Liberty or Deaf (pt. 2)

The second half of this update will further explore the incompatibility of corporations with a free market, as well as the insanity that is the Far-Right fringe in America. Also: For comedic purposes I will be posting information about Kid Rock next to a picture of a hideous abandoned chihuahua.

"Never in living memory has a single individual embodied so many negative stereotypes as Kid Rock. Kid is a perfect storm of every pro-eugenics argument."

 While these modern Libertarians often bemoan corporate regulations and taxation as redistributionist, anti-capitalist, and success punishing examples of government activism that are targeted at destroying the free market, this view ignores the major premise that corporations are, by their very nature, State-manufactured creatures. Given that the existence of corporations, artificial creatures endowed by the State with legal rights and protections, can only be possible with significant government interference in the free market to begin with, it would be nonsensical to claim a Libertarian defense with regards to their regulation after having already set an arbitrary baseline that allows for significant State interference in the market (Crane, 2005).

Additionally, the Conservative-Libertarian argument that government market regulations infringe on individual liberty relies on the selective reasoning that only the government has the ability to engage in coercion, when in reality any large concentration of power, such as an artificial entity granted exclusive power and privilege by the government, may do so (Crane, 2005). This is as true for large corporations as it is for private militia, private police forces, illegal cartels, and organized crime syndicates. The accurate Libertarian stance in all of these instances is that it is the State's almost exclusive responsibility to protect individual liberty from such coercive and authoritarian concentrations of power.

"After hearing American Bad Ass I thought 'Finally! Uneducated, violent, meth addict white supremacists have found their champion in Kid Rock!'"

The current American system of State-capitalism, or corporatism, is fundamentally authoritarian, as it funnels capital into the hands of a select few, who then use their power and influence to minimize competition and immunize themselves from failure in an increasingly exclusive and unassailable shell of corporate welfare and government protection (Goetting, 2010). This involves any number of mechanisms that either protect corporate interests at the expense of individual liberty or selectively favor certain corporations over others.

This system of corporatism, viewed from a Libertarian standpoint, is inherently flawed in that it self-corrects only where increasing profits and market dominance are concerned, the long term effects of which invariably lead to less competition, lower wages, and, once a certain level of success is reached, an ever-decreasing possibility of failure, all of which are antithetical to a free market. Such a system cannot act individually and will not act collectively to promote individual liberty (Chomsky, 2002).

This trend is not, as with authoritarian government power structures, caused by individual inequity, greed, or corruption, but is a mechanism enforced by the system itself. Individual corporate acts, undertaken by the CEO or Board of Directors, that seek to promote competition, equality or the betterment of the market or society as a whole are routinely weeded out to protect the corporation from market loss, takeover, and failure. This is accomplished by the gradual process of egalitarian management being superseded by officers that will act more in accordance with the shareholders' desires, which are collectively divorced from the well-being of society as a whole beyond the government regulations and employment laws that Right-Libertarians are currently lobbying against.

 "It's not that Kid Rock steals beats from good songs to 'sing' and 'rap' over, or that his non-retarded lyrics are just clumsy references to much better artists. It's that he sells records that are nothing but that!"



When corporate officers are allowed to continue acting for the good of society and not the good of the corporation for any length of time, then the corporation almost invariably suffers for it, and if it does not soon fail in the cutthroat market of corporatism, it will be so weakened that it will usually be either bought out or taken over by another corporation that is better able to fulfill its primary functions: to increase stakeholder profit, ensure market dominance, and minimize competition (Chomsky, 2002).

This authoritarian, coercive system masquerading in the guise and language of free market ideology is further exacerbated by the tendencies of those most opposed to such systems also being of the most politically dissatisfied and inactive socioeconomic classes, while the perception of public opinion is largely dictated by members of higher socioeconomic classes that place greater priority on the individualistic policies that most benefit themselves, than on equality-promoting policies that benefit society as a whole (Bobo, 1991). This has led to a self-perpetuating cycle in which those that stand to gain the most from a truly Libertarian market, the majority in the laboring class, become increasingly jaded and indifferent to market struggles and political representation and more acquiescent of exploitative and coercive practices, while those already benefiting the most from the current system are the most involved, have the greatest influence, routinely receive more favorable media attention, and have access to the resources necessary to influence policymakers and public opinion.

This trend does much to explain Tea Party Libertarian politicians and spokespersons that selectively defend policies that give unfair advantage to large, private concentrations of power (such as corporate person-hood and campaign contributions,) while attacking policies that protect individual liberty from those same concentrations of power (such as the calls for privatized public education and social security, or the abolition of minimum wage and child labor laws). Additionally, while the rhetoric used to defend these stances may sound like the same rhetoric used to argue for a small, limited government and to promote liberty, in practice it is merely shifting the power structure from a publicly accountable 
system to a private, unaccountable system. 

"It takes a unique kind of stupid to auto-tune yourself rapping over a country song and be proud of it. It's like a damaged toddler when they discover that feces can be used as paint."



While historically and globally Libertarianism is viewed as a Liberal political ideology, the language has been co-opted in the American political arena to be synonymous with far-Right Conservatism. This new far-Right movement has been found to be predominately composed of older, white males that largely identify as Republican or Republican-leaning (Williamson et al, 2010). Given that the Tea Party message, (contradictory claims, logical inconsistencies, and conflated terminology aside,) mirrors closely the Republican/Conservative message over the past thirty years it should come as no surprise that just beneath the free-market rhetoric and Libertarian language there exists a strong pro-corporate message. This pervasive conflation of laissez-faire free market language with corporate welfare and intervention on the behalf of big business has led to a large and increasing misunderstanding and misrepresentation of the Libertarian stance in American politics, and has rendered the true Libertarian stance effectively non-existent (Long, 2008).

The Tea Party arguments, inasmuch as they can be made sense of, seem to stem from a misunderstanding or outright perversion of the Libertarian concept of the free market, largely influenced by the writings of Adam Smith, and as such fail to account for the inevitable outcome of this form of unfettered capitalism. As Smith himself stated in 1776, when writing about the results of the division of labor in the system that would eventual become corporatism, that unless the laboring class is protected from exploitation in some way by their government, then eventually these private concentrations of wealth and power will lead to a stupid, ignorant, irrational and hopelessly corrupted laboring class.

These pro-corporatist arguments, largely made by informed politicians and pundits either intentionally misrepresenting or unintentionally misunderstanding the Libertarian stance, set the stage for far-Right Conservatism in America. These views have been reinforced in the public mind by Tea Partiers and other Conservative Libertarian groups, as well as pseudo-journalistic organizations with an unapologetically Conservative message, under even more nebulous, poorly-defined, and arbitrary concepts, such as 'freeloaders,' and 'hard-working taxpayers,' which seem to be applied based more on factors such as religion, race, nationality and physical appearance than on factors such as employment, welfare receipt, or tax bracket (Williamson et al, 2011). These beliefs, such as they are, seem to be based far more on straw-man arguments, moving goalposts, special pleading, conspiracy mongering, false dichotomies, jingoistic scapegoating, and appeals to emotion than on any sort of rational, well-reasoned, or even internally coherent and logically consistent arguments, goals, or philosophy drawn from the available facts. Given this, regardless of what individual Tea Party members may believe, as a whole the movement has been manipulated and spun, perhaps unwittingly, into the role of mouthpiece and shill for pro-corporatist, plutocratic policy hiding behind the language of small government fiscal conservatism.

While calling for a smaller and more limited government, particularly in the area of the market, these groups, although failing to address the inherent problems with corporatism as a whole, often speak out against government bailouts, such as the recent banking and auto industry crises. However, this narrow stance fails to address the more pervasive and invasive problems with the current Market/State dynamic, such as subsidies, eminent domain, grants of privilege or monopoly, selective tax breaks, excessive intellectual property laws, military intervention, and inflationary monetary policies (Long 2008). Beyond these examples of obvious government assistance, the state routinely implements prohibitive regulations, fees, and standards that have a disproportionate negative impact on smaller, less well-funded, and newer concerns than the giant, entrenched corporations that lobby for them (Long, 2008). 

 "I always wondered what the term was for a howlingly desperate and pointlessly rebellious attention whore that still manages to sound as homogenous, non-threatening, bland, and uninspired as a fast food jingle. It's 'Kid Rock' if you were curious."


Therefore, while the most likely outcome of the current corporate system, at least following the logic of the modern Conservative-Libertarian movement, would involve a smaller government, it would also be a more selective government that does less to protect individual liberty. The price for this, of course, would be greater concentrations of authoritative power and influence in the private market, hardly a favorable outcome for a group that claims to value individual liberty, self-ownership, and the level playing field of laissez-faire capitalism.

Self-sovereignty, the idea that an individual has absolute ownership of their own person, cannot be practiced in a system of hierarchical, authoritative power structures. Whether that power structure is an unaccountable government body or an unaccountable private institution that can only exist with the government's sanction is irrelevant, as the outcome invariably leads to less individual sovereignty the more exclusive and entrenched the power structure becomes.

Additionally, the principle of individual liberty, represented by voluntary association and free contract, is only possible in a non-coercive, competitive free market. This cannot be practiced in the current system of corporations, as choosing between death and sub-poverty servitude with no guarantee of security can not be said to be a decision free from coercion. Similarly, a market can only be said to be free if all participants are free to fail or succeed based on their individual merit. This is certainly not true in the current system, as evidenced by the decades long trend of corporate welfare, bailouts, and unequal tax breaks and subsidies, as well as stagnating wages for laborers, increased layoffs, rising income disparity, and the outsourcing of jobs overseas, while the management of those same companies report record profits and award seven figure bonuses to their corporate officers in a class of business that, in a market free from government interference, wouldn't exist.

Finally, while modern Tea Party Libertarians may call for smaller government, in actuality a limited, minimal governing body is antithetical to their own ideals, as those ideals rely on selectively defending policies that award unfair advantage to large, private concentrations of power at the expense of individual liberty. Similarly, while attacking policies viewed as intrusive and anti-capitalist, modern Libertarians are, in actuality, not calling for competition with the government in the fields of education and healthcare, but are rather seeking to privatize those concentrations of power through government sanctioned and protected grants of privilege and monopoly. The result of all of this, at least so far, has not been smaller government in the sense of a less powerful government accountable to a greater number of people, but a smaller government in the sense of a less accountable government controlled by fewer people that has, in effect, outsourced the public welfare to private institutions.

In conclusion, while groups such as the Tea Party Patriots and Americans For Prosperity, as well as their representatives in the public and private sectors, may use Libertarian language and free market ideology, in reality and practice this rhetoric is merely a misleading and confusing attempt on behalf of private corporations and their beneficiaries to impede the practice of such Libertarian principles as self-sovereignty, voluntary association, and a limited, minimal government

"Remember when Kid Rock's genre-bending, groundbreaking, confrontationally anti-authoritarian music galvanized a generation into social activism? Of course not. That's because Rage Against the Machine is what Kid Rock wants to be if he ever manages to learn to read."

So that's that. I'll be posting the references later if I don't lose interest.

Liberty or Deaf (pt.1)

A while back I made the claim that corporate personhood was an inherently corrupt and society-destroyingly vile institution. Since I was so obviously right I didn't bother checking the facts until recently. I say I was obviously right because anyone can usually be right by the simple practice of disagreeing with whatever claim Fox News, the Tea Party, Rush Limbaugh, and most Republicans make.

Anyway, after doing a lot of research into what, exactly, Libertarianism is, since it seems to be some magic word used by Tea Party candidates to immunize themselves from being seen as the fringe-politic lunatics they so obviously are.

What I found, of course, was a bottomless pit of information that the vast majority of Americans would rather, to quote one Facebook friend, run their genitals through a meat grinder than read.

So for that reason I'll be breaking the following protest-sign-unfriendly text dump with pictures of a cat I found outside of a homeless shelter next to information about Jason Mraz, who is an awful human being.

"After hearing Jason Mraz for the first time, my house is now surrounded by the howling ghost of every dead rape victim for 50 miles."








There has been a trend in recent years in the American political arena for certain far-Right protest groups and politicians to self-identify as Libertarian. With so much extreme, violent, incoherent, and blatantly one-sided rhetoric dressed in the banner of non-partisan Libertarianism it's no wonder that many Americans have an inaccurate idea of what Libertarianism actually means (Gerstein, 2009). With groups such as Americans for Prosperity and the Tea Party, as well as politicians such as Allen West and Michelle Bachmann and media pundits such as Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin calling for contradictory, extreme, and even impossible measures, this should come as no surprise. These include demands to eliminate government debt while cutting taxes, or calling for less government interference in individual lives while simultaneously demanding increased criminalization of minor offenses, as well as marriage and reproduction restrictions (Teaparty.org, n.d.).

With such confusion and contradictions, such as criticizing government regulations of corporations as interfering with the free market while ignoring the fact that corporations are, by definition and design, government interference in the free market, it should come as no surprise that the average American citizen has no clear idea of what Libertarianism really is.It is important to begin by defining what Libertarianism is, as far as the globally and historically accepted definition of the ideology. 

Philosophically the movement began during the Enlightenment based upon the works of philosophers like Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, William Godwin, and John Locke. Libertarians believe in a limited, minimal government that concerns itself mainly with defense and protecting the individual's liberty from coercion, exploitation, tyranny, and abuse at the hands of large concentrations of power. Individual liberty includes such ideas as voluntary association, self-sovereignty, and freedom of contract. Libertarians view a laissez-faire market, free from as much government influence as possible as the best system to conduct interpersonal business. Research shows that modern American Libertarianism, as expressed by such groups as The Tea Party and Americans For Prosperity, has little in common with the globally and historically accepted ideal of the various Libertarian schools of thought, such as self-sovereignty, voluntary association, and a limited, minimal government. 

"Jason Mraz is the noise abused housewives claim to hear 24 hours a day as they slowly descend into the madness that eventually manifests with them cutting their spouse's genitals off with a steak knife."






Self-sovereignty, the belief that an individual has absolute ownership of their own life and body, cannot be practiced in a system of hierarchical, authoritative power structures, whether that power structure be a governing body or a State-sanctioned and protected private institution, such as a corporation. While the Tea Party Right, and Libertarian's themselves, may argue that government is inherently evil and is best kept away from the market, there is an important distinction that needs to be made between Modern Libertarian calls for the deregulation of the corporate marketplace and the Classical Libertarian stance, which would be to abolish the corporate market altogether. Claiming, as modern Right-Wing groups do, that deregulating corporations will encourage laissez-faire free market practices ignores several foundational factors of the American Market that impede upon self-ownership

For thousands of years any market interaction of individuals was relatively small in scale. Even successful merchants and trade barons were somewhat limited in scope, and labor was valuable as the pool of laborers was somewhat limited in relation to the amount of available work. This changed during the Industrial Revolution, which took place around the same time as the birth of what came to be known as Libertarianism. Just as some philosophers, economists, and political thinkers were realizing the importance of the concept of self-ownership, labor was being replaced by machinery on such a scale that the old system of labor and capital was being replaced by a system of huge industries helmed by unbelievably wealthy and powerful capitalists. As a consequence of this the value of labor plummeted to a point that labor was worth only the minimum amount necessary to keep the working class from entirely dying off (Engels, 1847).

 "If you play Jason Mraz near a sex toy it will kill its owner exactly 13 days later, and unless exorcised by a Highpriest of Dagon, will annually murder a virgin on the Winter Solstice."








As a result of this shifting dynamic the laboring class, existing under the delusion of self-sovereignty and the illusion of a fair and competitive market were, in actuality, placed in a position arguably worse than slavery. The reason for this is that while a slave or indentured servant is normally assured subsidence and some degree of security, in this new age of capitalist empire individual laborers were and are forced into competition with each other for the privilege of toiling for subsidence at the whims of the bourgeois capitalists (Engels, 1847). This system of wage-slavery survives in modern society in such areas as the misleadingly named 'at-will' employment contract, which often provides wages far below the poverty line and demands unrealistic levels of productivity from laborers, yet also denies those same laborers the security of long-term employment, liveable wages, or any mechanism for the workers to organize and petition the corporation on their own behalf, as evidenced by the levels of corporate downsizing, outsourced jobs, increasing poverty, vanishing labor unions, and large-scale layoffs throughout America in recent years, even as those same corporations report record profits for their CEO's and shareholders.

"If date rape made a noise, it would be Jason Mraz's impossibly shallow, douchey, insincere, frat boy songs written in the key of sexual assault."








True liberty, or self-sovereignty, is further curtailed in this system, as it often forces noteworthy and exceptional individuals to either accept one of the preconceived molds of this society, or to face alienation from the society as a whole (Mill, 1859). This tendency of big industry to force remarkable people into unremarkable lives through manufactured necessity or accident of birth is antithetical to the idea of self-sovereignty, and represents a tyrannical infringement on both the individual and society as a whole, not by a publicly accountable State, but by State protected private institutions in the form of corporations. This corporatism, largely ignored by self-identified Libertarians in America, cannot exist in a society that values individual liberty

Given this evidence, that post-Industrial Revolution capitalism, particularly America's system of corporatism, promotes divisiveness, class struggle, oppression, and hierarchical tyranny, it would be folly to call for an increase in unfettered corporatism as so many modern Libertarians do. Whether it takes the form of deregulation, union-busting tactics, or privatization of public institutions such as education or infrastructure, in practice these tactics lead to an increase of centralized, private power that invariably mimic liberty-eradicating systems, such as monarchies and police states (Werhane, 2000).

"If you drop a Jason Mraz CD in a garden, no vegetation will grow on that spot. Ever. The ground will periodically shriek in agony and vomit maggots, however."

 





Next: Further Findings, Conclusions, Sources, and Kid Rock

.

Illiberati: Libertarianism Explained

After spending the past month researching the history of Libertarianism, and having read about 90 academic and business journal entries and watched dozens of YouTube clips on the subject I can now safely say that I completely understand a few things about Libertarianism:

• They are the one group of people more likely to get involved in a years-long verbal fistfight over the definition of a single word than atheists.
• They are the only group that rabidly disagrees with fucking everyone more than metal guitarists.
•  With the exception of a fundamentalist Christian, a Libertarian is a person most likely to condemn every other member of their group for being hopelessly misguided and wrong while simultaneously never questioning the rightness of their own stance.
• Self-ownership/self-sovereignty is the keystone of Libertarian philosophy.
• Self-ownership applies to corporate entities.
• Self-ownership does not apply to corporate entities.
• Coercion is seen as anathema to the Libertarian.
• The State is the only power capable of coercing the individual.
• Monopolistic private enterprise is capable of coercing the individual.
• No it's not, shut up! That's free contract!
• Choosing between wage slavery and starvation is coercion, not free contract.
• No, it's free contract! Coercion requires legislative power and authoritative us of force, hippie!
• Corporations buy legislators! Law enforcement is little more than private law! A coercive act undertaken by a private institution is still coercion, fascist!

Excuse me. Let me try that again.

•  The State, as a necessary evil, should be tasked solely with protecting individual liberty and defending from invasion.
• And no taxes.
• Well, alright, minimal taxes to ensure adequate defensive military strength and to protect the individual from exploitation.
• No, liberal activist judges and legislators have no place in Libertarian society! Taxed Enough Already!
• Taxes are lower now than they have been in like 60 years.
• Yeah! And we're drowning in debt! We MUST balance the budget!
• Well, raising taxes on the wealthy, corporations and taxing large churches would be a good way to do that.
• NO! TAXES ARE ILLEGAL! CUT SPENDING!
• Well, we could end military activities in the Middle East, cut subsidies for companies turning record profits, and stop funding the research of junk science like homeopathy. I mean, that would be 'less government,' right? So that is Libertarian.
• Typical misguided Liberal Democrat! We need to cut entitlements that encourage sloth and liberal policies that are draining the public purse!
• Do you mean 'liberal' in the sense of a strong social safety net and ensuring the poor have an equal opportunity to compete in the market, or 'liberal' like corporate bailouts, tax subsidies, and government sanctioned monopolization via patent and IP law, limited liability, and hierarchy enforcing legislation?
• Yes! NO LOONEY LEFTIES! OBAMANOMICS! COMMIE! DEATH PANEL!
• Look, protecting the defenseless from predatory institutions isn't activist government. It's merely protecting 'We, the People' from the tyranny, exploitative policy, and serfdom we originally revolted against. Whether that comes from the King of England or the CEO of Exxon is irrelevant!
• You liberals just want to punish success! You're just lazy! That's why you're poor! If you work hard you'll be successful too!
• Look, saying all poor people are lazy presumes that complex, abstract concepts like money and land ownership were invented before hunting and farming. The State should be responsible for protecting the individual from serfdom or outright slavery arising from that kind of fallacious, selective reasoning!
• Free Market competition will prevent that! It's called the Invisible Hand! 
• A market gamed in favor of those most able to compete via economy of scale and division of labor is not a free market! That's not an invisible hand! It's an invisible iron boot!

Sorry. I don't know why that keeps happening.

• Libertarians hold that the best form of government is small.
• Libertarians want the United States to be restored to the ideals of the Founding Fathers.
• This includes Christian Values.
• Wait, what? no it doesn't! It means a secular philosophy of non-interference, individual liberty, and inalienable human rights!
• Look, they may not have said Christian values, but they meant Christian values! You have to read between the lines!
• The lines being "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof"?
• Exactly! It's freedom OF religion, not freedom FROM religion! Also, Federal Government needs to get out of State business!
• Well, that seems crazy, but a more decentralized government is an effective method for preventing authoritative abuses. So that's unarguably Libertarian.
• Libertarians believe that local and state governments should decide the legality of gay marriage and abortions.
• Hey! That's legislating morality! Even at the local level it is most definitely interfering with individual liberty! That'd be like establishing English as the only legally recognized language!
• Wait, English isn't the only recognized language in the USA?
• Well, yeah, if groups of people want to speak French or Spanish or Japanese or whatever that doesn't really impede on the freedom of anyone else, does it?
• They're plotting a socialist plot! Libertarians are in favor of preemptive military action!
• No they're not! They're in favor of protecting themselves only from a clear and present danger from a hostile neighbor! Not going to war in other countries based on rumor and jingoistic conspiracy mongering!

Okay. So I hope that clears everything up. Libertarianism is that.

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

A 'Merican Dream

"Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies."-F. Nietzsche

"People are fucking stupid."-anonymous

Ever since I was a young man I've dreamed of being a super-villain. The road has not been easy. I don't know how to build a Doomsday Cannon, I can't afford a secret lair, and I only have one henchman, and she moved to a different state to go to some bourgeoisie 'school.' So she could 'learn things,' and 'get a job.' Since my only super powers involve the ability to know exactly which toothpick someone is about to take out of a toothpick container and the power to make most people feel vaguely uncomfortable around me, I thought I would have to throw in the black, pentagram-encrusted towel.

So there I was, ready to throw the old spandex outerwear, cape and mask in the dumpster and apply for a job in telemarketing or the Motor Vehicle Department when the beginning of the cunningest of cunning schemes began to hatch in my mind. At exactly late 2007 or early 2008 a movement of utter destruction began in America. It combined all the classic elements of villainy: absolute unquestioning certainty that this lunacy was commanded by the gods, a level of self-centered monomaniacal contrariness that should be impossible for humans after the age of 13, and the unbreakable constitution that only the doomed cult member can possess. Combined with a hatred and fear of science and learning, a blatant and total rejection of  self-preservation, coherent communication, rational thought and basic humanity, it was truly a sight to behold.

Formless as a fog and pervasive as a pop song, it rose; casting off the fetters of knowledge, discourse, progress and civility that had bound it for so long. It was weaponized denialism. Striking with the mindless drive of the revolting mob and the clinical callousness of a corporate takeover, America didn't stand a chance. As the prophet said, evil had come to America wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross. It called itself Tea Party.

Historically, the Tea Party was an event in American History that involved Paul Revere and White Jesus sinking the British fleets by firing Thomas Jefferson's illegitimate children out of a cannon made out of the Liberty Bell while George Washington built the White House out of the bones of brown people on the day that Moses and John the Baptist copied the Bill of Rights out of the King James Bible. Fuck you, if politicians get to invent history, then so do I. The current Tea Party aims to... actually I have no idea what the current Tea Party's agenda is. Lower taxes on the rich? Being an easy target for stand up comedians?

Probably not this.

Whatever their ultimate goal is, it didn't take a genius to see that a force this unrelentingly insane could never sustain itself. I, however, am a genius and saw hope: how my Empire of Skulls could be built upon its blackened corpse. After systematically hamstringing and/or dismantling and/or corpse-raping central and local governments through sheer audacity of will, the Tea Party, along with everyone else that doesn't control the things that make a functioning society function, would soon be too concerned with animal level survival to continue its ideological rampage. 

In the near future, having intentionally cut the strings for their own safety net: their access to cheap food, clean water, dependable energy, education, affordable healthcare and gainful employment, the American people would no longer have the capacity to work together or stand up for their rights, and the country will degenerate into what I imagine will be called The Remember-When-This-Happened-In-That-Road-Warrior-Movie Future by the toothless, syphilitic scavengers of the American Wasteland. The only commoners spared from this future, of course, will be those able-bodied and quick-witted enough to be conscripted into the Armed Forces of The Theocracy Of the Unclosing Eye of Jesus.

The good news, at least for me, is that this will save me a HUGE amount of time and money and effort. Just think, I won't have to develop a super-virus to control the population if people not only can't afford to go to the doctor, but also sincerely believe that an imaginary father figure that lives in the sky will cure their child's infected wound if they only continue praying and not making any real fucking effort to learn how to grow penicillin. I won't have to spend decades slowly building a campaign to brainwash the masses into believing I'm an incarnate god sent to liberate them if the masses first convince themselves that anyone that can read or do math or check facts or work an internet is a communist witch that feeds on miscarriages and should be sacrificed accordingly. That's a society begging for a Nefarious and Evil God King.

From there it's a simple matter of training the ignorant, diseased, malnourished masses into a suicidally vicious army while keeping a much smaller cadre of the intelligent and useful back to help run things or to attack any problems that attacking doesn't fix. Like power grids or communication networks. 

The absolute best thing about controlling an army of ignorant, hostile, xenophobic barbarians is that, as a super-villain, I would be morally obligated to not care if they die; therefore I only have to worry about results as I ransack the strongholds of the former elite, regardless of the cost in human life. I'm already practicing my anti-affirmations in the mirror every day: repeating things like "A man that cherishes ignorance is not a man," and "There is no more noble death than to die serving the greater good."

So, with that I'll leave you to stockpile water and ammo for the day everything burns. But just so you know, you will never have enough.