Today was the first day of spring quarter. (and there was much rejoicing...) But no, really, it wasn't too bad. I will probably talk about it more after this first week, but Mondays are going to be hard because I have five hours of class without a break--right during normal lunching hours!
I finished The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender, a book with its own particular sadness. Wikipedia notes that Bender is known for her surreal plots, which, aside from Rose's ability to taste emotions, did not seem true of this novel, until *SPOILER ALERT* her brother turns into a chair! What?!? I had to read that chapter twice and was thoroughly confused. It began to make more sense towards the end of the novel, if that's possible. I think the sadness for me came from the depiction of a dysfunctional family (that, and that the characters weren't entirely fleshed-out). God knows my family is nowhere near functional, and yet I thought, my family is more real than this, my family is more happy than this. And so I wondered if there are families out there like this, just quietly sad.
I am now reading Yann Martel's Beatrice and Virgil. So far it's interesting, but the novel seems a bit like Martel on Martel--obsessed as it is with writing and animals, the protagonist being a Canadian writer. It is clever, and I mean that as a compliment and insult. Still, two passages stuck out to me that I like:
"If you are pitched into misery, remember that your days on this earth are counted and you might as well make the best of those you have left."
That has a certain come-what-may, life-goes-on practicality, and that everything will work out somehow simply because it has to.
"English's drive to exploit the new and the alien, its zeal in robbing words from other languages, its incapacity to feel qualms over the matter, its museum-size overabundance of vocabulary, its shoulder-shrug approach approach to spelling, its don't-worry-be-happy concern for grammar--the result was a language whose colour and wealth Henry loved."
That's often how I feel about English--a language I love for these same reasons and am thankful that I am a native speaker. I should note that these quotes come from the uncorrected proofs.
Anyway, I came across this op-ed piece in The New York Times entitled "The Rage Is Not About Health Care," which crystallized a lot of my thoughts about the health care debate, my thoughts less about the bill itself and more about our current political climate. It is clearly pro-Democrat and anti-Republican, but I still think it's important. I wanted to quote a few passages.
How curious that a mob fond of likening President Obama to Hitler knows so little about history that it doesn’t recognize its own small-scale mimicry of Kristallnacht. The weapon of choice for vigilante violence at Congressional offices has been a brick hurled through a window. So far.
. . .
That a tsunami of anger is gathering today is illogical, given that what the right calls “Obamacare” is less provocative than either the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or Medicare, an epic entitlement that actually did precipitate a government takeover of a sizable chunk of American health care.
. . .
If Obama’s first legislative priority had been immigration or financial reform or climate change, we would have seen the same trajectory. The conjunction of a black president and a female speaker of the House — topped off by a wise Latina on the Supreme Court and a powerful gay Congressional committee chairman — would sow fears of disenfranchisement among a dwindling and threatened minority in the country no matter what policies were in play. . . . When you hear demonstrators chant the slogan “Take our country back!,” these are the people they want to take the country back from.
. . .
Yet no Republican or conservative leader of stature has taken on Palin, Perry, Boehner or any of the others who have been stoking these fires for a good 17 months now. Last week McCain even endorsed Palin’s “reload” rhetoric.
Are these politicians so frightened of offending anyone in the Tea Party-Glenn Beck base that they would rather fall silent than call out its extremist elements and their enablers? Seemingly so, and if G.O.P. leaders of all stripes, from Romney to Mitch McConnell to Olympia Snowe to Lindsey Graham, are afraid of these forces, that’s the strongest possible indicator that the rest of us have reason to fear them too.
Even Jim Nelson, editor of GQ (a liberal magazine), said very similar things back in September in his letter from the editor, "What We Talk About When We Talk About Race." His glib and provocative letter argues how race has trumped real political issues:
But it’s more than the birthers. Everywhere you look, people keep making batshit-crazy comments about race and ethnicity, stream-of-consciousness-style, as if the election had unleashed some Freudian anxiety in the cultural air.
Finally, here's a pro-liberal viral video that remixes Obama's slogan "Yes We Can" with John Boehner's "Hell no, you can't!" Time (magazine) says it pretty much sums up American politics in 2010 (so far, anyway).
I've stopped paying attention to "politics" of late, in favor of reading the bills or summaries. (http://thomas.loc.gov/)
ReplyDeleteI accept that US policy is inherently flawed by the fact that we make various majorities of 535 representatives agree to something before it is passed. Nonetheless, this is the best system currently functioning to prevent local factions (or Western Countries) from sending troops in to topple the government, so I suppose I'll support it.
My deepest political belief is that the bi-party system we have created makes it too easy to pick sides and to recognize the other as bad. Stability would increase in a J.S. Mill marketplace of ideas--guerilla-warfare--system. Stop, listen, then decide, using your own intuitive abilities, whether this speaker is worth hurling bricks at.
I like Mr. Rich's editorial very much. Congress is a scapegoat for deeper national anxieties. If we truly must hate, then hate your (insert party/race/gender/sexual-orientation) soap-boxing neighbor, but Congress is doing what we, those who cared enough to vote, told it to do. And as Mr. Rich points out "we" is changing--as Americans are prone to do. (Both the 1. Puritan-Protestant-Catholic or English-German-Irish- . . . -Hispanic way and the 2. Male property owners-white males-all males-women-kids over 18 way.) And as we are bound to continue to change, I wonder which will fail first, our long standing democratic traditions, or the revolutionist tendencies of our once-majority-minority? Watching political programming makes it feel like a much closer call than it ought to be.
I read this article last weekend, and thought it was pretty terrible. I find it hard to take anything it says seriously. The author paints a pretty bleak picture of Republican atrocities, with a "Shame on them for taking such a low road" attitude. All the while, the political cartoon to the side of the article juxtaposes conservatives with teabags, showing the Times is willing to be every bit as vulgar as the people they look down upon.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the two-party system has its flaws, shutting out other viewpoints creating the illusion that there are only two opposing sides to every issue. And today in its partisan if-you're-not-with-us-you're-against-us mentality of which the op-ed piece is guilty. Somehow I got through my poli-sci classes without learning about the marketplace of ideas.
ReplyDeleteSince it is an opinion piece I don't fault its blatant leftist leaning (though of course I personally agree with the opinion). I know the bill itself was a highly volatile issue, an issue we've been hearing about since the election, and everyone has an opinion. Still, I think there is something disproportionate about the rage we're seeing to a bill. I honestly didn't notice the cartoon until you pointed it out, Dain, and while I think it's kind of funny, I can see why you (and others) would not.
I think you hit on something there Kristen--I've always felt that the American Myth is that of the revolutionary/rebel uncomfortable with authority epitomized by the wild west outlaw. A tradition just as long-standing as our idealist democratic traditions; our nation is the result of a revolutionary war after all. So I think there's a tension between the law and our national psyche which has never really cared all that much for the law.