Skip to main content

Our Little Sarah from the Klondike

"How's that hop-ey, chang-ey thing workin' out for ya?"

My god, I try to ignore her!  It doesn't work.

It really isn't even Sarah who is driving me nuts.  The perky little dear is just making a buck to support her family, and trying to do what is best for Alaska by resigning as Governor.  Deep insight and self-perception like that are her credentials for goosing the Tea Baggers, and for flirting with the Presidency in 2012 if it looks best for her family and the nation and global warming and the whole universe.

It is all those Tea Baggers that are driving me goofy.  They like Sarah.  She is just what they admire:  she winks at them, and says, "ya" and scorns those in-te-llek-ya-alls who use teleprompters and talk pretty.  The Tea Baggers welcome neo-Nazis, and god-awful racists like Tom Tancredo, who advocates good, ol' Southern literacy tests to keep immigrants and you-know-the-types out of the voting booth, because they are the people who put Barack Obama into office.  (No matter that a majority of caucasians suppported Obama.) 

I can scarcely believe that about a quarter of the American population admires people like Sarah Palin and Tom Tancredo and Focus on the Family.  What has happened to their sense of decency?  Where have they parked their brains? 

Sometimes I make excuses for their anger and rage by reminding myself that a lot of people are hurting right now.  But is they are hurting, why do they oppose universal health care?  Universal health care, if not managed by insurance companies, would save us money, and make lives better!  Do they really believe that encouraging people to bet their social security on the stock market will someday buy them a condo in Florida?  Do they really want to turn investment bankers loose in hunting season with no-limit licenses? 

Do they really think Obama was born in Kenya?  That he is an agent of an international conspiracy to take over our government?  They think Ron Paul is too far left! 

Would you want the people whom Tea Baggers would like to elect to design your health care?  Would it not be sweet if they could teach Iran the lesson they would like?  How would you like to be a Jew or a Muslim or Hispanic or maybe even Catholic if they could have their way? 

Sarah Palin is a fraud; just a perky, simple-minded, money-hungry fraud.  The Tea Baggers are scary!  If they had their way, they would make this a very mean-spirited, racist, fundamentalist, dog-eat-dog nation. 

Is it that a sizable part of every society always consists of such people, and that they simply need a chance to load their guns, shout their hatreds, and recite their conspiracies? 

Where have the reasonable coffee drinkers gone?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Friends-- My step-father of 35 years died this morning. His name was Conrad Royksund. He was 86 years old. He was born into poverty on a farm near Puyallup, WA. He was the first member of his family to attend college and earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. He paid his way through all of that by fishing in Alaska. He spent his professional career as a college professor. I met him when I was just 3 years old and don't actually have any memories of my life befor e he was in it. He was intimidatingly smart, funny as hell, and worked his ass off. He taught me to meet people with kindness and decency until I was certain they could not be trusted. He taught me to meet ideas with carving knives until I was certain they could. I will remember him as one of the bravest, most curious, and funniest people I have ever met. He left this world with a satisfied mind. We are so grateful. Dan Hubbard

Caliche Busters and Government Work

When I was young and both stronger and smarter than I am now, I put my might and brain to work doing nothing useful, unless it might be thought that hand/foot/eye coordination might come in handy.  Those were skills to be learned and practiced.   I found an iron bar our grandfather had shaped in his blacksmith shop.  He took old car, truck, or wagon axles, and made tools from them for digging post holes.  He sharpened one end to a tip, and the other to a blade.  Washington State, like many places, had a hard layer of soil, probably created by water and limestone, or some such materials, that made digging holes a miserable chore.  The bar chipped through the natural concrete so that a shovel could take it up.   I found Grandpa's iron bar, and since I was young and dumb and strong--or so I thought--decided to punch a hole down to hardpan and ultimate truth.  I knew how to do that.  Raise the bar vertically with both hands, and then slam in straight down.  On the second try, aimi

The Sea is Rising

Let us just step back:  two hundred and fifty years ago, or so, the ships of England and Spain had drifted onto a whole new continent, as they saw it, from far north to a savagely cold south; pole to pole, as if there were such things. Millions of people already lived here, some of them still hunters and gatherers; some of them very wealthy, indeed!  Gold and silver stolen from the southern Americas funded Spanish and English dreams. There was land, lots of land, under starry skies above, rich land, and oil and coal and iron ore.  The whole western world learned how to build industries not on simple muscle power, but on steam and oil.  We farmed, too, of course.  All we needed was cheap labor--slave labor from Africa, mostly, so the ships came with slave labor.  Chinese labor built railroad beds where there had been rock cliffs. Europeans, long used to killing each other for good, religious reasons, brought their religious savagery with them.  Even when all they wanted to do w