Things To Do While Under Quarantine!

And here we all are, living in our quarantined lives as if we are ramping up toward a Post-Historic Cave People Society. This is just the beginning of what could be a lengthy period of voluntary and even involuntary self-seclusion. Some epic and profound shifts in our societies and Collective Consciousness are underway.

In the meantime, we could all benefit from some diversions or variety of stimuli while being confined. Towards this end, allow me to present The Daily Kibitz List Of Socially Distancing Entertainments!

Let's start with our Daily Kibitz Film Critic's Top Ten List of Favorite Movie Comedies. We can all use the laughs. These are all available on various online and cable platforms:

Duck Soup
Dr. Strangelove
Groundhog Day
Animal House
Airplane!
The Naked Gun
Monty Python & The Holy Grail
Young Frankenstein
Bringing Up Baby
The Big Lebowski

Yes! That's quite a collection of yuks and should keep you in stitches for some time. Maybe you want to intersperse these Hall of Fame Humor Films with something else to watch. Well, here is the next Daily Kibitz suggestion: our Top Ten List of Favorite Binge TV Shows. These all have been previewed by our Daily Kibitz media critic and get the big thumbs up! And they are all available on Netflix, Amazon Prime or Hulu:

Breaking Bad   Simply the best dramatic series ever made.
Parks and Recreation   Simply the best comedy series ever made.
Orphan Black   Simply the best acting performance ever; Tatiana Maslany rules.
Justified  Highly entertaining crime series located in eastern Kentucky.
Better Call Saul  Different cadence of story-telling, but the uber-high Breaking Bad quality remains.
Treme  The story starts three months after Katrina in New Orleans. Completely immersive.
Mad Men  Even if you loathe Don Draper, he represents America's values from 1960 to 1970.
The People vs. O.J. Simpson  Getting through this explains so much about our fractured society.
Friday Night Lights  Based on the movie, based on the book. "Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose!"
The Prisoner  From 1967 BBC, if George Orwell had taken psychedelics. It's more relevant today.

Is that a song in your heart I hear? Music surely helps during times like these. So here is our Daily Kibitz Music Critic's Top Ten Quarantine Songs. They're all songs about conditions that, though differing, still have the same impact as what we're experiencing today:

"Waiting For The End Of The World"  Elvis Costello
"Life In The Food Chain"  Tonio K.
"Bad Moon Rising"  Creedence Clearwater Revival
"London Calling"  The Clash
"Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment"  The Ramones
"Ball Of Confusion"  The Temptations
"Ship Of Fools"  World Party
"1983 (A Merman I Should Turn To Be)  Jimi Hendrix
"Everything Must Go"  Steely Dan
"Red"  King Crimson

Yes, that is a great list! In fact, I've compiled it into a Spotify Playlist and you can listen to it all right here. Just give it a click:

TOP TEN QUARANTINE SONGS SPOTIFY PLAYLIST

Alright, moving on, we consulted with our Daily Kibitz Social Media Critic for the low-down on which Twitter accounts should be followed. The recommendations are a blend of goofy and brilliant, highly informative and utterly sophomoric sites. It's a good Top Ten Twitter Accounts To Follow while sheltering from the storm:

https://twitter.com/MollyJongFast  Snarky supremo and hugely humanist. Funny, fair and spot on.
https://twitter.com/TheRickWilson  Author of "Everything Trump Touches Dies" is hilarious.
https://twitter.com/GiantCat9  Giant cats with military hardware. Sublimely silly.
https://twitter.cm/TomTomorrow  Cartoon humorist and his friends with wicked takes on the world.
https://twitter.com/AngrierWHStaff  The ongoing perspective from a former White House staffer!!
https://twitter.com/ParkerMolloy  The editor of Media Matters. She's super smart and is great fun.
https://twitter.com/Popehat  The twitterverse Legal Eagle and his funny lawyer friends.
https://twitter.com/PaulNoth  One of the best New Yorker cartoonists.
https://twitter.com/JoeDator  Another of the best New Yorker cartoonists.
https://mobile.twitter.com/chunkled  Chock full of nifty relevant memes and gifs!

Oh, those will keep you busy! But what if you have sworn to never venture into the evil, wicked Land of Twitter? Well, OK. Our Daily Kibitz Social Media Critic has also drawn up a Top Ten Websites To Make You Laugh. And here they are:

https://www.theonion.com  The fabled Onion. Still the best, even though the world is now weirder.
https://www.wonkette.com  Another great one, where contributors and commenters don't hold back.
http://www.picturesofwalls.com/gallery.asp  Some world-class examples of trenchant graffiti.
https://awkwardfamilyphotos.com  Think your family is weird?
http://www.oldjewstellingjokes.com/jokes/  This site will keep you going for days, all for the better.
https://theoatmeal.com  Cartoon instructional site with a definite edge to its humor.
https://www.funnyordie.com  A little too Pop Culture for me but what the hell, maybe you'll like it.
https://9gag.com  Quite an aggregation of videos, memes, gifs and comments about, well, lots.
https://thenib.com  A collection of the top "alternative" cartoon artists and their ongoing work.
http://www.artbanksy.com  Banksy! His life, his loves, his recipes, his plan for world peace.

All of these are fine, but what if you don't give a dang about Internet content? Aside from reading this fine blog, you'd prefer to be retro and read a book? Fantastic! Let's let our Daily Kibitz Literary Critic weigh in on the Top Ten Books To Read During A Pandemic. Some of these titles are available to read online. Some are probably lurking on a dusty bookshelf in your home. All are still in print.

"One Hundred Years Of Solitude" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Puts "magic realism" to amazing use.
"The Tragedy of Doctor Faustus" by Christopher Marlowe. All he ever wanted was everything.
"The Tempest" by William Shakespeare. About a family trying to be socially distant.
"The Hero With A Thousand Faces" by Joseph Campbell. Players change but the story's the same.
"Catch-22" by Joseph Heller. The idiocy exemplified here tragically remains with us in 2020.
"Slaughterhouse-Five" by Kurt Vonnegut. Easy to see why Kurt V. and Joseph H. were best friends.
"Moby-Dick" by Herman Melville. Why do we follow leaders who chase The White Whale?
"A Confederacy Of Dunces" by John Kennedy Toole. The funniest novel ever written.
"William Blake: Selected Poems" The genius. No poet will be greater. Remarkable artistic ambition.
"The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain. We are all on that raft.

And that will have to do! Now to help a little bit more, here are The Human Beinz singing their 1968 hit, "Nobody But Me" with attendant dance moves. Click, enjoy and let's get through this together!!

Is Conservatism Dead, Or Does It Just Smell Funny?

When watching stalwart Republicans sprain their necks by looking the other way while a President attacks institutions, laws, mores, precedents, protocol, and principles, I've wondered: What is Conservatism today and who are real Conservatives?

Conservatism has several branches, but its hallmark has been the preservation of social and political institutions. This includes maintaining the Family Values mantle, Rule of Law, Order and Tradition. Change is not welcome.

But Life is all about evolution, which I keep in mind when recalling how my conservative Rock-Ribbed Republican Dad went from being a George Wallace backer and Nixon voter to eventually filling out his ballot for Barack Obama. Twice.

Over the years, he had always expressed reflexive support for the GOP. He was a Realtor and owned his own business. He felt quite comfortable with the Pro-Business Individualism that the party touted. He was a Fiscal and Social Conservative, Free Market/Low Tax & Interest Rate, Do-It-Yourself kind of guy. He loathed any government program that, in his mind, gave anyone "something for nothing."

But some things rankled him. Although he liked Reagan, he didn't like Iran-Contra. He was repulsed by the hard-line "anything goes" politicking represented by Lee Atwater/Paul Manafort/Roger Stone.
He didn't care for Bill Clinton, but felt that the GOP had gone way out of bounds to get him. "I'll never vote for another Republican!" he said after that Senate trial. Of course, he did so the very next Presidential election.

His perception really changed during George W's tenure. Dad hated waste and incompetency, and there was plenty of it - a tipping point occurred. The GOP was no longer a Small Government, Fiscally Conservative party. Its claim on Family Values/High Morality didn't hold water anymore. And Dad was no longer the social conservative he'd been. He was uncomfortable with the nonsense and hateful rhetoric spewing out from the top to the bottom of his party. He was shook by the Iraq debacle and the economy's collapse.

So he voted for Obama, something I couldn't have conceived back in 1968. He railed at the GOP for their obstructionism and reactive animus toward Obama. And in 2012, he proudly voted for Obama again. A person can evolve for the better!

And a political party can evolve for the worse. Through most of his life, Dad was aligned with the GOP -- until he no longer could. His party, representing his conservative views, changed even more than he had. Before Trump ever lumbered onto the scene, conservatives within the Republican Party had been turning themselves inside out to justify their membership. Even someone like Ronald Reagan would have difficulty getting nominated today. Consider:

Fiscal Conservatism? Welp - the GOP has become the champ for spending deficits, leading to record National Debt; moreover, its economic policies produced the second worst economic crisis in our nation's history. All Free Market and Laissez-Faire economic conservatism vanished with America First protectionism, wide-scale tariffs and massive subsidies ("socialism") to groups adversely affected by them. And the crazily escalating fissure between the wealthy and everyone else is not a conservative endpoint.

Religious Conservatism? It's going great, if you're a far-right white Evangelical or an ardent anti-abortion advocate. But the GOP has so firmly lashed itself to Trump that it must accept his enormous moral transgressions. Hence the narrative that he's The Chosen One, like David or Saul, an imperfect vessel who is used by God to enact His Will on Earth. The resultant hypocrisy is repugnant and makes any claim to the high moral ground a sham.

Social Conservatism has been about Family Values and Law & Order and keeping the lid on various social issues. Like No to Abortion, and limiting Women's Rights. Or No to Same Sex Marriage and LBGT Rights. Or No to No Public School Prayer and No to Sex Education.  Or No to Gun Control Legislation. Or Criminal Justice Reform. Or Immigration Reform. Yet over the years, these and related issues have gained wide support with the American public. Republicans seem to be for Law & Order, as long as it's their kind of law.

Political Conservatism is listing badly. It's been a long time since Russell Kirk's "The Conservative Mind" sparked the imagination of folks like Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan. Some things remain the same - support for a super strong military, rollbacks of regulations, and the pursuit of lower taxes. What has changed is kinda profound.

As a minority-rule entity, the GOP fully embraces ruthless Control above Responsible Governance. It is against protecting Voting Rights; it is for Voter Suppression and Gerrymandering. It supports refusing refugees and asylum seekers; it's for separating such families and putting children in cages. It supports Climate Change denial. It's for allowing a President to enjoy Emolument revenue from his personal government-derived business. It's for politicizing independent agencies like the Department of Justice, the EPA, DHS, on and on. It's for hiring incompetent true believers in place of those with expertise and experience. It's for the rule by Executive Order, after campaigning against it. It's for allowing our international alliances to founder. It's... oh fer cry-yi, it's all such a national disgrace.

In short, the GOP displays the characteristics of a party comfortable with subverting the Rule of Law, Order, Tradition and Decency so it can cover for the President, and so protect itself.

"It (the GOP) is a dark mirror of the authoritarian regimes we once fought," say former Republican strategists Reed Galen, John Weaver and Rick Wilson in a powerful piece titled "A Party Of Idolators". Like many others who've fled the party, they see Trump and the GOP as anti-conservative; instead, a National Conservatism or a White Nationalist Conservatism has emerged. The destruction of establishment institutions and resultant societal shock was always the plan of people like Steve Bannon and Steven Miller. As the dust settled, these great people would construct a whole new society bearing their extreme and autocratic views as the new normal rule.

Principled Conservatives believe in gradual change and the preservation of institutions and traditions. Therefore, they've been kicked out, or have self-exiled, from the GOP. The party has rapidly transformed into something more familiar to despots like Kim Jong-un or Vladimir Putin. Dissent will not be allowed. Only fulsome praise for Dear Leader will be heard. Yes, it seems that Conservatism in its traditional sense is flatlining. And the rest of the GOP smells funny, too.

Let's close with this appropriate quote from Hannah Arendt, the thinking person's George Orwell: