Magnificent speechification: Grayson does it with style.

The bill calling for the much-needed extension of unemployment benefits has finally been passed by both houses of the federal legislature—the Senate passed it on Wednesday and the House got around to doing so yesterday. So I realize that, with respect to the political issue, this post is not exactly timely.

I wish, nevertheless, to share with my enlightened readers this absolute triumph of rhetoric/oratory that was delivered by Rep. Alan Grayson, Democrat of Orlando, Florida during the House 'debate' that preceded the bill's passage. Now, we've seen previous examples of Grayson's deadpan wit, his knack for using invective to tasteful and brilliant effect, and his panache and cogency as a debater on substantive issues.

And herewith, the House doth Grayson rock.

But so rousing is the perfect little specimen of succinct speechifying that Grayson brought to the floor last Wednesday that I went and transcribed the whole damn two-minute speech for you. Now you, my readers, can never credibly question my love and devotion to you. Enjoy:

My grandfather, in the 1930s, spent several years of his life, every single day, at the dump, looking for things there that he could sell. Looking for things that he could take to the market and sell, because there was no other way for him to survive the 1930s and the Great Depression.

There was no unemployment insurance back then. There was no state benefits back then. There was no help for the people who had [no] jobs. All they could do, like my grandfather—supporting a family of seven—was to go to the dump and desperately try to find something he could sell.

And that, my friends, is the America that the Republicans are trying to revive. The America of desperate straits and, for them, cheap labor. The America where people have nothing, hope for nothing and are desperate to live for the next day. That is what the Republicans are trying to resurrect—day after day, week after week, and now month after month.

I've got news for my Republican friends: every single person who's going to receive unemployment insurance under this bill is unemployed. Every single one of them doesn't have a job. And that's why they need this money.

Now, I know what the Republicans are thinking:

"Why don't they just sell some stock? If they're in really dire straits, maybe they could take some of their art collection and send it off to the auctioneer. And if they're in deep, deep trouble, maybe these unemployed could sell one of their yachts."

That's what the Republicans are thinking right now.

But that's not the life of ordinary people—the 99 percent of America that actually has to work for a living, that doesn't just clip coupons and live off of interest and dividends, like my Republican friends do.

That's why we need this bill to pass: because of the 99 percent of America that deals with reality everyday. The people who will lose their homes if this doesn't pass. The people who will be living in their cars if this doesn't pass. That's why we need this to pass.

And I will say this to Republicans who have blocked this bill now for months and kept food out of the mouths of children. I say to them now:

May God have mercy on your souls.

I yield back.

Thanks to PhuckPolitics.com for bringing this to my attention. That blog contains a link to a video of the speech, along with its blogger's exuberant commentary.

Lookin' for a hero...

Tom "The Fourth Doctor" Baker

Maybe if the United States of America had cooler superheroes, we'd lose our appetite for demagogues in media and politics.

Consider the following remarks of Tom Baker, who was—to my mind—the greatest Doctor Who of all time, in an interview broadcast on Australian television in the mid-1970s:

ABC Television Australia: Now, with the advent of Superman coming back to the big screen, do you think there’s ever a chance that Doctor Who and Superman may run into each other?

Tom Baker: Well that’s a nice idea, but what would be the point? I mean, Superman wouldn’t be any opposition, would he, because… well…

ABC Television Australia: You both have a sort of similarity with phone boxes, though, don’t you?

Tom Baker: Ah, yes, but that’s the only way. I suppose Superman only uses a phone box because, you know, he’s rather prudish and modest, isn't he, and doesn’t want to take his knickers off in public. But I think compared to the character of Doctor Who, he’s a bit of a bonehead, Superman? I mean, he punches things out, doesn't he?

ABC Television Australia: He certainly does.

Tom Baker: Whereas the character I’m involved with tries to think it out.

Music to my ears. It's high time that someone came up with an American superhero of the caliber of Doctor Who. We ain't got nuthin'.

Let's stop acting surprised.

We're not really shocked, are we?, by instances of deceit, incompetence, greed and arrogance in the corridors of power?

Those of us who are convinced that civil liberties, free expression, free inquiry and democratic deliberation are the cornerstones of American society know quite well that lots of things are not as they should be. We know that, somehow, these essential principles and practices must be preserved, repaired and/or improved. We realize that we must continue to take these things seriously, remind one another of their importance and significance, and teach subsequent generations to preserve all that is best about the American project in republican self-governance.

We were, all of us, horrified by the self-righteous barbarity and callous disregard for the rule of law promoted, clandestinely (and then not-so-clandestinely), by former Vice President Cheney. We were dismayed to learn that various United States agencies had spied on American citizens, tortured prisoners of war (using methods borrowed from 1950s Communist China) and fabricated intelligence as a pretext for waging war. We thought the eleventh-hour first Bank Bailout, under Bush, was a bald-faced exercise in theft—that it revealed, to our dismay, the extent to which the American political system has become a fully owned subsidiary of powerful financial interests and an elite stratum of wealthy investors. And we thought that the second Bank Bailout, under Obama's watch, confirmed our suspicions about the current impotence of American democracy. To be sure, I'm not referring to its impotence in practice: we already knew all about that. No, what was confirmed was the impotence of American democracy as an idea.

So why do we act shocked when we encounter leaked footage of American soldiers in Afghanistan firing missiles at unarmed civilians? Why so surprised when Obama sells off—faster than Bush would even have dared—the American education system to a bunch of glorified loan sharks? Why are we taken off-guard when the Supreme Court overturns hundreds of centuries-old laws regulating the political spending of multinational corporations, on the basis of the notion—so argues the Court—that such laws restrict the (previously non-existent) Constitutional right of corporations to free speech?

I don't think that we are surprised by these things. I think that we are pretending to be surprised. I'm guessing that there are two (2) ways in which we pretend to be surprised, which coexist in varying degrees in any particular instance:

i. The first way in which we act surprised.
We want to be surprised by these things. Therefore, we either convince ourselves that we are surprised, or we act surprised in a semi-conscious attempt to simulate, for our own comfort, the feeling of being surprised. Or we act surprised out of sheer habit. In any of these cases—whatever our level of consciousness of our actions—we are motivated by a desire for comfort.

Why is the feeling of surprise comforting to us? Because surprise registers the phenomenon to which we are responding as something that is—as it were—beyond the pale. It's a psychological defense mechanism. We want so desperately to believe that everyone else values our Constitutional protections and civil liberties as much as we do. To us, this stuff is basic common sense, and it shatters our faith in humanity to recognize the truth: there are a substantial numbers of American citizens who would gladly give away their liberties in exchange for an illusory feeling of safety or security.

This brings us to:

ii. The second way in which we act surprised.
We hope that by expressing our outrage and shock in the face of the erosion of American civil liberties, we might be able to shock the aforementioned cadre of American citizens—a cadre that is in most other respects as heterogeneous as can be—out of its complacency and docility.

In other words, we like to believe that we are walking, talking George Orwells. That, if we talk frequently and loudly enough about how disgusted we are with our country's seemingly inexorable drift toward fear-mongering, surveillance state, that we will manage eventually to make them see the light!

The mistake we're making in this second instance is about as obvious as can be: do we really think that we can out-fear-monger the professional political-corporate-media fear-mongers?? I think this is a difficulty that faces those of us in the post-Baby Boom generations who believe that the only way in which our democracy can be repaired is through a reinvigorated civil discourse. At present, American political rhetoric is—like American political thought—beyond its moment of crisis. It is in a state of extreme fragmentation.

All I'm saying is, let's start admitting that we all know this. Let's stop acting surprised.