CNN is often almost as amusing as The Onion, and nearly as informative. Take Alan Duke’s recent article about Peter Fonda’s grisly discovery.

My first thought was, why would Mr Fonda call the fire department? The car wasn’t ablaze. Is the number for the fire department easier to remember than “911”? Anyway, apparently it isn’t unusual to see someone “slumped over the wheel” of a car in L.A., but for TWO days?! That’s odd. If it weren’t for Neighborhood Watch Citizen, Peter Fonda, the guy might have been there until the car’s tags expired. That would get the cops out there in a hurry.

My second thought (I number them for easy reference) was that Sunset Boulevard must be a desolate place if people can kill themselves by the side of the road and not be discovered for days. It wasn’t until I reached the end of this gripping tale of tragic death, that the mystery was solved. “…he was not a celebrity.”

Your average Joe Suicide is hardly newsworthy (especially one that no one misses), but if the guy who finds him is a celebrity, then rush that story to the press!

The Middle Ground

In today’s column, Paul Krugman discusses the fact that while it is a good idea for us all to listen to each other, what we are likely to find is that we really do disagree with each other. He points out that on the one side, we have people that really do think that taxation is theft and regulation is tyranny. On the other, we have people who believe in a market system, but who think that those who do well should be taxed to provide a social safety net. Given this, there really isn’t any room to compromise. He is fundamentally right that is the political dialog in America, but I’m not sure he is right on the compromise front.

The truth is, the possible political dialog is far greater, as seen in many other countries. The American liberalism consisting of a free market with a social safety net is already a compromise with early, more strident forms of egalitarian systems. The real choice is between socialism and classical liberalism; the compromise is the mixed economy of the New Deal and the Great Society. The compromise is modern liberalism.

What is so frustrating about political debate in the United States is that virtually all who wish for a libertarian ideal, not only don’t really want it—they don’t even know what it is. They don’t see all of the government infrastructure that allows the free market to flourish. One step back from that are all the people who hate socialism except as it affects their lives. For these people, all of American socialism can be found in that 20% of the federal budget that is not Social Security, Medicare, and the military. And one more step further, we find all the rich who suck off the tit of taxpayer money, as so brilliantly exposed by David Cay Johnston in his book Free Lunch.

Marx’s idea of socialism was that a country (or the world) would be so wealthy that it would not have to use humans as glorified pack animals and thus each person would be freed to find fulfillment in life as he saw fit. Yes, this is an overly optimistic view of the future. As I have complained elsewhere, the main problem here is not that we don’t have the economic ability to do such a thing—it is that the vast majority of people want to do exactly the same thing: sit around watching TV. But this itself may be an indication of just how disillusioned everyone is with our political/economic system. Regardless, I don’t think that Marx’s utopia is any more far fetched than the libertarian utopia.

As long as we say that mixed-economy liberals need to compromise with libertarian or socialist utopians—we are lost. The mixed-economy is the compromise. And, of course, we are lost when people equate The Communist Manifesto with Mein Kampf (as many did over the last week). I’m not suggesting that either book be a blueprint for political action—only that the books have little in common other than being revolutionary in nature; that Mein Kampf alone is a racist, militaristic screed (in fact, I believe but for the racism and WWII, it would be acceptable reading today—that Glenn Beck would recommend it); and that I’m sure no one I heard equating them had read either. When we can take seriously utopian libertarianism, but not utopian socialism (as found in The Communist Manifesto, not Mein Kampf), we have a real problem. When our debate is between center and right, where do we move? Center-right? And then where? Hard-right?

Are we really going to abandon a system that worked pretty well up to 1980—and lesser so thereafter? All for a mythical ideal that most of its proponents don’t even understand? I hope not. But then, we have already abandoned so much. I can see things getting much, much worse. I’m not one of these idiots who believe, “We live in the greatest country in the world!” But we still live in a pretty damned good country. The problem is: the trend is bad.

Jon Stewart Does Have Balls—Today, Anyway

The last two nights of The Daily Show were very funny. The 11 January 2011 show was very funny—the best I’ve seen in a long while. And then, last night’s show was also very funny, but even more important, Jon Stewart showed that he actually did—contrary to all the evidence over the past year—has a properly functioning set of testicles. He really took Tim “I look as ridiculous watching hockey fights as John Kerry did hunting birds” Pawlenty to task. He pointed out that Pawlenty supported Bush’s bad legislation (not that that narrows it down much), “No Child Left Behind.” Then he asked the question (not an exact quote as shown by the lack of quotation marks): don’t you think that if Obama had introduced the same bill, most Republicans would have been absolutely against it and Glenn Beck would have railed against it with big posters of Stalin? Pawlenty, of course, obfuscated. But good for Stewart.

Conservatives’ Brains

Colin Firth (yes, the actor) was doing a show for BBC-Radio 4 and ended up helping an academic study of the differences in the brains of conservatives and liberals. Firth, a liberal, said, “I just decided to find out what was biologically wrong with people who don’t agree with me, and see what scientists had to say about it and they actually came up with something!”

Conservatives, it seems, have large Amygdalae, which are responsible for processing and remembering emotional reactions. As such, they are what stimulates fear in us. Liberals, on the other hand, have large Anterior Cingulates, which are responsible for assessing the importance of emotion and motivational information. The study (sorry, no link) is small and thus open to question. What’s more, the size of brain parts does not necessarily mean that they are more powerful. For a questionable example: smart people don’t have bigger brains than dumb people (although from species to species there is a very strong correlation).

It should come as no surprise, however, that conservatives are motivated by fear and other lower, just above reptilian brain functions.

[Note: this is a deeply personal reflection about my life. I think that it is of general interest, but it doesn’t deal with the nuts and bolts of the world that is the mainstay of this site. It is a story that I fear many people share to one extent or another—either from my perspective or that of my mother. If it is from the latter, I am truly sorry; hell is not supposed to be for children.]

I just realized why I hate holidays. Will was telling me about how even if he became a member of the Jehovah’s Witness church (whose members do not celebrate religious holidays), he would still feel as though he had to do Christmas for his kids, because his parents did it for him. That really got me thinking. As a child, I tended to dread holidays—especially Christmases—because my mother would almost always ruin them.

I don’t mean to vilify my mother; she was in most ways a great woman. She was very loving and (before the ravages of alcoholism) very smart and knowledgeable (amazing when you consider that she had only a grammar school education). When my mother was young, she was also very beautiful—a hottie, in the modern vernacular. But she was also deeply scarred in an emotional sense. As a child, she was sent from relative to relative and was sexually molested repeatedly by at least one uncle and probably also by her step-father. As a result of the molestation and (perhaps equally important) the shuffling, which would certainly have given her the belief that she was unwanted and unloved, she turned inside and found comfort in literature and drink. Even in her final days, she was always reading a novel—usually with drink in hand. Her taste was not mine—she especially liked historical romances, but she read widely—non-fiction included.

I think that holidays brought out the worst in her for two reasons. First, she had the feeling that they should be wonderful days but they always disappointed—they couldn’t make up for the emotional pain she felt throughout her life. And second, she couldn’t handle the stress of the holidays. And so she would get drunk and lash out at others—usually my father and usually without good reason.

As a result of this, I don’t really like holidays. I do like personal holidays. I love it when out of the blue I get a package from Andrea, who I originally bonded with over our shared addiction to thrift shops. And I love it when I find something that I think my father, for example, would love that I can give as a present for no reason in particular. But these are no-pressure, no-expectation events. If you will, “Practicing random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty.”

So I am two days away from life returning to normal. I can hardly wait!

Update

In the mean time, follow the wisdom of Bill and Ted: “Be excellent to each other!”