PECKSNIFFIAN!

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Are you wondering what the word title means?  A real attention grabber right? Good!  Now listen up!  Today's blog is about the dumbing down of meanings operating in our language that word important ideas to which the words we use in discourse refer.  I'm thinking about the word "government" and the word "politician" and a third term you cannot see operating in between these two ideas, "pecksniffian."

This may just be the right descriptive adjective for this tyranny going on that thinks systematically toward a political dismantling of representative democracy in America!  It is always to be majority rule with respect for minority rights. One elected to serve must honor the will of the people and do so by protecting equally the inalienable rights of every individual citizen.   But Arizona's leadership under Jan Brewer are pecksniffian in their approch to civic responsibilities.

PECKSNIFFIAN / [pronunciation: (p k-sn f - n)] adjective: Hypocritically and smugly affecting benevolence or high moral principles. After Seth Pecksniff, a character in Martin Chuzzlewit, a novel by Charles Dickens. To gather a sense for what I mean, compare today's Arizona Republic headlines (1.) with  AZ REP headlines this past March (2.)

(1.) Brewer Urged To Halt Medical-Marijuana Program; County Attorneys Say Licensing Will Defy Law. -by Yvonne Wingett Sanchez July 30, 2012 @ 10:59pm  The Republic azcentral.com

(2.) Arizona Seeking Pacts With Other States To Defy Federal Government. -by Ginger Rough Mar. 9, 2011 12:00 AM The Republic azcentral.com

The number two headline concerns more than just the  national, attention-getting and controversial immigration defiance as this excerpt shows...

Arizona lawmakers are working to create alliances with other states on controversial issues such as health care, immigration and firearms regulation in a growing effort to challenge the authority of the federal government.

Now my own thought here yields the notion that for these two picturings to operate opening a window framing the margins in seeing between March and the edge of August this election year, there must also be operating in the mind of the Arizona Republican party leadership currently in power in this state something between sense and nonsense swinging the pendulum of the collective governing civic mind of these folks that privately desires to dismantle the authority of We, The People in the process, something that dumbs down what government is to “mean”.

What is the meaning of government?  What is it to adopt a politically "pecksniffian" manner?  Who benefits if excluding participation of  SOME KINDS OF PEOPLES OVER OTHER KINDS OF PEOPLES OF AMERICA in SELF-GOVERNMENT were to be the normative principle of the day?  What if your story when you are old is to tell your great grandchildren how it was to be alive during the days of the Great Suppression? How is it the same group of politicians defy laws they don't want to obey against the mandate of people they are elected to serve? Pecksniffian is the attitude of the current legal campaign taking shape under the guidance of thirteen county attorneys and Jan Brewer's office. 

These same folks want us to believe their political responses are legitimate where they defy  the public mandate in what We, The People of the state which elected them to office mandate in passing this law.  Sadly, folks, they are not!  Politicians and other elected state officials (not to mention officials of high professional stature in private practices working closely with public leadership)  on the one hand build legal briefs to challenge and violate federal law due to the federal government's failure to act. On the other hand, the same, local, elected leadership in concert with county attorneys usurp the will of the people to self-govern in the face of federal law, which they now hide behind in a failure to act. Yes, folks, all that is in deed, acting!  They act like they are acting, which they indeed are, but poorly! Because it is in civic terms that the political actor masks his failure. The tragedy is doubly tragic for state elected officials fail to act on behalf  We, The People! 

Exclusions and divisions, exclusivity and derisions continue in Arizona splitting in two what kind of civic people hold power.  One must now vote with an eye for reclaiming one’s civic right to govern! VOTE with an eye for WE, THE PEOPLE as opposed to the politician 's pecksniffian approach to government.

HERA'S EYES



                                                1963 etching by Salvador Dali
First published in "Like A Woman Falling" ©2004, the following poem, inspired by a dream, is based upon the myth of IO as told by Ovid in "Metamorphoses".

IN A DREAM SHE LAY STILL

inside what she couldn't see one thousand eyed in two or three

the egg hatched when the eagle maid

in black, remade in gold...

Last night She dreamt an alchemy, She dreamt

neither me nor mine. She dreamt

herself and when that died

She left her eyes behind. He said

This forest burns

burns high in the heavens, see

every tree is blackened

to its tips. He said

Pick that up

and so, someone leaned over the edge and reached

high in the heavens low

and picked from the tallest tips of the blackened pines

someone looking just like me pitched out

and thus drew in two boughs, two boughs, both dead

one black, one gold, one ash and one

whose blossoming did hold. They are dead

someone looking just like me then said.

He said, "Separate them!" And, I did, while he went on

and on and on―an on-to-say, a story. The fires de-story

everything tis true, as this fire, this terrific fire did you

but look what you now hold. Downwardlooking

I lifted two boughs, both were dead

once.

He said

Separation changes things. Now that you know this
you will, too. Now you must get away quickly...

(is this a quickening a-go?) Go!

Get away with this saying-thing! And so

I jumped into a heap between two gents

a father and a son. What a mess!

that leap, this heap, these men

the son was driving

(too close to the edge)

the father's face kept changing―he had three!

(none of which I liked) but, that

didn't stop me from interacting

and all the while we were climbing.

And, we kept climbing, up a slippery slope

conforming to its curl, the dash tilting such

that water kept flowing toward us while curving

to the dash. The son was driving

on the outside where the three of us sat...

and the cab began leaking...from the in-side out.

Everything's a mess, I thought, yet,

is adhering so. The boy

reached out and slurped a sliding slip of a sip

from the dash. It was a mad dash! Such a bad water

a mad-lad, sad-bad water!

Turns out dad hauls manure.

(It was his truck the boy was driving.)

"Are you sure he knows how," I asked

just as we parked.

I got out as quick as I could

parked like we were on that iffy cliff

cleft with crevices and rocks and a high house

built upon stone. Some folks were home

a girlfriend I knew came out

we rushed into each other's arms

and each other's laughter. Oh, the things

you have been saying, she said.

I know. Don't you love it, the things I say?

They want to know how on earth

you do it, get away with that say. They want

to learn those sayings, too. I said

Oh, that is simple

then I showed them all. You let IT

form the picture. You let IT do the work.

Let it as IT, and IT will let you.

It opened then in the work they were

working on them. All the right colors bled, too

in the one I drew, which I used in example

I let the paint do its own painting, I said.

Then we watched and we saw that the paint did.

IT showed up and showed through and showed

quite a show―My! All those eyes!

Which formed into forms that died dry

in a day scene. But, just before they did...

in the center of the seen a black thing formed

and it began to grow

and this black thing formed into a bird

a bird in flight rising from a

red, red sorry sort of spot

surrounded in a circularity of gold

from where it hatched.

Seems eggs hatch when we

return a story.

And so, no body's sorry

about jumping into that

truckload of sh-sh...stuff

nor about exposing people

to all those black things bleeding

through their own red-dead, dead red

sorry messes

nor about

messin' with those guys...even though

(somebody still thinks that driver needs lessons)


Hera's Eyes, stephanie pope from  "Like A Woman Falling" ©2004