How Glenn Beck Sees The World

"I went to the movie this weekend with a gun."-Glenn Beck

I saw today that expert fact-maker-upper and victim pretender-to-be-er Glenn Beck compared the #occupywallstreet movement to the Night of Long Knives, effectively reducing the population of Earth that he doesn't secretly believe to be Hitler to 8 people.

Seriously, though. What does Glenn Beck do? What purpose does he serve? Fuck, what's his job description? Alarmist? Encrazyifier? As near as I can tell he gets huge Huge HUGE ratings by taking what dumbfucks, bigots and religious nuts already believe to be true, dressing it in fancy language and selling it back to them as 'news.'


Occupy Wall Street, as I've already said, is a highly orchestrated, secretive plan masterminded by a power-mad leader to have his personal army perform key political assassinations against leaders of a giant paramilitary unit that stands as the only obstacle between himself and a campaign of blood, genocide and torture that would become synonymous with absolute evil until the end of human civilization.

Leaving aside the inconvenient fact that everything in that last paragraph is provably and retardedly wrong, let's take a look at the mind that would make such heated claims, and what kind of worldview would cause someone to make claims like this on an almost daily basis with my old friend Microsoft Paint. That last sentence is not an endorsement for Paint. I just don't feel like installing another drawing program given that I draw like an eight year old with no hands.

 The black lines in those aren't partitions. They represent the threads of anti-white, anti-christian oppression Beck thinks dominates this country, keeping the poor rich white people down. Also Socialism.

Dis-Civil Obedience Pt. 2

     "There are no facts, only interpretations."
           -F. Nietzsche 
 
      "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
          -John F. Kennedy

Thanks in no small part to the manipulation of popular perception by the American media, most Americans exist in a happy delusion that unpleasant things like riots, police states, systemic corruption and armed revolution only happen in distant, hard-to-pronounce countries full of strange brown people.

I'll give an example of manipulated perception. An associate of mine, who we'll call Paul, is an average American. Paul is in his mid-30's, has two children, works as an assistant manager at a convenience store, loves classic rock, doesn't really follow politics, is a 'default Christian,' and rents a two-bedroom apartment that he can barely afford.

Paul has a tumor growing against a cracked disc in his spine, which has given him a form of sciatica that causes severe back pain, numbness in extremities and generally makes his everyday existence way way way more of a pain in the dick than it should or needs to be. He has shitty health insurance from his job, but even with that he can't afford the out-of-pocket costs necessary to treat his condition with a relatively simple operation. What Paul can afford is enough muscle relaxers and pain killers to continue functioning as a wage slave.

Paul does not support socialized healthcare (even though he supports medicare/medicaid.) Paul thinks Obama wants to euthanize your grandparents. Paul thinks America has the best health care system in the world. Facts and figures and evidence do not sway Paul. Paul has been indoctrinated by the media, through it's use of attractive, self-perpetuating misinformation.

Anyway, enough about Paul. Fuck Paul, this article is supposed to be about ignored or glossed-over unpleasantries in white peoples' countries.

Austeria 

There was a royal wedding recently in the United Kingdom between Prince William and Kate Middleton. The estimated cost of the wedding was somewhere between 30 and 110 million dollars with estimates of the ongoing damage to the economy ranging from 2 billion to 50 billion dollars.



While William and Kate were planning their ridiculously fancy hitching, the people that actually govern the United Kingdom were pushing through austerity measures, including drastic cuts to welfare support and public sector jobs.

(As an aside, I think it's weird that I almost don't want to type the word 'welfare.' Because of popular perception 'welfare' is now seen as a dirty word, conjuring images of crack-addled burglars gaming the system and unemployed single mothers driving luxury cars. This imagery is so pervasive and effective that I didn't wish to invoke it. In reality, 'welfare' simply refers to the part of the government system that concerns itself with providing a basic level of well-being and support to it's citizens, that they may fare well in their endeavors. The perception that huge numbers of the lower class are unwilling to pull their weight is largely a myth, as a moment's reflection by any member of the lower or working class would reveal. A moment's reflection, unfortunately, seems beyond the majority of us. Of course, there will always be a small minority of those that will attempt to manipulate any given system in their favor. Just look at the banking industry.)

Meanwhile, with the Will and Kate fiasco capturing the hearts and cameras of the world, anti-austerity protests and displays of civil disobedience were happening in the streets of London.

They were largely ignored.

And it worked. Mostly. Lots of young people chanted and waved signs and had marches and got knocked around by the police and no one really noticed. I remember having conversations where the disgusting level of opulence and privilege on display at the wedding would be brought up, and I would mention the disconnect between the imagery of the figureheads of state eating $40,000 cakes and wearing $400,000 dresses, and the working class outside eating terrible British food and wearing $20 hoodies trying to keep their jobs or child benefits. The crazy-ass thing about these conversations: I was the only one that even knew the austerity measures, let alone the protests, were even a thing. And I'm an asshole.

Cut to two months later.


Warning: Contains awesome.

If you can't, or don't feel like, watching that, it features two of my favorite things: Hooliganism and self-empowerment.

#occupywallstreet

should have been the top trending topic on Twitter on several different occasions over the past 12 days. Twitter, however, has an unwritten policy of censoring offensive and controversial topics to prevent them from trending. I can understand this. No one wants to log into a website and see a page of posts with #whenIfuckmydog or #Howtofistmycousin. But who decides what is controversial or offensive? JP Morgan? Tia Tequila? No one seems to know. It's also worth noting that emails containing information on the protest were marked as spam by Yahoo!, who later claimed it was an accident. It's not incriminating, just suspicious. Especially with the echoes of the cry that "the Egyptian revolution was made possible through social media!" still echoing in people's minds.

Whatever. Occupy Wall Street should be on the front page of every newspaper and website in the country. It isn't. Or hasn't been. New Jersey Governor and animate 'before picture' Chris Christie is. Why? Because he announced that he will not be running for President. That is not news. It doesn't even smell like news. I don't run for President every single goddamn day, and you know what? It doesn't warrant mention. Maybe as a blurb in the back of NJ newspapers, not the front page of the Washington Post and the New York Times.

I stumbled across Occupy Wall Street on accident after it had been going on for four days. It wasn't until after a week in that someone that could justifiably be called a member of the mainstream media, Keith Olbermann, ran a serious piece on it, mostly focusing on the media blackout. And it wasn't until videos of police using excessive force a couple of days later that anyone else took serious interest.

Occupy Wall Street, for anyone that doesn't know, is a leaderless, nonviolent protest on (well, near,) Wall Street. It was loosely organized by Adbusters and Anonymous (inasmuch as a group of random hacker vigilantes with a meme and love of lulz can be called organized,) that focused on, in a nutshell, American revolution.

They claimed to have one demand, although they hadn't agreed upon it yet. They still haven't. The closest thing to a common theme is one that states "We are the 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%."

To my religious friends: Exodus 32 seems pretty clear about this kind of shit.

The movement has received endorsement and support from such various celebrities, activists and intellectuals as Cornell West, Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, Roseanne, Immortal Technique, Lupe Fiasco, Chris Hedges, Susan Sarandon and Tom Morello.

The protest, intensely nonviolent at this point, has been using open forums and general assembly to build itself as it goes. This is interesting, because it means the movement is organic (insert vegan hippie joke here,) changing as it progresses, as opposed to the average Tea Party protest, or the Madison sit-in, or the Verizon strikes, which were organized with specific objectives, intentions and goals beforehand.

The attendance, as far as bodies on the ground, has been wildly debated from 'a couple dozen' up to 'several thousand,' with a predictable swell on weekends.

There have been between several and lots of videos showing police using excessive force on the protestors (such as macing women trapped behind a net and roughing up cooperative, unresisting protestors and bystanders,) as well as underhanded arrests like the resurrection of a 150 year old mask law and asking protesters to step off the sidewalk, then arresting them for obstructing traffic.

These are, of course, debatable facts for the callous and inhumane among us, but this fact remains: there are a lot of police there. If this is a small and insignificant demonstration by a bunch of bored, entitled kids (it's not,) why is there such a large number of police officers surrounding a public gathering of unarmed civilians exercising their constitutional rights?

Still, it is, at this point, a relatively small movement. That can be changed though. I think that that kind of change, while possible, is not very likely. The #occupy meme is spreading, with reported demonstrations being set up in Houston, Austin, Portland, Detroit, Washington D.C., Los Angeles and, well, anywhere big enough to theoretically support it. I hope that people get plugged in to this, and I hope it spreads. I hope that people realize that they personally have a responsibility in this country, that when this country no longer serves their interests it's not some distant politician's responsibility to reform or abolish it, it's the American citizen's.

I just worry that the divisiveness, apathy, indoctrination and indifference are too thoroughly entrenched in the American psyche to be shifted. Anyway, hopefully someone finds this informative and takes an interest in, well, their own best interest for once and tries to educate themselves. If not, have fun voting for the same crooked thieving mouthpieces everyone else at your church is voting for and please don't act surprised when the riots happen.

Dis-Civil Obedience (part one)

     "We do not remain slaves because masters exist, masters exist because we elect to remain slaves."
           -Paranoid Internet Yahoo

     "Arm the Homeless"
          -Paranoid Real Life Yahoo

(Author's note: There are a lot of links embedded in this article. They'll take you to more questionable information. I'm not getting paid for them.)

I'm a big fan of conspiracy theories. I'd like to be up front about that. I'm also a big fan of truth. What I'm not a big fan of is idiots that don't realize they're idiots.

It shouldn't have to be pointed out that not all 'theories' are equal. Saying that evolution and gravity are only theories, and then saying creationism and lizard people from beyond the stars replacing world leaders are theories too does not make them equal. But that's how dumb, crazy people justify believing in dumb, crazy ideas.

I desperately, desperately wish adults would self-educate. Unfortunately the vast majority of fully-developed humans I know are openly opposed to new information. Try to explain the Federal Reserve to them and it's like their brains shut down in fear. I don't know why that is.

I also wish I was half as smart as I claim to be. If I was, I'm sure I could find a way to shove truth into the heads of people that seem destined to happily base their entire lives on misinformation. Maybe start a Jersey Shore knockoff where every few minutes the Bar Hag and the Date Rapist erupt into a screaming match over the Bush Administration's culpability as war criminals.

Maybe a light-hearted web-comic?

It seems like people would rather believe an attractive lie than an ugly truth. You have to click on those last two links or the joke doesn't work. I'll wait.

Anyway, facts are boring and celebrity naked people rarely seem to want to attach giant boobs to boring old facts and figures. Leave that to boring old ugly boring people like Noam Chomsky and Richard Dawkins. Here's some I'll attach my marginal attractiveness to:

The Free Press

It seems like every time I turn on the TV someone's covering a revolution in the Middle East. And that's all well and good, but I've noticed an odd trend. The only revolutionary activity being covered here at home involves violent, ignorant hillbillies unwittingly representing the interests of private multinationals.

Like this charming fellow.

And again, there's nothing inherently wrong with this. The problem I have is that this minority of anti-healthcare, anti-choice, anti-government fringe lunatics receive such a disparate amount of media attention. Generally, supporters of this movement fall into two categories.

The first; The rich, power mad imperialists: the ones switching back and forth from company executives to government lobbyists and Representatives, the ones that benefited from the current economic meltdown, the ones pouring money into the campaigns of politicians that will later represent their interests in the State, the shadow CEOs, perfectly happy to perpetuate the current trend of low taxes, mass ignorance, poverty, disunity and deregulation. The ones that need the masses to believe in nonsensical ideas like 'too big to fail,' or 'death panels,' or 'small government,' that need the illusion that the system is fair, that hard work is the touchstone of success, that the voice of the little man is important. Their greatest strength lies in self-perpetuating falsehoods: That the unemployed are lazy, that the poor deserve to be poor, that they are being repressed, not by their oppressors, but by their fellow proletariat.

The second, of course, is the type of lower-class, herd-mentality, low functioning, country music and NASCAR loving apes that can be easily tricked into believing they have more in common with the smooth-talking, white multimillionaire that owns the company that enslaves him than with his dark-skinned (or Muslim or gay or female or whatever,) analogue. This type of capital B Believer seems custom made to be manipulated. Truth, to this type of person, is almost infinitely malleable. By harnessing this infantile and almost impossible level of naivete and lack of critical thinking with an almost endless capacity for misguided anger they have created the perfect army: the kind that doesn't require payment.

Truth isn't facts or dates or figures. Not to Sgt. NASCAR up there. Truth is a shared hallucination, a passionate conviction of faith, an agreed upon delusion. Truth is a catchy slogan. Death-Panels. Intelligent Design. The Bible is truth, and the Bible can be spun to support any argument. Incest is A-Okay because Lot did it. See? The dollar is truth, and the value of the dollar is based not on gold or resources, but on the whim of a private institution, (you shoulda listened when your weird friend tried to explain about the Fed). The perception that some people are genuinely evil is truth, and conveniently enough the 'evil people' are the ones that most share their common interests. The only mentality that breeds true evil is the one that is encouraged to see evil in others.

What this has caused is a perception shift in the American public, where the "Right," (Christian/Republican/conservative/etc.) is now seen as this fringe group of ultra-conservative capitalists, and the "Left" is now seen as anyone that embraces proven social programs that benefit the majority, such as socialized healthcare, well-funded public education or the social safety net for the unemployed, mentally ill, elderly, handicapped or those unlucky enough to slip through the cracks. As a consequence, what we now call "Centerist" or moderate views would have, 30 years ago, been seen as "Conservative."

The media, a capitalist institution, has fallen victim to the same amoral buyouts and mutual back-scratchings that took down our political and financial institutions. When the protesters don't represent the same lunatic ideologies as the Tea Party or Christian Dominionists the media coverage dries up. When it doesn't dry up it takes on the tone of condescending scorn, name-calling, derision, conspiracy-mongering (the kind based in wild assertions and linking unrelated coincidences, not the kind based on research and fact-checking,) and other blatant editorializing passed off as 'fact' by an irresponsible press to a public kept in ignorance of the truth.

The Madison, Wisconsin protests over Scott Walker's Union busting garnered a fair bit of attention. The weird thing is that the further up the media ladder one climbs the less 'fair and balanced' the coverage becomes. While online blogs and progressive activist sites treat it with the same gravitas as their conservative counter parts treat, I don't know, assault rifle porn and Planned Parenthood clinic burnings, major news sites were more likely to shift the focus away from the facts and towards editorializing. All of a sudden the buzzword wasn't 'union busting,' it was 'right-to-work.' The "Democratic Walkout" became an 'irresponsible stunt.' Suddenly it wasn't "gigantic ass protest over threatened union bargaining rights,' it was 'Democrats abandon ship while Walker makes tough choices.' It was marginalized and deflated and spun in a dozen different directions. Then the bill was passed. Then media coverage vanished.

Wait, what about the recall elections? What about the lawsuits filed against the State? What about Walker's relationship with the Koch brothers? What about pundits like Beitbart and Palin making against-character statements supporting Big-Government making decisions negatively impacting the working class? What about the smaller protests this caused across the nation?

Here's what happened: They were ignored. Old news. It was close enough to election season to resume the overly simplified black-or-white ideological charade that is American politics. People have the right to petition their elected representatives for redress of grievances, and inconvenient troublemakers that don't fit with the current narrative have the right to be ignored, mocked, demonized, bought out, criminalized, and ignored again.

Next Time: The Austerity of Hope and #Occupywallstreet