BEAVIS & BUTT-HEAD REDUX, OR THE AGING FLU PANDEMIC OF THE UNITED STATES!

BEAVIS & BUTT-HEAD REDUX OR THE AGING FLU PANDEMIC OF THE UNITED STATES!

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© May 7, 2009

“The current dissatisfied electorate vis-à-vis the last presidential election draws portraits of the Obama Administration in the manner of an Impressionistic painter. At a distance, where viewers of a certain mind stand, the portrait appears suspect, perhaps flawed and even contemptible; close in, where operations take place it is transparent, actively expedient and richly challenging. It is the reason all my writing is based on my own empirical work and not on Impressionistic academic, cultural or political painters who view matters from afar.”

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D., the Peripatetic Philosopher, "Fragments of a Philosophy."

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REFERENCE: This is from an executive bombarded with pejorative emails.

A WRITER WRITES:

Jim,

I just wanted to show you what I am typically being sent from this one person. She sends me scores of these diatribes. I hope it is okay what I’ve said. I'm really sick and tired of Obama bashing. Maybe, just possibly, she'll stop once she reads this. We'll see. What do you think?

HERE IS WHAT I WROTE TO HER:

B,

And you believe this because why? Did you personally hear each and every one of these quotes come out of their mouths? Or is this something Rush Limbaugh said or you read on the internet or some Republican bashing the Democrats? Please don't send me this stuff. I could send you bucketfuls of ridiculous things that Republicans (especially George Bush) have said but I respect you enough not to. I listen to you sometimes Bonnie and want to say something but some things are better left unsaid. If you feel it's necessary to pass on your propaganda, leave me off your list. I'm truly not interested in hearing it. It makes me think less of you.

HERE IS WHAT SHE SENT TO ME

SUBJECT:

GREAT ORATORS OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY

This may help you understand why I can't vote "Democrat":

Great Orators of the “Old” Democratic Party

Great quotes:

'One man with courage makes a majority.'- Andrew Jackson

'The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.'- Franklin D. Roosevelt

'The buck stops here.'- Harry S. Truman

'Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.'- John F. Kennedy

And for today's Democrats... idiot quotes:

'It depends what your definition of 'IS' is?'' - Bill Clinton

'That Obama - I would like to cut his NUTS off.' - Jesse Jackson

'Those rumors are false... I believe in the sanctity of marriage.' - John Edwards

'I invented the Internet.' - Al Gore

'It doesn't matter if the planet is cooling and plants need it to live. We still have to ban carbon dioxide.' - Henry Waxman

'To the next person that tells me I'm not religious. I'm going to shove my rosary beads up their ASS.' - Joe Biden

'America is--is no longer, uh, what it--it, uh, could be, uh, what it was once was... uh, and I say to myself, "uh, I don't want that future, uh, uh, for my children."' - Barack Obama

'I have campaigned in all 57 states.' - Barack Obama

'You don't need God anymore, you have us democrats.' - Nancy Pelosi

'Paying taxes is voluntary- Harry Reid

'Bill is the greatest husband and father I know. No one is more faithful, true, and honest than he.' - Hillary Clinton

'The days of "traditional values" and strong foreign policy are over.' Chuck Schumer

'I do not regard Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as problems, I regard them as great assets. I do not think we are facing any kind of a crisis. Fannie and Freddie pose no threat to the Treasury.' - Barney Frank

HOW LUCKY CAN WE BE TO HAVE SUCH BRILLIANT MINDS IN CHARGE OF OUR COUNTRY!

DR FISHER RESPONDS:

You have a perfect right to send this to me. There is not a person on earth that we cannot selectively excise comments that person has made, compromising behavior of some embarrassment, or words published that might put that person in a poor light.

We supposedly learn as a child not only to be a good winner but a good loser as well. Successful people have a lot of failures, and a lot of failures are successful people because of this rule.

It is apparent from similar emails that I have received that many cannot get past the Obama election.

We are preoccupied with the current economic meltdown and the scandalous behavior of corpocracy in industry, banking, insurance and government. But we have had a spiritual meltdown since 1945 or for sixty-four years since WWII. We won the war but have lost the spiritual peace:

(1) The family has abandoned its responsibility.
(2) The church has abdicated its role as refuge from greed and licentiousness.
(3) The corporation has set the bar as low as possible in taking rather than giving.
(4) The government has had a nervous breakdown in both parties.
(5) The military/industrial complex has used wars to sustain itself.
(6) The average citizen has played ignorant by living in denial of everything.

Recently, my twelve-year-old granddaughter, who is a straight A student in a tough prep school, told her father she wanted to be an ob-gyn doctor. He said, “Why would you want to do that? There’s no money in it!” It sent her away crying.

The happiest people I know are like my sister still working in her seventies every day, fiscally responsible, and living well below the radar of public attention. She votes her conscience and once she does she gets on with her life. She is active in her community but is not interested in headlines or kudos but only living a full, useful and productive life. She once was a devout Roman Catholic, but would be still if the church had not become as materialistic and corrupt as every other institution in this what I call an “aging flu pandemic.”

We have lost our moral compass and our way, but my sister has not. We are afraid to grow old and therefore grow up. In a society of more than 300 million, there are few adults, and least of all in the most critical positions of the land. We are suckers for beauty, youth, presence, glibness, and superficiality. If you have any doubt, look who are the news anchors on local and national television from news, to sports, to weather.

It is apparent there is a constituency in these United States that is a poor loser. As a consequence, they are not looking for ways to pull themselves up, but ways to sink winners down. The Obama Administration is their current focus.

They claim Obama harps on the mess the Bush Administration has left him, as if that is some kind of a secret. We have had eight years for the meltdown to take hold and become virulent. It is not going to be corrected in 100 days or 1000 days. Neglect doesn’t work that way. What do you expect from cowboys such as Bush, Chaney, Rumpsfelt? They represent the “American Adam,” which embodies the American myth. Here is how Garry Wills describes this Adam:

“The archetypal America is a displaced person arrived from a rejected past, breaking into a glorious future, on the move, fearless himself, feared by others, a killer for cleaning the world of things that need killing, loving but not bound down by love, rootless but carrying the center in himself, a gyroscopic direction-setter, a traveling norm.”

We like cowboys and cowboys have put us in the longest war in our American history. This is depleting our treasury.

There is little that you can do about someone of this mindset other than to delete these messages, and as you have done, let the person know they aren’t acceptable.

You are an active executive while I am retired and write books. I wrote a book in 1996 in which I talked about a couple of other cowboys who are still haunting us. One is Rush Limbaugh and the other is Howard Stern. The chapter about them is titled “Beavis and Butt-Head & United States of Anxiety.” This in part what I wrote:

“Only a comic opera could explain what has evolved. Rush Limbaugh became a conservative spokesperson by default, while liberals have Howard Stern as the sheik of the pornographic left. Limbaugh and Stern put excitement and good cheer into the prototype of this lackluster prism.

"The political prism is best known for its stuffiness, dullness, rudeness, and snobbery. Newt Gingrich and the Republican’s “Contract with America” had the resonance of Limbaugh and the spontaneity of Stern.

"Small wonder that the Republicans were swept into office in the 1994 election, reclaiming both the House and Senate for the first time in forty years.

"Only in the United States of Anxiety could two less likely individuals rise to prominence. Limbaugh, the Pillsbury Doughboy personified, and Stern, the long stem, cadaverous and rakish Dracula, made their reputation as populist radio personalities, Limbaugh as the right-wing king and Stern as the gross-out shock jock of the left.

"Both men are intelligent misfits who in their youth were not noticed by their peers much less taken seriously. Limbaugh and Stern appear to have a mandate to do much as they please. They are loved and hated by millions, but hardly ignored.” (The Taboo Against Being Your Own Best Friend, pp 15-16)

Today, thirteen years later in 2009, they are still with us both earning over $100 million a year. This says a lot more about us than about them. It tells us that we are a society of the lowest common denominator. They are both outsiders that have been adopted like pets by insiders.

Limbaugh and Stearn rack their havoc in ways politicians only dream of. Neither of them could ever be elected to public office, but from their sanctuaries of hate and malcontent, impotence and insecurity, they rule the day. They have confirmed more than Herbert Marcuse could ever have imagined the presence of his “One Dimensional Man” (Ark Paperbacks 1964), as they reflect our spiritual toxicity.

Limbaugh is great at hyperbole and political histrionics while Stern is outrageous at exposing our Puritanical uptightedness of our own sexuality.

What is the answer to this dilemma? Perhaps it would help if we grew up.

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