Austerity and Hard Times

He was listening to the news, and his granddaughter was proudly making a hat for him with the new knitting needles she got for Christmas.  “Grandpa,” said the little girl without looking up, “what’s ‘austerity’ mean?”  

It’s funny what kids will pick up when you have no idea they’re paying attention to what’s happening around them, he thought, not for the first time.  He studied her for a minute.  He’d known this day would come, but he hadn’t expected it to come so soon.  Was she old enough to have this discussion?  “Heck,” he finally said to himself, “if she’s old enough for Harry Potter novels, she’s old enough to be told about austerity.”

“‘Austerity’ is another word for what we used to call ‘hard times’ back when I was a boy,” he began.

Giving her a different name for it didn’t give her much to go on.  He knew that.  She needed to picture it in her mind to make it come to life, so he wasn’t surprised when she said, “Oh. Well, what’s hard about hard times?” 

In some ways he hated to tell her.  She was young to be carrying the freight of that knowledge.  But you couldn’t shelter kids forever.  You needed to be honest with them about the world they were growing into.

“In hard times--what they call ‘austerity’ nowadays--lots of people lose their jobs or their farms.  They can’t find a new job, or the job they have pays less and less, with fewer benefits. After a while they can’t pay their bills.  They lose their home.  They lose things they were buying on credit.  They sell off whatever they have that’s valuable, just to get some cash.  They can’t pay their loans.  They can’t afford to go see a dentist or a doctor.  They buy cheaper and cheaper food.  They get discouraged and depressed.”  

“Gosh, Grandpa, that sounds horrible,” she said.  “What makes austerity happen?”

Now came an even harder part: talking about the dark side of human nature to someone who had been cared for and cherished all her life, who had never known anything but consideration and kindness. 

“It doesn’t happen by accident,” he said.  “Some people choose to cause hard times for other people.  They make it happen with laws and policies that benefit themselves and hurt the other people.”

“What kind of people would do that?” asked the little girl, clearly struggling to understand the notion of a world with those kinds of people in it.

“Austerity is caused by rich people who want to get even richer,” he said.  “They do things to squeeze more money out of people like us, and they don’t care whether people who don’t have as much as they do get poorer or even lose everything.”

“That’s mean!” exclaimed the little girl.  “Why are they so mean?”

And how do you answer that, in a way that’s fair but honest?   He tried.

“Some of them are mean because of the way they were raised,” he said.  “They were always around other rich people, and they thought they were entitled to good things because they were better than other folks.  We know that’s not right, but they never learned it.  They weren’t brought up right.  Others are mean unintentionally, because they have rigid ideas that they think are right, and they get stubborn.  They stick to those ideas, even when there are all kinds of evidence they don’t work.  Others choose to be hard-hearted.  They decide they’d rather be mean and rich than kind and poor.  And some work in big businesses called corporations, and they do mean things to make the corporation more profitable, things that they’d probably never think of doing to people or places on their own.”

She thought for a moment, still trying to puzzle things out. “Where is austerity, Grandpa?”

Now that was really a tough one.  He wasn’t sure how to answer.  He got up, walked over to the bookcase in the corner, and took the globe off the top shelf.  

“I’m not sure I can answer that, sweetheart.  It seems to be almost everywhere.  Over a hundred countries--119 I think the man just said on the radio--cut their budgets last year.  The ones that get all the publicity are the ones in Europe, like Greece, Spain, Ireland, and Italy,” he continued, pointing to them. “But three-fourths of the countries being hit are in developing countries.  Most of those are down here.”  He ran his hand over the southern hemisphere. 

The little girl nodded.  “Can you show me where Greece is again?” she asked, and he did.  “What’s it mean they cut their budgets?” was her next question.

“You ask a lot of questions,” he said.  “That’s a good habit to get into.  Keep it up.  ‘Cutting their budget’ means they didn’t spend as much money,” he said.  “Mostly they eliminated jobs and cut what we call public spending.  That means they cut money for things like health care, education, housing, pensions, and unemployment.”

“Why did they have to do that?”

“Well, sweetheart, they didn’t have to do that.  Instead of taking away things from ordinary people--what some folks call the 99%--they could have provided jobs and improved the lives of most of the people in their countries.  All they had to do was change their tax systems, so the richest people contributed more and corporations paid a fair share.  They could have stopped rich people and corporations from hiding their money in places called tax havens.   They could have eliminated tax gimmicks that kept rich people from not paying taxes.  They could have cracked down on people who cheated on their tax returns.  But they didn’t do those things, because those cheating rich people and corporations were their friends and supporters.  So they took the money instead from the rest of us.  The rich have more than they’ll ever need, the poor don’t have enough to live on, and the people in between are having a harder and harder time.”

“That’s not nice,” declared the little girl firmly.  “I don’t want to be that way when I grow up.”

“I’m glad to hear it, sweetheart,” said the old man.  “Just remember that if the world tries to change you.”

She seemed to catch the solemnity of his words.  “I won’t change,” she promised.

“That’s my girl,” he said, giving her a hug.  Then he turned off the radio.  “Enough of listening to that thing,” he said, and picked up his fiddle, plucked the strings, and adjusted the tuning.  “Here’s an old song we used to sing when I was your age.  Do you know it?  It’s called ‘Hard Times’.”   He began to sing as he scratched out the tune. 

“Oh, I know that one,” she said.  “Mommy sings it sometimes.”  And she joined him, adding her sweet young voice to his as they sang Stephen Foster’s opening verse:

As we pause in life's pleasures and count its many tears
While we all sup sorrow with the poor
There's a song that will linger forever in our ears:
Oh, hard times, come again no more.

“Could we change ‘hard times’ to ‘austerity’ in the chorus?” she asked quickly.

“Sure,” he said.  “We can do whatever we want with a song.”

© Tony Russell, 2014

Big Brother on Steroids

Uncle Jimmy was in for the holidays, and I pulled him aside after dinner last night.  I knew he was going to leave early Monday morning to drive back up to his job at the Pentagon, and there was something I wanted to ask him about.

“Jimmy,” I said, “I saw a headline on Yahoo!  What’s the deal with Bernie Sanders asking the NSA if it spies on Congress?  That’s crazy talk, isn’t it?  Why would he even think such a thing?”

Jimmy looked surprised.  “The NSA's spying on people in Congress was the first thing I thought about when Snowden’s revelations started popping up,” he said.  “Any intelligence service, sooner or later, targets the people who are supposed to oversee it.  Sooner, usually.  That’s where their money comes from, and where the power lies.  When news came out that the NSA spies on the UN, and then that it spies on the leaders of our allies, it was obvious these guys are operating in a free fire zone.”

That definitely wasn’t what I wanted to hear.  “What I don’t understand, Jimmy, is that Sanders asked a ‘yes or no’ question,  but the NSA didn’t give him a ‘yes’ or ‘no‘ answer.  Sanders asked, ‘Has the NSA spied, or is the NSA currently spying, on members of Congress or other American elected officials?‘   And what the NSA wrote back was, ‘Members of Congress have the same privacy protections as all US persons’.”  

Jimmy laughed.  “Oh, Sanders got his answer all right.  ‘The same privacy protections as all US persons’ means Congress members don’t have any privacy protections.  None.  Zero.  The message the NSA is sending loud and clear is ‘YES, we spy on Congress and other elected officials--and people in the administration too.  You didn’t think you were exempt from the spying that you’re approving for everybody else, did you?‘  The NSA did everything but give Congress the finger with that answer.  It makes you scratch your head.  Did those people in Congress really think that the great fishnet in the sky had a catch-and-release program for them because they’re big fish?”

“Wait a minute,” I said.  “What do you mean when you say that having the same protections as all US persons means they don’t have any protections?”

He gave me a look of disbelief.  I get that a lot.  “Lord have mercy, boy, don’t you read your own newspaper?  Or listen to the news on NPR?  Or get news somewhere?”

“Mostly the sports page,” I admitted.  “Actually, only the sports page.  Well, and the comic strips.  And sometimes my horoscope.”

He groaned.  I get that a lot too.  “An informed citizenry is the cornerstone of democracy,” he muttered.  “Okay, Ace, here’s what we know at this point.  Edward Snowden said these NSA programs ‘put entire populations under an all-seeing eye and save copies forever.’  The NSA collects and stores data on every phone call made in the United States.  They also track and store the information on hundreds of millions of cellphone users on a minute-to-minute basis around the world--including our exact locations at each moment, where we’re going, who we meet, and where we meet.”

“They’re tracking me everywhere through my cellphone?!” I asked incredulously.

“Yep.  The NSA also broke into the global data centers of Yahoo! and Google, which enables them to collect information at will about hundreds of millions of people.  They search our e-mails, our online chats, and our browser histories. They also bribed the company that provides encryption programs for computer security to create a ‘back door’ enabling them to enter and spy on supposedly secure data and communications.”

I was stunned.  “What does all that mean?” I asked, still trying to take it all in.

“Basically it means none of us have any privacy when we use any electronic communication device, or when information about us goes into any electronic data system.” 

My mind started racing over things I’d looked at or written online.  Whoa!  “That’s scary,” I said.

“It sure is,” Jimmy said.  “There’s a saying that ‘information is power.’  Nobody in the world has ever had anything even close to as much information as the NSA.  If that saying is correct, the NSA is now the most powerful institution in the history of the planet.”

“Another saying is that ‘Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely’,” I threw in.

“That too,” Jimmy agreed.

“But now that Congress members know their lives are under a microscope just like the rest of us, they’ll do something about it, won’t they?”

“Well,” said Jimmy, “from the NSA’s standpoint, that’s the beauty of it.  Congresspeople are just as human as the rest of us, with the same weaknesses and vices--maybe even more, because the sheer expense of running for office, along with the lure of the political spotlight, guarantees that Congress will have more than its share of the ambitious, the vain, and the power-hungry.”

“So?”

“So while members of Congress are thinking about the NSA’s response, they’ll also start thinking about that stretch they spent in rehab.  About their confessions to their AA sponsors, which they thought were private.  About the affair they’re having with a staffer, and the e-mails they’ve sent each other and the telephone calls between them--all part of their NSA record.  About the bribe they took for a vote.  About the information on their medical record--now converted into an electronic health record which the NSA can break into.  About lies they’ve told.  About their gambling habit.  No need to go on; you get the idea.”

“It doesn’t take much of a scandal or hint of weakness to derail a political career,” I mused.

“No, we definitely operate with a strange standard,” said Jimmy.  “‘For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God,’ according to the Good Book.    But that doesn’t help somebody at the ballot box.  And if the congressperson feels fairly secure about his or her own life--which sure isn’t guaranteed--, what about their spouse, their kids, their brothers and sisters?  When you get right down to it, we’re all vulnerable.  And now congresspeople are on notice.  If you don’t vote right,  if you try to stop the NSA or even make an effort to curtail its power, they can hurt you.  Really hurt you.  Your life is an open book to them, and they wouldn’t hesitate to make a best-seller out of it.”

“What’s gonna happen then?  Can the NSA keep on getting away with all this?  It’s like Big Brother on steroids!”

Jimmy frowned.  “It doesn’t look good,” he said.  “James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, lied under oath back in March of 2013, when Ron Wyden asked him if the NSA collected any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans.  ‘No sir... not wittingly,’ said Clapper.  Just three months later, in June, NSA director Keith Alexander lied to Congress when he claimed that 54 terrorist plots had been thwarted through use of mass phone surveillance.  Eventually Alexander admitted that the number 54 was entirely fictitious, that maybe one or two plots have been affected in some way.  At a bare minimum, both should have been fired immediately and the NSA reined in.  Both could and probably should have been charged with perjury and contempt of Congress.  But neither paid the slightest price for lying.  Which probably gives you a pretty good indication of the leverage they have over Congress.”

“I don’t get it, Jimmy,” I said.  “What you’re describing sounds more like a police state than the land of the free and the home of the brave.”

“Those are your words, not mine,” he said.  “I’d be careful not to use them in an e-mail or on a telephone.”

© Tony Russell, 2014

A Christmas Carol (2013)

We had dragged in at 9:30, after six hours of last-minute Christmas shopping, leaving the last of the other desperate shoppers still in the littered stores with their long lines at the registers and their exhausted cashiers.  Dumping the bags full of packages just inside the door, we simply stood and looked at each other for a minute, almost too tired to think.  Finally Patty gave me a peck on the cheek and said, “Just leave those where they fell, Ace.  I’m going on up to bed.  We’ll wrap them in the morning.”

“Okay,” I said.  “I’ll be up in a bit.  I’m too wound up to go to sleep right now.  I think I’ll see what’s on TV.  If I remember right, one of the movie channels is doing a Christmas Eve marathon of the top ten versions of A Christmas Carol.  Maybe that will relax me.”

As Patty traipsed up the stairs, I grabbed a beer from the fridge, then settled back in my recliner and fired up the TV.  I was in luck.  The 1984 adaptation of Dickens’ work, with George C. Scott playing Scrooge, was just coming on.  That’s one of my favorites, and I watched it through to the end.  At that point I was feeling drowsy, but the 1999 production with Patrick Stewart was next up, and that version--although it’s too grim to be what you’d call a good time--is an excellent one as well, so I got another beer and plopped back down in my chair while the opening scene began to roll, with a horse-drawn hearse bearing Jacob Marley to the graveyard.  There beside the hole in the ground stands Scrooge, the lone mourner.

I must have dozed off.  I don’t know how long I had been asleep, but I woke abruptly, with my limbs heavy and my back stiff.  The house was as still and dark as a tomb, the only light being a ghastly pale green emanating from the television screen.  “Huh.  I must have slept through the end of the marathon,” I thought.  I started to reach for the remote, to switch off the TV and head off to bed, and discovered I couldn’t move!  Groggily I stared down, and realized that my body was wrapped in a heavy chain, which was coiled around me and pinning me to the chair like some metallic anaconda squeezing its prey.

I was frightened; I’m not going to deny it.  I was about to call to Patty for help when figures appeared on the screen, insubstantial things, themselves the same appalling green from which they emerged.  One by one they stepped out of the screen and moved toward me, glowing and pale but vaguely human-like forms, moaning as they came.  I cringed back in my chair as more and more of them appeared.  They formed a circle, crowding around me.  They too were in chains, which clanked as they dragged them across the floor, and their countenances were haggard and forlorn.

“Speak, dread spirits,” I said through trembling lips.  “Tell me, who are you, and what do you want of me?”  (That’s not my normal style, but waking out of a Dickens marathon, and given the timing, it seemed appropriate.)

Instead of speaking, however, they turned as one, and pointed toward our flat screen TV.   The eerie green light faded, and in grainy black and white, scenes began to unfold, one after the other.  I saw a river ignite and burn, and marveled.  I saw majestic mountains gouged and scraped into rubble and piles of waste, and mourned.  I watched smokestacks turn the sky dark gray, while their ash fell on women hanging sheets and diapers on clotheslines, and shrank back.  I watched dead fish floating in a river’s current, their bodies deformed, their skins marred with lesions, and bowed my head.  I watched ‘thalidomide babies’ trying to write, holding their pencils with shrunken limbs or flippers, and I wept.  I watched seven CEOs of tobacco companies declare, under oath, before a congressional committee, that nicotine is not addictive, and raged.  I watched children flee from a burning hut in a tropical landscape, with a jellylike flame searing their flesh, and I screamed.

“Stop!  I beg of you, stop!  I can stand no more!” I pleaded.

The ghosts took pity on me, and the screen went blank.

Shaken, I asked again, my voice trembling, “Tell me, tell me.  Who are you, spirits? “ 

“Someone who watches as much TV as you do, and you ask a question like that?”  They gave a hollow laugh.  “Over the years we have assured hundreds of millions of viewers that ‘you’re in good hands’; that ‘like a good neighbor,’ we’ll be there; that we are creating ‘a better world, through chemistry’; that we are ‘strength on your side’; that we are ‘taking you forward’; that we are ‘listening, answering’; that we are ‘engineered for life’; that ‘we never forget who we’re working for’; that we’re ‘resourceful by nature’; that we offer ‘science for a better life’; that we’re ‘delivering results that endure’.“ 

“I recognize the slogans,” I said.  “But what’s that have to do with you?  You look like people.  Those are corporate slogans.  You aren’t corporations.  Corporations aren’t people.”

They looked at one another, and then in an ominous chorus declared:  “We are corporations.  We resemble your kind in the minds of a handful of judges, who have declared us to be persons.  We are as fictitious or as real as Dickens’ creations--legal fictions rather than literary fictions, the ghosts of corporations past and present.”

This was not reassuring, but I persisted.  “What is it you want with me, and why are you and I in chains?”

“Speaking of ourselves, we are enchained by our own greed.  We are ‘persons‘ without a conscience, without morality, without love or pity or mercy.  We exist--are devoted to--profit.  Nothing more and nothing less.  Our Higher Power is our daily stock quote.  Call us the quintessential Scrooges.”

“That’s you,” I said, “and I’m genuinely sorry you’re in that kind of shape.  But what about me?  Why am I wrapped up in these chains?”

“You too are ensnared in the monetization of life,” they began, and I knew they didn’t mean that as a good thing.  “You consume more of Earth’s goods than any one person has any need for, wasting much and stealing from the future.  You accept the right of us and others like us to shape your wants, to do what we wish with the land and seas and skies, to purchase laws and governments.  You allow us to decide what news you will receive and what news will be denied.  You turn over to us your children’s education, and the shaping of their desires.”  

And all I wanted to do was watch a movie, I thought.  Did I ask for any of this?  No, I didn’t.  Still, I couldn’t deny what they had said.  They were right.  “So all of us are in bad shape,” I finally said.  “I’m complicit.  What do you want?”

“We want you to free us so you may free yourself,” they said as one, their voices full of anxiety and even fear.  “We may not bear a conscience, but at least we have a survival instinct.  End this charade.  We’re not people and never will be.  Strike down our phony personhood.  Please.  Otherwise, we, you, and Earth itself are doomed.”

“Earth doomed?” I said.  “Whoa!  That’s taking ‘serious’ to another level.  What’s that about?”

“You have witnessed Christmases past and present,” they said.  “These are Christmases of the future.”  Once again they turned and pointed to the TV screen.

Together we watched as glaciers and ice caps melted, oceans rose, and millions of coastal residents fled before tides racing inland.  As forests vanished.  As cities in deserts finished draining their aquifers, and the rivers they had diverted dwindled to a trickle.  As permafrost melted and clouds of methane rose into the air.  As plant and animal species disappeared--millions of years of creation’s work gone in an evolutionary minute.  As unimaginably violent storms flattened towns, flooded rivers, threw automobiles through the air like children’s toys.  As starving people watched farmland turn barren, the soil baking and cracked under the sun.

I was stunned.  They had known what was coming, and yet they too were stunned.  Finally I spoke.  “That’s really what’s going to happen?” I asked.  “There’s no way to avoid it?  Please, tell me, spirits!  Tell me it doesn’t have to be that way!  Tell me I can do something!”

They opened their mouths to speak, and then I heard Patty’s voice, calling from the stairwell.  “Ace, what in the world is going on down there?  Why are you yelling?”  I twisted in my chair.  The chains were nowhere to be seen.  Neither were the ghosts of corporations.  Nonplussed, I looked at the TV screen.   There was Kermit the Frog, playing Bob Cratchit in A Muppet Christmas Carol, sitting down to Christmas dinner with Miss Piggy as his wife.  I rubbed my forehead.  “Patty,” I said, “your voice may be the sweetest sound I’ve ever heard.  And God save us, every one!”

“Don’t you mean ‘God bless us, every one’?” she asked curiously.

“Wrong century,” I said.  “And I’m not Tiny Tim.”

© Tony Russell, 2013

No Christmas Break for Congress

“Ace, why bother coming to Washington during the Christmas break?” complained Patty.  “Nobody’s here.  They’ve all gone home for the holidays.”

Patty’s a little slow sometimes, but I try to be patient with her.  “Of course,” I said.  “That’s the point.  Everybody’s gone, so you don’t have all the traffic, all the crowds, the standing in line.”

She gritted her teeth, which ought to be worn down to nubbins by now.  “The reason there are no crowds, Ace, is there’s nothing to see.  Congress is shut down.  The circus has left town.”

She was wrong.

We arrived at the Capitol, and the place was a madhouse.  Panel trucks and pickups parked everywhere, workmen scurrying, extension cords tangled and stretching in all directions.  I grabbed a guy in coveralls who looked as if he’d been finishing drywall.  “Hey, what’s going on?” I inquired.

“Rush construction project,” he grunted.  “Gotta get it done before the bigwigs roll back in.”

“What is it?” I asked.  “New security measures for the Congress?  I know terrorism is their top priority.”

“You’ve got it,” he said.  “It’s all about financial security for the members of Congress.  They’re terrified an opportunity will pass them by.  We’re installing an auction chamber for the House and Senate.  It’s gonna be official now: government to the highest bidder.”

“Say,” I said, “Patty here loves auctions.  She picked up my vibrating recliner when she was at an auction last October.  Got it for twenty-five bucks, and it had to be worth twice that much!  Any chance she could sit in and bid on whatever comes up?”

“I doubt it,” he said.  “The way I understand it, it’s a closed deal, only open to lobbyists.  There’s probably nothing going up for auction she’d want anyway—it’s just the Congress members’ votes and influence.” 

“I’ll bet you could still pick up some bargains,” I grumped. 

“Sure you can,” he admitted.  “These energy conglomerates and pharmaceutical companies generate billions in profits from loopholes and favored treatment they worm out of Congress, and they get those things for a pittance.  Corporations have been able to buy a bill for less than they spend in a week on advertising.  And the payoff for banking and investment firms?  Through the roof.  We have a crew patching that right now.”  

“Why do they need an auction chamber?” I asked.  “I thought Congresspeople were making out pretty well with the current system.”

“It’s this CREW outfit,” he said.  They just came out with their annual bipartisan report, Most Corrupt Members of Congress.  A lot of the members have been embarrassed into giving some of the money they raked in to charity, so they ended up selling their votes for almost nothing.  It’s got them all upset.  And then, when the figures started coming out in the papers, some members got really ticked.  They’d been pricing their votes as low as five thousand bucks.  That’s not even enough to buy a good used car.  When they heard how much other members were getting, it just undermined their faith in the whole system.”

“No wonder,” I said.  “So putting in an auction chamber is a bid for fairness, so to speak.”

“Sure,” he said.  “That way, everybody gets an equal shot at it.  It’s one of the few things members of both parties could come together on.”

“Will they have the know-how to make it work?” I asked.

“In some ways the process is already pretty much in place,” he said, “but a lot of them have signed up for a quickie course in auctioneering over the break.”

“Won’t all of this drive up the price of government?” worried Patty.

“That’s the whole idea,” said the drywaller.   

“Do you think you’ll get finished on time?” 

“Looks like it,” he said, “the way everybody’s pitchin’ in.  Some of the members and their staff even gave up part of their Christmas break and came back to help.”

“How can you tell them from the regular construction crews?”

“They’re the ones hanging their stockings along the walls.”

© Tony Russell, 2013

Download the 2013 “Most Corrupt Members of Congress report as a PDF

It’s Sad How Wrong Rush Limbaugh Is (Unless It’s a Bizarre Satire By a Comic Genius)

We were killing time, waiting for a lane at the bowling alley, and I asked my buddy Al--short for Aloysius--what was up with this fuss over Rush Limbaugh’s comments on some new document the pope has come up with. 

“Do you listen to Limbaugh?” he asked.

“Can’t say that I do.  I don’t tune in much to radio--maybe a ball game while I’m driving, if I can find one.”

“What do you know about Pope Francis’s Evangelii Gaudium?”

“I know I can’t pronounce it.  Aside from that, um, not much.”

“Okay, just checking.  I figured I’d be starting from scratch with you, but I wanted to be sure.”  He thought for a minute.  “Evangelii Gaudium is the Latin title.  In English it means  The Joy of the Gospel.  It’s a kind of dream or vision of the sort of church Francis believes is needed to carry the good news to the modern world.” 

“What’s he have to say?”

“Well, a lot of things.  It’s really long, with 288 numbered portions.  But what set Limbaugh off is that Francis says the church should be in solidarity with the poor and be a driving force for peace.  As part of his ‘solidarity with the poor’ message, Francis calls out predatory capitalism for treating people on the margins as if they were disposable.  He goes even further and says that what free marketeers are doing amounts to economic tyranny.  He looks at environmental degradation, hordes of unemployed people, and the widening income gap between a small elite and masses of poor, and says that all these things result from the ‘idolatry of money.’   He doesn’t mince words; he flat out says they’re unjust and unfaithful to the gospel.”

“Well sure, anybody can see that.  So what’s the problem?”

“The thing is, it’s no problem for people who know and believe the message of the prophets in the Old Testament or Jesus’s teachings in the Gospels.  Or for people who just believe in the common good, and in treating other people as you’d like to be treated yourself.  But for Limbaugh, it’s a big problem.”

“How’s that?”

“Francis isn’t your ordinary do-gooder, Ace.  And I wouldn’t call him a liberal either.  He’s a man who actually believes all those teachings in the Sermon on the Mount, and is calling the church back to them.  He’s become one of the most revered people on the planet, along with maybe the Dalai Lama.  Limbaugh’s smart enough to know that going after Francis with the sneers, smears, and character assassination he normally uses would blow up in his face.  So his problem is to find a way to undermine what Francis is saying without appearing to attack Francis personally.  For Limbaugh, that’s uncharted water.”

“So how did he manage that?”

“I’d say he didn’t.  He tried, and failed spectacularly.  But you can judge for yourself.  The full transcript of his show is on his website.  Here, I’ll pull it up.”  

He fooled around with his iPad, switching out of the program we keep our bowling scores on, and then handed it to me.  

The transcript was headed It's Sad How Wrong Pope Francis Is (Unless It's a Deliberate Mistranslation By Leftists).  I read... and read... and read.  [Readers who want to check out the transcript themselves can see it at http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/11/27/it_s_sad_how_wrong_pope_francis_is_unless_it_s_a_deliberate_mistranslation_by_leftists].

“Holy Moses,” I said, “I can’t keep up with this guy.  He’s bouncing around like a handball, coming at you from every angle and every wall.  It’s just one piece of off-the-wall craziness after the other, nonstop.  Before you can catch your breath and question or point out what’s wrong about one thing, he’s off to half a dozen others.  I’ve gotta tell you, he’s absolutely a world-class bullshitter.  He’s better than my brother-in-law.”

“Craziness is way more entertaining than some reasonable academic lecture,” agreed Al.  “He’s like a venomous version of Mel Brooks in Blazing Saddles.”

“Mel Brooks is good,” I said.  “I was thinking Sacha Baron Cohen in Borat.”

“So what do you think of Limbaugh’s attempts to undermine Francis, Ace?”

“They’re a hoot!  They’re absolutely the best part of the show.”  I thought for a minute.  “Except maybe for the part where he says, ‘In fairness to the pope and in fairness to the Catholic Church, I will admit that communism years ago was much easier to see and identify than it is today.  Communism today is much more disguised. 

Communism today, in large part, is the Democrat Party.  Communism today is in large part the feminist movement. Communism today is found in most of the AFL-CIO-type unions.  It's just the Democrats, and it's a much tougher thing to identify and target, because it can be your neighbor.’  If that doesn’t make you bust out laughing, you’d better check your pulse and see if you’re still ticking.”

Al nodded.  “I googled the numbers,” he said.  “It’s kind of hard to get anything nailed down, but there seem to be over 70 million registered Democrats in this country.”

“That’s a lot of communists,” I said.  “And it’s anybody’s guess how many Democratic sympathizers and fellow-travelers there are out there.  Who knew?”

“Rush and a herd of Ditto Heads, from the looks of it.”

“I loved the part where he said, ‘Up until this, I have to tell you, I was admiring [Pope Francis].  I thought he was going a little overboard on the common-man touch, and I thought there might have been a little bit of PR involved there. But nevertheless I was willing to cut him some slack.  I mean, if he wants to portray himself as still from the streets where he came from and is not anything special, not aristocratic.... okay, cool, fine’.”  

Al looked thoughtful.  “You know, there’s something telling about a man who’s so cynical that he can’t even entertain the possibility that the pope’s identification with the poor might be sincere.  Or maybe he’s not being cynical.  Maybe if you’ve chased after wealth and toadied to the powerful all your life, it’s actually unthinkable that anybody--even the pope--would be headed the opposite direction.”

I scrolled down the screen. “Limbaugh’s next move is to say that these denunciations of capitalism couldn’t be Francis’s own thoughts; ‘... somebody has either written this for him or gotten to him.  This is just pure Marxism coming out of the mouth of the pope.’  What’s he implying there?  That caring for the poor and wanting fair treatment for workers isn’t Christian?  Is he suggesting that somebody else wrote it and the pope released it without reading it?  Or that the pope was held hostage and forced to sign it?  Or that he was brainwashed?”

“You can’t tell, can you?” said Al.  “That’s standard Limbaugh.  Inject paranoia, but keep it in the shadows, so you don’t know what you’re fighting--you just know that something scary is lurking there.  It’s like the boogeyman in the closet.  Limbaugh quotes pieces of what Francis has written, but he conveniently forgets to mention that the pope tells you flat out where his economic teaching came from, and it isn’t from Marx.  Francis writes, ‘Each individual Christian and every community is called to be an instrument of God for the liberation and promotion of the poor, and for enabling them to be fully a part of society. ....  A mere glance at the Scriptures is enough to make us see how our gracious Father wants to hear the cry of the poor.’  And then he follows that with half a dozen quotations from both the Old and the New Testaments.” 

In the background I could hear pins flying, followed by cheers.  Somebody must have just bowled a strike.  

“What about Limbaugh’s claim that Francis is some out-of-line maverick--that he’s way out on the fringes with his criticism of capitalism, standing all by himself?”  I asked, pointing to a passage on the screen.  “See here where he says, ‘I'm not Catholic, but I know enough to know that this would have been unthinkable for a pope to believe or say just a few years ago.‘   And down below here where he says, ‘... what has been attributed to the pope here doesn't make sense, with 50 years of the Catholic Church.  It doesn't jibe.  But it sounds exactly like what your average, run-of-the-mill leftist would say each and every day’.”

“Yeah.  That  is absolutely wrong.  There’s a long line of authoritative economic teaching from the popes, running from Leo XIII on through Francis’s immediate predecessors, John Paul II and Benedict XVI, and Francis’s teaching is consistent with it.  Francis’s writing is clearly in the mainstream of Catholic teaching.  Limbaugh is either just ignorant about it, or he is deliberately misleading people.”  [Readers interested in tracing the history of Catholic social teaching can see the foundational documents on the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops website at http://www.usccb.org/beliefs-and-teachings/what-we-believe/catholic-social-teaching/foundational-documents.cfm]

“Okay,” I said.  “So far Limbaugh has explained away the pope’s teaching as a PR move, or, alternatively, the Marxists ‘got to him,‘ or he’s some misfit off doing his own thing.  But I like his fourth explanation too.  He says people were telling him, ‘Hey, Rush, the pope was mistranslated.’  He admits he was skeptical, but then he realized the ‘worldwide left’ is ‘entirely capable’ of foisting a misleading translation off on us’.”

“That’s beyond bizarre, isn’t it?” said Al.  “That’s some elite conspiracy-fantasy spinning right there--especially when in interviews and sermons the pope has been saying these same things, over and over again, for months.  I think somebody ought to introduce Limbaugh to Occam’s Razor.”

“What?  I use a Gillette myself.  Does he need a new corporate sponsor?  He already looks clean-shaven in the photo on his website.”

“No, no.  Occam’s Razor is a principle, fittingly enough coined by a 14th century Franciscan friar.  One of the common versions of it is that when you have competing explanations for something, you choose the simplest one that explains all the known facts.”

I thought about that.  “So our choices are... ?

“We have a pope who has taken the name Francis in honor of a saint who renounced worldly aspirations and chose a life of poverty.  The pope himself has chosen a simple life style, drawn guidance from scripture, and talked and preached extensively on our brotherhood with the poor.  

“On the one hand, then, we could say that Francis’s economic teachings are consistent with his life, with scripture, with his own prior comments, and with prior teaching of the church... 

“Or, on the other hand, we can ignore all that and assume that no pope in his right mind would criticize capitalism, and therefore Francis must either: A) be insincere and simply pandering to the public in order to create some positive PR for himself.  Or B), he is the hostage--wittingly or unwittingly--of Marxists, who have managed to extort these criticisms from an innocent pope.   Or C), he is an isolated deviant from the church’s historical teaching.  Or D), his writing was hijacked by the evil worldwide leftist movement, which somehow substituted a fake translation for the pope’s original--which presumably was intended to be a hymn to the blessings of the capitalist system.  Or E), all of the above.”

“Looks like a plain enough choice to me,” I said.  “If Limbaugh were Pinocchio, his nose would be punching a hole through the roof.”

Just then the manager’s voice interrupted us:  “Ace and Al, we have an opening for you in the far left lane.”    

© Tony Russell, 2013

Learning Acceptance

The Willards invited us and a couple of other neighbors over for a barbecue on their giant new gas grill.  Ann greeted us at the door, and after we thanked her for inviting us, Patty asked, “By the way, is it some special occasion?”

We’ve known the Willards for years.  Ann flushed, hesitated, and then said, “I suppose it’s okay to talk about it.  Dean has been having some... anxiety for a while, and I finally persuaded him to see a psychiatrist.  It took some intensive therapy and some medication, but they finally got him adjusted.  Dean had a hard time adapting to the new ‘normal.’  But he’s made the breakthrough.”  She gave a little smile of relief.  “He’s fine now.  So we felt like having a quiet celebration with our friends.”

I couldn’t restrain myself.  Despite a warning glance from Patty and a sharp kick to my shin, I asked, “Uh, what’s this ‘new normal’ he’s come to accept?  What’s that about?”

“Oh, it’s nothing earthshaking,” she said dismissively.  “Just learning to accept the world the way it is.”

“Like what, for instance?”  

“Ordinary things,” she said.  “You know.  Kidnapping people and shipping them to CIA black sites overseas to be tortured.  Jailing people in Guantanamo while denying them lawyers and visits by family members and holding them for years without charging them with a crime.  And then finding them innocent but continuing to hold them for more years.”

“Heck, that kind of thing is old hat now,” I said.  “First Bush, and now Obama.  Dean always seemed like a sensible guy.  I would have expected him to learn to go with the flow, like most people have.”

“I don’t want to make him sound fanatical,” she said, a little defensively.  “He probably could have handled it if that was all it was.  But then that SEAL force assassinated Osama bin Laden when he was unarmed, and killed a defenseless woman in the process, and that really bothered him.  He felt as if the man should have been captured and brought back to stand trial.  He said that’s the way a government operating under the rule of law would have done it.”

I patted her on the shoulder.  “I can see what a burden you’ve been carrying.  I haven’t thought about bin Laden in years.  That’s not just yesterday’s news; that’s history.”

Ann gave me a weak smile of gratitude.  “I think he might have gotten over that, but then these drone attacks kept escalating.  When he learned that 90% of the people killed by the drones are innocent women and children, somehow he couldn’t let go.  It just kept gnawing on him.  He lost his appetite and had trouble getting to sleep at night.  He began carrying a copy of the Constitution around in his pocket, and he’d pull it out and read it over and over, at the most inappropriate times.”

“He must have been desperate, grasping for anything to give him a hold on reality,” I said.  “ But you say he’s recovered now?”

“I think so,” she said, nodding.  “We couldn’t let his depression keep on like that, so we reached out for help.”

“I can certainly understand that,” I said.  “Some things you can’t just let ride.  You have to do something about them.”

“I’m glad you understand,” she said.  “We were starting to feel so isolated, with people all around us just going about their lives, while he was stuck on brooding constantly about our government’s--I don’t know what you would call them.  Imperfections?  I mean, that’s just the way things are, right?  Nobody’s perfect.”

“Sure,” I agreed.  “And that was all that was bothering him?”

“Well, no,” she admitted.  “He had a laundry list of things that haunted him.  It seemed to prey on his mind that Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security are all on the chopping block.  That states are shredding contracts with state workers and denying them the right to strike.  That we have the worst unemployment since the Great Depression, and the response is budget cuts that will create more unemployment.  That CEOs are making astronomical sums at the same time they’re cutting the pay of hourly workers.  That corporations are hiding billions in profits offshore and paying no income tax.  That we’re all being spied on by our own government.  He just didn’t think those things were fair.  He’s always been a little old-fashioned, you know.  He still thinks we should look out for each other and treat each other decently.”

“He’s lucky to have a wife who pays attention,” said Patty sympathetically.  “It sounds as if you have a really good understanding of his problem.”

“I had to listen to him often enough,” Ann sighed.  “At first I just took it as Dean’s blowing off steam.  But he wouldn’t let things roll off his back like a normal person.  You’d think it was his money funding war and murder by executive order, his family’s safety net that was being threatened, his community’s environment being polluted.  He took it all so personally.”

“Mental health issues can be frightening,” I told her.  “I’m glad it’s all worked out for the two of you.  Which way’s the beer?” 

© Tony Russell, 2013