I'm an oddball. Eccentric. Just want to get that on the table. Have been, as long as I can remember. Maybe everybody feels that way, I don't know, but I don't think so. I had cool friends, as a kid, but I didn't belong with them, after a point. I certainly knew it, and I think they knew it. I was funny, and mouthy as hell, and good at sports, to a degree. Mostly baseball. So that gave me an in with the ins. But I sucked with girls, beyond imagining. And I wasn't typically competitive. Really, I didn't get it. I remember a coach screaming at me, in frustration, "Flanagan, get mean out there." Why. What's your problem. I don't buy it. Get a grip.
Not the attitude they wanted. And, playing sports, I got it into my head that there was something not right with me, my constitution. I couldn't make it work quite right, the body. Never got wind, no matter what I did, which was inconvenient, since they ran your ass off, in practice, especially mine, since I was bad at it. It was worrying and confusing. So I had a sense of physical insufficiency, maybe of mortality, early on. Like at ten. Sounds neurotic.
Finally, first time I had a chest scan, weirdness. Confirmation. Diagnosis. Big, inefficient heart. This was in my mid twenties. And emotionally, I was reactive as hell, which led to assorted humiliations, in adolescence. Couldn't seem to help it. Probably conditions at home, messing with me. Who knows. I think it made me empathetic, though, which is the point of telling you all this, how we come upon empathy, how I came upon empathy. Ask my friends, about the empathy. Let me know what they think. I'm curious.
So, I love THE SIMPSONS. And Bart. A kind of puer. A perpetual, preternatural pre-adolescent. Cool thing about toons, they get to be arrested, legitimately. They don't age. But you wouldn't want him as, let's say, head of state. Not a good fit. Unless you're Republican. In which case, perfecto! El Barto! Let's blow shit up! Oh, wait, you mean then I can't still have it, the thing I just blew to bits? It only takes the average adolescent boy about three years and a couple hundred demolitions to get this, bless their pointed little heads. People got hurt? Aw, shucks.
Look at L Paul "Bart" Bremer, custodian of Iraq. The Bushies had people on the ground there with some sense of reality. Inherited them. People who knew things. Things about Iraq. And they brought in guys like Bremer, because they had pro-life stickers on their skateboards. And they blew shit up. And none of the people responsible for this seem to have realized, let alone regretted, what they did there. They sit around making fart noises and laughing, I suppose, in their better jobs and bigger offices.
In this perversion of the Peter Principle, Republicans get promoted, not just to their level of incompetence, but beyond it, transcendently. Maybe it's the perfection of it, the Principle. They get promoted as a reward for incompetence, and to bring it to bear in appropriate situations. Screwing up is a skill. A talent. A knack. Something to be done with style, elan, aplomb, panache. Something to be nurtered, cultivated, inculcated. Onwards and downwards! I assume they have a secret awards' ceremony, and statuettes.
It's insidiously brilliant, or brilliantly insidious. Maybe just fucked up. They trash everything, then step back, and point the bony finger--at government. See, we told you, government sucks. No, actually, you suck. And the huge wreckage they leave behind, they never own. So they never grow up, these cartoon cowboys. Other people clean up the mess, or live in the rubble. Peter Pan cowboys, arrested in development, but not by the law. Too young, existentially. Juvenile delinquents, approaching retirement. On the road to their reward.
And I remember being there, mine own self. El Jimbo. As I said, I was an oddball, but all boy, nonetheless. Stupid. Insensitive. Impulsive. Destructive. Probably spoiled. What can I say. Witnesses are few. However, I have a wonderful, highly visual memory, to please and plague me. Entertaining, and distracting. I can very nearly relive stuff, certainly the emotional component. It's true of the adolescent crap, the evil-doing. So I can relive the indifference--to everything.
That's at the core, I think, of adolescent boyhood, a lack of the awareness of connectedness, and consequences. The lack of conscience is incidental, if no less appalling, for that. Most adolescent boys, if you point out some personal harm, and can get them to focus for a moment and actually see it, are instantly and sincerely remorseful, in my experience. I remember this exactly, when I ran my mouth insensitively and crashed it into some kid (Jim Lyons, for one), which I did more times than I care to think about, and got called on it.
Who's to say who's guilty of what. I have no real animus about Republicans, just the stuff they do. And the regret I feel over the youthful transgressions is genuine, if not altogether historical. It's current, certainly. I remember, and I strive to do better. El Jimbo, grown up version. Who knows how we would have turned out if our lives had been otherwise, any of us. In my case, I was sensitized when things went wrong, when I felt vulnerable, or when someone reprimanded me, in real time, which is what the Republicans need. Sensitivity training, and resistance. Big time.
You hope, from that, that they get a clue without having the first hand experience of, let's say, having your ass blown off in Iraq. There are always irredeemables, like the Cruz character, but there lies despair. Hell, I could have broke bad, I guess, meaning Republican. And I think I turned out okay. I'm an empathetic guy now, and nice. Please say yes to this. Oh, well. Ask my friends. Still curious.
So the Republicans get religion on gay rights if they have a gay kid, if ever. Do they need to be impoverished to have sympathy for the poor? Impoverishment isn't a viable policy, but a few steps in that direction, maybe so. The rich folks, they cough up a fee to join the country club, typically only six or so times the average net worth of a black family, in the land of plenty, but what the heck. Then, at the end of the year, they divvy up the expenses. Make it come out right.
I propose this as a deficit reduction model. A deficit eradication model. The Country Club Model. Let's do that with the national finances. Those that benefit the most, pay the bills, make it come out right. Maybe that will engender some sympathy, in the Republicans. Right. Piss them off, I'm sure. But at least we'd fix a problem.
Now, more broadly, the animus that's evident, in the air, hanging around like pollution, the indifference, the wanton, adolescent destructiveness, is almost all Republican. The Democrats are reacting to that, to the extent they're reactive, not generating it themselves, from what I've observed. I have no idea how to counteract it, the animus, to quick effect, since the culture warriors resist engagement at all. I think we may need help, to bring the transgressors back into the family fold, where we can at least work with them, sensitize them.
I look to the toons. That means Marge. The expert on Bart. Marge, for president. Really, the toon. How cool is that. First female president and first toon, all in one. The Republicans will run Cruella, I'm sure, but she has high negatives. Just need to get Marge scripted right, but I trust the experts on that. Man, I like this idea. Bart, first boy. Lisa, first girl/secretary of state. Homer? First whatever. He'll be pleased enough just to be first anything. We'll let Marge deal with that destructive adolescent impulse. The right balance of indulgence and indignation. Resistence and resignation. She knows how. She'll get it done
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