Ding-Dong the Witch Is Dead
Disney cartoons and Broadway shows are full of princes, princesses, kings, queens, and interacting animals with kings, queens, princes, princesses, and in both these kingdoms are dragons, witches, elves, giants, and other freaks. Walt Disney must have been a Tory unhappy with the pretentious democracy this country claims it is when in fact it's a republic...and now I hear a great big "Whoaaaaa!" coming from the drivers of this one-horse shay! "We are a democracy, dammit," holler the hayriders, "and we are offering democracy to the rest of the world through our 'invasion and occupation' tactics." I watch these hayriders shrieking from the edge of the road and then I asked, with all the 'invasions and occupations' we've tried over the past 100 years, how many of them established successful and stable democracies?" The answer, of course, is NONE--or not one!
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An Important Distinction: Democracy versus Republic
It is important to keep in mind the difference between a Democracy and a Republic, as dissimilar forms of government. Understanding the difference is essential to comprehension of the fundamentals involved. It should be noted, in passing, that use of the word Democracy as meaning merely the popular type of government--that is, featuring genuinely free elections by the people periodically--is not helpful in discussing, as here, the difference between alternative and dissimilar forms of a popular government: a Democracy versus a Republic. This double meaning of Democracy--a popular-type government in general, as well as a specific form of popular government--needs to be made clear in any discussion, or writing, regarding this subject, for the sake of sound understanding.
These two forms of government: Democracy and Republic, are not only dissimilar but antithetical, reflecting the sharp contrast between (a) The Majority Unlimited, in a Democracy, lacking any legal safeguard of the rights of The Individual and The Minority, and (b) The Majority Limited, in a Republic under a written Constitution safeguarding the rights of The Individual and The Minority; as we shall now see.
A Democracy
The chief characteristic and distinguishing feature of a Democracy is: Rule by Omnipotent Majority. In a Democracy, The Individual, and any group of Individuals composing any Minority, have no protection against the unlimited power of The Majority. It is a case of Majority-over-Man.
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A Republic
A Republic, on the other hand, has a very different purpose and an entirely different form, or system, of government. Its purpose is to control The Majority strictly, as well as all others among the people, primarily to protect The Individual’s God-given, unalienable rights and therefore for the protection of the rights of The Minority, of all minorities, and the liberties of people in general. The definition of a Republic is: a constitutionally limited government of the representative type, created by a written Constitution--adopted by the people and changeable (from its original meaning) by them only by its amendment--with its powers divided between three separate Branches: Executive, Legislative and Judicial. Here the term "the people" means, of course, the electorate.
www.lexrex.com/enlightened/AmericanIdeal/aspects/demrep.html_
The hayriders all proclaim their innocence--"Hey, man, we all grew up under the tutelage of Mister Rogers (a big believer in kings, queens, princes, princesses in a kingdom that is a mixture of real humans, human puppets, and animal puppets--one character on Mister Rogers fantasy hour was a man who was half-man and half-dog!), the Wonderful World of Disney, with its fairies and princes and princesses and kings and queens and little Polynesian girls who think they are nobodies until they discover they're really royalty!" And our kiddie culture also has automatons with royal powers over the seemingly helpless human beings (kid warriors)--transformers that can change themselves from ordinary beast-like creatures into steel and iron automatons--some turning from ordinary trucks and cars into living, fire-breathing mechanical giants who hate ordinary human beings in order to force them to go to witches and soothsayers and magic-wanders (like the Harry Potter tales--tales from the mind of Brit babe fop with an overblown fairy-tale imagination--God becomes "magic" in these tales--magic is salvation!).
Mr Rogers and his King
Disney Princess Movies
What's Even Scarier
And, yes, today was yet another John "Nutjob" McCain Sunday and another Sarah "Paleface" Palin Glory Day of Praise, and, yes, another Obama Challenge Day--challenging everything Obama says in whining defense of the dumbass, stupid, lollygagging things Nutjob and Paleface spout out--especially Paleface, who is the mistress of bullshit--I mean, she looks out of her Mrs. Hank Hill face (Mrs. Hank Hill is a cartoon human) and with that hollow twinkle in her gun-sighting eyes starts babbling pure-dee bullshit, twisted logic, backward thinking--oh, yes, she's more a whiz at backward thinking than Nutjob McCain who is limited in his thinking to mostly himself and his "maverick" stance, whatever the hell that means? What is his definition of a "maverick"? He's using the original use of the word correctly. The word comes from Texas, from the Texas cattle-ranching industry...well, here, check it out for yourself, it's a good tale:
Origin: 1867
It was all the fault, or the bright idea, of Samuel Augustus Maverick, who lived from 1803 to 1870. Descended from an old and notable New England family, he sought his fortune in Texas and there inadvertently made a name for himself. He took up cattle ranching, which was quite a different proposition from raising livestock back East. In Texas cattle grazed on the open range, without fences to keep one herd separate from another, and thus there was much opportunity for theft and disputes over ownership. To identify their cattle, ranchers branded them, rounding up the calves each year for this purpose.
But Maverick put no brand on his cattle. Stories about "old man Maverick" give various reasons for his abstinence: he was lazy; he objected to the cruelty of branding. Whatever the reason, if he had been an ordinary citizen, this practice would have put him at the mercy of other ranchers, who would have appropriated his cattle and marked them with their own brands. But Maverick was influential: mayor of San Antonio, member of the Texas legislature, and holder of 385,000 acres, he was able instead to claim that any unbranded calf was his. And so, either in earnest or in jest, the name maverick was applied to all cattle without brands. In 1867 a writer complained, "The term maverick which was formerly applied to unbranded yearlings is now applied to every calf which can be separated from the mother cow--the consequence is, the fastest brander are accumulating the largest stocks."
It was too good a word to leave to the cattle. What better word to use for a politician who was "unbranded" by a party label, not "owned" by special interests? In 1886 a San Francisco publication called the California Maverick defined it: "He holds maverick views" means "his views were untainted by partisanship." A Massachusetts politician declared in 1905, "I am running as a maverick; I have no man's brand upon me." Maverick accords with our American inclination to admire someone who goes his or her own way. A loner (1947) may be loony, but a maverick is an independent thinker.
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So, yes, that's what Nutjob means when he entitles himself "Maverick"--but of course that's a PR tag and since it's a PR tag it's a brand--you see what an old advertising man is trying to tell you?--once a PR firm has promoted you as a Maverick, you can rest assured, you are no Maverick in the true sense of the word.
By the bye, when I was a little kid in Texas, one of old man Maverick's grandkids, I assume, Maury Maverick, Jr., was in the US House of Representatives from San Antonio; a New Dealer from Texas of all things.
Old Maury Maverick, Jr., right before he kicked the bucket in 2003.
But there was a lot of John "Jowls" McCain (my theory is, when a politician gets jowls, he's eatin' and drinkin' too much and will soon suffer a mild heart attack or at least a mild stroke--watch the jowls--the further down they hang the closer the jowl-possessor is to their 6-foot-by-6-foot final home) championing going on on the commercial media pundit shows--I did see Pat Buchanan for a quick minute praising Sweet Sarah of Alaska--then I saw some jughead on the Disney Channel saying McCain was surprisingly still only 6-points behind Upstart, Inexperienced, Black Obama (Barack rhymes with black--hey, cute)--that, to this clown, means Nutjob's "Maverick" tag is working--keeping him politically more savvy than the Black guy--plus his brilliant move by conceding Michigan to the Black guy...blah, blah, blah, blah, blah....
And the Pulaski (Casmir Pulaski)(Polish) Day Parade is gradually spilling out of my street onto Fifth Avenue for a trip up it or down it--I've never seen a Pulaski Day Parade in its glory, only the part of it that's made up in front of my apartment building. Noisy bastards! I haven't heard any polka bands this year! Don't tell me the Poles are into hip-hop now! Holy Black Madonna, they are--I hear a Polish rapper rapping in Polish! Oh Jesus, now a modern Polski band, playing a gypsy-like music, has blared up in front of the house. And I have dinner sometimes at a diner on Fifth Avenue and two Polish sisters wait on me as if I were Ludwig the Hogface or some similar son of Poland like that. Hey, come close, thedailygrowlerhousepianist comes from Polish stock. No, he doesn't play the piano with two left hands. Yes, his medicine bottles do have labels in them. Yes, he can screw in a light bulb by himself...er-ah, I'd better backtrack on that one--I've never seen him screw in a light bulb come to think of it.
The Babes of Pulaski Day in front of my building.
For Codzienny Growler
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