OPTIMISTIC

 

I almost neglected the "O" in the alphabet, and luckily it was more appropriate for this post. So, what can possibly be said in today’s political climate that would indicate anything to  be "optimistic" about? How about if you don't really think about it too much, nothing is really "that bad"; life goes on hour by hour, day to day, paycheck to paycheck, year to year, and the only thing out of the ordinary is how you respond to little changes in life.  Sure, people spend an inordinate amount of their lives complaining about things; but it’s the old “feeling good about feeling bad” syndrome. People just like to complain, no matter how privileged they are; just ask Taylor Swift.

The following statement, in regard to professors and educators who are “totally destroying the country," may sound familiar, but only because it is further proof that the world hardly changes:

They are totally responsible for the sins of our children. The academic society is responsible for all of our troubles in this country. These are people that are destroying our country. The whole academic society is to blame, the professors in every institution of learning. They would lead to the path of Americanism rather than the path of Communism. It makes me sick to my stomach. They’re a bunch of sidewalk diplomats that don’t know the score. They don’t know what’s going on. They don’t have any right to talk. They are the sidewalk diplomats, who do not know and have no right to express an opinion on diplomacy. Why, some of them can’t talk as well as I can and I can’t talk very well. There are more repercussions in our society today because of them. They are totally responsible for the sins of our children. The academics have not taken care of our children. They are at fault for a whole generation of children.

This was someone named Martha, as reported by The New York Times, but not that Martha, wife of a Supreme Court justice. This was Martha Mitchell, then wife of John Mitchell who was the Attorney General in the Nixon administration before he was forced to resign. She was the self-proclaimed “Voice of the South,” and was infamous for making such culture war pronouncements. According to the Times, Mitchell  called a UPI reporter from a bathroom so her husband wouldn’t hear her. 

A recent documentary has attempted to “rehabilitate” her image as a Watergate “whistleblower,” but I was “there” and I never heard her name mentioned save her connection to the AG and her frequently unwanted commentary. On the other hand, John Dean was an actual “insider” and knew “everything.” Mitchell, who actually knew very little but her habit of shooting her mouth off made her a “problem.” turned on Nixon only after the indictment of her husband, feeling (rightly) that he was another “fall guy” to protect Nixon.

Now, how about this observation: “I just visited a very strange house inhabited by weird people who uttered all kinds of unearthly sounds and what they said truly frightened me.” This was Orson Welles in a Halloween-themed Laugh-In show. What was he referring to? The House of Representatives in Washington D.C. If teleported to today’s version of the House, he would have made the same observation. Could it get even worse? Just wait until Matt Gaetz gets his way and the House will be “created” in the “image” of this evil clown who thinks the only “function” of government is to cut taxes for the rich and gut programs for the poor while making migrants the scapegoat for everything.

A reviewer of the complete series of Laugh-In on dvdtalk.com unhappily observes that nothing has changed in the world in the last 50 years--except that once it was possible to “lampoon societal problems that seemed to have been met with great progress” on prime time, but today corporate-owned television has abandoned such commentary, allowing the reigniting  of "an ignorant, hateful and highly-vocal subset of America too self-absorbed and ill-informed to not allow themselves to be manipulated into going against their best interests.” The writer noted, as I have re-watching the show, that it lost it’s “punch” the final two seasons when new NBC executives succumbed to pressure from the Nixon administration to “tone down” the political and social commentary. 

This was somewhat “ironic” since some believe Laugh-In gave Nixon an election boost in 1968 with his “Sock it to me” cameos, although by the fourth season a character played by Barbara Sharma was introducing Spiro Agnew as “our president.” At first this might have seemed like a snub of Nixon, but it wasn’t; Agnew had established himself as the “voice” of what then passed for the far-right, as Nixon was seen by many conservatives as too “moderate.” Agnew was also seen by many observers as the likely Republican nominee for president in 1976.

While Nixon preferred to be seen as a “nice guy,” he occasionally released Agnew from his leash and used him as an attack dog against the media, liberals, “atheists,” anti-war activists and anyone who wasn’t a “real” American as the far-right defined such. Nixon had hoped that in Congressional races, Agnew would “energize” the “base” and draw in “disaffected” culture war extremists (with mostly disappointing results). Although he mentioned in passing in this Laugh-In skit, people then would recognize that the ideological “fighting” was highlighted by examples of Agnew’s inflammatory rhetoric, including such Agnewisms as “pusillanimous pussyfooting,” “nattering nabobs of negativism” and “hypochondriacs of history”:

 

Many Republican voters unhappy with Nixon saw Agnew as the true voice of the administration, and today his rhetoric can be seen as the opening salvo of the culture wars as we know it today, with attacks on Democrats as being “soft on crime” and that sort of thing (although the “border” was hardly spoken of). It was Agnew who persuaded Nixon to extend the war into Cambodia, which led to more student protests and the massacre at Kent State. 

“Fortunately” for Agnew, he was left out of the loop in the Watergate break-in and was completely ignorant of it before it became news, so for a period it seemed that he had a very good chance of becoming president before 1976. Unfortunately for Agnew, it had been long suspected he was a corrupt operator from the time he was governor of Maryland, and when it was discovered that he was taking untaxed kickbacks from a building engineering company even into the White House, his days were numbered, eventually resigning in 1973 after pleading guilty to one felony count of tax evasion—right up until that day maintaining his complete “innocence.” 

Of course Nixon had his own tax evasion issues, when an audit done outside the IRS invalidated many questionable tax dodges and determined he owed $476,000 in back taxes. Of course “ordinary” people who commit such crimes might have seen jail time.

I guess you have to be someone at least my age to remember, then, that nothing really changes, and that the country has somehow survived. Is that a "optimistic" thing? Or are things are different now? Only the "old" activists from a different generation seem to want to change things for the "better" or believe in "saving" a country worth living in for future generations, save younger activists labeled "progressive" in often derogatory terms. 

That shouldn't be surprising when we have the narcissistic "Gen-Zers" for whom the world is defined by whatever social media "influencer" catches their fancy, whether truth or lies. “Kids” don’t read books or are not properly taught history, so that the old truism that ignorance of history leads to the repeating of it still stands. Civics isn't much taught in high schools anymore, so Gen-Zers don't learn the importance of interacting in a way to maintain civil society that all have their place in, regardless of ideology.

That suggests that if "change" is coming, it won't be anything to be "optimistic" about. Morality and ethics have very little to do with one's thinking today. History, for example, tells us that convicted felons like Trump are supposed to do the “right thing” and step down, because voters like candidates who break the rules of civil society. But we don't live in a "civil" society anymore. "Liberals" may be overly prone to eat their own in response to gender-determined offenses, but this has nothing to do with morality or ethics but abuse of the power some people are given. 

On the other hand, Trump and his supporters  can never be accused of having moral or ethical “principles” that were seen as such even as late as 2008, when John Edwards stepped down from the Democratic primaries for marital infidelity. But then again, we should have seen it coming. Trump could have merely taken a page out of Bill Clinton’s playbook, who himself had numerous “issues” in regard to “fidelity” before and during his presidency; however, the fact that this didn’t seem to bother Hillary suggested that their marriage was a sham and one of “convenience,” and people thus allowed Clinton some “slack.”

After all, like Trump would do later, Clinton just denied everything, or declaring what he did wasn’t “it.” The Clintons, of course, also escaped from any accountability for crimes relating to the Whitewater affair, for which another former governor of Arkansas and a dozen others went to prison. Since the Clintons enjoyed "immunity" from the these crimes while they occupied the White House, we can understand why Trump so desperately wants to return to it--for his own self-interests, and not to serve the country's interests.

What does this all mean? That we can rest assured that we as human beings don’t really ever change our natures whether good or bad, that it is impossible to do so? This even when we know past history, we are bound to repeat it, because we can’t change, even when we want to. Isn’t that a “refreshing” thought? We can’t help ourselves, just like the Colombia-born Aileen Cannon can’t help herself but be a “partisan prima donna,” diva and drama queen who is easily “offended” by prosecutors expressing frustration at her lack of understanding of the facts of her case, but is “well prepared” with inane questions that have nothing to do with the facts. 

I find it interesting to note that Cannon's membership in the far-right Federalist Society (which is why she was "recommended" to Trump) and its belief in the limited role of the judiciary has been little commented on. That Cannon has a limited view of the world is bespoken by the fact that she believes that the Federalist Society allows a "diversity of opinion"--apparently extending between the boundaries of the extreme-right to some "dark side" out in the distance.

By the way, why is Cannon questioning Jack Smith’s appointment when everyone should be questioning her second appointment to the case when the 11^th Circuit Court found her incompetent the first time around? Political pressure from behind the scenes? Shouldn't the media be investigating that? Is something that was a 1,000-to-1 shot of happening just a little too "coincidental," especially when at the time the courthouse Cannon oversaw didn't even have the proper facilities to handle classified documents? 

Of course, the Supreme Court will tell us soon enough if Cannon’s way is the “future” of ethics and morality in this country, as if there is any of that left anyways, given the people who claim to possess them are the ones who most quickly put it aside when their own corruption is in the crosshairs.

Why then should it “shock” us that moral principles mean nothing today—especially to those hypocrites who claim to hold them most dear? “Soft on crime”—the same people who make this accusation are the same ones who most insure that crime and gun violence are not mitigated, because the proliferation of guns that insures that proliferation of crime goes unmitigated is useful partisan political cannon fire.

Who has become inured to moral and ethical principles? Certainly not people like me who didn't grow-up in the South, who remembers history, and how people with even a shred of moral and ethical principles know that when they have done wrong they must pay the penalty for it, when lying about it only traps them into a corner where there is no other escape. Today, you have people who commit crimes—real, or against those that civil society depends upon to remain upright—and do not believe that they are “guilty” of anything because they have confidence in knowing that for their supporters, the "law" only applies to other people.

I admit that none of this sounds very “optimistic.” But Trump has a plan to “Make American Great Again,” yessiree. Only it doesn’t mean for you. After talking with his business buddies (i.e. not you), Trump wants to allow foreign nationals who graduate from US colleges to automatically receive green cards. This is obviously against his “America First” platform. Foreign students are actively pursued by colleges and universities here to take spots from "native" students because they pay much higher tuition fees to fill their coffers, and business like Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Apple with their Indian managers only want Indian employees who work for lower pay and are more culturally “manageable”; besides, Americans are “stupid" and have too many holidays to take a perfectly useful day off. 

Of course, these companies get what they "pay for." If you talk to a customer service or tech support agent from any of these companies, you are typically frustrated that you are treated like a fool while they read off the company guidelines when you ask them to explain anything outside their college-educated "training," which is anything outside of what you can read yourself, or what common sense suggests.

Now, if these foreign students were going into fields that this country really needs help with, such as civil engineering, then giving them green cards may make some sense; it would certainly inspire more "optimism" than bringing in people just to talk insensibly on a phone all day, snacking or talking to a coworker who also has nothing to do in the cubicle next door, data processing, or constructing buggy operating systems that need “updates” every couple weeks, or playing with AI stuff that people think is "cool" but doesn’t help ordinary people to get through their miserable lives.

However, Trump has a plan to "offset" giving good American jobs to foreign students; deport millions of undocumented workers in the "bad" jobs, which will have the effect of shutting down businesses and those that supply them, with the ripple effect of putting millions of "real" Americans out of work, reigniting inflation and bringing on the recession that was supposed to have occurred during the Biden presidency, but didn't because he didn't prevent businesses on the labor-intensive side from getting the workers they needed. 

Come to think of it, back in the 70s there was at least “Have a Nice Day” music to put a “optimistic” spin on life. All you had to do to forget about all that outside noise was to plug into the latest pop song about “love” and “peace” and just being “together.” I recalled those times on a Reddit page, and someone responded by trying to defend all the self-obsessed, self-victimizing narcissism of today as “gritty” music, and that had its own "value." 

But why do we have to make things that are already "bad" worse because the only way to make things "better" is to insure that the next person is worse off than you feel? Is that how people “wish” the world to be now? Don’t even give a damn about a more "optimistic" future that everyone can benefit? Why should people who don't give a damn about the future be allowed to make all the rules?  At least some of us know how dumb that is, and someone we know even told us how dangerous dumb people who vote are:

 

That’s not a “optimistic” way forward for this country. You have to take a stand, one way or other, and not change your mind every mid-term election--or at least long enough until the worst of the disease is cleansed from the body politic, since it can never be "cured" completely. Or else, we'll see this, with this country becoming a fascist state with fanatical and psychopathic dabblers in evil doing what whatever they think will please an insane Der Fuhrer, as explained here by John Oliver:

 

The question is, is it a sign  of "optimism" to just keep things the way you are used to them being, with one side essentially cancelling the other out every two years, or do you want to chance allowing someone to let things go from "bad" to "really bad" to the point of no return, especially when you have a court system increasingly occupied by political partisans who have an agenda to satisfy their own narrow-minded, reactionary view points?  

For a majority of voters, let's hope that "bad" is "good" enough. That's about as "optimistic" as things get these days.