Predictably, the Hate Mail rolled in in response to this post.
An obviously-organized effort sprang into being to chastise me over the issue of my "inhumane" and "disgusting" views on the subjects of Illegal Immigration and Bi-lingual education, and I have to say that so far as organized efforts go, this one was pretty tame and I've gotten worse Hate Mail than this. Some of it (perhaps half) was actually quite civil, if full of misspellings (and isn't it peculiar that everyone made the same spelling and grammatical errors?).
Except for the three e-mails that had viruses attached (jackasses -- I scan my e-mail thoroughly, and I used to be a System's Programmer, so I know all the tricks!), the letters all made the same points (and isn't funny that all my correspondents made the same points in the same language, and in the same order?), most of it was boilerplate "you're a racist" sort of stuff that I see, oh, every other day. This is old hat; the only difference was the volume. I routinely get worse stuff from Anglo Libtards with their panties in a bunch over my obvious homophobia, blatant racism and pitiless disregard for the feelings and tribulations of transgendered pets, and the People Who Love Them.
The respondents all make the same arguments, and I'll summarize them here:
1. There are no"illegal human beings".
2. The "crime" of sneaking across the American border is not a crime, per se, but rather a "civil offense". It's not that big a deal, like getting a speeding ticket.
3. Illegal immigrants DO pay taxes, just not income taxes, and this is not their fault since they're being exploited by Big Business and unscrupulous Capitalists who all presumably studied the art of Business Management at the Simon LaGree Institute.
4. Appeals to "Fairness" and "The American Dream".
5. "It's for the children".
6. The United States "belongs" to Us (Mexicans, Indians, etc.) in the first place, and you Anglos "stole" it from Us.
Now, let's knock these perfectly infantile arguments down one at a time:
1. You're absolutely right. There is no such thing as an "illegal human being". However, that argument is a piece of pure Sophistry which might get you an "A" in Diversity Class, but which is otherwise meaningless. Perhaps because you are not so skilled in the use of the English Language, or more precisely, the subtleties of American Culture (and why should you be? It's not as if you're being encouraged to assimilate), it is not evident to you that we don't begrudge you your basic humanity, we only object to what you have done in order to get here, and what you do once you are here. The word "illegal" applies to the act, not the perpetrator.
I recognize every one of you as a Person, no different from me, except in some external and cultural ways. However, I didn't commit a crime and violate another Nation's Sovereignty just because I could, and with a reasonable assumption that I could then partake of all that Nation had to offer (because we're good people) without any corresponding responsibility to the people and government that provide it to me.
It's all about Respect and Gratitude. We expect you to Respect our laws, and then we expect you to show some Gratitude -- you don't need to thank me personally, but you could make an effort to help better the society that gives you much and asks for so little in return. It's called Civic Responsibility. You could start by trying to atone for your Original Sin and become citizens (that is to say, taxpayers), and then the least you could do is be contributing to the betterment of your adopted Nation.
2. A Civil Offense is still a crime; it's just not one that'll get you hung in the Village Square. And even "Civil Offenses" have consequences; if I get a speeding ticket, I still have points applied to my driver's license, or have it suspended or revoked, and then my insurance company may decide that I'm suddenly a reckless driver and raise my premiums. I have to show up in court and pay a fine. I have the offense entered into my "permanent record", and it will follow me forever, and that speeding ticket will be seen by every potential employer, every loan officer and every magistrate that I ever cross paths with.
It's not that a Speeding Ticket is a Capital Offense it's that if the act of speeding wasn't illegal, I would never have been charged with a Civil Offense in the first place! The differences between my ticket and your crossing the border are these: I didn't speed in order to get Food Stamps, a Free Education for my children, a housing subsidy, and a myriad of services paid for by other people for which I'm not expected to reciprocate, in any way, and which excuses even the worst behavior in the name of some made-up notions about "Diversity" and "Brotherhood". There certainly any Congresscritters, Mayors and City Councilmen clamoring to represent the "Speeder's Community" because of the votes, money and notoriety this might bring them, and there isn't a Business or Agricultural Lobby who views Speeders as source of cheap and infinitely-exploitable labor that bucks up their bottom line. There sure-as-hell isn't a bevy of "Advocacy Groups" working on behalf of Speeders because there's a shitload of Federal Money to be skimmed.
The difference between my Speeding Ticket and your "Civil Offense" is that your offense often costs far more than money, and does appreciably more damage to civil society.
The argument that there are laws which "don't really count" is a rather bad one. I may disagree with certain laws myself, but I can still respect them, and hopefully, try to get them changed through the legal processes of petition and elections. You want to get them changed on the basis of "there's too many of us here for you to adequately and humanely enforce this law, so why not just forget it", and then when that Legion of Lawbreakers becomes the majority, you'll be able to use legal means to justify and excuse your initially illegal act. That's plain wrong.
3. Paying Sales Taxes is unavoidable, and if given a choice, I'm certain you'd dodge these, as well. I know I would. That argument cuts no ice. The idea that Illegal Aliens pay Social Security taxes is laughable: those are, firstly, paid by your Employer (who is taking these out of your check before you ever get it, and who has every reason to lie about what he pays you because it was illegal to hire you in the first place), and because you don't have permission to work in the United States.
Which means you shouldn't have been hired in the first place. It would be against the law to do so.
If you were paying Social Security taxes as an Illegal Immigrant, then you would have a Social Security Card, which means the Government would know where you live, in which case, it's failing in it's duty to arrest and deport you.
In the case of Income Taxes, if I have to suffer that act outrageous theft, then so should you. The fact is that your immigration status being nebulous or questionable often shields you, to a large extent, from having to suffer that indignity. In the meantime, my money (as well as the money of millions of others who don't really have a choice in the matter) pays for perpetuating this most unfair, confiscatory and punishing system, and rewarding you for your outrageous --and illegal -- behavior.
4. As for "Fairness", when I can enter Mexico in violation of the Law, not get arrested and deported for it, and have the government there provide me with free hospitals, schools that will teach my children in English, a political system that's eager to cater to my every need at someone else's expense, doesn't punish me for breaking the law, and considers all that an act of charity, then perhaps then we can talk about what's "Fair".
Oh, and the reason why it's called The American Dream is because it's reserved for Americans. That means the people who play by the rules and who are actual citizens. You could probably have something similar in Mexico, China, India or Pakistan, but that would require effort on your part, I guess. If most of you showed half the industry and fortitude you apply in getting here to take advantage of the American Taxpayer to improve the conditions in your own countries, perhaps you wouldn't have to come here and live on the edges of Society, glomming off other people's success and industry, and then wondering why you're resented for it.
You certainly wouldn't be organizing a letter-writing campaign to an anonymous loudmouth with an opinion you don't like. For every letter I got that started with "I'm a hard-working individual..." I had to ask the questions: Then why weren't you working hard where you originally came from? and Why, then, do you need welfare? Yes, I know: the culture where you come from neither rewards nor encourages the virtue of work, nor does it provide the same freedoms, but it could, if only you took the opportunity to make it so. It's just easier to exploit a nation where conditions are different, isn't it?
5. I don't care about your children, in this respect; because YOU obviously don't care about them. Because the lesson you're teaching them is that it's within their rights to break the law as they see fit, and then it's perfectly acceptable to live like beggars on the edges of society, under-the-radar, and dependant upon the kindness (rather the extortion) of strangers. You're teaching them that they're entitled to all the benefits of American Society and the American Taxpayer, without having to accept the responsibilities of American citizenship. You're teaching them that it's perfectly alright for them to steal from others. Worse, that they're entitled and expected to steal from others. It's a Human Right, after all.
I don't wish to see children suffer, to go uneducated and without as wide a range of options for their tiny, little futures as possible. I do, however, don't believe they should be allowed to benefit from their parent's criminal activity.
6. I'm not an "Anglo". I'm a 4th-generation American. I was born here, the descendants of people who entered the country legally through Ellis Island (and some of them were quarantined -- basically imprisoned -- when they arrived on these shores, for months), and who didn't have an entire array of Government Services to exploit. My ancestors came here knowing little or no English, and there were no schools to teach it to them as a Second Language, and they were expected to a) suck it up, and b) assimilate. They did the same jobs many of the newer generation of immigrants do (sweeping streets, laying bricks, digging trenches), and their life was considerably harder because ethnic and religious hatreds weren't considered "bad form" by polite society; they were openly discriminated against, and there was no form of legal protection for them. The terms "Immigrant" and "Italian" didn't come with their own battalion of Lawyers, Senators, Aldermen, and Advocacy Groups to leap to their defense, excuse their criminal behavior, nor bend the culture and legal system to accommodate their every whim.
They (my forebears) assimilated, and became AMERICANS, and while they still loved the Mother Country and kept as many of their customs and culture as they could, they also realized that some aspects of those practices certainly weren't acceptable here, and so they conformed. Unlike the Hispanics I've seen around here who's children feel it's perfectly fine to urinate in the street -- and often make a communal game out of it, or who pick their noses and wipe snot on every convenient vertical surface, spit like camels everywhere they go,. or live 20 people to a two-bedroom apartment, and who have brought measles, tuberculosis, and other diseases that were once wiped out, back into the country.
Where's the quarantine for infected "immigrants"? Why is the Emergency Room of my local hospital full of people speaking strange languages and coughing up blood without insurance or the means to pay for the First-Class care they demand and expect to get? Why does the City of New York have to empower special panels to see to the "problems of bi-lingual education"? Even the terminology "problems of bi-lingual education" admits it; there's a problem. If it were a good thing, it wouldn't be a problem. But I digress.
As to who "owns" what -- get over it. Your ancestors, be they Mexican, Amerindian, Pakistani, or whatever, are the losers of history. If you were winners, you wouldn't have to steal from others. It's not my fault that your Stone Age forebears came up against Renaissance and Industrial Revolution technology, not to mention Smallpox, and lost out. I don't believe in the nostrum that all cultures are "equal and valid". If they were, there would be no immigration (illegal or otherwise), and you'd still be ripping the beating hearts out of your captives, shagging camels, eating your own feces and lice, and earning a good living doing it all in your own country.
I don't owe you anything. I'm perfectly willing to share what I have as a matter of being a good citizen, but not when the transaction is one-sided, and costs me far more than I get in return, and especially when the response to what I have given is not "Thank you", but rather "Fuck You...and gimme more!"
Friday, April 16, 2010
""We're saying, we don't care if you don't speak English, we don't care what your immigration status is..."
Those are the words of a New York City Bureaucrat attached to the Department of Education in the wake of a "scandal" in which it was discovered that perhaps thousands of New York City school kids who were "entitled" to Bi-lingual or English-As-A-Second-Language instruction, didn't get said instruction.
In true New York City government fashion, the Department of Education is forming a Blue-Ribbon Panel to study the issue, and it's seeking participation from the "Bi-Lingual Community" or whatever.
The story then goes on to tell you all about the trials and tribulations of immigrant parents who aren't involved in their children's schooling because "they don't feel welcomed" or are presumably intimidated by School Safety Officers who ask for identification cards when parents do show up at school. Tommyrot.
The story doesn't make clear, and I suppose neither did the nimrods who set up this Panel, just how many of those kids who require Bi-lingual education -- or just how many of those "unwelcomed" parents -- are illegal immigrants. Also left unexplained is just how the hell they're "entitled" to anything they don't pay taxes for. Because, let's face it, one of the biggest problems facing city and state governments nowadays is providing ever-more-expensive "services" to people who don't pay for any of them and abuse the hell out of them.
At what point does what passes for government in New York City and State begin to realize that it can't continue to provide things to people who shouldn't even be here in the first place? Why is it encouraging even more of these people to come here by letting them know their children will be educated in their Native Language at someone else's expense? Why is it that the "solution" to most problems in the United States involves taking from the productive to give to the non-productive, and in this case, probably criminal?
I might not have an issue if the people this program was specifically aimed at were people who were playing by the rules, and awaiting or actively working towards, U.S. Citizenship. But that quote "...we don't care what your immigration status is..." troubles me greatly.
If you want to fix the problems of Bi-lingual education, the solution, it seems to me, is to not provide it all, at least not when it's funded by the taxpayers. The truth is that many of the children in bi-lingual education programs will never learn English, and most won't even stay in school, because the system isn't set up to teach it to them in the first place; it exists solely to put more teachers on the payroll, and then overpay them. Perhaps those children would be better served if, and I'm spitballing here, the City didn't offer Bi-lingual education, and instead encouraged local organizations to provide English instruction before the little waifs attended school? Or better yet, perhaps the Federal Government could perform one of it's prime functions and keep Illegals out of the country in the first place?
In that fashion, perhaps we could avoid the "scandal" of not providing bi-lingual services (of all kinds) to criminals.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, spare me the crap about "it's about the children" and "don't punish the kids for the sins of the parents" and "they're just trying to build a better life". Because the reason most are here is to collect welfare and medical benefits they'll never pay for, and to give birth in American hospitals (that they won't pay for, either) so that the child obtains Birthright Citizenship which rewards criminal behavior by making it possible to import even more illegal immigrants who will collect welfare benefits they won't ever pay for.
I'm not anti-immigrant. After all, I'm the descendant of immigrants, but I am against rewarding people who break the law, and worse, encouraging them to come forward to suggest how their criminal activity can be facilitated and tailored to their particular requirements. Every non-English-speaking child of an Illegal Immigrant takes resources away from a Non-English-Speaking-Child who's parents at least had the decency to follow the goddamned rules.
In true New York City government fashion, the Department of Education is forming a Blue-Ribbon Panel to study the issue, and it's seeking participation from the "Bi-Lingual Community" or whatever.
The story then goes on to tell you all about the trials and tribulations of immigrant parents who aren't involved in their children's schooling because "they don't feel welcomed" or are presumably intimidated by School Safety Officers who ask for identification cards when parents do show up at school. Tommyrot.
The story doesn't make clear, and I suppose neither did the nimrods who set up this Panel, just how many of those kids who require Bi-lingual education -- or just how many of those "unwelcomed" parents -- are illegal immigrants. Also left unexplained is just how the hell they're "entitled" to anything they don't pay taxes for. Because, let's face it, one of the biggest problems facing city and state governments nowadays is providing ever-more-expensive "services" to people who don't pay for any of them and abuse the hell out of them.
At what point does what passes for government in New York City and State begin to realize that it can't continue to provide things to people who shouldn't even be here in the first place? Why is it encouraging even more of these people to come here by letting them know their children will be educated in their Native Language at someone else's expense? Why is it that the "solution" to most problems in the United States involves taking from the productive to give to the non-productive, and in this case, probably criminal?
I might not have an issue if the people this program was specifically aimed at were people who were playing by the rules, and awaiting or actively working towards, U.S. Citizenship. But that quote "...we don't care what your immigration status is..." troubles me greatly.
If you want to fix the problems of Bi-lingual education, the solution, it seems to me, is to not provide it all, at least not when it's funded by the taxpayers. The truth is that many of the children in bi-lingual education programs will never learn English, and most won't even stay in school, because the system isn't set up to teach it to them in the first place; it exists solely to put more teachers on the payroll, and then overpay them. Perhaps those children would be better served if, and I'm spitballing here, the City didn't offer Bi-lingual education, and instead encouraged local organizations to provide English instruction before the little waifs attended school? Or better yet, perhaps the Federal Government could perform one of it's prime functions and keep Illegals out of the country in the first place?
In that fashion, perhaps we could avoid the "scandal" of not providing bi-lingual services (of all kinds) to criminals.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, spare me the crap about "it's about the children" and "don't punish the kids for the sins of the parents" and "they're just trying to build a better life". Because the reason most are here is to collect welfare and medical benefits they'll never pay for, and to give birth in American hospitals (that they won't pay for, either) so that the child obtains Birthright Citizenship which rewards criminal behavior by making it possible to import even more illegal immigrants who will collect welfare benefits they won't ever pay for.
I'm not anti-immigrant. After all, I'm the descendant of immigrants, but I am against rewarding people who break the law, and worse, encouraging them to come forward to suggest how their criminal activity can be facilitated and tailored to their particular requirements. Every non-English-speaking child of an Illegal Immigrant takes resources away from a Non-English-Speaking-Child who's parents at least had the decency to follow the goddamned rules.
In The Local Paper...
Around these parts, the local newspaper (it purports to be one, anyway) is the Staten Island Advance. It's not much of a newspaper, being mostly devoted to events that happen on and around Staten Island, so you don't get a whole lot of National or International news from it. The Advance covers the"Big Stories" peculiar to New York City, but reserves almost all of it's pages to What's Happening In Our Neighborhoods.
It's usually rubbish. Birth and Wedding announcements, obituaries, local sports (high schools and the local colleges, Little League sports, and such), with most of it's space taken up by advertisements for yet-another-Italian restaurant, "Full-service" salons, and Jiffy-Lube, or such. The "coverage" of most everything is scattershot and amateurish, and you get the idea that the "journalists" who work for the Advance are merely those punching a ticket in the salt mines before they can move on to a "major" daily in places like Salt Lake City, Des Moines, or perhaps (dare they dream?) even Topeka. Very few of the writers have the polish or talent (like I should talk?) to write for the Daily News or Post, and I would hazard to guess that time spent at the Advance probably precludes you from even writing classifieds for the NY Times, as it's considered a "peasant" paper in these parts.
But then again, everything about Staten Island screams"peasant" to people in Manhattan. But I digress.
Sometimes, probably through sheer luck, the Advance does manage to report something that catches your eye (you mean that blurb about the Staten Island Golden Pins having two 300-games in the same night at the bowling alley wasn't eye-catching?),and might, if you could forget for a second just where you're reading it, make you stop and think.
Today was one such day, for the New York City Council is in session and Mayor McCheese...errr...Bloomberg has taken time off from his important crusade against Cigarettes, Salt and Saturated Fats to see to something that actually concerns the taxpayers. They're all doing important work on behalf of the People, don't you know. And yes, that was sarcasm.
Before I tear the Mayor a new one, he did manage one potentially-useful change in policy; there is a tentative agreement to eliminate the "Rubber Room", a contrivance wrested from City Governments Past by the Teacher's Unions wherein teachers who are awaiting disciplinary action (in some cases, even criminal charges) are supposed to report while their case is adjudicated. I won't explain the convoluted process by which teachers are fired in this City, because I can't understand it myself, but the number of bureaucratic steps involved practically guarantees that the worst teachers in New York can continue to collect paychecks for several years while they're being "processed" (i.e. someone, Lord knows who, decides whether or not they can keep their jobs).
They're also collecting full medical benefits, accruing pension benefits, and I think, the time they spend in the "Rubber Room" counts towards whether or not they're eventually tenured. Some of those teachers have been awaiting disciplinary action for a decade, or near enough. it costs the City $65 million a year to warehouse problem teachers who can't be fired. The article doesn't tmake it clear whether that money is just for the warehousing, or if it's the amount spent to keep these folks on the payroll.
If that revelation, and the figure attached to it, doesn't shock you, the next item on the City Council agenda most certainly should.
The City Council, in it's infinite wisdom and exquisite attention to the needs of New Yorkers hit hard by the economic downturn and higher taxes, has decreed that Carriage horses are entitled to higher rates of pay, five weeks of vacation, bigger stables, and better health care than most of us get.
The horses, to be fair, are a New York institution. Every tourist and Prom Queen in New York clamors for a Carriage Ride around Central Park, at $34 bucks a pop. It's a popular attraction. However, one can't imagine why it is that the City Council saw fit to devote time to this issue, except perhaps because it involves a subject upon which the City Council is expert: horseshit.
Of course, space has been included for the Public Outcry involved over New York's other great Economic Boost, the MillionTrees program, in which the City of New York plans to plant 1 million new trees all over the City. Not only is this a colossal waste of taxpayer money, but it appears that the Parks Department is so badly mismanaged that they're cutting holes in sidewalks for trees that won't be planted for several months, creating safety hazards, and pissing off local merchants. In one incident related to this program, a brand new sidewalk in front of an elementary school was ripped up just weeks after it was installed so that new trees could be planted God-only-knows-when.
This is par for the course in New York City, and especially for Staten Island -- where stories about City Workers installing fire hydrants in the middle of busy thoroughfares, or even in the woods (we actually do have forests here) are more common than you might, at first, think.
People need jobs, The World Trade Center still hasn't been rebuilt, taxes are being raised, the City is financially in the red -- but we need to plant a million trees in a Concrete Jungle, ripping up the concrete in the process? Go figure. The only purpose most of those trees will serve is to give the dogs a more diverse toilet experience. Within five years, I'll wager half of them will be dead, destroyed by automobile accidents, or considered a hazard that will have to be removed for one reason or another. I'll also bet that not a single nursery in New York City, or State, has a piece of that contract to deliver said trees. It wouldn't surprise me at all to eventually discover that we're importing trees from China for this purpose.
Because you just can't get good quality trees in America, anymore, you know.
But the Union idiots in the Parks Department (the people planting the trees), the Department of Transportation (the people cutting up sidewalks),and the Department of EnvironMENTAL Protection (the ones presumably counting the trees) will at least have something to do, and paychecks to collect, I guess.
Not to be left out of the competitive and exciting pastime of following local celebrities, we learn in the pages of the Advance that three bimbos who give Italian-Americans worse names than Tony Soprano -- the Girls of MTV's The Jersey Shore -- are to be given "makeovers" which include personal instruction from a descendant of Emily Post, the Goddess of Etiquette, herself. Who knew there was a proper etiquette to Gum Snapping, Anonymous Oral Sex in a Nightclub Restroom (should you spit, or show some consideration for the next whore to use that stall and utilize a flushable paper towel? Do you serve fruit salad or an arrangement of petit-fours and finger sandwiches?), not to mention the entire gamut of social rituals involved in the use of AquaNet on a crowded dance floor?
I don't know how I could ever have survived without this vital information!
And really, isn't it sad when this is what is considered "Celebrity"? It used to be called "Notoriety", but I guess standards have slipped appreciably.
It's usually rubbish. Birth and Wedding announcements, obituaries, local sports (high schools and the local colleges, Little League sports, and such), with most of it's space taken up by advertisements for yet-another-Italian restaurant, "Full-service" salons, and Jiffy-Lube, or such. The "coverage" of most everything is scattershot and amateurish, and you get the idea that the "journalists" who work for the Advance are merely those punching a ticket in the salt mines before they can move on to a "major" daily in places like Salt Lake City, Des Moines, or perhaps (dare they dream?) even Topeka. Very few of the writers have the polish or talent (like I should talk?) to write for the Daily News or Post, and I would hazard to guess that time spent at the Advance probably precludes you from even writing classifieds for the NY Times, as it's considered a "peasant" paper in these parts.
But then again, everything about Staten Island screams"peasant" to people in Manhattan. But I digress.
Sometimes, probably through sheer luck, the Advance does manage to report something that catches your eye (you mean that blurb about the Staten Island Golden Pins having two 300-games in the same night at the bowling alley wasn't eye-catching?),and might, if you could forget for a second just where you're reading it, make you stop and think.
Today was one such day, for the New York City Council is in session and Mayor McCheese...errr...Bloomberg has taken time off from his important crusade against Cigarettes, Salt and Saturated Fats to see to something that actually concerns the taxpayers. They're all doing important work on behalf of the People, don't you know. And yes, that was sarcasm.
Before I tear the Mayor a new one, he did manage one potentially-useful change in policy; there is a tentative agreement to eliminate the "Rubber Room", a contrivance wrested from City Governments Past by the Teacher's Unions wherein teachers who are awaiting disciplinary action (in some cases, even criminal charges) are supposed to report while their case is adjudicated. I won't explain the convoluted process by which teachers are fired in this City, because I can't understand it myself, but the number of bureaucratic steps involved practically guarantees that the worst teachers in New York can continue to collect paychecks for several years while they're being "processed" (i.e. someone, Lord knows who, decides whether or not they can keep their jobs).
They're also collecting full medical benefits, accruing pension benefits, and I think, the time they spend in the "Rubber Room" counts towards whether or not they're eventually tenured. Some of those teachers have been awaiting disciplinary action for a decade, or near enough. it costs the City $65 million a year to warehouse problem teachers who can't be fired. The article doesn't tmake it clear whether that money is just for the warehousing, or if it's the amount spent to keep these folks on the payroll.
If that revelation, and the figure attached to it, doesn't shock you, the next item on the City Council agenda most certainly should.
The City Council, in it's infinite wisdom and exquisite attention to the needs of New Yorkers hit hard by the economic downturn and higher taxes, has decreed that Carriage horses are entitled to higher rates of pay, five weeks of vacation, bigger stables, and better health care than most of us get.
The horses, to be fair, are a New York institution. Every tourist and Prom Queen in New York clamors for a Carriage Ride around Central Park, at $34 bucks a pop. It's a popular attraction. However, one can't imagine why it is that the City Council saw fit to devote time to this issue, except perhaps because it involves a subject upon which the City Council is expert: horseshit.
Of course, space has been included for the Public Outcry involved over New York's other great Economic Boost, the MillionTrees program, in which the City of New York plans to plant 1 million new trees all over the City. Not only is this a colossal waste of taxpayer money, but it appears that the Parks Department is so badly mismanaged that they're cutting holes in sidewalks for trees that won't be planted for several months, creating safety hazards, and pissing off local merchants. In one incident related to this program, a brand new sidewalk in front of an elementary school was ripped up just weeks after it was installed so that new trees could be planted God-only-knows-when.
This is par for the course in New York City, and especially for Staten Island -- where stories about City Workers installing fire hydrants in the middle of busy thoroughfares, or even in the woods (we actually do have forests here) are more common than you might, at first, think.
People need jobs, The World Trade Center still hasn't been rebuilt, taxes are being raised, the City is financially in the red -- but we need to plant a million trees in a Concrete Jungle, ripping up the concrete in the process? Go figure. The only purpose most of those trees will serve is to give the dogs a more diverse toilet experience. Within five years, I'll wager half of them will be dead, destroyed by automobile accidents, or considered a hazard that will have to be removed for one reason or another. I'll also bet that not a single nursery in New York City, or State, has a piece of that contract to deliver said trees. It wouldn't surprise me at all to eventually discover that we're importing trees from China for this purpose.
Because you just can't get good quality trees in America, anymore, you know.
But the Union idiots in the Parks Department (the people planting the trees), the Department of Transportation (the people cutting up sidewalks),and the Department of EnvironMENTAL Protection (the ones presumably counting the trees) will at least have something to do, and paychecks to collect, I guess.
Not to be left out of the competitive and exciting pastime of following local celebrities, we learn in the pages of the Advance that three bimbos who give Italian-Americans worse names than Tony Soprano -- the Girls of MTV's The Jersey Shore -- are to be given "makeovers" which include personal instruction from a descendant of Emily Post, the Goddess of Etiquette, herself. Who knew there was a proper etiquette to Gum Snapping, Anonymous Oral Sex in a Nightclub Restroom (should you spit, or show some consideration for the next whore to use that stall and utilize a flushable paper towel? Do you serve fruit salad or an arrangement of petit-fours and finger sandwiches?), not to mention the entire gamut of social rituals involved in the use of AquaNet on a crowded dance floor?
I don't know how I could ever have survived without this vital information!
And really, isn't it sad when this is what is considered "Celebrity"? It used to be called "Notoriety", but I guess standards have slipped appreciably.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Building the Myth of the "Great Man" Of History, Part 2...
On the news that Syria has just given Hezbollah Scud missiles capable of hitting Tel-Aviv with a nuclear warhead;
The Obama administration has told us since it's inception that Syria is an important player, I believe the phrase is "potential ally", in the elusive quest for "Middle East Peace". The theory is that if we just "engage" Syria, and apply "diplomatic pressure" upon them, Syria will stop arming and aiding Hezbollah, and will also aid the United States in the fight against Al'Qaeda in Iraq, since many AII terrorists are operating from across the Syrian border.
To this end, the Obamatards sent John Kerry to Syria two weeks ago to "voice long-running concerns" with what passes for the leadership of Syria, and there's supposed to be a new ambassador to Syria to be named shortly, a symbol of America's willingness to go the extra mile in the name of "Peace".
Okay, a couple of things about all of this:
Why is Syria is still on the map? This is one aspect of the War on Terror that has always troubled me greatly. Of course, I say the same thing about all Muslim countries. It has been my contention since September 12, that the only way to put an end to the problem of Islamic Terrorism is to make sure there were a lot of dead Islamics, and that the United States should not limit the (armed) scope of it's War on Terror to simply those terrorists groups we currently have in our sights (Taliban, Al'Qaeda and it's off-shoots), but to every terrorist group within range of American power, anywhere.
Syria is a major supporter of terrorist groups. It has provided shelter for terrorists who have killed American troops in Iraq. It serves as a base of operations and safe-haven for Hezbollah in it's fight against Israel. It has now given Hezbollah long-range ballistic missiles; These missiles will soon be paired to an Iranian nuclear weapon (since Hezbollah is a fully-owned subsidiary of Iran) and what happens next is not difficult to foresee.
But that's okay: Obama sent a man who's only talent is for marrying the widows of even richer men to "strongly" voice our concerns, and to beg Assad to be a pal. The price of "engaging" Syria, is going to be a lot of dead Jews so that The Won can appear to be fighting terrorists without actually fighting Islam. The two are one in the same, and the sooner the American ruling asses....errr...classes, realize this, the sooner we can get onto the real strategy that will ensure that another 9/11 never happens; inflicting unspeakable and immeasurable suffering upon Muslims.
Obama doesn't realize this -- because he hasn't studied any history that doesn't begin and end with black people and their grievances -- but the nature of the foe we're fighting today in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, is the same as it was in 1941-45. The Nazis and the Japanese were fanatics, convinced of their racial and cultural superiority, determined to rule the planet, and willing to fight to the very last man. He apparently doesn't know about Kamikazes and Waffen SS, about the ruthless and pitiless determination, the racial hatreds (the only racial hatred he knows about is the stuff he didn't hear Reverend Wright talk about for 20 years), the barbarity, displayed by both in battle...and even more so against non-combatants who either just happened to be in the way, belonged to categories of "inferior beings", or who had the temerity to protest against their treatment by their conquerors.
In the end, it required the destruction of both Germany and Japan to end that conflict. By gruesome and bloody combat on the ground, relentless carpet and fire bombing, the strangulation of blockade, and a couple of atomic bombs. Both nations, and the criminal leadership that ran it all, were brought to heel. But in the meantime, the cumulative effects of all that bombing, all that starvation, all those soldiers who didn't come back to the Ancestral Rice Farm because of American firepower ruthlessly-applied, had it's effect upon the German and Japanese people and economy. They tired of war, they ran out of supplies, their morale was sapped, they hadn't the means or the heart to continue the fight, and they became committed to maintaining peace after the hostilities were over -- because the experience of war had been too terrible to ever suffer again.
That stuff works. It worked when Genghis Khan tossed plague-infected bodies over city walls, and when Scipio Africanus sowed Carthage with salt. People who have been on the receiving end of that sort of thing pretty much learn the lesson "don't screw with those guys again".
But no, we'd rather "Engage" Syria. I'm not sure what the purpose of doing so ultimately is. It's not as if Syria has anything we want, and I wouldn't consider Assad the most trustworthy person on the planet, considering that we're trying to cultivate him for the purposes of promoting peace while he arms and protects terrorists. No amount of playing nice with Syria, I believe, is going to encourage Assad to stop.
The attempt will be made, however, because Obama must be seen as a figure who managed to do what no one else, no Bush, Clinton, Reagan, Carter, no American President, has ever done: made a Middle-Eastern Dictator see the error of his ways without a shitload of high-explosives. It will be a triumph of Smart Diplomacy applied by the Smartest Man Ever over the Neanderthal method of Brute Force, and it will be a glorious achievement in the annals of Statesmanship.
Because the New York Times will say so. That's what it's all about; getting the Times to call you One of the Greats.
If I'm an Israeli General this morning, my job is probably figuring out how destroy the Syrian Air Force on the ground as a prelude to locating and bombing the bejesus out of some mobile SCUD launchers. And that's after I've already been kept awake nights for the past year by the problem of how to defend against, or pre-emptively strike at, an Iranian nuke.
Again, if I'm that General, I'd be in my Prime Minister's office right now begging to be given The Order, and screw what Obama has to say about anything. Obama is a strutting peacock, nothing without a staged event in front of a hand-picked and fanatically loyal audience and a teleprompter filled with someone else's words, and his opinion or wishes when the subject is the survival of the Jewish State is irrelevant. Besides, the worst you can expect in retaliation for daring to disrupt his carefully-thought-out plan of cultivating dictators who support terrorists is that John Kerry will show up to waggle his finger at you and talk out of his ass.
That's a trade I'd be willing to make.
The Obama administration has told us since it's inception that Syria is an important player, I believe the phrase is "potential ally", in the elusive quest for "Middle East Peace". The theory is that if we just "engage" Syria, and apply "diplomatic pressure" upon them, Syria will stop arming and aiding Hezbollah, and will also aid the United States in the fight against Al'Qaeda in Iraq, since many AII terrorists are operating from across the Syrian border.
To this end, the Obamatards sent John Kerry to Syria two weeks ago to "voice long-running concerns" with what passes for the leadership of Syria, and there's supposed to be a new ambassador to Syria to be named shortly, a symbol of America's willingness to go the extra mile in the name of "Peace".
Okay, a couple of things about all of this:
Why is Syria is still on the map? This is one aspect of the War on Terror that has always troubled me greatly. Of course, I say the same thing about all Muslim countries. It has been my contention since September 12, that the only way to put an end to the problem of Islamic Terrorism is to make sure there were a lot of dead Islamics, and that the United States should not limit the (armed) scope of it's War on Terror to simply those terrorists groups we currently have in our sights (Taliban, Al'Qaeda and it's off-shoots), but to every terrorist group within range of American power, anywhere.
Syria is a major supporter of terrorist groups. It has provided shelter for terrorists who have killed American troops in Iraq. It serves as a base of operations and safe-haven for Hezbollah in it's fight against Israel. It has now given Hezbollah long-range ballistic missiles; These missiles will soon be paired to an Iranian nuclear weapon (since Hezbollah is a fully-owned subsidiary of Iran) and what happens next is not difficult to foresee.
But that's okay: Obama sent a man who's only talent is for marrying the widows of even richer men to "strongly" voice our concerns, and to beg Assad to be a pal. The price of "engaging" Syria, is going to be a lot of dead Jews so that The Won can appear to be fighting terrorists without actually fighting Islam. The two are one in the same, and the sooner the American ruling asses....errr...classes, realize this, the sooner we can get onto the real strategy that will ensure that another 9/11 never happens; inflicting unspeakable and immeasurable suffering upon Muslims.
Obama doesn't realize this -- because he hasn't studied any history that doesn't begin and end with black people and their grievances -- but the nature of the foe we're fighting today in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, is the same as it was in 1941-45. The Nazis and the Japanese were fanatics, convinced of their racial and cultural superiority, determined to rule the planet, and willing to fight to the very last man. He apparently doesn't know about Kamikazes and Waffen SS, about the ruthless and pitiless determination, the racial hatreds (the only racial hatred he knows about is the stuff he didn't hear Reverend Wright talk about for 20 years), the barbarity, displayed by both in battle...and even more so against non-combatants who either just happened to be in the way, belonged to categories of "inferior beings", or who had the temerity to protest against their treatment by their conquerors.
In the end, it required the destruction of both Germany and Japan to end that conflict. By gruesome and bloody combat on the ground, relentless carpet and fire bombing, the strangulation of blockade, and a couple of atomic bombs. Both nations, and the criminal leadership that ran it all, were brought to heel. But in the meantime, the cumulative effects of all that bombing, all that starvation, all those soldiers who didn't come back to the Ancestral Rice Farm because of American firepower ruthlessly-applied, had it's effect upon the German and Japanese people and economy. They tired of war, they ran out of supplies, their morale was sapped, they hadn't the means or the heart to continue the fight, and they became committed to maintaining peace after the hostilities were over -- because the experience of war had been too terrible to ever suffer again.
That stuff works. It worked when Genghis Khan tossed plague-infected bodies over city walls, and when Scipio Africanus sowed Carthage with salt. People who have been on the receiving end of that sort of thing pretty much learn the lesson "don't screw with those guys again".
But no, we'd rather "Engage" Syria. I'm not sure what the purpose of doing so ultimately is. It's not as if Syria has anything we want, and I wouldn't consider Assad the most trustworthy person on the planet, considering that we're trying to cultivate him for the purposes of promoting peace while he arms and protects terrorists. No amount of playing nice with Syria, I believe, is going to encourage Assad to stop.
The attempt will be made, however, because Obama must be seen as a figure who managed to do what no one else, no Bush, Clinton, Reagan, Carter, no American President, has ever done: made a Middle-Eastern Dictator see the error of his ways without a shitload of high-explosives. It will be a triumph of Smart Diplomacy applied by the Smartest Man Ever over the Neanderthal method of Brute Force, and it will be a glorious achievement in the annals of Statesmanship.
Because the New York Times will say so. That's what it's all about; getting the Times to call you One of the Greats.
If I'm an Israeli General this morning, my job is probably figuring out how destroy the Syrian Air Force on the ground as a prelude to locating and bombing the bejesus out of some mobile SCUD launchers. And that's after I've already been kept awake nights for the past year by the problem of how to defend against, or pre-emptively strike at, an Iranian nuke.
Again, if I'm that General, I'd be in my Prime Minister's office right now begging to be given The Order, and screw what Obama has to say about anything. Obama is a strutting peacock, nothing without a staged event in front of a hand-picked and fanatically loyal audience and a teleprompter filled with someone else's words, and his opinion or wishes when the subject is the survival of the Jewish State is irrelevant. Besides, the worst you can expect in retaliation for daring to disrupt his carefully-thought-out plan of cultivating dictators who support terrorists is that John Kerry will show up to waggle his finger at you and talk out of his ass.
That's a trade I'd be willing to make.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Building the Myth of the "Great Man" of History...
Okay, so I haven't pummelled Obama this week, but maybe that's because he's given me an awful lot to think about, and gimme a break: I was busy. Anyway, this was a big week-to-ten-days for the DopenChanger-in-Chief, in terms of futility, stupidity, and surrender to our enemies.
To begin with, he's still pushing this ObamaCare crap as if it was the greatest thing since penicillin. There isn't a day that goes by that the dems aren't defending this thing in some of the most astonishing language (in terms of how they use a lot of words to say a whole lot of nothing). If you want to see just what kind of verbal gymnastics dems are now reduced to vis-a-vis Reparations for Slavery Stage I, then I suggest you take a look at Greta Van Sustern's interview last night with Sen. Ben Nelson, he of the Cornhusker Kickback.
Next, we come to the problem of Israel. Or rather, Obama's problem with Israel. The new talking-point this week is that we care more about second-bedrooms being built in Israel than we do about nuclear bombs being built in Tehran (it's kinda catchy, but a little too simplistic). For some reason, the Obama Administration, which was supposed to "strengthen the Old Alliances" continues to kick the "Old Allies" squarely in the nuts. But that's okay: Obama didn''t actually snub the Israeli Prime Minister by not inviting him to dinner and leaving him to wander the White House all by himself until after he got the "moneyshot" photo-op.
The Obamatards are simply following the lead of the several generations of the "Enlightened" Anti-Semites in liberal politics (small 'L' intentional) that came before them. It is a well-established fact, despite protests to the contrary, that the political left hates Jews. It's more than happy to accept self-hating Jews within it's ranks (and their numbers are legion), if only because it helps speed up the ultimate decline of the Jewish people by weakening them from within -- a common lefty tactic. Besides, best to know your enemy and all that.
These previous generations have all held that the primary source of conflict in the Middle East (actually, is there a war in the last 1,000 years that Jews don't get blamed for in some way?) is the existence of (in order) a) Jews (Hitler's view) and b) a Jewish state (The consensus opinion of the European Union and American Left), and that if you simply got rid of both, there'd be no more war or violence. Ever. Of course, this ignores the readily-evident facts that Arabs are violent, inbred, wife-beating retards, who if they didn't have Jews to hate would just as quickly turn upon each other. In fact, one could make the argument that when Arabs turn upon one another, the depths of the depravity, the intensity of the violence, exponentially increases. Just look at what happens when Sunni fights Shi'ite.
The real problem swirling about the State of Israel is not so much that it has Jews in it, as much as it is that it stands as an alternative to Islamic or Strongman rule. It is representative of the best aspects of Western Civilization, something Arabs so desperately admire, but cannot recreate for themselves. Israel is a viable and successful and very wealthy, and therefore extremely-attractive, alternative to what passes for civilization in Arab culture. Islam, much like Communism or National Socialism, can brook no competition, and it must strive to destroy those rivals completely before it's grip upon the minds and cultures poisoned by it fails. That is why Israel must be pushed into the sea; because it's very existence serves as a shining beacon of what Life Could Be without the Imams, Repressive Monarchies, and Leader-by-virtue-of-successful-coup-Colonels. The fact that Arabs will never learn the finer points of democracy, nor will they ever develop the attendant cultural underpinnings, is beside the point.
And of course, there's too much money involved in the violence. Do you really think Hamas and Fatah wants peace when the EU and United States simply open their wallets everytime the Israelis put a whipping on them in a fight that they started? Hamas and Fatah skim that "aid" money, and fund themselves in perpetuity with it. Anyways, back to the original point...
"Enlightened-Liberal-Anti-Semitism" basically holds that without Israel, there is no rationale for War. And if, by some chance the process of chucking Israel overboard just happens to mean the end of the Jews, well, then that's a price They're willing to pay for the appearance of peace. As an American (and a Gentile who grew up amongst some of the most Orthodox Jews you've ever seen in your life in Brooklyn), this is disgusting. What's even more nauseating is that the entire time The Left hides it's Anti-Semitism behind words like "Peace" and "Diversity". Stopping the expansion of Israeli settlements will not bring Peace; killing Arabs in numbers large enough, by methods terrible enough, to cause them to rethink the logic of their "struggle" will.
Anyways, no sooner do we piss the Israelis off and give them no assurances about their security against Iran, than Iran goes ahead and basically calls Obama a punk-ass-pussy-bitch. His response? To beg the Russians for a Nuclear Arms treaty that basically disarms US -- cutting our arsenal in half, with no ability to modernize what's left -- while getting no help from the Russkies on Iran -- the people who are building the Iranian reactors in the first place. But, the Obama Administration claims yet another "accomplishment" because it got a piece of paper with someone's signature on it (I seem to remember a certain man named Chamberlain who waved around pieces of signed paper...). The "accomplishment" is not even a workable system of actual Arms Control; it's the fact that there's a Treaty at all that is supposed to be the incredible accomplishment.
Still on the subject of Nukes, Obambi then goes to this Pantomime Dog-and-Pony show that's supposed to be about nuclear weapons, but turns out to be a sort of Woodstock for Liberal Israel Haters. No, the thrust of the meeting of a gazillion dignataries (where Obama bowed to yet another foreign dictator-in-disguise. Why not just do a tap dance, or get down on your knees and sing "Mammy!" and get it over with?), where those present "promised" to police up their loose plutonium and other nuclear materials that could be used by terrorists to make bombs.
I hate to be the one who breaks it to you, but because Obama didn't get the Russians and Chinese to help with Iran, terrorists will soon have all the plutonium and uranium they need, regardless of whether or not the Canadians, Belgians and Cayman Islanders put every speck of the stuff under lock-and-key, and keep meticulous records. Because as soon as Iran can, it'll be giving the shit away to Al'Qaeda and Islamic Jihad and anyone else who wants it, and promises to use it against Israel and the West while denying Iranian complicity. But hey, it was a stunning visual effect, that cool-looking diplomatic cluster-fuck-aerial-photo, huh? Made for a great pic for the Presidential scrapbook!
That "Summit" accomplished nothing. Because none (or very few) of the countries which are likely to be the biggest problems were in attendance, or have any intention of actually abiding by any agreements whatsoever. It was a masterful piece of political kabuki, but it means absolutely jack shit. But then again, that was the ultimate goal; to put Obama into a scenario where he looks Statesmanlike and dramatic and all leadery-like, and fuck-all if he actually manages to get something important done for all the effort; the spin-meisters will turn it into something it isn't, and half the people in America won't even know or understand what has happened.
He then has the audacity (The Audacity of Dope!) , after showing this much stupidity and ineptitude, to question Sarah Palin's expertise on nuclear policy when she criticized him? People in glass houses and all that...
Anyway, the modus operandi of the Obama White House is becoming abundantly clearer every day; they don't really care about the actual results of their policies, what they care about is creating specific moments in which Obama can be portrayed as something he isn't, and then they claim Victory. It's a Presidency that will be defined by images and by claiming that unrealistic expectations were transformed into actualities. It has to be, because after the image there isn't much of substance -- and when it all fails, as fail it must -- it will always be due to some mysterious outside force, or as Commies liked to call them, Reactionary Elements, or Counter-revolutionaries.
In the Old Days, this was a code word for Monarchists and Jews. In the New America, this is a code word for Conservatives...and Jews. The reason Obama will have failed in the eyes of future historians will be because he was Super-Human, and we were not; the photographs,the Treaties and the Summit Meetings prove it. Only Great Men have Great Moments.
So what really matter is not whether any of Obama's policies actually works; it's that he gets to have a series of Historic Moments. That these moments have to be contrived and manufactured is besides the point; a hundred years from now, no one will ever know they were, and if the Left is lucky, most or all of what Obama ushered in will have stuck. The World Will Have Changed, and in that light, Obama becomes the next best thing to Jesus -- even if that means a mushroom cloud over Jerusalem, millions of Americans dead in the street for lack of food, shelter and medical care -- and that's when they weren't killed by the nuclear weapons smuggled into the country by terrorists allied to Iran.
And we'll have the photographs to prove just how great he was.
To begin with, he's still pushing this ObamaCare crap as if it was the greatest thing since penicillin. There isn't a day that goes by that the dems aren't defending this thing in some of the most astonishing language (in terms of how they use a lot of words to say a whole lot of nothing). If you want to see just what kind of verbal gymnastics dems are now reduced to vis-a-vis Reparations for Slavery Stage I, then I suggest you take a look at Greta Van Sustern's interview last night with Sen. Ben Nelson, he of the Cornhusker Kickback.
Next, we come to the problem of Israel. Or rather, Obama's problem with Israel. The new talking-point this week is that we care more about second-bedrooms being built in Israel than we do about nuclear bombs being built in Tehran (it's kinda catchy, but a little too simplistic). For some reason, the Obama Administration, which was supposed to "strengthen the Old Alliances" continues to kick the "Old Allies" squarely in the nuts. But that's okay: Obama didn''t actually snub the Israeli Prime Minister by not inviting him to dinner and leaving him to wander the White House all by himself until after he got the "moneyshot" photo-op.
The Obamatards are simply following the lead of the several generations of the "Enlightened" Anti-Semites in liberal politics (small 'L' intentional) that came before them. It is a well-established fact, despite protests to the contrary, that the political left hates Jews. It's more than happy to accept self-hating Jews within it's ranks (and their numbers are legion), if only because it helps speed up the ultimate decline of the Jewish people by weakening them from within -- a common lefty tactic. Besides, best to know your enemy and all that.
These previous generations have all held that the primary source of conflict in the Middle East (actually, is there a war in the last 1,000 years that Jews don't get blamed for in some way?) is the existence of (in order) a) Jews (Hitler's view) and b) a Jewish state (The consensus opinion of the European Union and American Left), and that if you simply got rid of both, there'd be no more war or violence. Ever. Of course, this ignores the readily-evident facts that Arabs are violent, inbred, wife-beating retards, who if they didn't have Jews to hate would just as quickly turn upon each other. In fact, one could make the argument that when Arabs turn upon one another, the depths of the depravity, the intensity of the violence, exponentially increases. Just look at what happens when Sunni fights Shi'ite.
The real problem swirling about the State of Israel is not so much that it has Jews in it, as much as it is that it stands as an alternative to Islamic or Strongman rule. It is representative of the best aspects of Western Civilization, something Arabs so desperately admire, but cannot recreate for themselves. Israel is a viable and successful and very wealthy, and therefore extremely-attractive, alternative to what passes for civilization in Arab culture. Islam, much like Communism or National Socialism, can brook no competition, and it must strive to destroy those rivals completely before it's grip upon the minds and cultures poisoned by it fails. That is why Israel must be pushed into the sea; because it's very existence serves as a shining beacon of what Life Could Be without the Imams, Repressive Monarchies, and Leader-by-virtue-of-successful-coup-Colonels. The fact that Arabs will never learn the finer points of democracy, nor will they ever develop the attendant cultural underpinnings, is beside the point.
And of course, there's too much money involved in the violence. Do you really think Hamas and Fatah wants peace when the EU and United States simply open their wallets everytime the Israelis put a whipping on them in a fight that they started? Hamas and Fatah skim that "aid" money, and fund themselves in perpetuity with it. Anyways, back to the original point...
"Enlightened-Liberal-Anti-Semitism" basically holds that without Israel, there is no rationale for War. And if, by some chance the process of chucking Israel overboard just happens to mean the end of the Jews, well, then that's a price They're willing to pay for the appearance of peace. As an American (and a Gentile who grew up amongst some of the most Orthodox Jews you've ever seen in your life in Brooklyn), this is disgusting. What's even more nauseating is that the entire time The Left hides it's Anti-Semitism behind words like "Peace" and "Diversity". Stopping the expansion of Israeli settlements will not bring Peace; killing Arabs in numbers large enough, by methods terrible enough, to cause them to rethink the logic of their "struggle" will.
Anyways, no sooner do we piss the Israelis off and give them no assurances about their security against Iran, than Iran goes ahead and basically calls Obama a punk-ass-pussy-bitch. His response? To beg the Russians for a Nuclear Arms treaty that basically disarms US -- cutting our arsenal in half, with no ability to modernize what's left -- while getting no help from the Russkies on Iran -- the people who are building the Iranian reactors in the first place. But, the Obama Administration claims yet another "accomplishment" because it got a piece of paper with someone's signature on it (I seem to remember a certain man named Chamberlain who waved around pieces of signed paper...). The "accomplishment" is not even a workable system of actual Arms Control; it's the fact that there's a Treaty at all that is supposed to be the incredible accomplishment.
Still on the subject of Nukes, Obambi then goes to this Pantomime Dog-and-Pony show that's supposed to be about nuclear weapons, but turns out to be a sort of Woodstock for Liberal Israel Haters. No, the thrust of the meeting of a gazillion dignataries (where Obama bowed to yet another foreign dictator-in-disguise. Why not just do a tap dance, or get down on your knees and sing "Mammy!" and get it over with?), where those present "promised" to police up their loose plutonium and other nuclear materials that could be used by terrorists to make bombs.
I hate to be the one who breaks it to you, but because Obama didn't get the Russians and Chinese to help with Iran, terrorists will soon have all the plutonium and uranium they need, regardless of whether or not the Canadians, Belgians and Cayman Islanders put every speck of the stuff under lock-and-key, and keep meticulous records. Because as soon as Iran can, it'll be giving the shit away to Al'Qaeda and Islamic Jihad and anyone else who wants it, and promises to use it against Israel and the West while denying Iranian complicity. But hey, it was a stunning visual effect, that cool-looking diplomatic cluster-fuck-aerial-photo, huh? Made for a great pic for the Presidential scrapbook!
That "Summit" accomplished nothing. Because none (or very few) of the countries which are likely to be the biggest problems were in attendance, or have any intention of actually abiding by any agreements whatsoever. It was a masterful piece of political kabuki, but it means absolutely jack shit. But then again, that was the ultimate goal; to put Obama into a scenario where he looks Statesmanlike and dramatic and all leadery-like, and fuck-all if he actually manages to get something important done for all the effort; the spin-meisters will turn it into something it isn't, and half the people in America won't even know or understand what has happened.
He then has the audacity (The Audacity of Dope!) , after showing this much stupidity and ineptitude, to question Sarah Palin's expertise on nuclear policy when she criticized him? People in glass houses and all that...
Anyway, the modus operandi of the Obama White House is becoming abundantly clearer every day; they don't really care about the actual results of their policies, what they care about is creating specific moments in which Obama can be portrayed as something he isn't, and then they claim Victory. It's a Presidency that will be defined by images and by claiming that unrealistic expectations were transformed into actualities. It has to be, because after the image there isn't much of substance -- and when it all fails, as fail it must -- it will always be due to some mysterious outside force, or as Commies liked to call them, Reactionary Elements, or Counter-revolutionaries.
In the Old Days, this was a code word for Monarchists and Jews. In the New America, this is a code word for Conservatives...and Jews. The reason Obama will have failed in the eyes of future historians will be because he was Super-Human, and we were not; the photographs,the Treaties and the Summit Meetings prove it. Only Great Men have Great Moments.
So what really matter is not whether any of Obama's policies actually works; it's that he gets to have a series of Historic Moments. That these moments have to be contrived and manufactured is besides the point; a hundred years from now, no one will ever know they were, and if the Left is lucky, most or all of what Obama ushered in will have stuck. The World Will Have Changed, and in that light, Obama becomes the next best thing to Jesus -- even if that means a mushroom cloud over Jerusalem, millions of Americans dead in the street for lack of food, shelter and medical care -- and that's when they weren't killed by the nuclear weapons smuggled into the country by terrorists allied to Iran.
And we'll have the photographs to prove just how great he was.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Okay, I Have To Set Some Ground Rules Here...
If you respond to a post of mine, please, please, please DO NOT include a link to a commercial website, and for Pete's sake, don't you dare include one pertaining to your personal business.
1. Limit your links to those which are subject-oriented (I don't mind linking to other sites which offer something funny or pertinent. I do it all the time, myself), or which you think might be interesting to others.
2. If you include a hyperlink to a commercial concern in your response, it will most likely be rejected for the following reasons;
a) I don't get paid for advertising Hog Ass Brand Mouthwash, Smegma Hand Cream, or your personal Furniture Re-upholstery and Rabid Hedgehog Rehabilitation services. If you'd like to advertise here, you're welcome to do so, but remember that The Lunatic doesn't believe in the Marlboro and Absolut fairies -- those things cost money, you know, and I could use cash just like everyone else. If you'd like some attention for your business, then pay up. Just because this is the Wild Frontier of Cyberspace and The Lunatic is an anti-establishment kinda guy doesn't mean that Capitalism is dead around here. I'm sure we can come to a reasonable agreement if you want to place an ad here. Hell, I might even be persuaded (for the proper fee, maybe even for services-in-kind) to design your ad for you, and I'll gladly post it here.
b) I'm under no obligation to post any reply of yours at all. Ever. I reserve that right for obvious reasons. I'm not posting anything that is objectionable to reasonable people (stop with the Kiddie Porn, please?). If I choose to post your replies, it's because whatever you had to say was relevant or acceptable, even if I might disagree with it, and I don't even mind saucy language and a few personal insults. I can take those in stride. Debate and discussion are one thing, taking the opportunity to get in some cheap (free) advertising is another. I understand that, sometimes, these ads-dressed-up-as-replies-to-blog-posts are generated by Spambots, but I also know (or believe I can honestly discern) when they aren't.
I can certainly discern when they're sent by the democratic party, or propaganda adjuncts, thereof. Whether or not those things get a fair hearing are conditioned by their applicability to the subject at hand and relevance. Most people recognize an organized propaganda effort when they see one.
3. Thanks in part to this website, I already have a mailbox full of e-mails telling me that I've just won the Irish Lottery (again! At this rate, there should be even less money than there are snakes in Ireland), the Dubai Sweepstakes, or a lifetime supply of Flavored Condoms in Designer,-Glo-in-the-Dark Neon Colors, and other similar rot. That situation only gets worse when I start posting unsolicited hyperlinks of dubious origin embedded in reply, and people start clicking them. Then, through the magic of Al Gore's Internet, I'm targeted for mass-mailings, and Lillian Vernon catalogs that I never asked for start finding their way into my home. Save some electrons, some trees and my Letter Carrier's back; don't do it.
4. No one is taking great pains to bump my hit stats up, so why should I be obligated to bump yours? If I do direct my readership (such as it is) to your site, it's because I thought you had something interesting to say, or to emphasize a point. I would expect that others would apply the same standards. If you're hoping for a stat bump by having me or my readers click you (because clicking hyperlinks has become an almost reflexive activity in this day and age) you're barking up the wrong tree. I already get plenty of offers for Stat-bumping services, and I reject them out-of-hand as scams; I'd really hate to be used by others in similar fashion without my permission or consent.
Thanks for stopping by.
1. Limit your links to those which are subject-oriented (I don't mind linking to other sites which offer something funny or pertinent. I do it all the time, myself), or which you think might be interesting to others.
2. If you include a hyperlink to a commercial concern in your response, it will most likely be rejected for the following reasons;
a) I don't get paid for advertising Hog Ass Brand Mouthwash, Smegma Hand Cream, or your personal Furniture Re-upholstery and Rabid Hedgehog Rehabilitation services. If you'd like to advertise here, you're welcome to do so, but remember that The Lunatic doesn't believe in the Marlboro and Absolut fairies -- those things cost money, you know, and I could use cash just like everyone else. If you'd like some attention for your business, then pay up. Just because this is the Wild Frontier of Cyberspace and The Lunatic is an anti-establishment kinda guy doesn't mean that Capitalism is dead around here. I'm sure we can come to a reasonable agreement if you want to place an ad here. Hell, I might even be persuaded (for the proper fee, maybe even for services-in-kind) to design your ad for you, and I'll gladly post it here.
b) I'm under no obligation to post any reply of yours at all. Ever. I reserve that right for obvious reasons. I'm not posting anything that is objectionable to reasonable people (stop with the Kiddie Porn, please?). If I choose to post your replies, it's because whatever you had to say was relevant or acceptable, even if I might disagree with it, and I don't even mind saucy language and a few personal insults. I can take those in stride. Debate and discussion are one thing, taking the opportunity to get in some cheap (free) advertising is another. I understand that, sometimes, these ads-dressed-up-as-replies-to-blog-posts are generated by Spambots, but I also know (or believe I can honestly discern) when they aren't.
I can certainly discern when they're sent by the democratic party, or propaganda adjuncts, thereof. Whether or not those things get a fair hearing are conditioned by their applicability to the subject at hand and relevance. Most people recognize an organized propaganda effort when they see one.
3. Thanks in part to this website, I already have a mailbox full of e-mails telling me that I've just won the Irish Lottery (again! At this rate, there should be even less money than there are snakes in Ireland), the Dubai Sweepstakes, or a lifetime supply of Flavored Condoms in Designer,-Glo-in-the-Dark Neon Colors, and other similar rot. That situation only gets worse when I start posting unsolicited hyperlinks of dubious origin embedded in reply, and people start clicking them. Then, through the magic of Al Gore's Internet, I'm targeted for mass-mailings, and Lillian Vernon catalogs that I never asked for start finding their way into my home. Save some electrons, some trees and my Letter Carrier's back; don't do it.
4. No one is taking great pains to bump my hit stats up, so why should I be obligated to bump yours? If I do direct my readership (such as it is) to your site, it's because I thought you had something interesting to say, or to emphasize a point. I would expect that others would apply the same standards. If you're hoping for a stat bump by having me or my readers click you (because clicking hyperlinks has become an almost reflexive activity in this day and age) you're barking up the wrong tree. I already get plenty of offers for Stat-bumping services, and I reject them out-of-hand as scams; I'd really hate to be used by others in similar fashion without my permission or consent.
Thanks for stopping by.
Some Thoughts on Putting a Life Back Together...
I've been away this week, tending to more important things than yelling ineffectually from the rooftops. It has been an enforced, but completely necessary, endeavor. One of the things I would assume that most people take for granted is being a "functioning" or even "recognized" member of society, and it's only in retrospect that I've discovered -- probably re-discovered, because I know that I've always known this but have conveniently ignored it -- is that it's not as easy as we think it is, and moreover, we make it more difficult by our own (in-)action, mostly unconscious (in-)action.
Yeah, that doesn't make much sense, but bear with me -- I'm a mental patient, after all, and my internal monologues don't always translate well to others. I'm spitballing here. I'm sure that's a common thing; the subjects you think upon and the conclusions you arrive at make perfect sense to You, inside the space of your own head, but they aren't always readily communicable to others.
For about seven years now, I've basically dropped off the radar screen in all respects. This has been by choice, mostly. I find the company of most people to be tedious, annoying, and an unwelcome intrusion. I rarely go anywhere, if I can avoid it, preferring the comfort of home to the Nasty Spaces Outside. Watching 3,000 people get murdered in the most horrible fashion imaginable and perceiving that none seem to really give a shit about it might make you think this way. Misanthropy, I think they call it; a hatred of your fellow Man. I know that it was based on some notion of "superiority", but by what system of comparison I had arrived at the conclusion that I'm better than anyone else is nebulous; it's an amalgamation of concepts that taken singly make very little sense, and when taken together become clearer, even approaching a Personal Philosophy, maybe, but it really isn't readily explainable to someone else.
I believe that "dropping out" was a necessary thing. It seemed that way at the time. You can't suffer the traumas I have and not want to withdraw and still call yourself a Human Being. It is only "normal" to close your eyes at the horror that is Modern Life, if only for a little while, but completely unacceptable to believe that you can consciously build walls to keep it at bay forever without doing serious harm to yourself, and your standing, in the process. At some point, you have to just accept that The World does not operate on the same wavelength that You do, and either learn to accept it, or find constructive, useful ways around it. A form of opportunism, if you will, a sense that I will take Life as it comes, taking advantage where I can, and declining action where that seems prudent, too.
Creating a bubble to live in, where all outside influences are kept at bay except for those you believe you can safely control and regulate to your needs and tastes, is simply a form of mental surrender. You can convince yourself that it's a virtue, and that even works for a length of time, but at some point, that bubble must burst, and the longer it's maintained the more traumatic and difficult the "re-birth". Seven years is a long time, and I've probably done more damage to myself in that time while trying to "protect" Me, than I would have suffered if I had just "Manned-up" and took yet one more on the chin.
It's even worse when you're under the mistaken impression that Life should be fair. And even the term "Fair" doesn't exactly square with anything approaching a valid definition, since in itself, it's a term that has no real meaning in a world of situational ethics; there are people who will die today, and that isn't Fair --but, Hey, at least it's not Me!. There are some who will become fabulously wealthy today, Someone else is going to be told they have three days to live, a child will be born with a debilitating defect, or someone will get hit by a stray bullet while minding their own business at a Bus Stop, and they'll be sitting there thinking, "This is total Bullshit!", I'm certain. My personal version of "Unfair" was based upon the belief, probably a result of my upbringing, that there were certain rules in Life that were inviolate, graven in stone, only to find that they weren't, and then crying about how that revelation wasn't "Fair" to an audience that largely could give a shit, and which certainly wasn't going to disrupt their own version of Life to do anything about it. They had their own litany of sorrows about how Life was Unfair, and who the fuck was I to assume that their losses, indignities and annoyances were any less important than mine?
Why did I expect any of them to care? Who says I should expect them to?
Mostly because I believed, as most idealists do (and trust me, all my Idealism has been pounded right out of me by experience), that people have bonds, they have a set of responsibilities to one another, that "Right" and "Fair" are concepts understood by everyone in the same, unmistakable terms. I've also believed that I had an Entitlement, that when I sacrificed on behalf of someone else that they were obligated by some cosmic sense of Justice to return the favor, and not just when or as they were able to, but when I demanded it or deemed it necessary.
I guess that makes me a disgusting, selfish, idiotic bag of DNA, too, but be that as it may, when that Cosmic Justice thing didn't quite work out for me the way I wanted it too, it became yet one more reason to withdraw a little bit further. Eventually, the only "World" you experience is the one within your own skull, only to find there's really nothing there. Nothing very attractive, anyway. That "Outside World", the one with the unvirtuous, disgusting little selfish beings you hate so much, is really all there is, and you'll just have to rejoin it at some point, as terrible as that idea sounds.
And so you try, but you soon find that your retreat from the Outside World comes with penalties; you've put so many obstacles in the path of reentry by virtue of your own inertia, an abject neglect or rejection of petty, but important, details that were once just a conveniently ignored part of the torture chamber. These petty details have a strange way of coming back to haunt you.
Like when you need new identification documents, and you haven't kept your old ones up-to-date, and now you have to prove that, sans the evidence to the contrary -- you're standing there in front of the Bureaucrat, after all -- you actually DO exist, despite what "The Computer" says. You would be astonished at how deeply and thoroughly this society has been systematically reduced to ones-and-zeroes, with a corresponding mentality to accompany it. A seemingly-bulletproof stupidity that dictates independent thought without the aid of an electronic gadget is impossible. It becomes evident when you have logic and fact on your side, and the Other Side has only a database, which might or might not be accurate. It's gone so far that people are willing to believe what "The Computer says" more than what YOU have to say.
You'd be astonished at how the legal system works against you, in secret and without your knowledge, when it can't contact you -- or more likely -- when it can't be bothered to try, or if it becomes inconvenient (i.e. they might lose the suit) to do so. You'd be flabbergasted if I told you that right now, thousands, tens of thousands, perhaps millions, of Americans are parties (usually defendants) to lawsuits that are being brought against them in states in which they don't even live, or have never lived in at all -- and they don't know a thing about them. Worse, they're having judgements rendered - -and almost always against them -- in these courts when they aren't even present, having never been summoned. They can't offer a defense or mitigation, or offer evidence, and worse, The Law allows it -- in fact, encourages it. Because the Law is no longer about giving order to Society, it has become the personal feeding trough of the Legal Profession, and a a tool of those who seek regulating power over all aspects of your life.
Can't let a little thing like not being able to contact the prospective defendant get in the way of getting a fee or recovering money at exorbitant interest rates for the client.
You'd be amazed to know that it's perfectly legal for your creditors to simply change the address of the "Main Office" from which they do business in order to take advantage of looser state laws and regulations regarding usury and the standards of evidence specifically for the purposes of bringing these lawsuits and obtaining default judgements against you. In a time and place other than "Modern America" this might be called "Extortion", maybe even "Felonious".
At the end of the day, these are all, ultimately, cases of personal responsibility, or rather, personal irresponsibility. I didn't write The Rules -- not to mention the Unwritten Ones -- but nonetheless, there they are. Sometimes, as the saying goes, the flies don't get to pick which pile of shit they land on. My mistake was to believe that I was "special" and entitled to have The Rules applied in a way that was conditioned by my pre-conceived and wholly unrealistic notions of "Fair". And because I believed I was justified in thinking and behaving otherwise, in fact I held this all as a virtue, I have dug a deeper hole.
I've gotten myself into a support group, because I have issues, many of which I have known about for a long time but have refused to tend to, and those can (mostly) be fixed. Yes, you are all diseased, but I will learn how to forgive you that sin. It will require some retraining and a new point-of-view on just about everything, but mostly it will be about learning to adapt to "New Realities", as President Odickhead is fond of saying. The World no longer operates on the system of values I was taught to respect. "Progress", or the notion of it in any case, often does this to a culture.
I've also gotten myself a lawyer (a damned good one, too!), and once I've proven that I do, in fact, exist (we're not yet, I hope, at the point of Orwell's concept of the Unperson. It's amazing that for the purposes of a secret lawsuit my existence was already taken for granted, but God forbid I want a State-issued identification card!) , I can hopefully go about the business of "reintegrating" into Society, and perhaps take all I've learned during this enforced exile and put it to work to my advantage.
If you thought I was a Bad Boy before I withdrew from your (collectively) sickening presence, just wait until I get these problems sorted out; I'll be your worst nightmare. Ten years from now, I'll be blogging about my beachfront property in Antigua, my twenty servants, and how I kicked the crap out of a beggar with impunity in the streets in full view of multiple witnesses. Perhaps my appetites and desires really won't go this far, but what I've learned is that selfishness and personal responsibility (defined as responsibility for Me and to Me, not to or for Thee) go hand-in-glove if you really want to thrive in what passes for civilization now, rather than to simply exist.
Be afraid. Be very afraid. There's a Lunatic out there determined to play your game by his own rules, and if past history is any indication, if you tell "You Can't" don't be surprised when he replies "Fuck you...just watch me!"
Yeah, that doesn't make much sense, but bear with me -- I'm a mental patient, after all, and my internal monologues don't always translate well to others. I'm spitballing here. I'm sure that's a common thing; the subjects you think upon and the conclusions you arrive at make perfect sense to You, inside the space of your own head, but they aren't always readily communicable to others.
For about seven years now, I've basically dropped off the radar screen in all respects. This has been by choice, mostly. I find the company of most people to be tedious, annoying, and an unwelcome intrusion. I rarely go anywhere, if I can avoid it, preferring the comfort of home to the Nasty Spaces Outside. Watching 3,000 people get murdered in the most horrible fashion imaginable and perceiving that none seem to really give a shit about it might make you think this way. Misanthropy, I think they call it; a hatred of your fellow Man. I know that it was based on some notion of "superiority", but by what system of comparison I had arrived at the conclusion that I'm better than anyone else is nebulous; it's an amalgamation of concepts that taken singly make very little sense, and when taken together become clearer, even approaching a Personal Philosophy, maybe, but it really isn't readily explainable to someone else.
I believe that "dropping out" was a necessary thing. It seemed that way at the time. You can't suffer the traumas I have and not want to withdraw and still call yourself a Human Being. It is only "normal" to close your eyes at the horror that is Modern Life, if only for a little while, but completely unacceptable to believe that you can consciously build walls to keep it at bay forever without doing serious harm to yourself, and your standing, in the process. At some point, you have to just accept that The World does not operate on the same wavelength that You do, and either learn to accept it, or find constructive, useful ways around it. A form of opportunism, if you will, a sense that I will take Life as it comes, taking advantage where I can, and declining action where that seems prudent, too.
Creating a bubble to live in, where all outside influences are kept at bay except for those you believe you can safely control and regulate to your needs and tastes, is simply a form of mental surrender. You can convince yourself that it's a virtue, and that even works for a length of time, but at some point, that bubble must burst, and the longer it's maintained the more traumatic and difficult the "re-birth". Seven years is a long time, and I've probably done more damage to myself in that time while trying to "protect" Me, than I would have suffered if I had just "Manned-up" and took yet one more on the chin.
It's even worse when you're under the mistaken impression that Life should be fair. And even the term "Fair" doesn't exactly square with anything approaching a valid definition, since in itself, it's a term that has no real meaning in a world of situational ethics; there are people who will die today, and that isn't Fair --but, Hey, at least it's not Me!. There are some who will become fabulously wealthy today, Someone else is going to be told they have three days to live, a child will be born with a debilitating defect, or someone will get hit by a stray bullet while minding their own business at a Bus Stop, and they'll be sitting there thinking, "This is total Bullshit!", I'm certain. My personal version of "Unfair" was based upon the belief, probably a result of my upbringing, that there were certain rules in Life that were inviolate, graven in stone, only to find that they weren't, and then crying about how that revelation wasn't "Fair" to an audience that largely could give a shit, and which certainly wasn't going to disrupt their own version of Life to do anything about it. They had their own litany of sorrows about how Life was Unfair, and who the fuck was I to assume that their losses, indignities and annoyances were any less important than mine?
Why did I expect any of them to care? Who says I should expect them to?
Mostly because I believed, as most idealists do (and trust me, all my Idealism has been pounded right out of me by experience), that people have bonds, they have a set of responsibilities to one another, that "Right" and "Fair" are concepts understood by everyone in the same, unmistakable terms. I've also believed that I had an Entitlement, that when I sacrificed on behalf of someone else that they were obligated by some cosmic sense of Justice to return the favor, and not just when or as they were able to, but when I demanded it or deemed it necessary.
I guess that makes me a disgusting, selfish, idiotic bag of DNA, too, but be that as it may, when that Cosmic Justice thing didn't quite work out for me the way I wanted it too, it became yet one more reason to withdraw a little bit further. Eventually, the only "World" you experience is the one within your own skull, only to find there's really nothing there. Nothing very attractive, anyway. That "Outside World", the one with the unvirtuous, disgusting little selfish beings you hate so much, is really all there is, and you'll just have to rejoin it at some point, as terrible as that idea sounds.
And so you try, but you soon find that your retreat from the Outside World comes with penalties; you've put so many obstacles in the path of reentry by virtue of your own inertia, an abject neglect or rejection of petty, but important, details that were once just a conveniently ignored part of the torture chamber. These petty details have a strange way of coming back to haunt you.
Like when you need new identification documents, and you haven't kept your old ones up-to-date, and now you have to prove that, sans the evidence to the contrary -- you're standing there in front of the Bureaucrat, after all -- you actually DO exist, despite what "The Computer" says. You would be astonished at how deeply and thoroughly this society has been systematically reduced to ones-and-zeroes, with a corresponding mentality to accompany it. A seemingly-bulletproof stupidity that dictates independent thought without the aid of an electronic gadget is impossible. It becomes evident when you have logic and fact on your side, and the Other Side has only a database, which might or might not be accurate. It's gone so far that people are willing to believe what "The Computer says" more than what YOU have to say.
You'd be astonished at how the legal system works against you, in secret and without your knowledge, when it can't contact you -- or more likely -- when it can't be bothered to try, or if it becomes inconvenient (i.e. they might lose the suit) to do so. You'd be flabbergasted if I told you that right now, thousands, tens of thousands, perhaps millions, of Americans are parties (usually defendants) to lawsuits that are being brought against them in states in which they don't even live, or have never lived in at all -- and they don't know a thing about them. Worse, they're having judgements rendered - -and almost always against them -- in these courts when they aren't even present, having never been summoned. They can't offer a defense or mitigation, or offer evidence, and worse, The Law allows it -- in fact, encourages it. Because the Law is no longer about giving order to Society, it has become the personal feeding trough of the Legal Profession, and a a tool of those who seek regulating power over all aspects of your life.
Can't let a little thing like not being able to contact the prospective defendant get in the way of getting a fee or recovering money at exorbitant interest rates for the client.
You'd be amazed to know that it's perfectly legal for your creditors to simply change the address of the "Main Office" from which they do business in order to take advantage of looser state laws and regulations regarding usury and the standards of evidence specifically for the purposes of bringing these lawsuits and obtaining default judgements against you. In a time and place other than "Modern America" this might be called "Extortion", maybe even "Felonious".
At the end of the day, these are all, ultimately, cases of personal responsibility, or rather, personal irresponsibility. I didn't write The Rules -- not to mention the Unwritten Ones -- but nonetheless, there they are. Sometimes, as the saying goes, the flies don't get to pick which pile of shit they land on. My mistake was to believe that I was "special" and entitled to have The Rules applied in a way that was conditioned by my pre-conceived and wholly unrealistic notions of "Fair". And because I believed I was justified in thinking and behaving otherwise, in fact I held this all as a virtue, I have dug a deeper hole.
I've gotten myself into a support group, because I have issues, many of which I have known about for a long time but have refused to tend to, and those can (mostly) be fixed. Yes, you are all diseased, but I will learn how to forgive you that sin. It will require some retraining and a new point-of-view on just about everything, but mostly it will be about learning to adapt to "New Realities", as President Odickhead is fond of saying. The World no longer operates on the system of values I was taught to respect. "Progress", or the notion of it in any case, often does this to a culture.
I've also gotten myself a lawyer (a damned good one, too!), and once I've proven that I do, in fact, exist (we're not yet, I hope, at the point of Orwell's concept of the Unperson. It's amazing that for the purposes of a secret lawsuit my existence was already taken for granted, but God forbid I want a State-issued identification card!) , I can hopefully go about the business of "reintegrating" into Society, and perhaps take all I've learned during this enforced exile and put it to work to my advantage.
If you thought I was a Bad Boy before I withdrew from your (collectively) sickening presence, just wait until I get these problems sorted out; I'll be your worst nightmare. Ten years from now, I'll be blogging about my beachfront property in Antigua, my twenty servants, and how I kicked the crap out of a beggar with impunity in the streets in full view of multiple witnesses. Perhaps my appetites and desires really won't go this far, but what I've learned is that selfishness and personal responsibility (defined as responsibility for Me and to Me, not to or for Thee) go hand-in-glove if you really want to thrive in what passes for civilization now, rather than to simply exist.
Be afraid. Be very afraid. There's a Lunatic out there determined to play your game by his own rules, and if past history is any indication, if you tell "You Can't" don't be surprised when he replies "Fuck you...just watch me!"
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)