Daylight Stupid Time
As if it weren't annoying enough to have to deal with my sundry computers automatically changing to reflect the end of Daylight Savings Time - which doesn't happen this year until November 2 - my notebook keeps changing back to the wrong time, thanks to synchronizing automatically with time.nist.gov. Hey, thanks!
So here's another reason to question the judgement, if not the sanity, of those who - like all my liberal friends, Sarah Palin, and Stalin - believe whole-heartedly in the "power of government to do good." We need these people to manage every aspect of our lives when they can't, in its second year of operation, make the simple software fix to adjust to their own stupid law? What a great idea!
Even if there were some reason to believe government has, does, or ever will act with the primary motivation of making you or me safer, freer, healthier, or richer - and why should they? - this also reminds us to ask: what would make us believe they could if they wanted to?
“We owe it to ourselves.”
For all those who like to believe that people today are dumber than they used to be, the above statement ought offer fairly compelling counter-evidence.
Once upon a time otherwise intelligent (and educated, which isn't the same thing) people apparently believed that statement, uttered decades ago by John Maynard Keynes, among others, in reference to the national debt.
But what does it even mean? On the face of it, isn't it transparent nonsense? Let's see you borrow $100 from yourself. Does that mean you suddenly have $200?
Ah, but let me explain how it really works.
I take from you $100. That shouldn't bother you, because "we" - necessarily including you and I - owe it to "ourselves." Yes?
Now, to pay back that debt, I take from you $100. Because you and I are still part of "we." And we owed that $100 to ourselves, yes?
So now we're square. The debt has been repaid. Only a greedy bastard could possibly complain. Gitmo for you, Gordon Gekko!
Isn't that simple?
Not convinced? I give you the "bailout" - the largest single wealth transfer from the proletariat to the wealthy in known human history. In this case, the transaction above works out as $100 (plus a whole lot more) borrowed from you, and repaid to J.P. Morgan.
Which cosmic larceny, of course, is heartily supported by both presidential candidates.
Our slogan for the day
The European Union - because Napoleon and Hitler just didn't try hard enough!
Fighting to lose
One thing that Neocon A (McCrazy) and Neocon B (O’Bomber) agree on, along with almost everything else of import, is that the US needs More War. Especially in Afghanistan.
It strikes me that it isn’t sufficient simply to point out (what should be) the blazingly obvious truth: the US has no sensible strategic military reasons for its occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.
It’s not just that those occupations are militarily pointless. "Pointless" isn't value-neutral: it’s a very bad thing. Any pointless military action is an invitation to disaster.
Aside from the fact that they drain the US defense complex of the ability to defend the US against actual enemies – strongly suggesting no one in charge of US defenses believes any exist – and laying aside that the grotesque costs of the two pointless horror-shows have broken the economy to the extent that over a quarter-century of inflation-fueled boom has busted, probably beyond repair, we all seem to be overlooking one very important fact.
In the real world, successful pack alphas are never aggressive. They don’t go looking for fights.
Why? Because they can’t win anything.
If you’re the Alpha, that’s it. You’re top of the stack. What benefits can you gain by fighting?
None. There isn’t anything left. All you can do is keep the status quo. Or lose.
Three basic possibilities exist for the rewards to fighting for an Alpha:
Parlous times for parodists
You can't parody such times as these.
A few days ago I was out walking with my dog (whose innocent name I won't sully by mentioning in such a foul and murderous context as politics) when it struck me that, for a lark, and since the two entities in question can't seem to muster any actual disagreement with one another, I ought to publicly propose that Obama select as his running mate John McCain.
Then he went and did.
Aren’t you glad …
... the batshit insane notion of incorporating the former Soviet Socialist Republic of Georgia into NATO never panned out?
Because guess what? If it had, you'd be at war with Russia now.
Russian troops on the move
Russia, in case you've missed the last century somehow, has strategic thermonuclear weapons and the means to deliver them.
Feel better now?
(Of all things Wikipedia has pretty good ongoing coverage of the war. Hat tip to Antiwar.com for alerting me to the fact.)
National Service Slavery
Youth, serve the Leader!*
Because you aren't doing enough for the rich and the powerful already.
You selfish bastards.
Yep. Mussolini-style fascism, imported wholesale by Herbert Hoover and rebranded as the "New Deal" by the plutocrats who pulled FDR's strings, rises again from the grave to stalk the living and suck out their lives to feed its evil.
Who am I kidding? Economic fascism - the Corporate State - is what we all grew up under. It never died.
But it still stalks the living to suck their lives and feed its evil. That part's right.
Of course the cynical might ask who's going to pay for all this. The government is beyond broke: its a few trillion in the hole. The answer is us, of course. But now how you think.
Rather, look again to Zimbabwe. Get ready to add three or four zeroes to the bills in your wallet.
And a couple more to the bills you have to pay to live.
Unearned feelings of not just self-worth but superiority are turning out, wicked fast, to be the most expensive habituation in history.
*Note: the bottom legend on the poster reads, "Everyone ten years in the Hitler Youth."
Both houses are a pox on us all
How can anybody with any sense can take seriously the ravings of the Republican candidate for the lucrative and flashy position of front-man for the oligarchy? He's a lifelong sleaze and champion of the almighty State. One expects his raddled raving head to poke out of the Alien’s chest.
Election '08: Any way you look at it, we lose.
The “election,” such as it is, hearkens back to 1996, when the rulers couldn’t be bothered to run a credible opponent to a highly vulnerable, overt charlatan of an incumbent, with the manner and sexual tastes of a televangelist, running instead another superannuated “war hero,” as unsightly in person as was his political record of serving Leviathan in the most persistent, and persistently self-serving, manner possible. (And if you’re excited by war-heroes, even authentic ones, as rulers, why not study some history – such as that of this man who won the Iron Cross First Class the hard way in World War I? How'd that work out?)
His rival will win the popularity contest, and frankly should – his appearance is at least not something to frighten naughty children with (and the true terror of the Republican’s face isn’t its age, it’s the overt evil and madness shining through.) Unless Israel attacks Iran, and the US’s rulers treasonously join in. Which will be the end of the election, the US, and quite possibly what we laughingly call civilization. As well as, likely, most of us.
But what’s exasperating is that his opponent is being marketed - seriously - as representing “change.” Yes: a brand shiny new wrapper for the same old maggot-writhing shit we've been fed throughout our lifetimes.
The American Lesson
If you can't tell democracy from freedom, what you get is democracy instead of freedom.
We may term this the American Lesson.
True words
"Those of us interested in building a free society have to face certain inconvenient facts about human psychology. One of the most inconvenient is that the majority of people are conspiracy theorists. Most people believe that there is a massive conspiracy by the rich and powerful to help and protect the average citizen."
- Bill Walker, "Days of Deceit: 12-7-41 and 9-11-01," in Strike the Root; emphasis added.
Let me repeat the heartmeat of that quote: a massive conspiracy by the rich and powerful to help and protect the average citizen.
The Google Gods must be smilin' on me today: I've been searching for the source of that phrase for years. It seems to strike directly to, well, the root of our little tyranny problem. (If you know an earlier source for the notion of a conspiracy by the rich and powerful to benefit us, please let me know.)
I don't reject "conspiracy theory" out of hand - indeed, is there a sillier, or more pernicious, concept abroad than the contention that no conspiracies exist and those who claim to perceive them can be ab initio dismissed as crackpots who cannot possibly have anything worthwhile to say? If you've fallen prey to that habit, one of these days I'll write an essay to kindly and gently pound that nonsense out your head.
Clearly, all conspiracy "theories" - okay, it's an imprecise usage: suffer it - aren't right. Any more than any other models, hypotheses, or explanations are all correct. Isn't it obvious that the conspiracy theory outlined above isn't right? Do you really believe such a conspiracy exists, or ever has, or will?
Yet isn't that what any of us really is saying, when we claim the State exists to do good things for us? That there exists a massive conspiracy by the rich and powerful to help and protect you?
Why should the State ever do anything with the primary goal of benefiting you?