Gingrich and the true believers

After watching the travesty that was the Republican primary in South Carolina, one wonders how a charlatan like Newt Gingrich could get 40 percent of the vote, particularly after his former wife’s revelations about his serial infidelity. The man is like a five-year-old in his utter selfishness. This is who we want for our next president?

How can Evangelicals in particular support such a blatant hypocrite? Gingrich claims he has repented of his sins and asked for God’s forgiveness. But he’s still benefitting from those sins, isn’t he? Gingrich’s idea of repentance is a sham. So why are Evangelicals buying his act? Are they simply clueless--or hypocritical?

Maybe they’re fanatics.  

In his 1951 book, The True Believer, Eric Hoffer analyzes “the art of ‘religiofication’ -- of turning practical purposes into holy causes.” What better way to describe Republican rhetoric and the Tea Party?

Honest Evangelicals and Tea Party followers (as opposed to those who exploit them) must see their own lives as spoiled and worthless. They crave a rebirth in a mass movement because they “are attracted by the prospect of sudden and spectacular change in their condition of life.”

Mitt Romney does not appeal to such people because he is so smug about his own “success”--meaning his mega-millions--that he really doesn’t want to change anything, other than to further engorge himself and the economic elite. The price of this free lunch for billionaires, however, may be staggering--and permanent.

The mass of Evangelicals and Tea Party zealots, on the other hand, really do seek change and see their cause as a holy one. As Hoffer points out, “Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves. The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready he is to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause.”

Take back our country? Everything is Obama’s fault?

Okay, Evangelicals may say, so what if Gingrich is flawed? We all are; therefore, let’s forgive him and elect him (he may be ruthless and shameless, but at least he’s not a witless buffoon like Rick Perry). Presumably, this is the gift that keeps right on giving. One wonders which sins Newt would need to repent of as president. Quite a list, I imagine.

“Mass movements do not usually rise until the prevailing order has been discredited … and has lost the allegiance of the masses,” Hoffer notes. “The discrediting is not an automatic result of the blunders and abuses of those in power, but the deliberate work of men of words with a grievance.”

Remind you of anyone?

Voters must never forget that politicians like Gingrich are all salesmen, whose only product is themselves. Salesmen aren’t necessary when a need already exists for a product. Their only purpose--other than to enrich themselves--is to create a need for their product.

Gingrich may be a great salesman, but he’s also a lousy human being who would make the worst president I can imagine. Unfortunately, Romney may not be much better. When I see how easily the voters of South Carolina were swayed by Gingrich’s outburst at the start of the last debate, I tremble for the Republic.

The Mental Life of Dogs

Sometimes I just can’t believe what I read in the papers. Take Sunday, for instance. A columnist from the L.A. Times wrote a piece about how Mitt Romney put his family dog, an Irish setter named Seamus, in a crate strapped to the top of the car for a 12-hour drive back in 1983.

          Wondering if “it’s time to give Romney a break on this one,” the Times columnist, Meghan Daum, further wonders if the dog would “really have been better off crammed into a station wagon with seven humans than up top in a secure, enclosed crate with a windscreen.”

          Politics aside, one wonders whether Daum herself would’ve preferred being jammed inside the car to riding in a crate on the roof. In fact, one wonders who’s the more callous here, Romney or Daum?

Daum quotes a presumed expert to the effect that, “It was a different time. It sounds horrific now, but back then we didn’t know so much about the mental lives of dogs.”

          Really? And now we do? How much insight does it take to recognize that these two options represent no real choice at all? And yes, it certainly does sound horrific now--and it would’ve sounded horrific to me in 1983, as well.

          So, yes, at the risk of being pigeon-holed by Daumer as a “single-issue voter and that issue is the candidate’s policy on pet transport,” I object to such inhumane treatment of animals, especially family pets. I suspect most of us have known some jerk at one time or another who was capable of such dimwitted brutality, but I never thought I’d see the day when a columnist for one of America’s great newspapers would think it was funny.

          It isn’t, Meghan. Shame on you, and the L.A. Times, for not knowing better.

The Big Lie

I wasn’t going to write about politics in this blog. But.

    After watching umpteen Republican debates, I wonder if anyone has a notion about what any of them would do if they got their hands on the White House? What happens when their stated positions run into the reality of divided government?

    No matter which Republican wins, I suspect the answer would be the same: executive rule by fiat like the last Bush, only worse. Since Democrats won’t agree to eliminate our tattered safety net, the next GOP president would simply take matters into his own hands and call it democracy in action. Works for the Supreme Court. Corporations are people? Really? So much for half a century of Republican dogma about strict interpretation of the Constitution.

    The Big Lie continues to prove its worth to Republican contenders, none of whom can open his mouth without uttering nonsense about the president. How sad that we’ve come to expect this. How astonishing when even a glimmer of truth escapes from elephantine lips.

    All this guff about taking back our country makes me wonder who Republicans are taking it back from--the voters, perhaps? As someone embarrassed by Kentucky’s two senators, I ask when are they going to give me my country back?

    I used to think Republicans would trade Bush’s huge tax breaks for the one percent for deficit reduction. How naïve. Now I see that the only thing the Republican Party stands for is money. However naïve occupiers are portrayed, at least they’re doing something.

    Cynical Republicans pander to the far right, but in their hands religion and patriotism are just tools to unseat Democrats. The Tea Party itself--how I despise their presumption in trying to highjack the American Revolution for their own selfish, selfish purposes--only further snarls things up.

    Whoever gets the nomination will no doubt continue to rely on the Big Lie, a propaganda technique coined by Hitler about using a lie so “colossal” no one would believe that someone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously."

           

           

           

Stumbling Stones (Germany #21)

Of late, The Active Voice has been, in a word, inactive. No excuses, but now we’re back. I thought I was through with reporting on my fall visit to Germany (20 posts seeming like plenty). But now that I’ve finally finished Peter Watson’s 964-page opus, The German Genius (HarperCollins, New York: 2010), I feel the need to pen just one more. The book, a gift from family members upon learning of my trip, is a fascinating history of German ideas over the past 250 years. Watson explains that Germany’s late arrival at nationhood in 1871 coincided with its late renaissance and late introduction to the industrial revolution, all of which helped produce the powerhouse nation that set out to dominate Europe in the 20^th Century.

There is way too much in this book for a blogger to adequately cover, so I won’t even try. But I do want to make three points before leaving the subject:  1) that the term “German genius” is no misnomer, as evidenced by the list of German geniuses I’ll share with you momentarily; 2) non-Germans do not realize the extent to which today’s Germany was changed by the social revolution of 1968; and 3) Germans today take responsibility--and show many signs of deepest regret--for their nation’s past sins.

#1: The “German geniuses” of the past 250 years include ‘the standard “backbone” of classical music … Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and Brahms … as well as scientists/inventors Friedrich Bayer (pharmaceuticals), Carl Zeiss (microscope), Alfred Krupp (weaponry), and Karl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler (automobile), to name but a few. Watson notes that, "with the exception of market economics and natural selection, the contemporary world of ideas is one that, broadly speaking, was created by, in roughly chronological order, Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Karl Marx, Rudolf Clausius (thermodynamics), Friedrich Nietzsche, Max Planck (quantum theory), Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein, Max Weber (Protestant work ethic), and two world wars. The ideas of another German, Gregor Mendel ("father of modern genetics"), are gaining ground fast as the start of the 21st century …”

#2:  Non-Germans do not realize the extent to which today’s Germany has changed. “Despite the successful establishment of democratic institutions in Germany after (WWII), authoritarian thought patters tended to persist and it was not until the 1960s that the modernization deficit was overcome. A crucial factor … was the generational rebellion of 1968, when the younger (generation) … turned on its parents for the acquiescence in horror they had shown in the Third Reich and for their inability to face their guilt; and only then, in 1968, did Germans start to internalize democratic values, develop a counter elite and demand self-government and democratic counter-power…. Henceforth Germany had a critical, skeptical public, an entity that had been common enough in, say, Great Britain, France, or the U.S. for generations, but that had now finally arrived in Germany…. The fourth postwar generation has adjusted to the terrible German past and has the courage to face up to the fact that “almost everyone” in the Third Reich knew what was going on…. (But) many outside Germany still do not grasp (with the Germans themselves failing to see why outsiders do not appreciate this profound truth), the social revolution of 1968, particularly in West Germany, was a much bigger set of events there than anywhere else…

3) Germans today take responsibility--and show many signs of deepest regret--for their nation’s past sins. In my other posts from Germany, I’ve pointed out numerous ways this is evident throughout the nation. As I was finishing Watson’s book, I came across the following paragraph--and realized I’d actually seen these “stumbling stones” during my visit to Cologne: “In some ways the most effective--and most beautiful--architectural project (or is it sculpture?), which also presents the face of a Germany we haven’t seen before, are the Stolpersteine, the ‘stumbling stones’ of Gunter Demnig. These stones, set into the pavement, in Cologne to begin with, are slightly raised cobblestones located outside houses where murdered Jews once lived. A brass plate is nailed to each stone containing basic details: “Here lived Moritz Rosenthal. B. 1883. Deported 1941. Lodz. Died 28.2.1942.” The first stones Demnig installed were illegal, but the idea caught on and in 1999 he was officially approved More than a thousand stones are now in place in Cologne and in several other cities.”

Inner Resources

Got a wry response (always a cause for celebration!) to my last post on ego surfing that went, “Okay, I have Googled myself. I was as boring on-line as I am in real life. I was hoping for more.”

Aren’t we all?

In response, I quoted two writers I admire and offered what I hoped would be sage encouragement:  “I'm not in the advice business, but if you really hope for more from life, my advice is to do something about it. Like right away. Good luck.”

And that, friends, is why I am not Dear Abby. Although I have opinions and the occasional insight (dutifully reproduced in this space when I’m not too busy writing other stuff), my advice generally stinks. To me, self help really is self help. And when I’m bored with myself, I usually fall back upon my imagination. I mean, what else is there?

Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,
we ourselves flash and yearn,
and moreover my mother told me as a boy
(repeatingly) "Ever to confess you're bored
means you have no

Inner Resources." I conclude now I have no
inner resources, because I am heavy bored.
Peoples bore me,
literature bores me, especially great literature,
Henry bores me, with his plights & gripes
as bad as Achilles,

who loves people and valiant art, which bores me.
And the tranquil hills, & gin, look like a drag
and somehow a dog
has taken itself & its tail considerably away
into the mountains or sea or sky, leaving
behind: me, wag.

--John Berryman, “Dream Song 14”

Mark Twain once said: "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."

Personally, I don’t think it’s ever too late to try this. But to all three of you out there who may be reading this, please do not misinterpret my meaning. I’m not saying you should try hang-gliding, mountain-climbing, or deep-sea diving (though I have done a little of the latter and it’s really fun). What I am saying is just go for it. Do what you want to do with your life. It’s the only one you get.

Ego Surfing

Ever Googled yourself? Bet you have. It’s called “ego surfing” or “vanity searching” and, according to a study by the Pew Internet & American life project, 47% of American adult internet users have undertaken a vanity search in Google or another search engine.

An “ego surfer” is one who surfs the Internet for his or her own name, to see what, if any, articles appear about himself or herself. The term was coined by Sean Carton in Wired (Wikipedia).

I did it today myself in order to see how often my blog would come up on Google. Of course, once I got started, I couldn’t stop until I’d gone through multiple pages to see anywhere else my name appeared. Didn’t matter whether it was in connection with something recent or decades ago. Didn’t even have to be about me; it’s amazing how many other people share my name (public officials, jailbirds), which I’d always thought an uncommon one.

Yes, such is vanity--and we are all vain.

Artists (like dogs and perhaps all God’s creatures) have always tried to leave their mark behind, whether in the form of cave paintings like the Paleolithic ones at Lascaux in southwestern France, whose age is estimated at over 17,000 years, or monuments like Mount Rushmore, which was completed in 1941.

Personally, I wouldn’t dignify carving one’s initials on a public park bench or tagging someone else’s property with graffiti by calling it art. But even these reprehensible acts probably stem from the same primal impulse that moves inventors to try and leave their mark in inventions, athletes in record books, and even some business tycoons by starring in their own cheesy commercials.

Writers, of course, try to leave their mark in books they have written (as opposed to vandals who leave their mark in books someone else has written). Likewise, musicians leave their marks in the songs they’ve made, from the earliest wax recordings to today’s digital technology.

Now that same digital technology is being used by ordinary shlubs to see their name in lights, if only on a computer screen. This is not surprising. The Anglo-Saxons of 1,500 years ago would’ve understood it perfectly. Beowulf, for instance, makes an heroic boast about his past glories before taking on a terrifying monster unarmed. We remember him because 1) he lived to tell the tale and 2) someone wrote it down.

More recently, Muhammad Ali boasted he could “float like a butterfly and sting like a bee.” Also, that he was “the greatest.” He backed it up, too. Now look at him--he’s got his own museum.

Even before late night talk shows, boasting was a way to achieve fame. And fame mattered because life was short and who knew what came next? The Anglo-Saxons had a fable about a bird who flies out of the darkness into the light of the mead hall, but only for a short time before vanishing again into the night.

Is it any wonder we put tombstones on our graves--or ego surf?