My Evil Plan to Become Dictator

If I were a wanna-be dic­ta­tor look­ing for some place to make my own, and I really mean my own – I might just pick Ten­nessee; any state polit­i­cally bipo­lar enough to pro­duce both All Gore and Fred Thomp­son is just ask­ing for it. The con­di­tions would have to be just right; an eco­nomic depres­sion, high unem­ploy­ment, iso­lated urban cen­ters sur­rounded by vast rural areas – so far, so good.  Then I would need a polit­i­cal vehi­cle that I could manip­u­late; one well known enough to engen­der respectabil­ity, yet intel­lec­tu­ally vacant enough to be con­trolled … how ‘bout the repub­li­cans! Now for the most impor­tant fac­tor in suc­cess­ful dic­ta­tor­iz­ing; fear.  I sim­ply need to iden­tify who the major­ity of the peo­ple are, find out what they […click to read the rest]

Hubris and Ignorance

I may not know what I think I know, you know? So I’ve been try­ing to come to some under­stand­ing about how very bright peo­ple, like some very close bio­log­i­cal rel­a­tives of mine, can see the polit­i­cal land­scape so dif­fer­ently than I do. Be warned; I’m about to get all for­mal essay on you… 1.    Cog­ni­tive hubris: each of us believes that his map of the world is more accu­rate than it really is. 2.    Rad­i­cal igno­rance: when it comes to com­plex social phe­nom­ena, our maps are highly inac­cu­rate. Cog­ni­tive hubris can explain large, per­sis­tent dis­agree­ments over such issues as finan­cial reg­u­la­tion and Key­ne­sian fis­cal stim­u­lus. Cog­ni­tive hubris is par­tic­u­larly trou­ble­some when com­bined with rad­i­cal igno­rance. Indeed, this con­fig­u­ra­tion jus­ti­fies lim­it­ing gov­ern­ment inter­ven­tion in order to avoid set­ting […click to read the rest]

Know Newt? No Newt!

Newt Gin­grich is smarter than you. Don’t feel bad; he’s smarter than every­body else, too. Just ask him.  But don’t ask him about his per­sonal life – how dare you! Repeated adul­tery with younger women, while each suc­ces­sive wife was seri­ously ill — and all along Newt was pro­claim­ing him­self a cham­pion of fam­ily val­ues. Attack­ing mort­gage lender Fred­die Mac, while secretly get­ting paid $1.6 mil­lion as a lob­by­ist for them – and claim­ing he was a “his­to­rian,” not a lob­by­ist. Attack­ing Con­gress for grid­lock, when per­son­ally led the destruc­tion of Con­gress’ civil­ity and tra­di­tions in the 1980s as a “bomb-thrower” and evil genius tac­ti­cian. (Seri­ously, look it up.) A half-million charge account at Tiffany’s Jew­el­ers for his lat­est, youngest woman (that we know of). All this […click to read the rest]

Edward Hopper – Visual Melancholy

Melan­choly.  I feel bad for great words that get attached to ter­ri­ble feel­ings; I think melan­choly is one of those words.  Webster’s has its def­i­n­i­tions, but I have my own as well.  Melan­choly is so awful because it is one of those in between feel­ings; not full sor­row, but very far removed from joy.  It may be more akin to mood than feel­ing, a feel­ing has an object, some­thing that we can iden­tify and deal with.  But a mood is just a vague sense that some­thing is amiss, and if we can’t iden­tify it, we can’t fix it. The word floated into my head the other day when my Art His­tory class was look­ing at the work of Edward Hop­per. I usu­ally cover Hop­per when we […click to read the rest]

Brain Death of the Conservative Body Politic

Sis­ter Sarah Palin (the quit­ter) warned her min­ions that an Obama health-plan would insti­tute “death pan­els” that would rule over plug-pulling cer­e­monies for the aged and infirm; maybe her wor­ries were really a lit­tle closer to home… After read­ing over the most recent offer­ings from the con­ser­v­a­tive avant-gardians from Vir­ginia and Okla­homa – I feel com­pelled to call it!  Time of death for neo-conservativism is… well, look at your watch.  The bells, they toll for thee! Ok, hyper­bole aside, if the con­ser­v­a­tive body politic is not actu­ally dead, it is most def­i­nitely Brain Dead! How long can a heart con­tinue to pump once the con­trol­ling gray mat­ter has shuf­fled off its mor­tal coil – how long can con­ser­v­a­tives con­tinue their cur­rent flop­ping about on only the decel­er­at­ing […click to read the rest]