By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

As I sat in a college classroom Thursday afternoon, the power went out and we swiftly determined we were in the throes of a regional electrical power failure. My first thought was to check for students in the elevators. My second thought was of the anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks and the possibility that the blackout was somehow related.

Actually, I’m being too charitable: My second thought was that the blackout could be the result of a terrorist attack, and when I couldn’t reach my daughter by cell phone, I had a fleeting moment of private panic.

My third thought was a multitude of things. I was angry that my own nation responded to the ravages of a small group of devastatingly lucky mad men with a devastatingly prolonged war and a culture of fear that would lead anyone to consider terrorism when simple corporate stupidity was a more likely cause of the electrical grid failure. I was angry with myself for passively complying with that fearful thinking. I was angry that the years and days leading up to today have been an exercise in institutionalized fear mongering and its internalization, as we have continually revisited the horrors of the attacks, glutted the irresolvable question of whether Osama Bin Laden has won despite that he now sleeps with the proverbial fishes, and chewed the cud of dread with the same fervor engendered by reality television — as though fear, normalized by our response to September 11, has become a national pastime.

And, I am angry because all the fear we have conjured has not made our country safe. National security is a misnomer, a fantasy even. No nation is safe, no nation is free from external or internal threat, no nation can secure its borders. Any nation can, however, encourage its populace to embrace fear or encourage its populace to open its arms to tolerance and democracy.

Former U.S. President George W. Bush and the majority of Congress responded to September 11 with the Patriot Act and new legal interpretations that violate our rights to privacy, free speech and due process; that entrench government secrecy and unconstitutional surveillance powers, the bane of democracy; that lead with fear.

In poignant contrast, Norway Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg responded to the July terrorist attacks on his nation with this: “We will not be intimidated or threatened by these attacks. The aim of such attacks is to spread fear and panic. We will not let that happen. … The Norwegian response to violence is more democracy, more openness and greater political participation.”

Some in the United States will refuse the comparison, dismissing Norway for its relative size, but Stoltenberg might understand better than Bush the notion that, no matter its size, a nation cannot be secure if the least of its people is not secure.

This thought gained clarity as we sat in our slowly warming classroom Thursday and talked about human security, personal security. We spoke of not feeling safe on the way to the campus parking lots in the dark. We spoke of being accosted on city sidewalks by men who felt entitled to do so simply because we are female. We spoke of feeling threatened in a group of men who might respond hostilely should we reveal our sexuality. We spoke of being targets of violence, by virtue of our gender — and that many men could not understand that, by virtue of being the privileged gender.

One vibrant young Black woman answered an assignment with this:

Where do you feel a lack of security? “Everywhere.”

What threatens your sense of security? “Men, white, police.”

What changes might give you more of a sense of security? “Having uncomfortable conversations.”

How brave she is to indeed have that conversation, no matter the discomfort — unlike our leaders, who have shown us that the most effective way to perpetuate the world’s evils is to fear them, to “spread fear and panic,” as we have done since September 11, 2001.

That vibrant young woman in my class is my new hero. The next time there’s a power failure, my first thought will be to check for folks in the elevators. My second thought will be that the utility-industrial complex has cut corners somewhere and screwed up again. And my third thought will be to have an uncomfortable conversation.

Love,
K-B

Take Action: Reform the Patriot Act

Read more: Let’s Cancel 9/11 by Tom Engelhardt

Crossposted at the Ocean Beach Rag and San Diego Gay & Lesbian News.

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

“Am I weird?” the teenager asked, balancing an old Ann Coulter book on her head, amid the bookstore’s discount stacks.

“You ask that as though ‘weird’ were a pejorative,” her mother said. “You don’t want to be normal, do you? Do you want to be like everyone else?”

“I know what ‘pejorative’ means, and, as for being normal, which that word is not, I think I’d just like to fly under the radar.” She shrugged and Godless slipped from her head, landing face up on the industrial carpeting.

“Yikes!” her mother stepped back. “Now, that woman is truly weird. The wrong kind of weird, the kind that verges on evil.” She looked almost serious.

“Hey, why would she wear low-cut stuff with a cross?” The girl picked up Coulter and traced her plunging neckline and the cross pointing into her cleavage. “She hardly has breasts, anyway. So, like, is she really evil?”

“She doesn’t deserve breasts, and she’s the closest thing to evil there is because she pretends to believe the outrageously divisive things she says for the purpose of inciting fearful people to reject the unfamiliar — people who are different, opposing ideas, whatever — and to look to her for bullshit passing as comforting fact.” The mother took a deep breath.

“Huh? What are you talking about? Why do you always talk like that?” The girl balanced another book on her head while exploring Coulter’s character in her book jacket.

“OK. She’s not really evil, but … let’s just say she’s full of shit. She’s full of shit because she tells fearful people outrageous shit, knowing it’s shit, and manipulating them into buying her shit.”

“We just learned about that, that thing you just did.” The girl flipped through the Coulter book, looking for more inappropriate pictures. “It’s called circular reasoning.”

“Well, Coulter has mastered it, that and the absurdly profane. After President Obama spoke at Notre Dame University’s commencement, urging pro-choice and anti-abortion folks to make nice, Coulter suggested that next year Notre Dame have an abortion performed live on stage, and that the “president throw out the ceremonial first fetus, like on opening day in baseball.’”

“Yuck! She’s gross!” The girl dropped Coulter on what she figured was her pulpy little ass. “Hey! If you look at it from this angle, the title looks like ‘Goddess.’ Do you think that’s intentional?”

“I wouldn’t put it past her,” her mother snickered. “Once you’ve contracted a severe case of superiority complex, you’re much more susceptible to delusional omniscience.”

“Really, do you have to talk like that?” The girl looked at her mother through the 3-D glasses she’d found in the book now perched on her head. “Don’t you want people to understand you?”

“Not always, but I’m OK with my kind of weird. Coulter has never written about a substantive issue she didn’t slander with superficiality.”

The girl continued to ogle the downed idol at her feet. “Well, I don’t know who she frickin is, but she looks like she’s trying to sell a book about religion with, like, sex. Not that she looks so sexy. Actually, she looks kind of bitchy. Why don’t you just say she’s a bitch? People would get that.”

“One can only hope they do,” her mother said.

“But do you think there are people who are really evil?” The girl looked around, still sporting the 3-D glasses.

“I don’t know,” her mother said. “Even the most horrible people always seem to have at least a hint of humanity. I’m sure even George Bush loves his kids.”

“Jeez. Bush isn’t evil.” The girl squinted at Coulter’s image to see if the 3-D glasses would make her breasts any bigger. “He was just too stupid to be president.”

“OK, just kidding about Bush. Dick Cheney’s actually the almost-evil one, with his fear-mongering crappola.”

“So, you’re saying, like, even Hitler must have done something good at some point in his life?” The girl stuck the 3-D glasses in a copy of Why Do Men Fall Asleep After Sex, which seemed funny, but she wasn’t sure why, so she didn’t mention it.

“Well, yes, probably, although it pains me to say so. Maybe Hitler once helped an elderly woman across the street or wiped his pee off the toilet seat.” She picked Coulter up from the floor. “So even this nitwit could have the capacity for truth and love,” the mother said unconvincingly, returning the book to the discount stack.

“Well, anyway, so am I weird or what?” the teenager asked, balancing A Thousand Splendid Suns on her head.

“You’re my favorite kind of weird, Sweetie; you’re wonderful.”

Love,
K-B

©2009 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

(Editor’s Note: This piece is cross-posted with www.ivorytowerz.com.)

The human race abounds with bad habits. It’s human nature, right? We consume things that initially feel good and then haunt us with health-threatening pounds, high cholesterol, cancerously prolific cells. We do things that that give us a momentary sense of exhilaration, power, fulfilled lust or relief and then, if we have any conscience, dash us to the cold, hard ground of guilt, sorrow, remorse and pain we’ve imposed on others.

Oh, yeah, we certainly have some redeeming virtues, but we also suck — and we know it, which is, perhaps, the reason for New Year’s resolutions. We seek self-improvement, atonement or reconciliation via an annual declaration of good intent. And then, more often than not, we repeat the behaviors we had hoped to abandon. Of course, there are those who intentionally persist in misbehaving, despite popular condemnation, perhaps because they don’t believe they are — for instance, President George W. Bush.

Like presidents before him in their eleventh hours, Bush is repeating the traditional imposition of unilateral decisions unlikely to receive Congress’ warm embrace: He has recently expanded healthcare providers’ ability to treat patients to their personal convictions in lieu of reproductive health information and services — even birth control; he has offered up fragile public lands to be sucked dry of their natural resources; and the like. He’ll next be tossing pardons like Mardi Gras beads to the parade of evil doers in his own administration who bared their greedy breasts, although many of their dastardly deeds are buried in the poop pile of executive privilege and blatant disregard of demands for revelation. These naughty behaviors are the habits of presidents of both parties, irresistible as such power is in its kingly qualities.

Regardless of these presidential practices’ abdication of what we common folk think of as our democratic process, we anticipate it like an oft-told joke. Yet, for all the cynical expectation that our presidents will take advantage of this benefit of the office, wouldn’t it be nice if they didn’t? Wouldn’t President-elect Barack Obama be walking the “change we can believe in” walk if he opted out of this particular perk?

Sadly, bad habits of individuals and institutions are tough to break, however self-destructive.

In some exotic lands where innate wisdom has yet to be replaced by mass-marketed family values and dogma cum politics, the local folk use a bamboo trap to catch monkeys. The trap is in its simplicity a work of art; in its design, its intent, an exquisite rendering of one of the more poignant foibles of animal nature.

The trap is baited and laid to await its hungry prey. The soon-to-be-supper primate reaches through the opening of the trap to fetch the bait, wraps its cute little fingers and opposable thumb around the tasty treat, and is caught, its fist now too big to pass back through the hole. In the monkey’s rigid refusal to let go the tempting morsel, it is held there, captive to its inability to respond any differently.

One might think that had the monkey the human ability of rational thought, it would simply release the bait and free itself from the stewpot, but then one would be assuming an awful lot about the human inclination for change. From our leaders to our voters, we have a whole lot of fists snared in bamboo tubes.

Nonetheless, hope abounds, or at least it pokes a puny head out of the muck of current conditions, and I continue to look for something better than monkey business from our leaders — as I hope such persistent hope is not just another bad habit.

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in his essay Self-reliance, “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.”

I’d like my new president to break with tradition at the end of his term — and throughout it — to forego the foolish consistency of his forebears, to drop the tempting treat, unball his fist and be a large statesman, a philosopher of the people, a divine inspiration for progress. I’d like him to be misunderstood as “Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”

In lieu of that, I’ll settle for someone who does not provide fodder for collections of verbal idiocy. And I resolve to continue to hope, however foolish that consistency.

Love,
K-B

©2008 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

(Image by Mark Nottingham via a Creative Commons license.)

“This is not what Christmas is all about,” a faithful man lamented over a cup of spiked eggnog, surrounded by holiday-inspired revelers. “It’s not about Santa Claus and gaudy trees and Ultimate Wall-Es. It’s about God’s son, his precious baby boy and the joy he brought into the world.” And the man absolutely knows this to be true.

Interesting, though, there is nowhere in the Bible — certainly nothing attributed to the Christ child, nothing offered up secondhand or even thirdhand — that indicates Jesus said, “Yo, folks, in years to come I think it appropriate that you celebrate my birthday. December of the forthcoming Gregorian calendar feels like a good month; 25 was always one of my favorite numbers. So, so be it — and have at it. Just don’t forget why you’re getting all those swell gifts; they’re to remind you of me. That little lace number from the paramour? Think of my dear virginal mother who bore me. Those CDs? Don’t forget the heavenly host singing ‘Glory to God in the highest’ that Luke will report after my passing. Keys to a shiny new car with a big bow around it? Remember the three magi hiking a beeline for Bethlehem.”

Nope, it didn’t happen that way. Indeed, as far as reportedly divine inspiration indicates, Jesus Christ never said a word about recognizing his DOB. What messiah would? Surely they have bigger and better messages to purvey and more humble concerns — the hungry and persecuted for instance — than to be proposing future celebrity roasts for themselves.

In fact, Christmas’ roots are entangled more in a bureaucratic reaction of the medieval Christian church to those nasty pagan celebrations of the winter solstice than in any Judaic tradition. And, before Charles Dickens did his bit to promote the concept of giving at Christmas, such celebrations were actually shunned by the pre-industrial age Christian elite.

It took Dickens’ social justice novella, “A Christmas Carol” — a treatise that remains one of the best bits of political propaganda in recorded history — to rock the egocentric foundations of burgeoning capitalism in the mid-19th century to the point that its movers and shakers tripped over each other in the slums of London to find recipients of their newly invigorated sense of benevolent generosity.

In an interesting 21^st century spin on the joy of giving, the Bush administration is now wrapping up a $17.4 billion gift for the derelict U.S. auto industry, and President-elect Barack Obama’s economic team has a bright red sack filled with $850 billion worth of packages for other needy and ailing institutions.

Well, it is the season of generosity and those tax dollars are surely given with a great deal of faith in their being put to good use. But it doesn’t take an economic disaster or a revolutionary fairytale or a born-again epiphany to awaken that giving spirit. Indeed, even nonbelievers enjoy the pleasures of sharing the goodies they have, for it is the warmth of tokens of tender affection, it is giving to people with less, pausing to remember those you adore that lend Christmas its poignance for many who witness the celebration, regardless of faith. This holiday now belongs to anyone who would claim it. And, were Christ still walking the earth, I imagine he’d be giving and receiving right along with the rest of us heathens, although it’s unlikely Ultimate Wall-E would be on his gift list.

So, as is my wont on Christmas, I will sit before the fireplace, sipping something surely of the Devil, and I’ll shed a tear for those no longer in reach of my embrace; I will revel in the joy of my lovely daughter and husband, my precious family and the intimates who grant such unexpected pleasures to my existence; and I will thank the Goddess that, despite the god-awful economy, I still have a few bucks left to put in the Salvation Army pot and buy those I love some heartfelt baubles.

Love,
K-B

©2008 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

(Photo courtesy of the U.S. Library of Congress.)

The Josephson Institute recently released its 2008 biennial report on youth ethics, based on a survey of 29,760 students in U.S. public and private high schools. The resulting data are dismaying, revealing, enigmatic:

     •  Eighty-two percent of students copied someone else’s homework once or more in the past year.
     •  Sixty-four percent cheated on a school test once or more.
     •  Sixty-five percent lied to a teacher about something significant.
     •  Eighty-two percent lied to a parent about something significant.
     •  Thirty percent stole from a store once or more in the past year.
     •  Forty percent agreed a person has to lie or cheat sometimes in order to succeed.
     •  And, 26 percent owned up to failing to answer all the survey questions honestly!

But here’s the stunner: 93 percent of students are satisfied with their own ethics and character, 98 percent agree it’s important to be a person with good character, and 96 percent agree it’s important that people trust them.

Hmmm, they cheat, they lie, they steal, yet, except for 7 percent, they’re feeling pretty comfortable with themselves; but for 2 percent, they think it’s important to be good; and, but for 4 percent, they want to be trusted.

That’s some disconnect.

The Corrupt by Salvador Dali 1964

Psychologist Shari Delisle, PhD, said it’s not unusual. “We are all products of deep paradox, although we resist knowing our lives are rooted in paradox. There’s a big disparity between what we believe and what we do. Believing is easy; doing is really hard.”

Apparently it’s quite hard to do what we know is right, and our youth are not alone: They have some very public role models in our government and corporate leadership.

“It’s a relatively low risk, high reward choice,” explained Vicki Fox, of the Josephson Institute. “If you look in the media … you hear about stealing and lying and cheating constantly, and we tend to look away or pardon the people involved … or bail them out. That doesn’t give students a lot of reason to want to change. What we model, they emulate.”

Yes, but there are responsibility, accountability, those nagging “bilities” that define our behavior. I know this from personal experience.

My best friend and I were caught shoplifting in our prepubescence. I knew it was wrong, but I didn’t think about it: We were too busy enjoying the adrenalin high of stealing — until a terrifyingly righteous store manager nabbed us with a purloined Bic, held us in his office and told us what he thought of our despicable behavior while we awaited the even more dreaded parents. After an excruciating hour of self-flagellation, my parents arrived at the store after work and were ushered into the manager’s office, cluttered with products: Mother still delights in recounting my look of abject shame, slumped in the corner atop a case of Kotex. My luckier friend had landed on the stack of Coke.

The manager, my parents and I all knew I had done something wrong: I took something that didn’t belong to me; I harmed someone else. There was no excuse for it other than my own moral failure. I lost what felt like a childhood of privileges, and I sure as hell never did it again.

In contrast, today, we’re eager to make excuses for bad behavior and, in the process, offer absolution with no consequences. We bail out our kids and our leaders without demanding atonement, all amid serial media frenzies.

The institute’s Fox said that parents, rather than supporting a school’s efforts to punish a student, are “much more likely to threaten a lawsuit or ask for a second chance.” She also said that almost every commentator who covered the 2008 report came up with excuses for the unethical behavior: the divorce rate, it’s harder to be a kid now, both parents are working, etcetera.

But that’s caca de toro. Although I’m loath to admit it, a little well-placed punishment can go a long way. Decades after my foray into theft, my honesty was once challenged at work. I wanted to yell, “Hey, buster, I have plenty of failings, but deceit isn’t one of them. I learned my lesson well: I was pilloried on a case of Kotex!” and perhaps that’s the answer.

President George W. Bush has been unable to pronounce one personal failure in his presidency, noting only bad intelligence on Iraq. He said, “I will leave the presidency with my head held high.” Is this because he truly is the likeable incompetent whom director Oliver Stone projected in “W.” or because Bush isn’t any different from today’s paradoxical youth?

As Dr. Delisle said, “Believing is easy; doing is really hard.” Let’s test this. Let’s plop Bush on the case of Kotex and see what happens.

Love,
K-B

©2008 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

“Persons in this condition should not receive Holy Communion until and unless they are reconciled to God in the Sacrament of Penance, lest they eat and drink their own condemnation.”

This sounds a little too scatological for comfort, which might not be particularly surprising given the source, a Roman Catholic priest in Greenville, S.C., and the context of contemporary Catholicism in which all things down there seem irrevocably tainted. (Is “contemporary” a misnomer?) Nonetheless, this is how the Rev. Jay Scott Newman counseled President-elect Barack Obama supporters at St. Mary’s Catholic Church against taking a seat at the Lord’s table until they atone for the sin of voting for a candidate who lacks awareness that abortion “is the greatest threat to the peace and security of the United States and constitutes a clear and present danger to the common good” (see the church bulletin below).

First Communion, 1929 by Tamara de Lempicka

Hmmm, the greatest threat: abortion or, say, terrorists? Poignant decisions, stirrups, speculum, dilation and curettage, and suction, resulting in dead fetuses, versus religious schools nurturing new generations with a theology of superiority and hate, improvised explosive devices, kidnappings, rapes, suicide bombers, crippled economies and beheadings, resulting in dead non-combatants and military personnel.

Oops: Scratch that religious schools thing. It seems non-terrorists do that, too — check out some of your local Sunday schools and Bible camps. It makes one wonder at what point hate mongering oozes into terrorism.

Anyway, Newman’s homily suggests Obama, Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain, President George W. Bush, our national security and military leadership and, oh, every head of every developed nation on Earth are all wrong about the threat of terrorism. Seems we might have been misled lo these last seven years.

Perhaps, had the $864 billion budgeted since September 2001 for the U.S. military to fight a war on terror been spent on family planning and education and birth control instead, we might have rid the United States of abortion, the “murderous abomination that cries out to Heaven for vengeance.” (Odd, the good reverend sounds rather like one of those terrorist fellows, doesn’t he?)

Oh, oops again: The Catholic Church has a thing about birth control, and given the failure of the Bush administration’s abstinence only sex ed, those billions might not have been an effective abortion deterrent. I suppose we could have bought mass quantities of chastity belts, but from the looks of them, most are not intended to forestall fornication. (Find your own link to that one.)

Despite his prayer for vengeance, Newman might have been correct when he declared the abortion debate a 30-year-old culture war, although he was off on the math. Perhaps he’s too busy counting the expenses of dispensations to accurately subtract 1973 from 2008. The U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the 1973 Roe v. Wade case established women’s rights to privacy and unlimited access to abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy, and the issue has indeed been a battle ever since, occasionally deadly, always bitter. Just this past election South Dakota voters defeated for the second time an effort to ban most abortions and create a case to overturn Roe v. Wade, and anti-abortion rights advocates must be mourning the McCain-Palin defeat as a lost opportunity to stack the Supreme Court even higher against Roe than Bush did. But the combatants in this conflict, for all their dedicated passion and prayer, could be blown away — literally — by the tangible commitment of a terrorist. So there’s a certain arrogance to Newman’s claim that abortion is the greatest threat to the United States and a danger to the common good.

I might be obnoxious — and arrogant — but I’m not a threat or a danger to anyone except the rodents that got to my heirloom tomatoes before I did. I have had an abortion and although it was frightening and sorrowful, it was my decision, my loss, my fear, my sorrow — not the government’s, not any organized religion’s, not those who constitute the common good. The thought of any such entity inserting itself in my most intimate quandaries makes me, well, gag — and I don’t expect anti-abortion advocates to understand that.

All of which is a longwinded way of declaring my hope that Obama and the 111^th Congress overturn Bush’s executive order extending the Global Gag Rule on abortion and appoint wise hearts and minds to our Supreme Court, minds and hearts that do not believe they belong in women’s bloomers.

We’re having enough trouble keeping the likes of Father Newman out of them, speaking figuratively, of course.

Love,
K-B

©2008 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Click here to see the Catholic Diocese of Charleston’s response to Father Newman’s homily.

Lying is a bad thing. From children, who’ve barely acquired enough language to do so, to the president and members of his administration commonly accused of it as prelude to the Iraq War, we all know we’re not supposed to lie.

Of course we do it anyway. But the boldfaced lie (BFL) seems a thing of the past. I miss its clear and direct nature, its economy of deceit and relative ease of exposure. Instead of the BFL, liars now machinate their ways around the malevolence of lying via euphemism: Lying isn’t quite so despicable when it’s thought of as fibbing, dissembling, bluffing or the contemporary classics perfected by our leaders: misspeaking and having no recollection of a particular thing.

We further confuse the issue by embracing gradations of situational contrivances to lighten the load of lying. On the lighter side, the little white lie (LWL) is a time-honored act of social kindness that has a well-worn page in every caring person’s repertoire. Who hasn’t uttered the likes of “Oh, you brought your nonfat, sugar-free, gluten-free cookies. Yummy!” or “Darling, that gown is devastating; it wraps your vast, uh, beauty in a swath of silken loveliness”?

But the LWL grows heavy with darker intent when its purpose is the liar’s benefit.

Bush Pants On Fire Doll

There’s the procrastinator’s prevarication: “Oh ye gods, my hard drive crashed! Can you believe it? I’ve contacted I.T. and they’re on the job — aren’t those guys great! So, I’ll get that report to you tomorrow.”

And then there’s the salacious swill of the sycophant: “It is such an honor to meet you. I admire you so much! Your last piece in The Atlantic was so powerful, so masterful: It thrusts the reader into the depths of your soul — again and again!”

This might lead to the opportunism of the engorged oaf: “Do I love you? Oh baby, you know how I feel about you, you’re the only one for me, baby, oh baby, can I put it in now?”

The LWL’s meanderings through the intermediate shades between black and white do little damage but to pull snags in the moral fiber of the fabricator. The objects of such duplicity either recognize the reprobates for what they are or they like hearing that trash, in which case liar and victim deserve each other.

Lies of omission (LOO) have a somewhat more sinister and utilitarian character in the hands of the great deceivers of our time who have come to know and intimately practice the school of “If one is not asked, don’t offer — and never remember, recall or recollect.” Imagine what juicy tidbits we’d have gleaned from President Ronald Reagan or President Bill Clinton or Vice President Dick Cheney or Attorney General Alberto Gonzales or even Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North if we had queried them before LOOs became all the rage in D.C. — Washington National Airport might have remained just that.

Yes, the methods of equivocation are as diverse as the mouths from which they emanate, but it is the fear of being caught in a lie that puckers the fannies of even the most practiced in the ranks of liars. This might account for the stunning absence of stately men and women grandly standing before the cameras in pursuit of President George W. Bush and Cheney for their scheming hearts and lying ways. We, the people who pay for their wars, have not been subjected to the persistent nightly news babblings about Bush and Cheney’s deceptions, deadly though they are, that historically drove President Clinton to prayer and a House vote to impeach for lying about diddling an intern. Perhaps the collective congressional deaf ear turned to the lonely calls to impeach Bush and Cheney from the likes of Representative Dennis Kucinich and Cynthia McKinney (who formerly represented congressional districts in Georgia and now heads the Green Party ticket for president) was at least in part a function of the don’t-do-unto-others-what-you-wouldn’t-have-them-do-unto-you school of thought.

Today, our decline to a commonly-tolerated state of deception has the very people who debate before the nation, eager to replace the Bush-Cheney den of thieves, subject to review by such lie-o-meters as factcheck.org, which measures the veracity of their proclamations, the extent of their hyperbole. Have we truly sunk so far that the men and women who would be king cannot be trusted to be true and that a lie is not a lie but an exaggeration?

I’d prefer the leader who can say, “I cannot tell a lie.” Instead, we’re dragged from Sarah Palin’s Joe Six-pack of exaggeration to John McCain and Barack Obama’s Joe the Plumber, with whom they attempted to TKO each other in the final presidential debate — and who, it turns out, has been snaking customer’s bowels without the required license.

Are we inured to lying? Is boldfaced honesty passé?

Oh, Joe, say it ain’t so! (Thanks, Sarah — may I call you Sarah?)

Love,
K-B

©2008 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Sat 20 Sep 08 Dear Diary: President Bush announced we’re in the middle of a huge financial crisis and he has a bailout plan that needs Congressional action pronto! Too bad they didn’t do something sooner — might have prevented the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac takeover, the messes at Merrill Lynch, Bear Stearns and Countrywide, the lifesaving $85 billion loan to American International Group. Who are these folks, anyway? The only thing I know about AIG it runs ads with weirdly articulate children, so it just frosts my derriere that we’re giving so much money to perfect strangers.

And now Bush wants us to spend $700 billion to buy bad-mortgage-backed securities to improve the liquidity of the secondary mortgage markets and restore confidence in credit markets and Mom’s apple pie. I read that somewhere, and I kind of know what these thingies are, sort of. OK, I know what apple pie is.

The plan is supposed to save Wall Street financial institutions and Main Street folks. OK, that’s $700 billion to save us all from the greedy mess Wall Street made of the freewheeling subprime mortgage binge served up with consumer naiveté. I know I don’t get it, but it sounds as though we’re refunding big Wall Street types money they lost on little folks. Funny, Wall Street usually kicks our derrieres sans subsidy. Now we’re being asked to provide the wads of cash with which to spank us?

So what does this lousy plan mean to me and mine, anyway? No one can tell me, not even Treasury Secretary Paulson or Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke. I wonder if our 401K and money market accounts are OK?

Tue 23 Sep 08 Dear Diary: Capitol Hill folks have been working on legislation to implement the administration’s barely three-page, $700 billion plan, and they’re still at it. I read the plan and it looks sketchy. John McCain wouldn’t comment on it today, saying, “I have not had a chance to see it in writing.” I had a chance; a lot of people I know had a chance; why didn’t the Republican presidential nominee have a chance? Maybe this situation isn’t such a crisis?

Whatever! I still don’t get what it means to me and mine.

Wed 24 Sep 08 Dear Diary: Oops, guess it is indeed a crisis! McCain said he’s suspending his campaign and heading to D.C. to solve it. Yikes!

So now I really want to know what this means to me and mine. Halloo? Anyone?

Hey, McCain also wants to postpone Friday’s presidential debate until we have a solution on track. I wonder how he would do managing two wars at once, say, in Iraq and Afghanistan. And the downward spiral of our public schools. And the war on drugs and the energy crisis and Social Security funding and global warming. And, well, can we afford a president who appears disinclined to delegate and can handle only one issue at a time?

Wowy, this is scary!

And then there’s President Bush’s pitch speech for the bailout bill! He might as well have declared the financial crisis is hiding weapons of mass destruction. Got wolf?

But maybe we should be scared. Will life as we know it come to an end if the bill doesn’t pass? Or at least will my credit union fail? McCain should go ahead with the debate so he can explain the financial crisis and the solution he’s going to work on during his campaign-free time.

Thu 25 Sep 08 Dear Diary: Oops, I guess I don’t understood. Apparently suspension of the McCain campaign means something other than suspension of the campaign, as the campaign is continuing to, well, campaign — with ads and interviews and attacks on the opposition.

This is as confusing as the financial crisis! OK, not really, but it felt good to write that.

Fri 26 Sep 08 Dear Diary: Just watched the first presidential debate. Yep, McCain showed. Guess they didn’t need him in D.C. after all. No one lost. No one won. Kind of boring.

Weird, though, McCain wouldn’t look at Barack Obama. Weird and rude. Weird, rude and it made him look scared of Obama. And his repeated “What Obama doesn’t understand” line, jeez! I suppose McCain gets points for staying on point but what is the point? Just to let us know he can stay on point? Yep, boring.

Sat 27 Sep 08 Dear Diary: I wonder where McCain is today? Maybe he’s hopped that campaign train that never even slowed down. He said he’s not one to rely on the phone. So, if he’s not on the Hill convincing all the House Reps to vote yes, who’s he going to blame if the bill doesn’t pass?

Sun 28 Sep 08 Dear Diary: My writers group was here tonight. We had the usual campaign update over dinner. Steve said the administration’s bailout plan was the closest thing to communism this country has ever seen. My poor honey; I guess most Marines still miss the Cold War. Wouldn’t it be cool if we didn’t cancel out each other’s vote this year?!?!

Supposedly, the bailout bill is a done deal: It goes to a vote tomorrow.

So what the hell does this mean to me and mine? I can’t believe there’s STILL no one who can answer that. If the bill doesn’t pass, is my kid’s education fund going to dwindle to a semester of Origami at the local community college? Will our 401K statements become kindling for the palm fronds we’ll be burning to heat the house? Will we have to work until our desiccated flesh is fertilizing the tree that’s turned into someone else’s timecards?!

Rep. Paul Ryan’s reported comment is right: “This sucks.” I have to sell a manuscript. Or maybe an heirloom would be better.

Mon 29 Sep 08 Dear Diary: The Big Rescue — that didn’t happen: The House didn’t pass the bailout bill. Should I be relieved or terrified or both?

Rep. Paul Broun called the plan “a huge cow patty with a marshmallow in the middle of it”; Rep. John Boehner, a “crap sandwich.” Neither description is any more appetizing than the plan itself. I think.

But now I need to know what the failure of the bill means to me and mine. My credit union said not to worry, but I sensed an implied “little girl” at the end of that directive. And McCain is blaming Democrats’ “partisan speech” for the bill’s failure. He must have forgotten Ryan, Broun and Boehner are from his side of the aisle. It might be more accurate to blame the 133 Reps who voted against the bill — and thank the 140 Dems who voted for it.

Well, at least it turns out McCain can do two things at once: He kept his campaign going and he went to D.C. … but maybe he should stick with uni-tasking, because what McCain doesn’t understand is that his grandstanding didn’t work.

And what I’m beginning to understand, is those at the helm don’t understand what to do any more than the rest of us.

Wed 01 Oct 08 Dear Diary: Guess what? The folks in D.C. ditched the bailout plan, because not enough normal folks could get behind bailing out Wall Street, and they’ve replaced it with a rescue plan. This is so much better! Yippee-i-aye!

Fri 03 Oct 08 Dear Diary: The House passed the bailout plan cum rescue plan bill. So, like, when are our 401Ks going to recover?

Love,
K-B 

©2008 Kit-Bacon Gressitt