The Face of Racism

Pick any one of these guys, they all appear to be the same privileged, spoiled, hate filled racist assholes. Have you wondered who they are, where did they come from, and how they ended up being such despicable semi-human beings? Some of these faces have become well-known, at least in their hometowns, thanks to the internet. The rest of us are left wondering if these people are our neighbors and that is the question we should be asking. Charlottesville, Virginia, to many of us, is the kind of place where we’d expect racism, fascism, and ignorance. It’s the South, isn’t it? To people who know the place, it’s more subtle than that.

For example, the Trump-spawn asshole front-and-center of this now-famous picture is a University of Nevada scumbag named Peter Cvjetanovic, who is now whining “I’m not a racist,” in spite of overwhelming evidence. Even when this guy speaks in self-defense and with some preparation time, he comes off no differently than his now-famous picture, “As a white nationalist, I care for all people. We all deserve a future for our children and for our culture. White nationalists aren’t all hateful; we just want to preserve what we have.” I assume he means his white privilege is the “what we have” he wants to preserve. Equally unsurprising, the University of Nevada is sticking by their Nazi student and employee. University of Nevada, Reno President Marc Johnson said, “There have been numerous inquiries about Peter Cvjetanovic, a student at our University who participated in the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville. Based on discussion and investigation with law enforcement, our attorneys and our Office of Student Conduct, there is no constitutional or legal reason to expel him from our University or to terminate his employment.” Moral values are, clearly, not part of the student code of conduct in Nevada, since that would typically give the university plenty of leeway for firing a neo-Nazi if they cared about that sort of thing.

A little more surprising is the story of Cole White, who lost his job at Top Dog, a Berkeley, California “libertarian hot dog restaurant.” Top Dog, a downtown Berkeley restaurant, posted a sign on its door saying, “Effective Saturday 12th August, Cole White no longer works at Top Dog. The actions of those in Charlottesville are not supported by Top Dog. We believe in individual freedom and voluntary association for everyone.” Supposedly, White “voluntarily resigned” his weenie job with his weenie employer who went the extra mile to let the world know they did not fire their neo-Nazi employee. The last thing libertarians want is for anyone to think they have ethics. Just ask Paul Ryan how Ayn Rand would feel about that. I have to wonder what kind of idiot would buy a hot dog from someone who doesn’t believe the state has the right to ensure the safety of food?

Mostly, the faces from Charlottesville are unsurprising. They are the the bad guy in every Karate Kid movie. They are the spoiled, upper-middle class kids whose parents foot every bill and enable every moment of their miserable, useless lives. Unfortunately, I think calling out every neo-Nazi, every homicidal militia Klan’er, every future abusive middle-manager or cop in that crowd is going to be a thankless task. The country has been breeding for this class of creep for 250 years.

By the way, both of you know you are going to be bald by 40, right? Enjoy that pre-skinhead look while you can.

Never Forget

One of the key components to pseudo-conservative/alt-right “thinking” is forgetfulness. If you remember history, you would never admit to being conservative because that would mean you are always wrong. Always, in the history of civilization and humanity. For example, pseudo-conservatives delude themselves into believing that Reagan was some sort of economic savior. For southern California, maybe, on a short term, but for the rest of the nation and the world that is total bullshit. Long-term, Reagan did damage to California that won’t be repaired without another Great Depression and a massive population drop.

For example, do you know when the United States became a permanent debtor nation? 1985, the beginning of Reagan’s second term. As tough as reality is for pseudo-conservatives, it's a fact. On September 17, 1985, the New York Times published an article titled “U.S. Turns into Debtor Nation” (“The United States has become a debtor nation for the first time since World War I, owing foreigners more than they owe it, a Commerce Department report indicated today.”) which should have tossed traditional conservatives into a fit of panic and generated a wave of cost-cutting, but Reagan and his band of nitwits convinced the New Right that “deficits don’t matter,” at least when fake conservatives are creating them. So, like every pseudo-conservative administration since Reagan, Republicans have stood for borrow-and-spend, instead of actual conservative principles.

Pseudo-conservatives have just elected the least conservative President in modern history. Trump’s “business” history is a sad tale of leverage gone wrong, with six bankruptcies and a long list of Trump-scam vendors and customers robbed and left broke in his wake. When his administration has spent its wad, the US will be further in debt and the economy will be crushed into a shadow of what it could have been. Like the post-Reagan and Bush I and II years, actual national security will be non-existent, the economy will be in shambles after a series of deregulation scandals and regulatory mismanagement, and U.S. citizens will be an international laughing stock. Our national resilience will be further stressed and our capacity for a comeback weakened by a degraded national education system and the resulting loss of technological capability and increased international competition for the bits of talent our education system produces.

Like every other pseudo-conservative President in the country’s history, national mismanagement will produce one or more extreme terrorist events; probably tossing us into another endless and mindless “war on terror” or some such bullshit label. Those of us who actually read will look back on the Obama years as the last gasp of Washington’s great experiment ("And since the preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the Republican model of Government, are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally staked, on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people."). The American people have degenerated far below any hope Washington might have held for democracy and the republic concept. We are a Nation of Stupid and, worldwide, we’re turning into a species of stupid.

Every good technician, engineer, and scientist knows “the more you know, the more you know you don’t know.” The inverse is also true. A relatively recently described human trait, the Dunning-Krueger Effect, explains "a metacognitive incapacity, on the part of those with low ability, to recognize their ineptitude and evaluate their competence accurately." Or, the less you know, the more you think you do know. Trump voters are that crowd. Their science, psychology, technology, economics, and mathematics are so shallow that they barely qualify as humans, but they have convinced themselves that they are of above-average intelligence. The less they know, the smarter they think they are. This isn’t going to end well.

Placing My Bet Now

Regardless  of what you conservative fluffballs think, President Obama has done a fine job of keeping the country safe and restoring as much of our deficit economy as possible without a lick of work from our deadbeat Republican congress. If he’d have been given actual patriots to work with, we’d be in a whole different world today.


But you fuckwits decided to blow up the country and see if a random 1% mobbed-up Russian pimp asshole could fix what people with functioning brains could not make a dent in. That’s the beauty of being a moron; you not only don’t have to think before you act but when you fuck up the world you won’t be intelligent, decent, or courageous enough to admit the mess is all your fault.

Here’s my bet for 2017: Trump and his idiot vandals will be so busy looting the national treasury that, like Bush and Cheney and pals, they’ll take their eye off of the national security job and we’ll experience another national disaster like 9/11/2001. The beauty of being a pseudo-conservative is, as always, never having to admit responsibility or error. You morons stumble through life with both feet stuck in trashcans and your heads up your asses and you think your shit smells like roses.

So, let me say it before hand, “Thanks Donny and friends.”

This time, you’re going to discover that tactic is going to fail; big time or "bigly" (if you’re the usual Trump illiterate). You are going to crash the world economy, the plant’s eco system, and there won’t be any coming back from it. You may not admit that it was your fault, but it won’t matter because everyone is going to suffer. Climate change, massive national debt, near-universal unemployment, and a national reputation for stupidity that turns our allies into either a laugh track or enemies.

#193 Fighting for "My Country"

There are things that we don't talk about in polite company. There are words we don't say out loud in public. There are ideas we don't ever mention when there is a chance that they might be brought up when we are running for office, applying for a job, or asking for a home loan. I'm not as old as McSame, but I'm old enough that I don't worry much about the damage my words will do to my political chances, career opportunities, or housing situation. As a refuge from the 1960's, I distrust the motivations of the people in power, almost always.

Patriotism is one of the least understood concepts in American life. What we often mistake for patriotism is usually nothing more sophisticated than nationalism. Webster's defines patriotism as "love for or devotion to one's country" and nationalism as "a sense of national consciousness exalting one nation above all others and placing primary emphasis on promotion of its culture and interests as opposed to those of other nations or supranational groups." The second definition is pretty wordy, but informative.

"Love" is an emotion that requires sacrifice, understanding, commitment, perspective, and knowledge. You can't love your country, spouse, children, or friends if you don't exercise these capacities. You can be addicted to them, infatuated with them, or dependent on them without loving them. When patriotism is linked to the kind of service typically promoted by the military, the line between informed patriotism and ignorant nationalism is more than just blurred.

Since 1948, the overwhelming majority of American military actions have been inspired by reasons other than national security. The argument that we needed to fight and die in Vietnam, for example, because of some fear of the spread of communism was dishonest, wrong, and immoral. Nobody with a functioning brain believed that the Viet Cong were going to invade the United States. Once the Pentagon Papers made it clear that American forces were not attacked in the Tonkin Gulf and that the entire justification, as weak as it was, for the military build-up in 1964 was based on a deliberate lie, even the dumbest nationalist would have to admit that there were other reasons for committing American lives to that pointless Asian civil war.

Korea was the same as was the 1959-60 Caribbean War, the evacuation of US corporate employees in Lebanon in 1976, our involvement in El Salvador in the 1980s, the military maneuvers in and around Iran, Libya, Chad, Syria, Egypt, and Lebanon (again) throughout the Reagan years, the invasion of Grenada, the continuing occupation of Panamas, the continuous occupation of the Persian Gulf since Reagan's regime, the 1990 exercises in Liberia, and, of course, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. These are not battles of self-defense, they are hostile corporate take-over maneuvers. The Iraq Invasion and Occupation is about oil. Nothing more, nothing less. There have been rare humanitarian uses for the US military, but the overwhelming purpose of our armed forces has been to protect American and international corporate interests. In other words, working class kids are being sent to die or be wounded to protect the investments of our ruling elite.

It's a lot less inspiring to admit that one has wasted and corrupted the best years of one's life fighting to protect the wealth and power of oil company executives, DuPont's rubber plantations, Chiquita's bananas and pineapples, or to control Third World economies so that even more jobs can be shipped to sweat factories in places that don't bother with livable wages, OSHA, or democratic governments. As uninspiring as that is, most of the time Americans are doing just that in our military "services."

It's common knowledge inside the military that the various "services" are more committed to protecting their own interests over that of the nation. The constant shuffling of double-dipping military officers into the military-industrial corporations they were assigned to monitor is a national shame and embarrassment. When institutions become huge, it's almost impossible for them to remain focused on their real mission. The US military passed huge about five generations ago and is now such a monstrous proportion of the national employment and budget that it more often seems to believe the existence of the military is the national mission.

"Be all you can be" applied to the mission of "fighting for your corporation" takes on an interesting meaning. For example, a huge part of the national budget is the cost of maintaining a military, military pensions, and military health care. Obviously, the military serves the orders of corporate America without question, but what would it do to the character of those services if corporate America were obligated to pay for that service? Currently, every man, woman, and child, is going into debt to the tune of $5,000/year for our military expenditures. What kind of sense does that make? Wouldn't it be more reasonable to obligate the people who get the advantage of that government service for the cost of the service(s)?

On the other hand, if only corporations receive the protection of the US military, who protects the nation? If corporate interests control military operations, what would keep them from using their military against US citizens? If the military is owned, controlled, and directed so completely by corporate interests, how is military service a patriotic act?

Many Vietnam veterans discovered that they were more able to serve their country from outside of the military. The most patriotic veterans joined organizations such as Veterans for Peace, Americans Against Escalation in Iraq, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Rolling Thunder, Military Families Speak Out, Gold Star Families for Peace, and Patriots for Peace to object to the use of military force for corporate purposes. In this time of challenge to democracy, the Bill of Rights, Constitutional government, true patriots have to carefully consider which side of the battlefield they choose when our "of the corporation, by the corporation, and for the corporation" government goes to war.

November 2008