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Friday, Dec 25, 2015 - 23:14 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

Stocking Stuffers


They don't pay us nearly enough for this, Mr. Robo...
(Original source: Somewhere on the Internet)


Me: So, it's that time of the year again.

Mr. Ham: And you're late. Merry... season's greetings!

Me: Nah, I'm more for the traditional phrasing actually. Since I'm getting a holiday out of it, acknowledging the sponsor's the least one can do. Here, for you, Mr. Robo.

Mr. Robo: Ooh! A cheek pouch protector, a "Clock or Not" circuit board kit with almond scent spray... and a The State's Times T-shirt! Human, you really shouldn't have!

Me: And for you, Mr. Ham... stop rummaging through the sack without permission!

Mr. Ham: I'm not going to do anything undignified for it, if that's what you're intending, human.

Me: Of course not. Plus, it's totally appropriate. Here.

Mr. Ham: Ahem. Let's have a look at it. One hamster gym membership card... human, are you insinuating anything?

Me: Oh no, why would you think so?

Mr. Ham: I will have you know, human, that I was a champion racer in my younger youth. A tactical one, mind. And, a pre-broken weighing machine. Yes, yes, very funny. Alright, let's get this over with. A... jar of... oil? Shouldn't it be coal?

Me: Well, we already did that last year. And hey, have you seen the price of oil these days?

Mr. Ham: Eh, whatever. Obviously, it's going to be my gifts that are going to bring down the house, this year.

Me: Not more surplus weaponry again?

Mr. Ham: Can't say I wasn't thinking about it, but no. Market's booming nowadays, what with all those merc companies springing up left and right in Damascus. Just yesterday, some fly-by-night outfit took those crates of ancient Korean War-era Brownings off my hands, no questions asked, and they didn't even ask to test them. Or read the "no returns" policy. Valuable learning experience, if I do say so myself. Enjoy.

Me: Wow, you actually sprung for a laptop? That was entirely unexpected, I have got to admit.

Mr. Ham: Laptop? No, that's mine. You get the YouTube video.


I like mine with a good head of fluff
[N.B. Follow-up]


Me: This has got to be a new low for you, Mr. Ham. But still, I'm not entirely displeased. Well, was a nice party, boys. Picking up where we left off...


Freestyle Notes (Part II)

Carrying on from last week, and tapping back into American politics. Deeply Divided - endorsed by no less than Piketty himself - posits that social (racial) movements and economic inequality has driven the present-day partisanship between the Big Two parties, as confirmed recently by the Rise of Trump. It might do to retreat just a little further back to flesh out the backstory, however, and in my own words.

Though there were scattered settler groups before that, the history of today's sole superpower The US of A began in earnest in 1776, when a bunch of Yankee colonists got fed up about not having MPs to help write their complaint letters, despite their tantrum a few years back that led to the waste of much perfectly good presumably Chinese tea (the English pronunciation of which comes from the Fujian te according to Restless Empire, but we're getting ahead of ourselves)

The ensuing Revolutionary War took about six years proper with the aid of the French, who burnished their friendship with the gift of a huge copper statue. Since it would be rude to refuse stuff, however gaudy, from someone who had just bailed your candy-ass out, the newly-non-Brits accepted it with grace, while frantically trying to figure out where to stash the damn thing, which was clearly too large for the mantelpiece; the nasty business about Roquefort-munching capitulation simians would come about much later.

The next century would be spent happily expanding across the continent, in the process genociding upwards of 80% of the native population, which to be fair doesn't really count because they probably weren't trying to do it - most of the time, anyway. To kind of make up for it, the nice gentlemen expedited the immigration pipeline from Africa in particular to continue meeting diversity quotas, going as far as to guarantee employment while their green cards were being processed. Just so modern applicants count their blessings, this operation took centuries back then.

With USA100 closing in, something grand had to be staged, and the Americans settled on having a big ol' Civil War, likely partly as it's practically expected of an established nation to have at least one in their C.V. somewhere. After four years, the mean stuck-up Northern bullies, who called themselves the Union, unjustly deprived the genteel Southern Confederate folk of their rightful chattel (see Gone With The Wind for one portrayal), and all but destroyed their thriving plantation economy. The present-day descendants of the Dixies have learnt from their past mistakes, and now rely on reliable Mexicans for their indentured labour needs instead.

Back to the Republicans and Democrats:


(Source: metrocosm.com)


Recall, the upstart Republican Party had been newly formed in 1854, with the main aim of abolishing slavery trampling on coloured peoples' right to gainful employment. Standing in opposition to them were the brave outgunned Democrats, whose bids to secede peacefully were denied, 'cause this ain't Star Wars, man. As might be expected, their Civil War affiliation remained strongly reflected in their choice of party candidate for president some fifteen years later, as shown above (as is customary, red for the Republicans, and blue for the Democrats. The black areas hadn't been properly genocided yet, but not to worry, they're working on it)

While the two parties had their ups-and-downs in fortunes, this general distribution of support held through to the 1960s. For example, when Hoover swept it in 1928, six southern states held firm for the Democrats, and when Roosevelt kicked Hoover out on the back of the Great Depression in 1932, a handful of northeastern states remained Republican. In fact, such was the degree of Democrat support in the former slave peculiar states, that it was known as the "Solid South".

The Sixties would however be a time of shocking transgressions, with trouble-making riff-raff ignoring properly colour-coded water fountains and bus seats, and railing about some "civil rights" poppycock. I mean, what next, miscegenation, goodness? JFK would be elected in 1960 on the Democratic ticket - and be assassinated in November 1963 - which would serve as the prelude to a quite incredible sight:


(Source: metrocosm.com)


What had happened was that Senator Barry Goldwater voiced opposition to the newly-minted Civil Rights Act, which would - gasp - have white and coloured children study together! In his defence, this was on the principle of not wanting the federal government intruding overly on individual states' prerogatives, but in any case it was wildly popular in the former Democratic southern strongholds, who didn't like their relinquished properties gettin' too many clever book-larnin' ideas.

Goldwater wound up soundly thrashed in the actual elections, as we can see, but next up to bat for the Republicans was a certain Richard Nixon. Still stinging from Goldwater's defeat, the GOP didn't want to be seen as too racist uncooperative on states' rights, especially as contemporary tastes had shifted from civil wars to Super Bowls. Anyway, a third-party American Racist Independent party took the not-so-solid south in 1968 as Nixon won overall, before Nixon took near everything in a 1972 landslide helped by swapping ping-pong players, a tack pursued half-heartedly and with rather more limited success by the present Singaporean administration.

Tricky Dicky would shortly after resign due to the Watergate scandal, in which he got caught bugging the Democrats' headquarters, and stealing copies of their documents. In retrospect, Nixon was simply born several decades too early, given that candidates from both parties nowadays are salivating at the potential to openly wiretap everybody.

The Republicans couldn't quite win the 1976 election after that scandal, which saw the South reluctantly fall back in behind Jimmy Carter, but they knew a swell opportunity when they saw one. The 1980 edition would see the arrival of legendary political strategist Lee Atwater to the scene, and the refinement of the Republican Southern strategy from overt to hidden racism to a focus on a principled commitment to fiscal conservatism, states' rights and law & order.

The former Solid South would basically vote Republican after 1980 with few exceptions, such as Arkansas pulling for homeboy Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996, which effectively represented a near-complete swapping of home bases between the Republicans and Democrats in half a century.

Given that good old-fashioned racism respect for tradition would not be able to garner enough votes thanks to shifting demographics, the Republicans would in effect pursue a big tent policy, that has begotten an only-too-holy union of soulless Big Business apparatchiks, Randian libertarians, tongue-speaking gay-slaughtering fundamentalist evangelists, Darjeeling Oolong Wasters, and bad-haired reality TV billionaires (but at least the last one's entertaining)

And, sprawled dazed on the sidelines, are the handful of moderate stragglers and old-school Republican liberals, wondering who pulled the carpet out from under them.


Y'all could've just stuck to cutting taxes...
(Original source: humanevents.com)


Anyhow, the authors of Deeply Divided noted with alarm the increasing polarization between the major parties, and identified as a major concern an inequity in voice in civic discourse. In short, despite polling evidence pointing to Americans remaining largely moderate on stands such as abortion (a major single-issue voter topic), proposed legislation has only become more draconian.

Disenfranchisement against the more-pigmented, certainly, has a long and sordid history in the Land of the Free. As recently as the 1960s, they had to get a perfect score on a thirty-question "literacy test", to qualify to vote. While this sort of thing might not fly these days, there's much more up the bag of tricks, with the GOP for example outlawing early Sunday voting in Florida as recently as 2012, to stop black churches from getting their congregations out to vote.

The authors' warning about a possible "legitimacy crisis" in American politics, mirroring the final days of the late USSR regime, could have sounded a little like scaremongering when the book came out last year. If it might remain unclear if this charge applies to the country as a whole, however, it seems evident that there is one brewing in the Republican Party.

A former Bush II speechwriter has belatedly identified a "class war" going on in their sellotaped alliance - which has gained precious little sympathy elsewhere - even as Trump-Daddy's nationalist platform continues to soar on a tide of the spellbound disgruntled, who are now applauding him on Hillary pee-pee remarks. Establishment man Jeb!, now scrabbling to hold on to his 3% in the shadow of The Donald, has hit back by insisting that he never wanted to be the frontrunner anyway; we foresee that he will remain happy, then...


And, in honour of our current star turn


[To be continued again...]



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Next: A Forced Awakening


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