How Much is That Doggy in the Window?

--What was Mr. Cruz thinking?

That deaf, dumb and blind kid
Sure plays a mean pinball! 
--Pinball Wizard, 
The Who

 You gotta ask yourself a question:
"Do I feel lucky?" Well, do ya, punk?
--Dirty Harry (1971)

Jump, little doggie, 
better do what she say,
jump, jump jump 
--Jump. Jump, Jump,
 Blondie

So you get nothing!
You lose.
Good day, sir!
--Willy Wonka and 
The Chocolate Factory (1971)

__________________

Subtitle: Despicable Me. (Of course, Mr. Cruz is not the only one to qualify for that sobriquet.)

Watching the PBS News Hour last night, one would get a totally different perspective of the conventions than if one had actually watched them. Saith one of the panel members, the Democratic national Convention went off smoothly, save for a minor glitch: 

"That Debbie Wasserman Schultz [former DNC Chairwoman] has been a problem for awhile now. She had to go," thereby effectively dismissing with a fillip what should have been the biggest convention gotcha -- the behind the scenes machinations to shuttle the campaign of Mrs. Clinton's only viable contender, Bernie Sanders.

That story did not fit the press's agenda, sadly. Journalistic integrity has died a slow, lengthy death starting about 50 years ago with Walter Cronkite's decision to breech the journalistic posture of indifference in exchange for editorial comment on the Vietnam War. 

Nothing which transpired at the Republican National Convention -- a predominately orderly affair -- remotely compares, but since we peeked into the Democratic National Campaign Wednesday, it is only fitting to recognize a once-contender in the Republican posse who shall now be relegated to a footnote in malcontent convention history for his spectacularly ill-behaved, egotistic and churlish performance, Mr. Ted Cruz.

It was a surreal moment when Mr. Cruz announced that he would not be supporting his party's candidate, Mr. Trump, and moreover that he refused to play Mr. Trump's "puppy dog". Mr. Cruz had not been invited to do anything, really, beyond the formality of recognizing the Party's choice (i.e., someone not him), and welcoming Mr. Trump into the bosom of the Republican family.

He failed to recognize that -- like a couplet from Dr. Seuss's Green Eggs and Ham , They did not like you then / and they do not like you now, Sam-I-Am.  Or as megachurch pastor Rick Warren would say, it's not all about you.

In the South, they would say Mr. Cruz showed himself to be a dog that won't hunt for you. He was barking up the wrong tree if he thought to gain any positive regard for his sourpuss solipsism.

He may have defended his lady fair, but we saw the mess that George W. Bush created when he went after the man who "tried to kill [his] daddy". Politics is not the art of getting too personal, and of putting on a thicker skin.

At a certain point, one must put on one's Big Boy or Big Girl panties, suck it up and move on. It's called grace, and it's called integrity. A politician is part of Bernard Mandeville's hive, and should tame his ego for the larger good of the party. 

Sadly, this is truly the age of Mega Me, and Mr. Cruz mistook the microphone for a megaphone with which he could impugn the party's nominee and possibly earn some Facebook Likes for doing so. However, the press and the Democratic party has been lashing Mr. Trump for a year, and to no good effect. What good was he possibly thinking might result from his petty show?

Humans are nothing so much as emulative creatures, so perhaps by witnessing the the equally small behavior from certain party denizens who had boycotted the event via their glaring absence, Mr. Cruz got the idea that he was doing something praiseworthy.

Sadly, it was not comme il faut, and far from presidential. He found Old Mother Hubbard's cupboard bare.

 

No Milk Bones for you, Mr. Cruz.

Peddlers and Meddlers

Romney is the frontman and apostle of an economic revolution,
in which transactions are manufactured instead of products,
wealth is generated without accompanying prosperity,
and Cayman Islands partnerships are lovingly erected and nurtured
while American communities fall apart  
--Greed and Debt, Matt Taibbi 

They’re peddlers and they’re meddlers
They buy and they sell
They destroyed your city
They’ll destroy you as well 
--Early Roman Kings,
 Bob Dylan 

Yo, we at war  
We at war with terrorism, racism  
And most of all, we at war wit ourselves  
--Jesus Walks, Kayne West 

____________________

"One Nation Under God" and "In God We Trust" have been co-opted as the mottos of today's Republican Party and express their vision for America as voiced in their recent national convention.  Vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan even bemoaned the fact that we were not MORE Christian: 

Slate wrote, "Ryan wants the Obama administration to explain why the Democratic platform doesn't include the word God in it. 'It’s not in keeping with our founding documents, our founding vision,' the VP hopeful told Fox News this morning. 'I’d guess you’d have to ask the Obama administration why they purged all this language from their platform.'"

But what about those of us who do not Trust in God?  Who speaks for us?  Why am I bound to their beliefs?  We are not "One Nation Under God," but rather a pluralistic society founded upon a humanistic philosophy which transcended the mandatory belief in a personal god.

Our government was not based upon religious belief but rather the freedom from any imperative -- governmental or otherwise -- to believe or not to believe.  Separation of Church and State was the watchword; citizens could overdose on religion, or not, depending upon their own predilections.  The bible is not the Constitution, and the Constitution is the seminal document for the United States -- a document not to be contravened by any other dogma.

The U.S. is no longer a bastion for White Anglo Saxon Protestants; their domination has been thrown to the charnal house of history. Try though the two Republican nominees might, the days of what they are peddling has past.  They cannot legislate morality any more than they can live morally.

Mitt is right: We deserve better.  But their convention did NOT tell us is how we can achieve the fabulous wealth and security that will supposedly come of bootstrap-pulling and dogma-adherence.  The Republicans say that the government has failed us, yet in a non-sequitur, advocate cutting food stamps, a program which has been successful in alleviating hunger in a nation in which one of ten of us suffers from "food insufficiency" (=hunger). For such a religious platform, their proposed policies are awfully penurious and punitive toward the poor.

Among a sea of believers in the Prince of Peace, why have we none but advocates for Warriorhood?  When did the worldly paid warrior enter into a neo-pantheon of gods? While our nation flounders while needing to create millions of jobs, it instead borrows money to fight elective and meaningless wars.  Why is war the only foreign policy we consider?  When did warfare become the American way of life?

Reason and logic had left the building in the RNC.