The Great Trucker Blockade Hoax?

 This was going to be the biggest thing since idiots in tri-corner hats held temper tantrums all over the country at town hall meetings with Democratic members of Congress. "Thousands, millions of truckers from all over North America" were going to descend on Washington, D.C. and block the beltway. Four actually did show up yesterday and tried driving around abreast at fifteen miles per hour, but they did not last long.

Foolish trogs. now the supposed "organizer" of the so-called "event" says it was all a sham.

From the Washington Post:

 [T]ruckers from across the country (and possibly Canada) planned to come to the nation’s capital Friday and bring traffic to a standstill on the inner loop of the Capital Beltway zinged across the Web and were picked up by outlets ranging from Fox News to the Huffington Post. The rally was dubbed “Truckers for the Constitution.”

But it is a hoax. 

“The comments to U.S. News were designed to do one thing and one thing only: stir the feather of the mainstream media,” said [Earl] Conlon [to U.S. News and World Report]

Riiiiiiiight.

Within the epistemic fishbowl of authoritarianism, the huge following tea party types have in their own little world led this little band of dittoheads to think they could pull something massive off.

It is nice to see continued evidence that the energy right wing authoritarian followers put into all their anti-democratic demonstrations is really drying up. I first noticed things were changing at the Fourth of July celebrations in my little red corner of Wisconsin. In a town that shall remain unnamed but previously crawling with signs and bumper stickers displaying the unbridled ignorance and bullying only the lame, over-the-hill baby boomer assclowns would proudly decorate their gas guzzlers with, this past Independence Day festivities saw nary a divisive image or gesture. It was a good day, almost felt like an American again.

Seems the only teabaggers with any fight left are unfortunately the ones elected to Congress. Maybe we will get lucky and some of them will be put to pasture soon as well.

UPDATE:

WaPo reported that the desperate 'wingers are now circulating a picture supposedly showing all the trucks bottling up DC traffic, but as usual the evidence is fake.

The photo was actually taken in May at a Make-a-Wish Foundation fundraiser in Lancaster, Penn.

SAVE THE LIE!!!!! Who cares that it was raining during the supposed blockade? The same loudmouths that make family gatherings such a pain will undoubtedly haul this PROOF of how mad real 'murika is with the "democrat shutdown" and the existence of a black president.

What is real and what is pretend? It all depends on how loud you can shout.

Reagan: The Problem

I was hoping for more from the title: A Short Breakdown Of How Reagan Broke Our Economy, Killed Jobs, And Rewarded Greed A little more history perhaps, at least an explanation of how political polarization led to Reagan's election and subsequent policy ransacking. But no, all we get from Sarah Wood is an analysis of the symptoms and effects of monopoly on the American people.

Reagan’s abandonment of antitrust laws and the refusal of policy makers even today to start enforcing them again is what collapsed our economy and rewarded greed.

While this is true, there is much more to it and simply stating that the reaganites gave business the green light to make their greediest dreams come true ignores the context of the times. For example, there were republican presidents before Reagan, why did Nixon or Ford not take their hands off the wheel and allow big business to rip apart the social contract? Events outside the US? Or recent history of that time? History is rarely a simple "A alone causes B." Looking at the 1980s from the perspective of what followed is a fallacy. While you will get no argument from me that non-enforcement of antitrust laws played a great role in the economic polarization of the contemporary US; it is a major source of the vast inequality of wealth and income, the stagnation of the economy as a whole, and ever-growing poverty, one cannot argue that this phenomenon occurred in a vacuum.

What follow in Wood's essay is a fairly standard recitation of the collapse of civil society, the result of economic ruin for the middle class and ever-deepening chasm swallowing working people into poverty.

Here is the salient point of Wood's thesis:

consolidation of industry has stifled our growth. Jobs grow through small business, individual entrepreneurship, and actual competition. However we need laws to allow this to happen which keep markets and wages fair. This doesn’t make me a socialist, this makes me a person in favor of capitalism who appreciates competition, but also appreciates laws that protect the small from being devoured by the large. These laws also protect us from these giant monopolies dictating laws that may potentially harm us (food safety, etc.) so they can increase profits by cutting corners. (Emphasis mine)

 Ahhh, let's not even pretend to understand the difference between socialism and varying forms of capitalism. Make sure you don't think of any white elephants while reading her essay. Funny how inoculation only works one way, when the Children of Light try it they only end up activating the Children of Darkness' frames. However, somehow anytime a progressive CoL brings up Reagan or God help us George w. bush the wailing of trolls begins. "Oh, of course it is all dubya's fault." Those knee-jerk schmuck declarations that dare you to agree, but reflexively we know what is out-of-bounds. It is the same reflex that all but forces liberals to defend small businesses as bastions of goodness.

Indented and italicized for no apparent reason and with no supporting source is this gem:

Industry consolidation also cuts down on workers’ rights. This is why Republicans hate and demonize unions. Workers having a voice cuts down on the ability to be greedy. 

The trouble is, and obviously there are exceptions, but most big business prior to the Reagan "revolution" had made peace with organized labor. Consolidated industries, like steel, or energy, or manufacturing were too vulnerable to workers' resistance in the days before subsidized outsourcing. The treaty of Detroit, where management finally conceded labor's right to bargain, meant high wages but no say in how business was run and compared to the days before the treaty had brought relative labor peace.

It was small businessmen who irrationally feared and loathed anything that smacked of bargaining with "the help." It was the NFIB that freaked out so hard about the Clinton administration's healthcare reform proposals in 1993, over a portion that required providing bare bones insurance for all employees at a cost of about 10 cents an hour. Twenty years later the fight is still joined at that level. The so-called tea party, if it has any real existence beyond Astroturf, is a rogue's gallery of small business types so it does not matter how dead unions really are this merry band of idiots and racists are frightened beyond belief that their busboys and stockers are just waiting for their fellow minority in the White House to give the word to agitate for fair treatment. This of course will cause utter chaos, the ruin of tea partiers' cult of self-importance, and possibly the violation of our white women.

Sorry folks, but race is, was, and probably will ever be America's original sin. Reagan did not kick off his campaign by memorializing and standing by 'states' rights' in a southern town that murdered several civil rights' activists during the 1960s because he himself had Klansman hoods in his closet, but he knew how to play the game for those that did. Reagan did not let loose his many counterfactual descriptions of "welfare queens" without the certainty of what images these fairy tales would conjure up in the minds of his supporters.

There is so much more to the wrecking of the relatively stable, fair, and equal America built by the Greatest Generation and refined by well-meaning Americans for a half century. But that will have to wait... because dang, that is a big, big story. Historians and lots of very smart people are still in shock that America unraveled this quickly and how far we will continue to fall. I don't mean to knock Sarah Wood or Political Shake for printing her piece, monopoly is a huge problem, but to pretend that there is a silver bullet which can undo all the damage of the last three decades is just naïve.

Who needs them?

I took the Kraken Hatchling to the Shrine Circus the other night. We had a great time seeing the acrobats, the tigers, the elephants, the clown, and his baby elephant/puppy. We ate popcorn, cotton candy, had a snow cone that has left my entrails green, and even got to ride on an elephant. Well the Hatchling did, I took pictures. A friend came along too, and despite being half my age I think he had an alright time. Mrs. Kraken was working so she couldn't make it but was glad we went.

So my friend, let's call him Rakdos, is a young man with a good heart who really wants to make a difference in the world. We were chatting quite extensively about "direct action," considering the chaos going on around us, and the ever present possibility of right-wing vigilantes within earshot I was a little apprehensive about it. The word "sabotage" even came up. Personally, I'm not a fan of that word, and even less for the frames it evokes. Maybe I'm just too old now to believe that any sort of violence will help our situation. In fact, I'm very worried that any destruction of property carrying even a whiff of leftist action will set off the powder keg of right-wing vigilantism and cause the random mass murders of innocents by psychopaths to focus into a directed effort of posses, hunting down any young radicals they feel like. Ergo, direct action of the Weathermen style is to be condemned and discouraged. Utterly futile I know, but until it is absolutely and irredeemably certain that our democratic system is irretrievably broken there is still a chance to make it work for the public good. Eeek! Is that a sliver of optimism showing? Quick! Get the net!

The other topic we discussed, briefly though it was far more interesting from my perspective, was intellectuals. Hence the title of this post. Obviously disdain for thinkers by right-wingers and especially authoritarians runs very high, but our exchange was on different grounds. Rakdos brought up a rap song called "You can't be neutral on a moving train" and was actually surprised when I told him that is something of a classic of dissident literature by the late historian/activist Howard Zinn. I cannot remember the exact exchange from then on and I want to be fair to Rakdos but his argument seemed to sum up as "what have they ever actually done?" Specifically he was referring to Noam Chomsky. Now, putting aside that Professor Chomsky actually did march, demonstrate and work vociferously toward ending the war in Vietnam, yes, his main contribution has been intellectual and theoretical. "What has he done?" In the abstract I suppose this is a good question. I rarely venture beyond the idea of spreading the knowledge of problems. Pick and rank issues, joust with individuals and try to change their minds through persuasion or at least debunk the incredible misinformation out there.

The question I pose is often framed as "what can we do?" Hence where Rakdos and I started talking, he missed going to a camp out in the woods to learn about and practice this elusive concept of "direct action" and fretted about the lost opportunity. The answer to my question is to withhold, boycott, or avoid elements of corporate power as much as possible. Turning off the spigot of money, labor, and attention to these totalitarian institutions seems the safest way to reduce their power and the power of their owners/managers. The economic elite is the wellspring of most of the problems in our world and it takes an incredible amount of money to keep their little game going. Perhaps that is wishful thinking.

How I was first exposed to leftist activism was through the works of Jello Biafra, former lead singer of Dead Kennedys. His spoken word albums held a great deal of content and led me to like-minded individuals, helping to end some of the alienation and apathy I felt as a young crustacean. Biafra also referenced Chomsky, Zinn, and "the guy who runs The Baffler magazine." That of course was Thomas Frank, an historian and great chronicler of both ends of the right-wing "conservative" movement. I put that word in quotation marks because there is really very little this movement is trying to conserve, a better word is the authoritarian movement but no one wants to think of themselves that way in the same way that racists get quite annoyed when you call out their racism. Fifteen years later and I have moved from listening to punk rock to audiobooks of serious issues by real scholars. Perhaps I am an anomaly. Perhaps we really do need more direct action and less intellectualism. If a loud minority of authoritarians can catapult their leaders into positions to really wreck things, maybe what the larger society needs is a few dedicated miscreants to wreck the twisted desires of the corporate elite; democracy be damned.

Then again, maybe not. I just hope my friend Rakdos and others whose youth clouds the larger picture or makes problems old-schoolers like Zinn or Chomsky have been dealing with for decades seem so urgent do not do something they will regret. To be continued, I hope.

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.

Oh well, what's on TV?

"The unions agree, sacrifices must be made. Computers never go on strike. To save the working man you've got to put him out to pasture... Looks like we'll have to let you go, doesn't it feel fulfilling to know, that even a human being is now obsolete. And there's nothing in hell we'll let you do about it."
--Dead Kennedys: Soup Is Good Food


The strait-jacket was placed around our unsuspecting shoulders in an embrace of American exceptionalism and slowly tightened with each exhortation of our greatness...

Until now, there's nothing to do but wait...

"So say 'Uncle' and we'll take you to the mental health zoo. Force feed you mind-numbing chemicals until even the outside world looks great. High-tech science research labs, it costs too much to bury all the dead. The mutilated, diseased infested surplus rats who can't be used anymore so they're dumped, with no minister present, into a spiraling corkscrew dispose-all unit. Ground into stew and flushed away." Oh the humanity!