Oh, I Triggered You? Too Fucking Bad!

I've had a long, hard life.

Sometimes that long hard life has been soul-crushingly hard.

Things have happened to me that I don't wish on my enemies.

I've been the victim of abuse, both as a child at the hands of my parents, and as an adult by a woman I thought I could trust.  I've been raped, and then treated as a joke by the authorities I tried to report this crime to. I've suffered broken bones, and lacerations. I've contracted bubonic plague, a disease you only read about in stories. I've seen friends die bloodily in front of me in accidents. I've had my life all but destroyed by people I trusted with everything.

So its safe to say that I know what "trauma" means. Trauma is some form of horrible, damaging experience that usually involves some sort of peril or loss that left a lasting scar, either physically or psychologically. And personally, I deal with my own trauma by talking to people. By writing this blog. By sharing my experience with others.

According to a certain young lady, my entire understanding of what trauma is and is not is completely and utterly mistaken. Apparently, trauma is now defined as "anything that makes you upset". And the way to prevent forcing someone to relive "trauma" is to issue "trigger warnings". That is, a warning that certain material might contain words, themes, or ideas that trigger "traumatic memories" in people who were once upset by something. Its a way for people to avoid that which bothers them rather than having to face it and deal with it. She explained, thoroughly, that a person should be able to expect a "safe environment" where nothing 'triggers" their "trauma".
It was the stupidest thing I've heard in months.

You know, I feel for people who really went through traumatic experiences, but my empathy ends when these people demand that society change to suit their personal desire to permanently avoid ever experiencing bad memories. Its like no one ever told these crybabies that they have no right to expect that they will never, ever be reminded of a bad experience ever for the rest of their lives.

And don't think I'm making an exception for myself. I have problems. There are things that make me flash back to bad times, too. You know what, though? I'll deal. I'm a fucking grown-up, and part of being a grown-up is dealing with the pain of your life. I have never demanded that women in elevators leave so that I can ride with the men, just because the thought of being alone in an elevator with a woman terrifies me. I've never mentioned to anyone how seeing a broomstick in the hands of a woman makes my legs shaky. I do not need to get a "trigger warning" because some TV show is running a storyline dealing with domestic abuse.

You know, my grandparents generation fought the worst, most damaging, most horrific war in the history of our species. When they were done, they came home and built this country into the land of opportunity that it was for the longest time. And they didn't do this by walking around as if the boogeyman was going to jump out at them at every turn. They didn't demand other people change to protect their tender sensibilities. They just dealt with it privately, not imposing on other people,  and lived their lives.

If these people today are so psychologically fragile that they fall to pieces over the merest mention of something vaguely related to their "trauma", especially if their trauma wasn't actually all that traumatic in the first place, they need to seek out serious professional psychiatric assistance. They belong in a mental ward, not in a college.

And they certainly have no place dictating what other people can think, say, and do.

How self-entitled do you have to be to think that you have some sort of right to dictate to other people how they run their lives? To expect everyone around you to cater to your own psychological problems?

Seriously, how narcissistic do you have to be?

So again, if your past bothers you so much that you feel the need to complain about what other people are doing or saying, then get help. See a psychiatrist. Get over it.

Don't try to tell other people what to do.

Just grow up.

Deal.

Because that's how real grown-ups handle life.

Bad Comedy: Conservatives and Small Government

Here is one solid truth that you can take to the bank:  No one with a lick of sense really wants a big, bloated, inefficient government that has been overrun with useless bureaucracy.

Nobody wants that, not even the liberals.

So the basic idea of a small, efficient government is a good one.  The thing is, when conservatives talk about "small government," and how they want to create one, they're basically lying to you.  They don't want a smaller government at all.  No, what both corporate and social conservatives really want is a big, big, BIG government that has its hands all over your life.

It's true.

Even though most literate conservatives (about 38% of the total number of conservatives in the US) are very wary of Thomas Jefferson and his ideals of personal freedom and liberty and the right of an individual to steer his own course, the conservatives have latched on to one Jefferson quote above all others and, if you listen to their rhetoric, made it into a religion:  "The government that governs least governs best."  Of course, Jefferson said that decades before he became president, realized that the idea of a small government was unrealistic, and went out and bought the Louisiana Territory from France without bothering to send Congress a note saying, "Hey, I've had an idea..."  Technically, Jefferson didn't have the authority to buy Louisiana on his own lookout, but you know what?  It doubled the size of the country and maybe quintupled the natural resources available to the still-infant United States.  It was a power-grab the likes of which we have only seen in the actions of the George W. Bush administration after the September 11 attacks.  And it was accompanied by the first really noteworthy enlargement of the government ever.

That's right, Mr. "Government that Governs Least" nearly tripled the size of the federal government overnight.

That was two hundred-some-odd years ago.  To this day, you'd be hard pressed to find a single American who would say that the Louisiana Purchase was a bad thing.  Even back then, when America was only a few hundred miles wide, had less than seven million citizens, enjoyed an economy smaller than the one enjoyed by the city of Cleveland, Ohio today, when "state-of-the-art weaponry" meant cast-iron artillery pieces, there was never a single hope of the United States having a small government.  It just wasn't possible.  There were too many things that needed looked after and managed.

So why would anyone think that the modern United States, whose territory spans a third of the diameter of the globe, with 300 million citizens, an economy worth trillions of dollars that is the clearly most dominant economic force in the world, with tens of thousands of corporations getting into trouble around the globe, with a military numbering in the millions of persons with state-of-the-art weapons the likes of which would have been considered science fiction even 40 years ago, could possibly be managed by a small government?

Seriously, anyone who really, truly believes that needs to report back to High School to attend a remedial civics lesson.

Or maybe needs to report to the nearest psychiatry clinic.

Of course, the only people who would believe that are either social conservatives or libertarians.  Both liberals and corporate conservatives know full well that "small government" is just another form of conservative deceit, just like the idea of a "free market."

Once upon a time, the rich and powerful loved government.  Of course, this was back in the days of feudalism, when the king was the benefactor of the nobility, who were allowed free reign over the serfs and peasants living on their lands.  This was when government and Big Religion were permanently intertwined.  The combined behemoth of political/military power and religious authority controlled every facet of a person's life.  But then, all sudden-like, this new and radically different sort of government popped its head out of the grass, and this new form of government was all aboutWe the People... and all men created equal... and certain inalienable rights and other ideas that threatened to utterly demolish the whole wonderful system of the upper crust having its way and the commoners having to just suck it up and suffer in silence.

A just democratic government stands for the people -- all of the people, not just the rich and powerful.  It stands for the minority against the might of the majority.  It protects all of the people, not just the treasured few.  This ought to be self-evidence for anyone who has the slightest clue as to what America is all about, but surprisingly sometimes those people are really thin on the ground.  It turns out that some Americans really don't much like the whole "democracy" thing, and would like to hijack it if they could in order to bring us back to the days of the rich ruling having ultimate power over the poor.

We call those people "conservatives."

And here I mean both the wealthy, powerful corporate conservatives and the sometimes-loveable, sometimes-not mush-for-brains self-delusional idiots known as social conservatives, who somehow have convinced themselves that their corporate colleagues on the right actually give a shit about them.

These conservatives see the government as "being in their way."  And so is born the idea of shrinking the government.  As tax-dodging felon and conservative cult leader Grover Norquist once said, "I want a government so small we can drown it in the bathtub."  But just like the "free market" that corporate conservatives proffer as the savior of the economy is actually a rigged market, so too the "small government" that the conservatives envision is actually a dragon hiding its true nature by disguising itself as a rosy-cheeked child.

Here is the truth.

What the conservatives really want to do is simultaneously strip the government of its means to protect the common man against the predation of the rich and powerful, while simultaneously maximizing the government's ability to control and coerce the common man.

Think about this:  conservatives have never once supported a budget which reduced military spending by a single penny.  The United States of America spends more than the rest of the world's military forces combined every year.  There are billions and billions of dollars that could be saved simply by removing the bloat from the military budget.  We could make it all more efficient by simply streamlining the process by which military production contracts are handled, and by eliminating overly-expensive and needless boondoggles.  But the conseratives won't accept a single copper penny being cut from the military's budget.  In addition, the conservatives cheerfully advocate and support military adventurism all over the globe.  After all, we've got this gigantic military toybox, we might as well play with the toys, right?

On what planet is this "small government?"

I ask, because this is Earth, where such a system requires a bloated government.

The military-industrial gravy train rolls on, year after year, decade after decade.  In addition, most American military adventurism is nothing more than the promotion of US business interests by way of violent force.  Hiding behind the clarion call to defend America against the boogeyman of fascism, communism, terrorism, or whatever the latest "ism" happens to be is the conservative desire to utterly control and dominate the world economically.  In the cases of the Korean and Vietnam Wars, the hatred of communism teamed up with a keen determination to protect and preserve American access to southeast Asian resources and trade markets.  American invasions of the Middle East are driven more by the desire to control the greatest single supply of petroleum in the world than it is the desire to "put a stop to terrorism."

Big business like this requires big government, if for no other reason than to settle the legal disputes the various corporations find themselves constantly engaged in with each other.  Beyond that, Big Business loves government regulations and red tape, because such things make it difficult for newcomers, small fry, and less-dexterous competitors to compete.  And of course, the more bloated and corrupt the government, the more Big Business is able to purchase people inside the government who will work toward the best interests of Big Business instead of the best interests of We the People...  

A small, lean government just wouldn't be able to serve these important functions at all.  A huge and complex governmental system crawling with paid lobbyists and bought politicians -- precisely what the average Joe would describe as "big government" - is absolutely ideal for corporate conservatives.  The average citizen has not a single lobbyist.  The oil industry alone employs thousands of them.

Meanwhile, some of the biggest schemes of the corporate conservatives involve the vast natural resources that are held in trust for We the People... by the federal government.  This land, this air, this water, these minerals, these trees, these animals, all belong to We the People... but Big Business wants and needs them.  A small, efficient government might effectively protect these precious resources.  A big, clumsy, corrupt government can hide all manner of shenanigans, allowing Big Business to get its claws on We the People's... property.  From Warren G. Harding's Teapot Dome scandal, to Ronald Reagan literally giving thousands of acres of old growth forest away to the lumber and paper industries for free, to George W. Bush's attempt to steal the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from We the People..., conservatives within the government are always looking for new, creative ways to steal natural resources from the public and transfer them to the hands of private corporations.

By the way, this includes the public airwaves that conservatives have used so effectively to dominate the media, as well as the internet, Medicade, and the Social Security fund.  They see these things as ripe fruit ready for picking.

So corporate conservatives want and need a big government in order to get away with robbing We the People... blind.  They need a pliant, easily manipulated and purchased government willing to follow directions.  When they wax eloquent about "small government," it's just code for wanting to dismantle all the elements of the government that stand in the way of their exploting the people and the natural resources of the United States.

The eventual goal of some of the more hardcore corporate conservatives is complete corporate control over society.  Anyone who has studied history knows there is a word for this goal.

That word is Fascism.

Pure and simple.  Fascism.  An end of government "of the people, for the people, and by the people" and a beginning of government "of the corporations, for the corporations, and by the corporations."  An end to America as we know it.  And while this seems far off, it really isn't.  Just take a good, long look at certain Supreme Court decisions.  You know, the ones that grant corporations status as a human being, and religious rights, and free speech rights.

Such a government isn't "coming."  Its already here.

Conservatives Hate America

Let's make one thing tragically clear right now.  Conservatives in general are not patriots, and the more hardcore conservative they are, the less patriotic they are.  The very idea of a "conservative patriot" right now would be a complete joke if it weren't so fucking tragic.  They are far from being patriots.  No, conservatives are too reckless and dangerous to be patriots.  They consistently veer closer and closer to being traitors to this country, and in the last twenty or thirty years they've enthusiastically crossed that line several times.

During the American Revolution, the Conservatives were actually against fighting alongside Britain.  They sided with the British against their own colonies.  They were the "Party of No" way back then, too.  Keep in mind that a conservative is someone who wishes to "promote, preserve and or restore traditional values, hierarchies, and institutions."  Well, in 1776, that meant they wanted absolutely no part in separating from England and the monarchy.  They liked being subjects of King George III.  They were called "Tories" then, and that name is still used in England by the Conservative Party.

Conservatives in this country started on the wrong side of history, and that's where they've been ever since.


After the American Revolution, many conservatives fled back to England, or ended up moving to Canada or one of the Caribbean islands.  Good riddance.  Unfortunately, many conservatives fled to Florida, which at the time of the Revolution was the one British colony (the British having acquired it from the Spanish) that sided with England during that time.  When Florida was acquired by the United States, the US got all those traitors back.

After the Revolution was over, the conservatives in the new United States began predicting the country's demise.  Almost universally, they believed that the "common rabble" could not govern themselves without the entire thing falling to chaos and anarchy.  To a man they refused to call themselves "American", and many vocally expressed anticipation on the British returning to America and "liberating" the colonies from the "barbaric commoners" who had taken it over.  As such, when the War of 1812 broke out, they once again returned to form and supported the British against the nation of which they were supposedly citizens.

That same war was the one that finally dashed the hopes of American conservatives that Britain would come and "liberate" the American colonies.  The conservatives, as I noted, might have welcomed the British with open arms, but their love of the British died when the British began looting, burning, and pillaging everywhere they went.  The British also incited the various Indian tribes to attack frontier settlements, once again stopped trade, and so on. 

This didn't sit well with the American conservatives.  Their supposed saviors turned out to be just another pack of rampaging barbarians, and for the first time the conservatives began identifying themselves as "American."

Better late than never, I suppose.

Make no mistake, though.  The nascent loyalty of the American conservatives to their own country was weak, tenuous, and easily broken.  This was readily apparent in 1861, when conservatives decided that they'd rather betray their country than put up with Abraham Lincoln as president.  They stomped off in a huff so they could form a nation where "states rights" triumphed Federal law, and where all right-thinking, decent Americans were free to own as many other human beings as they could afford.  This act of arrogant conservative ideology run amok killed over seven hundred thousand Americans, and brought about the first assassination of a political leader on American soil.

You'd think that such a shameful chapter in their history would have at least shamed conservatives into thinking before they started talking, but no.  One hundred and fifty years later, the descendants of these traitors are proud of their ancestor's treason.  Conservatives proudly fly the Confederate flag.  Sometimes they actually place that treasonous banner in a place of honor over the national flag of the United States.

Not only that, but many of them seem to be planning another try at secession.  Several Texas conservatives (including Rick Perry, the current governor of that state as I write this) have remarked openly about seceding.  Up in Alaska, former governor-turned-vice-presidential-candidate Sarah Palin belongs to a group called the Alaskan Independence Party, which advocates secession.  Local and state-level conservative politicians from Wyoming, including former Vice-President Dick Cheney, have remarked that the people of Wyoming are actively considering secession.

Ironically, all this fuss and feathers involving secession is once again been caused because these people would rather betray their country than put up with Barack Obama in the White House.  Its the same childish posturing, the same macho angst.  The same bluster.  And it just goes to show how shallow any real patriotic feeling flows among these so-called "conservative patriots."

Conservatives have always wanted to thwart the democratic process, since the beginning.  When the Constitution was being written, it was the conservatives who wanted to restrict citizenship to white men who owned property above a certain number of acres.  They also wanted Senators hand-picked by state office-holders.  The reason for these two measures was simple:  they were "conserving" the aristocracy.

By the way, these same measures are precisely how the old aristocracy has the British House of Lords rigged up.


It is a statement of historical fact that the conservatives in this country have stood in opposition to every effort to expand the vote away from white male property owners.  They have also stood opposed to all efforts to have most government positions, including senators, congressmen, and even the presidency itself open to popular vote. 

They have stopped at nothing, and will continue to stop at nothing, in order to interfere with the popular vote. 

Over the years they have thrown up poll taxes, literacy testing, blatant intimidation, inconvenient and unnecessarily strict ID requirements, setting up onerous and punitive restrictions on voter registration, outlawing voter registration programs, providing insufficient numbers of voting machines, blatantly rigging elections, tampering with vote counting, and even getting the United States Supreme Court to violate a sovereign state's Constitution in order to hand-pick a President, just to name a few of the malodorous and unethical tactics that have been used by conservatives to lower voter turnout among the "common folk".

And do not think that these tactics are things of the past.  Many of them are being put in place as I write this. 

Quite recently as I write this, conservatives such as Justice Antonin Scalia, Governor Rick Perry of Texas, former congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul, Senator Zell Miller of Georgia, and many others have actively pursued the repeal of the 17th Amendment to the US Constitution, which grants the right to vote for their senators to the people of the United States.  Instead, they want Senators to be hand-picked by the state legislatures.  In other words, they want to take power away from the common folk and hand it back to the aristocracy.

Even worse, since the last time conservatives were allowed to nearly bring this country to its knees back in the 1920s, conservatives have deliberately been disseminating propaganda which paints any government that isn't run by themselves as evil, corrupt, and bad for the nation.  When they aren't in control, conservatives do everything they can to disrupt and delegitimize the political authorities of the duly elected liberals who are in charge.  This is a hair's breadth away from High Treason.  K'ung Fu-tzu, the Chinese philosopher and politician known better today in the United States as "Confucius", once said that it would be better for nation to lose its security and all of its food than for the nation's government to lose the trust of the people.  Many otherwise powerful nations over history have fallen apart because such trust was lost.  Once the people lose their trust in their government, civil strife and anarchy are sure to follow.

And do not for one moment think that the conservatives don't know this.  They can read history just as well as I can, and they know what it means.  Why do you think they're trying to undermine trust in the government?  It's a power play.  They believe that once the common people mistrust their government, they'll be able to sweep in, making promises left right and center, and the people will love them so much that they (the common folk) will never know that the conservatives want to bring us back to the days of feudalism.

This nefarious scheme has won conservatives elections, but it has been one of the most disastrous strategies for the country itself of any political tactic in the history of the United States.  This scheme intentionally fosters deep and passionate division among the people, and a divided people are much easier to rule.  Conservatives are gleefully fanning the flames of not just disagreement but outright hatred for all things that aren't conservative, no matter how moderate these non-conservative things might be.  Over the past fifty years, conservatives have spit venomous bile at the likes of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, and most particularly Barack Obama, along with any ideas and proposals they make.

And they do this even when the ideas and proposals were originally put forth by conservatives, like "ObamaCare", which began life as "RomneyCare," a creation of former Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts.

This is the point at which some of my Libertarian friends will say, "There is no difference between parties.  They both do these things."  No.  This is a blatant lie.  The vitriol spewed by conservatives for their liberal counterparts are entire orders of magnitude more venomous and hate-filled, and more damaging to national unity and stability than anything coming from the liberal side.

Conservatives value party ideology and dogma over American ideals and values, including the all-important idea that we are one nation, united.  Guided by their disloyalty, conservatives seek to divide and separate themselves, whom they consider "superior", from all others, whom they regard as "inferior."  This naturally pits them in direct opposition to most Americans.  but then, they do not like most Americans.  They demonize and blame the country's problems on the blacks, on the Hispanics, on the poor, on the homosexuals, on the immigrants, on unions, on teachers, on firefighters, on government workers, on lawyers, and naturally, on liberals.  They blame anyone and everyone who is not one of them.  Not a fact in the world can possibly justify this arrogant assumption of superiority, nor support the blatantly prejudicial thinking that supports it, but conservatives truly believe that if you spread a lie wide enough and often enough times, if they spew their prejudicial hate-mongering message loudly enough, just enough gullible voters will believe it, and once enough people believe it, no one will ever remember that it all started out as a big fat lie.

The sad thing is, they're right about this.

So, as they are by nature in opposition to the interests of the American people, a Conservative's only real means of controlling the people is by way of dividing and conquering.  Conservatives know they cannot win by standing on their positions and their true agenda.  Rather, they must lie, deceive, frighten, divide, and subjugate.  The whole idea of a United States of America is contrary to conservative objectives.  What they want is an America divided into a caste system; a distinctive separation into a hierarchy between the politically and economically powerful haves and the utterly disenfranchised and subjugated have-nots.  They want a system of oppressors (themselves) and oppressed (everyone else).  And boy howdy, do they have a real problem with the idea of "We the People..."

To quote William F. Buckley, conservatives stand athwart democracy, yelling, "Stop!"

Conservative politicians wrap themselves in the flag and wallow in false patriotism.  What they are actually doing is everything they can to stop the democratic process while denigrating and foment distrust for the American government.  From Warren G. Harding's corrupt cronyism to McCarthy's witch hunts to Nixon's paranoia to Reagan's blatant disregard for the law to Bush's willful incompetence to the unprecedented obstructionism of today's Republican party, conservatives in America are actively working to murder their own nation.

Because they hate their own nation.

Micro-Aggressions

Was talking to this guy recently and he started in on something really, really ridiculous.  I mean something petty.  But the way he expressed it, this minor, petty problem was actually the gateway to something larger and more sinister.


It wasn't just that Person A had bumped into him that morning, making him spill his coffee because Person A was in a hurry and wasn't actually paying attention, it was that all people who share characteristics with Person A were assholes intent on demonstrating to the world how everyone who wasn't a Person A-like individual (including the guy telling me this) were worthless.


This might be one of the dumbest things I'd ever heard.


I finally found a word for it, though.  "Micro-aggressions."  Supposedly, these small acts of "aggression" are indicators of greater behavioral trends.  Supposedly.  And they get turned into long-held grudges and resentment.


You know that red-headed girl who you asked out last month?  The one who not only turned you down but made you feel small and worthless?  Yeah, its not just that she wasn't interested and rejected you badly, its that all red-heads are actually bitches out to emasculate all men.


Did a guy driving a Ferrari once "steal" a parking space from you and then laughed at you when you gave him a dirty look?  Yeah, its not that this one guy was a bit of an asshole, its that all Ferrari drivers are sadistic dicks who enjoy humiliating people.


Did someone with the government, say a Driver's License Bureau worker, give you a hard time when all you wanted to do was get something cleared up?  Yeah, its not that this one person treated you wrong, its all government workers everywhere who are tyrannical monsters...


You encounter a single person acting badly, and you conflate it to all people who share that person's characteristics, or who are acting in a similar manner, or who you encounter in a similar way being villains.


Micro-aggressions.


You know, any sane person would tell you that shit just happens sometimes.  Its life.  Bad things happen to good people all the time, and sometimes those bad things are minor and petty and are driven by people who are assholes.  But that's just life.  Getting cut off in traffic, having someone snap at you because they have a bad headache, getting into a socially awkward position with someone, not being able to do what you wanted to do.  These things are not carefully engineered and orchestrated personal attacks.  These things are not part of some greater trend.  These things are just life happening.


The entire concept of micro-aggressions is based on narcissism that has been taken to a level that is truly awe-inspiring.  A person who thinks in this way believes the entire world either does or at least should revolve completely around them.


You know who else thinks the world revolves around them?


Two-year olds.

A Day in the Life of Joe Teabagger.

Joe Teabagger is an ordinary working class guy.


Every workday, he gets up at 6:00 am like clockwork to prepare his morning coffee. He fills his pot full of good clean drinking water because some liberal fought for minimum water quality standards.


He takes six different pills every day, usually with his first swallow of coffee. The medicines he takes are safe to take and effective because some liberal fought to insure that drugs don’t poison people and that they do what the doctors say they’re supposed to do.


Joe only pays $10.00 for his meds.  The rest of the $1500 a month cost of his medication is paid for by the medical insurance he gets from his job because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance.  Joe gets it too, even though he’s not a union member.


Joe prepares his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs this day. Joe's bacon is free from parasites or food-born bacteria because some liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry.


After breakfast, Joe takes his morning shower.  The shampoo he uses is in a bottle that’s properly labeled with every ingredient and the amount of its contents because some liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained.


Joe dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is clean because some tree hugging liberal fought for laws to stop industries from polluting our air.


Since the train station his so close, Joe usually walks rather than drives to catch his ride to work.  The railway he rides into town is subsidized by the government, and it saves him a lot of money in gas and parking fees, not to mention time he doesn’t have to spend out on the congested highways.  This is because some liberal fought for affordable public transportation.


In addition to the medical insurance he gets from his job, Joe enjoys an excellent ray rate, has paid holidays and vacation days, and when he retires will get a really great retirement plan that will keep him from starving in his old age.  This is because some liberal union members fought and died for these working standards.



If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed he'll get a worker compensation or unemployment check because some liberal didn't think he should lose his home because of he has a run of bad luck.


At noon, Joe spends his lunch break at the bank, depositing his paycheck so he can pay his bills.  The deposits he makes are all federally insured by the FSLIC because some liberals decided that we really didn’t need people starving to death in another Great Depression.


Joe also makes a payment on his mortgage, which is held by the Fannie Mae corporation, and on his federal student loan.  He can do this because some idiotic liberal decided that Joe would be better off if he had a decent education, and thus could earn more money over his lifetime.


On the weekend, Joe decides to go visit his mom and dad who live on a farm out in the country.  So he gets into his car and takes the drive.  His car is among the safest in the world, because a bunch of liberals took an interest in car safety standards.


The farm Joe grew up on was originally financed by the Farmers Home Administration and not a bank, because back in the 1930s, when the farm was owned by his grandfather, no bank would issue a loan in a rural area.


In addition, the farmhouse didn’t even have electricity or running water until some big government liberal stuck his fat nose where it didn’t belong.


Joe’s always happy to see his mom and dad, who are both retired.  His parents live on Social Security and dad’s union pension, because some no-account liberal wanted the elderly to be able to take care of themselves.  That way, Joe wouldn’t be burdened with caring for them himself (not that Joe would mind doing so; he’d just have to struggle more than he wants to).


After his visit with his folks, Joe drives back home.  While driving, Joe turns the radio to the Sean Hannity show.  Joe likes Sean Hannity.  He agrees with pretty much everything Sean Hannity has to say.  He especially likes how Hannity says that liberals are bad and conservatives are good.  (Of course, Hannity doesn’t tell Joe that his beloved conservatives have fought against every single protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day.)


Joe agrees with Hannity.  And while driving, Joe says to himself, “We don’t need those big government liberals ruining our lives with their tax-and-spend communism!  After all, look at me!  I’m a self-made man!  Those liberal assholes should get off their butts and take care of themselves, just like I do!”