House of Eratosthenes

A Revelation

I was over reading in “The House” and I ran across the line “Republicans don’t need to broaden their base…”

and I thought to myself….

No…. they need to deepen it.

Says all that needs to be said, right there. “Broaden” the base is just plain silly. Broaden the base with what policies, exactly? With the sub-skeletal level of discussion about policies in last year’s election, it has become a practically refuted point that there is any consensus-value of any policies whatsoever. The electorate still seems reasonably sure about the Holy Man they elected President. He spoke very little about policies — less than any candidate in my lifetime, and before that. His message was, rather, what some nameless faceless anonymous busybodies would think about His policies. Republicans should make inroads into the dimwits who so passionately elected Him? How? By learning some dance moves? Our nation longs to see a bunch of sixty-year-old white guys doing the moonwalk? Make that happen and people will vote Republican in droves?

Silly.

Phil’s right. The problem is depth. Republicans were fired because they didn’t do what they were supposed to do. People think, if they’re all crooks anyway, and they’re all going to spend money and bankrupt our kids anyway, might as well get someone fun to watch. Then the time comes to do post-mortem, and nobody thinks about character. The voters voted for what’s-cool, they’re going to be doing that forever now, and so the problem is now to make these old-white-guys with hair growing out of their ears more “cool” than Barack Obama by 2012. Let’s come up with some ideas!

Count me outta that one.

On the other side of the fence —

White House Twitter Account Comes To Life
By Doug Caverly – Fri, 05/01/2009 – 15:59

Following the presidential election, Barack Obama’s Twitter account fell silent for more than two months, and some people suspected that he’d abandoned the service after achieving his goal. But the old account still sends out an occasional message, and today, an official Twitter page for the White House was also introduced.

Mind you, our nation’s leader doesn’t seem to be typing out text message abbreviations while counting to 140 himself; one tweet identifies Obama in the third person instead of the first, so don’t count on hearing his thoughts directly (or watching him waste his time).

Social Networking Twitter. The President’s on Twitter. He was on the Tonight Show a couple months ago, and now He’s tweeting.

Well, we have a Twitter account too. No MySpace and no Facebook…the latter of which is coming into widespread use among our acquaintances. Facebook operates by networking, so the question comes flying in fairly frequently about whether our Facebook page is up & ready for a link. The answer is that Twitter is about as far as we’re willing to go into this kiddie-territory. Very little of what we have to say about things fits into a “tweet,” and even with just this service, we’ve managed to make medium-to-very-poor use.

We just don’t make very good “twits.”

More than one (ostensibly) well-intentioned commenter has made the point that perhaps a blog is taking things too far all by itself. We do not blog under a nom de plume, and since we are a professional dude, perhaps we should. The principle is the same as the one by which you park your car in a garage, or out in the open, above-ground rather than in an underground bunker: If someone wants to do their damage badly enough, they’ll get it done. So we blog. And blogging is pretty much all we do out in cyberspace.

We’re live-and-let-live about it — but at the same time, it does cause some concern to us, and it should give pause to others as well, that the nation’s leading executive chooses to tweet. Why would this be a great fit? He takes the helm of a mighty nation during a devastating crisis, He has all kinds of balls to juggle, He’s supposed to be the most intelligent and curious President since perhaps Washington…exceptionally well-read…the “rep” is that everything in His noggin is so constantly up for appeal, that the die is seemingly never cast on these ideas. Not that He’s indecisive, oh no, don’t you dare ever insinuate such a thing. It’s just that where the rest of us have brain-farts, He’s just gelling His ideas into works of fine art. Laboring six days and resting on the seventh, & all that.

So if His ideas are so complex and so multi-layered — what’s up with the kiddie-stuff?

Got into a scrape with the FARK kids last night…somewhere…I dunno where. The Iraq death count is up for the month of April, and I dared to criticize Dear Leader over it. I was immediately challenged to prove my assertions by calling out an Obama change in policy. I replied that I was merely holding Obama to the same standard as His predecessor…as all of us, really. Tell the boss you’ll have something done by such-and-such a date, and, while you’re in charge, everything goes to hell and he tells you so — you don’t get to reply “Oh yeah? Prove your assertions. Point out exactly what I did to screw up.” Nope. Best case scenario, you’re given x much time to straighten things out. So I suggested they should just admit — their guy is just supposed to look cool, not foment any kind of positive “change,” they made a mistake in supporting Him and they should just admit it. Then I went to eat my dinner.

They have become parodies of themselves. Everyone else can be criticized, but say a word against anything Obama-related and they’re like Rottweilers on a ham steak. It’s impossible to exaggerate how bad this situation has become. So they’ve devolved into something two-dimensional and paper-like…rather like a stock character on Saturday Night Live. The skit practically writes itself. “That dress Michelle wore last night, made her look frumpy.” “Grrr!!!!! Oh yeah??? Prove it!!! Grrr!!! (slobber)”

All this stuff speaks to one thing: A crisis of depth. People want to be shallow right now. It’s just where they’re at. Things are not supposed to happen by such-and-such a date…anywhere. Instead, everything’s just supposed to be likable. Republicans need to really turn their whole act around, in order to be liked. Obama’s supposed to be fun to watch, not to get anything done or improve anything. Our country isn’t supposed to be secure, or prosperous, or mighty, or even think too highly of itself. It is, instead, supposed to talk to our enemies and stop alienating our allies.

This perpetual embrace of the facile somehow brands it as heresy to ask: What, exactly, do our enemies have to say to us, that a spider doesn’t have to say to a fly? And in what ways, exactly, do our allies “love” us, beyond the ways Rosie O’Donnell loves pastries?

As for the rest of us, screw up a deadline with the boss and you’ll be called in for an awkward meeting for thirty minutes or so…maybe passed over for a promotion that would’ve meant a bunch of pain-in-the-ass work anyway. But fail to be fun-to-watch, and that’s where the serious punishment begins. Your kids hate you, nobody wants to be seen with you, your wife’s getting boned by the mailman, et al. And so, in 2009, the pressure is on: Be hip and edgy, don’t worry about getting anything done.

Reminds me of some “advice” I once saw broadcast, generically, to all the guys who wanted to marry well, from a frustrated coquette who figured her own disappointments on the dating scene had more to do with deficiencies in the stock available to her, than in what she was offering to those who expressed initial interest. If I live to be a hundred and fifty, I’ll never forget this quote. She said, “everything that needs inventing has already been invented; drop out of the trade school, learn to rap and do your crunches.”

I thought at the time that this was a very sad thing, the idle ravings of someone young enough to know everything, doomed to single-motherhood at the very best. (Just imagine a marriage lasting a lifetime, with an attitude like that under the roof!) But now I think maybe she was on to something. She wanted next year’s model of “car” to be irreducible. Functionally monolithic. Pleasing to the eye, but offering nothing under the hood for inspection, maintenance or repair. You drive it around, other people look at it and admire how pretty it is, and when something needs fixing inside it you just junk the whole thing.

Kardashian All this is descriptive of every building block in our society right now. Our worthiness is in the aesthetic pleasure we bring to those who look at us. Even that has very little to do with anything deep…like manners, proper salutations, unexpected talents, knowledge of subjects, et cetera. Few among us are supposed to be doing anything. My complaint is not that our lifestyles are inflated or that some abundance of rights or opportunities has been denied us. It is, instead, that the level of comfort and security we enjoy is disconnected from the things we do…how well we do them…how long they stay done. Like we’re all Kardashians. So why would we value results? And if we don’t value results, why would we value methods? For lack of any reason to value methods, why value any deep thinking at all? Why value character? Why be deep?

In a twisted sense, our society’s extraordinary shallowness is a dementedly reassuring sign that people are paying attention. They’ve figured out they aren’t supposed to perform, and neither is anyone else. We’re all just supposed to be pleasing to the eye. Know some dance moves, “tweet” away, be witty, and that’s all that is expected of us.

Beneficial results aren’t valued, because they simply don’t matter. Everything we can acquire with ’em, we can grab just as easily without ’em. Be good looking — that is the measure of a socially functioning citizen right now…although I hesitate to call us citizens if that’s the definition. Know those dance moves. Bring visual and audible pleasure. Nothing else matters!

There is a great and tragic disappointment headed our way. Because if you want to see something that really doesn’t matter…just feast your eyes on the second-most-attractive person in a room. Sooner or later, the most radiant and ravishing among us, the hippest and edgiest, those who know the very best dance moves — will all taste of that bitter fruit of True Obsolescence. That is the gambit we’ve made.

As I mentioned yesterday, this is hardly surprising given the relentless drumbeat of “I may grow older, but I refuse to grow up” that the culture has been subjected to for the last 40 years.

What these “Children of All Ages”, in the Ringling Brothers’ phrase, have forgotten (or never considered) is best summed up by W.H. Auden:

As the poets have mournfully sung,
death takes the innocent young,
the rolling in money,
the screamingly funny,
and those who are very well hung.
- rob | 05/02/2009 @ 11:01

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Saturday, May 2nd, 2009