At What Price Civility, Monkey See, Monkey Do

Is it just me, or are there more out-of-control folks wandering amongst us?  Did these people always exist?  What prompted them to crawl out of the woodwork?

Crawling Out of the Woodwork

I’m sure a psychologist somewhere is writing a book on this topic, but I think it is some manifestation of imitative behavior.  The psychology of mob mentality is described as when people lose their sense of individual responsibility and respond to heightened emotions, anger, and hostility.  The riots of January 6, 2021, at our nation’s Capital would be such an instance.  In fact, many of the participants in that mob now in trouble with the law are trying to use mob influence as an excuse for their actions.

Trump Mob Attacks Nation's Capital

I think that mob behavior is but a single facet of a much larger problem.  When people are provided with a prominent figurehead who exhibits extreme aberrant behavior, they are more comfortable mimicking that behavior.  Just 203 days after Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45^th president of the United States, we had self-identified members of the alt-right, neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and radical militias, hold a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.  Counter-protestors showed up.  Then, about a half-mile away from the main rally site, a white supremacist used his car to ram through a group of counter-protestors.  He injured 35 people and killed one.  His mother thought he was at a Trump rally. He received two life sentences and an additional 419 years for other offenses.

KKK at Charlottesville, Virginia

During the pandemic that began in the US in early 2020, we saw people begin to come unhinged.  We saw the nation’s president ignore the virus, downplay its importance, and refuse to wear a mask when scientists and medical personnel advised that such mask-wearing would save lives.  That president would later catch the virus and would recover only after he afforded himself the absolute best medical treatment available.  He would continue to downplay the pandemic, insist that business and the nation’s financial stability was more important than the cost in human lives, and he would ignore all attempts of his scientific and medical advisors to guide the nation through the crisis.  He secretly got vaccinated but word leaked out several days later.

Is it any wonder then, that others would mimic his behavior?  How can we act surprised when the “Karens” and “Kens” in our communities take that same attitude and flaunt their personal beliefs over that of science and the law?  How can we expect even civil behavior or a modicum of common decency?  They all seem to have taken the former president’s attitude and made it their own.  People are now walking around with hair-trigger tempers.  One single perceived affront and stand back.

A recent event unfolded on an airplane where a passenger and a flight attendant got into an altercation.  The female passenger felt that the solution was to punch the flight attendant in the face and knock out two of her teeth.  While there may be more to this argument, it still stands that it was a disagreement that could have been solved without resorting to violence.  The offending passenger was arrested on a charge of battery causing serious bodily injury and was taken to a local detention facility.  She was forever banned from flying Southwest Airlines.

While masking requirements for air travel have been at the heart of many such incidents, this one seemed to center on closing a tray table and not following instructions.  The airline industry reports that in the most recent 2-month period beginning in early April, there were 500 such onboard incidents.  Surely, pent-up emotions from recent restrictions, masking demands, and other unfamiliar requests to change our behavior, have now manifested in outrage.  The FAA used to see 100 to 150 cases of disorderly or dangerous behavior aboard passenger planes in a typical year.  Since January 1, 2021, the agency has seen over 2,500 cases with about 1,900 involving passengers refusing to wear masks.

I believe the overall rise in violent acts committed by people who had heretofore avoided such activity is partly the response to pandemic fatigue, but more importantly a mimicking of the horrible examples of our former president and many in Congress or in gubernatorial positions around the country.  Mob mentality occurs when people get caught up in their surroundings where previously unacceptable behavior becomes acceptable, responsibility is diffused within the group and emotions get amplified.  Mix in a dose of MSMD (monkey see, monkey do) and thoughts of aberrant behavior are manifested in aggression.

With social media added to the mix, it no longer takes a physical gathering to make a mob.  People feed off the posts and rants of others to amplify their own previously repressed feelings.  Like the pandemic that spreads by close contact with infected individuals, the propensity for violent acts is exacerbated by the media, both social and mainstream, that depicts other violence.  Coverage of events in Washington State can fuel hostility in Wisconsin, New York, or Florida.

Eventually, this pandemic will be just a memory, but deep-seated anger and hostility will still be with us.  The national divide was inextricably widened by a giant wedge of Trump.  His rhetoric fanned the flames of suppressed hostility, racism, xenophobia, and the like, and created a wildfire that engulfed an entire political party.  What was once smoldering resentment is now a five-alarm fire.  By some definitions, a five-alarm fire is one that requires assistance from other municipalities or jurisdictions.  Let’s hope we can get this under control before our nation follows the fate of the Roman Empire.

We need to demand civility within our government officials and hold them accountable for their behavior.  This holds for both sides of the aisle.  Our leaders should lead by example.  We should not tolerate the likes of those who would prefer to shut down our government before negotiating any legislation.  I believe that if Mitch McConnell was told he had kidney stones, he would refuse to pass them.

What is Patriotism?

This Memorial Day weekend will be celebrated by many with picnics, military air shows, and tens of thousands of Facebook posts which proclaim that true patriotism can be measured in how many likes and reposts you get on your meme-graphic featuring an American flag, a bald eagle, or some patriotic landmark.  Some of these posts will be made by people who have joined the ranks of those who believe that the shameful attack of January 6th to overthrow the results of our recent democratically held election, was somehow an act of patriotism.

My only guess is that these people fell asleep in history class when the origins of our democracy were discussed.  Our founding fathers and the patriots of the time were rebelling against the tyranny of a king who had ignored the will of the people.  We established the foundations of our democracy upon a representative government elected by the citizens of this country.  It was not a democracy founded on insurrection where might is always right and only the strong survive.

Decoration Day as it was originally called, began following the end of our Civil War.  One of the first such celebrations was organized by formerly enslaved people in Charleston, South Carolina just weeks after the Confederacy surrendered in 1865.  Yes, for those of you still waving Confederate flags, the Confederacy lost the war and surrendered.  The original official Decoration Day was May 30, 1868, and that day was selected because it did not coincide with any particular battle of that war.  Decoration Day became Memorial Day in 1968, and it became a federal holiday in 1971 when the last Monday in May was selected. 

Our celebrated war heroes who died for their country fought to protect the values of our democracy.  Voting in an election to select our government representatives is a sacred duty of all patriotic Americans in support of that democracy.  Furthermore, the acceptance of the outcome of that election is also the duty of all patriotic Americans, even if those results are not exactly what you wanted with your one vote.  You don’t get to second guess the will of the majority without clear evidence of fraud.  You don’t get to make wild unsubstantiated accusations of fraud without evidence.

The 2020 presidential election was held according to law.  It was run by other elected officials in accordance with existing laws.  It was certified by supervisors of elections which included both Democrats and Republicans.

The votes have been counted, in some cases three and four times.  There has been no change in the outcome of our 2020 presidential election.  That election won seats for both Republicans and Democrats and Joe Biden is the duly elected president of the United States.  Making any claim to the contrary, especially without any evidence, is truly an unpatriotic act.  In the case of many involved in the events of January 6th at our nation’s capital, it amounted to treason.

Memorial Day is all about those who made the ultimate sacrifice in service to their country.  It is not about waving flags, having picnics, watching air shows, marching in parades, or posting patriotic memes on Facebook.  If you are a true patriot, you will remember the fallen and honor their sacrifice because they died for this democracy.  None of them fought and died to support insurrection, authoritarianism, or a government ruled by a wealthy elite.  If Donald Trump were a patriot, he would take this opportunity to declare that Joe Biden is the legitimate president of the United States based on the results of a fair election.  I don’t expect this to happen, I understand he has other worries these days.

And the Truth Shall Make You Free - John 8:32

 And the Truth Shall Make You Free - John 8:32

When, in 1601, England’s King James I decided to “translate” the Bible to clarify some of the biblical uncertainty of its “first drafts,” he couldn’t have predicted the political fallout from Anglicans, Catholics, Protestants, and those pesky rebel splinter groups, the Puritans and Calvinists. Just think about the consternation that would have been wrought if Lord Zuckerberg had been born 383 years earlier and had created Ye Olde Facebook that could spread the word faster than a melting glacier. Yes, when they included the statement from the Gospel of John that reads, “ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free,” they hadn’t contemplated the likes of Donald Trump, Fox News, and our new Trumpublican Party.

Now it seems that any new translation of what Jesus meant over 2,000 years ago, would have to account for the circular reasoning of the GOP where, according to Saint Giuliani, “the truth is not the truth.” Any new translation would have to deal with 2.7 billion Facebook users who create 4.7 billion posts a day, many of which have no more concern for the truth than Donald Trump has for it during a tax audit or most other times for that matter.

Hyper-partisan arguments, tribal political bias, conspiracy theories, and propaganda, are all now part of the amalgam where truth is so hidden as to be beyond the grasp of many Americans. Our new “facts” may or may not have some kernel of truth at their core, but they can be wrapped in so much BS as to totally distort what is factual into an alternate reality for the gullible.

We currently see people who believe, without any proof or facts, that Donald Trump won the 2020 election. They totally ignore overwhelming evidence to the contrary. It is what they want to believe so it becomes their new reality. It used to be that this fringe lived within the bubble of Fox News, but now, even that bastion of conservatism has been called out for not being supportive of a more radical and unhinged belief system; one that borders on the absurd.

In the post-WWII 1950s, we had a new form of drama that emphasized the absurdity of human existence using disjointed, repetitious, and meaningless dialogue to promote purposeless situations that were devoid of logic and defied reality. It was called the Theatre of the Absurd and it questioned the nature of reality and illusion. History has a habit of repeating itself and we now find ourselves contemplating the Political Theatre of the Absurd. The new Republican Party is blindly following their blonde Monty Python into the land of the absurd, but unlike the original Pythons, this Flying Circus is devoid of humor.

Chief Justice Louis Brandeis wrote in 1927, that the best remedy to “falsehood and fallacies” was not the “enforced silence” of censorship, but “more speech.” This served us well for nearly a century, but our current cacophony of falsehoods has reached a crescendo in this era of Twitter and Facebook where the truth is not merely a needle in a haystack of untruths, it is but a single grain of salt in an ocean of lies. Our only defense seems to be logic and common sense, but that too is in short supply. We should not have to rely on the likes of Mark Zuckerberg to be our arbiter of truth.

The 2020 election was not stolen from Donald Trump by a massive voter fraud campaign that included secret shipments of ballots from China that were slipped into the Arizona voting system in the dead of night. Fraudulent ballots were not fed to chickens which were later incinerated to more adequately cover up massive fraud. The kind folks who visited the Capitol on January 6th were not part of some tour group who walked calmly through that building in an orderly fashion. The Coronavirus was serious, masks helped prevent the spread of the disease, and the approved vaccines are remarkably safe and effective. False claims about these last three items, cost us many avoidable deaths. The Big Lie and its ilk are killing our democracy.

The truth may eventually set us free, but at what cost? While I have some sympathy for the under-educated who may have been fooled with information spread by the careless and callous, I have no sympathy for the educated among the GOP who knowingly use lies just because it is an easier path to reelection. I strongly disagree with much of what Liz Cheney stands for, but I respect her commitment to the truth in the face of recriminations from her own party for promoting the truth. For the GOP, “Ye may know the truth but it is the Big Lie that will get you elected and reelected.”

Perhaps Trump, those in the GOP infatuated with the “neon god they made,” and other members of the cult, should read the words of Coolio from his Gansta’s Paradise where he says,

“Power and the money, money and the power

Minute after minute, hour after hour

Everybody's runnin', but half of them ain't lookin'

It's goin' on in the kitchen, but I don't know what's cookin'"

"Tell me why are we so blind to see

That the ones we hurt are you and me?"

"All About That Base"

A popular 2014 hit by Meghan Trainor bears the title, “All About That Bass.”  An easy English language play on similar-sounding words brings us to my title, It’s All About That Base.  I would call it a homophone but too many on the political right would be reaching for their Bibles.  In this case, I am referring to a political base.  All politicians have one.  If they didn’t, they wouldn’t have gotten elected, and this discussion wouldn’t make much sense.  I might still meet that threshold, but I will Babylon.  Is that another homophone?  Babylon has two direct meanings.  One where it is a capital city in ancient Mesopotamia, and another that is used among Rastafarians to describe contemptuous aspects of a society that are seen as oppressive.  In my usage, however, I am using it in a more homophonic sense meaning to “babble on.”  But I digress down a rabbit hole of my own making.

The base to which I refer is the group of voters who will support a political party without regard to the specific views a candidate holds.  That works only when the selection is between candidates of different parties.  When choosing between candidates of their chosen party, many in the base will choose the person who most vehemently holds with their points of view.  This brings us to the tactics being used within the GOP electorate of today.

If we are to assume that these politicians are educated and not inherently stupid, we must acknowledge that their actions promoting anarchy and what is being called in the press, “The Big Lie,” are merely creating the illusion that they are so far RIGHT as to be out of sight.  By this measure, the GOP voter base is made up of a group of people who are mental zombies guided by their thirst for their opiate of choice.  That drug may be self-righteous religious extremism, racism, xenophobia, financial greed, unwarranted fear of the unknown, some other radical view that they find normal, or some combination of the above.

How else could you explain GOP leaders meeting with the President in the Oval Office in the fifth month of his term, continuing to support efforts to overturn an election certified by members of their own party and by judges they helped put in office?  They must know this isn’t possible.  No matter how hard one might want some other outcome, the sun still rises in the east, the tides still rise and fall, and Joe Biden is the 46th president of the United States.  

Other delusions include those who claim that Donald Trump had nothing to do with the Capitol riots of January 6th and that the whole thing is overblown by the leftist press.  One member of the GOP (Congressman Andrew Clyde) calmly stated that, if you didn’t know otherwise, those nice folks that walked through the Capitol on January 6th could have been with a tour group. 

This wild under-stated characterization of the Capitol riots reminds me of the scene from the 1967 film, The Graduate, where Mr. Robinson confronts Benjamin with the fact that he knows that Ben has slept with Mrs. Robinson.  That exchange went as follows...

Benjamin: Listen to me. What happened between Mrs. Robinson and me was nothing. It didn't mean anything. We might just as well have been shaking hands.

Mr. Robinson: Shaking hands? Well, that's not saying much for my wife, is it?

Ben and Mrs. Robinson; The Graduate, 1967

The reality disconnect in the GOP has been exemplified by the stripping of Liz Cheney’s leadership position and Mitt Romney receiving boos and shouts of “traitor” and “communist” at a recent Utah state GOP convention.  Their crime was to acknowledge that Biden won a fair election, as certified by their own party election officials.  So, in this fictional GOP-Utopia that is the promised land for political survivalists, pandering to The Big Lie that Donald Trump is the president in absentia, wins the day.  Kevin McCarthy, GOP House Minority Leader, first claimed that Trump “bears responsibility” for the January 6th insurrection, now says that Trump couldn’t have foreseen what would happen.

The Big Lie is a propaganda technique used for political purposes, defined as "a gross distortion or misrepresentation of the facts, especially when used as a propaganda device by a politician or official body."  The term was first coined by Adolph Hitler when he dictated his 1925 book, Mein Kampf.  In today’s world, the term is used to describe Adolph Trump’s, excuse me, Donald Trump’s claim that there was widespread fraud during our election and that he actually won the presidency.  GOP support for the ongoing Arizona debacle using cyber ninjas with UV bamboo-seeking flashlights and industry trade-secret fraud-finding technology to overturn that state’s results is an example of Trump’s Big Lie.  GOP promises to repeat the Arizona secret recount in other states, is just them playing to their base.  It really is All About That Base.  Privately these politicians know the truth, but publically it is in their best political interests to repeat outrageous lies that stoke the fires of conspiracy beliefs of that delusional base of voters.

"All About That Base"

For those GOP folks who may have read this far, if you haven’t looked up the word by now, just know that a "homophone" is just a communication device used by the LGBTQ community.  At least that is what my friends at QAnon tell me.

Classic Literature

During this past year of the Covid-19 shutdown, I began thinking about classic literature.  Not that I read any of it last year mind you, I just thought about it.  During the many Zoom interviews given on television in 2020, quite a few people would have their background include bookshelves filled with their intellectual formative history of reading.  For some, this was a real bookshelf and for others, it was a “green-screen” faux image of bookshelves filled with the classics.  Various interviewees who had written their own books would generally have their publications visible and turned so the front cover(s) could be seen.

My Library of Classic Literature

I would reflect upon my own exposure to classic literature and how it had influenced my formative years.  Once I got beyond Fun With Dick and Jane, I looked for additional intellectual stimulation.  I read The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore.  I remember the title if little else about the book.  A quick bit of research found that the book was written in 1907 by Laura Lee Hope.  It was marketed as, “For Little Men and Women.”  Digging a bit deeper I found that Laura Lee Hope never existed.  This was a pseudonym for a syndicate of writers founded by Edward Stratemeyer.  Seashore was the third in a series of 72 books, now in the public domain, that involved the adventures of two sets of fraternal twins born to an upper-middle-class family.  I downloaded a PDF copy and quickly found that this children’s classic would not stand the scrutiny of our modern PC Police.

The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore

I also read Ojibway Drums, a 1955 story of a 12-year-old Indian boy, Half Sky, and his pilgrimage to Dreamer’s Rock to fulfill his search for his animal spirit as he approached manhood.  I had a childhood fascination with Indian lore.  I had already watched a gazillion Saturday morning movies involving cowboys and Indians and I had visited a “real” Seminole Village in the Florida Everglades to see how they lived.  The men wrestled alligators and the women operated pedal-driven Singer sewing machines to make their colorful dresses and men’s shirts.  Certainly, these Indians never surrounded a wagon train or attacked a fort.

Ojibway Drums, 1955

As I got older, I read a few of the more traditional classics like Treasure Island, Tarzan Lord of the Jungle, Moby Dick, Catch-22, Nineteen eighty-four, Animal Farm, and To Kill a Mockingbird.  I’m sure many of these were work assignments from teachers and not something I chose on my own.  I tried to read Tolstoy's War and Peace once but the school librarian got a hernia trying to get it down off the shelf for me.  I also banged my head up against Beowulf and several of Shakespeare’s works, even managing to memorize several lines from Macbeth.  With just the right amount of Scotch I will still recite those lines to a mostly unappreciative audience.

While I am sure I was somewhat influenced by having been exposed to these literary classics, I must now admit to and identify the most influential publication of my early adult life.  You won’t see this work on the bookshelves behind some talking head in a Zoom interview, but I’m sure many of the adult males, and perhaps a few females, will secretly admit to having read this during their lives. 

It was a comprehensive historical snapshot covering several generations and it contained the works of Arthur C. Clarke, John Updike, Michael Crichton, John le Carré, Kurt Vonnegut, Ian Fleming, and Woody Allen.  It featured the cartoons of Jules Feiffer, Gahan Wilson, and Shel Silverstein.  It published interviews with artists, architects, economists, composers, film directors, athletes, religious figures, and even President Jimmy Carter (November 1976).  Interviewees included Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and American Nazi Party founder George Rockwell.  Their interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono was in the November 1976 issue and was on the newsstands when Lennon was murdered.  

Ruth's Tattoos, Shel Silverstein

This slick publication first saw the light of day in December of 1953 and was the brainchild of a University of Illinois psychology graduate, Hugh Hefner.  This first entry into the crowded world of men’s magazines featured Marilyn Monroe as its first centerfold.  It was to have been called Stag Party but legal threats from a men’s adventure magazine, Stag, brought about a name change.  We now call that publication, Playboy.

If you asked anyone in the day, they only subscribed to Playboy for the articles.  I must admit, I did read the occasional article.  The only people who could legitimately claim they “just read it for the articles” must have been their braille subscribers.  Yes, in 1970 Playboy became the first gentlemen’s magazine to be published in braille.  As I don’t read braille, I had to endure the regular print publication.

For a generation that grew up in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, Playboy was a staple.  It would not survive the onslaught of “more open” competition, and it is certainly not politically correct by any stretch of today’s standards, but for a time it provided a fantasy world for young male imaginations.  There were grooming and style tips that were fit for the times.  Its jokes page was conveniently placed on the back of the centerfold.  There were such gems as, “Perhaps you’ve heard of the new social action group DAM—Mothers Against Dyslexia.”  It was always good to review the joke page before heading out to a bar as you never knew when you might need an icebreaker.

My Guantanamo barracks bunk 1972; locker door
sports my NAUI certification and two Playboy pinups

There was information on new technology.  On page 169 of the February 1989 issue, you would learn of Camerica’s Freedom Stick, billed as the first wireless joystick that would work on Nintendo, Sega, Commodore, and Atari game systems.  It was available for $59.95.  On page 165 you would hear about the new Panasonic KX-F120 telephone with built-in speakerphone, fax machine, copier and answering machine that retailed for only $1,695.  In today’s dollars, that would be around $3,631.38.  These same features can now be found in a smartphone you carry in your pocket.

You may have noticed in the last paragraph that page numbers were quoted.  Yes, I still have that 1989 issue along with others of similar vintage.  I managed to save, for research and nostalgia purposes only, an eclectic assortment of old Playboys.  While some issues may have collectible value, I doubt any of these will be a source of income in my retirement.

My February 1989 issue

I see on eBay that a March 1990 issue is worth $45, mainly because of the interviewee, Donald Trump.  An October 1982 issue featuring Tanya Roberts (Bond girl and the last season Angel in Charlie’s Angels) and an interview with Robin Williams sells for $14.95.  I would guess that Robin Williams’ inclusion is driving that sale price.  I also see where someone is offering the Bo Derek March 1980 issue for $12,000 (with $15 shipping).  I see that 67 people are “watching” this auction on eBay.  I may have this one in my garage.  My February 1989 copy had a cover price of $4 so it is not like these magazines are going to make anyone wealthy as an investment.  In most cases, estimated shipping costs exceed the sale price.

Trump the Playboy

So it is with the classics, beauty or class is in the eye of the beholder or reader.  I see that you can buy Aesop’s Favorite Fables in hardcover for $11.69 on Amazon.  I hear that Aesop never saw a dime for his valuable work.  No one even knows who wrote the 3,182 lines of the epic Old English poem Beowulf either, and I guess that is all for the good.  After suffering through lines like those below, you just want to burn the bastard in effigy.

"He was easy to find then who otherwhere looked for a pleasanter place of repose in the lodges, a bed in the bowers. Then was brought to his notice told him truly by token apparent the hall-thane’s hatred: he held himself after further and faster who the foeman did baffle."

Anyone claiming to understand the previous paragraph is delusional, or worse, a Republican.  Beowulf was just a form of medieval torture, similar in function to the rack.  Like a few works of art, some writings become classics because they are so obtuse as to be subject to interpretations that fit the desires or ideas of the observer.

Yes, the greatest and most prolific author of the classics has to be Anonymous.  He/she will be revered and despised for eternity.  I read now mostly for information and research.  The classics I have read, by choice or assignment, are all part of my background.  Among my most influential classics, Playboy will be a whispered part of my past but still remembered fondly.  As a footnote to the history of Playboy, Hugh Hefner died in 2017, at the age of 91.  He is buried next to Marilyn Monroe, his first centerfold.

Hefner and Marilyn