Last Saturday my wife, son, and I, were sitting in a church … voluntarily. As far back as I can remember … this Had Never Happened before. We were there because we’d read in the paper that this was THE place to be for the best Christmas Chorale Music.
Well … not so much. Another typical religion “bait and switch.” They promised traditional Christmas music but instead trotted out a Christian Extravaganza. The church must have some Big Donors because this was a Big Budget Production. Singers, dancers, a small orchestra, and actors, served up a strange presentation of Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem intercut with a story about an upper-middle-class couple trying to adopt a child. Every once in awhile everybody would burst into song. Contemporary Christmas pop tunes. The refrain from Jose Feliciano’s Feliz Navidad, “I wanna wish you a Merry Christmas from the bottom of my heart” over and over and over until blood spurted from my ears. 90 minutes of deadly earnest Christian entertainment. Gosh it was fun.
Bob Alexander's Commentary
A Confederacy of Dunces (with apologies to John Kennedy Toole for stealing his title)
There is No Joy in Muddville
I know a guy who listens to Rush Limbaugh every day, and watches FOX News every night. And he’s been doing this for years.
I have to deal with this guy regularly. And almost all of the time what we have to talk about has nothing to do with politics. But every once in awhile we “go there.” And an amazing transformation takes place. He becomes a Rush Limbaugh - FOX News - talking points regurgitator. But it’s even weirder than that. He doesn’t just repeat zombie-like what he’s heard like some “Gooble-Gobble One of Us” freak … he’s internalized it. He takes the current Conservative Talking Points, digests it completely, and when the Conservative Button is pressed … out come the Talking Points … but in his own words. It’s not like he’s become a Limbaugh/Hannity/O’Reilly clone because he still retains his individuality. He’s personalized the mindset and sees everything that is political through that lens.
I know exactly what he’s going to say about Current Events. When George Zimmerman murdered Trayvon Martin I knew before I picked up the phone I was going to hear the racist conservative spin come out of his mouth. When Rush and FOX come up with their latest attack on Obama … it goes straight into his Anti-Obama hope chest where he keeps all his Anti-Obama ammo.
Vu Zjahday … the opposite of déjà vu. The sense that you’ve never been somewhere before.
… you believe in things that you don't understand
Then you suffer
I watched the presidential and vice presidential debates on CBC up here in Beautiful British Columbia. During the debates viewers could vote on who was winning. The first debate’s results were: 76% Obama, and 18% Romney. The next morning I went online to read the American Polls. WTF!!?? Romney was declared the winner.
Then came the VP debate between Biden and Ryan. Again I watched it on CBC and the Canadian viewers voted 88% Biden and 10% Ryan. The next day American polls gave a slight edge to Biden. The CNN/ORC poll showed Ryan at 48% to Biden’s 44%. NBC Politics had Biden at 38% to Ryan’s 34% and CNBC reported a tie with Ryan and Biden both at 47%. WTF squared.
Morons With Movie Cameras
I’ve seen more bad movies than anybody I know. Back in the 70’s I’d regularly go to my local drive-in with a lawn chair, a couple of quarts of beer, and watch terrible low-budget movies till 3 in the morning.
The question immediately comes to mind … why would I subject myself to steaming piles of cinema like: The Corpse Grinders, The Undertaker and His Pals, The Worm Eaters, Invasion Of The Blood Farmers, and The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies?
We Are Already Where We Were Afraid We Would Be
Before I got started I wanted to define just one word: Fascism. I spent hours wandering in the vastness of the Google and by the time I called it quits I had thousands of words mined from scholars, historians, and politicians. I then boiled them all down to these 109 words:
Benito Mussolini said, “Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism, as it is the merger of corporate and government power.”
Leon Trotsky, “The historic function of fascism is to smash the working class, destroy its organizations, and stifle political liberties when the capitalists find themselves unable to govern and dominate with the help of democratic machinery.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt, “The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism — ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.”
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