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Posts Tagged ‘GOP’

I Miss the GOP

Posted in Culture, Politics, Television, tagged , , , , , , on 14 Jan 2021| 6 Comments »

We’ve had a few tense weeks here, and not because of current events. Short version: My wife had a cancer scare, but thankfully it was only a scare.

The past eight weeks, and especially the last two weeks, were filled with appointments and waiting and procedures and more waiting and biopsies and even more waiting. As you can probably imagine, during that waiting, all that downtime when the “What if?” scenarios bounce around your head like a ping-pong ball at a championship match, we desperately needed something to occupy our brains.

My wife (the one in greatest need of distraction) found her solace in Blue Bloods. It’s a show we’ve never watched before, and she now had eleven seasons (!!) to binge on.

And binge, she did (with me at her side, for much of it).

For those unfamiliar with Blue Bloods, it follows a family of Irish Catholic police officers in New York City. Gramps (Len Cariou) is retired, Dad (Tom Selleck) is the police commissioner, and the boys (Donnie Wahlberg and Will Estes) are cops. My wife was there primarily for Tom Selleck as the gruff but gentle patriarch. For my part, I was there solely for Bridget Moynahan, who plays the daughter, an Assistant DA for the city.

The shows are simple. There’s an A plot and a B plot in each episode. The family always gets together for Sunday dinner. There is ongoing character development, but for the most part, it’s purely episodic. It’s a dependable show. Dependably good. Dependably homey. Dependably entertaining.

During one episode’s Sunday dinner scene, I turned to my wife and said, “One thing I like about this show: they’re all Republicans.”

She looked at me like I had suggested they were all rabid dogs, a look that said, “Are you crazy? That’s impossible. I like these people!”

Given recent events, this reaction can be forgiven, but I stand by my opinion. Law enforcement skews strongly toward the GOP. Catholics lean conservative. Taken with the characters’ commentary about political and social issues (e.g., stop and frisk, personal responsibility, etc.), it was clear that this family had a strong conservative viewpoint. Doing the math, it was clear to me that the characters would probably vote Republican.

This deduction, however, was not offered up as an insult. As I said, I liked that aspect of the show. As a staunch liberal, a guy whose father campaigned for Adlai Stevenson (twice!), you might think it odd that I like watching a show about a family of Republicans, but it’s not odd. Not odd at all.

Why? Because these characters are old-school GOP, like the Republicans of my youth. Conservative? Yes. Tough on crime? You bet. Fiscally tight-fisted? Damned straight. But they are also capable of compassion, of seeing the gradients between black and white, of taking into account mitigating circumstances, and (above all) the necessity to compromise. They care for people as people, seeing the world not just as cops and robbers, heroes and zeroes.

In short, they are not of the rabid Jim Jordan GOP, nor the morally relativistic Lindsey Graham GOP. The Blue Bloods family is more akin to the Eisenhower GOP.

And I miss that GOP.

I miss the GOP with whom you could actually debate, the GOP that wasn’t blind to the massive common ground between the extremes. I miss the GOP that understood that politics is ideology but governing is compromise. I miss the GOP that was willing to give something up, to negotiate in good faith, in order to advance what they saw as the greater good.

Yes, polarization exists on both sides, these days, but if there’s one party that owns the centrist, moderate ground, well, it ain’t today’s GOP. Today’s GOP has been moving off that part of the field for over a decade, and in the past four years, they ceded it completely. Today’s GOP is all about power and money and control and is nothing about governing. Today’s GOP is the party of the Big Lie, conspiracy theories, and slavering devotion to Dear Leader. And sadly, of sedition.

I know there are some exceptions to this new norm in the GOP, and I feel for them. They are grossly outnumbered by the wild-eyed cohort that has shifted the GOP so far to the right. These few, these moderate few, are trapped between the mob their party has built and the abyss that now exists between our parties’ ideologies.

I miss the GOP, and I suspect perhaps some of these politicians do, as well.

k

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Make It Stop

Posted in Politics, tagged , , , , , on 10 Dec 2020| 2 Comments »

It’s one thing for my rabid right-wing-nutter Uncle Earl to run about in his tin-foil hat and go on and on about stolen elections and massive fraud at the polls. It’s entirely another thing when elected officials do the same. Crazy Uncle Earl didn’t take an oath of office to protect and defend the Constitution. Elected officials did. 

If, at this point, they do not admit that Biden won the election, then they must believe that:

  • all the federal judges and Supreme Court justices (including Republican/Trump appointees) who have dismissed the fifty-odd (and counting) lawsuits filed, are lying to us
    • and
  • all the state elections boards, secretaries of state, and governors (including Republicans) who have certified Biden’s win in their elections, are lying to us
    • and
  • the complete lack of credible evidence is irrelevant to the process of determining fact from fiction
    • and
  • thousands upon thousands of people across fifty states, people who have worked for decades in jobs and processes that, in 2016, delivered Donald Trump the presidency, have all suddenly, secretly, and without evidence of collusion or conspiratorial intent, decided to cooperate in such a way as to deny that same Donald Trump a second term, and have done so without a single credible leak, whistle-blower, email, or text (all while delivering many down-ballot offices to the GOP).

In short, they are willing to believe the fabulists who concoct stories that support their fearful wishes, rather than accept the evidence that surrounds them, to wit:

  • a majority of voters who have decried this man’s performance for years simply voted against him,
    • and
  • the explanations as to how “day of” and “mail-in” ballots differ demographically are uncomplicated, unsurprising, and totally predictable,
    • and
  • multiple recounts and investigations and audits and canvasses have consistently shown the reported results are accurate.

The behavior we’re seeing from these elected officials:

  • is a disgrace to their oath, their office, and their country
  • is a blatant accession to the current administration’s worst autocratic impulses
  • is damaging to our institutions, our democracy, and our national security
  • is emboldening an indoctrinated and violence-prone faction within our populace, encouraging this faction to act out, terrorize, and even hurt people they see as “the enemy” 

This should hang around these politicians’ necks like a dead albatross.

But I’m sure we’ll forget all about it.

This is why we can’t have nice things.

k

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My Mr. Fezziwig

Posted in Politics, tagged , , , , , , , , on 19 Jul 2012| Leave a Comment »

Alas, despite my new diet, some memes are unavoidable. This new one, with POTUS supposedly dissing businesses, has come at me from all angles. News, Facebook, emails, workplace chitchat…this argument has been carried into my personal sphere by almost every vector available.

Whenever I am faced with a diatribe, I first like to look into the source a little more. Then I like to give it a little think.

By looking into the source, the first thing I found was that, true to form, the anti-POTUS rank has snipped and clipped the video like an Elizabethan coin. They’ve taken the 5 seconds they want, the 5-second sound-bite they could really give a good spin, and tossed the rest. POTUS says: If you have a business…you didn’t build that.

Well, first, that’s not the exact quote, and second, if you back the clip up by just 2-3 seconds, you see that he’s talking about something else. Watch the whole clip and see if you don’t agree. What POTUS is saying is that hey, all these roads and bridges, if you own a business, all that infrastructure? You didn’t build that. But, of course, that doesn’t take a right-hand spin as well, so it was dropped.

So, all the arguments you hear are not about something POTUS meant, but about a segment of the idea he was presenting. Typical.

Second, by listening to the arguments that were made and giving it all a think, it was clear that what all the furor boils down to is a difference in how we perceive the individual.

Some people see individuals as an island, a rock standing up against the world. For these folks, a person who starts a business is solely responsible for its success or failure. Devil take the man who says otherwise, and to Hell with him who tries to chisel away at the financial gains because they sure as hell don’t share in the financial ruin. For these folks, it’s about the money, and that’s an end to it. They put up the money, therefore they get all the glory or all the notoriety. The math is simple.

Others (like myself), see individuals as part of a larger whole, a member of a society. For me, a person who starts a business is the impetus, but shares responsibility for success and failure with employees, regulatory bodies, and whatever customer base the business targets. And there is a different calculus that separates financial gain/loss with social gain/loss. A good business builds both financial gain and social benefit, grows with the help of the relationships it makes, and succeeds or fails depending on the value it provides. The math is complex.

I used to work for a man who, at the beginning of the “mission statement” era, said to us, “Our mission, our purpose here, is to be in business next year. Our goal is to keep us all employed.” He understood that, despite being the man who had the idea, the man who put up the money, we were all part of a team, a team that included his employees and his customers. We were a small society, providing mutual benefit. He recognized that though his financial risk was higher, we all shared in it. Employees trusted that their paychecks would clear, that the benefits would come through when needed, and that the pension funds wouldn’t be raided. He, in turn, trusted in us to do a good job, to work hard, and to give him value for our exchange. We all worked for the combined benefit. For his entrepreneurship, and for his higher risk, he got more of the gains, and none of us begrudged him that gain.

His goal wasn’t to make a pile of money and bail out with a golden parachute. His goal wasn’t to build his portfolio, or do whatever it took to ensure the dividends his investors demanded, even if it meant stripping companies or firing his domestic workforce. His goal was, simply, to provide income for himself and his family, to provide employment for others, and to provide a marketable service for his customers.

He was not working for himself. He was the owner, but he was not working for himself. We were all working together.

He was my Mr. Fezziwig, and I haven’t seen his like since.

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No Brains Required

Posted in Politics, tagged , , , on 11 Jul 2012| 1 Comment »

Obey the Kitty!If I told you that the problem with your kids is that they think too much, what would you say? Well, that’s what the Texas GOP is saying in their platform section on education.

We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills…, critical thinking skills and similar programs…which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.

I knew it! All those pesky teachers, sitting in their classrooms, waiting—just like a spider!—until we send them our kids so they can teach them to think for themselves! Damned commie pinko junkies!

There are other gems in this section of the TX-GOP platform, including:

  • A rant against multiculturalism (It’s divisive.)
  • A hoo-rah for corporal punishment (We’ll beat your kids for you!)
  • A contradictory statement against disciplining kids without consent (We’ll beat them, but only if you give the green-light.)
  • A Henry Ford style approval of sex education (Teach them anything, as long as it’s “abstinence before marriage.”)
  • A curriculum weighted heavily with founding documents, including Founder’s writings (I guess they never read Ben Franklin’s “Fart Proudly”.)
  • The complete removal of any sort of oversight to private education (Hell…anyone can be a teacher; what’s so hard?)

And, in a final, oxymoronic, only-in-Texas coup de grâce:

  • All controversial topics such as evolution and climate change should be presented as “challengeable scientific theories” (which would be great except that, oh yeah, we don’t want to be guilty of “challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority,” remember?)

In short, it’s the kind of approach to education that evokes an image of millions of students, standing rank and file, each holding up their little red book. It’s the kind of approach that fosters bovine complacency and stifles genius. It’s the kind of approach that says:

“Don’t question authority.”
“Don’t worry your pretty little head about it.”
“The nail that stands up will be hammered down.”

From a purely sociological viewpoint, it would be interesting to compare the graduates of this educational policy with those of other methods, but I’d prefer to start with a smaller test group than the whole State of Texas.

k

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