Wish I May

This month has really lived up to its name for me.  At the start of it, I was full of ambition.  I May do this, I May do that.  I'm not sure how successful I was at pushing things from the May to the Did column.  I did finally read Homo Deus by Sapiens author Yuval Noah Harari which had been on my list for several months.  The topic of the book is the impending domination and subordination of humanity by an amortal, superiorly engineered successor species to homo sapiens fashioned by the elite members of our current species from themselves.   The trajectory of 50 years or so in which this would occur per Harari seems to me to be optimistic in light of news of the acceleration of global warming (also brought to us courtesy of our elite!) as reported to the world by a panel of 91 climate scientists last fall, making the notion of a cybernetically and genomically superior superspecies as a threat to humanity almost cute in its quaintness.  Good luck with the charred and depleted burning turd ball of a planet we're about to bequeath you, bionic overlords!  You deserve each other!

At the start of the month, after reading a string of exhilarating articles on CurrentAffairs.org, I thought "I may subscribe to this damn thing."  I did.

After several weeks of boiling and pouring water for coffee from a saucepan following the demise of the second cheap tea kettle in 3 years, I thought I'm either going to invest in quality water boiling paraphernalia or give up coffee forever.  I'm still pouring water out of the pan, but I swear I'm going to order a kettle. Maybe in June.

I had several ideas for blog posts that I may or may not ever get to.   (For all that matters, I may finish this one or I may not.  We may never know.)  For instance, I've been flirting with the idea of writing specifically about a commonly discussed notion of some writers / voters / focus group participants / acquaintances that they will be disappointed if the democratic nominee is not a woman.  As a shorthand, I'll call this faction (those who prefer a female nominee) Gender Voters as a particular case of what could be called Identity Voting for those supporting or seeking to support a candidate on any specific demographic or identity-centered basis.  Given that barring a change to the constitution Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will not meet the age requirement for the presidency until 2024, I have to face facts that I am strongly decided on a candidate whose non-womanly status places me in a position of rooting for disappointment for a significant segment of what I hope will be allies by the time of the general election.*  I've touched upon this before, but frankly the predicament this past week of Theresa May (no pun intended) in the UK, who is after all the second woman Prime Minister after Margaret Thatcher in the 80's, has reminded me with a great deal of poignancy that gender alone does not automatically confer feminist priorities, compassion, skill or wisdom on a leader.  I don't doubt that May's gender tempered her incumbency-- I could even be persuaded that things would be even worse if she were a man as I'm sure her successor if he's Tory will soon enough amply demonstrate-- but may we be chastened by the actual examples from history against promoting candidates on narrow bases without assurance that their greatest strengths will lead us out of our current predicament and into the light of better days rather than deeper into the mire.  If Hillary Clinton had won in 2016, I do not doubt her 2-term presidency would be a success (and most importantly, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch would still be mere gleams in the eyes of the Federalist Society instead of the nails sealing the coffin on Roe v Wade if not this republic's judiciary), but could we or the planet endure 8 more years of neoliberal status quo before daring to dream of a progressive president?   On the other hand, on closer consideration, I've decided I don't want to "mansplain" so I may not write about this topic after all. (Keep in mind: if you hear of any wagering on how long I can go without broaching the topic again, I may want in on the action.)

To complement the Mays, I have a list of Mayn'ts:

• I mayn't yet be over obsessing about presidential politics (to the exclusion of all other categories yet) (a year before the primaries yet), and I mayn't be completely sorry about that.
• I mayn't foster a habit of mindfulness outside of discussions about how I really ought to foster a habit of mindfulness
• I mayn't forgo watching Real Time with Bill Maher on a regular basis even though he appears to have forgotten there's a left to the left of center left in his roster of guests and moreover fully transcended the line into old man crankiness himself.  (It helps to mix it up a little with Wyatt Cenac's Problem Areas.)
• I mayn't give up lo-sugar ice cream novelties for dessert.
• I mayn't stop adding to the list of Mays before transferring legacy items to the list of Dids 

To that final point,  even though the hurt of AT&T killing FilmStruck after purchasing Time Warner last year still stings,  I may risk my heart being broken again by subscribing to Criterion Collection before the end of the month.   I understand they are featuring the films of Anna Biller.  Then again the mere thought that I may do it, may in the meantime give me something to live for.

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* I'm sorry but Elizabeth Warren does not go far enough in her policies given current circumstances.  There is an actual progressive running, in case you hadn't noticed.  I'm not ready to settle, but if I must settle after the primaries, she is the one among the likely alternatives that I would hope I'd be settling for. 

It's not Brain Surgery

Retired Neurosurgeon, Failed Presidential Candidate, Treasury looter, Oddly Comatose Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson has difficulty concealing his hostility to questioning by Freshman Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts for his medical opinion about health effects on the residents of Federal Public Housing of the increasingly subhuman conditions therein since his incumbency at the agency*, for which Carson is seeking a budget reduction:

The exchange speaks volumes for itself.  Carson shares with his boss a comically robust (if undeserved) self-regard and a penchant for leaving a trail of bizarreness in his wake, but this episode perfectly captures the arrogance of an incurious man who has milked a hot dogging celebrity for 30 years who now finds himself having to answer for his incompetence (or negligence or dereliction of duty-- it hardly matters which) to someone he would desperately prefer to see as his inferior.  Even his eyes can't be that closed to reality.

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* He could also be grilled on his Christian perspective on the matter.

Amarisi Amari

Perhaps recognizable from Csókolom's recording on the soundtrack of Everything is Illuminated, here is Zidoni performing the Roma tune, Amarisi Amari: 

Amarisi amari
Amari chini borie
Ai, lalala lay lay lay lay lay-lay
Amarisi amari
Amari chini borie
Ai, lalala lay lay lay, laylay
Dooi dooi desha dooi
Tumidou meh lako mui
Ai, lalala lay lay lay lay lay-lay
Dooi dooi desha dooi
Tumidou meh lako mui
Ai, lalala lay lay lay, laylay
(Fiddle solo)
Lako musi rupona
Pushka trubula dinow
Ai, lalala lay lay lay lay lay-lay
Lako musi rupona
Pushka trubula dinow
Kelen savoraleh-drom
Te kelai la puroh rom
Ai, lalala lay lay lay lay lay-lay
Puroh rom te kelelah
Bistayeh je malav-ya
Ai, lalala lay lay lay, laylay
(Fiddle solo)
Hoy! te meraoo
Tena chachi paw phenow
Ai, lalala lay lay lay lay lay-lay
Hoy, te meraoo
Tena chachi paw phenow
Ai, lalala lay lay lay, laylay
Amarisi amari
Amari chini borie
Ai, lalala lay lay lay lay lay-lay
Amarisi amari
Amari chini borie
Ai, lalala lay lay lay, laylay

https://lyricstranslate.com/en/amarisi-amari-she-ours-she-ours.html

She is ours, she is ours
She is ours, she is ours
Our little daughter in law

Two two twelve
I kiss her mouth

Her mouth is made of silver
she has to be shot

Make way children,
let the old man dance

When the old man dances
he taps on for twenty one days.

I’ll slap away at my boot-legs,
That you’ll hear it even in the morning.

Oh let me die
If I don’t tell the truth

She is ours, she is ours
Our little daughter in law

2 options

One choice is compromise.  Reaching across the aisle.  Recognizing that regardless of whether your Senatorial colleagues are Democrat or Republican, all elected representatives are intelligent people who only want what's best. We learned our lesson 40 years ago after the humiliating defeat after only one term of Jimmy Carter (himself no Democratic Socialist while he was in office certainly), followed by 12 years of Reagan and Bush, Sr, the stewards of our current predicament.   The lesson we can't seem to unlearn: For Democrats, the center is where it's at! 

The tragicomic thing about the Democratic virtue of compromise is that it is always offered up front and it is never reciprocated.  The effect has been a shift into a rightist corporatist fantasyland that is markedly removed from government that meets the needs of most people.  But at least someone is compromising.  It has to start somewhere, right?

One question, though:  who asked for it?  What voter truly thinks, you know what's wrong with political life in America: not enough compromise of my position.  (Hint: No one.)  The Republicans control the demand of this commodity; centrist Democrats have a monopoly on the supply.  The effect is compromise in the worst sense. As in the erosion of value.  As in the exposure of venal motivations of those doing the compromising.

The other choice is a blank slate upon which you are invited to project your dreams.  What more could be said about someone you never heard of 3 months ago who explicitly evades questions of specifics on policy and yet somehow manages to threaten to take the nomination.   We almost always tend to be more creative and bolder in our imaginations than these formless candidates turn out to be in practice, and yet the power of these palimpsests of politics (for voters who are happy just to desire) is quite awesome.  You do not come from nowhere with nothing of substance on the table and win a presidential election unless you have been well groomed for such a role by your starting place, by your life choices and career moves and by your donors, and if this is the kind of candidate you are, you never find yourself in this role by accident.

Sometimes the proliferation of options is not enough.  If these two are anywhere near your top picks, it's time to check your priorities.  Is your number one priority global warming?  Is it medicare for all?  Is it cancelling student debt?  Or is it replacing Donald Trump with more of the same?

There are better choices.