H.L. Mencken

A bit back, while I was out of town for the weekend, some friends of mine decided to have a political discussion about the nature of the Right vs. the Left. My take follows...

"Well, y'all hadda go and start a political discussion whilst I was otherwise engaged.

This could be a Veeeeerrryyy Long Hyperbolic Diatribe, but here's the Reader's Digest Condensed Version - "A plague on both their houses."

The question of Right vs. Left vs. Center is, umm, well, hmmm, - poorly worded. The Center is mostly comprised of the Sheepul that are too apathetic or poorly informed to be influenced by anything much more substantive than the quality of the campaign ads, the Madison Avenue spin on the candidates, and their respective haircuts.

The Right and Left are more alike than not - they both are engaged primarily in getting the Sheepul to lay down for more taxation and spending, thus increasing their ability to buy the votes of the taxed. The only discenible difference is that each of the parties has a traditional set of issues associated with them - as trivial examples, over the last few decades, the Elephants have claimed Defense as their own, while the Donkeys lay claim to Entitlement programs as their turf.

That any of those issues may, or may not, actually have some intrinsic merit is merely coincidental to the Grand Game of Winning Hearts and Minds.

As a strategy, they sniff the polls to attempt to gain an advantage by describing exactly where they want to spend the money in order to increase their constituents, typically my making incremental changes to their basic platforms with the aim of bolstering votes by stealing some from the opposition, with the least possible erosion of their current voter base.

Each of those blocs are guilty of basing their behavior more on political expediency than any tightly held ideals. As a case in point - during their defense of the clearly illegal actions of Slick Willie, the Donkeys recycled many of the exact same arguments the Elephants used in their less successful attempt to defend Tricky Dick, and the Elephants replied with salvos of offensive rhetoric lifted straight from the Donkey Apologists, as quoted from their incarnations in the earlier era.

The more accurate way to represent the political spectrum, I believe, is to place them on the spectrum of Individual Freedom vs. Collective Control.

Fascism and Communism seem to have little in common, other than in this most critical quality - Centralized Authority.

Elephants want your money for more tanks, etc. Donkeys want it for Education. Whatever. Elephants want to control what you see, (porno) Donkeys want to control what you say (hate speech)

While the verses are different, the song remains the same. The Common Refrain?

"There Ought to be a Law."

Allow me to present a recent example - aviation security. After 9/11, the only serious debate was as to what flavor of federal interventions the Congress would enact. Result - increased taxes, more federal employees, industry bailouts with a cost to the taxpayers half again as large as NASA's budget.

Allow me to present an alternative solution - leave the industry to its own devices. Along with the flying public.

Gasp! The Horror!

Allow airlines to implement whatever reasonable measures they wanted, and market the differences to various segments of the flying public.

You wanna board the plane ten minutes before the flight? Quick, cheap, anonymous transport? Fly Easy Access Airlines, and show your flea market ID at the gate.

Are you paranoid? Fly Kevlar Air, with El Al trained screeners, mandatory security interrogations to include all manner of biometric scanning, airline issued IDs, armed aircrew, and exhaustive examinations of the airframe before each flight, complete with complimentary $100 million insurance policies for each passenger lost in any inflight mishap, whatever the cause, along with big media campaigns to tout the unbreachable interlocking layered walls of defense.

Be prepared to pay SugarDaddy BigBucks prices for the added peace of mind.

Of course, there could, and most likely would, be all manner of gradations between the two extremes I've mentioned, giving the public the freedom to choose their preferred level of security.

It is a telling point that such a solution was never even considered, to my knowledge.

So, the major conflict is simply Autonomy/Responsibility vs.Control/Childishness, in which the Government functions in loco parentis for induhviduals not considered capable of making their own ethical decisions, and living with the consequences.

Some of you reading this may be thinking that this is putting me more squarely in the snares of Right-Thinking.

Oh, oh, so not so.

The Right is equally as guilty as the Left. As examples, on the issues of abortion, use of the military as both a symbol of the "American Way," linking it closely into American religious values, specifically homophobism, and as a tool of US imperialism, the use of presently illegal drugs, symbolic acts such as burning flags, curtailment of other civil liberties, and restrictions on domestic living arrangements, the Elephants demonstrate their predeliction for imposing their world-view on the populace

The Left, conversely, imposes, or attempts to impose, its very own values, in such areas as collective responsibilty for induhvidual wrongdoing, the transfer of responsibilty for the disadvantaged and truly needy from family and private charity to government agencies, use of the military as a sociology lab, as opposed to a mission-oriented combat force, curtailment of civil liberties in the area of, for example, freedom in corporate hiring and promotion practices, that is to say, affirmative action, and the idealistic fantasies that are neccessary to imagine a truly pacific planet.

(Before you decide to jump my shit on the affirmative action issue, allow me to explain. It's my contention that any company that widely discriminates as regards the age, gender, or sexual orientation of its emloyees is a dinosaur doomed to a quick death in today's economy, one which is essentially a seller's market. I realize that this is not applicable to, say, Mississippi during Reconstruction, or even in NYC of the early 1960's. I've often dreamed, though, of starting a company of, say, dropout single black mothers under thirty - I betcha we'd kick some major booty on those hidebound whitebread honky mofos in any of several industries. :-)

The parties are indistinguishable in many aspects and issues - as trivial examples - the public funding of political campaigns under rules that effectively exclude any legitimate third parties, and so ossify the status quo, continued support of an litigious society effectively ruled by lawyers, continued bloat of the personal rewards and perqs associated with their roles as solons, and an arrogant hubris that tells them they are a better class of oligarchs better qualified, by virtue of having triumphed in a process designed to bring out the basest from the most power hungry, a popular election, to decide the future.

As I said, a pox on them all. Were it not for the parenthesized D's and R's after their names when we see them on the news shows, we would have a difficult time telling them and their parties apart.

I said this'd be the short version. Guess I lied once again. :-) Well, at least I meant it when I said it.

... Link (0 comments) ... Comment

Last November, I drove over to Baton Rouge to pick up my daughter, yclept in this forum as MK, (for "Miss Kitty," my favorite of the many nicknames I have for her) to spend the weekend with me at TRF, the Texas Renaissance Festival, where I've worked for four years now.

Unfortunately, I only get her every now and again - holidays, vacations, etc. So, I'm the "fun" parent, not the one that has to make her do homework, etc. though, by all reports, she's not too much trouble, saving her room is always a mess. She's always on her best behavior around me.

On the way to Faire that Friday evening, we were stuck in a traffic jam on I-10, for hours. Seems as if a tanker truck had overturned, spilling some sort of noxious chemical that required shutting down both sides of the Interstate. Traffic was at an absolute standstill. We spent the time talking to while away the time.

For the very first time, we had a long talk about religion. She's been raised by very devout Catholics, as was I, and so has been indoctrinated into that Faith. She asked me why I did not go to church.

I explained as best as I could what I believe and why. She had a difficult time understanding it, of course. :-) I tried to explain my core belief to her - that, by definition, the nature of the Creator is so unimaginably different from ours that it is beyond our human powers of comprehension. Therefore, most religions try to remake the Creator into a human image, and are all equally wrong in their attempts to put a human face on God.

I told her that I did not believe that we were born as flawed sinners, that the Creator made us just how he likes us to be, and that there was no Hell, and certainly no need for some Messiah to come down and die a scapegoat's death for the sins that we performed.

She asked me a bunch of questions, that I answered as simply, but as honestly, as I could. We talked about lots of different religions, from Adventists to Zoroastrians.

This was all pretty new to her, of course, as the Catholic Church isn't well known for presenting much information about other religions, well, at least much positive information to the younger amonst the faithful. (Gotta make sure the Faith takes a hard set during the formative years)

She asked me why all these people (her Mom, teachers, priests, etc) told her things that were different from what I said. I wasn't sure what to say there, not wanting to criticize them, so, simply, replied that most people, like her, tended to continue to believe what they are taught as children. Anyway, this went on, as I said, for hours. I pointed out that if we are all God's children, how could he ever send us to hell forever? Could she imagine that her mother or I would send her to hell, forever, no matter what she did? She said, no she didn't think we would. And I said, isn't God 'sposed to be even more merciful that any human could possibly be? She said, well, yes. And so how could God send us to hell forever? She said she didn't know, and how could she, she was just a kid that had just turned twelve and all!

I told her don't feel too bad, because even her teachers and the priests at church couldn't answer that, and they'd been to college to study that very subject, and nobody in hundreds of years had been able to figure that one out, anyway.

In fact, I said, you might ask them that next time you see them. She said no way she was going to start trouble. She said all that stuff I was saying was OK for me, 'cause I was so smart, and read everything and knew all that junk about all that history and other religions, and the hard questions, and stuff, but normal (her word) people like her were better off with what they were taught.

At the end, and this is hilarious, she said that she was going to stick to her faith, and that I wasn't going to change her mind. Was that OK, or was I gonna be mad? And could we change the subject now, because I was making her head hurt.

I said that that was fine with me, because unlike God, I'd still love her no matter what. ;-) .

So, we talked about skating and Otto (her first ride with/in him) and astronomy and her little sisters, and dinosaurs, and what she was going to do at TRF, the whole rest of the time, except for when I got fed up, and took a detour to get away from the traffic jam, through some rural back roads of southwest Louisiana.

She got a little nervous then; the roads were dark, houses infrequent, and the roads wound through some of those creepy moss-covered trees. She said it reminded her of some scary movies she'd seen where the car broke down and then the Bad Guys got the people.

I told her she'd been watching too many scary movies, and that Otto was a dependable sled, he had a strong motor and the tires and brakes were good, coz I'd checked 'em out purty hard before I bought him, and them Germans didn't mess around when they built cars, you cain't hardly kill 'em iffn you just keep oil and water in 'em, and that I was a purty safe driver, even though I don't see too good at night anymore, that was OK, 'cause Otto has these nuke-u-lur, cow-tannin', hedgerow wiltin', European High Beams that light up the countryside for about a mile, and I flipped 'em on, and she said !wow! as black night turned into, if not day, a purty respectable twilight, and I said I bet them lights alone would melt a whole damn battalion of the UnDead, and besides, I was a bona fide, certified, Government Trained Killer, and I had my trusty knife here, custom forged from a railroad spike that used to be a nail from the True Cross by the blacksmith Paul Pearce from Arkansas, blessed by the Pope his own holey self, an' garan-dam-teed to pour a whole gallon of whoopass on any Bad Guys, see? Then reached over to the console and pulled out the knife and put it in my teeth and told her I'd drive that way through the scary parts iffn it made her feel better.

When she stopped laughing, she said that was OK, just put it back in the console, as I couldn't talk too good with it in my teeth, and if I just didn't run off the road while I was rantin' and ravin' she guessed we'd be alright.

That made me purty happy, as it is a big honkin' knife, and it was making my teeth hurt to hold it there.

About twenty minutes, and twenty twisty tree-lined blacktop miles later, we got back on I-10, so she finally relaxed and feel asleep. We'd left the ClusterFuck behind us in the sort of nightmare a chemical spill can cause on a major US interstate highway.

I figured most of the LEO's in the area would be back trying to unfuck the Clusterfuck, so my odds of escaping a traffic ticket were purty good. So I put the boot to Otto, and tried to make up time. The roads were clear and dry, the night bright, and the traffic sparse. Most of the I-10 traffic was still sitting snarled back at the Clusterfuck. I was tired, in a way, but still alert, seeing the road well, so I took my chances.

Otto's a lazy ride in the city - he's geared so high that trying to ride him in urban stop and go traffic is like driving a cranky mule on downers in a field of quickmud. But about sixty miles per hour he sort of blows his nose, wakes up, and sez, "Oh, did you page me?" and all of the sudden unlimbers, turns into seven-league boots, and you're runnin' triple digits, swearing you never pushed another RCH on the go-pedal. Eighty, ninety, one hundred - the faster we went, the faster he wanted to go.

I wasn't worried about a ticket. Somehow, I knew that night I was golden, and that MK was the amulet that had gilded me.

I cranked up the radio and sang along, as I am wont to do. The radio served as well as a navigation beacon to guide my progress through the night, as Rockin' Doopsie and Wayne Toups (Lake Charles) gave way to Mark Chestnutt, whose home town of Beaumont sits right on the Great Divide between East Texas and the land of the Cajuns, and later, around Vidor, (home of one of the last bastions of the KKK in Texas) George and Merle and Hank. Just steer with your ears toward the twin fiddles and the twang, and you'll find yourself back home in the Lone Star State.

We blew through those towns, slowing down only a bit in genuflection to the local speed deities, shooting through the sparse traffic like a bullet through butter, the driving lights melting every truck and trailer over into the slower right lane to let us blow by.

I saw cop not one. I patted the sleeping MK for good luck.

An hour or so later, we hit the Beltway, flew north and west around Houston to Hwy 249, rolled through Tomball to Magnolia, and pulled into the camp at TRF. Otto's high beams woke innocent folk for furlongs around, but I managed to remember to switch them off in time to avoid having to pay damages for singed tents. I'd been driving for around thirteen hours, so was purty glad to get out and stumble around behind the tent and relax for a minute. :-)

After her nap, MK was all wound up again, even though it was way past her bedtime. She hadn't seen CG in a good long time, so they had to visit for a good spell, and she had to meet all dozen or so of our camp friends, who, as usual, had gathered around the campsite like vultures waiting for me to show up so I could get to cooking and feed them all. (It's our custom to host the meals - I like to cook) I was hours late, so they were half concerned, half pissed, and half ravenous. I know that's three halves, but in Texas, you can get away with that - everything's bigger.

I heated up the taco meat I'd made the day before at home on one burner of the propane cooker, and deep-fried the corn tortillas on the other. CG got fixins out of the cooler - lettuce, tomato, guacamole, onions, cheddar and jack cheese, along with her special homemade salsa, yclept Lolly's Lightnin', after my sister, who originated the recipe CG perfected.

About one hour and exactly 100 tacos later (I know the exact number because that's how many tortillas were in the package I'd bought at the local panaderia) I quit cooking. Note to self - Parkinson's Law applies to tacos at </abbr title="Texas Renaissance Festival">TRF - strange people kept showing up to get fed until we were totally out of chow.

MK was passed out in her chair, wrapped in a coupla wool blankets I'd given her earlier when I noticed her sitting there shivering. I had thought then about sending her to bed in the tent, where she'd be warmer, but I saw that little light in her eye. I knew that it came from that special feeling of being a kid allowed to eavesdrop in on an adult world.

All our friends were sitting in a circle, eating tacos, drinking cider or beer or whatever, talking about Faire, horses, stoopid things patrons had done this season, armor, day jobs, the weather, (it was cold as hell that night), music, what we'd do with bin Laden, and all sorts of other sundry topics.

Through it all, MK sat there like a fly on the wall, just soaking it all in, until the SandMan finally caught up to her and smacked her between the eyes with a Passout Punch.

Everyone finally crawled off to their tents. CG helped me tuck MK into her pallet, and crawled into bed herself. I went outside, turned off the lanterns, pulled a cooler over close, plopped down in a chair, wrapped myself in a blanket, and relaxed, just watching the stars, drinking a cider, unwilling to let the night end, too wound up to sleep if I wanted to.

Our friend Linda came walking back down the lane, from the direction of the privies, wrapped in layers of sweats.

"You staying up?"

"Yeah, just for a bit."

I waved my mug at her.

"Y'all were all drinkin' while I was playing tacobender. Now it's my turn. You want a nightcap?"

"Yeah, I put a few pear ciders in the cooler earlier. Any left?"

I opened the cooler, found her one, poured it into her mug, and handed it to her. She pulled a chair over next to mine and sat down, tucking a blanket in around her.

"You know, your daughter is a sweetheart."

"Well, thanks, I always thought so, but daddies ain't real objective."

"I want to help her with her choreography."

"Huh??"

"We talked about it earlier. You know I do that, right?"

"Well, no, not really." I knew Linda was working on her Master's in Drama at Texas A&M; one Saturday night a few weeks earlier I had stayed up late I had helped her memorize some lines for a scene she needed to do for class. Earlier, while I was cooking, I had seen MK and her conversing, but had no idea as to the topic.

"You have to send me her email address so we can get that together."

"OK. Done."

I reached over beside me and took her hand.

"Thanks, love."

We sat there for a few minutes, holding hands, sipping our drinks, just enjoying the quiet, broken only by the hiss of the propane heater in our tent.

"She's beautiful, you know."

"Yeah, I know. Thank dog she looks like her mother."

"I think she looks like you."

"That's 'cause you've never seen her mother. No one that has continues to think I do.You gonna get up tomorrow morning and watch the Leonids with us? The show's 'sposed to peak around four our time."

"Cool. Sure. Wake me up."

"I'm ready for a Guinness. Want one?"

"No, I'm fine. She's very bright, too."

"That, I do take a little credit for. I used to tell her mom, 'If she has your looks and my brains...' but that isn't really true, as her mom's a real smart cookie. But I think that it's mostly 'cause I read to her every damn day, no matter what."

"Well, whatever, it's working."

"Yeah, I don't deserve her. Really pisses my mom off. I was a real handful as a kid - my mother was just waiting for me to get a taste of my own medicine - and I get Miss Kitty. I'm just hoping she's not gonna make up for it as a teenager."

" I bet she'll be just fine."

"Well, I dunno... you know it's too bad Jason is so young - if their ages we reversed, we could arrange their marriage."

Linda has a handsome tow-headed son, around six or seven. He'd visited Faire a few weeks before with Linda's parents. He was a bright, friendly kid. Took a shine to CG, but then, despite age or gender, most everybody does. :-) I doubt I've have many friends without her - they all put up with me to be around her, I think.

"We can't do that! It wouldn't work."

"Well, actually, it doesn't work any better or worse than letting kids choose their own spouse, according to the stuff I've read. But I wasn't actually being serious. Like I said, your boy's too young."

The conversation went on for a long time, covering all manner of things. A good coversation is better than sex, I think, and much harder to find. I drank a few more good brews, while we talked of myriad things, sealing wax and cabbages and kings, and then, suddenly...

"Hawke? What are you doing?" CG called to me from the tent behind us.

"Just sitting here with Linda, talking. You OK, hon?"

"No, I'm freezing in here. How much longer before you come to bed?"

"I'll be there in just a little bit."

"Hurry."

"OK, I will."

I drained my brew, and said, "Seems I'm being paged, Linda. I'm off to bed - gimme a kiss g'night."

We stood up, and shrugged off the blankets for a moment. She folded into my arms, and I gave her a long wet smooch.

"Damn, girl, you got one long, pointy, tongue."

"Yeah, I know."

"I kinda like it."

She giggled.

"See ya in the morning. I gotta go warm CG up."

"Good Night."

So, with one last hug and lingering kiss, we unwrapped and stumbled off to our tents. As I stepped into our tent, I saw MK in the faint candlelight, laying on her pallet, covered in a mound of blankets, sleeping peacefully away. She was still wearing her glasses, so I took them off her and laid them on the dresser. She never stirred.

I saw why CG was cold - she'd given MK about five blankets on this chilly night, and kept only two for herself, banking on the fact I'd be there to keep her warm.

I stripped off my sweats, and rolled into bed next to CG. I blew out the candles, tucked the blankets in around us, and slipped my hands underneath her breasts, where it's always warm, and kissed the back of her neck as I snuggled in next to her.

"Love you, honey. G'night."

She awoke enough to mumble something I couldn't understand.

I fell asleep, thinking that I hadn't had a day better than this in a long time.

... Link (0 comments) ... Comment

In the unlikely event that you can even get through to the IRS with a tax question, you're only three percentage points better off than if you just guessed - even on the most frequent and simple questions.

From an article in USA Today:

"Over a recent four-day period, auditors were unable to get through to an IRS employee on 37% of 368 test calls made to the IRS toll-free number, David C. Williams, the Treasury inspector general for tax administration, told the House Ways and Means oversight subcommittee on Tuesday.

When the auditors did reach someone, IRS officials gave the wrong answer 47% of the time. That happened even though the questions were drawn directly from the agency's own list of frequently asked questions."

This is evidently not going to deter them from increasing the rate of audits, in an ever-increasing proportion on middle class taxpayers, according to this:

"The IRS reversed a long, sharp slide in the number of taxpayers facing audits, the agency reported. It audited 1 in every 172 individual tax returns in the 12 months ending Sept. 30, 2001. That was more than the year before, when 1 in 204 returns was audited."

"More than 640,000 poor and middle-income workers were audited last year, up from 518,000 the year before. If one's income was less than $100,000, the chance of an audit rose 22%. More than half of audited returns involved people who claimed the earned income tax credit, generally those earning less than $32,000 a year."

However, an IRS spokesman claims that as recent new hires get up to speed, they'll be able to get that audit rate back up for the wealthy, too. Maybe they'll get all the way to the 1996 rate of 1 in 60 returns.

Your tax dollars at work.

Methinks perhaps they oughta spend the time and effort to get the damn answers right when you call them, but since you're still liable for their mistakes, what's their incentive? It makes more sense for them to give out bad advice, then they can dun you for interest and penalties, too.

This'll be great news for the underground economy. :-)

What will it take before the nation moves to a sane method of tax collection? The tax code, allegedly simplified and reformed a bit back, is so complex and convoluted to defy comprehension even among those taxed to enforce it. The average citizen is forced to pay expensive professionals to have a fighting chance of filing a correct, legal return.

The only solution I can imagine that could make sense would be to abolish the income tax, and replace it with some other method, perhaps a national sales tax.

Perhaps even better, a "Plain English" law, one with teeth, requiring that any law passed by the states or Federal government be understandable by a person of some reasonable standard of intelligence and education, would not only force a simplification of the tax code, (with the inevitable elimination of nearly all loopholes) but also free the American public from the tyranny of a whole host of burdensome, cryptic, regulations.

... Link (1 comment) ... Comment