#152 Believing the Unbelievable (2006)

All Rights Reserved © 2006 Thomas W. Day

There's a movie you ought to see on the web, 911 Loose Change.  Suspend your credibility for a moment of 90 minutes and listen to the charges made in this film.  After you watch it, come back and hear my opinion of this interpretation of events.  If you've already watched Loose Change, stick around and here comes another rant. 

You back with your doubting cap firmly in place?  Ok, here I go.

I know you don't want to believe that Bush and his corrupt little band of rat-bastards blew up the Twin Towers, Building 7, and/or the Pentagon.  I'm glad you have some sliver of optimism left in your shredded little hearts.  I do too.  Honestly, my vote is still out.  I know the movie is mostly sensational.  I know many of the points made have been refuted by moderately believable sources.  Obviously, what little remains of our free press is ignoring this possibility out of fear, disbelief, and . . . more fear.  Like the Kennedy and the grassy knoll, Martin Luther King's assassination, Bobby Kennedy and his lack of security in 1968, and the deaths of Wellstone and his family, I doubt that I'll live long enough to hear the truth about any of these national disasters.  It's possible that we have heard the truth.  Maybe all of these nation-altering events were as simple as the government has described them.  

However, here's the real question you should ask yourself.  Do you believe the Bushies wouldn't do something exactly this vicious, traitorous, and evil if they thought they could get away with it? 

No, you don't.  I don't either.  I can't imagine a deed foul enough that, if there were profit in it for them, that these vicious sub-animals wouldn't do.  Bush would betray his father, kill his children, smother baby kittens, bankrupt his neighbors, and sell this country to the highest bidder for a few million in profit.  For hundreds of millions, Cheney would shotgun an old friend, disown his lesbian daughter, take an ink eraser and a pair of scissors to the Constitution, and hand over the keys to the national defense to Saudi Arabia, North Korea and China.  Both of these men have emptied Fort Knox for exactly these financial causes and they will do more, much more, before they leave office. 

You know it.  I know it.  Even their supporters, who will lose everything by the time these vile mobsters have gone to hell, know it.  Anyone smart enough to breathe without assistance knows these men are amoral representatives of the worst humanity has ever bred. 

As much as they hated him, even the dumbest neocon knew that Clinton wasn't vicious.  Their "fear" of Clinton was more fear of ideas than action. They were terrified that he might extend civil rights, for women and minorities.  They were worried that universal health care might piss off their corporate masters.  They scared that Clinton might actually do something about the environment and, somehow, limit their access to oil and carbon monoxide.  That fear was more an exercise in motivation than real.  Clinton was proud to call himself "an Eisenhower Republican," so he was no real threat to the Establishment.

The fear is real with the Bushies and neocons, though.  The only thing that, maybe, saves us from absolutely believing the premise of 911 Loose Change is that these guys are fools.  Georgie's goofy lady lawyer friend, Harriet Miers, said "George is the smartest man I ever met."  Come on.  Is there anyone out there who doesn't know at least a hundred men who are smarter than G.W. Bush?  If this is the kind of folks Bush surrounds himself with, we have a margin of safety, because they can only accomplish so much with their limited abilities.  Incompetence will only protect us so far, though.  Eventually, even the dumbest man (Hitler or Mussolini, for example) can create massive havoc on the country and the world.  Given time, the neocons can turn back the clock on democracy, equality, science, justice, and progress.  They will divide this country into a dim shadow of its former greatness.

This is the kind of people who are running the store in Washington.  Dumb as bricks, crooked as the Dismal River, and vicious as rabid coyotes.   If they didn't plane-bomb New York and Washington, we all know they would if they thought they could get away with it.  The real question is, "if we know that, why don't we do something about it?"  Are there any real Americans left.  Citizens who believe that government is for and by the people?  Are there any voting citizens who understand that "people should not fear their government, governments should fear the people?"  If not, the "freedoms" that Bush keeps babbling about, as he removes them, will vanish faster than the assassin's bullet that took our most optimistic and courageous social and political heroes. 

April 2006

#151 Magic and Stupidity (2006)

 

All Rights Reserved © 2006 Thomas W. Day

Ronald Reagan believed in the "magic of the markets."  Nancy believed in the magic of astrology.  G.W. Bush believes in the magic of a military that he busted his butt to avoid serving in during his misspent youth and a version of Christianity that would be unrecognizable to Christ.  Many of the seriously freaky neocons believe in all sorts of magical religious weirdness.  G.W.'s good buddies, Enron psychos Kenny-boy Lay and Jeffy Skilling, believed in the magic of money and power as do the conservative freaks with whom Little George surrounds himself. The religious right curses everyone with the power of their gods and nature seems intent on squashing the Red States.  The religious whackos claim that's because the nation tolerates homosexuality, abortion, and/or racial equality.  Nobody questions why the gods appear to be picking on the "true believers."  Is that magic?

Bush has done everything he can to avoid reality and because the country is filled with fantasy lovers, he's still getting away with it.  Bush allowed Enron to crush California's economy and pervert an already viciously ignorant and corrupt California political system.  Bush's corporate buddies raided the national checkbook and blew through the country's savings before 911 gave them an excuse to spend even more cash on themselves.  Magic.

Bush and Cheney presided over the worst breach of security in the history of the United States, somehow turning that into a reputation for defenders of the nation.  They claimed that "nobody" had considered using airplanes as weapons, even though Tom Clancy wrote a book that described a terrorist wiping out the Senate and killing the President with a plane.  The public and press appeared to be as amazed as Bush.  Magic. 

Then, Bush and CRAP fabricated a list of Iraq's weapons of mass "descrucion" that would have humiliated the old Soviet Union.  Because this group of traitors and criminals had a near-perfect record of failure, incompetence, and corruption, their fairy tail found few doubters in Congress, in the media, and among the majority of uninformed and timid citizens.  The Bush dipshits declared the war "over and won" long before it was barely started and acted surprised when their invading army wasn't showered with flowers and barrels of oil.  The American sheeple were just as amazed.  Nearly 3,000 dead Americans and a half-million dead Iraqis later and the end of this war isn't even in the territory of being in sight.  Magic, fuckin' magic, and unbelievable fuckin' magic. 

Follow those circus acts with Katrina and New Orleans.  Nobody, but nobody, is surprised that New Orleans was wiped out by a hurricane.  The place is twenty feet below sea level.  As the globe warms, we've seen an increase in east coast storms, many of which are going to sink Florida and Louisiana.  Not only that, but there is at least a week's warning when an actual hurricane, say Katrina, is going to hit the beach, or the levies.  With that background, the Bushies manage to ignore all this information and claim "nobody expected" this kind of disaster when New Orleans is flattened and washed out to sea in the Mississippi mud.  A good portion of the country appears to believe this fantastic tale of incompetence.  A year later and New Orleans and most of the Gulf Coast is still a disaster zone, the country is broke and still pouring money down the Iraq toilet, and we've thrown most of the freedoms Bush claims "the terrorists hate us for" away in one unpatriotic Patriot Act after another.  Freakin' magical magic done with fuckin' amazing magic.

Bush gets caught tapping the telephone lines of terrorist organizations like the Quaker Church, Greenpeace, Physicians for Social Responsibility, and other well-known scary people and Congress immediately wants to launch an investigation into who ratted out the traitors.  It reminds me of the "Stop Squealing" gangbanging rapper campaigns going on in New Jersey.  Obviously, it's a worse crime to rat out a President who violates the law than it is to be an actual criminal/traitor.  Now that's not only magic, but great comedy. 

What could be next? 

What it won't be is a courageous press growing a testicle and doing its job to protect our democracy.  It won't be a majority of Democratic Senators and Representatives acting like Democrats instead of gutless Republicans.  It won't be Bush and CRAP admitting that they've done the worst possible job of managing and protecting the country and showing themselves the door out of honor, humility, and disgrace.  If any of those things happened, it would be real magic.  Wouldn't it?

March 2006

Hypocracy on Display

 

John Oliver does what he does as well as anyone on the planet, exposing Repuglican hypocracy. These assholes are like the Bush war criminals who knew Iraq had WMDs "because we still have the receipts." They are convinced that the rest of us are fraudulent voters because they do it so often and so shamelessly.

#150 Murder in South Dakota (2006)

Rat Rants 2006

All Rights Reserved © 2006 Thomas W. Day

One of the dullest states in the nation, South Dakota, is trying to lead the country into the 21st Century, leaving Roe vs. Wade, science, logic, and rational law in history's dust. You gotta wonder why women live in a state that doesn't even consider them to be a critical character in their own abortion.  The newest anti-abortion legislation penalizes a doctor who performs an abortion, the doctor and pharmacist who prescribe and deliver "morning after pills," and anyone with an IQ higher than a piece of toast. 

Who is making these nutty laws?  Who's electing the idiots who make the nutty laws?

Taking a look at the state's demographics, I found that South Dakota population growth is half the nation's average, while the birth rate is at the norm.  So, more folks are leaving the state than are immigrating to this intellectual dead zone.  Surprise! 51% of the population are women.  Dumb women, apparently.  The state proudly boasts that 80% of its citizens are high school graduates.  Just guessing, I'd suspect that not many of that number are women.  I wonder what the South Dakota berka looks like?  While you wouldn't expect this to be a state full of scientists, I was surprised to see that science is even taught in South Dakota schools. As dumb as their politicians are, it appears that the average high school graduate is no worse equipped than the national average.  I have to wonder if South Dakota suffers more than typically from the usual Midwest "exodus of the intelligent?"

The state isn't particularly concerned with children already born.  Like most of the country, a significant percentage (16%) of children live in poverty and a substantial percentage (36%) live in low income families.  Education-wise, the state has a high school graduation rate that is slightly higher (4% higher) and substantially fewer college graduates (18% fewer) than the national norm.  Not surprisingly, the state is overwhelmingly white (85%, compared to 58% nationally) with the majority minority being "American Indian" (10.7%).  In just about every educational measurement, SD is pretty much in the middle of the pack.  It's a depressingly poorly performing pack, but South Dakota isn't as overwhelmingly moronic as I'd expected.

If nothing else, I think this proves that statistics are not often useful data. Some aspects of the stats prove that South Dakotans are less than committed to bettering the lives of children once they are born.  So, what does the state's most recent piece of legislative foolishness mean to the rest of us?

Taking this idiot attempt to control abortion at its face value, let's look at what South Dakota legislators are saying.  The doctor who is asked to perform this operation, an abortion, is contracted by a woman and, often, her male partner.  If the doctor performs the operation, he/she is going to be prosecuted as a Class 5 felony (five years in prison and up to $5,000 in fines).  The woman, on the other hand, is assumed to be a helpless, defenseless idiot; "Nothing in this Act may be construed to subject the pregnant mother upon whom any abortion is performed or attempted to any criminal conviction and penalty."  Judging by the general simplemindedness of the majority of South Dakota, I think that assumption is probably correct. 

Per this silly piece of shit legislation, a woman who becomes pregnant and requests and pays for and subjects her unborn child to an abortion is guiltless.  Obviously, she must be too dumb to know what she's doing?  A man/husband who, with the woman, also conspires to request the abortion is also innocent of any crime?  The only person being prosecuted by this moronic law is the doctor, the hired help.  This is, obviously, a chicken-shit way to short circuit the process, attacking the extremely limited supply of professionals who provide the service instead of the unlimited supply of customers who want the service.  That doesn't make it right or logical, though.  Just like all conservative totalitarian attempts to regulate human behavior by superstition, ignorance, arrogance, oppression, and tyranny, this legislation is seriously stupid. 

However, it does open up some creative opportunities for people wanting to commit other types of crimes.  Simply put, the South Dakota law says that the only person guilty of a crime-for-hire is the hireling.   If this anti-logic spreads to other South Dakota criminal laws, an employee violating a law is a criminal.  An employer who requires, requests, or specifically contracts that employee for the purpose of violating the law is disassociated, legally, from the crime. Practically speaking, this has been the way the law works for corporations since the beginning of Corporate America.  I guess it's about time that other areas of criminal law apply the same twisted logic.

Deep in the heart of the Mob, hit men must be considering asking their clients to stay away from South Dakota these days. It only makes sense that the guy who does the hit is screwed in SD, but the person who paid for the contract should be held as innocent as a woman wanting an abortion.  What's the difference, after all?  If you want someone whacked, try to hire the job done in South Dakota.  Murder is legal in that state as long as you don't do the killing yourself. 

February 2006

#149 A Foolish Immigration Policy (2006)

All Rights Reserved © 2006 Thomas W. Day

The recent stupid chain of events in Europe and the Mideast have illustrated how incompatible Islam (and, probably, religion in general) is with democracy.  Islam has a long, primitive, painful history as a repeat theocratic offender.  The best government all of the Islamic nations has managed is a collection of corrupt kingdoms and a much larger collection of dictatorships.  The worst they have managed is the trampling of the free speech rights of most of the world's democracies.  The recent rampage of ignorant fools raging across Europe over the "abuses" of the free press is all the evidence I need to know that it's time to send Islam's children a message. Like Christian conservatives, Islamic conservatives are afraid of their own shadows and freedom is a concept that they view as subversive and heretical. 

I can not, for the life of me, imagine a good reason for why we have allowed ourselves to become so degraded that we care about the opinions and superstitions of a pack of retrograde desert hillbillies who haven't managed a moment of technological success or a single cultural achievement since long before the time this country separated itself from England.  I lie, I know why we do it.  We do it for the oil.

I wrote, way back in 2001, that the best way to get revenge against the people and cultures that attacked this nation on September 11, 2001 was to wipe out their primitive economies.  I still say that's the best tactic.  After the complete failure of Bush's primitive fight-fire-with-fire tactics, I'm more convinced that I was right five years ago.  It's not like they have anything other than oil to sell.  They don't have intellectual properties.  They don't have an education system of their own among the entire lot of Islamic nations.  To learn even the most basic modern skills, they must send their children and the children of their slaves to the universities of the nations that they hate.  We are among those nations.

Do we really have so little respect for our culture, our history, our science, our democracy, our nation that we would sell it for a few drops of oil? 

Apparently.

However, I'd like to propose something different.  I'd like to suggest that we all, every single western culture, stop wasting cash on trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's asshole and turn our attention to divesting ourselves of Arab oil.  Brain-dead Bush has blown almost a half-trillion dollars trying to convince Iraqis to consider becoming a civilization.  The current "plan" is to burn up at least another one-and-one-half trillion dollars before we give up and go home with a religious dictatorship left behind.  It ain't gonna happen.  After centuries of illiteracy and corruption and superstition, Iraq and the rest of North Africa is not going to flip directions and become enlightened.  And, honestly, I don't know why we should worry about it. 

Sooner or later, we have to consider our own self-interest.  Closing the boarders to students from terrorist states and religions is a start.  Shutting off commerce with those countries is at the heart of closing down the terrorist states.  Once we have completely wreaked their economy, we can expect considerably more cooperation in hunting down bin Laden and any other fruitcake we want to talk to.  But my advice is that we take as little of their help as possible.  They want ten times the value of everything they offer, so we need to wean ourselves from them to get their price down to what it's worth. 

As a collection of cultures, they have demonstrated that they are intolerant of every freedom held dear to a free society.  Their violent reaction to the horrible threat of . . . cartoons proves that they can't be trusted with sharp objects of intellectual stimulation.  Let the "guys sitting around" continue to sit around until they starve to death.  The reason there seems to be no shortage of idiots willing to strap on a bomb and walk into a crowd is that these fools have no other options; nothing to lose.  We need to lock them down and lock them out so that the discover they have quite a lot to lose.  Once the oil money dries up, we ban their ruling freaks from civil society, eliminating their ability to be playboys and perverse freaks outside of the constraints of their own countries.  Make all the whackos live together, with no avenue for escape from each other, and they will implode.  The few intellectuals their cultures generate will be driven to do something to fix their countries, because they'll go nuts having to live with the fools who make up the majority of those places.  Until they are valuable contributors to the world community, the world's majority economies will be encouraged to boycott these places and their citizens, and refugees.  They will be forced to suffer the consequences of their fantasies and corruption and they will become another example of "the destructive meme." 

In the meantime, we've focused all of our energy on fighting terrorism by ripping the funding from the terrorists.  We've also freed ourselves from the tyranny of oil and oil money.  We might save the world from the side effects of world-wide oil use, if it isn't too late for that.  We could punish three perfectly evil groups at the same time; Islamic terrorists and American oil executives and the politicians they own. Seems like all the motivation a country could need.

We will be creating a peaceful world for our children to enjoy, instead of a never-ending war that will only get worse.  We will free ourselves from this Orwellian future that the conservatives seem to want to create.  They want it so badly that they are willing to sacrifice everything good about humanity, about our way of life, about life itself. 

We can't continue to fight ignorance with ignorance.  We have to use the tools of science.  Tools that democracy invents faster than any system in history. 

February 2006

#148 Coming to America (2006)

All Rights Reserved © 2006 Thomas W. Day

A lot of young, smart, hip, politically-alert United States citizens are thinking about immigration.  Some are considering the effects of uncontrolled, irrational over-population of an already resource-crowded nation, some are trying to find a sane political system, some are convinced that the United States is about to go on a fascist witch-hunt and don't want to be "the last Jew looking for transportation out of Germany."  Maybe more than any time since the Civil War, there are more good reasons to leave the United States than there are to stay.  These are terrifying times and most of the terrorist forces are internal.  The possibility of Orwell's 1984 becoming a reality have never been more likely. Vancouver is being overrun by immigrants from the United States and housing prices are reflecting the cash those immigrants are moving from this country to Canada.

The problem with Americans immigrating outward is that most of the countries we'd consider immigrating to don't want us.  Our limited educations have limited our options.  We only speak pidgin English with a variety of accents, only a few of which are intelligible to folks outside of our regional neighborhoods. Rarely does a US citizen offer the receiving country the advantage of competency in the local language.  Many of us are not particularly talented, technically, socially, or politically.  Our education system has short-circuited our natural abilities to learn complicated disciplines and techniques, which suggests to the immigrating country that we may be a liability on their carefully designed economic systems.  So, those countries design restrictive immigration policies that require huge non-interest-bearing bonds (the most desirable European destinations ask for nearly a million dollars in non-interest-bearing bonds), long periods of unemployment designed to prove self-sufficiency, and have installed a huge variety of minor violations that will result in instant deportation (and loss of those security bonds).. 

The simple fact is, even for the best of our best, as immigrants United States citizens are not particularly welcome anywhere outside of our own boarders.  An even more discouraging fact is that most nations would rather suffer Islamic fundamentalist immigrants with no skills of any sort, no interest in fitting into the local culture, and a tendency toward violence at the hint of any perceived slight toward their native superstitions.

On the other hand, our government is particularly interested in maintaining low labor costs.  You can jabber about cynical humanitarian reasons for maintaining high immigration rates until you are almost liberal, but we all know our government represents our ruling class.  That group of anti-patriots doesn't want to pay a living wage for the services they fancy.  Have you noticed how many wannabe high government officials have lost their jobs when someone found that they had hired undocumented house-help?  This isn't a trend, it's the way of our world.  Actually, it's their world; the rest of us just rent a space in an unwanted corner.

The cool thing, for the low-brow ruling crud, about wanton immigration is that they don't have to pay for . . . anything.  They can de-fund education, because there is no shortage of desperate mid-tech refugees from totalitarian third world nations who will self-educate themselves, to the point necessary to fill the shrinking technical requirements of US jobs. Instead of paying a living wage to current citizens, the management class can pay a subsistence wage to a desperate immigrant.  Better yet, they can pay a fraction of a living wave to an illegal immigrant under threat of deportation if the employee complains. 

I want be perfectly clear about this.  It is not rational to consider illegal immigrants as criminals.  In a moral society, it is irrational to criminalize an effort to improve your life, to attempt to ensure a better life for your children, to leave a corrupt political system to immigrate to a more democratic place.  We can only call this “illegal immigration” because it violates our laws, not because it violates natural law.  The most damning thing we can say to the immigrant is, "Sorry, you'll have to go back home, fill out the correct paperwork , meet the requirements of this country for immigration, and please try again.  Thanks for taking an interest in the United States.  Have a nice trip back to where you came from."

The real criminals, the only immigration criminals, are the United States citizens who hire these immigrants in a blatant, intentional, and treasonous effort to violate the laws of this country.  This specially protected group of traitors and terrorists can wipe out any services the government provides to anyone but them.  They'll convince the uneducated masses that these basic services are "welfare" and convince the drooling middle class that anyone accepting welfare from the state (even if that "welfare" was actually an insurance program paid for by that same group of people) is un-American.  Soon, the only job left for the government will be to suppress populist political movements, to invade foreign countries to obtain natural resources for corporations and their executives, and to manage the distribution of national wealth and resources to the ruling class.  Which, if you honestly analyze the former Soviet Union or the current communist Chinese state, is exactly the practical result of communism.  This class of criminals are our ruling elites; best represented by the current President and his pack of inbred hillbillies.

For the rest of us, the question of immigration should be very simple.  Immigration drives down wages, reduces the opportunities for our children, overpopulates our cities and nation, strains the capacity of social systems, damages democracy by diluting the acumen of the electorate, and increases the power of the elite.

While monkey-boy Bush chatters about "jobs that Americans won't do," it's pretty obvious that he won't work for a pittance.  Our elitist spoiled rich kid President seems to think that his government income barely pays for part-time employment, based on the dozens of extended vacations he takes every year.  The number of jobs that Americans won't do is rapidly on the rise, because jobs that used to be middle class occupations are quickly being shipped to China and India or handed over to third world immigrants at minimum pay or less.  We "won't do" those jobs because they don't pay a living wage.  Americans seem to be doing multiple jobs a lot more often these days. 

Even more obvious, Cheney, the hand that turns the hurdy-gurdy crank for incurious George's dance, won't even work for the hundreds of thousands in salary and perks the Vice President receives.  Cheney still has his fingers and wallet stuck in Halliburton and other corporate and political income sources.  He practically laughed at the suggestion that part of volunteering for public service meant that you have to stop draining the public cash register until your stint of "service" was finished.  Cheney has always had and eaten his cake, from years of employment in corrupt political regimes from Nixon to the Bush family.  If he didn't have to work for only a few hundred thousand in 1972, why should he suffer now?

The rest of us do the suffering for him.  Under the guise of keeping waves "reasonable," Cheney and Bush and the Republican part drag wages below the poverty line and suppress both the economy and our political system.  Hard times are a conservative's wet dream.  When people are scratching for survival and worrying about hanging on to their marginal jobs, they don't worry about fine points like justice, racial equality, the social net, public education, or their children's future. 

When times are bad enough, humans commonly bash in the heads of their youngest children to conserve resources for adults and older, more independent and productive children.  Conservatives seem to put a real premium on the ability to rampantly use capital punishment as long as the criminals are poor people.  Maybe that's the conservative ideal.  Actions always speak louder than words.

January 2006

#147 Send More Jobs to India (2006)

All Rights Reserved © 2006 Thomas W. Day

This morning, the NPR dill-hole "economic expert" and other similar fools were marveling at the "fact" that most Americans are suspicious of the current "economic upturn."  I put all this crap in quotes, because these terms are being tossed about, in the media, like they have some meaning.  I am regularly amazed at the minimal math skills required to become an "economic expert." 

The United States has become a feudal state, with 1% of the population owning nearly 90% of the country's assets.  The majority of that 1% produces absolutely nothing, contributes nothing of value to the nation's gross national product, and would barely be noticed if they instantly vanished from the planet.  But they are the people for whom the economy is slightly upturning. 

The rest of us are seeing declining wages, rapid inflation, reduced buying power, vanishing middle class jobs, erratic and irrational government attention to the economy, social insecurity, and no sign of anything improving our lot.  So, why is it so difficult to figure out why most of us are not optimistic about the current and future economy of this country? 

Easy.  Managers and their "experts" are fools.  Like Republican politicians, they either think the rest of us are dumb enough to buy what they're crapping out or they are fooled by their own bullshit.  Mostly, though, they are simply inbred, upper-crust idiots.

Which brings me to my current business solution; send more jobs to India.  Here's where that inspiration came from:

I recently wanted to verify some information on my AT&T/Citibank credit card.  I called the 800 number on the back of the card and ended up in India or Pakistan of some damn place where English is spoken with a mouth full of marbles. It's not that the connection was bad, although it was pretty awful considering that AT&T is supposedly a telephone service.  For ten minutes, I asked my question and listened to a collection of random syllables in response.  I'm assuming they were a response, since I have no idea what was being said on the other, distant end of the line.

After a series of non-communicative exchanges, I decided that I didn't really need this credit card and said, "I want to cancel my card.  Please say 'yes' if you understand this request and have closed my account." 

Instead of the response I'd requested, I received another long string of random vowels and I waited it out.  When she had finished talking space alien, I repeated my request.  Another pile of vowels poured through the telephone line, but I interrupted and said, very slowly and, probably, a little forcefully, "I'm not kidding.  I just want to cancel the account.  Please just respond with a single word, 'yes,' if you understand what I said and have closed my account with AT&T/Citibank." 

A long pause followed, clicking noises covered the silence, and, finally, I think I heard her say "yes."  Honestly, I couldn't understand what she was saying, even with a single syllable word, well enough to know for sure that she managed to comprehend what I wanted done.  I cut up the card, posted a note to my credit record describing why I'd cancelled the account and put a note in Outlook to remind me to check on the account in a month to see if it is closed. 

Over the years, I've collected a small pile of credit cards from back in the day when credit card companies simply mailed a card, unrequested, and created a customer.  Like dope pushers, credit card companies are always looking for new addicts and I used to simply drop the new cards either in the trash or in a fireproof safe.  I rarely use credit for anything and think of the cards as more of an emergency fund than an actual financial gadget.  I opened up the safe and took out all of my unused credit cards.  I had two MBNA accounts, another Citibank account, a couple of Chase cards, and a Discover Card.  Suddenly, it seemed like a good time to simply my financial life. 

I called the 800 number for MBNA, got another noisy long line, a series of automated instructions, and, finally, another non-English speaking service person.  After listening to his long, barely intelligible drone touting the great benefits I would realize by consolidating all of my non-existent debt into a six-month, zero-interest loan from MBNA, I slowly repeated my AT&T request, "I want to cancel my account.  Please just respond with a single word, 'yes,' if you understand what I said and have closed my account with MBNA."  Just like my AT&T/Citibank experience, I had to repeat myself about a half-dozen times to get the job done, but I finally heard a simple "yes" from the long end of the line, thanked the fellow, and moved on to the rest of my cards.

It turned out that only Discover Card had either kept telephone service in the US or done one hell of a job of teaching English to the lady with whom I spoke.  So, I reluctantly kept my unused Discover Card. 

Personally, I recommend that we all go through this exercise.  Those US companies that think so little of their US customers that they save a few bucks on service by shipping that service to non-English speaking countries do not deserve out business.  In fact, we ought to be closely watching where our dollars go because the jobs we save are our own.  Some people buy Toyotas instead of Fords or GM cars because it's more likely that the Toyota is built here than the so-called US manufactured cars. 

That said, there are some jobs that could easily, profitably, and practically be moved to India.  Positions that cost far more than they provide in service to customers or to productive employees can be displaced to third world countries.  High paid, non-technical, non-essential positions, which are often held by middle-aged white men who have gravitated to those jobs solely because of longevity and an ability to avoid doing productive work, would be ideally suited for foreign export. 

There is no reason why the nation couldn't export the job done by every single multi-national executive position, every media expert spokesperson, every Fox News talking head, and every government office to India, Pakistan, South Korea, or, even, Iraq.  Once all of those non-essential positions are securely positioned in their tar-paper shanties and grass huts (equipped with cell phones, iMacs, and bug spray) billions of dollars would be saved and our nation's productivity would skyrocket.  Most US corporations would shave 20-40% from their overhead just by trading in their inefficient mismanagement for low-paid, third world executive services.

The best bit I've saved for last, though.  With our wasteful US-based management systems, we have to fritter away precious resources in golden parachute payoffs, executive retirement plans, and all sorts of pointless and unproductive expenditures to be rid of useless executives.  Move those jobs to India and executive downsizing is a simple problem.  When hard times come, as they always do, those same corporations could easily downsize by cutting off the cell phone service to their off-shore executive staff.

With this simple reorganization, service to customers would improved, employee productivity would be enhanced, profitability would explode, and nobody anyone cares about would be harmed.  Couple the corporate efficiency with the improvement in national communications provided by moving the media and government offices offshore and you have the perfect modern social and economic system.

January 2006

#146 When Do You Shoot? (2006)

All Rights Reserved © 2006 Thomas W. Day

I woke up this morning to a news report that a Milwaukee man had been beaten to death by a gang of a dozen or more kids.  Apparently, a pack of parent-less brats were blocking the street and, when this unfortunate man honked his horn to get their attention, they ripped him from his car and assaulted him.  The beating resulted in the death of a 52 year-old man. 

This story caught my attention because a friend, David Santistevan, found himself in a similar situation two years ago.  He wasn't in Milwaukee or another urban armpit.  He was in a small town in Idaho.  He wasn't confronted by a large gang, but by two young men on ATVs in a dark alley behind a bar.  An Idaho court decided that in defending himself from what he perceived to be a threat, he had committed "attempted murder" and sentenced him to 22-45 years in prison. 

I don't know all of the details of the event, other than what I read in local Idaho newspapers and what David has told me.  The newspaper reports were so biased that I found it hard to believe that David could receive a fair trial in that state.  I know that David shot both of the young men and one was critically injured and the other received a minor wound.  I also know that both of the boys were white and David is Hispanic in an often radically-racist, state.  The newspapers and prosecutor regularly called the men "boys" and "kids," but one of the "kids" was six-two and weighed 220 pounds.  David is five-five, 50-years-old, and an overweight guitar player.  I doubt that anyone would imagine an Idaho court returning a similar verdict if a 50-year-old white man had been in a similar situation with two large, young Hispanic men. 

In reading the reports from the trial, I felt the judge clearly spent a lot of time posing as a champion of justice and the Great White American Way.  I suspect his posturing means that judges hold elected offices in Idaho.  In his closing statement, Judge Elgee said, “Mr. Santistevan did all he could do to commit two murders.  This has been a life sentence for the victims. I considered the sentence very carefully when I imposed it and can see no basis to change it.”  Ridiculous.  Doing "all he could" to commit murder would have resulted in two deaths.  David fired two shots in panic, left an easy target on the ground, made no effort to catch the other victim, ran away from the scene, and hid in his home.  He was obviously terrified by every aspect of this event.  Nothing about that set of actions resembles an intent to commit murder.  In all, I felt that David took a ride on a railroad in his trial.

What David did was akin to the old American proverb, "don't bring a knife to a gunfight."  In his case, he brought the gun while his antagonists brought youth and we may never know what else.  There was no effort in the police "investigation" or in the trial to determine what incited the fear that caused David to fire his weapon at the two young men.  As I mentioned before, the local newspapers made no effort at presenting an unbiased report of the incident or, later, David's character.  The Wood River Journal, the local paper, was particularly one-sided, going as far as collecting and printing derogatory character statements before the trial and pronouncing David guilty long before the trial began.

Even with that background, it took the jury 15 hours of deliberation to convict David and, by the newspaper report "None of them looked in the direction of the defendant."  In other words, they couldn't face the man they had convicted.  Who could?  Presented with a half-hearted police investigation, a biased community, a politically motivated judge, and a jury that faced returning to a community that had already convicted David and would have been happy to hang him from the nearest tree, the jury did what they had to do; they found him guilty and ran back to their ordinary lives as quickly as possible. 

In the past couple of decades, Idaho has regularly been a national embarrassment. Idaho has become a dumping ground for slack-jawed losers and idle and addled trust fund babies, often demonstrated by White-Power-Aryan-Nation crap, Scientology-Creationist-Intelligent-Design superstitious jabber, and rich-Californians-turned-small-town-hicks nuttiness. These days, that is less of a character flaw, since the whole country seems to be going to the conservative dogs.  If Idaho has a fault, today, it's that the state is slightly worse than the rest of the country in a time when it would be so easy to be better. 

The only clear message this trial conveys is that Idaho is stuck in the conundrum that haunts the rest of the country; guns are good/bad.  In this case, David defended himself with a gun and that resulted in an attempted murder conviction.  If he were white and his attackers were brown, black, yellow, or red the result would be different.  If he'd have tried to defend himself with a baseball bat, he probably would have been beaten to a pulp but he wouldn't be in prison today.  If he'd have tried to defend himself with a knife, he'd probably be dead.  He successfully used a gun and he's in prison.  The judge tacked on considerable extra time to his sentence because David used a gun in the "crime."  But politicians, everywhere, take thousands and millions of dollars from the gun lobby to make sure criminals have easy access to as many guns as they desire.  Most likely, this Idaho judge and prosecutor will receive political contributions from the Idaho gun industry in their next campaign. 

As a nation, we consistently defend the right to own guns but are less convinced that we have the right to use them in defense.  If anything good can come from this poor excuse for justice, I hope it causes a few people to review their position on handguns and licensing.  A lot of the misery caused by this incident could have been easily prevented with competent law enforcement, before the event, and simple regulation of handguns.  People kill people with guns.  Maybe that's not such a good thing.

January 2006

#145 Too Many Targets (2005)

All Rights Reserved © 2005 Thomas W. Day

Wow!  This has been an incredible month to look through the rat hole into the real world.  Republicans are drizzling ooze in all directions and they're presenting so many targets that writing about them is like shooting catfish in a barrel.  Just as a reference, for those of you who aren't counting:

• Bush's mole in the last remaining piece of non-right wing media, ex-Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) Chairman Kenneth Tomlinson, quit before he was fired by the CPB's board.  The CPB's inspector general had found that Tomlinson had hired lobbyists and contractors, without the board's knowledge, to campaign Congress to restrict public broadcasting's ability to report the news, unless it was favorable to the administration.
• Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham pled guilty to conspiracy and tax evasion and resigned his office.  Cunningham soaked up $2.4 million in graft to while working for a collection of crooked military contractors.  Cunningham, who often promoted his military connection as a former Navy pilot, was one of the few Republicans in office who could actually make any kind of claim to national service.  He's facing 10 years in prison and had to give back some of his booty.  I'm sure he'll receive a sharp slap on the wrist.  Republicans are really into "taking responsibility" when the responsibility can be passed on to someone else.
• Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his lobbying partner, Michael Scanlon, a former aide to Tommy DeLay, bribed Rep. Bob Ney and a collection of Republican congressmen into making bold statements in favor of gambling casino interests in return for at least $10,000 in contributions to the RNC.  Big surprise, Republicans and the Mafia are connected.  Who'd have thought?  Funny, when cops find drugs on poor person, those drugs are astronomically priced.  When they discover a Republican politician is taking bribes, we're barely talking any money at all.  Raise your hands if you seriously believe that a gambling casino siphoned only $10,000 to the RNC.  Ok, so there are a few really stupid folks still able to breed.  Nature works overtime to populate the species, no matter how dumb a move that may be. 
• Bush and Cheney are on the road promoting their right to torture captives while the rest of the world wonders what the hell happened to "the land of the free and the home of the brave?"  On the upside, many people (Lawrence Wilkerson, Rep. Norm Dicks, Sen Jack Murtha) are beginning to locate their lost testicles and are speaking out against this abomination and perversion of our national values.
• Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr. has become as interesting as an afternoon soap opera.  He has ruled in favor of investment companies that, incidentally, he had considerable financial interest.  Paragons of propriety, such as Arlon Spector decided, "It is my conclusion that there has been no impropriety on your part," but folks with a conscience and a lick of sense are less convinced.  Alito ruled that a strip search of a 10 year old girl was within the powers of our police state.  Alito has ruled that machine gun ownership is every (mobster) American's right.  And on it goes.  Where do Republicans find these whack jobs?  
• The new Iraqi Congress resolved that Iraq’s opposition has a “legitimate right'’ to provide resistance to American occupation.  They also asked for a timetable for an American troop withdrawal, something Bush has claimed he'd do the moment Iraq asked us to leave.  Of course, now he's saying it's "premature" (wonder if he knows what that word means?) for us to consider withdrawal while Iraq still has oil and Halliburton hasn't yet extracted all of the gold in Fort Knox. 
• Senator Tom Delay is sinking further into the Texas court system.  For me, the highpoint of his legal mess has been the difficulty a Texas politician has had in finding a competent, unbiased Texas judge to hear his case.  Bush seemed to think that every damn court in Texas was competent to try death cases, even without a state public defender system, but political corruption is beyond their capacity.  How difficult is it to determine if a Republican is taking bribes?  I'd be surprised if it's any harder than deciding if a politician is lying (are his lips moving?).
• New Orleans and Katrina are still spilling into Bush's lap.  Corruption and incompetence seem to be the legal tender of this administration's attitude toward domestic issues.  As our weather changes, lots of red states are likely to be experiencing natural disasters.  I'm sure Pat Robertson will be praying for their contributions to his newest castle on a mountain.  One thing for sure, Bush and the Republican wolf pack has made sure none of those damn homeless freeloaders can escape from natural disasters through filing bankruptcy. 
• Lastly, a collection of "conservative think tanks" (an obvious oxymoron) have been advocating large families as a "solution" to the Social Security crisis.  Their argument is that Social Security was "set up" to be a system that relied on the contributions of new workers to support retiring workers.  This ignores the fact that the original system was a "pay as you go" insurance program that has been grossly mismanaged and liberally robbed from by every Republican President from Eisenhower to Bush II.  Republicans hate "pay as you go," because it requires the people they represent, the grossly rich, to contribute to the nation's expenses.  This idiot "solution" ignores the fact that large families are overwhelmingly the major contributors to poverty, child abuse, illiteracy, and unemployment.  I heard one of the brain-dead "conservative intellectuals" explaining this solution on NPR and nearly hurt myself laughing at his justifications.  Finally, the poor boy had to fall on his sword and admit that there was a religious/superstitious component to the argument that made large families "even more compelling."  Ah, the Corporate God demands "more customers" and who are we to disobey?

The list is much longer and funnier than this.  If it weren't scary beyond belief and dangerous beyond our wildest terrors of the Cold War, it would be a lot more entertaining. 

The most important thing we should have learned from the Cold War was that a national government run by a single party is dumb beyond belief.  Instead, Reagan imported Soviet Union-style politics to the United States and the right has promoted that incompetence to a fine, political art.  There are few signs that the media is going to contribute anything useful to the reform of our political system and our elections have been contaminated beyond simple reform.  Unless individual citizens wise up and rise up against the nuttiness of the right, we're screwed.  For the short term, we're screwed anyway.  Bush and his puppeteers have blown the national budget, decimated our national reputation, and lowered our future standard of living to third world status.  Good thing they're entertaining, otherwise they would be totally worthless. 

November 2005

#144 Religious Organizations and Leaders (2005)

All Rights Reserved © 2005 Thomas W. Day

"Oxymoron: A rhetorical figure in which incongruous or contradictory terms are combined, as in a deafening silence and a mournful optimist."

• "Religious: Having or showing belief in and reverence for God or a deity."
• "Organized: Functioning within a formal structure, as in the coordination and direction of activities."
• "Leader: One who is in charge or in command of others."

Good 'ole boy, Reverend Pat Robertson, is a leader of modern organized religion.  I have to suspect that claim contains a pair of oxymoronic phrases.  The folks Robertson leads are as scary as the followers that Hitler led into Hell. 

This week, Robertson condemned the citizens of Dover, PA for having the audacity to vote to oppose the insertion of creationist dogma in their local public school science programs (by replacing 8 Creationist school board members with folks who picked science over myth).  Robertson ranted, "I'd like to say to the good citizens of Dover: If there is a disaster in your area, don't turn to God. You just rejected him from your city."  Florida, Louisiana, and most of the deep South are hotbeds of superstitious belief and I haven't noticed any god-given relief provided to those places.  I suspect that Dover won't be any less protected than any other area of the world.  God is spectacularly consistent in his absence in times of natural or unnatural disaster, political upheaval, and personal loss. 

Not content to prove himself mostly arrogant and stupid, Robertson went on to rant, "God is tolerant and loving, but we can't keep sticking our finger in his eye forever.  If they have future problems in Dover, I recommend they call on Charles Darwin. Maybe he can help them." 

Calling on Darwin will be at least as effective as would be a prayer to Robertson's god.  Both efforts are a waste of time and energy, but superstitious people never run out of time to waste.  At least, if they pay attention to insane freaks and charlatans like Robertson, that would be my best guess.  The lil' fella' has a lot of followers and, based on his fine collection of expensive suits and jewelry and mansions and palaces, I suspect he has collected a bunch of money from those fools with excess time on their hands. 

By the time he was finished with Dover, Robertson had moved himself into the rare territory of the completely arrogant and stupid.  If Robertson is a "religious leader" in "organized religion" he is doing his best to prove that organization and religion and leadership don't mix.  At it's best, religion is a spiritual foundation that provides moral guidance and strength to a believer.

Religion doesn't often function at an optimal level, though.  Most folks inclined toward organized religion are there for the money and/or power.  Folks like Robertson get off on inventing gods and forcing others to bow to their inventions.  This is an ancient, primitive crowd control tactic that has been practiced ever since humans began to hang out in groups.  Some dickwad invents a god or ten, pretends to be in communication with powerful supernatural voices, and comes up with a fanciful list of behaviors that everyone else is forced to imitate or be doomed to eternal discomfort and bad luck.  If Robertson wore a bone in his nose, waved bags of sticks and chicken bits, and painted himself to look like a nasty Bozo the clown, he wouldn't be any less modern than he is today. 

Minnesota's ex-Governor, Jesse Ventura, created a smoke storm of superstitious frenzy during his term in office by stating that "organized religion is a sham and a crutch for weak-minded people who need strength in numbers."  He recanted that statement, but he should have simply defined it.  There is no shortage of weak-minded religious people; "weak" as in uneducated, cowardly, crazy, and gullible.  That's all Jesse needed to say. 

Whenever this fact is pointed out, the crutch-leaners always pull up Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Mother Theresa, and the short list of brave souls who fairly justify the existence of religious faith.  The short list of equally brave souls who did not invoke divine authority for their acts of humanity and courage is rarely considered in the argument. 

Humans, by definition, are a faulty animal.  Society at its best, whether religious or secular, attempts to guide human activity toward what we call "civilized behavior."  Robertson and the Religious Right are not examples of people or organizations with moral or sincere intentions.  Robertson is simply another of a long line of witch doctors acting in his own interests while doing as much damage to his culture as he can manage with his limited abilities. 

What Robertson does represent is the contradiction between the best meaning of "religion" and the reality of either "organized" or "leader."  Spirituality is so individual that intrusion by someone claiming to be "a leader" turns internal spirituality to mere imitation, which removes the possibility of "reverence for God or a deity."  Instead, the hoard are simply revering the human representative of a fanciful idol.  Manipulators like Robertson represent themselves as the "voice of God," which reduces that supernatural being to something easily interpreted, grossly fallible, and an embarrassing mockery of the high standards humans are capable of aspiring.  Instead of rousing heroism and moral behavior, religious leaders lower their followers to "monkey see, monkey do" ritual and cowardly conservatism. 

Organizations, by their nature, repress the creativity and sacrifice required by the very same brave souls those institutions refer to when they attempt to justify their existence.  Every one of our spiritual heroes (secular and non-secular) claimed by religious organizations had to work far outside of religious tradition to accomplish their goals.  Not a one of those organizations claimed a relationship with their own heroes when it would have been useful to those champions.  God's guidance appears to only have hindsight, when it comes to religious organizations.  With that in mind, I suspect the citizens of Dover will do just fine, regardless of Robertson's feeble curses.  At least, they won't do any worse than cities that suffer Robertson's blessing. 

October 2005

#143 Personal Words (2005)

All Rights Reserved © 2005 Thomas W. Day

For the last four years, I was blessed to work for a man I respected and trusted.  A couple of those years were the best experience in my working life.  I'm not saying the company, the school, for which I've worked has been respectable or trustworthy; just the man.  However, it has been a rare enough experience just having the opportunity to work for someone with positive qualities that it has spoiled me for the usual management riffraff.  This man, Michael, quit today.  The school's management didn't think Michael's leaving was important enough to let the rest of us know, but the word spread through the staff like a fire of despair. 

The last year and a half has been tolerable, but in decline.  The people who own and mismanage the school are the usual lot; boy-men who couldn't make a sane decision if their inheritances depended upon it.  But that hasn't mattered for the past twelve years of the school's existence, because Michael could always be counted on to make the important decisions for the organization.  While the owners rattled around in their palatial offices, posing for portraits and polishing their egos, Michael hired staff, distributed resources, settled disputes, and moved the school from a dilapidated warehouse in Minneapolis to a shining new facility in St. Paul.  When every major step was completed, the owners would make a hand-waving appearance and express wonder at their miraculous accomplishments. 

Other than being a bit irritating, most of us didn't mind their ignorance, because Michael knew who did the real work and he made us into the kind of team that rarely exists outside of myth and dreams.  Today, members of that team met in hallways, the parking garage, and at least one bar to mourn the end of a workplace era.  I heard expressions of anger, disappointment, sorrow, and pain from people working in sales, maintenance, administration, and (above all in an educational institution) the teachers.  The loss of no other person in the school could have inspired so much emotion, and we've had some sad losses in the last couple of years.  If both of the school's founders had died in the floods of New Orleans, a bare fraction of that passion would have been generated.  The feeling in the school was similar to what I experienced in 1963, as a school boy, when President Kennedy was assassinated.  Hearts were broken, spirits were crushed, bonds of friendship and common goals were damaged. 

Of course, the mismanagers were oblivious to all of this because they were distracted, as usual, by illusions found in their office mirrors. 

As I sat in a bar with friends, fellow instructors, listening to plans for revolt, alternative business ideas, descriptions of escape routes, and general melancholy, I tried to come to peace with my own future.  Not long ago, I planned to spend the rest of my working life with this group.  For the first time in my adult life, I had been part of what felt like an indestructible force; like an NFL offensive line, and I was watching it dissipate like a beautiful sunset fading to darkness.  For me, the school isn't a serious place without Michael there.  What we do, suddenly, seems pointless without his encouragement, honest faith, and vision for our institution and our students.  Michael believed in what we did, he supported it.  Michael had taught every class we taught.  He understood our industry and our technology.  He recognized and attempted to fix problems before we saw them coming.  Even if the industry we represented is mostly in the past, he believed that we could guide our students into the future, making music and changing lives.  He created the school's mission and he believed in it.

What's left is about money, power, and the usual suspects are in control.  Something extraordinary has been turned ordinary.  It's incredible how easy that is to do.  Destruction is always easier than creation, but it's not as inspiring.

September 2005

When Liars Use Numbers

Don’t ask why, but I was looking at an Amazon customer product review today and discovered that the numbers didn’t “add up.” The review (see right) average of 4.3 out of 5 stars is grossly optimistic. Just looking at the star ratings without any sort of analysis you’d notice that 36% of the reviews are 3 star or worse (“It’s Ok.” or worse). 26% are 2 and 1 star ratings (“I hate it.” and “I don’t like it.”) If you really get critical, even a 4 star rating just means “I like it,” so even a 4 star rating is pretty dismal. How is it possible that this product has earned a “4.3 out of 5 stars” average rating?

So what would actual statistics applied to this particular product return for an average rating? If we go for a simple mean average, the sum of the review scores divided by the number of reviews (and the definition of “average” that most of us assume), we’d end up with a 3.72 star average score (just below “I like it”): not bad, but not somewhere between “I like it” and “I love it.” If Amazon were being totally disingenuous, they’d use the mode average, which would be 5 stars and practically every product would have a 5-star average rating because American consumers tend to “love” everything they buy. Apparently, Amazon’s rating system is based on the median average (the middle number, when they are ranked in order) or something close to that.

The takeaway for me is that I won’t pay any attention to Amazon’s average rating ever again. They and their suppliers are counting on our tendency to trust “customer reviews” and ignore the way those reviews are scored or what they really mean. Amazon has proved, again, “nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.” Including me.

#142 Fools are Us (2005)

All Rights Reserved © 2005 Thomas W. Day

So, which came first, the chicken or the egg?  Or, in regards to the subject that I am developing here, did our national business model create our national foreign policy or did the foreign policy come first?  My bet is on the business model.  I suspect that our cut-throat, amoral corporations and the execs that squirm within created the mess that the rest of the world sees as the United States. 

As a nation, our "leaders" have often acted as if the rest of the world, especially the third world, is populated by complete idiots.  Our current government is particularly arrogant in its expectations of the rest of the world, but they are just the logical extension of a long history of overconfident, under-skilled  politicians and bureaucrats.  Ever since the United States began to formulate a foreign policy, that policy has been directed by the assumption that everyone else is an idiot and we are so clever that they won't see through the thin veneer disguising our national purposes.  The fact that our politicians and their henchmen are as transparent as fine crystal has never occurred to arrogant American lunkheads from John Adams to G.W. Bush.  They simply see their malevolence as being so complicated and intricate that no one outside of their inner circle could possibly sense their motives. 

We haven't had a sophisticated Executive, Congressional, or Judicial branch since the early 1960s.  And the intelligent leaders didn't amount to more than a hand full of fingers before that.  Cats can predict the motives of the overwhelming majority of human politicians.  A pigmy child extracted from the depths of the most remote area of Africa could, in seconds, size up any of our federal or state bureaucrats and anticipate their actions.  Our national motives are as simple and impure as those of any villain ever dreamed up by Marvel Comics, "'We want your natural resources, all of them, and we will pay bottom dollar to get them.  We'd prefer to wreak your culture and crush your dreams in the process."  Even if the rest of the world was completely populated by morons, that message wouldn't be subtle enough to fool anyone who doesn't drool a in Texas accent.

Our management class is a carbon copy of our government class.  These "elites" stumble through company meetings, delivering foolish platitudes and grade school ultimatums, assuming that no one foolish enough to be employed by a company so disorganized as to hire them for management could detect deception if it were printed in a frame surrounded by flashing "lies, all lies" signs.  If anyone in the room is stupid enough to accept anything they say as worthwhile, that person is clearly management material.  They lie and cheat and stab each other, and the rest of their countrymen, in the back over power and wealth.  The difference between our executive class and Mafia dons is so minimal that the two swap positions without skipping a beat.  All the while, they assume the rest of us are too stupid to do anything about their crass manipulation and gross corruption.

In a way, they are right.  We take far too much abuse from the 1% who own 90% of our country.  Third world terrorists are quicker on the uptake than US voters.  The average man living on the streets of Calcutta knows more about what goes on in Washington D.C. than does the typical American voter.  It's incredibly embarrassing to admit that my own country appears to be the world's most universally hated and feared villain, but it's better to acknowledge that and fight against the inbred self-proclaimed royalty that owns the United States than it is to pretend crimes are not being committed in our name.  You can't fix anything until you recognize it needs fixing.  A startling majority of Americans seem to be too stupid to know when they ought to be asking for a little lubrication with their shafting. 

It's not like the execs are stunningly clever.  These are not people who are bright enough to learn from history, books, mathematical simulations, or remedial tutoring of the sort provided to the ruling class through their Ivy League institutions of slower learning.  They do not realize that eliminating freedoms, driving the middle class into poverty and servitude, terrorizing the third world, and acting as the planet's corrupt Chicago Police force is a sure formula for mass riot and individual violence.  When people do not have political outlets for their grievances, they are forced to resort to physical outlets.   You can bottle beer, but you can't hold your thumb over progress.  The human race is progressing, regardless of the efforts of the current administration, the U.S. military, or mismanaged multinational corporations. 

From the mismanaged side of the equation, the perception is anything but confused.  Most employees think management is overflowing with idiots.  Decisions are handed down without even the slightest clue as to the cause, effect, or purpose.  Every word uttered by mismanagement seems to be designed to demotivate, irritate, confuse, disorganize, or incite riot among the employees and alienate customers.  As I have written before, in every company I've ever worked, if the top management were to contract a disease that caused them to vanish, instantly, in their offices, it would be weeks, months, or years before anyone noticed they were missing.  Universally, the thing that would instigate a search for the missing execs would be a sudden increase in profitability, efficiency, and morale improvement beginning the moment the dead weight vanished. 

Abusing and destabilizing the countries from whom we depend upon for natural resources has been a terrible, vicious, failed experiment.  New York on September 11, 2001 suffered for all of our sins in that regard.  Allowing ourselves to be similarly abused at work and in our communities has resulted in the depersonalized, culture-of-one society that appears to be so susceptible to degenerative "life style marketing." 

Many of us have resorted to looking for a pill that will counteract our national low self-esteem and non-existent sense of community and purpose.  Pills won't help.  Treating the symptoms only works when you treat the right symptoms.  The cure is revolution in the voting booth.  We'll find a cure when the majority of citizens are taking part in the political system with an educated, motivated, outraged purpose.  Until we are "mad as hell and we won't take it any more," we're going to be stuck in crappy jobs, mismanaged by inbred idiots.  Until we want to honestly respected as "the leader of the free world," we'll be ordered about by fourth generation political hacks who only serve international corporate masters and have no interest in the fate and future of this country.  We either stand up and act like citizens of a free country or fall down and serve as floor mats for the ruling class.  There is no middle ground.

September 2005

#141 The Selfish Class (2005)

All Rights Reserved © 2005 Thomas W. Day

I wish this rant was only directed at the ruling class.  I wish the rest of the country was as disgusted and tired of a social system that discriminates against everyone from the handicapped to the working poor to the middle class who bear the burden of every responsibility this nation has taken on.  But it's not.  The real failure of our modern state is because more than half of the country is too damn dumb to think for itself and, on the rare occasion that group thinks at all, it only thinks in the most uncomplicated selfish terms.  Human evolution is the history of people learning to cooperate in the interest of their family group, community, and culture.  The Selfish Class has lost this evolutionary drive.

You could place a little of the blame for this wide-spread cultural suicide on the blitz of marketing that has been aimed at the general public, attempting to convince us that we "need" gadgets, toys, synthesized food, recreational drugs, overpriced personal vehicles and housing, and powerful international corporations to complete our lives.  Marketing has worked to create a society that is solely concerned with individual material solutions to social problems.  A lot of money has been spent in this effort, so you could say that is why we're so selfish.  You could do that, I can't.  I think anyone who buys a new car based on inspiration provided by a television ad is too dumb to vote, make important personal decisions, or breathe without instruction.  The state of modern marketing is so low-brow that it amazes me anyone ever watches an ad or buys a product that was mass marketed.

The existence of a television ad promoting a product means that product's value has been dramatically sacrificed to pay for the ad and the morons who conceived it.  But the Selfish Class is largely driven by the instructions they receive in "lifestyle ads" and those instructions run counter to the best interests of the culture.

The biggest share of the blame for the growth of the selfish cancer is from our lack of national leadership.  Or, to be more accurate, this disease is a result of of their leadership.  Like most degenerate cultures, we have a completely self-indulgent ruling class who are only interested in their own short-term immediate gratification.  The Bush's, the Gates', the Jobs', and our hierarchy of idle and semi-idle (executives, for example) multi-generational spoiled rich children contribute nothing more to the culture than poor role models for the working class and wannabe-rich-middle class.  Everything in society and business is top-down and if the "leadership" is foolish and short-sighted, so goes the rest of the country.

But I digress. 

The modern American average Joe or Joan is a proud member of the Selfish Class.  Mostly, participation in the class is how they are kept in line.  They labor mindlessly under the illusion that "anyone can succeed" and "if you can't make it here, you can't make it anywhere."  All kinds of people can't make it here: people with families, people with dependent adult family members, people who have had their lives interrupted by illness, people who have had their jobs shipped overseas for cheaper labor, and the usual cast of characters who fall through the growing spaces in our ever-deteriorating social net.  The Selfish Class doesn't care about the problems of the unfortunate many.  The Selfish Class can barely be bothered to care about problems within its own family and, when the kids become disobedient teenagers, the Selfish Class often "disowns" its own children and tosses them out like stale bread. 

The Selfish Class is particularly incensed when it finds itself on the outside looking in.  When that happens, they are usually convinced that the entire social net has been assembled to ignore their life-style-threatening problems.  Then, they vote to "fix" the system.  Of course, since they're perspective on what's wrong with the system is so narrow and erroneous, they vote ignorantly and short-term selfishly.

A couple of years ago, a conservative Selfish Class acquaintance (redundant, the Selfish Class is always conservative) found himself suddenly unemployed (for the third time in a year) with a ton of debt and no savings.  Unless a member of the Selfish Class has been thoughtfully provided an untouchable trust fund they are rarely able to save for more than a moment's pause in cash flow. After a few weeks of fruitless job hunting, he applied for state assistance and found that the state did not consider him to be particularly destitute.  After all, he possessed a garage full of motorcycles, three new upscale four-wheeled vehicles (for two family drivers), a home (with three mortgages), a house full of modern expensive gadgets, two kids enrolled in a high-priced private school, and a small collection of recreational club memberships.  The state implied that he could do considerable cost-cutting and make a few sacrifices in expenses and belongings before he would qualify for state assistance.  He was outraged.  From his perspective, everything he owned, every one of his activities, every extravagance in his life was "necessary" and justified.  That a lowly state employee could suggest otherwise was an affront to his status and self-image.

Because he is white, young, healthy, well-connected, and possesses a collection of employable skills (all obtained in a Minnesota public vocational education system that is now being abandoned), he was only out of work for a few weeks.  After his experience at the edge of being inconvenienced, he has become convinced that the social net is worthless and should be dismantled.  It didn't work for him in his hour (literally) of need, so it is obviously not working for anyone who matters.  This is a close to a perfect Selfish Class response as anyone could create.  "If it's not all about me, what is it good for?"

The Selfish Class is what put G.W. Bush in power.  G.W. and Co. may not be the brightest lights on the Xmas tree, but they can read these Selfish simpletons like an Archie and Veronica comic book.  All they have to do is act naturally, in fact, since current conservative leadership are the most selfish people on the planet.  To appeal to the Selfish Class, you only have to speak to their immediate self-interests.  The Selfish Class does not care about the fate of life on earth, they care about themselves now, today, this moment.  The Selfish Class has children, but they are supposed to be mirror images of themselves and if those children stop reflecting their parents' they are abandoned as easily as any animal leaves its offspring.  The Selfish Class is willing to sacrifice the health, security, and welfare of the people of the rest of the world for unlimited use of the world's resources.  And yet, they express horror and confusion when the people they have sacrificed strike back with the same weapons and brutality that have been used against them in the interests of the Selfish Class. 

The worst thing about our current state of egocentric self-interest is that it is self-sustaining and regenerating.  A top-down corruption is the worst system failure an organization or society can suffer.  When the entire leadership is corrupt, the majority of citizens simply follow their example.  This isn't anything new, something invented by the new right.  In fact, it's the oldest political system on earth.  It's also the most fragile.  A country mostly populated by lazy, selfish people is easily destroyed by natural catastrophe, internal revolution, external attack, or a combination of these forces.  The lack of community that is the core of the Selfish Class is also the downfall of that same group.  A community without an interlinking support system that protects the less fortunate, educates the ignorant and the young, provides for the common good to equalize opportunity across economic levels, and protects and listens to the canary-in-a-coal-mine voices of dissent is easily fragmented and destroyed.  We have become that kind of community and our vanishing personal rights and growing economic imbalance is just a sign of where that is taking us.

August 2005

#140 Why Do Conservatives Hate the United States? (2005)

All Rights Reserved © 2005 Thomas W. Day

Ok, I admit it.  This rant was inspired by conservative propaganda that begins or ends with statements like "why [Michael Moore/Liberals/The Liberal Media] hate(s) America."  But at the core, I believe that conservatives, especially the radical (is there any other kind?) religious right, hate the United States and the representative democracy that it represents.  I don't mean "dislike," "mistrust," or have a reasonable disagreement among patriots and well-meaning, honest men and women.  I mean hate. 
First, our current herd of neo-conservatives are stupid.  The "America" that they imagine liberals hate doesn't exist.  It never existed.  "America" is a pair of continents; not a country, system of government, or a collection of ideals.  We have North America, of which the United States of America is a part and we have South America where US corporations have a lot of financial interests but no honestly held rights or morally earned privileges.  The bulk of the folks who claim to love "America" don't even know where the United States ends and where America becomes other countries, cultures, and economic systems. 

Even more to the point, I doubt there is anyone living on this continent who hates the soil and the continental shelf upon which they live, liberal or conservative.  "America" is a pair of continents (with an often-contested sub-continent, Central America, connecting the two larger land bodies); not a culture, social or economic system, or a flag-symbolized nationalistic god-fearing corporate prison camp.

Hell, most of the nationalist right-wing "Americans" don't know much about the United States geographically, historically, politically, or in any other critical specific.  They chant about "America, the Christian Nation" and babble their foolish notions of capitalism, taxation, and defending the homeland in exactly the same words (other than the actual language) as did their idealistic predecessors, in Nazi Germany.  When it comes time for them to demonstrate their understanding of the foundations of the nation, the principles of economics or democracy, or their legitimate rights and responsibilities, they are often and usually found to be missing in action.

In modern history, these radicals, misnamed "conservatives" have been on the morally wrong side of every national crisis since before 1776.  Conservatives opposed the Revolutionary War and the concept of representational democracy.  The first conservatives to pollute the New World's political thinking fantasized that Kings and Queens and inherited wealth and power was vested by the gods and mere mortals were incapable of divining the gods' will in matters as complicated as creating a civil and just society.  Dumb-asses, all of them.  Our first conservatives were known, by the country's patriot forefathers, as "Tories."  If you are interested in finding yourself on the morally right side of practically any disagreement in the history of humanity, determine which side the current breed of conservatives has selected and join the opposition.

Following the footsteps of the country's first conservative dolts were slave owners.  They were the second American wave of god-fearing conservative big thinkers and they fantasized that their ability to terrorize other people, initially including other white folks, somehow illuminated their moral superiority.  This pack of inbred hillbillies were willing and nearly able to disassemble the Union in favor of an economically degenerate system based on slaves and serfs with a collective government that mostly resembled Jolly old England from the previous unenlightened centuries commonly known as "The Dark Ages."  Fortunately for us, them, and the rest of the world, the liberals of the 1860's decided that living next to a pack of moral decadents was unacceptable and we had a Civil War that put to the test upon which side the gods actually stood.  Again, conservatives turned out to be on the down-slope of cultural and human evolution and they had their asses kicked by bleeding heart liberals and the power and creativity that is commonly found only in liberal cultures. 

The gods weren't on their side, either.  If gods exist, it's hard to imagine their preference being for evil, selfish, vicious, and simple-minded humans.  I could more easily imagine a god only interested in cats than one who would pick Karl Rove or G.W. Bush as an eternal neighbor. 

However, if conservatives can't do anything else they can breed like vermin and they kept reproducing their progeny, misinformation, and ignorance all over the country, especially in the south and the hillbilly segments of the Midwest and west also known as "the Bible Belt."  Even after having their asses kicked and their ill-founded faith in their gods' will proven to be false, they continued to imagine that white people had some inherent superiority over other cultures.  Shortly after the end of the Civil War, economic and social discrimination against everyone but rich white people became the southern standard. 

The sludge at the bottom of the intellectual pool, dumb poor whites, somehow managed to become convinced that they had some interests in common with dumb rich white people.  Dumb whites dedicated themselves to protecting rich folks from non-white poor folks.  This misdirection resulted in the Civil Rights Movement and we wasted nearly one hundred years in making our national intention semi-coherent.  In the meantime, we have had Civil Rights Acts passed and ignored in 1886, 1957, 1964, and 1991.  All the while, conservatives still battled to preserve discrimination, segregation, and outright hostility toward people of varying races, religions, and political beliefs.  Just another example of how much conservatives hate the democratic intentions of the United States of America. 

World wide conservatives did their best to allow their fellow true believers in Nazi Germany to complete the extermination of Jews and other "undesirables" deemed to be imperfect non-Aryans in the 1930s.  Eventually, liberals became irritated enough at this vicious and inhuman activity and, once again, conservatives had their asses kicked.  A fair number of conservatives are so disturbed by this ass-whipping that they deny the existence of the entire period of history, commonly known as World War II.  Many of these inbred morons wear swastikas on their clothing and body art and claim to be "Americans" while hating the government of the United States of America and doing everything within their limited mental capacity to undermine the process of democracy.  More examples of conservatives hating the USA.

Conservatives drug the nation into Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, and Iraq, twice.  Not in the interest of spreading democracy, but in the interests of the military-industrial complex that desperately needs wars to sell it's products.  Of course, the bonus was international corporate access to Iraq's oil resources.  Hardly a moral issue. 

Every issue with an attached real moral value is, and has been, opposed by American conservatives.  From women's rights to ecological conservation to racial equality to public education to the social safety net, conservatives have consistently come down on the side of international corporations and the interests of the ruling class.  Conservatives, without fail, have fought against progress, justice, freedom, peace, and common sense since the founding of this country.  Most likely, conservatives have argued against all of those things since the first group of cave people decided to band together. 
The great migration of southern whites to the Republican Party, which became blatant during the Carter Administration and resulted in white backlash and Reagan's election and the current radical Republican domination of the federal government, was all about racism and the long, ignorant history of poor white trash whose irritation is easily misdirected by international corporations and idle rich white trash.  You can't fool "all of the people all of the time," but you can fool these dumb fucks without putting up much of a show. 

The "values" represented by the Red States are limited to gun ownership, anti-feminism (thinly disguised as the "life" issue), the establishment of a national religion, and white power.  Not one of these issues could be described as central to the founding of the United States of America.

Conservatives protect the status quo, by definition.  Conservatives do not invent, improve, or initiate anything for the betterment of the country or the world.  They inhibit, repress, and regress at every junction of human, and especially the United States', history.  The reason they hate the United States of America is that this union of citizens, under the banner and protection of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, is liberal by its foundation and nature.  Liberals are progressive, conservatives are regressive.  The United States of America was a progressive, innovative, liberal idea. 

England was conservative in 1776 and still is, today.  The Soviet Union and Germany's National Socialist (Nazi) Party were conservative.  Iran's Assembly of Experts is conservative and so was Iraq's Arab Baath Socialist Party and Hussein's  Revolutionary Command Council.  These government systems were "loved" by the local conservatives and hated by the same countries' liberals. 

In this nation, when the government is obeying the law and serving the interests of the majority of its citizens, conservatives hate their government and want it changed by any method possible.  When the government is trampling personal rights and representing international corporate interests, conservatives are happy as hogs overdosing on PCP.  American conservatives have never loved the concept of the United States of America.  From the cocaine fields of Columbia to the Aryan Nation's compounds in the Pacific Northwest, conservative Americans have found things to hate about the United States of America.  The ideals they hate are what all intelligent citizens should all love about this country.  Freedom is a liberal goal.  Justice is a liberal ideal.  Equality and prosperity is the result of a liberal culture.  Those are the things conservatives hate all over the world and those are the things liberals must fight to protect. 

August 2005

How Not to Retire

The inspiration for writing this how-not-to instructional essay came to me while I sat on a picnic table outside of the dumbest purchase I’ve made in 65 years, my cursed Volkswagen-powered Winnebago Rialta, listening to Motion City Soundtrack’s “LGFUAD” for the nth time on New Year’s Day 2014. I was cold, frustrated, and stranded and had been all three of those for more than six weeks. If I had imagined retirement would be such unrewarding, complicated, stressful, expensive work, I’d have stuck with my job till I dropped dead from boredom. At work, at least I got paid to be bored. Retirement in an RV is all outgoing cash flow and the only satisfaction I can look forward to is the knowledge that this damn life has a limited warranty. That is, in a nutshell, how not to retire.

For three weeks of our internment in New Mexico, we’ve been doing our best to enjoy the moderate and sunny New Mexico weather. The first three weeks were spent struggling with Albuquerque area “mechanics” and mooching off of friends.  Once we gave up on finding someone who could fix a Volkswagen in Albuquerque and made a desperate dive south for sun and warmth, some of the misery moderated into resignation. The dramatic scenery around Truth or Consequences kept us partially distracted while I struggled with the various incompetent and manufacturer-unsupported power-train problems VW designed into the universally-detested but precisely named “Eurovan.” (Think “Eurotrash” and you’ll know why VW accidentally tagged this heap of junk with a near-truth-in-advertising nickname.)

I handed in my resignation notice and applied for Social Security in July. I spent most of the summer wrapping up my education employment, selling as much of the artifice of my professional audio career as I could find buyers for, and trying to convince my wife that we own way too much junk and should pay someone to empty our house and haul it all to a trash dump. Two out of three ain’t bad, right?

We’ve been on the road since a few days before Halloween and, we enjoyed slightly less than a month where our misnamed “recreational vehicle” served as both transportation and a residence. For the rest of the time, we’ve been living in this thing in the same way hobos live in refrigerator packing cartons or prisoners live in their cells. Our RV is an overweight travel trailer without a hitch or a tow vehicle. The good news is that we managed to limp across eastern New Mexico to Truth or Consequences (TorC), where we have shuffled from Elephant Butte Lake to TorC, trying not to overstay in the park or overspend in town. For the moment, the rolling pile of junk rolls well enough to travel a few miles before self-destructing. That may be as much as can be expected from a German vehicle, based on the comments I’ve heard from New Mexico mechanics regarding all things Hessian. They may be the “Master Race” in their own minds, but the rest of the world rates German vehicles somewhere below cheap Chinese toys.

Being stranded in New Mexico wasn’t our plan. When we laid out our first year of retirement, we imagined ourselves travelling from Minnesota to Texas to California and Oregon through. “Best laid plans” and all that. We planned to completely avoid winter for the first month, but we drove right into a “storm of the century” just west of Dallas. By the time we straggled into Carlsbad, New Mexico, our vehicle had acquired a one-inch layer of ice and our VW’s electronics demonstrated an allergy to moisture and the electronically-controlled transmission developed a “genuine people personality.” From that point on, our recreational vehicle was not that recreational and rarely qualified as a vehicle. Two months later, we’re looking at renting a house or apartment in Truth or Consequences so we can hand our VW over to someone until they can bring it back to life or set it on fire.  This is not what the AAA and ARP travel magazines are talking about when they jabber about the joys of being retired.

However, from conversations we’ve had with other travelers, it turns out that our experience is not unusual. Repeatedly, when we meet other RV-owners, we are regaled with tales of near-bankruptcy, being stranded in awful places, and the trauma of having to abandon the family home (the mobile home, that is) because it died in a place where it was unrepairable. There is no shortage of such places, either. Depending on the vehicle you own, even the most urban locations might be a ghost town when it comes to finding a mechanic who can service a rolling house full of cobbled-together parts and mediocre engineering.

None of this experience comes without emotional costs, either. My wife and I have had next-to-no problems with living in close quarters, but the division of responsibility has been cause for communication breakdown. If yours’ is a typical relationship, where one partner carries 90% of the family responsibilities, and the other is along for the ride, don’t expect that to improve in an RV. Driving an RV is dozens of times more complicated than driving a car and if you are the family driver, you better like driving because you’re going to be doing all of it. If you paid the bills and dealt with “the big problems” when your household was stationary, you are not going to be seeing that division of labor improve on the road. An RV is just a house with the added reliability issues of a vehicle and, usually, the vehicle problems are going to be multiples of what you’re used to from a more purely single-purpose automobile.

The painful fact is that RV’s are second-rate vehicles, at best. Let’s face it, nothing good comes from the territory where most RVs and travel trailers are designed and built; Iowa, Indiana, Michigan, and other seriously economically and socially depressed states. RVs come from the Rust Belt backwoods where there are lots of disposable low-skilled, low-paid temporary laborers, but where no self-respecting manufacturing or design engineer would be caught dead. Nobody goes through four or six years of painful engineering classes thinking, “Boy, I can’t wait to build trailers and motorhomes when I graduate.” This is a career of last resort and only the worst of the worst get stuck with a last resort (Think “nuclear power plant engineers.”)  All of that combines to make the perfect storm of unreliable, low-quality, poorly engineered products.

The little-known-fact about motorhomes, RVs if you will, is that they are nothing more than motorized trailers and, once you’re living in one, you become trailer-trash. By that I mean, you are living in a pile of junk that will need constant maintenance because the morons who design and build this crap think hot glue is the ultimate assembly tool. Everything in your RV will have to be disassembled, cleaned, and reassembled with proper fasteners and adhesives after you have lived in it for less than a year. If you think roving the country in a motorhome is going to be a vacation, you’re clueless. If you are going to stay on the road, you are going to have to be, or become, an expert mechanic, a welder, a mechanic, an electrician, a long-haul trucker, a finish carpenter, and very, very patient. You will probably have to redesign several of your vehicle’s systems, so you need some serious engineering skills or a whole bag full of one-hundred dollar bills.

With that in mind, it’s important to consider how many of any of those skills you are willing to develop and exercise. If you are on the extreme end of the DIY world, it’s probably reasonable to consider poorly supported and unfamiliar power trains from Volkswagen, Mercedes, Renault, and other brands and models that only you will be able to service. If you want to have any hope of getting outside assistance when your vehicle breaks—and it will—you better play it safe and buy something every shade tree mechanic can cobble back together. In the USofA,That means Ford, Dodge, and GM and you better think twice about opting for the diesel offerings even from those car companies because competent diesel mechanics are almost as rare as unicorns.

There is a breed of, mostly retired, people who proudly call themselves “full-timers.” That, in un-obscured English, means “homeless.” These folks live in a variety of RVs, from beat-up old pickup toppers to sixty-foot behemoths lugging more luxury than most mansions, 365 days a year. There is something odd about the “pride in a patch” attitude full timers exhibit. If they lived in trailer courts, many of these people would be embarrassed to describe their homes. Since they hobo across the country, pretending to be “camp hosts” to obtain free campsites and, sometimes fuel and a pittance, they elevate their status to the “full timer” label. Calling them “janitor” would be insulting, but doing janitorial work for sub-minimum wages and the honor of parking in a “camp host” space seems to be some kind of status symbol among the full timers.