a maze of words leading to …?

Do Republicans threaten US democracy?

26 06 15

Gun

There’s no doubt that the Republican party is becoming more and more extreme in its views. Is it perhaps even getting dangerously close to threatening US democracy itself?

It’s not just that the majority of Republicans in Congress have, during the entire Obama administration, focused almost exclusively on trying to damage and block the President rather than seeking what’s in the best interests of governing the country. Much worse, some leading Republicans are now seeking to place their version of ‘Christian beliefs’ in opposition to democracy itself.

A few examples:

  • Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee describes the laws legalising gay marriage as “judicial tyranny”, vows to “fight to defend religious liberty at all costs” and says “I hope we answer the alarm clock and take this nation back for Christ.”

He has also endorsed comments from the President of the Southern Baptist Convention, namely that “… the Supreme Court is not the final authority … the Bible is God’s final authority … and on this book we stand.”

  • Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum: “This is a spiritual war. And the Father of Lies [Satan] has his sights on ….. the United States of America.”
  • A statement on the official Republican Party 2012 platform said “The Founders of the American Republic universally agree that democracy presupposes a moral people (my emphasis) …”

The same official website highlighted George Washington’s notion that “the propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained.” It went on to proclaim that “… our rights come from God.”

When you put such inflammatory statements together with the Republicans’ huge emphasis on ‘gun rights’ –  especially gun rights in relation to their supposed role in preventing any government tyranny – then you have a potentially explosive mixture.

In this mixture you have gun-toting “Christians” being egged on to regard their version of morality as above the law, above democracy and – since “rights come from God” – above constitutional rights as decided by mere humans.

Whether this Republican drift towards extremism will win them the next presidential election seems doubtful. And despite losing the last two presidential contests, many Republicans still don’t seem to twig the fact that the majority of Americans just don’t support – and likely will never support – a bible-thumping, homophobic and quasi-misogynist agenda.

So if the Republican party loses yet again – and this time to not only to a woman, but a woman called Hillary Clinton – then might we see their anti-democratic rhetoric transformed into something more sinister?

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Current Affairs and Politics, USA

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Green Party – after the election

06 06 15

Green Party logo banner

[See also the pre-election post: The Green Party – a failing venture]

The General Election in Britain has come and gone. The Green Party retained the single seat that they already had, but made no gains. The “green surge” predicted by the party’s campaigners simply didn’t happen.

It could hardly have been much different … not with the first-past-the-post voting system, in which the winners take all and the losers, no matter how many votes they receive nationally, get little or nothing.

So yet again the party’s electioneering strategy has all been mostly in vain, just as it has been since they embarked on this path in the 1970s. The party continues to be marginalised, as do (more importantly) the green policies that it promotes.

Will the Green Party ever realise that no deep-seated political change is possible – and that its engagement with electoral politics is pointless – unless and until the voting system is changed? Will they ever transform themselves into the cutting edge of a radical campaign for true democracy and its essential ingredient, namely a genuinely proportionally representative voting system? And towards this end, will they ever look to create alliances – focused on obtaining true democracy rather than the party’s recent ‘anti-austerity’ posturing – across the much wider range of green and progressive currents?

Will they ever announce a boycott of all national elections – and seek to persuade other parties (those similarly unfairly marginalised by the current voting system) to do the same – and keep this in place until true democracy is introduced?

The answer to all these questions is ‘probably not’ – not while party activists continue to seize, post-election, on any available positive statistic. This time around they point to gains in the number of votes received nationally and gains in the number of party members …. as if either of these things amount to a hill of beans in the face of the party’s continued electoral impotence … as caused by the voting system and the travesty of democracy that it represents.

The suffragettes– the ‘votes for women’ campaign in late 19th and early 20th century Britain – brought about the last major change in the democratic system. They didn’t get this by forming a political party and contesting elections.

It’s well past time that the Green Party looked to their inspiration and took up their mantle. It’s well past time for the Green Party to drop the election game and enter the arena of radical campaign for true democracy.

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Current Affairs and Politics

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Greenlands Farm – Part 3

31 05 15

Greenlands Farm

[See also Greenlands Farm – Part 1 and Greenlands Farm–  Part 2.]

The Central Somerset Gazette had a belter of a headline: “Gypsy Site ‘Horror’ Could Be Permanent”.

Permanent horror?, I mused, clutching the newspaper as I sheltered inside the shop from the rain, is that metaphysically possible?

My thoughts ran on. Surely it would only be possible sustain a feeling of actual horror for so long? Wouldn’t you eventually fall asleep or something? Or wouldn’t you get that tiny bit used to it in due course, after which it might decay into something less … like semi-revulsion, or maybe quasi-terror. Eventually – I persisted with this – it’d surely just become nothing more than mild panic, and even begin to seem normal after a while, as indeed it would be normal, by definition, if it was there permanently ….

I was interrupted in this entertaining (if pointless) train of thought by the arrival of a delivery van, which screeched to a halt outside the shop. A breathless man came running inside, dumped a pile of newspapers on the counter, ran back to his truck and sped off. It was a rival paper, hot off the press, even hotter these days since a circulation war had erupted, centred on ever more lurid headlines about the ‘traveller’s settlement’ at Greenlands Farm.

Even standing in the shop doorway I could read the block letters, six inches high, of the latest screaming headlines: “New Disease Fear as Vermin Virus Hits Greenlands.”

Nicely ambiguous, I thought. By “vermin” did it mean rats and suchlike, or did it mean the travellers? And did it mean that the travellers had been struck by the virus, or rather that they had brought it with them to the farm?

I bought a copy and read the story’s opening paragraph: “Rats found at Greenlands Farm are to be wiped out by vermin control experts following the discovery of a suspected new killer disease at the controversial camp-site.” … It later turned out that the “vermin virus” was non-existent, but few newspapers let little details like the facts get in the way of a good story.

I awoke the next day to find that this yellow journalism had brought a swift response from the Avalonian People’s Popular Liberation Experience (A.P.P.L.E.) – see Avalonian Independence Party. Their “Provisional High Command” (alleged) had nailed a “communiqué” to telegraph poles across the town. This ran as follows:

“Insofar as the government has powers to remove us by social blackmail or force, let it be known that we have several sites lined up in the immediate area to move to. However we cannot let this happen whilst hepatitis, mental derangement and psychotic visionaries are running like wildfire through our midst. Our local Masonic contacts assure us that it is better to leave things as they are.

We insist the authorities approach in a spirit of reconciliation, and we will sort this out together. Otherwise 23 shades of pandemonium will break loose over the heads of honest Glastonburgers. Over the next few years the county’s mental hospitals will be emptying rapidly, and hippies are best equipped to absorb these people, but we cannot do this under the pressure of continual harassment.” [1]

Signed,

Boris, leader of the Convoy; King Arthur Mix; Swami Bharmi; Wally Hope; Bob Dylan.

The local press printed this message in full, though “hepatitis” was printed as “hippytitis” in one newspaper (later claimed as a proof-reading error).

I glanced at the signatories. Swami Bharmi was a real person actually camped at Greenlands – this much I knew. Bob Dylan was also a real person – depending on your point of view – but unlikely to be camping in the mud (though in Avalonia one never quite knows for sure). Wally Hope sounded normal enough and on that count was probably fictitious (I later stood corrected, though it wasn’t his real name and he was dead in any case). As for Boris, “leader of the Convoy”, it was well known that The Convoy had no leader, though this didn’t stop the police looking for him. That left King Arthur Mix.

Following a hunch, I opened my copy of Glastonspeak – The Essential Guide, turned to the back and scanned through the index. There it was, the entry I’d suspected. Moving to the page listed, I read:

“Half a mix” (colloquially “Arf a mix”, and thence Arthur Mix). This is a shouted public request / invitation, which translates as: “someone please give enough hashish for this next communal joint / pipe / chillum.” Though the origins are somewhat obscure, it is believed to refer to a half-and-half smoking mixture of cannabis sativa and tobacco.

I glanced again at  A.P.P.L.E’s “communiqué, pondering. So, they had nailed their colours to the mast – or telegraph poles in this case – and the battle lines were drawn ….

[1] See http://www.unique-publications.co.uk.

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At Random

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Republicans = Big Government

30 04 15

Republican Party

Have you ever noticed how many of those who most loudly claim to be against “big government” are actually the most in favour of enforcing social conformity and restricting individual freedoms?

Consider the Republican Party and its religious-right supporters in the USA, who want to (for example):

  • Exert central government control over the physical body of each and every individual woman when it comes to abortion and a woman’s right to choose.
  • Restrict individual freedom by denying the right of marriage to gays and lesbians … even though such marriage does not affect the rights of heterosexuals in any way.
  • Ban the provision for teenagers of information about contraception, replacing it with the teaching of sexual abstinence until marriage as the “responsible and respected standard of behavior”.

In other words, such folk are gung-ho for big government when it comes to enforcing conformity with their own beliefs and many prejudices.

And in many Republican minds, these belief and prejudices become translated to “morality” … which of course means that something is deemed to be “moral” if they agree with it, but “immoral” if they don’t.

What’s profoundly disturbing in this context is that, in the words of the official Republican Party 2012 platform: “The Founders of the American Republic universally agree that democracy presupposes a moral people (my emphasis) …”

To put this another way, if the Republican Party and its supporters deem the views and behaviour of some people to be ‘immoral’, then those people can be cast as being at odds with democracy itself. Thus democracy can become equated with conformity to Republican moral values … and those who don’t conform can be seen as the enemies of democracy who can thus be rightfully subject to the repression and intrusion of big government.

The theme of supporting big government continues further with the Republicans, who want to:

  • Generally increase the funding and powers of American security and intelligence agencies.
  • Increase military spending – and hence further boost the power of the American military-industrial complex – despite the fact the USA already has by far the largest military budget in the world.

And it’s Republicans who are the most keen on blurring the boundaries between the different branches of government – and redefining the federal government in overtly religious terms (their official policy documents are littered with frequent references to God and Christianity). For example:

  • Proclaiming that “… our rights come from God” (as distinct, we suppose, from being inherent by virtue of being sentient human beings).
  • Supporting the appointment of judges who “respect traditional family values and the sanctity of innocent human life”.
  • Supporting “the public display of the Ten Commandments as a reflection of our history and of our country’s Judeo-Christian heritage.”
  • Highlighting George Washington’s notion that “the propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained.”

Eternal rules of order and right …. hmmm. From which religion do these eternal rules stem, we might ask? All the more so since there is no reference to Christianity or Judeo-Christianity (nor even ‘God’) in the American Constitution. And, indeed, the Constitution’s 1st Amendment explicitly says: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion …”

But speaking of “order and right”, it’s ironic that the individual right which Republicans seem most keen to promote is that of gun ownership (“gun ownership is responsible citizenship”) … supposedly in the cause of defending against a potential tyranny of big government.

The irony here, of course, is that if any federal government in America were to incline towards tyranny – a tyranny in God’s name no doubt – it would almost certainly be one run by the Republican Party … and almost certainly egged on and supported by a wide variety of gun-crazed, bible-bashing, misogynist nutcases.

Thence “One Nation Under God” might be better read as One Social and Moral Conformity Under the Republican Party. So much for small government …

[Note: all quotes in this blog-post, with the exception of one taken from the American Constitution, are from the official Republican Party platform website of 2012.]

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Russian Orthodox Christians

18 04 15

Russian Orthodox 2

The Tribes of Christianity – Encyclopaedia Avalonia Vol. IX …

Russian Orthodox Christians (ROCs) are pillars of the establishment who take a highly conventional – not to say orthodox – view of things.

In the ROC version of heaven everything runs along traditional lines, with Russian-speakers receiving the protection that they apparently need and Archangel Vladimir eventually sitting at God’s right-hand, tasked with making sure that everyone toes the line.

This task should not be too difficult, since only ROCs are allowed into ROC-heaven … except for a small corner allocated to their religious cousins – Greek, Serbian and other Orthodox Christians – on the understanding that they learn to speak Russian and engage in intense study of the principles of oligarchy.

Aside from watching gangster films, the main leisure activities in ROC heaven involve staging re-enactments of the glories of Russian history and drawing up lists of moral deviants, mainly those who don’t worship God Archangel Vladimir, for consignment to hell.

ROCs have a problem with hell, however. Its hot temperature sits uneasily with the Russian tradition of sending deviants to Gulags in the frozen Siberian wastes, whilst true believers go on holiday to the warmer climes of Crimea. Why, say the ROCs, should deviants ever be allowed to enjoy the warm locations, when these have always been historically part of Russia?

Luckily, the Archangel has a plan …

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Encyclopaedia Avalonia

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House Christians – EA Vol. IX

12 04 15

House Christians

The Tribes of Christianity – Encyclopaedia Avalonia Vol. IX …

In Avalonia, House Christians are devout agoraphobics who thus rarely, if ever, venture out from their homes.

The only known exception was struck by a falling roof tile as she stepped out from her front door. And although an insurance policy covered such “Acts of God”, this official designation was taken by other House Christians as proof of their wise precautions.

One such other attempted to take things further, by seeking insurance against another possible Act of God, namely not being admitted to heaven come Resurrection Day.

Whilst several companies were eager to offer such a policy, the key issue was how proof of any claim would be provided. Negotiations broke down at this point, mainly because the House Christian concerned stated that, due to said agoraphobia, he would not be willing to leave Hell once there in order to testify regarding this final destination.

He also refused to countenance a post-mortem corroborative visit to hell by any insurance claim-checker … on the grounds that all insurance company employees were going to hell anyway and he didn’t see why they should be favoured over him by a chance to prepare properly via an advance look.

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Encyclopaedia Avalonia

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The Green Party – a failing venture

08 04 15

Green Party logo banner

Election campaigning is currently in full swing here in the UK, with voting to elect a new Parliament (and thus government) due to take place in May. And as usual, the Green Party is busy fielding its own crop of candidates and promoting its election manifesto.

But again, as usual, it’s all mostly in vain. Because although the party might win a seat or two and receive 5% (say) of the national vote, the end result will be the continued marginalisation of the party and the policies it promotes. This is the inevitable consequence of the first-past-the-post voting system, in which the winners take all and the losers, no matter how many votes they receive, get nothing.

This voting system means that huge numbers of votes are wasted – not translated into elected representatives. Even if a party were to contest every seat and lose in each by only a tiny fraction of the vote, they would end up with no elected representatives at all …. no matter that their national share of the vote might be 30 or 40 per cent.

Clearly this is a travesty of democracy. So it’s little wonder that many voters either don’t bother to vote, or else are deeply disenchanted with electoral politics, voting merely to keep ‘the other party’ out … because they know that voting for the party they most favour will be a wasted vote.

Yet still the Green Party persists in playing this rigged game, just as it has done since the 1970s. The party activists will argue that electioneering provides them with publicity – a public platform from which to explain and promote their policies. Yet whilst this is true, what is the real point in promoting policies that the voting system will ensure can never be implemented? So the party is left hoping that one or two of the mainstream parties’ policies become slightly more green-tinged in reaction … a very marginal gain at best.

The alternative – a radical movement for true democracy:

Instead of playing a rigged game to little practical effect, the Green Party should boycott all elections and transform itself – involving alliances across the wider range of green and progressive currents  – into the cutting edge of a radical, campaigning movement for the creation of true democracy. This should centre on the demand for a truly proportionally representative (PR) voting system for elections: if a party gets 1% of the vote then it should get 1% of the elected representatives.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Current Affairs and Politics

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Happiness

07 04 15

zen

“Happiness does not come from having much, but from being attached to little” ~ Zen Master Cheng Yen

This notion is often seen as mainly concerning material possessions, but it’s also something that religious fanatics of all persuasions might consider …

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Quotes

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A Sioux Indian story

16 03 15

Mole

“The Creator gathered all of creation and said, ‘I want to hide something from the human until they are ready for it. It is the realisation that they create their own reality.’

The eagle said, ‘Give it to me, I will take it to the moon.’ The Creator said, ‘No. One day they will go there and find it.’

The salmon said, ‘I will hide it on the bottom of the ocean.’ The Creator said, ‘No. They will go there, too.’

The buffalo said, ‘I will bury it on the great plains.’ The Creator said, ‘They will cut off the skin of the earth and find it even there.’

Then Grandmother Mole, who lives in the breast of Mother Earth, and who has no physical eyes but sees with spiritual eyes, said: ‘Put it inside them. That is the last place they will look.’

And the Creator said, ‘It is done.’”

 

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Quotes

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From 1968 and Robert F. Kennedy

06 03 15

Kennedy

“Even if we act to erase material poverty, there is another greater task, it is to confront the poverty of satisfaction – purpose and dignity – that afflicts us all.

Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things.  Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product – if we judge the United States of America by that – that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage.

It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them.  It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl.

It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities.  It counts Whitman’s rifle and Speck’s knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.

Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play.  It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials.

It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.

And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans. If this is true here at home, so it is true elsewhere in world.”

Robert Kennedy, University of Kansas, March 18, 1968

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Current Affairs and Politics, Quotes

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