Ichabod's Kin
A place for politics, pop culture, and social issues

We moderns despise the notion of judgment. To our minds, no one is Up There watching and there are no paybacks. But something there is that likes to imagine both ultimate comeuppance and just reward–and more than just “bad” and “good” cholesterol.

That the foregoing requires a Mr. (or Ms.) Big (as the case may be) in charge tempts also the notion that such god, being good, would tend to let people off, a la a permissive parent, while “natural” justice would be deservedly harsh. This is based on the idea that natural justice derives from what humanity, over its long journey, has fashioned into necessary standards– like laws, rules and policies. Such justice would be, at the least, tough love, by cracky, and not to be messed with.

The fun begins with breakage of standards–e.g., lies…no, more than that: political lies, since the latter prejudices the larger number of people. This is a timely suggestion, given our long national nightmare that began with last year’s Town Hall Meetings from Hell, to the rise of the Tea Party, and now finds its full flower in the current legislative blocking of health care reform. At the center of this obfuscation has been FauX News and its pseudo-journalists, all in harmony and in lockstep with GOP/Republican/conservative/right-wing/wing-nut rhetoric.

Exhibit A in this jackassery are the aged. Jon Stewart, bless his soul, and his Daily Show staff, are the only ones who avoid what St. Exupery said of the media: that they do not report “matters of importance.” Stewart showed how the GOP and FauX News has been on a tight script from which none deviate–use of words to describe the president’s health bill like, “ram…shove…push” and ending with “down our throats.”

This has been repeated on every FoX broadcast by anchors, commentators, and political guests for the benefit of its vast swarm of impressionable listeners; at last it was possible to interview nursing and retirement home residents and hear them regurgitate the same spiel. These are known of course as the Repetition and Bandwagon effects, the irony being that these same elderly have long benefited from, and will continue to, terrible “socialist” programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

This is a far departure from the days of Rep. Claude Pepper (but who remembers him?) who educated his Floridian retirees to vote for and protect their real self-interests. But the Big Lie has since taken root, and die-hard capitalists for whom there is no end to greed, have convinced average people, for whom they care not a fig, that it is possible to have a world without taxes and to trust only Republicans with interest rates.

I apologize for simplifying the dumbing-down of America as a one-year siege. My bad not to mention Lee Atwater, the GOP creator of the politics of personal destruction, or fail to harken to their 1964 national convention when Nelson Rockefeller’s speech was drowned out by yelling and foot-stomping crazies whose antics foretold the future of political discourse in the U.S. No wonder that Roger Ailes and Pat Buchanan always called Reagan a “sweetheart”: Ronnie was well-taught to read a script and when handed one by them, could be wound up and turned loose to deliver it with  flourish and fervency.

It is curious that only two years ago the populace was clamoring for health care reform–until the right wing began to scare them with untruths and misrepresentations, and with the mantra that ours was, very suddenly, “the best health care system in the world.” And foreign policy, long a conservative concern, goes unmentioned now that Obama has his administration and the military on the same page with a reasonable plan in which both have had part. Compared this with George W’s abrupt beginning to his infamous “call to war in Iraq” cabinet meeting by daring Sec. Powell with, “Well, Colin, are ya with me er not?” There’s leadership for you, and from the lips of an eternal frat boy.

Now the worst for last: once Republicans lost a crucial vote on the Congressional reform bill, it’s no surprise that with their minions whipped into a fury, heightened rhetoric from the Tea Party, and Sarah Palin calling for a “re-load,” threats of personal harm were unleashed on ten Democratic legislators, and that’s just for starters. Should any of this come to pass, file it under Domestic Terrorism.

So we’ve hit rock bottom and it’s time to twelve-step (or however many it takes) to sober up our drunken politics. We’ve sown the wind and reaped the whirlwind.

It’s judgment time. The judge has come. And may we come to our senses.