Columbus Day 2010

I have never worked at a bank, or lived in the Northeast, so Columbus Day is just some print on a calendar to me, but Al Capone used to celebrate it enthusiastically, I hear. In October of 1492, the intrepid explorer Cristoforo Colombo made landfall somewhere in what is now the Bahamas, only days ahead of starvation, dehydration and mutiny. The naively friendly Arawaks hosted Columbus and his men for a few weeks before he moved on to Cuba and Hispaniola. The ultimate result was that the Europeans bartered smallpox for syphilis and the Native Americans were largely doomed. I don’t think America and Europe have yet come to terms with the enormity of the devastation brought by European colonization and America’s manifest destiny, but I feel relatively certain that if the victims of this historical inevitability had been white, there would be a few more memorials for the certainly tens of millions of people who eventually died as a direct result of the voyages of Columbus and his successors.

Elsewhere, Carl Palidino, the Republican/Nativist Party candidate for Governor of New York recently decried the “brainwashing” of children to accept homosexuality as being “equally valid”. There are a few interesting subtexts to Mr. Palidino’s lamentation, the first being the use of the term “brainwashing”. Apparently Mr. Palidino feels that if I attempt to pass my value system to my children, they are being brainwashed; unless, perhaps, he happens to share those values, which is admittedly unlikely. Maybe Mr. Palidino was only objecting to societal institutions, such as schools, engaging in the practice of promoting open-mindedness about sexual identity issues, in which case he should also bemoan the schools being used as a platform for promoting other values, but, here again, the litmus test appears to be whether he personally agrees with what is being taught. I can respect any honestly held belief as a matter of conscience, but no one should have the power decide which ideas have official sanction and which don’t. Mr. Palidino is a scary fellow. He might even be a Douchebag. Anyway, allowing for the possibility that human society is complex and that people are diverse and everything is not black and white is not brainwashing where I come from; it’s common sense.

And before I absent-mindedly wander off to some other subject, why is the question of the “legitimacy” of homosexuality in America not seen and discussed as the purely religious issue that it is. If a state legislature somewhere was debating a law about whether you could eat pork or work on the Sabbath, nobody would have any doubt that it was simply an attempt to impose religious orthodoxy on people who had already consciously rejected it. Of course, in some states that might make it more popular, but the anti-Gay forces in America are nothing more than Old Testament literalists trying to force their beliefs on the nation though the power of government. How can this be ok? I realize it’s nothing new; just ask anybody in Georgia wanting to buy a case of beer on Sunday, but these “social conservatives” are simply the Spanish Inquisition in sheep’s clothing. I’m not saying that they don’t truly believe that they are doing what’s right; on the contrary, that’s what makes them so dangerous, but as a nation we have already crossed this bridge and the issue is settled; we are guided by Constitutional principles, not partisan religious ones.

I got some hostile feedback from my immediately previous blog where it turned out all the weekly Douchebags were somehow associated with the Republican Party. It was suggested to me that I was not fairly addressing the objectionability of certain persons on the more Liberal end of the political spectrum. I accept this criticism as completely valid and will attempt to do better in the future. The Obama Administration in general is really making me question my anti-senile old man from Arizona vote in 2008. I’m too tired to provide a complete litany of failings, but they all pretty much fall into the category of being too scared of the Republicans and too desirous of keeping the support of Wall Street, which may amount to about the same thing. We voted for a revolution and got a surrender. I generally leave the Democrats alone in my attempts at sarcastic critique, mostly because they are so helpless. The Republicans are a much more serious threat to liberty than any Democratic regime could ever be, simply and solely because they have a greater power of organization and party loyalty. I have repeated this mantra incessantly; I fear the Republicans and pity the Democrats and generally respect neither, and the Tea Party patriots don’t even get an honorable mention, except in the Weekly Douchebag Roundup.

The Mid-Term elections are just about three weeks away. Polling data, as usual, is contradictory and ever-changing. It does seem clear that there is something of a tendency towards replacing the incompetent with the insane, but we will have to await election night to see if this is sustained. Americans usually talk a lot of nonsense and then go with the familiar, especially in politics, but this may be a new, post-apocalyptical political paradigm where all bets are off. People may just be angry enough with the status quo to actually put people like Sharon Angle in the Senate, for example, but the problem is that it’s sending a message that carries a six year contract with it. I am truly at a loss to identify a path to resolution of this nation’s problems; other than the one President Obama tricked me with, which involved ending useless war, investing in education and research, reforming health insurance, treating all citizens with respect and taking real measures to ensure LONG-TERM, sustainable physical solvency. Apparently none of that stuff is important anymore. Obama may find himself on the Douchebag list if he doesn’t straighten up.

And finally, this is Breast Cancer Awareness month in the United States. Each year somewhere around 40,000 women die of breast cancer in the United States. While the incidence of breast cancer has risen slightly since 1975, the death rate has fallen significantly, especially for Caucasian women. This would tend to indicate that medical progress is being made in fighting the disease. Science, not superstition, prayer or voodoo, is prevailing, albeit agonizingly slowly, against our bad genes and bad habits, and it is likely that if we put the same effort and resources into preserving life that we put into destroying it, many, many more diseases could be cured and prevented. Since 1971, the American Cancer Society has funded almost $390 million in breast cancer research. Just for reference, the United States is spending approximately the same amount in 2010 alone for building the Stryker Light Armored Vehicle, which I guess we need to fight lightly armored enemies. God knows we are making enough of them.

My mother died from breast cancer on December 2, 1972. She had a radical mastectomy, months of debilitating radiation therapy, and further surgery to remove lymph nodes where the cancer had spread. She spent the last weeks of her life in a morphine induced stupor and at the end barely recognized her own children, which may have been a blessing for all of us. My mother once washed my older brother’s mouth out with soap for using the “N” word, in Georgia, in the 1960’s. She would unwisely pick up hitchhikers because she said they might be “unfortunates”; she couldn’t stand Richard Nixon. I still miss her and I understand the sorrow and anger of those who are prematurely deprived of their loved ones, by whatever cause. This is why I despise the bringers of death and destruction, whatever flag they may wave. Stop the wars; spend the money on destroying misery instead and quit cynically manipulating the ignorant and the frightened and the foolish. Grow up, damn you. My mother has a bar of soap with your name on it.