CSotD: Stupid question, stupid answer, empty gesture
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Start with the easy one, derided here by the New Yorker's Benjamin Schwartz.
Suddenly there's a huge flood of commentary about how Jeb! Bush told reporters that, if time travel were possible, he would go back in time and kill Baby Hitler.
I had to go back and find out where this came from. Turns out NYTimes Magazine "polled its readers" on the question, though I'm rather sure they simply asked a clickbait question and didn't actually "poll" anyone.
Jeb! is desperate enough at this stage that he will answer any question, no matter how stupid.
And if you ask a stupid question, you get a stupid answer, though certainly not one that will disqualify anyone in the current race for Dronemaster And Possessor of the Launch Codes.
The notion of "Killing Baby Hitler" is not simply a stupid answer, but an actively toxic one, because it perpetuates the Evil Genius Theory of History.
That theory credits one bad person with bringing about horrors that could not possibly succeed except in a society that wanted them to happen.
It's simply a reversal of the childish view of history and politics that credits Rosa Parks, "the tired seamstress," with touching off the entire Civil Rights Movement.
Just as Rosa Parks didn't just magically make all those good things happen, so, too, Hitler did not magically make all those bad things happen.
The wheels were in motion, society was ready.
If it hadn't been Rosa, it would have been someone else. Ditto with "Baby Hitler."
Regular readers, please excuse me for going back to this interview I did with Frank Zappa 30 years ago, but people keep saying the sorts of things that make me want to post it:
Peterson: I remember that at one point, Lennon was asked in an interview on his pacifism, "What would you have done about Hitler?" and he said that the problem with Hitler was back when he was a kid, why did he become Hitler, rather than what do you do with him in 1938 when it's too late…
ZAPPA: That's an interesting observation, but it doesn't solve the problem in 1938. And then, it raises the spectre of what do we do, have a government agency to spot little Hitlers? My theory is, any society can produce a Hitler, and to the Germans in 1938, Hitler was a totally acceptable guy, because he was saying the things that they wanted to hear.
If you look around you in the United States today, there are plenty of acceptable guys saying what Americans want to hear that are just as dangerous.
…
If you want to take Lennon's Hitler comment to another ridiculous extreme, try to imagine what kind of mutants are going to be running around in another ten years when these latchkey kids grow up? The sons and daughters of the Yuppies who are out playing racquetball and leave their kids languishing someplace else.
Or, all the kids who are in the poverty bracket right now, who, with all the cutbacks in education and everything else, will have a harder time climbing out of that hole. What have we invested in?
While we're watching the Dow wander its way towards 2000, you've got some problems for the future boiling all around you that are not being addressed. Everybody's having too much fun here.
I think that, secretly, they must have a theory in the back of their minds that, "I'll make my money and then, when everything falls to pieces in the United States, I'll move to Switzerland." These people have never been to Switzerland. You don't want to spend your days in Switzerland.
You'd better start looking around to what you can do to make this a better place to live in, and it goes beyond the instant buck of today.
Peterson: The thing you said in the album, that came up three or four times, I think, was "All your children are poor unfortunate victims of systems beyond their control…":
ZAPPA: "…A plague upon your ignorance and the gray despair of your ugly lives."
Peterson: Yup. You still go with that?
ZAPPA: Sure.
Well, the Dow closed yesterday at 17,758.21 and our solution is to go back in time to kill Baby Hitler, and meanwhile, this:
A plague upon your ignorance and the gray despair of your ugly lives.
Can Poppies grow in Astroturf?
I was a bit surprised by today's Barney & Clyde, because I associate poppies with November 11 in Canada, but with Memorial Day here in the USA.
I certainly go along with the derision of pointless, pro-forma "patriotism," mind you. It's just the calendar part that threw me off.
Poppies, of course, come from the World War I poem written by a Canadian field surgeon a century ago this year. Both Remembrance Day and the poppy were later applied to veterans of all wars in Canada, as this Lynn Johnston piece from 2012 notes.
FBOFW never failed to mark the day, and, living just south of the border, I grew used to seeing them on every lapel on television, and on every shirt and blouse if I ventured up to Montreal in late October or into November.
But, on this side of the border, we already had Memorial Day to commemorate our war dead and the poppy became part of that tradition.
They may be available today in major metros: The Barney & Clyde crew is based in DC, and perhaps if I were in Boston or NYC or Chicago, I'd see American Legionnaires on the streets selling them.
But out there in the hinterlands, poppies are only around in May.
If you can get one, do, because the money raised goes for veterans' causes and that's something everybody talks about and nobody does anything about, as Steve Artley notes.
Artley's commentary stands out. There aren't many editorial cartoons that call for greater support for vets without adding a kind of backhanded commentary about the futility of their contribution, which I think might be better voiced in the wake of failed legislation than on this particular holiday.
And I sure hope I don't sound too cynical in asking what good buying green light bulbs at Wal-Mart does for anyone but Wal-Mart?
Yes, I see there are some non-profits signed on. But, to echo that little boy with the broccoli, I say it's Astroturf and I say to hell with it.
Granted, their heartfelt patriotic pitch includes some kind of promise to offer shit jobs to veterans.
I'm reminded of Dana Andrews in The Best Years of Our Lives, coming home from the war an officer and having to take a job as a soda jerk at the local drugstore under the management of the slacker who rose to management in his absence.
If you're so damned concerned with raising awareness, Wal-Mart, why don't you give away the lightbulbs?
Or go beyond "awareness" and give all proceeds from their sale — and I don't mean "a portion of the profits" — to veteran's causes?
And what say we all stop saying "Freedom isn't free" if we're not willing to pony up ourselves?
Please listen.
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