Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Sunday, November 2, 2008
So What Is It with German Führer Worship Anyway? -or- The Cycle of '8
I like foreigners, including Europeans, and included in Europeans, Germans. But sometimes they (foreigners) get these strange enthusiasms. Germans especially.
1938
1968
2008
For instance, this one time, they were all hopped up about some Austrian corporal, back in ... oh ... about 1938. Unfortunately, it didn't turn out too well. The guy turned out to be a mass murderer. History's third biggest, I'm told. So really, not too well at all. Also destroyed the country. Yeah, really not good.
1938After all that, a generation later the youth were out in street again with a new enthusiasm, for another inscrutable charismatic:
1968Unfortunately, this one didn't turn out too well either. Yep, another mass murderer. This one was history's second biggest, I understand. How'd the Germans do it? They're two for two. It's like they're trying to climb the league tables of misplaced enthusiasms. At least this time their hero wasn't in their own country, so they didn't have to be his victims. They figured that much out.
So now another generation has passed and the warm weather brought another round of inscrutable charismatic hero worship...
2008Again, they seem to have learned the 1938 lesson and they're going for a guy who's not in their own country. (You do have to feel sorry for whatever country's gonna get stuck with him, though.)
But, what I'm wondering is, how come the more oppressive government a guy promises, the better the Germans like him? Is there some kind of masochism gene in central European DNA? On the socialism chromosome perhaps?
The Germans seem to be the anti-canary in the coal mine. When they start hyperventilating, get the hell out of the mineshaft.
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Why I'm a Democrat
People often wonder why I am a Democrat even though I am not a liberal.
I am the most right wing person in my community. My political credo, which has never steered me wrong, is "find out what liberals want, then do the opposite". I am George Bush’s constant defender (even when he doesn’t deserve it), I crush the hope out of liberals at every opportunity, and I convince hippies to support Pat Buchanan. Yet I am, and have always been, a registered Democrat. I even ran for public office on the Democratic ticket.
To some, this is a paradox. Why would someone be so right-wing but simultaneously a Democrat?
The answers to this are as obvious as they are infrequently discussed. So let's "shatter the silence". Here are the reasons:
1) Only Democrats are allowed to wage war. Think about it. World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam--all the major wars of the last hundred years--they were all waged by Democrats. When George W. Bush tried to wage a minor war in Iraq, a war that consumed less than one tenth the American lives of the least bloody of the Democrat Wars and involved none of the conscription of the Democrat wars--he was immediately and comprehensively pilloried as an out of control war monger, "worse than Hitler" even. No lie was too foul, no personal attack too low to use against him, because it was all in the cause of stopping that madman Bush from exercising the legitimate executive power of war ... legitimate for Democrats, that is!
Some people protest that Bush made errors in managing the war. Okay, show me the war that was without errors. Yeah ... I'm still waiting. In fact, Bush made only one serious error in managing the war: not registering as a Democrat before battle began! History shows us, executive command in extremis can only be exercised by Democrats. Other parties need not apply. Executive military command is the ne plus ultra of American political power. But only one party may wield it.
So why be a Republican and have the most potent policy tool of your office, your military option, perpetually castrated? Be a Democrat and attack whomever you want whenever you want! Democrats don't even need Congressional approval. George Bush went though the trouble of getting Congressional approval for Iraq again and again. Do you think that helped him later on? No way! Congress, the federal bureaucracy and the media can't wait to stab him in the back at every opportunity. By contrast Bill Clinton didn't bother with all that constitutionally required Congressional stuff before launching his wars in the Balkans. Have you ever heard anyone complain about it? Didn't think so. Today Clinton is hailed as a great statesman. Why? He is a Democrat.
So given the choice between belonging to some other party, following the rules and getting shafted anyway, versus being a Democrat, doing whatever you want and basking in unearned glory, which would you choose?
And this doesn't just apply to war. It applies to your personal life as well, which brings us to the second reason...
2) There is no penalty for personal misconduct by Democrats. There are thousands of examples here, but maybe one will suffice. David Paterson's first official announcement as Governor of New York was that he had been carrying on extramarital affairs as Lieutenant Governor and that he had put his floozy on the state payroll in return for sex. Thus he inaugurated his administration by a formal, public declaration that he is both a sleaze and a criminal. The response to this breathtaking admission was ... nothing at all. After all, he is a Democrat, so it must be okay.
If you are a Democrat, you can drown a woman in your car and not only will you not be convicted, you won't even be prosecuted. And, you can still go on to be the Lion of the Senate! You can even be a rapist. Just keep your Democratic registration current, win an occasional election, and you can avoid prosecution forever! Or, if you or a close relative has the surname Kennedy, you are permanently immune from all censure.
By contrast, even small moral infractions are career-ending for Republicans. Poor, chumpy Republicans, losing their careers, families and personal lives for cruising the wrong public lavatory or sending an instant message to the wrong person. Meanwhile, a Democrat can have interns lined up waiting to service him in the oval office, and, after the tumult and the shouting dies, carry on as if nothing had happened. Indeed, even be an object of pity and sympathy.
While other parties labor under the grave burden of such things as laws, ethics and threat of public disgrace, Democrats suffer no such handicaps. After all, when your party believes everything is relative, when nothing is forbidden, when the meaning of "is" is whatever, then disgrace is impossible.
3) Freedom of Speech: In America, we have Freedom of Speech ... for Democrats. For everyone else, we have hate speech laws, Human Rights Commissions, civil rights infractions, truth suppression squads, and coerced public apologies.
4) Favorable Press: Want kid glove treatment from the press while they set the dogs on your opponent? Then run as a Democrat. As in the old Soviet Union, the press see their job as finding ways to advance and protect the candidates of the Official Party while slandering their opposition. You may refer to journalists as "The Press", "The Fourth Estate" or "The Media", but we Democrats refer to them by their proper name: our stenography pool.
5) E-Z Votes: As a Democrat since birth (and probably before, if I know my precinct captain), I know something not even Republicans will admit: we are the true professionals of voting fraud. The Republicans are rank amateurs compared to us. They may envy our prowess, but they will never match us. The best the Republicans can manage is trying to get voting law enforced when it is in their interest, which is neither a) illegal, nor b) fraud. Pikers! We Democrats, on the other hand, run vast and industrial operations manufacturing signatures, registrations and votes of people who don't exist or who are, ahem, "dead". Not to be judgmental, of course. They are only dead biologically speaking. Politically they live on, loyal Democrats even beyond the grave!
Not sure you can win that election? Need a few thousand votes to tip a crucial district? You can do it the old fashioned way, meeting voters, understanding issues, making speeches, forging compromises, or you can join the Democratic party and specify the number of votes you deserve.
6) Do-overs: And suppose after all this, you lose the election anyway. Well, if you're a Democrat, it's not over. You can try to win the recount you will demand after you lose the election. Still no joy? Then you can try to win the election via the lawsuit you will file after the election. Judge won't give you victory? Then try for a win on appeal, all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary. Just because the voters don't like you doesn't mean that judges won't. After all, most candidates of the Party of the People are actually Ivy League lawyers, so judges should be happy to put one of their own into office.
As Democrats, we just have more ways to win. Other parties have only the election. We Democrats have the election, the recount, the lawsuit, the appeal from the lawsuit and the appeal from the appeal. And even if we still lose, we have our stenographers--heh, I mean the objective reporters in the media--to complain that the election was "stolen", i.e., not given to a Democrat.
7) Finally, money: You can try to get money the old-fashioned way: by earning it. But this involves difficulties like finding out what people want and providing it, or inventing something new that creates value, or putting in long hours at unforgiving tasks. If you've ever tried any of these things, you'll know: they're hard work! Plus, if you try to make money those ways, you'll find your efforts hampered by endless taxes and regulations. Who made all those taxes and regulations? Well, let's just say that in a world of finite resources, we don't want the wrong people using those limited resources! You know, the "wrong people", like non-Democrats.
Fortunately, there is an easier way to get money ... if you're a Democrat! For the lowliest of Democrats, we'll have the government just send you a check. In the old days, this was known as "bribery" and "corruption". But those terms imply something bad. So we renamed it "welfare". And who can object to welfare?
Well, as it turned out, a lot of Americans do. Somehow, "welfare" got a bad name. Search us as to why. But, no problem, we just had to re-rename it "tax credits", and we've been carrying on unmolested ever since!
But this is just the chump change for the rank and file. If you want to climb any higher on the economic pyramid of Democrats, you'll have to show a little creativity. You know, have one of your supporters buy you a house, or get yourself appointed to a "charitable" foundation where you can direct funding to your favorite cronies. Your beneficiaries will return the favor many times over. What's that? You think it might result in unfavorable press coverage? Hey, didn't you read item #4 above? The worst that can happen is some obscure right-wing blog will notice, but nobody reads those things anyway. Forget about it. The voters will.
Be as greedy, self-serving, venal and nepotistic as you want ... if you are a Democrat. It doesn't matter that your rhetoric is all about helping the poor and disenfranchised. The main thing is: help yourself! A Democrat who doesn't retire rich just wasn't doing his job. After all, nobody expects you to abide by your own rhetoric: you're a Democrat!
Now that you know what a sweet deal Democrats have compared to ordinary citizens, you probably want to sign yourself up right away. Whoa! Not so fast! We may be the Party of the People, but that doesn't mean any old people can just come and be one of us. When we say "People", we mean it in the same sense as "People's Republic of China" or "Democratic People's Republic of Korea", that is, we are not just any old people, we are the people who enjoy privileges not available to most people.
So who can really be a Democrat? Sure we'll accept your vote no matter who you are: alive, dead, citizen, foreigner, legal, criminal, real or fictional, in that sense we really are ... what's the word? Oh, yeah ... democratic. After all, we couldn't enjoy the support we envy Kim Jong-il for if we didn't use some of his tactics of generating favorable election returns. But if you really want to have rights beyond just the right to vote for us--rights like freedom of speech, immunity from prosecution, the right to favorable press treatment for yourself and unfavorable treatment for your opponents, the right to the number of votes you choose, the right to win elections irrespective of voter sentiment, the right to enrichment from the public purse--these rights, as in China and North Korea, are only available to a select few. In China and North Korea, the select few are the Party members. Here, being a Party member is a good start, but it's only a start. Our most select rights and privileges are only available to millionaire Ivy League lawyers. That's right, if you want to preside over the Party of the People, you'd better be rich, be a lawyer and have attended an exclusive north-eastern university. Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry and Michael Dukakis all understood this. That’s how they became top Democrats.
If you can't manage to be a millionaire Ivy League lawyer, try for at least one of the three: millionaire, Ivy Leaguer, or lawyer. Or at least get a law degree. You can't get anywhere in the Democratic party if you don't think you know how to run the country better than regular people do.
I am the most right wing person in my community. My political credo, which has never steered me wrong, is "find out what liberals want, then do the opposite". I am George Bush’s constant defender (even when he doesn’t deserve it), I crush the hope out of liberals at every opportunity, and I convince hippies to support Pat Buchanan. Yet I am, and have always been, a registered Democrat. I even ran for public office on the Democratic ticket.
To some, this is a paradox. Why would someone be so right-wing but simultaneously a Democrat?
The answers to this are as obvious as they are infrequently discussed. So let's "shatter the silence". Here are the reasons:
1) Only Democrats are allowed to wage war. Think about it. World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam--all the major wars of the last hundred years--they were all waged by Democrats. When George W. Bush tried to wage a minor war in Iraq, a war that consumed less than one tenth the American lives of the least bloody of the Democrat Wars and involved none of the conscription of the Democrat wars--he was immediately and comprehensively pilloried as an out of control war monger, "worse than Hitler" even. No lie was too foul, no personal attack too low to use against him, because it was all in the cause of stopping that madman Bush from exercising the legitimate executive power of war ... legitimate for Democrats, that is!
Some people protest that Bush made errors in managing the war. Okay, show me the war that was without errors. Yeah ... I'm still waiting. In fact, Bush made only one serious error in managing the war: not registering as a Democrat before battle began! History shows us, executive command in extremis can only be exercised by Democrats. Other parties need not apply. Executive military command is the ne plus ultra of American political power. But only one party may wield it.
So why be a Republican and have the most potent policy tool of your office, your military option, perpetually castrated? Be a Democrat and attack whomever you want whenever you want! Democrats don't even need Congressional approval. George Bush went though the trouble of getting Congressional approval for Iraq again and again. Do you think that helped him later on? No way! Congress, the federal bureaucracy and the media can't wait to stab him in the back at every opportunity. By contrast Bill Clinton didn't bother with all that constitutionally required Congressional stuff before launching his wars in the Balkans. Have you ever heard anyone complain about it? Didn't think so. Today Clinton is hailed as a great statesman. Why? He is a Democrat.
So given the choice between belonging to some other party, following the rules and getting shafted anyway, versus being a Democrat, doing whatever you want and basking in unearned glory, which would you choose?
And this doesn't just apply to war. It applies to your personal life as well, which brings us to the second reason...
2) There is no penalty for personal misconduct by Democrats. There are thousands of examples here, but maybe one will suffice. David Paterson's first official announcement as Governor of New York was that he had been carrying on extramarital affairs as Lieutenant Governor and that he had put his floozy on the state payroll in return for sex. Thus he inaugurated his administration by a formal, public declaration that he is both a sleaze and a criminal. The response to this breathtaking admission was ... nothing at all. After all, he is a Democrat, so it must be okay.
If you are a Democrat, you can drown a woman in your car and not only will you not be convicted, you won't even be prosecuted. And, you can still go on to be the Lion of the Senate! You can even be a rapist. Just keep your Democratic registration current, win an occasional election, and you can avoid prosecution forever! Or, if you or a close relative has the surname Kennedy, you are permanently immune from all censure.
By contrast, even small moral infractions are career-ending for Republicans. Poor, chumpy Republicans, losing their careers, families and personal lives for cruising the wrong public lavatory or sending an instant message to the wrong person. Meanwhile, a Democrat can have interns lined up waiting to service him in the oval office, and, after the tumult and the shouting dies, carry on as if nothing had happened. Indeed, even be an object of pity and sympathy.
While other parties labor under the grave burden of such things as laws, ethics and threat of public disgrace, Democrats suffer no such handicaps. After all, when your party believes everything is relative, when nothing is forbidden, when the meaning of "is" is whatever, then disgrace is impossible.
3) Freedom of Speech: In America, we have Freedom of Speech ... for Democrats. For everyone else, we have hate speech laws, Human Rights Commissions, civil rights infractions, truth suppression squads, and coerced public apologies.
4) Favorable Press: Want kid glove treatment from the press while they set the dogs on your opponent? Then run as a Democrat. As in the old Soviet Union, the press see their job as finding ways to advance and protect the candidates of the Official Party while slandering their opposition. You may refer to journalists as "The Press", "The Fourth Estate" or "The Media", but we Democrats refer to them by their proper name: our stenography pool.
5) E-Z Votes: As a Democrat since birth (and probably before, if I know my precinct captain), I know something not even Republicans will admit: we are the true professionals of voting fraud. The Republicans are rank amateurs compared to us. They may envy our prowess, but they will never match us. The best the Republicans can manage is trying to get voting law enforced when it is in their interest, which is neither a) illegal, nor b) fraud. Pikers! We Democrats, on the other hand, run vast and industrial operations manufacturing signatures, registrations and votes of people who don't exist or who are, ahem, "dead". Not to be judgmental, of course. They are only dead biologically speaking. Politically they live on, loyal Democrats even beyond the grave!
Not sure you can win that election? Need a few thousand votes to tip a crucial district? You can do it the old fashioned way, meeting voters, understanding issues, making speeches, forging compromises, or you can join the Democratic party and specify the number of votes you deserve.
6) Do-overs: And suppose after all this, you lose the election anyway. Well, if you're a Democrat, it's not over. You can try to win the recount you will demand after you lose the election. Still no joy? Then you can try to win the election via the lawsuit you will file after the election. Judge won't give you victory? Then try for a win on appeal, all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary. Just because the voters don't like you doesn't mean that judges won't. After all, most candidates of the Party of the People are actually Ivy League lawyers, so judges should be happy to put one of their own into office.
As Democrats, we just have more ways to win. Other parties have only the election. We Democrats have the election, the recount, the lawsuit, the appeal from the lawsuit and the appeal from the appeal. And even if we still lose, we have our stenographers--heh, I mean the objective reporters in the media--to complain that the election was "stolen", i.e., not given to a Democrat.
7) Finally, money: You can try to get money the old-fashioned way: by earning it. But this involves difficulties like finding out what people want and providing it, or inventing something new that creates value, or putting in long hours at unforgiving tasks. If you've ever tried any of these things, you'll know: they're hard work! Plus, if you try to make money those ways, you'll find your efforts hampered by endless taxes and regulations. Who made all those taxes and regulations? Well, let's just say that in a world of finite resources, we don't want the wrong people using those limited resources! You know, the "wrong people", like non-Democrats.
Fortunately, there is an easier way to get money ... if you're a Democrat! For the lowliest of Democrats, we'll have the government just send you a check. In the old days, this was known as "bribery" and "corruption". But those terms imply something bad. So we renamed it "welfare". And who can object to welfare?
Well, as it turned out, a lot of Americans do. Somehow, "welfare" got a bad name. Search us as to why. But, no problem, we just had to re-rename it "tax credits", and we've been carrying on unmolested ever since!
But this is just the chump change for the rank and file. If you want to climb any higher on the economic pyramid of Democrats, you'll have to show a little creativity. You know, have one of your supporters buy you a house, or get yourself appointed to a "charitable" foundation where you can direct funding to your favorite cronies. Your beneficiaries will return the favor many times over. What's that? You think it might result in unfavorable press coverage? Hey, didn't you read item #4 above? The worst that can happen is some obscure right-wing blog will notice, but nobody reads those things anyway. Forget about it. The voters will.
Be as greedy, self-serving, venal and nepotistic as you want ... if you are a Democrat. It doesn't matter that your rhetoric is all about helping the poor and disenfranchised. The main thing is: help yourself! A Democrat who doesn't retire rich just wasn't doing his job. After all, nobody expects you to abide by your own rhetoric: you're a Democrat!
Now that you know what a sweet deal Democrats have compared to ordinary citizens, you probably want to sign yourself up right away. Whoa! Not so fast! We may be the Party of the People, but that doesn't mean any old people can just come and be one of us. When we say "People", we mean it in the same sense as "People's Republic of China" or "Democratic People's Republic of Korea", that is, we are not just any old people, we are the people who enjoy privileges not available to most people.
So who can really be a Democrat? Sure we'll accept your vote no matter who you are: alive, dead, citizen, foreigner, legal, criminal, real or fictional, in that sense we really are ... what's the word? Oh, yeah ... democratic. After all, we couldn't enjoy the support we envy Kim Jong-il for if we didn't use some of his tactics of generating favorable election returns. But if you really want to have rights beyond just the right to vote for us--rights like freedom of speech, immunity from prosecution, the right to favorable press treatment for yourself and unfavorable treatment for your opponents, the right to the number of votes you choose, the right to win elections irrespective of voter sentiment, the right to enrichment from the public purse--these rights, as in China and North Korea, are only available to a select few. In China and North Korea, the select few are the Party members. Here, being a Party member is a good start, but it's only a start. Our most select rights and privileges are only available to millionaire Ivy League lawyers. That's right, if you want to preside over the Party of the People, you'd better be rich, be a lawyer and have attended an exclusive north-eastern university. Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry and Michael Dukakis all understood this. That’s how they became top Democrats.
If you can't manage to be a millionaire Ivy League lawyer, try for at least one of the three: millionaire, Ivy Leaguer, or lawyer. Or at least get a law degree. You can't get anywhere in the Democratic party if you don't think you know how to run the country better than regular people do.
If you can't even manage that, if you're just one of the, you know ... people ... well, just sit over there and we'll send you your welfare check--oops, I mean tax credit. Not content to be just a publicly funded dupe on stoop? Well, there's always the Republicans.
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