In T.S. Eliot’s classic poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” one of the lines reads, “In the room the women come and go / Talking of Michelangelo.” These eleven words capture the superficiality of the educated classes as they engage in cocktail party talk about the giants of artistic and cultural achievement. There is an affectation of knowledge, grounded in a superficial and vain foundation.
V.P. Kamala Harris is the embodiment of this vain combination — trying to appear wise and perceptive within a context of personal limitations that are quite extreme. She is being quoted online as saying, “Today is today and yesterday was today yesterday. Tomorrow will be today tomorrow.” This seems amazingly consistent with the Eliot quote, where drivel tries to pass itself off as profound by including Michelangelo’s name. In this quote, she is attempting to project a profound paradox as being at the heart of a simple premise.
The Democrat Party Platform reflects this same mindset of trying to sound down-to-earth and normal yet at the same time taking a giant step on behalf of “the people” of the USA. This desire to sound normal and elevated — operating at the same time from a higher plane — is the essence of the cocktail party mentality. Superficial, yet drunk with lust for power, it lifts itself up while trying at the same time to appear normal.
Near the beginning of this year’s Platform, it is stated, “There is so much more to do. Democrats will fix the tax system so everyone has a fair shot. We will restore the right to choose. We will continue to bring down costs for families. We will continue to reject political violence of all forms and give hate no safe harbor.” Here is the vacuous counterpart to the phrase “the women come and go.” These sentences are also the counterpart to the vacuous “word salads” of K.H. that are consistently fairly ridiculed.
What is a “fair shot?” A fair shot at President Trump? A fair shot at finishing high school? At finding employment? What does this vague term even mean?
Years ago, when I was teaching at a high school marked by truancy, urban blight, and a commitment to learning close to zero, a mother came to see me at the end of one term to ask if her daughter could do some assignment that would lead her to pass. The daughter had shown up for class only two days out of the 90 scheduled and had taken no tests and done no homework. I solemnly told the mother these facts and that her daughter therefore could not pass. The mother’s eyes glowed with rage, and she said, “You people always say that when it comes to people like us.” She had pulled the race card, and our brief meeting came to a close.
Then the Platform states that everyone will have a “right to choose.” Does this refer to taxes, or is it a non-specific reference to abortion? Within the same paragraph, political violence is then rejected. Yet Democrat politicians continue to blame Trump for the “violence” (assassination attempts!) directed at himself. If asked, undoubtedly, they would say they are referring to Jan. 6, but what about the riots after Trump won in 2020, when Sen. Rand Paul and his wife barely escaped the hysteria of an out-of-control mob in D.C.? What about the maniacal and expensive riots over that precious saintly victim, George Floyd, that destroyed so many hundreds of millions of dollars worth of property and brought the hellish victimization of many persons?
All this drivel was packed into one totally vague paragraph in the Platform. Then, just as the reference to “Michelangelo” is the cocktail party way of salvaging a sense of relevancy and knowledge, in the very next paragraph of the Platform, the Dems write, “He [Trump] and his extreme MAGA allies are ripping away our bedrock personal freedoms, dictating what health care decisions women can make, banning books, and telling people who [sic] they can love. They’re rigging our economy for their rich friends and big corporations, pushing more trickle-down tax cuts for the wealthy and powerful, and a new national sales tax that will cost every working family an average $2,500 a year. They’ll cut the Social Security benefits that folks have paid into for their whole lives; and gut Medicare, Medicaid, health care, and prescription drug coverage.”
Providing this entire list of specifics is to create the impression that the Platform is not mere political posturing; rather, their concerns about the right to choose and having a “fair shot” are supposed to be grounded in real-world governing concerns. Trump wants to “rip away” our personal freedoms, and then they provide three items — health care decisions, books, and personal love choices — that are under attack by the MAGA juggernaut.
Yet these “facts” are not undergirded with other facts that are, so to speak, more factual. No actions or words specifically designating any of these grotesque goals are noted or quoted. It’s like someone referring to Michelangelo at a cocktail party who has not heard of the Pietà or the Sistine Chapel. They are trying to impress others with their cultural/artistic awareness by name-dropping, but the name-dropping is just a different stream of superficiality. Trump wants to gut Medicare, but our dear former president and mentor to “Uncle Joe,” Pres. Barack Obama, moved $500 million from Medicare to Medicaid under the terms of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare).
Cocktail parties not only include conversations where superficialities are peppered with attempts at sounding knowledgeable or sophisticated, but also are notoriously filled with lies meant to impress the other guests. Here are just three of many found in the Platform:
1. “Through record energy production of clean energy, oil, and gas, we’ve lowered prices at the pump for American families.” LIE. Check the inflation the next time you are at the gas station.
2. “The President also knows the frustration and fear that high grocery prices can cause, and he has taken action to lower costs for hard-working families.” LIE. Check the inflation the next time you do your grocery shopping.
3. “Some 15 years after the subprime mortgage crisis devastated homeowners and froze construction nationwide, we’re still seeing the effect of a severe housing shortage that’s pushing up prices and keeping homes out of reach.” LIE. This is a direct attempt to place the blame for high housing costs not on the high mortgage interest rates, but on the administration of Pres. Bush 15 years ago.
With only a few words, T.S. Eliot made us aware of how superficiality and an attempt to appear knowledgeable often are found together at cocktail parties. This combo is part of the modern mindset. The Democrat party Platform reveals the same mindset and goes one step further into the realm of outright lies.
Image: zenjazzygeek via Flickr, CC BY 2.0.
Jesus Christ is King
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