Walk Softly and Carry a Bag of Sticks
Once upon a time, the Communist atheist New York Times write an editorial in which it was warning that Fascism could arrive in America “silently, slowly, like fog creeping in on little cat feet.” I have not read the rest of the editorial, but I think that it end up with recommending that everyone put butter on their cats’ feet to prevent this from happening. Of course, it is all a silly idea, because Fascism is proud and violent and insolent and will tell you esactly what it is doing to you while it is doing it, much like the brave and dedicated torturers of the Inquisition.
Is wrong on so many levels, but especially the stance and the shoes!
Just think, for esample, how rubbish would have been the Spanish Civil War for Golf if El Generalísimo had not esecuted all those anarchists and Trostskyists, installed a militarized theocratic feudal dictatorship, and focused on attracting wealthy tourists by dispossessing the peasants of their land and building the finest golf courses the Iberian peninsula have ever seen. Imagine instead if he had said, “We are going to establish a fascist dictatorship centered around compulsory dress-wearing for ladies, vegetarianism, and being nice to animals. Also we might engage in a bit of genocide.” People would think he was mad! And rightly so. Because the nature of fascism is very clear cut and fundamental and easy to spot: Militarization of the populace, estreme and unashamed nationalism, highly centralized state control of all aspects of the economy and social life, and golf. If any political movement is lacking in one of these areas, it cannot properly be called fascism.
One man who understand this better than anyone is Venezuelan president Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías, who have recently hit on the brilliant strategy of closing down all the golf courses in his country. The so-called Independent newspaper in England is reporting that:
If they are closed, no fewer than nine courses will have been shut down since the campaign began in 2006, Julio Torres, head of the Venezuela Golf Federation, told The New York Times this week. Most of them, it so happens, are in oil-producing regions, and therefore linked with an industry once demonised by Mr Chavez for its links with the political opposition, and by extension with those “damned Yanquis”.
They say it as if Chávez have made this decision out of spite to annoy his political opponents. The fools! In fact, the real reason he have adopted this tactical hatred for the world’s most civilized sport is so that nobody can accuse him of being a fascist. Is brilliant!
Anyone who make the quick look at Chávez’s background and political practice—military strongman, populist politician who espouse a top-down nationalist socialism and make the efforts to strengthen the state and remove presidential term limits while establishing supervised inorganic local community decision making—would almost immediately assume that he is a typical Latin American demagogue with self-evident fascist tendencies. And yet NO! We now are knowing that he cannot be a fascist because he is persecuting the golfers. I laugh very much and loudly and longly while also taking my hat off to him. Much as I am believe that golf must play an integral part in the construction of any truly fascist society, even I am recognize that in this day and age the proud declaration of one’s fascist beliefs and aims can rapidly lose you friends and influence. Even Silvio Berlusconi tries to stay quiet about it.
My suspicion is that Chávez have made golf to be the sacrificial escapegoat that will enable him to continue to milk the sympathy cow of bed-wetting liberals, bein-pensant socialists, and closet masochist media types who fantasize about a jackboot crushing their heads so long as it is red and Chávez is wearing rubber and a buttplug at the same time. Such idiots are not caring anyway about the niceties of democracy and human rights. Most of their politics is based on envy and, therefore, a hatred of golf. Chávez have spotted that, and he is esploiting the red scum for everything he is worth. Well done, sir.
It is all a big shame, though, that he is not playing the golf, really. He is sound like just the sort of clubbable chap who you might want to have a round with and then take several large brandies at the 19th hole, chattling at the fireplace about bagging some grouse, holidaying in Marbella, and referring to one’s car as “the old girl.” Perhaps when he is overthrown by America we can bring him to Jandía to live with all the other deposed dictators.
I am have a large balloon waiting for you, Hugo!
Quoting Carl Sandburg, are you?
Fog
The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
Cheers,
MaryAnn
If you put Sellotape on your cat’s feet, your cat will not be creeping silently or slowly anywhere. Your cat will get on like a Ann Coulter at the mention of socialized health care. Although the cat will still be more entertaining.
I am all for getting rid of golf, but Chav is doing it for the wrong reasons. He should do it because… well, just because it’s golf, really.
Hola Mary-Ann!
I am nor knowing the Carl Sandtrap. He sound like a good fascist though. Give him my regard.
Besos
Manuel
Hola Sparro!
You clearly have never enjoyed the gentle pleasure of spending three hours hitting a small ball with a stick across softly rolling green fields happy in the knowledge that they have been reclaimed from ignorant peasants who was only wasting it all by growing vegetables and grazing stupid animals.
Besos
Manuel
Hola M,
Venezuela is moving up my list of countries to visit after reading this. (Am not a closet masochist type either and I swear bed-wetting is not a problem…)
I don’t know. I think Chavez may, in the banning of golf, be forcing his fascists into other, less savory leisure pursuits. Like lacrosse. Or … God help us … badminton.
Besides, prohibition doesn’t work. It only forces golf into the clutches of criminals, who would be peddling golf on street corners, inviting impressionable youngsters to flick their balls into strategically placed tin cans.
Oh yes. Fascism, like golf, will find a way.
Hola Columbine!
Perhaps we could go together. Have you ever hear the saying about chalk and cheese?
Besos
Manuel
Hola Sweary!
You are prefectly correct. There is no holding back man’s natural golfing tendencies. That is what the idiot communists always forget.
Do you have any pictures of the impressionable youngsters and their balls? I would like to have them as evidence.
Besos
Manuel
Golf was invented by St Andrew and Jesus which was the ultimate doon fall of Scotland which explains the releasing of the Lockerbie bomber.
It has weaken a once strong culture of drinking and glassing into a pseudo sassenach world in which people have rights, I refuse to live in a kind of world like that maybe I’ll settle in Ireland. I salute Chávez because his shipments of merchandise are always on time just like Mussolini and the trains.
Hola Old!
What an outrageous statement! Everyone is know that golf was invent in Spain!!
But, yes, by Jesus.
Besos
Manuel
mr manuel fascist, (not to confuse you with the other manuel, who uses a lot of swear words in his replies), all will be fine even after golf becomes extinct in Venezuela, so long as they don’t become mentally ill and start playing cricket, getting drunk then starting riots while throwing up.
Hola Manuel,
Sandburg was no fascist!! A man of the people, a decendant of Walt Whitman and–if one must use labels–a democrat!!
Besos,
MaryAnn
Hola Mary-Ann!
Pffft. He can’t be a man of the people AND a democrat. We’ve already establish that all people are inherent the fascist by nature. Now he is just sound like he was confused.
Now, Walt Whitman, THAT is a fascist name if ever I heard one. I espect HE had no time for limp liberal ideas such as the democracy.
Besos
Manuel
Hola Manuel,
No, I’m quite sure I’m correct about Sandburg. And Whitman!
Besos,
MaryAnn
Are priests fascists? Sometimes I see them playing topless volleyball in our parish with the small ones, charitibly. Other times I hear them breathing in the confessional. There is no obvious nazi paraphanalia, but I wonder and I know, is a sin.
We have a Limerick Zombie, called Dolores of the Cranberries. You know her song?
Hola MaryAnn!
I just go and look both of them up. They are both POETS!
It would have save us both a lot of time and effort if you had been telling me that.
Lorca is my favourite poet. He is dead.
Besos
Manuel
Tony Blair tried to do the same thing by banning fox hunting.
Hola Daphne!
Si. He would have been assassassassinate if he had ban the golf: Is the favourite sport of all the people who gave him his job in the first place.
Chavez could learn a lot from Blair about the presentation, spin, approach shots, and many other important feature of politics.
Besos
Manuel
Bon Dia Manuel
I could be wrong but wasn’t the state car of Nazi Germany the Volkswagen Golf?
And Pitch & Putt. That’s like Tar & Feathering right?
Bye
Martin
Hola Martin!
You are correct! Is not to be confuse with the Passat, which was the estate car.
You may be condfuse the pitch and putt with the pitch and toss, which is a sex game council workers play in those little tents on the pavement.
Besos
Manuel