Politics Again

I had some thoughts about politics; as I said before, I'm extremely politically skeptical but I don't like the Left. Sorry if that bothers.

• I hate to harp on this (no, not really), but in France between the 11th and 14th centuries women could own property, file lawsuits, and vote in any circumstances men could. It was your precious Renaissance that put a stop to that, folks, since what got "Reborn" was a culture where, don't let's forget, women didn't have first names—they only had the feminine of their clan name, since Romans left out all their daughters after the first for the wolves.
  
  The medievals similarly had no slaves, and, indeed, very little in the way of racism—though Ethiopians, say, are much darker than the average "Black" American, the medievals would never dream of treating them as anything worse than "funny foreigners".
  
  Nice going, America: with the 13th, 14th, and 19th Amendments, you've almost caught up to the 12th Century. Oh, except that if you people knew as little about physics as you do about metaphysics, you'd think every object's motion was the result of the whims of the Olympians—with some few, really daring thinkers who theorize that objects fall by antiperistasis.


• So I realized that I sympathize with a lot of the Tea Partiers' ideals—they're a lot less bullshit libertarian than I'd feared—even though I don't believe a number of the myths that are integral to the American right's worldview. Basically, my response to them is Bilal's response to the Gurren-dan's typical speeches, right before he helps Shimon pilot Gurren Lagann: "As always you talk a load of crap...but this is a load of crap I can really get behind."
  
  And yes his name's Bilal, not Viral, he's named after a French cartoonist.


• So, in general, I tend to like Hispanic culture more than Anglo; basically America is the only good thing Anglos have ever done, though most of its good points are moves away from the typical Anglo model (the strong executive, for instance, directly undoes the Magna Charta, which is Latin for "The king's not allowed to keep the barons from doing whatever they like to the commoners"). The worst thing Mexico ever did (the oppression that culminated in the Cristero War) had American collusion, so even then, the biggest minus in Mexico's column is also one in America's column.
  
  But, hey, Mexico, two thoughts. I like France better than England and Poland better than Germany, but that doesn't mean Frenchmen or Poles can violate the immigration laws of England or Germany. Or in other words, even if your neighbor is a flabby drunk who likes Adam Sandler movies, you can't just walk into his house without permission. Is that complicated?


• Thought of how race-politics play out in this country's major cities, has brought to mind a rather Carson/Leno-style joke. "Serbo-Croatian now has a word for tribalized political fragmentation. They're calling it 'Chicagoization'."
  
  I kill me.


• So there's a weird ethnocentric movement among some Hispanics, mostly Mexican-American (no seriously, I doubt most of them are fewer than two generations removed from Mexico), called MEChA. I don't remember the acronym's meaning, except the A is for "de Aztlan", Aztlan being (to them, and them only) a collective name for the land America acquired (mostly by purchase, does the name "Gadsden" ring any bells?) from Mexico. Only, what? Aztlan is a mythical place in Aztec mythology, with some parallels to the Hopi idea of the Sipapu or Emergence Hole. It's probably never been a real place at all, and it sure as hell ain't anywhere near America.
  
  Remember, if you're gonna use mythological terms to dress up your naked bid for Lebensraum, make sure nobody knows what they mean.


• So it occurred to me, and I really want to make a short film of it or something, that the attitude many Americans have toward the Founding Fathers, even to the point of letting a piece of paper force them to tolerate what they view as evil, is ancestor worship. But not normal ancestor worship. No, I think I may have come across the secret of America's religious life that's eluded scholars at least since de Toqueville.
  
  You see, there are many gods in America, but the country's inhabitants truly revere the gods of America, but mainly by the fear of offending them. On some nights, when the fog lies low over the River Potomac, they will shuffle forth from their black temple with its silent belltowers, wrapped in their black shrouds and bearing their black wands, and those who make the mistake of transgressing their will, will never be seen again.
  
  You weren't expecting a Fritz Leiber reference, were you?