Changing My Political Affiliation

Last week when I read in the New York Times that Obama was going to submit a budget that proposed cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits, I decided that if he really did this, I was going to leave the Democratic Party. For what it’s worth, I wrote the White House saying so. (No response and no quaking in boots.) Well, he has done so, and I’m changing my registration today. Some people are saying that what he’s done is merely a tactic to try to make the Republicans look bad or something. I don’t care. I want someone who stands up and openly does what’s good and what’s right. I’m sick of the political games. I’m sick of compromising with evil. I don’t know exactly what happens next, but I’m not staying on this track anymore. The Republicans managed to pull the country into hell by being uncompromising. Maybe we have to be uncompromising to make our way into the heavenly realm.

In more pleasant news, I just found out that my book, The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, has gone into an 11th printing as a paperback. (It did four printings in hardback.) Next February, the book will have been in print for ten years, a happy milestone.

More on the GOP

Other than its depth, there is nothing new about my contempt for the Republican Party, which has been increasing every year since 1969—my contempt, that is. My family was so staunchly Democrat—Roosevelt/Kennedy-style Democrats—that they didn’t dare tell my grandmother that Nixon had been elected. She was in the hospital dying and they were afraid that the news would kill her. Nixon was probably the only thing my father and I ever agreed on. It has reached the point now—reached it awhile ago actually—that no Republican can ever represent me for anything. This is not hyperbole. The Republicans want a victory that they must never have. I mean, a victory where their so-called “values,” which are, objectively speaking, vile, hold complete sway. This country is, in effect, in a civil war; it’s just that we haven’t started using guns.

I feel like a man without a country.

A Party to Evil

The Republican Party is not the party of individual freedom. It is the party of ego, the party of Mammon. I think it has gone insane—become evil. And you can’t compromise with evil because it can never be satisfied. Those who will tell me that what I’m actually describing is the Democratic Party are wrong. The Democrats are compromised, but they haven’t become out and out evil as the Republicans have become.

An Appropriate Word

I’ve been far too busy with my work on the book to post anything here lately. I do want to make one comment, however. There’s a tremendous amount of name calling that goes on in this country, and sometimes a name will stick and the object of scorn has to carry it around for years. “Tax and spend liberals” is one I can think of at the top of my head. Lately, I’ve been seeing a word being directed at the Republicans that I like because I think it’s accurate: Nihilist. I hope it sticks.

The Evil in Wisconsin

Tonight I was reading the readers’ comments attached to the New York Times article about the sick act the Republican party pulled off in Wisconsin, and I found myself hitting the recommend button on any post that said, “this is war.” I don’t know yet how that manifests itself. I’m not the kind who gets enthusiastic about wars—of any kind. But it’s clear that something needs to be done. The Republican party is evil. While it will destroy itself eventually—that’s a real universal law—it’s doing far too much harm to the common good right now to just stand by and wait. For starters, I sent some money to the Wisconsin Democratic party to help them in their recall efforts.

There are readers of this blog who dislike it it when I use the word “evil.” But it is the correct word. I’m leaving tomorrow morning for a speaking gig in Pasadena. When I get back I’m going to start work on a post dealing with my thoughts on evil.

Hate is Too Strong a Word

The new year is here, and one thing that I know is coming is the partial resurgence of the Republican party. For two years, it’s been kept on something of a choke chain. But now it’s going to be out of the yard, snarling and snapping at us. I’m grateful to have had two relatively peaceful years of not having to listen to crap like, “Why do you hate America?” My answer to that was, “I don’t hate America. I hate the Republican vision for America.” But then I would always have to step back and remind myself that it really isn’t okay to hate.

When you hate something, even if it is something evil, your mind becomes clouded. You can’t see straight. You make bad decisions. You are filled with the evil of hatred. This is all true. I wonder what to call the proper response to evil. Opposition? Well, that’s certainly part of any correct response, but it seems a little mild. Revulsion? Yes, but that’s a purely personal, interior response. Something has to be done to stop evil. Is contempt the same as hatred? Does anybody have a good idea for the right word?

And make no mistake. What the Republicans push is evil. Their calls for personal freedom unhindered by governmental interference is really just a disguise for unbridled egotism—the dog-eat-dog kind. In the Republican universe, money and power are King, which is your basic, garden-variety definition of evil. It astonishes me that they can claim to be the representatives of morality in America and not get called on it. If this country ever has a serious discussion on what constitutes real morality, the GOP will be utterly discredited.

Over the next two years, I have little doubt that from time to time I will slip toward the fringes of hatred. And each time it happens I will make a conscious effort to pull back. But I’m sick of this. We have to stop the Republican party. We (I don’t mean Democrats, I mean Americans) have to drive a stake through that organization’s dark heart and never let it get back up. It could be done if we all got real.

The Tea Party at War

A few days ago somebody asked me if I knew what was going on in Iraq these days. Is there still a war happening? Are we getting out? I had to admit that I didn’t really know. War is such a constant in the background now—just like in the novel 1984—that I tend to tune it out, like traffic noise. It’s an insane situation. Official government policy is that the United States must be capable of fighting two wars simultaneously. A year or so ago I saw an article in the New York Times stating that a lot of officials are beginning to believe that this might be insufficient. Only empires do this sort of thing. And empires invariably overextend themselves, exhaust themselves, and then collapse. This is where we’re heading, but hardly anybody talks about it. American military spending is roughly equal to the rest of the world’s combined. But when the Republicans and the Tea Party folks raise hell about government debt they never suggest slashing the military budget.  One reason nobody talks about it much is that the word game is rigged. Nobody talks about the “War Department” or “war spending,” but the “Defense Department” and “defense spending.” Our wars are not defensive; they’re imperial. There is a belief—and growing up I heard it stated many times, and by the same sort of people who make up the Tea Party movement—that every generation should experience war, that it “makes a man out of you.” That’s crazy. The last war I supported was Vietnam and only up until early 1968. I supported it because I was a dumb teenager and I didn’t know any better. The Tea Party continues to receive a lot of media attention for its supposed rage over government debt. If their rage were really about government debt, they’d be making a huge stink over military spending. But they aren’t doing that and they never will.

A Universal, Inexorable Principle

With today’s news of the arrest of nine members of a violent, right-wing “Christian” militia group, and watching the angry ride to hell that the Republican/Tea Party is taking us on, I find some comfort in this passage from the I Ching.

When misfortune has spent itself, better times return. The seed of the good remains, and it is just when the fruit falls to the ground that good sprouts anew from its seed. The superior man again attains influence and effectiveness. He is supported by public opinion as if in a carriage. But the inferior man’s wickedness is visited upon himself. His house is split apart. A law of nature is at work here. Evil is not destructive to the good alone but inevitably destroys itself as well. For evil, which lives solely by negation, cannot continue to exist on its own strength alone.