I remember back in the day – the ’60s to be exact – I took civics, a required class devoted to teaching future voters how the Founding Fathers formed a representative democracy consisting of three branches of government that created checks and balances to ensure that no one entity could usurp power, a system in which reason, rather than avarice, would rule the nation.
The idea was that citizens would elect a person to represent them and vote on issues pertaining to their lives, to look after the majority’s best interests.
Well, the Republican controlled House of Representatives just passed a budget that calls 880 billion dollars of spending cuts to help offset 4.5 trillion dollars in tax cuts.
Under this budget, Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security would have to be cut.
Here are some un-fun facts to know and share.
South Carolina has 1.1 million residents who rely on Medicaid (19.5% of the population).
South Carolina has 1 billionaire (0% of the population).
South Carolina has 108,812 millionaires (5.4% of the population).
Every single Republican representative in South Carolina voted for this budget, opting to further enrich billionaires and millionaires but to further impoverish the needy.
The minority rules!
A not at all delicious irony: the working class is now the base of the Republican party.
Certainly, as several cultural critics have pointed out, Yeats’s magnificent poem “The Second Coming” expresses powerfully and concretely our current situation, what TS Eliot abstractly described as “the immense panorama of futility and anarchy that is contemporary history.”
Yeat’s poem is brief; therefore, I’ll quote it in its entirety:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
***
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Does the description “a gaze as blank and pitiless as the sun” remind you of anyone?
Of course, the Founding Fathers feared the rise of an American despot, so they counterbalanced the executive with Congress and the courts. Unfortunately, the lines “[t]he best lack all conviction, while the worst/ [a]re full of passionate intensity” aptly describe the Republican controlled House and Senate, Nancy Mace, full of passionate intensity, Lindsey Graham lacking all conviction.[1]
The Republican Senate certainly abandoned their responsibility of advising and consenting when they confirmed a vaccine-denying former heroin addict who literally has had worms eating his brain as Director of Health and Human Services and an alcoholic sexual predator who has absolutely no experience running a large enterprise as Secretary of Defense.
This idea of citizens lacking conviction is also powerfully rendered in TS Eliot’s “The Hollow Men” whose final lines have become almost a cliche:
This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper.
The hollow men of Eliot’s poem are scarecrows, heartless, “behaving as the wind behaves,” going with the flow, their “dried voices [. . .] quiet and meaningless.”
Like Senator Susan Collins, for example.
At any rate, in both poems we see Christianity breaking down, as the Antichrist slouches towards Bethlehem and in Eliot’s poem when the “Lord’s Prayer” breaks down into gibberish.
Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception And the creation Between the emotion And the response Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire
And the spasm Between the potency And the existence Between the essence And the descent Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is Life is For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper.
[1] Both hail from a state “too small to be a country, too big to be an insane asylum.” – James Petigru on South Carolina.
It seems to me, an admittedly jaundiced observer, that many of our current representatives are attention-starved narcissists who would rather don costumes and bring attention to themselves than plopping down behind a desk and performing the unglamorous work of governance.
Take our director of Homeland Security Kristi Noem dressing up like a border patrol agent, a cowgirl, and an ICE agent.
Of course, her trendsetting boss is no stranger to dressing up and engaging in make believe.
Unfortunately, this compulsion to commandeer the spotlight isn’t just confined to the cabinet. House Representatives, particularly Nancy Mace, enjoy incorporating Halloween into their everyday comings and goings as well.
Here’s Mace channeling Hester Prynne in a subliterate misunderstanding of Hawthorne’s classic novel, not seeming to get that the scarlet letter stood for “adultery.”
She claimed she was wearing the A because she was a woman being demonized for her “voice” and “vote.” Hester Prynne, on the other hand, stoically bore her persecution silently. Stoicism and silence are certainly not attributes we identify with Mace, who seems to be in the throes of some kind of nervous breakdown, reminiscent of the first scene in Night of the Iguana where clergyman T. Lawrence Shannon goes apeshit in the pulpit and mocks the parishioners, resulting in a mass exit during the course of his rantings.
Here’s a LINK to my post on nervous breakdowns featuring a clip from John Huston’s film Night of the Iguana.
Representative Mace’s venue for her recent Reverend Shannon-like ranting was the House floor of the US Capitol where she flappingly displayed the dirty laundry of her sordid relationship with her ex-fiancé Patrick Bryant for all the world to see, the same fiancé she mentioned at the National Prayer Breakfast a year earlier when she shared with the august worshippers assembled there that she had told Mr. Bryant, “No, baby, we ain’t got time for that,” that being premarital morning sex, because she didn’t want to be late for the Jesus fest.
I’m not going to catalogue the accusations of her screed the other night, which may or may not be true, the hidden cameras, the sexual assaults, etc. but merely suggest we the people would be better served with representatives who focus on our collective good rather than their own personal vendettas, to channel Jimmy Carter as opposed to Caligula, who also had a penchant for cosplaying, who liked to dress up like soldiers, mythological figures, and women.
Oh, Joe Cunningham, our lonely First Congressional District turns its lonely eyes to you.
Oscar Wilde’s counterintuitive observation that “life imitates art” certainly seems a valid observation when you consider that Elon Musk obviously modeled his persona on the Bond Villains he identified with as a child watching 007 movies in his South African enclave.
I asked ChatGPT to create a Venn diagram comparing characteristics of Dr. No, Auric Goldfinger, Ernst Blofeld, and Elon Musk, but rather than creating the visual representation I asked for he/she/it/they came up with this:
“Creating a Venn diagram comparing characteristics of Dr. No, Goldfinger, Blofeld, and Elon Musk could be interesting! Here’s how we might categorize some of their traits”:
Dr. No
Monologuing: Dr. No is known for his villainous speeches and arrogance.
Desire for Global Power: His main goal is to dominate the world.
Tech Savvy: Uses technology for his villainous deeds, such as a secret base and advanced machinery.
Goldfinger
Love of Wealth: Obsessed with gold and wealth accumulation.
Manipulative: Skilled in manipulating people and situations for personal gain.
Planning for Destruction: Plans to increase his wealth by threatening global economics.
Blofeld
Mastermind: A schemer and manipulator who plans complex, worldwide operations.
Philanthropic Facade: Often hides his true intentions behind a charitable or business façade.
Desire for Control: Wants to control global events to advance his personal agenda.
Elon Musk (Common Traits)
Innovative: Known for pushing technological advancements (SpaceX, Tesla).
Wealth: A billionaire who accumulates wealth through various ventures.
Ambitious: Has ambitious goals such as colonizing Mars and transforming energy production.
Public Persona: Often in the media spotlight and makes bold statements.[2]
Note how ChatGPT avoided portraying any of Musk’s traits as negative, much less as villainous.
Allow me to rectify that failure:
Elon Musk (Common Traits)
Monologuing: an assholeknown for his villainous speeches and arrogance.
Desire for Global Power: a megalomaniac who desires to dominate the world.
Tech Savvy: an innovator who buildsrocket ships, electric cars, etc.
Wealth: a billionaire obsessed with wealth accumulation
Mastermind: a schemer and manipulator who plans complex, worldwide operations.
Desire for Control: a self-obsessed piece of shit who wants to control global events to advance his personal agenda.
Oh, yeah, what about the autism, the lack of social grace and human empathy, not to mention operating outside the bounds of law? The stilted speech patterns all four share?
On this assignment, I’d give ChatGPT a big fat D if he/she/it/they were my student and myself a C- on this blog post, which has forsaken hard work for expediency.
That said, it’s kind of scary that a Bond villain now has access to my social security number.
[1] The name Elon Musk sounds like Ian Fleming himself came up with it.
[2] Not how ChatGPT doesn’t bother with parallel construction. The catalogue he/she/it/they came up with is about as elegant as a Tesla truck.
There’s a scene in Woody Allen’s early movie Bananas that reminds me of Trump’s first two weeks in office.
Here, take a look.
Remind you of anybody?
Obviously, the power has gone to Trump’s thick-as-the-walls-of-Troy skull.
Here’s his first social media message of the day via the Economic Times.
“Therefore, Canada should become our Cherished 51st State,” he wrote on his Truth social media platform, claiming the move would bring “much lower taxes, and far better military protection for the people of Canada – AND NO TARIFFS!”
“Um,” as the cynical sitcom kids sarcastically say, “that’s sure to work.”
And they’re right. Canada has cooked up some retaliatory tariffs of their own, tariffs aimed at red states targeting Kentucky Bourbon and Florida oranges.
So if you voted for Trump because you thought groceries were too high, you’re in for some pocketbook disappointment.
Good thing I don’t like avocados on my pizza.
Good thing there are midterm elections.
Good thing there’s the 22nd Amendment.
But until then, strap yourself in, because we’ve all boarded the roller-coaster from Hell.
Speaking of Hell, I’ll give Milton’s Satan the last word:
But wherefore let we then our faithful friends, Th’associates and co-partners of our loss Live thus astonish on th’oblivious Pool, And call then not to share with us their part In this unhappy Mansion, or once more With rallied arms to try what may be yet Regain’d in Heav’n, or what more lost in Hell?”
You Do Hoodoo 