So, I guess old Edwards has left the race. We're down to Clinton v Obama on one side and McCain v Romney on the other. I am becoming less optimistic by the second.
Last night I had a long, animated discussion about this with my mom and stepdad (then my uncle called and the first thing he shouted into the phone when my mom said hello was, "What is the deal with the Florida delegates? What kind of stupid decision was it to not have the delegates count?" or something like that. You get the idea. We're all obsessed with politics in my family.
Something in this did make me laugh today, though. A writer on Slate said that working class and rural people were Hillary's natural constituency, and so Hillary might have a chance at some of the people who would have voted for Edwards. Maybe he's got access to some polling data that I don't, but it made me laugh. From what I know of rural folk--my family back in Arkansas, the good if somewhat militant people in Reserve, NM (pop. c. 300), this little enclave where I currently live--I think no way in hell is Hillary the candidate of the rural people. The last time people in this particular area were polled the leading Democrat was Obama followed by Edwards with Hillary in a distant third (although everyone knows this area wants Romney so bad it keeps them up at night. I don't really get it. Do they think that just because he's Mormon, he'll take office and suddenly impose mandatory polygamy and maybe take us back to Prohibition? I mean, he's still got a Congress to deal with and all that. Anyway, how they can trust a big-business type is way beyond my comprehension). So, perhaps if it's Obama, all is not lost, though I have already spoken to some independents who favored Richardson and Edwards and now, faced with Hillary and Obama, are already talking up McCain.
*sigh*
This primary system is completely fucked. That is my humble, amateurish opinion. Just fucked. Thanks Iowa and New Hampshire! Once again, thank you! Of course, it's not the fault of the good people of those states--it's the fault of the parties for working their primary system this way and the media for playing it the way they do.
It is also, somehow, the fault of Canada. I haven't worked out just how yet, but I'm in a blaming mood today, so I'll get there.
(sorry, Greenhows! sorry, Greg! really I'm just jealous of you people up there.)
*sigh*
I've written before that I don't consider myself an "environmentalist." I do care tremendously about the environment--keeping our air and water clean, preserving our vast and breathtaking national forests, stopping the destruction of the oceans, all of it. I love and respect the world of nature more than the world of humans, really, although I harbor the silly and admittedly outdated notion that, ideally, the world of nature and that of humans are not separate and distinct, but intertwined and connected and part of the same great circle and cycle. Actually, they are not separate and distinct, but some people like to pretend that they are.
But the rhetoric of environmentalists and animal rights activists (I will do some lumping of the two here, even though they are not always the same) loses me a lot. Not just the rhetoric, really, but also some of the proposals and actions. Let's start with the rhetoric, helpfully presented to us in this Sunday's newspaper.
There was an article about the problematic deer population in New Jersey. I am given to understand that back there, deer no longer have natural predators. Well, anyone with even a half-assed understanding of these things knows that, in the absence of predators, prey populations will escalate and start to invade suburban lawns and eat people's well-manicured grass (I love how the governor of New Jersey said there are too many deer on "our property." Right, dude. Your property, not the deer's.) So, the governor has made some special 10-day hunt to reduce the populations, and apparently hunters are specifically being encouraged to kill the young ones.
In a meeting about this, some protestor shouted, I guess about the young ones, "We call them Bambi!"
Oh, OK, see. You're just not even a serious person. I cannot take your point-of-view seriously when your knowledge of wildlife is derived from a fucking Disney movie aimed at 5-year-olds. For one thing, deer don't speak English. Also, their eyes are not that disproportionately large. I have to admit that when I was young and we often ate venison that my stepdad hunted, we used the term "Bambi burgers" rather a lot, mostly to irritate my vegetarian mom. So, maybe I'm just coldhearted towards anthropomorphized forest creatures that giggle.
Then the protesters suggested birth control as an alternative, nonviolent means of controlling the deer population. I can already feel the headache coming on. Because so far man's intervention into the natural world has been so completely successful, let's try injecting pig proteins or gonadotropin-releasing hormones into deer to fuck about with their reproductive cycles. Not to mention that, unlike predation (even human, gun-powered predation, albeit to a lesser extent), contraception is not going to select for the smartest and healthiest animals to reproduce or to get the greatest mixing of the gene pool to keep the herd strong. It is more or less random. And do we have any idea at all what the long-term effects on individual deer and the health of the herd are from this? Not yet, not really.
And let's not even forget that the deer contraception will not eliminate the need for predation and hunting to control the deer population in most places. Hurrah!
Who are these people? How can they have so little understanding of or respect for nature? I assume you know what I mean when I say they don't understand nature. By "respect" for nature, I mean respect for animals for what they are and their animal-ness (and the animal-ness of humans, too. Why do liberals, who typically advocate Darwinism or something like it, think it is reasonable and healthy to deny the primal animality of humankind? I'm getting all hot under the collar just thinking about it).
I wouldn't personally say that a deer's life is "sacred"--then again, I wouldn't say that about a human life, either. I'm not much into that word. I don't think a deer's life is worth less than mine. What I think is that we exist in a natural relationship of predator and prey and that this relationship is healthy, efficient, and good. As Michael Pollan pointed out so very many times in Omnivore's Dilemma, this relationship slowly but surely converts sunlight into sustenance. The sun feeds the grass and plants that feed the deer; the deer feeds the predator; the predator eventually dies and becomes fertilizer for the grass which feeds ... You get the idea. To me, this is a beautiful and elegant cycle, and very energy efficient. Every part of it relies on the other part--including predators. In many cases, as we have eliminated so many natural predators, humans are the only real predator left. To me, it is our duty to fill that role, and it is right when we do. If you want to try to convince me that wolves would be better at it than us and that New Jersey inhabitants will stand for the introduction of large predators to their ecosystem, you can go ahead and try but you're probably not going to get far.
That being said, humans do need to exercise more restraint in how many animals they eat. The industrial feedlot system is grossly inhumane and unsustainable, and we are decimating our ocean fish populations. Both of these things are short-sighted. Joel Salatin likes to talk about the "pigness of the pig"--if you really respect the pig as you do a human, then treat it like a pig and not like a human. That doesn't mean you treat it badly or abuse it, but you respect the fact that pigs exist in their currently large numbers (and chickens, and cows, and dogs, etc) because at some time long ago, they struck a bargain with us that allowed them protection from natural predation and the elements and the ability to reproduce in great numbers. In return, they provide us with things--milk, meat, hides, eggs, and in the case of many of them (not just dogs) a kind of companionship. It's symbiosis. Or it should be. That symbiosis is now being greatly abused by our industrial food system and our great greed for humongous hunks of meat, but it doesn't have to be that way.
As for other environmentalists, those who would not advocate deer birth control or refer to deer as "Bambi," I'm mostly sympathetic, except in extreme cases. Back when I lived in a little logging town in New Mexico, Earth First! was going around putting spikes in trees and, I'm sorry, but again you lose me. I can't support that, no matter how much I love the forests. And I'm not going to support ceasing logging on national forests when it often just means that wood is then imported from other countries that may have less oversight of the harvesting process than we do here. I would gladly support the cessation of timber harvest on national forests if, say, people would stop buying second homes that required lumber to build. I hate that kind of waste--you don't need a second home, but if you're going to have one, the materials to build it are going to come from somewhere. You want to stop logging (or oil drilling, or mining, etc.)? Try doing something about the avaricious, consumerist lifestyles Americans lead.
I also get hostile at enviros who blame the Forest Service for everything. They make big, bold statement about how the Forest Service is failing to deal properly with the forest-fire situation (by, for example, failing to do prescribed burns) which are often outright false. The Forest Service does, in fact, do prescribed burns. It was funny--one time Redzilla wrote about this particular issue and earlier that same day I had been in my stepdad's office (he is the ranger on this district of the Caribou-Targhee National Forest) and he had been discussing a prescribed burn they were about to do with his staff, the impacts it would have on the flora and fauna in the area, and blah blah blah. I don't know--I certainly don't know all there is to know about it, but I do know that those people who work there care about and know more about it than most of the environmentalists I've met. (On the other hand, the Forest Service as it is a public agency has to also deal with other parts of the public, including ranchers and loggers and campers and fisherpeople and the people who build houses near forests and then fail to take their own preventive measures against forest fires and then can sue the Forest Service if their houses burn down. Dummies.)
Also, environmentalists and animal rights people tend to think that hunters and fisherpeople only destroy rather than conserve. But that is silly. It is silly because even if we assume the worst about hunters, that they are only acting selfishly, it is in their best interests to preserve the habitat of the species they hunt and also to protect the strength of those populations. "User fees" including those paid for hunting and fishing licenses make up a great deal of state conservation departments' budgets. Hunters and fisherpeople also support habitat-preservation and conservation groups such as Ducks Unlimited and the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation in a big way. Many hunters and fisherpeople go out and do the things they do because they love the outdoors and want to see the forests protected and preserved, even if they don't always bring home meat. Not all of them, of course. As with anything humans do, some of them are going to be assholes.
Now, if we're talking environmentalism such as that you get from Wendell Berry, Joel Salatin, Aldo Leopold, Teddy Roosevelt, that kind of thing. Sure, I'm all for it. But if we're talking about reducing the glory and grandeur of nature to the status of a museum in which the objects are untouchable--or, worse, to an animated kids' film--no, thanks.
What's your favorite hangover cure?
Submitted by Soup.
Either avgolemono, pozole, good ramen, or pho, whichever seems handiest. In America, it's pretty much never the ramen.
Um, so basically, I'm saying soup, Soup.
Alternate Title for this Post: OK, I'm kinda through talking about abortion, how about you guys?
Politics will return in short order though, particularly as I saw in the Sunday paper today two particularly ridiculous things. Anyway, this distraction meme was lifted from mcco12. In the same spirit, I will order that any of you who wish may do it, but I won't actually tag anyone.
Two names you go by
Hmm, I normally keep that secret.
1. A not-uncommon English name that begins with the same initial affricate as does 'gin.' It ends mellifluously with a syllable consisting of a lateral liquid consonant and a nice eeeeeee sound.
2. "You fucking pedant."
Two things you are wearing right now
1. My very awesome slippers. Wool felt with a supportive footbed akin to that of a Birkenstock.
2. Red spectacles that my son has abused almost to the point of rendering them useless. But they're cute.
Two things you want very badly at the moment
1. for it to be spring.
2. for my husband to get safely to work. And also not to have this song stuck in my head.
Two things you did last night
1. ranted.
2. raved.
Two things you're going to do tonight
1. eat melon mousse.
2. go to bed at a reasonable hour. Maybe.
Two things you ate yesterday
1. homemade pizza
2. tembleque with bananas (my recipe came from Bittman, but the idea to combine the banana pudding recipe with the tembleque recipe was mine, all mine, and such a delicious one.)
Two people you spoke to last
1. Mr. GinBaby, also known as T.
2. The kid.
Two things you're doing tomorrow
1. going to the office where I have to pay for our car registration.
2. making playdough.
Two longest car rides
1. Er. I spent the better part of a month in a car with a Japanese guy and a cat. We went in a loop from Montana to Chicago down to New Orleans then across to Las Vegas and back to Montana.
2. Montana to New Mexico, and then back, several times, countless times. Usually I drove it as close to nonstop as possible, with lots of Red Bull and DJ Krush.
EDIT: Oh, goodness...I think actually that time we drove, when I was maybe 14 or so, from New Mexico to Washington, D.C., was longer, especially because I believe we also went up to Pennsylvania to see some family, and when we came back through Oklahoma, there was such a horrible blizzard that we couldn't go more than about 20 miles per hour, and our car kept freezing up, and I was stuck in the back of the Ford Escort (that wretched car! it would later spontaneously combust as we were trying to move from New Mexico to Montana. Spontaneous combustion is never OK.) with a fragile, antique picture from some person named "Aunt Mary" whom I did not and do not know. The damn picture kept shifting around as our ridiculous car was buffeted about in the Oklahoma apocalypse of snow, and I was cautioned many times and had to take great pains not to break Aunt Mary's picture. Oh, lord, that was a long trip.
Two favorite vacations
1. Malaysia, Christmas 2003.
2. That flyover-zone tour.
Two favorite beverages
I don't know. This is entirely dependent on mood.
Two things which make you happy
1. spending time with my husband and son
2. a good book.
Two favorite places you like to hang out
1. at home
2. on the bank of a river--I'm not overly picky about which river, but the Blackfoot is good.
Yeah, so, I've been writing these things about why I think the Democratic party is losing votes in rural areas, particularly in the South and West, and it just seems to me like maybe it's a lost cause. The Democrats are increasingly the party of urban people, and it seems more and more unlikely to me that it will ever be anything but. Eh, well, whatever.
I'm in a funk because Democrats are leaving me with few options. Edwards, the only candidate who reliably demonstrated an interest in those of us who live outside of the cities, is not going to win. Fabulous. Edwards I would have voted for. He has flaws, sure, but they all do, and his seem to be more due to overzealous adherence to his principles than anything else.
I won't vote for Hillary. That much is for sure. I won't vote for her even if she wins the nomination, I think. She sucks. I don't like her using Bill in South Carolina, and I don't like the tone Bill has taken on lately. "Here I am, the first serious woman candidate for president, but I need my ex-president husband to win this for me." Yeah, OK, Hillary. Way to go. Also, your health care plan is incredibly stupid. I can't vote for you. I don't want you and Bill back in the White House. Also, you need to back the hell off and remember that *you* don't have experience in the White House except as First Lady, and being President as opposed to married to the President is a slightly different ballgame. So, just step back with your "experience" kick. Bleh.
The idea that Hillary could get the Democratic nomination alarms me. The Democrats seriously need to win this election, and I think there are too many people who really don't want to vote for her.
So, Obama. I need to find out more about him--I don't know enough about his actual policy ideas (beyond "hope" and "unity" which are, mmm, vague and alarmingly reminiscent of the shining city on a hill crap. Also, they tell me he's black). However, at this point, he seems to be the only thing standing between me and whoever is running on the Libertarian ticket. Maybe Green Party if they're on the ballot in Idaho.
In a year in which the Democrats should be a total shoe-in due to extreme dislike of Bush, the Iraq War, the downturn in the economy, and all of that, please don't tell me that we're going to make the divide between urban and rural even worse. This could be a time for uniting...but I don't know if it's going to turn out that way.
I read an interesting thing the other day (I think it was on Slate, and I think it was by Richard Thompson Ford, but I'm not going to look it up right now) about how the blue states should give more consideration to federalism and "states' rights" and take their more liberal, progressive measures on at the state level. That way blue states could have their gay marriage, and red states could have their hog-tying contests, and we could live essentially as two countries. But this isn't really about red states and blue states, or it doesn't have to be. That's why I posted that Purple America thing. The Democrats are losing most of rural America, even in some of the "blue states." And I wonder...I'm sure they would get enough votes out of the city people to pass their desired legislation, but--ah, back to imposing your beliefs and all that. Because urbanites know best for everyone and apparently believe the entire world is their world, and we out here are novelties and hillbillies.
But more than that, I just wonder how this animus started. Democrats were the populist party, the party of the South, of farmers and union workers. And now they are the party of academics and urbanites. I'm sure some erudite historian has an explanation, but I don't think your average Democrat any longer even really thinks it's a problem. The odds would be in their favor, presumably, as urbanization increases. On the other hand, Republicans overall tend to breed more (like I said, no Republican calls mothers "breeders"--and then turns around and says "homosexuality is a dehumanizing and offensive term." Oh, and calling a woman a "breeder" isn't? Right, got it.), so their luck might not hold. I know I'm having an increasingly difficult time giving a rip about Democrats.
And I'm getting really, really sick of hearing urban Democrats talk about rural people as if they were stupid throwbacks--and as if we're all Christian Republicans out here. Feh. Feh. That's all I've got to say about this election.
We're taking a break from politics for today, because O!M!G! I have to tell you about my two new cookbooks.
For Christmas, we bought my son a copy of Mollie Katzen's Pretend Soup. I had been checking it out in
Barnes&Noble one day and thought it seemed like a cool concept. For every recipe, there are two versions given. The first, for the adults, is the ingredients list and preparation written out, along with special guidelines about what preparation steps the adult needs to do before and during the kid's cooking. The second is a set of pictures that demonstrate how to make the recipe with virtually no words, just numbers and pictures. It was written for preschoolers after she saw her own child in his preschool class making applesauce from an illustrated recipe and how all the children were happily working away with the teacher guiding but not actually doing the work. I wondered when I bought it if my son would really understand the pictorial instructions and if he would be interested in cooking. And now I can positively answer yes to both.
The first recipe we made was "carrot pennies," sliced carrots in a slightly sweet, sesame glaze. The adult slices and steams the carrots until just tender. Then the picture recipe kicks in and has the kid put in a pat of butter, 3 shakes of salt, a tablespoon of sesame seeds, and so forth. My son diligently looks at the pictures and does what he's supposed to do (although the last time we made it, he did go a little overboard with the salt--must have been some hefty shakes). For that recipe, there is a period of time when you're just stirring (with a very long-handled spoon, of course) and waiting for the glaze to reduce, and sometimes he gets a little impatient with that, but otherwise, he does it all himself. He has been extremely proud of the food he has made "all by myself!" He even had to call grandma after successfully completing his first recipe, and the last time we made the carrot pennies, he took a plate of them to Papa and proudly offered "my carrots" to him. And, of course, he eats them right up.
And that's the thing. Though the recipes are very simple, the food is good. It is not your run-of-the-mill "kid's food" but stuff that we like eating too. The illustrated recipes are well planned and apparently really easy to understand for even an almost-3-year-old. Now he pulls the book off the shelf every time I'm making dinner or he wants a snack to see what he can make now. I am really, really pleased with this book.
Also, I recently bought Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. Now, no one in my house is a vegetarian (my mom is, but she lives in a different house). However, as must be obvious from the tales I have told of the garden, we eat a lot of vegetables. We also eat a lot of whole grains and unusual grains and rather a lot of tofu. And this book is amazing. It is nothing short of mind-blowing, this book. I am in love.
I have some of Bittman's other books, and I think he is worthy of kitchen-god status (right up there with Alton). My copy of How to Cook Everything is a disaster--the thing has been used and used to the point of falling apart. But the vegetarian one is even better. It is now by far the most useful cookbook I own, with How to Cook Everything, Not Your Mother's Slow-Cooker Cookbook, and Barbara Kafka's excellent Vegetable Love.
Not only is there Bittman's characteristically straightforward style and comprehensive guide to ingredients and tools, this one is completely packed with charts showing you how to take a basic recipe (say, a vegetable gratin) and just make it with whatever vegetable you've got on hand. The first recipe I made from it was a gratin of pearl barley and tomatoes, and it was delishusssss. I've since made several others, and every one, just like he says, is simple and good.
I am also loving the fact that he devotes space, and quite a lot of it, to cooking with alternative milks. "Alternative milks?" Did I just say that? It sounds so freaky that way. But you know what I mean--soy milk, almond milk, etc. We don't drink milk (we do use butter and cream and we eat a lot of yogurt). Milk is a big problem for me, and now we think T is lactose intolerant (I don't know why that explanation for his endless stomach issues didn't occur to us before, but he never drank milk in Japan, and then in America he did, and we couldn't figure out why his stomach hurt pretty much since we came to America, though we typically blamed it on Dick Cheney--anyway). Butter and cream don't seem to affect us too much, probably because they get used in small-ish quantities. Yogurt has the bacteria that render the milk digestible for all of us.
Oh, anyway, I'm sure our dietary habits are fascinating, but the point is that for someone who is usually cooking with a nondairy milk, this advice is extremely helpful. I've always just sort of winged it. I even make sawmill gravy* with soymilk, because I'm freaky like that, but soy milk does usually require extra tweaking and sometimes extra care to cook up acceptably in recipes that call for regular milk.
Anyway, these new cookbooks have just made my life so much easier. I am so pleased. It is so good to buy a cookbook and find something you actually want to cook and eat--something that you actually can cook because it is not difficult and uses the ingredients you have--on every page.
*It's weird to me that recipes exist for sawmill gravy. I have never used a recipe for it before and have no idea if that is a good one, but it is Alton Brown after all, and he knows Southern food, so I'm trusting him. By the way, you can make an entirely vegetarian (possibly even vegan, but I'd have to look at the ingredients of the sausage) sawmill gravy. My mom started doing it for me since I can't drink milk, and she's a vegetarian who doesn't eat sausage (for shame, not eating pork!). Just use the frozen soy breakfast sausage patties and as they brown and cook, crumble them up. You're going to need to use oil (or butter) to replace the meat fat that isn't there, as gravy is not gravy without fat, and you might want to check the seasonings on it more carefully because soy milk tastes different from cow milk (cow milk tastes like cows, man), but speaking as a lover of Southern food, I think the end result is really quite good. And it doesn't make me sick, so hurrah!
I hadn't really been looking forward to writing the one about abortion. It's such a fraught issue. Fortunately, William Saletan over at Slate did me the great favor of very nearly writing it for me. So now he can catch the heat.
I could rant about this for hours. I dislike the completely casual attitude about abortion and the moral status of the fetus that exists in some quarters. No, I don't just dislike--I find it fucking repellant. Why if a woman is pregnant is she suddenly the only thing that matters in the entire universe? The father doesn't matter and, hell, may not even be identifiable. The little parasite in there deserves less moral consideration than a vegetarian offers to a fish. And, obviously, if the kid was going to be born deaf, then it would be something akin to a sin to give birth to it.
As I said, these attitudes are not, I think (I hope), the mainstream attitudes among pro-choice liberals. But think about how the crazy right-wing evangelicals freak you out. These crazy extremists in our own camp are freaking enough people out that we are witnessing something of a rightward turn on this topic.
Pro-choice advocates need to spend more time talking about reliable, affordable, accessible contraception methods (I know, none of those things is going to actually be available under Dubya, but we need to talk about them anyway). While we don't like abstinence-only education, we have to recognize that, for the most part, teen sex should be safe and rare--indeed, unprotected sex should be rare among people who don't want and are not ready for children. If you want kids--or STDs--then you get the condom-free pass. We need to be convincing that we take this seriously, because pro-choice people, mainly its extremists but they can be awfully loud sometimes, are really enraging and turning off your sort of typical, moderate people, and really and truly repelling anyone who has a modicum of social conservatism (like me--I'm big on nuclear families and shit).
Oh, and also, while I would be happy to federally subsidize abortions for impoverished women, we are surely not asking anyone to subsidize multiple abortions for a woman who is just careless with birth control, are we? Surely we're not. I thought some kind of right-winger made those women up, like Reagan made up the "welfare queens." But a couple of recent posts on Jezebel, in which women have written up their personal experiences about abortion, taught me otherwise. No, sorry. If you can't be assed to take your pill, then I will subsidize a tubal ligation for you, how about that? Because anyway if you're not responsible enough to take care of your contraception, you are certainly not responsible enough to be having kids.
Eh. Anyway, I remain pro-choice, in terms of legality, but this kind of crap is pushing me more and more to seeing the anti-abortion point of view. It does have moral significance, I think, but there are too many liberals who act as if it does not. We need to slow down with the rhetoric on this one. Most people can understand the need for legal and safe abortions in some circumstances but do not think that the fetus is a little piece of meaningless and worthless crap, either. And if some liberals keep loudly insisting otherwise, they will continue to push moderate sorts away to the other side.
Here is the second exciting installment in my beef with the aforementioned devil groups. The way this one plays out is quite different from the gun control episode though, so you'll want to hang around for the amazing conclusion.
I am not a person of faith. I believe in no god or set of gods or religion. I am not even a secular humanist, as my faith in humans is somewhat less than my faith in most of the gods I've heard of. I would even go so far as to say that science, while it often brings us almost miraculous salvations, is not a basket I would stick all my eggs in. And, as Marvin Gaye cautioned, I believe roughly half of what I see and none of what I hear.
In other words, my feelings about Christianity and about the salvation offered by science (to take two examples only) are similar. Atheists who devoutly believe that the scientific method can do no wrong (and, what's more, that incredibly fallible human scientists can do no wrong) are only somewhat less frightening to me than Christians who energetically believe that Christ will come again, and that is probably only because science continues to find new and ever-more-interesting means of birth control.
So, I am not a person of great faith, though I'm sure some of you will find things that I have faith in. I believe, for example, in the basic and essential wisdom and beauty of nature and its cycles. I believe that Wallace Stevens could save the lost soul of man if we let him. I believe that the Beatles were better than the Rolling Stones.
All that being said, if I hear one more lefty say, "Well, Huckabee wants to impose his beliefs on the rest of the country," I'm going to scream. Why do I keep picking on the Huckmeister, anyway? I have no idea. He unnerves me more than the other candidates, and many of my fellow lefties seem to feel similarly.
Anyway, the reason this statement bothers me so much is not that it is untrue. It is almost certainly true. I am 99% certain that Huckabee wishes to impose his beliefs on the nation. The reason it bothers me is because that is pretty much what all of us want to do, all the time.
Huckabee believes, for example, that choosing to live a homosexual lifestyle is immoral; that belief is based on the version of Christianity to which he subscribes, yes--not the only version of Christianity there is, mind you. Believing it is immoral, he at the very least wishes not to sanction it by making gay marriage legal, and probably he wishes to actually recriminalize homosexual activities (not, like, dressing nice or something--I mean other kinds of activities).
I, and probably all of you and most of America and the world, disagree with him that it is immoral to be homosexual. I think homosexuality is of no particular moral import, and it is very difficult for me to understand the thinking of a person like Huckabee. Yet there are people who believe the same things he does and have their reasons, I suppose. And so we have a disagreement about morality, but we are similarly trying to impose our beliefs on our country. If given an opportunity, we would happily run to Capitol Hill, declare that it is not immoral and that gay marriage (or any type of discrimination against gays) is a question of equal civil rights, and sign it right into law. If we did that right now, most Americans would disagree with us, probably; I believe it is still the case that the majority of Americans still oppose gay marriage, although I believe that majority is slowly declining, too. I could be wrong. The point is that some significant portion of Americans would disagree with it, yet we would impose our beliefs on them. Liberals are no less self-righteous and fascist in their desire to make everyone think the same way they do*. I do not necessarily think we would be wrong to do so--that is what humans tend to do when we strongly feel that something is immoral, after all. A significant number of Americans also opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 when it was signed into law, yet progressives managed to impose their belief that it was the right thing to do and did it, and now we've gradually come around so that I expect there is hardly anyone who would undo it (I know there are always fringe groups, neo-Nazis and the like, who would, but they are a very small minority, let's face it).
Now, Huckster Mike is no Lincoln or FDR (both presidents who imposed their vision and beliefs on the country), but what I want to say is that, though he's Christian and I'm not, I could be accused of the same thing--yes, I would impose my beliefs on everyone. And so would most of us. When you believe something, anything, strongly enough--and particularly if it is a question of morality to you--you will quite happily make people do that thing, however you have to go about it. If I were President suddenly, would I force Congress to accept a single-payer health system? Yes, you bet. I can be very persuasive when I'm of a mind to be. Would I force the sick bastards who make their dogs and cats become vegetarians start feeding their pets the chunky cans of dubious meat chunks in gravy? Oh, yes. I believe in whole foods (not the store--the actual foods), so would I find ways to make veggies cheaper than soda? Yes, despite the fact that people really like soda better.
See? I'm just as willing to force you all to succumb to my evil will as a Republican is. I used to tell a coworker that deep down inside we all have a little tiny Hitler trying to get out. Maybe we should say "dictator" instead of Hitler, but the point remains. Most people have strong beliefs about what is moral and what is not, and most people would gleefully force/coerce others to act the way they want them to act.
So, then, what (to me) is the acceptable reason we don't vote for the Huck? The main thing, of course, is he wants to anally violate the Constitution. The job of the President is to uphold the Constitution, and here he wants to just go and do it in. It's like nominating John Bolton to the UN, man. You're kind of disqualified by virtue of the fact that you cannot fulfill your most essential function. Dubya has, of course, done some damage to the Constitution, too, by way of the Patriot Act and the Gitmo torture sessions and all of it, but he hasn't actually done anything to the Constitution itself, whereas Huckabee just wants to go in there and fuck around and make it so that the Supreme Court, say, has no choice but to declare sodomy laws constitutional. The other things are that I obviously disagree with most of his views on the divisive moral issues, I find his economic policies suspect, and I don't like his eyes.
Now, liberals--don't get all self-righteous here saying that you don't want to fuck around with the Constitution yourself. If you all could do something about the Second Amendment, I'm confident most of you would.
*Incidentally, there is a book out about how liberals are the inheritors of the fascist tradition, not conservatives. I haven't read the book, but I have read a couple of reviews and interviews with the author, and he makes some good points. I have suggested that there is a possiblity that if the Democrats continue to irk me, I might vote Republican. That actually is not a possibility. What is a very real possibility, as I have done it in the past, is that I would vote Libertarian. I don't dig the fascist thing, whether it's from right or left.
*And, please. I'm not anti-science. It's just that scientists, like Nostradamus, are frequently wrong, and they often contradict each other. Besides, they also often proffer new medicines and such that they don't really understand, either. So people who want to make policies based on newish findings of scientific research scare me a little. Like, if back in the 1970s there was a law passed banning butter, thus forcing everyone to use margarine instead, that would have turned out to be incredibly bad public health policy, yet the science devotees would have touted the latest findings and research. Mmm. So, I just like to remain skeptical until, as Buck Turgidson would say, "all the facts are in."
Man, this weather is crazy. I swear this particular place has the worst weather of anywhere I have ever lived. It is unbearably hot, dry, and windy in summer and then unbearably cold, dry, and windy in winter. Spring and autumn are nice, but very short.
Anyway, so it snowed a lot, and the wind is blowing a thousand miles an hour, and we were inside most of the day due to the danger of frostbite and such. The kid gets pretty restive when we're inside that much, so we were looking for fun stuff to do, and he wanted to make some origami boxes, and we did. Then he was flipping through one of the toddler crafts books--the brightly illustrated one--and found hand painting. Specifically, he found a photo of a hand painted as an alligator and another painted as a parrot, and he very much wanted to do that. I kept trying to explain to him that we had no face paint, so it would have to wait until sometime when we could get to town. But when you're 2, such explanations make little sense. He kept going to a shelf, pretending to get paint and bring it to me, and I felt rather sad about it...
...And then I remembered! I have another toddler crafts book--not illustrated but very useful anyway--that has recipes for various kinds of paints and modeling clays and such. The recipe for face paint was given as "1 part corn starch, 1/2 part water, 1/2 part cold cream, food coloring."
OK, I thought, I can do that. I have all that stuff...except what the hell is cold cream exactly? I've heard of it, but I doubted that I had any. I had to call my mom to find out that it's like really thick moisturizer. So I used some thick lotion and cut back slightly on the water and voila! Face paint! It cost me virtually nothing and required no trip to town! I think I should get a gold star for mommying today.
And, oh my, did we have fun. First, I painted his hand as the alligator and mine as the parrot, but he insisted that it was not a parrot but a plover and so it should clean his alligator's teeth. So we did that, then washed our hands and painted them again as two dinosaurs--and then our dinosaurs had a pinchy war. That is to say, they pinched the opposing dinosaur with great glee and mirth. Then we washed our hands again and painted them again as different kinds of monsters and had a squeezy war in which we tried to squeeze each other's hands while simultaneously fending off squeezy advances from the opposing monster.
People, I realize how this sounds, but I laughed so hard and we had such fun. It was the best fun I've ever had stuck inside a house with no money. You should try it sometime.
I was just talking to my mom a bit ago about the Democrats and gun control, and she indicated to me that the Dems have started saying that gun control is an issue better left up to lower levels of government. If this is true, this is the most politically savvy thing I've seen the Democrats do in a long time. I had just been telling Mom that gun control is one place where Democrats and "liberals" usually lose me and make me want to give a spite vote to Huckabee (of course, deep down I really just like Huckabee because what a fun name! How jolly it would be to refer to President Huckabee for 4 years of Bible camp! It lends itself so nicely to Copy-Guy-style nicknaming--the Huckmeister, Huckarama, Huckabeetle, etc. ahem.) because I believe most gun control policy at the federal level is an attempt to solve an urban problem with a universal measure.
Let me explain. Out here in Jesusland, guns are tools. We use them to procure food for our families--not by holding up a Safeway but by hunting and/or killing our livestock. We use them to ward off predators from our poultry and livestock. We use them to put down suffering animals. We also shoot for sport--targets, skeet, beer cans, whatever--but we grow up with them around as tools. They have nothing to do with machismo or penis size, as some liberals will assert--I wish I thought they were only saying those things in jest, because it makes them sound simple-minded and bitter. They have nothing to do with being tough or cool. They just are. They are akin to cars, only they often last longer, getting handed down from generation to generation. My first rifle was my stepdad's first rifle, and it will be my son's first rifle. If only our Toyota would last that long.
In cities, or so I am given to understand, gun crime is a gigantic problem. Out here in Jesusland, there are virtually no murders--seriously, dudes, the most exciting stories on the news are usually about the weather. (oooh, blizzard warning! The lead story in spring/fall is often about whether we are anticipating frost.) Gun crime is a problem for our nation, America as a whole, yes. But out here we think, reasonably, that it might do to put more severe limitations on guns in circumstances where it will actually help prevent crime than impose it on someone who just wants to get the coyotes out of the chicken coop.
And, essentially, every election cycle for years now, the Democrats have been losing votes on this issue (not only this one--there are others, but this has been a big one in the West). It is never a Republican who dismisses sport/target shooting as stupid and frivolous. It is never a Republican who dismisses hunters as barbarians (ah, because it's so much more civilized to eat meat that has been subject to the industrial feedlot system, killed for you with manure still on him, semi-cleaned, and wrapped in plastic). It is never a Republican who wants to tell a farmer who has used a gun as a tool all of his life that he is irresponsible, likely to become a "nut" and a criminal at any minute, and go on a shooting spree down at the local bar. Those kinds of statements always come from the left, and they alienate those of us who are Democratically inclined but rural.
Also, why do you blame the gun for gun crime? Do you blame the car for traffic fatalities? Oh, and incidentally, last I checked, there were more traffic fatalities in America than there were gun-related murders. Why aren't we more anti-car? But I think this dude put it really well when he said,
Why do you cover high murder rates and seldom mention how unsafe our cities are for those driving, walking, or bicycling? I know the answer – it’s the same concept as when I get scared when my plane takes off and I don’t think twice about driving in a car – the fear of the spectacular. A plane crash and the murder of an innocent person are spectacular events. Unfortunately, the death of over 40,000 Americans each year in cars and the numerous deaths of pedestrians and bicyclists rarely make the news.
There are other issues where "liberals" alienate wide swaths of the population, myself included, and I've decided to go ahead and go over some of these in the next few days. I am quite certain most of you will dislike it, but my point, it should be remembered, is that I am in essential agreement with nearly all liberal goals (as, incidentally, are most of the people of this country). It's the fucking rhetoric that gets tossed off on the liberal side that threatens to totally alienate me, and I should think liberal types and Democrats would want to win over every Western/rural vote they can get. Only winning the reliably blue urban/coastal areas isn't enough.
I am not going to pick on the Republican/conservative rhetoric in the same way. Why? Yes, it is a mess as well, but a) it has been a more politically effective mess in recent years, and b) it is widely known that I already disagree with most of it anyway.
And also, and keep this in mind, I am going to employ a shorthand in which I refer to several types of person under the very rough banner "liberal." All of these people--academic types, "feminists" who publish "feminist" blogs, registered Democrats, Green Party geeks, gay rights activists, Nation columnists, and so forth--are prone to voting Democrat-ish and often identify themselves as "liberal" or "left," so I'm going to conveniently group them together and let them know exactly where they lose me and others like me. I'm not doing this to be assy and vindictive--I'm going this because I want the Democrats to stop losing votes for senseless reasons and win. I want them to understand why they have trouble out here in the Rocky Mountain West and, increasingly, in the South (when the South was traditionally Democrat) so they can come to some kind of solution and win the hell out of the next election.
On a brighter note, let us all stop for a moment and give thanks that we now have less than one year remaining of the Bush-whackery. Perhaps we will survive.
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