Thursday, May 25, 2023
3 Chords & the Truth: Something stupid
Friday, May 19, 2023
3 Chords & the Truth: The Ironic Curtain
Greetings from the wrong side of the Ironic Curtain.
The what?
The Ironic Curtain. Let me explain. What we’re seeing in America these days is the building of an Iron Curtain in this country, dividing red and blue states -- and dividing Americans into first- and second-class citizens.
In America . . . again.
The irony, of course, is that we now have an Iron Curtain -- much like the one that divided democratic Western Europe from the communist east after World War II -- in a country that styles itself as a beacon of freedom and democracy for the world. This is the second time that's happened here.
The first time, it was the line separating the Jim Crow South from the rest of the United States. Back then, there were definite similarities between the repression found in the Eastern Bloc countries and the repression found in the American South. Before that, the South's Jim Crow regimes served as inspiration for the policies of Adolf Hitler's Germany.
TODAY, those of us stuck behind the modern-day Ironic Curtain are starting to see certain similarities between ourselves and Vladimir Putin's fascist dictatorship in Russia and, much more closely, Viktor Orban's fascist, authoritarian regime in Hungary.
It's not a good place to be, especially if you're an official "Other." That's what this week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth is all about, which is pretty much what last week's show was about, too.
As a Nebraskan by choice who sees what is happening to this state, I have been on the razor’s edge of rage for a while now. But it’s not really rage, fundamentally. What it is, is grief.
What I have witnessed during this session of the Nebraska Legislature -- and I have watched hours upon hours of it on television the past few weeks — is incipient fascism. The content of LB 547, and the chicanery employed to pass it, looked familiar to me; I was born in 1961 into Jim Crow era Louisiana.
I attended legally segregated public schools in Baton Rouge . . . until 1970. When my school was desegregated under a “neighborhood school” plan, I had a teacher tell me not to play with a Black classmate. I saw that Black classmate demeaned and discriminated against by our fourth-grade teacher.
As a Southerner of a certain age, I know what fascism and official “othering” looks like. And it has followed me here after all these years.
In Nebraska today, the Others are vulnerable pregnant women and transgender youth. Next year, the legislator behind today's othering intends to target drag shows.
I AM a 62-year-old man who has been married for almost 40 years. I do not understand transgenderism because, well, how the hell could I?
But I do understand that trans individuals are citizens of the United States and children of God, and they deserve to live in peace. The parents of trans youth have the right to seek the best care possible for their children. Medical science has no solution that will perfectly reconcile mind and body, but it should not be illegal to do the best one can -- especially when that might be what keeps your child alive.
As a Catholic, I would be inclined to proceed cautiously if I had a transgender child. But make no mistake, I would do what I had to do to keep my kid, first, alive and, second, happy and healthy.
But how parents raise -- or choose to medically treat -- their trans children is, fundamentally, none of my damned business. It is not the unicameral’s business. It isn’t even the church’s business. It’s just not.
Likewise, concerning abortion, I have to say I consider myself pro-life. However, LB 547, enacted by the legislature Friday, is no fitting way to reduce the instance of abortion as much as humanly possible. It also will endanger the lives of women with catastrophic pregnancies.
If legislators want to “save babies,” they should -- pardon my French -- give a shit about vulnerable women. They should give a shit about struggling families. They should give a shit about the outrageous expense of giving birth.
They should give a shit about the oppressive cost of decent daycare. They should give a shit about creating an effective social safety net. And they should give a shit about the jobs they’re about to drive away from Nebraska.
That said, this is the week Nebraska died. It’s over. And that's what informs this week's Big Show.
That is all. That is enough.
It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
Saturday, June 25, 2022
This won't end well
This is the artwork that ran with the Nov. 11, 2016 edition of 3 Chords & the Truth, after the election of Donald Trump as president.
Everyone of sound morals, sound judgment and sound mind knew that America would be left in tatters by the time he was done. And yet, we still underestimated the "American carnage."
But the thing about Trump, and his MAGA movement, is that he -- and it -- is the "gift" that keeps on taking. It corrupts everything it touches -- our institutions, our society, our democracy and even the church. Especially the church.
Now Roe v. Wade has been overturned, thanks to the lackeys Trump and the MAGAfied Senate GOP installed on the Supreme Court. And the United States, already roiled and disunited by the culture wars and partisan strife, surely will finish the job of self-immolation.
WE ALL have lost much over the last six or seven years, thanks to the twin plagues of COVID and Trumpism. I have lost my relationship with an increasingly Trumpified Catholic Church in the United States. I can live in this country, or I can be Catholic. The roiling ball of mortification and visceral disgust in my gut tells me I cannot do both.Now, I am no enthusiast of abortion. I suspect not that many people are. In fact, I consider myself pro-life.
But I have come to the conclusion over the years that outlawing abortion will not end it. It may not even make a dent. It will just criminalize it -- and make criminals of desperate women.
It will work just about as well as Prohibition did, and probably worse. The carnage resulting from the war of the self-righteous against the hard-pressed likely will be worse than that of trying to make teetotalers of an entire nation, and that whole deal gave us Al Capone and a raft of lesser mobster lights . . . and the resulting wave of death, violence and public corruption.
Today, few babies will be saved, and more women will die. Even more will be hounded after suffering miscarriages, because the Unsatisfied Righteous will see illegal abortions around every corner. Especially where there are none.
We will see no increase in maternal health care, and it won't be more affordable. We will see no outbreak of affordable child care. We will see no expansion of paid parental leave. There will be no child tax credits, increased food aid or accessible mental-health care.
Babies will be precious -- and protected -- right up to the moment they exit the birth canal. Then it will be time to suck it up, Buttercup. Just like today, only worse.
Bullshit from the "pro-life movement" |
And I'm the goddamn queen of France. They only had 49 years to figure this shit out . . . and now it's going to get done on the fly?
What we have now, people, is flat-out minority rule heading fast for full-bore tyranny. My 61 years of life experience, my observational skills as a one-time journalist and my increasingly accurate, increasingly fright-making gut instinct tells me that some form of civil war might be an optimistic outlook.
You thought things were bad before? Just wait, now that the "pro-life" dog has caught the speeding dump truck of history. And fate.
Ugly doesn't even begin to cover it. Forget fetuses, we're gonna kill one another now. We've been waiting for the spark to set off the powder keg. And here it is.
The possibility exists that we could get some leadership -- and pragmatic common sense -- from somewhere. On the other hand, our institutions have been corrupted or enfeebled, and our politicians are either malign or feckless.
I mean, do you trust them to fix anything today? Do you really think the average American is even capable of democracy anymore? Come on, man. Double-digit percentages of us think the Italians beamed shit from satellites to make voting machines gaga for Joe Biden and screw Trump out of re-election.
Confidence has not been inspired.
That said, there will be no 3 Chords & the Truth this week. And I even had everything ready to go.
But it isn't distraction -- or a salve -- that we need now. We need a little silence . . . and space. It may be the last we get for a long, long time.
Goodnight, America. You had a too-brief run.
Thursday, January 23, 2020
The abomination of Trumpolation
It has been many years since I've wanted a goddamned thing to do with the professionalized, politicized "pro-life" movement. Why? Because it's God-damned.
That sad fact becomes clearer by the day, if not by the minute.
Any organization that isn't wouldn't mock the Almighty by saying, with apparently straight faces -- both of them -- that Donald John Trump was "a voice for the unborn and continuously working to build a culture of life." That is a whopper of Trumpian proportions, at least.
Trumpian, hell. Orwellian.
Having Trump speak at an alleged March for Life is like having the ghost of Joseph Goebbels keynote an Anti-Defamation League convention. This most vile and dangerous of American presidents is building some kind of culture,
A CULTURE OF LIFE does not see ripping children from their parents at the border, then placing them in squalid and overcrowded Border Patrol stations as a feature and not a bug.
A culture of life's stance on the treatment of women does not include "grab 'em by the pussy."
A culture of life does not celebrate war crimes, it does not threaten war crimes, and it does not tolerate peacetime assassinations of foreign leaders.
A culture of life seeks to ease the struggles of the poor -- it does not cut their SNAP benefits.
A culture of life takes a dim view -- a really dim view -- of referring to women as "dogs."
A culture of life does not claim there's "some very fine people" among neo-Nazis and other white supremacists.
A culture of life does not celebrate someone who's told 16,241 public lies in his first three years in office.
A culture of life is not racist.
A culture of life is not anti-Semitic.
I could go on, but it's late and I'm tired.
WHEN I SAW the March of Life's tweet, the first thing -- literally -- that came to mind was "abomination of desolation." That's Bible speak, roughly describing something horrific and defiling. Apocalyptic, even. Think of erecting pagan monuments on the ruins of the temple in Jerusalem, as the Romans did.
Think of building an altar to Satan in a Catholic church.
Think of having Donald John Trump speak at a March for Life.
I'm thinking of the Archdiocese of Omaha sending busloads of teenagers to the March for Life -- and all of its hyperpoliticized Trumpdolatry -- like lambs to the spiritual and ideological slaughter. One of three things is likely to happen to each poor soul, and none is good:
* The kid might die of irony overload right on the spot.
* The kid might become a MAGA enthusiast, endangering his or her immortal soul and causing much harm to others somewhere down the road.
* The kid might be unusually perceptive, see this for the evil, blasphemous bullshit that it really is, take note of who and what brought him or her into this moral clusterfuck . . . and be lost to the Church (or Christianity, period) forever.
What an amazing witness for Christ. America -- and the church -- will have much to suffer because of such sulfurous subversion from the depths of hell.
I'm also imagining Jesus on one of those buses full of Nebraska teens as it crosses the Potomac River. It is written, "As he drew near, he saw the city and wept over it."
Wednesday, May 02, 2018
Your precious-feet pin won't get you into heaven anymore
Here's what it means to be a "pro-life" Republican politician these days in a most Republican state like . . . say . . . Nebraska.
(And, yes, I'm looking at you, Gov. Pete Ricketts, and especially you, Attorney General Doug Peterson.)
First, you make a lot of noise about "the sanctity of life." Then you advocate laws you damn well know will be shot down about 3.2 seconds after they land before a federal judge. This is fine with you, because then you can keep flogging the same ol' same ol' and keep raking in knee-jerk votes from knee-jerk voters. (Secretly, though, you worry that folks might realize someday that you and yours have accomplished absolutely nothing substantive on abortion since it became law of the land in 1973.)
After talking a good pro-life game about mamas, babies and the evil lib'ruls, you gut all the social programs that might make it easier for women to have and raise their children. Because pro-life.
Pro-life?
Forget it, they're rolling.
Then, you make sure Nebraska's gun laws are loose enough so folks can kill one another as easily as possible. After all, you're pro-life, and assault weapons are, too. Because God, constitutional rights and freedom.
Freedom!
After pro-life criminal elements commit pro-life homicides, pro-life law-enforcement officers catch the perpetrators. Then pro-life judges impose pro-life death sentences, all to demonstrate the sacredness of the sanctity of life. Because thou shalt not kill.
FINALLY, you have your corrections department try to buy lethal injection drugs on the black(ish) market because drug companies don't want your money -- or blood on their corporate hands. This is because they, no doubt, are anti-life pussies.
On your first foray into "Psst . . . you got the stuff?" you waste almost $28,000. Alas, the FDA was against you. So was UPS -- it sent your stash back to India for lack of proper paperwork.
Several years later, when you finally come up with the ingredients for a toxic cocktail, you find a legislative committee is wary enough to subpoena the corrections director to a hearing.
So, in the name of the rule of law and the sanctity of human life, you sue the legislative committee to keep the corrections director from appearing . . . or answering any questions about where he got the drugs. Or even what drugs the state bought.
Pro-life means never having to say you're sorry -- or anything at all, actually.
This all makes complete sense to me. Then again, I've been dropping a lot of the brown acid lately, man.
Pay no attention to the Mexican gorilla bench-pressing a cow. The socialist baby-killers sent them here to distract you. And the air tastes like Jesus. Squirrel!
God Bless America.
Wednesday, February 21, 2018
Moonlight and magnolias . . . with a side of crystal meth
What would we Louisiana expatriates do without our hometown newspapers . . . to remind us why the hell we left in the first place?
I am from Baton Rouge. My hometown newspaper is The Advocate, which isn't the gay publication of the same name but is rather queer, come to think of it.
Anyway, The Advocate has, in the past, printed some pretty insane things. Those were a warm-up for this dog whistle.
DAN FAGAN (whatever a Dan Fagan is) accuses Mitch Landrieu of being a race-baiter and then -- somehow -- brings the whole argument about Confederate monuments to "Because abortion."
I am pro-life. And I am here to tell you this is, to quote George W. Bush, "some weird shit." It's also why I have become, as a pro-lifer, allergic to so much of the "pro-life movement," which has devolved to a bunch of pro-birth political hacks who are fine with merely delaying the execution of society's most vulnerable members to a later date.
In light of that, Fagan's argument comes down to this:
SO . . . society should be in the business of honoring things that aren't moral, ethical or right? Fagan is saying that Landrieu is a race-baiting scoundrel because he tore down New Orleans' monuments to the Confederacy and white supremacy.
And refusing future honors to Democrats, because abortion, will somehow be a cosmically just payback for tearing down monuments to those who fought for slavery? Which, of course, was somehow both horribly wrong yet worthy of honor via public monuments to the men and states dedicated to the perpetuation of institutionalized human bondage.
Actually, the non-disingenuous analogy here would be removing a statue of a Mitch Landrieu who went on to commit treason against the United States in the name of legal abortion -- and then to fight a bloody civil war against it. Because abortion.
The Democrats may be on the wrong side of history regarding abortion, but they're no traitors and, thus far, have refrained from firing upon Fort Sumter. Today's Republican Party, on the other hand, is placing itself on the wrong side of history on virtually every other issue -- some of them just as morally fraught and morally non-negotiable as abortion.
And, by the way, any number of the GOP's members in this Age of Trump are this close to being demonstrably treasonous.
Now, what does this son of the South, who now lives in the Gret White Nawth, have to say about Fagan's philosophical treatise, one he obviously penned for the benefit of Confederacy-loving mouth-breathers who can't use "treatise" in a sentence? Well, I'm thinking of a certain bumper sticker we used to see a lot in the South in the 1960s and '70s -- often affixed to pickup trucks.
Tuesday, January 09, 2018
Get the hip boots and clothespins -- it's kinda deep in here
Today's Omaha World-Herald |
It's just bullshit. Bullshit so fragrant it could have come from America's bullshitter-in-chief, Donald J. Trump.
The state's budget under Gov. Pete Ricketts and his predecessor NEVER has reflected pro-life values, from wasting $50 grand in a botched attempt to illegally acquire execution drugs to cutting services for the disabled to (for a time) banning government-funded prenatal care for undocumented women (which actually increased both abortions and birth defects).
Omaha World-Herald, May 2017 |
Monday, November 07, 2016
The smoke of Satan
If this isn't the bottom for Election 2016, I don't want to see what the bottom is. I mean that with every fiber of my body and soul.
Worse, The Bottom comes to us courtesy, I am sorry to say, of a Catholic priest -- an unethical, seemingly insane and wicked Catholic priest, but an alleged man of God nonetheless -- and his deeply ironically named, off-the-rails fanatical organization, Priests for Life. Of course, Priests for Life is completely in the tank for Donald Trump.
I know I am burying the lede. I have to work up to the lede, though I imagine you can guess what it is from the obscured Facebook screenshot. Trust me, you don't want this lede upfront.
NO, you don't. Steel yourself as I dawdle.
What we have, courtesy of Fr. Frank Pavone, isn't just sacrilege -- it's diabolical. Diabolism in the name of Trump.
God help us, that orange abomination is diabolical, literally, in his ability to inspire all those he touches to engage in naked, unapologetic wickedness. Like this.
Just today, I thought I had seen the bottom of this horrible election being dredged with the news story that Trump had a 12-year-old with cerebral palsy and his mother thrown out of a Florida rally -- with the rabble assaulting them all the while.
But no.
The bottom now has been dredged in the name of Jesus Christ and of being "pro-life." Upon the altar. By a Catholic priest.
FROM TODAY'S article in The Washington Post:
Ahead of Tuesday’s presidential election, the Rev. Frank Pavone took an aborted fetus, laid it upon an altar Sunday and posted a live video on Facebook. Pavone, a Catholic priest who heads New York-based Priests for Life, said the fetus was entrusted to him by a pathologist for burial.THERE. There's your lede. In supposed defense of the right to life and the dignity of all humans, born and unborn, a Catholic priest who heads a "pro-life" organization desecrates the body of an aborted child upon the altar of God in cheap, vulgar political theater. This sacrilege -- this defiling of both a dead body and the sacred altar -- came in support of Trump, a presidential candidate who unconvincingly proclaims himself "pro-life" while advocating violence, racism, torture and state-sponsored murder of innocents abroad.
During an already heated and divisive campaign season, Pavone’s video has raised questions for some about what is appropriate antiabortion and political activism in the church. As of Monday afternoon, the video, which is 44 minutes long, had 236,000 views. In it, he holds up a poster of graphics of abortion procedures.
In Pavone’s Facebook appeal, he wrote, “we have to decide if we will allow this child killing to continue in America or not. Hillary Clinton and the Democratic platform says yes, let the child-killing continue (and you pay for it); Donald Trump and the Republican platform says no, the child should be protected.”
A call placed to the spokesman for the Diocese of Amarillo in Texas, which is Pavone’s diocese, was not immediately returned Monday. The receptionist, however, said her phone has been ringing off the hook.
In a blog post for Patheos, Scott Eric Alt argued that what Pavone did was sacrilege, a violation of Catholic Church canon law, which states that the altar is “reserved for divine worship alone, to the exclusion of any secular usage.”
“Being pro-life is about respecting the dignity of the human person,” Alt wrote. “It is the antithesis of respect for the dignity of the human person to use a dead child as a political prop to lobby for your presidential candidate the day before an election.”
And let us not forget that Pavone's favored "pro-life" candidate is on tape bragging about numerous instances of sexual assault.
C.S. Lewis would have been hard-pressed to imagine such perfidy in service of Our Father Below for a sequel to The Screwtape Letters.
This . . . this is the smoke of Satan in the sanctuary, fetid incense burned in worship of Deep Cheeto. A dead, apparently saline-burned aborted child, splayed upon the altar as if at an Aztec temple. An offering to Quetzalcoatl?
No, Donald Trump.
Mein Gott im Himmel! Somehow, it seems appropriate to express horror in the original German when speaking of Trump and his "souled-out" sycophants.
This has the feeling of the devil demanding his due from a movement that sold its soul to Republican politics long ago.
Feeling? One cannot tangibly prove such things, but it seems to be more like a lead-pipe cinch to me.
In this church where we have been asked to cross too many bridges too damned far, a line has to be drawn. A spiritual line has to be drawn, and rotten limbs have to be cut away for the sake of the Body of Christ. Frank Pavone doesn't need to merely have his faculties suspended; he needs to have them removed completely. He needs not to be able to present himself publicly as a Catholic priest.
Now.
And then let the state's criminal investigation begin.
Monday, February 08, 2016
Satan overplays his hand
Yes, the National Abortion Rights Action League would like you to believe that fetuses actually are toasters, not humans.
The insanity of these people is self-evident, as is their humorlessness and rigid ideology. The devil may have all the good tunes, but he has to own the angry, death-loving harpies as well.
OH . . . Angry Scolds for Death hated this Hyundai ad, too. Perhaps Kevin Hart was messin' with their business model; I dunno.
At any rate, I stand with Jim Minardi. Even the devil drunk tweets from time to time, ending up overplaying his hand and giving us all a glimpse behind the unholy veil.
Thursday, March 12, 2015
One standard or two? We report; you decide.
It had to happen.
Protesters took to the street outside the Dallas home of the N-word spewing SAE frat boys at Oklahoma, chanting slogans and, according to one neighbor, accusing the entire neighborhood of being a hotbed of racism.
Accompanying the protest were a couple dozen reporters and several cops. From CBS News:
Dozens of protesters took to the street in front of the home of a former University of Oklahoma student and fraternity member who was shown in a video leading a racist chant aboard a bus.THOUGHT EXPERIMENT: Is this Dallas protest proper, or is it harassment -- the creating of the same sort of "hostile environment" that University of Oklahoma officials alleged in kicking two (so far) Sigma Alpha Epsilon members out of school.
Dozens of demonstrators Wednesday evening marched up and down the North Dallas residential street in front of the home of Parker Rice. Watching them were about two dozen news media representatives and six police officers.
The protesters chanted, "Racism is taught," and, "Racism is a choice."
CBS Dallas reported that the group, Next Generation Action Network, says Rice and Highland Park-graduate Levi Pettit, another SAE member seen in the OU video and now also expelled from the university, made a bold statement that was caught on tape and now it time for protesters to make theirs.
Their numbers didn't pack the street, but their message was heard loud and clear. "This is what democracy looks like," they chanted. "Teach your kids another way, no modern day KKK!"
Would your answer to the question change if this were a bunch of anti-abortion protesters marching in the street outside the home of an abortionist? If so, why?
"Because one is bad and the other is good" is not an acceptable answer -- not before the law and not in today's morally relativistic philosophical soup, in which your "truth" may not be others' "truth."
Thursday, January 22, 2015
A whore by any other name
. . . is just as screwed
Here's the thing about being a whore: No matter how sweet-talking the john -- no matter how apparently solicitous the man who's bought and paid for you is -- you will never, ever be allowed to forget exactly what you are.
A whore.
Because it's not about you. It's about Not You.
Yes, Pro-Life Movement (TM), I'm talking to you. The institutional "movement," the one with D.C. offices and PACs and endorsements of candidates. The one that, at some point, may come to realize that it's the whore of whores -- Republican whores.
THE A-NO. 1 fact of political life in our nation's capital is this: Politicians can be bought. The A-No. 1 reality for groups like National Right to Life, the American Life League, yadda yadda yadda is this: You're not the highest bidder.
Unfortunately, Pro-Life Movement (TM), your Plan B was to prostitute yourself to the very people who you couldn't afford to buy, but who sometimes would smile and greet you in the hall -- if not too many people would notice. And you paid them for the dubious "privilege."
But someday . . . someday! Someday, you'd end up just like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman!
Boy, that's sure worked out well.
Thursday, February 27, 2014
Conditional adorability
Awwwwwwwwwwwww.
That's the adorable word from WECT television in Wilmington, N.C.
Try not to smile after taking a look at this picture!
Shantee Johnson from Wilmington shared her most recent ultrasound picture and you can see her prenatal daughter is all smiles.
3D and 4D ultrasound technology is giving a lot of future parents the opportunity to get a quality glimpse of their children. Johnson got her ultrasound done at Wilmington Maternal-Fetal Medicine. She's due in mid-March, but was induced Wednesday and is currently in labor. She's expecting a girl.
MEANTIME, "forced ultrasounds" are a Nazi plot against the autonomy of the blah blah blah blahblahblahblah. That's the outraged word from the NARAL Pro-Choice America website:
Imagine this: you're facing an unintended pregnancy. After talking about it with your partner and your family, you decide that abortion is the right choice for you.
You call the doctor, and are told that you have to make two appointments. At the first appointment, you are forced to undergo an ultrasound and have the images described to you. You don't want an ultrasound, and your doctor does not recommend one—but you and your doctor have no choice. Your state has a forced-ultrasound law.
The ChallengeACTUALLY, ultrasound examinations are absolutely routine for pregnant women as a means of screening for birth defects, as well as the age, position and number of fetuses. Ironically, it's also not unusual for abortion clinics to do ultrasounds before terminating the baby . . . er, pregnancy.
Many states have some type of ultrasound-related law. Some give women the option; others have forced-ultrasound laws that don't give women a choice.
The people behind forced-ultrasound laws claim they just want to give women more "information." But really these laws make women go through invasive medical procedures against their will.
In a free country, we don't force anyone to undergo medical procedures against their will. Women considering abortion—a safe, legal, and constitutionally protected procedure—are no different. Politicians have no place telling a woman she has to have a procedure she does not want and her doctor does not recommend.
Besides, if this study of abortions at Planned Parenthood clinics in Los Angeles is indicative of what happens across the country, it's not like NARAL Pro-Choice America will be fending off a plague of "unwanted" children. According to the Reuters Health story, when women really don't want to be pregnant, they really don't want to be pregnant.
And in a free country, when women really don't want to be pregnant and others can profit from that, it's absolutely fine to have forced -- legally -- almost 49 million in utero human beings "to undergo medical procedures against their will" from 1970 through 2010.
Which resulted in their deaths.
Because adorability is in the eye of the executioner.