Author Andrea Hackman (aka Baja Boomer, aka La Huerita, aka Tigerdog), keeping cool by the ice machine in front of The Giggling Marlin in Cabo San Lucas, 1992
Mark Twain famously opined that history doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes. I’m experiencing a lot of rhyming in the world right now; you too?
In the late 1980s and early 1990s when I was living in Cabo San Lucas, MX, I wrote bi-weekly columns for English-language newspapers (using the pen name Baja Boomer). The following column, recently rescued from storage in an old cardboard box and in desperate need of resurrection, was near the top of my list for transcribing into a PDF file for posterity. It didn’t take long for me to recognize all the “rhyming” happening between this 1992 column and today’s political scene. I hope that you might find it interesting, if not valuable.
I apologize in advance for its length (1,206 words!) and possible clumsiness; I’m publishing it here in its entirety, warts and all and it is, after all, 30 years old...
(P.S.: It will be useful to remember that in 1992 the President of the U.S.A. was George H.W. Bush and the VP was Dan Quayle...) Without further ado:
The Politics of Morality
“Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion.
To attack the first is not to assail the last.” -Charlotte Bronte, 1847
A year ago I thought that this fall's elections in the North 50 would be the most boring of the century. The Gulf War was over, the populace at large was indulging in a frenzy of self-congratulation, parades and yellow ribbons were the order of the day, and the Prez and his Veep were riding high.
“Why even bother to have an election?” I grumped. “We might as well just ask for a show of hands and get on with business.”
I was wrong, as usual.
First, George-the-Prez finally admitted that there had been a recession by announcing that it was now over. It wasn't.
Then we had the disgraceful and embarrassing debacle of the Judge Thomas/Anita Hill hearings where George was forced to make himself look bad by maintaining support for his badly tainted Supreme Court nominee; no way could the hero of Desert Storm back down on a little thing like that. It made women REAL mad, and African Americans were not impressed by the mere fact of Clarence being black. So is Anita.
As the recession dragged on with unemployment soaring and homelessness substantially increasing, the Prez tried to blame it all on Congress for thwarting his programs while simultaneously pronouncing that he was IN CHARGE, after all, and not one of his vetoes had been overturned! Well, George, you can't have it both ways. “A pox on both your houses!” the people cried. The natives were getting restless.
Enter Pat Buchanan, jumping into the race from somewhere to the right of Atilla the Hun.
“Hullo,” I said. “What's this?” Things were starting to look more interesting; I began to smile again, and friends noticed that I was humming under my breath.
Then Roe vs Wade blasted full force into the picture. People who had comfortably voted Republican secure in the knowledge that their “right to choose” was protected by the Supreme Court, no matter who was President, began to realize that this might no longer be the case. They began to look at George and Dan-boy slanty-eyed, and Buchanan made them hyperventilate.
Bill Clinton? Governor “Moonbeam” Brown? The nation groaned. What to do? Where to turn?
Strains of the William Tell Overture, a cloud of dust and a hearty “Hi Yo Silver...”
Who is that masked man? Where did he come from? No one really knew but a millionaire businessman named Ross Perot galloped out of the west saying all the “right” things without really saying anything at all – and suddenly it became anybody's race. Right down to the (dim?) possibility that no one would win a majority and the next President of the United States could be chosen by Congress.
Hot damn! As my old Swedish Granny used to say, “Ya shooor, we're havin' fun now, you betcha!”
Clearly in trouble now, the self-proclaimed Environmental/Educational President Bush decided to counterattack by becoming the Morality/Traditional Values President as well. He sent the Veep, Dan Quayle, out to carry the message to the people.
Excuse me? Isn't this the same man who loudly proclaimed the righteousness and morality of the Vietnam War while he carefully hid out in the National Guard?
Dan Quayle strikes me as the kind of guy who'll pick a fight in a bar and then hold your coat for you while you slug it out. On the way to the hospital he'll comfort you by saying, “I guess we showed them a thing or two, by cracky!”
I'm sorry but every time I start thinking maybe he's not such a bad guy he does something stupid. In this case he started off by ragging about an episode of the “Murphy Brown” TV show concerning a single woman who got pregnant and decided to keep her baby and raise the child by herself. Seemingly outraged by the immorality of it all, he said with his best deer-in-the-headlights stare, “Hollywood just doesn't get it.”
Well, Hollywood's bottom line is dollars. If Murphy Brown were not a successful, well-liked show it would soon be off the air. Obviously, then, people watch the show and, obviously, there must be something about the character that they like. Could it possibly be that it's our government that just doesn't get it?
When Vladimir Lenin's revolutionary party was still only a small splinter group in Russia he named it the Bolshevik Party, Bolshevik meaning“ Majority”. The Tsar's government, with amazing stupidity, accepted the appellation of “Menshevik”, which means “Minority”. Within 15 years or so it was true.
It seems to me that something of that sort is happening now in the States. A vocal minority group calling itself the “Moral Majority” wants us all to conform to its concepts of morality and values, and people are beginning to believe they are right in spite of the fact that poll after poll shows that a large majority of the populace does not agree with them at all.
So, when we're talking about “Morality and Traditional Values,” whose definition are we talking about? And does any one of us have the right to force our notion of right and wrong on anybody else?
It's probably a good thing that I no longer maintain residence in the North 50; I'd be in the stocks all the time for things like laughing on ye Sunday and keeping ye odd hours.
I suppose that most reasonable folks among us can agree that in an ideal world it would be a good thing for a child to live in a stable, loving two-parent home. I think we can come to some general agreement on other issues as well. Murder is bad. Child abuse is bad. So are racism, bigotry, rape, poverty, and mistreatment of our elderly.
Here are some things that I personally find immoral but on which I might get some argument:
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The deregulation of business that opened the door for the S & L scandal, while the government simultaneously regulated what we can and cannot do in the privacy of our own bedrooms.
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The U.S.A. screaming at other nations to stop chopping down their forests while only about 10% of its own original forest remain, and they're on the verge of cutting those down, too.
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That there are about 10,000 oil spills annually in the U.S.A. And nothing beyond a slap on the wrist is ever done about it because it's bad for business.
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That during the last decade more people became millionaires than ever before – at the same time that the percentage of the population living below the poverty level increased every year and homelessness became a plague.
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And, finally, anyone, any place, any time, EVER telling me (or you) what I (we) must think.
I saw a bumper sticker some time back that has stuck in my mind ever since. You might like it, too. It said, simply:
The Moral Majority is Neither
Dare I say that I agree?
Originally published in
Los Cabos Magazine
June25, 1992
-by the Baja Boomer
aka: Andrea Hackman
