maya's (l)inklings

But while Tupac was off getting it, two guys in suits with Right Online badges came up. “Hey ladies, when you get sick of Commie McNevershower here, you oughta come party with some real men. But be warned – we like guns, capitalism and we lay pipe like Alaskan oilmen. If you’re ready to step to the right, we’ll be firing up Macanudos on the patio.” Then one handed me his empty Guinness bottle and they walked off.

The womyn were totally outraged. “Can you believe that?” one said. “So arrogant, so … powerful. Let’s go give them a piece of our mind.” The other nodded. “Yes, a piece … of our minds.” As they went off to confront those sexist jerks, I shouted, “You go girls!”

So, back in my hotel room, I couldn’t sleep because of the drumming so I got on the computer and checked out “HotProgressiveBabes.com.” Well, there were at least two things wrong with that name and I’m not sure they were even progressive. I next wrote a Daily Kos piece on the need for a government entitlement program to assist those who George Bush has prevented from meeting girls.

This is not a new idea by any stretch. But what is perhaps new, speaking in strictly modern terms, is the extent to which the elites of the nation have gone to convince themselves that such a thing is a damn fine and American idea, and that how could we possibly afford to give schoolchildren a few more apples when our top American corporations are suffering under an effective tax burden of zero percent, and when this terrible recession has rocked Wall Street, momentarily rendering their bonuses unclear before returning the besuited classes to businesses as usual, albeit with a few more homeless people on their sidewalks than usual.

I am not saying that the Republican position of lower taxes for the wealthy is inherently a bad or loathsome one. I am not saying that one political party is immoral, and the other party better.

But what I am saying is that if, in the end, your grandiosely presented and handsomely argued economic philosophy results in you constantly taking positions that, to repeat myself, make you look like a heartless son of a bitch, and which constantly come down in favor of the wealthy over the poor, or constantly choosing the connected over the unconnected, or the powerful over the powerless, or require you to demand we treat our children worse, or provide for our elders less, then you may, by process of deduction, simply be a heartless son of a bitch, and no amount of powerpoint slides, think-tank studies or prominent churchgoin’ will render it otherwise.