I’ve been thinking about living in the moment lately, a state of mind I struggle to maintain with very little success. Tomorrow occupies more thought than today, next month flows like a ribbon of upcoming obligations, next year will be here before I can turn around, plans need scrutinized for the swell of life’s commitments. Right now can wait, the next moment can’t. I tend to miss out on the extraordinary bits of daily living as I step through life with my pair of shaded, fierce blue eyes.
Then there’re the stories which take hold, dancing through my head while my husband discusses a recent Boy Scout meeting, Little League schedules, important dates to pencil on the calendar. I drift off with the itch to write, turn, fold a mouthful of words into readable tales, the man’s solid litany of the here and now blurring into intangible details I can recover sometime later under the frown of his clear irritation.
My brother’s recent confession, spoken softly in his deep, measured voice, telling me he was deeply sorry to say that he had voted for Obama, a terrible mistake, but how could he have chosen that creep McCain, committing to four more years of godawful Bushism? The high peals of unexpected laughter rolling over the phone, vividly reminding me of the delightful little boy who shared my childhood, when I chided him for picking Bush II, Bush on steroids, Blackface Bush*, committing himself to more Bushy incompetence than he ever dreamed possible. The laughter still rumbling as he said the new man’s so bad it’s become absurd, feel’s like we’re living in the darkest draft of a Kafka novel.
That rumbled through my back brain as I fitted the boys for new school shoes this afternoon. Present, but not present, not a mindful, motherly moment, nowhere near engaged with their excitement of the upcoming change in season. I wasn’t there with my kids today, busy off in my head, spending time with the always honest, bare-faced voice of my soft-spoken brother.
I listened as Doug worried about the layoff notice he might receive next month, a result of Obama’s decision to halt offshore drilling, tightening his employer’s business as a material supplier to those very same rigs. Didn’t our shortsighted president take increased unemployment into consideration when he made that politically expedient decision? A circle of ancillary businesses, rippling out beyond the rigs themselves, are being affected by the moratorium. Increasing unemployment at this time of depression era statistics doesn’t seem like any stroke of particular brilliance in my book.
The main breadwinner, holding all the safety nets of medical insurance, matching 401K retirement investments, a salary to cover the house payment and provide the necessities for his small family, my brother is hoping he’ll dodge a bullet. He told me how, at his previous job, he’d arranged his schedule to take an extended ninety minute lunch break, which he spent in a nearby Barnes & Noble, reading free books while enjoying his sandwich at the latte bar. One day a group of professionally dressed ladies sat at a table nearby and proceeded to discuss nothing but celebrities for a solid hour, he told me he became so obsessed with listening to their bizarre conversation that not a lick of reading was accomplished.
“They talked about these people as if they were family, Daphne. Like these fancy strangers were vitally important to the equilibrium of their pathetic lives. It bordered on the obscene, it was grotesque. How could anyone with a functioning brain stem find celebrity whores so goddamn fascinating? Do these mindless plebes think those talentless stars even realize they exist as anything more than dollar signs filling up their fat bank accounts? The economy is in the shitter, there are few replacement jobs for normal people who want to work, need to work, the federal debt is out of control, we’re busy fighting two long wars, my people (he’s retired Airforce) are coming home in body bags or damaged beyond belief and shameful few of my fellow neighbors take the occasional minute to notice this awful, bloody fact, much less bow their heads in distressed prayer. Washington is so corrupt we might as well call it Goat Fucking Kabul and these mindless, well-heeled women are busy discussing Lady Gaga’s genetically mangled, fucked up crotch for a solid hour like it’s the Holy goddamn Grail.”
Maybe all we deserve is cheap bread, vulgar circuses and federal mayhem that our lack of mindful attention has brought to bear on the republic.
* Thank Dennis The Peasant for that bit of apt ripe vulgarity.
You have a wise brother.
Tell him there’s a huge difference between a learning experience and the end of the world. He needs to hear it.
[...] ninety-fifth award for Best Sentence I’ve Heard Or Read Lately (BSIHORL), goes to Daphne’s brother. Yet another repentant, sadder, wiser Obama voter. This one’s made acutely aware of the depth [...]
Posts like these are the reason you grace my blogroll.
To your brother: Thank you for your service to our great Republic.
To both of you: It’s not too late. More Americans are waking up every day, asking, “Dude…wait, WHAT?” This is a low spot in our history, granted–but perhaps we needed to elect Obama. We’ve been rolling toward the cliff of tyranny for a hundred years now. Sometimes at 80, sometimes at 20, and we all but coasted during the Reagan Era.
Had we elected McSame, we’d have continued on our kamikaze course, albeit at a slow and comfortable pace. But now that we’re doing 150 with both feet on the hammer, I think the American people are going to go for the emergency brake. And once we stop, we can grab the wheel and turn this nation around. We’ve done it before, and we can do it again–hopefully for good this time.
pity this busy monster, manunkind,
not. Progress is a comfortable disease:
your victim (death and life safely beyond)
plays with the bigness of his littleness
— electrons deify one razorblade
into a mountainrange; lenses extend
unwish through curving wherewhen till unwish
returns on its unself.
A world of made
is not a world of born — pity poor flesh
and trees, poor stars and stones, but never this
fine specimen of hypermagical
ultraomnipotence. We doctors know
a hopeless case if — listen: there’s a hell
of a good universe next door; let’s go
Lately having read about the fall of the Roman Empire in the west and the Byzantine Empire. Remembering Barbara Tuchman’s “A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous Fourteenth Century”, I can’t help but wonder if such shallowness isn’t the normal human condition. I hope not, but I fear it might be.
“Maybe all we deserve is cheap bread, vulgar circuses and federal mayhem that our lack of mindful attention has brought to bear on the republic…” might be closer to the truth than we think.
“We have met the enemy, and it is us.”
Had the Roman Empire possessed daytime tv, there would be no need of a Colosseum.
Strangely enough now, it is the women who are attending the games.
How sad that the arena James, is a bookstore. Not surprising, given that most people in a bookstore aren’t actually reading books, but celebrity magazines.
Considering Obama’s circle of influence and mentors, beginning with his mother, was easy to understand his agenda if elected.
Hopefully November will be the beginning a renewing regurgitation.
In the meantime, don’t let anyone steal your joy.
Best wishes towards your brother. The election was one of two choices, Obama or McCain. I’d vote Obama again without reservation given the alternative. (McCain’s presidency would have seen me in St. Patrick’s Cathedral for four years lighting candles to his health).
If the Republicans come up with a decent candidate in 2012, maybe I’ll vote for that person, if not, I won’t.
The wife is operations manager for a high end machine shop.
One sector is the offshore drilling industry. The stuff they make is loaded on the rigs prior to drilling and is consumed as they drill. It predates actual operations on the rig by 3-6 months.
Most of the stuff up until July went to the Gulf, now it is being sent overseas. That tells me that it will be at least 3-6 months before drilling resumes.
The moratorium is the environmental equivalent of medieval bloodletting medicine. With leeches.
Administered by a surgeon mentioned a bit too prominently in the patient’s last will & testament…
And yet . . . .
How would things be now if McCain had won? The Left was willing to rend this country till all bled or were dead. Now they have to pony up.
Somehow this thing with Obama had to happen.
At the very least, Obama has no shame. I debate back and forth with myself whether he’s a true believer, imprudent, or maybe a touch daft.
Time will tell, eh?
Great post.
Speaking of medieval, cabon “credits” are indulgences, except you not only are excused for living, but can profit from it.
Another data point on the “Endarkenment Cometh Tour” graph.
One of my all time favorite bumper stickers I saw in Houston: Dear Lord in the next boom let me save all the money for the next bust.
Of course it’s not the same, one is a natural business cycle the other is pure malice.
I hope Dennis comes back, I for one enjoy his caustic wit.
Wraith – you took the words straight out of my mouth.
Daphne – A wonderful piece. I still cannot fathom how anyone could have failed to see Obama for what he is but millions did not.
I admit to being tempted to saying, no – screaming, “I told you so!” but I don’t. I stand in amazement that so many of those who loudly supported Obama, even those who intimated or outright accused those of us who did not that we were racist and stupid, are now coming out in public and admitting that they are as terrified as the rest of us have been since, oh, early 2008 when it was evident that the dye was cast and this was going to be so very bad.
Daphne, I hope to heaven that your brother is spared the layoff. I can’t image the stress and worry he must be under. Please let us know what happens.
I’ll say now what I said back then: Cap and Trade would already be law, 20+ million illegals would magically have become legal and we’d still be spending out the wazoo. In other words, the domestic spending situation would have been worse than it is now. About the only thing- the only thing- that would have been better would have been foreign policy, which currently resembles policy that crack addicts suffering from psychotic breaks would have made.
McCain made a canny pick for Veep and then squandered all of the political capital by being, well, McCain. As much as I’m not enjoying the current administration, I cannot honestly say that I’m unhappy that John McCain will never, ever be president of this country.
McCain may not have been the optimum choice, but one, he would not have been Bush 111, for god sakes, then again having Atty General or Defense Secretary lindsey Graham
wouldn’t have been more of an improvement, Schmidt would
have taken credit for the win, and they would have tried to marginalize the one you think so poorly of Mahon, they would
not have succeeded.
I’d vote Obama again without reservation…
I’m afraid, mahons, that I’ll never again take seriously anything you write.
Gedaliya – Be not afraid.
Lance and best friend, Sam, headed here….
http://www.charterdayschool.com/
Sam shakes his already-open can of Snap E Tom. Juice all over.
Lance. “What the f$#@. I believe we’ll call that move an Obama.”
Sam. “Whaddya mean?”
Lance. “It’s something your tool of a president would do. He even fucks up tomato juice.”
Sam. “Had to do something to fix the mess Bush made.”
Lance. “And communism was that something?”
Sam. “There you go….Wingnut.”
Lance. “Okay, let’s stick with actions. Every single thing he’s done has had effects exactly the opposite of what he claimed they’d be. And even when the destructive effects are obvious, he claims that his schemes worked. In summary, you fucked up when you elected him. I TOLD you he was shit on a stick. And all you could say was, ‘He has experience as a community organizer.’ Yeah, that’s what we need. A schmuck with a clip board.”
Sam. “Better than Republicans any day.”
Lance. “Jesus! You’re the smartest guy I know. But you sound like those idiots at the ed school. How does this work? You can identify 50 ways that someone’s research is crap, but you can’t see even one way that this regime is a plague…..What are you afraid will happen if you admit it?”
Sam. “Screw you, Lance. I don’t need therapy.”
It’s a kind of madness.
“Hey, your blood sugar is 230, your blood pressure is 190/150, and you weigh 280. You’re gonna go blind and then drop dead.”
“No, I’m not.”
…when a man’s fancy gets astride on his reason, when imagination is at cuffs with his senses, and common understanding as well as common sense, is kicked out of doors, the first proselyte he makes is himself…[Jonathan Swift. A tale of a tub. 1704]
The Moratorium is the Post-Modern Pogrom.
We have the Oil Drilling Moratorium and the California Irrigation Water Moratorium. Both products of a Federal government. Both are staggering regional economies.
Oil drilling is the perfect industry to strike – GOP leaning, CO2-producing, and male-dominated. Ditto agriculture in California’s Central Valley.
Who is next?
http://mises.org/freemarket_detail.aspx?control=54&sortorder=articledate
Consider this book, The Vampire Economy: Doing Business Under Fascism by Guenter Reimann.
“”Industrialists were visited by state auditors who had strict orders to examine the balance sheets and all bookkeeping entries of the company or individual businessmen for the preceding two, three, or more years until some error or false entry was found,” explains Reimann. “The slightest formal mistake was punished with tremendous penalties. A fine of millions of marks was imposed for a single bookkeeping error.”
Reimann quotes from a businessman’s letter: “You have no idea how far state control goes and how much power the Nazi representatives have over our work. The worst of it is that they are so ignorant. These Nazi radicals think of nothing except ‘distributing the wealth.’ Some businessmen have even started studying Marxist theories, so that they will have a better understanding of the present economic system. ”
Or consider the fate of the Ukranians under Stalin.
I agree with P. Geek, McCain would have been a horrendous president from a conservative standpoint, easily surpassing Bush’s feckless, domestic incompetence.
Regarding foreign policy, I suspect the old buzzard would have already started us on another disastrous middle east debacle by bombing the hell out of Iran.
I pulled the lever for McCain because Obama made me violently nauseous by the early primaries, not because I believed the maverick was worth more than a bucketful of warm spit.
The only candidate who surpassed McCain as a worse GOP presidential contender was that repulsive Huckabee.
Be not afraid
Oh please.
Out of respect for Daphne I’ll restrain my inclination to flame you into a burnt cinder.
Mahons might enjoy a fierce comeback, G.
He’s been lacking a field of educated, witty opponents over at his home place (A Tangled Web) for awhile now.
Besides, it might be interesting to watch my two favorite, highly literate New Yorkers do battle.
So don’t hold back on my behalf, although I appreciate the respect and return it in spades, darlin’.
gedaliya..
with all respect, please don’t, I have a squeamish stomach.
Man up, Stoney!
If you could vote for McCain without losing your lunch, a flame war between two sharp tongued men should be a cake walk.
Gedaliya – Light My Fire if you can, in a battle of wits you are unarmed.
Game on.
(Can you tell I’m bored today? Anybody else feeling like excoriating Newt Gingrich as a side topic, I’m in a mood to pitch his roly poly ass under the bus.)
I’ll be back.
Does Huckabee have another name that he goes by? Nehemiah Scudder may be about right.
American politics continues to baffle this cousin across the pond. I really can’t understand why a President/VP ticket of a geriatric zealot and a theocrat whose main claim to fame was being second runner-up for Miss Alaska was thought to be even vaguely realistic.
Perhaps, if and when the GOP puts forward a realistic candidate who isn’t an instant turn-off for anyone not a fundie, they will have a chance of regaining Ameica.
I’m betting on Gedaliya! And anyone named after a lizard, like newt should never be taken seriously…ask any of his ex wives. What the hell were they thinking anyway.
Newt is a brilliant thinker, strategist, orator and statesman.
He seems to be lacking the ability to connect with middle America. Could be charm, humor or humbleness.
He wants nothing more than the top job and would have ran in 08 but saw the handwriting on the wall …he will run in 2012 because he smells blood.
The next Republican to win the office is probably yet to become a household name.
Fletcher, you just caused a throat full of rampant chuckles to erupt with your first two lines. As you may have guessed, I despise Huckabee and fail to see the Holy Roller attraction he holds for many so-called conservatives.
As to the rest, what can I say? We’re an odd, mercurial people.
Stoney, the man’s a fucking socialist on steroids. He should be purged from all conservative rolls as a trojan horse heretic.
Jewel, I think it’s a pretty even match. I’m not laying bets yet, they’re both brilliantly caustic when their dander’s up.
Fortunately, nobody with the name of Newt, or with the name of Gingrich, is ever going to be President. It’s a two for one special.
I’m not so sure of that, James. Considering the current line up of potential fools and Obama’s sinking numbers, Gingrich might be a surprising dark horse if he throws his hat in the ring.
Besides, we recently elected a multi-racial man of color named Barrack Obama – who could have seen that coming?
Mahons, aren’t you the genius who rose in defense of Eamon de Valera’s decision to keep Ireland neutral in WWII?
And, isnt it also true that you also rose in defense of your great Irish hero’s note of condolence to the Third Reich’s Dublin ambassador when word of the Fuhrer’s premature demise came to his attention?
Check on that, Daph, but it is a burden, and let us consider he has other burdens that are not of his own making (in addition to the ones that are)–he’s ugly, and dumpy. And one that is–he never stops talking.
This is the sort of man who never gets national traction and people wonder why even when they like what they hear. It is not because he is a political whore who would find relevance and employment in Machievelli’s day or Lenin’s. I suspect in the Founder’s time he would have attached himself to Hamilton, or tried to.
You will see him come up short even against lesser men, as he has before. I’ll count my blessings, wherever they come from.
From what you write, James, there are no lesser men.
What are you trying to say, exactly?
Gedilya: To you of course most people appear to be a genius, but I have never claimed to be one. As for Irish neutrality in WWII it was a necessity (and soemthing the US engaged in for a couple years at far less risk). As for old Dev’s condolence call, I am fairly certain I noted that as a mistake born out of a rigid adherence to neutrality.
Take a deep breath and try to catch up to the 21st Century.
Well, I’m quite sure Mr. de Valera didn’t regret his note to the Reichsminister, just as you don’t regret your vote for Barack Obama.
I see similar thought processes at work here, don’t you?
Agreed, James. He’s small monster, but the uneducated public seems to adore these self-fabricated, paltry whores.
Gedaliya – I don’t see any thought process that could be attributed to you. But keep trying!
Agreed, James. He’s small monster, but the uneducated public seems to adore these self-fabricated, paltry whores.
So the people are stupid?
I don’t see any thought process that could be attributed to you.
Of course not. Anyone who publicly admits no regret for his 2008 Obama vote couldn’t discern a thought process if it smacked him on the forehead with a 2×4.
Yes, there are lesser men than Gingrich. He is a prodigious talent, and no great mistakes are ever made without it.
It’s really not all about you, Geds; perhaps you identify with him too much. I admit he is more humble than you are.
Someone at NRO coined the term “Huckacide” for the GOP appeared on the brink of doing back in 2008. If the Huckster somehow manages to win the GOP nomination in 2012, it would be sign that the GOP wants to join the Whigs in the dustbin of political history. Frankly, I cannot see enough people falling for Huck’s crap in 2012. To be fair, I did not see McCain’s nomination coming at all, so I could be wrong. I hope like hell that I’m not, though.
I’m thinking Chris Christie is looking pretty good – time we had a really BIG man in the front office.