Today, I'm more into reading than writing. Uh-huh.

So I'll start by posting some interesting things I've read lately and then commence blathering.

A Fascist Philosopher Helps Us Understand Contemporary Politics was a link off of an article from Slate asking, on the surface, whether it really was fair game and, moreover, our responsibility to note the similarities between the Bush administration and the Third Reich. The argument was mainly focused on the propaganda state question, the ability to seemlessly shift public sympathies away from core democratic values, etc. Have a look, let me know what you think.

The Fascist Philosopher article is another one of those "why do conservatives work this way?" deconstructions that I like so much. The argument seems to have an element of truth if you're willing to examine our current administration as a wanna-be fascist dictatorship, and who isn't?

"In The Concept of the Political, [Fascist philosopher Carl] Schmitt wrote that every realm of human endeavor is structured by an irreducible duality. Morality is concerned with good and evil, aesthetics with the beautiful and ugly, and economics with the profitable and unprofitable. In politics, the core distinction is between friend and enemy. That is what makes politics different from everything else. Jesus's call to love your enemy is perfectly appropriate for religion, but it is incompatible with the life-or-death stakes politics always involves. Moral philosophers are preoccupied with justice, but politics has nothing to do with making the world fairer. Economic exchange requires only competition; it does not demand annihilation. Not so politics."

If you're a Republican or just a good ol' fashioned call-it-like-it-is fascist (I'll leave run-of-the-mill conservatives well out of this) and if this is the basic philosophy you've adopted, what is your rational end? I keep asking that question and not finding a satisfying answer, which makes me think I must be asking the wrong question. Rational end. Silly liberal.

But historically and philosophically there is at least a rationale. One just has to step outside one's liberal democratic box. Yes, many of our current (soon to be former!) leaders aren't idealists on this level so much as opportunists out for their own equivalents of 24-carat gold shower curtains, but in this system there's plenty of room for their contributions, too. When they go too far and get caught, they're readily disposable and make convenient whipping dogs to deflect attention from actual news. The frightening things is that some in our leadership clearly do, God help us, actually appear to follow this stuff.

But this is the part that interests me--Fascist beliefs have never gone out of circulation in the populace.

Here's the anecdotal evidence you'll accuse me of winding up out of all proportion. I can take it. I'm related to and grew up with a community full of these people, so I feel fairly comfortable making the generalization.

Several years ago, there was an amusing/frightening exchange between my right-wing Christian brother-in-law (BIL) who will now stand in for the far- to way-far-right, and the-clever-boy-I-was-dating (CBIWD) a few years ago who will stand in for Democrats.

My brother-in-law favored a government directed by competing Powerful Capitalists. CEOs of large corporations (this was pre-ENRON, I should note, but things haven't changed much for BIL), Rockefellers, Fords and their ilk. He felt power should be based on marketplace standing. He also insisted that this not only fit fine in the democratic model, but was the only way to make it work. The powerful were powerful because of their inherent intelligence and deservedness. They had the best instincts about how to lead us. Business model and all. Competition keeps everyone on their toes, keep them working for society and thus makes society work.

Did I mention that the BIL tends to equate Capitalism, Democracy, and The Will of God? Minor confusion between the material, the social and the spiritual in my POV, but what do I know? I'm well on my way to the First Circle of Hell.

The CBIWD had a nice gift for metaphor, so he melded my BIL's argument into a metaphorical bus in which competing power-holders took control of the wheel. My BIL liked that. Yes. The most powerful person should most certainly drive and direct the bus. They'll get us where we want to go.

Now you might want to go to your home on State Street, but you have no real say. Hopefully, the power-holder also wants to go in your direction. However, the power-holder has some business to take care of on Church Street, so away he goes. Oh, he'll probably circle around to everyone's stop eventually. But his stop is terribly important so we need to stick with his decision. Oh, wait. Competition has just kicked in and now there's a new driver. Hang on folks. We're turning around and heading for K Street. Got some serious bidness to attend to boys--you know what I mean. You want to stop somewhere on the way? Well, maybe, if you can convince me it's worth my while. Hope you've got some big bills, BIL. No? How's that bus workin' for ya now?

Here, I'm afraid, both metaphor and argument ended because my mother said, "Ach, turkey's on the table. Stop fighting and come shove some cranberry sauce and stuffing in your horrible, screaming gobs. Maybe that'll shut you up." (I paraphrase.)

So how do I equate this to fascism?

First off, a bit of back-argument. Pure capitalism thought of as political structure is inherently wrong-headed as it results in too many independent, self-interested drivers. In an equation where individual power is the end, the little people will eventually jump out of their seats and strangle driver after driver, and finally, each other, in increasingly anarchic attempts to get where they want to go. The end state of pure competition is usually some sort of fight to the death.

Politics, leadership of country, the ability to make it all work together despite competition--to bend competition to the greater good--requires the politician. Shudder now and forever hold your peace. I do believe we're married to this people. It's our lot as social beings.

But here we see the roots of a typical right-wing business-oriented belief system. In this view, successful businessmen have a grasp of the world that the rest of us simply don't--they are better. They're there because they deserve to be; they earned it, and more frighteningly, the assumption is that they earned it honestly, following their righteous paths to the American Dream. The People should stand down and trust them to lead. They absolutely should have influence in government, and much more than the average person. A bit of social Darwinism and some serious idealism at work. Mm. Mmmm. Not nearly there yet, but, by God, it begins to taste a bit like fascism.

From that base, it won't take much to turn BIL-man against the Democratic values he claims to hold dear.

1. Logic is not his strong point. Belief is.


2. He is already driven to worship power and status


3. He distrusts the populace (except those who agree with him)


4. He distrusts politicians who cater to those portions of the populace he finds disagreeable


5. He trusts, nay believes in, politicians who believe as he does and favor the powerful


6. He believes it is critical to keep his politicians in power as the country will surely go keeling into disaster and moral decrepitude if he does not

For BIL, the Capitalist-Politician is inherently superior and whatever he needs to do to advance his ideological agenda is valid. Add a frightening war without borders and an appeal to blind patriotism, then a dash of xenophobia and the recipe's not only mixed--that bird's cooked.

This last election was tough for BIL. I don't know how he voted in the end. Had it simply been the issues of torture and government eavesdropping, he wouldn't have had a problem casting his vote. He is driven by reverence for what he thinks he knows and fear of the Other, not by his critical mind. It was the corruption, finally, that got him. It all just went a bit too far.

I think that's the rather fortunate Achilles heel of power and persuasion politics. No matter how much spin doctors scrub the information that goes out, they can't scrub away a whole series of scandals and missteps. There's simply too much evidence piled up. And when too much power gets concentrated in too few greedy, brutal hands, scandals are bound to erupt.

The People speak, misspeak and live to speak again.

The frightening thing is that my BIL is still out there, watching and waiting for the next knight with a facade of shining armor. He isn't worried by brutality or inequity; it's mainly child molestation and the free golf trips that get him down. With time, he is certain he and his kind--the Right Kind--will win out.

His only fear is The People.

Halloweenie

So I flew in from Toronto on October 30, unpacked my bags, did some laundry, picked up a ton of candy for Halloween the next day, and went to friends' house to polish off the two aforementioned bottles of Canadian wine.

I arrived home late and considered putting the candy in a bowl but couldn't bring myself to do it as the thought of it disappearing down a big Toad Roommate gob made me want to cry. I left the bag o'candy stashed in my closet.

I arrived at work somewhat late the next morning only to find a huge to do list waiting for me. I realized by about 5:00 that I was going to miss out on Halloween. Around 6:00, I gave in and decided it would be better to call and leave a message on the machine at home telling Toad where the candy was than to be stuck with an entire bag of bubble gum eyeballs. Yes, he'd eat a bunch, but the trick or treaters (tricks or treater?) would arrive fast and furious.

Meanwhile....

Toad Roommate turns onto the street that leads to the house looking forward to an evening of relaxing on my couch watching something stupid on my television and laughing loudly at things that are not funny. He is horrified to see more children than he has ever seen in our neighborhood. They are all in costume. Where did they all come from, scamming for free candy? Oh, ho. That doesn't seem right to him. Then, he makes an even more frightening realization. He will be the bad guy who has no candy! They will chastise him and play tricks. What can he do?

Being the clever Toad he is, he turns around and goes to a fast food establishment to get dinner and sit out the evening waiting for the terrifying children to leave.

9:55
I arrive home and find the place dark, make a fairly accurate guess at what has happened and catch the last carload of parents and kids who are about to leave.

"Wait! I have a ton of candy and worked so late I didn't get to give it out. Do you guys want one last trick or treat?"

Parents say yes and wait for me to trade bookbag for candybag. I fill up a last few ghoulish pillowcases and decorated HEB bags with as much candy as I can w/out being absurd and, of course, have a bunch left over.

I realize I really need to get the candy back into my room if I don't want untoward things to happen to it, but it's been a long day and I'm very tired. I sit on the couch and find a Halloween episode of Boston Legal. I laugh at the sight of William Shatner in a dress.

10:30
Toad Roommate arrives. He tells me what transpired and where he's been. Then he eyes the bags on the couch.

"Oh, candy." He stuffs his sticky toad fingers into the bags and draws out a great handful of candy. He asks me to fill him in on all the details of the Boston Legal that he has missed. I tell him I really just turned it on a few minutes ago and I'm not sure. He laughs loudly as William Shatner in a dress decides that James Spader in a dress might actually be sort of attractive. I can't really blame him there. He munches sweet tarts.

Absurdist Dream Sets In
I smile cruelly. Have some more sweet tarts, my sweet, I say. He munches and munches and blows up bigger and bigger before my eyes.

"Wh-what's happening to me? Oh, oh, I'm floating!" And sure enough, Toad Roommate is blowing up like a balloon and floating toward the ceiling, bob, bob, bobbing against the awful popcorn texture that I'm going to leave there forever and ever.

I open the sliding glass door and begin to shove him through.

"Oh no, no!" he says. "I'll float away!"

"Yes, my pretty, that's the idea" I say, shoving harder and harder, but he seems to be stuck. "Wait right here, silly Toad."

"Well, uh, okay, but you got more candy?"

"In good time. In good time."

I find my trusty crowbar and house-fixing tools and begin to work at the doorjam. He can take the whole squeaky thing with him by God, and I'll find a way to buy French doors. Unfortunately, I'm clumsy and unskilled and bits of plasterboard break away from the walls. I'll have to fix that later, dammit. Oh dear God! Dry rot! Please not dry rot! The cheap house siding crumbles away in my hands as I work, but I continue anyway. I will at least have this one pestilence gone! But he begins to shrink now, shrink back down to normal. He didn't eat enough to hold the spell.

"Eat more sweet tarts!" I order, fearing I'll never be rid of him

"But I don't want any. I want chocolate."

"Eat chocolate then!" I cackle.

This is much too easy. He puffs up again. Damn it all! Why didn't I shove him through first? Always doing things in the wrong order. I kick and kick at the doorjam, but it won't come loose from its moorings.

"Uh, you got any more of that chocolate?"

I kick one last time at something that looks like it could be moorings, stubbing and possibly breaking my toe. The doorframe does not move, but a large piece of siding falls off of the wall outside and crumbles on the porch.

"No!" I say, my voice infected by madness. "No, by God! It's all for me! I paid for it, it's all for me!"

I leave him where he is and step out onto the front porch, where I proceed to chew up an entire bag of bubble gum eyeballs. I begin to blow a bubble that is 2 feet, 3 feet, 6 feet wide! And it isn't done growing yet. Ten feet, 12 feet, 15 feet wide! But it won't rise up. The bubble is full of angry, bitter air and sinks down, roiling over the half-dead lawn and the garden that needs weeding and mulching.

There is no other choice. I begin to eat the chocolate. Oh, the cursed chocolate. Seratonin floods my brain and I am lifted by a lovely chemical calm. I barely notice as my body blows up to double it's proportions, triple, four times. Okay, probably triple would make me round and balloon-like, but let's just say four times.

The pounding in my toe subsides as I float up toward the calm, glowing moon. It's so soft and pleasing. So quiet and peaceful.

"Hey, you gonna eat the rest of that candy?" a loud voice belches from below. The words break my reverie as they are called out again and again, but they fade out of range, and then it is just me and the stars and an increasingly thin supply of oxygen. I look down on the earth and see all the cookie cutter rooftops, each filled with its own little monsters this night and I feel at peace, as all witches must, riding aloft on the delicious curses of All Hallows Eve.

The End

Okay, The End needs a little work, but maybe I should get back to those children's stories I'm always yammering about trying to write. Hm.

All events prior to the Absurdist Dream section are true. Names have been changed to protect the guilty, I suppose.

The house, the house, the house is on hold! And then there was Toronto.

Thanks to all who commented on my house woes. It's these little acts of support that give me strength.

I managed not to put a nail through the plumbing by the way. And I finally found just the right series of twists on the toilet connection, so it no longer leaks! Of course, I managed to unbalance the whole toilet in the process of all the fixing, so now each time someone sits on it, it sorts of rocks around and makes futile efforts to refill its full tank. Kind of fun, really. I plan to keep it that way until the seal goes and I have to call a plumber, which seems downright inevitable now. The walls, meanwhile, are a not-quite-right muted gold-ish yellow, and a not-quite-right muted goldish-yellow they will stay. No towel bar yet. I've spent all my money and can't afford the towel bar.

Is it that much better than peeling country blue wallpaper? No, my friends. No it is not.

So in other news, I just returned from Toronto where I remembered what it was to be human. Yes, I did. Chinatown, Italian town, Indian town, gaining back all the weight I lost through consumption of cheap, delicous ethnic foods, gay man town (Gay marriage is legal in Ontario, and yes, this was the rainbow street signs section of town, dominated by men), art museums, independent galleries, shopping trips to Chinese tea shops, St Lawrence Market, and Canadian mall chain stores to buy blue jeans that dyed my legs blue. Canadians, I know you're against artificial ingredients and whatnot, and I admire that. I really do. But dye setter? Is there a problem with dye setter?

I wandered into one small gallery that was showing--ay, me--a film about Texas, George Bush, the Branch Davidians, and bats flying out of caves in San Antonio. It was a Turner Prize (don't ask me) winner filmed by British artist Jeremy Deller. Yeah, I didn't know who he was either, and this website is much less informative than the gallery owner who gave me a brief and amusing/interesting history of his work. Always informative to see one's cultural/political surrounds through an outsider's lens. Come to think of it, that's how I usually feel I'm seeing them these days. So much information out there, such a fickle lens to deliver it, such strained comprehension. Mr. Deller's work was finer and more compassionate to all its participants than our media's has been for some time.

Then there was the evening of literary readings since I happened into town in the middle of the International Festival of Authors. I didn't care for most of the works of fiction that were read that evening, though I was intrigued by The Remainder and picked it up to read on the way back in the plane. Pretty interesting most of the way through, but, alas, flat at the end. I did, however, get to see a slide show by Ralph Steadman whose scattered brilliance and dry British humor cut through my mild hangover and woke me up for the long walk home. I wish I'd gotten him to sign my book instead of the Remainder guy, but Steadman was apparently somewhat belligerent about the whole process. He'd presigned a few copies which sold off even before he left, post-reading, to drink (one assumes). Of course, this made me respect him even more.

So all in all, a successful trip. I also picked up a few bottles of wine in the Canadian wine country as I drove back to Rochester, NY (conference, free plane ticket to Rochester and back, rented PT Roadster--God help me--to drive to Canada). You laugh, but there's good soil and a microclimate around Lake Ontario. The reds are still immature for most of the vineyards, but they're getting there and some of the whites have begun to garner a good reputation internationally.

Don't I sound knowledgable? Not to worry--I had to check that info through w/ a friend before I wrote it down for public consumption. The lady at the vineyard could have been BS-ing me left, right, and sideways, and I would've only caught half the misinformation. But she was good and true, as one hopes people will be. Most of the people I met in Canada were just that. Friendly, liberal, helpful. If only the winters were a tiny bit less wintery...

So enough of my good fortune. I've been back since Monday. It's Sunday and my second weekend day in the office. Most of the wine is gone, I've got slightly less than 2 more months w/ my stinky roommate and I've decided to post again instead of working. Best to spend a few moments savoring the good parts of one's life before one eases back into the crushing depression, I always feel.