Too Many Unanswered Questions

I was a part of a discussion recently about reparations being made for slavery in the US, and I objected to the idea based on the fact that a) the last person we can confirm was a slave in this country died sometime around 1958, and b) the last person we can confirm was a slave owner died a lot longer ago than that.  Its my feeling that the people who owe reparations are the people who perpetrated the crime, and they are owed directly to their victims.

Anyway, the most vocally person arguing for such things was using a lot of sneering derision when it came to white people, but when called on it told me that racism required power, therefore black people could not be racist.  And besides, this was about the legacy of slavery, not his feelings about white people.

Eventually, he stopped issuing his vile racist nonsense and actually started talking about the legacy of slavery, basically saying that he, personally, was owed millions of dollars because of ancestors who were slaves and that he was affected by its legacy and all that (despite not being able to actually pin down how he was affected).

So I asked him the following questions:  If, as he said, it was all about the legacy of slavery and not about his feelings of hatred for white people, then:

1.  How did his plan for reparations for slavery being paid by the "descendants of slave owners" to the "descendants of slaves" affect those descendants of white slaves in this country?  Because the original slaves in the colonies that would eventually become the United States were criminals, mostly white, from the United Kingdom who were sold into a lifetime of slavery on plantations in the colonies as a part of their criminal sentence.

2.  How did his plan for reparations for slavery being paid by the "descendants of slave owners" to the "descendants of slaves" affect those descendants of black slave owners in this country?  Because there were a not-insignificant number of black people in this country prior to universal manumission who owned and kept slaves for the exact same reason the white folk did:  to work their farms and plantations and to act as servants.

3.  How did his plan for reparations for slavery being paid by the "descendants of slave owners" to the "descendants of slaves" take into account those people who were not only the descendants of slave owners, but who were simultaneously the descendants of slaves?  Would such people be forced to pay reparations to themselves?  Or did his plan use some demented version of the "one drop rule" where, if even one of a person's ancestors was a slave owner, they count as a slave owner regardless of what the rest of the person's ancestry was?

4.  How did his plan for reparations for slavery being paid by the "descendants of slave owners" to the "descendants of slaves" take into account those people whose ancestors were neither slave nor slave owner?  It would be unfair to force people who were not involved in slavery at all to pay reparations, just as it would be unfair to grant reparations to people who did not deserve them.  And if you're assuming all white people (as this young man did) are responsible for slavery even when they did not actually own slaves, we're back to the subject of white slaves.

5.  What measures did his plan for reparations for slavery being paid by the "descendants of slave owners" to the "descendants of slaves" include for taking into account those people whose ancestors came to this country after slavery had ended, and who therefore had no hand in that institution?  Because it would be unfair to force people who were not involved to pay reparations, just as it would be unfair to grant reparations to people who did not deserve them.

Amazingly enough, he didn't have any answers for me.  He just kept beating the "white people are bad" drum, even if he dressed it up in fancy clothes.

Idiot Men and Wise Women

Consider your average commercial.

As the scene opens, some moronic clown of a man, usually a husband, is struggling to figure out how to do some basic task correctly and is failing miserably. It doesn't really matter what he's doing (laundry, sweeping, doing the dishes, even something as simple as eating lunch...), he's doing it wrong.

But don't worry about him, he's covered! For sure enough, an all-knowing woman (usually his wife but sometimes his co-worker) is there to pull his bacon from the fire. Rolling her eyes and shaking her head in pity, she saves the idiot of a man before he utterly ruins everything. And of course the product being peddled is usually part of the solution. And afterward, the all-wise woman gathers with some of her fellow women (all of whom are wise) and has a nice laugh about the guy, who can be seen in the background messing something else up.

And, by the way, did I mention that the man is stupid?

And of course we’re all supposed to laugh: “Ha, Ha, Ha look at that stupid guy. What an idiot! Good thing all that women were around, right? Because men can't be trusted to breathe and chew gum at the same time without messing it up!"

Now, sometimes there is a variant of this commercial in which it is a pack of children, almost always led and spoken for by a girl, who are the all-wise rescuers of the helpless idiotic father figure. They (the children) step in with the product and save the day.

You know, I have no idea who these people are trying to sell things to, but I know its not me, because commercials like this tend to make me boycott those products. I refuse to give my money to any company that, in their commercials, says to me "Buy our product, you stupid schmuck!"

Now, this is not to say I lack a sense of humor or I lack the ability to laugh at myself from time to time, but I have to tell you, after the thirtieth or fortieth time in a single day I see the "Idiot Man/Wise Woman" style of commercial, I'm tired of laughing and am getting irritated about what is clearly a problem.

You see, I think these commercials are actually hurting our society. They are helping to promote and continue the sexist (not to mention false) attitude that men are all incompetent doofuses who need someone smarter and wiser (not to mention female) to watch over/control/guide them before they hurt themselves or someone else.

Even worse, what are these commercials teaching to children? From what I can see, they're teaching children (especially male children) that adult men are idiotic, crude, foolish, lustful, and untrustworthy. A steady diet of disrespect for a single gender served up in commercials that adult men (especially their own fathers) are to be laughed at, abused, and generally disrespected.

What a healthy message to teach any child, much less a young boy. How does constantly being told that when he grows up, a boy will be a man who is lazy, unfaithful, inappropriate, rude, addicted to beer, unclean and unkept, inattentive, addicted to beer, and an utter moron help that boy become a decent human being?

The "men are idiots" message in these commercials might have a certain humor about it (it is fun to make light of the honest differences between men and women, after all) but in the end, its not the attitude we need to be cultivating. Women do owe men respect, if only as fellow human beings, in the same way that men owe women respect.

Constant ridicule of one segment of society is not helpful for anyone.

I've spoken on this subject before and people have responded with "Yeah, well, its just a joke." Yeah, well, its not funny anymore. One woman told me that "These commercials reflect our culture." Really? You mean to tell me that you think the men in your life (your fathers, your husbands, your sons, and your friends) are truly like this? That they are all idiots and morons who can't be trusted to tie their shoes correctly? What a wonderful opinion you have of them.

Try reversing the roles in these commercials and making the women the butt of the joke and see how funny you think they are after the twentieth time you see women depicted like that. See how soon you decide to boycott the product they are selling in the commercial.

Commercial advertisement, like all forms of public media, not only reflects our common culture but helps shape it. So I ask one more time, how does all this negativity toward men and boys affect the public perception of male human beings in general? I can't see it affecting them in any way but harmfully.

The truth is that its not just the commercials.  There are almost no healthy, balanced portrayals of men in our current popular culture. Its not just the morons displayed in the commercials, its the fact that men are generally portrayed as over-aggressive, overly violent, crude, dirty, and hyper-sexualized. In popular media, the "heroes" are often amoral, out of control, and bordering on criminal when they aren't seen as unintelligent, weak, and ineffectual.

None of which helps anyone become good, caring, attentive, and most importantly responsible husbands and fathers.

Christianity is Killing America

I figure if I haven't driven you away already, you're likely going to start burning me in effigy for this commentary.  No one wants to acknowledge the absolute damaging effect that religion in general, and Christianity in particular, has on the founding principles of the United States, not to mention the society that has grown up around us that's supposed to be based on those principles.


So, let's start with some background information.


Christianity, as a religion, did not start with Jesus.  Nor did it start with Paul or any of the other apostles.  Christianity actually started with Constantine I , who ruled the Roman Empire from 306 to 337 CE.  The Empire, which once upon a time had been a democratic republic but had long since become an autocratic, war-mongering military-dominated conquering state, was having a problem.  Namely, the Roman army, made up of men from all corners of the Empire -- men who rarely shared a language, certainly didn't share a background culture, and absolutely did not share much in common when it came to religion -- was having a problem fighting together.  The army brought together Germanic pagans, Mediterranean Jews, old-blooded Romans who followed the Imperial cult -- dozens of religions and dozens of cultures, all supposedly working together under the banner of the Empire, but in actually all rivals and hating each other.

So what was a war-mongering dictator like Constantine to do?  He knew he had to unify his armies somehow, and he knew that religion was the problem, all the while keeping his temporal authority as Emperor.  The old style Green paganism might work, but it lacked a central authority.  Judaism featured a central authority, but the Jews were never one to grant a human being that central power.

And then, suddenly, out of nowhere, a new group arose.  The people who made up this new group weren't particularly rebellious, like the Jews were, and they preferred a central figure ruling over them.  They seemed to willingly go to their death because they were promised salvation after death and not any sort of reward in this life.  They didn't fight and fret over the beliefs of other people, either, it seemed.  They were an offshoot of the Jews, who believed that a Jewish man named Jesus had been the son of God, and followed the supposed teachings of this man.

So, with all this in mind, Constantine made a choice that would best unify the various cultures and people under his rule -- especially those in his armies.  He chose to make Christianity the official state religion.  It was a brilliant and masterful piece of brinksmanship.  Not only would the people in his Empire all share a religion, it was a religion that taught the peasants to accept a life of misery -- because they were sinners by nature -- and only hope for something better in the afterlife.  And even then, they'd only get the afterlife if they behaved and followed the rules in this life!

Now, since they knew that his people would have a hard time simply dropping the pagan life they'd lived up until then, the leaders of the new official Empire-wide church worked traditional pagan chocolate -- the rituals and holidays enjoyed by the pagan people -- into their brand new Christian peanut butter.  The best example would be the story of the death and rebirth of the Greek god Dionysos.  It was was adapted by Christianity, with Jesus in the starring role.

And so the government of Rome created a brand new religion, which would serve for years to convince the people of the Empire -- of whom three-quarters lived in abject misery, oppression, and slavery -- that all the misery and servitude and death was not only acceptable, but to be expected, because they were inescapably sinners and thus suffering was their lot in life.

And as time passed, Rome moved further and further from being the democracy it was founded as and more and more toward an autocratic theocracy, until finally Christianity landed Europe in the depths of the Dark Ages, where religious dogma ruled and independent thought was forbidden.

Rome wasn't the only country to follow this program, by the way.  If you look at every single civilization on earth that turned from intellect and reason toward religion, you find the civilization in question diminishes and becomes more and more oppressive until finally it collapses in on itself.  Take ancient Greece, for example.  The government of Athens executed the great philosopher Socrates for teaching young people how to think critically, intelligently, and independently.  The formal charges made against him was heresy; that is, for having different thoughts, beliefs, and religious views than those approved of by the government.  He taught his students that they, too, could think as they wanted, and thus he was put to death.

Anyone who has read the works of Socrates today knows that there is nothing unholy about them.  Nothing evil or corrupting.  He simply taught logic and independent thought.  And the rulers of Athens -- a group of wealthy, war-mongering politicians known as "The Thirty" -- didn't like that at all.  But notice:  they didn't charge and convict him of sedition, or treason, or inciting rebellion against their rule.  They charged him with heresy.

Its a basic fact.  Religion has always stood against critical thought.  Independent thought.  Rational thought.

Always.

Consider the following.

In order to finally become a true democracy, England had to actively reject the influence of the Church of England on politics.  France today has strictly secular laws that enforce a separation of Church and State that even the United States could learn from -- but they had to go through the Terror -- a very religious, very conservative time when Maximillian Robspierre and his Jesuit cronies sent every person who dissented with them or disagreed with them to the guillotine -- before they embraced rationality again.  Italy, a nation that is perhaps the most stereotypically religious country in all of Europe, exiled the Pope to to an independent "nation" smaller than the city of Rome itself, and thus is a secular democracy.  Even Israel keeps its religion separate from its state as much as possible just to encourage democratic thought.

On the other hand, you have those countries where religion and government are irrevocably intertwined.  Iraq.  Iran.  Saudi Arabia.  Oppressive dictatorships, every one.  Because in reality, religion and freedom are directly opposed to one another.

Which bring me to the United States of America.

Right now, as I write this, the popularity and influence of Christianity has been ascending for about the past 30 years.  Since the Reagan administration, religion has replaced secularism as the American norm.  Americans have handed over their previously remarkable talents for critical thinking, rationalism, and independent thought in exchange for faith-based acceptance of ideas that are not grounded in fact and absolutely are not in their best interest.

The modern Republican party has, in fact, been transformed into a group of preachers, teaching dogma and catechism to their followers instead of political thought.  Republican "policy" is based on a fundamentalist understanding of Christian teachings.  This dogma is spouted from countless sources of propaganda, and rather than discussing it, criticizing it, and molding it using reason and rationalism, the rank and file simple accepts it without question.  They simply swallow what their political leaders -- who are becoming more and more similar to their religious leaders -- tell them, no matter how non-factual, how untrue, and how unbelievable, based on nothing more than faith.

And before you think I'm being one-sided, let me tell you -- the phenomenon is happening with liberals too.  Just more slowly.

The source of nearly every single problem facing American today is the fact that the American people have abandoned critical thinking en masse.  The idea of questioning the popular wisdom and analyzing it based on facts instead of dogma is frowned upon.  Normal people just accept.  They take things on faith.  They don't analyze, they don't examine, and they certainly don't raise doubts or contradict "what everyone knows".  Every single problem faced by the people of the United States right now was easily foreseeable, but only by people who think independently.

Christianity tends to punish and excommunicate independent thinkers.  Christianity tends to shame those who express doubt, or who question the "Word" as given by those in authority.  Christianity tends to discourage education and seeking knowledge for its own sake.  Christianity tends to encourage ignorance and the acceptance of whatever nonsense is handed down from on high.

At least, a certain segment of Christianity does.  Unfortunately, that segment is dominant in the United States right now.

And so, the United States has been slowly, gently been turned into a nation of unthinking peasants.  When their bosses tell them that from now on, they'll be doing the work of two people but won't be getting paid any more than they already are.  When they are given the smallest amount of vacation time of any country in the First World.  When they work more hours but are less and less able to make ends meet.  When all of this happens, the American people accept it, because the Christian dogma they are addicted to has taught them that the problem is them.  The problem is each person, as an individual.  They are sinners, and deserve to be mistreated.  To be enslaved.  If they speak out or stand up they'd simply be whining about things mandated by God.

Talk to your average working-class Christian American.  Ask him why American workers shouldn't be paid more, or be given more vacation time, or why Americans shouldn't complain about how many hours they have to work just to get from week to week and you'll hear rote responses about how Americans are better than those "socialists" in Europe who are treated like human beings by their government and their employers.  Why only losers seek to take better care of themselves and educate themselves.  Why only dorks and weirdos care about things like fairness and quality of life.

To these people, the purpose of the American worker is to slog on without complaint, even as they accrue more and more debt, as they become less and less healthy, as they die younger and younger for easily preventable reasons.

We seriously need to get out from under religion if we are going to survive as a culture.  We need to get back to the days where we embraced intelligent, independent thought.  Where we celebrated intelligence instead of ridiculed it.  Where "great men and women" weren't overpaid athletes or celebrities who were famous merely for being famous, but were men and women who achieved greatness through intellectual prowess:  inventors, scientists, philosophers, explorers, and leaders who were not afraid to question the common wisdom.

America has a Christianity problem.  As a nation, we'd better start doing something about it, or we'll be just another Third World theocracy before anyone here notices.

More Reasons to Like the Government

Got a joke for you.

How many government bureaucrats does it take to screw in a light bulb?  Two.  One to assure everyone that everything possible is being done to correct the problem, the other to screw the light bulb into the water faucet.

I've written in other notes how one of the more pernicious lies created by the conservatives is that the American government is a ham-handed fumbler that has a poor record of achievement.  Conservatives (and their puppets, the Libertarians -- more about them in another note) are constantly promoting the idea that the government is so incompetent and unsuited to actually govern that it couldn't find its own collective ass with a flashlight, a road map, and a detailed set of directions.  They've been telling this lie so often and so loudly and for so long that people who are otherwise sane and intelligent have come to believe it.

A lot of Americans have accepted this image of the American government as a collection of corrupt, incompetent, bungling clowns.  Ask most Americans and they will tell you that if you want something really screwed up, hand it over to the government.  According to a Time Magazine survey, only 4% of all Americans say that they have a lot of confidence in the government to solve problems.  Nearly 64% said "No confidence at all" or "Just a little confidence."  Three our of four called the government "Incompetent" regardless of the complexity and the difficulty of the problem involved.  Nearly 70% said that government "creates more problems than it solves."

Conservative talking head Sean Hannity once said, "The more important question isn't why government is so big, but why it fails at everything."  Another conservative, Charles Murray, said, "The reality of daily life is that the things government does tend to be ugly, rude, slovenly, and do not work."  Rush Limbaugh, on one of his radio shows, once said, "With the exception of the military, I defy you to name one government program that has worked and alleviated the problem it was created to solve."

The truth, though, is different.

Once we begin to look at the actual performance of major governmental programs, what we find is that the vast majority of them not only solved the problems they were designed to solve, but improved on them and insured that the problem would never arise again.

This of course flies in the face of conventional wisdom, but it is nonetheless the truth.  The evidence is there, if anyone bothered to look.

So, can I, as Rush Limbaigh demanded, name "just one government program that's worked to alleviate the problem it was created to solve?"

Challenge accepted, Mr. Limbaugh.  I can not only name one, I can name ten.  And if I really, really felt like it, I could name thousands more.

1.  The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC):  In the 1970s, the Federal government began to pass laws that protected consumers from shoddy and dangerous products.  The Consumer Product Safety Commission remains the primary agency that enforces these laws.  And do not think for one minute that it is no longer needed.  Consumer products still kill over 20,000 people a year, and injure over 20 million more.  If the CPSC did not recall thousands of dangerous products each year, these numbers would be far higher.  It is estimated that its actions save over $10 billion in health care bills, property damage, and other costs associated with these defective products.

2.  The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC):  Everyone takes this one for granted.  This is federal protection for our bank accounts.  In times of eonomic downturn, banks are inherently vulnerable to "runs" -- times when worried depositors all seek to take every cent they have out of the bank all at the same time.  During the Great Depression, nearly 5000 banks went bust, and millions of Americans lost everything they had, because of this practice.  During the financial crisis of 2008, there were no runs on banks, because the government was there to guarantee the safety of people's bank deposits.

3.  The Food and Drug Administration (FDA):  This is another agency that the corporations, especially the pharmaceutical companies, complain about, mainly because it is doing its job.  Americans alive today have no idea how hazardous it was prior to the creation of the FDA to simply eat, or take medicine.  The FDA makes sure that the medicine millions of people take every single day actually does what it says it does.  And it makes sure our food supply is healthy and uncontaminated.  The American public is safer and healthier because of it.

4.  The GI Bill:  Without this program, the middle class as we know it today simply would not exist.  At all.  The GI Bill provides governmental support that allows millions of our veterans to attent college.  On a personal level, it allowed me to become the first member of my generation to get a college degree in my family.  The people who received these benefits, starting with the veterans of World War II, changed the face of American society by drastically raising the level of education, and thus the level of productivity and social discourse, in this country.

5.  The Interstate Highway System:  The interstate highways are the backbone of this nation, and modern America could not function without it.  The hundreds of thousands of miles of highway only make up about 2% of the total roadway mileage, but every single day of every single year it carries almost 30% of all roadway traffic in this country.  The interstates have allowed millions of Americans to move away from the cities and live in more pleasant suburban and small town environments.  They are statistically more safe than more traditional roadways, saving hundreds of thousands of lives each year.  Conservative George Will once called it, "the most successful public works program in the history of the human race."  The interstate system has become a part of the lives of each and every American, and I, for one, could not imagine the United States without it.  And without the government, it would never have existed.

6.  The National Weather Service (NWS):  This agency does more than just provide a daily weather forecast.  It also helps insure the safety of planes in the air and ships at sea, and has saved countless lives with its hurricane and tornado warnings.  The science behind its actions is getting better every year, and its predictions have been getting more and more accurate as time's past.

7.  The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA):  Businesses love to complain about OSHA and its rules.  Turns out, the people who actually work at OSHA take pride in being complained about, because they say that's how they know they're doing their jobs.  Sure, sometimes the policies have been a bit overboard, but at the same time its very clearly been effective and successful.  In 1970, the year before President Richard Nixon (a conservative Republican, remember) created OSHA, over 22 million people were injured on the job and over 14,000 died from job-related injuries.  Since 1970 and 2013, workplace deaths and injuries have decreased by 96%.  Particularly impressive has been the virtual eradication of cases of brown lung disease, which was once the leading cause of death among textile workers.

8.  Public Health Programs:  There have been a variety of programs overseen by the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control, and state and local Public Health Departments that have greatly and dramatically improved the level of health of every single American.  Just to name a few, the scourges of polio, cholera, and smallpox have been effectively exterminated.  Vaccination programs have effectively ended the risks of a random person contracting diseases like hepatitis, measles, mumps, tetanus, rubella, and diptheria by nearly 95%.  Federal funding spent on buying and distributing these vaccines have saved countless lives and will go on to save countless more, and have saved billions of dollars that would otherwise be spent fighting these illnesses.  In addition, the CDC is what stands between the American people and potentially catastrophic epidemics imported from other countries.

9.  The Settlement of the Western United States:  Very few people realize this, but the development of the West was basically a huge government program.  It was that way from the very beginning, starting with the federally funded journey of exploration undertaken by Lewis and Clarke.  It continued with the unfortunate "Indian Removal Program" that, despite being one of the greatest crimes this country has ever committed, directly led to more settlers entering the western territories.  The government sold public land to homesteaders in Oklahoma, Missouri, Nebraska, and Kansas to encourage development, and in some cases (in Oklahoma especially) gave it away for free.  The railroads, which were the most direct cause of growth in the West, were federally subsidized projects.  And even today, farming in the west is made possible by federal water management projects, ranching is possible because of the use of federal lands for grazing by ranchers, and mining is possible by dirt cheap access to federal lands.  Cities like Los Angeles and Las Vegas would dry up and blow away if it weren't for federally funded dam and canal projects that bring water to those metropoli.  Its ironic that so much of the country's anti-government sentiment is based in this area, because without the federal government, this area would be an uninhabited wasteland.

10.  Social Security and Medicare:  Without these two programs, growing old would be a living hell for most Americans.  Before these two programs, starving to death was a real possibility for millions of the elderly.  Social Security cut the rate of poverty for the elderly by half (the rate was 29% in 1966; as of 2013 the rate is 10%).  Economist Jane Bryant Quinn described Social Security as "arguably the greatest success story for the US government".  Medicare shares a similar success.  It has doubled the number of elderly people covered by health insurance so that 99% of all people over the age of 60 now enjoy that benefit.  Without this program, 15 million of our poorest citizens would be going without medical care entirely, or would be forced to choose between health care and eating.


So, there you have it, Mr. Limbaugh.  And like I said, I could have named thousands more governmental programs that worked just as planned, and did the job they were created to do.

Government Is Not the Problem

Here's the truth:  governments make mistakes sometime.

Government, like all things, is not perfect.

And when government botches things up, it generally botches things up disasterously.

Especially when the Republicans are in charge.  No, seriously, a study was done regarding events which the government completely and totally messed up on, and the Republicans lead the Democrats for incompetent management of government by a ratio of 4:1.

And of course, government is not the proper solution to all problems, and is hardly ever the entire solution to anything.

Here's more truth for you:  the government is the only entity large enough and powerful enough to handle certain issues.  It is the only entity large enough and powerful enough to stand up to, and stop, the abuses of democracy and other American ideals by those who would attempt to dominate, subjugate, and explot the interests of We the People...   In this sense, the government, especially at the federal level, is very definitely the ultimate solution.

There is a long tradition in this country of carping about the government.  And its not just this government, either.  I'm absolutely certain that somewhere, sometime, way back in Ancient Mesopotamia, somebody was complaining about Sargon the Great and how his administration was doing nothing to assuage the troubles faced by the common man.  Of course, before the rise of modern democracy, those who complained about government generally were those who had been disenfranchised somehow.  The poor and the downtrodden.  The outlaws.  The political enemies.  Because prior to democracy, the rich and the powerful loved the government.  After all, they were the government.

For the poor, it was generally wise to keep your complaints about how the local lord was running his fiefdom to yourself unless you had a real need to discover what torture and execution felt like.  This all changed with Democracy.  First with the United States, then with France, and then slowly with the rest of the world.  Suddenly the age-old tradition of government being the plaything of the rich and powerful was completely flipped.  Democratic governments were controlled, at least theoretically, by We the People...

Unfortunately, this didn't sit well with government's former owners.  They knew that this "democracy" fad had to go, and so they came up with two basic strategies.  First, they tried to buy it back.  Politicians, judges, and public officials of all stripes were generally quite amenable to this idea, selling their time, attention, and loyalty, not to mention their honesty and integrity, to the highest bidder.  But it wasn't enough.  Try as they might, the rich and powerful couldn't ever seen to fully complete their conquest of the government and all those pesky We the People... who weren't interested in just standing back and letting the rich take over again.  So they came up with a second, complimentary strategy.  The second strategy involved dividing and conquering.  If the rich could persuade a bare majority of the really stupid poor people to go along with them, they could tighten their grip on the reins of power.

There are a lot of ways to divide.  Race and religion are the two greatest hits when it comes to causing a population to eat itself, and boy howdy were these put to good use by the rich and powerful in their efforts to divide We the People...  Concurrent with the rise of democracy, however, came a new tactic:  promoting active distrust of the government, so as to lessen its legitimacy.  It also lessened the people's sense of ownership of the government.  A disenchanted and apathetic citizenry, one that doesn't think government works, and doesn't think their vote counts, will tune out the entire subject of politics.  They will not show up at polling places, and thus not exercise their power of control over the government.  This gives a much wider opportunity for the rich and powerful to grab control with only a small percentage of the voters helping them to do it.

This tactic is pure evil.

No, seriously, it's evil.  It's evil because it intentionally risks driving the entire country into the ground.  The wisest leaders know that citizens loving and believing in their government is crucial to the strength and well-being of the entire nation.  Conservatives are willing to abuse this ancient axiom to gain political and economic power.  They rationalize it away by saying that it is they, the rich and powerful, who have always had the "divine right to rule."  But the truth is, they have no interest whatsoever in a nation "for the people, by the people, and of the people."  What they want is a return to the "good old days" when there was no democracy.

With the faith of We the People... in their government wrecked, the rich and powerul can do whatever they want.  They can slash taxes on themselves while increasing taxes on the poor and middle class.  They can deregulate their giant, predatory businesses.  They can write laws and appoint judges who will favor them.  They can loot the treasury.  They can start wars all over the globe.  They can propagate their fundamental philosophy, that "greed is good."  They become what they most crave to be:  rulers of the world.  You know that the ruination of America is not far off when such a philosophy, as utterly lacking in any sort of virtue as it is, gains the upper hand.  The less We the People... believe in their government, the weaker they are, and the better the rich and powerful like it.

The people in the lower and middle classes who support these corporate oligarchs in their take-over of the United States are those who share some of the anger and bitterness of governmental control over their "freedoms."  Again, just as with the rich and powerful, it is their "traditional values" that they believe are being threatened by the government.  These "freedoms", these "traditional values", are things like the freedom to discriminate, the freedom to be as prejudiced and hateful as they want to be.  The freedom to force other people to live as they do.  The freedom to suppress books and movies and television shows and music they don't like.  Those are the freedoms and traditional values we're talking about.  And this is why social conservatives buy into the "government is the problem" bullshit.  They see government spreading and enabling equality, liberty, justice for all, and the pursuit of happiness -- in other words, government trying to live up to its own ideals -- they see government spreading scientific knowledge rather than religious ignorance, and modernity and multi-culturalism being applied to the art of governance, and they dont like it at all.

Why?

Because all of this chips away at the advantages and privileges they have enjoyed for generations.  The actual or perceived loss of being special infuriates them.  Thus, they become willing henchmen for the siren's call of the rich and powerful:  "government bad!" which allows the oligarchs to steal the government away from We the People...

Of course, the concept that "the government is the problem" is a great big lie.

Even the most cursory glance into the history of the United States reveals this idea to be nothing more than a myth.  We the People of the United States, organized into our shared objectives in the form of the federal government, has achieved more in the last 238 years (as of this writing) than the rest of humanity has in the last thousand.  The progress that we, Americans, created has stunned, amazed, and revolutionized the world in ways that cannot be overlooked, ignored, and dismissed.  I may rail about unnecessary military adventurism, but I also have to admit that from the Continental Army all the way up to today, the American military has also been the world's policemen, and the world likes it that way.  From Lewis and Clark all the way up to the Apollo astronauts, Americans have led the world in courage, fortitude, and character when it comes to revealing new worlds of wonder.  Federally funded scientists have led the way in virtually all areas of science.  America's national parks are the envy of the world.  Our dams and bridges and interstate highway system was once one of the crowning achievements of mankind.  The American Post Office still is the benchmark by which all other such services around the world are measured.  When calamity strikes anywhere in the world, it is to the United States that people look to for aid.  Even people who just hours before were badmouthing the government cry for federal help when their world comes crashing down around them.  Oh yeah, and one more thing.

You know that internet thing that everyone talks about?  The one you're using right now?

It was invented, created, and initially funded by the US government.

And even more important than these triumphs were the times when the government was all that stood between some part of American culture and the corruption of our ideals.  When this happens, not everyone is happy with the government, especially those people who are asked -- forced sometimes -- to back down and let other people live as they want.  When a group of people takes a particular dislike to what another group of people are saying, or doing, or even just thinking, and move to actively stop them, it is the federal government whose job it is to stand in the way of the onrushing horde and say, "No.  They have a right to their freedoms just as you do, and your not liking them is no excuse."

Equality.  Justice.  Liberty for all.  The pursuit of happiness.  That's what its all about.

There are those out there who would love to thwart these ideals for other Americans, simply because they don't like the other Americans.  It is the job of the federal government to stand in the way and say, "No."

Racists don't like being told they had to treat black people and Hispanic people and other minorities like human beings.  Chauvenists don't like being told that they have to treat women as equals.  Homophobes don't like being told that they have to be forced to treat gay people as human beings.  Religious zealots don't like being told they have to tolerate people who believe differently than they do.  Polluters don't like being told they have to protect the environment.  Banks don't like being told that they can't run the economy like it was a casino.  Insurance companies don't like being told they can't deny their customers treatment or cancel their customers at will.

People even bitch about such petty things as having to wear their seatbelts or wear a motorcycle helmet.  It's always something.  There is no limit to the carping and griping and bitching that goes on about the government.

Sometimes the griping is warranted, such as the backlash against the Bush administration's utter failure to properly prepare and manage the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.  For their failure to properly prepare for or react to Hurricane Katrina.  For the housing bubble, the bank bailouts, and, eventually, pretty much everything about the George W. Bush administration.  Still, its a long way from recognizing that one particular segment of the government, at one time, was really, really bad at governing to believing that all government, everywhere, is bad.

Study American history and you find that government actually works pretty well, and more virtuously, when its allowed to govern.  When it doesn't face a lot of interference from conservative business interests.  When the conservatives are in charge, they see to work to make sure their own negative prophecies regarding the "failure of government" come true.  The conservatives make the messes, the liberals then have to fight tooth and nail to clean those same messes up, while simultaneously being blamed by the conservatives for the messes they are cleaning.

So yeah.  The old saw about government being the problem is a huge lie.

Unless, of course, you're talking about a conservative-controlled government. 

There Is No Such Thing as a Free Market

Simple as that.

There is no such thing as a "free market."  Period.

There never has been, there never will be.

Its a fairy tale.

Yet another conservative myth.

The very idea is 100% bullshit.

It might be possible, theoretically at least, that a truly "free market" could exist, if we're talking about something like the public market square of a village with a hundred people or fewer in it where everyone knows and trusts each other.  But in any thing larger, like -- just to pull an example out of the air -- a nation of 300+ million people?  Forget about it.

Of course, the truth is that the very same people who so aggressively promote the idea of a "free market" are actually the last people on Earth who actually want such a thing:  the corporate conservatives and the professional politicians that the corporates have bought and paid for.  These folks don't really want a "free market."  They want a rigged market.  And the truth is, that's pretty much what they have.

Of course, they can (and do) think of ways to make it even more rigged in their favor, which is what they truly want:  a world where Big Business owns and runs the world, and where government -- the only entity with the power to counter and put controls on Big Business -- is small enough to "drown in a bathtub."  (At least when it comes to regulating business; Big Business loves it when government promotes the interests of Big Business.)

So what do Big Business corporate conservatives actually mean when they talk about a "free market?"

Glad you asked.

What they mean is that corporations should be free to do whatever they want.  They should be free to sell anything, anywhere, without any concern over whether the product is harmful, toxic, or dangerous.  What they mean is that corporations should be free to enslave their workers and not have to pay them a living wage, or pay them at all, in fact.  Corporations should be free to demand utter loyalty from their workers, while returning no loyalty whatsover to those same workers.  They believe that corporations should be free to extract, exploit, subjugate, and monopolize whenever they want to do so.  Corporations should be free from any sort of tax burden, and from government regulation, and responsibility for any damage they cause.  They believe that corporations should be free to buy and sell politicians in order to control the government.  And they believe that corporations should be free to eliminate the competition using any means necessary.

When conservatives talk about the "free market," it's simply code phrases for the Big Business concept of Heaven:  a world in which Big Business does what it wants, any time, all the time.  Of course, this would be Hell for everyone else.  And by "everyone else" I include smaller businesses, because the truth is such a world would be a killing field.  The moment a small business poked its head out of its hole, Big Business would swoop in like a hawk and devour it.  As for the workers and the consumers, the "free market" envisioned by the giant multi-national corporations would make them hardly better than slaves.  Such people would be free to accept their lot and nothing else.

You say one of their products blew up in your face and left you blind?  Prove it wasn't your own fault!

You say unsafe working conditions led to your husband getting killed?  Try sueing us.  We dare you; not only won't your "frivolous lawsuit" get anywhere in the courts, we might send some guys over to your daughter's elementary school so she can send a message back home to mommy and daddy for us about how its smarter to not make waves.

In such a world, parastic banks would run wild with speculation, buying and selling without constraint and inventiing all manner of financial "instruments" which which to dissect their customers and relieve them of money, security, and future.  The privatization of anything and everything would run rampant in the conservative wet dream of a "free market."

How about a quick game of "let's pretend".  Let's pretend such a world came about.  What, exactly, would that lead to?

First off, the goal of the corporate conservative's "free market" is to assume all the powers of government and then take those powers to the limit, including total control and exploitation of the people.  So say goodbye to freedom, democracy, the vote, and the ability to decide for yourself how your life will go from then on.  Your electricity, gas, and water wouldn't come from public utilities, but from predatory corporations who can raise the rates or cut you off whenever they feel the whim.  Toll roads and bridges would proliferate.  The court system would be privatized, with a strong profit incentive to lock as many people away in the privately run prisons as possible.  Wars would be completely privatized, with a strong profit motive to keep the fighting going as long as possible, and to use up the weapons and equipment so as to create a need for more.  Education would be privatized, with only the wealthy getting more than just the basic training.  Public schools would become indoctrination centers where children are taught to be barely literate worker bees or soldiers for the state and its corporate overlords.

Think about how much money the very rich could squeeze from the lower classes with such limitless power.

Without government subsidies, price controls, and regulations, food production would become wholly predatory.  Prices would skyrocket.  Food quality and safety would plummet.  Only the rich would be able to afford clean, healthy food; the rest of us would have to settle for the cheap stuff and take our chances with every bite we eat or drop we drink.  That's assuming we could afford any food or water in the first place.  Scavenging, begging, and starving would become a way of life for billions of people.  And health care?  Sorry, but with no government assistance, no government health programs, disease would explode into pandemics.  Of course, the wealthy would protect themselves by ghettoizing the poor.  No need for them to worry, though, because even if the disease does make it to them, they have all the doctors.

The problem is that even a system where the very rich control everything and fuck the poor, it all falls apart very quickly.  Unregulated capitalism eventually eats itself.  When the poor and the middle class disappear, the profits the rich depend on also disappear.  But the corporate conservatives, who are all about instant gratification and getting the short term gain, know that trillions upon trillions of dollars are to be made by the greatest pirates the world has ever seen.  And as long as they're making tons of money now, they give fuck all about what happens tomorrow.  Not their problem, man.  They've made their fat stacks of cash, and that's all that matters.

So.

That's the free market in a nutshell.  A truly free market is a recipe for utter disaster should it ever be imposed.  Its a beast that would tear the goose that laid the golden eggs to pieces.

Little by little over the past 30 years, the corporate conservatives have managed to nudge us further and further in the direction of their wet dream.  Since the Reagan administration, the conservative mantra has been "government is the problem, not the solution."  Its become commonly accepted wisdom among the less intelligent members of the population (almost all of whom are social conservatives).  According to this philosophy, the solution to the "government problem" is the free market.  Conservatives have been bleating this same noise for decades, and millions upon millions of people believe it.  As Joseph Goebbels correctly stated, "people will believe anything if you repeat it often enough."  This has always been the tactic of the very richest in order to gain the support of the rest of us in order to cripple the only thing powerful enough to stop them:  a government run by We the People...

The proof of the pudding is in the eating.  Since Ronald Reagan, the "free market" has had 30 years to produce the results that the corporate conservatives always promise:  that great wealth will come "trickling down" to everyone.  Jobs galore will be available, and everyone will enjoy improvements to their basic standard of living.

Anyone else but me notice that this just hasn't happened?

Seriously, for three decades, taxes have been slashed for the richest Americans.  Deregulation is the rule, dramatically reducing safeguards in every sector of business.  Competent government regulators have been replaced by capitalist foxes who are supposed to be guarding the henhouse.  The "free market" ethos has been applied to an extent that would have left the people who led this country out of the Great Depression stunned in sheer disbelief.  And this same thing has happened in countries all around the world, not just the United States.

What has actually happened is the reverse of what the conservatives behind the "Reagan Revolution" promised.  Real wages and the earning power of the average American family has stalled out if not reversed.  Prices have zoomed upward to the point where decent housing, health care, and college educations are beyond the reach of over half the population.  For the first time in American history, the greater majority of people in this country face the prospect that their children will have worse lives than they led, and that their grand-children will have lives that are even worse than that.

This is what the "free market" has done to America.  Imagine how much worse it would be if the market were even more "free" than it already is.

Conservatives Hate the Military

Now, I know what you're going to say.

You're going to say, "But Jack, I happen to know that a lot of people who identify as conservative willingly volunteer to serve in the military!  How can you say they hate the military if they volunteer for it?"

Yes, this is true, many people who consider themselves conservative do, in fact, volunteer to serve in the military.  For that, they have my respect and my thanks.  And most people, conservative and liberal alike, are supportive of our veterans and our active duty service personnel.

When I say that conservatives hate the military, I am once again talking about the so-called "corporate conservatives" I mentioned in my essay "This is Why We Can't Have Nice Things."  Corporate conservatives are seriously and chronically remiss in their care and support for American military personnel, both in terms of their own history of service in the military and in how they treat service members when they are in charge of the country.

Again, I know what you're going to say.  You're going to say, "But Jack, how can that be true?  Conservatives are always wearing shiny little flag pins and having their photos taken with soldiers and marines and sailors and they're constantly talking about supporting the troops in their election speeches!"

Yes, they do all those things.

Unfortunately, its all a lie.  They are all posers.

They're exploiting jimmied up, fake patriotism as a means to camouflage their true intentions. 

Now social conservatives (which I also talked about in "This is Why We Can't Have Nice Things") are true patriots who are willing to fight and die for their country when and if the time comes.  Corporate conservatives, on the other hand, are the worst sort of "show patriot," who make great public displays of mouthing all the right words to make people think they love their country.  But its all bullshit.  They aren't really patriots at all.

Unfortunately, it seems that most social conservatives haven't caught on to the fact that they are being bullshitted by their compatriots, or to the disservice, disrespect, and disdain that corporate conservatives regularly serve up to active duty personnel and to veterans.

Now, it is absolutely true that corporate conservatives support using (and abusing the hell out of) the troops.  They're willing to send the troops to die for various causes that only vaguely have anything to do with defending America.  Take Iraq, for example; when President George W. Bush ordered troops into Iraq, he did so in full knowledge that there was no need to.  Its just that Iraq was weak, and had oil reserves we wanted, and he assumed that the puppet government he installed after our troops wiped out Saddam Hussein would dance to the tune he called and that the people of Iraq would just idly sit by and let it all happen.  It was a case of schoolyard bullying (and we were the bully, folks) writ large, whose goal was to effectively steal another nation's natural resources.

The common theme is that conservatives are full of piss and vinegar.  No cool, patient diplomacy for them!  No Special Operations approach to belligerents.  Rather, its full on "shock and awe."  John Wayne style.

But then, what can you expect from a group of people who are so starry-eyed over spending billions of dollars on the latest weapons and attack systems, and who appropriate billions of dollars for them, even when the top generals are calling such systems boondoggles?  There is no end to how much of the taxpayer's money these corporate conservatives are willing to spend on military toys and on military adventurism, especially if such toys and adventurism allows the conservatives to funnel that self-same taxpayer funding into their own pockets.  And what fun is it to have a weapon system just sitting around!  They want to play with the toys, even if it means aggravating some situation somewhere in the world into a full blown shooting war.

So they are always eager to send "assets" (funny how they never call them "people) into harm's way.  But after the "fun" is over, when its time for the cleanup, corporate conservatives show their true colors.  When it comes to caring for and assisting wounded veterans, for providing psychological or financial assistance to the solders and their families who face tough times because of their experiences during combat, they suddenly become tighter than a gnat's ass.  When it comes to supporting the troops after the troops come home, these same people become so stingy with money that they won't even tip their hats.

Liberals, traditionally, are the exact opposite.  They are inherently weary of unchecked military spending.  They take Eisenhower's warning about the dangers of the "military-industrial complex" taking over our nation's foreign policy seriously.  They place heavy emphasis on diplomacy and negotiation in order to avoid armed conflict whenever possible.  They are reluctant to send human beings into the fire without overwhelming and important reasons to do so.  And they don't call them "assets" because they realize when they talk about the military, they are talking about real life human beings, a consideration that the corporate conservatives dismiss out of hand.

People who are sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, husbands, and wives.  For liberals, warfare is a last resort, not a first response as so often seems the case with conservatives.  When armed response finally seems unavoidable, liberals prefer intelligent and clear strategies, unlike the "roll in, shoot some guys, we win" attitude of conservatives that has been so painfully on display in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Rather than "shock and awe," the preferred military tactics of liberals has always been surgical strikes:  do everything you can to keep your own people safe, try to minimize the trauma to the innocent local populace, and when you're done, you're done.  Bill Clinton's approach to the Kosovo War was a perfect example.  General Wesley Clark (a self-admitted liberal Democrat) oversaw NATO's strategic bombing to help end that war with zero American casualties.  Similarly, the Obama administration used careful intelligence gathering and surgical use of the Navy Seals to finally locate and eliminate Osama bin Ladin after eight years of the Bush administration's ham-handed floundering and blundering.  And once war is over, liberals move to assist service personnel and their families who need help, while conservatives suddenly decide that these "assets" are now "liabilities." and do their best to get rid of them.

For those of you reading this who are veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, please note that the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans Association (IAVA) graded the members of Congress in terms of their support for veterans, with grades similar to those used to grade school papers.  These grades went from "A" for very supportive all the way to F for "no support at all."  92% of the D's and F's that were assigned were assigned to conservatives.  The truth is, if you are in the military, or have a son, daughter, mother, or father who is in the military, you should absolutely quaver in fear when a Republican becomes Commander-in-Chief.

Let's take a look at how things historically worked out for the troops and veterans when conservatives were in control:

• 1777 to 1778:  Conservatives in the Continental Congress stiff General George Washington when it came to financial and material support.
• 1922:  President Warren G. Harding vetoes the Veterans Bonus Bill, keeping hundreds of thousands of World War I veterans in poverty.
• 1924:  President Calvin Coolidge tries to veto the re-admitted Veterans Bonus Bill.
• 1932:  President Herbert Hoover orders the US Army to attack a camp of homeless World War I veterans.
• 1959:  President Dwight D. Eisenhower rejects a proposed extension of the GI Bill that would aid millions of World War II veterans.
• 1968:  Then Republican presidential candidate Richard Nixon lies to the American people by running on a platform of ending the Vietnam War, while privately making a deal with the Communist leaders of North Vietnam to refuse all agreement proposals until after Nixon is in office.
• 1983:  President Ronald Reagan American servicemen into harm's way with virtually no security into Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War, a war in which the United States has no stake, resulting in the deaths of over 200 US Marines.
• 1983:  Primarily as a means to cover up his cowardly actions in Lebanon, President Ronald Reagan orders the invasion of the tiny island nation of Grenada.
• 2002:  President George W. Bush sends American troops into not one, but two simultaneous, dubious wars.  In both operations, the conservatives ignore the advice of the consensus military opinion and send US troops into dual combat theaters with no clear overall objectives and absolutely no exit strategy, highly unrealistic expectations, and without proper preparation or intelligence regarding what the troops would encounter and how they would be received by the local populace.
• 2008:  Congressional Republicans unsuccessfully try to block expansion of the GI Bill.
• 2011:  Congressional Republicans unsuccessfully try to block VA payments to veterans affected by the use of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War.
• 2012:  Senate Republicans filibuster the Veterans Jobs Corps Act of 2012.
• 2013:  House Republicans unsuccessfully seek to slash VA healthcare benefits for disabled veterans.
• 2014:  House Republicans successfully block the Veterans' Bill.

By now the message of this essay should be quite clear.  If you are in the military, or have as family a member of the military, the last politicians you should be wanting in charge of military affairs are the conservatives.  The notion that they support you is one of the cruelest lies ever devised.  They will nickel-and-dime you to death.  They will use you, and once used will discard you like a soiled piece of toilet paper.  They'll send you off to be killed by a trumped up enemy while they rake in what their really after:  billions of dollars in war funding.  They will sacrifice you on the altar of their greed, all the while telling you to your face how brave and wonderful you are.  And sometimes, they'll turn you against your fellow service-members and veterans, because nothing is easier to conquer than an enemy in conflict with itself.

I cannot say it often enough.  If you are in the military, do not fall for conservative lies.  They are not your friends!