My views on politics, life, death, the army, and other things too miscellaneous to mention here. This is a personal blog. This blog is 100% factual.
Bill Duckwing
Poet, Author, Journalist
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Your Super-Cute Daily Terror Alert Update Will Be Forevermore:
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"There are some myths and untruths surrounding the role God plays in our daily lives. To say that religion and politics do not mix, is certainly a myth, unless you ask a liberal. Anything that affects a Christian (and voting is one of them) — enters into the religious realm. Trying to separate the two is like trying to separate oil from a glass of water, it's impossible to do. "
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Tuesday, June 08, 2004
Ronald Reagan and the New Era of American Politics
I was a cusp child, born into a new era of American politics. Though noboby really knew what was happening at the time, I think you can carve a general distinction between Nixon and the fall of Watergate, and the rise of Carter as a political reformer and the election of Ronald Reagan. I was born somewhere in between these events, and thus my own personal political outlook relies heavily on the neo-conservative outlook of American that has shaped our foreign and domestic politcy over the last thirty years.
I won't get too much into Jimmy Carter as a reformer for the neo-con movement. It strikes me as too conspiratorial, and he was way too much of a minor President to give it much consideration. Suffise it to say that he was the first President to break with modern-liberalism and actually cut domestic programs and greatly increase defense spending.
Reagan was the maturation of the process, except he couldn't quite cut butter as much as he wanted to, and he couldn't cut taxes as much as he wanted to.
Instead, Reagan adopted a policy of raising taxes, greatly increasing defense spending, and greatly increasing the scope and development of the Federal government into a huge an insanely bureaucratic institution, servicing only the few who could get had the time and the money to cut through the red tape.
This is the great thing about the neo-con philosopy -make the government big, confusing, and annoying, then announce that government cannot serve the public because it's too big, and the only way to adjust this is to cut taxes, which leads to record deficits, which leads to more spending and more bureacracy, which leads to more confusion, which leads to voters voting Republican.
I suppose if neo-conservatism never happened, I'd probably position myself as a modern liberal, which was the essential governing philosophy from FDR to Nixon. The idea behind modern liberalism was that taxes paid provided a service, much like the current theory behind private enterprise. Back in the day, the government worked for the taxpayers. Taxpayers paid good money to gain service, either for themselves or for the good of their nation. It could be paid out in security, defense, unemployment, social security, public transportation subsidies, equal opportunity housing, you name it. Maybe I'm not quite getting it, because as a cusp born, I've never lived in the era when modern liberalism thrived. I'm pure product of the neo-conservative era, where there is too much red tape, too much politics, and where people consider you crazy if you expect something from the government(service in times of need)for something (paying taxes).
Of course, the government can't satisfy everybody. We now equalify that for everyone in Ameica by making sure it now can satisfy nobody. This pushes people to pave their own way, while still paying exhorbitant payroll taxes, into an almost social-darwinistic pulse and drive in America. Not that there's anything really wrong with the Soc-Dar attitude. But when we send two-thirds our tax dollars to Lockheed to build weird and scary things that'll probably still be prototypes when the next World War comes around...most of which will be spent on government memoes stating that more memoes are needed in order to certify that more memoes will be needed to get the prototyes certified by the people who need to memo each other for the next couple of years to consider the implications of what points in each progression in the paperwork need more approval to be considered for funding and how much the federal government can be overcharged at each stage and still stay off it's shit list (which probably doesn't even exist).
This is the modern Federal Government. This is the neo-con revolution. This is why most of us younger liberals are mostly libertarian and consider the government incapable of reform.
I notice that I haven't really gotten into Ronald Reagan much, and that's probably all for the best, as I consider him mostly a herald for neo-conservatism, rather than the all emcomposing light and truth of it. The honor probably goes best to George W. Bush at this point.
I think we should pay our respects to Reagan, and to his family of course, but we shouldn't forget how conservatives have taken the message of simpler government, and made it into perverse mockery in order to gather popular support for tax cuts for the wealthy and for mojo business. We pay our high taxes because we expect a limited amount of service from our government, and we should expect efficiency rather than mindless bloatation (new word, heh). Nothing less.
-duckwing, at 8:52 PM
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Monday, June 07, 2004
Creed Over and Out
Have you ever noticed that some weeks are just filled with the obituaries of past popular culture icons? Deaths come not in pairs, but in groups of three or more. So far this week, we've seen the demise of both Ronald Reagan, and now, the demise of the rock band Creed. They finally reached the Promise Land with arms wide open when their tour bus went into a guardrail somewhere off the interstate in rural Wisconsin.
Naw, just kidding. They just broke up. For good. Not that it really matters.
The only real reason that Creed was able to kill popular rock music is that popular rock music wanted to die a quick yet spectacular death. A case could be made that rock music died a long time ago. A case could be made that rock has died multiple deaths already. Rock died. Punk brought it back to life. Rock died again. Grunge brought it back to life again. Rock finally died for good and was laid to rest.
Creed did one thing right. Creed was the the dinner bell, the endnote of the grunge era that reminded grunge listeners that they were taking themselves and their music way too fucking seriously. This was good. The only problem is that they sold way too many records. And the other problem that you really couldn't listen to alternative radio in the car anymore without singing along and letting go of the steering wheel sticking your arms out like they was nailed to a crucifix and rolling down the windows to let the wind catch your hair and watching your car cross the interstate median into oncomming traffic and...
This totally doesn't explain why Creed were as popular as they were. Or maybe it does, after all their last album didn't sell quite as well as Human Clay did, right?
-duckwing, at 8:09 PM
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Saturday, June 05, 2004
Reagan for Beginners
I write this post in deference to, with head bowed, Ronald Reagan. In one respect, I cannot think of one politician in the last 50 years, let alone my lifetime, who shaped US policy and US politics quite like Ronald Reagan did. Fuck JFK, fuck Nixon. Reagan was it, and anyone who tells you differently was selling you something, something else that wasn't really key to what Reagan effectively changed forever in American politics.
And, truth be told, I cannot quite skewer him anymore than I can praise him. He turned a bunch of I what I could suggest would be normal intellegent liberal college graduates into a motley of cynical naysayers, assholes, and freaks. He changed the face of the Democratic party from a bunch of civil rights activists into a group of New Democrat deficit hawks. He taught that it doesn't really matter what you do as a leader, as long as you smile when you do it.
He was the ultimate hippie ideal for a president, as he skewered and twisted everything and anything the hippie movement was suspected to be about.
Which was, more than anything, changing what the image of America was supposed to be about. A bright smiling face, riding on horseback. That certainly hasn't changed since Reagan, and it probably won't change soon. As a liberal, it to me has always meant a bright smile with a foot stuck in some seriously yucky mud. To others, it's the promise of America's unfulfilled guarantee to the world, negating quite a bit of question "well, what if it goes horribly wrong?"
Reagan was the future of American attitude and foreign policy now gone present. Bad or good for the world and our country, we all still live in his shadow.
Edit: I think I'm going to write my obit up as a essay. When I do, I'll delete this brief one, and put the full article up. There was something about Reagan that sums up modern American politics for me.
-duckwing, at 10:42 PM
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