Category: tyranny

I choose whimsy

I am not at a loss for words today; it just feels like a good morning to pull this 2012 post out of the archives to start the work week.

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I see and hear the cranky and dyspeptic political tones, philosophical arguments dressed up as a battle between good and evil, and I have seen and heard enough.

“There ain’t no good guys, there ain’t no bad guys, there’s only you and me and we just disagree,” the poet sang.

And yet the demagogues behind the curtains conjure images of battlegrounds. We don’t just disagree; you are the embodiment of evil walking on Earth. If your kind keeps/retains power, then the rest of us die.

Hogwash. I say again, hogwash. Pay no attention to the demagogues behind the curtains.

My freedom is not dependent upon someone holding or being ejected from office, and neither is yours. Human beings are born to freedom, not granted liberty by benevolent rulers. What part of “endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights” is so hard to understand?

We have a choice to stew in our own bile – or in bile provided for us by willing political toadies – or to live our lives freely, joyfully and in celebration.

You may follow the path to fear and loathing and the infestation of imaginary hobgoblins. I choose whimsy.

A New Hope

Today brings something my parents never saw in their lifetimes — the inauguration of a guy who was elected president of the United States twice but non-consecutively. Grover Cleveland and Donald Trump are the only two people ever to achieve that feat.

I looked up Cleveland and found he won the popular vote three times, something that only Franklin Roosevelt also accomplished. It seems he was a classical liberal, which means he would be a political conservative in today’s environment. 

So today we again “meet the new boss.” The phrase is usually paired with “same as the old boss” thanks to Pete Townshend, but I wonder if that’s really true this time. I’d like to believe that it isn’t. Trump was not able to do much last time about his promise to drain the swamp. Certainly the swamp creatures frustrated, vilified and ultimately beat him by 2020, but this time he’s had eight years to study them more carefully, and he has the popular vote behind him this time.

I have some strong views about government and two wishes — that it become smaller and eventually go away, restoring our basic freedoms, and that it stop waging and sponsoring endless war across the planet. By recruiting the likes of Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, to ostensibly study ways to reduce government, and the likes of Tulsi Gabbard, an outspoken veteran who advocates for peace, Trump gave me hope.

For the past four years faceless puppet masters have been operating the machinery of leviathan behind the figurehead of a confused old man, and Trump has appointed a small army of disruptors to lead the various departments of government that have so abused us. Whether they can succeed in ferreting out the worst offenders remains to be seen, but at least the puppet masters’ ghastly efforts have been made more visible and defeated at the ballot box.

Inauguration Day coincides this year with Martin Luther King Jr. Day, celebrating a man who advocated for freedom and human dignity through nonviolent civil disobedience. Like many before him and since, he was taken from us by violent means. As always, evil triumphed for a moment by taking a good man, but it utterly failed to kill the idea. 

Time will tell if the infestation in Washington, D.C., and other halls of power can ever be eradicated, but as long as the ideas of freedom and human rights survive, we can hope and pray.

An apparent reform: Can it be real?

ID 179599307 | Mark Zuckerberg © Frédéric Legrand | Dreamstime.com

And now Mark Zuckerberg concedes he yielded to the forces of censorship these past eight years and promises to behave better in the future. Hallelujah? Praise the Lord? Too little, too late? Trust, but verify?

Perhaps that last, an echo of Ronald Reagan’s attitude toward the Soviet Union. Zuckerberg was part of a very Soviet approach to dealing with free speech. The behavior of those entrusted with the tools of mass communication and information has been deplorable for at least these past eight years, an insult to the people who crafted the Bill Of Rights and especially the First Amendment. The Orwellian dystopia has come to life as if Nineteen Eight Four was a training manual instead of a chill warning. And now one of its architects cries, “Mea culpa!” as if that will make it all better.

Still, I profess to be a Christian, and so my default position is to forgive my neighbor’s sins, as mine have been forgiven on the cross — indeed, my neighbor’s sins were forgiven in the same place, and who would I be not to forgive him?

Forgive me, though, for refusing to forget, and for keeping a wary eye to make sure this particular neighbor is not doubling down on his awful deception.