Greg, You Had One Job…

Politics, Reality TV and Texan Drama

Prices are higher these days, huh? In some places gas is above $4.00 a gal­lon. Those are Eu­ropean prices. The cost of trans­port­ing goods is go­ing to also be high­er, there­fore. Any­one can see that in­fla­tion is cost­ing con­sumers every­where. I men­tion these painful­ly ob­vi­ous facts as an in­tro­duc­tion to this week’s “Dumb­est Play for Dra­ma and At­ten­tion”.

Greg Ab­bot of Texas is the frontrunner for that hon­or. Greg qual­i­fies twice. That’s a lot even for a Re­pub­li­can gov­er­nor. This week Greg de­cid­ed that he’d teach Old Joe B a les­son. Greg thought it would be a cute thing to send immigrants to Wash­ing­ton D.C. on a char­tered bus. Now none of the peo­ple on the bus were il­le­gal. They were all on their way to some oth­er place where they were welcome. They had rea­son to be at the bor­der and all of them had per­mis­sion to stay in the Unit­ed States un­til their sta­tus could be ad­ju­di­cat­ed. But Greg de­cid­ed that it would be cute to send them to Wash­ing­ton so he could em­bar­rass Old Joe. He charged the state of Texas for the bus­es and for feed­ing the folks and sent a cou­ple of bus loads of folks to Wash­ing­ton.

The prob­lem with that dumb play for at­ten­tion is that it does noth­ing at all to ad­dress the prob­lem. The prob­lem doesn’t ex­ist in Mex­i­co and the prob­lem doesn’t ex­ist in Wash­ing­ton. The prob­lem doesn’t even ex­ist in Texas. The prob­lem ex­ists some­where south of Chi­a­pas, Mex­i­co. It ex­ists in ar­eas of Cen­tral Amer­i­ca where gangs have tak­en over whole cities. The US ex­pelled the gang mem­bers and the gang mem­bers did what they knew how to do when they got back home. They re­cruit­ed more gang mem­bers. Now peo­ple who want to live a de­cent life run away from their coun­try and show up at the bor­der to try to find that bet­ter way of life.

But that lit­tle stunt didn’t get Greg enough at­ten­tion so he thought he’d bet­ter make his state­ment a bit more dra­mat­ic. He de­cid­ed to stop all trucks cross­ing the bor­der to in­spect them for il­le­gal aliens. What a clus­ter fuck that was. Greg, for some un­known rea­son de­cid­ed he’d try to force the gov­er­nors of Mex­i­can states with com­mon bor­ders with Texas, to cow-tow to his dra­ma and agree to do their part to stop the in­flux of Cen­tral Amer­i­cans. Of course, a cou­ple or three of the Mex­i­can gov­er­nors agreed. It’s not that they can do any­thing about the peo­ple com­ing to the bor­der. Most of the in­flux is not from Mex­i­co. But in or­der to appease Greg, those gov­er­nors told Greg that he could rest as­sured that they would stop the in­flux.

I’m sure as soon as they were off the phone they had choice things to say about Greg and his an­ces­try. I can hear in my mind’s ear them all say­ing, “El gringo esta loco.” I’m just as sure they were not that po­lite ei­ther. But Greg had to man­ufac­ture his dra­ma. No doubt he saw him­self as a mini-one-time-pres­i­dent off in a for­eign coun­try, push­ing his way to the front of the pho­to op, just to show how ar­rogant he could be. I can see how that kind of be­hav­ior would play well for some of the folks in Texas. But the eco­nom­ic cost of Greg play­ing big boy cost Texas a lot more than bus fare for some folks wait­ing to hear from a judge.

Ear­ly gues­sti­ma­tions sug­gest that it will take a week or more to over­come the cost of Greg’s at­ten­tion grab­bing dra­ma. Did Greg not un­der­stand that stop­ping trucks at the bor­der and back­ing them up so that their loads of pro­duce spoiled, would have eco­nom­ic con­se­quences? I don’t see a gain for Greg in any of this, but I do see los­es for lots of peo­ple due to Greg’s stu­pid­i­ty. I have to won­der if prac­ti­cal thought has tak­en a hia­tus in the Re­pub­li­can Par­ty.

Some­one should maybe stop some of those folks and ask them if they understand what a re­al­i­ty TV show is. Think about this for a mo­ment. Kim Kar­dashi­an posted a pic­ture of her hold­ing a Champagne glass on her am­ple be­hind for at­ten­tion and dra­ma. But Kim was a re­al­i­ty TV star. She was ex­pect­ed to do such sil­ly stuff. The Don, aka XLV, was also a re­al­i­ty TV star. Both of those peo­ple know that in their fan’s minds they are ex­pect­ed to do out­ra­geous things like say, “You’re fired ‘’ or even wear re­veal­ing gowns and ap­plause will fol­low. But in the real world we don’t ac­tual­ly play pre­tend games. In the real world there are ac­tu­al con­se­quences to ac­tions that cost peo­ple mon­ey and con­tin­ue to cost be­cause of the im­pact those ac­tions have over time.

No one cares if Kim shows her butt or if the XLV makes grandiose state­ments about being in love with the North Ko­re­an dic­ta­tor, or even if he gets paid by a Sau­di Prince. Kim and the XLV are fig­ments of our imag­i­na­tion. That’s not true for Greg Ab­bot or even for Sr. DeSan­tis. What they do have is long-last­ing ef­fects for lots and lots of peo­ple and what they do isn’t en­ter­tain­ment. This is where the prob­lem comes about.

We all, per­force, live our lives ac­cord­ing to the world we per­ceive. Our brains are locked away in­side of bone and the only con­tact with the out­side world, what we call ‘ex­ter­nal re­al­i­ty’, is through our per­cep­tions. Pause here, please. We must interpret our per­cep­tions and what we use to in­ter­pret our per­cep­tions with is our be­liefs about what is right and wrong, good and bad, ad­van­ta­geous or not. Those perceptions are not con­scious. You can tell me they are if you’d like and I won’t ar­gue with you, but you do not have time to ex­am­ine your per­cep­tions be­fore you see or hear or taste or feel any­thing at all. All that per­ceiv­ing has been de­cid­ed be­fore the percep­tion takes place.

So here we have a flock of politi­cians all per­ceiv­ing that what they see in their in­ter­nal re­al­i­ty about ex­ter­nal re­al­i­ty is ac­tu­al and real. Based on what ex­act­ly? Not on com­mon sense. Any­one with com­mon sense would do all they could to augment the flow of com­merce into their state. We could even go so far as to say that a gov­er­nor of a state would have a man­date to in­crease the com­merce in his state. But Greg didn’t do that. Greg per­ceived that he could act like a 12-year-old kid who thinks he’s a bul­ly be­cause his Dad­dy has mon­ey. Greg want­ed Dad­dy’s at­ten­tion so he made a dra­ma. Last week the Cawthorn kid did the ex­act same thing and because what he did or said em­bar­rassed the Re­pub­li­can lead­er­ship, he was chastised. But Greg is try­ing to em­bar­rass Old Joe and for that he’s glo­ri­fied? Not in my book he ain’t. I don’t care what his ti­tle is, act­ing for at­ten­tion and dra­ma is not okay for a gov­er­nor. It’s fine for re­al­i­ty TV stars but not for se­ri­ous peo­ple. It’s Kim’s job to be con­tro­ver­sial. It’s the XLV’s job to be con­tro­ver­sial, but it is not Greg’s job to be con­tro­ver­sial. It’s Greg’s job to be a stew­ard of the re­sources of the state of Texas. Greg has one Job…and that’s not to show his ass.