So apparently, the war in Iraq is like the Hungarian Uprising.

In what way is the War in Iraq like the Hungarian Uprising?  Well, and I’m only using the man’s own words here, it’s because:

a.) “The sacrifice of the…people inspires all who love liberty,” and

b.) ”we honor your courage. We’ve learned from your example, and we resolve that when people stand up for their freedom, America will stand with them,” and

c.) “The lesson of the Hungarian experience is clear. Liberty can be delayed, but it cannot be denied.”

Do not, I repeat, do not, think about the fact that the sacrifice of approximately 40,000 civilian lives is, at best, a dubious source of inspiration.

Do not, I repeat, do not, think about the fact that America did not, in fact, intervene in the Hungarian uprising at all (apparently we were too busy with the Suez Crisis, or something).

Do not, I repeat, do not, think about what follows from the syllogism: if Hungary = Iraq, then the USSR = ???. 

And finally, do not, I repeat, do not be surprised at the jaw-dropping unmitigated gall of a man who shamelessly appropriates the rhetoric of MLK, who in turn may or may not have been channeling Gladstone, who if he really said it (and that’s unclear) most likely said it in the context of Parliamentary debates over Irish Home Rule.

Indeed.  Don’t think at all.  Really, it’s the best policy.

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So, the Voting Rights Act won’t be renewed (and this in a story that appeared on page 16 of my print edition of the NYT.  Why is this not front-page news?).  Because apparently it is unacceptable that we print ballots in any language other than English.  This from a guy that represents voters in fecking West Iowa.

The minimum wage will stay at the same damn place it’s been since 1997.  (note: while it is still technically possible to be married and raise two kids and not be poor while making minimum wage, you both have to work full-time, and God help you if you live in, oh, say, anyplace worth living).  Because apparently paying people decent wages will bring on the (quelle horreur) spectre of inflation.  Which, as we all know, will destroy our precious 401(k)s and prevent us all from becoming rentiers.

The immigration reform bill will be taken on a whistle-stop tour of the nation so that — well, what exactly?  Because immigration is apparently in such a damned state of emergency that we need to build a damned 2000-mile wall (complete with a lovely and touching mural), turn some non-trivial percentage of the population into felons overnight, and institute a new caste-system (dare we call it the Brown Code?) of rotating-but-permanently indentured servants – but not so much of an emergency that we can’t oh, wait until the 2007 legislative session to deal with it. 

Oh, and did I forget?  They’re all-but-going to repeal the estate tax.  All I’ve got say on that is that my parents better not take any train rides with me in about four years (you may have to pay for that last link — apologies).

Yup, no shock left.  It’s gone.  And since I’m not black, Hispanic, or poor, and since whatever hope I had of actually having legal rights as a gay person in a committed relationship are rapidly being flushed down the toilet in anyplace except New England, I’m just about ready to turn to tending my own damn garden.  Anybody got any advice on cucumbers (or hell, you could just start with the jokes about a man that grows straight eights?)

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http://youtube.com/watch?v=u7IcNiLvv_Q&search=connie%20chung

It leaves me speechless, it does.

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So the partner and I recently re-painted two rooms in our house. 

The first room started out smurf blue, which I caused me to run back to the local hardware place (god bless the mom-and-pop corner store, I tells ya) and get something grayer and darker.  So now my office feels like an aquarium.  Which, on the whole, I like.

The second room — my partner’s study (because being filthy yuppies, we own a large house, and having neither pets nor kids means that, yup, we each get our own home office.  It’s disgusting, really) — we have painted a color that I can only describe as “peacherine” or “apricot tarte” or “tangelo glow” or something else vaguely Junior League of Pasadena cookbook-meets-50’s nymphet porn star.

Now here’s my beef.  Picking out colors to paint a room is guaranteed to drive me completely insane. 

Now I’ll grant you it’s fun to fantasize about what a new room could look like; especially when the various walls in our house could best be described as: sea-foam green (living room), bloody chocolate (dining room), haut mod Swede green (downstairs bath), “oriental blue” (my study) “tangerine kiss” (partner’s study — I wish I were making this shit up) and midnight-in-the-jungle green (master bedroom).  Gee, now that I list it all, it sort of sounds like Freud met Joseph Campbell and they both got roaring drunk before picking the color scheme.  Anywho, I will also admit it’s even sort of fun to spin the color wheel.  Because choices are always fun, and perhaps (perhaps) especially so when you literally have thousands of colors to choose from.

But here’s my beef: it’s this consumerist fantasia of choice that explicitly says “look! look at all the ways you can be uniquely you, for you are never so unique as when you have that personal touch, that color that expresses your own personal individuality.”  As if the color of my walls said something about who I am as a person (more horrifying than the logical fallacy inherent in that statement is the thought that it might actually be true).  As if all those thousands of choices didn’t somehow magically end up producing the same damn middle-class good-taste concoctions of architectural blandness that one sees on home tours across the nation.  As if, (and here I suppose I’m channeling Didion), having just the right mix of fruit and pastel and verdure could hide the fact that there is no place in one’s home to call one’s own — no room(s) in which to hide, or weep, or propose, or entertain, or while away an afternoon alone reading a novel — just the same damn straight-from-Lowe’s light fixtures, the same damn oversized reproduction prints of fecking French vermouth adverts, the same damn coffeetable books on how to restore and decorate a Craftsman home that lay (lie?), gathering dust on the coffee table because there are no damn bookshelves on which to put books.

Yes, it is that entire system of taste-for-purchase, of individuality-for-hire, of consumption as display, of lifestyle bound by, embedded in, and totally defined by expenditure that I find utterly, utterly enraging.  ‘Tis all the more pity it is inescapable.

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So, readers of this blog (both of you) know that I’m interested in politics.  Furthermore, you know that I basically grew up with politics — I literally spent a good chunk of my childhood playing tag in the back stairwells of the State Capitol. 

Having grown up with politics, I probably take some things for granted that others don’t.  Such as,

- That one must take a long-term view if one is to preserve one’s sanity (short-term defeats are simply part of the game — there’s always a re-match when the legislature re-convenes next year). 

- that big talk is part of the process (one must make promises, and the more mellifluously phrased the better), but at the end of the day it is power that matters.  Power, of course, defined as the ability to get something you want despite the opposition of others.  If all you can do is talk a big game and you can’t ever produce — win an election, get a bill passed, shovel rewards to your constituents, etc. — then, well, you’ll probably be paid better if you become a media talking head.  And if you had any honor you’d sit down and let someone else have a hand at bringing home the bacon.  As a corollary, if you can produce but for whatever reason can’t spin golden words from the straw of policy, then by all means stick to consulting and running other people’s campaigns.  Wonks may not get the glamour, but as lobbyists they’re sure as hell paid better than elected officials.

- that politics requires compromise with one’s enemies and trading favors with one’s friends and allies.  And while your interests won’t always align perfectly — and so therefore you should forgive minor disputes — you must also remember to pay back (and sometimes pay forward) if you’re ever to expect to get anything in return.

- that, because politics is about power and about money, it is not always clean.  Of course it ought to be, but it often is not.  And while we must always ourselves be honest and honorable, the necessity of horse-trading means dealing with the corruption of others.  You want to get shit done?  Be willing to negotiate and trade favors with people you consider unsavory. 

- that partisanship is about which team you’re on.   Parties are “merely” organizational tools used by various groups of people to accomplish goals.  When you sign up with a party, you’re signing up as a member of a team, and that means (among other things) that there are others on your team.  If people make assumptions about you based on who else is on your team, you shouldn’t be surprised.  Don’t like the fact that voting Republican means that people assume you’re a racist religious bigot out to chain pregnant women to the kitchen counter?  Think about who else is on your team.  Don’t like the fact that voting Democrat means that people assume you’re a Birkenstock-wearing pot-smoking mealy-mouthed crystal-worshipping moral relativist?  Think about who else is on your team. 

- that, by the same token, being part of a team means supporting policies with which you might not personally agree.  In other words, supporting a team of necessity involves some amount of hypocrisy, and you must decide how much hypocrisy you personally can handle.  So, for instance, voting Republican really does mean that you’re ultimately supporting the passage of policies that screw persons of color, exploit the poor, enforce religious bigotry, and prop up the patriarchy.   Voting Democrat really does mean that you’re supporting the passage of policies that raise the tax burden on those with means, advance cultural and religious pluralism, and expands the regulation of business.  This is not to say that unprejudiced egalitarian athiests “shouldn’t” vote Republican or that religious professionals and businessmen “shouldn’t” vote Democratic — but know that you cannot claim that you don’t support, “not really, anyway,” the stated policies of the party for which you are voting.   To hold that position is, quite simply, to advertise one’s native stupidity.

- that a lot of the time — perhaps even most of the time — a lot of partisanship is simply team-activity. Confused as to why rural and religious Kansans vote for the Republicans, a party dedicated to the expansion of an economic system that undermines rural, small-town, petty bourgeois prosperity and steadily evacuates our culture of all moral certitude and decency?  Or that Blacks and Hispanics vote Democrat - a party with a stated platform supporting civil unions and access to abortion?  Be not confused — they’ve chosen their team.   In the words of Rev. Al Sharpton (a mellifluous orator if ever there was one), they’re riding that donkey as far as it will take them.

I am reminded of these points because I attended a state party convention this weekend.  And I was bemused by how many people were surprised, shocked, and ultimately made cynical by various actions, events, and outcomes.  So a fair number of candidates are stuttering, plug-ugly fools — gotta fill the ticket somehow.  So the guy who talked the best game is, it turns out, an incompetent liar — this is the first time this has happened?  So people get ugly and scream at each other and try to shut each other down — like you’ve never dealt with ill-bred rubes before?  So a lot of the decisions get made behind closed doors — what, you think opening up the process to input by every crazy cracker from Ding Dong Texas is a _good_ idea?

Politics isn’t pretty — this should not be news.  So the world is a fallen and trivial place. Get over it and get back to work.

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So we had Pride this past weekend here.  It was…sweet.   Basically the same as last year, only the parade was moved slightly on account of road construction.  

Like last year it took place in the sun-blasted industrial expanse of the Near South Side. There were almost more people in the parade than watching it.  The floats consisted of a few bars, the two gay churches, my group (a political org. of course), some AIDS service providers, the various drag court divas and their groupies, and PFLAG.  The people along the way seemed to be mostly from the neighborhood.  We threw candy.  No one-passed out from heat exhaustion, though let me tell you there is nothing scarier than a drag queen with runny makeup and sweat-stained pantyhose.

Afterward, we set up a booth at the “pride festival” — the usual (if smaller) assortment of vendors arranged under tents in the “back forty” of one of the bars.  We managed to sell approximately 3 bumper stickers and register one voter.  We did not stay for the wet-boxer-short contest.

As the state Democratic Party is having its convention here next week, let us hope that there is more excitement in store this coming weekend. 

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