Calhoun’s Cannons for Nov 16, 11
I watched as many of the Republican debates as I could stand without having to arrest myself for cruel and inhumane punishment, something candidate Michelle Bachman is four-square in favor of. So it’s clear to me its paper-bag-over-the-head time because nobody has any sense of shame any more since most of the candidates are suffering from The Sarah Palin Syndrome: no real-world assessment of self except some glowing, aggrandized version of, “ Of course I’m qualified to be President! I’m Wonderful Me!”
Even worse, I don’t think the public has any sense of shame either, which likely comes from too many people watching too many Mean-Girl, Gong-Show “reality” programs. In that world, talent-bereft, unqualified, humiliation-proof narcissists are the norm. And when those shameless characters show up on the political/public stage, the voters clearly don’t hear alarm bells going off in their heads. I mean, in a sane world, most of the Republican candidates wouldn’t have any poll numbers higher than zero.
So, it’s paper bag time for cowboy Rick Perry. He can’t even remember what he’s supposed to be adamantly opposed to. This is a guy whose brain can barely manage to operate on bumper-sticker slogans. Paper bag over the head for him.
And Newt? Really? Newt? He’s a hack who truly knows no shame. His overweening sense of his own wonderfulness has allowed him to shamelessly spend years turning up like a bad penny to haul his tired old failed ideas out of his portmanteau for all who will listen, blissfully unaware that the sane people in his audience are rictus-smiling and nervously edging out of their seats. Shhh, don’t make any sudden moves. Keep smiling. The door’s that way. That guy has so much shameful baggage, he doesn’t need a paper bag. He needs a Luis Vuitton suitcase the size of New Jersey, all charged to his $500,000 revolving Tiffany account. Paper bag him.
Ditto for Herman Cain. He needs a whole lot of paper bags to carry the lists of names of all the ladies who are coming out of the woodwork to complain of his improper canoodling. Plus, during a sit-down with newspaper editors from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, he apparently had trouble understanding which Lybia was under discussion. Oh, Gaddafi, right, you mean that Lybia? In a reasonable world, his polling numbers would be minus-zero
As for More Water-boarding Michelle? Please. Paper bag.
And it doesn’t stop with presidential candidates. Jack Abramoff has hired some big PR flaks and will soon be staging a comeback. You remember Casino Jack, corrupt and corrupting lobbyist who would sell his grandmother to his mother then sell them both down the river? Major player in Bush’s Washington who has been spending time in jail for his efforts? Well, he’s coming baaaaccckkkk. And, unlike Nixon’s hatchet-man, Charles Colson, who found God while in prison, while Jack is claming a similar enlightenment, he isn’t planning to return to a quiet life of private penance for his sins. Oh, no. Jack’s back. Shameless. No paper bags for him. But will the public care? Will they boo and hiss and demand he go away? Not likely. Not in “Jersey Shore America.”
Not in Penn State America, either. Before the growing list of victims has even been identified, the alleged molester, Jerry Sandusky, appears on TV brazenly soft-soaping and justifying his behavior as “horseplay,” while the first reaction to all this by some Penn State students was to riot to protest the firing of their legendary Coach who did “as little as possible” to protect the boys, thereby doing “as much as possible” to protect the man who was preying on them. And now everyone is changing their stories, scrambling to cover their bare behinds with gym towels that are now suddenly the size of a micron.
Have we really come to this? Has our common sense, our basic sense of decency, our critical sense of what’s real versus what’s fake been so corrupted that we no longer know the difference? Or care? If so, then it’s time to bring back the paper bag.
In the Nov. 24 Rolling Stone magazine article, Matt Taibbi observes that the Occupy Wall Street movement “was always about something much bigger than a movement against big banks and modern finance. It’s about providing a forum for people to show how tired they are not just of Wall Street, but everything. This is a visceral, impassioned, deep-seated rejection of the entire direction of our society, a refusal to take even one more step forward into the shallow commercial abyss of phoniness, short-term calculation, withered idealism and intellectual bankruptcy that American mass society has become. If there is such a thing as going on strike from one’s own culture, this is it.”
Gold star for Matt. He’s got it just about right.
Showing posts with label Matt Taibbi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Matt Taibbi. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Your Wednesday Reading
Do yourself a favor, go to http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/owss-beef-wall-street-isnt-winning-its-cheating-20111025, Matt Taibbi’s blog posting – OWS’s beef: Wall Street isn’t winning, it’s cheating. If you need a reason to be mad, there it is. Then get a copy of Matt’s “Griftopia.” That’ll finish the job.
Friday, February 26, 2010
A Man, A Plan, A Plane
Calhoun's Can(n)ons for February 26, 2010
The demagogue is one who preaches doctrine he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots. H.L. Mencken
It was a tragically perfect metaphor for our times: Average American, Joe Stack, angry at “the government” over his own self-created problems, burns his own house down then kills himself by flying his small plane into a Texas IRS building.
America has now self-devolved into a mook’s game. For over twenty years, a sufficient number of Joe Stacks believed the patent nonsense being fed to them by the carny barkers setting them up for a proper fleecing: Tax breaks for the rich would “trickle down” and make them all rich, too. Government is the problem, not the solution, which is why government needs to be starved until it’s weak and small enough to be drowned in a bathtub. The Free Market doesn’t need rules and regulation because The Free Market is never wrong and will solve all problems. Poor You are hideously, unfairly overtaxed! After all, Poor You shouldn’t have to pay taxes in order to pay for all the services you voted for. No, The Other Guy needs to pay for those things, not Poor You. Move your war-profiteering corporate and personal assets offshore into tax havens and you can still receive a standing ovation at a GOPAC convention. Question those tax same havens and you’re engaging in class warfare and are a bad American who wants the terrorists to win. The growing gap between rich and poor is a Good Thing because the American Commons is nothing but “French Socialism.” Our motto isn’t e pluribus unum, it’s “I’m All Right, Jack.”
And so, while the distracting carnival music blared in our ears and the Ferris wheel spun, our real national wealth – workers actually making things, including a living wage that created and supported whole communities -- was drained away offshore and our imaginary wealth – housing bubble Ponzi schemes and stock market gambling with imaginary money selling imaginary “products”—was finally revealed for what it always was: A mechanism to fleece the mooks.
And Everyman Joe Stack brooded. And all across the country angry citizens brooded, then put Hitler moustaches on posters of a President Obama oxymoronically labeled “Communist.” Or gathered in the thousands to angrily declare that they were tired of being overtaxed at the same time they had actually been receiving tax cuts via various stimulus packages. Inchoate anger being fueled by various demagogues – phony Astroturf groups fronting and funded by well-paid lobbyists for a variety of special interests – carny barkers signing best-selling books while preaching doctrine they know to be false to people they believe to be idiots, while the “idiots” sadly refuse to look behind the curtain.
And so it goes. Congress is now in self-inflicted gridlock because voters didn’t send a sufficient number of politicians to Washington with a clearly committed set of marching orders. Or, more accurately, didn’t send a sufficient number of politicians who weren’t already wholly own subsidiaries of Corporate America. And Congress itself continues to suffer from self-inflicted rules that have moved “majority” into “Supermajority,” procedural rules that virtually guarantee that nothing will get done. So here we are, two scorpions in a jar, locked in mortal combat, focused only on jockeying into deadly striking position, while polls now show a country adrift and best described by the phrase, “Yes we want no bananas . . . maybe.”
Over at Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi continues another hilariously brilliant report on “Wall Street’s Bailout Hustle,” noting, “Instead of liquidating the prosecuting the insolvent institutions that took us all down with them in a giant Ponzi scheme, we have showered them with money and guarantees and all sorts of other enabling gestures. And what should really freak everyone out is the fact that Wall Street immediately started skimming off its own rescue money. . . . ‘It’s evidence,’ says Rep. Kanjorski,’ that they still don’t get it.’ . . . More to the point, the fact that we haven’t done much of anything to change the rules and behavior of Wall Street shows that we still don’t get it. Instituting a bailout policy that stressed recapitalizing bad banks was like the addict coming back to the con man to get his lost money back. Ask yourself how well that ever works out. And then get ready for the reload.”
And so it goes. Self-ignited, Rome burns. Demagogues fan the lucrative flames that bring them riches while burning most fiercely their self-blinded adoring supporters. And the usual foxes grin and pick fresh chicken feathers out of their teeth while Joe Stack lights a match to his own house and heads for the airport. Get ready for the reload, indeed.
The demagogue is one who preaches doctrine he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots. H.L. Mencken
It was a tragically perfect metaphor for our times: Average American, Joe Stack, angry at “the government” over his own self-created problems, burns his own house down then kills himself by flying his small plane into a Texas IRS building.
America has now self-devolved into a mook’s game. For over twenty years, a sufficient number of Joe Stacks believed the patent nonsense being fed to them by the carny barkers setting them up for a proper fleecing: Tax breaks for the rich would “trickle down” and make them all rich, too. Government is the problem, not the solution, which is why government needs to be starved until it’s weak and small enough to be drowned in a bathtub. The Free Market doesn’t need rules and regulation because The Free Market is never wrong and will solve all problems. Poor You are hideously, unfairly overtaxed! After all, Poor You shouldn’t have to pay taxes in order to pay for all the services you voted for. No, The Other Guy needs to pay for those things, not Poor You. Move your war-profiteering corporate and personal assets offshore into tax havens and you can still receive a standing ovation at a GOPAC convention. Question those tax same havens and you’re engaging in class warfare and are a bad American who wants the terrorists to win. The growing gap between rich and poor is a Good Thing because the American Commons is nothing but “French Socialism.” Our motto isn’t e pluribus unum, it’s “I’m All Right, Jack.”
And so, while the distracting carnival music blared in our ears and the Ferris wheel spun, our real national wealth – workers actually making things, including a living wage that created and supported whole communities -- was drained away offshore and our imaginary wealth – housing bubble Ponzi schemes and stock market gambling with imaginary money selling imaginary “products”—was finally revealed for what it always was: A mechanism to fleece the mooks.
And Everyman Joe Stack brooded. And all across the country angry citizens brooded, then put Hitler moustaches on posters of a President Obama oxymoronically labeled “Communist.” Or gathered in the thousands to angrily declare that they were tired of being overtaxed at the same time they had actually been receiving tax cuts via various stimulus packages. Inchoate anger being fueled by various demagogues – phony Astroturf groups fronting and funded by well-paid lobbyists for a variety of special interests – carny barkers signing best-selling books while preaching doctrine they know to be false to people they believe to be idiots, while the “idiots” sadly refuse to look behind the curtain.
And so it goes. Congress is now in self-inflicted gridlock because voters didn’t send a sufficient number of politicians to Washington with a clearly committed set of marching orders. Or, more accurately, didn’t send a sufficient number of politicians who weren’t already wholly own subsidiaries of Corporate America. And Congress itself continues to suffer from self-inflicted rules that have moved “majority” into “Supermajority,” procedural rules that virtually guarantee that nothing will get done. So here we are, two scorpions in a jar, locked in mortal combat, focused only on jockeying into deadly striking position, while polls now show a country adrift and best described by the phrase, “Yes we want no bananas . . . maybe.”
Over at Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi continues another hilariously brilliant report on “Wall Street’s Bailout Hustle,” noting, “Instead of liquidating the prosecuting the insolvent institutions that took us all down with them in a giant Ponzi scheme, we have showered them with money and guarantees and all sorts of other enabling gestures. And what should really freak everyone out is the fact that Wall Street immediately started skimming off its own rescue money. . . . ‘It’s evidence,’ says Rep. Kanjorski,’ that they still don’t get it.’ . . . More to the point, the fact that we haven’t done much of anything to change the rules and behavior of Wall Street shows that we still don’t get it. Instituting a bailout policy that stressed recapitalizing bad banks was like the addict coming back to the con man to get his lost money back. Ask yourself how well that ever works out. And then get ready for the reload.”
And so it goes. Self-ignited, Rome burns. Demagogues fan the lucrative flames that bring them riches while burning most fiercely their self-blinded adoring supporters. And the usual foxes grin and pick fresh chicken feathers out of their teeth while Joe Stack lights a match to his own house and heads for the airport. Get ready for the reload, indeed.
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