Key Largo

After taking some time ‘off’ and coming back to blogging and politics with somewhat of a new perspective, I find that I do not have a new perspective. I have the same old perspective. Frustration.

Frustration that the first nation ever ostensibly founded to serve the Greater Good of The People….instead of the greater good of the King or the State itself, doesn’t.

Frustration that America has not yet grown up. As I have been walking through the corridors of my past for this last week, one oft repeated phrase from my youth resonates with my feelings for America…..”You have such potential, if only you would apply yourself!”

I now better understand the frustrations of virtually every teacher and guidance counselor I ever had in school! (Before realizing that it was actually school ityself that was cramping my true potential, and fleeing to learn from the Sacred Mountains instead!)

Now that I am old and wizened, I am frustrated that America is not living up to it’s potential. I want this very young (as countries go) to live up to its potential….to live up to the ideals and words it was founded on. And I am supremely frustrated at the assclowns that keep it from doing so.

And thus we come, in today’s rambling reentry into blogging, to the Three Pillars of Assclownism.

Republicanism.

The Media that enables it.

And the Democrats who pander to it.

Thanks to  MinistryOfTruth for the story and GOGB for compiling the video, we now have a record of the Acme of Assclownism

Markos has been writing about the lack of a quality that is simply essential to being a good human being and living up to your potetential as a human, and until we as American humans live up to our potential, America can never live up to it’s own potential. That quality is empathy. And the opposite of empathy is greed.

Being possessed of greed to the point where one lacks empathy is a symptom of a particular human condition: Being three years old.

When one is an elderly or even middle aged man or woman and yet behave as if you were three years old, that makes you an assclown.

With the video above we see the true depth and breadth of Assclownism. Two three year old boys in grown-up bodies, wishing a horrible death by terrorism on OTHERS…….just so they can get what THEY want.

But it turns out that that wanting, that greed, that lack of empathy is NOT the real problem….even though one must say that wanting the death of your fellow citizens is indeed A problem…..this is the real problem: They don’t actually know WHAT they want.

We turn now to the the script of the Bogie movie Key Largo for illustration, in the form of a conversation between returned WW2 hero (a hero is one who sacrifices for others out of empathy) and the washed up gangster Johnny Rocco (played by Edgar G. Robinson, insert appropriate accents!)

Johnny Rocco: There’s only one Johnny Rocco.

James Temple: How do you account for it?

Frank McCloud: He knows what he wants. Don’t you, Rocco?

Johnny Rocco: Sure.

James Temple: What’s that?

Frank McCloud: Tell him, Rocco.

Johnny Rocco: Well, I want uh …

Frank McCloud: He wants more, don’t you, Rocco?

Johnny Rocco: Yeah. That’s it. More. That’s right! I want more!

James Temple: Will you ever get enough?

Frank McCloud: Will you, Rocco?

Johnny Rocco: Well, I never have. No, I guess I won’t. You, do you know what you want?

Frank McCloud: Yes, I had hopes once, but I gave them up.

Johnny Rocco: Hopes for what?

Frank McCloud: A world in which there’s no place for Johnny Rocco.

Rocco is holding the residents of a hotel hostage. During a hurricane. Rocco refuses to give local residents shelter from the hurricane in the hotel.

Many people die in the hurricane, because of Rocco’s lack of empathy, because of his willingness to sacrifice not himself, as the hero McCloud did during the war, but because he is willing to sacrifice the lives and well being of others to get what he wants…….even though he can never get what he wants. Because you can never fully have…….more.

More is a mythical desire, having all of more is a mythical state. And yet that is what Republicans want, and what they have convinced there fellow Americans that they should want.

Regardless of reality.

Regardless of the storms that are raging, Republicans want more. Regardless of the fact that when storms are raging, we all have to do with less, we all have to sacrifice….for the Greater Good of All that are trapped or threatened by the storms. But even in the midst of the greatest and most powerful of storms, when reality dictates that we all join together and cooperate in sacrificing our smaller needs fro the Good of the greater need….Republicans STILL want a mythical more.

James Temple: Will you ever get enough?

Frank McCloud: Will you, Rocco?

Johnny Rocco: Well, I never have. No, I guess I won’t.

And they know what to do if they don’t get it!

Frank McCloud: You don’t like it, do you Rocco, the storm? Show it your gun, why don’t you? If it doesn’t stop, shoot it.

Or even better, have someone else, have Osama bin Laden shoot it…..and then nobody can blame you!

Then you will not have to take responsibility.

For anything. Since you are three years old and thus incapable of accepting responsibility for any of the terrible things you have done. And thus you are forced to blame every else for you not having more.

So what is the solution to all of these three year olds in adult, Republican, bodies?

Ironically, the solution to the juvenile behavior of the three year olds is…..youth.

Think Progress has a piece about DADT

Yesterday, the president hosted a meeting commemorating the 40th anniversary of the gay rights movement where he reiterated his desire to end the policy, saying it “doesn’t contribute to our national security.” Appearing again on MSNBC last night, Fehrenbach, who attended the White House meeting yesterday, said that Obama told him privately that a “generational gap” is the biggest obstacle standing in the way of overturning DADT:

 

FEHRENBACH: I told him the situation for me was urgent and I needed his help. […] He looked me right in the eye and he said, “We’re going to get this done.” And then he continued to say, you know, everyone seems to be onboard. We’ve got about 75 percent of the public that supports this. He said, but we have a generational issue. And so, there is some convincing to do, that there is a generational gap it seems and some of the senior leadership.

Fehrenbach called it a “reasonable answer,” adding that “the young officers and the young enlisted corps” he works with find this to be a “a non-issue.” “I sort of suspected that maybe the people that were a little bit disconnected were some of the senior leadership,” he said.

The Old, White, Men of the “Senior leadership” are the ones who are acting like three year olds. Their feeling of privilege and superiority and their desire for a mythical world where they and people like them…… but NOT Others ….have more have elevated them to the position of Head Assclowns. They are willing to have Others sacrifice so that they can maintain the illusion of more……by refusing to give anything to Others. One of the basic precepts of More, is that “I have More as long as I can prevent others from having anything.”

Thus we can give billions to the banks because they are “like us.”

But we can’t have Public Option Insurance because the Public is ….other.

But the good news is….the Myth of More is dying off with it’s practioners and defenders:

WASHINGTON – American adults from young to old disagree increasingly today on social values, ranging from religion to relationships, creating the largest generation gap since divisions 40 years ago over Vietnam, civil rights, and women’s liberation.

A survey being released today by the Pew Research Center highlights a widening age divide after last November’s election, when 18- to 29-year-olds voted for Democrat Barack Obama by a 2-to-1 ratio.

Almost 8 in 10 people believe there is a major difference in the point of view of younger people and older people today, according to the independent public opinion research group. That is the highest spread since 1969, when about 74 percent reported major differences in an era of generational conflicts over the Vietnam War and civil and women’s rights. In contrast, just 60 percent in 1979 saw a generation gap.

Asked to identify where older and younger people differ most, 47 percent said social values and morality. People age 18 to 29 were more likely to report disagreements over lifestyle, views on family, relationships, and dating, while older people cited differences in a sense of entitlement.

All over the world, as we see in Iran, the young people of today are rejecting the Myth of More. The morality of More. If one can indeed call that morality.

The Youth demographic of the 1960’s changed the world. Barack Obama is a product of that. His heartfelt ideals (though disappointingly unrealized in the political world so far) and emphasis on empathy are a direct reflection of the environment in which he grew up, an environment informed by the Ethos of Peace and Love that the Hippies introduced and post ’60’s world unconsciously and unwillingly absorbed and grudgingly accommodated.  Today, there is an even larger ‘contingent’ of youth. Roughly half of the worlds population is under 30. And they too have unconsciously absorbed and unknowingly embody and are bravely acting out the Ethos of Peace and Love. The Ethos of Empathy.

The young people of today are actively adding their revolution to the cultural revolution of the ’60’s. Building upon the Ethos of Empathy and acting to fulfill it’s promise and the promise of their inevitable contributions to enhance it.

It is only the Assclown Dinosaurs still seeking the Mythical entitlement of More that are holding the world back now. The world has already passed them by, they just don’t know it because they are incapable of seeing beyond the bubble of their expired entitlement. Let us do what we can to hasten their demise.