Letters to the Editor
Doktor Krankheit
Published Letters: 42
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"The Prez and the land are one."
[Read the article: Weighty matters]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Back in the '90's, we had a president with appetite---for love, for sex, for food, for attention---born of childhood want and adult achievement; nearly the whole nation was replete. Now, the C.i.C. is a man who formerly gratified himself shamelessly, and now the entire aware portion of our polity desperately feels the need for a beer.
Someone once claimed that Henry VIII is viewed much as pagan fertility gods once were, hence the durability of the fat-man-with-chicken-leg image long after most of us couldn't identify Charles Laughton if a night with Elsa Lanchester in her prime depended on't. Poles have King Sas. When Bill Clinton dies, he will join their august company in a hall replete with wine, beer, Jack, akavit, plump waitresses of negotiable virtue, and hams. Lots and lots of hams. Ummmmmmm.
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Careful dissing the noose
[Read the article: Right-wing party animals]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]There are many who probably think that '...the noose was cool,' (I can just hear Butthead saying that). But we Democrats probably don't have those idiots anyway (which isn't to say that we have none of our own---even groups with good ideas attract ugly remora of different sorts, although being out of power helps to thin their ranks).
And maybe it would turn off (at least the female) suburbanites, a detachable group because their lives are built on family size limitation and decent treatment by big companies, neither of which are Republican strong suits. It probably depends on Democrats' ability to convince the public that there's a difference between throwing our weight around and maximising our safety as a free people. (Maybe we can pick up more males if it turns out that the gov't actually have been blackmailing legislators based on records of their pr0n site viewings, as at least one right-wing nut has suggested.)
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NLRBring it.
[Read the article: The left splits over immigration]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Why not give an automatic green card to all the needful employees of a given employer if any of them report a health, safety, minimum wage, max. hours, or anti-union organising infraction on the employer's part?
It would legalise some people already at work here, but it would go a long way to reduce the incentives to hire more undocumented workers---why bother, when you'll have to pay them prevailing wages anywya?
The rise of the undocumented worker has more to do with the gutting of the labour law enforcement mechanisms in the early Reagan administration than anything else, short of the corruption and land-theft in Mexico.
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Threat vs risk
[Read the article: A kinder, gentler war on terror]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Think of it this way: an asteroid's falling to Earth and ending all human life is a much greater threat than your falling in the shower and breaking your neck, but the latter is much likelier to happen, and so is a greater risk. I believe George W. Bush is perhaps only one one-hundredth as evil as Usama bin-Laden; unfortunately, he's perhaps a million times more powerful (if my pocket meters can be trusted---Usama clocks in at one deciheliogabalus and half a caesar, Bush at about one milliheli and five-hundred kilocaesars).
America is very strong; if we should let it fall completely to the complete control of religous/corporate/government fascists (and I do not use the term lightly or loosely), then the entire world would be in trouble.
It is important to remember that (unless we get our priorities straight) we will all die; perhaps forty thousand persons per year give their lives for our freedom to drive. I'm willing to be at greater risk of being blown up by a religious Muslim jerk from (say) Sa'udi than to cede my civil liberties to a religious Christian jerk from (say) New Haven. The Muslim will find almost all Americans against him, and must work in secret; the Christian will receive the enthusiastic support of perhaps one-fifth of us, and the grudging support of another thirty-one percent, and is proud to do his deeds in public, for the most part. It would be more shameful to live having allowed ourselves to become a massively powerful self-parody of America (which is preventable if we grow eyes and ears, and especially noses) than it would be to be blown up by a random asshole after giving stopping him a free people's try.
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Take two aspbergers
[Read the article: I don't fit in any boxes!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Those of us who have to manually fake being human easily get annoyed by the rest of you who do it thoughtlessly, in both major senses of the word.
The guy does sound kind of self-involved, but the hatred he seems to evoke says more about the respondents than about him. Fie on him for wanting something better.
I would say to him, though: Accumulate as much money as you possibly can, morally (not the same as "legally") and safely (prison is so bad it's comparable to high school); money insulates you from having to rub up against the Others.
Look for other weirdoes---not consumer abnormality like the beats and the hippies became, but strange folk who might look like bank managers. An Aspberger's support group might be a start, as would an independently-owned coffeee shop (or even a Starbucks if you're in a hick town like mine) or a utable karate organisation (I like the S.K.A.).
And do cleave unto your wife; if she accepts you as you are (and restrain yourself to be) then she's more than you could possibly gain outside your home.
And yes, the boxes do exist: above the survival level, and especially in modern societies, semantic constructs matter as much as or more than physical objects: "Jew", "Communist", "kulak", "winner", "nigger", "loser", "Christian", "faggot", "terrorist", have mattered more to how people will treat you than anything you actually are or do---they're just a pattern of neural firings in people's brains, but since that also describes everything else we are and know about the world....