MrHoatzin

PURITY! SLIPPERY SLOPE! SOCIALISM! DOG AND CAT UNNATURAL MARRIAGE!

US, of all the industrialized western nations, has for a long time now had the worst safety net, the least comprehensive medical coverage (while at the same time one of the most inefficient and most expensive medical systems), the longest work hours per week vs the lowest productivity, the most litigious pandemonium in civil courts, the most people in prisons per capita, the most punitive laws against poverty, and so on. The right side of the political spectrum is always super poised to be as cruel as possible to the weakest people who are least likely to fight back—far more so than the right ever is in Europe. In Europe both sides of the spectrum have a kind of respect for the downtrodden, and a kind of understanding that "trickle down" and "raising tide" are not the same thing. An example! Welfare to Work program is one of the most sinister Republican programs ever. It is a perfect example of the barbed frontier welfare that is practiced in this country; it is a system that is supposed to stick it to those welfare queens (a republican PR invention to discredit poor, generally black people) to not just sit on their asses, but to develop a solid Calvinist work-ethic, and in the process pay back the state the money they took from its generous teat. Basically, poor people at the end of the line get an option to join this program and get some money from the state for some time. Then they have to pay it back by working as a ward of the state—like parole, or what used to be known back in the day, indentured servitude. The state in turn rents the services of these people, usually for dirt cheap (with probably some tax incentives to make it extra savory for the parasitic quarters of the free market), to some local service-providing businesses, usually companies that staff mall concession stands with unskilled workers in the rich-ass town one hour away from where that "welfare" recipient lives. It is a kind of horrible feudal arrangements which do not help the person at all, they just perpetuate the cycle of downtroddenness and ultimately punish more than they help. They happen all the time in America but are unheard-of in Europe. Of those 60 years you mention, the last 30 (like I have mentioned) have seen a kind of stagnation of the entire middle class with all the fruits of the on-going boom going to the richest 15% of the population. Plus, as the financial crisis has taught us, a lot of those gains in wealth are entirely fictitious—generated by the perpetual-money-making machines in a giant circle-jerk of inflating property—entirely happening inside mathematical simulations (stock market fail-safe computers, collateralized debt obligations, etc.) tacked on an irrational system (cattle/people who have no real idea or desire to understand what they're buying or selling) governed by a magical invisible hand metaphor (the Holy Ghost). OBLIGATORY: AsgA5qxEy_Y

(please elaborate)

Woo, Hobo Lobo of Hamelin, ladies and gents! This is an early version of the Lobo himself... He has changed a wee bit since then.

I'll tweet it when it's done or you can follow the RSS feed if that is your kind of thing. I just did the last two frames yesterday night, I guess I am aiming for a weekend live date going forward.

Cough.

Yesss!!! Until it becomes too unwieldy whereupon there'll be pagination.

:buyme::buyme: hobolobo.net :buyme: :buyme: Will try to update at least weekly, free time permitting.

I don't think we're reading and responding to the same stuff here. I have absolutely not singled out Thompson for his age. What I have said is very much a critique of his confrontational tone and his fluffy content. Nothing more. The notion that communism failed because people are greedy is silly and simplistic. The notion that management will not give up the opportunity to control others is silly, because there were centers of power and control structures in communist countries and they were far more oppressive than the capitalist management (by and large and in recent memory). "Capitalism is the way the human race runs," is a truism, and a wrong one since human race has existed for far longer than capitalism. Plus, it goes against a lot of the science that is presented on the first page of that TED talks thread. That communism can never work, is also truism. And the quoted passage from NYRB about China was supposed to illustrate that communism is still around, whatever its form. And he kept juxtaposing capitalism with some "perfect system" that people here are allegedly advocating and want in place TODAY, daring us to tell him he's wrong... That is silly! I don't want a perfect uncapitalism to rule us all, or whatever, I just want a more just society. And as somebody mentioned, what we have around us is not even capitalism. Adam Smith wouldn't be able to recognize what we have going on. I think Smith's vision of capitalism is a really awesome society, but it really has very little to do with the large scale global thing that we have going which in turn is hardly deserving of credit for how awesome the global society is. All of that is half baked. There is no full-on socialism, but governments in many countries generally own utilities and have true monopolies over some industries. I did hedge this statement. There is socialism in Europe and Canada, which is not to say that Europe and Canada are thoroughly socialist. They are kindof comprehensive. Which US is not. US is dogmatically laissez-faire.Also, I totally conceded his point that there is no viable alternative. I said, "I will not argue with you that the left has yet to offer an alternative to capitalism. Postmodernism is not as good at generating Visions Of The Future that can inspire people as modernism was." I did not dismiss that at all, since those are not points that he tried to make. Again, no. I have been harsh. I'm sorry for being harsh. I am more sorry for being perceived as harsh, frankly, than being harsh, but I am sorry for both regardless. It's the internet thing. Imagine all that calmly stated rather than bellowed...Granted, I did say he was being a dick, but he was not being a dick because he is 17, he is being a dick because he presented all these alleged show-stoppers that were in fact a warm pile of unhelpful common wisdom. No one is talking about throwing capitalism away and replacing it with a utopia. Talking in those terms—denigrating any alternative to capitalism that people may bring up as a utopia or needing to be perfect to compete as viable—is antagonistic to further conversation, hence dickish, hence unimaginative. QED. I don't think it is in anyone's interest here to go "ABOOBOOBOO, poor Thompson got bullied by a belligerent slav!" None of this is personal. And I am peeved that you automatically assumed otherwise. Oh, noes! There goes 100% of my hypothetical constituency which doesn't even live in this country. nKoB8TPyHBo

I am so glad that we all agree here. This is why Idle Thumbs maybe deserves to live. Some more. Often. Not that Destructoid is any kind of alternative to the Thumbs or anything. Even people who are sometimes right turn out to be disappointing turd-humans in the filed of the great misnomer that is video game journalism.

Oh, ok, never mind then. Carry on. Here's an obligatory vid of a crow fashioning a tool: TtmLVP0HvDg

See, Hermie, this is what I was talking about... It is impolite to talk politics in fine company. People would rather not know stuff, even though it would make them super fucking angry, with righteous ire, and maybe get them to think and talk about this shit... And talking about this public knowledge makes you comparable to a schizophrenic fear-mongering demagogue. Tone it down, man? Tone what down, exactly? Sit down and shut up, because that is the proper thing to do? LIFrqZPehK8 Here's another one! Just making up for all the politics shit I made you read through. It's Obligatory.

IqfSoDG1C3g Here's a fun vid! Yay, the end of patriarchy! Or something!

You're welcome. Asshole. And Hermie, communism and socialism as dirty words in this culture are a theme of Dethspank, the second one in particular. I though that was one of the most ingenious examples of satire in video games since the last GTA game I played. But yeah, I don't really get it. There is a really strong business lobby and PR machine in this country that has completely discredited unions and social concerns of little people. Plus, talking about politics is seen as an impolite thing in fine company, to the point where no one explains any of this shit to the misinformed. So you have people in whose interest it is to organize mortified by the idea on spiritual, irrational grounds. Unions=evil, corporations=not an enemy. So, with that kind of shorthand embedded in peoples' thinking, you can have the most right politician in Europe fall to the left of the most liberal politicians in the States.

I will not argue with you that the left has yet to offer an alternative to capitalism. Postmodernism is not as good at generating Visions Of The Future that can inspire people as modernism was.

Socialism is working just fine in Europe and Canada. Such as it is. You're talking in truisms. And you're being both a dick and unimaginative by throwing your hands up in the air and declaring that everything that is not capitalism must be some sort of pie in the sky fantasy utopia. And no, communism didn't die out because of greed. If I felt like being a pedant, I'd say it has yet to be truly tried out. If anything, it died out because it was a totalitarian beast and as such hardly a friendly society prone to thriving. Besides, the Chinese brand of communism is doing just fine: Emphasis mine.

I don't really see it. I've been in this shit for a dozen years now. Every time someone tries to suggest a better course of action for the country to take, inspired by our best understanding of the situation, the status quo side dials up the crazy and all of a sudden the political reality is such that doing the right thing is untenable. This country is incapable of pulling out at the last second. I can't fucking see it, for as long as the left power structure 1) has no alternative story simple enough for the stupid motherfuckers to comprehend, 2) has no balls to do what is right, and 3) is eager to throw the little man under the bus time and again. The little man is so fucked by both sides all the time, and its only recourse is to vote for the other guy. So now, after being fucked by Bush and the arsonist who burned down everything for eight years, the people elect a messiah who turns out to be made of cardboard, so they are in a situation where their only recourse is to reelect the arsonists. Shit is not right. GWB's presidency took place because people were annoyed with the Democrats and voted for Nader. I really can't blame them. The media noise machine on the right is super powerful. There is no way they will just wake up one day and realize they're the problem.

Yeah, no, Obama is at worst useless, at best disappointing. McCain would've been far worse for the country. And also, that hippie in the coffee shop is a horrible straw man, Sully. There are no hippies in coffee shops. They don't exist. Look at the data. Argh, I think you're gonna make me ramble here. I don't like it when I ramble. In the last 30, 35 years this weird dogma has arisen in the US, that government, in general, is incapable of solving problems. That all the society's problems can be solved by just letting big, benevolent corporations deal with them. This is patently false, and yet all the allegedly liberal presidents have embraced this belief. In the same time frame, India and China have invested immense amounts of resources in generating smart people, developing complex industries, as the US has stagnated because investing into the populace is what damn pinko commie secularists do and is not The American Way™. Most of the wealth generated in the US in this time period went to the richest 10 percent of people, making them richer. The middle and lower classes, in relative money terms when you adjust for inflation, had stagnated and got worse. It is now harder to raise from the strata of society one is born in than ever since the turn of the 20th century. This dogma that government is part of the problem didn't arise out of nowhere. It was manufactured by big business PR interests and spouted by Ronald Reagan. It benefits big business directly. And it is not supported by evidence. When the government is weak and unable to protect its constituents, it creates a kind of state of nature and the strongest kid on the block (i.e. the huge employer that employs 30% of a town's people) all of a sudden wields amazing power. The level of power over the people in the area is damn near feudal (since a lot of the time, quitting and finding another job is really not much of an option). They always wielded such power over smaller governments. A General Electric can bully a state's government easily. But they cannot bully the federal government as easily. That is why there is this weird cry for "states rights" that goes along with the cry for a smaller government. More power given to the states means that more power can be wrestled away by big businesses. Big businesses absolutely don't think that government is not a part of the solution, because they profit from the government, it is the place they go to get things done cheaply. They blackmail states to get tax breaks to open new facilities in certain places. Then states bid against one another to get those jobs happening, underbidding, disregarding environmental impact reports, making it harder for workers to unionize, passing all kinds of beneficial regulations and building supporting infrastructure, roads and pipelines and communication networks to get these companies situated in their nook rather than their neighbors. It one stupid game of big brother. I am not here to make friends, I am here to win. And at the end of the day, most of the wealth generated by the company will go to the CEOs and shareholders. Most shares are owned by a dinky minority of people. The abstracted method of ownership is just an extension of the feudal system; those who are already rich will get richer, and those lower down will work like crazy to get up, and probably not make it anywhere. This is not a problem of lazy people just not working hard enough to pull themselves by the bootstraps. This is a retarded order of things. It is patently undemocratic and unjust, if you're into those kinds of things. And the people that run the show on the big business side of things, the CEOs, are not there because they're the smartest kids on the block that managed to beat everyone else in the great meritocracy we live in. They are, by and large, utter morons, just like the rest of everyone. Read this article from the Financial Times about a memo one Tom Barrack sent to his employees. That is the quality of the smart people running this show. They are clueless morons who lucked out. And they are working hard to stay on the top by moving the floor further and further away from them. I wish I had all the facts collated, with all the references. I should totally do that. And then just dump a fact bomb when someone comes out of the wood work and implies so offhandedly that what I am saying is crazy talk by an irrational person who cannot take blame for his own fucked-up life. I am doing just fine. I bought a house last year. I don't work particularly hard but I work intelligently. And, of course, I got lucky. I am not a fucking hippie in a coffee shop.

Well, maybe you should eat shit and die? :( My blood pressure is elevated as it is, living in this country of credulous, willfully ignorant morons who think "freedom" means making the government less able to stop corporations from bullying them, and listening to the allegedly liberal president say he is more concerned his constituents (i.e. corporations and the conservative astroturf bullshit mill) see him as anti-business rather than his base (i.e. those who worked hard to get him elected) seeing him as completely oblivious to their suffering and unwilling to fight their battles. He has thrown the Democratic party under the bus with his last state of the union, basically choosing to be elected in 2012 (with both branches of congress in Republican hands) over staying true to any kind of conviction. It would be a lovely tragedy if it were fiction. The Republican assholes in congress, elected by the mandate of the people to Get The Country Back (to the middle ages, to apartheid, to de-facto feudalism, or wherever the fuck) are already working hard to roll back the health care reform bill that was passed last year, because that would somehow help people get jobs... it is a fucking mess. I wouldn't be entirely surprised if they succeeded. The bottom line is, no need to be a dick about how fucked up this country is. In 10, 20 years the empire will completely crumble under its own weight and stupidity. There'll be creationist theme parks in every city and the schools will be segregated anew. College will be prohibitively expensive for everyone and there will be no point in going, since there will be no prospects anywhere. All the engineering and serious science will be done abroad, in countries that care about education and staying competitive, rather than some absurd free-market-will-safe-us-all nonsense. Then the war with Mexico will start when some Great White Hope (Palin herself perhaps!) starts a full-on Kristallnacht. By this point, the world will have moved on and the American Empire will have ended. The US political scene is seriously giving me flashbacks to Yugoslavia in the early nineties. US capitalism is in full-on cannibalism mode. Maybe even moreso than in the robber baron times, since back then the little people knew that the interests of the rich didn't reflect their interests. The conservative astroturf bullshit mill has won. Thoroughly. There is no saving America. :buyme:

Actually, I'd say Nixon was the last decent president this country had. And the last liberal president... who only happened to have been a bigot and a Republican and a little Machiavellian... He raised social security, lowered defense spending, protected consumers from price gouging and created the EPA, Clean Air Act, OSHA, Consumer Product Safety Commission and the Supplemental Security Income, he recognized that there are many flavors of communism and started opening diplomatic relationships with China.... Oh, and wtf, it looks like Noam Chomsky thinks the same way I do! Woo, I am in good company. Anyway, the only retarded thing he did was make some kinds of poor-people food cheaper in artificial ways, inadvertently creating the high-fructose-corn-syrup-fueled decline of health in the country at large. See this lecture Jayel linked in the lectures thread for more detail. Clinton and Obama and Carter all did some things that quickly escalated the fortunes of the little people of this country. They are the liberals who don't care about liberal causes by and large, the if-you-can't-beat-them-join-them new tories in liberal clothing in Tony Blair's mold.

Oh, no, she is way too vain to let that happen. She will fill the cabinet with her friends from high school and random sycophants. She cannot be controlled the way GWB was.

They're talking about czars. There is a habit of naming some special appointments to tackle specific problems as "czars", so you have a dude whom the press refers to as the "Drug Czar" but his real title is Director of National Drug Control Policy. More here. There was a completely manufactured right wing rage a year and a half ago (when that was shot) due to the fact that Obama was Ruskiying up the hallowed Anglo-Saxon departments of the executive branch by appointing czars left and right. It was a preposterous load of bullshit and no one remembers it now.

She is walking a fine line.

There is nothing comical about Sarah Palin. She is a living, breathing nightmare.

Smart wizard. Not like one of those layabout deadbeat wizards who never amount to anything. Courtesy, my router. This happens when cheapo, uninventive marketing departments run out of adjectives and posses no self reflection to notice that "smart wizard" sounds really, really stupid. Maybe the term wizard has lost all its true denotation, thanks to some wise ass programmer in the early nineties.