Party Before Country, No Matter What

So at the moment, both major political parties are dealing with their own sexual misconduct scandals.  The GOP's is Alabama Senator Roy Moore, who just over two weeks away from a special election in his home state, the winner of which fills a vacant United States Senate seat.  Meanwhile, the Democrats are dealing with a growing number of allegations against Minnesota's comedian-turned-Senator Al Franken, as well as Michigan Representative John Conyers, who also happens to sit on the fairly important House Judiciary Committee.  Or, he used to, anyway; on November 26th, Conyers stepped down from that committee as part of the investigation into the allegations against him. 

Amazingly (to me, anyway; Congress' complete lack of morality still shocks me, despite everything I've seen), key leaders from both parties found ways to excuse their colleagues' misdeeds - probably while contemplating the overall agenda.  On one side of the aisle, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell contemplated the idea of urging Luther Strange (Alabama's temporarily appointed Senator) to resign, as a way of avoiding the state's upcoming special election.  On the other side, Nancy Pelosi waffled and refused to mete out a harsher punishment than some stern language toward Conyers.

That's sad and disgraceful, especially by the Democrats.  Franken and Conyers's disgusting actions are nowhere near as bad as Moore's vile pedophilia, but neither of the two Democrats appear to be squeaky clean either.  Their punishments should be more severe, given the apparent patterns of misbehavior on both their parts.  I've long since given up expecting even the slightest shred of decency from the GOP - why would I think a party that condones Trump's behavior, associates with Nazi sympathizers like Steve Bannon and Seb Gorka, and panders to the worst parts of society, like racists and science deniers? The GOP is a lost cause.

But the Democrats want to take back Congress next year, and the Presidency in 2020.  A lot of Americans want them to, also.  But why should the country vote them back in, if this is the standard for acceptable conduct they're setting? Now, some of the rank-and-file Congressmen have known Franken and Conyers for years.  They've probably played together for Congressional softball games, or gone on "fact-finding" junkets together, or shot the breeze at weekend BBQs or after-work dinners at DC's finest restaurants.  Pelosi is not a rank-and-file Democrat, though.  She's in a leadership position, which means two things.  First, she's not there to be anybody's friend; her job is to take responsibility for problems and fix them.  Second, her colleagues and constituents look to her to set the standard for acceptable conduct, and she just told them all that bad behavior will still be acceptable, unless you really get out of control.

Unlike Kay Ivey, Pelosi is smart enough to not publicly state her reasons, but she's letting Conyers off with a light punishment for the same reason that the GOP won't abandon Moore: both parties consider keeping Congress full of their members crucially important.  And yes, it is important.  Trump and the GOP are pushing a lot of destructive policies: the tax plan, the ACA mandate repeal, judicial nominees.  Given those things, isn't keeping Franken and Conyers in play a necessary evil?

No.  NO.  This is bigger than the GOP's horrible governance.  Americans need elected officials to stop the GOP cold, but they (we) also need those same officials to start regaining our trust.  Part of what made the 2016 election stand out was that a large portion of the electorate rejected the status quo.  Voters sent a loud, powerful signal to Washington, and just over a year later, it doesn't seem like Washington got that message.  If the Democrats would clean out their own house, it would be a sign that they're hearing us.  The GOP legislation will hurt, but abandoning all sense of ethics to score a legislative win will hurt more in the long run, by further eroding Americans' trust in governmental institutions.  This isn't war, and the stakes aren't so high that you need to collaborate with the devil like FDR did, in order to win.

The Democrats have a choice.  They can cross any lines, abandon any morals, do whatever it takes to push back against the GOP, and probably gain some short-term victories.  Or they can act with honor, integrity, and decency, and show the American public they are fit to govern.  They can put the country ahead of a legislative "win" for their party.  They can help make Americans proud of their elected officials again, instead of being embarrassed of the current pack of miscreants and dirtbags.  That's worth more than a few legislative victories.

Hard Times and Heroes

"It's only in the face of horror that you truly find your nobler selves. And you can be so noble. So, I'll bring you pain, I'll bring you horror, so that you may rise above it." - Tilda Swinton as Gabriel, Constantine (2005)

Hollywood uses an occasional plot device to make the heroes become heroes: someone will inflict a tragedy upon them so that they rise to the occasion and reach their greatest potential.  Nick Fury kind of did it in The Avengers.  Gabriel wants to do it for all of humanity in Constantine.  And maybe in Donald Trump's and the GOP's twisted brains, that's what they think they are doing.  Rolling back so many of our current safety/civil rights/environmental/workers' rights protections, that we, as Americans, get off of our lazy, selfish, entitled asses and fight like hell to get them back.  Thus Making America Great Again in the process.

 

That paragraph above is sarcasm, by the way.  It's more likely that Trump & the GOP, along with their corporate paymasters, don't give a shit about anyone but themselves.  They've never cared if America becomes a giant shit heap as long as they're at the top of the heap; and now they're working feverishly to accelerate the defecation process.  So what happens if we let this continue unimpeded? I'll let Ramsay Bolton answer that:

Rollerblading, Demagogues, and Economic Downturns

A post-apocalyptic dystopia is a quick, easy setting for any story: just drop the protagonist(s) in the middle of a really messed-up situation, and have them fight like hell just to survive.  A lot of well-known works began in the aftermath of some catastrophic event: The Hunger Games, Mad Max, Logan's Run, 1984, and Brave New World, to name a handful of popular ones.  Naturally, there are a lot of lesser-known ones, such as the one that's the subject of this post.

Back in 1990, a B-movie called Prayer of the Rollerboys came out.  Since its major selling points were Corey Haim and rollerblading, when rollerblading came close to being cool (Was rollerblading ever cool? I thought it was, but I was probably in the minority), I'm guessing that you haven't seen it.  It was mostly forgettable, but it had a unique angle on the dystopian society setting.  The story begins several years after the United States has suffered a massive economic crash, and the Rollerboys are a powerful crime organization that rose to prominence in its wake.  The group pulls in money by dealing a fictional drug called "mist", and promotes a lot of overtly racist ideology.  I won't recap any more of the plot, because it's really not important; but the backstory and setting seemed interesting, which is why this movie gets a blog post about it.  The movie's first few minutes contains a monologue by the Rollerboys' leader, which provides important context to the movie.  It's also important to this post, so I'm going to quote it here:

"Before many of you were born, our parents caused the great crash.  They were consumed with greed.  They ignored repeated warnings, and borrowed more money than they could ever repay.  They lost our farms, lost our factories, lost our homes.  Alien races foreclosed on our nation while we--we were locked in homeless camps.  Now America belongs to the enemy.  Forget your parents.  They didn't care about us.  We are the new generation, and we are the remedy.  You need a new family--a family that cares.  The Rollerboys care.  Join with us.  Let us be your strength.  Let us be your warriors.  Help the white army win back our homeland.  The Day of the Rope is coming."

That little speech pretty much gives away the fact that the movie is an analogy for Nazi Germany, and several other parts of the movie reinforce this connection.  It also relies on the traditional wisdom about economic hardship creating an opportunity for demagogues and wanna-be despots to gain power, which has happened countless times throughout recorded history.  Some people might also see it as a cautionary tale for America, because the government's trend of racking up massive deficits has raised alarms from some economists.  One could draw further parallels to this movie by referencing any number of news headlines, because there is never a shortage of things to prompt severe panic.  Maybe America is on the verge of crashing into total disaster, who knows? I could point to events during each of the past five or six decades where a lot of people thought the country was verging on ruin too. (I might do a blog post about that in the future.)

History is like a never-ending game of Russian Roulette, and nobody can predict when the gun will go "bang" when someone pulls the trigger.  I'd tell people to not read too much into this movie, and just see it as historical allegory.

Remembrance Day 2017

"In combat, there are no winners.  The victors just happen to lose less than the vanquished.  One side may impose its will on the other, but there is nothing noble or virtuous about the process.  People are killed and maimed, homes and communities are destroyed, lives are shattered, families are broken apart and scattered to the wind--and just a few years later, we can barely remember why." - Eric L. Haney, Inside Delta Force

November 11th is recognized in a slightly different way in many other countries.  Here in the United States, we observe Veterans Day, while Great Britain and several of its former territories call it Remembrance Day, and other nations observe Armistice Day.  These holidays both trace their origins back to the end of World War I, specifically the signing of the armistice that officially brought the war to a close.  It seemed like a symbolically fitting way to commemorate the event.  World War I devastated most of Europe in an unspeakably horrific conflict that nobody wanted to repeat.  That's why a lot of people associate it with the phrase "the war to end all wars," because its sheer destructiveness was enough to inspire mankind to end war forever.

But that is a wildly naive and idealistic goal, and people knew it even immediately after the Great War.  War has been around since the first prehistoric clans of people bumped into each other, and it's still with us a couple of billion people later.  We can design weapons with unprecedented destructive capability, believing that if the stakes get high enough nobody will want to fight - and yet, nations still find ways to fight.  We can proliferate technology that helps make us more interconnected - and people still find reasons to fight.  War has always, and will always, be with us. 

And maybe that's not necessarily a bad thing.  Occasionally (very rarely, in my opinion) there's a valid reason for the organized brutality of war.  Maybe it's a severe injustice that can't be remedied any other way, or a tyrant whose aggression needs to be checked.  But no matter what reasons are behind it, war is always horrific, whether it's a single bomb that obliterates an entire city, an emplaced machine gun that mows down charging troops by the dozen, or a roadside bomb that rips an armored Humvee apart like an aluminum soda can.

Perhaps that's why Remembrance Day or Armistice Day seem more appropriate to me.  They are more of an acknowledgement that while we can't eliminate war, we should always remember its destructive cost, so that we work as hard as we can to avoid it as much as possible.