The Gangs of Baltimore

Tags

Baltimore, police, racism

Watching the events play out in Baltimore is an education to some, to others, it’s a why question. Why didn’t this happen sooner? The fact is whether you like it or not, life in the inner city is purely shit for the average African-American citizen.

Every deck is stacked against the individual trying to survive. Poor schools, no jobs are just the beginning. We see nothing less than a systematic attempt to herd “unwelcomes” into small enclaves and then devote all our money and energies to “other interests.”

We not only condone racism in this country but we grow it.

We demean people even when we give them the pittances we do, by making them take drug tests, and defining what food stamps can be used for, and attaching so many rules and regulation to any sort of assistance that you end up in the “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” scenario.

And when people rise up out of anger and frustration and disgust at the injustices they endure, we blame it all back on them and their “fatherless” homes, where unfortunate black youths learn no morals or sense of obedience to authority. Above all that, they have no respect for their betters.

One young man fairly told Geraldo Rivera to take his white ass and get out of town. They recognize Fox for what it is, purveyors of hate upon their heads. Geraldo, the youth said, you are only interested in filming what you call “thugs” rioting. You and Fox haven’t been interested in coming here to report on the daily injustice that we face.

To those of us who have engaged in the criminal justice system in this country in large metropolitan cities, we know all too well of what the young man speaks. As Alan Dershowitz explained in his Rules of the Justice Game, “almost all police officers lie about whether they violated the constitution in order to convict guilty defendants”, (rule IV) and all prosecutors, judges and defense attorneys are aware of rule IV. Worse, they look the other way. Like it or not, it’s true.

The recent public exposure of these cases of police overreach, abuse and lying comes as no surprise to us. I recall a dear friend of mine, a street cop from Detroit, whom I had argued with good-naturedly about whether police could do their job and still tell the truth. He was called to testify on an arrest and to make his point to me, told the truth. The case was dismissed for lack of “probable cause”. He grinned at me, as he walked from the courtroom. “See what you get when you tell the truth?”

We understood it, and we accepted it as a the way life was. We knew that in most cases the officers were at least sure they had the right guy.

But there is a segment of police officers within each department who do not care. They figure one black body is as good as any other, and they have ambitions, and a host of emotionally based reasons for throwing their authority around and not caring who gets caught up in their game.

Therein lies the problem.

And a solution comes from an unlikely source:

The gangs of Baltimore.

The major gangs have declared a truce, and apparently are devoting their time and efforts to helping their community respond in a politically helpful way to the recurrent injustice visited upon them in general and in the Freddie Gray case in particular.

It boggles the mind. Young men hell-bent on killing each other, and unfortunately any innocents that get in the way, have come together and agreed that for now at least, they will stop the violence against each other, and help organize their community to stop police violence against them all.

This is no small thing. Thinking, educated, above middle-class men and women only a few miles away, encased in a glorious white facade of sandstone and marble, are unable to agree upon even the most basic of things because screwing the black guy in the White House seems paramount.

Yet these young men have agreed to set aside their differences and work together for the common good of their community.

And the gang has a good deal to offer should it choose to actually follow through. Long the center of loyalty, and business acumen (albeit illegal) it mirrors many good traits that the young can well adopt. Strong Black men, helping their community? What’s not to like here. They teach loyalty, respect, and how purpose can bring about change. Somehow in their matriarchal upbringing, they have managed to become quite savvy at things they aren’t supposed to understand at all.

They in a real sense complement their environment, reflecting an honest if not legal response to the tremendous burdens and disadvantages heaped upon them since birth. They have the ability to encourage the younger kids coming up at least in the character requirements of making their way in a racist world while still standing firm for dignity.

No one argues that gangs are stellar examples to our youth. They have not been since the days of the Irish gangs, the Puerto Rican ones or any of the others. But all ethnic groups plagued with the criminal element within have always managed to take those good attributes and bettered themselves and their communities. And the Black community is no different. It too learns the right lessons along with the less savory.

Larry Wilmore, on his show The Nightly Show, did a most important thing on Thursday. He sat down with gang bangers in a diner and just talked. And they were articulate, and politically aware, and sincere. And that matters and should matter, and should make us hang our heads in shame when we cannot expect better from our paid politicians, and we cannot seem to expect more of ourselves in insisting on our own justice from the tyranny of big money and big K Street influence.

Perhaps it will be the gangs of Baltimore that will lead the way in helping us to see that we are not without recourse in our own struggles to retake command of our government. We need merely to stop focusing on our differences and agree that we are not being heard. None of us, for anything. And it’s time to change that. And if it takes a gang to explain that to us, well, more power to them.

And that’s a compliment in case you didn’t realize it.

We participate in SoCS.

 

Why The Dividin’ Works So Well

Tags

culture wars, the poor the poor and the inbetween

If you happened to catch Jon Stewart last week he did what has become classic for him–pointing out the heaping hypocrisy that the uber Right always seems to manage to live with. Entering the head of a right-wing expert is sorta like entering the minotaur’s labyrinth. A normal person gets lost in all the dead ends.

Anyway, Jon was talking about Kansas. Kansas just passed a law and gol’ darn it, Sammy “spittin’ Brownback signed it, removing all restrictions to concealed weapon carrying, including even having a permit. That’s cuz Kansans are so dang trustworthy and kin do the right thing. Kansas is also real big on the notion that poor people are not like regular Kansans. They are akin to kidlets and must be told what to eat and what to buy. If you get assistance from Kansas, you get a list of what you can use it for, cuz you aren’t grown. Jon pointed out that the inconsistency here is that Kansas receives $1.29 from the Federales, for every $1.00 it pays in. Which makes them welfare moochers ya know. So, um, if we wanna be consistent, I guess we ought to be tellin’ the Kansans what they spend their free monies on huh?

Kansas is not alone in this sort of thinking. Republican-led legislatures in many states seek and do impose lots of restrictions on the poor of all sorts, treating them like they are not fully grown, nor citizens. One wonders why Re-huh-ligans think this way. I mean plenty drug test anyone seeking assistance, even though the results of all those tests suggests it costs way way more to give them then it ever saves in “drug users don’t git no help” fails.

It’s all illogical, demeaning, and downright awful and one wonders why, as I said.

See, iffin’ you go back far enough, we were a very tribal species. Sorta like lion prides. New folks from other lands were not invited into the tribe, much as alpha males drove off traveling loners who sought to join the pride. (This all drives fundies quite mad, since they don’t believe we humans go back far enough for that, but fundies seldom can force themselves to take the giant step to actually read out of their comfort zone, so no matter.)

Anyway, we tend to be tribal still, some of us more so than others. The tribe is generally quite artificial these days, but it often relates to religion, or ethnic origin, gender, and stuff like that.

We live with a lot of folklore here as they do everywhere. We were raised on the Protestant Work ethic which should tell you a whole lot just by the name. It had to do with religion and salvation, but has become twisted into some sort of “this is how grownups behave” notion that hard work brings success economically.

Our start as a nation also caused people from time to time to strike out on their own, urged on by such things as primogeniture, to make a life in the wilderness. This became “pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps”, in other words, making it on your own.

These things, when done successfully give one a sense of accomplishment and capability. Such people like to look a bit down at others who for a whole list of reasons can’t succeed as they did.

Of course, this whole thing gets extended and twisted until it doesn’t really resemble what it started out as. We aren’t any longer a new country with a vast Western virgin expanse where one can strike off and create a new life. You can only invent the hula hoop once. It gets harder and harder to make it on your own, and hard work can end up bringing little more than basic survival.

But as long as one is surviving, albeit at the lowest level, one can still, and one is encouraged, to look down askance at those who have failed to even reach basic survival.

When we have priced education out of the range of most working class kids, it’s time to put down the idea that elite educations matter. All that matters is common sense after all.

The political hacks who do the work of big corporate interests have gotten very good at all this. They keep the barely differentiated in reality yapping at each other for all sorts of nonsensical things so that we fail to see what is really wrong in our country. We break into union/non-union, religious/not-religious, right-kind-of-religious/not-right-kind-of-religious, gay/straight, unregulated guns/regulated guns, and the divisions are infinitely divisible at this point. Somehow it all becomes liberty-loving patriots/commie-socialist-atheists. It all becomes prideful, and the alpha males snarl and gnash their teeth around the perimeter while the king of beasts patrols, defending.

The poor, become child-like, and lazy, because the working poor who are scraping by, must see themselves as successful. The liberals become elites who want to take what little the working poor  have and trade it for votes among the child-like and lazy. The conservatives want to encourage entrepreneurship in theory to “grow jobs” by reducing taxes and regulation, and the workers are encouraged to believe that they could be entrepreneurs if only they didn’t have to pay for the child-like and lazy.

It all is quite silly and wrong and indefensible by the actual facts, but that does not matter since the working poor and barely holding on middle-class wants to believe they are doing all they can, and it’s somebody’s fault. They are actually right. They are doing all they can, and it is somebody’s fault. Just not the folks they think. For the machine works tirelessly to make sure that their anger is directed away from them.

We have gone in this country for feeling pity for the poor to actually hating them. For they are us and deep down we know that. And we are desperate to keep that fact buried deep in our subconsciousness, so that we can go on feeling successful and proud of ourselves.

Not just hate, which we camouflage in “tough love” rhetoric, but bitterness as well. They remind us of not just of ourselves, but of the opportunities we have missed, abused, and let go by while we took the easier course of listening to our “betters” and their constant propaganda. “You could be just like us,” they whisper, “if it were not for them.” And we have listened and we have nodded in agreement, and we have gone back to our Archie Bunkers and laughed uproariously and told ourselves that we are not Archie, all the while we have been Archie and continue to be that caricature in all his bigotry and blaming.

And we feel self-righteous in our demands that you don’t get to buy steak or get your nails done if you are getting my tax dollars. And we claim we are just helping “them” act like us, which is what we have been told is the “right way to be”. And what we do is ugly and mean, and makes people feel bad about themselves and they hate right back.

And the corporate masters cheer and clink their glasses and laugh and discuss the latest results of the polo match and whose going to the Mediterranean this year, and who will be at the Met this season.

And the wars go on. And nothing changes. And we teach these stupid lies to our kids and life goes merrily along for the rich and powerful and we keep dancing.

Is that all there is?
Is that all there is?
If that’s all there is my friends
Then let’s keep dancing
Let’s break out the booze and have a ball
If that’s all there is

 

Thoughts on Living Dark in America

Tags

racism, right wing

I’m not a white man, I’m a white woman. A few Black men used to tell me that white women and Black men shared a common victimization. They claimed that Black women were freer than both of us.

I was never sure that I bought that argument, and I certainly don’t buy that I share an equality of victimization with Black men or women.

But it does give me a certain empathy that comes easier for me than perhaps to the white male.

In my professional working days, I dated a number of police officers. A few were regular beat cops, a couple were Sergeants. I  called a number of detectives and even one Deputy Chief good friends. Since this all occurred in one of the larger metropolitan forces in America, I think I know of what I speak.

Given that all this happened in Detroit, Michigan, once the “murder capital” wherein I worked with and under a list of rather well-known African-American police/ judges/politicians, I speak with some small knowledge of the realities of both crime and racism in America.

We are in the grips of a series of well-publicized incidents wherein Black folks have been killed by white police officers. This has happened in myriads of places, among forces that are more or less bigoted toward their policing communities. The evidence (1) or more properly, the allegations are all over the place. Some cases “seem” more clear-cut than others. People who are favorable to the police in one case are not necessarily favorable in other cases.

Whatever the truth may be in any case, there is a strong and clear perception that the system has failed the African-American community in large part. One example will suffice. Studies suggest that where marijuana is concerned, people use it pretty much in an equal amount racially. In fact, in some years, whites out use marijuana. Yet when you examine arrest rates, Blacks are arrested at stunningly higher rates. A look at the incarceration rates across the country speaks to the same conclusion.

Blacks are targeted. This has always been the case, and it continues to be the case. All the explanations and arguments cannot dissuade this conclusion no matter how hard people try. Deflections to “blacks commit more crimes against blacks than anybody else” are convenient diversions but nothing else. African-American parents teach their boys at an early age a whole series of behaviors in public that are required of them that are unthinkable to a white parent. Walking and driving while black is a real concept.

During my time practicing law, it was not unusual to be told by a client, “the police rolled up on us, stopped us, and said, ‘what are you doing in THIS neighborhood?'” No such thing is asked of a white kid.

The insensitivity to race in this country is stunning and shocking. The Right-wing continues to claim that we are a post racial country. And of course this is understandable when you are busily trying to dismantle government support systems, deny people the right to vote, and otherwise diluting the influence of dark skins in the decision-making process. Suddenly we don’t need to feed the hungry because they are poor and victimized by an unfair system that revolves around poor schools, lack of transportation choices, injustice in the courts, and so forth, but rather because they are “lazy” and have not learned the values of hard work and sacrifice that all good white children learn.

The point is there is a vested interest on the part of the Right to negate racism in America. Their champions become those handful of Negroes who crave the limelight and are willing to dance Bojangles tunes in return for being patted on the head and “considered” a real presidential candidate. African-Americans who stand up and declare the unfairness (as well as well-meaning liberals) are just “playing the race card”

Go to any right-wing blog, and read the comments. I regularly post “humor” pieces consisting of nothing but verbatim comments by people on topics of racial injustice. The same sick and ugly remarks pervade the hundreds that are posted.

Yet, I am daily told that I am the problem. I fail to understand the dangerous jobs our police people are doing, against criminals who are armed to the teeth. I fail to have any balance. I am always “playing the race card.”

Yes, I play it, because it fairly cries out to be played. This country is still ugly racist and you, Right wing, prove it every single day.

Here is a list of what is considered racist:

1. I’m not a racist. Well, you probably are if you made that statement. People who are sensitive to race and working to eliminate racism recognize that we are all racist or bigoted in ways we don’t even realize. We are always looking for the ways that we “assume” before thinking, “react” before thinking. We recognize our tendencies and work to eradicate them.  To say you are not a racist is to utterly fail to even grasp this concept. You are deeply racist, and haven’t even begun the process.
2. We have a black president, and a black attorney general. As Chris Rock said, this is not an example of “progress”. There have been Black people for decades and centuries that were more than capable of being all these things. To suggest that white American has finally reached such a point, has little to do with “progress” from a Black perspective.
3. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are black racists. There is no such thing as a black racist. It’s an oxymoron. Racism denotes the power to control a minority by a majority. A minority cannot be racist. Individuals of any race, creed, or gender can be bigots. Learn the difference.
4. Blacks need to raise their children to work hard and be law-abiding. They already do. What you are really saying, is that black people need to act white. You are not constrained as they are by crime-ridden neighborhoods, poor schools, lack of good transportation, poor government services, local merchants who take advantage of them though inferior products and high prices. When you have tried to fight though all that AND teach your child to be polite to slur-slinging authority figures and keep their hands out of their pockets and not play with toy guns, and not to walk down certain streets, and not to wear those tennis shoes, and not to wear your hat that way, and not to be out after 10 p.m., and not to ride in that sort of car, and, and, and, maybe you will get it.

Much has been made in recent months of mostly white men walking around in stores carrying their “I got a big dick” guns, in some male peacock display of misplaced masculinity. People forget that the Black Panthers did the same thing in California back in the 70’s and then Governor Ronnie Reagan called for new gun laws to stop this danger to the public. Black men with guns is dangerous. White men with guns is “protection to all”. Do you FUCKING SEE THE DIFFERENCE?

One day we will look back on all this (we being future generations no doubt) and see all the hypocrisy. A study just confirmed what has been known for a number of years. The bulk of the “tea party movement” was born, bred and financed by the Kochs. They personally don’t give a damn about all your religious issues, but they do find it a good thing to have your mind occupied by gays and affirmative action, by “socialist” boogie men behind every government program designed to help those less fortunate. They and those like them are behind the misdirection that you live with.

As long as you blame others for your shit-life ( or at least it would be a whole lot better if I didn’t have to support THEM), then you are not blaming them–the people with all the money and with all the power. They continue to reform this country into an oligarchy where the rich have everything and everyone works for them in some sick Ayn Randian dystopian nightmare. And you play your part by calling for free markets and free guns, and worrying about who is marrying who.

Get a clue. Markets have never been free, and the Kochs and their ilk don’t want free markets, they want them rigged as they now are to favor them. They want international markets to be open to their products and they will abuse and exploit workers worldwide and do so with impunity. They are intent on reducing you to no more than a Bangladeshi sweat-shop worker. They don’t care about your old age, or your health. As long as we continue to breed, there will always be enough. Platitudes are all you actually get from paid politicians who say we just have to get back to the good old days of hard work and sacrifice–you know, like you and your parents. Stop supporting these lazy no-accounts. That ain’t racism, just good old American pride.

Bullshit.

As they sit with their December tans in San Moritz and laugh over martinis at the gullibility of their “tea bagger” supporters,  while you continue to talk about “respecting our police” and calling young a young kid who may have snatched a few cigarillos a “thug”. Yeah, continue doing your “job”. The rich laugh all the way to the bank.

PS: all this shit applies to brown skins too.

 

(1) Given that almost none of these cases has resulted in a prosecution, we can only surmise what the evidence is. Grand jury testimony is not evidence nor proof of anything, having been untested by cross-examination or subject to objection by the other side. This is no “other side” in grand jury proceedings.

Turn the Page or Another One Spits Out the Stupid

The Contrarian made a bold statement yesterday.

“I’m done,” he announced.

I nodded without paying much attention. If you ain’t there yet, you will learn as a sane woman that much of what men say is not worth listening to, so all that waiting with baited breath (what the hell does that really mean anyway?) has long passed me by and I automatically search for certain key words to hear before I engage fully in “listening” to my spouse.

“No more news for me. I don’t care. I don’t care what the Republicans do, I don’t care what Congress does or doesn’t do about anything. I’m done with it all. Today was it.”

This brought me to attention, since I just barely, through the usual fog of interfamily discourse, sensed a certain turning point in life issue here.

“What’s up?” I cautiously inquired.

“Fox is in a fit because the president has come out against Christie and Cuomo and their plans to quarantine aid workers returning from Ebola-stricken nations.” (actually he said something like Fox is having a fucking melt down because Obama said they were nuts for locking up people because they MIGHT be sick). Call it poetic license or anything else that suits ya, I’m writin’ it the way I wanna.

I nodded, since I would assume Fox to take no other position. The equation is simple enough. President says X, Fox says, FOR SHAME YOU BASTARD! Nothing new here.

“Ya see,” he says, “if Obama had been the one to quarantine these people, they would be screaming that he is locking up innocent Americans and depriving them of their rights, and FEMA camps, HELLO, just like we been tellin’ ya.”

“Yep, you are probably right,” I mused. That would be true too.

“Well, it’s the last straw, the camel’s back is broken. I’m no masochist. I’m 64 years old. What is this government going to do to me that I can’t live through at this point? Why pollute my mind and peace of mind with such crap? I read WorldNewsDaily every day, and watch the crazies throw poop at each other from inside their cages and call it entertainment. I read Townhall and Daily Caller, and Blaze for the same reason. I’m constantly overwhelmed by how stupid these people are, with few of them even capable of understanding the most basic of arguments on anything. Why they all take oxygen I’m sure, because not a one of them has sufficient brain cells to engage in breathing without help. So I’m done! This is pure torture to the human soul.”

He blinked.

I frowned.

I write about politics and I basically argue that it is a basic requirement of a citizen to be informed and to vote. So I was forced to confront the issue of whether it was really okay to be a low-information citizen or not. Certainly I argue that more knowledge is better, but I can sympathize with the concept that politicians as a rule today are a rather seamy sort of lying blood sucker. That said, can we expect anything better if we don’t participate?

One is faced clearly with a dilemma. On the one hand it is said that Tea Baggers are rather more “informed” than the average person about political issues. But on the other hand, plenty of reputable studies indicate that Fox watchers are by far the most misinformed of citizens. While it may seem that this is contradictory, it truly isn’t.

It’s quite one thing to know that a subject exists in the world, and quite another to know any truth about that subject. Case in point. Fox viewers (aka typical tea imbibers) know that we have no Surgeon General presently occupying the post. In that respect they may be among say only 30 percent of Americans in general. But if you were then to go further and ask, why don’t we have an SG, you would get from the Tea Fool that it is because Obama’s nominee wants to destroy our 2nd Amendment rights, and therefore the GOP has blocked his nomination.

That is patently false. The nominee has evinced an opinion that gun violence is a proper study of health care in America. There are a volume of doctors and other scientists in the field who agree with him. Congress has for several decades explicitly denied the the budgets of the SG or the CDC for that matter as to an studies on the subject. End result, the SG has zero ability to either “take away”  anybody’s 2nd Amendment rights, or even to investigate the issue. Thus it cannot be a REASON to block his appointment.

Thus we can see that in some cases, it would be much better to have no information than purposeful disinformation of which Fox News and it’s ilk are so famous for.

As to the average person, I would suggest, that most are exceedingly low information citizens. While the most prominent “political” party is now “Independent”, that is just a label that means in essence, “I have not thought even enough about any issue to decide on a party.” At least the Green or Socialist, Libertarian, or even Anarchist has done that.

However, it cannot be said from this analysis that people shouldn’t vote unless they can present a modicum of basic knowledge (as some Fox commentators are now arguing). Although their targets are always the poor and brown skinned, there are I suppose some on the left that bemoan from time to time that people who are essentially Tea Party stupid are out there electing their political equivalents to state and federal office. On the whole, the low information voter does reach the right result, even though they may not know why.

Basically, by one’s twenties, one knows what kind of person one is. One is either a citizen of the world and sees us all in this together with the need to work together for the benefit of all, or one sees oneself as part of a tribe, whose only concern is with others of their kind. Most anybody with a few brain cells can tell which party is which based on that simple analysis.

So I have no fear that the Contrarian will falter in his allegiance to the basic principles he has always espoused and vote accordingly. He will continue to read the paper and no doubt will pick up more than enough from me to ensure that he is still wildly above the average when it comes to political knowledge.

And he points to a real issue for me. It is painful to do what I do. My heart is wrenched again and again at what I see as wonton disregard for the rights of others and a very real turning away from helping with basic issues of food, housing, education and health care as basic rights entitled to by all. It hurts deeply to watch the GOP demand that people have a job before they can eat when there are not enough jobs. It is all well and good to create a worldview, and a religious one to back up to that world, as a means to make you feel comfortable with who you really are. It’s quite another to foist that twisted worldview on the rest of us and demand we live by it too.

I am sick to death of so-called religious people (who are not in the least) misusing MY faith as means to justify their own selfish fears about the world and their own inadequacies. If you are unable to handle your homophobic fears that deep down if unleashed you too might harbor a “crush” on someone of the same sex, or once did, hey, deal with it. Don’t re-interpret texts in a sacred book so that you can feel okay in your repulsion at your own “tendencies”.

So I get the desire to dump it all in the nearest trash can and spend the remainder of one’s thinking life pursing things that make one happy and peaceful. I do. And I think that a person has the right to opt for that. And some days I do opt for it.

But politics is as are most things,  a jealous lover. She calls me back. Perhaps one day too, I shall be able to resist her siren calls. But it is not today.

Peace out.

 

Undoing Christianist Drivel One Knot at a Time

Tags

Christianist, damnable lies, fundamentalism

It’s been a week of people pissin’ me off.

Not that my personal life has been that way. No, thankfully, it’s been rather grand, with the kitchen redo going splendidly and my beloved and I agreeing on most every sub-step of that adventure. Who woulda guessed we would agree on faucets!

But oh, the lame-minded Christianists have been pushing my button once again, but given their IQ limitations, what could one expect.

I also garnered another bit of info that stands to reason given their lacking abilities as well.

So let’s get to setting some records straight.

Facebook memes are funny things as I’ve stated before. Some are quite accurate, but a whole lot tend to seem superficially so but fail in the deeper contemplation.

Sometimes, they are blatant lies from start to finish.

A Christianist “friend” of mine on Facebook (you know the term I trust–one who proclaims Jesus as their one and only but uses the bible and their faith to justify hating who they already hate/fear/are jealous of, etc. [Facebook “friend” being a loose term at best for people who read your shit and whose stuff you are subjected to as is the case here]), posted a meme that on its face was silly, stupid, untrue, hateful, and most UnChristian-like in every single respect.

The pastor of this “friend” allegedly  quoted from some other dude, something to this effect: (I have to paraphrase because the said Christianist when confronted with actual facts, deleted the entire meme from her wall rather than allow any of her “friends” to see actual facts.)

“Rome had a lot of “rabble” who were taken care of by the Roman government. But instead of being satisfied, they just demanded more and more, until finally Rome was bankrupt and then this rabble sacked the city, which was, as we all know, the end of Rome. America too has it’s “rabble”, which was corrected identified as the 47% by that paragon of goodness (my hyperbole) Mr. Romney, who was utterly vilified for stating what turned out to be the truth. Now we are saddled with a government (Obama of course) which has allowed/created a (1) housing crisis (2) runaway debt through over spending (3) a huge deficit (4) Obamacare and (4) insufficient sun on Sunday! (okay I added that). But the rabble won’t stop demanding and of course the inference is clear–so will go the way of America just like Rome.”

Oh where to begin.

First of all, pretty much all that Rome did for the citizens of Rome was provide bread to those who were starving, along with olive oil and wine. The only other thing provided was entertainment in the guise of the circuses. Rome was not sacked by its urban poor, although surely there were uprisings from time to time but these were not threatening to Rome’s existence.

Rome fell through a series of invasions by outsiders called “barbarians” (some of whom were no doubt the very ancestors of idiots like the above who don’t know history at all). Does the name Visigoth mean anything to you? How about the Vandals?

So it is utterly false to claim that the “rabble” destroyed Rome because they weren’t given what they wanted.

What was this “rabble” of Rome? They were in fact urban poor, citizens of the state but with no land, and no ability to make a living. Sort of like people in the US who have lost their jobs when their company chose to build a cheap factory overseas and employ cheap labor. Sort of like people who are trying to raise families on non-living wages. Sort of like small business owners and farmers pushed out of a living by mega corporations who undercut them in prices so deeply that they can’t compete. Sort of like that.

But more than that, they WERE THE FREAKING PEOPLE JESUS CALLED US ALL TO CARE FOR.

The Christianist now calls the poor, the 47% or rabble.

And then we go to Obama.

Now under no circumstances that remotely relate to truth is Obama responsible for the housing melt-down. That happened as we all recall under the watch of wonder boy, George. Now we know that the demise of Glass-Steagall had much to do with that, and Democrats bear their responsibility in that as well, but please, it cannot be laid at the feet of Obama.

Obama did not “run up massive deficits” either, but has paid them down and kept spending to levels not seen since Eisenhower. It was boy George who did that, but beginning and running two wars and a drug prescription law on a credit card.

Now I pointed all these pesky facts out in my comments. And of course, what happened is that the meme was deleted. Not with an “oh thanks for the information, my bad” but just deleted. I might have ignored this had I not found a similar in tone meme (the left is “intolerant of ideas” –the ideas being my bigoted thoughts about transgendered people “deciding to be girls so they can use women’s locker rooms”) that had not been deleted but deleted to remove the comments I made, and then reposted. This one also was applauded by the woman’s “pastor” as good Christian truth.

In perusing the wall, I noted a remark made that suggested why this woman gets so much wrong: “I do my best never to watch the news.”

I’m tired of people who use religion to hide behind all the while twisting it into grotesque shapes to fit their sick fears and hatreds. They are not Christians at all.

Next up, what’s happening in Demagography today!

The South Has Fallen Way Off the Edge of Stupid

Tags

GOP, How stupid are you?, Merika, right wing, teabaggers

Gather round children, it’s time to hear a story.

It’s a story about a land called Merika.

It was once a jolly place living in the delusion of self-congratulatory goodness.

Yes, these Merikans believed themselves not only special, but specially good.

They stood for apple pie, Mom, and freedoms which were countless in number, as many as stars in the sky.

People from all over Gaia did whatever necessary to get to the land of Merika and we welcomed the poor, and tired, although why they were tired from sitting on a boat is a question seldom asked.

Course, the People who lived in Merika (who never named it just calling it home) were not nearly so impressed with these new Merikans and their ways. Their “ways” including pretty much telling the People to go jump in the Pacific, for they needed the Merika for a thing called “capitalism”, which sounded capital but turned out to be just another scam for the rich to inherit the earth.

They stole some folks and made them work for no wages, which gave a pretty unusual cast to capitalism and gave new meaning to the concept of “good people”.

They then got nosy in other people’s business in other places not Merika by explaining with bombs and such that they too should be like Merika (as best they could, given they were not special).

Anyways, Merikans prospered (at least most and as long as most is more than other countries, it was accounted perfect), but the thing about this capitalism is that some very few Merikans got filthy filthy wealthy, and they didn’t share with nobody. They bought houses and visited them a couple of weeks a year, and maybe not even every year. They traveled to other lands, always remarking that these other lands were not as nice as Merika, but they bought stuff that reminded them of these inferior places anyway. They boat boats too, and sailed the oceans blue.

Meanwhile, lots of Merikans got dirt poor. So the rich grew a bit scared. “What if they blame us for taking all the money?”

So the rich invented stuff like “Protestant work ethic, and pulling oneself up by one’s own bootstraps” and explained that rich people work really hard.

So poor people worked really hard.

But it didn’t help. And they were getting really riled.

So rich people told them that it was because of all those freed people, and all those other-than-white people who were the cause of their misery. They were “takers” and the gov’mint was givin’ away all their hard-earned money to “those others.”

And Merkia got more and more split apart between the few haves and the enormous have-nots.

The haves decided that the best thing to do was to make it hard for the have-nots to vote.

And this reached the height of heights in a silly state called Florida which looks a lot like a flaccid penis, and when you stop to think about it, it’s a bunch of flaccid penises that promoted the new law they have. And when you add in that most of the people in Florida are really really old, then that picture of very very old wrinkly flaccid penises will sear your brain for all eternity.

Anyway, this law, says that if you go get in line to vote, you can’t have someone save your place while you go pee. They figure that given the relative age of voters in Florida, this will reduce the lines a lot.

It may of course just encourage a lot of very very old and wrinkly flaccid penises to be publicly exposed. Not to say about what it might mean to that phrase “trickle down economics.”

I don’t know how this will give the rich a boost at the polls however. Unless it means that rich people think that only they can afford Depends. I guess it depends on what you call poor.

Close by in the land of Louisiana, a land that like most in the South, spends a lot of time talking about the honored sacredness of the “Constitution”–a document that once upon a time, they sought to distance themselves from in the quest for cotton-pickers at no cost, has found time to reason together in an unreasonable way.

Seems they have decided that like having a state flower and a state bird, a state really oughta have a “state book”.  And although the CONSTITUTION suggests that the state should “make no law” that has the effect of favoring any religion, the crawdaddys there decided that that doesn’t mean what it says or say what it means, and the bible would be a fittin’ state book, because as we all know, it says what it means and means what it says.

No doubt it will be one and one only version of that book although there are hundreds, because as everyone knows, God spoke to King James and said, “go forth and translate my words and call it your version of my words” which is not exactly God’s version, but thinking any deeper than that makes my head ache.

 

And so my child, this is the story of a special land, a special people, and a special time.

And they all lived happily ever after in the land that everyone else called Stupid.

Amen, and good night.

 

It’s Not Left vs Right, It’s Right vs Wrong

Tags

economy, editorial, GOP, poor, race, rant, teaparty

A movement is arising.

It began with Occupy Wall  Street.

It arose with Moral Mondays in North Carolina.

It’s spreading.

Throughout the South.

It’s moving to Wisconsin, and there are murmurings in Missouri.

People are getting tired of being tired.

And it’s not Democrats although no doubt most are. It includes Republicans and Independents and people who have little to do with politics. It includes some business folk, but probably not so many as people who are working stiffs. And poor. Lots of the poor.

And they come to state legislatures and stand in silent witness that these bodies of Republican control are unjust and immoral.

Yes immoral.

Republican extremism known by the name of Tea Party, is an immoral wound in America and people are not going to take it any more.

Let us be clear. Like it or not, believe it or not, (and the extremists are very good at refusing to accept reality), big business (aka Koch brothers) organized and funded the Tea Party movement. Their intentions were not made known of course but their intentions are clear: reduce taxes on the rich, reduce corporate taxes, reduce regulation on business, and continue to subsidize business so we can continue to laud “free market economies” (which of course given all this are not even close to being free, but are protected by government itself) as the best thing on earth.

To the Tea Party they formed, the message went: your taxes are going to takers not makers. You have worked hard and deserve that money yourselves. All you need do is fund the military so we can continue to enforce our will of “right” on the world. We can create the jobs if you just do your part and give us a free hand. That’s what democracy is all about, that is capitalism. It’s the government and its incessant socialistic welfare mentality that is destroying this country.

Now some of the Tea Party are well-educated business types. They are tiny business operations for the most part, but they like to think of themselves as “entrepreneurs” which makes them sound like the Kochs, and Trumps and those kind. But most of the Tea Party consists of not very well-educated white aging men and their overly made up and coiffed wives who like that idea that more money should be in their hands and not going to “those” people. You know “those” people, the ones are required to called “black” now, when in the day it was fine to call them “N*****”? And all those Mexicans, which are still just Mexicans, even though plenty of “them” actually come from Guatemala and Nicaragua and other places called Latin America. And then there are those “Orientals” from the “Orient” since Asian is still not de rigueur in this culture, and it’s all one big country isn’t it? After all, Sarah thought Africa might be a country, right?

Then in the ultimate hypocrisy of all hypocrisies, there in a dose of “Christianity” to hide that racism/downright hatred underneath. “See, it’s not me, it’s God who has a problem with fags!” And if that makes them feel vulnerable, well, throw in a dose of the 2nd Amendment was made for you and me, and voila, we have a mess of a human being filled with self-righteous hate, little actual knowledge of the world, but a gun-defended arrogance to do everything but call it publicly what they call it privately.

But ordinary folks are getting tired. Ordinary decent people who don’t have to wave a bible around to know what is right and what is wrong. And they are tired of watching years of work being undone by barely literate Republican senate and house members who pass insane laws one after another, making it safe and right for white America to live in their fantasy of the “good ole days”.

So people are marching. And more of them march every week.

IN NORTH CAROLINA THE GOP HAS SINCE 2010:

1. Raised taxes on the lowest 80% of it’s citizens
2. Removed a tax credit on 900,000 working families
3. Enforced restrictive voter laws
4. Blocked increased Medicaid coverage for the poor
5. Cut Pre-Kindergarten funding
6. Cut unemployment benefits
7. Voted itself a right to intervene in abortion lawsuits
8. Repealed a law that allowed death row inmates to challenge their convictions on racial grounds
9. Increased the standards at abortion clinics to that of surgical centers and made it illegal to offer abortion coverage if you are a public health insurance company.
10. Offered no increase in base salary to school teachers even though they are paid at the lowest rate in the country.
11. Tenure is to be phased out and no salary increases are to be given for master’s degrees. Teachers aides are severely cut.

IN GEORGIA, THE GOP HAS:

1. Refused to grant increase in Medicaid coverage affecting some 600,000 Georgians and made it a crime to assist someone who is seeking ACA coverage.
2. Cut more than 7.6 BILLION dollars to public education over the last 10 years.
3. Restricted workers rights and benefits
4. Promoted more stand your ground and like gun legislation.
5. Cut unemployment benefits
6. Promoting enforcement of voter suppression laws.

When you go nation wide, the results are the same. GOP-led legislatures are doing the Koch’s bidding everywhere, often with bills written by the KOCH legislative arm, ALEC. Everywhere the tune is the same–lower taxes on the rich, cut out programs for the poor, all with the promise to Mr. and Mrs. White OLD people–this will all benefit you, we promise. Just wait for it.

Let me repeat. There is nothing Christian in any of this. People who are TEA PARTY adherents and claim they are Christian are lying. They are at best Christianists, people who use the bible and their own personal interpretation of it to hide behind while they endorse and argue for a denial of health care for the poor (they can use the emergency ward if they need to — duh who pays for that stupid?), a denial public education to the poor (let’s have vouchers, and the poor will end up with the poorest of poor systems but they had their “choice”), a denial of food, unemployment insurance (that breeds dependence and doesn’t teach work ethic–yeah hungry babies are eager to work), a denial of voting rights (everybody can get a voter ID–yeah except for the cost and the travel to a distance center, and oh yeah, lots of people can’t get a birth certificate any more because records are lost, but a gun permit is okay, but  student ID is not), a denial of basic rights to undocumented workers (since they steal our jobs–yeah we were wondering where you were in the bean fields yesterday and even the little one’s can pick can’t they?), a denial of fair wage (business can pay whatever it wants to, that’s the American way–along with child labor, and unsafe working conditions right?), and on and on…

They say all this and have the temerity, the audacity, the chutzpah, to suggest that Jesus would approve! Jesus hated government they say, and Jesus hated the minimum wage. Jesus loved guns and self-defense. Jesus is nothing more than a malleable dummy used while these vile gutless wonders shrink in horror at their own diseased and flesh eaten faces staring out from the dead sockets from which they look upon a world they hate as it slips from their nail-torn fingers.

Lord save me from the Christianists and though I don’t believe in Hell, but God, sometimes I wish there was one, for these puke excuses of humanity.

Other than that, I’m having a great Sunday.