AC 180

(va: The Ann Coulter Conversion)
Sondra’s telephone call came before I was ready to face the day. My clock read 5:21 AM.

“I’m not here,” I mumbled into the receiver.

“You will not believe what just happened to me!” she exclaimed. (The enthusiasm in her voice seemed unhealthy for such an early hour.) “Oh, I know you’re only half-awake, but you know, some people say half-awake is the best time for breakthrough insights. And I think I just had one!”

“Could you not spare me till at least 7?” I groaned.

“No,” she said. “This is too bizarre.” [Dramatic pause.] “I dreamt about ANN COULTER.”

“Oh, dear,” I said coming slightly more alert for I had heard Sondra bemoaning Ann, not more than one day ago. “I mean, she just seems so caustic and parallel-challenged,” Sondra had said. “Honestly, I think I share some of her conservative values, but if she ever met me, she’d probably shred me like a liberal, because I happen to believe that “We, the people” means more than, “Me, the Right & True Republican.”

“You don’t sound as if you’re bleeding profusely,” I said.

Sondra laughed. “No, actually Ann began reading to me, quite animated, from one of her books. I started to follow along with this fantastic scrolling reader-thing—you know how dreams are. Anyway she was reading along and I was following with this scrolly thing, when suddenly there was this bizarre disconnect. You pretty much had to be there to get the full effect, but suddenly my scroller began highlighting words at the same moment Ann would read other words in place of them. She was inverting liberal and conservative references! After several “mistakes,” I decided it must be intentional, so I looked up, all shocked-like, but she just smiled sweetly and read on, making these crazy substitutions! Isn’t that bizarre?!”

“Confusing is the word,” I said staring wide-eyed into the dark, “for there is no chance to infinity that Ann Coulter is a closet liberal.”

“Oh, no,” Sondra laughed. “She didn’t always substitute—but always in those places dealing with strategy—you know, the despised liberal/Democrat attack/bias/liar methodology stuff. So it ended up like, everything she accused them of, she’d re-attribute to herself or like-minded conservatives; even changing whole paragraphs. Was still reading when I fell asleep in the dream, which is when I woke up to see the spine of her very book—the “Talking to a Liberal” one—propped against my lamp. That was startling strange, till I remembered I had stashed it there—courtesy of my pastor’s wife—wants to know what I think! Confused me though for a moment. Wasn’t sure I was waking from a dream or into one.

“So maybe you should tell me your breakthrough insight, so I can go back to sleep,” I sighed.

“Wait a minute!” Sondra said. “You’re not getting the feel for this. I can hear it in your voice. You just should have been there—here—wherever. The gist of the whole thing was like—well you know those hidden paragraph codes in word processing. Well, this was like The Ann Coulter Code. Actually even way beyond her—like The Authoritarian Conservative Code. Like whatever they condemn in liberal strategy, and you’re right—I can hear it in your breathing— there is plenty to condemn on all sides—but the dream-Ann was telling me—with a smile, to boot—that she was foreshadowing and perfectly nonchalant about making extreme use of every nasty strategy she so vehemently condemned. In fact, seemed quite exhilarated to do so.”

“Well, it’s probably historical precedent—déjà vu.” I said.

“Exactly, exactly,” Sondra said, “but shouldn’t we have learned by now too see through these finger-pointing deflections. Anyway, Ann got me so interested, I might start her book where she left off reading, and do the dream reversal. And from now on, that’s how I’m going to interpret all those hostile opinion books of both persuasions—with my little mental scroller highlighting AC conversion in the background.

“Maybe you should rewrite her book,” I suggested. “You could acknowledge her as the ghost writer.”

“Wouldn’t that be the height!” she exclaimed with a laugh. “I could label it satire or parody or something. I could republish, reversing all the liberal/Democrat stuff with conservative/Republican stuff. It would be bang on from what I have been seeing, and I could call it … AC 180.”

“Sounds like the perfect title,” I agreed.

“Oh, yeah, that reminds me!” Sondra exclaimed. “For a split second, AFTER I awoke, I saw this big “ME” plastered over part of her title. You know, so it read, How to Talk to ME (if you must).”

“Oh dear,” I said, “she’ll swear your vision-giver is a cloistered liberal.”

“Honestly,” Sondra moaned, “one gets so tired of this uncivil discourse and strategy blame-game. I mean both sides seem to be in full spin-cycle most of the time—like it's an equality contest of grenade lobbing, which isn't what I signed on for. And worse than that, so many "rightists" are so busy cursing liberal craters, we don't seem to notice the bottomless pit we’re digging ourselves into by our own follies and self-deceptions.”

“I doubt Ann will be—” I began, but Sondra was not finished.

“So you see what my breakthrough is? What this dream-Ann has awakened me to?—to the decision that I’m totally tired of all this beam-in-the-eye stuff we’re pretending isn’t there. I just seems we're doing as much—if not more—damage to America as any so-called liberal, so if I have to poke the eye of my grand-old-party just to get them to look into their own contorted, parallel reflection, then so be it.”

“Well from what I see, some of them don’t just poke back, they try to decapitate,” I cautioned.

“Oh, I know,” she said, “but too many of us seem to be asleep or else so enraged by the other guy’s sins we lose our own focus. So maybe it’s time more of us started flinging facts into our own fan.”

“So, does this mean you have an answer for your pastor’s wife?” I asked.

“I guess so,” she laughed. “This vision/dream thing should be the clincher. I’ll tell her too, it’s like crossing the street. If you don’t look both ways, with eyes wide open, you ain’t as safe (or as smart) as you think. Anyway, gotta go, but I’ll send you a little sample of the dreamy rendition.”

And that was that (except for the email).

▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ [Sondra’s Email] ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪

As I promised, here’s a little sample of Ann’s very own dream-revisions—truly an “AC 180,” don’t you think? She was a tad erratic, skipping about, but this gives you a taste. (I've italicized her changes from the book.)

p. 1: We, conservatives, traffic in shouting and demagogy. In a public setting, we will work ourselves into a dervish-like trance and start incanting inanities: “Obama lies.” “Baby killer.” “Racist!” “Fascist!” “Socialist!” “Conspiracy!” “No, No, No, Hell No.” ... We, conservatives, as opposed to sentient creatures, have a finite number of memorized talking points, which we periodically try to shoehorn into unrelated events, such as 9/11 and Iraq; but our favorite is to deny parallels like enhanced interrogations in Guantánamo and “bad apples” in Abu Ghraib, or like shoe and underwear bombers, or like OUR use of House reconciliation, OUR numerous flip-flops, OUR earmarks, OUR moral lapses, … [She had quite a list.]
p. 2: Our idea of a battle of wits is to say, “Socialism” in front of adoring conventioneers and be wildly applauded for our brilliance and courage. …, we have a number of stratagems to prevent liberals from talking. We shout liberals down, cut the microphones of interviewees, threaten liberal politicians, and heckle liberal speakers. We target them.

Sorry, this will take too long to scribe all AC’s inversions and changes. In the dream, it all seemed to just roll off her lips. And she was SOOO well-versed in conservative/liberal parallels—even things I hadn’t heard yet. (Could there be astonishing things YET to break in the news!?!)

Wonder if we could get someone to do a “fair and balanced” AC 180 of her book. Then maybe, between her book and the inverted one, we’d really have AC 360 (Astute Citizens!?! even). Anyway here are two other inversions, she seemed quite pleased about.

p. 7: “Our other new hobby is to call people “liars.”
p. 15: “Even if you’ve led a blameless life, we invent absurd stories about you.

(PS: You get the gist! I wonder if a daily reading from Matthew 7 in Congress and before every pundit-cast would be of any help! I’ll save you the trouble of looking it up.)

Matthew 7:3-5: And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye. (Also see Luke 6:41-2)

Is there any hope to save us from ourselves?! Till next time, Sondra

va: Beware the Spokesman!

“Talk about déjà vu!!!!!” my friend Sondra headlined in her email reporting her belated research on the state of healthcare debates.* She continued: “It was the tobacco boys all over again. Painful! Painful! Our best ’n brightest industry spokesmen—lined up like errant school chums—all prepped by their corporate-ness to the identical party-line. The new chant?—Recission. Recission. Recission. (Unanimous!) And you know what? I actually felt sorry for them—these free-market devotees touting policy and ‘apple-pie’ American business—for I never saw a sadder display of conformism and lackey-loo in all my life (except, of course, for those tobacco boys**). And it set me to thinking. Right there in that hearing-room was the raison d’étre (’scuse the French) of stratospheric compensation pacts. They buy soul.

“And the sweet hush-hush is that for many of our chiefs and semi-chiefs, it’s only half the story. They spend their days eating, drinking, flying, and perking at company expense. So, I ask you: Like who would give up that kind of privilege—that kind of “security” to speak one’s mind; to question the status quo; to question the ethics?

“So what do you think? Can anyone EVER agree to be a spokesman for pay without risking a fracture of soul? And considering the trade-off, how cheap it seems to go—whatever the perks! Sad, sad, SAD!”

---------------
* July 27, 2009 hearing at Indiana University Southeast, United States House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations New Albany, IN Field Hearing led by Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., chairman of the said Subcommittee. Spokesmen: Don Hamm President and CEO of Assurant Health, Indianapolis, Indiana; Richard A. Collins, CEO of Golden Rule Insurance Company, a UnitedHealth Group business, Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Brian A. Sassi, President and C.E.O., Consumer Business, WellPoint, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana.
http://energycommerce.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1718:terminations-of-health-policies-by-insurance-companies-state-perspectives-and-legislative-solutions&catid=133:subcommittee-on-oversight-and-investigations&Itemid=73&layout=default&date=2009-07-01

**Tobacco boys: http://www.jeffreywigand.com/7ceos.php

va: A Bill of Goods?

“Do you realize this year is the twentieth anniversary of a huge world event?” my friend Sondra said as she accosted me outside the local grocers.

“Well, I guess that would be ’89,” I said, as I scrambled to remember what 1989 was all about. As usual, I did not have to reveal my ignorance of huge historical facts as Sondra’s questions were almost always leading onward.

“And here we are,” she moaned, “twenty years later, watching our own economy collapse under the weight of its own false premises. It’s just so disgusting.”

“Oh right, ’89,” I said. “Those command economies bit the dust. I remember. It was kind of huge.”

“And you know what gets me?” she said. “We were so smug. Our good old capitalism, all vindicated; but I have been thinking, and I think we’ve been sold a bill of goods—as bad—maybe worse that those poor old deluded comrades of yesterday. I mean, I have been reading and thinking, and I have to wonder—with all this déjà vu “red scare” stuff—if it’s not just more diversion, to keep our noses off the true scent of ourselves. And do you know what that is?” she exclaimed.

“Well, I haven’t given it as much thought as—”

“Well, you really should,” she interrupted, “because as I see it, we are all just two sides of a counterfeit coin. It’s just too clear. With all their coercions and freedom paranoia, they deny the very best of who we humans are; and we, with all our free-market talk and regulation paranoia, deny the worst of who we are. So what do we get—out of both systems? Pretty much the worst of ourselves.”

“Hey, that IS interesting,” I said. “But you do have to admit that free-markets have gotten us a lot more than their command ones ever got for them.”

“Well, let me see,” she said. “They live in one long depression. We prefer to recycle and recession ours. Like doesn’t anybody notice? Like how many billions—trillions—of our good capital do we have to flush every quarter-century or so, to wake us up to reality—to permanent memory? And what has all this periodic, free-wheeling prosperity got us anyway? Too much stuff, too much fat, too much debt, too many elites, and too many poor—all of which we could do very well without. And I’m serious.”

“You could be right, but—”

“And another thing, I don’t see too much difference between their command economies and all our prestigious transnational dictatorships. Talk about command and supply. Talk about selling free speech and conscience for a mess of employment pottage. Talk—”

“What?” I interrupted.

“Read a transnational—maybe even any—employment contract and see just how free our corporate comrades are to speak their minds—to blow their whistles—to organize themselves—to refuse to work on their holy days. Oh, man, it’s just all too depressing. We’re just a bunch of deluded, debt-loaders, thinking we can serf our way to prosperity. And then to have the temerity to call this the pursuit of happiness.”

“Well, at least we have—”

“A fraud,” she scoffed, cutting me off. “What should we call it when our favored “citizens” are mere legal constructs; when our so-called reps are under the influence 24/7; when free-market means free-ranging predatorship with bonuses for dessert, and then bailouts when the indigestion strikes? And answer me this. If labor has its capital sins needing restraint, what of capital?”

“I guess I’m like most of my fellow citizens. I haven’t read Adam Smith, so I—”

“That’s another thing!” she exclaimed. “Adam Smith has been hijacked. People should inform themselves.”

“Honestly, Sondra, you know it’s not that easy. Life is pretty consuming. That’s why we elect people. THEY keep informed; and we trust—hope—they’ll do the right thing.”

“Well, history is not on your right side, my friend; and why we keep ignoring that is beyond me.”

“Maybe because there’s too much history out there. And anyway, when you’re in the thick of a thousand things, it’s hard enough to focus on the big picture, let alone the past picture—even to know what those pictures are.”

“OK, I know. I sympathize, but that’s part of the fraud package. Our macro-elites claim the entire big picture, but it’s all single-lens reflexive—free-wheeling economic determinism—as if that ever made sense—the global view-master! The inevitable solution! And we passivate.”

“Passivate?!’ I said.

“It’s a word I hijacked,” she said. “But it’s true. We’re so coated in expert’s rhetoric we don’t even try to think, let alone question all this hype about deregulation and competitive free-markets. We tie competitive sports up in knots of rules and referees, but not hyper-capitalism! Oh, no. Capitalism and free-markets must be allowed to follow the dictates of natural flow, and all the while we pretend the natural man-ager will be self-restraining; and that they’re doing it without massive concessions and handups. Like sports-doping doesn’t occur?! Like that makes a level playing field?! So you see what I mean. I’m not saying, ‘tie capitalism in knots of regulation’; I’m saying, ‘use common sense. Wisdom. Balance. Balance. Balance. Get a memory! Acknowledge the greed gene. Make it mighty uncomfortable! Inflict consequences. Don't give away the commonwealth for private profit.’ But no, it’s like we keep recycling the same stupidity we manifest in Iraq, watching the theft and vandalism with such surprised wonder and distaste. As if we hadn’t seen it a thousand times before. And it’s such a bill of goods.”

“So then, what am I to do if I’m not to ‘passivate’? And if YOU are not to be late for lunch?” I asked, waving my wristwatch in her face.

“I’m always late, I can’t help it,” she said, “But the thing that matters is that WE the people reclaim the pursuit of happiness. It’s been plastered over by the pursuit of wealth which we bizarrely pursue by way of debt and leverage. And it’s pretty much illusion, delusion, and theatrics. Just look at all those no-balance sheets of our too-big-to-fail, prestigious corps. Not to mention, all our foreclosed houses.”

I waved my watch again.

“OK, OK. I’ll let you go with this,” she said. “We have to multi-focus. No more single lens. We have to slap economics back onto the tightrope along with all our other competing values and get them all walking in balance as best we can. Democracy is ruddy inefficient, if you want the truth. Probably the most inefficient form of government there is, but that’s democracy. Well, at least until that determined efficiency of competitive-markets grabs it by the jugular. And then it’s just plain oligarchy, oligopoly, and all the rest. So there you have it. No more leveraging that bill of goods. My sermon for the day. So, go forth and do not ‘passivate.’ Be a persistent Socratic annoyance.”

“I don’t have to ask how it’s done,” I said, waving her off.

But frankly, as I watched her drive away, I’m sorry to say, I could not help thinking how much easier it was to just ‘passivate.’ How much more simple life was without persistent Socratic annoyances. But then again, What is citizenship, if not a walk upon a tightrope?

va: Hummer Bummer

“I am so bummed,” the usually elegant Sondra said before I even had a chance to say, “How are you?”

We were meeting for our monthly Cheesecake luncheon and I had never seen, let alone heard, her so disturbed.

“You should see our neighborhood!” she exclaimed in disgust. “It looks like a war zone! Our tree-lined paradise, and now six—I tell you—six Hummers on our block alone and they can’t even be bothered to park them out of sight, because, of course, that would mean out-of-mind, which is not exactly what they hope for us Hummerless neighbors.”

I didn’t even have to raise an eyebrow for she was on a roll. “So, I tell you, if one more house on my block takes to sporting a war machine, I may just go out of my ever-lovin’-American mind and declare my own war on this freedom of excess. I mean, do they not know? do they not care how close we are to sucking fumes?”

I knew I had to calm her. Sucking fumes was several years away. And besides, America was the world’s foremost bastion of freedom and free enterprise. I told her so.

“Free to what?” she cried. “Free to leave our kids in the dark. Free to pine-beetle our way to the death of transportation, as we know it. Free to consume the rest of the world into untimely death by OUR affluenza!”

I opened my mouth to speak about the boon these Hummers might prove for alternative fuel R&D, but she was already there.

“And don’t get me started on the food-for-fuel imbecility,” she warned. “In fact, in protest, I think I shall boycott the excesses of cheesecake and buy bean-futures. Come to think of it, we should start a bean program. Hang a bean-bag on every Hummer’s side-mirror to remind them that gas has to come from somewhere!”

“That’s not likely to win friends or influence the right people,” I said calmingly.

“You mean the wrong people,” she snorted, which wasn’t an altogether pleasant sound for one who sings in the church choir. “We have got so gosh-darned confused about right and wrong in this country that we call a pig’s snout a silk purse and nobody bats an eye, cause we ought to be free to imagine and manifest the future anyway we want it.”

I had to assert some reason. “Well, you know, I’m not sure we have the right to dictate the things people choose to drive.”

“OK,” she said, throwing her hand up. “Let them buy Hummers if they must and park them as monuments to excess in their backyard flower-beds, but when they pull up to a limited resource and drain the common fuel pool a million-times faster than the—

A million times!?!” I interjected.

“I approximate,” she defended, “to a scooter.”

“Well, you can’t expect Moms, CEO’s, staunch Republicans, or confused Democrats to scooter their way to all that is required,” I argued.

“That’s it!” she exclaimed. “That’s the test.” What-is-required is pretty basic. Set a reasonable standard. We’re all in this together, so I say, for those who haven’t discovered the follies of selfishness and mindless profit, then boot-camp them for a wealth of common experience.”

I could see it was probably hopeless to reason with her. Hummers had spread the fog of war into her burbs. Nonetheless, I felt the need to caution.

“Now, Sondra, I trust you realize this is private property and those things do cost a pretty penny.”

“You’re darn right—they cost the world a pretty penny and that’s why I stand amazed that all those Hummerites and their enviers don’t seem to notice the tremors. I mean, if they’d turn off their engines, they’d feel the big-quake tensing up, and it ain’t gonna be pretty when the disaster compacter comes for the metal and rubber scraps—which by the way, is a whole other boiler that just sends me—”

“Nonetheless,” I firmly interrupted—only to be interrupted myself.

“Yes, yes, I know,” she grumbled. “I know what civil means. Honestly, I’m a Gandhi-ite at heart. I really am. It’s just this deplorable disconnect with my lips— which I guess is my whole wretched point. Oh, mercy! it’s all déjà vu Isaiah, isn’t it? This lips and heart stuff is just gonna do every-sorry-last-one-of-us in. God help us!”

Now how does one reply to that? Amen?