Columnist.
In spite of the fact that the Democrats have been the reason that so many cities and states, not to mention the nation at large, are in such dire financial straits, there are only a dozen states that boast two Republican senators and a Republican governor. You do have to wonder why anyone would vote for someone who seems to think socialism is preferable to capitalism or why they would continue to elect politicians who don't even pretend to negotiate seriously with public sector unions. We all know, or should know by now, that they merely go through the motions while, in reality, using the negotiations as a way to line up volunteers and guarantee themselves campaign contributions in exchange for our tax dollars.
As I sit here, apparently everyone in Washington, D.C. is mulling over what to do about Syria. For my part, I'm mulling over what to do about Washington, D.C. It just seems to me that America has fallen and can't get up. I know that I am expected to be up in arms over chemical weapons being employed by Bashar al-Assad, assuming that the intelligence is better now than it was prior to the Iraq invasion. But I have never understood the moral outrage connected to weaponry. Neither have I ever grasped the lunacy of war being waged according to some grotesque version of Marquis of Queensbury rules. As I see it, wars are fought in order to defeat one's enemy before he has a chance to defeat you. And the faster you do it, the better.
From 1928 through 1945, "Quick, Henry, the Flit!" was the tagline in ads for a popular insecticide. Interestingly, Theodor Geisel did the original artwork, which typically showed people being menaced by large whimsical-looking critters. Mr. Geisel went on to graduate from a make-believe medical school and become better known as Dr. Seuss. I swear, every time I see a politician on TV, especially one who insists on calling himself a public servant, I find myself reaching for the Flit. What a bunch of mealy-mouthed, money-grubbing, hypocrites! Apparently doing nothing but posturing and posing for TV cameras takes so much out of these phonies that, come August, they'd have you believe that their very survival calls for a five week vacation we have to pay for.
When older people compare contemporary times with days gone by, they usually report that when it comes to child-rearing, general civility, education, popular music and patriotism, things were far better in the 40s and 50s. The areas in which modern times tend to win the day are life-saving pharmaceuticals, dentistry and surgical procedures. One of the worst things about modern life, I think we'd all agree, is the four-hour window we have all come to accept. Whether it's some form of home repair or having a major appliance delivered and installed, you have to decide whether you want to wait around from 8 a.m. to noon or 1 p.m. to five. I have no idea when it happened that we not only had to pay these people, but allow them to dictate our lives. Especially in this economy, you would think it would work just the opposite, with the person writing the check getting to say "I want to see you at my front door at 2:30 or forget about it."
I've heard that a five million dollar class action lawsuit has been filed here in California on behalf of those people who purchased copies of Lance Armstrong's autobiography in which he swore that he had never used performance-enhancing drugs. Their claim is based on the fact that when they purchased the book, it was represented by the subject and his publisher to be non-fiction. I am not a member of the lawsuit because I didn't buy the book, having no interest whatsoever in the life of a professional bicyclist. Perhaps my interest would have been piqued if he'd won all those races riding a unicycle or while juggling dishes, but that's pretty much the same reason I gave Obama's memoirs a wide berth.
If I were a time traveler from an earlier age, I'm sure that along with our music, manners and clothing, the thing that would mystify me the most is our legal system. For openers, I would not understand why rapists and pedophiles are not executed, or at the very least locked away in dungeons to be gnawed on by rats. What possible excuse could there be for keeping these creatures alive? Some crimes can be explained, if not excused. People sometimes kill in self-defense or in a jealous rage. People sometimes steal food when they're starving. But rape and child molestation are cold, calculated atrocities, and anybody who commits them has allowed his membership in the human race to lapse.
It would be a lie to say that bigotry doesn't exist in this country. The lie is in the media's insistence on attributing it to white conservatives. If you believed these people who lie for a living, everyone who isn't black, Muslim, homosexual, a Democrat, an illegal alien, a single woman or a member of the left-wing media, can safely be assumed to be a bigot. If you only believed what you read in your local newspaper or hear from anchors and reporters for the major TV networks, you would think that white conservatives spend 24/7 pondering how best to oppress everyone who isn't one of them. As a white conservative, I also stand accused of waging endless war on women.
I would like to spend a little time wandering through those weird cavernous echo chambers that pass for brains in the skulls of Obama, Kerry, John McCain and Lindsey Graham. But only if I knew I could get out and not be trapped inside with all those stalagmites. While the Republican pinheads speak of reconciliation of all parties in Egypt, the Democrats wring their hands over the "rolling back of human rights" and the refusal of the military to allow for "peaceful demonstrations." On what bizarre planet do these ignoramuses live? And is there sufficient oxygen to support human life?
We live in very weird times. How weird? I recently heard that atheists are insisting that the U.S. Navy accept atheist chaplains into its ranks. What on earth would their function be, you ask? I can't imagine, unless there really are sailors who would find comfort in being assured as they go into combat that there's no God and no afterlife. I had long heard that there were no atheists in foxholes, and assumed the rule held true for fighting men aboard ships.
All I knew about the original Diogenes is that he was said to carry a lantern even during daylight hours, explaining he was searching for an honest man. He also founded the Cynic philosophy. So you can see where I might identify with him. Where we part company is that, being poor, he made a virtue of poverty. That would be like my making a virtue of being short and bald. But I dare say I have spent at least as much time as he did searching for an honest man. I have found a few, but in most cases, being honest in 2013 is even harder than it was in 323 BC. That's because one can either be truthful or politically correct, but not both. And cowards invariably take the path of least resistance.
My neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley is diverse. In fact, it's more diverse than the typical college campus and light years more diverse than the typical college faculty. On my single block, we have blacks, whites and Latinos. The age range runs from about 13 to mid-80s. Across the street is an orthodox Jewish family; next door are Armenian Christians from Constantinople. Next door to them, the house is for sale because the elderly Hawaiian couple died in recent years. We also have a married couple in their 30s, a retired Marine and his wife, a middle-aged son living with his mother who suffers from Alzheimer's, a multi-generational family of Hispanics and a woman who shares her home with four cats who have somehow survived sharing space with two pit bulls. For the most part, my neighbors, both the Democrats and the Republicans, are apolitical.
I confess that there is a part of me that envies my fellow commentators their ability to focus on a single topic. I honestly don't know how they do it. I write three, sometimes four, pieces a week and I still wind up feeling like the Sorcerer's Apprentice, going nuts trying to keep up. For instance, I was watching a Yankees/Angels baseball game recently when it was announced that through the American Forces Network, the game was being watched by members of the U.S. military in 175 countries and on ships at sea. I was floored! Our military is stationed in 175 countries?! That's nearly as many countries as are represented at the U.N. Aside from propping up a large number of local economies with our tax dollars, what the heck are they doing over there? I say if we're going to have that many people in uniform, I suggest we move most of them from their foreign posts and reposition them at our southern border, where they could actually do some good.
There is so much in America today that calls for ridicule and contempt, one hardly knows where to begin. But when in doubt, you can't go wrong starting with liberals. Whether they're calling themselves liberals, progressives or Democrats this week, at the top of their mission statement is the feeding and housing of the needy. But what they never do is separate the needy who are deserving from those who aren't. To them, the needy are all the same. They make no distinction between the elderly poor or severely handicapped and those who are young and able-bodied but feel themselves entitled to everything without having to work for any of it.
It seems that every time I write anything about movies, I can count on hearing from readers who boast about not having seen one since "Birth of a Nation." I can certainly empathize with those who don't want to waste their time and money watching movies based on comic books and have no desire to help enrich or promote the careers of people like Alec Baldwin, Susan Sarandon, George Clooney, Sean Penn, Morgan Freeman, Jamie Foxx, Tim Robbins, Steven Spielberg and Jane Fonda.
The title comes from a tune written by Rodgers and Hart for their musical, "Pal Joey," written in 1940, the year I was born. It could very well serve as the title of my autobiography if I were ever crazy enough to write it, because it so perfectly describes my general state of mind. For instance, in the wake of the Zimmerman verdict, Obama insisted that the basis of the race problem in America is the distrust that white people often have of black men. It causes black men to feel resentful, he explained. Inasmuch as he is theoretically the president of all Americans, it might have behooved him to acknowledge that the distrust has been earned. He might have pointed out, for instance, that although blacks constitute only 13% of the population, between 1976 and 2005 they committed over 50% of all murders, along with 35-40% of all robberies, assaults and rapes.
As I sit here, it's only been a few days since the six honest jurors in Sanford, FL, restored a little of my faith in the American legal system. Unfortunately, I have no idea if Eric Holder will undo the good they did by charging George Zimmerman with depriving Trayvon Martin of his civil rights. This is the same end-run around the constitutional prohibition of double jeopardy that the feds used in charging the L.A. cops with depriving Rodney King of his civil rights after a jury of their peers had found them not guilty.
According to a recent Pew poll, 62% of the respondents believe that the GOP is out of touch with the American people. On the other hand, the majority felt that Republicans have stronger principles than the Democrats, which suggests that if Republicans want to connect with the voters and win future elections, they had better lose their principles.
Liberals like to say that war is the result of people's failure to utilize diplomacy. I think the truth of the matter is that diplomacy is the coward's attempt to delay the inevitability of war. I'm not saying that war has never been averted by the two sides sitting down to swap lies, but I haven't been able to come up with a single example. Chamberlain went umbrella in hand to convince Hitler to be a good fellow. The Japanese were in Washington trying to soft soap FDR at the same time that their Zeros were bombing our naval fleet at Pearl Harbor.
