The handjob-in-a-Bangkok-bathhouse presidential campaign

But this [presidential] campaign, relatively speaking, will not be fierce or hotly contested. Instead it’ll be disappointing, embarrassing, and over very quickly, like a handjob in a Bangkok bathhouse. And everybody knows it. It’s just impossible to take Mitt Romney seriously as a presidential candidate.

– Rolling Stone political writer Matt Taibbi, May 7

It’s difficult to write about this year’s presidential race, since it’s so substance-free.

We all know what Repugnican Tea Party candidates Mittens Romney and Pretty Boy Paul Ryan are all about: the continued radical redistribution of wealth, from the very many to the very few. (Right-wingers oppose the redistribution of wealth only when such redistribution benefits the many instead of the few. Then, it’s “communism” or “socialism” or some other “anti-American” “evil.”) And Team Romney/Ryan are about the Orwellian, Randian relabeling of those of us serfs who produce for our plutocratic overlords as “parasites” when it’s the plutocrats who are the parasites on the rest of us – not vice-versa.

Class warfare, indeed.

And we all know that President Barack Obama, the lesser of the two evils, won’t/wouldn’t do much more in a second term than he has(n’t) done thus far. An Obama re-election, while not the hell that a President Romney would mean for us, would mean four more years! of whatever the hell it is that you could call these past three-plus years.

So devoid of substance is this presidential race that the narcissistic, shallow, cold-blooded Paul Ryan’s workout routine is considered “news,” and so coveted has been a shirtless pic of Ryan that the gossip website TMZ has put a watermark on the Paul Ryan shirtless pic from six years ago that it managed to find and present to the world:

Thankfully, in TMZ’s online poll, as I type this sentence, 85 percent of the respondents proclaim that the chicken-legged Ryan’s looks will not influence their vote, while only 15 percent say that Ryan’s looks will/would be a factor in their voting decision, and 58 percent of the respondents say that they would not do the nasty with Ryan, while 42 percent say that they would. Seventy-seven percent claim that they would rather get it on with Ryan Gosling than with Paul Ryan, while only 23 percent choose the surnamed Ryan over the first-named Ryan. And asked whether we’ll ever have a President Paul Ryan, 69 percent say no and only 31 percent say yes.

This is what American politics has been reduced to. Just so you know.

This is the result of decades of “infotainment” and celebrity culture and corporately owned and controlled non-journalism poisoning what we still call our “democracy.”

So watered down and insipid all of it has become that we have Mittens Romney proclaiming the obvious as though it were scandalous.

This past week Mittens proclaimed that President Barack Obama is “running [for re-election] just to hang on to power, and I think he would do anything in his power” to remain in office.

Duh.

Most presidents run for a second term, and Mittens has not been running for president since at least 2008 because he wants power?

Yeah, you know, I think that the vast majority of those who run for president want the power of the presidency. (What they would do with that power, of course, is another matter.)

The very definition of “politics” (the broad definition) is the use of power.

Barack Obama is to be shamed for wanting to retain his power, but we are to believe that Mittens doesn’t want the same power? (Or, at least, are we to believe that Mittens actually would use such power for good?)

And what about former “President” George W. Bush? When he ran for a second, unelected term, didn’t he “just [want] to hang on to power”? Or are only Democratic candidates power-mongers?

Such sheer hypocrisy is what it means to be a wingnut or a Mormon, and in multi-millionaire Mittens we have both.

Mittens this past week also proclaimed that Barack Obama’s re-election campaign is driven by “division and attack and hatred.”

Let’s see: The Mormon cult and the Repugnican Tea Party both believe that women, non-whites, non-heterosexuals, non-“Christo”fascists, non-citizens, non-capitalists, et. al., et. al. should be/should remain second- or third-class citizens, and that only right-wing, “Christo”fascist, white, heterosexual, patriarchal, capitalist males should continue to run the show, but somehow that’s not “division” or “hatred” or an “attack” on those of us — who are the majority of the human beings who inhabit the United States of America – who don’t fit those demographics and who disagree that those with those demographics should continue to have an insanely unfair amount of political power in what is supposed to be a representative democracy.

No, when Mittens’ Mormon cult — and Paul Ryan’s Catholick church – actively supported Proposition Hate here in my home state of California, that was an attack, a personal attack on my equal human and civil rights guaranteed to me by the constitutions of my nation and my state.

That was a divisive attack based – steeped – in hatred.

Women should not be allowed to control their own uteri; same-sex couples should not be allowed to be married; “illegals” should be deported immediately (or, as Joe the Plumber, who is running for the U.S. House of Representatives for Ohio on the Repugnican Tea Party ticket, recently put it, “put a damn fence on the border going with Mexico and start shooting”); the filthy rich should continue to get richer and the rest of us should continue to get poorer; and Hey, let’s start another war in the Middle East! — as John McCainosaurus hilariously sang during the last presidential election cycle, “Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran!”

But the Repugnican Tea Party traitors and the members of the Mormon cult are nice people, you see, because they don’t use profanity or salty language (like that evil Joe Biden!), and they smile lovingly while they propose to destroy you with such euphemistically named plans as Pretty Boy Paul Ryan’s “Path to Prosperity,” which is only a blueprint for the continued prosperity of the richest among us at the continued expense of the rest of us.

It’s difficult for Team Romney/Ryan to talk substance when their only goal is to ensure that the richest and the most powerful among us gain even more wealth and more power while the rest of us lose even more wealth and even more power than we’ve lost since at least Ronald Reagan’s reign in the 1980s. When you are concealing your true aims – because your true aims are patently evil – there isn’t much of substance for you to say. Thus, you are reduced to such hypocritical, ludicrously insubstantial charges as that your political opponent — wait… for… it… — wants power!

Not that Barack Obama has much more to run on. He promised us, incessantly, “hope” and “change.” Instead, he has delivered much of the same, and has been one of our nation’s most mediocre, most disappointing presidents.

But even that, sadly, is head and shoulders above what the Romney/Ryan ticket offers, and that is catastrophic for the United States of America.

As Ted Rall concludes in his latest column,

If all Democratic strategists have to do to attract progressive voters is to frighten them with greater-evil Republicans, when will people who care about the working class, who oppose wars of choice, and whose critique of government is that it isn’t in our lives enough ever see their dreams become party platform planks with some chance of being incorporated into legislation?

In recent elections (c.f. Sarah Palin and some old guy versus Barry), liberals are only voting for Democrats out of terror that things will get even worse.

That’s no way to run a party, or a country.

Well, I, for one progressive, have refused to give President Hopey-Changey (a.k.a. President Lesser of Two Evils) a single fucking red cent for his re-election, and come November 6, I probably will cast my vote for Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein or maybe even Peace and Freedom Party presidential candidate Roseanne Barr.

Throwing away my vote, you say?

No. To vote for the pure, raw evil or to vote for the lesser of the two evils — that would be to throw away my vote.

Using our troops as human shields doesn’t work anymore

George W. Bush perfected the tactic of turning our troops into human shields for his political gain.

Any criticism of his illegal, immoral, unjust and unprovoked Vietraq War, Bush or one of his henchpeople tried (with at least some success) to recast as an assault on our troops.

Let’s talk about our troops.

The members of the party that loves to send our troops to their maimings and their deaths for the benefit of war profiteers and not out of actual national defense or national security do not wuv our troops.

Further, this patriarchal, macho, misogynist hero-worship bullshit has to stop. Our troops indeed are important for actual national defense, the need for which is rare these days, with most military operations nowadays being about perpetuating the bloated military-industrial complex. But it’s not just our members of the military, law enforcement officers and firefighters who are critical to our nation’s well-being and security. How about teachers? Our nurses? Last but certainly not least, our mothers? (And our scientists and our artists and…)

Repugnican Tea Party Speaker of the House John “Cry Me a River” Boehner proclaims that he’s confident that those Democrats who believe it is important to fund our troops and make real spending cuts will prevail upon Senator Reid and our commander in chief to keep the government from shutting down.”

It’s a thinly veiled threat: If the Democrats don’t give the Repugnican Tea Party traitors what they are demanding, the federal government will be shut down, our troops won’t be funded – and this will put all of us at imminent risk. And it will be the Democrats’ fault.

But what the Repugnican Tea Party traitors are demanding is no meaningful cuts to the bloated budget of the bloated military-industrial complex but the evisceration of the Environmental Protection Agency and the end of federal funding of Planned Parenthood.

Wow. Protecting our environment is part of our national security — as we will see, graphically, as climate change increases over the coming years – but the Repugnican Tea Party traitors want to put corporate profits way ahead of our national security.

And Planned Parenthood is part of our national security as well. The Repugnican Tea Party traitors have been telling us for some months now that we just can’t afford human beings (and we can’t, not when the rich and the super-rich keep getting their tax cuts, when corporations like General Electric pay no fucking taxes, and when all of our tax dollars go to the [in]human greed of the military-industrial complex instead of to human needs).

Yet birth control (yes, including abortion, elective and medically necessary), aside from being great for the planet because of reduced consumption of natural resources and thus reduced pollution due to lower birth rates, is a great fucking solution toward keeping the nation’s population at a sustainable level.

With increasing population and increasing poverty, which is the result of increasing population, comes increasing violence. Therefore, keeping both the population and poverty down keeps down violence, which is part of what you call national security.

But apparently, the Repugnican Tea Party traitors want there to be even more miserable Americans in poverty.

The Repugnican Tea Party traitors, of course, don’t give a flying fuck about national security. They care about treasonously continuing to feed at the trough of the U.S. Treasury via the Pentagon. It’s their legalized thievery from the American people. And perpetual warfare ensures that, like Big Brother in 1984, we have a perpetual supply of fake enemies (like Saddam Hussein, who posed no threat to the U.S.) or true enemies that we created through our own military actions (like Osama bin Laden). It’s a great gig if you can get it — using warfare to create more enemies, which you then use to justify even more warfare, which creates even more enemies, which…

“For them [the Repugnican Tea Party traitors] to want to disguise their bad [federal budget] proposal by hiding behind our troops is really a disservice to our troops,” said she-devil to the right wing U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California.

Yes, it is, but keeping them in perpetual warfare in the Middle East for the benefit only of the war profiteers is a disservice to them, too. The way to demonstrate that you truly care about our troops is to never put them in harm’s way unless it’s absolutely necessary to do so. And in those rare times, you do everything in your power to keep them safe.

Thankfully, President Barack Obama is threatening to veto the Repugnican Tea Party’s budget plan that attempts to hold all of us hostage by using our troops as political human shields while achieving the wholly-budget-unrelated right-wing wet dreams of destroying Planned Parenthood and the EPA.

Obama wants to be re-elected, after all, and the stupid white men’s assault upon The People is Wisconsin isn’t working out too well for them right about now (so it’s rather stunning that Repugnican Tea Party U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin now is talking about destroying Medicare and giving the rich and the super-rich even more tax cuts as being fundamental to our “prosperity”). Obama surely doesn’t want to go the way of Wisconsin Supreme Court “Justice” David Prosser or the way that Wisconsin Gov. Scott “Dead Man” Walker is going to go as soon as his recall can begin.

It’s a bad-ass battle right now between the stupid white man, who has always run the show — and who is destroying the very planet (the North Pole is melting, for fuck’s sake) — and the rest of us, the majority of us who favor the fate of the planet over the fate of the stupid white man, hands down.

We’ve already won the battle of global public opinion, but we still have an awful lot of work to do. There are legions of stupid white men and their sympathizers who still need to be neutralized — or, if necessary, destroyed — for the sake of the very planet and of humankind’s continued existence.



Democracy first for Egypt, then for the U.S.?

AFP photo

Egyptian protesters surround a statue of Alexander the Great in Alexandria, Egypt. The protesters are demanding the ouster of autocratic Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. A sign that they’re likely to get their wish is that the members of the Egyptian military and the protesters apparently are finding camaraderie, as evidenced by the news photo below that was taken in Cairo today.

Associated Press photo

You gotta love the Egyptians. While we Americans are being buried alive in a slew of hollow slogans by a “hopey-changey” president who adafuckingmantly refuses to significantly alter the status quo, the Egyptians are in the streets with the goal of ousting the fossilized President Hosni Mubarak and his regime.

While we Americans refuse to even get off of our fat asses and into the streets, thus far more than 90 Egyptians have died in more than five days of fighting for democracy (for real democracy, not the brand of “democracy” that the U.S. government loves to impose on nations in the Middle East), according to the AFP.

The increasingly embattled Mubarak, following the playbook of ultra-shitty leaders, fired his cabinet (declaring, “I am dismissing the government and will appoint a new one”) in order to show that they were the problem, certainly not he. In a sign that he knows that his days are numbered, for the first time he named a vice president today, as well as a new prime minister.

But the Egyptian protesters apparently are stopping at nothing short of total regime change. They apparently believe (correctly) that a fish rots from the head down, and they’re going after the rotten fish head. (My hunch is that they should reject Mubarak’s newly appointed vice president and prime minister and new cabinet members, too, and pick an entirely new leadership wholly unaffiliated with Mubarak. Megalomaniacs like Mubarak pick only their ideological clones to succeed them.)

The events in Egypt are inspiring.

If only we could have revolution here at home.

Sure, nonviolent revolution would be nice, but when, in the history of the world, did the corrupts powers that be ever respond to niceness?

That’s why it’s a fucking joke that President Barack Obama has advised the Egyptian protesters not to resort to violence: Violence often, if not usually, is the only way to oust the calcified powers that be. It’s not like you can ask tyrants nicely to pack it up and leave and they will.

While Obama has advised the Egyptian protesters to be utterly ineffective in changing the status quo (just like he is), he has advised Mubarak to institute “reforms.”

“Reforms.”

Bullshit.

Like an 82-year-old man is going to significantly change his game now.

“Reforms” are lame-ass excuses for not doing what needs to be done.

When something is utterly broken, you cannot “reform” it. You can only sweep aside the old, broken system and build something new.

Which is what we need to do here in the United States of America, where the will of the people long has been ignored by an entrenched duopolistic partisan system in which the corporateers and the war profiteers and the others with the millions of dollars to buy off our politicians (like the Israel-first lobby [a.k.a. AIPAC*]) long have been running the show under the guise of “democracy.”

We don’t have democracy (true majority rule) here in the United States of America. We have friendly fascism (as Bertram Gross put it) or managed democracy and inverted totalitarianism (as Sheldon Wolin put it). We have a slogan-spewing smooth operator in Barack Obama, who serves not us, but who serves his corporateering and war profiteering masters (including, of course, AIPAC) who bankrolled his rise to the top.

Obama’s type of tyranny — friendly fascism, inverted totalitarianism – is even more dangerous than is Mubarak’s, because while Mubarak fairly openly is a tyrant, Obama employs a veneer of friendliness — a veneer that confuses many if not most, because while they hear his warm and cuddly promises and his soothing slogans, they see that things in a corporately and plutocratically owned and controlled nation that is at perpetual bogus war continue to get worse, not better.

And a majority of us Americans were, after all, duped by promises of “hope” and “change” to cast a vote for Obama in November 2008. (It happened to the best and to the most well-meaning of us, including to yours truly.)

But I assure you that Obama’s greatest hope is that a critical mass of Americans do not wake up during his watch.

–

*Speaking of the devil (AIPAC), while I disagree with newly elected Repugnican U.S. Sen. Rand Paul on most issues, I love his balls for suggesting that the United States of America cut aid to the sacred fucking cow that is Israel.

Both Repugnican and Democratic politicians slavishly kiss Zionist ass for fear of being branded as “anti-Semitic” and for having the Israel-first lobby fund their political opponents over them in their election battles.

The United States this fiscal year is giving Israel $3 billion in military assistance, notes The Associated Press, adding that last fiscal year Israel got $2.8 billion, and starting next fiscal year is slated to get $3.1 billion a year for five years.

In his defense, Rand Paul’s spokesman released a statement that “The overwhelming majority of Americans agree with Senator Paul — our current fiscal crisis makes it impossible to continue the spending policies of the past. We simply cannot afford to give money away, even to our allies, with so much debt mounting on a daily basis.”

Unfortunately, while Paul wants to cut around $20 billion in foreign assistance, and wants to cut $16 billion out of the bogus wars in Vietraq and Afghanistan (while both wars should just be fucking ended altogether; the United States no longer can afford to meddle in the Middle East when things literally are crumbling here at home), he also “would make significant cuts in education, housing and energy,” according to the AP.

Speaking of the fact that charity should fucking begin at home, the AP also reports that on the topic of de-funding Israel,

Rep. Nita Lowey of the New York, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees foreign aid, said the United States cannot renege on its commitment to the only Democratic nation in a dangerous region.

“Using our budget deficit as a reason to abandon Israel is inexcusable,” Lowey said in a statement. “It is unclear to me whether Rand Paul speaks for the tea party, the Republican Party or simply himself. I call on all those who value the U.S.-Israel relationship to make it clear that our nation will not abandon our ally Israel.”

But using our budget deficit as a reason to abandon Americans here at home is perfectly acceptable to the Israel-first lobby, you see. Americans can fucking starve to death — as long as we continue send Israel $3 billion a year with which to slaughter Muslims!

And note that it’s a Democratic politician defending the Israel-first lobby here. No doubt that she gets plenty of money from the Israel-first lobby. I mean, she’s the top Democrat on the subcommittee that oversees foreign aid – you don’t think that AIPAC & Co. have paid her off?

In fairness, I don’t support cutting Israel off cold turkey, necessarily. Perhaps the assistance could be cut gradually from $3 billion a year to zero a year over a period of five years or so, which would give Israel at least some time to adjust to the new fiscal reality.

But to continue to arm Israel, which then uses these U.S.-funded arms to slaughter Muslims, which then causes even more unrest in the Middle East, which then “justifies” continuing to send $3 billion in military aid a year to Israel — yeah, this bullshit has to stop.

‘HoBos’ in HELL

In his syndicated column for which he presumedly actually is paid, wingnut Jonah Goldberg — perhaps best known for having penned this lovely little tome:

(Ha ha ha! Comparing liberals to Adolf Hitler is funny! And original!) – makes the “argument” that because liberals* finally repealed “don’t ask, don’t tell,” it must mean that militarism is a great thing.

Wow. This “ironic progressive victory,” as Goldberg calls it, sounds like the kind of bullshit “logic” that Goldberg was roundly criticized for employing in his book with the Hitlerized smiley face on the cover.

Goldberg does in his column make some statements of fact, such as that the gay community very largely has been co-opted by the dominant, corporate-dominated American culture. (That he makes some statements of fact among all of his distortions and lies apparently is his tactic; many people, I surmise, believe that if they read one sentence that they recognize as truth, then all of the sentences that they read must be truthful.)

But Jonah Goldberg is no historian. In his column he bizarrely actually asserts:

Two decades ago, the gay left wanted to smash the bourgeois prisons of monogamy, capitalistic enterprise and patriotic values and bask in the warm sun of bohemian “free love.” And avant-garde values. In this, they were simply picking up the torch from the straight left of the 1960s and 1970s, who had sought to throw off the sexual hang-ups of their parents’ generation along with their gray flannel suits.

Really?

There are leftists who are gay, but I’ve never known, in my 42 years on the planet, of a strong “gay left.”

“Two decades ago,” by my math, was the early 1990s, and I recall the 1990s being more of the same from the 1980s: unbridled materialism and consumerism among all Americans, gay or straight, male or female, white, black, brown, red or yellow. I don’t recall the 1990s as having been some sort of a repeat of the 1960s, as much as many of us might have wished that that had been the case.

The baby boomers, including gay baby boomers, of course, had some rebelliousness to them, but from the late 1960s to at least the early 1980s they largely were about partying. And – consequently… – from the early 1980s until the mid-1990s, it was combating AIDS, not combating capitalism, that the gay community was most concerned about, if my memory serves.

I just don’t remember that Big Gay Anti-Capitalism Era that Goldberg posits existed in our history (“two decades ago,” to be exact), and as far as is concerned that “bohemian ‘free love’” thing that the gay community wanted two decades ago, according to Goldberg, well, I can tell you that ever since about 1983 or 1984, when the AIDS epidemic started to decimate the gay male population, I, for one, have been quite careful not to become infected with HIV, which pretty much fucking precludes “free love.”** Two decades ago, in the early 1990s, when gay men were still kicking off from AIDS (until the protease inhibitors came along in the mid-1990s), “free love” was the last thing on this faggot’s mind.

But the wingnuts are still fighting the culture wars of the late 1960s and the 1970s, so Goldberg just reaches into his rectum and scrawls that my generation of gay men (Generation X) were copycats of the party-hardy gay baby boomers when no, we were not and we are not.

And Goldberg also stupidly asserts that the “gay left” “simply [picked] up the torch from the straight left of the 1960s and 1970s” as though no gay people were a part of the sociocultural movements of the 1960s and 1970s when, in fact, the gay rights movement was a large part of those two decades, and of course many individuals in the other movements of the 1960s and the 1970s, such as the women’s rights movement, the civil rights movement and anti-war movement, happened to be non-heterosexual. Fucking duh.

And presumedly Goldberg’s sloppy assertion that the “gay left” “wanted to smash the bourgeois [prison] of … patriotic values” means that perpetual fucking warfare, a value of the right, is a “patriotic value,” so that if you don’t support perpetual warfare, then you are unpatriotic. (Nice try, Jonah. While you were at it, why didn’t you just write that members of the “gay left” wanted to “smash” puppies and kittens, too?)

Goldberg writes that “the sweeping embrace of bourgeois lifestyles by the gay community has been stunning” (he calls the “homosexual bourgeoisie” “HoBos,” borrowing from the book Bobos in Paradise), and this has been stunning, but this does not mean, as he asserts, “that such bourgeois values — monogamy, hard work, etc. — are the best guarantors of success and happiness.”

“Hard work” is what the filthy rich who don’t work claim to value, and those who are poor, the filthy rich lie, are poor because they “hate hard work.” It’s not exploitation of the poor by the rich, you see; it’s that if you’re poor, you’re lazy, and if you’re filthy rich, you’re industrious — even though you are filthy rich only because of the hard work of others. (The right wing loves “hard work,” all right — hard work performed by others from whom they obscenely profit.)

And we all know how well monogamy is doing among the heterosexuals in the U.S. these days.

Goldberg essentially asserts (as far as I can tell from his inartful prose) that gay men and lesbians (and other non-heterosexuals) want same-sex marriage because marriage inherently is (and monogamy, by extension, inherently is) wonderful — and that they wanted “don’t ask, don’t tell” repealed because militarism is so fucking great.

I, however, long have found it beyond unfortunate that instead of creating something new, so many non-heterosexuals have only wanted to mimic their heterosexual counterparts (yawn). Yes, as Goldberg points out, gay men and lesbians and other non-heterosexuals have been co-opted, but this is not testament to the greatness of capitalism or militarism or monogamy or any other of Goldberg’s wingnutty fetishes. This is testament to, among other things, the degree to which the plutocrats and corporatocrats have been able to zombify the American masses over several decades, regardless of their sexual orientation or race.

And, with virtually nothing else widely modeled for them, what else can we really expect of so many same-sex couples other than that they (desire to) mimic their heterosexual counterparts, and in a nation that doesn’t want to educate its college-age citizens and doesn’t want to provide them with decent careers or even living-wage jobs, can we blame financially and occupationally desperate non-heterosexual young people for wanting to join the U.S. military when so many heterosexual young people are in the same boat?

It also is a failure of imagination, as well as it is intellectual laziness, political apathy, materialism, self-centeredness and zombification by the corporate media (which want Americans to be obedient to the corporatocrats, not to be informed and to be free) – and it is not a testament to the inherent greatness of the wingnutty values that Goldberg and his ilk espouse (such as capitalism and militarism) — that accounts for why so many non-heterosexuals want to mimic their heterosexual counterparts.    

Further, there is much more about the ongoing push for same-sex marriage and the successful push for the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” than great love for the institution of marriage or love for the institution of the military.

I, for one, have great reservations about monogamy and marriage. Scientists are coming to the conclusion that just as monogamy is not normal or natural for our closest living relatives, the chimpanzees, monogamy is not normal or natural for most human beings, either — thus the high rates of infidelity and breakups and divorce. (Google it.) I’ll take science over religious/hocus-pocus moralizing any time.

However, for me the issue of same-sex marriage is not that the institution of marriage or that monogamy is so fucking great – the issue is fucking fairness. You allow all consenting adults to marry each other, regardless of race or biological sex, or you allow no one to marry.

While I have reservations about marriage myself, I can’t see myself telling any other consenting adults who wish to marry each other that they can’t. The wingnuts, however, have no problem whatsoever depriving others of the freedoms that the wingnuts claim to be all about.

“So now openly gay soldiers get to fight and die in neocon-imperialist wars too?” Goldberg snarkily begins his column.

Um, yes, they do, but no, that they do doesn’t mean that those wars for the war profiteers and corporatocrats and other assorted traitors are now just wars. That so many non-heterosexuals want to be able to serve in the U.S. military is just testament to the shitty national economy, with its lack of decent-paying jobs, and to the zombification of Americans, heterosexual and non-heterosexual, who believe, stupidly, that the U.S. military actually exists primarily to defend and protect the nation when, in fact, the U.S. military exists primarily for the obscene profits of the war profiteers and the corporate expansionists.

So I did not want to see “don’t ask, don’t tell” repealed because I think that the U.S. military is so fucking great. I generally believe that no one with two brain cells to rub together would join the U.S. military when the U.S. military hasn’t fought a just war since World War II. (Again, I do, of course, cut at least some slack to those who join the U.S. military because, unfortunately, they see no other career option than to make themselves cannon fodder for evil rich men who cavalierly send them off to bogus wars for their war profiteering and for their corporateering.***)

But, if you’re going to allow heterosexual dumbfucks and the heterosexual financially and occupationally desperate to join the U.S. military, then out of fairness, you have to allow non-heterosexual dumbfucks and the non-heterosexual financially and occupationally desperate to join the U.S. military, too.

It’s about fairness and equality, something that Jonah Goldberg and his wingnutty ilk wouldn’t know about, and while I understand that Goldberg is desperate because his dinosaurian values are in their death throes, I am one faggot who’s not going to allow him to actually Orwellianly attempt to twist the cause of equal human and civil rights for non-heterosexuals into being some sort of “proof” that his sick and twisted beliefs and values are OK.

Goldberg concludes his sick and twisted column: “And given that open homosexuality is simply a fact of life, the rise of the HoBos — the homosexual bourgeoisie — strikes me as good news.”

Yes, homosexuality is simply a fact of life (referring to it as “open homosexuality,” however, curiously sounds like Goldberg would prefer that all non-heterosexuals pose and pass as heterosexuals), but “the rise of the HoBos” is not “good news.”

The co-option of heterosexuals or non-heterosexuals (or whites or non-whites or…) by the toxic, militaristic, materialistic, consumeristic, capitalistic, jingoistic, ultimately soul-crushing system that Goldberg so slavishly supports is fucking tragic.

We’re not talking about “HoBos” in paradise — we’re talking about “HoBos” in hell.

P.S. Goldberg also writes in his column:

Personally, I have always felt that gay marriage was an inevitability, for good or ill (most likely both). I do not think that the arguments against gay marriage are all grounded in bigotry, and I find some of the arguments persuasive. But I also find it cruel and absurd to tell gays that living the free-love lifestyle is abominable while at the same time telling them that their committed relationships are illegitimate too.

Goldberg sounds like he’s trying to please all sides.

I don’t find him to be an ally simply because he states, correctly, that same-sex marriage in all 50 states is inevitable. (I’m sure that many supporters of slavery saw its eventual demise, too. That doesn’t mean that they were anti-slavery — just that they were realistic about the current of events.)

If he’s going to assert that same-sex marriage is an inevitability for “ill,” then Goldberg should tell us how it would be for “ill,” and in his column he curiously doesn’t fucking bother to share any of the arguments against same-sex marriage that he says aren’t “grounded in bigotry” and/or that are “persuasive.”

And the only two possibilities that Goldberg apparently offers to us non-heterosexuals are the “free-love lifestyle” (you know, with its diseases and death and sinfulness and such) or the strictly monogamous married lifestyle that so many heterosexuals find to be stifling and soul-eroding.

But he’s happy to grudgingly allow us non-hets to take part in the misery that is monogamous marriage.

Gee, thanks, Jonah.

While Goldberg asserts in his column that “there isn’t” “some grand alternative” to these two miserable choices, I wholeheartedly disagree with him. Maybe heterosexuals’ biggest concern about allowing same-sex marriage has been that once non-heterosexuals got marriage, they would be able to transform it in a way that heterosexuals never have been able to do. 

–

*I prefer “progressives,” not because I’m ashamed of being a leftist, but because so many so-called “liberals” actually are milquetoast Clintonistas with whom I don’t want to be associated. (After all, it was the “liberal” Bill Clinton who is responsible for “don’t ask, don’t tell” in the first fucking place!)

**The AIDS epidemic first hit when I was still a freshman or sophomore in high school, and I saw the images of dying AIDS-stricken gay men (looking like concentration camp victims) before I seriously thought of having sex with another male, and to this day HIV transmission is a significant concern of mine, so this “free love” thing that Goldberg claims my generation perpetuated did not, in my experience, ever fucking exist.

***Goldberg snarkily remarks that “the folks who used ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ as an excuse to keep the military from recruiting on campuses just saw their argument go up in flames.” Ha ha ha!

Well, the primary argument against allowing military recruiters to recruit fresh cannon fodder on our high school or college campuses is that so many young people have no fucking idea what the U.S. military is really all about and so they are easily duped. And so many young people notoriously believe that they are immortal, a mistaken belief that the deliberately mispresentative, “Top Gun”-like military recruitment ads, which never show maimed or killed soldiers, perpetuate.

Our young should not be fed to the meat grinder that is the military-industrial complex, regardless of their sexual orientation. I invite Jonah and his ilk to go fight the wars that they claim are all about patriotism and actual national defense and leave our children the fuck alone.

The new, ACTUAL axis of evil

Trifecta! Repugnican Sarah Palin-Quayle delivering the keynote address at a “tea party” convention covered by Fox “News” in February. If this isn’t a sign of the end times, I don’t know what is.

In my last post I invented the “Unholy Trinity of Wingnuttery” — FOX “News” and other right-wing propaganda outlets, the Repugnican Party and the “tea party.”

Timely, because today CREDO Action announced today that “After tens of thousands of votes, FOX News has earned the title of champion of the Bracket of Evil.”

Yes, Fox “News” beat out Sarah Palin-Quayle, the “tea party” dipshits, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Dick Cheney, among others, as the most evil person or group of persons in CREDO Action’s rounds of voting in its “Bracket of Evil” over the past month or so.

And speaking of FOX “News,” FOX “News” head honcho Rupert Murdoch recently had the hypocritical gall at the National Press Club to bash the New York Times as biased. (Non-fucktarded media, you see, have a “liberal bias.” Intelligence = socialism. Fucktardation = patriotism. God bless America!)

Murdoch even said this: “We have both sides in our news shows, our politics or whatever. We have Democrats and Republicans and whatever.”

Yeah, whatever. (Great public speaking skills there, Mr. Murdoch!)

Let’s see — FOX “News” has Repugnican Sarah Palin-Quayle on its payroll and covers the very same “tea party” gatherings that it promotes. But the New York Times is biased!

FOX “News” is a textbook example of how concentrated wealth and power in the mass media can subvert democracy into serving the interests of the wealthy.

The mass media, the “fourth estate,” are a critical part of the workings of politics, power and democracy, which is why the plutocratic elite control so much of the mass media and furiously are consolidating media outlets so that common Americans have fewer and fewer options and get their information from fewer and fewer (corporate, of course) sources.

It’s funny that it’s FOX “News,” because it’s the fox guarding the henhouse. Oh, yeah, thechickens can trust the fox to give them reliable, fair and balanced information that is in thechickens’ best interest.

Also in the news is one of the other branches of the Unholy Trinity of Wingnuttery, the “tea party” “movement.” Reports The Associated Press today:

St. Paul, Minn. – Several tea party leaders announced plans [today] to form a national federation to promote the movement’s conservative message and to counter the idea that the tea parties are politically unsophisticated and disorganized.

Tea party leaders from Memphis, Tenn., Richmond, Va., and Orlando, Fla., along with representatives of several other groups announced the new National Tea Party Federation during a rally outside the Minnesota Capitol. They said 21 tea party groups around the nation had joined the federation.

Memphis Tea Party founder Mark Skoda said recent media coverage had questioned whether the conservative tea parties, which number in the thousands nationwide, were too loosely organized to be politically effective in the national midterm election.

He said the federation intends to convey a unified message about the tea party’s brand of fiscal conservatism, which emphasizes limited government, less public spending and free markets….

Um, “federation” or “confederacy”?

Looks to me like the election of the nation’s first black president has many Americans (a minority, but still a sizeable minority, and certainly a vocal one) wanting to form a separate nation again…

As far as the third branch of the unholy trinity — the Repugnican Party — goes, it’s hard to say how much FOX “News” harms vs. helps the party. It seems to me that having a networkdedicated to your “cause” could only be more helpful than harmful. Sure, FOX “News” solidifies those of us on the left, but FOX “News” also misinforms millions who believe everything that they see and hear on the tay-vay.

If the “tea party” splits the Repugnican vote, however, that could spell real trouble for the Repugnican Party. And the “tea party” also is driving Repugnican candidates even further to the right. Notes Yahoo! News:

… [The] popular anger stirred up under the [FOX  “News”] network’s auspices may not be an unqualified boon to a GOP facing a tough primary season that pits many “tea party”-style insurgents against candidates aligned with the national [Repugnican Party] organization.

Two of the most prominent such races are the [U.S.] Senate contests in Florida and Arizona, where two more compromise-minded mainstream candidates, Charlie Crist and John McCain, are fending off challenges from candidates backed by the “tea party” — and running strongly to the right of their usual positions as a result.

Beyond the primaries, the GOP is looking to make significant headway against the Democratic majorities in Congress — hoping even to return the House to Republican control. But to do that, Republicans will have to overcome their disadvantage in voter registration in many districts by appealing to independent voters — and those are the very sorts of voters most likely to be repelled by an angry ideological message….

I would think that the “tea party’s” influence on elections would cause more overall long-term harm than benefit to the Repugnican Party. The more right-wing candidates can win the Repugnican primaries, but they struggle in general elections except in the redder regions of the nation.

White supremacism and racism, misogyny and patriarchy, homophobia, “Christo”fascism, xenophobia, jingoism and militarism — to name just a few of the “values” that the “tea party” stands for, whether it will admit it or not — do not appeal to those demographic segments of the nation that are growing, but appeal only to certain demographic segments of the nation that are shrinking.

The “tea party,” aided and abetted by FOX “News,” it seems to me, very well might end up speeding up the demise of the Repugnican Party.

In the meantime, I remember when “President” George W. Bush named, in his 2002 State of the Union Address, Iraq, Iran and North Korea as the “axis of evil.”

Funny, because Iraq certainly never posed a threat to the United States, and thus far Iran and North Korea haven’t harmed the United States, but FOX “News,” the “tea party” and the Repugnican Party eat away at the fabric of our democracy every fucking day,bringing us closer to ruination of our nation than the members of the unelected Bush regime’s “axis of evil” ever could hope to – without their having to launch a single missile, or, indeed, having to lift a single fucking finger.

Sarah Palin-Quayle, grand dragoness

“Tea party” convention headliner Repugnican Sarah Palin-Quayle greets adoring supporters in an excellent PhotoShop job.

President-wannabe Sarah Palin-Quayle wrote this in a public relations — er, opinion – piece for USA Today before fellow radical-right Repugnican Tom Tancredo, a former U.S. representative from Colorado and former presidential hopeful who has used or at least tried to use xenophobic, anti-Latin-American-immigrant sentiment for personal political gain, opened the “National Tea Party Convention” in Nashville, Tenn., on Thursday:

Their vision is what drew me to the Tea Party movement. They believe in the same principles that guided my work in public service — whether I was working on the PTA and city council or serving as a mayor, commissioner or governor. I look forward to meeting some of these great Americans this weekend.

Probably at least in part because she’s no longer in public office, having quit her job as governor of Alaska before she served even one full term, Palin-Quayle apparently thought it sufficiently safe to appear at the Wingnut Super Bowl in Nashville today.

Other Repugnican elected officials who are still in office decided not to appear the “tea party” convention, afraid that some wingnut might say some really whack shit at the convention that would reflect poorly upon them. Or maybe the Repugnican National Committee made that decision for them.

In any case, some really whack shit was said at the convention, right off.

This is what Tancredo (who, like fellow wingnuts Samuel Alito and Antonin Scalia* [both U.S. Supreme Court "justices"], is an Italian American; now that their families got to immigrate to the U.S., we should hermetically seal our borders, you see) said in his opening speech for the convention on Thursday:

“…And then, something really odd happened, mostly because I think [that] we do not have a civics literacy test before people can vote in this country. [Big applause from his audience.] People who could not even spell the word “vote” or say it in English [more big applause] put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House — [his] name is Barack Hussein Obama.” [More applause.]

You can watch the clip on Rachel Maddow’s show here.

So Tancredo, who is able to say whatever he wants to say because his political career is dead anyway — really, you can’t be a one-trick hater-pony like he is and get anywhere — has bashed the 53 percent of Americans who voted for Barack Obama in 2008. He has alleged that because of low intellect and ignorance and/or a language barrier, Obama is our president.

That’s pretty fucking funny, since wingnuts are notorious for being fucktards. Like this one:

(I should note that I Googled “get a brain morans,” and from what I can tell, the viral images of the white-trash fucktard with that sign apparently are authentic images of an authentic wingnut.**)

And, as I noted waaaaay back in 2002, the same fucktarded haters who call for a “civics literacy test” (actually, “civics test” is just fine; there is no need to add the word “literacy” in there) for those from other nations (usually from nations within Latin America, since their skin usually is brown) or even for fellow American citizens (that is, black Americans) could not pass the same fucking civics test that immigrants must pass to become an American citizen. (Seriously — see how many of the questions you can answer correctly yourself!)

Knowing his background, Tancredo’s hateful remarks yesterday most likely were aimed, at least primarily, at those from Latin America who want a better life, but his remarks are reminding those who know their U.S. history of the literacy tests that once were used to prevent black Americans from voting. Notes Wikipedia:

As used by the states, the literacy test gained infamy as a means for denying suffrage to African Americans. Adopted by a number of Southern states, the literacy test was applied in a patently unfair manner, as it was used to disenfranchise many literate Southern blacks while allowing many illiterate Southern whites to vote.

The literacy test, combined with other discriminatory requirements, effectively disenfranchised the vast majority of African Americans in the South from the 1890s until the 1960s. Southern states abandoned the literacy test only when forced to by federal legislation in the 1960s…. Since the passage of the civil rights legislation of the 1960s, black registration in the South has increased dramatically.

So Repugnican former Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi in 2002 publicly mused that the nation would have been a lot better off had segregationist Strom Thurmond been elected president in 1948, and now, Repugnican former Rep. Tom Tancredo muses that he sures misses the good old days of the literacy tests.

And, as I have noted before, calling Obama a “Muslim” or insinuating that he is a Muslim by stating his middle name of Hussein, is simply code for “nigger,” as is “socialist.” (“Committed socialist idealogue,” then, would mean “biiiiig nigger.”) And the name Hussein, of course, is associated with former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, which is meant to associate Barack Obama with the “evildoers” of the Middle East. We whiteys are to be just as afraid of the niggers here as we are to be afraid of the sand niggers who hate us for our freedom, you see.)

But when you say that the “tea party” “movement” is all about (or at least largely about) white supremacism, the wingnuts crow that you’re wrong. But listen to the “tea party” convention crowd’s reaction to Tancredo’s racist, xenophobic clarion call for a “civics literacy test”; the crowd eats it up.

After Rachel Maddow shows the clip, she quips, “Although to be fair, it was sort of hard to tell exactly what the sounds coming from the crowd meant; they were sort of, a little bit muffled by the — you know, the white hoods.”

Yup. The “white hoods” joke is appropriate, but I believe that Maddow was kidding; it is clear from the clip that Tancredo had a doting audience, clapping and laughing and whooping in response to his comments.

So when Sarah Palin-Quayle, the keynote speaker of this weekend’s “National Tea Party Convention” in Nashville, gushes about the “tea party” “movement,” as she did in USA Today –

Later this week I’ll head to Nashville, where I’ll have the honor of speaking with members of the “tea party” movement. I look forward to meeting many Americans who share a commitment to limited government, common sense and personal responsibility….

– it’s bullshit.

Things like “common sense” and “personal responsibility” and “limited government” are the “tea party” “movement’s” stated raison d’être (hey, look, this American who cast his vote for Barack Obama not only can spell the word “vote,” but he can mix it up with a foreign language sometimes, too!), and those things sure sound good — but the “tea party” actually is about white supremacism and patriarchy and misogyny and “Christo”fascism/theocracy and militarism (to spend any of our tax dollars on people instead of on war profiteers is deemed “socialist”) and xenophobia and jingoism and homophobia and ignorance and fear.

The “tea party” is comprised mostly of stupid, backasswards white men who can’t get over the fact that rapidly changing demographics in the United States of America are making it more and more impossible for the stupid white man to have the political control of the nation that he used to have.

There are some fucktarded white women, like Palin-Quayle, who support these fucktarded white men, but the “tea party” “movement” irrefutably is stupid-white-male driven. 

The “tea party” “movement” represents a small slice of the American electorate, and even that small slice is melting just like the polar ice caps are melting. Just as the “tea party” fucktards deny that the ice caps are melting, they seem to be in denial that their existence is endangered, too. They have become the dinosaurs that they don’t believe in.

So you have the “National Tea Party Convention’s” opening act, Tom Tancredo, call for a “civics literacy test,” and you have Palin-Quayle gushing about how great the “tea party” “movement” is before she goes to Nashville to be the keynote speaker at their first national convention.

How can we not associate Palin-Quayle with the rest of what has gone on at the Wingnut Super Bowl this weekend when she herself has chosen to associate herself with it?

—

*Well, Scalia’s father was an immigrant from Sicily and his mother was born in the U.S. to Italian immigrants. (Sicily, Italy — close enough…) Alito’s father was an immigrant from Italy. Wikipedia says of Tancredo, “Both sets of his grandparents emigrated from Italy.”

So it was OK to let all of these Italians and Sicilians into the United States, you see, but we need to keep the Latin Americans, especially the brown-skinned ones, out.

**I cannot vouch for the authenticity of this image, however:

In James Cameron’s magnum opus ‘Avatar,’ the Bad Guys R Us

Film review

Above: Jake Sully (played by the rather yummy Sam Worthington) inspects his brand-new “avatar” in the James Cameron epic (that’s redundant, isn’t it?) “Avatar.” Below: Jake, in his avatar, bonds with native Neytiri, played by Zoe Saldana.

James Cameron’s “Avatar,” which I finally saw yesterday (I was waiting for the crowds to die down), is pissing off everyone, right and left. Cameron must have done something right.

Being such a political creature, if a film has the least bit possible sociopolitical bent to it, I’m going to notice it right off. In “Avatar,” such a bent abounds.

Most notably, in “Avatar,” we – the United States of America — are the bad guys. Well, not we, not really. “We” as in the military-industrial complex that has come to represent the United States of America around the world is the bad guy in “Avatar.”

I have read that, unsurprisingly, the wingnuts are not happy about this, especially given the film’s wild commercial success. (Fuck ’em.)

The villains of “Avatar” are an over-the-top corporate hack and an over-the-top colonel who work in tandem – not unlike how the Catholic church’s missionaries and the Spanish crown’s soldiers worked in tandem to conquer the “new world” — to conquer the lush planet of Pandora, which has an element (called “unobtainium,” ha ha ha) that the invading Earthlings want. (The Spanish monarchy wanted gold, of course, and the Catholic church wanted converts. We’re never told in “Avatar” what practical application, if any, “unobtainium” has, so my guess is that, like with gold, “unobtainium’s” main value is that it is, um, valuable…)

To conquer the tall, blue, feline-faced, tail-possessing people of Pandora — the Na’vi — the Earthlings (whom the Na’vi call the “sky people”) decide to infiltrate them with “avatars,” biologically fabricated Na’vi bodies that are inhabited by the consciousness of human beings controlling the biologically fabricated Na’vi bodies.

Now, the Na’vi natives are a bit too accepting of these “avatars,” whom the natives know aren’t fellow natives. If you weren’t born into and raised by the tribe, why would the tribe just accept you at all as one of them? I mean, if it were clear to us human beings that some alien race were coming to us in human bodies, would we embrace these aliens in human bodies as one of us? Prolly not.

But it would ruin “Avatar” if the avatars didn’t get some degree of acceptance from the Na’vi, and so they do.

Anyway, in “Avatar” the invading Earthlings clearly are the bad guys, and while watching what’s probably the biggest, loudest scene in “Avatar,” the Earthlings’ military forces destroying a site that is very sacred to the Na’vi, I couldn’t help but think of the internationally televised so-called “shock and awe” that many if not most of my fellow Americans got off on when the unelected Bush regime (yeah, the same regime that my fellow Americans just allowed to steal the White House in late 2000) illegally, immorally, unprovokedly and unjustly invaded Iraq, which had had nothing to do with 9/11 and which of course never possessed the weapons of mass destruction that the members of the Bush regime had lied through their fangs about, in March 2003.  

Yeah, it takes a big, tough, studly nation to attack a relatively defenseless one.

In the middle of all of this, the conflict between the rapacious Earthlings, who are represented by a very American-like military-industrial complex, and the Native-American-like Na’vi (they even wear warpaint and let out war cries), is Marine Jake Sully (played by Sam Worthington, who appears to be in just about every movie these days, which is OK with me, since he has a definite certain sexiness about him), who unexpectedly finds himself recruited to man an avatar. (Of course, he has to make a deal with the devil: for infiltrating the Na’vi and helping to subdue them, the wheelchair-bound Jake is promised that his paraplegia will be cured.)

As you already know from the previews, after he’s been manning his avatar, Jake changes his allegiance from the military-industrial complex to the Na’vi.

You probably already suspect that Jake ends up being the big hero of the film, and that of course he and his female Na’vi companion, Neytiri (wonderfully played by Zoe Saldana), go from their initially tense relationship (which showcases some great dialogue) to becoming lifemates.

That the white Marine, instead of one of the Na’vi natives, becomes the big hero of “Avatar” has pissed some people off, I read in today’s news. Reports The Associated Press:

Near the end of the hit film “Avatar,” the villain snarls at the hero, “How does it feel to betray your own race?” Both men are white — although the hero is inhabiting a blue-skinned, 9-foot-tall, long-tailed alien.

Strange as it may seem for a film that pits greedy, immoral humans against noble denizens of a faraway moon, “Avatar” is being criticized by a small but vocal group of people who allege it contains racist themes — the white hero once again saving the primitive natives.

Since the film opened to widespread critical acclaim three weeks ago, hundreds of blog posts, newspaper articles, tweets and YouTube videos have said things such as the film is “a fantasy about race told from the point of view of white people” and that it reinforces “the white Messiah fable.”

The film’s writer and director, James Cameron, says the real theme is about respecting others’ differences….

Adding to the racial dynamic [of “Avatar”] is that the main Na’vi characters are played by actors of color, led by a Dominican, Zoe Saldana, as the princess. The film also is an obvious metaphor for how European settlers in America wiped out the Indians.

Robinne Lee, an actress in such recent films as “Seven Pounds” and “Hotel for Dogs,” said that “Avatar” was “beautiful” and that she understood the economic logic of casting a white lead if most of the audience is white.

But she said the film, which so far has the second-highest worldwide box-office gross ever, still reminded her of Hollywood’s “Pocahontas” story — “the Indian woman leads the white man into the wilderness, and he learns the way of the people and becomes the savior.”

“It’s really upsetting in many ways,” said Lee, who is black with Jamaican and Chinese ancestry. “It would be nice if we could save ourselves.” …

Yes, come to think of it, “Avatar” is basically a futuristic “Pocahontas” in which Jake Sully would be John Smith and Neytiri would be Pocahontas.

And it did occur to me while I was watching “Avatar” that it seemed off that a a white guy who wasn’t even one of the Na’vi would end up as their savior.

I understand why historically oppressed peoples wouldn’t be pleased to see a white guy emerge as the hero, but I think that “Avatar’s” surprisingly subversive message succeeds as it does because it’s the white guy who realizes that what the military-industrial complex that he has been a member of has been doing is wrong, and so he decides to fight for the other side.

And it’s not just the character of Jake whose allegiance changes; there’s the character of a great Latina fighter pilot (played by Michelle Rodriguez, of whom I’d like to have seen more of in “Avatar”) and a few others whose allegiance changes, and this kind of pop-culture image in which the “turncoats” are the heroes can’t be good for the U.S. military-industrial complex, which expects its soldiers to be blindly obedient cannon fodder who die for rich white men’s fortunes while believing that they are fighting for such noble causes as “freedom” and “democracy” and “God” and “Jesus” and puppies and kittens, for fuck’s sake.

I mean, fuck. Before “Avatar” began, I had to watch an endless fucking recruitment advertisement for the National Fucking Guard. (The recruitment ad didn’t show any maimed or dead soldiers, of course, but looked like something out of “Top Gun,” as usual.) The U.S. military-industrial complex has millions if not billions of dollars – our tax dollars – at its disposal to brainwash our young people into believing that the U.S. military really is about defense and patriotism instead of about what it really is about: war profiteering, feeding the endless greed of the military-industrial complex and the greedy fucking white men who run it and who personally profit from it.

Trust me, oppressed peoples of the world, “Avatar” does much more for your cause by having its hero a white guy — a Marine, for fuck’s sake – who realizes that he’s been fighting on the wrong side and then switches sides, than it would have done for your cause had its hero been one of the Na’vi natives.

The millions of young American males (and females) who see “Avatar” might think twice before joining the U.S. military, and that’s a good thing for a planet that probably cannot survive a World War III.

Indeed, Cameron’s intent, I believe, was to send a message of peace, and it’s whitey, with his (and her) beloved military-industrial complex, who needs to get that message more than does anyone else. Those long oppressed by whitey already know the value of peace.

The Associated Press reports that Cameron wrote the AP in an e-mail that “Avatar” “asks us to open our eyes and truly see others, respecting them even though they are different, in the hope that we may find a way to prevent conflict and live more harmoniously on this world. I hardly think that is a racist message.”

Agreed.

The AP also reports of “Avatar”:

“Can’t people just enjoy movies anymore?” a person named Michelle posted on the website for Essence, the magazine for black women, which had 371 comments on a story debating the issue [of whether “Avatar” is racist].

OK, that’s a valid question.

Although it’s a rhetorical question, the answer to the question, for me, anyway, is no, I can’t just enjoy a movie anymore.

Don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed “Avatar.” It is a visually stunning film, and I love its profuse use of greens and blues and purples, which, actually, reminded me a lot of “The Princess and the Frog,” which, come to think of it, is a bit like “Avatar”: Both films have heroines with African blood in them (Zoe Saldana apparently has African blood in her) who meet up with bumbling men whom the heroines have to turn into heroes, and both films largely take place in green, blue and purple, swampy, lush settings.

“Avatar” succeeds on the sensory level (as it should, given the millions and millions of dollars that were put into it ) — although the ubiquitous DayGlo stuff does get a little bit tiresome after a while and although Pandora’s plethora of creatures, including its Na’vi, look way too much like Earth’s creatures, including its human beings – but sue me if I am able to enjoy a movie on more than one level.

I can multi-task; I can take in all of the technical achievements of a film like “Avatar” while seeing its obvious sociopolitical statements, statements that I can’t be accused of having pulled out of my moonbatty ass because James Cameron himself says are his intended statements.

It’s a rare film that can entertain and that can stimulate public debate on important sociopolitical issues, so kudos to Cameron for having achieved that with “Avatar.”

“Avatar” is such a cultural achievement that I have to wonder if from now on people are going to go around saying to each other, in all seriousness: “I see you.” (Even though it’s a bit cheesy, I kind of hope so…)

Yes, “Avatar” is a bit derivative of other films, not just of “Pocahontas” but also of Cameron’s past films — we even get the “Alien” series’ Sigourney Weaver as a protagonist in “Avatar” (I have to say that I found Weaver’s avatar to be a bit creepy-looking, to look a bit too much like Weaver), we get the manned robots that we saw in “Aliens,” and we even get “The Company” in “Avatar” (is the amoral, profit-piggy, generic “The Company” in “Avatar” the same one that was in the “Alien” series, I wonder?).

But “Avatar” succeeds on its own and probably will be Cameron’s magnum opus. 

My grade: A

P.S. I read a news account that President Barack Obama took his girls to see “Avatar” recently. Mr. President, I sure the fuck hope that you learned something, and that having your girls there with you drove the point home.

Debate on pregnant U.S. soldiers misses the point, as usual

I just read a column by yet another apparent self-loathing woman — you know, the kind of woman who thinks that Sarah Palin is just great, you betcha! — on the topic of pregnant U.S. soldiers. The piece (of shit) is titled “National Organization for Irresponsible Women,” and it’s penned by she-wingnut Mona Charen.

The crux of Charen’s column is this paragraph:

Feminists, above all, should recognize that when a woman takes an oath as a soldier, she has freely undertaken extraordinary responsibilities. If she becomes undeployable and has to be sent home (the unavoidable consequence of becoming pregnant), someone else must serve in her place. The Army loses a valuable investment, and the unit is left vulnerable.

Wow, has Charen imbibed the Kool-Aid or what?

First of all, a human being is a human being. Not an “investment.” Not a thing.

It is sick and twisted that the capitalist United States of America has turned even human beings into commodities — yet claims at the same time to be “Christian.”

And it’s interesting that the pro-military wingnuts are so fucking “pro-life” — except when the woman is an “investment” of the stupid white man’s military. Then, she is chattel.

Memo to U.S. women: You are allowed to get pregnant only when the stupid white men give you their permission to do so. (But you knew that already, didn’t you? You have the pope, the Repugnican Party, Faux “News,” the Mormon cult, et. al., et. al. telling you your place every fucking day, don’t you?)

And, women, you have the likes of Mona Charen, head of the National Organization for Sellout Women, working for the stupid white men to help keep you in line, as though you were living under the rule of the Taliban.

You betcha.

But even all of this misses the main point, which is that the U.S. military is not worth joining in the first fucking place.

The U.S. military stopped being about defense a long, long time ago. Now, the U.S. military is only the avenue through which the stupid white men pillage and plunder the U.S. treasury. This wholesale looting of the treasury by the military-industrial complex is called “defense,” which, of course, is “in the national interest,” because that, you see, justifies the looting of public billions by private interests.

Again, the question isn’t whether or not it’s OK for women to get pregnant while they’re in the U.S. military.

The question is why in the fuck any woman would want to join the U.S. military in the first place, when by doing so she is not serving her country, but is serving only the war profiteers.

Nor do I understand why gay men and lesbians want to join the military, when anyone with half a brain cell could see that the U.S. military stopped being about defense years and years ago.

But so brainwashed are most Americans that they actually view the U.S. military as the protector and the expander of freedom and liberty and democracy, even when the illegal, immoral and unjust Vietraq War, which thus far has benefitted only corporations like Dick Cheney’s Halliburton, and the Abu Ghraib House of Horrors remain recent history.

I have cringed lately when I have seen Christmas sentiments extended to those “serving” overseas for our “freedoms.”

They’re not serving us or our freedoms. They’re serving the profiteering of the military-industrial complex, to whom they are only “investments.”

If we perpetuate this sick and twisted thinking, that the U.S. military actually is about expanding freedom and liberty and democracy, instead of recognizing what it’s really all about — war profiteering and expanding the power and the profits of the corporations for whom the U.S. military acts as thugs (thugs paid for by us taxpayers, not by the corporations, of course) — then we will go the way of ancient Rome. Assuming, of course, that we haven’t reached that point of no return already.

P.S. Charen also writes with her poisoned pen that “it would be nice if [feminist U.S. senators, including my senator, Barbara Boxer] thought of themselves as representing the interests of the nation from time to time, and not just as compliant mouthpieces for interest groups. Do any of these liberal senators ever lift their sights enough to recognize that an army is not a social welfare agency?”

There’s that “interests of the nation” bullshit again. Does Charen really believe that the military-industrial complex is about our “national interests”? Is she truly that fucking deluded? Or does she want to continue to personally profit from the exploitative stupid-white-male system that she so dutifully supports?

Speaking of which, how can Charen blast feminist U.S. senators for being “compliant mouthpieces for interest groups” when Charen herself is a compliant mouthpiece for the military-industrial complex? (Do hypocrites recognize their own hypocrisy or is the nature of hypocrisy such that hypocrites are utterly unable to recongnize their own hypocrisy?)

And are there more women in the United States of America or are there more members of the military-industrial complex in the United States of America? So who is representing the interests of more Americans, then: these “femi-Nazi” U.S. senators whom Charen blasts — or Charen and the other defenders of the corrupt military-industrial complex?

Memo No. 2 to U.S. women: You aren’t more than half of the American population now. You are now just another “interest group.” Your bud Mona says so! And she can’t be wrong because she actually gets paid to write a column!

Finally, yes, I agree with bitching and moaning bitch Mona on one point:  the U.S. military should not be ”a social welfare agency.”

The trillions of dollars — mine and yours — that go to the bloated U.S. military-industrial complex instead should go to Americans’ needs (food, health care, shelter, the creation of meaningful jobs, education, environmental protection, etc.) instead of to the stupid white men’s military-industrial complex’s greed.

Would Jesus Christ spend billions and billions of the American taxpayers’ dollars on the military-industrial complex’s greed or on human beings’ needs? Um, yeah.

The anti-Christian Mona Charen supports the sick system that makes people so financially desperate that they see no other alternative than to join the U.S. military because all other jobs have disappeared (and because a college education has become woefully unaffordable for most Americans), and then she blasts these poor people for their desperation.

We should ship Mona off to Afghanistan, since she cares so fucking much about our “national interests.”

And we don’t have to worry about her getting pregnant, because what man would touch a cold bitch like she?