Still Misfitting

I don’t know what era Nevada senate candidate Sue Lowden’s grandparents lived in, but I know my grandparents didn’t pay for their health care through the barter system, much less with poultry products. They used cash, check or Medicare. Paul Krugman weighs in on the absurdity of the notion of paying for doctors’ visits with chickens, but even he fails to point out that Lowden’s grandparents would not have been living in an agrarian outback where bartering for services was feasible, unless they lived circa 1890s Kansas.

Even folks in rural counties of Ohio have sophisticated hospitals these days, but if specialized care is required, patients commute to the urban hospitals where chickens are definitely not a payment option. You can bleed to death interviewing with the receptionist with all the questions asked of you about your coverage. Then, you’re lucky if your insurance will cover your treatment, and you often don’t find out until after the fact. I remember once going to an emergency room with severe abdominal pain and having to wait over three hours to be seen because I didn’t have an elevated temperature, therefore I wasn’t suffering from appendicitis. Instead, it turns out I required emergency surgery anyway, since I was suffering from an incarcerated intestine due to a small hernia. I had less than 24 hours to live, but no fever.

Even a barnyard full of chickens wouldn’t pay for that surgery, considering my then misrepresented policy did not cover the procedure. I wound up with over $13,000 in medical bills that today would be double. Maybe I could trade the procedure for a thoroughbred racehorse? After that disaster, I became a licensed insurance agent so I could learn how to avoid another trap.

As an homage to our Dibble’s Dictionary, allow me to define some common Teabonics words:

Alliens – during a game of Kick the Can, when all the players rush the can at the same time
Amensty – broken blood vessel in the eye caused by a revival meeting
Amnety – a crazy, but very friendly neighbor
Baught – nausea caused by too much draught beer
Boarder – Mexican tenant
Borror – When Joe Bob needs another donut, he asks to “borror” a dollar
Clunkker – a pickup truck plastered with Confederate flag stickers
Competnce – when incompetnce just won’t do
Constution – characterizes a criminal who hardly ever gets sick
Currancy – a dessert made with Jell-O, Cool-Whip and currants
Daugter – a female child born in August
Descent – lowering one’s reason for dissent
Dependance – An aging Tom Cruise reprising his role from “Risky Business”, this time dancing around the living room in his Depends™.
Deviding – combination of “devoid” and “divide” – seceding for no reason
Enoungh – a large-bellied Dr. Seuss character
Excetions – exceptional secretions
Extremey – characterizing Tea Partiers’ point of view
Facism – something easily mistook for actual totalitarianism
Feedom – Dick Armey’s war chest
Gemany – fictitious country located between Hobbiton and Gondor; denizens known as “Gemans”
Hugh – large, adult duck
Impeah – common condition resulting from severe dehydration and lack of portable lavatories in Nevada
Lanaguage – anti-aging cream made from lanolin and guano
Lier – a Tea party activist in ambush mode
Lobbyest – when, during a tennis match, your opponent scores most of his points with lobs
Mavrick – an unconventional Rick roll
Mortage – deed held by a now defunct bank
Offical – flip-flopping politician
Plummer – fruit picker with severely baggy pants
Polititions – a petition to oust an “official”
Rascist – a rascally bigot
Rediculous – when an interior designer suggests painting your bedroom brick red
Redistribtion – painting only the molding red
Repeel – what Mom does to the potatoes after Dad
Sactity – being fired from your job for having small breasts
Scholiast – a philosopher with socialist tendencies
Socilism – closing one’s eyes to the truth
Stimulas – an abundance of stimulating information; see also: pornography
Theif – subject of a logical premise: theif, thenwhat?
Waisting – When your George Washington costume doesn’t fit
Wroking – if the trailer’s doing this, don’t come knocking

Readers of my former blog and followers of the Peterson trial will remember, not always fondly, the group of people who advocated for Peterson’s innocence and organized web sites and discussions forums that simply begged to be parodied and ridiculed. We called the “Scott is Innocent” group “The Dibbles.” “Dibbles” was shorthand for “Opus Diable,” a spoof organization we invented in which the members were doing the work of the devil, as opposed to “Opus Dei”, of course.

Among other constant insults to our intelligence, the Dibbles flung spurious and unsupported allegations at the victim’s family, libeled Amber Frey and Ron Grantski, and accused virtually everyone involved in the prosecution of misconduct and criminal conspiracy, which was bad enough. It was their blatant and consistent stupidity we mocked. It was as if they were following a different murder trial on some parallel universe.

The Tea Party activists resemble the Dibbles in many regards, not least of which are their narrow grasp of facts, their prejudicial viewpoints informed by hate-radio (Limbaugh, Beck, Levin, et. al.), and their dismal use of the English language. Are Tea Partiers as dumb as the Dibbles? Let’s look at some startling similarities:

• Tea Partiers and Dibbles make atrocious spelling and grammatical errors demonstrating either incompetence, ignorance or amazing indolence. The Dibbles were so prolific and hilarious in thier misuse of language, we developed a “Dibbles Dictionary” featuring the most grevious of their typos, misspellings and word choices. Perhaps someone should do one for the Tea Partiers.
• Tea Partiers are mean-spirited like the Dibbles, and attack anyone who disagrees with them, including threatening to divulge personal information, posting addresses of dissenters’ homes, and interfering with the daily business activities of their “enemies”.
• Tea Partiers and Dibbles both enjoy defacing and defaming anyone they dislike, using jejune photoshopping and insults. They demonstrate the emotional maturity of a seventh grader.
• Both Dibbles and TPers are hypocrites and practice double standards.

Are there former Dibbles among the TPers? Very likely. However, I think that the similarities between these groups are less about politics and more about the personality types that suffer from insecurity, prejudice, rage, and envy. The TPers, like the Dibbles, are sore losers who refuse to accept reality. I suspect the TPers will suffer the same fate as the Dibbles: self-immolation.

The new buzz phrase in the latest political propaganda blitz is “common sense conservatism”, which  I’ve seen misspelled as “commonsense conservatism”, “common-sense conservatism”, both wrong, as common and sense are distinct words. Regardless of how much the inconsistency and grammatical ignorance constantly on display in our embarrassingly illiterate media annoys me  (and Sarah Palin is the patron saint of illiteracy), what irks me more is how a simple phrase can be redefined to mean something entirely ironic and false, like “compassionate conservative” once was.

Let’s look up the phrase in a few dictionaries:

common sense  
n.  Sound judgment not based on specialized knowledge; native good judgment

Function: noun

Date: 1726

: sound and prudent judgment based on a simple perception of the situation or facts

Note the word “judgment” in both definitions. Now, let’s look up “judgment” while we’re at it:

(n) the ability to judge, make a decision, or form an opinion objectively, authoritatively, and wisely, esp. in matters affecting action; good sense; discretion

So Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, and their attendant producers and handlers want us to believe that they are the standard bearers of a new form of conservatism based on good judgment, because they have demonstrated the ability to form objective opinions based on wisdom and discretion. Really?

This, from a woman who accepted the nomination for vice president, a physically gruelling and intellectually demanding task,  when she already had a special needs infant and a pregnant teen daughter at home, and had been elected governor of a state less than two years prior to the 2008 election; never mind her abysmal knowledge of foreign policy, domestic issues, history, geography or experience in the “lower 48.”

Was that a sample of her good judgment, of her common sense?

This, from a man who harassed a female producer of his show with lewd phone calls and sexually charged pursuit and was forced to settle a multi-million dollar lawsuit out of court to protect his job? Did that demonstrate O’Reilly’s sound judgment?

This, from a guy who throws every strand of WorldNetDaily conspiracy theory spaghetti on the wall to see what sticks, absent any research, search for facts or truth or logic? Is that sound judgment? Would anyone accuse Glenn Beck of having common sense?

Surely you jest.

Will this “commonsense conservatism” [sic] meme have legs? Karl Rove, Mary Matalin and a crew of other Fox and right-wing commentators are doing their best to make it so. When will someone, anyone, point out how ludicrous this is?

Ponsa ponsa time, in ancient internet days, there emerged from the pop-up riddled, blue screens of AOL and other sluggish dial-ups strange, misanthropic creatures that interrupted message boards with inane, provocative comments designed to disrupt the conversation. These creatures came to be known as “trolls.” We have all met more than our fair share of them throughout the years. Their agenda was relatively simple: attention-seeking, mischief, and using forums as a vehicle for misguided rage; however, mostly it was merely attention-seeking.

During the last (seemingly endless) political campaign, a new breed of devious and manipulative poster appeared in blog comment sections and forums who seemed, at first, to be sympathetic to the author’s opinion (or the thread subject), but expressed some concern that certain ideas or actions would be improper, illegal, counterproductive or irrelevant. These posters became known as “concern trolls.” A good example of a concern troll would be someone who came into this blog, told me they agreed that Sarah Palin was a malignant narcissist, but that I’d better be careful because she is threatening to sue bloggers and media types for defamation. (As if.) The concern trolls’ agenda is passive-aggressive: they couch their opposition in friendly, innocuous language, but their aim is to create doubt and confusion.

But the most insidious of internet scoundrels is the agent provocateur: a poster who may be paid (nice work if you can get it) to seek blog posts and articles on specific subjects, infiltrate the comment section, and post propaganda, disinformation, specious statistics, skewed polls, or junk science and argue for hours (sometimes days) with anyone foolish enough to engage them. Agents provocateur have a more specific agenda than garden-variety trolls or concern trolls; their aim is to change minds and influence opinions, particularly those of nameless, faceless lurkers who read the comment section but do not post.

How to spot an agent provocateur: they post the same talking points, links, or citations (from dubious sources) over and over, regardless of the facts that dispute their position. It’s as if they don’t even read what commentors write.  There is no reasoning with them. They’re not paid to reason, they’re paid to propogate lies. Their posts are often copied and pasted (or, as Samantha the Troll would say, “coped and pastied”) from other message boards and blogs; they use multiple handles (like good old-fashioned trolls), and their mission is to cast doubt upon a set of beliefs borne by research, common sense, and critical thinking. They are often poor writers and spellers, although because they’ve undoubtedly had their copy written for them, they’re better than the average troll.

The internet is still the wild, wild west, and with it comes the double-edged sword of free, anonymous, unlimited information; thus while it’s wise to take our mothers’ advice not to believe everything you read, be especially wary of posts that smell like fake concern, scan like propaganda or seem curiously non sequitur.

It’s been a long time since we heard from Dr. N Buster, but she would be remiss not to opine on the recent news of Republican starlet, soon-to-be-ex-governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin’s surprise resignation. Many questions have been raised attempting to interpret Palin’s actions recently, particularly her bizarre reaction to late-night comedy jokes and articles about her behavior during the presidential campaign. Dr. N Buster responds to some of the most compelling queries.

First of all, is Sarah Palin a malignant narcissist?

Palin certainly demonstrates many of the textbook characteristics of malignant narcissism: in particular, her belief that she (and her family and inner circle) are exempt from standards, rules or laws that apply to everyone else; in her myopic self-aggrandizement; in her startling hubris; in her willingness to exploit others (especially her children) for political gain; in her sense of entitlement; in her petulant response to criticism or ridicule; but most shockingly in her tendency to lie, obfuscate, deny, distract, blame others and play the victim.

How did she ever get elected governor in the first place?

Before we were introduced to Sarah Palin as John McCain’s running mate, few of us knew much about Alaska politics, or, for that matter, really cared. Now that we have been educated in the ways of the intrinsically corrupt and parochial politics of this remote hinterland (from where you can see Russia), we can appreciate how a “maverick” like Sarah could fool a lot of people some of the time. Like the more advanced and charismatic of her species, Sarah makes a good first impression. Unfortunately, the more you get to know her, or the more you observe her behavior as opposed to her words, the less appealing she becomes.

Why would she fly to Alaska from Texas while in labor with a fifth baby?

This is the $64,000 question no mainstream media journalist wants to explore. There are three possible explanations, none of which are flattering: 1) that she wasn’t really pregnant and was covering for her daughter, Bristol’s first pregnancy; 2) that she secretly hoped to miscarry or deliver a stillborn baby, thus avoiding the inconvenience and heartache of raising a child with Downs Syndrome; or 3) that the story is fiction. Any one of those explanations would befit a narcissist like Sarah.

Why did she resign if she has ambitions for future national political office?

Sarah, like all textbook narcissists, has self-sabotaged. She took what was a golden opportunity to advance her status as a presidential contender for 2012 and squandered it by reacting to petty criticism, exploiting her family, crying “sexism”, playing to the basest core of religious and racist voters, and committing ethical violations knowing her every move was broadcast on a national stage. This is similar to our friend, Scott Peterson’s incomprehensible behavior when he returned to the Berkeley marina over and over, knowing that he was being followed by police.

Instead of proving to detractors that she was an experienced and savvy leader, Sarah has only reinforced their worst opinions of her: that she is mentally unstable, unpredictable, reckless, shameless, and unforgivably obtuse.

What does the future hold in store for Sarah Palin?

She penned a lucrative book deal, she’ll no doubt be given a television platform (either on Fox or smaller conservative venues), and she’ll likely campaign and fund raise for other Republicans in the mid-term elections with a modicum of success. She will not, however, be a candidate for public office again. For this, we can exhale a huge sigh of relief.

I may as well be waiting for Godot.

Back during the campaign, I enjoyed a wonderful fantasy that when Obama was elected, I’d get to see former Bush administration officials taking the proverbial “perp walk” like celebrity (and our favorite) accused criminals, broadcast on the internets, cable and local television.

I had a lot vested in that campaign: time, money, talent; I hoped that with my affection for the candidate, my abysmal disillusionment with all things politics was going to be cured by a progressive administration that would, with a substantial majority in both House and Senate, change the direction of the nation.

But, as the song goes, “I was wrong, again. I was wrong.”

Right after the election, I was asked by the Obama campaign to sit on a committee to draft health care reform. I had a little expertise on health insurance, having made a living selling it and well versed on Medicare (which is the model for single-payer plans), and I participated with my usual enthusiasm, including submitting a testimonial based on my personal and professional experience that was included in the draft of our plan.

However, as I observed the new administration’s actions regarding protecting the former leadership from prosecution, despite reams of evidence of lawbreaking, and Obama’s justice department adhering to ”state secret” dogma, my newfound faith began to wane. As the timetable for withdrawal from Iraq began to extend indefinitely, and as the ”new” administration continued its obfuscation on the CIA’s torture regime, my previously simmering enthusiasm diluted to tepid dishwater. When Obama continued to capitulate to the fear-mongering mob of tea-bag-mailing morons, I decided that I would no longer donate my valuable time (or diminishing treasure, thanks to the economy) to the cause.

 A fellow community organizer called to ask me why I had recently dropped out of the committee and I told her I was no longer participating in any Obama administration (free slave labor) committees until he gave the green light to prosecute war criminals. That was met with shocked silence.

I sent several well-researched (and passionate) emails to Obama’s White House staff who were only too eager during the campaign and shortly afterward to email me requests for donations or to help pay off Clinton’s debt (as if), or to help the DNC. I responded by demanding investigations into war crimes and to bring the troops home as they promised.

Then, recently, I received an email from the Democratic group soliciting contributions to Al Franken’s legal fund in order to encourage Norm Coleman to give it up if he realizes Al has more money to fight the endless court battles. I promptly responded: Tell Al’s lawyer to do it pro bono! Nobody wrote me back. I don’t get any more phone calls, but I wish I did.