Are We Becoming Lilliputian?

By: Ed Raymond
Staff Writer

I know I’m getting old and shrinking as gravity gets stronger and stronger, but are our elites and politicians also getting tinier and tinier? I read the other day that Johann Sebastian Bach was surrounded by death and music in his life of 65 years, losing both his parents when he was nine and then ten of his children. Widowed with seven young children, he married again and had thirteen more children, with only ten surviving out of the twenty. Near the end of his life he was blind – but he continued to dictate to his surviving children songs, poems, and music for publication.

One of the great organ players in the world at an early age, he also composed thousands of music selections, including 200 church cantatas. Bach was often surrounded by death and emotional chaos. One biographer suggested that Bach possessed a “consciousness of
catastrophe,” a feeling for the “suddenness ... with which suffering descends on unsuspecting souls.” Another biographer listened to all of Bach’s religious cantatas: “They indicate that the life of man is like a rising and vanishing mist; that we live with one foot in the grave; and those who sit among us like gods will be forgotten. The world is said to be like a hospital in which countless people, even infants in cradles, lie down in sickness.” He added: “When Bach writes the words ‘Kyrie eleison’ (Lord, have mercy!) It becomes a visceral cry, a collective plea for grace.” After reading about how Bach lived his life, it struck me how “Lilliputian” our elected politicians have become.

Is Texas Loaded With Flatheads?

Two news items from Texas aroused my interest. For some unknown reason Texas babies are suddenly being born with flat heads at nine times the former rate. The other is that Republican Tea Partyite Governor Rick Perry, who wanted Texas to secede from the United States last year because Texas did every thing “better,” is pleading with President Barack Obama to “help” pay costs for all the fires devastating drought-ridden areas of the Lone Star state. I can’t explain the flat heads on Texas babies unless it’s a sign from God that the earth is really flat. Or it could be Texas politics is turning brains to mush even in the womb.

But six ft. four-inch Rick Perry with the nice hair has turned himself into a six-inch Lilliputian by running and screaming to the feds for help. Actually he has had a typical Republican response to misfortune. Sure, they want to strangle government in Grover Norquist’s bathtub, but as soon as there is trouble in river city they put their hands out for someone else’s money and saying, “Can I have more?” Individualism and responsibility, my ass.

Doing The Rope Dance And Other Impossible Tricks To Get Elected.

Perhaps the greatest satirist of all time was an 18th century Irish minister named Jonathan Swift. He attacked poverty in Ireland in his essay “A Modest Proposal” by proposing that poor Irish have lots of babies and fatten them to the age of one for sale to the English and Americans for main meat dishes. He wrote: “I have been assured by a very knowing American … that a young, healthy child well-nursed is at a year-old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricasse, or ragout.”

His most satiric thoughts were reserved for politicians in “Gulliver’s Travels.” It is a most entertaining book for children because of the odd characters and the many outrageous adventures of Gulliver. On another level it is the finest satire ever written. Because of a storm at sea Gulliver ends up on the island of Lilliput, which is inhabited by people only six inches high. The Emperor of Lilliput appoints all of his high court officials according to the skills they have in rope dancing, rope walking, and other tricks instead of judging them by their principles and judgment.

(Sound familiar?) The two political parties in Lilliput are distinguished by the fact that one party wears low-heeled shoes and the other wears high-heeled shoes. The high-heels, called the Tramecksans, support the Constitution and the emperor. But the low-heels, the Slamecksans, are in power! Do these two parties remind you of the Democrats and Republicans? The normal-sized Gulliver is forced to leave Lilliput eventually because he eats daily what “1,724 Lilliputians eat” so they threaten to put his eyes out while he is sleeping. If you have not read “Gulliver’s Travels” (or seen the movie!) You have missed a real satiric treat. He also has wonderful adventures with the giant Brobdingnagians and a very talented group of beautiful, rational horses called Houyhnhnms who live in political happiness and serenity. The horses are of a much higher quality than the ones we have in Congress. We seem loaded with the south end of Congressional horses going north.

Are We Dominated By Lilliputian Politicians?

I think it is troubling how much we have shrunk as a people and as a nation. In 1943 in the World War II African campaign German General Erwin Rommel, the “Desert Fox,” surrendered nearly 300,000 of his Afrika Corps to English and American forces. The British could not give up enough food to feed their share of the prisoners so they asked us to take care of them. We loaded up dozens of Liberty ships (at one time during the war we launched three Liberty ships a day!) And brought hundreds of thousands of German prisoners to this country. Near the end of the war we had over 400,000 Italian and German prisoners housed in 500 prisoner-of-war camps in 45 states. All of these U.S. camps were regulated by the rules of the Geneva Convention.

We treated the prisoners under all treaties. After the war many of them wanted to stay in the U.S. That’s what the Geneva Convention is all about: convincing enemies you’re better. As one writer wrote: “This was extraordinary rendition, Greatest Generation style.” By the way, German prisoners housed in the Red River Valley assisted in farm labor and picked many tons of potatoes for us during the war.

When elected, Obama wanted to close the infamous Gitmo Bay prison George Bush created because of the torture used there. “Rendition” flights to Poland torture sites during the Bush administration also had given us a bad name around the world. This was much worse than a stain on a blue dress. Geneva Convention infractions were stains all over the blue suits and flag lapel pins of our political leaders.

People will say anything under torture. Determining truth is another matter. There isn’t a legitimate interrogator in the world who would bet his life on information garnered during torture. I spent many an hour preparing Geneva Convention lectures for my Marine rifle company. According to Marine Corps regs these lectures had to be held every year so that all troops understood what was considered a war crime. Most of the “torture” regulations written by Bush’s lawyers were prepared under the supervision of Vice-President Dick Cheney, who once said about waterboarding: “A little water never hurt anybody.” This from a fascist idiot who scrambled for five deferments during Vietnam, never wore a uniform, and thought that any tortorous act justified the means. According to international law Bush and Cheney committed criminal acts and should be charged with being war criminals, along with their lawyers John Yoo, Jay Bybee, “Scooter” Libby, and David Addington. These are all Lilliputians who turned the Geneva Convention signed by many nations into an unrecognizable mass of garbage we will never be able to bury in a sanitized landfill.

Congressional Lilliputian Chickenhawks And The Laying Of Big Rotten Eggs.

The Republican Congress, frightened to death by 779 “bad” guys imprisoned at Gitmo at its height, refused to close Gitmo and send the prisoners to a maximum security prison in the U.S. Congress cut all funds when Obama wanted to bring them to this country for legal processing or continued imprisonment. These were all cowardly Lilliputian politicians. Here we could handle over 400,000 pretty tough Italian and German prisoners of war scattered over 45 states during WW II—but we couldn’t handle a few “terrorists” from Iraq and Afghanistan! What a bunch of Congressional Lilliputian chickenhawks. At this writing we still have 172 prisoners at Gitmo. What a terrible force to reckon with! This is the severest case of not-in-my-backyard cowardly hysteria the world has ever seen.

Wall Street Loaded With Rope-Dancing, Cartwheeling Lilliputians.

Even American businessmen are getting a reputation for dishonesty that the Bush administration hung on government because of torture memos, rendition flights to torture centers in the world, and the use of “enhanced techniques” at Gitmo. The Bush mess at Abu Ghraib because of inadequate numbers of troops did not help. U.S. businessmen now rank 22nd in the “least corrupt” category in the world. Not good when modern economies absolutely must run on trust. The Brobdingnagian thieves at Goldman Sachs tried to claim they were innocent of misleading investors in selling subprime real estate mortgages, but they established their guilt by paying a $550 million fine. Nice try. Greedy thieves with Lilliputian ethics and judgment dominate Wall Street. These smart guys on Wall Street don’t even understand that the rich will only be secure in their wealth if prosperity is equally and broadly shared among everyone. But our Lilliputian Wall Street investment bankers are obsessed with money. They go to Washington and rope dance and do cartwheels for a Lilliputian-dominated Congress, feeding fund raisers so they can continue to steal from the Washington Buffet. Republican President Theodore Roosevelt described them well while fighting Wall Street malfeasance in 1912: “A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal
the whole railroad.”

A Case Of Accounting Gymnastics While Rope-Dancing And Cartwheeling.

Large corporations, the Business Roundtable, and large Chambers of Commerce are lobbying the Lilliputians in Congress to lower taxes on business. It is true that our rate of 35 percent is second only to Japan’s 39.5 percent. Except no business plays that rate because of loopholes–and in any given year 55 percent of our businesses pay no taxes at all! Look at General Electric with its profit of $14.2 billion. Paid not a dime!  As a matter of tax fact, all of the industrialized nations in the world average twice the paid business taxes of the U.S. Our businesses pay 1.3 percent taxes on our gross national product. All other countries average nearly double that at 2.5 percent of GNP. IRS and other tax experts estimate that businesses have a minimum of $100 billion in loopholes and escape paying another $50 billion by the use of “accounting gymnastics” and political “rope-dancing.”

Swift also wrote about the giant Brobdingnagians who occasionally did great things for humanity. We have had a few. In 1927 Senator Carter Glass tried to convince his fellow Congressmen that bankers were creating huge financial bubbles in the stock market and in real estate. He said to a banker testifying before his committee: “This gambling fever continues to spread.” The banker laughed: “My own opinion, Senator, is that the people of this country are just beginning to realize on the prosperity to which they are entitled.” You know the results of this judgment. In 1929 the banker probably heard the bodies of his fellow investment bankers splatting on the concrete sidewalks after jumping out of Wall Street windows, realizing they were wiped out in the “Great Crash.”

To show how ridiculous many religious arguments are, Swift has his Lilliputians in a tizzy over which end of an egg should be opened first, the big end or the small end. Lilliputian Roman Catholics prefer opening the egg at the big end, while Protestants prefer opening the egg at the small end. Things haven’t changed much in the ways of men. One only has to think of the wisdom of the Catholic bishops in this country as opposed to the wisdom of the evangelicals and Pat Robertson, Oral Roberts, and my favorite crier, Jimmy Swaggart.

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