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StrangerThan -> RE: Confrontation Looms In Boston... (10/11/2011 11:46:21 AM)
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Blog post from 2 years ago.
New York is crying. I travel - a lot. Mondays often see me in an airport or on the road with several hours of driving time ahead of me. It's not fun. It's not glamorous. It is work. What travel days do though is give me a chance to absorb news, to listen to pundits, to watch news shows I would never watch at home. The rest of the week I return to sanity and mostly ignore the news. Life is so much better when you do. You can go about your day not worrying about North Korean rockets, shooters in nursing homes, and you don't have to watch CNN.
I suppose I could avoid that specific activity while I'm sitting in an airport, but CNN seems to be the channel of choice in a many of them for some reason and my options are limited. After nearly stripping, unpacking half my stuff and being guided through metal detectors by TSA folk, I can pick my teeth, wander through yet another over priced gift store, or hunt down some airport food.
Yum, yum.
So Monday, I get to see the headline about Obama firing Rick Waggoner - I spell his name right? You know, the GM CEO. I get to hear quotes about the 25-30 billion we've sunk into the auto industry being money thrown into a black hole. Really?
Notice the stock market tanked Monday. Big surprise, huh? Not really. The elite goes into a panicked frenzy every time something comes along that will A) threaten them personally, or B) threaten their ability to rob more money out of the system while holding their hands out for even more from the tax payer. Those silly market people, don't they know this is akin to picking on the little nerdy kid to make Dems look bigger, badder and tougher than they really are? And here they run, wringing their hands, fearful of government intervention.
Sigh. Obama learned that lesson his first couple of weeks in office when nationalization talk made the rounds. The market shed almost a 1000 points that week.
So Obama gets tough on car makers. Well, I guess he had to appear tough somewhere didn't he? Two weeks ago we're all up in arms because someone slipped AIG a bonus loophole. Today we're acting like our government is safe guarding American interest by forcing one car company to sign a merger with a European auto maker - Chrysler and Fiat, and forcing the head of another automaker out the door. That's how we get the tough image from Obama, the notion that he has single-handedly stepped in and said enough to greedy car makers. As for Chrysler, if they don't manage to complete that merger, we're going to let them go bankrupt. After all, they're the small fry in the US car making business, only 50k or so workers world wide. Let's not get dirty and talk suppliers. Let's also not get dirty and talk about the fact that Chrysler actually produces something in this economy of ours.
We have a hatred in this country for manufacturers. Oh, they're fine as long as they're somewhere else. We've shipped one industry after another offshore and out of country in the last few decades. We call it progress and free trade. We sit around figurative campfires humming sing-along songs and marvel at our own progressiveness. We think about the poor in other countries, and rail against the unfairness of life being good in the US while it is so demonstrably miserable in other parts of the world. And we sit while men and women wearing more make-up than a French whore, decked out starched clothes that cost more than most people will make in a week, spend our money, tell us they need more, and pour what we give them down black holes so deep they could swallow the US auto industry a thousand times over.
This is being tough. Gotcha.
I'll tell you what the auto industry is. They are the whipping boy in comparision to the banking fiasco, the geek that anyone and everyone can pick on. They're about the only place Obama can be tough both in economic terms and in social terms. It's not tough. It's whacking the squire trotting along behind you because you're afraid to face the knights in front of you.
Do I want accountability? You're damned right I do. But I don't just want it from the peons in this case. I want it from the castle builders who built glass fortresses. I want it from the conglomerates of government and business leaders who sat in closed rooms and figured out the means and ways to destroy the US economy by wringing every friggin dollar they could from it. I want it from Congress, from the men and women who spouted party-line sound bites over the years and voted again and again for not only taking the reins off the banking sector, but spurred them on into decisions and policies that were bad to begin with and got worse and worse over time.
I'm in New York this week, that bastion of blue votes, listening this morning to said voters crying on public radio about tax increases that are being hailed as massive. I have to fight back the laughter. I swear I do. Let's put this on the stupidity scale. You vote for, promote, sign on and support the same people and same parties who have not just overseen, but aided and abetted the economic destruction of the United States, and then you want to complain? You want someone to listen to your damned story and feel some sympathy? You want to cry about the fact that in what is the worst monetary disaster in nearly a century, you are being figuratively turned upside down and shaken to see how much money falls out of your pocket? That rates, oh, about 99 on the stupidity scale. I'd say 100, but some people just don't pay attention until crap hits them out of the blue. I'd give NY voters about a 1 percent chance of being blind instead of stupid.
You know why government does what it does? Because you don't give a damn. That's right. Stiffen your back. Get all indignant. Go out and polish your Obama sticker and rest easy in the knowledge you voted for Change! Imagine the eye roll. All that political slogan BS is just that. What you voted for was the hope that you could go back to being an idiot and not have to worry about the bigger picture, that you could be just as lazy over the next four years as you have been much of your life and do it without George Bush in office.
Got news for you bright star, Bush was leaving anyway. It's that law of the land thing. Didn't matter how you voted. What did matter about your vote is that you lined up in the same cafeteria line that you've lined up in for decades. The same Democrat or Republican feeding troughs backed by people who know all the lines, know the lingo, and constantly tell you how they're going to do good things for you.
Your government does what it does because the population in this country is sold on the Dem/Rep model. Because neither Democrat nor Republican is afraid of you, because no matter what they say on TV or at the rallies, the idea is about power, not governorship. Your government does what it does because you're lazy. Oh yeah, you'll bitch, gripe, moan but when is the last time you picked up a phone and called your representative, your senator? When is the last time you wrote a letter to either? When is the last time that you joined others in refusing to sit down and shut up and be a good little citizen? When's the last time you did anything other than go home, watch TV, complain to your wife or husband?
The only time your government gives a shit about you is during the election campaigns. Really? Yes, really. It's about the only time elected folk will come mingle with you, ask your opinion, talk tough, or do what's right for you. Once they hit Washington, they're lost in the power struggle, marked if they don't comply with the leadership, and those dollars you contribute? Well, the leadership doles those out depending on who toes the line best.
Keep sitting on your ass. Keep not taking part in your government. Keep waiting for someone up there to have a clue, to get a brain, to evidence they understand something about your life. It ain't going to happen because they're not scared of you and because in the realm of important things, you're less than the worm the robin outside is feeding on. You're one of the faceless masses who keep lining up to vote for them while your world falls apart.
You're the idiot. And they know it. The only one in this equation who doesn't know it, is you.
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