politics – Page 5 – Hopeful Romantics

The People We Love to Hate

Not long ago, on one of the book blog sites, some guy went out of his way to tell me how indifferent he was to my work. I responded once and asked him if he was so indifferent than why did he go out of his way to tell me. I thought if he had actually read the book it would be one thing. If he hated my guts for some other reason, okay. I realize I am not on everyone’s Christmas list.

My reply elicited further responses from him where he again reiterated that it was the subject matter with which he would be indifferent and would never read. I finally thanked him for taking time from what I was sure was a frantic schedule to register his indifference to the extent he had. Civil restraint prevented my real considerations on the probable status of his life. I have not always been the world’s best practitioner of civil restraint, so I guess that is mark of progress.

Obviously, there was something about me or the book subject that caused this intense reaction. And then I started thinking of how when we as a society should perhaps feel indifferent we go out of our way to declare our own distaste for things. In fact, with certain politicos and celebrities, certain hot button issues, rather than just declare our displeasure or say nothing at all, we cannot leave it alone. Doesn’t matter what side of the political or social spectrum you are own or how enlightened you may perceive your lifestyle, there is always somebody or something that causes us to rail on wherever and as often as we can. And that becomes a trap where the logic of indifference is corrupted by our passions. We end up devoting way too much time and emotion to things with which we should really care less.

We should know better. Not that we should know better because we are above it all and should transcend the rancor by taking the high road and retaining an enlightened state of mind. We should know better because we are of an age when it is the media’s main job to manipulate our thoughts and sentiments, our social belief,s and political perspectives in order to establish a multi-level marketing platform for its celebrity flavors of the week. In short, we are being used as marks and proud of it. We are either the support group, or we are the opposition. In the hands of a manipulative media and those ringing up the cash register we are two sides of the same coin.

Stirring up the crowds is nothing new. Professional wrestling has done it for years. In professional wrestling you have the hero, the glowing and glistening symbol of virtue and skill, and you have the heel. The heel is the bad guy, the one who fights dirty and says outrageous things, who thumbs his nose at the crowd. The heel revels in the crowd’s hatred. Hen needs the crowd as much as the hero needs the crowd. The crowd with its boos and catcalls supports the heel as much if not more than it supports the hero. The crowd loves to hate the heel. In both instances without the crowd there would be no controversy. There would be no sport.

With wrestling as with most things socio-political, the hero and the heel are interchangeable. A wrestler has a run as the hero for awhile, and then when his adoring public grows tired of adoring him, he becomes the heel. Those who loved him, suddenly hate him. He is the one now prancing arrogantly in the center of the ring and thumbing his nose at the crowd. He is now the one disparaging his opponent while making outrageous predictions about the state of things to come. As the hero he sold tickets to the show. As the heel he sells tickets to the show. People pay money to see him get his ass beat in. And when it doesn’t happen, when he prevails over the current heroic symbol of virtue and merit, the crowd gets to hate him that much more.

The socio-political spectrum is different in a variety of crucial ways. Unlike wrestling, with things political and social we don’t just invest in tickets. We invest with our lives. But nevertheless we are manipulated by a media, or more directly the media conglomerates, that have a financial motivation to work us into a frenzy. Media or more to the point what passes for news media these days has realized there is no money anymore in providing objective news reports and thoughtful analysis. As Campbell Brown, a recent CNN news show causality, remarked that the public does not want objective news anymore. The public wants the type of news that supports its own points of view. Apparently, we would rather cheer blindly from the sidelines than try to analyze the facts.

Whether the media conglomerates created the condition where news as opinion pieces or whether they responded to public taste I suppose is a matter of conjecture. But they certainly have profited from its condition. By eliminating objective messaging and critical thinking from what passes for news shows, the conglomerates were able to develop media celebrities of every stripe, ethnicity, and political perspective. These are the chosen who were developed to pander to the crowds by offering an alternating spectrum of simplistic solutions to complex challenges or a spectrum of crackpot ideas. In short, like wrestling, they were able to develop opposing forces for any issue. This in turn created a passionate fan base and multi-marketing platforms and the subsequent delivery systems that can offer everything from speaking engagements and books, to rallies and picnic baskets.

It could be claimed that Fox News was the first to venture forth on television with the decidedly slanted news format. I should say Fox News took the elements political talk radio. and carried them further. While I am not the world biggest fan of Fox News and while my total talk radio listening time, annually, is less than an hour, I give credit, if that is really the word, to these two platforms for changing the dynamic of news and politics. Both talk radio and its logical spinoff, Fox News, determined from the outside that their programming didn’t chase after viewers’ minds as much as their emotions.

While political radio could raise the blood pressure by taking call-ins, Fox News inflamed the passions with the Fox good guys taking on the bad guys. Like some electronic rendition of the Medieval Inquisition, Fox pundits in the name of “fair and balanced” were fond of dragging the progressives and liberals, and the rest, for the opposing point of view. Between commercials, they would give these straw men five seconds to explain their point of view before browbeating them like some jingoistic weed whacker. If you believed in what the Sean Hannity’s and Bill O’Reilly’s had to say, you felt yourself vindicated. If you were the more progressive thought you would find your blood boiling over.

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Coulter, Malkin, Rush Limbaugh, and, later, Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck, represented a new dynamic in media marketing. Unlike wrestling, where the character was either the hero or the heel, these pundits were heroes and heels all at once. They were loved and they were hated. The more they are hated, then the more they are loved. The more they are loved and hated, the greater their revenue. Let them say something outrageous and it is all over the media, conservative and liberal alike. The only difference is where one side applauds the remarks, the other side regards them as Satan’s spawn. What is conclusive is neither the veracity or the falsity of their written and spoken words, but that their polarizing effect generates some major bucks for both the players and their handlers, the media groups. So not only is there a lot of money in saying things that people agree with, there is an equal amount to be gained by having your critics declare how stupid you are.

The liberals, of course, after decrying the conservatives for their crass statements and wanton venality, finally decided that taking the high road offered little assurance they would reach their final destination. So they formed their own media platforms that is other than those of the “traditional liberal media,” where progressive pundits could offer their own brand of ridicule for the things they detest the most. Hence MSNBC, after myriad incarnations, developed finally a workable format for progressive ideology. There are the Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann who offer their own brand of competing self-righteous indignation to what some may consider the good fight. There is also Progressive Radio or Air America, or whatever it was the last time I looked with Tom Hartmann, Randi Rhodes, and the famously unfunny funny man turned current and competent U.S. Senator Al Franken.

For progressive media, a fair share of the commentary includes the castigation of conservative mainstays like, Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin, Bill O’Reilly, Ann Coulter, and Sarah Palin. Progressive hosts rail on about them like the fashion police dishing at high school. This in turn inspires lastest outrage from the Legion of the Outrageous, which in turn causes viewers and listeners to take ongoing umbrage and the latest indiscretion. This not only boosts radio and sales for the support group, the progressive media pundits who now peddle their books, lectures, events and such, but gives food for the right to carry on with its own agenda, giving speeches, writing books and otherwise catering to their own support group.

In a world where many are concerned about ecological condition’s and environmental matters, the socio-political media is the primary example of environmental harmony. If you say something your side likes and supports, you make money. If you say something the other side hates, you make money. The only time you can lose money is if you address complex issues with more than a sound bite or buzzword. This tends to confuse the audience and tends to be off putting as critical thinking is required. In a world we are programmed that solutions are simple and cinema heroes resolve international conflict in an hour and forty two minutes, you don’t need the dynamics of complex critical issues and all that is required to solve them to go raining on the delusional parade. The more you think about things, the less time you have for railing out your own particular party line. Complex thinking requires deeper thought, which results in extended contemplation , which means fewer books and public appearances for those who actually have to explain themselves in greater detail.

While we are not exactly a nation worthy of our heritage as being born in the Age of Reason, we are not always stupid. We recognize that these media pundits are not just out there for the well being of America or the general common good. We recognize that Glenn Becks recent soirée at the Lincoln Memorial is less altruistic and more for the benefit of Glenn Beck than anyone else. We recognize that Rush Limbaugh didn’t make his few bucks by initiating a selfless campaign for the good of Mom and Apple Pie. We realize Sarah Palin resigned as Governor of Alaska to devote more time to optimize her own window of opportunity to make money hand and fist. We realize that every pundit right or left is dependent on their audience to stay on the air. Former Congressman, Dick Armey, has feathered his nest as the spokes person for the Tea Party or whatever the hell it is called this season. Al Gore didn’t go broke by promoting the environmental movement. The more they incite their adversaries, the higher the ratings the more money they will make.

Yet,while we know these are puffed up entertainers posing as news analysts and politicians we cannot refrain from taking them seriously. We care when Keith Olbermann rants on about Sarah Palin using bullets as symbols for the targeted politicians the Republicans believe are vulnerable to being unseated. Obviously, Palin chose the bullet images as a ploy, in fact as part of her branding, but just about every commentator on MSNBC and elsewhere went for the ploy, revving it up disproportionately as if she was truly recommending the assassination attempts on these veritable Moose Lodge Members. Beware! Oooohhh.. Served Palin well as it reinforced her branding, and served the progressive pundits as it reinforced their selling of the great Palin threat.

There are hundreds if not thousands of examples. A decade ago it was the Clinton’s, and now it is Obama. Or it is what Limbaugh has to say about this or Pelosi has to say about that. Dr. Laura, Al Shartpon…pick your poison and then go piss and moan. People don’t just disagree, but they work themselves into a frenzy, inciting the blogsphere with incantations and variations on the theme. And from it all we are farther and farther removed from any condition of unity or relative attempt at consensus. We don’t exchange thoughts; we utter slogans. Name the topic, name the person; each side has its jargon to address the issue. Bite sized jargon that will fit nicely between commercials and book plugs.

I don’t discredit these pundits for self-promotion. It is America, the land of opportunity. It’s tough in an overpopulated world to rise from obscurity and make a name for yourself. Especially when at heart you are an imbecile. Well not really an imbecile, because despite all popular thought about some or our noteworthy media folk, it takes a wily coyote to climb the heights of media recognition. You can lack knowledge and you can have the intellectual depth that goes from A to B and back again, but there is a talent to manipulating the media to where you hold sway on public thought.

I guess in the end, I want to know why we even care about these people or what they have to say. Obviously, most are a long way from scholars or experts on the subject. And then, considering the state of things some of which are the result of the pondering of experts on the subject, why do we hold in such regard the positions of any of these people? Logic would dictate that you delve deeper and conduct your own critical thinking, before this once easily accessible thought process is relegated to the junk pile of modern consciousness or turned into a lost art. You would think we would regard most of these people as self-aggrandizing snake oil vendors and take their offerings no more to heart than we would a dancing bear. You would think we would spend a lot less time pissing and moaning about them and tripping over their incomplete thinking and figure out in traditional American pragmatic process how to get ourselves out of this mess.

But we don’t. Maybe as a nation we have too much time on our hands. Without celebrity, we only have ourselves. And without the heroes and heels, we have only ourselves to blame and then we must shoulder the responsibility of rebuilding the country. And that, media-wise, is a very hard sell.

Will They Serve Frozen Yogurt At The Next Revolution?

All rhetoric aside, revolutions are not started by the poor. The poor may contribute later on, or pile in and take the revolution to certain extremes, but they are not the ones who start it. I realize it is romantic to think of the poor rising up to break the yoke of poverty, but it is simply not the case. It could be argued that if the poor were that well organized, then they would get it together enough not to be poor.

It’s the disaffected bourgeoisie, the merchant class, the middle class, that always always gets the ball rolling. If at first it is not the middle class directly then it is their progeny, their erstwhile sons and daughters who grow restive in the coffee houses or on the job, in the schools, where discussion leads to protests, and protests leads to violence, or the series of incidents that set it all off. Robespierre, one of the leaders of the French Revolution, was from a family of lawyers. Castro, in Cuba, was from a wealthy middle class family and also a lawyer.

Lenin was also an attorney; his father a director/inspector of the public school system. Trotsky was raised in a family of wealthy farmers. Che Guevera was from an upper middle class family and was himself a doctor. Mao Zedong’s father may have started life as a peasant, but by the time Mao was still a young boy the old man was doing just fine as a farmer and grain merchant.

The American forefathers were largely merchants or gentrified farmers. Those frocked coats and powdered wigs cost a few bucks, and none of them have been cited as showing up in a peasant rags. In the case of most revolutions, the leading intellectuals and rabble rousers took their cues from principles and doctrines in the literature of choice. The French and the Americans cited passages from the Age of Reason, while the Russians and Chinese took their cue from Karl Marx. Most peasants weren’t reading Marx at the time, and the literature found in Age of Reason or the Enlightenment was mainly accessible to those that had money, and certainly those who could read.

Another misnomer is that revolutions occur out of principle. That they are driven by the abstracts of ideology and their anticipated application. Revolutions, at least successful ones, are based in economics and not the more higher minded principles as some would believe. Most successful revolutions emanate from self-interest and economic necessity before being disseminated to a greater mass through rhetorical ideology. Even in today’s world where even the most complex strategic considerations are boiled down to simple jargon and sound bites, embedded at the root core there is short and long range self-interest and its related economics. The higher minded rhetoric, all that stuff about liberty, equality…whatever…comes after when you need more bodies to sacrifice themselves for the greater cause.

I think about revolution not because I am encouraging it. I do ponder at what point the middle class once again decides it has had enough of the chicanery and double dealing that leaves it holding the bag. I think about the Tea Party and realize that some laud them while some mock or hate them, fearing the worst from the dregs in their lot. But the Tea Party thing didn’t come out of nowhere. People are pissed off. The middle class is pissed off. These are the people who have lost their houses, their jobs, their dignity, and their chance to make life better for their children. While with the Tea Party all that anger is being channeled almost entirely to the wrong places, the frustration is real.

Their jobs are going offshore. Their trades skills if not obsolete are being transferred to other countries, leaving crafts people to work in humiliating call center positions where they try to accommodate those as pissed off as they are. Small businesses have watched the stimulus money get kicked back to the larger banking and financial interests. They have watched the money go offshore so domestic interests can make nice with foreign interests, so everyone is happy for the next financial shell game. Many small and medium size business owners realize they are in a game of musical chairs, and when the music stops they may lack a place to plant themselves. The less evolved make irritating claims about wanting their country back. Few realize that while there were always virtues there were also the ugly elements of sexism, racism, and the economic leverage of the Robber Barons that is not at all unlike the way things work today.

But the smarter souls realize the middle class is dissolving. It is a species facing extinction, or if not extinction then certainly a serious depletion among their ranks. It is becoming increasingly evident, at least to me, that both the right and left are creating a permanent underclass. The Conservatives may be more calloused and venal, willing to exploit cheap labor, and under the guise of free enterprise ship people’s livelihoods to other places, in order to serve their bottom line. But then the Liberals or Progressives, or whatever they are this year, in offering meager entitlement without any real job training or actual support of industry have policies that may keep people alive but eliminate their chances of obtaining the skills that will empower them toward gainful employment. At the end of the day, it is really two sides of the same coin with both sides pandering to their bases. One caters to the rich, and the other tries to garner votes from the poor. The middle class pays the tab and then finds itself ignored.

Common sense would be that rather than just hand people money, it would be wiser to re-purpose factories, even in the supposed archaic industries. Develop a modern version of Roosevelt’s WPA where younger folks can form in teams to employ modern technology with seasoned business sense to make stuff. No country survives by merely shuffling paper around. You need to make stuff. Even in a global economy you cannot constantly suffer trade deficits for goods you can be making here. Or, more to the point, you can not do it and survive. Re purposing factories would allow the government to supplement production. The factories might even operate at a loss to stay competitive, but that loss would not be nearly as costly as just laying out billions for stand alone entitlement programs where nothing comes back to the coffers.

But then some argue, why bother with outmoded industries? Well, for one thing not all of our citizens are technological geniuses. Some of the work may be mind numbing, but it is a living, and a better living than either the call service job that has filled in in many blighted cities, or the government check that covers close to nothing. It is better to have people working at something, especially products that would reduce our imports and overall deficits, than not working at all.
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We talk about what great innovators we are. We love to revel in our inventions and our technological brilliance. We boast of our start ups and how great technological achievements have originated from that humble garage workshop. It may be true. But as Co-Founder of Intel, Andy Groves, points out in his terrific article on Bloomberg Business Week, entitled How America Can Create Jobs, even when we innovate through the start ups we no longer scale these companies but instead the big outfits buy them out and ship most of the work offshore. There is little chance for a new Microsoft or anything else when either that fledgling company is left to fend for itself, having no access to the kind of capital that would enable scaling to competitive levels. There is little chance when that nascent company is bought up by the big kid and its resources moved offshore.

And both sides of the aisle are equally culpable. The conservatives bark about free enterprise and the lack of government intercession. These were the same people who couldn’t wait for government handouts from the bailout, where many suffered little or no consequences for their duplicity and lack of sensible business practice. On the other hand, we have the current majority in government boasting of its reforms. They boast of a financial reform and a bill that has no teeth. Companies too big to fail are still too big to fail. As for much of the legislation, five minutes after its passing any corporate interest with a team of lawyers and common sense has figured out a way to beat most of it. There is little pressure for this current or any future administration to reduce or eliminate tax credits for shipping its jobs offshore. There is little incentive via added tax credits to encourage even foreign companies to set up shop over here and hire American laborers.

So, in all, minus the rhetoric from both sides and all the concomitant window dressing, you have people either out of work or working jobs so meager they can’t support their families. Credit extension to the regional banks who would in turn provide funding for local businesses is little more than a passing topic of conversation. The economy is once again stalling. Consumers are reluctant to make purchases. There is talk of a double dip recession. There is talk the housing market could slip even lower with increased foreclosures.

And the middle class? I have to wonder at what point does the toxic mismanagement reach critical mass? It is one thing to wear a ridiculous hat with tea bags draped from its brim. It is another to consider the twenty-first century version of tarring and feathering, vandalizing, and otherwise making life miserable for those who have reduced this country to a shadow of itself. I think about this recent little fiasco in the California City of Bell where it was recently discovered that four of the five council members were getting paid about $100,000 for their part-time jobs in the blue collar city of 40,000 people. The Bell city manager, who made nearly $800,000, which is roughly three times the salary of the President of the United States. For the City of Bell.

Why did it take so long to figure out that these conniving individuals were getting paid so much for so little? The salaries were only made public after a Los Angeles Times investigation, based on California Public Records Act requests, uncovered the ugly fact that the city payroll was bloated with six-figure salaries. Since the discovery, some of the grand city officials have resigned. Others are defiant. Attorney General, Jerry Brown, is contemplating criminal charges. There is much rancor about their very generous pensions.

But supposed they hadn’t resigned. Suppose they all remained defiant and the state government ignored this outrageous transgression on the public trust. One has to wonder at what point do the riots start where some of the city officials are dragged into the street? Maybe never. Maybe the citizens of Bell all toss back a beer and a Zoloft and go back to American Idol. But suppose this incident or an incident much like it does get out of hand. And then suppose in other parts of the country the citizens there think a little tar and feathering of sorts is not at all a bad idea. You know, little local and regional things that suddenly erupt beyond the point of control.

I know it is a lot of supposing here, but if history tells us anything, major changes gestate for years before breaking out to a greater order. History demonstrates it takes just a series of minor incidents that evolve from miniature rebellion to considerable revolution. America had its Boston Massacre, it’s Tea Party, and Lexington and Concord. Russia had its riots in St. Petersburg. France had the storming of its much hated Bastille. And so it goes.

I am not saying we are about to see a full scale revolution, replete with Civil War and all the other accouterments that give new meaning to dangerous living. No extreme sports are necessary when you have massive rioting and killing in the streets. But we are not a country that angers easily. On the top side of our national persona, we have an embedded sense of law and fair play that if it doesn’t hold us back from theft and duplicity at least burdens us with guilt.

On the down said, we are spoiled, fat, lazy, and have far too many distractions. A revolution is hard work and takes focus and a great deal of concentration. Between channel surfing, texting and gossiping, focus and concentration is not particularly our strong suits. It may be difficult to sustain anger when you take mood elevators and believe your critical assignment is attacking the nearest buffet. We are out of shape and eat a lot of frozen yogurt. It could be argued that unless Fro Yo wins the concession for the next American Revolution, turnout will be minimal at best. And if there is a turnout, then is everyone proclaimed a hero? Does everyone get a trophy? Hard to say.

But then that anger is growing out there. It is diffuse and misdirected, concerned with petty concepts like racism and people’s sexual preferences. It is concerned with lifestyle choices and religious beliefs or lack of them. But then we aren’t there yet. We aren’t at the place where that slow to anger big dog finally gets off the porch where sensibilities start to galvanize and find articulation. Where the middle class declares, “enough of this,” and decides that voting for the same thing regardless of party cannot turn it around. When it becomes clear that it is not an issue of wanting one’s country back but moving it forward. Against the deliberate intransigence. And in the face of those who wish to keep you right where you are.

The Civil Rights Lesson from a Randy Chinese Swinger

When you think of China, you don’t think of it as a particularly sexy place. Probably the Chinese don’t even think of China as a particularly sexy place as they tend to take their lead in sexual conduct from the West. Nevertheless, with nearly 1.5 billion people, China is the most populated country in the world. All those babies have to be coming from somewhere.

In truth, the citizens of China have practiced pre-marital sex for quite sometime now. They may not have the long legacy of erotica found in the West, initiated since time began and fortified by the art and literature,and ruminations of the Victorian Era, leading up through the pornographic “French Decks” of playing cards to the grand institution or erotica we extol today. The Chinese may not even share the Japanese legacy, the artful and colorful paintings of lovers in bold colored silk robes contorted in every imaginable position, most of which having their visage in defiance of logical perspective.

Beauty shops and massage parlors permeate most Chinese cities, with each being the code word for a brothel. While technically against the law, Chinese authorities tend to look the other way when it comes to the long stand presence of “beauty parlors,” kind of like what California does with its medical marijuana shops. And like the medical marijuana shops, unless there is political pressure from a self-righteous group of do gooders with too much time on their hands, or the owner of the “beauty parlor” manages to upset someone in the bureaucracy, business goes on with little fanfare.

There is a preponderance of “adult health stores”. These health stores are not to be confused with American health food stores where you can buy your granola in bulk. Chinese Adult Health store is the given name for purveyors of every imaginable type of adult sex toy. To say these stores are easy to find, is to equate their proximity with the nail salons of American. If there isn’t one on every corner, then the sex toy shops are ubiquitous enough to assure no one will be waiting in line. As for pornography on the Chinese Internet system, that is also forbidden. But needless to say, thanks to the wonders of modern technology and with necessity being the not only the mother of invention but a matter of getting off, the Chinese can acquire software that can circumvent the government blocks.

As with most countries on an economic upswing, social regulatory efforts, if not necessarily the actual letter of the law, tend to liberalize in practice as well as theory. When people are starving and struggling to survive, they have little time for sexual diddling. Or if they do have time, it is because it is there only diversion from a dreary life, and those impromptu episodes usually result in the begetting or more children, which puts even more pressure on the family and its struggles, and makes for far less time in the exotic pursuits. A win-lose situation, for sure. But when the good times are rolling, leisure and vice become a heady pursuit.

So what’s the big deal over the Chinese college professor, Ma Yahohai, who was sentenced to three and a half years in prison for having the temerity to engage in sex orgies and practice sexual partner swapping.? Ma and his girlfriend were members of a group of 22 persons that had some 35 swinger sessions over a two year period. Frisky devils. Ma participated in about half of these sessions. Most of these sessions took place in Ma’s two bedroom apartment. Ma shared the apartment with his girlfriend and mother. What the adventuresome couple did with Momma during these libidinous occasions is anyone’s guess. Maybe she took video. Or like a good caring mother, washed off the sex toys to eliminate disease. One can only imagine.

But the fact is that out of the twenty two arrested and charged with Criminal Law 301, Sexual Law 301, Crowd Licentiousness, eighteen of these randy souls were sentenced to prison. While the defiant Ma was sentenced to his three and a half years, others were sentenced up to two and a half years. No slap on the wrist, and no mention whatsoever about community service or making an anti-sex film. The Chinese prison system has never been known much for luxury living. So a couple of years in jail can give you a lot of time to ponder wistfully the sex orgies you will be missing. As for the three defendants who got off without a jail sentence, I have no idea how they got so lucky. Maybe they were only there to watch or serve hor dourves.

It could be worse for Ma and his swinging associates I suppose. Back in the good old days of Chairman Mao and his successors, various types of sexual congress, including group sex, could be construed as “hooliganism.” “Hooliganism” was catch all charge for crimes that made you realize you were in big trouble. Big trouble meant a lengthy jail sentence at a slave labor facility not of your choice. You were looking at possible execution. So by those draconian standards, I suppose, a couple years in jail is a slap on the wrist.

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Other groups are considered far more threatening. There are all sorts of radicals and terrorists groups who actually blow up things and don’t just brag about some sexual exploits on the Internet. There are people trafficking in illegal everything, from counterfeit prescription drugs to counterfeit invoices. There are myriad labor strikes and worker unrest, including violent demonstrations. The citizens of the more rural provinces are restless and prtoesting the state appropriation of their lands. This has resulted in massive riots. In one riot recently, hundreds were killed in Sichuan Province.

There is airline corruption and all sorts of financial swindling. Chinese law enforcement has been very busy as the nation pays the price of progress. Even the questionable menace of the Chinese Uighur population would present more of a problem than a couple bunches of swingers. There are many millions of Chinese Uighurs, a Muslim group that is viewed by the Chinese Government as a radical faction and periodically subjects them to surveillance and harassment. In Xinjiang Province alone, nearly half the population of 23 million are Chinese Uighurs. I would venture very few Chinese Uighurs are swingers, but that is another story. The fact is the swingers of China make up but a small but determined faction that you could probably fit into the Beijing Subway. A chance at getting off at every station.

To be sure, I am not promoting swinging. I am not promoting it in China or anywhere else. In fact, mere photos of the swinging Internet set threatens to drive me to the monastery for contemplations of semi-theistic metaphysics and far less carnal pursuits. Watching the few happy partner swapping examples on the Jerry Springer Show made me seriously consider celibacy for the next millennium,. Fortunately, reason took control of my senses. I only took a shower, instead. Here in America, swingers can live large and lounge about in communal congress inside the often tacky but spacious environs of a split-level sub-tract with enough garage and driveway space for all those Toyota Camrys. Meanwhile their kindred Chinese swingers must dangle their dongs in a measly two bedroom apartment. Here you get to be on Jerry Springer or at least have your fat, naked ass plastered all over the Internet. But in China you get a couple, few years in jail.

To loosely paraphrase Voltaire, I may not like swinging and partner swapping, but will defend to the death your right to engage in it, no matter how nauseating it may appear. Alright, maybe I won’t defend it to the death, as I have better things to do than defend the randy rambling of a bunch of refugees from Wal-Mart looking for distraction in a down economy. But at the very least, I will give it lip service, even when I grimace and fumble with the shower faucets. Why?

Because everybody should have the right to get laid. It is a right, after all, and not a privilege. Okay, so maybe sometimes it is less of a right and more of a privilege, a treat even, a pathetically rare one, depending on the disposition and predilections of your spouse or lover. I realize that sometimes your significant other does not find either you or your entreaties as significant or otherwise as you might either hope for or come to expect. So I guess like other debates over rights and privleges, there is at least a little wiggling room. But once you do work it out with your lover or significant other you have the freedom to fire away, anytime, day or night. Even if twenty two people are involved.

But as in China, there are some here and in parts of the world who don’t really see it that way. They allude to some intelligent design and a divine plan where you must only do it with restrictions. They ascribe the damning words immoral and degenerate to a variety of sex practices that were apparently never detailed in the master plan. Otherwise, I suppose, the master plan would have been just plain old porn and not some divine edict from the heavens explaining explicitly where Daddy and Mommy or Daddy and Daddy or Mommy and Mommy may put their thingies and Woo Woo’s. In some cases they want to rearrange your thinking; they want to straighten you out.

Oppression always begins somewhere. Usually in the stupid places, the places that make us wince. But then they graduate to places where we are concerned where transgressions are made against our privacy and thought process. We suddenly find our rights intruded upon and threatened by a group of ideologues who truly believe in this world of infinite choices they are so graced with absolute answers. We find ourselves being subjected to embarrassment and thrown in jail for acting out on our natural impulses. Oppression begins in the dumbest of places, and it ends somewhere else. And we don’t know how we go there.

Chinese Professor Ma Yaohai has resigned from his teaching post. He now lives off his savings and his mother’s pension. He is appealing his sentence of three and a half years for “group licentiousness,” which translates into getting his rocks off with a couple dozen people. As we have seen recently in this country, some of our own social issues that we thought were long put to rest, sexuality, racism, the right to live and breathe as you so choose, have resurfaced and been challenged by perhaps a well intentioned but vehement minority. Given that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, we should never take the good professor’s condition all that lightly. No matter who you are or where you sleep, something may be lurking beneath the sheets. Something besides your partner’s cold feet.

When Drivers Can’t Drive Their Cars

We all think the other guy is a lousy driver. What’s odd, is that at least one out of five times. According to an article in Media Post a new report from the2010 GMAC Insurance National Drivers Test we are correct in our assessment. At that is before we delve into our biases in the way we rate our fellow drivers. Add in some of the more obvious and extenuating factors and a great many of us should never be anywhere behind a wheel. Quite a few in fact shouldn’t be allowed to pull a little red wagon, yet alone power a three thousand pound automobile.

The recent report from the 2010 GMAC Insurance National Drivers Test contends that one in five drivers, nearly 38 million drivers in all would flunk the written driver’s test, if it were given today. The test incorporated basic driving questions that were culled from the driving manuals in the fifty states. Nothing too arcane or esoteric. Just stuff you maybe need to know before you head off for your bag of Doritos and double Mocha Latte with your cellphone in your ear and your makeup in your lap.

Okay, so maybe in addition to the twenty basic questions there were some other, more directed questions. There were questions related to the texting while driving. You know, difficult interrogations that are only slightly less challenging than reading the fat content in a Denny’s Grand Slam. Questions, from what I gleaned, like whether or not you should duck your head back into the rear seating area for a quick peak at the monitor where Finding Nemo is preventing your kids from beating each other with their Young Einstein action heroes.

The study indicates that a number of licensed Americans continue to lack knowledge of basic rules of the road; the national average score decreased to 76.2% this year from 76.6% in 2009. No need to convince me we are dumbing down. About 85% could not identify the correct action to take when approaching a steady yellow traffic light. Many drivers remained confused by safe following distances. This would require math, not a strong suit as of late. Hell, we can’t even estimate correctly how much oil is leaking into the Gulf of Mexico on a daily basis. Small chance we can estimate how many feet it takes to stop a car. And then there is the matter of reading, actually understanding the questions that were being asked. Other studies report that fifty percent of our citizens are functionally illiterate. Perhaps we should have left our more serious reading to the dinosaurs who lived with us in domestic harmony a mere 6,500 years ago.

The drivers in some states did better than the drivers in others. Kansas may not have grasped entirely the radical theory of Evolution, but at least as a state it came in first on on the written driver’s test with an average score of 82.5%. New York State finished last with a 70% average score. That means three out of ten drivers in the Empire State should always be taking the subway. In general, drivers in the Northeast may not be as well informed about driving regulations as their Midwestern counterparts. The Northeast had the lowest average test scores (74.9%) and had the highest failure rate (25.1%). The Midwest region had the highest average test scores (77.5%) and the lowest failure rates (11.9%).

Not surprisingly, the older the driver, the higher the score. The aged are still able to read, which is probably their greatest advantage. Males over age 45 earned the highest average test score. Males also outperformed females overall in terms of average score (78.1% male versus 74.4% female) and failure rates (24% female versus 18.1% male). I suppose the one caveat about the vaunted elderly drivers is that you can also see him driving down the street with his turn signal flashing and a shopping bag perched on the roof of his car. Then it might be wise to think differently.

As for female drivers, overall, a significantly higher percentage of females than males reported engaging in the following distracting situations: conversation with passengers, selecting songs on an iPod or CD/adjusting the radio, talking on a cell phone, eating, applying make-up and reading. We are talking multi-tasking. Not always easy at sixty miles an hour. And then every once in awhile you do need a hand on the steering wheel, whether you want to or not. The other day I watched a woman in an SUV while she juggled muffin, coffee, makeup and cell phone, while trying to negotiate the traffic in Beverly Hills. It was almost an art form, until her one angry bite severed the muffin so it fell out of her mouth and into her lap. The look on her face was priceless.

George Carlin used to comment in his comedy act that the driver poking along ahead of you and who won’t let you pass is an imbecile. On the other hand, the driver whipping around your slow and sorry ass and blazing on up the highway, well that driver is a maniac. Everyone else, I suppose, is somewhere in between. And where is in between? Cutting corners so tightly that they clip the car in the left turn lane who was just sitting there waiting for the light to change. Trying to figure out how to parallel park sometime before the second coming. Or not knowing that four wheel drive can help you drive through the ice and snow, but it doesn’t assist much in the way of stopping.

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This report may go a long way to explaining the forty thousand people who die every year in car wrecks, and the couple, few million who are injured. These figures are actually down from a decade ago, but you can attribute that more to the safety of the vehicles than our collective driving prowess. I suppose, if you want to get picky, you can also remove from the list the false claims of injury and incapacitation that are mounted to sustain the driver-lawyer-quack doctor menage a’ trois. Most accidents are not of the gnarly paralyzing and dismembering type that will get you a prime spot on the late night commercials sponsored by your local ambulance chaser.

Now bear in mind, the GMAC Insurance is just that…an insurance entity. Their job is to sell insurance to drivers. This is where their money is. And despite the fact that they need and want to sell as much car insurance as possible, they are contending that one in five drivers shouldn’t be behind the wheel. I would think this is a conservative estimate. Should we ever get realistic about these estimates, auto sales would plummet even further, insurance policies would go wanting, and the country would have to actually do something about viable public transportation. Ancillary benefits would mean less of a dependence on oil, and possibly in urban centers you could actually breathe the air. We can’t have that.

But we all know there is no such thing as reality anymore. Pragmatism is a thing of the past. If we had common sense, knowing the destruction they cause from distracted driving, we would be draconian in enforcing laws about cellphone use in the car. In my humble opinion, instead of some measly fine, for first offense they shove the phone where the sun won’t shine, and for the second offense, they remove it with a chainsaw. But I am being moderate here. Oprah Winfrey is spending real bucks on commercials where she is dragging out the victims and survivors of victims killed by distracted drivers. She admonishes us about using driving and cellphone use, and she is a national icon. Tears fall. Voices tremble. This is Oprah., for god’s sake. Everyone adores her. Everyone listens to her. Except when she tells us that when you are driving put down the damn cellphone. Then even Oprah is a just another pain in the ass.

Perhaps it is wise to use the GMAC Insurance estimates as a base figure and take a closer look. By utilizing some of the GMAC survey questions we can start to approach the truth. On the survey, only five percent admitted to texting while driving. So we are not only a nation of lousy drivers, we are also a nation of liars. Couple that with the fact that, according to reports, fifty percent can’t read and understand the survey anyway, so there answers may be more guess work than actual comprehension. Add into this mix those out there who are driving without a license. There are more than a few. So this group wasn’t even asked to take the test. And if you still think it is only a mere twenty percent of the driving population that shouldn’t be behind the wheel, I have one final suggestion. Take a trip to your local DMV. Look around. Then tell me how safe you feel with some of these people motoring down our highways.

By no means does this make us the worse drivers in the world. Americans are merely the worst drivers in the United States. Anyone who has driven anywhere else knows the tribulations of, say, the Indian National Highways, or the vagaries of traffic rules in South America. We can’t all be Canadians, after all. Even in the South of France, unless you demonstrate you are committed to running over pedestrians, it is nearly impossible to get from here to there. And these are places where they have some semblance of highways. Or paved streets. There are many parts of this world where even the Yak is ill informed to who has the right of way.

And then, despite our whining and sniping, we Americans are pretty much a tough breed. Come some national holiday where perseverance and John Wayne’s rectitude are compulsory, before we head out on the highway with a six pack of beer, and a bevy of off-road vehicles trailing behind our four miles per gallon bargain RV. We are a nation that meets its challenges. Well, sort of.

Well, there are many challenges ahead of us. The least of which is being able to read the driving manual. As John Kennedy implored as President, about our reaching the moon in ten years, we have to continue moving forward. Which is fine with me. As long as we don’t have to drive there.

For the curious sort, you can take the 2010 GMAC Insurance National Drivers Test by clicking this link.