Why I'm Done Posting Political Point of View On FaceBook

Well, to be perfectly honest, it's because as best I can tell nobody cares—or reads it.

So that's one reason.

Also—and again, a smart person probably wouldn't admit this, or at least go announcing it as if he were some prescient smarty-pants, but—Romney's toast. He's probably the worst politician either party has seen running for president in my lifetime (and that's a pretty long time, going back to Eisenhower's last year in office), with the possible exception of Mike Dukakis. What's worse, his political team, his advisors, are made up of the kind of hacks and discredited fools that would give the management of the Colorado Rockies a run for its money. Again, if I were a smart blogger, interested in growing my audience of like-minded souls at a time when most of them are just starting to pay attention to the political race, so that I could one day end up on the Huffington Post ... well, no one ever accused me of having a lot of sense that way.

And even if I did, no one (not really) wants to read about it on FaceBook. As my dear wife has heard me say ad nauseum: FaceBook's brilliance is that it took everyday banality to the next level, allowing many of us the illusion of connection without having to actually smell the person and worry whether some of his or her saliva was going to hit you in the face when he or she told you—live—what was going on with his or her children, or home repair, or where they'd gone of their vacation, and instead of, say, smiling while at the same time seething with envy over whether that person's vacation was cooler than yours, you could simply huddle with your device and privately, very privately, and quietly (or not, if you're home alone, as I am now) say to yourself: Fuck you and fucking vacation you fucking fuck!!

Which sounds smug, and pompous of me, I know—and it is!

But here's the thing. As much as most of us, when we aren't on some cool vacation ourselves, don't especially want to hear about someone else's vacation, we'd rather hear about their vacation, or even their children's activities, than listen to them go on about who they're going to vote for in November.

I mean, I know its part of the human experience to find out that someone you really think a lot of, and respect, "Likes" something, or someone, you don't like, or think is a fucking idiot. I know that happens, and I really shouldn't expect the sort of perfect world where, at least on FaceBook, it doesn't happen. But what I've decided is that it doesn't need to be a reason for despair. For thinking less of that person (anymore than I would want them to think less of me). Supposedly Reagan and Kennedy got along famously, as did William F. Buckley and John Kenneth Galbraith. I know it isn't fashionable these days to be so cosy with those you don't see eye to eye with on economic issues, that practicing Catholics ought to get the better seating in the pews than the ones who only go to church when their mom is in town, but nonetheless, it wouldn't hurt us—it wouldn't hurt me—at a time when people are getting killed over some not even B-grade movie to say WTF ... WTF do I care if someone I really think highly of, and would do anything I could for if they needed help, or someone had hurt their feelings, or fucked with them in some way, is reading the entire compendium of the "Fifty Shades of Grey" series? Does it really matter if a person who almost all the time makes me smile "likes" Paul Ryan? Am I not someone who embraces irony, paradox? Is my own life not one great big example of both?

So, you ask, WTF is your point?

Well, in short, I'm done, on FaceBook at least (if you want to read my political stuff, in 140 characters ore less, no less, follow me on Twitter @BPithyCB), pushing my point of view on people and imagining that they're going to give a shit. I'm going to stick with anecdotes, preferably funny ones. And if I tell you about my vacation, and include pictures that might make you for even a second want to strangle me because you're stuck breathing smoke in 100 degree heat after your child just dumped a bowl of cereal on their homework, I'll try to include at least one horrible thing that happened to me that day. Something we can all relate to and not feel too murderous about, to each other.

Anyway, I'm going to try.

The (Surrealistic, Barely Avoided) Conversion of Paul

"But what are we to do with the weak?" Paul asks, his pupils having strangely grown to the size of dark quarters since the reception that followed Mitt's big speech. "What do we do with the losers, the screw ups, the ones who can't be whipped into shape, who buy high and sell low, who don't respond  to reasonable incentives ... "

"Are you out of your fucking mind?" Mitt wonders, frankly, frustrated, sitting his glass of plain water on the coffee table and leveling a severe pair of non-dilated eyes at his young companion. These odd, incongruous questions from Paul are very perplexing, particularly after he, Mitt, has just given a speech that was nearly as memorable as Clint Eastwood's discussion with the empty chair.

Paul, holding what looks like a Cosmo in one of those pretty glasses, leans forward in his stuffed leather chair, his head slightly askance. He appears both amused and disoriented, as if he were staring at himself in one of those old-fashioned fun house mirrors. "I thought Mormons didn't curse."

"I didn't curse," Mitt informs him. "I was being profane—adjectivally profane—which is something different."

"You know what you look like?" Paul says now. "You look like someone who would play the president in a movie where the president doesn't have much of a part ... like in that movie where Clint Eastwood plays the Secret Service agent who listens to Miles Davis ... and then puts the moves on Renee Russo ... this when he isn't trying to catch John Malkovich, who, if you ever saw the movie, is way creepy, some ex-CIA guy ..."

Mitt, bristling, gives him a good slap across the face in the hope it'll straighten him out. Paul smiles, as if he wants him to do it again. Mitt asks, "Have you been drinking? Is that what this is all about? Tell me something, why is it that Catholics drink so much? Especially the Irish Catholics. Why, when I was the governor, in Boston—"

Paul winces. "Don't mention Boston."

"What?"

"With Boston comes equivocation. The Etch-a-Sketch has erased it."

Mitt wants to slug him now but doesn't. Instead he points to the glass. "Do me a favor and tell me what you had to drink. What are in those pink things? And what are those things floating in your glass."

"Confetti." Paul replies dreamily. He looks down in his glass. "Little tiny squares of confetti ..."

Mitt gets up. "I'm going to call the doctor. I think you've been drugged—"

Paul laughs—hysterically, convulsively, like someone who has been drugged—then says, "You know what I can't understand? I can't understand why you can't drink just a little coffee in the morning, before you step in front of a microphone. I mean, your forefathers took Benzedrine—"

Mitt picks up the phone, but then remembers what happened to McGovern after they found out Thomas Eagleton had had a few jolts to his nervous system. Mitt doesn't want to end up like George McGovern in '72. No, Mitt thinks he'll just have to talk him down himself. "Listen to me," he begins, only to have Paul ignore him, run over to the window, stick his head out and yell, "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!!"

"Imagine," Paul says, coming back now, his face flushed, "if people actually DID that. If they wouldn't just accept their lot in life. If everytime people like us left our homes without security we had to worry about getting our throats slit by someone who wasn't accepting his lot—"

"But people don't do that," Mitt replies, his voice soft and reassuring. "They have television to calm them. And there are many, many drugs. There are workout routines. Moreover, we DO have security. At least for the moment—"

Paul frowns. "We're going to lose, aren't we."

Mitt knows it's true, but sees no need in adding despair to Paul's situation at the moment. He regrets that he let that last part slip out. "Now, now, let's not be silly—"

"The Secret Service, for us, is fleeting. Soon we will be on our own—"

Mitt sighs, thinking this is what often happens to these true-believer types. Even Barry Goldwater went soft in the end, after he had that homosexual caregiver ... No, better to lick your finger, he thinks, and hold it up into the breeze for guidance. "We're going to straighten this country out," Mitt takes Paul by the shoulders and insists, staring into Paul's eyes, now, and seeing a full-length black and white reflection of himself. "We're going to cut the capital gains tax so I can make serious bank again. We're going to repeal that health plan that Obama stole from me, all of it except the part about covering the people with pre-existing conditions—"

"The expensive part," Paul says.

"That's right," Mitt winks. "After all, I'm not heartless.

Paul smiles, supremely entertained as he watches Mitt's entire skull expand and contract like the lobe of lung. He takes another sip of his Cosmo—he loves these things. He wonders what one would cost in a real bar. Then, suddenly, his mood slips. "The poor will always be with us. I just didn't realize until now just how much—how close—they would be. If we do what I want to do with Medicaid, for instance, Uncle Ned might be in my basement. And maybe Aunt Virginia. Those two couldn't balance a checkbook much less make sensible decisions with a Medicare voucher. Uncle Ned would have probably taken it and bought the FaceBook IPO—"

"Then he deserves what he gets," says Mitt, who is finding all this fussy talk of consequences tedious.

"What he'll get is a tent," Paul retorts. "One big enough to hold all his guns, and he'll pitch it in my yard! Until I let him have a room in my basement!"

"Make him help out," Mitt suggests, sensibly. "Who knows? If you train him right, you might be able to fire the guy who mows your lawn."

"Or Ned could shoot me in my sleep."

"Well then there's always Virginia. You did say Virginia, right? Maybe she wouldn't be entirely useless. Maybe she could pick up the slack for Ned. Does she do floors? The person doing my floors at the moment is ... let's just say he isn't doing much of a job."

"Why don't you fire him?" Paul suggests, looking a bit more himself, Mitt thinks. "I thought you liked firing people."

"I would," Mitt admits, believing he may have seen the turn, "but he frightens me."

Paul stares at him indignantly and shrugs. "So don't call him again. Get someone else to do your floors. Get a dog, an alarm system. Hire someone else."

"But he hasn't left since the day I let him in."

Paul is at once intrigued and aghast. "What do you mean he hasn't left."

Mitt isn't entirely sure this is working, but keeps on. "I mean, Paul, that I have a big house, and the guy who does my floors, or did, once, is living in one of the rooms—the one farthest from mine and Ann's. I got him a flat-screen TV with all the premium channels and I have my chef cook him whatever he wants when he wants it. You could do the same for your aunt and uncle. Maybe build your uncle an underground firing range, so that he leaves you alone—"

"But I don't have that kind of money, Mitt. I'm not as rich as you."

Mitt scoffs. He's tired of people telling him they aren't as rich as he is. "Well then, fire your maid. Get a job manipulating resources in the private sector. Be practical."

"But I want to be vice-president! If I was vice-president, and maybe, someday, the president, then I could have the Secret Service take care of Ned—"

"Or—I'm just saying, OR—you could make Ayn Rand up in Atheist Heaven proud, and get your spoiled by government work self to work in the private sector, and make millions, and buy an island somewhere. How well does your uncle swim?"

Paul, who could swear that the room they're in has just turned into a jumpy castle, thinks about this and says, "I'm not sure."

"Stick with me," Mitt finally says, not at all sure if it is good advice or bad at this point. "Once we're done handing out favors we'll be able to get you an island for a decent price. We'll get you set up better than Dr. No."

Paul smiles at the James Bond reference. He likes James Bond, how things always seem to work out for him, how James is a government employee, too, but nobody makes fun of him, because he's James Bond and would kick their ass if they did. He offers Mitt a drink from his glass."

"No," Mitt says, a bit shocked. He waves his hand and makes an attempt at a joke. "You know us Mormons. If it isn't Benzedrine, it's crap."

"Benzedrine?" Paul has forgotten about his Benzedrine remark.

"Never mind," says Mitt, adding, "What do you say I freshen up my water and grab my Book of Mormon, and you grab your copy of Atlas Shrugged, and we see which book will put us to sleep first."

Paul, much to Mitt's relief, thought that was a great idea. After a little bit, Paul asked, "Do you think I could do a mission to Africa some day? Get away from all these government jobs ..."

"This is America," Mitt answered, distracted and overwhelmed by the torpor of Rand's prose. "You can do anything you want here."

"That's what I was hoping."

And in this way, the universe was righted once more.

Those Fundamentally Different Paths

I'm going to make this quick (I know, bullshit, but one must try), since I have a woodpecker banging on the side of my house that I need to go outside and shoot, before I pick up my mower from its annual physical, and maybe go sell some gold to pay for my health insurance premiums, which have recently gone down, considerably, though I no longer have "behavioral health" coverage (which some of you might find astounding, or at least unwise, given certains tics and tendencies you've observed in the author's recent posts), and am currently waiting on my refund of the difference, which, well, if you want to see an insurance company dilly-dally, and flat out lie to you, ask them when you can expect your refund (hint: not in time to pay your American Express bill, chumpie).

So not only did I watch Obama speak to the DNC last night, but I saw him again today addressing some "folks" in Portsmouth, NH, essentially repeating the same speech as last night, though this one had a little more humor in it (joking on making Bill Clinton the Secretary of Explaining Stuff).

I don't care what anyone says: he's an incredible speaker, doing just exactly what he needs to. Unlike his opponents, he's cool, self-deprecating, and yet ... he's quite ... presidential.

Anyway, that fucking bird is going to have a hole in our cedar big enough for a bear if I don't get out there (he sees me even peek my head out on the deck now and he flies away, that's how scared he is of me), so let's get to the matter at hand ...

In short, what no one tells you, is that the consequences of continued tax cuts, or further concentrating the wealth among the wealthy while cutting programs (to finance the cuts) that overall serve to stabilize the fortunes of the unfortunate, is going to be a lot more strife. You can run a professional sports team on the principle of Winners Only. You can run a Gulag or a Concentration Camp on the principle of Only The Strong Survive (to do more work, for those running the camp). But if you aren't willing, or don't have the stomach, for such strong, highly un-Christian measures, then you need to accommodate the entire population. Which is to say you need to govern a society, and not pretend that you're fielding a team of olympians and when all is said and done there will only be beautiful and talented people using the 15,000 condoms provided for the Olympic Village.

No ...

There will be people with no athletic skill at all, who don't fuck well or maybe don't fuck at all, but who will nonetheless be stealing the condoms because, well, fuck those pretty, talented people because I'm not one of them ...

This is not going to change by making these people exercise more. Not everyone is, or ever could be, an olympic athlete.

Is this not obvious?

Similarly, not everyone is going to "win" at capitalism. Not everyone who gets a big line of credit is going to behave sensibly with it. And we can let those people go broke, and bitch about how unfair it is that our tax dollars have to pay for these fucks ups and all that, but unless we take them to a ditch and shoot them—and everyone else who fucks up, who doesn't have a respectable Win/Loss record—then we have to deal with them. As scripture says: The poor will always be with us.

So, all matters of decency, and compassion, Christian charity and all that, aside ... would you rather leave it up to these folks to wisely use a grossly indequate voucher to sensibly buy their health insurance in their dotage, from unregulated (or far less regulated) for-profit insurers, or should we make sure that we do what we can to keep Medicare funded?

Should we ... spend more money than the Pentagon is even asking for (and not on soldiers, but to make happy the various pigs at the trough of the "Military-Industrial Complex" Eisenhower, a Republican, warned us of over sixty years ago), and take it from Medicaid, from the real losers in the system, many of whom don't even vote, and then, what ... make them go out and get jobs? Where? And what about when Dad's money runs out and it's either Medicaid paying for his nursing home or you bringing him home and setting him up and, well, that's going to do wonders for the disposable income you could otherwise use to stimulate the economy. Though it might be good for you as a person. Or it might not. Maybe some pretty ugly things inside you might come out, things you might have kept inside and never been made aware of until Dad was asleep in his grave. Though you would have the consolation of knowing the wealthy had gotten wealthier while you were learning these things about yourself rather than, say, going out to eat from time to time, or taking a vacation, or maybe even paying for your son or daughter to play hockey.

The game with Republicans, since St. Ronald, has been, in theory, to choke the beast—government—though, as Clinton's numbers (verified by Bloomberg News the following day) indicated, they've done a terrible job. Government has grown, considerably, under every Republican administration including St. Ronald's—one could say St. Ronald took the idea of growing government to new levels, levels never seen before. And yet our new disciples sing his praises.

What they did was give the tax dollars to different people. That's all they did. And it seemed to work out all right while the economy was in a generational expansion ... which is to say, a natural leg up, and the stock market we were all encouraged to buy into was going up, up, up.

But what goes up, must, at the very least, take a breather, a pause; these pause, when you measure them closely, last about as long as the legs up. Politicians hate them, since during these fallow times difficult decisions need to be made that don't sit well with the people doing the voting.

The endgame to the Crisis of 2008 has always been whether we would end up getting suckered out of programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and probably VA benefits, so that the wealthy can continue to make respectable year over year gains in the stock market at a time when the market should, in a free market environment, be selling off, getting cheap, until a new cycle begins, or whether we embark on a different sort of arithmetic, one less the calculations of the gulag, and more the calculations of the neighborhood. Woodpeckers and all.