What This Country Needs Is A Good Civics 101 Course

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While certain aspects of the right-wing political yowling in this country have made perfect sense to me, other aspects didn't--until I realized something, that is. What I realized is that social studies, or civics [as opposed to straight "history"--Ed.] education seems to have disappeared from our educational system.

When the Tea Partiers, for example, yammer about their rights and freedoms being taken away by an oppressive government, and when idiots like Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich pontificate about the current administration being "the most radical" secular, socialist government in US history, and people take them seriously, what other conclusion can be drawn?

The Tea Partiers have taken the name for their movement in honor of the Boston Tea Party, which I hope even people with virtually no knowledge of American history recognize was a protest against a British imperial tax on tea imposed upon its then-colonies in North America. Fair enough. Empires, almost by definition, are despotic and largely opposed to the will of their subjects. But the Tea Partiers in fact are more like the governments in southern states before and during the US Civil War

The distinction the Tea Partiers have failed to recognize or even acknowledge is that the British government imposed its taxes on its American colonies without the colonials [more precisely, the colonials' representatives--Ed.] being able to vote on the imposition of those taxes in Parliament. The secessionists, on the other hand, were (as they well knew) a minority population in the country as a whole. They HAD representation in the national government. They HAD legal recourse and access to get their opinions known and their voices heard. They HAD a place within that very government they railed against. They just didn't like being on the losing end of the votes.

I remember social studies in junior high and high school. One of its most fundamental teachings was that when people come together to form a government and participate in an attempt to form "a more perfect Union," their obligation under that social contract or social compact is that everyone agrees to accept, peacefully, the outcomes of the votes that go against them, and that their recourse is to work within the system to win enough votes to change the outcome in the future--and unless and until they regain that majority, that they abide by the results they do not like, and peacefully comply with the law. WE all ARE the government. It is not some alien thing being imposed upon us by some distant, evil, nefarious "them" which wants to destroy us and take away "our freedom."

This teaching seems largely to have been lost on members of the Tea Parties and the GOP toadies who further incite them. This teaching is so basic, so fundamental to what being a responsible American citizen is all about, that its failing to have taken hold in the minds and hearts of the Tea Partiers mystifies me. I conclude, therefore, that this teaching is no longer offered in our school systems, and I for one mourn its passing. In the long run, it means the end of what the American dream really constitutes.

And I know that rhetoric often gets heated in the course of the discussion. But I'm not talking about heated rhetoric. I'm talking about people threatening to "take back" what they feel has been "taken away" from them by force of arms or even revolution. I'd have said "or secession," given the proclivity of numbskulls like Texas Governor Rick Perry to resort to that language, but anyone who knows the outcome of the US Civil War should know that secession as an idea is dead. The Confederacy lost. Get over it, already.

What scares me at this point is the increasingly violent stridency with which these allegedly disenfranchised people are pushing their agenda. America, it seems, is for everyone--only so long as everyone is just exactly like them [which is the unstated but essential linchpin of their equation--Ed.]. And they are willing to say they'll shoot people who disagree. Watch very carefully all the pro-gun, pro-Tea Party rallies that have been scheduled to take place near Washington, D.C., on April 19th. The tone of our political discourse is changing in some fundamental--and I use that term deliberately--way. Threats of violence should not be a part of everyday politics, but of late, such threats have become all too common. Two quick examples: I remember a sign at one of the Tea Party rallies. It said "We left our guns at home. This time." Second, a recent political cartoon in the Washington Post may be about to come more literally true than anyone with even half a brain should want. The cartoon depicts the exterior of the US Supreme Court building, with bullets whizzing everywhere all around it, and a speech balloon coming from inside the building [probably from Justice Scalia--Ed.] saying in a self-satisfied tone, "Ah, a robust Second Amendment in action!"

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Barack . . . Spock?

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Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek, built better than he knew. The original Star Trek and all its permutations have influenced not just popular culture, but our whole society, in innumerable ways. A few examples: the original Apple computers were designed to look like Star Trek's desktop monitors; your flip-top cell phone owes its look AND its existence to the Star Trek communicator; your iPhone or Blackberry is our generation's version of Star Trek's tricorder.

But Star Trek did more than influence the development of technology. It gave us hope for the future in a turbulent time. It showed humans of all races working together peacefully and harmoniously when the real world in 1968 seemed to be coming apart at the seams due to anti-war protests, racially-discriminatory-prompted violence, assassinations, and expanded easy availability and use of mind-bending drugs . . . to name just a few of the myriad crises overwhelming us in those deadly days.

For many of us who lived through 1968, the last eight years have been like a "déja vu all over again" experience. But Tuesday night was our breath of fresh hope. So I got to thinking. Did the late, great Gene Roddenberry somehow affect the outcome of this election?

Think about it. Is Barack Obama a real-life Mr. Spock? Spock, as you all well know, is the 1/2 Vulcan, 1/2 human Science Officer of the USS Enterprise. He is known for his impeccable logic, his coolness under fire, and his overall intelligence and knowledge. Barack Obama, the offspring of a black Kenyan father and a white Kansas mother, is one cool customer, as his steadiness in the face of the slimy campaign run against him demonstrated. He, a Harvard Law graduate, is obviously very smart, tremendously well-organized, and knowledgeable about politics and history, two of the broadest academic disciplines. If you know politics and history, you know (or know how to find out) about anything and everything.

Furthermore, Spock, the supposedly non-emotional alien being, had a deep understanding of human psychology and a great sense of humor. [The humor of Star Trek has always been under appreciated, but to my mind it's one of the show's greatest strengths and legacies. But that's a topic for another day.--Ed.] Obama's ability to connect with people demonstrates his grasp of human psychology. He has also regularly demonstrated his sense of humor, especially during some of the most grueling moments of the recently-concluded campaign.

But they are not clones. Spock was most content to be an advisor--to give his captain the information he needed but to let the captain make the final decision. Obama is a natural-born leader who is also smart enough to know when to follow the public will. He modified his stand against offshore oil drilling, for example, when the public mood indicated clearly that his position, no matter how correct (for the environment, for the country, and for the future), wasn't going to fly. Thus my oft-stated admiration for his grasp of politics being "the art of the possible."

My ultimate point, however, is that the existence of and admiration for the character Spock in the public consciousness for the past 40 years may well have played a roll in the public's acceptance of and votes for Obama in the just-concluded election. One of the greatest of human fears is fear of the unknown. That fear often expresses itself as a fear of change, even when the rational mind knows change is necessary. I am convinced that, consciously or not, Americans' familiarity with Spock made them less afraid of voting for the first African-American major party nominee for US President, thus contributing at least in a small way to Obama's large margin of victory. Remember: he didn't just win in a landslide in the Electoral College (more than a 2-votes-to-1-for-McCain margin); he won the overall popular vote by something on the order of five million votes (as I write this).

So wherever you are, Gene Roddenberry, thank you. You've helped us find our own way to improving our chances to live well and prosper well into this dangerous 21st century.

Oh, The Huge Manatees!

(With apologies to Herbert Morrison and Les Nessman)

Ideas that have crossed my mind of late:

How can Dick Cheney have been involved in public life for so many years and still have managed to insult the entire state of West Virginia in one sentence? His remark about having Cheneys in his ancestry on both sides of his family, "but we're not from West Virginia," is beyond jaw-droppingly dumb. Sure, he apologized, but he shouldn't have said it in the first place. Methinks this is a perfect example of the arrogance of power. He's gotten away with so much for so long that he no longer bothers to engage his brain before opening his mouth. Lucky for us his departure from office will come soon. It cannot come soon enough for the well-being of the country.

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Have you seen the Miller Lite "Beer Heaven" commercial? I get the intended message: Miller Lite is so good that you'll think you're in heaven after drinking it. But I wonder: did the ad's creators get the unintended implication of their work? "Drink Miller Lite, and DIE." Talk about your "things that make you go hmmm . . ."!

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Big Brown may be a lock to win the Belmont Stakes and thus become the first Triple Crown winner in 30 years. But no one knows until the race is run for real. Things happen. The Chicago Cubs were a lock to win the NL pennant in 1969, too . . . until a black cat at Shea Stadium and the so-called Miracle Mets wrecked that dream.

If you believe in that sort of thing.

So, while I am going to enjoy the good things I see happening in sports this summer, I am not going to anticipate or presume anything.

While we're on the subject of horse racing: if Big Brown does win it, I will have been privileged to have seen 1/4 of all the Triple Crown winners accomplish the feat. I do wish, however, that Big Brown had a more Triple Crown-winner-worthy name. "Secretariat" has a special ring of class to it. "Big Brown" sounds like a lunch bag . . . or something that goes down the toilet . . . He's a really nicely conformed horse, too, so his name totally doesn't match his quality. I wish it were less pedestrian.

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What's wrong with this picture? WGN, a Chicago TV station, is now announcing all its show times in Eastern and Pacific (which it's calling "East" and "West," God help us!), not in Central, the time zone in which Chicago is located. Count me as one viewer who dislikes that intensely. Why give the "stuck up sticky beaks" (thank you, Graham Chapman) on either coast another reason to look down upon the middle of the country as something to fly over?

Sheesh! We Midwesterners have enough self-esteem problems as it is!

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One of humanity's great talents is to take a disparate batch of things and make something coherent out of them. We see patterns in things, which lets us find the significance of seemingly unrelated things. It's a great survival mechanism. Then again, we also see patterns where none really exist, which can distract us into defending against dangers that aren't really there.

Two benign manifestations of this human tendency are constellations and calendar conjunctions. Constellations I had nothing to do with. I do find it amusing, however, that the Big Dipper is eventually going to look like a stiletto heel before it disappears completely (from Earth's point of view, that is). Calendar conjunctions are one of my own pet patterns, even though I have no idea why. I find it fascinating, for example, that Ernie Kovacs and James Joyce both died on the same day--decades apart. Don't know why that should be of cosmic significance, much less what that significance might be, but it seems somehow to have great import. Likewise the notion that the first day of Lou Gehrig's Ironman streak (2,130 consecutive games played for the Yankees) and his death occurred on the same day, again, decades apart. It's easier to see why this matters, because what killed Gehrig (ALS) is the same thing that stopped his Ironman streak, but at some visceral level, doesn't it strike you as eerie that the two events coincide on the calendar?

And William Shakespeare is believed to have been born and to have died on the same day . . . again, decades apart. April is the cruelest month, isn't it? Unless June is--for Bobby Kennedy was shot, and Ronald Reagan died, on the same day 36 years apart. Both the Left and the Right thus mourn on June 5th.

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There are no new plots in science fiction--just nuances in how we tell them. I was watching an episode of David Tennant's Doctor Who and I suddenly realized that it was just the same plot as Star Trek V and aspects of Quantum Leap all roiled up into one neat package . . . by using a theatrical device that goes back to at least the Greeks. The Doctor Who episode was called "The Satan Pit," and was about a bunch of humans who found a planet orbiting a black hole (yes, even the people in the episode said it was impossible--that's why they were there, to investigate it and figure out what was going on). It turns out that the original incarnation of Evil had been captured and chained in a pit 10 miles plus under the planet's surface--and Evil wanted out.

So It transferred Its consciousness to one of the humans and set things up so the humans would leave, thus taking Its consciousness with them and loosing It again on the universe. The Doctor, of course, saved the day, but all the way through the episode, I kept hearing Captain Kirk saying, "What would God want with a starship?" I also figured out within the first few minutes of the first part of the episode (a two-hour two-parter) that while the Doctor's Tardis had disappeared, it would come back just when all hope seemed lost, thus literally becoming a deus ex machina, especially if you accept that the Doctor is the human incarnation of science as God.

Which is not to say that any of this was not entertaining. It was hugely enjoyable. Hey, I stayed up past midnight on Saturday night two weeks in a row just to watch it, even though I'd already figured out the overall sequence of events.

So the Doctor is like Sam Beckett in Quantum Leap, popping in and setting right things that once went wrong--or should I say that Doctor Who inspired Quantum Leap since the original Doctor Who goes back at least 40 years?

And the whole idea of Evil needing curious humans (or humanoids) to escape Its prison comes straight out of Star Trek V, which in turn owes the idea to any number of previous stage plays, novels, and teleplays.

Let's hear it for Ecclesiastes. There really is nothing new under the sun. Just how we tell it.

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Speaking of science fiction: did you see the Arts and Entertainment remake of The Andromeda Strain last week? Compared to the original movie, what a stinkeroo! OK, the special effects were better, and the cast was more high-powered than the original movie's cast, but the reworked script put in a bunch of cliched and extraneous plot devices that made me roll my eyes in disgust. When it was just a story of an alien plague dropping to Earth and the humans' race to figure it out and find a cure before the entire planet died, it was a taut thriller. Yet its emphasis on science made it somewhat low-key and extremely credible.

But to turn the thing into a mish-mosh of government conspiracies, time travel, and assassination attempts (some successful) diminished the significance of the story and went way beyond my ability to suspend my disbelief. For one thing, would wiping out the killer bug instantly return all the flora (and fauna?--the miniseries never made this plain) back to life the way the special effects showed? I mean, even if "the Andromeda strain" was killed, wouldn't all the Earthly things it had killed stay dead?

Also, the very end of the movie posited the type of time travel "do-loop" that is the bane of serious science fiction writers--people in the future send a warning to those of the past, but the need for the warning doesn't exist until after the warning from the future has gone awry in the past and caused people to do the very things that require sending the warning in the first place. Huh? That's why I call it a "do-loop"--there's no starting or stopping point. You can't have the future event without the past event, but the future event is what caused the past event in the first place. Makes me want to pull out my hair in frustration.

I will give the A&E version some props. A lot of the dialog was snappy (though too many of the characters were walking cliches). Rick Schroeder, as a US Army Major and doctor and biological weapons researcher had the best line in the whole miniseries. When asked by one of his fellow scientists if he had a girl waiting for him outside the lab, he said, "If you don't ask, I won't tell."

That was brilliant, but not enough to overcome the miniseries' plethora of shortcomings. Michael Crichton should be ashamed of himself for allowing this updated "improvement" of his original work to be produced.

It's All Greek To Me

Rather, maybe I should have been Greek. I find myself of late complaining mightily that "civilization" is going straight to hell. Such kvetching is a time-honored tradition, going back to ancient Greece, if not farther. Every generation thinks the next several are lesser than it in every measure. And every generation is right. Yet the world keeps turning.

I must admit that if things keep going the way I currently perceive them, however, I may not want to stick around to see how everything turns out. If it weren't so sad, the ignorance of those calling Barack Obama "an appeaser" would be laughable. I am glad for Sen. Clinton's sake that she immediately spoke out unequivocally against such accusations. Why is it that she finds the guts to act presidential only when it's much too late for hopes to become this year's Democratic Party's presidential nominee?

I was also glad to see Obama speaking forcefully and rationally against such wrong-headed attacks. I'll give the man this: he is cool under fire, which is a prime presidential character trait.

But for John McCain to claim Obama thinks America has no enemies and that Obama is living in la-la land is beyond ridiculous. McCain's supporters also called Obama's response to the absurd attacks hysterical political maneuvering.

None of these people could make themselves look more ignorant or worse liars/fools if they tried. They are the ones living in la-la land. I increasingly fear that their realization of the total bankruptcy of their "ideas" is going to make Dubya invade Iran before he has to leave office--worse yet (and thanks to my cousin Val for expressing this so concisely), he's amassed so much executive power and cowed so many people into submission that he may even try to declare martial law and suspend the elections just to hold onto power. Part of my brain is telling me I'm being paranoid . . . but the other part of my brain and my heart are palpitating in fear. I didn't think Dubya and his minions would be brazen enough to do some of the stupid things they've actually already done, so . . .

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Things are no brighter on the social front. I saw a commercial for the new season of The Bachelorette yesterday, and it filled me with sadness. The new bachelorette is the one who did not win the bachelor's heart in the just-finished season of The Bachelor. She says she's out to win her happy ending. The bachelors among which she gets to choose are all making "I'm going to win" noises. They don't even know her--nor does she know them. To expect her to find her "one and only" when she claimed to have done just that on The Bachelor, only to be rejected, is ludicrous. It's staged. It cannot be genuine. Everyone's behavior is geared to getting to a conclusion . . . a conclusion that probably wouldn't happen were events allowed to proceed without outside interference or influence.

Since when did love become such a callous and calculated win-or-lose proposition? Since when does one's success in life ride on "winning" in such an artificial, manipulated "game of love"? When it's a game, it can't be genuine. How many times has each of these shows run through its cycle? At least seven of each, if memory serves. And how many of the couples are still together? One, if memory serves.

It's all so coarse and callous. I'd rather be alone than subject myself to such public indignity. But the younger generations don't seem to have any understanding of what self-esteem really means. Nor any sense of shame. Nor any capability for truly deep feelings.

Why does anyone watch this crap?

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Another reason the unregulated free market isn't such a good idea: if farmers raise their crops based purely on what's going to give them the highest price, we're going to have overages of some crops and shortages of others. Free Marketeers will tell you that this is OK because prices will shift in response and the farmers will then shift in response to that, and things will level out. But food is not something you can let the market control. For one thing, there's lead time--a/k/a growing seasons. It will take a year or two for changing prices to affect changing production. What do you do in the meantime? After all, farm production is also perishable. And what of people's health? What if we discover that some very unpopular crop is vitally necessary to human biological health? If we insist on letting a free market control farming, we could be committing long-term slow collective suicide.

Not to mention that unregulated free markets often dictate that the very best, most productive farming land is too valuable to be used for farming. We're importing food into this country that we could well produce here, but the farm land is worth more when built on for commercial development than it is to grow what sustains us. What's wrong with that picture?

If for no other reason, being dependent on other nations for our very "stuff of life" is no way to improve/enhance national security. I've heard some people say that when we get such global trade entanglements, it's actually good for national security, because (as they've said, in all seriousness) "no countries with McDonald's restaurants have ever gone to war with each other."

McDonald's has been around for only 50 years or so. That's not even an eye blink in terms of all of human history. Quarter Pounders with Cheese are no guarantee of world peace. The notion is nonsensical in other ways, too. Anybody who thinks he is on the short end of resource allocation is not going to let anyone else (fellow franchisee or not) take what he perceives to be rightfully his . . . not without a fight, at least.

I don't know what's going to happen. I hope I am wrong about Dubya's intentions. I hope the American electorate wakes up enough to realize what's happening and to do something about it. The historian in me wants to hang around and see how everything turns out . . . but the pragmatic realist in me wants to go hide under a very large rock.

Give Me Your Hat--I'm Going To Puke In It

Two items that hit the news yesterday were at least as stomach-churning as any of the banquet scene courses in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

First, the Republicans in the US Senate have voted Trent Lott to be their # 2 in command. Other GOP senators interviewed about it, including John McCain and Chuck Hagel, brushed aside the specter [pun intended for you political junkies out there--Ed.] of Lott's remarks several years ago lauding Strom Thurmond's segregationist stand in his run for the US presidency in 1948. "It's old news, Lott's a good man, Americans believe in redemption" were the official themes of the day. Right. The real themes of the day were that (1) the GOP will do anything to hold onto whatever vestiges of power it has--in this case, via obstructionism (Lott is a master of the Senate's rules and knows how to keep bills the GOP doesn't like from getting full Senate consideration), and (2) people of color who belong to or who support the GOP in its present incarnation are fools--or tools--or dupes--or worse.

Second, O.J. Simpson is now promoting a book and Fox (it figures) TV special called something like "If I Did It, This Is How," regarding the murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and of her visitor Ron Goldman. Even the book's publisher says it's a confession of O.J.'s guilt. Has anyone connected to this beyond-tawdry enterprise given a thought to how this will affect O.J.'s children with Nicole? "I'm your father, and I didn't murder your mother, but if I had, here's how . . ." That is utterly sick.

The only remotely possible good that could come from this is that Nicole's and Ron's families can garnish any profits generated by it as at least partial payment of the multimillion dollar civil trial judgment they won against O.J. (for having caused Nicole's and Ron's deaths). O.J. hasn't paid one single penny of that judgment to date.

But is it worth the cost?

I suspect the Brown and Goldman families think not.

Never Underestimate The Wisdom Of the Group

The jury gave Zacharias Moussaoui life in prison without parole. Collective wisdom is a wonderful thing. I know that many of the relatives of those killed on 9/11 (and Rudy Guliani) are not happy about this. Nonetheless, it was the right thing to do. Moussaoui wanted to die so that he could become a martyr. He also wanted to die because it would spark a whole new world-wide wave of anti-Western and anti-American violence by Muslim extremists.

I don't care that Moussaoui says America lost because he did not get the death penalty. He is wrong. In actuality, America won. For Moussaoui will be forgotten but not gone. I hope he lives a long, long, long time in jail. Long enough to realize that the world at large has erased him from its consciousness. That will punish him far more than his own death ever would--or could.

I remember a very early Law and Order episode, wherein the character Ben Stone tells the character Adam Schiff that the jury in a quite complex trial got to the right verdict (guilty on some counts, not guilty on others) even if it did it for the wrong reasons. I don't give a hoot about what the Moussaoui jury's reasons were. They got to the right verdict.

Let's hear it for the jury!

[I cannot help but shudder, however, at applauding the wisdom of the collective. It strikes me as capable of being interpreted as pro-Borg, which I most assuredly am not.--Ed.]