I don’t really tan anymore. There was a day when I got bronzed (and a day when I won the “C” Company, 5th Brigade, 3rd Battalion sit-up title — but that is a tale for another waistline). Now, I kind of turn lobster red. And if I stay in the bright blue waters off Miami beach for too long, under a clear sky and a nearby shimmering star, I burn. Like toast. I once saw a t-shirt that said “tanned, rested and ready” with a picture of Nixon on it preparing for another presidential bid. And I haven’t been able to shake the slogan all week. I’d never been to Florida. And though I’m not really tanned, I do feel re-charged. Ready for a new year. With this stupid slogan ringing in my ears.
Aside from a couple of e-mails, I haven’t written anything of substance in a month. I still checked in on you all. Watching the pond as if from afar, like it was a little world encased in glass, surrounded by fake snow. And it was hard not to write sometimes. But I did pretty good. Enjoyed down time. Tanned. Rested. Ready.
The biggest thing I’ve noticed in my month off is that we haven’t really impeached the Batshit Loopy Preznit yet. I figured when he confessed to a felony in his national radio address, he was toast. I gave the principles of our Republic too much credit, I guess. Here we are. A new year. Same old rotting democracy. But I’ll blog about the national security issues later. Got to stick to one topic. Mind wandering. Like a sunburned middle-aged guy who just got back from a sweet vacation and can’t quite concentrate on the task at hand.
The task at hand. Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed that our entire economy is on the brink of a fucking total collapse. I’m not talking about the economy described by Bondad, or Jerome a Paris, or Stirling Newberry. I mean, they scare me enough, given the right topic. But what has me flipped out is the other economy. The one not dictated by government statistics and theories from guys wearing bow ties and class rings from Harvard and the University of Chicago. I’m talking about the economy that people actually live in. Regular people. Blue collar people. Old people. Undereducated people. Just people. They are standing on the edge of the fucking abyss. And I don’t need a government report or a Wall Street Journal headline to tell me so. I know. Because in the midst of my vacation, I had to write a couple of reality checks.
I’ve got it good. Fuck. The only things that could bankrupt me tomorrow are the loss of a job or a major medical crisis. But for the time being, I’m pretty flush. I mean, in three months, you could ask again and I could be singing a completely different tune. But by all standards from where I grew up, I’m fucking loaded. Fat and happy.
But I still know a lot of folks right back where I started. They are the people losing jobs because, as the Wall Street Journal is fond of touting, “productivity growth” has been so stellar. They are the old-timers who are retiring after a full life of back breaking work. And finding that they can’t afford medicine. Regular people. Fucked.
First check I had to write was for $700 plus. I think that may have amounted to the great big tax break that Bush gave me once upon a time. I wish he would have fucking kept it. Used it to help build a damn world where I don’t have to get pre-Christmas calls like the one I got from a niece I hardly know.
She called. Frantic. She had nowhere else to turn. Her uncle, whom she loves dearly, was in trouble. She tried every government office she could. She tried closer family and friends. But I was the only one she knew who was flush.
Her uncle, my cousin, is a general laborer. Not surprisingly, he is out of work. Without any money. The relatives were willing to feed him. But when the power company shut off his heat in December, he was out of a fucking place to stay. He was humiliated. Wouldn’t have called himself, said my niece. Homeless, basically. And even with the Bush “Clean Skies” initiative helping to promote warmer winters in Michigan, it is still too fucking cold to be in an apartment without heat. Or worse, to be on the street. Reality check. For $700 you can get your cousin back in a relatively warm place to stay. It stings the checkbook a little. But come the fuck on. You write the fucking check, hoping to the Flying Spaghetti Monster he won’t hate you for shaming him. Give him a hug. And know that the solution isn’t permanent. Him and every other general laborer out of work, facing higher heating costs, are in the same damn boat. Everyone in northern Michigan is burning wood and corn to try to offset the costs. But people are hurting. That’s my cousin there. We used to play football in an orchard. Shoot each other with toy guns, training for Reagan’s army. He’s living right on the fucking edge.
But all is well. I got some energy stocks, anyway. And they are doing okay. All is well in the world. Go on vacation. Buy lots of shit from China. Have a happy holiday. Forget the fucking credit card bill that your family will never pay, if, FSM forbid you are diagnosed with a brain tumor.
Come home. Tanned, rested and ready. To write another reality check. This one was good.
Call from mom. She’s had a tough year. Pre-emphysema type condition. Because she started smoking Winstons at 14 at the drive-in, because their advertisements told her she would be more cool. Grown-up. She is. All grown-up. 61. And can’t breathe to save her life. Literally.
She was a work horse. Had my brother at 16. Because she was grown up even then. Had two jobs most of the time after dad left. And we still clocked in under the poverty level. Good old minimum wage. And less, when you are a waitress at the Moose Lodge (my Little League sponsor), letting old dudes pat your ass for good tips. But she kept us alive. Strong. In a way. Now just frail.
Had to leave the job at the bowling alley. Where she clocked in for something like thirty years. Couldn’t take the walking. From the shoe rack to the till. Not enough breath.
Felt lucky to get social security disability. But it meant giving up the medical insurance at the bowling alley. So now she gets a small monthly check. But it doesn’t cover her $700 dollars a month in drug costs for the lungs and the depression.
Calls me for the New Year. Not well. Apparent in the voice. Hasn’t been taking her meds. Can’t afford them. Hated to fucking call me. Didn’t want to ask. But her husband the sign painter hasn’t had many jobs this year. So there is not enough money for rent, food and medicine. Medicine seems to be the least important thing. Unless it is all that stands between you and not breathing. Or between you and slitting your wrists. Because life has been fucking hard.
Reality check. There isn’t a government program taking care of mom. We don’t really have a comprehensive health care system in the country. In fact, from the monthly nut I pay for our private insurance, I’d venture to say that we dont have any health care system at all. We’ve got a corporate care system. Some motherfuckers are getting really fucking rich. I think Frist is one of them.
Anyway. She is falling apart in front of your ears on the phone. So, you can talk about the policy issues. Maybe suggest some budgeting. Some advice about Medicaid applications, should this year’s tax returns look more bleak than last year when you couldn’t qualify. But your only real recourse is to hope that you are flush. And write the fucking check. Hope that somehow the psychiatric meds will re-adjust themselves despite the semi-voluntary disruption in treatment.
And this is how perverted my thoughts have become. Living as a capitalist. I’m actually hoping that I’m stronger than her. That when I get my diagnosis. Heart disease. Diabetes. Cancer. Whatever the fuck I’m on track for because I’ve lived the life of poor white trash who could suddenly afford dining at McDonalds. When that day comes. I’m hoping I’m stronger. That I won’t call my fucking kid. That I’ll be brave like a guy named Red we all knew. Who when his own day came, he got the fucking shotgun and took a last trip to the tool shed. Dying with dignity we call it in a country that sure as fuck debates the value of the Second Amendment more than it considers having a rational fucking health care system. I want to be like Red. No fucking lie. Because that’s where I am. That’s where I live.
At least I’ve got some Big Pharma stock though. So for this year, I’m flush. I’m tanned. Rested. Ready. And all is well in the world. Until the next reality check.
Looks around for a familiar face. Finds a horse. Asks, “Why the long face?”
Welcome back. You may be living proof that too much time for thought is dangerous indeed. It was kind of you to sugarcoat the reality for us. The dirtier reality is far too ugly. Hope your family’s ok. I’ve been day to day too many times and I’m never a stranger to work, just money. It kills me to see the Abramoffs and the Federicis and the DeLays, Scanlons, Safavians……
Oh my family is okay. Fuck. We are middle class. I’m thinking that there may be a shitload of people who may not be “okay.” Despite what I’m reading in the papers about our relative prosperity.
I’ve seen the utilities run some nasty rackets over the years but this is the worst it’s been for the most people who never had problems before. That means the ones who normally have cash flow problems for existence expenses are just plain lost now. One thing that’s going to be interesting is the coping skills and adjustment the middle class will be forced to develop. Hell, poor people are used to being poor…not happy about it but have learned to deal with it.
Sometime last year I saw Neal Cavuto laughing at some tip for the elderly to buy higher dose prescriptions and cut them in half to get a better price. He laughed…saying nobody he knew would ever be that hard up. Glad his pharma stock’s doing well.
This, how the other 2% lives, from my morning paper:
The redistribution is alive and doing very well, it seems.
BTW if anyone thinks they’re well insured, try a short hospital stay for a mental health issue. I guarantee you’ll be unpleasantly surprised with the bill.
Stay with us Joe, we need people like you to help us all rage against the madness!
I’ll need a short hospital stay at a mental unit if Bush is not stopped. I swear. I think I’m breaking with reality now.
And don’t worry. I’ll be writing here. Perhaps my frequency will go down as I get a bit busy from time to time. But I’m not going anywhere. And if I do disappear without warning or a trace, please feel free to contact the ACLU and ask them to make inquiries.
I’m all for free market forces but this is ridiculous. There has to be some way to bring this under control if the industry can’t do it themselves.
Are there any laws to restrict a corporation from acting recklessly and becoming a threat to national interests?
Free market forces are based on competition and/or responsible corporate management keeping prices down but if the system is fixed to eliminate competition/salary caps isn’t that an addressable issue?
Modest profits are acceptable but this should be against a law,….some law, somewhere.
Eventually, this industry will crash and expect a bailout while the executives get to keep their fortunes.
Thanks for getting me fired up again. I was feeling apathetic for a moment.
Doesn’t matter if there are laws.
There are Republicans in charge. Laws for big business don’t mean poodlepoop when there are Republicans in charge.
(They don’t always mean a LOT when there are Democrats in charge, but once in a great while…)
but now? Nope. Doesn’t matter a rodenheiny.
It’s far from a new policy, but there are several new programs to expedite the process.
That’s a good talking point to remember when people compare modern US to Hitler’s Germany. The US doesn’t round ’em up. It implements multi-billion dollar programs to eliminate them slowly. Sort of the same philosophy as the Iraq “sanctions.”
And from a purely business perspective, which is, after all, the ultimate American value, it’s clearly more profitable. With a limitless supply of increasingly desperate able-bodied labor, why would any right-thinking American entrepreneur, wealth-builder, want to spend profits on a commodity that does not generate revenue, just absorbs it?
Many people, including myself, have commented recently on the remarkable meekness of the American underclass. Your diary illustrates one key aspect, without which the transition to feudalism would not be possible. There are many Americans who sincerely believe that dignity means blowing one’s head off when the feudal lords deny one human rights, as feudal lords have done for millennia, until the serfs performed a correction.
That guarantee of continued underclass meekness on which the US economy rests may look flimsy, but when the lords can count on the serfs to kill themselves when they feel the lords are not doing it fast enough, that’s no flimsy filament, that’s a firm foundation.
It is my prayer, Joe, that long before you get your diagnosis, that the people of the world, who do not share that particular cultural value, will have done what they need to do to protect themselves from Somalia with money, and in the process, save millions of American lives.
Viva la Revolucion Bolivariana!
Leave for a couple of weeks and Ductape Fatwa sounds like an optimist. Viva la revolution.
If I didn’t know you better (not knowing you at all really), I’d say that you were suggesting I aim the shotgun in some other direction. But I’d never blog about such things in public. Someone would surely hasten our trip to a friendly U.S. Torture Inn in Eastern Europe if we were to talk so openly about the need for revolution.
At least now I’ve got another mantra in my head. The Nixon t-shirt was getting old. Now I can hear John Lennon singing, “So you say you want a revolu-shu-un, well ya know… hmm hmm hmm hmm hmm hmm hmm.”
your child loves you as much as you love your mother, and in the event that your diagnosis and resource exhaustion occurs prior to either “correction” or explosion of the planet, that you remember that, and if by some chance she happens to have resources, call her, and yes, conserve your firearms for personal protection. Encouraging people to conserve firearms for personal protection is currently not prohibited by the Patriot Act, though it may be prohibited by one of the secret laws, and certainly may be at least as open to interpretation as the constitution has been recently, hanging as it does, on the venerable brass roller there in the west wing hygiene suite.
π
I really did like Red. No money was really going to save him. He was just going to give a lot of cash to health care executives. So he chose an alternative path. I don’t think I have his stones. Though I would like to have the right to choose a different path when the time comes. Bastards can’t even let us choose our own path while they are fucking us to the bitter end with their right-to-life Schiavo bullshit.
Good to see you DF. Some good in the world.
couldn’t help noticing that when my grandmother was good for the bottom line they couldn’t do enough to keep her alive but when she required assisted care living arrangements suddenly talking hospice became all the HMO wanted to talk about. They wanted her in hospice a full year before she finally went.
Hey Military Tracy. I’m not surprised you would be in Red’s camp. And it is more than crappy that Grandma gets treated like a commodity. I’m thinking that getting sent out with the ice flow like in the old native legends would be a better thing than getting bled out by the medical-insurance industry.
There’s a really funny thing about “revolution”. The ruling class never knows it’s coming until it’s already upon them. even the masses are often caught by surprise when the first real “spark” of revolution ignites.
We are closer now to revolution here in America than we’ve been since the founding.
Thanks to an unexpected disability, I now belong to the poor and infirm underclass, after a 45 year career of working with “them”, as an RN.
This statement bothers me, DF. “Many people, including myself, have commented recently on the remarkable meekness of the American underclass.”
When every moment of every day is completely absorbed by the struggle to meet basic survival needs, and to stay alive with poor to no health care, you are not necessarily “meek”, you are exhausted. You need to sleep so you can do it all again the next day. There is no energy left to protest, or fight back, especially when you know no one listens to those considered “invisible” in this country. You prioritize, in order to survive. Americans who have never been forced into survival level living simply have no idea of how much courage and stamina it requires. To here (my) underclass labeled as “meek”, just doesn’t work for me. (Hell, it bothers me to have it called an “UNDERclass” too, for that matter. Under who?)
This is courage, not meekness. Those who are truly “meek” usually don’t survive at all, or live out tragic lives full of terrible suffering. The rest of us build the very best lives we can, with what we have. Without the luxury of material comforts or luxuries like vacations, we learn a lot about the true value of community, of genuinely caring, the power of relationships well tended, and the pleasure of the sheer freedom of a simple life well lived day by day. You learn to truly appreciate life in non material ways, which is where it’s true value lies.
In many many ways, I feel richer now, by far, than I ever did when I was literally chained to exploitive employers so I could make the payments on all my “material evidence of success” and a literal slave to taking care of all I “owned.”
It is not a great idea to judge any class of people, until you have been a member of that class of people, as I’ve learned the hard way. “Rich” is not necessarily better than “poor”. Easier? Hell, yes. Better? Not necessarily, not in my world, where the intangible measures of sucess are the yardstick.
As for your Mom, Boston Joe, she deserves ten medals of honor for raising you all, as a single Mom and a waitress at the Moose club. She is just tired now, not frail. Frail women can’t do what she did. I’m so glad you are willing to, and can, be there for her now.
I always valued growing up “poor.” I use quotation marks because it is a relative term. I mean compared to some in U.S., and many overseas, who grew up in same timeframe, I’m sure they wouldn’t think of my life as poor. We usually had food and a roof.
Mom was completely a hero in a sad world.
I don’t take DF’s comments on “underclass” as any kind of disparagement. I don’t think he or she meant them as personal in any way. He/she and I share a world view in some sense, though we are very different people. I think we both look very critically on the macro structures that effect the lives of people in this planet. Much of what I write would be labeled by those on the “right” as class-warfare in some way. But frankly, I’m just trying to focus on people. Even the damn people working in the corporate world. They are people. This system of state-capitalism, which is just accepted as a given beyond debate by most in the U.S., is ruining our planet. That is my humble assessment after 39 years of watching. I could be wrong. But the more I see, the more I believe I am only beginning to understand the truth. It is a systematic destruction of people. Worse. Of other life. Perhaps not always malicious. Maybe even rarely so. But it is happening anyway.
I think thinking and writing about those ideas is a good thing. It gives others the courage to think and talk and write. And perhaps, given time, to actually start changing. So I’m a fan of DF’s thoughts. I’m quite certain from my interactions with him/her that he/she would be more than sympathetic to your personal experiences. As am I. I’m horrified by what I’m seeing. Tons of us. You. Slipping to someplace that isn’t anywhere near the American ideal I grew up with. Maybe my goals for what a good place this country should be, or could be again, are too high. But I don’t think so. If we put people ahead of profit, I’m convinced we could all live in a more dignified place.
But I agree with your comments as to valuing non-material things. And think that the want of the material is the root of what is driving this madness. But I don’t blame it on individuals I guess. I think they are systematically indoctrinated to want and consume as cogs in this machine. To the service of profit.
Wow. Sometimes I just can’t shut up.
Later.
I could have worded my response more effectively, as I certainly don’tsee DF, or you as being disparaging in any way whatsoever. I think I am just paying a lot more attention to language these days, because it is such a powerful influence. So much of our language is heirarchal,amd unintenttionally implies value or lack of value, no matter who is using it. No way around it I suppose.
And no way could I agree more with you on placing people above profit, or at least equal in importance to it.. as the only way we’re every going to get back to anything real in this country.
My life experiences, one of which did render me homeless for a period of time, and some that landed me amidst the poor of other cultures, are what opened my eyes wide..to the potential positive side of “poverty”. It does carry an strong element of freeom, I’ve found. In each of these experiences, I was stunned at the way people worked together and cared for each other: how willing they were to extend help to a stranger, and the surprising amount of joy and pleasure in living I found among those I previously thought were so miserable all the time. I found a sense of genuine “community” and concern for the common good still in existance among those with few material resources, that I could not find in my own white culture, which seemed to just wash it’s hands of me, once I was no longer productive enough, and couldn’t present enough material evidence of sucess to prove my “worth.”
Yes. This culture has been well programmed to “want” more and more, by our current profit/power driven systems. This is, in my opinion, slowly destroying our humanity, our dignity, and the necessary core belief in the ‘common good” a healthy society has to have.
Please do NOT ever shut up, ever, Joe. Writers like you and DF are what give me the most hope that someday, things just might turn rightside up again.
My favorite theory, scribe, is that our “culture” has mutated into the sort of beast that manufactures the kinds of bodyminds it needs in order to perpetuate itself. Nearly every cultural information system that we encounter from the time that we are small children until the time that we are grown people is the sort of system that teaches us that a person’s value comes from external sources, such as the sort of job they have, the sort of house they have, the sort of car they have, and the sort of things they have power-over, the sorts of things that they control.
We’re not taught that there’s inherent worth in us as creatures, or that power-sharing is a better ethic than power-hoarding. We’re often taught that the things we do are far less important than the things we can control. It’s a power-over ethos from top to bottom — literally.
Hence Red’s decision becomes clear. He probably perceived himself as having become a liability (as if a good man could ever be a liability), and that controlling his own death such as not to “become a burden on his loved ones” was thus the “most honorable” option in his mind. And that’s exactly the decision that the people who are hoarding all the power want those without much power to make. They wish to perpetuate this system of things, and we should resist it because we deserve better than a last trip to the tool shed. But resistance is very tricky because it goes against nearly everything we have ever been taught, from every system from Saturday morning cartoons right on through to law school (to choose examples at random).
If I am understanding DuctapeFatwa correctly, that’s what he means by meekness. The meekness refers to the acceptance of this arrangement of values and the lack of open revolt against it, not to the far greater courage it requires to survive poverty in the first place.
Couldn’t have said that any better.
Even the poor and infirm. Even those who do not produce profit.
As scribe says, material values are not what it is all about. Someone may not “produce” in material terms, but he or she still has value, he or she is still well worth having his or her needs met.
Just as the labor of the humblest worker is at the very least, worth that worker’s survival.
The problem is that too many Americans have accepted and internalized the concept that their value is measured in material wealth, either what they have, or what they can produce, accepted the judgment of the “free market” that they are worthless.
Thanks for sharing scribe. On your own experiences. And on the whole language thing. I guess our language has been co-opted in a number of ways. So I’m glad there are those willing to examine these things closely.
The underclass are those who are, as you say, considered invisible, to whom no one, meaning no one with the resources and ability to do anything about it, listens. They do not listen because there is no need for them to listen, there is no profit in it for them.
Who is the underclass under? Under the rich, the politicians, their corporate sponsors. Under the people who, as you point out, have a great obsession for acquisition of material things. So great is that obsession that they would rather buy two loaves of bread and throw one away than give it to someone who has none.
So different are their values that they would rather spend a dollar to kill someone else’s child than a dime to care for their own. That is who the underclass is under.
As you point out, the “truly “meek” usually don’t survive at all, or live out tragic lives full of terrible suffering.”
Yes, exactly. Like BostonJoe’s friend Red. To either live out one’s tragic life of terrible suffering, or blow one’s brains out. That is considered, in American culture, to be dignity, to be courage.
Sort of an economic honor killing, an “intngible measure of success.”
In the whole sorry history of feudalism and greed, every single correction has come from serfs for whom “every moment of every day is completely absorbed by the struggle to meet basic survival needs, and to stay alive with poor to no health care.”
If they were able to meet basic needs and have discretionary resources left over, there would be no need for an intifada, no need for a correction. They would not be invisible, they would not be serfs, they would not be an underclass.
To insist on one’s human rights, to insist that a day’s work – any work – should at the very least equal the cost of a day’s survival, is hardly to eschew “true value of community, of genuinely caring, the power of relationships well tended, and the pleasure of the sheer freedom of a simple life well lived day by day.”
On the contrary, all those things are enhanced, even made possible, by a roof over one’s head, adequate food, and medical treatment.
There are those who argue that it just hasn’t gotten bad enough yet. That there are simply not enough poor Americans dying in the streets, simply not enough parents clawing at the trash dumpsters, fighting over half-rotted scraps to take home to their children, not even enough “middle class” people coming up against the reality that it is either grandma’s medicine this month, or the mortgage.
Maybe those folks are right. We will find out before too long.
Interesting discussion you sparked DF. Makes me examine the whole “Parable of Red” in a new light. I mean, I truly believe that I admired Red for his actions. And it just shows how deep the indoctrination is. They’ve gotten to me, and I don’t even know it. But that’s how I feel. Better dead than burdensome. Horrible. Horrible. Horrible thought.
Love the idea that the value of a days work should be equivalent to the value of a days need (and I would go farther — because we have sufficient wealth/technology — that the value of 1/2 days work should equal the value of a days needs. Why is that such a ludicrous thought to capitalists? Why can’t we focus on having full, dignified, sustainable lives for people. If we made that a top three priority, or elevated it to the priority of national defense spending, it seems to me that we could achieve a far fairer world. And what is stopping us? I’m seeing these South American countries beginning to vote with a people’s voice. And I have to say that I want it to spread north like a wild fire. And I’m hearing flak in the MSM (radio broadcasts mostly) criticizing these democratically elected voices of the people. Calling them reckless. Calling them names. Socialists. Bad for business. Unpragmatic. And worse. All because these leaders have the nerve to say that people ought to be placed ahead of the priorities of profit. I like that warm wind blowing. And I fear that it may lead to a harch snuffing by the corporate powers in this hemisphere — to try to extinghuish it before it begins to run.
An indication of how extreme the situation has become – that simple principle of a day’s pay for a day’s work, that the day’s pay should at least equal a day’s survival – is considered now to be “socialist.”
It is not. It is a fundamental without which capitalism cannot exist.
Remember the idea of capitalism is that management will reward the worker, who makes him profit, with a share of that profit, thus providing an incentive for the worker to make more money for management, and also allowing the worker to amass – guess what? – capital!
With that capital, he can purchase goods and services, or he can save it, go into business for himself, competing with his former employer, thus constituting competition and providing his employer with an incentive to produce a better product and/or sell at a lower price.
The idea of capitalism is to have that capital be in MORE hands, that is what a prosperous society means, that is what economic progress means.
Once the value of a day’s work falls below the price of a day’s survival, you no longer have capitalism, you have feudalism.
Management is not doing the worker a favor by paying him a living wage, not giving him a handout. He is paying him for work done, and increasing the chances that his grandchildren, and the workers’ grandchilden, will grow up an environment more prosperous and economically progressive than Rwanda.
My favorite analogy about economies (which if you have already read more than 7 times, skip this part) is the four year old and his dinner.
If you give the child nothing but cake, he will get sick.
However, if you give him nothing but broccoli, he will also get sick, he will stop eating it, with no incentive of cake if he does.
Thus, if you would have a functional economy and a successful state, once you have fed and housed and doctored your people, you can have a big bowl of capitalism with whipped free market on top!
In other words, like a balanced diet must have more than one kind of food, so a healthy economy must have some socialism and some capitalism.
And just like there is no place in any diet for cyanide, there is no place in any economy for feudalism.
I can’t say I’m enough of a student of history to know much about fuedalism. I can say, from my legal studies, that at least in fuedalism — as awful as it sounds — there were obligations that a lord had to meet. You know. You were a vassal. Your lord was your protector (tyrant). But your lord needed your labor. Needed you as a soldier. So it was somewhat symbiotic.
What I see today, with our tyranny, is less sybiotic. I think. The only thing the ruling class needs us for is to consume. We are a herd of cud chewing cattle. A burden to them. And they are shedding their responsibilities to protect us as valued vassals. You know.
Interesting, interesting discussion. But I don’t know. No answers. Only questions.
One thing about capitalism. You said, “The idea of capitalism is to have that capital be in MORE hands, that is what a prosperous society means, that is what economic progress means.”
I never learned this. And I don’t see it in practice. It seems to me that unfettered capitalism always results in the same thing. Monopolistic control by an operator. Robber barons. Exploiters of us all. Railroad companies of “The Octopus.” Standard Oil. MicroSoft. Wal-Mart. They are all playing the game. And winning. But it is the game that sucks. Because when maximizing profits is your only goal — then the system is going to end up looking like ours. And in need of a correction. I think.
Fwiw, Foucault says something like that the primary differences between feudal systems and our modern systems of government are the nature of the power relations and the methods of discipline.
By which he means, roughly: feudal lords governed with the threat of death. They had the power of death over their subjects and the subjects had little motivation to hold much allegiance to their lords outside of whatever was expedient to their immediate needs and/or fears. But the advent of modern governments changed two key aspects of those relations: one, the power of the government switched from the threat of death to the regulation of life processes, and two, this changed the nature of being a subject to being a citizen, which has a whole host of different power relations. I did a diary a while back partially on these ideas, quoting myself here:
‘Docile’ bodies are easy to manipulate, to change, and to inscribe with normalizations of whichever categories are useful in any given scheme of power relations–for example, scientific categories like medical/psychiatric definitions of ‘normal sexuality’. In a detailed analysis in Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison Foucault describes how the disciplinary power employed by the state produces not only ‘docile’ bodies, but also utilizes constant surveillance to produce a state of mind “that assures the automatic functioning of power.” (p. 201) We are not constantly observed directly by regulating authorities of the state, but we constantly watch ourselves and each other for signs of deviance; we police ourselves and each other into ‘normality’.
“Normality” also includes morals & values. Anywhere we could pick up information about morals and values, whether church, school, your neighborhood, or the Girl/Boy Scouts, would all likely teach us variations on the same theme of morals & values — to be stark and direct about it, almost all of them will teach us that when we find ourselves in Red’s context it’s better to blow our own heads off than to revolt, or to behave in such a way as to induce others to revolt.
Which is a good enough illustration of why we must revolt. π
(Disclaimer: I’m playing a little fast and loose with Foucault here because I think he would not mind.)
FWIW? That was worth a lot in my book. Excellent stuff. Not familiar with Focault. Sounds like good reading.
One, all isms look better on paper than in actual practice.
Two is related, the money word from your post “unfettered.”
Just as socialism, unfettered, can twist itself into North Korea, so capitalism, unfettered, can twist itself into the US. Or Somalia.
Back in the day, the obligations of the lord were, not unlike the obligations of the slaveholder, up to him, subject to the laws of supply and demand.
If he wanted his workers to have a longer shelf life, he fed them, doctored them, etc. If for reasons of economic or other resources or circumstances, the supply of his labor was plentiful enough, he could follow the model adopted by the US today: simply replace the unusables.
Wal-Mart abraded a few sensibilities a few weeks ago when they acknowledged strategies to hire younger, healthier workers. They framed it a bit awkwardly, but most pragmatic American businesses do the same thing.
The supply of labor is so limitless, the individual value of a human being so low, even negative, in some cases, that there is no need for management to bother about how he treats his serfs. If they become unusable, or leave, there are always more ready to take their place.
People will do almost anything to feed and care for their families. This is true even of Americans, with the emphasis on almost. Convinced of their lack of worth beyond dollars and sense, they will not revolt.
I’m thinking, as some sythesis, in all this talk of ism, that a concept of anarcho-syndacalism as I’ve read about but poorly understood from Chomsky, might be an answer.
Something about the heirarchy of power structures being prone to abuse. Inherently enslaving. A true equality by elimination of heirarchy. Can markets exist without police forces? Do we/you believe that human nature is capable of good will? I do.
Obviously they are, people commit acts of goodwill every day.
It is not, however, the norm, I am sad to say.
Until the species evolves to the point where it is the norm, there is a need for laws. Hamurabi had it right.
Greed is a powerful force, and whatever its historico-anthropological use may once have been (gathering enough berries to last one over the winter), today it is the single greatest cause of suffering and harm of all kinds.
“Meek” may be just another expression of powerlessness.
You’d think that it would be enough just to exploit them by paying less that a living wage, threatening what little security they have, working them to death, freezing them out, starving them out, sending their children to rotten schools, trapping them in violent relationships, renting them fire traps, “containing” crime in their neighbourhoods, and denying them basic human services.
But it’s not enough.
The disenfranchised are BLAMED for their poverty. Efforts to better themselves by working off the books are criminalized. When the poor rent out the only thing they own, their bodies, they’re branded as immoral whores. Society tells them they must be lazy or stupid or bad because this is America, and anybody can pull himself up by his bootstraps and live out the American Dream.
Just like the slave owners who invented disparaging character traits to ascribe to blacks, the rich vilify the exploited underclass.
It makes it so much easier to kill people if you first label them as unworthy to live.
But your book is terrific!
Yeah. Reality wasn’t very cheery, was it. Sorry. Didn’t mean to get back and become an immediate downer.
Glad you are liking (or liked) the book. It is really gratifying to hear that people like it. Particularly progressive people.
And a point of information for others who might read this — and don’t know me — or BooMan recent history. I read in BooMan’s open thread the other day that he is struggling with reality checks of his own. Mainly, rent. And then he went on and listed my book at the Boo Store, as if buying a copy were going to help the BMT. That was very kind of our blog host. But in reality he was just helping me out when he listed my book a couple of months back. He makes paltry amounts from book. Better folks buy Boo Bumper Stickers if they are shopping. The real BooMan should not have to worry about where the next box of Milk Bones will come from. Not while his owner is providing a public service in giving us this space — so that we might at least compare notes in the seeming twilight of our Republic.
about 1 or 2 chapters left.
I am about giving new authors, singers, politicians. etc., my money, attention etc.
I am so sick of the same famous authors, movies stars, politicians getting more and more all the time.
I refuse to go to the movies and seldom watch any if I have to dish out money. They got enough and don’t deserve mine or my support. I stopped reading Stephen King, etc., years ago, even though I liked him, because I know Most of us nobody’s are capable of just as good a product. We just haven’t had the ‘luck’.
So any readers out there please support Terry’s book Direct Actions! It’s as good as any Grisham novel I’ve read. Seriously!
Thanks for the props and support Roseeriter. I don’t think you’ve come to the end just yet. And I don’t want to play spoiler. But I always love to hear what people think about the ending. E-mail me is you want. Just love the reactions sometimes.
I should have time to finish this weekend and I’ll let ya know!
Hey Joe – I missed you! So you came to Florida without visiting me. Oh well, that east side is a whole nother world. Glad to see you back.
I’m sorry. I would have vistited had I thought of it. But even on vacation life has a schedule, you know. Especially when you are hanging with relatives. So even if I would’ve known, I might not have gotten away. Good news — I liked weather so much, I’m planning on going back in March for some spring training and a book signing in Miami area, if you want to come out then. More details as they become available.
What a bitch to find that reality is still there when you drop back into the real world after taking a couple of weeks to tan or lobsterize as the case may be ;o)
Me, I’m glued to reality. My family wonders how, and why!, I choose to stay connected to the truth as if the truth is wearing me down! Shit…the truth is about all i feel I have left in this fucked up world. But it does sometimes feel like I’m watching my own, and my country’s demise and being too morbidly fascinated to look away. But in the end I’m in it for better or less better and I’ll say what I think no matter what patriot act soldier may be listening to me. I really don’t give a fuck. That is how they control you. The truth is the truth. Fuck them. Fuck all of them. My children are being taught that it’s better to be honest and at risk then to be tiptoeing around with your mouth shut and your mind closed.
Hey super. Met some long islander over the holiday. Mentioned I knew you. Felt very wordly, as I’ve never been able to talk about long island before. Talked about the difference between the shores, north and south. Pure bullshit, having never been there. But it worked. Thanks. Glad you are a voice of truth. You and that flag. It seems like there are many, many of us out there. You know. When you start speaking up about these things. So who knows. Maybe “everything is gonna be — all right.”
Glad to see you here friend. The pond is only as good as the frogs that inhabit it you know, so seeing you here doing the backstroke again is cool.
You do know that half of Florida is made up of ex-Long Islanders don’t you? Part of why I don’t like the place so much anymore. I lived in West Palm for many years. It used to be nice when you could still find a relatively uncrowded, non-public beach to go snorkeling off of, but those days are long gone. Nowadays you have to belong to a condo association to access the beach. Not wishing any harm to anyone but I suspect that Mother (nature) has an eventual plan for all those beach blocking buildings ;o) It’s only a matter of time like everything else. Every little thing is gonna be alright :o) With thanks to Mr. Marley.
Peace
Another ex-Long Islander here, thanking you for this reality check. And yet medicaid funding has just been cut (although medicaid is no subsitute for regular health insurance), extra food stamp funding has been denied to the 5 states seeking it (including NY) and student loans funding slashed (but that’s another diary). At the abyss indeed.
Yeah. That was a neat trick. I was at my Congressman’s office protesting the cuts. What was it. $35 million. Or $50. The numbers escape me. And at the same time the renewal or continuation of a $75 million tax break for the wealthy. We had maybe 20 people protesting it. My pet theory is that they just keep us too busy with the day to day bullshit, and then just keep doing more and more outrageous shit daily, so that most can’t keep up and quit.
Ductape Fatwa may be onto something. A revolution. But I’m hoping for a peaceful one. I like the idea of masses surrounding public buildings. Bringing government to a stop by the sheer force of numbers. Not unlike the Ukraine.
I also considered myself a lefty although some said I was to radical in my thinking(most especially on social issues but what’s so radical about wanting everyone in this country to be taken care of/given a fair shake and treated with dignity and compassion?) but I’ve gone beyond that and happen to agree with Duct also that nothing short of a revolution-and I mean a popular uprising/taking to the streets and overthrowing the powers that be-whether they are republican or chickenshit democrats…fuck being a centrist etc-it’s past time to do something.
I agree. See the link in my sig line for some ideas you may find useful for the oncoming ruckus.
That is a really cool link. Love things that try to educate like that — on ways we can fight for democracy. And be non-violent about it.
I keep waiting for things to get so awful that they can’t be ignored by masses. But I don’t know if that day will ever come. Some of what I’ve read/seen suggests to me that in the 30s, with the Great Depression, we were very near a revolutionary change, and that FDR’s embrace of socializing programs to help people averted it. Perhaps for some self-serving purpose of the ruling class. To protect a system of continued capitalism that places profit over people. And now I see that the ruling class has forgotten the point of those reforms. That if there is no safety net, eventually things will get so bad, that there will be revolutionary forces thrown into action. That’t just my pop-culture take on the recent history.
This was a really great diary. Thank you. I just wanted to point out another great article on this very issue that is at the top of the page on http://www.alternet.org. While it is a tad more economy based it does talk about how most Americans really are doing worse today that they were five years ago and that the so-called booming economy is more or less a fiction for most of us.
Great to see you back!
Aw shucks! Thanks. Uh-huh.
You know I’ve drifted pretty far outside what is considered mainstream thought when I tell you that I stopped reading alternet because I thought they were too centrists for me. But I’ll take a look at the article. Thanks.
BostonJoe, as an occasional lurker and once-in-a-blue moon poster here, I wanted you to know I just spent half an hour mucking around trying to remember my log in and password just so I could jump in and tell you how moving this piece is.
I live in Australia and, although our health care system is surely far from perfect, we do have universal health care and I’ve never met or heard of anyone who can’t afford some level of health treatment, or who can’t afford prescription drugs. I’ve never met or heard of anyone who’s been sent into bankruptcy because of health care costs.
I don’t have any health insurance, but I’ve never been refused hospital treatment (I’ve had two kids in hospitals — cost nothing, spent 11 days in hospital in 1999 — cost me $0,) there is a doctor a few blocks away who will see me for free (sure, on most occasions I’ll pay to see a doctor I prefer, but the government will refund all but about $15 of what he charges.)
Australia currently has a budget surplus, despite this rampant socialism <sarcasm> so if a little country like ours can manage it, what kind of crap management makes it impossible in the US?
Of course our Bush-loving conservative government is doing it’s best to take us down the path that will lead us to where the US is now.
We signed a free trade agreement with the US last year (reward for us joining Poland, Tonga and the Marshall Islands in the Coalition of the Willing) and one of the stories we keep hearing is that US Pharma companies want us to remove the protection we give to our citizens against high prescription drug prices. So far, we’ve held out, but it scares the hell out of me when I look at the US and see what happens when these bastards get their way. I just hope we get rid of our government and you get rid of yours before I hit retirement age.
I’ve made friends with an retired lady in Detroit who worked all her life and now tells me she has to rely on her daughters chipping in to cover her pharmaceutical costs.
What is happening to the US? Honestly, sometimes I think a lot of people inside the country can’t see how it looks from the outside. There are so many things the world admires about the US — but there are also aspects of US society are truly pitiable.
Thanks again for your post.
No, no. Thank you for your post. It is nice to hear from folks outside the U.S. Though, you know, by talking like this I fear we have set ourselves up for “lawful” NSA intercepts by heir Bush.
Your post reminds me of a funny thing. Most Americans I know. They are too fucking proud to admit how completely fucked their country is. Or maybe they are too brainwashed. I don’t know. But even if you tell them your system takes better care of you, they will still get together in private and say, “We live in the greatest damned Country in the world. No better system ever invented.” You just can’t tell us any damn thing. It is fucking laughable. Dragging the entire planet under and completely self-deluded. At least 90% of us, in my self-assessment of attitudes in this country.
Good luck saving your country from our fascism. That’s what it is. I’ll call it like I see it. It is not Nazism or Stalinism. But it is some strange combination of capitalism and Christian self-aggrandizement. Manifest in the Bush administration. And we’re collecting allies. Like your PM. And Blair. And you know. Making a list. Checking it twice. Get on board or get trash-talked like Venezuala. Cuba. Any place that tries to do it different. Not only wrong. Evil. They say. With us or agains us. I’m so not wanting to be here.
You’ve touched on something that has always flabbergasted me: how can one possible reconcile Jesus of Nazareth’s teachings with sociopathic, rapacious Capitalism ? What kind of mental gymnastics does it take to fit those two things together ?
They must have to go about blinkered, with their fingers in their ears, humming loudly to themselves, just to keep the reality out.
horrific crimes against humanity with Version 1 of the Arbrahamic OS, a millennias-old tradition of peace and tolerance whose main theological focus is trying to learn more about God.
In the same way that some Muslims ‘reconcile’ terrorism against women with the teachings of the Prophet, who in Version 3, astonished his audience by declaring women as equals of men.
And in the same way that every year, we can count on some wacky Hindus to ‘reconcile’ another millennias-old tradition of peace and unity with running around strip malls destroying cardboard Valentine’s Day displays.
The problem is not with the religions themselves, but with the readiness of a certain sector of humans to issue inner decrees that the religion’s originators REALLY meant any number of things that have nothing to do with any religion, and are for the most part, in direct conflict with all religions.
Here is a useful prayer, suitable for people of all faiths:
O God, please save me from your followers.
Yeah. A lot of Christianity just doesn’t fit for me. I mean, there was some half-assed attempt for the culture to indoctronate me, so that I could be a fully functioning cog. But it just didn’t take. One of the best things I’ve read this year on the Internet was DarkSyde’s dKos diaries about atheism. Helped me own up to my own agnosticism/atheism.
I honestly think Christ, as a historical figure or a mythical figure, stood for so much good. I like the morals of the stories. I like the lessons. If people would actually practice them. But I think you are right. They just don’t fit in a “get mine” culture. And we get some fucked-up self-righteous political-economic-religious-social fascism. Just my opinon.
Hey, I visited the US last year and got a thorough search at every friggin’ airport. My luggage unpacked, swabbed for explosives, you name it, I got it. Figured either middle aged Aussie women are notorious for terrorist leanings, or they’ve been monitoring my US political blog activity. So, I’m not worried about drawing further attention to myself. You, I figure, are on their list anyway, so let’s carry on. When it comes to rendition time, perhaps we’ll find ourselves at the same eastern European facility π
Anyhoo … funny you should say what you said about Americans believing they live in the greatest country on earth and not liking hearing otherwise … I find myself self-censoring and being careful with how I say what I say precisely because it makes Americans aggressive when I point out something about Australia that I think’s better than in the US. Even making my previous post, I reworded it quite a few times because I know how sensitive Americans can be to be told something is better in another country. In Australia, we grow up with a healthy cynicism about our own nation because we’ve never had much to puff our chests out about anyway. (Although there is a worrying trend towards nationalism developing, we’ve still got a way to go matching the US in flag-waving.)
It’s one of the reasons Americans are so unpopular internationally. So many of them cling to the self-delusion that everything is better in their country, just because they come from the most powerful country in the world. Truth is they are living in the most powerful country in the world and they’re being screwed royally. Most Americans are so unaware of the rest of the world that they’ve got nothing to compare their own situation with. That’s why I try to (politely) check off a few realities with Americans from time to time.
I became caught up in US politics in the lead up to the Iraq war because I realised that no matter what the rest of us do in the “free” world, we’re all going down with you guys if you go down. Our democracies all depend on the US not fucking up monumentally, and, right now, the signs aren’t good.
But, through getting involved in US political blogs I’ve discovered how many Americans do see how wrong things are in their country, and it’s totally changed my attitude. Wish I could do more to help.
Sometimes the best I can do is tell people like you to keep speaking out and say how much I appreciate the way you do it.
when you post here..I think most people here have a good idea of the cons/pros’s of this country and an outsiders more objective opinion about how we are perceived is more than welcome…if we don’t know how we’re perceived by people like yourself than we’ll never know how bad or good the country is regarded…or how to help change things. A personal story like that goes a long way to show what things have come to in this country.
Besides I’m always interested in the perspective of an middle-aged Aussie woman who is apparently a closet terrorist…
I agree with what CI has said here.
I think we are in dire need of outside-the-US viewpoints, as even those of us who think we know what is actually happening here are continually running into unhappy surprises.
Yeah, me too.
Don’t sugarcoat it on my account. Your insight and comments are appreciated..
…oh, and sorry about all that shit you had to go through at the airports.
π
What they said.
I saw some ad or comment from the frigging wingnuts asking “were we really bad off?” Well screw them. Me personally is definitely not better off financially, but I am happier with the penny ante clerk job putting bandaids on kids than with the high powered corporate rat race where I was making good money. But my kids may have to help me in a few years because my little squirrels nestegg is tiny. And some of them will have two sets of parents to try to save from destitution. Along with kids to put through school.
As a country we are such a far cry from 6 years ago. I don’t think our government then would allow the travesty of NOLA to occur. There are still bodies not buried there and yet they have a death toll count??? WTF?? I guess people who listen to Jack Abramoff don’t have to be able to do math.
Yeah. I laugh daily at the economic reports I read. The rah-rah cheerleader bullshit. Unemployment claims fell. Just keeping hearing Big Brother from 1984. Production is up, you are doing great. Rations are down, there is a war. Just open eyes and ears and talk to people who are not CEOs and figure out if you think the economy is doing great. For most, who aren’t absolutely indoctrinated, I think they tell you times are tough. Getting tougher. Cover me.
Hey Boston, very glad your back, missed your diaries and a great diary to come back with…and great discussions going on here also. I hope this diary hangs around for a bit so I can add my 2cents. This is a subject-well not so much a subject as the life I’m living being on SSD/SSI and quite dependent on my sister to help make my living conditions such as I am insulated a bit from the reality of my own circumstances.
Anyway it’s been a long day for me and I have to get off the computer but hope to post some more tomorrow.
Oh yeah, the new ‘drug plan’ that started on the first now means that instead of paying nothing for my drugs(as was considered hardship case and had Medicaid paying for all but one prescription) I will be paying about 20 dollars a month or so and about 240 a year for my permanent prescriptions and that doesn’t count if anything else comes up…some savings right-from 0 to at least 240 a year..and again lucky for me my sister will be paying the tab.
I’m glad you are able to help your Mom out and as you say also about the niece who called you and you were able to help out…and that is the real trick also when you have to accept help like this is not to be humiliated or even become angry at the person who helps you. Becoming dependent on a family member can make for a whole new set of mental problems or depression if you let it or the family member who helps out happens to be a complete jerk about it.
And Batshit Prez just gave a speech somewhere the fuck today and I heard him say how fucken swell the economy is doing…better than it has in over 30 years or some such fucken looney toon horseshit-is he really so completely fucken blind-don’t answer that-he doesn’t care and just goes out and says that cause it sounds good whether it bears any resemblance to the fucken truth or the REALITY of real peoples lives or not…and I said I wasn’t going to write anything didn’t I. More tomorrow I hope.
Sorry you are a living example of this shit CI. If I half to listen to that chimp tell me again how the war is going well and the economy is booming, I honestly think I’m going to have a Sharon-like brain event. At least I couldn’t hear the fucking President anymore, though. So that wouldn’t be a bad trade off.
Welcome back! I missed your incisive wit,not to mention snark!
I never realized I had a snark. Until I came here.