If The Republican Party Doesn’t Believe In Government, Why Does It Exist?

There’s a simple solution to the contradiction eating away at the heart of the GOP. Disband and secede to enclaves reserved exclusively for the extremely rich.

A Republican Enclave, recently

The Republican Party convention in Tampa this week has mined comical new depths of inane, conceptually bankrupt rhetoric, even by the already desperate standards set during George Bush’s government, which managed the impressive task of staying in power for eight years without passing a single act that genuinely improved life for the majority of people living in the United States. The folksy Florida theme of the week has been as simple as saying “Pray to God and all good things shall come to thee”. Speaker after speaker has claimed to come from ornery, humble roots, but thanks to hard work they ended up successful and, by proxy, stinking rich. And if everyone else just works as hard as these leading model Republicans, they’ll end up exactly the same, and America will be saved from the hardline socialists apparently rife throughout the Democratic Party (nope, I can’t name a single one either).

The contradiction at the core of what can barely be called a Republican ‘philosophy’ is that all this apparent success was achieved without help or handouts from the state (this in itself is a lie comprehensively nailed here by Charles Pierce). And yet, while denouncing big government, it wants to be the Party that governs all 50 states. How can that be done on a small scale? The answer, as all latter-day GOP administrations have discovered, is that it cannot. But there’s no need to let reality stop you posturing in the name of a phony but populist grassroots core belief.

In order to bring some genuine principle back to a Party so heartbreakingly starved of integrity, the Republicans should renounce its goal of being elected to political power and liquidate itself with immediate effect. In return for this magnanimous gesture, the

Thou Shalt Not Overtake A Cop

I was told at Sunday School that “God is everywhere”, and though I stopped believing that at around the same time I stopped believing anything else I was told, I learnt on a short trip to the US South last week where the phrase came from. There’s just no escaping the entity down there. “They’re commandments, not suggestions!” a reproachful sign in Mount Airy, NC, informed us. This was a sign at a petrol station. “Fear of God is the only path to wisdom!” barked an apparently very angry preacher on the radio. GDS ARMY read a number plate on a pick-up truck in Roanoake, Virginia (Great Deity in the Sky?). In a restaurant in Asheville, Tiger Woods appeared on a TV screen, prompting a man at our neighbouring table to remark, “That man’s gotten lost on the way to heaven.” Though looking at some of the women he’s been involved with, you might argue that he’s been there and back already.

Christian morals don’t necessarily mean Christian behaviour. I was idling along the I-40 just before Hickory, NC, cruising in the fast lane on a perfectly clear day, driving in a perfectly safe manner, when I passed a state trooper. Yes, I overtook a cop. Yes, I am that stupid. Though I should add that I was going at about 65.1 miles per hour in a 65 mile per hour zone, and by the time I saw him hidden in the line of traffic, it seemed too obvious to slow down and pull in behind him. So I drove carefully past, moved in ahead of him after indicating, and at that point state trooper Christiansen of F Troop, District 5, North Carolina, excitedly activated his flashing lights and pulled me over. Then he kept me and the family waiting for 25 minutes while he returned to his vehicle to write me out a ticket (I have a long surname).

It wasn’t the $25 fine that bothered me, it was the $130 “court costs” that he slapped on top. Out of state number plates are an easy revenue-raiser, because state trooper Christiansen of F Troop, District 5, North Carolina, knows as well as I do that I’m not going to show up in court on March 19 in Newton District Court, six hours drive away from home, to contest the fact that I was speeding. We all know you shouldn’t get smart with cops, because while you are undoubtedly smarter than them (even idiots like me who overtake them), they have several ways of compensating for their stupidity, most of them involving guns, electronic stun-sticks, handcuffs, lies and cold cells with hard stone floors. So it was probably good that by the time I’d taken in the enormity of the fine, he was striding back to his car, and therefore I didn’t have the opportunity to congratulate him on his fabulous detective work and his incredible, crime-cracking acuity at hunting down a hardened felon like myself, accident-free in almost 30 years of driving but surely about to cause a multiple-car pile-up if not for state trooper Christiansen’s absolutely brilliant intervention.

Or to say to him, “Goodbye state trooper Christiansen, and as we like to say in Germany, Geh ficken, Du doughnutfressendes Arschloch!” (translation: drive safely, and I hope you enjoy your lunch).

Inspirational Fiction On The Fly

My name has somehow landed on the mailing list of the Harper Collins’ imprint Avon Inspire. This means I regularly receive books that publish a line of “inspirational women’s fiction that features that which matters most: family, community, faith, and love.”

Aside from the alternative school of thought claiming “that which matters most” also covers, in no particular order, football, sex, music, the economy, the environment, proper beer, good manners and the public execution of the owners of any dogs that crap on my front lawn, it’s an odd notion that a branch of fiction must define itself as inspirational. The old eastern Bloc tried something similar with socialist-realist literature, and aside from a few texts that sneaked through due to the clot-headed censors’ failure to understand imagery, it was mostly dull. Which is what happens when you try to write a book glorifying life in a cement factory.

Most recently I have become the privileged owner of Shelley Shepard Gray’s ‘Hidden’, a novel about Anna, a “modern girl on the run” from a fiancé “with good looks and prestigious position at a top law firm,” but who’s also violent (boo!). She takes refuge with an Amish family (hurrah!) and “finds fulfilment in the Amish way of life”, which will be handy with the coming energy crisis. Yet she still has to win the trust of one family member, Henry, who has “got the raging hots for her, but is tortured by sexual anguish suppressed by a stringent and quite frankly unsustainable moral code.” Okay, I made that last bit up. The book’s big question, according to the press release, is: “Can he accept that Anna may truly be his soulmate?”

Given that this is inspirational fiction, my guess is that he will, though not without a 200-page struggle. Ah what the heck, I can’t wait. Let’s turn to page 201 (of 202): “Very slowly, very deliberately, Henry curved an arm around her and pulled her close.” Whoooargh Henry, you sly old dog! Is this how the author wants to “showcase her Christian ideals”, as the publicity blurb states? With this filthy, depraved groping? The book ends with them both contemplating a rabbit in a field (“Look, she whispered to Henry, to the man…who would one day be her husband. Another rabbit.”). And it’s not the rabbit of recession I referred to in my last blog entry, but an inspirational, hopping, fertile, action-ready rabbit full of the jumping joys of spring. At least I bet that’s Henry’s view (why didn’t she just call him Horny and be done with it?).

Aside from the commercial angle -- ‘Hidden’ sells at a meta-spiritual $12.95 -- you might ask what is the purpose of literature that so clearly wears its heart on its jacket, with closure as comforting for its readers as a talking bearded Jesus doll. I unwittingly found the answer the other day when a noisome bluebottle landed on my computer screen. The nearest item to hand was ‘Hidden’, which did a messily efficient job of flattening the insect, with the operation concluded by a swift mopping up of its guts using a moist tissue. The book, alas, is sullied and will soon be sent for recycling.

One of the book’s “questions for discussion” says that it is only when the book’s characters “put their futures in the Lord’s hands that they find joy,” asking, “When has following God’s path brought you success?” I played God with that irritating (and undoubtedly evil) fly, consequently reaching a state of peace and contentment due to the absence of its buzzing and dive-bombing. It seems the mysterious delivery of ‘Hidden’ into my post-box was all part of A Plan. Count me in as one of the truly inspired.

Lucky Lightning

Last Saturday night a storm came through our neighbourhood. A huge tree was struck by lightning and landed right next to a house a couple of streets away. The house suffered barely a scratch.

Does that make the inhabitants of the house lucky or unlucky? It was good luck that the tree missed their house. But surely it was bad luck that the lightning struck a massive tree right in their garden and no one else's. And that next day they had to call and pay for a timber crew that spent two days cutting up the tree and removing it.

The inhabitants might still have considered themselves lucky had the tree actually landed on their house, but they’d been out at the time. Or if they’d been sheltering in the basement. On the other hand, they might have considered themselves unlucky that half their house had been destroyed. Ultimately, though, most of us would think ourselves lucky that we were still alive, regardless of any destruction or the inconvenience of having lumberjacks occupy our garden.

Why then does someone like myself, living a couple of streets away, not consider himself lucky that the tree struck by lightning in my neighbourhood fell nowhere near to my house? Why am I not more relieved than my neighbour who’s gone through a massive cut-up and clean-up operation the past few days? Why am I not thanking God (or the Gods) that he or she or they sent that lightning bolt through a tree several hundred yards away, instead of the one in my back garden?

It's a different question, however, to consider getting missed by lightning as a piece of good luck, as opposed to having a narrow escape from an act of divine providence. God did not smite the tree upon your house because he is merciful, one might say. To me, though, it’s just further proof that he doesn’t exist. Otherwise, seeing as he was in the neighbourhood anyway, he’d have sent a stern message to the recalcitrant atheist via thunder, lightning and the crash of heavy wood. Look what I can do, infidel! Instead he apparently chose to warn an old couple who always keep a very neat garden (I suppose it’s possible that God really really hates very neat gardens. Or that they have several bodies buried under their flower beds and God reckons it's about time they fessed up).

You often read about people who had near-death experiences saying that they prayed to be saved, and now they are hugely grateful to God that they’ve been spared. To me, that’s strange. If you believe in God, and you think you’re about to die, shouldn’t you be happy you’re about to meet this entity you credit with creating the world and the universe? I’d be just dying to ask, “Dude, how the hell did you make the nudibranch and the twelve-wired bird of paradise?”

And second, if believers think that God controls their destiny, why do they think that God put them through this near-death experience? What sort of God gets a kick out of scaring the shit out of a nice old couple? A psychotic prankster? If that’s the case, perhaps eternity will turn out to be more entertaining than I thought. A massive amphitheatre with a giant screen where we can watch God toy with mankind and we all get to vote on typhoon, tornado or tsunami.

If not, we’re back to plain old good and bad luck.

An Easy Way To Bring About World Peace

Ever since the anti-war rally to the Pentagon car park on a nut-freezing Saturday back in March, I’ve been haunted by two things. First, the looks of unbridled contempt and hatred from the pro-war counter-protesters. Second, by one of their signs, which read, “Fight them over there, not over here.”

I’ve got a better idea. If the legions of thick-necked, peacenik-hating, patriotic, steely-eyed hardmen are gung-ho enough about this war to show up and heckle as traitors those of us who are against it, why not let them just fight it? Over here, in America. What are they scared of?

Here’s how we could bring it on.

The hinterland rednecks have more in common with al Qaeda than they think. They’re both deeply conservative, and they both love killing people they disagree with, usually in the name of a non-existent God they believe will reward them for their combative endeavors. So jet all those jihad-loving enthusiasts professing to want to kill Americans over here (presuming they can resist the impulse to hijack the plane), and let them slug it out with those pro-war Americans so quick to back the “war on terror”, but not so keen they’re actually over in the Middle East to prosecute it.

There’s a huge open space at Gettysburg ready for the showdown. Simply arm both sides to the teeth, place them at opposite ends of the battlefield, blow a whistle and let the hand-to-hand killing commence. The alluring sight of fat, leather-clad bikers roaring towards their robe-wearing counterparts-in-hate could be broadcast with commentary from retired generals on the ESPN Xtreme Sports Channel (“Gettysburg 2 – yet again, the war to end them all!”). Sign up sponsors too. “This portion of the slaughter is brought to you by the National Rifle Association,” would make so much sense, not to mention cash.

The battle continues until one side has killed every one of its opponents. There’s no surrender, because that’s peacenik talk. The winners are handed a placard that reads, “Congratulations, you have won the Holy War!” They will be allowed to retire to the Aleutian Islands on a no-exit visa.

Final result: Peace. There will be no more pro-war rednecks, and no more pro-jihad terrorists. No more calls from South Dakota to back a war that’s thousands of miles away, and no more self-destructing scum left to blow themselves up in a crowded market. As all the self-declared warriors of God think they’re off to their respective heavens anyway, they’ll be happy to die as well. Everyone’s a winner.

This prototype combat scenario can be used in all arenas where two parties believe the best way forward is through violence. With reactionary pro-war philosophies nullified, the path for progressive thought is cleared at last, and the human race gets to continue evolving after all.

This Solution for World Peace is brought to you by an unread blog. You’re most welcome.

The Land Of Family Fun

I must have done something very bad in a previous life, because I’ve ended up in hell. It’s called the Caesars Brookdale Resort. It is “the land of family fun”.

On the drive up here yesterday we passed a church somewhere in Pennsylvania with the sign “Act today like you’ll be meeting God tomorrow.” They should add: “Otherwise we’ll make you sit through the Maisie Hills Band at dinner-time.”

Maisie (not her real name) is in her 50s, and while we digested the sub-ordinary stodge that the resort is passing off as nutrition (it’s an ‘all-inclusive deal’, otherwise known as No Escape), we were subjected to her mid-life interpretations of songs old and new, plus banter in between numbers. Come on dad, get up and dance! Oh look, there’s a bloke in the audience looks like Justin Timberlake! As my ten-year-old daughter, who recently discovered The Joys of Sarcasm, would say: Ha. Ha. Ha.

We must be the only family in America insane enough to leave Washington DC on a mild and sunny day, after a month of freezing, ball-biting weather, and consciously drive northwards for four hours, back to the cold and the snow, and all for the pleasure of freezing cross winds, Formica décor, getting elbowed away from the salad buffet by alternatively sized natives, and tortuous small talk with the family from Long Island placed at our table to foster exciting new friendships.

Our apartment was designed with the swinging playboy demographic in mind rather than the suburban family of four. In the master bedroom there’s a jacuzzi, and a ceiling mirror over the bed. The wife and I could stick the kids in front of the tv, close the door, run a bath, crack open the bubbly, put on some James Last, and party like it’s 1972. In theory. In practice we all four lie on the bed and stare up at our reflections, making faces. Would I really like to watch myself fucking? I’ll keep you posted (maybe).

There is an actual reason we’re here, rather than staying at home and burning a pile of hundred dollar notes: the rest of the family is skiing, a sport I reluctantly took up and gave up ten years ago after falling down a Swiss mountainside and ramming my knee into my head during a beginner’s course I’d been coerced into taking.

The wife booked that, as she booked this. When I heard the price we were paying, I imagined a ‘resort’ in the sense of something luxury, where you’re pampered a little, and the quietly devoted waiters bring you complementary cocktails by the side of a vast and peaceful indoor pool. Perhaps a pianist plays Bach in the marbled foyer, and all kids except my own are banned.

If I act today in such a way that I get to meet God tomorrow, I’ll ask him if that’s the kind of set-up you get for good behaviour.