Narcissim and arrogance of GOP

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Newt Gingrich recently declared that his nomination for the GOP nomination was certain. I’m just appalled at his brazen arrogance but that kind of chutzpa has a definite place in the contemporary Republican party. We all have flashes of narcissism in which we are too sure of ourselves but usually we self-monitor and do not announce our childish whim, realizing that we appear arrogant and over-confident. We have the whim but on some level we immediately pause and say to ourselves, “Now how would this sound to others?”

There is another example from a GOP debate in September. Health care for the indigent was being discussed and Ron Paul was asked about the issue. Wolf Blitzer posed the question to Paul, “What do you tell a guy who is sick, goes into a coma and doesn’t have health insurance? Who pays for his coverage? Are you saying society should just let him die?” Immediately someone from the Tea Party audience yelled, “Yeah” and that was immediately followed by another “yeah” and then thunderous applause. The candidates were silent for a moment, realizing that the crowd response was really awkward.

Now, I would think that the Tea Party crowd would have realized just how awkward it would appear to applaud and cheer for the hypothetical death of another human being. But “self-monitoring” is not their strong suit and they burst into applause. It was kind of like an earlier debate when the crowd cheered that Rick Perry’s state, Texas, was “leading the league” in executions.

Beauty is always present!

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Life is filled with suffering, but it is also filled with many wonders, like the blue sky, the sunshine, the eyes of a baby.  To suffer is not enough.  We must also be in touch with the wonders of life.  They are within us and all around us, everywhere, anytime.  Thich  Nhat Hanh (Being Peace).

Do you ever get caught up in your sorrows and disappointments so that you lose perspective?  I sure do.  But it helps me when I catch myself doing this to stop for a moment, to pause, to exercise “mindfulness”, and appreciate the beauty that is around me.  And, if this beauty is not immediately present, I can recall the beauty that I have seen and will see again.

I have here just one glimpse of beauty that was caught by my mother-in-law’s eye several years ago.  It is stunning.  And deer, and birds, and squirrels, and the rest of god’s critters are just marvelous.  And I didn’t even mention dachshund puppies who just totally slay me, especially the two that I own.

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Herman Cain’s homecoming

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Well, Herman Cain has spent the night at home with his wife of 37 years.  Boy, did they have lots to talk about.  I wish C-Span could have had its camera there.

I have a suggestion for SNL tonite re how to sketch this homecoming. The sketch would show him walking up to the door of his house, pizza in one hand and a huge King James Bible in the other.  He would attempt to unlock the door and the key would not fit.  He would then knock, first tentatively and then firmly.  After an awkward moment, Gloria would open the door, looking disheveled with a shot glass in her hand.  “Honey, I’m home,” he’d announce with enthusiasm  . Seriously, he has steadily demonstrated that he is in over his head and I’m not even talking about the bimbo factor. I think of him as occupying the Sarah Palin chair of the Republican campaign, triumping for that honor even over the formidable candidacy of Michelle Bachman.

Back during the late summer, early fall, the Republican Party should have put all of them on a flatbed truck and carted them around the various county fairs in the deep South.  It would have been quiet a show.  It would have created a real delimma for me though, forcing me to choose between the GOP candidates and the two-headed woman and the conjoined twins.

 

Damn those human limitations!

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I really love e e cummings. He was just so damned contrary and here I am stuck in my plain-vanilla, humdrum life! It ain’t fair!  He didn’t even obey punctuation! How in the hell did he get by with that? His teachers must have wanted to beat his butt.

Here is one of my favorite of his poems:

WHEN GOD DECIDED TO INVENT

when god decided to invent
everything he took one
breath bigger than a circus tent
and everything began

when man determined to destroy
himself he picked the was
of shall and finding only why
smashed it into because

I really do not understand this poem. But it grabs me. The key to the poem is the limitation of the cause-and-effect world that we live in, a relic of that damned time-space continuum. And, I don’t understand that “continuum” either! Not consciously, anyway. But, I know that cummings realized the limitations that we live in and I know he must have found them very frustrating.

Ultimately, the only thing we have is “why” and that brings us face to face with the profound mystery of life. I’m made to think of Einstein’s observation that he had found that at the heart of everything was an “impenetrable mystery”, noting that this experience is what brought to his heart “religious sentiment.” I choose the term “God” but “my god”, how that term is abused.

Republicans in a delimma

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The report today is that the unemployment rate has improved, dropping to a 2.5 year low. Recently there are several indications that the economy is improving. And that is not even counting the huge boost in the stock market a couple of days ago and the one that is expected today. This news puts the Republicans in an awkward position. Their leading “candidate” in the election of 2012 is a poor economy. And they went out of their way early in the O’Bama administration to emphasize that they “hope he fails.” I know that as they see the economy stirring a little, they must be privately saying to themselves and to each other, “Oh shit!” This attitude they have demonstrated is really embarrassing. In addition to announcing, “I hope he fails” they have opposed any effort along the way to get the economy going.

Now, O’Bama is still in deep trouble. A Republican victory in November 2012 is quite feasible. It would be so funny if the GOP does win if Democrat leaders would come out and smarmily announce, with pronounced irony and facetiousness, “We hope he fails!” I personally cannot imagine “I hope he fails” coming to my mind should the Republicans win though I will surely announce it to tease my Republican friends. That attitude is absolutely deplorable. And, I don’t think the Democrats are currently exploiting that Republican mind set enough.

Marilynne Robinson and the Transitoriness of life

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I have written before about one of my favorite contemporary American novelists, Marilynne Robinson. Two of her books are Housekeeping (my favorite) and Gilead for which she won a Pulitzer Prize in 2005. But she recently posted an article in The Nation entitled “Night Thoughts of a Baffled Humanist” and there demonstrated an ability to astutely address our world’s political and economic issues.

She brings what I call as cosmic perspective to the messes we are in:

Say that we are a puff of warm breath in a very cold universe. By this kind of reckoning we are either immeasurably insignificant, or we are incalculably precious and interesting. I tend toward the second view.

She sees our species as a very vulnerable creature at a very precarious point in our history. She brings to mind W. H. Auden’s description of us as creatures, “clinging to the granite skirts of our sensible old planet.” From this “cosmic perspective”, we are all “humans” and our primary identity with various and sundry nation-states is specious at best. The only way to successfully address our collective issues is to realize that we are all in the “mess” together and even more so, to borrow on old bromide, “none of us are gonna get out alive.” Therefore, our best efforts should be to work toward making this a more hospitable home for our children and for their children so that they can have even more fun in the brief moment they are allowed to cavort about on “this sensible old planet.”

Pretending

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If you can’t pretend, life is going to be difficult. For even the most basic social functioning requires “pretending” at times, not acting on impulse but acting according to the expectations of the social group. The problem with serious psychopathology is the inability to subscribe to and conform to these social expectations.

But even for the garden variety neurotic this pretense can be a struggle. W. H. Auden noted:

I wish you first a sense of theater.
Those who know illusion and love it
Will go far.
Otherwise you spend your life in confusion
Over what to do and say with who you really are.

For, if you don’t develop that “sense of theater” you are apt to find yourself “wondering” too much about “who and what you really are”.  That navel gazing can pose real problems for your life

There is an old oriental aphorism that illustrates this point:

A centipede was happy quite
Until a toad in fun, said
“Pray which leg goes after which?”
This through his mind to such a pitch
He lay distracted in a ditch
Considering how to run.

Musings re “The Secret”

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As indicated yesterday, Rhonda Byrne‘s book, The Secret, has been helpful to me.   But, I do have reservations.

For example, I do wander about using the “Law of attraction” to obtain a parking spot or
fabulous wealth. Though, true enough, perhaps if I felt differently I would be
wealthy and would readily find a parking spot each time I needed!  Oh me of
little faith!

The issue is the unconscious dimension of our experience. The real, the
essential negative self-talk takes place beneath the surface in the form of old
recordings buried deep in our neurological structure. And, yes, since they are
“unconscious” we can’t see them because then they would be conscious! BUT, we
can be self-aware and be honest about the images that flutter through our
conscious mind and about the poor choices that we make. Then, we can ferret out
what these old recordings are.  Or at least some of them.

I’m casting doubt on just how much impact “the power of positive thinking” can
play when our wounds are buried deeply in our subterranean depths. But, it
can’t do any harm to become conscious of “stinkin thinkin” and practice new
refrains or mantras. In other words, it can’t do any harm to attempt to
re-program our brain. It won’t do any harm to attempt to “brain-wash” ourselves
anew with positive and affirming thoughts. For, “brain-washing” is what
happened in the first place.

Let me share something that has been personally useful. I think it was Rumi who
noted once, “The only antidote to depression is praise.” Here, I’m going to
exercise literary license and replace “praise” with “offering thanks.”  Then I
can apply a couple of admonishments from the Bible, such as, “Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.”

What Rumi had in mind was that when life gets grim, we can still exercise choice
and focus on the many good things that are present in our life, even if it is
nothing but the blessing of the very breath of life itself. It has helped me,
when despair beckons, to “pray the alphabet” which Mary Karr taught me in her
memoir, Lit. “Praying the alphabet”, in this context, means going down the
alphabet and making yourself find something or someone starting with each letter
of the alphabet for which you can give thanks. This gets interesting with X, Z,
and Q; but I manage! The beauty of this strategy is that it is on some level a
simple cognitive behavioral therapy strategy. You can’t whole-heartedly focus
on more than one thing at a time. So, focusing on the wonderful things in your
life can pre-occupy you for a moment and take your attention away from that
gnawing despair.

The Law of Attraction

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I was channel-surfing last night and I happened by Joel Osteen. He always gets my attention as he is so unusual looking. On this particular “drive-by” he was discoursing re the power of the words, “I am.” He developed the point that whatever you complete the sentence, “I am….” with is what you get. He developed this point very well, noting for example that if you say, “I am a louse” then probably you are going to be a louse. If you say,“I am stupid”, then probably you are going to be stupid. Now in the time I was there he did not reference Rhonda Byrne’s book, The Secret, which described this truth as “The Law of Attraction”—whatever you put out there with your words is what you will attract. And this “Law of Attraction” is being popularized by many of our contemporary self-help, New Age, spokespersons.

This “Law” can be described as simplistic but I don’t totally dismiss it. I too believe that it is with our words that we create our world and with obsessive self-talk perpetuate it. And I’m very pleased to see someone in Osteen’s position promulgating a message like this. I just hope it is taught to the kiddies in Sunday School as that is when it needs to be learned.

Osteen’s sermon was a simple self-help spiel and I was impressed with what I heard. I’m pleased to see an evangelical preacher preaching a message of self-empowerment. And he didn’t trot out that “hell fire and damnation” stuff either.