Common Sense	Common Sense Archive

I hope I'm not alone in this sentiment. But I cannot get away from the idea that the immediate and large worlds I live in is looney-tunes. Actually, I shouldn't drag Looney-Tunes into this morass as they were a fine cartoon factory, and still may be, giving us the iconic Bugs Bunny, as much a gay icon as Batman and Robin, a pair of cartoons who formatted, or at lest provided a service to, my nascent sexual ambitions, when young. And, I suspect, to many others. Blessings on their creators.

Doesn't it seem the mean-spirited, the wicked, and the deranged are running the show these days? And given a free pass by those who are rumored to occupy the positions which are to offer checks and balances? Let's start at the top, as the ad for our local Blaine's Hair School used to famously advertise. I watch with wonder and constant surprise how Our Dear Leader and his clique confront their elected and appointed duties. It's worse than Nixxon and his gang, but at least then there were public advocates and members of the Fourth Estate tailing them, and brought that story to a satisfying conclusion. Will the same happen now?

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There's talk that the gay marriage "controversy," and the many states that had constitutional changes on their ballots regarding this issue, brought out the bible vote and tipped the election. I simply assume that the national election last year, like the one before it, was stolen, this time in many sly and planned ways, like not having enough voting stations in Kent and Oberlin, Ohio, for example, when you know voters in Cincinnati-- the most right-wing city in the USA-- were fully serviced. The game is rigged and the gang that "won" thinks they are on a roll. They may have a window of opportunity. Attacking PBS. Attacking same-sex couples. Attacking sex education. Gutting Social Security. Banning condom use. Gutting educational programs.

Grover Norquist, a high-profile personality among this clique, was not dainty when he was asked what his wing's goal was. He wanted to abolish the 20th century, noting that, to his point of view, the USA was at its best in the administration of William McKinley. I think Norquist actually said that 1899 was America's best year, which gives you perspective on such a person. Throw out Theodore Roosevelt. Throw out Wilson (which half of me wants to anyway). Expunge FDR and all his successors. Abolish unions. Bring back child labor. Take pictures of white crowds laughing at black lynchings in the southland. Ban books. Close down theaters. Blacklist dissidents. It is a particular vision of my country and the society in which I reside. I think the agenda of those to whom I'm referring is pretty clear and it hasn't changed much. But the chutzpah! I still am asea at how we arrived at this configuration of craziness. I was formatted by the culture of the 1960s and 1970s, and it wasn't supposed to come to this.

But now that these gangsters and clowns have gotten to the crown of the pole and grab the microphones, what is their top story? Gay marriage. I only sample the public media on a daily basis. But the gas from the gassers has high octane and three lungs and goes 24/7. What is the fuss about?

I, of course, prefer some sort of domestic partnerships. One of my favorite authors, Edmund White, was on the radio-- T. Gross's chat show on NPR (White only got a half hour, if even that, should have had an hour, but the media world doesn't work that way)-- and went into the gay marriage controversy and said that with his years of living in Paris and, while there, the French government's decision to go with Domestic Partnerships made sense to him because it was more inclusive, same-sexers being a rather small minority that this way many other domestic relationships would be allowed access to state and work benefits.

The French try to be sensible. They often succeed. In our blue and red states, we still haven't figured out how to provide health care to our citizens-- many of them voters, who get sick too. This rich society has yet to figure out how to make the public education systems in its various states equitable. The right-wingers enjoy the luxury of bashing minorities and hitting on those issues which employ the uglier aspects of majoritarianism, endemic to our winner-take-all political and economic culture.

As they sow, so shall they reap-- that's my wish.

When I was younger, I would sometimes wish a person or persons ill. This was a failing on my part, youthful hubris. I no longer engage in such emotional investment. There is still the pleasure, in what the ancient Greeks taught us, of watching those in august venues overreaching and meeting the fates appropriate to what they have done. It doesn't always happen, but so satisfying when the gods actually look down and run the script.

Author Profile:  Mitzel
	Mitzel was a founding member of the Fag Rag collective, and has been a Guide columnist since 1986. He manages Calamus Books near Boston's South Station.
	Email:	mitzel@calamusbooks.com
	Website:	calamusbooks.com