Saturday, April 22, 2017

Why Our Nation is BROKE(n)

Read the entire essay if you desire to comment.

I think they left out the part about multi-billion dollar corporations unwilling to pay a living wage. 




General Electric made $26 billion in profits in 2010 and paid $0.00 in taxes, we have the largest military industrial complex in the world with a $250 billion budget, and people wonder why our government is broke. Who are we fighting?  The terrorists?  Does anyone remember a time before 9/11, when terrorists were underfunded, radical, militant fringe groups who blew stuff up from time to time?  Yeah, well, that's what they're still doing, what they still are, and that's all they will ever be.  Does anyone remember a time when it was believed that everyone paid taxes.  What was the adage?  "Nothing is certain but death and taxes," unless you're a multi-national corporation (a personhood, if you will), claiming absurd deductions for which they are busily lobbying Congress for even more as I write these very words.


These terrorists had to use a plane as a missile on 9/11 because they lacked the funding and the expertise to do anything more than that.  It was tragic indeed, but 3,000 dead isn't even a drop in the bucket when you consider that the Iraqi people - most of them civilians - have suffered more than a million casualties since the Iraq War's inception. I am not proposing that there should not have been terrible consequences for the attack on September 11th, 2001. But in the grand scheme, the terrorists never were a real military threat to begin with, no more than the backwards, flyspeck nations who harbored them were.  Afghanistan has about as much of a chance at defeating "the Great Satan" as I do defeating Anderson Silva in an MMA match, i.e., none. The real threat is the corporate-tit-sucking Congress we continue to reelect into office, over and over again, because we are too lazy to demand a better choice. We are content to choose between "the lesser of two evils" as if that were a sufficient basis for electing who will decide the future of our country.


In other words, we no longer care enough.  We are complacent, fat and lazy.  We are content to let these fools and degenerates do our thinking for us, and actively choose to believe the lies and propaganda perpetrated and perpetuated by the news media each and every day. Did you know that elected office is one of the very few government jobs for which a requisite degree or certification is not required. Let me say that again: The most powerful people in this country are not even required to be legitimately, or even adequately, qualified for their positions. And we CHOOSE this!  We know they are lying to us - we have all been told, and even when faced with irrefutable proof (Dubya lying about WMD's, Obama lying about repealing the USA PATRIOT Act, Trump lying about . . . well, everything), we CHOSE to ignore the dire implications, and now we live in a country where it is perfectly acceptable for our government agents to raid anyone's home they choose, to write their own warrants, and search and seize property without your consent.  Because it is inconvenient.

Complacent, we are, and cowardly.  How can we stand against a government - a Congress that would legislate itself salary raises for the "fantastic" job they are doing and turn a blind eye when Dubya called for war on a country that had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11 - when all we really care about is still getting to go home and play World of Warcraft at night?  Actually doing something would interfere greatly with Mad Men and Game of Thrones, and we might have to give up the MMO night playing Call of Duty with our buddies.  Damn....social consciousness is just too damned inconvenient.  How 'bout them Bulldogs?

"What do you think you're doing with my sippy cup, bitch?"
And when we do muster up enough give-a-damn to care, it is dictated by right- or left-wing radio and/or television personalities whose sole job is to shape public opinion and sow discontent. They had one liberal, Alan Colmes (R.I.P.). That's all. But perhaps that is why Fox still thinks it can tell us it is fair and balanced.  But how?  Because they cater to the right wing and most other major media outlets cater to the left?  That doesn't make them fair or balanced. Yet we continue to allow this major news outlet this blatant and audacious lie. Conservatives should be particularly offended. Their primary flag bearer flaunts its contempt of the truth behind a mantra that would be noble if it weren't so patently false.

But worse are the conservative heroes and pundits, each and every one of whom is a firebrand dedicated to inciting fear, paranoia and dread.  Rush, Hannity, Ingraham, O'Reilly,

and the really ignorant ones like Brian Kilmeade and Neal Boortz - these people are poison. These nimrods stood by and defended Bush Jr.'s every mind-numbingly ignorant decision. They rationalized his failings, blamed liberals (somehow) when his unerringly bad decisions ended up . . . badly. And they have seamlessly transferred that same blind, irrational loyalty to the Trump administration, all the while producing wider audiences and higher ratings. How, you might ask? Because media may not control how you think, but they very decidedly control what you think about.  And if these buffoons - pundits - are good at anything, it is spinning the truth.  Let me clarify by saying that I am not simply ostracizing conservative pundits here.  I am fully aware that leftists are at it just as hard, only they have a slightly more intelligent audience with which to deal, and it's a bit more of a challenge, although not by much.  And I was exposed to those conservative guys more than most. As a journalist in the South, I was inundated with republican ideals. The vast majority of politicians I have interviewed have been republican conservatives. And conservatives are all you hear on talk radio. So unless your parents like NPR, if you're a child growing up in the South, you're not going to be presented with too many alternative or opposing views to conservatism - much the same as it is with religion.

All the mainstream media outlets these days are controlled by corporate/political (because there is no distinction anymore) entities.  But at least NBC doesn't feel the need to argue before each commercial break that they are "the most trusted news source" because they are unbiased.  They're not.  They're just cleverer about it, and they don't feel the insecurity of standing behind a motto that is so ludicrously, blatantly and obviously horseshit. Anyone ever listened to the "J.T. Show?"  This ignorant fool has a political talk show, such as it is, every day on SuperTalk Mississippi, 97.3, for those of you who aren't familiar with him.  He is, to reuse a word from the above paragraph, *very* decidedly one of the most ignorant and brainwashed individuals I have ever had the displeasure of hearing on the radio. His diatribes (such as they are considering his limited vocabulary, his atrocious grammar and diction, and his tenuous grasp on the political climate in general) are mindless rants about how liberals are ruining the country <yawn> that have no basis in reason or fact. He was doing Trump before Trump was doing Trump. How he has managed to stay on the air, in the slot he was given, as long as he has, is a complete mystery to me. This fool pronounces 'nuclear' like Dubya pronounced it: "Nuke-U-lar."  Whether he is just deliberately ignorant or he just wants to be like his hero (Trump, Reagan or Bush, take your pick) is unclear.  The fact is, he is a radio personality, to the extent that he has a show - not that he is in fact a "personality" of any note - and he has the ear of thousands of people every day. And he is not only paid to perpetuate (there goes that word again) his ignorance, but the good people of Mississippi encourage it.

So why are we broke again?  Because our government pays for entitlement programs it cannot afford or because G.E., along with dozens of other one percenters, pay zero dollars in taxes?  "But they will ship our jobs overseas!" some might say.  And the Fed should fine the holy hell out of them if they do.  That's what China does.  They're doing pretty okay these days.  Our government is broke because it lacks the will to tax corporate "personhoods."  Because even Facebook thinks that word is wrong, if the red, squiggly line underneath it indicates anything.  Our government is broke because its money is tied up in special interests our illustrious Congress has decided are more important than our national welfare.  Our government is broke because they no longer give two shits about the American people, but spend 80% of their time in office fundraising for their next campaign.  Our government is broke because it depends on, and is beholden to, an independent Central Bank that is NOT beholden to the government which houses, shelters and defends it.  And our government is broke because its citizens are too lazy and too frightened to do - or not do, in certain cases - the things necessary to effect a change.

It used to be that only educated people were encouraged - or even capable - of practicing the art of journalism.  Only now, with mediocrity the only height to which most aspire these days, journalism has become something much less than what it once was.  People crave - thanks to the conditioning served up by the advertising media - nothing so much as what will entertain them, and care very little about factual accuracy or unbiased relaying of those facts.

And again, if you want to respond to this, please read the whole damned thing. I'll know if you did simply based on your comments. This took me a long time to write, and I am not going to repeat something that was already covered in this essay. I welcome intelligent conversation and debate, but I don't have the time or the inclination to respond to dick-ish repostes and rebuttals. Be civil, in other words, or don't say anything at all.

And guns.  Leave my damn guns out of this conversation.  I'll delete it in a heartbeat if one single mention of fun - I mean....gun control comes up.  It's off-topic and just dumb.  And a subject for another essay....