The Summer of Hate & Stupidity

As the summer winds down, I am reminded of the Margaret Cho joke about the American South: "They say, it's not the heat it's the humidity. Well," she says, "it's not the hate, it's the stupidity." (And you might throw heredity into the mix, as well.) However, this summer everywhere in America, it's been about hate AND stupidity. From the Tea Party to Dr. Laura, from Rush to Hannity, all they do is spew hate. And now, they are getting stupid about it. Why? Because their intentions are so clear that they have to flounder around in unknown territory (apologies, called out on lies, etc, as well as, spouting some crap they think is middle of the road to as not seem as wacky as they really are).

It has been a summer of subtraction. The media is reporting on smaller and smaller groups to give them the vocal platform the media deems they deserve. A guy has a parish of less than 50 like minded folks and when they decide to burn the Islamic Holy Book AND the media gives him all this attention? Give us all a break. Twenty thousand attend a rally in Detroit for fair wages & fair trade policies and I'll bet the house you didn't read about it. Something like 90% of the media in this country is owned by six companies. Excuse me but the air waves legally belong the people. Thank Clinton for selling off a lot of small, family owned radio stations to big corps, so that the news we get in this country is dictated by six companies. Thank him for NAFTA while you're at it.

Before Ronnie, Georgie I, Slick Willie & Georgie II, banks were not allowed to have more than one branch with the allotment of a drive-up within 25 yards of the bank. That meant that every bank in this country was owned & operated by small business people. Same with radio & TV stations. If you owned one, that was it. It was especially a no-no to own more than one media outlet in the same city, say a radio station & a newspaper. We talk a lot about responsibility in this country but I want to know where corporate and governmental responsibility went & how to we rescue it and get it back.

The answers are fairly easy but it means reverting to a way of life that doesn't exist anymore. God knows, President Obama wants none of that going back stuff and for the most part, he is right. But there are some things that we ran right passed without even noticing. These are two. Hate and stupidity.

What does that have to do with the far right? Everything. Their hatred of the common folk and the commons that we own filters through everything they do. Any new programs from the Repubs (they go to the pub over and over again)? Any answers from them except not to let the Bush tax cuts expire? Actually, yes. The Koch (pronounced coke) brothers, owners of the second largest corporation in the US (gas, oil and mining) are funding all kinds of right wing activities, from the Tea Party to think tanks (Cato Institute, Americans for Prosperity among others), from lobbying congressmen to lying about hard science in their publications, from stealth attacks on individuals to the exaltation of idiots. Yeah, while good folks are trying to get something done to make this country a great place for us all to live in, these people are dropping millions and billions of dollars to fund right wing agendas that want to exclude any and all who are not filthy rich, white, Christian, far right republican or libertarian. (They are often hypocrites when it comes to social issues) . Their father founded the John Birch Society, need I say more? All the money in the world and this family spends it to keep others from having. Hell, if they'd taken the money they have funded numerous right wing institutions and publications with and divided that figure up among all Americans, we could probably eliminate a lot of the social programs they despise. Shit, we'd all be fairly wealthy.

A friend asked me today what it would cost to just give everyone in the US a million dollars (overtime). Of course, I said about 330 million dollars. We both fell out laughing at what an absurdly low figure that is when compared to other government programs. So, listen up Koch Brothers. Give us each a mil each & you can get on with you gas & oil biz & not have to worry about Social Security and Medicare. 'K? But no. They and their ilk would rather spend more telling us what shits we are for being unemployed and how great they are at creating jobs and they would do much better at running Social Security and Medicare. Hello, anyone really listening. All my problems with Medicare come from the PRIVATE company I have to get to cover what Medicare doesn't.

There is a balance. There should be and there will be. The pendulum has swung way to far to the right and rich and they seem to have found a way to stop the pendulum from swinging away from them. Somehow, they have suspended the physical forces of nature and they have that pendulum suspended forever, it seems, on their upswing. Guess what. They can't hold on that long.

The Summer of Hate and Stupidity is finally about ourselves and how we react to this onslaught. What do we tell our children about the way we acted during the Summer of Hate and Stupidity? Of course, we all had to go to work to support a family that used to take half that income. Look, it is easy to see the way the middle class is being fucked over by the corporate Repubs. Even easier to see how the poor get shafted even more. Of course, you have to look.

WHO WOULDA THUNK?

In Teddy Roosevelt's day, during his presidency, he being a conservative Republican was called "a communist agitator."1 Of course, he wasn''t. But "conservative Republican" meant something else back then. It had nothing to do with orange complexions, corporate ass-sucking, destroying the middle-class, refusing to enforce the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, ignoring alternative energy sources, giving tax breaks to the filthy & not so filthy rich, weighing tariffs & tax incentives in favor of the big corporations.

No, Teddy Roosevelt was a true conservative, as was Abraham Lincoln. They both understood that labor creates capital, not the other way around. Corporations are sitting on so much cash (trillions of dollars) that they have the mistaken belief that they create labor. For now, they are. They are taking their capital to India, China, Taiwan & any other nation willing to ignore labor laws or have none to begin with. But whose labor gave them the riches to do that? Soon, the laborers in China, Taiwan, etc., will rebel. It may be a while. After all, a doubling of wages now & then will probably keep the peeps quite for a while. Of course, doubling thirty-eight cents an hour should be no problem for the Big fat Corps. They could do it for years & not feel so much as an itch on their economic ass.

There is a bill now before congress that would require American corporations to disclose the salary & benefits of the lowest paid employee & the salary & benefits of the highest paid (CEO) employee. Guess who is putting a lot of lobbying money into stopping this bill. That's right. Big Insurance, Big Oil, Big Tobacco, Big Health Care & many more. The NRA & the US Chamber of Commerce have already donated over a hundred million dollars to the Republican cause. & the best we can do is elect corporate democrats??

President Obama needs to purge (not in a Stalinesque sort of way) his cabinet. Rahm should be gone. See ya later, Tim. Cat Giet your tongue. Paluson, too. It won't happen, though. The President seeks to govern (& appease) everyone. Can't, won't happen. What's especially funny to me is that the Republicans have someone, as they did in Clinton, someone they can work with. They won't. & just like Clinton, President Obama will try to gain their favor like a little girl begging for the life of her kitten. They will fuck him. If they win either the House or the Senate, look for Republican instigated investigations into everything the Obama administration has done. Look for them to not just say no but watch them tie up government processes with phony procedures (more so than they all ready have). It's disgusting.

They will take power again after this election & they will fuck us again. & our short term memory will be how long?


1.Roosevelt's speech to the State of Kansas, concerning John Brown, Lincoln & the state of labor & property (capital). Fifty years after slavery ended, "labor" still had a special meaning. The American worker finds him or herself in dire predicaments even if not rising to the horror of slavery. Wages have not gone up in thirty years, not since Reagan. Profits for big corporations have soared. They've taken over the airwaves (owned by the public), they've sent our jobs overseas, they are getting ready to take your Social Security & your Medicare (thanks Tea partiers).