LIBERALS CAN'T BE FASCISTS BECAUSE....

Tonight I pulled out an old movie that I long ago transferred from tape to DVD, called Battle Cry. As I watched this Marine Corp fable, crafted by Leon Uris, for the fourth or fifth time, I was telling Mertie that if she wanted to know me as I existed mentally when I was 17, that movie had it all. It encapsulates all I believed about men, women, sex, marriage, courage, honor, love, faithfulness, war, children, prostitutes, America, WWII, male camaraderie, extra-marital sex, family relations, barroom behavior, smoking, drinking and love affairs. Battle Cry was released February 8, 1955 when I was a high school senior. Influenced by that movie and too many John Wayne movies to list, four months later, on June 15, 1955, I was on a train to Great Lakes Naval Training Center. I also told my wife if she wanted to understand my smashup and alcoholic drinking I suffered through from around 1964 through 1976 when I stopped drinking, all she has to think about is how the 1960s and early 1970s interacted with my outworn beliefs. The movie is one cliche after another from start to finish, yet I found myself crying from time to time as I watched it. I suppose I was crying over the lost innocence of the young man I was. Later, another movie followed me into the sort of person I became with a college degree in English after I dropped out of graduate school. That movie was Five Easy Pieces with Jack Nicholson as Robert Dupea who also had college degrees, drank too much and worked strictly blue collar.

I write this not to invite my friends to check these movies out but, like most writing, to remind myself about who I was and who I am and about the growth of consciousness and awareness that comes with a good education and a much better grasp of normative human values and reality. What happened during the middle decades of the 20th Century divided forever those who never gave up that false fable of reality offered by Battle Cry and those of us who suffered through and got beyond the movie Five Easy Pieces.

Modern Teapublicans live in a world about 60 years out of date, some even 2,000 years out of date. This is why they are full of the same kind of fear I was filled with during the 1960s. Let us hope that their fears do not destroy the American Dream by trying to return us to a heroic myth about the past much like Hitler and Mussolini wanted to return their nations to a mythic reality that never existed. When I put it this way, I realize we must not be naive enough to imagine that the far right could not impose some fascist reality onto America. If our society became unstable enough and if the middle class became fearful enough, America could easily slip into a fascist nightmare. I fear the modern Teapublican by trying to destroy and destabilize our American government hopes unconsciously to bring about a return to mythical times they thought were so much better than modern times. Fascism cannot come from the liberal dream any more than liberals brought fascism to Italy and Germany. Liberals support modernity not ancient myths. They were persecuted in those two nations right alongside the Communists.

AN OLD BEATNICK MEETS GEORGE BUSH IN A TAVERN

Finally watched The Butler last night. Spent a large part of the movie in tears. All the pain that finally buried this "very sensitive" child under alcohol abuse came back last night. The interesting thing to me is how "conservative" I was as child and youth, in that I believed all the myths about America. After WWII, I really believed all the things about America's greatness, its love of freedom and justice and free speech. What the 50s and 60s taught me, finally and painfully, was that the American people were no better or worse than any other nation of people. 

Unrealistic "idealism" is what tortures modern conservatives also. They cling to the past, and they believe all the nonsense they were taught as children. They can't see modern America in a real light, and they are incapable of seeing the "injustices" created by free enterprise or capitalism. I do believe that capitalism is the best method for distributing a nation's wealth as long as the distance between those most and least rewarded does not grow too great. Which it has. 

Sadly, modern Teapublicans can't help "blaming" others for being poor because conservatives cling to the myth of "free will", thus it's easy for them to blame others and to praise themselves. They are controlled by evolutionary forces just as much as the less fortunate are controlled by genes and nurture. Those who succeed usually have a "sense of entitlement". The sense of entitlement describes a psychological or electrochemical state in the brain/body that leads to success. Their "psychological state" is a cause of success rather than an effect of success, and a grown Teapublican can no more take credit for that psychological state of being than a honeybee can take credit for being the queen of the hive. 

This film explores the difference

In my own case, I was driven by pain to try and understand who I was and what made me into the person I was. Success became secondary to that struggle. I was tortured by insecurity and shame. Until I reached the bottom of my personal struggle, trying to escape my worker bee status was next to impossible. It was like trying to climb up a hill of marbles. By the time I did understand the forces that drove me, I was in my 50s, a late start in the rush to earn fame and fortune in the free enterprise system. If only Teapublicans understood their fortunate electrochemical inheritance and quit "being proud" of themselves, we'd have quite a different nation to live in. 

Pardon my length, but simple-mindedness is not one of my strongly evolved characteristics. Complexity of thought comes with the territory of self-understanding. Thus, I am not George Bush and he is not me. Back in the day, however, I'm sure we'd have enjoyed drinking a beer together had we known each other. I enjoyed the company of many a young George Bush in the taverns where I "bought my alcoholism" one drink at a time.

SELFISHNESS BRED INTO US. CAN WE WHIP IT?

Keep this to the front of our minds as the Teapublican Party continues holding impoverished children, the handicapped, retired seniors and veterans hostage in order to get a budget agreement that permanently harms those vulnerable groups. Four percent of any population is sociopathic. Then there are many others with very low empathetic (conscience) brain functions. I'm sure conscience or lack of it can be plotted on a bell curve just as can most human traits. I believe it's safe to say that the Teapublican Party is dominated by those two groups of people. It's not their fault—they were born that way—but the rest of us should watch out when they try to con us into going along with them by attempting to manipulate our evolved adaptations for selfishness. Our agreement with their selfish policies might indicate we also might be brain damaged. Let's hope the human species is slowly evolving toward more altruistic behavior than selfish behavior. The world need not be as selfish as it is. 

TEAPUBLICANS MIX UP CAUSE AND EFFECT: A BRAIN DEFECT

Republicans frequently mix up cause and effect when they discuss human behavior. Clear evidence of that confusion is revealed in their plan for cutting back on COLA increases for seniors on social security. It's called chained consumer price index (CPI). Roughly, chained CPI assumes that as one's income decreases, he (or she) will spend less on food (i.e. steak to chicken) or prescriptions or medical care, etcetera. Thus, according to Republicans, senior benefits can be reduced since they will spend less. However, that is assbackwards. The chained CPI reduces money to people on social security benefits and creates the effect of people spending less on necessary items. A chained CPI will force people to spend less because they'll have less to spend.

Republicans think the same backward way about capitalism. Obviously, for capitalism (or free enterprise) to work, many must be poor so that a few may be wealthy. I can see no evidence in history or currently where capitalism does not create much poverty while allowing only a very few to fully benefit from it, but when altruists discuss helping those whose poverty is created by capitalism, the wealthy Republican, instead of feeling responsible to relieve the poverty their economic system creates, blames the poor for being poor in a system which needs many to be poor if it is to work correctly. Cause and effect are clearly turned around in a Republican's brain. 

I think Teapublicanism is a brain defect of cause and effect caused when the circuits between moral feelings and one's actions aren't fully developed. In order to be so callous, one must not be able to feel the pain of others very deeply. 

FLIPPING THE TRUTH...A TEAPUBLICAN TACTIC

the face of terrorism in America

The Teapublican terror brigade's alien cell in the American government hopes that we don't recall what they've been saying for months, i.e. we're going to shut down your American government if you don't do what we want. Their allies in terror at Fox News have already forgotten or they never knew, since, mostly, they just make up the news as they go along. If the Teapublicans and their wealthy friends in broadcasting manage to flip the responsibility for the shutdown, then we'll know that the American people have lost their ability to think for themselves. Like the Nazi's the Teapublicans believe that if they lie long enough and frequently enough, the people will come to believe the lie. Will it work in such an obvious case as this one? 

FIVE SUPREME COURT TRAITORS UNDERMINE DEMOCRACY

These five men are traitors to the American Constitution. From left to right, the traitors are Antonin Scalia, John Roberts, Clarence Thomas,  Samuel Alito, and below right, Anthony Kennedy whose smug crooked smile (up on one corner, down on the other) could be put on the face of all five of these very average men. They have made a mockery of the idea of fair elections in America, helping to return America to the days of Jim Crow election practices in the South. The most frightening thing about this Supreme Court misruling is the realization that these members of our Supreme Court are so corrupted by partisan politics that they willingly and openly participated in the brazen Teapublican plan to disenfranchise American voters. Not since Hitler's days has a top court of justice gone along so brazenly with one political party in an effort to destroy the right to vote of another group of voters. In Hitler's Germany, it was the Jews who were disenfranchised. In America, it's blacks, Hispanics and older citizens that these corrupt Supreme Court justices are helping the Teapublicans to disenfranchise. When a nation's supreme court of law is so corrupted as this one is by one party, no citizen is safe from politicians willing to destroy the democratic ways in which we select those who will represent us in our Republic. I think, if honest lovers of our Republic should ever achieve enough power to do it, these five Justices of the Supreme Court ought to be tried as criminals for their aid to the Teapublican Party's plan to undermine the Constitution of the United States. They are due no respect. They've dirtied their pants, crapped on the bench where they sit in shame. They stink. The five are corrupt Teapublicans, root and branch, with loyalty only to the wealthy people who fund the Teapublican Party.  

IF YOU SING, TEAPUBLICANS ARREST YOU

I'm 75 and these parents are older than that. We remember the Depression and we don't forget, either, what wage earning was like before strong unions were born, back when Teapublicans (still called merely Republicans back then) fought in every way possible to eliminate unions in order to keep profits high for their extravagantly wealthy owners. At least in those days there was some risk involved in getting wealthy. Now, with our tax dollars continually insuring that corporations don't fail, there is little risk for the biggest fat cats. Teapublicans! The wage earner's curse! Who insures the wage earners? Certainly not Teapublicans in North Carolina where unemployment benefits no longer exist.

As to a person's age, Teapublicans don't care a hoot about that. Their attacks at the federal level on Social Security and Medicare proves they don't care about seniors. We wage earners and retired wage earners, the young and the old, the union wage earner and the non-union wage earner who hopes for better wages and benefits, the unrepresented wage earner at Walmart and Poopy John's...we must begin to stand together to reverse this Teapublican attack on wage earners. It's no accident that they've been responsible for the greatest transfer of money from the middle and lower classes to the top 1% since the early days of the last century. Since 2009, the wealthiest Americans have seen their incomes increase by 123% while the poorest Americans have seen their incomes decline by 4%. The middle class remains stagnant. Solidarity, friends.

MOST TOP APES ARE LESSER HUMANS

I'll tell you what's scary. I'm certain of the facts of evolution, and I understand the sense of entitlement these "top apes" in the Teapublican Party were lucky to be born with and the adaptive and conscienceless emotional drives that force them to drive for the top, but those drives also make MOST of them more selfish and less caring than the average monkey.

The saddest fact is that the Teapublican power base in the American Bible Belt does not understand or recognize evolution. Thus those Southern "lesser monkeys" go right along currying favor (i.e. picking the nits off those top gorillas' backs by voting for them). However, these Teapublican gorillas at the top don't return the favors of the "nit pickers" like real gorillas do. 

Evolution stands out so clearly in these battles between we clever liberal chimps who can understand the dynamics of the situation and the selfish gorillas of the Teapublicans who are fighting mad to maintain their dominant place in the concrete jungles of the globe. If only MORE of our brothers and sisters to the American South understood the actual situation that they nourish with their nit picking votes and began to vote as if their personal welfare depended on it. If only...! Sadly, at this time, these nit pickers in the South remain the tools of the greater apes who use those lesser monkey's Yankee hatred to divert them from the damage being done to them everyday in the Southern concrete jungles.