I made reference to James Burnham's The Managerial Revolution a few days ago, and got some mail from people asking me where they could find a copy, since it doesn't seem to be floating around many Public Libraries these days.
Of course, you can find all the Jacqueline Suzanne you want, but very little in the way of Political Science. Unless it's Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals, which I'm led to understand the library can't keep on the shelves, or Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged (can't wait for the movie!). Amazon.com has The Managerial Revolution -- at an unconscionable price. I personally found my copy at The Strand bookstore in Manhattan, many years ago, and I think I paid about $8 for a used copy, so try them. Otherwise, I'd keep my eyes peeled at used book sales, swap meets, etc.
For those who can't afford the ass-rape price over at Amazon.com, I'll summarize the book for you here as best I can.
Burnham wrote the book in about 1940 or '41, at the start of the Second World War. His basic premise was that laissez-faire capitalism was as dead as a doornail, and as proof of this dictum, he pointed to the defeat of the capitalist nations of France, and the hanging-on-by-it's-fingernails desperation of Great Britain and it's empire. Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy were going to win the war, according to Burnham, because they had abandoned the old-fashioned, outdated, unworkable system of Capitalism. The superiority of the Nazi/Fascist economic system, where industries were nationalized but their owners allowed to keep ownership -- and profit -- by the State, was evident by it's visible effects upon the battlefields of Europe.
Burnham also made the point that while Capitalism was doomed, Socialism wasn't exactly automatically going to inherit the Earth, as many Leftists had hoped (the Soviet Union, he felt, would also be defeated, or at least come to some accommodation with the Nazis in order to simply survive). What was going to replace those two systems was a mixture of both; a planned economy (on the Nazi, socialist model), geared to national aggrandizement and victory, but run by a new generation of people who weren't interested in such old-fashioned notions as mere profit, as much as they were eager to be the New Arbiters of Power within this new system.
This New Generations were to be called The Managers. Their ranks were to consist of the politicians, scientists, technical specialists, inventors, lawyers, media types, and so forth, who were willing to put their talents to work for the empowerment of the State in return for special privileges; the opportunity to manipulate the levers of power for their own benefit. These were the men and women who would remake society according to their tastes, and being privileged employees of the State, they were to also acquire the ability to direct resources as they saw fit (usually, in their own direction).
The Managers, in the new, Managerial State, would find their way into positions from which they could influence business and government according to their efforts, while remaining invisible.
A similar idea was once also promulgated by the Italian Communist, Antonio Gramsci, who postulated that if given a choice between full-blown Communism and Capitalist Democracy, the greater mass of the people would choose Capitalist Democracy almost every time. Therefore, the Communist was always assured of defeat in fair electoral politics. So, instead of engaging in electoral politics, the True Believer Commie would instead make an effort to insinuate himself into the institutions of the State -- into the educational system, the judiciary, the legal profession, law enforcement, labor unions, and so forth -- and work within the bureaucracies to promulgate his stupidity. Much like the Managerial Class would do.
In any case, Burnham turned out to be wrong in a major way: the Soviet Union, Great Britain and the United States defeated Hitler and Mussolini, and it was the American Capitalist System that had become the Arsenal of Democracy that built the guns, ships, planes, grew the food, pumped the oil, and shipped it all over the oceans to every battlefield where it was needed, and wherever it could be brought to bear against the enemy.
In fact, I think it was 1944 -- when Germany was staring certain defeat in the face -- when Burnham changed his original thesis in another book, The Machiavellians, in which he basically said "forget what I said before...it's obvious that Hitler and Mussolini had the right idea, but were just the wrong guys to lead this new Managerial Revolution, but the idea will survive. Democracy, it turned out, was far more amenable to Managerialism after all than Dictatorship was... just you wait..."
And we waited.
You now live in a world which is managed by selfish little toads to the nth degree. Products are produced with built-in obsolescence as a major consideration, and with full knowledge that newer-and-better technologies and products are available now but deliberately held back by Big Business. Government advocates on behalf of this industry or that, sends trade missions to foreign countries on their behalf, and negotiates Free Trade Agreements which allow favored industries to relocate the more expensive aspects of their operations overseas (where wages are lower and regulation non-existent). Where it would be inconvenient to move operations, the government then allows masses of illegal immigrants to pass into the country unmolested, or issues H1-B visas to effectively do the same thing. The Middle Class is deliberately destroyed so as to make them dependant upon government.
There is no longer anything that can be described as a Free Market, anymore. Markets are now manipulated by a hybrid of Business Interests and Government Regulations. Government now picks winners and losers in industry. Businesses are started overnight with government subsidies, and then quickly die when the subsidy money dries up without having produced a single thing except profits for it's executives. Banks are allowed to defy economic logic and extend their reach into stock markets, mortgage markets and insurance industry, and then are bailed out by legislators and Presidents who have been bought and sold by corporate money when they become Too-Big-To-Fail -- and no one notices that it was the lawmakers (manipulated by the Managerial Class) who allowed them to get that way by issuing this or that waiver, or failing to perform the basic oversight duties its empowered to conduct.
And when the inevitable happens -- disaster looms -- then government simply demands more restrictive and intrusive powers to ensure that 'this never happens again!' Restrictive and intrusive powers put into the hands of...you guessed it: the Managerial Class (i.e. the bureaucracy).
How do you think GE has managed to avoid paying any taxes whatsoever, get Jeffrey Immelt (perhaps the worst CEO in America today) on the President's Economic Advisory Board, and then stand to profit enormously because of its involvement in Green Energy, Electric Hybrid Vehicles, High-Speed Rail and Nuclear Power projects? Not to mention having it's finance arm, GE Capital (the largest such finance company in the world) bailed out by American taxpayers? The Oil and Coal industries are being slowly strangled in the name of environMENTALism -- another branch of Managerialism; this one says we can control the weather with lovely thoughts and strangling Western Economies -- from which GE will profit handsomely, and gladly return some of that tax-free profit into Obama's and the democratic party's coffers.
General Motors and the UAW have also been the recipients of government largess, and they will, we're assured, in the very near future be building automobiles powered by GE products. Those automobiles will be protected against foreign competition by the government (remember all those Potemkin Toyota Hearings last year? Oh, btw, it turns out that Toyotas don't have accelerator problems...only stupid drivers). The Defense Industry has it's hooks into every Congresscritter who's ever lived, so that Congress can fund 400 F-22's when the Air Force only wants 300, sell tanker aircraft the military doesn't even want, build tanks which are overkill for the current battlefields were on, fund jet engine programs that no one wants, and spend money to ensure that every soldier has every high-tech geegaw, regardless of it's actual battlefield utility?
NASA only exists to ensure that thousands of highly-trained specialists actually have jobs. In return, we get to watch them shoot golf carts to other planets we could never live on, chase asteroids, build an International Space Station for which we bear the burden of cost, and look for exoplanets in other galaxies we can't reach for millenia, if ever. There is currently no replacement due for the Space Shuttle for another decade, and not too much of a domestic, commercial Space Industry in this country: Do you believe the government is simply going to allow all that talent and experience to either wither away, or worse, head overseas? NASA engineers and technicians will, mark my words, be able to write their own checks.
You get your news and entertainment from corporate conglomerates that are cheerleaders for this-or-that political point of view, and they don't even try to hide their biases anymore. The executives of the major networks exert their influence on behalf of the political parties. Hollywood makes films attacking this or that political standpoint, or cultural tradition. News anchors have absolutely incredible power to shape public opinion. Newspaper editors, too. All contribute to political parties and candidates, and then actively seek to aid the very politicians they've bought, or raised to prominence. Editorial content is carefully vetted, crafted, infused with orthodoxy, to ensure that only one point of view is presented, and that any other point of view is discredited.
Washington, D.C. (and every state capitol, also) is absolutely lousy with lobbyists, lawyers, think tanks, special interest groups, etc. These people actually write legislation in cahoots with lawmakers, carving out special breaks, tax credits, waivers, relaxation of regulations, legal immunities, for themselves or their clients, and then ensure that a steady stream of cash flows into campaign coffers, or that lucrative job offers for 'retired' politicians are available when needed, in return.
The healthcare industry is about to be handed over to the Federal Unions. The private insurance industry is about to be squeezed out of the medical insurance racket by legal means, economic factors, and state-run insurance exchanges, all brought into being by ObamaCare. That new system will be run by the bureaucrats who made Medicare such a rousing success. The ultimate goal is to de-privatize as much of the healthcare system as possible, and then leave the business of deciding who lives and dies in the hands of a nameless, faceless, unelected mish-mash of bureaucracies, approval boards, Death Panels, government accounting boards, lawyers, and so forth.
President Odingbat, in order to better run all these new government bureaucracies that he's created and dole out the giveaways to politically-favored people and entities, has appointed something like 35 'Czars' who are unelected, unanswerable to the people or Congress, and as we have seen, have little or no regard for the law. They seem to act capriciously, and pick-and-choose who wins and who loses according to their personal preferences, or according to political orientation/affiliation.
Your Public Schools and Universities are chock full of people pretending to be educators, but their real job is to indoctrinate; to prepare future generations of people for the day when every aspect of their lives will be controlled for them, where their decisions will be made for them. We turn out college graduates who can't add. We promote elementary school children who can't read. Textbooks are devoid of facts, and full of pie-in-the-sky garbage disguised as scholarship. The price of a college education continues to climb, ensuring that only the 'right'people -- i.e. rich liberals who can afford it, or who have been exempted from the more onerous and oppressive dictates of government -- will be able to get one. And where will they work? Not private industry -- which will soon be destroyed -- but for the government. The schools impose "Speech Codes" ostensibly for the protection of people's sensibilities, but mostly because no dissent against the coming Managerial Revolution can be voiced, or even tolerated.
Wall Street, once a bastion of Conservative Capitalists, is more and more coming to be dominated by the Rich Liberal. Wall Street poured more campaign cash into Barack Obama's coffers than they ever did any republican, in the last election cycle. In return, ex-Obama administration appointees find themselves with highly-paid sinecures when they leave Public Service, and the Firms find themselves with a ready supply of people who have the ears of those in power, or in a position to re-write this or that reg, squash this or that investigation. And to be fair, it was going on long before Obama came down the pike; How many Clinton Administration officials found themselves on the board of directors of Citigroup, JP Morgan., AIG, and others?
How much influence do NOW, the NAACP, United Nations, Council on Foreign Relations, EncironMENTAL groups, a thousand think tanks, study groups, blue-ribbon panels, immigrant spokesdouches, Advocacy Groups of a Thousand Stripes visibly exert upon American Policy? How often do we see the same people leave -- and then re-enter -- 'government service' on a regular basis?
Burnham predicted this would happen; a collusion between business, government, and politically-favored-and-funded groups in which one hand washes the other; but instead of just the old-fashioned notions of plain old graft and bribery, all this coziness has an identifiable, and yet not-too-easy-to-discern, goal; the Management of the American Public by people and groups who will stand to benefit the most from the re-ordering of society when the fruits of capitalism are 'spread around' in the proper fashion. And by the proper people.
Of course, such a thing will eventually destroy the very capitalism that it depends upon to fund it, but that was the goal all along. Once there's no more money and the ensuing crisis such an event will create finally arrives, government (i.e. the Managers) will simply grant itself "Emergency Powers" to re-order society as it sees fit. The decisions on who gets what, if anything, will be made by the same Managerial Class (bureacrats, 'experts', and so forth) that probably engineered the crisis in the first place. Socialism will arrive -- if not in name but surely in effect -- without there ever having been a vote in favor of it, without a violent revolution, and without anyone ever identifying it as 'Socialism' at all.
NOTE: This post has been edited for spelling, and punctuation, and a few additional notes have been added since the original publication.
Showing posts with label Nuclear Power. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nuclear Power. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Monday, July 12, 2010
How Would You Fix It? Part II
My apologies for posting this several days late: Life intruded, as if often does, and I had no time for blogging.
Here are some observations about four new subjects, Race Relations, Energy, the Two-party system, and the BP Oil Spill. I hope to explain my extreme and diseased views on these subjects, and then tell you what I think should be done about them by We The Citizens, because depending upon government to solve these issues is sort of like asking your Golden Retriever to do your taxes -- he might by pure chance get it right, but he's far more likely to slobber and drool, and leave muddy paw prints upon the forms, if he hasn't already used them to take a dump on.
As to how We The Citizens are to affect these changes is something I cannot tell you. I've thought about the how, but then I realize that actually making these changes would require the entire culture be uprooted and replaced. We live in a modern culture which rewards the stupid and the lazy, mostly because it has been created BY the stupid and the lazy, for the benefit of other stupid and lazy people. While there are brilliant and innovative minds at work in America (despite the best efforts of Barack Obama to drive them out of the country), they increasingly turn their talents towards making life easier, without making it any more tolerable; you can get an iPhone app to figure out your four-way lunch bill in a restaurant, saving you the trouble of learning math. You can take a pill to control your cholesterol, cure your vaginal dryness, or lose weight without having to make drastic "lifestyle changes". The Digital Revolution makes for better communications and more efficient use and exchange of information, but no one seems to get any smarter, or to even listen to one another, anymore.
The only solution that I can imagine which might start to affect the cultural change we require is by that of personal example (if only because a carefully-planned program of street executions might not go over so well). If ONE person changes the way he or she lives and the choices they make, then perhaps someone else will see them do it, and likewise make the same changes. That's a very long shot, indeed, but it's better than the alternatives (depending on government, or Oprah).
Without further ado;
A) Race Relations
1. Slavery was abolished a long time ago. Jim Crow is dead. There have been Civil Rights Acts, Voting Rights Acts, Welfare Statism and Affirmative Action up the wazoo. If African-Americans still feel they haven't progressed (despite the evidence to the contrary), then we're probably no longer dealing with the lingering effects of victimization and "institutional Racism", and are more likely dealing with a mental illness, and a reflexive habit. The next time I hear an African-American scream "Racism!" I'm giving him the number of a really good psychiatrist. I'm tired of being made to feel guilty (doesn't work anymore!) and being made to pay for something I did not do and which is now well-and-truly in the past, and now which only serves as a poor excuse for the worst of behavior. I say to African-Americans: it's the 21st Century, come to the front of the bus -- and stand with the rest of us.
2. There is an entire generation of "Civil Rights Leaders" and countless organizations who constantly beat the "Racism" drum because it's been made economically- and politically-rewarding for them to do so. The truth is that Jesse, Rev. Al, and Rev. Wright have not changed a single thing for the better for anyone -- let alone their own race -- for over 40 years. At what point, do you think, someone will have the balls to stand up and say "Hey, this doesn't work. Can we try something else?". Even the NAACP, where one of those A's supposedly stands for "Advancement", is still attached to the rhetoric and "solutions" of years gone by. "Solutions", incidentally, which have only deepened the psychosis of a people who have apparently been taught that the answer to every problem in life is to hold your hand out and demand something you haven't earned -- or you'll pitch a riot.
3. The election of Barack Obama at first appeared to be a sign that America was finally beyond race; Americans had finally elected a (half-) black man to the highest office in the land. In hindsight this now appears not to have been an exercise in fairness and equality, but an act of desperation. The future was bleak in November of 2008, and the only other choices were a man who might not know what day of the week it was, and a modern-day Mussolini in a Black Panstuit encumbered by a horndog husband who would fuck a catcher's mitt, if it held still long enough, and the Secret Service could keep it a secret. That desperation gave us a President who was thoroughly unprepared, lacking common sense or knowledge of how the government actually works, a background sufficiently muddled so that even he can't explain it, and who somehow managed to graduate Harvard with a degree in Constitutional Law without apparently ever having read that document. In office, President Obama seems more interested in playing golf and enjoying the perks of office, rather than in actually doing the job for which he was hired, and when he actually does it, the results are about what you would expect from a brain-damaged four year old working with a hammer and a chainsaw.
In effect, Barack Obama has become the visible symbol of every negative stereotype that Whites ever held about blacks; He's an unqualified Affirmative-Action Baby who never held a real job in his life and who won't do this one, if he can avoid it. However, he has no trouble picking up a paycheck for as long as he can decently get away with it, all the while being paid the back-handed compliment of "he speaks so well...." from the upper crust of Libtard hypocrites. To hear Obama speak now -- far from the days when people were probably paid to faint at his speeches for dramatic effect -- all you can now hear is the constant repetition of a single theme -- "It's All Whitey's fault" -- in which George W. Bush, Wall Street, British Petroleum, the Republican Party, Religious people, Gun Owners, Law-and-Order conservatives and Immigration reformers all stand for "Whitey". Now you know just what effect Rev. Wright had on the man who sat in the pew for 20 years but mysteriously didn't hear nuffin'.
If Barack Obama survives his term in office (and by that I mean avoids impeachment, the ravages of hypertension, and the synapse-crushing banality of Joe Biden) he will probably have done more to set race relations back than any other individual now alive. He may be the first (half-) black President of the United States -- but he may also very well be the last one forever. Just remember that when it comes time for African-Americans to complain (due again in about 15 minutes) that "We never got a chance". These problems didn't appear overnight, and Obama knew there were two wars and an economic crisis when he lobbied for the job claiming to have all the answers, so he can't complain now. And neither can African-Americans who wanted a Savior but are forced to support a Scoundrel solely on the basis of a racial affinity system that they constructed themselves.
4. Instead of selecting Barack Obama as your hero and life-example, you might want to re-consider the example of Gansta Rappers -- stripped of the veneer of their"music" and "art"; unlike the President, these guys at least understand economics and Capitalism better than most Ivy-League educated Economists, obviously work hard to build their little empires, and are probably smart enough, in their own ways, to have been anything they desired had they not chosen "rapper" as a career path. Even if they have made their fortunes selling cultural poison, they were at least honest about their motives: Dollah-Dollah, biotch!
5. To All my Mexican "Amigos" (the ones leading the unwanted invasion); we Gringos don't owe you anything either, and the Southwest isn't "your" country anymore. While the Southwest USED to be your country, you lost it. You lost it because Mexicans couldn't make it economically viable, and so you had to import Gringos -- Gringos with a history of fighting for liberty, the rule of law, and personal notions about individual rights and the prerogatives/limitations of government -- to do it for you. You mistreated them, and so they did what came naturally to them; they revolted. You lost the War. Your leaders bankrupted your country in the process, and the territory they didn't lose in War, they sold off to cover their debts. To Us Gringos. Get over it. Your country is still economically moribund, and you still live in it and we don't, so try to figure out if there's a common theme there. We're not "stealing" from or "oppressing" you. Accept this basic truth, and you'll no longer be laboring under the delusion that you're magically entitled to something for nothing, and you might be motivated to make your own home a better place.
6. Mexico is a shithole because Mexicans made it so, not Yanquis. Mexicans accept corrupt government, massive criminal activity, and a "manana" culture. They do not value education, the rule of law, and use every convenient vertical surface as a toilet (like the landscaper I caught pissing in my neighbor's hedges this past week, and the "immigrant" children who play pissing games in the streets around here). While many pro-Illegal Immigration advocates raise the battle cry "They're only here for a better life!", left unanswered is the question "Then why don't they create one for themselves in their own country?". If there's "tension" between Whites and Hispanics, it's because Hispanics have brought that lack of values (and sanitation) to America with them, and then have the cojones to demand that we accept it. Remember: you're not "Doing Jobs Americans Won't Do", you're "Doing Jobs Americans Won't Do Because They Suck, Pay Badly, and Don't Come With a Dental Plan", so who's really benefiting? I wonder what we'll do with 12 million parasites in the future when lettuce gets picked by machines, the MLS finally shuts down, and the really smart people switch to rock gardens, and home-grown vegetables.
B) Energy Policy
1. It's time to go nuclear, baby, and not just on Iran. All the "No Nukes" faggots who ran around in the 70's and 80's, who helped to kill a more widespread nuclear power industry in this country, are probably the same deranged idiots who run around screaming about that Global Warming/Freezing/Flooding nonsense. The irony here is that by resisting the push for nuclear energy, you probably condemned Mother Gaia to another several decades of nasty pollution. Not only that, now that we're at a point in history where a change must be made (but not for the reasons you want it to be), if there ever IS a move to increase the number of nuclear power plants in this country we'll be several decades behind in terms of technology, efficiency and expected costs. Good going, Douchebags! Until the "Green Movement" is purged of it's sanctimonious-and-clueless Watermelon Faction (Green on the outside, Red on the Inside, All-wet-and-slightly-slimy-throughout), or they're all beaten into deep comas, we'll never have a better answer to the problems of Energy Independence and pollution, because every solution offered will never be good enough to appease these absolutist assholes. They are the modern-day equivalent of Calvinists.
By the way, morons, in case no one told you; Carbon Dioxide is a gas which is essential to the continuance of Life on this planet. If you try to artificially restrict it or prevent it from being generated, you will be killing billions of your fellow creatures -- especially the one's you're always trying to "save".
2. Alternative fuels and sources simply must be found. Current "Green" alternatives (wind, solar, ethanol, etc) are merely stopgaps, or at best, adjuncts. None is capable of becoming a dominant source of energy like fossil fuels, simply because these forms cannot generate the sort of power we demand as efficiently or as inexpensively. It is up to the Public to advocate for serious investment in viable alternatives by putting their money where their mouths are, as it were, with their investment dollars, their votes, and by pushing Energy companies to respond to the needs of a changing marketplace and attitudes (that will never be allowed, because that would be, like, The People exercising their freedoms!), without giving into the more ridiculous demands of the "Save the Earth, Kill All the People" fringe of Tree Huggers.
3. Until such time as an alternative to fossil fuels is found, it is necessary to increase domestic production of oil, coal, and natural gas. Fuck the caribou in ANWAR; they don't pay taxes. Fuck the fish, they don't vote; let's gets some more hydroelectric dams up and running. Coal is cheap, and can be burned cleaner than ever before, by a process that is probably cleaner than most people's bathrooms. Natural gas is so abundant that it's amazing that there aren't gas-powered television sets already, We can even siphon the methane out of the Everglades and garbage dumps. We'll need to have a "carry-over" period between when energy is created in abundance by alternative means, and when the Internal Combustion engine goes the way of Teddy Kennedy, and we already have a great deal of what we'll need right here at home. Make use of it.
4. What's wrong with this scenario: America's best minds are fully capable of inventing drugs that give old men erections that no woman in her right mind wants any part of, but the same minds seem incapable of solving the problems associated with energy? People who will complain loudly about $3 gasoline, and consider it a grave economic burden, apparently have no issue with the $25 dollar-a-pop hard-on, so I guess that's where the money goes, and so, naturally, that's where all the talent and brainpower goes, too. Priorities, on both sides of the equation, are seriously skewed.
C) The Two-Party System
1. One party robs from the Rich to Give to the Poor, and considers it an act of "fundamental fairness". The other Robs from The Rich to Give to the Rich-er, and calls it a "Free-Market Economic system". Neither actually believes what they say, for if they did, their policies would not have produced the results they have; two sub-populations of dependants -- one lining up for government cheese, and the other for Corporate welfare, at the expense of those in the Middle, the very backbone of the American Economy. Once this premise is accepted, it becomes so much easier to understand why the Tea Party exists and has become a popular, and electorally-viable alternative, in such a short time.
2. Social Utopianism based upon redistribution of wealth, only redistributes poverty. The class of "The Rich", gets defined ever more expansively, and the scope of the redistribution widens and deepens, sucking all the ambition and creative energy out of life. I guess this is why the democratic (small 'd' intentional) party can claim that it's best equipped to "fight for the poor" ; it certainly knows how to make them poor. The sooner the democratic party is brought kicking-and-screaming into the 21st Century by a thorough purging of it's extreme, Pink left, the better to disabuse it of it's 19th Century ideas. That can only be accomplished at the ballot box.
3. Most aspects of Conservatism are approaching the symptoms of mental disease in which it's greatest advocates seem to remember a "Golden Age", which never really existed in quite the way they remember, or rather choose, to remember it. Those that believe in this premise are caught between two antithetical ideas: a) there can be technical progress, and a general increase in living standards, without a corresponding change in social mores, and b) that time travel is possible -- but only into The Past. The sooner the Republican party is dragged kicking-and-screaming into the 21st Century, and out of the 1500''s, the better. The sooner the Republican party stops looking for "The Next Reagan" and concentrates instead on "The First Man with A Grasp of Our Current Realities", it would be even better. This, too, can only be accomplished at the ballot box.
4. Though both parties claim to abhor "Special Interests" neither is anything BUT a coalition of Special Interests. The Libtard party is a coalition of narrow, self-interested groups (Gays, Women, Blacks, Labor, Abortion Chicks, etc), and so is the Fuddy-Duddy Party (Religious bigots, The Machine-Guns-and-RPG's-For-Everybody-Crowd, Small Business owners, The Law-and-Order-at-all-costs zealots, those who can remember when Cowboys slaughtering Redskins on TV was considered "Wholesome Family Entertainment"). Both parties accept scads of money from entities that are often diametrically-opposed to what they claim to stand for; Wall Street funds democrats, those who hire illegal immigrants against the law support the party of Values. The Media supports the party that would destroy it's Independence and profitability in a heartbeat, while advocates for Free Markets support the party that does everything in it's power to ensure that markets are neither free, nor fair, and creates an atmosphere where outright theft is allowed because enforcing the law is "bad for business.".
One party holds itself out as the defender of Working Families while it plunders their wallets to support the Non-Working Families, and the other claims to be a paragon of Family Values and Fiscal Responsibility while it's members solicit gay sex in airport bathrooms, grope the Congressional Pages, cheat on their wives, and vote to pump taxpayer money into failing companies in order to "save the American economy". Seems to me that if you want to save anything, you don't throw money at failure, either the corporate or the social kind, and especially not the political kind. The sooner we hold both parties to their rhetoric by paying attention to their actions, the more accountability and honesty we'll get from these dimwits, because they certainly understand the meaning of "Unemployment Line" -- they've only combined forces to send 8 million people there in the last two years.
5. Campaign Finance Reform MUST be repealed, as it protects incumbents and makes it near-impossible to challenge the status-quo in our politics. Many good people, perhaps people with actual talent and ideas, are being artificially kept out of public service by CFR, the better for Senator Asshole and Congressman Dingleberry to keep eating at the public trough, and to reward/punish their political allies/foes with taxpayer-funded goodies. The sooner we get rid of CFR, the sooner we can get some new blood and new ideas, into American government.
A third party -- and why not? -- a fourth and a fifth are most sorely needed; we can have a Tea Party, and of the other two, one can contain all the aging hippies, and the other can be chock full of the ancient and pious hypocrites, and both will be so marginalized as to eventually disappear from the poilitical scene completely.
D) The Gulf Oil Spill
1. The federal Government has shown it's inability to co-ordinate any action in the face of a major disaster. For all of you douchebags who blamed George W. Bush for the slow federal response to Hurricane Katrina, now you can stand up and say you're sorry, given the even more pitiful perfomance of the Obama Government. Local government and private citizens have done more, or at least would have, if they weren't prevented from trying by the Feds. Cleanup would have been more efficient had the Feds accepted all the offers of international help, and had not been beholden to the labor unions. Dispersants and certain other cleanup measures would have been in place, and doing useful work, if it wasn't for the EnvironMENTALIST's influence on the levers of power, and OSHA dictating 20-minute work hours. BP would probably have been more forthcoming on the how's and why's of this spill, if the Justice Department hadn't been screaming"LAWSUIT!" for polticial purposes, and the Administration wasn't trying to shake them down before letting BP take care of it's primary responsibility: stopping the leak, and cleaning the shit up.
2. BP fucked up, but the Federal Government fucked up more, only faster, more-expensively, on a grander scale and in front of the video cameras. It's time for a booster shot of Federalism, and a new dose of State's Rights. When it becomes the job of the Federal Government to do everything, it manages to do nothing, only spectacularly and with ruinous expense. If we've learned anything after 9/11, Katrina and now this Oil Spill, it's that government functions on about the same level as a retarded Irish Setter, is totally detached from the issues/problems of the people who pay for it, and has so many competing bureaucracies involved in every aspect of our lives that meaningful and effective action on most subjects is next to impossible.
3. BP, more as a result of the Obama Administration's attempts to publicly punish the company in an effort to cover it's own ass, has sent the company to the brink of bankruptcy (this Administration is really good at that). Today's paper reveals that Exxon-Mobil is poised to scoop up what's left of BP, creating an even bigger, richer and less accountable corporate entity. It would have been better had someone reminded President Dickhead that the main thrust of "government action" should have been cleanup, preventing the destruction of beaches, shorelines and marshlands, protecting and helping American citizens, and he left BP to the task of actually stopping the leak. But that would have meant no COngressional Hearings, and no Golf, I guess. Instead, we got a lot of talk about "Relief Funds", lawsuits, and the Savior of the Universe being unable to suck the oil up with a straw. If I were the CEO of BP right now, I'd throw my hands up in the air, yell "Fuck it!" and take my millions to go live on a nice, tropical beach somewhere, and let the all-powerful-all-knowing-in-charge-from-the-18th-hole-and-clueless Barack Obama clean up my messes -- the ones he's made infinitely worse -- for me. After all, he's the one who supposedly came with the cape and the halo, and you're just a guy in an exquisitely-tailored suit.
But then again, Mr. BP CEO; you often get what you pay for, don't you? That doesn't help the fishermen and resort workers on the Gulf, but they're just "little people", right? Even Obama, by his actions, has said so.
Next time, I'll have a go at the Eductational System, Foreign Policy, and the process of "Enstupidation" (thank you, Fred Reed, for inventing the term).
Here are some observations about four new subjects, Race Relations, Energy, the Two-party system, and the BP Oil Spill. I hope to explain my extreme and diseased views on these subjects, and then tell you what I think should be done about them by We The Citizens, because depending upon government to solve these issues is sort of like asking your Golden Retriever to do your taxes -- he might by pure chance get it right, but he's far more likely to slobber and drool, and leave muddy paw prints upon the forms, if he hasn't already used them to take a dump on.
As to how We The Citizens are to affect these changes is something I cannot tell you. I've thought about the how, but then I realize that actually making these changes would require the entire culture be uprooted and replaced. We live in a modern culture which rewards the stupid and the lazy, mostly because it has been created BY the stupid and the lazy, for the benefit of other stupid and lazy people. While there are brilliant and innovative minds at work in America (despite the best efforts of Barack Obama to drive them out of the country), they increasingly turn their talents towards making life easier, without making it any more tolerable; you can get an iPhone app to figure out your four-way lunch bill in a restaurant, saving you the trouble of learning math. You can take a pill to control your cholesterol, cure your vaginal dryness, or lose weight without having to make drastic "lifestyle changes". The Digital Revolution makes for better communications and more efficient use and exchange of information, but no one seems to get any smarter, or to even listen to one another, anymore.
The only solution that I can imagine which might start to affect the cultural change we require is by that of personal example (if only because a carefully-planned program of street executions might not go over so well). If ONE person changes the way he or she lives and the choices they make, then perhaps someone else will see them do it, and likewise make the same changes. That's a very long shot, indeed, but it's better than the alternatives (depending on government, or Oprah).
Without further ado;
A) Race Relations
1. Slavery was abolished a long time ago. Jim Crow is dead. There have been Civil Rights Acts, Voting Rights Acts, Welfare Statism and Affirmative Action up the wazoo. If African-Americans still feel they haven't progressed (despite the evidence to the contrary), then we're probably no longer dealing with the lingering effects of victimization and "institutional Racism", and are more likely dealing with a mental illness, and a reflexive habit. The next time I hear an African-American scream "Racism!" I'm giving him the number of a really good psychiatrist. I'm tired of being made to feel guilty (doesn't work anymore!) and being made to pay for something I did not do and which is now well-and-truly in the past, and now which only serves as a poor excuse for the worst of behavior. I say to African-Americans: it's the 21st Century, come to the front of the bus -- and stand with the rest of us.
2. There is an entire generation of "Civil Rights Leaders" and countless organizations who constantly beat the "Racism" drum because it's been made economically- and politically-rewarding for them to do so. The truth is that Jesse, Rev. Al, and Rev. Wright have not changed a single thing for the better for anyone -- let alone their own race -- for over 40 years. At what point, do you think, someone will have the balls to stand up and say "Hey, this doesn't work. Can we try something else?". Even the NAACP, where one of those A's supposedly stands for "Advancement", is still attached to the rhetoric and "solutions" of years gone by. "Solutions", incidentally, which have only deepened the psychosis of a people who have apparently been taught that the answer to every problem in life is to hold your hand out and demand something you haven't earned -- or you'll pitch a riot.
3. The election of Barack Obama at first appeared to be a sign that America was finally beyond race; Americans had finally elected a (half-) black man to the highest office in the land. In hindsight this now appears not to have been an exercise in fairness and equality, but an act of desperation. The future was bleak in November of 2008, and the only other choices were a man who might not know what day of the week it was, and a modern-day Mussolini in a Black Panstuit encumbered by a horndog husband who would fuck a catcher's mitt, if it held still long enough, and the Secret Service could keep it a secret. That desperation gave us a President who was thoroughly unprepared, lacking common sense or knowledge of how the government actually works, a background sufficiently muddled so that even he can't explain it, and who somehow managed to graduate Harvard with a degree in Constitutional Law without apparently ever having read that document. In office, President Obama seems more interested in playing golf and enjoying the perks of office, rather than in actually doing the job for which he was hired, and when he actually does it, the results are about what you would expect from a brain-damaged four year old working with a hammer and a chainsaw.
In effect, Barack Obama has become the visible symbol of every negative stereotype that Whites ever held about blacks; He's an unqualified Affirmative-Action Baby who never held a real job in his life and who won't do this one, if he can avoid it. However, he has no trouble picking up a paycheck for as long as he can decently get away with it, all the while being paid the back-handed compliment of "he speaks so well...." from the upper crust of Libtard hypocrites. To hear Obama speak now -- far from the days when people were probably paid to faint at his speeches for dramatic effect -- all you can now hear is the constant repetition of a single theme -- "It's All Whitey's fault" -- in which George W. Bush, Wall Street, British Petroleum, the Republican Party, Religious people, Gun Owners, Law-and-Order conservatives and Immigration reformers all stand for "Whitey". Now you know just what effect Rev. Wright had on the man who sat in the pew for 20 years but mysteriously didn't hear nuffin'.
If Barack Obama survives his term in office (and by that I mean avoids impeachment, the ravages of hypertension, and the synapse-crushing banality of Joe Biden) he will probably have done more to set race relations back than any other individual now alive. He may be the first (half-) black President of the United States -- but he may also very well be the last one forever. Just remember that when it comes time for African-Americans to complain (due again in about 15 minutes) that "We never got a chance". These problems didn't appear overnight, and Obama knew there were two wars and an economic crisis when he lobbied for the job claiming to have all the answers, so he can't complain now. And neither can African-Americans who wanted a Savior but are forced to support a Scoundrel solely on the basis of a racial affinity system that they constructed themselves.
4. Instead of selecting Barack Obama as your hero and life-example, you might want to re-consider the example of Gansta Rappers -- stripped of the veneer of their"music" and "art"; unlike the President, these guys at least understand economics and Capitalism better than most Ivy-League educated Economists, obviously work hard to build their little empires, and are probably smart enough, in their own ways, to have been anything they desired had they not chosen "rapper" as a career path. Even if they have made their fortunes selling cultural poison, they were at least honest about their motives: Dollah-Dollah, biotch!
5. To All my Mexican "Amigos" (the ones leading the unwanted invasion); we Gringos don't owe you anything either, and the Southwest isn't "your" country anymore. While the Southwest USED to be your country, you lost it. You lost it because Mexicans couldn't make it economically viable, and so you had to import Gringos -- Gringos with a history of fighting for liberty, the rule of law, and personal notions about individual rights and the prerogatives/limitations of government -- to do it for you. You mistreated them, and so they did what came naturally to them; they revolted. You lost the War. Your leaders bankrupted your country in the process, and the territory they didn't lose in War, they sold off to cover their debts. To Us Gringos. Get over it. Your country is still economically moribund, and you still live in it and we don't, so try to figure out if there's a common theme there. We're not "stealing" from or "oppressing" you. Accept this basic truth, and you'll no longer be laboring under the delusion that you're magically entitled to something for nothing, and you might be motivated to make your own home a better place.
6. Mexico is a shithole because Mexicans made it so, not Yanquis. Mexicans accept corrupt government, massive criminal activity, and a "manana" culture. They do not value education, the rule of law, and use every convenient vertical surface as a toilet (like the landscaper I caught pissing in my neighbor's hedges this past week, and the "immigrant" children who play pissing games in the streets around here). While many pro-Illegal Immigration advocates raise the battle cry "They're only here for a better life!", left unanswered is the question "Then why don't they create one for themselves in their own country?". If there's "tension" between Whites and Hispanics, it's because Hispanics have brought that lack of values (and sanitation) to America with them, and then have the cojones to demand that we accept it. Remember: you're not "Doing Jobs Americans Won't Do", you're "Doing Jobs Americans Won't Do Because They Suck, Pay Badly, and Don't Come With a Dental Plan", so who's really benefiting? I wonder what we'll do with 12 million parasites in the future when lettuce gets picked by machines, the MLS finally shuts down, and the really smart people switch to rock gardens, and home-grown vegetables.
B) Energy Policy
1. It's time to go nuclear, baby, and not just on Iran. All the "No Nukes" faggots who ran around in the 70's and 80's, who helped to kill a more widespread nuclear power industry in this country, are probably the same deranged idiots who run around screaming about that Global Warming/Freezing/Flooding nonsense. The irony here is that by resisting the push for nuclear energy, you probably condemned Mother Gaia to another several decades of nasty pollution. Not only that, now that we're at a point in history where a change must be made (but not for the reasons you want it to be), if there ever IS a move to increase the number of nuclear power plants in this country we'll be several decades behind in terms of technology, efficiency and expected costs. Good going, Douchebags! Until the "Green Movement" is purged of it's sanctimonious-and-clueless Watermelon Faction (Green on the outside, Red on the Inside, All-wet-and-slightly-slimy-throughout), or they're all beaten into deep comas, we'll never have a better answer to the problems of Energy Independence and pollution, because every solution offered will never be good enough to appease these absolutist assholes. They are the modern-day equivalent of Calvinists.
By the way, morons, in case no one told you; Carbon Dioxide is a gas which is essential to the continuance of Life on this planet. If you try to artificially restrict it or prevent it from being generated, you will be killing billions of your fellow creatures -- especially the one's you're always trying to "save".
2. Alternative fuels and sources simply must be found. Current "Green" alternatives (wind, solar, ethanol, etc) are merely stopgaps, or at best, adjuncts. None is capable of becoming a dominant source of energy like fossil fuels, simply because these forms cannot generate the sort of power we demand as efficiently or as inexpensively. It is up to the Public to advocate for serious investment in viable alternatives by putting their money where their mouths are, as it were, with their investment dollars, their votes, and by pushing Energy companies to respond to the needs of a changing marketplace and attitudes (that will never be allowed, because that would be, like, The People exercising their freedoms!), without giving into the more ridiculous demands of the "Save the Earth, Kill All the People" fringe of Tree Huggers.
3. Until such time as an alternative to fossil fuels is found, it is necessary to increase domestic production of oil, coal, and natural gas. Fuck the caribou in ANWAR; they don't pay taxes. Fuck the fish, they don't vote; let's gets some more hydroelectric dams up and running. Coal is cheap, and can be burned cleaner than ever before, by a process that is probably cleaner than most people's bathrooms. Natural gas is so abundant that it's amazing that there aren't gas-powered television sets already, We can even siphon the methane out of the Everglades and garbage dumps. We'll need to have a "carry-over" period between when energy is created in abundance by alternative means, and when the Internal Combustion engine goes the way of Teddy Kennedy, and we already have a great deal of what we'll need right here at home. Make use of it.
4. What's wrong with this scenario: America's best minds are fully capable of inventing drugs that give old men erections that no woman in her right mind wants any part of, but the same minds seem incapable of solving the problems associated with energy? People who will complain loudly about $3 gasoline, and consider it a grave economic burden, apparently have no issue with the $25 dollar-a-pop hard-on, so I guess that's where the money goes, and so, naturally, that's where all the talent and brainpower goes, too. Priorities, on both sides of the equation, are seriously skewed.
C) The Two-Party System
1. One party robs from the Rich to Give to the Poor, and considers it an act of "fundamental fairness". The other Robs from The Rich to Give to the Rich-er, and calls it a "Free-Market Economic system". Neither actually believes what they say, for if they did, their policies would not have produced the results they have; two sub-populations of dependants -- one lining up for government cheese, and the other for Corporate welfare, at the expense of those in the Middle, the very backbone of the American Economy. Once this premise is accepted, it becomes so much easier to understand why the Tea Party exists and has become a popular, and electorally-viable alternative, in such a short time.
2. Social Utopianism based upon redistribution of wealth, only redistributes poverty. The class of "The Rich", gets defined ever more expansively, and the scope of the redistribution widens and deepens, sucking all the ambition and creative energy out of life. I guess this is why the democratic (small 'd' intentional) party can claim that it's best equipped to "fight for the poor" ; it certainly knows how to make them poor. The sooner the democratic party is brought kicking-and-screaming into the 21st Century by a thorough purging of it's extreme, Pink left, the better to disabuse it of it's 19th Century ideas. That can only be accomplished at the ballot box.
3. Most aspects of Conservatism are approaching the symptoms of mental disease in which it's greatest advocates seem to remember a "Golden Age", which never really existed in quite the way they remember, or rather choose, to remember it. Those that believe in this premise are caught between two antithetical ideas: a) there can be technical progress, and a general increase in living standards, without a corresponding change in social mores, and b) that time travel is possible -- but only into The Past. The sooner the Republican party is dragged kicking-and-screaming into the 21st Century, and out of the 1500''s, the better. The sooner the Republican party stops looking for "The Next Reagan" and concentrates instead on "The First Man with A Grasp of Our Current Realities", it would be even better. This, too, can only be accomplished at the ballot box.
4. Though both parties claim to abhor "Special Interests" neither is anything BUT a coalition of Special Interests. The Libtard party is a coalition of narrow, self-interested groups (Gays, Women, Blacks, Labor, Abortion Chicks, etc), and so is the Fuddy-Duddy Party (Religious bigots, The Machine-Guns-and-RPG's-For-Everybody-Crowd, Small Business owners, The Law-and-Order-at-all-costs zealots, those who can remember when Cowboys slaughtering Redskins on TV was considered "Wholesome Family Entertainment"). Both parties accept scads of money from entities that are often diametrically-opposed to what they claim to stand for; Wall Street funds democrats, those who hire illegal immigrants against the law support the party of Values. The Media supports the party that would destroy it's Independence and profitability in a heartbeat, while advocates for Free Markets support the party that does everything in it's power to ensure that markets are neither free, nor fair, and creates an atmosphere where outright theft is allowed because enforcing the law is "bad for business.".
One party holds itself out as the defender of Working Families while it plunders their wallets to support the Non-Working Families, and the other claims to be a paragon of Family Values and Fiscal Responsibility while it's members solicit gay sex in airport bathrooms, grope the Congressional Pages, cheat on their wives, and vote to pump taxpayer money into failing companies in order to "save the American economy". Seems to me that if you want to save anything, you don't throw money at failure, either the corporate or the social kind, and especially not the political kind. The sooner we hold both parties to their rhetoric by paying attention to their actions, the more accountability and honesty we'll get from these dimwits, because they certainly understand the meaning of "Unemployment Line" -- they've only combined forces to send 8 million people there in the last two years.
5. Campaign Finance Reform MUST be repealed, as it protects incumbents and makes it near-impossible to challenge the status-quo in our politics. Many good people, perhaps people with actual talent and ideas, are being artificially kept out of public service by CFR, the better for Senator Asshole and Congressman Dingleberry to keep eating at the public trough, and to reward/punish their political allies/foes with taxpayer-funded goodies. The sooner we get rid of CFR, the sooner we can get some new blood and new ideas, into American government.
A third party -- and why not? -- a fourth and a fifth are most sorely needed; we can have a Tea Party, and of the other two, one can contain all the aging hippies, and the other can be chock full of the ancient and pious hypocrites, and both will be so marginalized as to eventually disappear from the poilitical scene completely.
D) The Gulf Oil Spill
1. The federal Government has shown it's inability to co-ordinate any action in the face of a major disaster. For all of you douchebags who blamed George W. Bush for the slow federal response to Hurricane Katrina, now you can stand up and say you're sorry, given the even more pitiful perfomance of the Obama Government. Local government and private citizens have done more, or at least would have, if they weren't prevented from trying by the Feds. Cleanup would have been more efficient had the Feds accepted all the offers of international help, and had not been beholden to the labor unions. Dispersants and certain other cleanup measures would have been in place, and doing useful work, if it wasn't for the EnvironMENTALIST's influence on the levers of power, and OSHA dictating 20-minute work hours. BP would probably have been more forthcoming on the how's and why's of this spill, if the Justice Department hadn't been screaming"LAWSUIT!" for polticial purposes, and the Administration wasn't trying to shake them down before letting BP take care of it's primary responsibility: stopping the leak, and cleaning the shit up.
2. BP fucked up, but the Federal Government fucked up more, only faster, more-expensively, on a grander scale and in front of the video cameras. It's time for a booster shot of Federalism, and a new dose of State's Rights. When it becomes the job of the Federal Government to do everything, it manages to do nothing, only spectacularly and with ruinous expense. If we've learned anything after 9/11, Katrina and now this Oil Spill, it's that government functions on about the same level as a retarded Irish Setter, is totally detached from the issues/problems of the people who pay for it, and has so many competing bureaucracies involved in every aspect of our lives that meaningful and effective action on most subjects is next to impossible.
3. BP, more as a result of the Obama Administration's attempts to publicly punish the company in an effort to cover it's own ass, has sent the company to the brink of bankruptcy (this Administration is really good at that). Today's paper reveals that Exxon-Mobil is poised to scoop up what's left of BP, creating an even bigger, richer and less accountable corporate entity. It would have been better had someone reminded President Dickhead that the main thrust of "government action" should have been cleanup, preventing the destruction of beaches, shorelines and marshlands, protecting and helping American citizens, and he left BP to the task of actually stopping the leak. But that would have meant no COngressional Hearings, and no Golf, I guess. Instead, we got a lot of talk about "Relief Funds", lawsuits, and the Savior of the Universe being unable to suck the oil up with a straw. If I were the CEO of BP right now, I'd throw my hands up in the air, yell "Fuck it!" and take my millions to go live on a nice, tropical beach somewhere, and let the all-powerful-all-knowing-in-charge-from-the-18th-hole-and-clueless Barack Obama clean up my messes -- the ones he's made infinitely worse -- for me. After all, he's the one who supposedly came with the cape and the halo, and you're just a guy in an exquisitely-tailored suit.
But then again, Mr. BP CEO; you often get what you pay for, don't you? That doesn't help the fishermen and resort workers on the Gulf, but they're just "little people", right? Even Obama, by his actions, has said so.
Next time, I'll have a go at the Eductational System, Foreign Policy, and the process of "Enstupidation" (thank you, Fred Reed, for inventing the term).
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