There's really not a lot of Saturnalia-themed wallpapers via the Google search engine. I'm counting about... four, maybe six Saturnalia themes.
This is sad.
If our so-called War On Christmas is going to live up to Fox Not-News' bizarre standards, we're gonna need more Saturnalia stuff online in order to cheese off the O'Reillys of the world. We need to rile them up sufficiently so WE can go around and declare those insufferable far right so-called "values" people are waging a War On Saturnalia. See how they like it when the tables are turned...
Otherwise this will be a relatively sad and quiet holiday season focused on presents shopping, wrapping, getting the halls decorated fa-la-la-la-laaa.
IO SATURNALIA! It shall be our battle cry this festive month.
Unless you're into that whole Mithras thing. Yeah, then we're gonna need to coordinate our efforts and such.
Prepare for the horror that is... creamy Asparagus dishes! Artichokes! Swedish meatballs! ...no, seriously, some people do meatballs for Thanksgiving. Why? I mean, stick to the traditional meats like turkey, or honey ham, or fish. Fish is legal, it's a Pilgrim staple... ya, ya...
So anyhoo, for the benefit of the seven people who follow this blog, here's the keystone to our holiday festivity:
Now, about the proper way to sacrifice your turkey to the pagan Gods of the Harvest... First, lay out a table in a geometric pattern with silver stabbing weapons and ceramic plates in which the ritual offerings can be placed. Light some scented harvest-themed candles in the center of the table... Have the participants sit within an order decided by rank and by age... Bring forth the SACRIFICE! Offer a prayer to the appropriate deity of the house... AND BEGIN THE CUTTING...!
Multiple sacrifices AKA seconds may be granted depending on the satisfaction of the house deity.
TONIGHT! THERE WILL BE SATED GODS. ALL WILL BE WELL WITHIN THE PANTHEON OF DEITIES.
Also, it's the one-year anniversary of the Butt Fumble. Sometimes, we must wonder which Gods the Jets displeased...
Next up, SATURNALIA! I need more computer desktop wallpapers for Saturnalia, graphics artists! NOW...
Or is that Pax Reagana? Damn it, I've lost my Latin skills! I told you I'm bad with languages... got a hard enough time keeping up with Anglish...
Basically I'm talking about the Reagan Era, the moment when Ronald Reagan became President.
There are moments in American history where the flow of history - much like a mighty river - shifts direction and the whole landscape changes. Usually wars - the American Revolution, Mexican-American, Civil War, World War II (but not necessarily the first one), Vietnam, the War on Terror - and sometimes economic disasters - the Great Depression, the Great Recession - but rarely an election of a political leader. Oh, Lincoln's election was pivotal, but that was part of the Civil War, sort of co-sponsoring the national shift from slavery to emancipation and states' rights to federalism. No, I'm talking about election of the likes of Andrew Jackson, a forceful personality who basically willed an entire nation's political and economic structure to his whims. There's a reason the 1830s-1840s is called the Age of Jackson (or Jacksonian Democracy).
Another such election was Reagan's. Which is slightly ironic in that Reagan's personality was not forceful like Jackson's, nor was he Active like Lincoln. In his Presidential Character book, James David Barber designated Reagan as a Passive-Positive, and for good reasons. Pass-Pos Presidents don't tend to leave a major impact on history, and yet pretty much the Eighties and even the Nineties could be considered the Reagan Era. We're still living (2013) in the aftermath of that era, so much that the Republican Party still pursues the policies of that era out of some fevered nostalgic hope to reclaim the past.
What Reagan brought to his tenure as President was an affable charm. It was that part of him that made him a relatively successful movie actor of the Thirties and Forties. This made him as a political figure more an entertainer than enlightener, but for him it worked. To quote Barber:
By the time Reagan reached the stage of the White House, he had more experience pleasing audiences than any American politician since William Jennings Bryan... And not since Harding had a happy-talk President's character and style fit together so nicely with the public's yearning for positive thinking in politics. The President had a terrific sense of humor, which he exercised regularly in what started out to be formal prep sessions by his staff... (p.256)
Reagan's nickname became The Great Communicator. No other President could pull off a bon mot, a one-liner, a poetic reading, a shaggy dog tale, and a comeback like he could.
With this persona in play, Reagan could be on the one hand ruthlessly micromanaged by his own staff - like an actor with an entourage handling all the chores, with a chief of staff doubling as publicity agent and gatekeeper to the media - and on the other perform flawlessly at staged photo-ops and televised national addresses. With control of the persona, there was control of the message.
It is through that manipulation of Reagan's image that an ambitious political agenda could be unleashed. Reagan's rise to power - from actor to governor of California to President - came through his association to social and economic conservatism, as part of the Goldwater movement of limited federalism. He challenged Ford for the 1976 primaries coming from the Far Right vs. Ford's pragmatic moderate platform, and was the bannerman for the conservatives once more in 1980. Reagan's victory, along with Republicans winning control of the Senate, was viewed as a shift in the national mood away from the FDR-to-LBJ liberalism.
Yet appearances were modestly deceiving. For all of the conservatives' hopes of pushing massive legislative changes, very little went in the Far Right's favor. The massive tax cut Reagan achieved in 1981 proved disastrous and Reagan quickly switched gears on that, raising taxes by 1983 to help pay off the increased deficits those cuts created. During his second term, Reagan pushed for and got an Income Tax reform bill in an attempt to straighten out and simplify a bloated tax code. Social welfare programs saw some cuts but for the most part remained intact, due to a Democratic House unwilling to bend on those programs. As a Passive-Positive, Reagan was amenable to compromise and working with Democratic leadership (Tip O'Neill especially) to get deals done.
The biggest difference between rhetoric and reality for the Reagan administration was the Cold War. Reagan came into office in 1980 as a kind of "cowboy", presenting himself as a Cold War Warrior standing up against the Evil Empire of the Soviet Union: yes, this is an actor relying on movies like Star Wars to help explain his world-view. It was this persona that pursued a massive arms build-up that forced the Soviets to spend beyond their own means. Yet it was another movie The Day After, about a nuclear holocaust, that woke Reagan up to the fact that a nuclear war was unwinnable, and he seriously began pursuing an arms limitation treaty with the Soviets after having spent the 1980 campaign decrying such negotiations during the Carter years. As a result, Reagan is the President who achieved getting a massive arms reduction treaty passed. Both the massive defense spending and the nuclear arms reductions - a one-two punch - began the late Eighties dominoes of events leading to the end of the Cold War in 1991.
Reagan received a lot of criticism from the Far Right for failing to pursue their objectives - an end of the New Deal policies, pursuing an honest-to-God war against Communism - and yet today he's still the patron saint of the Far Right, of the Republican Party as a whole. Because of two things: First, Reagan's administration is the only administration of the last eighty years the Far Right can accept (can't accept Bush the Elder or Ford or Eisenhower as they were too "moderate", can't accept Bush the Lesser considering all the disasters he presided over, and can't accept Nixon's because yeah Watergate); and Second, Reagan did achieve making hard conservative values acceptable to the mainstream consensus. Such as deregulation of businesses, downsizing of government, limiting abortion access, giving politically-active religious groups more political prestige, and other social conservative issues.
It's that particular agenda that defines the Reagan era. It's one of the core elements of the modern Republican agenda - to deregulate everything, to privatize everything, to shrink the federal government down to where Grover Norquist can drown it in his bathtub, to insert conservative religious values everywhere - that we live with and fight against to this day.
And as a Third point: Reagan's Affability, his popularity, remains untouched even to this day. Although like other Passive-Positives he filled his administration with untrustworthy underlings - Reagan presided over a scandal-filled administration that produced a Savings And Loan fiscal crisis when that sector was deregulated; and the Iran-Contra Affair that saw illegal arms deals to Iranians to free Middle East hostages, with the funds illegally going to support Nicaragua Contra rebels - Reagan himself remained untouched by most of the scandals. And despite the fiscal damage of the S&L crisis, the American economy remained churning and most Americans didn't seem to care.
Reagan's legacy remains: the idea of shrinking the federal government's role in the lives of Americans (and in the deregulation of billion-plus corporate industries) remains potent even as the Reagan era itself has technically ended. Not many Passive-Positives can claim such a legacy.
Next Up: Bush the Elder. There's not really anything fancy I can say about that.
ADDED BELOW I'm of the belief that you need to ask an American just three questions to ever figure out exactly who that person is: ask about the American's name; ask about what he/she does for a living; and ask what he/she thinks happened to JFK in Dallas Nov. 22 1963...
The assassination of John Kennedy remains one of the most traumatic moments in American history. Up there with the Civil War, Pearl Harbor, 9/11 attacks, and the rollout of New Coke.
As a librarian I can tell you the importance of a historical event by the number of books filling up the shelves. Civil War books, usually the biggest section of the 900s (DDC) alone can take up a full shelf (with six packed rows of books) in a small library, and take up an entire stack of shelves in a big library.
The Kennedy assassination is getting up there in the number of books written. It's been the cornerstone of conspiracy thought ever since the Warren Report came out and people hooked onto certain flaws found in it. It's been 50 years of arguing over the assassination, over the report, over how history got screwed (the number of What If plotlines and time-travel-to-save-JFK stories are pretty numerous).
For myself, I grew up in the shadow of the Sixties, a young child of the Seventies and a teen of the Eighties. I was engulfed with the conspiracy talk ever since we got to this part of U.S. history in the classroom. Having grown up reading non-fiction books about mysteries – UFOs, witchcraft, ghosts, Bigfoot, the Bermuda Triangle – the allure of conspiracy about JFK's death was pretty irresistible.
So. Shall we play a game of Whodunnit and argue over the various conspiracies over who shot JFK?
Lone Gunman
The official take. Oswald, ex-Marine who defected to Russia and returned disillusioned, acts alone in the planning of the assassination and is the only one pulling the trigger. He kills a police officer while fleeing on foot before getting captured in a movie theater. Oswald himself is killed by a lone gunman, a paranoid club owner Jack Ruby.
Why this theory works: all the official evidence points this way. What is known of Oswald fits into the psych profile of other assassins. There are other parts of Oswald's activities before the assassination – an attempted shooting of a retired right-wing general – that points to a man desperate to prove himself via Propaganda of the Deed.
Why this theory falls apart: the “official evidence” could have been manipulated: there have been enough complaints about the Warren Report having errors and unfinished tangents deserving of investigation to make that report suspect. While Oswald fits the profile of an assassin, he's unique among all of the other shooters and would-be assailants in that he refused to take credit. He's the only one on record saying he didn't do it, and that he was a “patsy”. Having Oswald killed prevents any truth of his actions from getting out. Considering the number of political enemies Kennedy acquired over the years, having some nobody be the one killing him just doesn't seem kosher.
The Russians/Commies Did It
The first possibility, considering we were at the height of the Cold War. Kennedy had just stared down the Russians from putting nuclear warheads in Cuba, and the Berlin Wall had just gone up. Eliminating a political opponent wouldn't be out of the question for the KGB.
Why this theory works: Oswald had defected to the USSR and had just returned, reportedly kicked out by a Soviet Union that found him useless. He could have been conditioned or encouraged by his Soviet handlers to pull the trigger on Kennedy.
Why this theory doesn't work: If this were true, we'd have started launching nukes at the Soviets inside of thirty minutes of finding out. This would have been such an act of aggression that war would be the only logical response. The Soviets may have been cunning, but they weren't crazy. They could deal with Kennedy, and they didn't need to kill him.
The Castro Cubans Did It
Independently of their Soviet allies. Castro had been surviving attempts on his life and was probably pissed off enough to turn the tables. Oswald had been positioning himself as a fan of communist Cuba, and may have shot Kennedy to curry favor with Castro.
Why this theory works: It actually doesn't. Because...
Why this theory doesn't work: There has never been any conclusive proof that Castro or Cuban communists were in contact with Oswald. The FBI and CIA made serious efforts to find one, but never could (the possibility of Oswald going to the Cuban embassy in Mexico is disputed with the fact that the documented photos of someone claiming to be Oswald doesn't match the real thing). Castro pulling something like this without the knowledge of the Soviets is unlikely; and if found out would have forced Soviet Russia to either cut ties to Cuba while the US invaded out of revenge, or else sign on to nuclear Armageddon.
The Anti-Castro Cubans Did It
While there were a lot of people angry at Kennedy, none of them were as driven as the exiled Cuban community. They considered themselves twice betrayed: first when JFK refused to provide air support for the failed Bay of Pigs, second when JFK refused to invade Cuba over the missile crisis. It hurt that Kennedy's deal with Khrushchev included a full stop to all covert attempts to overthrow Castro.
Why this theory works: As noted, these guys were PISSED at Kennedy. That fateful trip through the southern states originally had Kennedy stopping in Miami (the center of anti-Castro activity), but that was canceled when it was deemed security wouldn't be tight enough. Given some of the evidence of Oswald being involved with some elements of the anti-Castro covert ops, it's possible Oswald got recruited by a small band to assist either directly or indirectly with the shooting. As part of of this conspiracy theory, they then get Ruby to shoot Oswald to cover their tracks.
Why this theory doesn't work: There's little evidence that the anti-Castro Cubans had this amount of power to pull of an assassination like this. Or have this much control over the investigation. If it ever got out that the anti-Castro groups killed our President, the American people would have turned against the anti-Castro crowds and their government handlers like the CIA. The only way this theory works is if you add it to the larger conspiracy theory such as...
The CIA/FBI/Shadow Government Did It
What quickly became the most prominent theory among conspiracy buffs. Somehow, Kennedy was a threat to their covert operations and overt attempts at starting World War III. It's common knowledge nowadays that the Joint Chiefs and other key government officials viewed Kennedy as soft on Communism (it was more that Kennedy refused to ignite a nuclear war, something the war-hawks viewed as survivable). Kennedy had threatened to dismantle the CIA after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, blaming them for misleading him with false intel.
Why this theory works: If Kennedy had enemies within the government, it was most likely here. The heads of the CIA and FBI both disliked JFK along with the upper echelon of the military. The CIA could have been in contact with Oswald as part of the theory that Oswald was an attempt to infiltrate the Soviet Union. The FBI had tabs on Oswald right up to the assassination. And the FBI basically had control of the whole investigation that created the Warren Report, meaning they could hide any incriminating evidence they didn't like.
Why this theory doesn't work: a conspiracy of this size and scope would have had to involve hundreds of people through various agencies, any one of whom could have slipped up on a detail or betray the secrecy in some fashion. Having this covert group pull off a very public assassination would have drawn too bright a light on their activities. And this shadow government would have had other means of killing Kennedy – through poisoning to make it look like a natural death. How many people knew about Kennedy's Addison's Disease? Did his Vice-President know...?
Johnson Did It
As part of the government conspiracy theory, where the CIA and FBI didn't do it, but Vice-President Johnson did and the government merely helped cover it up. There'd been stories that Kennedy was thinking of dropping LBJ from the ticket in 1964, that Johnson's ties to a crooked land developer was the key reason, although the Kennedys (including Bobby, Jack's confidant) and Johnson didn't get along very much to begin with. As Johnson desired the Presidency, if he got booted off the ticket that'd be the end of that hope, so killing Kennedy to get promoted sounds like motive...
Why this theory works: It really doesn't. Because...
Why this theory doesn't work: There's no direct or indirect link between Johnson, nor Johnson's people to Oswald. We'd be better off thinking it was a massive government cabal with Johnson on the side benefittng from the results. Kennedy may have disliked LBJ but he needed Johnson's negotiating skills to keep Congress in line. If Johnson knew about Jack's Addisons, he could have easily created a situation that would have triggered the illness and have Kennedy die of natural causes...
Cabal of Business Leaders Did It
Kennedy wasn't popular among various business leaders, especially the oil men in Texas. One major conspiracy theorist leaned on this as his go-to theory, even making a rather dull movie about it.
Why this theory works: These men would be far enough outside of government to avoid accountability, while having enough ties to various agencies to ensure they would cover their tracks. They would be able to hire the best assassins and covert ops types of the day.
Why this theory doesn't work: Again, there would be too many people involved in the planning, staging, and execution of the attempt, let along the hundreds more needed to cover up something of this scope.
The Mafia Did It
Stories abound of how Kennedy relied on help from mobsters to secure certain election results to win the Presidency... and then unleashed his brother Bobby as Attorney General to hunt the Mafia down. Feeling betrayed by someone who was literally in bed with them (well, in bed with one of the mob boss' mistresses), the mobsters would have felt the need to strike back...
Why this theory works: The Mafia tended to be a group that, when confronted with a problem, uses bullets to remove said problem. There were ties to the New Orleans mob with some of the more interesting characters in the various conspiracy theories, although ties to Oswald are tenuous at best.
Why this theory doesn't work: Again, anything on the scale of what the mob is accused of doing involves too many people, any one of whom could have blown the whole deal. The risks of trying were too high, even if they did succeed.
Aliens Did It
Why not?
Why this theory works: Aliens hated Kennedy for some yet-unrevealed reason.
Why this theory doesn't work: Haven't found any aliens at all, let alone aliens with a grudge against JFK.
You and Me Did It
The Rolling Stones argument. WE are the ones who killed the Kennedys.
Why this theory works: Society is to blame.
Why this theory doesn't work: You first have to believe the Rolling Stones were capable of waxing philosophical.
The truth?
We can never be really sure of it now. It's been fifty years: most of the people involved with that tragic day are dead, and while some documents have been released over the years there's still a ton of evidence locked away for a long time.
For myself, I tend to lean towards the Anti-Castro elements being the culprit as they had the greatest motive and opportunity, but to prove that would require getting to the bottom of whether Oswald was a serious attempt by the CIA to infiltrate the Soviets, and what ties Oswald might have had to any of the Anti-Castro groups operating along the Gulf of Mexico.
The more I've looked at the Warren Report, the more I see an investigation that was more cover-up than revealing, but not for sinister reasons: a lot of it seemed to be an attempt to hide any failures of inaction on the FBI itself. The conspiracy theory about the government behind it all doesn't the basic scrutiny test of Why? Why commit an action fraught with risk when simpler, more subtle methods were at hand?
Although I still have a question about one thing: when Oswald got kicked out of the USSR and came back to the US, why didn't anyone arrest him for desertion from the Marines when he fled to Russia? He was technically AWOL when he did that. The House UnAmerican Activities congressional committee was still operating at the time: why didn't any eager Congressman looking for media interest bring Oswald up on charges and make a public show of it? I'm still kinda bugged about this point. If someone can point me to a detailed answer to this question, I'd be grateful.
So, until next time, when we unravel the possibility that the emerging American Football League of that decade were in cahoots with Oswald after all...
ADDED: I know this is a bit sick to point out on the anniversary and all, but this bit from Red Dwarf just nails it... What? Too soon?!
What can you say about a Republican Congresscritter who voted eagerly to have food stamp recipients be tested for illegal drugs... getting caught buying illegal drugs?
Pretty much this: BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
Republican U.S. Rep. Trey Radel of Fort Myers is due to be arraigned Wednesday morning on cocaine possession charges. A Washington, D.C., court document says that on Oct. 29, Radel "did unlawfully, knowingly, and intentionally possess a quantity of cocaine, a controlled substance." The misdemeanor drug charge carries a maximum sentence of 180 days in jail and or a fine of $1,000.
Radel is one of those high-and-mighty judgmental creatures you get in the Republican Party. The ones who express the viewpoint that everyone in poverty only have themselves to blame... that the poor are all "takers", living off the "makers"... that a lot of the poor and minorities are running around lazy and drunk and high on drugs. These are the ones who want to make unemployment benefits recipients be tested for drugs, despite the lack of evidence that drug abuse was rampant or a cause of their unemployment: Radel recently voted on having food stamp recipients be tested.
The hypocrisy reeks.
The Republicans are so eager to punish the impoverished and hungry, while the rich and powerful like themselves try to get away with breaking the very laws they're using to punish everyone else.
Radel isn't showing any sign of resigning or stepping aside for 2014, and he's trying to blow this off on his alcoholism driving him to make "bad decisions." But it's not alcoholism that makes you buy drugs, boss: it's the DRUGS you're buying that make you buy that drug. Which begs the question how long has he been buying cocaine? And it also begs the question how many other decisions under the influence he's been doing if alcoholism affects him this way?
Just got a reminder from one of the references I work with at the library.
Today is the 150th Anniversary of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.
As oratory goes, the address is short and simple. The keynote speaker, Gov. Edward Everett, gave a more formal and better received speech at two hours length.
So why was the Gettysburg Address so famous while Everett's barely gets cited in any reference?
The Address has several advantages. Its shortness made it perfect to fit on a single page and column of a newspaper. It also makes it easier to memorize.
Above all, its simplicity in stating in such short words the cause of the war, and what the objective of the war should be: A New Birth Of Freedom, from the end of slavery and the emancipation of blacks into American society.
...It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
