We’re All Entitled Now

We’re All Entitled Now

Posted on April 19, 2013 at 5:10 pm by JM Ashby

Considering what has transpired in Boston during the course of this week and particularly last night after a shooting at MIT lead to a carjacking, shootout, the use of explosives, and a manhunt — I’d like to take a moment to marvel at how big of a jackass Lou Dobbs is.
This is from two nights ago.

Dobbs: There seems to be a sense of entitlement on the part of many Americans that somehow they don’t have to be responsible for themselves and that they have no obligation to protect themselves, their families, and their communities in the face of these horrific threats.

Apparently, if you do not own an AR-15 and an extended magazine for it, you’re not only a liberal girly-man, you’re also an entitled freeloader. Because you should be providing security for yourself and not relying on trained, tax-payer funded law enforcement.
I wonder if the officers of Boston-area police departments would agree that they are serving an entitlement to the free-loading residents of Boston as they pursue someone who may or may not be armed with explosives at this time.

Kraken's comments

Sorry about the cut and paste job but this observation from Bob Cesca's Awesome Blog Go! was simply too good not to share. Is this the latest trial balloon of "how far can we go?" Thomas Frank discussed in Pity the Billionaire that there is no limit to the aspirations of right wing nutjobs, the crazy knows no boundaries. The contrast between monied insanity and society could not be more stark, in a week where most of us were so proud of law enforcement in Boston a sizable chunk of cretins make the dobbesian moment of derp; "MOAR GUNZ!"

How ironic that it is now the right wing authoritarian followers who are preaching Ice-T's mantra. Our so-called "conservative" movment has now finally and truly broken off to become it's own little oxbow lake of stupid and crazy if they think "Fuck the Police" is going to be a winning strategy for them.

filmhill.com: TAKE A LONG WALK OFF A SHORT PIER

For the second time this year I would like to state that this site has no connection with filmhill or any other goofball spam site. Still getting notifications that traffic is being routed to this site from the aforementioned scumsuckers so to reiterate. GET THE FUCK OFF MY KOOLAID YOU DIRTY SCAM ARTISTS!

Civics and the Republic

What is empirical evidence?
What are logical fallacies and why not a valid way to argue issues?
What does the Constitution actually say? And why is that document more important than the Declaration of Independence?
Why do both sides of an issue often accuse each other of the same things? And why are our political rivals ALWAYS LIKE HITLER AND THE NAZIS!?!

The zombie recently posted this picture:


What's the difference? I sometimes forget in my gloominess and cynicism that there are actually people out there who, in spite of great intelligence and skill in other areas, just do not know much about that black hole we call "politics." And why not? After all, if you think about it rationally, what does one actually gain by being "informed?" There are only so many hours in the day. Once you start ladling family and bills and home maintainance, planning for retirement, "" "" weddings, death, and everything else that gets in the way of a responsible person's leisure who the hell wants to read or watch the bad news? That's on top of learning a skill or profession, finding and keeping employment, advancing into a career, and on and on.

In that spirit, a friend commenting on this picture noted how he keeps meaning to read this article about how to avoid sounding like a idiot when discussing politics. Zombie and I chatted for a moment about what it means. No conclusions but maybe there are lots of educated professionals,  certainly not limited to that demo, out there who have mastered their skill, feel comfortable in their career and now want to be involved in the Great Experiment. A bit of irony there, if any truth can be found, that is exactly the reason zombie founded this blog in the first place. He even tried to build a second one called "New Deals and Great Societies" as an educational site. As academics, wannabe intellectuals, scholars even, we thought maybe we could provide a minimally biased and patient environment for a sort of adult civics class.

However, this site is called the Gloomy Historian and it is run by one now. Whatever the zombie's intentions, I feel trying to market information to the frustrated individuals with a deficit of republican virtue would be a complete waste of time. After all, we live in an age of incredible access to information. If there is a substantial population of Americans unable to understand, analyze, or process it, I do not think I can help. Who am I to even think I can make any difference either?

I would trade all my knowledge and wisdom of history, politics, ideology, and human nature for one truly marketable skill. But this is what I have, trouble is that the only politically-engaged folks out there seem to already be pretty set in their ways. Certainty, like consistancy, is a hobgoblin of small-minds and there is nothing to be gained by continuously jousting with cretins.

I would love to be proved wrong.

Patience

Note to CNN, the next time you are going to go off half-cocked; think about baseball.

Journalists really should have to take some history classes in college, it might just teach them a modicum of patience. Not that that is the only thing wrong with cable news or the entire corporate media structure, but it would be a start.

Boston Double Standard

Another day, another tragedy. I hate writing that and as my heart goes out to the victims of yesterday's bombing, I pray I will not need to write them again. And again, the speculation machine is in full force. Even worse to me is seeing the vitriol and wrath directed toward official enemies. No one, repeat, no one at this time knows who set and detonated these bombs at this time and no amount of assertion by alex jones or the new york post will validate the fears of high scoring right wing authoritarian followers. No folks, a Saudi national is not in custody and under guard at the hospital as of this writing. However, a double standard big enough to drive a truck through has already emerged. Twenty six people gunned down in Newtown, CT and an obnoxiously vocal minority screams against rational steps to curb the availability of weapons used in that massacre. But three people blown up at the Boston Marathon and this is the first thing I see in my facebook feed:

I hope someone is dumb enough to take credit for yesterday in Boston.... and when then they do, our waste of a president better come with full force and furious anger in response.

Attack America on patriot's day...? THATS YOUR ASS!

I wish that would be true but all I see is red dawn an he's up shaking hands with the assholes
 

The second indent was a comment. So, 26 dead by firearms and authoritarians blame mental illness, video games, lack of guns, the President's daughters. Anything but the tools of violence and death. Three dead and many wounded by bombs and many on the right are ready to bomb anyone they can find in retaliation. Their only worry is that "our waste of a president" will not respond forcefully enough to satiate their bloodlust.

The first thing through my mind was, "and if the perpetrator turns out to be a lot more like you than like a dark-skinned middle-easterner?" If this was the work of an American "patriot" (ho ho) lashing out in rage at the heart of liberalism (Boston) on "patriot's day" (tax day), then what? Most low scoring authoritarians, i.e. normal people, wanted the President to go "full force and furious anger" to finally do something to curb gun violence, and my friend above called Barack Obama a tyrant for the tepid weaksauce offered in the executive orders. Again, this is also speculation but the double standard is a slimy, gaping hole.

There are reactions like the one above all over the internet. I am making no predictions about what actually happened or who was responsible and will eat my words if it does turn out to be a "saudi national" after all. I just wanted to comment on the obvious, shocked initial reactions to this tragedy, as though retribution and revenge at this point serves any purpose other than soothing the ego. And to the radical right-wingers salivating over revenge... be careful what you wish for.

Still struggling

Zombie again.

The last post a while back, I finally posted it because there have been some developments that would not make sense in a vacuum and what happened last night (early morning actually) really can't lay on my chest. My father-in-law apologized to me for "overstepping his place." Bah! He's a used car salesman, insincere sincerity is a prerequisite. Anyway, it's a start, even if pressure from his wife and daughter played more of a part than any genuine remorse. So now I have two paying jobs, in addition to the unpaid eighty hours a week one caring for my daughter. One is web design/support for a friend who wanted to help me out, which I am beyond appreciative and grateful for. If only I had the time and concentration/focus to do well, hopefully as time passes I will get better at. The other is delivering newspapers...

Like the snow shoveling job, my wife sought this one out to do herself because she holds to an impossible standard of financial somethingorother. I took it instead because well, fuck the world I guess. So, seven days a week I get up at two am to drive forty odd miles putting the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and a few others into tubes as an independent contractor, i.e. no benefits, no tax withholding, and enslaved for a year because quitting would entail penalties. Takes about two hours on the road, plus a half hour or so to put the fucking things together. Sundays are even worse. The best thing is, I am actually doing it for free. Just about every cent I make goes to vehicle repairs, depreciation, and buying my own gas; 15 mpg x 40 miles @ $3.79/gal (33 miles I can claim as tax deductions) = fuck math. Seventeen cents per paper x one hundred something a day = kill me now.

Then there are the other fun things, like driving off the road and having to call the sheriff to get a tow. Sitting stranded for a couple hours during a blizzard, had to shimmy my fat ass out through the window because the snow was up to my waist and couldn't open the door. Then the deputy arrives and we shoot the shit about our time in the military. But then I asked "am I gonna get a ticket for this?" after he was checking my registration, license and all that. He says "no, I think having to pay for a tow is punishment enough." Punishment, for trying to do my job, as though I would have been driving out in BFE by choice. That was my first unhappy encounter with law enforcement in forever, I knew it was inevitable just by virtue of being on the road so much.

So finally the winter from hell is over, but you know Al Gore is fat so global warming had nothing to do with it. Finally starting to feel not so despairing about my life for reasons nongermane, and all of a sudden, cherries in the rear-view. Great. "Do you know why I pulled you over?" In my head, C-3PO says "we seem to be made to suffer, it is our lot in life." Now I specifically asked the supervisor and the guy who trained me on the route whether the cops ever bothered carriers for the whacktastic way we have to drive. "No, they know we're out here." Apparently no one told this wet behind the ears deputy and he read me the riot act about appearing drunk, etc. It is not humiliating enough to be doing a job now that I had in middle school. Not hard enough to get up at 2 am everyday and then go through life as a metaphorical zombie, not just a cute screenname.

Yes officer friendly, I am well aware of the irreconcilability of doing my job and obeying traffic laws. I have to drive on the wrong side of the street, high beams and dome light on, no seatbelt, and so on. All of which are anathema to me and my lawful-good alignment, but the alternative is... well the impossiblity of doing the job and I got used to it. He eventually let me go with a warning after seeing all the newspapers in the van with me, but now I have to watch my back for johnny law and ramp my stress level beyond tolerance just to not make any money. I am probably two thousand dollars in the hole for repairs and have just about maxed out my gas card.

I spent the rest of the route muttering to myself about the degree of life's unfairness instead of enjoying some music of an audio book. Of course, I could not write any of my clever musings down because, gotta keep moving. Had to get home, hope for a little nap before baby zombie gets up and begins the day's reign of terror. There are dishes to wash, messes to clean up, laundry to do, meals to prepare; I am already way behind from writing this. FML

My Struggle

By Zombie.
Life moves pretty fast, if you don't stop and look around once in a while you could miss it.

Not long after Christmas I got an unsolicited call from my father-in-law. He decided it was time to kick me in the ass for being unemployed. So I got a earful about how worthless I am, how I have no sense of responsibility for my family, how he'd "stood by long enough as I dragged his daughter and granddaughter on a 'downward spiral'" and must obviously be lazy as hell.

Not suprisingly, he's a hardcore republican and follower of bill o'reilly. Also not suprising, it must be something wrong with me in his diagnosis. There could not possibly be anything wrong with any outside circumstances. But, can't dwell on that. Obviously I'm not trying hard enough. So, everything wrong with our society is no longer just "out there" remote and inapplicable from my personal situation. It started because my wife, unhappy with just our recent cost-saving moves, got a second job shoveling snow that she worked a grand total of three times. She had a fantasy about driving a snow plow for many years, and she just went out and did it without really discussing it with me. The old man found out and blew his top, as though I was somehow happy to have my wife working two jobs while I had none.

I stay home with our daughter, which is full-time and a half, and I am stuck with this position because no one else can do it. Caring for children does not count as work in our society, but it has to be done and of course the same o'reilly worshipping crowd screams about "family values" if parents put their kids in daycare. Recently my wife was alone our daughter for three hours and was about ready to crack, the grandparents are similarly exhausted from a day with her. I have her all day, everyday and do not always get help on evenings or weekends because my wife works them sometimes and often has clubs and volunteering stuff on normal days.

So, I am very tired, very stressed, and now an even bigger loser than before. Some people fantasize about winning the lottery or just taking a vacation, I fantasize about being in a coma.

There, pity party over. Just for the hell of it though, how would this crappy situation look if I were a woman? Leaving that exercise unresolved, waste of time, it would just make me look sexist.

Give it away, part 2

When it comes to speculation I could not have found a more perfect example of the suspicions of sinister intent than Yves Smith in an article entitled Obama Wants to Be the President Who Rolled Back the New Deal.

Who, whom? Before trying to analyze the many facets of Smith's dramatic rendering of the possible ways the President wants to screw us, let us count off a few relevent groups of American attitudes.

1. Wall Street. The titans of financial folly love the President sooo much for saving their irresponsible asses and boosting the stock market to record levels right? Not so much.

2. Seniors. You would think the people most likely to be alive and not poverty-stricken because of Social Security and Medicare could be considered shoo-ins for supporting Barack Obama. After all, he is the leader of the party that invented and instituted them right? Ugh.

3. Republicans. Umm, we'll get back to them.

4. How about the Very Serious People inside the Beltway? According to Paul Krugman the VSPs have been howling about the need to "fix" Social Security for years now. So it would seem this is the group the President is trying to win by appearing "serious" himself about balancing the budget on the backs of the poor and vulnerable.

There is no more pretense possible. As we’ve warned for some time, Obama is eager to put a notch on his belt by being the President that rolled back the New Deal programs that helped create broad-based middle-class prosperity and dignity. He’s cast himself as an adult inflicting discipline on profligate Americans.
 

So begins Smith's warning. The pretense being that President Obama was ever a liberal or even a Democrat in the first place. After naming the real culprits and their very real crimes, Smith gives his reasons.

 He seems spectacularly unwilling to take on anyone even remotely approaching his size (as if a President should be cowed by senior banker bullies like Jamie Dimon). The President’s failure to reprimand the financial CEOs who dissed him by refusing to attend his address on the first year anniversary of Lehman was a tacit acknowledgement that they were really in the driver’s seat.
 

Furthermore, "We are not in the realm of Obama kayfabe, where he pretends that those big bad Republicans forced him to do what he wanted to do all along. This is Obama’s budget offer, not the result of pretend hard fought battles over positions that are at most 10 degrees apart." I had to look that one up too, "kayfabe" is usually referred to by unhappy liberal bloggers and commenters as 'kabuki theater'. I am not going to defend the President's proposals but I am not willing to assent to this kind of cynicism either.

Smith makes several valid points, such as how this proposal will fund universal preschool (a favorite but limited panacea among very serious liberals, according to James Galbraith ) with regressive taxes on smokers. Yeah. Beating up on smokers is a great credential for very serious people. Also practically useless and counterproductive from an economic (reducing purchasing power) and political (alienating working class voters). But it makes sophisticated liberals feel like they've done something useful without actually engaging the dark lords of finance. Unfortunately, he then jumps to an Argumentum ad Populum by citing all the critical comments to the NYTimes story reporting the chained CPI proposal. Democracy and the increased ability of regular Americans to voice their opinions is a great thing, but pointing to the comment section and saying "see?" does not strengthen the argument. Resorting to logical fallacies rarely does. Neither does using obscure phrases such as "extreme porcine maquillage exercise" help get your point across, it just makes the writer look like a dick.

Give it away, give it away, give it away now

So few Americans have held the fate of so many others in their hands. The president is one of those few to ever hold the double-edged sword of power/responsibility. However, Barack Obama has wielded that sword very poorly in any objective sense. "Who, whom?" is the marxist/materialist economics question to ask for motivations. Similar to "follow the money," this idea simply tracks the most basic aspect of human nature, self-interest, and transfers it to those in power. Or at least that is how I have come to understand Lenin's question.

Who does No. 2 work for?

Why has Barack Obama insisted on proposing cuts to Social Security/Medicare and other New Deal programs as an initial bargaining position? Is this really the political boxing equivalent of "leading with your face" that it seems? We have discussed government magic, wailers, and the intransigience of teabaggers before on this page but the speculation machine over what "he" is doing has failed to make it all the way up the burp-tube. Unlike the right, who from top down seem to be in lockstep about how badly they want to hurt people, the left is never a team but simply disjointed voices that agree from time to time in isolation and never seem to be on the same page.

One area of concordance between the liberal blogosphere and it's many commentors is the question of "why is the president so remote and aloof from us?" It gives rise to an awful lot of conspiracy theories from simply being a tool of wall street to playing 11 dimensional chess to just plain naivete. Of course... we don't know and probably never will truly understand our president.

That fact certainly has not stopped the speculators from trying to pin down just what is going through Barack Obama's head in economic and domestic policy proposals or the elusive plans of the administration. And at that point the wheat is almost indistinguishable from the chaff. History is so much easier to analyze because the answers to some degree materialize. Despite the rampant fear and hyperventilating in 1800 Thomas Jefferson showed that he was neither a godless heathen out to ban Christianity (be still my Santayana heart), nor an agent of radicals in France (and you Birchers thought you were so original in claiming Eisenhower was a secret communist). But here, who knows? All the speculation in the world and a dollar might get you a cup of coffee, unless you are getting paid some other way to fill column inches.

I realize this post has already gone on too long, if you've made it this far; thank you, and my hat is off to you. Without further ado, The Red Hot Chili Peppers!

You can't have pudding until you eat your meat.

And you can't own an AR-15 unless you've carried an M-16. That goes for you too nuget.

Glenn Greenwald: Wailer

When I first encountered him on salon, Greenwald seemed to me to be a slightly pushy moralist trying to parrot Noam Chomsky but without the latter's erudition and childlike whimsy. I had him confused with Robert Greenwald the documentary filmmaker and as such gave Glenn the benefit of the doubt.

Glenn exhausted that particular benefit after just a few pompous columns however, and he was firmly affixed with the label Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. came up with in The Vital Center: The Politics of Freedom for naively idealistic and ego maniacal writers with zero responsibility; the wailer. It is almost eerie how so much of Schlesinger's tome remains relevant or perhaps re-established its relevance to the contemporary world. The wailer in 1940s America was a writer/commentator for a left wing periodical ("left" being synonymous with "communist" or fellow traveler then, understanding that really nails how far the ideological fifty yard line has moved) who had no experience in the practical reality of governing. This aloof intellectual could therefore make high, moralistic demands upon government or society for whatever drew their fancy without having to deal with or even admit the practical ramifications. If you ever looked at an objective analysis of the abolitionists in pre-Civil War America, you might find them kindred spirits. So, just as paranoid right-wingers have always been with us, so too have puritanical idealists. It is up to the humane realists to deal with the responsibility of reform and governance.

So this Greenwald, who apparently lives in Brazil and therefore has no real stake in US policies, has built himself a little niche of like-minded purists on the strength of his reputation for moral certitude. And since the election of Barack Obama, he has taken to showing his independence by bashing the Democrats and especially the President for being just as bad as republicans and bush jr. How hipster of you Greenwald. For specifics check out The Daily Banter website, where his pseudo-intellectualism and sheer obtuseness is a regular topic.

The thesis of this little essay has to be to never stop exercising your critical thinking skills. Skepticism is healthy, but like anything else, moderation is important too. People are all very different, dogmatism is dangerous in a republic no matter where it lies.

The Gloom

I apologize for my prolonged absence, sometimes the gloom is a powerful motivator to action or at least writing, and sometimes it overtakes you. It could be called depression, plenty of that around, but the gloom ebbs and flows while depression has more of a constant value. Hard to put into words and I'm sure psychologists would disagree with my ideas here. No one individual can or should feel responsible for the state of society, or the personality disorders of "other people." Trying can only drive you over the cliff.

Personal stuff that has no effect on others aside, the big picture has not changed. The election solved nothing. The firewall against crazy held... barely. Wherever the republicans hold power, that is where power lies in the political side of our suicide pact. So in this case it is the house of representatives... currently held in less esteem than cockroaches, but when power is it's own end popularity is meaningless. There are enough right wing authoritarian followers out there who will believe whatever the smoke machine tells them, no matter how far-fetched as long as it is what they want to hear. And that is at the heart of the gloom.

I say the political side of the suicide pact because there are so many roads leading to destruction that it matters little which one is the shortest. Environmental destruction, overpopulation, resource depletion, global warming, the next pandemic, nuclear war or even a series of splendid little conventional ones lay ahead. So what does it matter to comment on whatever the outrage of the day is? The trouble is that the more balls I let breeze over the plate, the harder it is to finally swing at one.

Every day (excuse me, "newscycle") that passes makes it more difficult to finally jump back into the fray. I feel I need to explain myself and why this site basically went dark a few months ago. A few cliches spring to mind, "bailing out the ocean with a teaspoon", arguing with a brick wall" among them. Whether it is guns, history, economics, or any other topic discussed it makes not a dent. Despair set in. Especially after Tanya Lohr went down to defeat by almost 60 points against glenn grothman. I know firsthand how hard Tanya worked, canvassing door-to-door, talking to anyone who would listen. I know as well many people who also broke their backs and in one case damaged their health severely, trying to get a voice of sanity into the WI State Senate. It was our chance, all the progressive-minded people in my little corner of hell, to show the state and the country that it can be done.

But it didn't. And grothman is still a prick, only now he has a "mandate" from the slack-jawed yokels to wreck good governance, punish the poor and minorities, frolick in corporate campaign bribes, and generally make the minority of sane denizens of Washington County, WI the laughing stock of the country. And that... was heartbreaking.

So, I will give it a shot. This blog will try to put up some comment, however small, on at least one piece of the unfolding tragedy on a regular basis. Unless I hear/read serious objections I guess.