Looking At The News From An Inappropriate Angle; Or, Why The World Seems Crazy

They announced today the arrest of a man in connection with threats against Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va). That's always scary stuff--along with the arrest of members of a Michigan militia who think the Antichrist serves on the local police force--but the point that caught my attention was the following passage:

[the man] also seemed to refer to a bullet found in Cantor’s office last week and said it will be placed in his head. Richmond Police had originally discounted the bullet as a stray. It is unclear whether the FBI will expand the investigation into the Richmond bullet.

Just how many stray bullets ought one expect to find around a Congressional office? Was this one of Cantor's new Tea Party buddies who got over-excited during a discussion of policy and let off his or her six shooter at random?

You look at people like the Michigan militia, the rebels in the Moscow subway bombings, the people strutting around Washington DC with their guns, urging acts of violence, and sometimes it seems like the world has all gone mad. But the world has seemed like this before.

But god, these people who tout acts of violence are such idiots. I'd love to slap some sense into them. Er, wait . . .

Seriously, who told anyone that acts of violence as a political gesture or a cry for attention was a good idea? It's never worked well for anyone's reputation since the days of Cain, by which I mean the days of Dean Cain as Superman. If you were a jerk in Metropolis who tried to get violent on some innocent citizen, you can bet that Superman would not think highly of you. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want Superman taking a dim view of my actions.

There used to be a group called the Montana Freemen in Darby, with an enclave and everything, who used to be bellicose, 'patriotic,' fighting for freedom, etc. I played soccer with one of them. I suppose they wanted attention, and I guess they got it, but we just thought they were awful human beings. Is that a reputation worth achieving through violent--or should I say terrorist--actions? Is it really worth it, getting a few moments of fame for threatening violence against someone in authority when you have no rational reason for doing so and the consequences must outweigh the rewards?

Then again, that is the question, isn't it, the question of rationality. We are not in an age of rationality, not particularly, at least not according to what I see on the TV.

The sad thing is we are trained to think of violence as an easy fix for everything. And we are trained to think of it as making us more cool.

It's a dangerous moment when you combine that socialization with the mind of someone too deluded or too angry to care that violence will make them seem like a jerk.

In The Aftermath Of Reform

I have seen some people on Facebook deny it, but the evidence is clear that "Tea Party" protesters used racial and anti-gay epithets, targeting Barney Frank and the civil rights movement figure John Lewis, among others. That doesn't exactly help them avoid looking like a party of crazy jerks. Nor does strolling around in public packing guns. Nor does the recruitment of Sarah Palin, for that matter.

But leaving aside that fringe element, and leaving aside the question of why Republican legislators were cheerleading them from the Capitol steps, fanning the flames that engulfed civilized debate--someone called Bart Stupak a "baby-killer" inside the House chamber--there is another factor that troubles me about the Tea Party.

Have you ever seen a Tea Party attendee in the news clips who didn't look like a suburban white person? That kind of limits its credibility in terms of being a 'grass-roots' movement. The haves not wanting to help the have-nots. It's hard for it not to look like that sort of picture, although I'm sure many of the Tea Party protesters aren't insane.

Yes, there is a responsibility on the part of government to spend money reasonably. But the Tea Party can't convince me that health care reform is evil if all they do is stand and scream at TV cameras like a herd of lemmings, if lemmings gave up their--probably mythological--suicidal tendencies and instead milled around screaming for no good reason because someone on TV told them to do so.

Furthermore, where is their alternative? Their credo seems to be "don't spend tax money." Where were they when the previous administration rushed into invading Iraq under shaky--and what proved to be unjustified--rationale? Getting bogged down into Iraq has devastated our economy, turning the surplus at the end of Clinton administration into a huge deficit.

In any case, all the existence of the Tea Party tells me is that people are still capable of being whipped into hysterics at the notion of change. But I already knew that.

When The Census Meets Real Life

The people conducting the census are clearly go-getters, sticklers for details. A couple weeks ago, we got a postcard advising us we would be receiving our census form in the mail shortly. Then we got the form. Then a few days after that, we got another notice reminding us that we just received the census form and that we are required by law to complete it.

We began to get the idea that maybe, just maybe, they wanted us to fill out this thing. We were still coming to terms with the idea that I have now gone from 'boyfriend' to the more statistically-precise-sounding "unmarried partner." It kind of sounds as romantic as a deflated Valentine's balloon being dragged through the gutter behind a dusty Muni bus whose driver keeps calling the elderly passengers blind because they thought he was going to stop at the actual stop instead of across the street from the actual stop before zipping on by what was, technically, the actual stop. Silly old people, thinking transit is supposed to make their life easier.

In other words, the census kind of tries to drain the romance out of living together.

Thank god we both like Sex and the City and a good cocktail. Also, we like cuddling. That restores the romance right there.

Yes, that's right. I like Sex and the City. And cuddling. And I'm damned proud of it. (I also love college basketball's March Madness, which is the other bit of March excitement, other than the census; who knew that the "Rock, Chalk, Jayhawks" of KU would become "Rocked, Shocked Jayhawks" at the hands of Northern Iowa? This loss is tragic, especially for a good friend who goes to school there--and whom I promised I would skip the clever wordplay about the loss, but honestly, I probably just promised that so she would ask me what the wordplay was--but at least it was to an Iowa school, and Iowa is, amazingly, more progressive than California in terms of gay marriage. But I digress. Sue me. It's a blog entry about the census, and I have a rough word count to aim for.)

But my point was the census, which leads me to the real point, a briefly glimpsed juxtaposition of two different worlds. At 26th and Mission, on the side of a grocery store, there is a Spanish-language poster touting the ease of completing the Census form. It has been tagged with the usual permanent-marker scribblings you see everywhere, but more interestingly, the center of the poster was covered by a handmade, roughly artistic poster calling for "Justice for Oscar Grant," the unarmed Oakland man shot and killed by BART police on New Year's last year.

I'm not a sociologist, so I won't try to analyze the significance of this juxtaposition. But it is surely striking, in a subtle way at least.