Showing posts with label Catilina. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Catilina. Show all posts

Friday, September 2, 2022

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist XXXVII. Quo usque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra? Quam diu etiam furor iste tuus nos eludet? Quem ad fīnem sese effrenata iactabit audacia?*

Let's do a post that's guaranteed to somehow offend everyone. 

 Cicero denounces Cataline.*
Is politics nothing other than the art of deliberately lying?
Voltaire.

Lies, Blinders, Hypocrites

Al Franken's 2003 book, written before his stint in Congress, and before his political fall from grace.  Copyrighted image posted under the fair use exception.

Al Franken, the left wing comedian, was Minnesota's Senator from 2009 to 2018. 

My goodness, 2018 seems so long ago, it's like a different world. 

Franken tended towards biting social and political satire.  It's not everyone's cup of tea, but he was funny as a rule.  He migrated towards being disgusted, principally with the political right, and in 2009 entered the Senate.  His downfall came due to one Leeann Tweeden in an event which, while it would seem Hollywoodescque in some ways now, probably wouldn't have led where it did if it were to break as a story now. 

Tweeden was one of those figures who came up due to being exposed, literally, in Hugh Hefner's monument to juvenile male fantasy, which has now been exposed as related in every fashion to the worst sort of sexual crimes imaginable, that being the Playboy magazine rag.  Having prostituted herself photographically, she leveraged that into a sort of career, which in turn ended up with her being assigned to a tour for the troops in Afghanistan, sort of like one of those now embarrassing events memorialized in grossly exaggerated form in Apocolypse Now.  You know, big boob babe appears in front of troops, with musicians and comedians, so they can ogle over her. Franken trespassed a line that shouldn't have been crossed, by her account, in some forced kisses that were part of rehearsals.  I'm not discounting that he did it, and that this was completely wrong.  The fact she perceived them that way gives credence to it. **
[Y]ou may fool people for a time; you can fool a part of the people all the time; but you can’t fool all the people all the time.
Abraham Lincoln. 

Following that, other women came forward, as universally seems to be the case in these instances. Were the accusations true?  I don't know.  I didn't follow them at the time, and it is, I'd note, seemingly universally the case that this occurs.  Having said that, in some of these instances, such as those involving Bill Cosby, some of them definitely are pretty believable.But should Franken have resigned? I didn't think so at the time.  Yes, that made him a cad of a sort, but 2018 was already two years after the election of an individual to the Presidency who had made a completely crass comment about grabbing women's genitals.  Franken wasn't accused of that, and a large percentage of the voters, although not a majority, voted for that candidate, Donald Trump.  Soon, Republicans accused of gross sexual misconduct would disregard it, as in the case of Matt Gaetz.  Franken may have done the honorable thing, but he may have in fact been more honorable in his resignation than he needed to be, or the times called for. 

He seems to have recognized that now. This past February, Franken commented that he regretted resigning from the U.S. Senate and noted that he might run for office once again.  He probably ought to. 
So why am I bringing this up? 

One of the things that propelled Franken into office was his disgust with "lying liars". That disgust doesn't seem to exist anymore either. I've noted this before, but as a Catholic, I'm in that branch of Christianity, which is the largest, whose theologians regard lying as so serious that some theologians hold that all lies are sins, no matter how trivial.  They further hold that some lies are mortal sins. And yet one of my co-religious based his campaign for high office in the state on lies. 

You can't judge the state of another person's soul, but you can hold contempt for his conduct.  One person has already held such contempt for the conduct that she has resigned rather than serve under him.  Maybe he doesn't believe they're lies.  But that says something about the season of lies we're now in, in that case.  You can't blind yourself to lies, and you can't willfully disregard the truth in order to opt to believe in them as you want them to be true.
One idiot is one idiot. Two idiots are two idiots.  Ten thousand idiots are a poltiical party.
Kafka.

Unintentional Irony: 

A recent headline:

"Cards Against Humanity” Game Creator To Send Wyomingites’ Money To Pro-Abortion Group


The killers, in the movie, The Killers, played by Charles McGraw and William Conrad.

No kidding.  An inventor of something "against humanity" is for killing infants.

Makes sense.

Recently, the news has been just thick with irony, and ironic headlines, including additional ones in this area.

The violent complaining about violence.

An abortion clinic, which was not yet in operation, was hit by a while back by a female arsonist in Casper recently.

Now, I don't condone arson, but I don't condone being dense either.  Here's the headline that appeared after the clinic was burned.

Abortion clinic founder after fire: This world seems to be encased in violence

Really?

Abortion is the epitome of violence.  You can't cite the world getting violent as a defense to your own violence. It'd be like the Germans complaining about a concentration camp being bombed on the basis that bombing is violent.

"My goodness, Fritz, the Americans dropped a bomb inside the camp wire. . . the world sure is getting violent".

Men:  Shut up, speak up, now shut up.


Here's another abortion related headline:

Abortion Rights Advocates Say They Need More Men's Voices

For decades men have been told that abortion is none of their business and that indeed, once they withdraw, so to speak, nothing that happens is their business.  Indeed, men who are opposed to abortion are told to butt out.

You can't have it both ways.

If men have a say in the issue of abortion, they also have a say, indeed a coequal one, in whether a baby is to be aborted.  That is, the mother ought to inform the father, and he ought to get a veto over the abortion.  

That would actual recognize that this is at least a two person affair, or rather three.

That probably isn't the male voice they're seeking to elicit.

Some things never change.


In the further unintentional irony category:

Gen. Jacqueline Van Ovost
The character of war is changing. We won’t have the luxury of operating under the same conditions as yesterday.

A statement that's true about every single war fought since the first war was fought.  

D'uh.

We love the high price of petroleum, but hate the high price of gas. . . They aren't connected, are they?

And speaking of trying to have things both ways, a local politician was posting stuff like this nearly every day on Twitter:

Americans woke up today to a double whammy of record inflation and record gas prices. Gas tanks and wallets are running on empty.

@POTUS

owns this record inflation, and American families can’t afford his spin.

I've noted this before, but in Wyoming, high prices mean lots of oil field jobs.  Low prices mean no oilfield jobs.  If we want oilfield jobs, we need high prices.

With the price dropping, by the way, the same fellow hasn't congratulated President Biden on dropping the price.

Weird.

Speaking of politics. . .

Politicians need fun

Under-fire Finnish PM Sanna Marin says even politicians need fun

I'm sure that's true.

She probably actually said:

Jopa poliitikot tarvitsevat hauskaa

Marin is 36 years old, and surely at that age even politicians deserve to have fun.  

And, we would note, unlike less youthful politicians in the US she isn't spouting slop form Twitter or Twitter alternatives all the time.

Well, this year, why not?

Newly Released Sasquatch Data Shows More Wyoming People Are Bigfoot Believers

Sure, in a year in which a slight majority of Wyoming Republicans think an out of stater who has been in the state for only a decade, and who seems to have never really had to struggle independently for his place in the world would make a good Secretary of State, why not Big Foot?

On this:

Over the last 50 years or so, there have been 28 reported sightings in Wyoming of a tall, muscular creature, covered in dark hair, with long arms, leaving behind huge footprints. 

That would not be our presumptive Secretary of State.  He's only been in the state about a decade , as noted, and does not appear to be hirsute.

I've already noted an effort by the outgoing legislature to remove election responsibilities from the incoming election questioner.  It won't happen.

Elected officials, by the way, in Wyoming take this oath:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support, obey and defend the constitution of the United States, and the constitution of the state of Wyoming; that I have not knowingly violated any law related to my election or appointment, or caused it to be done by others; and that I will discharge the duties of my office with fidelity.

This would require said incoming individual not to be screwing around with elections, however, as a former legislature that was already his duty.

Which raises the amusing question of whether the Chief Justice of the Wyoming Supreme Court can refuse to swear in an oath breaker.  I.e, if we know that somebody is facially breaking the oath, thereby breaking that fidelity they've sworn to uphold, can the office be denied.

That won't happen, but it's an interesting thought.

"Am I blue. .  "

Lady Gaga says she hopes 'purple' Texas turns blue at Arlington concert

M'eh, who cares what she thinks?

Gaga, one Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, is just another yapping voice following the Madonna route of getting a good Catholic education and then forgetting what it taught so that she can get a career based on her presentation of her image, and then asking to be taken seriously.

Serious people are to be taken seriously.  You can't build up a career on silly fluff and then demand to be taken seriously, even if you are by that time actually serious.

Speaking of the serious. . . 

As she really is.

Melisa Raouf became the first woman to advance to the finals of the Miss England contest to abstain during the pageant from wearing makeup.

Good for her.  Makeup is stupid. Women should eschew it.

Poor Karen's

I think I've known two women named Karen.  One was the wife of a former partner of mine.  The couple divorced.  I don't know why, but I never knew her that well.

The other is a young Mexican American woman whose family owns a restaurant.  She's not superficial or entitled.  She's probably too serious to be insulted by the current misuse of the name Karen, an example of which is presented below.

Lauren Boebert: “Joe Biden is robbing hard working Americans to pay for Karen’s daughter’s degree in lesbian dance theory.”

What?

Boebert somehow manages to reduce serious issues to absolute nonsense. 

Why do people vote for her?

So here we have the issues of societal debt, student debt, and its impact on American society and education, a set of issues that are complicated and serious.  We also have the issue of, I guess, homosexuality, maybe, which is an issue that's never really been sorted out at the existential level  And what is Boebert saying about these heavy issues?

Who knows, but it sounds dim.

Slacker Baristas?

If you are that slacker barista who wasted seven years in college studying completely useless things, now has loans, and can’t get a job, Joe Biden just gave you 20 grand . . . Maybe you weren’t gonna vote in November and suddenly you just got 20 grand,. . . if you can get off the bong for a minute … it could drive up turnout.

So stated Ted Cruz on a videoblog of his own.

Frankly Ted tends to be an asshole.

Being a barista is a job that strikes me as being hard.  All jobs like that, waitresses, bar maids, bar tenders, servers, are hard jobs.  Usually insulting one or making life difficult for one is a sign that you've never had to do a job like that.

Indeed, people who have done jobs like that are usually very polite to others who have done jobs of that type.  My father, who hardly drank at all, had been a bar tender in college and was just such an example.  In contrast, I once worked with somebody who gave wait staff a terrible time quite frequently.  He'd never done such a job.

I wonder if Cruz has?

Anyhow, Cruz's comment is insulting to working people.

It also displays a blistering lack of knowledge on the current state of education in the U.S. A few years ago, I read of a recent law school grad working as a barista. That was during a period in which new law school grads were having a hard time finding work, which has since changed.  People taking those jobs aren't slackers, they need a job.

Cruz also went after the FBI recently.

Ted Cruz says FBI needs 'complete housecleaning' due to its 'horrific' abuse of power

We'll quote again Cicero, "Quo usque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra? Quam diu etiam furor iste tuus nos eludet? Quem ad fīnem sesw effrenata iactabit audacia?"

One person whose patience with Cruz has apparently reached its limit is Liz Cheney, or at least she is now liberated from any restraints by the results of the primary election. She tweeted:

Understanding isn’t difficult. He lacks principle and has always been a chameleon who will say anything, anytime. He thinks he’s so smart no one can see through him. Ted, we can. All of us can.
Ms. Cheney's optimism on everyone being able to see through Cruz are no doubt optimistic.  Cruz actually has fans, and he's positioning himself to run against Ron DeSantis in 2024, assuming that Trump, whom Cruz once publically scorned but now supposedly admires, doesn't run.  DeSantis, I suspect, is running no matter what.

I've never liked Cruz and when he ran for President in 2016 I was disgusted by his comments about the Federal land going to the states, "like Texas".

This isn't Texas, and we don't want it to be.

Regarding Cruz, how is it that Barrack Obama's right to run for President was questioned on the myth he was born in Kenya, while nobody seems to be ready to suggest that Cruz, who was born in Canada, isn't qualified?  Granted, I think he is, legally, but given the wacky interpretation things have been getting recently by people who seem prepared to question a normal readying of the Constitution, why not?Anyhow, he's really not qualified to run as a he's a robot.

I bet that is rare.

In Rare Move, Duke Law Professor Leaves Academia to Return to Big Law

Having said that, one of my really good law school professors did the same thing. And one of my not so good ones did as well, although I understand he was very successful in private practice.

Headline Typo

A headline in the Tribune reads:

AG Opposes holding penitentiary hearing in abortion ban case.

Penitentarily hearing?

No, the Attorney General opposed an evidentiarly hearing, not a penitentiarly hearing.

Seriously?

Biden is the most condescending president of my lifetime. He’s done nothing to unite the nation. Nothing to bring healing. Nothing to alleviate the pain millions of Americans feel everyday. He’s been a divider in chief and come November he must hear from all of us.

I don't know who they are, and I don't care.

My Twitter feed constantly suggest that I check on the latest doings of certain celebrities.

One of them is Megan Thee Stallion.  I guess she's a singer.  I'm sure her last name isn't "Stallion"

Up until recently, as I don't know who she really is and my mind was just filling in the blanks, I thought that last name was "Three Stallions".  I only noticed very recently that I was wrong.  Perhaps that shows a mindset inclined towards Native American names.

Another one is Harry Styles.  I don't know who Harry Styles is or why anyone cares what he's doing.  I could probably look that up, but I'm not going to.

Another link noted that Billie Eilish is wearing baggy shorts, having experimented briefly with appearing as an actual adult woman, her having returned to appearing like a toddler.

I don't have a really appropriate song for this topic, so this'll have to do.

Footnotes:

*The opening lines of Cicero's first speech against Cataline.  Translated, they state:

When, Catiline, do you mean to cease abusing our patience? How long is that madness of yours still to mock us? When is there to be an end of that unbridled audacity of yours, swaggering about as it does now?