Calhoun’s Can(n)ons for April 8, 2011
If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about answers.
Thomas Pynchon
The laughter started in the middle of Los Osos Valley Road, halfway home. I had been driving along while listening to another radio news broadcast so full of crap it took my breath away. Then it hit me: They’re not even trying anymore. The bullsh*t has now gotten so high it’s simply no longer worthwhile to try to spin it, to cover it up or ignore it or pretend it isn’t there. There’s simply too much of it. Piles of it. Mountain ranges of it, filling all the spaces of our daily lives. A person can’t breathe any more without inhaling bullsh*t.
In the bad old days, there was a sense that arrant nonsense should be hedged in with at least some kind of plausibility, that blatant, palpable lies needed to be finessed, that hypocrisy and theft and greed and wrongdoing and bad behavior needed to be justified or hidden because there once was some kind of sense of accountability or shame left in the country. A sense that people were too smart to fall for the feeble con, the misdirect, the political carny tricks that only worked on low-information rubes.
No longer.
We aren’t bombing Lybia, France is. President Obama is a Muslim who was born in Kenya. Tax breaks for the rich and for multinational corporations create jobs. Trickledown economics raises all boats. The budget deficit can be fixed by cuts alone. Taxes are job killers. What’s good for Wall Street is good for America. (Which is why I paid more taxes last year than G.E. did?) Medical reform hurts businesses. A fairer, reformed tax code is socialism. Illegal immigrants are destroying America. Global warming is a myth. Tighter (and enforced) Wall Street rules and regs will kill the economy. Outsourced jobs didn’t kill the American Dream. Skewed tax breaks for the wealthy didn’t kill the American Dream. A de-regulated Wall Street didn’t kill the American Dream. Collective bargaining by Wisconsin’s teachers did!
Bullsh*t.
Here in California, which is sinking under a mountain of debt, the legislature has been held hostage by a minority of Republicans who refused to even let the people vote on extending a modest handful of about-to-expire taxes and instead proposed a cuts-only budget which will result in continued tax breaks for big corporations while it slashes K-12 funding and cuts services for the most vulnerable of our citizens. In short, Grover Norquistian Bullsh*t.
In real life, when your family finds itself in debt, you tighten your belts, cut expenses to the bone and every able bodied family member, including the kids, goes out and gets part-time jobs to raise income. But not in Republican Norquististan. In that country, Daddy first goes out and buys a few Rolls Royces for himself and his buddies, thereby busting the budget. Then he absolutely forbids Mom and the kids from getting jobs to raise more money, and instead takes money out of the house-repair account to buy more cars for himself, and if the leaking roof can’t be repaired and falls down as a consequence, well, too bad. Then he eliminates family medical coverage to ensure his rich friends have extra money for luxuries, and if the kids get sick and die as a result, also too bad. As for taking care of Granny? Sorry, Daddy needs that money to avoid paying taxes on a new yacht, so out into the street she goes while the rest of the family is put on bread and water rations for the duration.
In the good old days, anyone proposing that line of Bullsh*t would be laughed out of office. But not now. Now, they get elected by the very people who are going to get kicked to the curb – folks who understood too late that the funny piece of paper pinned to their backs was a bull’s eye. And now they’re afraid because they no longer even know how to ask the right questions.
Which is why the corporate pols no longer even bother to lie to them anymore. And why the bullsh*t is so high it’s blotting out the sun. And why I started laughing out loud while driving down Los Osos Valley Road, half-way home.
Donald Trump for President! Too perfect. America? You’re fired!
Friday, April 08, 2011
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6 comments:
Hah! Norquististan! (You are a wordsmith, kid.)
And "Daddy" sounds like my exhusband. I could tell you stories...oy veh!
Even I, the Eternal Optimist, have had trouble with the mountain of bullsh*t that hits me in the face daily.
But we must speak truth to power. That is our job as citizens and as people. I know you will never give up. And neither will I.
Ahh but the media is the message. Lucky Libyans, they at least know which direction to run. We are inundated and submerged in information. Mostly opinion about opinion about comments taken out of context. Data data everywhere and not a bit to process.
A wise old statesman once said (not a good person, but a wise one):
All this was inspired by the principle--which is quite true within itself--that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.
Alon, ah-yes. And now we have The Donald with his "birther" bullsh*t and The Ryan Budget Plan that declares that privitizing Medicare (with for-profit insurance companies requiring at least 15% overhead to administer their policies) will be cheaper than government run Medicare that takes an administrative margin of 3%. Hmm, 15 . . . 3 . . . Well, of course. 15% is much lower than 3%.
"Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation."
Batten the hatches. The crazies are in charge of the asylum.
In debate club in high school, we used to draw for sides in a debate then argue accordingly. Today's political world is perfect for this.
Ann passionately rips the conservative politicians and, in many cases, justifiably so. While I share many of her concerns, I am also equally concerned about the tactics and general disregard for our huge deficit fiscal trending by the liberal politicians.
Instead of 40% liberal, 40% conservative and 20% independent (or whatever), we would be way better off @ 20%-20% and 60% respectively. No way to analyze specific issues any more--it's all about the parties. While I see our Country and our State circling the drain.
Brilliant, Ann. It's got so we have to build up calluses on our ears, there's so much crazy coming at them from the airwaves. And you forgot "Anybody who has every rescued a puppy or helped an old lady cross the street is a SOCIALIST!!" and "Jesus HATES everybody but straight, white billionaires!" and we can believe the Saudis who own Faux News but not Brian Williams, and we fear the tyranny they have in Canada and every prosperous nation on earth and we want LIBERTY like they have in Haiti and Somalia!
TCG sez:" No way to analyze specific issues any more--it's all about the parties. While I see our Country and our State circling the drain."
That's the problem, really, it's getting nearly impossible to get accurate info, which makes it impossible to make sensible decisions. And impossible to get straight answers from the screaming heads. Like my question of Ryan's "privitizing medicare" plan. 15% overhead vs 3% overhead. Somebody please wanna 'splain how that's supposed to work? Or some doofus Congressman on the floor of Congress claiming that 90% of Planned Parrenthood's federal money is spent on abortions. When contacted later, he fesses up that, oh, well, that statement wasn't meant to be taken as "fact." It's Alice in Wonderland time and you can't make any sound decisions when the Mad Hatter's running the show.
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