I have often said that I don’t really approve of insult humor. I don’t think calling someone names really adds to the discussion in any useful way, and the real point of humor is to reveal the truth in a way that is palatable because it is surprising enough to make you laugh. Revealed truth is much funnier than calling someone names. So when I call Donald Trump the king of rotten cantaloupe rinds, I am really being no more clever than he is talking about Lyin’ Ted or Crooked Hillary.
Three of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, (from left to right) Famine, Cinnamon Hitler, and the Pale Rider, Death.
So, what in the heck am I doing talking about Golliwogs in this post?
A Golliwog is a Raggedy Ann-type rag doll from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They were a common doll type for typical little white girls in typical little middle class families. My Aunt Jean, my father’s sister, had one as a child. A female one with a red dress with black spots. You could flip that doll over and underneath her skirt was a different doll, a yellow-haired white girl in a blue and black dress. The image has become poison in modern culture because the blackface-minstrel roots of the character is now deemed racist and offensive. The Golliwogs in the children’s books of Florence Upton and Grid Blyton, though, were actually quite heroic, good-hearted and kind.
As much as we vilify people for having them nowadays, there are many people who secretly adore them and wish to collect and preserve them. I have long been enthralled by the brilliant 1920’s newspaper cartoon, Little Nemo in Slumberland by Windsor McKay. But there are many who would lecture me sternly about that because there is at least one Golliwog character in the cartoon strip, and it is even debatable that the main character of Flip, the “bad kid”, is just another kind of Golliwog.
Now, the point of this article is to make relentless fun of Betsy De Vos, the harpy that Donald Trump has put in charge of the implosion of the Department of Education. There are a number of very bad things about this wicked witch and her policies. Diane Ravitch does an excellent job of explaining what’s wrong with De Vos and her wicked witch plans in Ravitch’s education blog, linked here. You should read all about it so you know why I am regressing into vacant-headed teacher burblings about her, and resorting to the kind of insult humor you find me committing in this blog post.
Betsy De Vos looks at public school children and sees Golliwogs. She is suspicious of their pedigree and basically doesn’t like them. Remember, we are talking about public school children, not the children in upper class, rich private schools, the only kind De Vos actually touts. She wants to give Golliwogs only the minimums absolutely necessary, the spoiled and the spilled milk. The cream belongs to rich kids. And she’s not prejudiced or racist, oh, no. She sees poor white kids as just as golliwoggie as poor black kids, and she would have no problem pandering to Ben Carson’s kids. Ben has lots of money. He can be Sleepy McBoing-boing as much as he wants, and take off after phantom luggage whenever he wants, because money keeps you from being the detestable Golliwog.
But the secret… the revealed truth is… Golliwogs are worth loving and educating. Diversity and the resilience learned from hardship and poverty are priceless things, resources too rarely put to good use. Most of the kids I truly loved as a teacher were Golliwogs. Not just the chocolate-flavored ones, though those were very precious and precocious children, but also the vanilla-flavored ones, the caramel-flavored ones, the blueberry-flavored ones and the grape-flavored ones. (Okay, maybe they were only blue and purple in my crazy old head. And maybe I shouldn’t be making metaphors that suggest I am promoting eating school children. That was Jonathan Swift’s thing.) But Betsy De Vos and her boss, Donald Trump, will never understand that, and never see the true value in them. If we are ever again going to have a fair and just system of education, we have to give value to the Golliwogs.
Catch a Falling Star 
Explaining the Words
I used to have political arguments all the time with my father that would end only in frustration… for me. He was happy to see his offspring boiling over ideas with smoke coming out of both ears. Because no matter what I said, he would always take the opposite position just to oppose me. I know this because I tested it. I would counter an argument he had just made by rephrasing it so that it was in different words, but meant exactly the same thing he had just said to me. Naturally he came up with opposing views immediately. One time I even flat out stated, “I agree with you!” Which naturally led to an immediate and complete reversal of the position on his part. I think now that he was training me to think more deeply about things than just parroting talking points heard on television. Either that, or he really really loved to argue.
The most important thing I learned in the endless arguments about Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bob Dole, Two Bushes, and Bill Clinton was that you have to establish the meanings of the terms you are using. Hence the reason for this post.
The words that made the most difference in my discussions with my father were “liberal”, “fascist”, “conservative”, and “communist”. When my dad used those terms, “conservative” always meant “good guys” and the other three words meant “bad guys”. But when I listened to the policies and concerns he wanted to talk about, whenever he said the word “conservative” he was really saying “moderate”. And because he was pretty much in the center of the political spectrum, he thought of fascists and communists as being the same thing. If my father ever was truly wrong about anything political, it was when he followed Ronald Reagan’s affable, smiling “Morning in America” politics towards the far right and abandoned the moderate principles he held dear. He had been deceived by Nixon, and regretted it… in fact, we all were deceived and we all regretted it. But that did not prevent him from being deceived by later Republicans. We both have had a long-standing admiration for President Eisenhower, Senator Bob Dole, Senator Chuck Grassley, and Senator John McCain. They represent the moderate wing of the Republican Party. But the GOP has marched relentlessly towards fascism and oligarchy of the rich, and we both feel that has tainted both Grassley and McCain. My dad ended up voting for Barack Obama twice. Obama, to him, is Eisenhower reincarnated. The problem, we both agree, has come anytime American politics have moved away from the center.
So let me begin defining terms by ridiculing the Loony Left.
Being liberal means promoting change. Hence, the Marxist devotion to revolution and the desire to have an on-going revolution of constant change. Unfortunately constant change is another way to define chaos. That is the main reason that communist-socialist experiments have generally ended in violence, economic collapse, and fascist-type strong-man oppression. The poor raggedy communist in my cartoon, standing on the left end of the spectrum is always doomed to poverty and violent death. If you don’t believe that, just ask Leon Trotsky if it isn’t so. Oh, wait, you can’t. Stalin had him murdered. Stalin ended the Russian experiment by cracking down on everything, making himself the antithesis of actual socialist ideas. I included the ultra-liberal philosopher and hedonist Alistair Crowley on this end of the spectrum because he fought against all social norms and rules. That sort of religion leads to sexual depravity, vice, and corruption to a degree that got Crowley labeled “the Most Evil Man Who Ever Lived” in a BBC documentary.
Sometimes being liberal is needed desperately. Then you get the kind of liberal change agents that JFK was (and thankfully, LBJ carried out his liberal changes to an American society crippled by racism and xenophobia). Martin Luther King Jr. was also that kind of agent of change. Bernie Sanders is a parallel agent of change to JFK in that Barack Obama’s policies are almost a mirror image of Eisenhower’s in the 1950’s. What the media today labels as a liberal is equivalent to moderate Republicans before Nixon. Very similar changes are needed in social and economic areas today. We have yet to see if Sanders can get elected in 2020 and then assassinated shortly thereafter.
You can probably tell that this article is not yet complete. I have a lot more loony liberal pontificating to do (and please note, I said “pontificating” not “defecating”. I am not a Trump voter.) But I am well past the 500 word goal for today, and so, I must leave the rest of the crap to be said in a part two article. Maybe also a part three. Please stop me before I reach part twenty-six.
I do so enjoy making fun of Trump and his tiny, tiny hands. So here I am sharing another lampoon at the expense of the Great Orange Face of America.
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Filed under angry rant, autobiography, commentary, conspiracy theory, humor, insight, Paffooney, politics, word games, wordplay
Tagged as communists, conservatives dang!, fascists, humor, liberal politics, politics