arts-attic.com

This one should be filed under stuff I just don’t like.
Here in Vidalia, Georgia is a shining example on a hill top of a medical center, the Mercy Medical Clinic operating under the umbrella of the Mercy Ministries. Something bothered me, just a little nagging urge in the back of my mind as I rode around on my motorcycle looking for medical care and then I found the Spring/Summer 2015 issue of Toomb’s County magazine. This is a four color plus varnish magazine printed on heavy paper and it’s all about the best of the local stuff. On the cover was “Actions that Matter, Volunteers make our community strong, especially when they set a good example.” The story is titled “Heaven comes to earth when community helps each other. By Teri R. Williams, photos by Daphne Walker.”

Quoting from the book by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert, When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor and Yourself, Pastor Clint Hutcheson, the Helps coordinator of Mercy Ministries, the Mercy Medical Clinic, The Mercy Guild, Compassionate Care Dental Clinic and Mercy Helps Ministry, espouses a religious philosophy of work, and personal responsibility. But who should decide worth? I like to think of medical care as being something fact based and executed with scientific rigor yet here I find a medical facility quoting from a bible to support it’s medical decisions. Over and over again this story relates . . .

So The Donald, as New York City natives refer derisively to Mr. Donald Trump, the Presidential hopeful has extended his hate speech to include all people who practice the Islam religion.
Conservative talk show hosts are upset over The Philadelphia Daily News evoking Nazi imagery on its front page Tuesday (8 DEC) with a tight profile shot of Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump, right arm extended up and out at a 45-degree angle. The Philly tabloid went with “The New Furor.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/12/08/the-philadelphia-daily-news-front-page-goes-there-on-donald-trump/

What is the difference between the people who practice Islam and Judaism? Nothing. Except that 75 years ago the German people created a sophisticated system for killing human beings and used that system ruthlessly to try an exterminate an entire group of religious people. Period.

Don’t kid yourself with “that was then, and this is now.” People are people and we never change from one generation to the next. All we do consistently well is fail to learn from our past mistakes.

Ever since the run up to the year 2000 elections one political party in this country has focused its efforts on hatred and division. The members of the Grand Old Party of the Republic have consistently done their best to deny their opposition the ability to govern with the philosophy that all government is bad government. A side effect of all of this has been the growth of a group of small minded hate-filled people who “have theirs” and to hell with the rest of you. Members of the GOP want nothing more than to have a free ride, refusing to pay their fair share for living in a country with orderly changes of government and a well regulated society. Even the thought of government regulation is antithetical to them. Until the members of the GOP are faced with life without government protection.

I’ve wandered astray from the historical similarity I originally want to point out to you.

Pre-War Germany was really no different than the times we now live in. There was no evil supernatural leader there were only politicians doing their best to lead their country in the direction the political party and the people thought was best for all. That it was all to end in world-wide horror at what had been done to innocent people wasn’t clear at the beginning.

But if we look in the rear view mirror of history we can see politicians vilifying choice groups of citizens with their demagoguery, as a means to a political end, maybe not even seeing what horrors those self serving politicians were to bring on not only those people chosen as easy targets but the entire world.

There’s this video, taken by a https://youtu.be/Xx-41k_oxaA CNN videographer after escaping from the media pen at a The Donald political rally in of all places Birmingham, Alabama.

When the members of the GOP began their policy of, it’s cheap to say hatred and intolerance, but the policy of denying the opposition party any success and on the rare occasion when the opposition party did manage an achievement to claim the achievement as a GOP accomplishment, counting on the short attention span of the majority American citizen . . .

Well, what could go wrong?

I mean to say, what is wrong with charismatic, forceful speakers telling people what they people want to hear, practicing demagoguery mixed in with who to fear, why you should fear and what you can do about your fear?

What can go wrong?

When reputable media collectors, what we used to call journalists are confined to a specific area so they can only see and report what the candidate wants them to see and report.

What could go wrong?

Xenophobia is the New Black

Xenophobia is the fear of that which is perceived to be foreign or strange.[1][2] Xenophobia can manifest itself in many ways involving the relations and perceptions of an ingroup towards an outgroup, including a fear of losing identity, suspicion of its activities, aggression, and desire to eliminate its presence to secure a presumed purity.[3] Xenophobia can also be exhibited in the form of an “uncritical exaltation of another culture” in which a culture is ascribed “an unreal, stereotyped and exotic quality”.[3]

Art Joly 18 NOV 2015

When I first thought of that acerbic, multiple meaning phrase, I was going to allow it to stand on its own. Then I started thinking. Ingroups versus outgroups. Who is “in” and who is “out” and who gets to decide?

When the members of a political party in Germany needed to justify their existence the good citizens of Germany took a time honored method to hand: Identify someone or something to fear, point and tell your fellow citizens why they should fear “this.” The members of this political party, a party of strength and good health chose a group of people practicing a particular religion as the target of their political need.

In July of 1938 “Fewer than 5 percent of Americans surveyed at the time believed that the United States should raise its immigration quotas or encourage political refugees fleeing fascist states in Europe — the vast majority of whom were Jewish — to voyage across the Atlantic. Two-thirds of the respondents agreed with the proposition that “we should try to keep them out.””

The Mayoral election for Manchester, NH was decided by 75 votes in favor the the incumbent, Ted Gatsas. We wanted to vote for Joyce Craig in the hopes that the children of Manchester, NH would get a fair shake in the school system so that would have been 73 votes for Mayor Ted.

But.

We received our absentee ballots on the 5th of November. Franked by the city hall postage meter on the 29th of October and cancelled by the USPO on the 2nd of November. Now if the mail had gone out on the 29th we might have had the ballots on the 2nd and I wold have paid USPS or UPS for guarantied next day delivery.

But.

For the Mayor of Manchester, NH, foot dragging won the day.

This week, the New Hampshire Governor’s Executive Council voted along party lines to deny funding to Planned Parenthood. Or to rename their action into something more understandable, the GOP voted to deny women health care.

And to top it off, Carroll County has had it’s line of credit frozen due to a budget shortfall.

I’ve been here before, back when Governor Mel Thomson and the state’s legislature repealed the state income tax. We’re still trying to dig our way out of that hole without reinstating the income tax. New Hampshire doesn’t have taxes for the most part, we have fees. What’s the difference. You have to pay for living in a civilized society.