BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE:POLITICS

It has been said that democracy is the worst form of
government except all the others have been tried.

Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

COMEBACKS
 
When longtime Boston Mayor James M. Curley was speaking 
during one of his many political campaigns a heckler shouted,
    "I wouldn't  vote for you if you were St. Peter."
 Curley shout back, "If i were St. Peter, you wouldn't be in 
my precinct."
 
from I'll Be Sober in the Morning, edited by Charles Lamb 
(Chsrleston, SC: Frontline Press, Ltd, 2007)

***

DEMOCRACY
 
“Democracy means government by the uneducated, 
while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.”
           G.K. Chesterton
 
"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, 
more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some 
great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach 
their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned 
by a downright moron."
 
H.L. Mencken 
Notes on Democracy
1926
 
 
Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's
 inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.
 
Reinhold Niebuhr, theologian (1892-1971)
**
ANALOGY:
Betsy De Vos: Public School Education :: Hannibal Lecter: Gourmet Dining

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS
 
The three towering geniuses of European culture, Shakespeare, Mozart and Lenardo di Vinci, were not allowed to appear on the euro note as they might, in their separate ways , cause offence; mozart because he was a “womanizer”, Shakespeare, because he wrote The Merchant of Venice, a play judged to be anti-semitic, and Leonardo because he was reported to fancy boys. Now the euro note carries a picture of a rather dull bridge.
 
John Mortimer,  Where There’s a Will
 
 
 
 
POLITICAL THOUGHT
 
From the Renaissance to the eighteenth century,
The impulse behind classic works of political thought was the urge to shape events. Machiavelli wrote to rescue Florence and Italy from internal corruption and external weakness.
Jean Bodin desgned a theory of sovereignity that might rescue France from its wars of religion. The Marian exile of the mid-sixteenth century, and John Locke under Charles II, devised justification for resistence to prevent tyranny.
 
Blair Worden in TLS (August 4,2006)
 

 
POLITICIANS/POLITICS
 
 
No matter how paranoid you are, what the government is actually doing is worse than you can imagine.
        William Blum
 
Don’t believe anything until it’s been officially denied.
         William Blum
 
 
People used to complain that selling a president was like selling a bar of soap. But when you buy soap, at least you get the soap. In this campaign you just get two guys telling you that they really value cleanliness.
 
David Brooks
 

   Somewhere out in the audience may even be someone who will one day follow in my footsteps, and presides over the White House as the President’s spouse. I wish him well.
 
  Barbara Bush. College address at Wellsley College on June 1, 1990
 
 
Politics? Politics are just like women: get into them seriously and you’re going to come out looking like an earthworm stepped on by a longshoreman’s boot.
 
Charles Bukowski  in a letter to Gerald Locklin (August 2, 1981)
 
 
Political conflicts are merely surface manifestations. If conflicts arise you may be sure that certain powers intend to keep this conflict under operation since they hope to profit from the situation. To concern yourself with surface political conflicts is to make the mistake of he bull in the ring, you are changing the cloth. That is what politics is for, to teach you the cloth. Just as the bullfighter teaches the bull, teaches him to obey the cloth.
 
      William Burroughs
 
Journal for the Protection of All Beings (City Lights Bookstore)
 
 
 
…one of the terrible truths of presidential politics: it changes everybody who gets into it, generally for the worse, frequently for the awful.
 
  Gail Collins. The New York Times (February 7, 2015)
 
 
As early as 1923 it had become clear that world revolution was 
no longer on history’s agenda, at any rate not in the form envisioned
 by Marxism.
 
George C. Eckstein, reviewing Bukharin and the
Bolshevik Revolution in The Nation (February 8, 1975)
 
**
 
The exiled tyrant Pisistratus , planning his return to Athens in the 
early sixth century BC, hired an unusually tall woman named Phye 
to ride beside him in his in his chariot. She was to pretend to be the 
manifestation of the goddess Athena, the Patron of Athens. Herodotus 
gives her height as some four cubits---around 5’11”, more than a
foot taller than the average woman at the time—and notes that not 
only was she dressed in full armour but was instructed of the bearing 
in which she might best beseem her part (according  to Macauley’s 
inimitable translation . As Pisistratus and Phye trundled through the 
fields of Attica, fell over themselves to pay their respects., 
Herodotus notes that Pisistratus was immediately returned to power.
 
Claire Hall. “The Day a God Rode In,”: reviewing “The Realness of 
Things Past: Ancient Greece  and Ontological History” by Greg 
Anderson (London Review of Books)
 
 
I have just received the following telegram from my generous Daddy,
 It says, “Dear Jack: Don’t  buy a single vote more than is necessary. 
I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay for a landslide.”
 
             John F. Kennedy    at the Gridiron Dinner (1958)
 
 
**
 
If you agree with me on nine out of 12 issues, you should vote for me. 
If you agree with me on 12 out of 12 issues, you should see a psychiatrist.
 
       Ed Koch, Mayor of NYC
 

 
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
 
Groucho Marx
 
 
       …I haven’t studied politics that much really. It just seems that 
you have to be in a constant state of revolution, or you’re dead.  
There  always has to be a revolution, it has to be a constant thing, 
not something that’s going to change things, and that’s it, you know, 
the revolution’s going to solve everything. It has to be every day.”
 
         Jim Morrison, in an interview with John Tobler
 
 
 
Politicians are people who, when they see light at the end of the tunnel, 
go out and buy some more tunnel.
                       John Quinton
 
 
 Teddy Kennedy says, “These are times that will test all people. Are we 
up to the test?” And the people say, “The question is, can we get someone 
to take the test for us?”
 
    Mort Sahl









**
 
   In that first four weeks (AFTER OBAMA’S ELECTION), you probably remember, effigies were burned. Obama supporters were being beat up, all sorts if things like that. For me, it was all captured in the amazing case of the second and third graders in Idaho who were riding their bus on the way to school and chanting “Assassinate Obama!” It was an incredible moment. I think that –very much like David Duke, the ex-Klan leader, predicted – Americans woke up on November 5 and to some of them it was a rude shock. This black guy was going to be their president, and, by God, he was going to take his wife and kids and move into the White House.
 
     David Schimke. “Hate,Ink.” in  UTNE READER (Jan-Feb. 10, 2010)
 
**
 
 
Arguing with the Tea Pary is like playing chess with a pigeon. No matter how good
your argument the pigeon is going to knock all the pieces over, crap all over the board and strut around like it’s victorious.
 
   Charles Simmons (?)
 
**
 
Democrats work to help people who need help. That other party they work for people
who don’t need help. That’s all there is to it.
 
       Harry S Truman
 
**