Let's Throw a Party!
Black and White
for release 05-16-05
Washington D.C.
At last Thursday night's $250 a plate gala in Washington DC, thrown to laud and flatter House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, Rep. Tom Feeney of Florida said, referring to the ethics probe in the House, ""We need going forward to have rules that are less gray and ambiguous and more black and white."
Republicans like things to be black and white. That's why they are Republicans. Their little binary brains won't recognize anything but zeroes and ones. You are either right or wrong, straight or gay, good or the axis of evil, red or blue, for us or against us, anti-life or pro-choice.
In the beautiful grayness of our chiaroscuro world, with it's subtleties and shadings, the binomial outlook misses the joyous ambiguity of evenings and dawns, and would rather see only the absolutes of noon and midnight.
To be fair, the Democrats aren't much better at detecting the lovely little in-betweens of life. They would prefer to use the paradigm of left-right and center. The liberals see the conservatives as Bible thumping, gay hating, NASCAR watching, Limbaugh listening ditto heads and the conservatives see the liberals as free-spending, tax-raising, tree hugging, latte sipping snobs who want Norman Mailer or Dr. Kevorkian on the Supreme Court.
I have long marveled at the survival of the two party system in America. This is a country that supposedly prides itself on diversity and the free market of ideas, yet we only have two political parties with any chance of being viable. We can drive a Ford or a Chevrolet. This has been the case since the Federalists squared off against the Anti-Federisits. Luckily the Anti-Federalists prevailed and as a result we got the Bill of Rights. But the Constitution mentions nothing about political parties. The current system evolved from political practicality.
In this country we have parties representing every known political persuasion. We have communists, socialists, every possible stripe of wobbly, nazis, proto-fascists and neo-nazis, falangists. We have environmentalists living in tree houses and survivalists and millennialists crawling around the country-side on their bellies in camoflage suits shooting paint balls at each other in preparation for the unraveling of the social fabric. We have Reformers, Progressives, Regressives and there's even a Pot Party. We have anarchists who drive SUV's. We have absurdists like me. We have monarchists and fringe-ball weirdos who dress up in white robes and anticipate visits from our guardians in outer space. We have everything from the KKK to the NAACP. Why then, when you look at our Representatives in Congress, do you see only Republicans and Democrats and perhaps a lonely Libertarian? Oh yeah and maybe a few that call themselves Independents. These are the political equivalent of Unitarians who don't really believe anything but are happy to take money from all sides.
You don't have to be a Democrat or a Republican to run for high office in America, you just need to be a Republican or a Democrat to get elected. It doesn't take much to start a political party, hell I have one myself. It helps to have some money like Ross Perot or some recognition like Pat Buchanan or some grass-roots support like Ralph Nader or Jesse Jackson. These men all started parties, but I'm sure none of them (except maybe Perot) harbored any illusions of being elected president. They were furthering other agendas, personal and political. But it could be argued that Perot and Buchanan handed Clinton his victories and that Nader was partly responsible for Bush's first term by shaving enough votes from Gore to put the race in the hands of brother Jeb's state machine and Daddy's Supreme Court appointees.
But even with all the glorious diversity in America's political landscape, we settle for Red and Blue. Wouldn't it be fun to watch George Bush try to form a parliamentary coalition between the Greens, the Christian Falangists, the Maharishi Party and Goth Piercing Party instead of trying to cram his reactionary judicial candidates down the throats of the Senate by changing the rules because his monolithic party owns the chamber? That's all we need, judges who can only see black and white.
The Poet's Eye gets bored only looking at black and white, good and bad, left and right. It longs for grays and shadows, hues and tints. But as it is I can't tell the Republicrats from the Demiphants. Join the Absurdist Party, it's the only one that makes any sense.
You know, if
one person, just one person does it they may think he's really sick and
they won't take him. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony,
they may think they're both faggots and they won't take either of them.
And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in
singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. They may think it's an
organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day,I said
fifty people a day walking in singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and
walking out. And friends they may think it's a movement.--Arlo Guthrie