Are my eyes really blue?

Rand Paul in Kentucky. Sharon Angle in Nevada. Maes in Colorado. Murkowski in Alaska. The list goes on and on. Now O’Donnell in Delaware and Paladino in New York. Time and again, Tea Party candidates are capturing Republican nominations in statewide elections – and as often as not, turning safe Republican seats into tossups, or worse. In Delaware, for instance, the Democrats are projecting to hold the Senate seat and pick up the House seat of Mike Castle, the presumptive GOP nominee before tonight.

This is a bet. If this works out, the Democrats may yet take their 747 with three engines on fire and fly it through the hurricane to land on the aircraft carrier. If it doesn’t, the GOP will take the reins in Congress with the most radical right-wing rank and file since the Civil War. This is a dream scenario for the Ds in their darkest hour – but if they botch it, it will be a train wreck.

Now there are those who say “yay, put the Tea Party in control for two years and people will see how radical they are and the Republicans will be ruined forever!” These are the same sort of people who voted for Nader in 2000 and then tried to rationalize it while shitting themselves. If it would be a disaster for your opponent to win, you had better fucking win.

This was inevitable, to be honest. The GOP has been in the hands of the South for quite some time. “Tea Party” is just a label the base assumed because “Republican” was a toxic brand in the post-Bush era and “Confederate” might be a little too honest for electoral success. But don’t think for a second that the people you see waving WWF-style signs at Glenn Beck rallies are outside the mainstream of the GOP – that’s the most reliable base the Republicans have, the last-ditch dead-enders, the ones who talk endlessly about how the President is a Muslim (largely because the N-bomb remains over the line in politics), and – most importantly – the ones who are convinced that they are the last platoon desperately holding the line against the Mexican Muslim Homosocialist onslaught. Which means that their support will gravitate to the kind of no-retreat no-surrender candidates who will never ever ever compromise with The Enemy.

Take it, Charlie Pierce:

Seriously now, [O’Donnell] was a crackpot when she rose on primary morning, and she’s a crackpot now, and she will be a crackpot whether she wins or loses in November. She no more belongs in the Senate of the United States today than she did the day she was born. That 30,000-odd primates in Delaware thinks she belongs there is their problem. If enough people in Delaware come to think so, then she becomes our problem.

O’Donnell is a creature of an age in which politics have no meaning beyond performance art. She is the Creature From The Green Room, with no apparent public career beyond being available whenever some teenage booker from the cable shows needed someone to say something reliably stupid. She is one of those people who’d show up at CNN with a waterbowl in her teeth if someone there blew a dog whistle.

Her resume is so thin as to be opaque, and a lot of it seems to be a lie. She seems to be something of a deadbeat, and “U.S. Senator” seems to be her idea of an entry-level position. This morning, she stands one step away from the job.

She is what politics produces when you divorce politics from government. She is what you get when you sell to the country that nothing government can do will help, and that the government is an alien thing, and that politics is nothing more than the active public display of impotent grievance.

She is what politics produces when you turn them into a game show and the coverage of them over to a generation of high-technology racetrack touts. She is what you get when political journalism reduces politics to numbers on a scoreboard, divorcing them from the real world consequences of what are increasingly seen as cute little eccentric decisions…

…they released Mac OS X Public Beta.

Which means we’re coming up on ten years since my Powerbook G3 Series with Mac OS X Public Beta installed got ganked out of the Irish bar at 2 AM. Leading to my purchase of an iBook SE and the beginning of my obsession with cheap mobility computing.

The moral of the story is this: if you’re going to take your laptop down the pub, make sure nobody spike your drink with, like, seven other drinks.

When my mother came to visit a couple weeks ago, she brought an old pair of boots – Rockport hikers that I acquired in fall 1991 for my first trip to Europe. They carried me from Poland and Czechoslovakia pretty much all the way to my first pair of Docs, and served some useful time even after that until I moved to where there’s not much need for insulated hiking boots. They’ve got laces I don’t recognize, some repairs to fraying stitching (and a lot of fraying stitching not repaired), and their third set of Vibram soles, and I had to put an old pair of sports shoe insoles into them to account for the fact I bought ’em a half size large to accommodate the big thick wool socks. And they are now the oldest footwear I have in my house.

That same autumn, I got my first Redskins hat – plain grey wool twill with a burgundy bill, script Redskins across the front, ever-so-slightly retro feel to it. It’s the oldest hat in my house now – despite the presence of two or three newer ones, like my Pentagon-patch Skins cap (the go-to for anything commemorating my DC family). Within the same month, I also splashed out for a Redskins jacket – a quasi-retro cloth varsity jacket that commemorated the (then) two Super Bowl victories. It’s way too warm and way too gaudy and way too not-waterproof to actually wear out here, and a tad on the small side, but it’s the oldest piece of outerwear in my collection here in California.

It should be obvious at this point that my autumn of ’91 was a big regeneration point. I don’t know why the transformation happened then, but it did – although I had claimed the Redskins the previous year, this was the year I sold out from game one on (and was rewarded with the third Super Bowl victory). This was the year I discovered football prior to the AFL, discovered Glenn Miller, discovered the old 1920s yearbooks, and really discovered what would come to be known in my house as “five space”.

Which brings us to the oldest thing in my wardrobe. A couple of years ago, my mother gave me her dad’s old watch, but I hadn’t really paid much attention to it until recently. Back in 1991, my maternal grandfather was the deceased relative that I reminded everyone of, and was the closest thing I had to a spirit guide of sorts – and if I’d been given this watch then, I probably would have thoroughly lost my S. Because it’s not just any watch – it’s an old Movado Tempomatic, Swiss-made, with nary a battery or circuit to be found. It’s a purely mechanical automatic action – you put it on your arm, and the movement spins a weight that in turn winds the mechanism. After a while, you take it off and set it to the correct time – and then put it back on, where it keeps time without battery, winding, quartz, or a hint of electronics. It’s unbelievably simple – not even a date window, no form of illumination whatsoever, and the cheapest Spiedel stretch-band you can imagine.

Simple, Swiss, family-connected, mechanically ingenious, and the oldest thing I own to wear – it’d be tough to conceive of anything more perfectly suited to me. As much as we talk about high school around here, it’s plain that the kid in 1991 is still me – and vice versa, although he never would have expected twenty years of mostly misery from supporting the Skins. Or seven years living in DC. Or listening to Sonny and Sam while driving down Highway 1 in California…

I don’t know why MT ate this post. Fuck ’em. I will try to reconstruct it later.

…the DC contingent is alive and about as well as can be expected under the circumstances. We had to retrieve Liz from a crisis team meeting at GWU, but we’re all at home and in one piece. National Geographic had two people on one of the planes. I’m not looking forward to work tomorrow, but I’m going to be there, probably with a needle in one arm…

-email to an out-of-towner, 9/12/01, 12:20 am

I don’t remember much about getting to work. The alarm probably went off around 8, and I probably dragged myself out at about 8:19 to turn on the bathtub spigot and stick my head under the water, and probably got out the door by about 8:45 to try to catch the train at Virginia Square. All I knew is that we were in for a really shitty day.

When I came out of the train at Farragut West, the first thing I noticed were the troops. DC National Guard was everywhere. If there was a patch of ground big enough to park a Humvee on, there was one parked on it. There were a shit-ton of guys (and gals) walking around with M-16s and M-4s and expressions that screamed “what the fuck have we gotten ourselves into.”

I know the day before they had closed off the National Mall about 3 PM – because we had walked down there, one guy running the video camera to try to get a record of the day’s events while I sloshed down whiskey and warned future generations that drinking at 2 in the afternoon on a weekday was not cool and that these were special circumstances. Nobody was able to call or text worth a damn, and it was only the primitive CDPD-based data service on my phone that had let me get word to the rest of the crew and family that we were all OK. That was before I knew that two of our staff had been on the Pentagon plane.

That next morning, I walked to work thinking for some absurd reason that I should be bringing donuts to the guys with the guns.

I mention our deceased users because we had to go down to the basement and unlock the PBX so we could get at their voicemail and create a redirect message. And I had to install new Lotus Notes ID files so the bosses – and next of kin – could get into the email. And I remember my boss getting irritated at a voicemail from somebody complaining about an office move scheduled for the previous day that didn’t happen, and how they were behind now. I don’t remember if he gave them the business, but I certainly hope so.

Thing is, looking back, I don’t remember anyone panicking. I don’t remember anyone fleeing town. I don’t remember anything but a bunch of us knuckling down and getting to work dealing with our new reality. And I look at all those other people now, in 2010, years removed and hundreds of miles away from where the attacks happened, locked in the grip of pants-shitting terror. And when I compare how we were that day to how they are now, I can only conclude one thing:

I – and everyone who was alongside in fall 2001 in Washington DC – am a stupendous badass.

Sept. 11, 2001, 8:35 PM EDT

Subj: Good evening from Arlington

I just got home. I think all of the DC contingent are safely home in one piece now.

A few thoughts, and I apologize if I’m repeating anything you’ve heard a million times already or otherwise beating the obvious:

* National Geographic lost two people on the flight from Dulles–Ann Judge of the Travel Office and Joe Ferguson of Geography Education. They were on their way to a conference in LA with some schoolteachers who has been selected for a special NGS program. I think this makes them the first National Geographic employees to die in the line of duty (for lack of a better phrase) in over thirty years.

* Over the weekend, the ruling Taliban launched a major offensive in Afghanistan to push back the Northern Alliance, the last quasi-democratic resistance in the country. It is thought that the head of the NA was killed in a bombing attack sometime yesterday or Sunday (news has been slow out of the area) and there is some speculation that the explosions in Kabul are NA-related.

* The short answer on the blood: give it. If it doesn’t come here, it’ll go to replace what does. I’m trying to put together enough dinner to get myself good and fortified for tomorrow.

* Never in my whole life did I think that I would ever again see what I saw in 1991: President Bush speaking on ESPN. The enormity of the situation hasn’t really hit me yet, I don’t think–during the Gulf War, we had months leading up to the actual outbreak of hostilities. I think in a couple of days, when I think that the huge pillar of smoke off to the southeast was the Pentagon for crying out loud–then it’ll probably be a little more overwhelming.

* Everyone from CNN to the Sports Junkies (who are on, without commercials or sports, eschewing the usual schtick and just taking calls from people) has talked at length about not flying off the handle and making sure we have a grip on who is responsible for this. I don’t think you’ll see any of the sudden overreaction and mistaken attacks we saw in the wake of Oklahoma City in 1995. I certainly hope not, anyway.

* Take anything you hear with a grain of salt, or more. In times of crisis, when it’s rip and read, right off the ticker, you see and hear all sorts of things that may not be any more credible than that line about how Ferris was passed out at 31 Flavors last night. On my way from NGS to Mark’s, I heard everything from car bombs at State to a plane circling the White House trying to crash and being targeted by military forces trying to shoot it down. God knows the press does its best in times like this, but it’s tough to keep everything level when you don’t know where the next strike could come from.

* If you know how to pray, start now.

1) Yes, we know the other guy shit the bed for seven-plus years. Being a “President Bush” means never being able to close the deal, we know that. And maybe it’s gotten so far out of hand that it can’t be done now. But that doesn’t mean you don’t still have to try. Mr. President, he’s still out there, and you’re still on the hook.

2) I realize that there are a lot of people out there who are shit-their-trousers scared. Oddly enough, they’re the ones shrieking loudest about Park51, or burning Korans, or ranting about how awful the “Ground Zero Mosk” is. And oddly enough, they’re also almost uniformly from somewhere other than DC or NYC. If you’re scared, and want to run hide in your hole, be my guest. But don’t think for a second you’re gonna drag me down there with you, because I ain’t Al-Qaeda’s bitch, and I ain’t scared, motherfuckers.

Sept. 7, 2008:

…If you’re looking for some changes to the way things run in this country, forget that too. The Senate Republicans have shattered the record for filibusters in a single session these last two years, and that’s with a President who could still veto things if they somehow got out of Congress. With a Democrat-controlled Congress (and probably by a larger margin in both houses) and a Democratic President, they’re going to dig in their heels. Scorched Earth, just like 1992-94. Every initiative will be tied up forever in the Senate, while the usual talk-radio scum bellow on about how the GOP is saving America from the depredations of the horrible socialist terrorist-worshipping Democrats…and the political media will bemoan the fact that Obama has failed to change the tone in Washington and cannot get his program through Congress….

…A new President isn’t the end of the nightmare, kids. It’s just the beginning of a new one. And unless the big O has it in his power to somehow reshape the whole of American political culture over the past 20 years, things are not going to change one little bit….

You don’t need ideas, you don’t need plans, you can ignore your track record. All you have to do is scream loud and long enough, and wait for the idiots of the press to regurgitate what you say without giving a single thought to whether it’s true, or accurate, or even sane. You can run the country into the ground for the worse part of a decade, then single-mindedly sandbag anyone who tries to turn it around, then blame the fiasco on them – and get away with it.

Get ready, because starting next January, it’s going to be 1995 again. The rednecks are going to take any win this November as a complete validation of what they espouse – and the googly-eyed simpletons of the press will go right along with that. Why yes, the entire country does want to privatize Medicare, hand over Social Security to Goldman Sachs, punch holes all though the Constitution, introduce segregation for Muslims, eliminate all taxes on anybody with money, and carry on our politics at the same level of intelligence as Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin or any other drooling retard from Dixie. You’re going to see an endless parade of those slobbering hicks, carrying out Congressional hearings into everything Rush Limbaugh’s army of mental defectives can conceive of. ACORN? The “New Black Panther Party”? The First Lady’s “40-person-junket to Spain”? All of this and more, more, more – up to and including another government shutdown to save us all from the horror brought on by forcing insurance companies to actually provide the services they’re paid for.

This is what you have to look forward to if the GOP gets control of even one chamber of Congress. They’re not running on any policy ideas, they’re not running on anything even as substantive as the Contract With America – they’re running on the collected ravings of Glenn Beck and the pants-shitting fears of a million racist rednecks. And a win will be interpreted – by them, and by their apologists on TV – as a mandate to indulge those fears and ravings.

Save the date, bookmark it. If it doesn’t come to pass, I’ll take you out to the local speakeasy for drinks on me and we can all laugh at my fever-swamp paranoia. But I won’t bother putting any money back now to cover the tab.

Twenty years ago, I started undergrad. It was a highly educational experience – although I daresay of everything I learned in those four years, 75% of it was outside the classroom. And it was mostly the sort of thing that you chalk up as a “learning experience” to make you feel better about it.

I was exposed to a lot of freshman-level thought. It was the early 90s, and I heard lots about viewpoints and perspectives, and postmodern thought in which commentary supercedes authority, and all about the importance of self-expression and the validity of other views of the world. Of course, this was a Deep South “liberal”-arts college, so it’s not like we were looking at the Antioch speech codes or the kind of stuff that would be deried as “political correctness” ever since.

And oh, the irony.

The need to regard all points of view as valid is what got us here. The need to accept alternative points of view – and their own frames of reference, under which those points of view wouldn’t seem, you know, batshit loonball crazy – led in a direct line to the phenomenon we now experience. Somehow, the kind of thought that was derided twenty years ago as empowering a deranged sort of Afrocentrism and engendering Maoist levels of feminist and “other” orthodoxy has become the delivery mechanism for an alternate view of the world that rejects objective measurable reality and substitutes its own.

This is how it’s possible that the majority of one political party can say that the other party’s elected President is “probably” not a citizen of the United States. Or “probably” a Muslim. Or how an entire region can embrace viewpoints that might have been considered legitimately medically insane two decades ago – and not only have them tolerated, but validated by larger external forces.

We said people were entitled to their own view of reality. And other people took it, ran with it, and decided they were entitled to their own reality – and built all the infrastructure they needed to reinforce that reality. An entire media ecosystem exists so that those who subscribe to that reality can indulge in it constantly with no fear of contradiction.

Because how do you contradict it? We have plenty of documentary evidence that the President of the United States was born in Hawaii to an American mother and has spent years if not decades as a practicing Christian. In fact, we have no proven evidence contrariwise. But a huge chunk of the population – and its agitators and supporters on television, radio and the Internet – claims the President is in fact a “secret Muslim” and ineligible to the office of the Presidency, with no evidence to support their claims beyond what would be laughed off the street corner by a homeless lunatic. But if they persist in believing it – what on Earth can you do to contradict them? Or persuade them otherwise? If they insist that the sky is English racing green, and you point up at the blue, and they insist that it’s green – what can you say? Especially when there are entire television programs – hell, an entire network – countless columnists, endless call-in shows – dedicated to reinforcing the opinion of those who think the sky is green?

How can you cope with mainstreamed insanity?

A 3-point win with shoddy officiating has put Boise State in the drivers seat for the 2010 BCS Championship Game. Because strength of schedule means nothing as long as your record ends with “-and-O.”

You can claim otherwise, but spare me the insult to my intelligence and do it somewhere else.