.  I was amazed nobody at Fox "News" said, "You know who else had Parkinson's and killed himself?  Hitler."  Which is their idea of a walk-off, game-winning argument.