The Southerner Journal

Connecting the Dots
by Glynn Wilson

As I woke up and smelled the coffee this morning and consulted the wires, the polls and Krystal Ball, it became obvious already what's going to happen in the Presidential election of 2008.

So you may as well go ahead and place your bets now at PaddyPower.Com, or take us up on the Yuengling odds.

Krystall Ball has been a tad fuzzy on '08 so far, since it's WAY to early to be talking about a presidential election that is more than a year and a half in the future.

But now, with Tennessee actor Fred Thompson's announcement that he is "testing the waters" and will jump into the race by July 4, it is fairly obvious how this whole thing is going to play out.

Thompson Moves To White House Run

It's Sen. Fred Thompson vs. Oscar winner Al Gore in '08.

What's Krystall Ball's reasoning?

Up to now, the Christian Right really hasn't had anyone in the race to vote for.

Rudy Giuliani of New York, with his pro-abortion and gay rights record, would never have cut it in the conservative Republican primary.

And Sen. John McCain's numbers have been way down in part due to his push for more troops in Iraq and in spite of his foray to the Falwell mountaintop.

Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney could never carry the day, because the polls show the Christian Right will never vote for a Mormon. Sad but true. That's the problem with this religious voting issue in the U.S.

Watch for the Karl Rove political machine, with the Bushes out of the way, to start painting Thompson as the next Ronald Reagan. He is a well-known Southerner from his days of playing the president in movies and a lawyer on TV and he has amassed a solidly conservative voting record in the U.S. Senate.

Hillary might have been able to beat Giuliani or even John McCain. But she hasn't a prayer against Thompson. Sorry Bill.

As for why Al Gore will run, Krystal Ball says she doesn't believe Gore when he says he is not running. He may not be in the race yet.

But when it becomes obvious from the polls that Hillary or Obama or even Edwards won't be able to out-celebrity Thompson, the liberal bloggers will draft Gore and the Democratic Party hierarchy will have to go along or face losing in '08 - which could bring back talk of the party's demise at the hands of Karl Rove.

Another interesting question is: Who will get the nod for Veep on the Democratic side?

Krystal Ball says it will most likely be Barack Obama, the popular black senator for Illinois, since chances are, Hillary would not be interested in being the first woman vice president without having Bill living in the White House as first hubby. Obama is young enough and new enough in American politics to take the Veep slot to position himself to run for president in the future.

But don't place your Yuengling bet or Irish political bet on this one just yet. Krystall Ball needs to wait and see how everyone reacts to Thompson's announcement around Independence Day.

The one other calculation is: Who will win in '08? Krystall Ball says the Democrats will still pull it out in a squeaker. It won't come down to hanging chads in Florida this time or a few thousand stolen votes in Ohio. It will all come down to Louisiana, which will go Democrat no matter what due to the Bush administration's handling of Katrina.

Bet against us if you dare. But the Thompson v. Gore match-up is a one Yuengling bet right now. It should be up to a six pack by the Fourth of July, when Thompson formally makes his announcement.

And that's the word from Locust Forkland, where the river runs cold and true, the great blue herons dance like Elvis and the people like to shoot the breeze (and they are usually right).

Posted by Glynn Wilson at 12:00 PM | Permalink

Connecting the Dots
by Glynn Wilson

TUSCALOOSA, Ala., May 27 - If it is too hot to paint here on the verge of what promises to be a classic global warming summer of heat waves, droughts and forest fires, imagine how it must feel in the deserts of Iraq trying to fight an unpopular, unwinnable war.

And think of how hot it must feel in Washington, D.C. for those trying to find a way out of the war and get Americans to pay attention to the news on global warming and stop driving gas guzzling SUVs everywhere they go.

A recent study showed that only when gas prices reach $4.48 a gallon will a change take place in the U.S. car culture.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of Americans do not pay much attention to politicians or the media. And you almost can't blame them, considering the double-sided bullshit that passes for knowledgeable information pumped out by PR men everyday.

Rather than paying attention to serious news, many Americans do seem to pay attention to TV shows like "Family Guy" on Fox, a show that makes fun of their nuclear family lives.

"Family Guy" is an Emmy award winning animated television series about a family in the suburbs of Quahog, Rhode Island, created by Seth MacFarlane in 1999.

It holds the distinction of being the first cancelled show to be resurrected based on DVD sales in 2005 after it was canceled in 2002.

Most episode titles of the show are parodies of movies, popular slogans and television shows, and for the first half of the first season, the writers tried to work the words "murder" or "death" into the title of every episode to make the titles resemble those of old-fashioned radio mystery shows. They quit when it became too hard to keep up with the limited range of titles.

TV critics panned the show, and for good reasons, Not the usual family-values based reasons of too much gratuitous violence, sex or profanity.

Entertainment Weekly seems to have an ongoing war with the show, leading to an episode in which the main character and dysfunctional dad Peter wiped his ass with a copy of the magazine when he ran out of toilet paper.

In another recent episode, a big, fat woman flirts with Peter at a party and says, I kid you not, "Do you like my ass? Would you eat cake off my ass?"

We know President George W. Bush doesn't watch TV news, but if he had time to watch TV at all, I bet he would laugh at that joke and maybe think to himself or tell Condi, "Hey, that's a great line. Think I'll use it. Let them eat cake off my ass. Ha. Ha."

The show has also been panned using premises and humor very similar to "The Simpsons," where the writers have taken their own jabs at "Family Guy" on the same network. The show was mocked in a two-part episode of South Park. The cast called "Family Guy's" jokes interchangeable and said their frequent "cutaway gags" had no place in the storyline.

The show is at its best when it makes fun of politicians, the media and even the Fox network.

In a recent show, a character resembling George Bush falls off the wagon, gets drunk and runs around naked on a putt putt golf course. In the season finale, the character Death tells Peter he has had a busy day: "Dick Cheney, the president of Haliburton, shot Justice Scalia in a hunting accident and the bullet went through him and killed Scooter Libby and Tucker Carlson."

In the 400th episode of "The Simpsons," little Lisa tried to get people to understand the contradiction between the conservative Fox News and the often irreverent Fox TV.

"They just don't match," she said.

Which is much like a lot of real family life in the U.S. It is sometimes hard to understand the disconnect between people's "beliefs" and "actions."

But maybe that's why it seems too easy for the mass public to be manipulated by lying politicians, who toy with the line between belief and action all the time, and crass commercial capitalists, who make billions fooling some of the people enough of the time.

Beliefs don't mean shit. It's what we know that matters.

It's just that you can't get away with saying it on the stump or in the news. Sometimes you can only find the truth in satirical animated TV shows - or maybe on blogs these days.

But there are some things you can't even get away with on a blog. Does anyone doubt that the Bush-Gonzales Justice Department would spring into action if one were to suggest that Cheney AND Scalia should be shot?

Just kidding Alice. When I say shot, I mean with a camera, not a gun.

Posted by Glynn Wilson at 10:06 AM | Permalink

The spring bird migration seems to be over now, the grosbeaks have moved on north and the mosquitoes have finally arrived, along with the dreaded need for air conditioning - a great invention that allows us in the South to live in these climes year around but fuck up the planet at the same time.

The news is not so interesting these days, although the scandals still pile up in Washington. It's not a bad time to reflect on another Monarchical time - thanks to Showtime.

If you have not been watching the new series on the young Henry VIII, you may want to catch up with the action as young Henry is about to figure out a way to marry the vivacious Anne Boleyn and split from the Catholic Church to form the Church of England, an event that led to the beginning of a great flight of Europeans to what became the United States of America.

The Tudors Official Website

The series shows just how corrupt and sick ruling elites can be in a Monarchy. It's something Americans should beware of considering our current political predicaments. If the Bush's had their way, we would be headed - or beheaded - in that general direction politically.

One point you should understand right away. The cardinal is the king's pimp.

That is more or less an accurate depiction of what the mix of religion and state can produce when the leader of a people is said to get his power from a divine source. They called it the "divine right of kings."

We did away with that shit in the American and French revolutions, and it would be a shame to see something similar return to public favor on Earth.

One of the more important and interesting characters being depicted is Sir Thomas More (1478-1535), also known as Saint Thomas More, an English lawyer, author, and statesman. During his lifetime he earned a reputation as a leading humanist scholar. He was a man of great honesty and character, apparently, which makes him rare in this tale.

More coined the word "utopia," a name he gave to an ideal, imaginary island nation whose political system he described in an influential book called Utopia published in 1516.

I red this book a long time ago, but lost my Book Club hard bound copy along with all my Aristotle, Plato and Socrates on my move from Gulf Shores back to the Southside of Birmingham in 1992.

Utopianism or "no place" refers to an imaginary island depicted by Sir Thomas More as a perfect social, legal, and political system. Various social and political movements, and a significant body of religious and secular literature, are based upon the idea of a Utopia on earth.

Utopia is largely based on Plato's Republic. It is a perfect version of Republic where equalism (egalitarianism) and pacifism flourish throughout human society and where poverty and misery are eliminated. It is a place where private property does not exist and religious toleration is practiced. It has few laws, no lawyers and rarely sends its citizens to war.

Utopia is often seen as the forerunner of the Utopian genre of literature, in which different ideas of the "ideal society" or perfect cities are described in varying amounts of detail. It is a typical Renaissance movement, based on the rebirth of classical concepts of perfect societies as set out by Plato and Aristotle, combined with the Roman rhetorical finesse of Cicero. Utopianism continued well into the Enlightenment Age.

Many commentators have pointed out that Karl Marx's later vision of the ideal communist state strongly resembles More's Utopia, especially on the issue of individual property, although Utopia is without Marx's atheism.

Apparently Henry VIII employed More's exceptional intelligence and grasp of the law and religion to write several treatises in defense of the Catholic faith against European reformers, notably Martin Luther.

But after young King Henry split from the Catholic Church, which would not grant him a divorce, and after he formed the Church of England, More came to believe that the rise of Protestantism represented a grave threat to social and political order in Christian Europe. As with many of Henry's enemies, he was charged with high treason for denying the validity of the Act of Succession and sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered - the usual punishment for traitors. But the king commuted his sentence to execution by beheading.

We suspect if Bush had his way, he would be allowed to do that to his enemies. Instead, these fuckers just set out to ruin people who criticize them via rumor, innuendo and secret dossiers passed around over the "Internets." Sometimes the bastards employ a car crash that looks like an accident. Yes, we could cite specific examples and document them.

But it's late. And afterall, how many scandals does it freaking take to get rid of these corrupt swine?

I'm far more interested in getting past these royal assholes and getting onto more productive pursuits, such as later versions and theories of Utopia. Maybe a scientific approach, something like the one founded by the Global scenario group, an international group of scientists led by Paul Raskin, which uses scenario analysis and backcasting to map out a path to an environmentally sustainable and socially equitable future. Its findings suggest that a global citizens movement is necessary to steer political, economic and corporate entities toward this new sustainability paradigm.

But apparently we're going to have to re-fight the American and French Revolutions, at least in the political realm, before we can get on with that paradigm shift. We always seem to repeat the mistakes of the past, perhaps because people don't remember the past in an educated way.

Did you hear the socialists are rioting as the Conservative Sarkozy won the French presidency?

Bummer man...

Get on top of things people. Don't just watch The Tudors.

Learn more about it.

And let's stop it from happening all over again...

Posted by Glynn Wilson at 08:37 PM | Permalink