Pandemonium

Clowns to the left, jokers to the right

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Earlier this month, the United States had something that passed for an election. Given that there was an average voter turnout of about %40 per district, I’m not sure how much of an election it really was. My initial response was “whiskey tango foxtrot?!?” But looking back, I should have seen this coming.

I’m not surprised that the Democrats lost their simple majority in Congress, because they have been acting like a bunch of moping sad-sacks lately. Instead of celebrating the achievements they have managed to pull off in the last few years, they were apologizing for them! Did they really think such talk would bring in swing voters? Did they consider that they would be alienating their core voters? And when did they decide that alienating the President – a sitting Democratic president who has some good victories to his credit – would be a good thing? Apparently someone spiked the DNC’s cool-aid! The Democrats screwed up big time, and arguably got what they deserved.

I’m also not surprised that the Republicans failed to get the overwhelming majority they were hoping for, because they’ve been sounding like a bunch of paranoid lunatics lately. They managed a simple majority, but not the crucial two-thirds majority. Seriously guys, did you think that ranting and raving about immigration or the Affordable Health Care act, or of constantly bringing up images of death, destruction, doom and gloom was going to give you a mandate? Apparently they did, and a lot of people fell for it, but not quite enough.

But, having a simple majority isn’t enough to instantly override a VETO, which may be a good thing, because it means those few good things that got through the system during the last few years will be hard to remove. But it also means we’re going to get another two years of gridlock, partisan bickering and unrestrained vitriol thrown at the President and who knows who else, and perhaps another furlough or two.

Personally, I lean Democrat, so naturally I was disappointed at the outcome. But I think what bothers me most of all is just how politically divided this country has become. Both sides of the political aisle have ideas on how to run the country, or how to solve it’s problems. For most of our history, the two sides would debate issues until a some type of consensus was reached, that met some of the objectives of each side. Constructive discourse generally got good results. But that seems to have ended!

Now there seems to be a growing belief that the only way to deal with the opposing side it to shut them out completely, and keep them shut out until they unconditionally cave. The objective has not become achieving a consensus, but at destroying the opposition. When did the political climate change to the point that destroying an opposing party became the primary objective of each political faction? Whatever happened to actually debating, finding common ground, and coming up with a compromise solution? In a country as large and diverse as the USA, no political party is ever going to get an unrestricted mandate. I personally can’t wrap my head around what is happening any more. Every attempt at a logical analysis leaves me scratching my head, so much so that it’s starting to bother my sinuses. But, I have become aware of two things.

First, the Republican Party leadership (and many other conservatives) are jerks. They are greedy, short sighted, jingoistic, anti-intellectual, and paranoid about anything new or different. Sorry guys, but the good ole’ days weren’t always so good, and some old ideas and practices need to fall into history. The country and the world have changed, but they still seem to be pining for the GOP heyday of the 1950’s, or even seeming utopia of the 1920’s! Anyone who has studied history knows that both of those periods ended badly, but they don’t seem concerned. And their general contempt for education makes me downright angry. They seem to have this notion that people don’t need to think, or that they should only learn what they really need, and be done with it. Sorry guys, but the ability to think and learn beyond our needs is one of the things that separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom, and to write that off as unnecessary is unforgivable. They also talk a good talk about traditional values and making lives better for everyone, but in practice they only thing they consistently do is send more money to the extreme upper class. But somehow they have managed to do the Pied Piper thing and got a lot of people following their agenda. I just don’t get it.

Second, the Democratic Party leadership (and many other liberals) are jerks. They have many unrealistic ideals, are self-righteous to a fault, and are exceedingly arrogant. They have this notion that if the general population would just listen to them for a few moments, and allow themselves to be educated (heh…), then they will ultimately see things the same way liberals do. Here too is the notion that their way is the only way. Do liberals really expect the general population to have some sort of epiphany where suddenly everything becomes clear and everyone realizes that the liberals were right about everything all along? Sorry guys, but some liberal ideas are not all that good. And, some people aren’t going to agree with you no matter how much you educate them. People don’t all think alike. After the reality check of the 1970’s, the liberals should remember that.

(There is some mia culpa in that last paragraph. I’m working on that personal flaw.)

So where does this leave us? In a lot of trouble, I suspect. I don’t expect the nation to implode within the next 24 months, so I’m not going to lose much sleep over it. I mean, it’s statistically possible that the nation’s infrastructure and social fabric will come apart, and that there will soon be rioting in the streets. (The Republicans seem to think that was imminent, but now that they have a simple majority, they would say we’ve dodged that bullet. Heh…) It’s also statistically possible that I’ll be struck by lightning on a clear day, or find a winning Powerball ticket in front of the local supermarket. If anything, one of those two events is more likely than the doomsday talk from either of the major parties. Elephant shit… donkey shit… it’s still shit and it still stinks.

A pox on both your houses!

In all honesty, I should probably keep a healthy distance from political topics, because I tend to get frustrated, loud, and irrational when discussing politics. But keeping quiet can be very difficult at times.

Anyway, both of the major parties seem to have shifted to their respective fringes, and historically that has never ended well. Each side seems to think that this time it will be different, which is exactly what they said last time. A one party system doesn’t work, so why both sides ultimately seem to want one is beyond me. Doesn’t anyone study history any more?

history

Recall the old historian’s adage:

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

This quote has been around since the days of Herodotis, perhaps longer, and has variations that stress different facets of historiography. American historian and philosopher George Santayana is credited with bringing the notion into (or perhaps back into) the mainstream consciousness through his various writings. But again, the sentiment has been around since ancient times.

But even so, the modern leadership of the United States doesn’t seem to remember it. Or worse, they don’t care. Those on the political right are too anti-intellectual to study history in the first place. They are so certain that everything will go their way no matter what happens, that reading history is considered a waste of time. Meanwhile, those on the left are too iconoclastic to put any value on what happened in the past, because they are all about the future and don’t want to cloud their vision with images from the past. Especially when it involves dead, privileged white guys.

Clowns [Democrats] to the left of me,
Jokers [Republicans] to the right,
Here I am, stuck in the middle…

Footnotes:

Regarding the title of this article, I’m paraphrasing the Stealer’s Wheel song Stuck in the Middle, written by Gerry Rafferty and Joe Egan. The line has also been associated with Thomas Nagel’s book The View from nowhere. There could be a connection between the two, though if there is, the song came first. Stuck in the Middle first charted in 1972, while Nagel’s book was published in 1989.

Also, if anyone can provide me with a citation for the political cartoon, I would appreciate it. I don’t recognize the signature of the artist, and the metadata for my copy of the image has gotten mangled. That’s a librarian’s nightmare.

Pandemonium

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Pandemonium from Paradise Lost, by painter John Martin.

Pandemonium from Paradise Lost, by painter John Martin.

My old blog, Peppers, used to have a category called Pandemonium, and I have carried it over to this one. It was a category I used for social and political commentary on the world around me, or at least my perception of it. Someone once asked me why I chose the word Pandemonium. That’s a two part story. Allow me to tell it to you.

First, let’s look at how Merriam and Webster define the word:

Pandemonium: noun (pan-da-mo-nee-um)

  1. the capital of Hell in Milton’s Paradise Lost
  2. the infernal regions; Hell
  3. (not capitalized) : a wild uproar; tumult

Since I’m talking about this world and not the afterlife, I’m ultimately referring to the third definition: a loud, tumultuous ocean of noise. But not entirely, which brings me to the first part of my story.

Rewind to the late 1980’s when I was a student at St. Bonaventure University. I had been taking some theology and philosophy courses (which at the time were a University requirement) that included the writings and polemics of the Trappist monk, Thomas Merton. Merton wrote several books of short essays and commentaries about contemporary topics. Most of his writings had a tongue-in-cheek wit about them. But others were acidic and sarcastic, and a few were downright vicious. In fact, he was ultimately silenced on certain topics, because his more venomous writings got his order into some hot water!

Anyway, I was discussing these writings with some friends one night, and we all wondered if we were to each write a similar book, what would it be like? As that conversation turned, I came up a list of topics I would have ranted about. Most of the topics tended to be the unpleasant, controversial, uncomfortable things that no one likes to talk about, but that ultimately everyone must. And when they are discussed, the scene often degenerates into a loud, disjointed fight. One of my friends (who, like Thomas Merton, has since taken a monastic vocation) suggested that I name my book “Cacophony,” or that I use that word in the title, in reference to this noise.

I was thinking on this idea until a literature class, when the professor was talking about John Milton’s classic, Paradise Lost. There is a passage where the narrator describes the capital city of Hell, and he makes frequent references to the constant noise. One speaker would start yelling louder than whoever happened to be speaking, seemingly with the aim of forcing the listener to hear their statements and be forced to ignore the former. Then another speaker would come in and attempt to drown out the original two. Then a fourth speaking would come in do the same. Meanwhile the first speaker has increased their volume to compete with the other three, and so on. After a while, the noise level of so many voices demanding the undivided attention of everyone, at all times, becomes a mass of sound so large than one can no longer hear themselves think. I found that metaphor rather fitting for so much of modern life, so from cacophony I shifted to a title that evoked less of a condition and more of a place.

I never wrote that book. In all seriousness I never expected to. I did other things instead. But throughout my adult life I’ve often found “Pandemonium” to be a poetic descriptor for the constant barrage of noise that modern life subjects us too.

The second part of this story begins a few years ago, when I was setting up my first blog. I once again I found myself wanting to write about cultural, social, and political topics that just annoyed the heck out of me. The noise level that I experienced in the late 1980’s has not subsided. In fact, with the advent of the Internet, it’s gotten considerably worse. I’ve gotten better at filtering it out, and some topics don’t rile me up the way they used to. (Though to be fair, some topics now rile me far more.) But make no mistake: that disgustingly naive 20-year old was still inside me, seething away. And the title of his never-written book (or perhaps not-yet-written book) surfaced anew.

Someone else recently asked me why I’m still maintaining a web site, given that I find the Internet to be largely a noise box that puts television to shame. That’s hard to answer, but I guess one reason is that I’m doing this for myself. This is a means by which I may be able to get my little piece of noise written down, as my personal foil or counterpoint to a lot of the stuff I have thrown at me each day. In all honestly, I didn’t expect many people to read this, but I’m delighted to know that a few people are. (Thanks for visiting!)

Another reason I’m writing this is far more pragmatic. I’m an aspiring writer, and I need to practice my craft. This is one of the ways I have chosen to do that. Who knows, one day I may actually get something published. Perhaps it will be a set of commentaries about the modern world?

So to answer the question as to why I use such an esoteric and pedantic word, I’ll put it this way:


Sometimes I watch the news, traverse the Internet, or listen to the radio, and I’m subjected to a constant barrage of noise. Noise from people or companies I have no desire to talk to, all doing everything in their power to capture every piece of my attention for the few precious moments they need to sell me their questionable products. I hear noise from political and media demagogues who insist that I get in line behind their chosen idol and never want to consider another opinion again. I hear noise from people from many walks of life who want me to subscribe to their point of view. They don’t want me to form my own opinions based on my own experiences, observations or needs, they want me to blindly follow them like a sickened sheep. They – the noise makers – don’t want me to think for myself, they want to do my thinking for me. What’s worse, as soon as I manage to pull away and block out their clamoring, there are at least two more trying to do the same thing. And the cycle continues, over and over. I am hearing the endless cacophony of unwanted voices echoing off the flame-scorched streets of John Milton’s city of the damned: Pandemonium.

My (open) letter to President Obama, 11/7/2012

tardis_by_homemadezombieIt’s flashback time!

This is something that appeared on my original blog, which I wrote the day after the elections of 2012. It has proven rather interesting reading after the 2014 elections.

November 7th, 2012
Mr. President,

Allow me to congratulate you on winning your second term!  Yes, I did vote for you this time as well.  However, unlike 2008, this time it was a very difficult decision for me, and I came very close to voting for one of your competitors.  Allow me to elaborate.

When you look at the popular vote, your margin of victory was very small.  A lot of your supporters should keep that in mind while they run about being sore winners.  You made a lot of promises in 2008 which you, shall we say, haven’t finished delivering yet.  That’s the phrasing I’ll use; your opponents will make other, far more colorful word choices.  You’ve been saying that you would need another term to complete the work you started, and apparently I and several million others were willing to give you the benefit of the doubt.  But we’re going to hold you to that, so you had better start delivering better results.  And I suggest you do it sooner than later, because your narrow victory suggests that things may be direr than you think. If you don’t deliver some results, then I suspect the mid-term elections in 2014 are going to more painful than anything you could possibly imagine.

To wit, the economy is recovering, I’ll grant that.  Considering the situation you inherited, that is no small achievement.  But, the economic recovery has been very slow.  For a lot of people it is proving to be too slow.  You need to get more aggressive in your economic recovery agenda.  If that means playing nice with the Republicans, or alienating your own party, then do it.  You no longer need the DNC.  You are no longer shackled by the political system, and you no longer owe anything to anyone.  So do what’s right for the country and not your career.

On foreign policy issues, perhaps you should decide exactly where you stand.  Or rather, you should make it very clear where you stand.  If you are indeed anti-colonial, or anti-Imperialist or anti-whatever, then please stop hedging or prevaricating and say so.  I suggest you use small words when you do.  Your reforms to the educational system haven’t taken hold yet, so a lot of people won’t understand you if you’re subtle.

I also don’t like some of the stances you’ve taken on moral issues.  I won’t elaborate on that because I tend to loose my cool when discussing such things and that won’t achieve anything.  Just suffice it to say that I’m displeased, and I’ve got my eye on you.

In 2008 you presented yourself as a moderate.  Personally, I was very pleased with that, because I consider myself to ultimately be a moderate.  (Yes, I lean liberal, but only slightly and only on certain issues.)  However, when one looks are your record, you are not a moderate.  I’m not sure what you are, but you’re not a moderate.  Please stop insulting those of us who are.  This more than anything else almost cost you my vote.

You may be wondering why, if I’m being so critical of you, that I didn’t vote for Romney.  That’s a little complicated, actually.  I’ve never been a keen supporter of the RNC, and I especially dislike the so called neo-cons that have been controlling it for the last 15 years.  But I did look at Romney’s platform and I did my best to make an informed decision, using logic instead of emotion.  From my perspective, the only thing Romney ever consistently said was that he wasn’t going to do the same things you did.  That’s fine and good, but he never really said what he would do.  Romney kept asserting who he isn’t while never really saying who he is.  You at least provided some information on that, by detailing some of your economic plans, though it was lacking in many ways.  Still, some information is better than none.  Everything I saw from Romney was either vague or so simplistic that it was of little use.  I didn’t vote for Romney because he struck me as a cipher, who was even less consistent and less transparent than you are.  You were, quite literally, the lesser of two evils.

In all seriousness, I almost voted for Jill Stein!  I didn’t because I live in a battleground district, within a battleground state.  I didn’t feel I could afford to spend my vote on a third party candidate.  This time.  Depending on what happens over the next 24 months, I may end up painting my voting card Green.

I’m sorry to have to end this letter with a veiled threat.  But it’s ultimately an empty one, since I’m only one voter out of millions.  But I suspect there are many, many more like me out there, and combined, we’re probably worth a few electoral votes.  Congratulations again on your second term.  I hope, for your sake and that of the United States of America, that it’s a successful one.
 
Richard J. Pugh
Registered Democrat (for the moment),
Culpeper, Virginia
 
Observations:
As it turns out, I could have voted for Jill Stein and it wouldn’t have made much difference.  Romney won my district by a very comfortable margin, though he didn’t win my state.

Looking back after the 2014 elections:

I said that the 2014 midterm elections might be painful for the President, and apparently I was right!

I think it’s safe to say that the nation is in the throws of some sort of backlash. The Republican party has full control of Congress, which means the Koch brothers and their like are in control of the government. Is this a good thing? No. Frankly, I can’t wrap my head around the collective willful ignorance this represents. Are we, as a nation, really that stupid? Perhaps not, but a lot of us are either gullible fools, or quick to bury our heads in the sand.

To be fair, President Obama has handled some thing badly. Benghazi, for example, was the biggest display of ineptitude in recent history. How much of that is Obama’s fault, and how much fault belongs to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, will be a something that historians and political analysts will be squabbling over for some time to come.

I don’t know what to make of the recent elections. I suspect, however, that next October I will be out of work for a week or two. Another furlough, brought on by partisan bickering, is almost certainly going to occur. The Chinese have a saying: “May you live in interesting times.” It’s intended as a curse. An “interesting time” suggests chaos, disorder, and uncertainty.

It looks like it’s going to be an “interesting” two years.

Spring Forward Fall Back…?

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Twice a year, everyone in America (save a few counties in Indiana) goes through a ritual where we change our clocks such that more daylight falls into that part of the day when most of us are traditionally working. According to Wikipedia, the United States started using it during World War I, though there were attempts to implement it as early as 1900. One of the earliest references to Daylight Savings Time that I ever encountered was from the play Inherit the Wind by Robert Edwin Lee. That play was written in 1955, and fictionalizes events from 1925.

The original idea was to maximize the amount of daylight between the hours of 8 am and 7 pm. For people in the agriculture industries, that makes good sense. It was also done to reduce the use of electricity by moving activities into hours with abundant sunlight. Given that I work in a building that’s 70% underground, I can’t really speak to that point. Maximizing sunlight hours for outdoor related activities makes sense. But as for the energy saving argument, I don’t think that holds up as well as it used to. Given that most workplaces now depend on the constant use of heating and/or air conditioning, which consume far more energy than electric lights and don’t care what time it is, I am a bit skeptical as to the difference one or two hours of artificial light makes.

I do know that this particular year I was actually looking forward to the fall clock change, because it was so dark in the morning that getting out of bed required a herculean effort. I mean, it’s hard to get out of a nice, warm bed when the sky is still pitch black and there is a definite chill in the air. Some mornings, even the dog wanted to sleep in! Now that the clocks have changed, the presence of morning sunlight makes it easier to get out of bed, but it also means that when I start home from work in the late afternoon, the sun is making an exit to stage West, and the temperature is falling like a rock. What’s worse, by mid- to late-November it will be dark in both the morning and the evening, so I loose either way.

Looking back, I think I prefer my extra daylight to come after my workday. That way I can work in my garden, or elsewhere in the yard, and actually see what I’m doing. I could shift such activities to the morning before I go to work, but in the morning I’m so focused on getting to work that just about everything else gets ignored. From the moment my alarm goes off until the moment I walk into my office, I have no other purpose beyond getting to that office. The extra morning daylight is wasted on me. So, is Daylight Savings Time worth the trouble? I honestly don’t know. I’ll consider this again in the spring when the clocks are moved again, and see how it effects me. This time, as opposed to the previous 94 times I’ve experienced this, I’m actually bothering to take note.

One thing has remained constant. I am not a morning person, and I never have been. I usually don’t like to get out of bed no matter what the clock says.

I do have one fun memory related to the clock shift, though. When I was growing up in Cortland, New York, we would periodically attend Sunday Mass at the Newman Chapel, adjacent to the SUNY Cortland campus. The pastor, Fr. Edward J. O’Heron, used to have a running joke about Daylight Savings Time. It went something like this:

And finally, if you’re wondering why this 10:30 am mass seemed to start a little late, it’s because this isn’t the 10:30 mass. This is the 11:15. You apparently forgot to change your clocks to reflect Daylight Savings Time.

He had variations on the joke based on whether it was “spring forward” or “fall back,” and which mass he was addressing. Even after we moved to Homer and generally attended a different church, I remember we used to go to Newman Chapel on those two particular Sundays just to hear Fr. O’Heron’s joke. And apparently we weren’t the only ones. I suspect most of the population of Cortland had heard that joke at some point, and it had become a local classic.

If memory serves, Father O’Heron died in the late 1990s. I remember when I was in graduate school he was suffering from a form of cancer, and had largely retired. I don’t know if his successor continued with the clock joke. I suspect not, because attendance at the Newman Chapel dropped off in the late 1980s and early 1990s, so it may no longer have two masses to joke about. It wouldn’t work at my current church; the two Sunday masses are scheduled too far apart.

Anyway, I guess I just find Daylight Savings Time to be a strange, perhaps antiquated practice. Modern technology has changed the workplace enough so that it almost doesn’t matter where the sun is any more. And workers (on almost all fields) are constantly being encouraged to come in earlier and work later, which also renders the clock nearly irrelevant.

But no matter what the clock says or doesn’t say, I’m still having trouble staying alert, and I need some caffeine, stat.

Diet Coke, don’t fail me now.