Well, I guess I could be considered wealthy if I lived somewhere with a much lower standard of living.  And my tastes run to flannel shirts… make of that what you will.

Oh, and also, I’m not a man.

Wow, really blew that opening all to Hell, didn’t I?

For those not in the know, those are the opening lyrics to “Sympathy for the Devil” by the Rolling Stones.  I’ve had it in my head for the last few days, both the song and the concept, for a couple of reasons.

First: I’m finding that I’m feeling a little sorry for George W. Bush these days.

This is surprising to me, because I’d pretty much written the guy off as an idiot within the first four months of his first term and I have disagreed with probably about 90% of his actions while in office.  He was over-proud, over-confident, and had a way of ignoring anything that didn’t fit into his narrow little worldview until it smacked him in the face like a dead fish.  And in the last weeks of his last term he is working as hard as he can to turn back the clock to sometime in the Victorian Era on environmental and women’s issues.  The sum total of his time in office is that our friends don’t like us, our enemies have had a Godsend in the public relations arena, and trickle-down economics still doesn’t work.

But… he seems so alone now, doesn’t he?  All of the people who supported him and egged him on for the first seven years of his Presidency are treating him like a biohazard in his eighth.  Obviously there is no honor amongst thieves… er, excuse me, politicians, but it would be nice to see at least one of his enablers in the Legislature man-up (or woman-up, as the case may be) and admit that Bush could not have caused the trouble that he did if they hadn’t been marching behind him.  Not just the Republicans either, being a spineless Democrat is no saving grace.  Yes, Iraq was a mistake, topping out in the Major Big Time category.  Who could have stopped him?  Hmm…  Yes, warrentless wiretaps are an infringement on our constitutional rights.  Who voted to give him a blank check on domestic affairs with the various PATRIOT Acts and then was asleep at the switch when it came to the whole “checks and balances” thing?  Hmm…  Tax cuts for the rich?  So, what’s the average income of most of those pesky constituents anyhow, and how does it compare to the income of the folks getting the breaks?

They’re so busy distancing themselves now, why the hell didn’t they do that years ago, when it would have really mattered?  Bush will probably leave Washington DC to a rousing chorus of “Thank God and Greyhound You’re Gone”, from both sides of the aisle.

However, despite the damage that he has caused, I have some wee bit of sympathy for a guy that has to stay on the ship while the rats dive out the portholes.  I really don’t think that he’s an evil man.  Misguided?  Check.  Arrogant?  Check.  Ignorant?  Check.  Should these be grounds for absolving him from the human suffering that can be laid at his door?  Definitely and unequivocally NO.  But taking a personal inventory: have I ever been misguided, arrogant, and ignorant?  Well, um, yes.  Admittedly, not on such a grand scale as he was, and unlike him, no-one was permanently hurt or injured by my idiocy.  But have I ever looked back on something that I did and think “Well, I thought I was doing the right thing, looked good at the time, but I really should have seen THAT coming”?  Er, next question please.

Have I ever had the experience of being torn down by people who were intent on covering their asses?  Dear God, don’t remind me.

Can I look back on my fuck-ups, admit I was wrong, and learn from them?  Yes.  Can he do the same thing?  That remains to be seen, and quite frankly I’m not too terribly optimistic about that possibility in the short term.

Still, I can’t help it.  He’s a human being who is being openly reviled by the same people who were singing his praises a few short years ago, which I don’t think is fair because quite frankly I think they are equal partners in the various disasters that have hit the nation.  When I see him anymore, I have a little bit of an urge to pat him on the shoulder and buy him a beer.  Which is probably more than any of his former cronies are willing to do.

The folks on the Left, of course, are taking a great deal of pleasure in pointing and laughing at the folks on the Right.  And they might have earned it, except for the fact that before the election there were quite a few folks on their side of the fence who were convinced that it was never going to take place because Bush & Co. were going to stage a terrorist attack or some other faked “catastrophe” so that he’d have an excuse to declare martial law and cancel the election, thereby staying in power forever and ever, amen.

I wonder what would happen if one could get both side into a room so that they could listen to each other.  I know that this is not possible in the real world, because they have demonized each other and made up such a fantastic mythology about what the other believes that the chances of getting them together to listen to each other is only slightly better than me ever doing the same thing with my aunt.  And the only reason I’m giving them better odds is because my aunt is dead.  Suspending disbelief though, would hearing the weirdness from the other side cause them each to reflect on their own convictions?  Or would it further entrench in their heads the belief that someone who would cling to something that stupid cannot be trusted with any kind of power?  Would it be a mutual obliteration, like matter and anti-matter colliding, or would it be more like pouring gasoline on two separate fires?

Or am I just being impossibly Zen, and should stick to thinking about single hands clapping or trees falling in forests?

Another thing that I like about the two of them is that they are willing to bring people onto their shows that they don’t necessarily agree with.  Thus it was that on October 22, Stephen Colbert had David Frum as a guest.

David Frum is a former speechwriter for George W. Bush, and back in 2003 he wrote a book called The Right Man, which to my understanding is a book about what a great President Bush was back then.  I’d not heard of it, and since I don’t think much of W, I probably wouldn’t have read it even if I had.  However, he has come out with a new book called Comeback: Conservatism That Can Win Again.  His conversation with Stephen Colbert piqued my interest enough that I checked it out of the local library and read it.

It’s pretty clear from the outset that he is preaching to the choir and is not looking for converts to the cause.  The general tone of the book is that the Republican Party contains all of the bright boys (and girls, let’s be inclusive here) and the Democrats have done nothing throughout history other than ride on their coattails.  He paints the Democratic Party as liberal extremists “in thrall to special interests” and the Republican Party as a group of level headed moderates.  I’m not saying that there aren’t any level headed moderates in the Republican Party, as I have met quite a few of them.  However, to present such a one-sided view not only opens him up to “pot calling the kettle black” charges, but it alienates moderates who are outside the clubhouse and who might otherwise be willing to give him a listen.

In other words, if you are not someone who is able to say “Yeah, right, whatever, next point please”, don’t even bother to crack this one open.

He almost lost me during Chapter 4, entitled “A Better Deal for the Middle Class”.  I’m sure that his statement that the middle class is overwhelmingly Republican would be as much of a surprise to my middle class Democratic friends as it is to me, an Independent.  He also makes a couple of assertions that I would need much more clarification on before I bought into them:

1) Teacher salaries are actually higher than certain other white-collar professions.  This was something of a shocker to me, so I did some cursory research on my own.  Using all of the groups he lists in his book, these are some of the median numbers I came up with according to www.payscale.com, based on 10-19 years experience:

• Secondary School Teacher: $48,053
• Mechanical Engineer: $73,795
• School Psychologist: $61,137
• Chemist: $57,855
• Architect: $66,103
• Economist: $87,822

I read the report that he cites as his source, and there is obviously a disconnect in my understanding somewhere, as I am unable to reconcile the numbers I was finding with the numbers the authors of the report were coming up with.  It would be interesting to sit down with the guys from the Manhattan Institute to discuss their findings so that I would have a better understanding of their research, but until then I’m left scratching my head.

2) He willingly states that conservatives should stop defending the current health care system as being perfect and not in need of any kind of overhaul, although he makes a case for more competition and is not advocating socialized medicine.  I’ll admit to some skepticism about that approach.  However, he makes a couple of points in this section that I’m not sure jive with reality.  He claims that poor people get medical care, “often quite lavish”, through Medicaid.  If this is true, I’m wondering why I keep reading articles in newspapers about those who are unable to find doctors because fewer and fewer practices are accepting Medicaid.  He also said that in 2003, almost one third of the people without health insurance would have actually been able to afford it but decided not to get it because it didn’t make financial sense to them.  For the sake of argument, or actually for the sake of avoiding an argument, I’ll accept that number.  What about the other two thirds of the people without health insurance in 2003?

At this point I almost closed the book and took it back to the library, but I decided to keep going instead.  I’m glad that I did, because he does make some good points later on.  For instance, I took his basic stance on abortion to be that right now it’s probably as good as it is going to get, where it is already gone for all intents and purposes in communities that are strongly against it and available in communities that feel it is necessary.  He’s being pretty pragmatic here, and I have to say that he’s probably right.  I also liked his idea of taxing fuels that “present political and environmental risks” (helloooo fossil fuels) to encourage the development of energy sources that do not.  It makes a lot of sense and I hope that someone who has influence over our energy policy can get a hearing on it.

On the other hand, there were enough times that he held up the current administration as an example of good governance in action that I found myself rolling my eyes a lot.  Is he really that puzzled as to why the rest of the world thinks that Guantanamo Bay is some sort of torture circus?  He makes a valid claim that past Republican administrations have been major players in environmentalism and conservation, but is silent on Bush’s efforts to weaken clean air and water legislation.  He also recycles the typical Republican views on other issues such as immigration and national security.  Some of it I agree with, some of it I think he’s off in left field on.  Or should that be right field?  He also seems to concentrate a lot of his arguments on white Americans.  With that particular segment of the population projected to become a minority in the coming years, I would think that it would be prudent for the Republican party to start doing some outreach to other racial and cultural groups.

As a Repulican, you’re probably going to agree with a lot of the things he says.  As a Democrat, you’re probably not going to get past Chapter 1.  As an Independent, you’re still going to be fantasizing about locking the two of them up in a room somewhere and not letting them out until they learn to work together constructively.  As I said, if you take his “we are always right and they are always wrong” partisan attitude with a grain of salt, it might be worth the read.  He definitely puts forward some ideas that are worth taking seriously.

“I hope thing get a lot worse, so that I can say ‘I told you so’!”

Really.  You hope things get worse.  You hope that we have another terrorist attack on American soil that kills thousands of everyday, ordinary citizens, so that you can feel superior?  (By the way, don’t say that one out loud – remember that we still have a President who thinks it’s okay to yank people off the street and toss them in jail without access to lawyers and the courts.)  You want another natural disaster that kills thousands of people and leaves tens of thousands more homeless, so that you can wag your finger and yell “See?  See?”  You’re going to pop champagne corks when your neighbors lose their houses to foreclosure, because the schadenfreude feels so good?  It’s one thing to believe that things are going to get worse, but to actively hope for it, just so that you can say that you were right?

“I really hope someone knocks him off!”

Have I got a place for you!  It’s called Iraq.  Afghanistan would be another good choice.  Al Qaeda is recruiting in both places, so really it will boil down to the type of climate you prefer.  Here in the US we have this thing called “the Rule of Law”, we pride ourselves on being a civil society, and we don’t condone the killing of our politicians.  It’s one of the reasons why we have one of the oldest democracies in the world.

Trust me, I have called people out who said the same thing about Bush, and I have more affection for sauerkraut than I have for him (hint: fermented cabbage?  Are you kidding me?).

Comments like these, when the people expressing them are serious, mean that we as a nation have failed.  We have failed to instill in our citizens the love of the ideals that this country was founded on.  It means that our military has fought and died for nothing.  Democracy means that you don’t get to win all of the time.  When you do win, it means that you get the chance to put your theories and ideas to the test.  When you don’t win, it means that you have to work harder to show that they are worth pursuing.  Every four years we elect a leader.  He’s not anointed by God, he’s not the hereditary heir, and he doesn’t take command at gunpoint.  He’s there because he’s convinced the majority of his fellow citizens that they should put him there.  Individually, we not obliged to like him or agree with him on anything, and each of us has the guaranteed right to say that he’s the biggest idiot in the world without having to worry about the secret police showing up in the middle of the night and dragging us off.  If we think he screwed up, we kick him out in the next election, and guess what?  It doesn’t take a coup d’etat to do it.  If he does something illegal, our founding fathers were smart enough to put an impeachment clause into the Constitution.

All of this has made us one of the most successful systems of government that this planet has ever known, and we have loved it so much that we have fought wars to preserve it.  What would President Lincoln think of the enmity and disgust between “Red States” and “Blue States”?  What would all of the people who died in WW I (which was kicked off by the assassination of an Austrian Archduke) say to those people who fantasize about bumping off the guy who was elected by a majority in his own country?  Did all of our soldiers in WW II fight and die to eradicate Fascism, just so that they could come home to a country that will not tolerate public dissent?  People in countries with politically repressive regimes dream about the day when they will become more like us; what would they think if we told them that we dream of being more like them?

We have become such a small-minded, petty people, and we should be disgusted with ourselves.  We really need to take a long look at ourselves, because we seem to have forgotten where we are and what we have sacrificed to get here.

I wanted you to win the nomination so badly in 2000.  I was even going to change my registration from Independent to Republican so that I could vote for you in the primary, but unfortunately I moved from that state before I had the chance to, and by the time the primary in my new state had rolled around Bush had already sewn it up.  He was so much your inferior that my vote went to Gore that year.  Had it been you instead, Gore would have had one less vote in his tally.

I watched you though.  McCain-Feingold.  The time when you stood up with a group of Republicans and Democrats and restored sanity when the Senate was about to come apart at the seams over the nomination of Supreme Court judges.  I admired you.  In my day I, too, have stood up for people and ideas that weren’t popular with my peers, and I know how much courage it takes to do that and what the personal costs sometimes are.  By 2006 I was ready.  I knew who the next President was going to be.

But then… something went wrong.

You started distancing yourself from the things I most admired about you.

You went hat-in-hand to seek the approval of the Religious Right.  John, you hit the nail right on the head with those guys back in 2000.  Whether it’s people like Jerry Falwell or people like Jerimiah Wright, preaching hatred is wrong no matter what side of the divide one is on.  After 9/11, Falwell and Robertson went on television and said that God hates homosexuals and feminists so much that he let over 3,000 innocent people be killed, including over 300 firefighters who went into burning buildings to try to save others and several members of the military whose proudly accepted duty was to keep this country safe.  I remember one victim, a little Irish girl on vacation with her mother to this country, who had been on her way to California to go to Disneyland when the plane she was in slammed into one of the Towers.  She must have died in terror, and Falwell and Robertson wanted us to believe that this was a-okay with God because He had an axe to grind with a small minority who lives here?  How could you go to them and beg for their approval?  Why would you even want to?

And Bush’s tax cuts to the rich?  After six years, with studies showing that they were getting richer while the rest of our salaries were stagnating or even declining?  Stupidity is doing the same thing again and again and expecting a different result, and you are not a stupid man, John.

I was puzzled, and becoming disillusioned.  None of your fellow Republicans inspired me.  None of the Democrats did either.  Obama became the Democratic nominee, and I was still on the fence, I still could have gone either way.

And then the Coup de Grace: Palin.  She’s got international experience because she can see Russia from her house?  She’s got what it takes to run a country as big and complex as this one when she’s only been the Governor of the least populous state for two years?  She’s going to enforce the Constitution when she doesn’t even know what it says her job responsibilities are?  John, if you were dead set on having a female running mate, there are several Republican women that would have been better picks.  Had you picked Olympia Snowe from Maine, I’d have been yours, but you rail about Obama’s inexperience and then pick someone who has even less?  You’re not a young man, John.  I know your mother is still alive in her 90s, but if our parents’ lifespan accurately forecasted our own longevity, my father would have died 20 years ago and my mother would have died last year.

But you know, there was a brief moment when I saw glimpses of the old maverick again, when I saw you stand up against something you knew wasn’t right.  I saw those clips of Palin exhorting the crowd with insinuations about Obama’s supposed links with terrorists.  The people in the crowd yelled “Terrorist!” and “Kill him!”, and she just stood there and smiled.  It made me sick and angry, and if I had my way she’d be cooling her heels in a jail cell somewhere for inciting the murder of a sitting US Senator.  But not you, John.  When people did the same thing at your rallies, you stopped them.  You told them that it wasn’t right, that Obama was an upstanding citizen and a respected colleague of yours.  They wanted to hate him for something that he was not, and you called them out for it.  That was the real you, coming through when it was too late, and at that point I was sorry that your corrosive, divisive running mate was going to keep me from voting for you.

Your strategy in the last few weeks was almost painful to watch.  The accusations of Socialism.  Your refusal to look at Obama or address him directly in the first debate, your reference to “That One” in the second.  The dismissive air quotes around “women’s health” in the third.  You came across as mean-spirited and uncaring, and you couldn’t have done more to alienate me if you had specifically tried to.  I had gone from looking forward to your winning to being relieved that you lost.

The man I had originally decided to vote for showed through again last night though, during your concession speech.  You were gracious, you were gentlemanly, you were conciliatory, and you were statesmanlike.  You pledged to work with the man who had just defeated you to help resolve the problems we have today, and called on your supporters to do the same thing.  I felt a lot of respect for you then, but I couldn’t help but wonder where this side of you had been for the past few months.

I hope you have a lot of years ahead of you in the Senate.  You have a lot of good experience, and your opinions are valuable.  But… I hope that you go back as the man I was going to vote for.

Get real, people.  Making abortion illegal won’t solve what’s really wrong.  You want to tell me how pro-life you are?  Fine.  Tell me about:

- Your plans to require all schools (public and private) to teach scientifically accurate sex education.  These plans should also include factual, non-agenda-driven discussions about the pros, cons, and efficacy of the various methods of birth control.

- How you think low-cost or free birth control can be made available to teenagers and low income adults.

- Your vision for how schools (public and private) can provide parenting classes to teenage parents-to-be, and what incentives you think will induce the fathers to become involved.

- Your thoughts on effective drug abuse treatment and prevention programs that will reduce the instances of a) women trading sex for their next fix, and b) babies being born with addiction problems.

- What you plan to do to expand domestic violence programs so that women who are in abusive relationships don’t have to feel like they have to choose between their babies and their safety.  These programs could also provide a safe haven for teenagers who are afraid of what might happen to them if their parents found out that they were pregnant.

- How you plan to offer free pre- and perinatal medical care to poor women who otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford it, so that they have a better chance of bringing healthy babies into the world.

- Your plans to encourage the adoption of minority and special-needs babies into happy, stable homes so that they don’t wind up getting dumped into an ineffective and sometimes abusive foster care system.

- Your ideas for providing child care to families so that the parents can either work or continue their educations.

And finally, the corker: since pro-life people tend to be Republicans and Republicans are the most likely to scream about taxes, tell me how you plan to pay for all of this.

Nothing is free, is it?  It’s easy to be pro-life when it doesn’t cost you anything, when the only thing required of you is that you wave a sign and call other people murderers.  What is having the necessity for abortion wiped out worth to you?  If the Government told you “We can provide the social programs that will make non-medically-necessary abortion a thing of the past, but we’re going to have to raise your taxes to do it”, will you say “Sure, the life of the unborn is worth it”, or are you going to bitch and moan about the Evil Government taking your money (I think the current buzz-phrase is “redistributing the wealth”)?

Do you think you can guess who would be willing to have their taxes raised?  Hint: it’s those same people you label as baby-killers.  Yep, the very same people you vilify for being pro-choice are also the people who are more likely to support the progressive social programs that would help resolve the issue.  Horrifying thought, isn’t it?

I’m sure that a lot of folks are going to say that the Government wouldn’t have to raise taxes to pay for this if they would just eliminate all of the wasteful spending that goes on.  And you know what?  They’d be absolutely right.  There are plenty of stupid and wasteful programs that could be cut, and a lot of people wouldn’t miss them.  But be practical.  The public has been agitating for the Government to trim spending for decades and it hasn’t happened.  How many more abortions do you think will have been performed before the Government decides to reign itself in?

I’m sick and tired of all of these people who are soooo pro-life but refuse to support and be part of any meaningful solution.  There is a word for these people: hypocrites.  And the hypocrisy makes my head hurt, so unless you are willing to put forward real, well-thought-out solutions to the problem, don’t even talk to me about it.

To anyone who feels like using the comments to tell me how I’m going to Hell, I would invite you to read The Inferno by Dante.  He makes an excellent argument about why hypocrites should be lower down in Hell than murderers.  Since we’ll both be headed there, I’ll make a point of trying to remember to look over the edge and wave down at you.

Well, there’s another, not-so-well-known story about Midas.  Some time after the “Midas Touch” incident, Midas had the misfortune to be picked to judge a musical contest between the gods Apollo and Pan.  He decided in Pan’s favor.  Greek gods were not known to be gracious losers, and Apollo, being no exception to this generalization, expressed his displeasure at the verdict by giving Midas the ears of an ass.

One might imagine that having the ears of an ass would be something of a social handicap, but by carefully selecting the appropriate headgear, Midas hid it so well that no-one knew about them.  Well, almost no-one; someone did have to cut his hair, so Midas’ barber knew about them.  To insure that no-one else found out about them, the barber had the threat of execution hanging over his head if the deal with the ears ever leaked out.

How badly did that have to suck?  Here’s this guy who knows one hell of a juicy secret about the king, and he can’t tell anyone.  It ate at him and ate at him, and finally out of desperation he dug a hole in the ground, whispered “The king has donkey ears” into it, and then filled it back in and walked away a happy man, relieved of his secret at last.

(Unfortunately over time, some reed grew in the spot, and every time the wind blew, the reeds would whisper “The king has donkey ears.”)

So what does that have to do with anything?  Well, think of me as somewhat akin to Midas’ barber, and this is my hole in the ground.  While I would never tell a secret that someone has told me, I do sometimes have thoughts and opinions that I need to get out of my system.  This is going to be my venue for doing that.

Or I could also be thought of as Midas, and those thoughts and opinions are the donkey ears I’m hiding under my turban.