Skip to main content

The Pink Panda

.
I have been thinking about the panda bear who screamed at us at the bank drive-in.  "Obama is stupid!", she shouted:  "There is no global warming!"  I suppose drive-in rage is a form of road rage, except that the road had nothing to do with it.  It was entirely political:  political rage.  When the screaming pink panda was sure we had heard her, she charged off, inside her assault vehicle.

Political rallies, such as the Tea Baggers are having, are something like people in cars.  Rallies are a safe place to scream at people, to curse them and flip them a bird. 

I used to worry about drivers who screamed and honked and exhibited their middle fingers.  I always let them go.  I knew that some of them had guns in their cars or trucks.  Now we know that some people bring guns to political rallies, too.  Isn't that comforting!  It isn't Obama who is trying to take our country and consititution away from us:  it is the people who want to come armed to settle differences.  Guns do not insure life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  More often, they insure death, jail terms, and enduring grief. 

The poor panda who screamed at us that there was no global warming was amazingly stupid about what climate change means, and does.  I am quite sure that a bit more snow than usual was proof enough that the overall temperature of the earth was not rising.  Melting glaciers and rising oceans meant nothing.  Thinning ice packs in the arctic, and retreating ice in the antarctic did not convince her.  More snow in Washington D.C. was all the proof she needed; that and her icy driveway.

One could argue forever about the climate of the earth being a whole system, and that less ice and more water and water vapor in the system would have enormous consequences.  I will wager that the pink-faced panda who screamed at us will be forever undeterred by science, and simple facts. 

Politically, it seems that about a quarter of the population is angry; really angry!  That is important in the same way that road rage cannot be ignored.  Something is making them angry, but it may not be what they tell us it is.  It almost certainly will not be what they say it is, but it is scary, nonetheless. 

That rage scares even the Republican Party.  People like Dick Armey use the political rage for their own purposes.  Dick Armey is not in a rage, himself.  He is harnessing the rage to his own political purposes.  The Republicans whose constituents are screaming at them are afraid.  They want to be elected, and the pink panda is one of their voters.  A lot of pink pandas believe that even the most conservative Republicans are not radical enough.  They want blood!

Tiny Tim Pawlenty, Our Very Own Minnesota Governor--the Governor who is leaving the State in a miserable financial mess because, like the Bush administration, he is willing to spend money, but not to insure that there is income--did his best at the Conservative Political Action Conference, even suggesting that people need to take a nine iron to the windows of government (He is so clever!), but when a straw poll was taken to see who the conservatives thought should be the next Republican presidential nominee, he came in last, with about 6%.  Sarah Palin, who wasn't even at the conference, probably because no one offered her $100,000. to be there, got more votes than Timmy.  Ron Paul won.  Ron Paul!  He is an old-fashioned Libertarian in Republican clothing. 

Intelligence was not on the agenda. 
How does one deal with road rage? 

Comments

Post a Comment

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
1 comment
Read more

Nice to Run Into You Again

We do not see things in enormous time-frames.  We human beings are fairly new at figuring things out for ourselves.  For instance, some  people today still think of the earth as a newly created thing, perhaps ten thousand years old.  Earth is actually about four-and-a-half billion years old.   That is to say, the earth is 450,000 times older than the Adam and Eve story, and the universe is three times older than that! I recall first hearing that continents were slowly drifting around the earth, and that there quite likely had been several times when the continents were squeezed together.  But people could stand on the edge of their own continents, and not see Africa or Asia getting closer.  It took at least fifty years to figure things out. We called our continent something special. But sure enough, there have been numerous times during several-billion year history of the earth, when supercontinents formed, and eventually drifted off. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

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. ...
Post a Comment
Read more