Who Let the Dogs In? Read Free Page A

taxes for the rich. They said it would be “the CEO administration,” and so it is. What is astonishing to me is the irresponsibility.
    Fiscal irresponsibility, leaving staggering debts to be paid for by future generations. Economic irresponsibility: As Paul Krugman observed, if you eat ten chocolate bars in a row, you will get a burst of energy, but it’s not good for your health in the long run. Environmental irresponsibility: To simply ignore global warming, to pretend it’s not happening, is so stupid. Mercury, carbon dioxide, mad cow disease, arsenic—they behave as though corporate profits were more important than people’s lives. Irresponsible about terrorism, we have thrown away the goodwill of the rest of the world, ruptured alliances, threatened friends, and publicly dismissed and condescended to the United Nations. We have done nothing but create more terrorists and cost ourselves the most valuable tool that exists in hunting them down: international cooperation.
    Benito Mussolini, who knew whereof he spoke, said “Fascism should more properly be called corporation, since it is the merger of state and corporate power.”
    “So, Stanley, a fine mess you’ve gotten us into this time.” And what’s to laugh about in this sorry pass? There’s always that reliable cheerer-upper: Things could be worse. For example, the current governor of Texas is a lot dumber than the last one, and he could run for president. And things could get better. I think we have taken a wrong turn, but that doesn’t mean we can’t get back on the high road. It’s already been a great political year, in that the Internet has finally arrived as a major political player, and all to the good. Interactive politics, people participation, and, best of all, money—real, serious political money, being raised in small amounts from regular folks. Wow, that’s new, and that’s important.
    Rejoice, beloveds, we’ll weather this brush with fascism and come out as noisy and as badly behaved as ever, our politics back to the usual national Roller Derby. As Marianne Moore said, “It is an honor to witness so much confusion.”

 

 
     
    How to Survive Reagan
     

     
    M ANY CITIZENS of progressive political persuasion are finding that, soulwise, these are trying times. To be a liberal in the Reagan Era—not to mention being a lefty, pinko, comsymp—strikes most of us as damned hard cheese. Duty requires the earnest liberal to spend most of his time on the qui vive for jackbooted fascism, in a state of profound depression over the advance of the military-industrial complex, and down in the dumps over the incurable nincompoopery of a people addicted to
The Newlywed Game.
    Beloveds, fear not, neither let yourselves despair. Rejoice. I bring you good news. As a lifelong Texas liberal, I have spent the whole of my existence in a political climate well to the right of that being created by Ronald Reagan and his merry zealots. Brethren and sistren, this can not only be endured, it can be laughed at. Actually, you have two other choices. You could cry or you could throw up. But crying and throwing up are bad for you, so you might as well laugh. All you need in order to laugh about Reagan is a strong stomach. A tungsten tummy.
    Mike Zunk is a fellow we used to know who tried to get into the
Guinness Book of World Records
by eating a car—ground up, you understand, a small bit at a time. He just took it in as a little roughage every day. We always thought of Zunk as a Texas-liberal-in-training. The rest of us toughen our stomachs by taking in the Legislature a day at a time. And now, lo, after all these years of nobody even knowing we were down here, it turns out Texas liberals are among the few folks who know how to survive Reagan. We feel just like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.
    It may be true, as Tom Lehrer believes, that satire died the day they gave Henry Kissinger the Nobel Peace Prize. But then, as Gore Vidal recently observed in another