The Republican pundits and blogsters are all aghast at the passage of healthcare reform. I guess that they are irritated that the record for biggest entitlement increase in generations is now held by the Democrats. Previously the Repubs had held the title with the Medicare Prescription Drug benefit. Those pesky Dems have taken the lead and don't seem to be looking back. And now O'Reilly and Hannity drone on and on about the eviscerated Constitution. Interesting that there wasn't much talk from the neocon mouthpieces of what the Patriot Act did to the document. They are born again constitutionalists now that the Democrats are in charge.
The great thing about "Health Care Reform" is that there is no money to pay for it. I cheer the passage of any bill that hastens the bankruptcy of the federal government. The only way guaranteed to slow government growth/power is bankruptcy. Most folks fail to understand that government is a giant leech on the neck of the economy. There is no economy positive thing that government does. Fortunately for us, the pillagers currently in power don't have the sense of an untrained billy goat. They will eat everything until there is no more food. One can hope that then they starve.
This has happened before. The governments of France, Great Britain, Rome, the USSR and numerous other great powers lost their collective minds and over pillaged their peoples until there was no more stuff to take. Then they shrunk and lost power. This is the inevitable cycle with human depravity being what it is and government of humans being what it is. The Republicans usually understand that the best way to properly steal is to do it slowly so as not to kill off the golden goose. This is the main debate on the Hill: how to pillage properly for maintenance of long term rewards at the expense of those actually working.
Some of you may say that the above is just my opinion, I am a reactionary and that I fail to see the big picture yada yada yada... To you all, I would point out that 1 Samuel 8 states clearly what central governments do. If you don't like 1 Samuel take a look at the writings of Frederic Bastiat, Murray Rothbard, Frederich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, or Hans Herman Hoppe.
So all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah. They said to him, "You are old, and your sons do not walk in your ways; now appoint a king to lead us, such as all the other nations have."....Samuel told all the words of the LORD to the people who were asking him for a king. He said, "This is what the king who will reign over you will do: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. Your menservants and maidservants and the best of your cattle and donkeys he will take for his own use. He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and the LORD will not answer you in that day."
Ask yourself if this is where we are at now? The worst of both worlds is at hand in our egalitarian democracy. We have a strong central government that is capable of taking whatever it wants with or without (quite obviously) the consent of the governed. Every four years the people cry out for a new president that will give them what the other governments around us have. We begged the government for security and got the Patriot Act. We begged the government for jobs and got the Stimulus. We begged the government for drugs and healthcare and we got it. Just like Israel, we get what we ask for each time at the cost of eroding our freedoms and national character. This last election cycle we sold our freedoms for the paltry sum of "Change." I would say that we got what we asked for this week.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Who is John Galt.....?
Some of you may have read Ayn Rand's classic Atlas Shrugged. The book chronicles the slow melt down of the United States as those that know how to make things work are given no incentive to provide that expertise to the populace. I am not an adherent of the Objectivist school of philosophy. However, I find many parallels between Atlas Shrugged and the events of today's era.
Rand shows us a world where, in order to be successful, it is necessary to curry favor with the appropriate bureaucrat. This is as it is currently in our glorious plutocracy. If you are a bank, it would appear that you need to engage Tim Geithner. If you are a drug company, you need to lobby one of the key swing senators who can influence health-care legislation. Of course, heavy industry needs to make sure that they have the right bureaucrat on board in case Obama manages to get off the mat enough to start some type of climate change legislation.
Rand further describes how those that do produce on their own are stifled by regulation and changing legislation. This is exactly what is currently happening. Investors are finding it nearly impossible to figure out what to invest in and what to stay away from because new regulation is always on the horizon. The most egregious example of this is the recent proposal to break up and enhance regulation on large financial institutions. Banks and their investors had planned on their current business model for the foreseeable future but, with these proposals, it is unclear whether that model is viable. When government regulation of any given business changes, the investor and management must adjust to a new set of parameters within which to run their business. This changing of the rules in mid-game causes investors to potentially change their strategies for deploying their monies which can be devastating to the businesses that depend on that money. To illustrate what I mean, ask yourself whether or not you would invest in health insurance companies right now or wait for the health care bill to pass.
As the government fiddles with all manner of private business, we continously see that unforeseen second and third order effects happen that stymie innovation and the road to recovery. The decision by the Federal Reserve to pay interest on excess reserves is a case study. The rule was put into place so that banks could build up reserves and still make some money to help them stay in business. The second order effect was that they now don't have to lend out their money to the public in order to stay in business. The third order effect is that all of the Fed's money pumping is not making it into the economy to stoke the recovery. There is a potential that that money will be deployed swiftly and cause inflation once banks are less risk averse than they are now. There are numerous other examples where federal meddling in the private sector is making it increasingly difficult to make financial decisions. This is causing the private sector to withdraw to safety rather than take reasonable risks based on foreseeable business parameters.
Although I know that it is not in vogue to praise free markets because it has been the received wisdom that the free market was what caused the recent downturn, let me speculate what may have happened if the market was allowed to work in one sector. If the government had allowed GM and Chrysler to go bankrupt several salutory events could very reasonably have happened. The unions back would have been broken, and the pricing of auto labor would have been brought into line with reality. Ford, the US automaker with the best business practices, would have increased market share which would have rewarded the best run US automaker. There would have been little reason to have the "Cash for Clunkers" program which would have helped a cash strapped US treasury. Money which was added to the deficit by the various auto bailout plans would be available to private entrepeneurs who may have spent the savings on building high speed rail systems to take the place of airlines whose business models look increasingly suspect in the current high fuel cost era. The trains would be much more "green" than getting GM and Chrysler to build a few E85 cars.
Alas this is not to be. Our society is instead rapidly dissolving into one that looks to influence beauracrats and elected officials to get our hands on an ever dwindling pot of federal handouts. I recently saw an add for the census that suggested that a good reason to complete census forms was so that your district could get the right amount of federal monies. Daily I hear adds from companies that suggest that because banks received bailouts on their problem loan books we should expect a bailout from our credit card debts. As more and more of our society become leeches, I wonder who will be left to produce the wealth that the we live off of.
In "Atlas Shrugged" Rand describes a world where the producers, led by a man named John Galt, one by one quit because they get tired of seeing the fruits of their labors given to others who had "connections." I fear that we will see that outcome if we continue on our current path. This is not without precedent. The USSR basically collapsed from within because of economic apathy. The communist leaders of China were discerning enough to understand what had happened and began to encourage policies that have loosened government controls on the market. These policies, although not as free a one would like, still have produced a minor economic miracle in the country.
I don't want to find out who is John Galt, but I am afraid that we will all meet him within my lifetime.
Rand shows us a world where, in order to be successful, it is necessary to curry favor with the appropriate bureaucrat. This is as it is currently in our glorious plutocracy. If you are a bank, it would appear that you need to engage Tim Geithner. If you are a drug company, you need to lobby one of the key swing senators who can influence health-care legislation. Of course, heavy industry needs to make sure that they have the right bureaucrat on board in case Obama manages to get off the mat enough to start some type of climate change legislation.
Rand further describes how those that do produce on their own are stifled by regulation and changing legislation. This is exactly what is currently happening. Investors are finding it nearly impossible to figure out what to invest in and what to stay away from because new regulation is always on the horizon. The most egregious example of this is the recent proposal to break up and enhance regulation on large financial institutions. Banks and their investors had planned on their current business model for the foreseeable future but, with these proposals, it is unclear whether that model is viable. When government regulation of any given business changes, the investor and management must adjust to a new set of parameters within which to run their business. This changing of the rules in mid-game causes investors to potentially change their strategies for deploying their monies which can be devastating to the businesses that depend on that money. To illustrate what I mean, ask yourself whether or not you would invest in health insurance companies right now or wait for the health care bill to pass.
As the government fiddles with all manner of private business, we continously see that unforeseen second and third order effects happen that stymie innovation and the road to recovery. The decision by the Federal Reserve to pay interest on excess reserves is a case study. The rule was put into place so that banks could build up reserves and still make some money to help them stay in business. The second order effect was that they now don't have to lend out their money to the public in order to stay in business. The third order effect is that all of the Fed's money pumping is not making it into the economy to stoke the recovery. There is a potential that that money will be deployed swiftly and cause inflation once banks are less risk averse than they are now. There are numerous other examples where federal meddling in the private sector is making it increasingly difficult to make financial decisions. This is causing the private sector to withdraw to safety rather than take reasonable risks based on foreseeable business parameters.
Although I know that it is not in vogue to praise free markets because it has been the received wisdom that the free market was what caused the recent downturn, let me speculate what may have happened if the market was allowed to work in one sector. If the government had allowed GM and Chrysler to go bankrupt several salutory events could very reasonably have happened. The unions back would have been broken, and the pricing of auto labor would have been brought into line with reality. Ford, the US automaker with the best business practices, would have increased market share which would have rewarded the best run US automaker. There would have been little reason to have the "Cash for Clunkers" program which would have helped a cash strapped US treasury. Money which was added to the deficit by the various auto bailout plans would be available to private entrepeneurs who may have spent the savings on building high speed rail systems to take the place of airlines whose business models look increasingly suspect in the current high fuel cost era. The trains would be much more "green" than getting GM and Chrysler to build a few E85 cars.
Alas this is not to be. Our society is instead rapidly dissolving into one that looks to influence beauracrats and elected officials to get our hands on an ever dwindling pot of federal handouts. I recently saw an add for the census that suggested that a good reason to complete census forms was so that your district could get the right amount of federal monies. Daily I hear adds from companies that suggest that because banks received bailouts on their problem loan books we should expect a bailout from our credit card debts. As more and more of our society become leeches, I wonder who will be left to produce the wealth that the we live off of.
In "Atlas Shrugged" Rand describes a world where the producers, led by a man named John Galt, one by one quit because they get tired of seeing the fruits of their labors given to others who had "connections." I fear that we will see that outcome if we continue on our current path. This is not without precedent. The USSR basically collapsed from within because of economic apathy. The communist leaders of China were discerning enough to understand what had happened and began to encourage policies that have loosened government controls on the market. These policies, although not as free a one would like, still have produced a minor economic miracle in the country.
I don't want to find out who is John Galt, but I am afraid that we will all meet him within my lifetime.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Harry Reid is a Jackass but not a Racist...
Over the last several days when listening to the news, I have had to resist the urge to stab myself in the ear with a pencil. This endless droning about Senate Majority "Leader" Harry Reid and his "racist" remarks is enough to wish oneself deaf. Aren't there enough substantive problems with Mr Reid's positions (Health Care Reform, Cap and Trade, Bankster Bailout, ad infinitum) to ensure the egregiously hypocritical Republicans don't have to drown us in this nonsense? Worse, because of their politically correct buffoonery, I am feeling compelled to write in the public sphere defending Mr Reid.
My thesis is two parts. Part A: Harry Reid is a jackass. I will not defend this because it is self-evident to any one with two brain cells to rub together and the capability to do 10 seconds of research on Mr Reid. If you are a supporter of the Democratic Party and cannot understand why I have stated the above, you can rest assured that you do not in fact have two brain cells to rub together.
Part B of my thesis, "Harry Reid is not a racist;" while it ought to be self-evident, must be defended. Our (U.S.) cultural presupposition of egalitarianism has made it so that we cannot say anything that does not support the logical idiocy of all men being equal. It is - of course - true that President Obama could not have gotten elected if he was eggplant colored and spoke in an ignorant ebonic type dialect. Mr Reid just stated the obvious truth. Why we have an aversion to truth in our country is difficult for me to understand but it is a fact. Racism is irrational malice towards someone because of his race. Mr Reid has not demonstrated irrational malice towards anyone other than this countries' taxpayers. Truth telling is a fairly rare occurrence for Mr Reid so he ought to be congratulated rather than castigated.
Further, while skin color is really a non-issue, the dialect of our Presidential candidates is supremely important. Why would we want an ignorant sounding president? The ebonic dialect is ignorant. It is not proper spoken English. There are plenty of other dialects that also should not be spoken by the President. Standard southern trailer park english is ignorant sounding and is roundly and justifiably made fun of. If a candidate spoke in a dialect that suggested that his main interests were WWE, Jersey Shore, Lynrd Skynrd and his new meth recipe, we rightly wouldn't vote him into the Presidency. By the same token we should not vote in one who sounds like "he be slappin some hos and biatches dat frontin' bout they work at the crack house." Although one could make an argument that a crack house manager may have been better than the choices we had in '08...
My thesis is two parts. Part A: Harry Reid is a jackass. I will not defend this because it is self-evident to any one with two brain cells to rub together and the capability to do 10 seconds of research on Mr Reid. If you are a supporter of the Democratic Party and cannot understand why I have stated the above, you can rest assured that you do not in fact have two brain cells to rub together.
Part B of my thesis, "Harry Reid is not a racist;" while it ought to be self-evident, must be defended. Our (U.S.) cultural presupposition of egalitarianism has made it so that we cannot say anything that does not support the logical idiocy of all men being equal. It is - of course - true that President Obama could not have gotten elected if he was eggplant colored and spoke in an ignorant ebonic type dialect. Mr Reid just stated the obvious truth. Why we have an aversion to truth in our country is difficult for me to understand but it is a fact. Racism is irrational malice towards someone because of his race. Mr Reid has not demonstrated irrational malice towards anyone other than this countries' taxpayers. Truth telling is a fairly rare occurrence for Mr Reid so he ought to be congratulated rather than castigated.
Further, while skin color is really a non-issue, the dialect of our Presidential candidates is supremely important. Why would we want an ignorant sounding president? The ebonic dialect is ignorant. It is not proper spoken English. There are plenty of other dialects that also should not be spoken by the President. Standard southern trailer park english is ignorant sounding and is roundly and justifiably made fun of. If a candidate spoke in a dialect that suggested that his main interests were WWE, Jersey Shore, Lynrd Skynrd and his new meth recipe, we rightly wouldn't vote him into the Presidency. By the same token we should not vote in one who sounds like "he be slappin some hos and biatches dat frontin' bout they work at the crack house." Although one could make an argument that a crack house manager may have been better than the choices we had in '08...
Friday, April 24, 2009
Thug Life
It occurs to me that our nation is a bit schizophrenic. We want cheap stuff. We want WallyWorld to sell us all sorts of merchandise made in various “emerging” countries. We want our military/diplomatic corps to ensure that the supply line of cheap stuff stays open. The most important ingredient to having cheap stuff is cheap oil. Of course it was not always cheap oil, read GEN (R) Smedley Butler here to find out what we have been wrangling about the world to get cheap since 1898.
So we want cheap stuff, but to get cheap stuff you have to buy cheap resources or have cheap resources available to those that manufacture the stuff for you. Throughout the 20th and into the 21st century we have been ensuring the access to cheap resources by mucking around in others business. Other empires that did this were fairly honest with themselves that this mucking was self-interested and so they did not really apologize for it. We seem to feel that we must apologize for our self-interest; the latest exhibit was the Obama Penance Tour conducted around the world. This is akin to saying your sorry to some guy whose teeth you just kicked in. Most folks the world over don’t buy it.
But we do even worse than just apologize. We are so remorseful that we feel that we must do surgery on the guy’s teeth to try to make him all better. Not because we actually care for him, but because it makes us think more highly of ourselves. Of course we are not much for dentistry, so we do a horrible job, and it hurts our victim even more than if we had just left him with his broken teeth. I think that I have taken this analogy about as far as it can go; so putting the bottom line in the middle, I wish we would decide if we want to be an empire. If we do want to be an empire, and it seems that we do, then lets have done with all of the mercy and get thuggish.
President Obama is preparing to expand our nation building in Afghanistan. There is nothing to be had in Afghanistan but a bit of self-righteousness. The “country” was a shambles when we got there. It was ruled by a gang of lunatics that dearly needed to be treated to the working end of a tire iron. We are very effective at that sort of thing. Having administered the appropriate beat down, we should have left. By doing so, we would have shown the Taliban that they need to find other outlets for their frustration than targeting US interests with their terrorist buddies. As it is, we have tried to rebuild the country and in the process managed to empower the Taliban to the point that they are now a significant threat to Pakistan as well as Afghanistan. Now we are going to try the strategy that seems to have worked in Iraq in the short term. The Obama administration has borrowed every play from George Bush’s play book from the time they got into office; so why not a surge? It seems that the Democrats are really Republicans with a healthy dose of guilt.
The point is that if you are going to run an empire, you must do it the old fashioned way. Fear is what motivates other countries to give up their stuff at less than market price so that we can have cheap stuff. Fear is what drives the capitulator. To run an empire, you have to raze Carthage and Jerusalem to the ground. You have to make it so that all others capitulate when you politely ask them to because they are scared.
We want to be an empire of love. There is no such thing. No one ever loves you when you come and require them to give up their stuff so that you can have a new flat screen TV. Even if you have a great propaganda machine that tells them that you are helping them; they only see you stealing their stuff and trying to foist your “way” upon them.
This schizophrenic strategy of helping those that we take from is doomed to failure. The US empire will fall unless we look ourselves in the mirror and decide that we are going to act like what we are. We are an empire, so we ought to act like one or give up the game altogether. I am all for giving up the game, but that is not realistic given the insatiable thirst for power that attends central governments. So let us stop this double mindedness and get our thug life on. At least we would have a chance at being successful.
So we want cheap stuff, but to get cheap stuff you have to buy cheap resources or have cheap resources available to those that manufacture the stuff for you. Throughout the 20th and into the 21st century we have been ensuring the access to cheap resources by mucking around in others business. Other empires that did this were fairly honest with themselves that this mucking was self-interested and so they did not really apologize for it. We seem to feel that we must apologize for our self-interest; the latest exhibit was the Obama Penance Tour conducted around the world. This is akin to saying your sorry to some guy whose teeth you just kicked in. Most folks the world over don’t buy it.
But we do even worse than just apologize. We are so remorseful that we feel that we must do surgery on the guy’s teeth to try to make him all better. Not because we actually care for him, but because it makes us think more highly of ourselves. Of course we are not much for dentistry, so we do a horrible job, and it hurts our victim even more than if we had just left him with his broken teeth. I think that I have taken this analogy about as far as it can go; so putting the bottom line in the middle, I wish we would decide if we want to be an empire. If we do want to be an empire, and it seems that we do, then lets have done with all of the mercy and get thuggish.
President Obama is preparing to expand our nation building in Afghanistan. There is nothing to be had in Afghanistan but a bit of self-righteousness. The “country” was a shambles when we got there. It was ruled by a gang of lunatics that dearly needed to be treated to the working end of a tire iron. We are very effective at that sort of thing. Having administered the appropriate beat down, we should have left. By doing so, we would have shown the Taliban that they need to find other outlets for their frustration than targeting US interests with their terrorist buddies. As it is, we have tried to rebuild the country and in the process managed to empower the Taliban to the point that they are now a significant threat to Pakistan as well as Afghanistan. Now we are going to try the strategy that seems to have worked in Iraq in the short term. The Obama administration has borrowed every play from George Bush’s play book from the time they got into office; so why not a surge? It seems that the Democrats are really Republicans with a healthy dose of guilt.
The point is that if you are going to run an empire, you must do it the old fashioned way. Fear is what motivates other countries to give up their stuff at less than market price so that we can have cheap stuff. Fear is what drives the capitulator. To run an empire, you have to raze Carthage and Jerusalem to the ground. You have to make it so that all others capitulate when you politely ask them to because they are scared.
We want to be an empire of love. There is no such thing. No one ever loves you when you come and require them to give up their stuff so that you can have a new flat screen TV. Even if you have a great propaganda machine that tells them that you are helping them; they only see you stealing their stuff and trying to foist your “way” upon them.
This schizophrenic strategy of helping those that we take from is doomed to failure. The US empire will fall unless we look ourselves in the mirror and decide that we are going to act like what we are. We are an empire, so we ought to act like one or give up the game altogether. I am all for giving up the game, but that is not realistic given the insatiable thirst for power that attends central governments. So let us stop this double mindedness and get our thug life on. At least we would have a chance at being successful.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Suburbiaurbia
I rediscovered this quote from Fred Reed today:
If you don't read Fred you really should. If everyone read one article by Fred Reed everyday, folks would understand what is going on in our brainwashed PC world. The only thing better would be reading one chapter of the Bible daily. Which I have so far failed to do, and I am more motivated than most. Anyhow I digress. Back to the above quote.
It expresses perfectly what I think of "Urban" and "Suburban." I am sick of it. I really yearn for rural. I am tired of the nattering nabobs pretentiously pulling out their iPhones and texting their tawdry lives to the other posturing punks masquerading as men. I want to be around bubba. Folks who will compliment me when I crank one. Men who can actually explain the general way that an internal combustion engine works.
As I navigate the suburban Norfolk region, with its gangrene of blubbering feminized yet self-esteeming soccer boys being begged for obedience by their Blue-Tooth clad metrosexual Brads, I feel slimed by the disgusting ooze of the urban/suburban world. It sticks to me. I so long to hear just one man say "Boy, you better shut up!" The only ones allowed to say that today, apparently, are black single mothers from the hood. Somehow black women are the most manly men out there now. As a man from the middle class on the other hand, you are fully expected to get your ass handed to you daily by a four year old. All of suburbia needs to be slapped.
I have to mention a few heroes of rurality (no, I don't know if it really is a word) before I get so irritated that punch my computer.
Hero 1. The guy that rents my farm. This man drives a 2-wheel drive F350 with nauga-hyde seats because he knows that real trucks do work. He recognizes that leather in a truck is a pretentious ornament that screams that you bought the truck to affirm that you really are a man since you secretly question that basic fact given that your man-parts remain safely tucked as you hamster wheel your existence in Cubicle World. He knows how to drive in mud without 4-wheel drive, whereas there are apparently many around my town that seem to think it a necessity on asphalt. I guess they think that one day they might take that Mercedes SUV muddin'.
Hero 2. Bob Summers. This man showed that at 60+, he could still pitch hay right alongside me when I was 16. He showed me how to get out of the way of a monster Santa Gertrudis bull. He allowed my family to hunt his property and asked nothing. Yet, when we would cut a little firewood for him or fix the dam on his pond, he still tried to pay us. He knew how to grow the sweetest watermelons and made gallons of homemade cider out of apples that he squeezed from a cider press that looked over hundred years old. The guy had a law degree but chucked that life so that he could live the rurality rather than work for partner. Oh yeah, I never heard him lie or equivocate either. I never got to thank him right; I wish he was still alive.... Fred talked about Milne and Donne in the above quoted article, but Bob's life was poetry.
Hero 3. My real estate agent. I know what you are thinking. How could one have a real estate agent for a hero? That is like having a used car salesman or a Pakistani telemarketer as a hero. I was providentially brought to the only honest real estate agent I have ever met when I bought my farm. The guy is actually honest. He is neighborly. Nearly everytime I see him, he tells me to go in his barn and use his tractor if mine breaks down. He tried to do all the real estate work when I purchased my houses for free. His reasoning was that I was in Iraq at the time; and he didn't really need the money; and anyway I was a neighbor. He tells people not to buy houses that he is selling if he sees that they don't have the money, even if the republicratic ownership society subprime Alt-A variable rate loan comes through. He also has the capability to explain the general way that an internal combustion engine works.
Fred Reed doesn't beleive that our society can recover from our current path of degeneration. I am not really that optimistic either. I am certain that if it does, we are going to have to look to places like West Tennessee and South Georgia to find decent brood stock. It isn't going to come from the urban/suburban Parents Magazine digitized group therapy session that is going on amongst those in the population centers.
(I was informed by one who read my previous post that I poorly punctuated it. If any of you English majors want to critique this one feel free. I have tried to rightly write the Kings English but I may have missed the mark.)
"Few precisely like what we have, I suppose, but how does one escape it?
Perhaps they don’t sense exactly what it is they want to escape, and anyway
there is nowhere else to go. In noise-ridden cities smelling of exhaust,
crowded, where the stars languish obscured by smoke, the rivers run
semi-poisonous and much of the populace can barely read, how can anyone think
beyond the stock market and the next empty copulation?"
If you don't read Fred you really should. If everyone read one article by Fred Reed everyday, folks would understand what is going on in our brainwashed PC world. The only thing better would be reading one chapter of the Bible daily. Which I have so far failed to do, and I am more motivated than most. Anyhow I digress. Back to the above quote.
It expresses perfectly what I think of "Urban" and "Suburban." I am sick of it. I really yearn for rural. I am tired of the nattering nabobs pretentiously pulling out their iPhones and texting their tawdry lives to the other posturing punks masquerading as men. I want to be around bubba. Folks who will compliment me when I crank one. Men who can actually explain the general way that an internal combustion engine works.
As I navigate the suburban Norfolk region, with its gangrene of blubbering feminized yet self-esteeming soccer boys being begged for obedience by their Blue-Tooth clad metrosexual Brads, I feel slimed by the disgusting ooze of the urban/suburban world. It sticks to me. I so long to hear just one man say "Boy, you better shut up!" The only ones allowed to say that today, apparently, are black single mothers from the hood. Somehow black women are the most manly men out there now. As a man from the middle class on the other hand, you are fully expected to get your ass handed to you daily by a four year old. All of suburbia needs to be slapped.
I have to mention a few heroes of rurality (no, I don't know if it really is a word) before I get so irritated that punch my computer.
Hero 1. The guy that rents my farm. This man drives a 2-wheel drive F350 with nauga-hyde seats because he knows that real trucks do work. He recognizes that leather in a truck is a pretentious ornament that screams that you bought the truck to affirm that you really are a man since you secretly question that basic fact given that your man-parts remain safely tucked as you hamster wheel your existence in Cubicle World. He knows how to drive in mud without 4-wheel drive, whereas there are apparently many around my town that seem to think it a necessity on asphalt. I guess they think that one day they might take that Mercedes SUV muddin'.
Hero 2. Bob Summers. This man showed that at 60+, he could still pitch hay right alongside me when I was 16. He showed me how to get out of the way of a monster Santa Gertrudis bull. He allowed my family to hunt his property and asked nothing. Yet, when we would cut a little firewood for him or fix the dam on his pond, he still tried to pay us. He knew how to grow the sweetest watermelons and made gallons of homemade cider out of apples that he squeezed from a cider press that looked over hundred years old. The guy had a law degree but chucked that life so that he could live the rurality rather than work for partner. Oh yeah, I never heard him lie or equivocate either. I never got to thank him right; I wish he was still alive.... Fred talked about Milne and Donne in the above quoted article, but Bob's life was poetry.
Hero 3. My real estate agent. I know what you are thinking. How could one have a real estate agent for a hero? That is like having a used car salesman or a Pakistani telemarketer as a hero. I was providentially brought to the only honest real estate agent I have ever met when I bought my farm. The guy is actually honest. He is neighborly. Nearly everytime I see him, he tells me to go in his barn and use his tractor if mine breaks down. He tried to do all the real estate work when I purchased my houses for free. His reasoning was that I was in Iraq at the time; and he didn't really need the money; and anyway I was a neighbor. He tells people not to buy houses that he is selling if he sees that they don't have the money, even if the republicratic ownership society subprime Alt-A variable rate loan comes through. He also has the capability to explain the general way that an internal combustion engine works.
Fred Reed doesn't beleive that our society can recover from our current path of degeneration. I am not really that optimistic either. I am certain that if it does, we are going to have to look to places like West Tennessee and South Georgia to find decent brood stock. It isn't going to come from the urban/suburban Parents Magazine digitized group therapy session that is going on amongst those in the population centers.
(I was informed by one who read my previous post that I poorly punctuated it. If any of you English majors want to critique this one feel free. I have tried to rightly write the Kings English but I may have missed the mark.)
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Britney-Paris = Obama-Biden
If I knew that the media types were going to be this fawning over our soon to be President; I would have voted against him just so that I did not have to hear about how great he is. To listen to CNN et al. one would think that we were being given the opportunity to coronate some combination of Ghandi, Franklin Roosevelt, JFK, MLK and Abe Lincoln as the tyrant du jour. We are told in breathless tones that he slept a couple of nights at the Hay-Adams Hotel since there was no room at the Blair House. That his kids will go to private school somewhere. That his dog has been picked out and a host of other useless stuff. It is the same type of sludge that is trotted out about Britney and Paris. Should the news media stoop to level the playing field between the President and Paris? Especially JFKMLKGhandiRooseveltLincoln? Initially I said no. Certainly in a culture that was healthy at all, a President would be held at a higher level. At least Mr Obama with his impending canonization would be. Then I began to think about what this said about our culture. This is a culture that has T-Shirts with the "score" of the victory in the form of electoral votes emblazoned on them. I guess that the presidential election has taken on the same importance as the annual Georgia-Georgia Tech clash. My guess is that our actions speak what we will not ever say. Namely, that Obama's election was about as important as the aforementioned football game.
Will there be a substantive difference between Obama and George Bush? I doubt it. The master of change has presented us with a cabinet of Washington insiders. He has asked the current President to pass out the other $350B for TARP which was passed with the support of Bush/McCain/Obama/Clinton. The apparent central component to his "novel" economic plan is a grotesque orgy of public spending. He is going to change the primary front of the War from Iraq to Afghanistan something so much in the works by the previous administration that the Iraq SOFA approved before Mr Obama takes office has all combat troops out of Iraqi cities by June 2009. What in the above is the difference between Obama and Republicans? I can't see anything other than which drunken crew gets to say "We're NUMBER ONE!" Sounds like our culture has been apropos in signaling that the latest about Britney and Paris is eqivalent to the latest about Obama.
Will there be a substantive difference between Obama and George Bush? I doubt it. The master of change has presented us with a cabinet of Washington insiders. He has asked the current President to pass out the other $350B for TARP which was passed with the support of Bush/McCain/Obama/Clinton. The apparent central component to his "novel" economic plan is a grotesque orgy of public spending. He is going to change the primary front of the War from Iraq to Afghanistan something so much in the works by the previous administration that the Iraq SOFA approved before Mr Obama takes office has all combat troops out of Iraqi cities by June 2009. What in the above is the difference between Obama and Republicans? I can't see anything other than which drunken crew gets to say "We're NUMBER ONE!" Sounds like our culture has been apropos in signaling that the latest about Britney and Paris is eqivalent to the latest about Obama.
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