The Mayans were right, as it turns out, when they predicted the world would end in 2012. It was just a select world: the G.O.P. universe of arrogant, uptight, entitled, bossy, retrogressive white guys. Just another vanishing tribe that fought the cultural and demographic tides of history. Someday, it will be the subject of a National Geographic special, or a Mel Gibson movie, where archaeologists piece together who the lost tribe was, where it came from, and what happened to it.
The experts will sift through the ruins of the Reagan Presidential Library, Dick Cheney’s shotgun casings, Orca poll monitoring hieroglyphics, remnants of triumphal rants by Dick Morris on Fox News, faded photos of Clint Eastwood and an empty chair, and scraps of ancient tape in which a tall, stiff man, his name long forgotten, gnashes his teeth about the 47 percent of moochers and the 'gifts' they got. Instead of smallpox, plagues, drought and Conquistadors, the Republican decline will be traced to a stubborn refusal to adapt to a world where poor people and sick people and black people and brown people and female people and gay people count.
This is the cost of war. Look at it, don't turn away and pretend you didn't see.
Congressman Walter Jones, a republican from North Carolina, is raising that question in the House Armed Services Committee's hearings on the Afghan war this week. Maureen Dowd writes in the NYT:
The impossible has happened in the past few weeks. A war that long ago reached its breaking point has gone mad, with violent episodes that seemed emblematic of the searing, mind-bending frustration on both sides after 10 years of fighting in a place where battle has been an occupation, and preoccupation, for centuries.
Afghan security forces cold-bloodedly murdered some American troops after Korans were burned by military personnel. Then an American soldier walked out of his base early one morning and began cold-bloodedly murdering Afghan innocents, leaving seven adults and nine children in one small village dead.
There was an exhausted feel to the oversight hearing, lawmakers on both sides looking visibly sapped by our draining decade of wars. Even hawks seem beaten down by our self-defeating pattern in Afghanistan: giving billions to rebuild the country, money that ends up in the foreign bank accounts of its corrupt officials. . . .
Jones was once so gung ho about W.’s attempts to impose democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan that, after the French opposed invading Iraq in 2003, he helped lead the effort to rename French fries “freedom fries” and French toast “freedom toast” in the House cafeteria.
But now he thinks that both wars are sucking away lives and money, reaping only futility, and that he was silly about the fries. He said he’s fed up with having military commanders and Pentagon officials come to Capitol Hill year after year for a decade and say about Afghanistan: “Our gains are sustainable, but there will be setbacks” and “We are making progress, but it’s fragile and reversible.”
He said he had recently visited Walter Reed and Bethesda Naval Hospital to see wounded troops: “I had a young Marine lance corporal who lost one leg,” in a room with his mother.
“My question is,” the Marine asked him, “Why are we still there?” . . .
[Jones] concluded: "We can declare victory now. But there’s one thing we cannot do, and that is change history, because Afghanistan has never changed since they’ve been existing."
The epitaph of our Sisyphean decade of two agonizing wars was written last year by then-Secretary of Defense Bob Gates: “Any future defense secretary who advises the president to send a big American land army into Asia, or into the Middle East or Africa, should have his head examined."
What I Say: Your Head Trucker is no military man, but as a student of history, the insanity of trying to subjugate and occupy a country so impenetrable and so far away has long been apparent, as shown by the disastrous careers of invaders in other lands down through the centuries, from Alexander to Napoleon to Hitler. This takes no special knowledge of military science, just a simple appreciation of the facts of geography, terrain, an enormously long supply line, the lack of dependable nearby allies, corruption, and the natural resistance of any people to a foreign invader.
It's crazy. It's stupid. It's a totally ridiculous proposition, one that is doomed to fail before it ever begins. And yet . . . why does our country keep doing this terrible thing? Korea - Vietnam - Iraq - Afghanistan. Does nobody in Washington ever have a brain bigger than his goddamn dick?
I bet the Marine lying there in Bethesda missing a leg wonders that too.
Obama is “evolving” on the issue of gay marriage, which, as any girl will tell you, is the first sign of a commitment-phobe.
Maybe, given all his economic and war woes as he heads into 2012, Obama fears the disapproval of the homophobic elements within his own party. But he has tried to explain his reluctance on gay marriage as an expression of his Christianity, even though he rarely goes to church and is the picture of a secular humanist.
While picking up more than three-quarters of a million dollars from 600 guests at a gay and lesbian fund-raising gala in Manhattan on Thursday night, the president declared, “I believe that gay couples deserve the same legal rights as every other couple in this country,” even as he held to his position that the issue should be left to the states to decide.
. . .
With each equivocation, the man in the Oval Office shields his identity and cloaks who the real Barack Obama is.
He should draw inspiration from the gay community: one thing gays have to do, after all, is declare who they are at all costs.
On some of the most important issues facing this nation, it is time for the president to come out of the closet.
While we're on the subject of marriage, here's Cynthia Nixon, speaking last year at the New Yorker Festival:
Gay people who want to marry have no desire to redefine marriage in any way. When women got the vote, they did not redefine voting. When African-Americans got the right to sit at a lunch counter alongside white people, they did not redefine eating out. They were simply invited to the table. And that is all we want to do.
On my blog, a Times reader named Eddie asked about President Obama: “Where is the man I voted for?”
“Does he ever sweat?” Eddie continued. “We’re in desperate times and I don’t see a man who is really affected by it.” He concluded: “We need a committed, passionate person to lead a country . . . not a Sunday school teacher taking cautious, baby steps.”
Well, it’s time for Mr. Obama to sweat like a racehorse. My feeling is that the country has gone too far on blaming its economic distress on Mr. Obama, failing to give him credit for averting another Great Depression among other achievements. But it seems as if Michelle and I may be the only ones who think that way. . . .
Mr. Obama has a far better product to sell than Tea Partiers like Mr. DeMint. But Mr. Obama needs to connect better with American voters. He needs to lose the cool and start sweating — and slugging.
Barack Obama became president by brilliantly telling his own story. To stay president, he will need to show he can understand our story.
At first it was exciting that Obama was the sort of brainy, cultivated Democrat who would be at home in a “West Wing” episode.
But now he acts like he really thinks he’s on “West Wing,” gliding through an imaginary, amber-lit set where his righteous self-regard is bound to be rewarded by the end of the hour.
Hey, dude, you’re a politician. Act like one. . . .
One top aide told me that the president — who perversely tried to marginalize a once-captivated press corps — was beginning to realize that he had not used his charm as effectively as he could have.
His inner circle believed too much in the power of the Aura and in protecting the Brand. They didn’t think they needed to sell anything or fight back when the crazies started sliming them. They didn’t care that the average citizen needed an M.B.A. to understand the financial plan and a Ph.D. to fathom what the health care plan would mean.
Because Obama stayed above it all on health care and delegated to Max Baucus, he missed the moment in August of 2009 when Sarah Palin and the Tea Party got oxygen with their loopy rants on death panels. It never occurred to the Icon that such wildness and gullibility would trump lofty rationality.
As the president tries to ride the Tea Party tiger, let’s hope for this change: that he puts some audacity in his audacity.
What is very clear is that is the national strategy of a delaying votes on our action items for freedom over the last two years turned out to be disastrous mistake. Many of us urgently begged for our President and our national organizations not to delay action or we would face a new Congress. Well, that is exactly what happened although no one could have forecast the landslide that took place.
Legislation: The prospects of passing ENDA and repealing DOMA and DADT are slim to none. No matter what the military report says in December the Republicans in Congress are not about to allow LGBT citizens into the military. Our only hope is that the Department of Justice will drop its appeal (yeah, right) or the President issues a stop loss order. I wouldn't hold our collective breath. Although we 'control' the Senate remember this is more a Senate of the Ben Nelsons and Max Baucuses then of our liberal friends. Nothing can get done without their support. Our opportunities have mostly vanished with our inaction over the last two years and we face a tough new world. If the courts continue to side with us, expect the 'constitutional marriage amendment' to be revived and we could be in trouble. . . .
As we continue with the dialogue about what is next we should be respectful of all of our brothers and sisters. There is a lot to discuss. None of us has all the answers but we are doomed if we don't carefully reflect on election day and what is next.
What I Say: Your Head Trucker has nothing to add to the above. Except that it's very ironic from a historical point of view that even as China by slow steps becomes more wealthy and more open, the United States seems to be moving in exactly the opposite direction: repressive, insular, intolerant, and closed off. Is it possible that we have already passed the high-water mark for gay rights in this country?
And like many of you, I'm sure, I'm totally disgusted and heartbroken over the way Obama gamed us in the 2008 election. So much pretty talk: all hat and no cattle, as we say down here in Texas.
BTW, Butthead Perry walked to an easy victory in the Texas governor's race Tuesday, by about a 2 to 1 margin statewide, with a voter turnout of only 36 percent. Ninety percent of my neighbors here in this rural, Bible-believing county voted for the asshole, and it was pretty much the same story for all the other Republican candidates. Which was only to be expected.
Some days, I just want to get in my truck and drive and drive and drive.
But there's nowhere to go, not really. Assholes are everywhere, so you might as well just stay home.
It has been quite a journey for Ted Olson. He’s gone from being the conservative lawyer who helped crown W. by winning the Bush v. Gore case before the Supreme Court, to being a lesbian.
“Maureen,” he told me in his gravelly voice, “one of the biggest lesbian groups in this country told me I’m already an honorary lesbian.” . . . “We’re going to explain why allowing same-sex couples to have that same right that the rest of us have is not going to hurt heterosexual marriages. It has no point at all except some people don’t want to recognize gays and lesbians as normal, as human beings.” . . .
“I’ve got a grandson who’s a senior in college, and he can’t imagine fighting over this issue,” Boies said. “It’s like explaining to my daughter that there was a time when women didn’t have the right to vote and couldn’t own property.” . . .
I asked the lawyers if they were disappointed that the president who had once raised such hope in the gay community now seemed behind the curve. “Damned right,” Boies snapped. “I hope my Democratic president will catch up to my conservative Republican co-counsel.”
Olson added: “I’m not talking about Obama, but that’s what’s so bad about politicians. They say, ‘I must hasten to follow them, for I am their leader.’”
Obama sees himself as such a huge change that he can be cautious about other societal changes. But what he doesn’t realize is that legalizing gay marriage is like electing a black president. Before you do it, it seems inconceivable. Once it’s done, you can’t remember what all the fuss was about.
Two good ones in the NYT, the first from Maureen Dowd about the party-crashers at the White House:
We live in an age obsessed with “reality” and overrun by fakers. The mock has run amok.
This decade will be remembered for the collapse of the Twin Towers, the economy and any standard of accomplishment for societal prestige. TV and the Internet wallow in the lowest common denominator.
Warhol looks like Whistler.
But if Congress investigates social climbing and party crashing in Washington, it won’t have time for anything else.
And the other from Roger Cohen about the fading of anti-Semitic attitudes in Britain:
I still believe the greatest strength of America, its core advantage over the old world, is its lack of interest in where you’re from and consuming interest in what you can do.
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, harmony; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that I may seek not so much to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.
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We cannot all do great things, but we can do small things with great love.
and welcome to the Blue Truck, a blog for mature gay men with news and views on gay rights, history, art, humor, and whatever comes to mind. Plus a few hot men. The truck's all washed and gassed up, so hop in buddy, let's go.
CAUTION: For mature gay men only beyond this point. Some posts and links may not be suitable for children or the unco guid. You have been warned.
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My Story
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Churches say that the expression of love in a heterosexual monogamous relationship includes the physical, the touching, embracing, kissing, the genital act - the totality of our love makes each of us grow to become increasingly godlike and compassionate. If this is so for the heterosexual, what earthly reason have we to say that it is not the case with the homosexual?
It is a perversion if you say to me that a person chooses to be homosexual. You must be crazy to choose a way of life that exposes you to a kind of hatred. It's like saying you choose to be black in a race-infected society.
If God, as they say, is homophobic, I wouldn't worship that God.
