Not to understand a man’s purpose does not make him confused. —Master Po

If a man dwells on the past, then he robs the present. But if a man ignores the past, he may rob the future. The seeds of our destiny are nurtured by the roots of our past. —Master Po

In striving for an ideal, we do not seek rewards. —Master Kan

To suppress a truth is to give it force beyond endurance. —Master Kan

I would like to create a poster. It would be a picture of a dead cat or dog in a clinic. And it would have the caption, “The ASPCA saved me… Right before they killed me.”

That’s what the ASPCA does. And this is why I so hate those heart wrenching ASPCA commercials. If animals under the care of the ASPCA are truly “in the arms of an angel,” it is the death angel.

Do not give money to the ASPCA. There is a “no kill” revolution going on. If you care, fund it.

And finally, here is a picture of a 3 week old kitten:

Update (4 August 2012 12:19)

How can I have forgotten to include this video, which is beautiful and effective. Not only is the ASPCA abusing helpless animals—they are abusing helpless rock stars!

I guess I’m glad that Lt. John Pike (Pepper Spraying Cop) has been terminated. But as with all such things (e.g. Abu Ghraib), it seems that Pike was a scapegoat. I’m not saying that he shouldn’t have been fired—just that his firing will be used to avoid making structural reforms that are at the core of the problem.

I have little doubt that any member of the DC Davis police force would have done what Pike did, if they had been there with the spray can. So the next time a similar situation arises, another officer will be there to place duty to his comrades above his duty to society. (There won’t be another “pepper spray at close range” incident, because they’ve all learned that lesson.)

One bit of data from the article really stood out. Pike’s salary last year was $110,243.12. This is much more than the vast majority of college professors make. Policing is not a hard job. And as I’ve discussed before, it is not a particularly dangerous job. But policing on a college campus? And on the UC Davis campus in particular? Please! Night manager at a suburban Motel-6 is far harder and more dangerous.

Yet the University of California thinks it makes sense to pay their police officers more than they pay their college professors, the people who provide the product they are selling. And those over-paid police officers think that spraying (Pouring?) pepper solution into the eyes of nonviolent student protesters—At close range!—is a good idea.

There are major problems at UC Davis (and by extension pretty much everywhere else). Firing Lr. John Pike doesn’t even begin to address them.

Rather than something normal like “See you later,” I am prone to quoting Cole Porter at the end of conversations. And not just any Cole Porter.

“You do that voodoo that you do so well.”

In my head, it is always said with a German accent, because I mostly know it because of the version by you know who:

Recently, I’ve have begun to get a little push back on quoting this line so much. Apparently, my friends do not have as good taste as I had thought. (That’s not true; I’ve always known my friends have poor taste!)

The strange thing is that my friends have a problem with the song itself. They don’t even know about the evil parodies of the song. Like “Dog Shit” from Tuscaloosa Calling Me But I’m Not Going, “You do the do-do that you do so well.”

I use the line as a kind of encouraging goodbye. “Go out there and work your magic.” But if I used that line, I wouldn’t get the thrill of having Marlene Dietrich singing in my head. And frankly, that does something to me.

I got a few minutes today, so I went looking for video of Gore Vidal, who died the night before last. He was very important to me when I was a teenager—and beyond. I particularly remember his essay Sex Is Politics, which he published in Playboy in 1974. (Ah, for the days when intellectuals could ogle at naked women! Or perhaps perverts ogle at naked intellectuals?)

It is rare that I care when I learn that someone has died. I felt a little bad about Ernest Borgnine, because he looked so good in RED, I was hoping he’d make it to 100. I like round numbers. But mostly: nothing; I just don’t care. When I heard that Vidal had died, I was sad in a way usually reserved for people I actually know.

I found this video from the last year that shows him in all of his later life glory:

He is already missed.

Afterword

Gore Vidal always makes me think of this video, even though it is really all about Normal Mailer:

There are a few interesting things about it. One is that Vidal actually takes pity on Mailer. The worst comes from Dick Cavett and Janet Flanner. Another is that Mailer is certainly at a low point—and drunk! (I’m very fond of him and I feel bad about what goes on, even though he is entirely to blame.) Finally, this video cuts off before the best line. Cavett tells Mailer, “Why don’t you fold it five ways and put it where the moon don’t shine.”

After the laughter dies down, Mailer asks, “Mr. Cavett, on your word of honor, did you just make that up, or have you had it canned for years, and you were waiting for the best moment to use it?”

Cavett responds, “I have to tell you a quote from Tolstoy?”

Dick Cavett discusses the episode at length in an obituary of Norman Mailer. Talking about all of their relationships after that episode, Cavett writes:

That’s classic Gore Vidal.

And for the record, Mailer was the better writer. Gore Vidal was a deeper thinker and smarter and more knowledgeable and pretty much anything else you can think about. It is Mailer’s example that keeps me writing after all these years even though I know I’m not deep enough, smart enough, knowledgeable enough or pretty much anything else enough to attain greatness in any objective sense.

I recently read Violence: Six Sideways Reflections by Slavoj Žižek. I’ll have more to write about it later. But there was one line that really struck me.

The great thing about Žižek is that he can write a book titled Violence without talking all that much about violence.

In the fourth movement, “Antinomies of Tolerant Reason” he talks primarily about religion in a general sense.

He then mentions a justification I hear (And use!) all the time:

Even though America is a very religious country, it is all cultural religion. People have a vague feeling that they believe in God and he loves them and blah-de-blah-de-blah. We also have this ridiculous liberal idea that people’s religious beliefs should be respected regardless of how ridiculous they are.[1] As a result, I don’t see this idea discussed much in public regarding religion.

But I do hear it a lot regarding politics.

I feel bad about it myself. I’ve done a lot of thinking about how my political beliefs differ from those of the Soviet Union. After all, I believe in much of the same stuff that Stalin claimed to believe in. Very briefly, it comes down to why Stalin had to whack Leon Trotsky. The people of USSR didn’t mind suffering for the sake of the greater good in the early days of the revolution. Stalin used this willingness to be the autocrat he was clearly born to be. Also: he was in no important way different from any mainstream Republican politician.

It is frustrating to watch the finger pointing that goes on after a tragedy. Right now, I can just feel both sides of the political chattering classes anxiously waiting to find out if James E. Holmes was a righty or a lefty. Whack jobs like the unfortunate Holmes skew heavily conservative and libertarian. I think there is something to the fundamental appeal to conservatism: anger. But the main thing is that the left had its try at violence (e.g. Weather Underground), and they learned from it. Typical liberals: always learning shit.

In situations like this, it is a big mistake to claim to know what God wants. (And by God, I mean whatever: conservatism, socialism, or even, well, God.) It makes people who are already too ideological even more so. It is what causes people to claim, for a random example, that the problem at that Aurora movie theater wasn’t too many guns; it was too few. If only everyone had guns, this would never happen. Or, as we saw in the 60s (and still do to some extent in local “peace and justice” movements), the push for more and more ideological purity.

But don’t get the idea that I’ve gone all centrist. The conservatives are the single biggest threat there is to our way of life. And although you can find all this religious-based search for purity on the edges of the American left, it is everywhere on the American right (e.g. the No-RINO sign at the Republican booth at the fair last year). This leaves me with one question:

How can any self-respecting Republican from 30 years ago continue to be a Republican?

[1] People say they’ve met with aliens from another plant who told them to stop waging war and start being good. These people are publicly mocked. People say a guy died 2000 years ago so that after they die they will get to go to a happy place where everyone is fairies and elves and they can have all the cotton candy they want. These people must be respected! (It is interesting that since I don’t believe in the guy who died 2000 years ago, I won’t go to the happy place. Jeffrey Dahmer, on the other hand, having decided to believe in the guy who died 2000 years ago after Dahmer murdered 17 other men, does get to go to the happy place. Yeah, we should definitely have respect for that religion!)

I have many problems with Sam Harris, even as I largely agree with him. He is also pretty funny in a low key way. Here is is discussing why Mormonism is necessarily even more ridiculous than Christianity.

However, his argument, while funny, is wrong. Not that it matters. Maybe I’ll discuss it later.

I’ve written about this before. I overheard another evil blonde conservative woman and I had to post this: Susan Del Percio.