JohnHenry.US

Category: My Writing

  • The Price Of Bread

    The Price Of Bread

    Introduction

    The “price of bread” is a tried and true hook on which to hang any given complaint from any given ideological perspective to shock the consumer, draw attention, and stoke feelings of anger and frustration. The “bread” in question is a metaphor for any consumer good. The arguments in question tend to take the general form of “I can’t believe how terrible the economy is today. Why, when I was young I used to get two packs of name-brand cigarettes and two 16-ounce glass bottles of Mountain Dew for $2!”

    The “price of bread” argument fails not only in that it’s usually highly subjective and prone to strong influence of personal bias e.g. artificially glorifying “the past” as having been “better,” but it’s also completely meaningless by itself. Numbers increase, particularly in capitalized systems wherein the currency is based on an intangible asset like “the full faith and credit” of the issuing nation, as is the case with all such nations including the United States. By itself this increase means nothing that can be said to meaningfully reflect on the average quality of life.

    Worse than that for those seeking progress, it often inadvertently draws attention to weaknesses in argumentation and flaws in a given logical calculus attempting to rationalize or validate progressive social policy. In doing so, the net effect tends to be empowering counter-arguments rather than advancing the ostensible agenda at hand.

    In today’s example we’re going to look at a tweet by someone calling themselves “Fred Krueger” (not likely to be a real name, but it’s possible). Mr. Kreuger, who is entirely unknown to me, claims to hold a PhD from Stanford, and says he’s a “bitcoin maxi,” whatever that is, in his twitter profile. I’ve included a link to the original tweet below, but given conditions at Twitter I thought it best to also include a screenshot.

    Original URL: https://x.com/dotkrueger/status/1873320780739510285
    Tweet by "Fred Krueger" (@dotkrueger) reading: "The median family income in the US has gone from 10K in 1971 to 55K today, a gain of 5.5x however, The median cost of a car has gone from 4K to 48K, an increase of 12x. The median cost of a house has gone from 25K to 357K, an increase of 14x. The median cost of an ivy league college has gone from 3K a year to 87K, an increase of 29x. The average cost of healthcare per person has gone from $400 to $15,000, and increase of 37x. Basically, the average person in the US is worse off today than in 1971. So much for "progress"" Dated Dec 29, 2024
    Screenshot of original tweet posted at https://x.com/dotkrueger/status/1873320780739510285

    The tweet reads as follows: “The median family income in the US has gone from 10K in 1971 to 55K today, a gain of 5.5x however, The median cost of a car has gone from 4K to 48K, an increase of 12x. The median cost of a house has gone from 25K to 357K, an increase of 14x. The median cost of an ivy league college has gone from 3K a year to 87K, an increase of 29x. The average cost of healthcare per person has gone from $400 to $15,000, and increase of 37x. Basically, the average person in the US is worse off today than in 1971. So much for “progress.””

    Problems Of Fact

    There is a whole lot wrong here. First and foremost there is no indication of any of the sources of any of this information, so let’s track that down first. The Census Bureau tells us that the first number isn’t far off – the median family income in 1971 was $10,290. We also find with a bit of quick google-fu that the median price of a new car was $3890, and a new home was a nice even $25,000. Of course none of those numbers are normalized – those are 1971 dollars being compared to 2024 dollars, which is sort of the whole point of the exercise.

    The “reader added context” in this case isn’t particularly helpful and leans toward its own agenda.

    First and foremost the reader feedback ignores that the entire point of the framing is to compare price increases of specific items to baseline inflation. I believe the intent of the writer was to imply that life is much more economically challenging for most of us than a simple broad average inflation rate tells us, so noting that the numbers haven’t been normalized doesn’t really address any of the problems with the tweet and in fact mostly serves to point out that the people offering that particular criticism didn’t understand what they read very well. The fact that the numbers aren’t normalized is the whole point of the tweet.

    Second, there aren’t many people alive right now who were around in the 70s who really feel like they have nearly twice as much purchasing power today as they did fifty years ago, and there are some very good reasons for that.

    While the implication that quality of life is significantly improved across the board for most people is ostensibly supported by adding up the cash value of various goods and services, it also overlooks the necessity of far greater levels of spending than were necessary fifty years ago, even accounting properly for inflation. This is propaganda in the other direction; suggesting that people are basically doing just fine right now and any struggle you’re experiencing must be down to something other than a steadily decreasing quality of life. In short: gaslighting.

    But I digress, let’s get back to the tweet at hand and check some numbers. I’ve included a few direct citations links, those numbers not directly linked come from the same or similar sources.

    The median family income “today,” i.e. 2023, the most recent year for which statistics have been properly documented, is $80,610 – a difference from the quoted post of about $32K, and an increase of 8x, rather than 5.5.

    Already this is going to make the comparisons less striking, and we haven’t even checked them yet, but let’s finish the job for posterity and we’ll move on to understanding why we can’t keep doing this, nor allow it to continue being done.

    A new car in 2024 is averaging about 48,400.

    A new home is about $420,400 – a greater increase than the tweet by about 18% (and an increase of about 17x rather than the 14x cited).

    The rest of the numbers are similarly garbled; an ivy league education in 1971 was 2600 rather than 3K – a difference of about 13%. Today’s cost is 64,690 – $25K less than cited. The Social Security Administration tells us that per-capita health care expenditures in 1971 were $358 – less than 90% of the number given here. The most recent available information is for 2022, which the WHO tells us is 12,473 – about a sixth less than this tweet reports.

    So we’ve established that, at the very least, there are significant errors in basic information here, which of course throws all the calculations off.

    We’re not off to a good start; if someone wanted to argue against the core thesis of the tweet (that the average person in the US is worse off today than in 1971), this writer has certainly given them plenty of ammunition to call their basic reliability into question, which delegitimizes the thesis in the reader’s mind before it even happens.

    It all forces us to consider: why are we listening to this person or taking this message seriously in the first place?

    Problems of Reason

    On the other hand, here are two semi-randomly selected prices for 25-inch televisions from the Sears catalog in 1974. One is 609.95, the other 759.95, which average to 684.95. Divide by 25 and you’ve got 273.98 per viewable diagonal inch, in old-school NTSC resolution at best.

    I’m currently using a 40-inch Polaroid flatscreen as my desktop monitor. I paid $259 for it in 2019, which is 319.62 in 2024 dollars, or 7.99 per viewable diagonal inch.

    That’s a 97% price decrease, and this is why item price comparisons are always a flawed argument.

    Contrary to what seems to be popular belief, this isn’t less true but more so when the flawed argument is supporting a larger (and entirely valid) point about the relative cost of living.

    In 1974 the minimum wage was $2.00 an hour, that would be 12.80 today. But that’s also not a fair comparison because so many things have changed since then about how we make and spend our money. The internet and its accouterments were not a required part of living in 1974, and the expenses one might incur to replicate the necessary functionality were often far lower but also with much lower quality of access, e.g. looking up information in an encyclopedia at your local library rather than on your cell phone. Fundamentally free or close to it, but also limited access and functionality. (Worth pointing out for pedantry that there are of course costs involved in transportation plus the value of one’s time, but that’s still not working out to a monthly cell phone bill of $50-$200+ dollars…and if you’re a kid in the seventies and eighties like I was, you were at school with a library full of reference material several hours a day anyway).

    There is also a long, LONG list of important social advances that have happened in the last fifty years. That we are not yet in some progressive utopia doesn’t change that. However as a rhetorical tactic, to ignore or disregard that progress out of fear that people will think the job’s done and stop trying or something (see: “post-racial America” circa 2009) is insulting to the people who made that progress happen and disheartening to those working to ensure we keep moving forward. It also adds to the general sense of futility that can attach to any attempt at meaningful social change, on any level.

    Cherry-picked statistics are a fundamentally dishonest and manipulative tactic, and we have to start recognizing that and holding our information sources to a proper standard of valid reasoning and factual accuracy.

    “People aren’t going to change and it’s a waste of time to try. You may as well give up, because even with all this advancement you’ve gotten nowhere.” This is a critically important subtext contained within this entire argument. It’s messaging that serves only the interests of the entrenched and abused power to which so many people taking this attitude believe they’re working against.

    A loaf of bread ran 28 cents in 1974. It’s 1.92 now. That’s only 7 cents off the standard rate of inflation.

    These comparisons have no meaning. They’re only intended to shock and grab attention, but they don’t convey meaningful information. What they are is a nice setup for someone who understands why this framing fails (consciously or unconsciously; Hanlon’s Razor applies) to come along and yank out a list of similar comparisons – go ahead and price what would’ve conceivably passed for a home computer in 1974, or a mobile phone! – in an attempt to invalidate the core point that we’re living in a capitalist-sliding-quickly-into-fascist dystopia, which stands just fine on its own without making a bunch of cherry-picked comparisons in an appeal to emotion.

    In both cases – and this is important! – the actors at hand, both the person throwing these kind of “information” around and those who show up to try to undermine the thesis by attacking the obvious weak points in the supporting arguments or evidence, are deliberately and intentionally aiming at your emotional responses in order to subvert, distract, and ultimately mitigate your critical thinking, because they both know their arguments don’t hold up to critical analysis.

    Why It Matters

    An angry troll picking cherries out of a pile of statistics. Generated by Bing AI with additional modifications by JH
    “RAWR! THERE’S NOTHING BUT LIES AND DAMN LIES IN HERE!’ (Bing AI generated image, with modifications by JH)
    As with so many discussions of this nature, the first objection one can usually anticipate is some sort of argument from apathy – why does this matter, you’re just splitting hairs, this is all just pseudointellectual self-indulgent twaddle, insert dogwhistle for whatever audience e.g. “wokeism” or appeals to ridicule, etc.

    So let’s talk about why it matters for a minute.

    First, cherry-picked statistics are a fundamentally dishonest and manipulative tactic, and we have to start recognizing that and holding our information sources to a proper standard of valid reasoning and factual accuracy.

    This seems like one of those things that would hardly bear saying out loud, but apparently it does: the most effective way to lie is with as much truth as possible. Simply throwing a bunch of statistics around without context and validation is often the tactic of someone who knows they’re trying to make a point, but doesn’t know how, and doesn’t want to let that get in the way of the dopamine rush and-or traffic bump and-or possible passive income generated by throwing around empty aphorisms and questionable statistics that are emotionally appealing and don’t invite careful scrutiny.

    (NB: When this is done at high volume with deliberately malicious intent, it can quickly turn into what’s become known as the “Gish Gallop,” wherein the speaker just throws such a ridiculous pile of misinformation around that by the time you sort through it you’ve forgotten the original point and likely made some superfluous error the speaker can then seize on as evidence of your incompetence. Hence the troll…)

    But there’s more. Inherently the application of dishonest and manipulative rhetorical tactics reflects, at the very least, a lack of confidence on the part of the speaker in their own words – if they believed what they were saying they wouldn’t think they have to lie about it to convince anyone else. By using these tactics, the subtext we’re writing is that either we don’t believe our position holds up on merit, or we don’t believe we’re not capable of expressing our reasoning effectively. Most importantly, it shows. People tend to pick up on it when you’re trying to con them, whether they do so consciously or not.

    To a discerning media consumer – and we’re all media consumers, discerning or not – this is an immediate red flag that the speaker may not be a reliable information source. Maybe they know they’re lying; maybe they’ve bought into it and are choosing to resolve any internal cognitive dissonance between what they want to believe on one hand and reality on the other by trying as hard as they can to convince other people to believe with them. Whatever the specific situation may be, people who are paying attention are going to pick up on the flaws in the argument almost immediately, and that calls into question the validity of the entire thesis. As I’ve noted above, they’ll often pick up on it even if they don’t consciously realize it.

    Arguably however the real damage comes among the less discerning consumers, those who repeat this information in earnest good faith, not realizing that they’re basically being set up to fail. Now they’ve distributed the information, and those who consume it via their distribution will hold them responsible for its accuracy. The entire conversation is now reduced to back-and-forth arguments that resolve nothing and are all based in factual and logical error. They’ve sacrificed their own credibility and taken on a huge set of arguments, while validating the source of the bad information!

    I have a problem with this in a pretty serious way because I happen to fully support and believe in the surface thesis presented by this tweet as a question of personal ideology. I was alive and conscious in the early 70s and I absolutely believe that in many important ways we were all doing far better then than we are now. Many of us were also doing far worse, which nobody of any sense wants to ignore or pretend isn’t the case. However it’s also true, and important to recognize in this context, that in terms of stability and security in the lives of the average American, the 70’s and early 80’s were far superior to any time since including the present, and indeed the nature and pace of our social progress has sunk to embarrassing lows by contrast as well, especially when one thinks not in terms of what constitutes the current status quo but in terms of what’s being done to improve it, and why, and for whom.

    We had a lot of work to do back then.

    We still do.

    We’ve done a significant bit of it as I’ve alluded above, and there are significant and powerful forces in this world who do not want that work done because our collective progress threatens their personal power. We were more honest with ourselves, culturally, especially in advanced nations, about our need to grow and recognize that we weren’t the pinnacle of human advancement but just the current step in a never-ending series of them, and that our job was not to be the best but to be the best we can, improve on what came before us and set up and inspire what comes after to do the same, where “improvement” is defined as being in more complete compliance with the “ultimate ethic” of keeping the species alive and propagating.

    We know through the research of all human history that the greatest progress happens when human minds are well-educated and free to explore and express their thoughts and ideas in a fair and just context that ensures both the right of the individual to say their piece and the right of other individuals to reject their piece as ugly, ignorant, or malicious, including the right of society to collectively reject their values or ideology as unacceptable, immoral, or unethical.

    We know that the holding the privilege (and it is a privilege, as is everything else we keep trying to call a “right”) to say your piece does not include the privilege to insist everyone pretend they agree with it and love you for saying it.

    We know that human progress individually and collectively relies entirely on our capacity to unlearn old lies. We also know that there are forces in this world whose power relies (no pun intended) on us not doing that. The capitalists can’t keep running everything if we refuse to be capitalized or to participate in their games anymore. Problem is we’ve been letting them do it for about five hundred years now and they refuse to get out of the way.

    Now, given all of that…

    Ya Thought I Forgot, Huh?

    Our thesis is that dragging out prices fifty years ago, or a hundred, or twenty-five and comparing them to current prices is a waste of time and energy, except perhaps in radical situations like a collapsing currency where you’re seeing prices jump by orders of magnitude in a short period of time, and in very specific applications of economic analysis that simply aren’t either directly relevant to or within the personal intellectual capacity of the average person. It’s certainly of no value in social media conversations about the need for broad social reform of capitalized institutions.

    Another image of a troll picking cherries out of a pile of statistics, visualized here as stacks of paper. This troll is less angry than cunning, with an evil grin.
    Another AI take on trolls cherry-picking statistics, this one courtesy of OpenAI via Jetpack, and enhanced a bit by yours truly

    I hope that by laying out weaknesses that are readily open to valid criticism in this framing, we can learn to first frame our own thinking more effectively but also learn to start rejecting those who either can’t or don’t.

    Because the raw truth of the matter is that either you understand the things I’ve discussed here or you don’t. If you don’t understand them, you’re probably not qualified to be participating in the conversation as anything but a spectator, and that’s okay. I’m not qualified to perform heart surgery, and that’s not a reflection on my character either. NB: If I know I’m not qualified to perform heart surgery and insist on doing it anyway, that is definitely a reflection on my character!

    If you do understand the things I’ve discussed here and still choose to frame things in this way, you’re being deliberately dishonest and manipulative. This means you can’t be trusted, and nobody with a worthy message wants to have it promoted by someone who engages in deceit and manipulation to communicate it. Since I happen to think that the underlying message of diligent and constantly refining progress of human quality of life is worth, I have to stand up and call out this radically unhelpful framing as it is.

    If the message is worthy, deceit and manipulation isn’t necessary.

    If deceit and manipulation are necessary, the message isn’t worthy.

    What happens when we allow this kind of noise to flood our zeitgeist is that we begin to accept the premise that the behavior is necessary, like someone trying to rationalize lying on their resume. “Everyone does it, you can’t avoid it.” That argument has its place. For instance, I can’t avoid trying to make money with my work; I live in a world that requires money to survive and ensure my capacity to do that work.

    That argument isn’t valid in this conversation; it’s a capitulation to the bullies and the liars, the manipulators and deceivers.

    What happens when we allow those who are intentionally deceitful and manipulative to control the conversation is we force everything to become deceitful and manipulative in order to keep up. The deceit and manipulation undermines the legitimacy of the core ideas in people’s minds until eventually nobody knows what truth is anymore, and at that point Big Brother has won the game. We let them make deceit and manipulation necessary, and then none of us can trust each other enough to work together on anything…including pushing back against the powers who want to permanently convert the vast majority of us – everyone but them and those they choose – to “human capital stock.”

    So please stop doing this stuff and stop putting it over. Stop believing and validating things just because they push your emotional buttons in a way that satisfies you. That reaction, all by itself, is what every perpetrator of evil has counted on in one way or another for as long as we’ve been telling each other stories.

    The only way to stop the evil is to stop falling for it.

  • Why There Will Never Be A Successful “Third Party” In The US

    To date in human history, there have been precisely two ways in which a “third party” will rise to primacy over the existence of two “major parties.”

    The first is some variant of coup or war or insurrection.

    The second is when the more rightward of the two existing major parties continues driving to the right until it has become egregiously abusive of or hostile to the rights and liberties of the people they’re governing. Egregiously, you’ve got to push people past the breaking point and THEN wait for the stragglers to clue in to the point where you functionally only have ONE major party. That will inevitably be the party which has traditionally represented the leftward polarity. It will shift rightward over time in pursuit of preserving its power, losing sight of core principles one by one until a contingent within that party get fed up and start their own thing, splitting the one major party in two. (Sidebar: This process is sometimes referred to as the “Overton Window.” I eschew this terminology because a) it’s inaccurate, b) Overton was a rank plutocrat, c) the idea had been expressed long before he did it, and d) I’m not making more famous or adding credibility to some Mackinac Center oligarch whose reason for describing the window in the first place was to strategize how to move it rightward and normalize fascism without those being seduced into it being aware of their seduction.)

    The formerly right major party falls entirely into extremism and failure and internal power struggles, the formerly left major party slides into the more moderate right position the former other party started off occupying, and the new party rises to represent the left, becoming the new “second” party as the former right party declines into impotence and obsolescence.

    The last (and really only) time this has happened in the US was close to two hundred years ago when the Whigs lost their compass and devolved into internal bickering and contention over the question of slavery, and the Democrat-Republican party split in two with Dems on the right and Reps on the left (which frankly made no sense by the labeling; the right represents artistocracy and bourgeoisie which is republican i.e. government by elites, the left the proletariat which is democratic i.e. government by the people; this has been the case since the left-right nomenclature was coined hundreds of years ago) and eventually reversed polarity between the end of the Lincoln administration and WWI, with the polarity reversal finally completing in the “Dixiecrat” shift following WWII led by Strom Thurmond and representing the last holdouts of right-wing authoriarianism in the Democratic party at that time. Their primary complaints were FDR’s social programs which didn’t discriminate against people of color, and his antagonism toward racial discrimination as then exemplified by the “Jim Crow” laws of the south.

    That split finalized the polarity reversal in the parties that began slowly prior to WWI and ultimately culminated in Strom Thurmond trying to do exactly what I described above, but from the right – which will not and did not work. That split was the final act of the polarity shift and the Dems have represented the left – such as it is – ever since.

    (NB: I’ve somewhat flagged the idea that Mitt Romney switching parties would be one strong sign that this process is accelerating and the end of the GOP is in sight. He might not, but that would definitely be the two-minute warning. The center-right status quo contingent of the Dem party is right in line with his milquetoast, lukewarm, pro-capitalist politics. Truth is if the GOP hadn’t completely lost touch with reality Romney would likely be their best shot at unseating Biden, but at this point 3/4+ of the GOP hates Romney because he only sometimes bows down to the skidmark at the top of the party. There *might* be one or two other Republicans who might fit in there – and Liz Cheney won’t be one of them, all due appreciation to her integrity re: Jan 6 – but Romney’s the archetype.)

    It always happens that way, including the direction of ideological “flow” from left to right. The left wing party never slides off the edge of the spectrum into autocracy; they slide right until they’re the major right-wing party, and then start sliding off that end of the spectrum into rank autocracy as they try to preserve and increase power. Again, lacking some sort of hot conflict, that’s the only way a “third party” has ever risen to prominence over the two existing major parties in any system I’ve been able to find.

    There are a few “squishy” spots in there, and occasionally in multiparty systems like the UK you’ll see one of the two majors so entirely step on their johnsons that the people turn their backs and adhere to whichever party most closely aligns ideologically with the self-defeated, but a) that’s an extraordinary circumstance and b) even that scenario isn’t functionally different from what I described above, you just have a multiparty establishment from which to draw your rising left rather than the single left-wing party; basically you’ve just performed one step of the process in advance of the actual split.

    The alternative path tends to more or less follow the NSDAP template: being radically right-wing from the outset but pretending you’re a “socialist,” where “socialism” is defined as socialism for those cooperating with the group in power and waterless showers for everyone else. They will target that thirty-ish percent of the population that’s ALWAYS willing to sell everyone out to tyranny if they think it’ll benefit them, organize them, and then conduct propaganda and disinformation campaigns to provide plausible deniability to those who can be convinced to join the baddies, usually through appeals to nationalist, religious, and/or racial supremacy, or personal greed through promises of increased affluence after the “other” is eliminated from society.

    Then they start trying to take over other countries until the rest of the world gets fed up and destroys them, at which point a new government is constituted and the cycle begins anew.

    (In the unlikely but not entirely impossible event Trump gets re-elected next year, that’s our future.)

    This means the cycle of politics will tend to roll over parties every 100 or 200 years (and we’re about due), through one or the other processes described above.

    Not once in the history of the democratic process has an external group constituting itself as a third party, containing no appreciable trace of either of the existing two major parties, ever successfully won more than a handful of minor elections, and never once have any of those minor parties grown in power to present a serious challenge to the two main parties at the national level, anywhere. It works the same way in any democratic system – democratic republics or pure democracy, first-past-the-post or proportional representation or even ranked choice. Minor parties will do better in minor elections under certain systems like ranked choice; never once has one risen from outside the establishment to supplant one of the two parties that existed when the third party came to life. The ONLY time that happens is when it happens as I described it above.

    In this country the most successful “outsider” candidates have always been either entirely party-independent or tagged themselves with a party label long after they’d risen to some level of power on their individual merits, e.g. Ross Perot’s Reform Party.

    I can’t find a single example in the history of democracy – and I spent four years of a polisci minor looking for one – all the way back to its earliest forms in ancient Greece and Rome, in which a new party showed up and slowly built power on its own by providing an alternative to the two existing majors until it successfully supplanted one of them, without a civil war being involved. It’s a nice theory, but it just. doesn’t. happen.

    People – even those who think of themselves as “liberal” – are generally change-averse to an extreme outside of conditions that are absolutely intolerable to the broad majority of the electorate. They – we – would rather sell out to fascism and pretend we don’t know that’s what we’re doing until long after the damage is done, at which point we’ll work to preserve their social standing and approval by pretending to have been merely stupid as opposed to deliberately evil, than risk a radical shift into unknown territory.

    The greens, the libertarians, etc? Useless, and none of them will ever gain more than token representation in minor offices.

    The most successful third party in the US, the Libertarians™, managed to become the only third party in US history to have presidential ballot access in all states in two cycles – a process that took 220 years, has never come within even plausible wildcard hope of winning, and they couldn’t pull it off a third time.

    The only member of the Libertarian™ Party to serve in federal elective office *at. all.* is Justin Amash, and he changed parties AFTER being elected so that doesn’t even count for the purposes of this discussion.

    No matter how nobly motivated or “right” they may be, you will never see a third party rise to power in this country from outside the existing political establishment without catastrophic conflict (and no, you seething edgelord, you do not want catastrophic conflict). It will not happen, barring an extraordinary set of circumstances that can’t be predicted and can’t be created intentionally

    It also won’t happen by some magical coalescence of “the big middle.” The big middle is moderate and leans conservative(*) by nature; hoping for that to drive serious change is like hoping you can stop that troublesome noise in your engine by turning up the radio. The most successful attempt in this direction was Ross Perot, whose “party” was a retcon anyway, created to support his presidential candidacy rather than being an existing entity he “joined” and represented. He got about 20% of the vote and 0 electorals.

    * In spite of broad misconception on this point, “conservative” is not and has never been synonymous with “right wing.” While things tend to play out that way over time, “conservatism” politically is simply a preference for maintaining the status quo over introducing radical change. “Liberalism” politically is a preference for radical change over maintaining the status quo. Conservatism is not inherently “right,” and liberalism is not inherently “left.” In spite of how wrong it sounds if you’re stuck in the “con=right lib=left” thinking, Donald Trump was a far more liberal president than Barack Obama because he had zero respect for the status quo and radically altered many aspects of our government, at least temporarily. That is right-wing liberalism, not “conservatism.”

    The ONLY third party electoral vote in US history was a faithless elector in the Republican party who voted for the Libertarian candidate in I think 1972, rather than the pledged vote for Nixon/Agnew.

    If there were a strong progressive running from the left as part of some party that currently doesn’t exist – the Greens have bad branding and unflattering history, the libertarians aren’t in the least bit progressive, and there’s literally no other party that’s even laughably contending – in the next election and Joe Biden passed away in mid-September leaving only Trump+whoever, Harris with no running mate or one that had to be VERY hastily integrated and publicized and sold to the electorate, and that strong progressive on the ticket, there’s a slim but non-zero chance the progressive outsider would win…but the safe bet is Trump would take it because unlike the left, the right wing in this country knows how to march in formation and not make waves. Which, incidentally, I find disgusting, odious, and an insult to everything meritorious about our entire system, but my feelings about it don’t change the reality.

    By and large people will tend to vote for a comfortable and certain tyranny than an unknown and uncertain freedom. They just convince themselves the tyrants will only hurt people they don’t like. It’s the mentality of one acclimated to their own enslavement: sure it sucks being someone’s property but at least you eat once in a while. No guarantee of that out on your own.

    (NB: That last part is why most of us refuse to quit bad jobs or demand better pay and working conditions, too. We don’t dare risk losing an iota of whatever petty comfort we have, even if holding on to it is literally killing us. Plutocracy always plays the same parlor tricks, they just file off the serial numbers and add or subtract a little chrome trim from the body panels so people who aren’t paying attention get fooled into thinking it’s a whole new ride.)

    In the upcoming election, as things stand right now, there’s not a chance in hell of Biden being seriously challenged from the left because we don’t want to risk going back to Trump – that conservatism I mentioned earlier. Sanders won’t run this time; he knows it’ll be a waste to try to primary Biden and will only serve to make people mad at him for trying. If you want real progress for the next four years, Biden is (somewhat unfortunately) your best bet. Say what you will about Biden, but it is to his immense credit (and our best hope) that he’s repeatedly proven movable on matters of considered principle. Not as many of them or as often as I think he should, but certainly more so than that whatever skidmark – probably Trump – who ends up running against him, or anyone likely to rise as a serious candidate in the next twelve months.

    Stein blew her cred pandering to antivaxers; Williamson occasionally says something powerful and brilliant but it’s generally a rare sighting in a flood of new-age pseudo-spiritualism and badly misunderstood concepts like karma appropriated from other cultures.

    No other remotely serious suggestion even exists at this point. The progressive wing in general – the justice dems and squad folks – aren’t politically stupid, they know trying to primary Biden this round will be political self-immolation. AOC, Sanders, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar? They know the GOP is tottering on the edge of implosion and four years from now will likely be a MUCH more auspicious set of circumstances for the progressive wing of the Dems to break off into their own thing, and then that party and the Dems will spend the next couple of cycles finishing the job of ending the GOP (possibly conceding a presidential election along the way).

    We will almost certainly have nothing but a string of center-right moderate status quo DNC presidents until that new progressive wing gets off the ground, settles their hierarchy, and rallies behind a presidential candidate of their own to present a genuine and serious left-wing challenge to entrenched capitalist-oligarch-plutocratic power.

    That is where your “third party” is coming from, not some fantasy of all the disaffected and disenfranchised voters in the country suddenly finding enough common ground to mount an effective, well-organized, and cohesive challenge to the two major parties.

    If you’re serious about wanting a real left wing in this country, this is the context in which you’ll need to create it, and that means a whole bunch of us need to be working with and reaching out to those progressive leaders because the power core already has an army of astroturfing profiteers and clickbaiters on their payroll, and millions of easily manipulated rubes think that is the “left” in this country.

    And right now, sad as it is to say, they’re right. It’s the only meaningful left we’ve got because the real left is split between being pumped full of bias confirmation clickbait by grifters and arguing with each other over bad, useless ideas like dreaming for a third party deus ex machina to get us out of this mess.

    When the grass roots refuse to grow, you get astroturf, and right now that’s the only grass of any serious relevance in this country. Let’s stop hanging on to old, useless fantasies and start getting seriously organized from a position of reason, pragmatism, and integrity.

  • Better Call Saul? Maybe Not.

    This started being a curated post, but frankly as things worked out I think it deserves to be rewritten from the ground up.

    Back in 2010 there was this fella, Saul Anuzis. Saul had been a hotshot in the MI GOP for a few decades at this point, having held the state party chair among other prominent positions. He ran for national chair in 2009 and didn’t make it.

    So he ran again for the 2011 chairmanship. Was considered quite the likely prospect when he started.

    Along the way, he had the great misfortune to catch my attention while playing dirty pool.

    After that, he wasn’t such a hot prospect anymore

    Of course it would be silly to suggest that I was the reason for that.

    It all started here (amazing good fortune for me to find that the thread is actually still on Facebook 13 years later almost to the day)…

    Screenshot of Facebook post dated Oct. 11, 2010: Saulius Saul Anuzis · Really?? ...and Virg Bernero wants to be our Governor??? No wonder even Democrats are NOT voting for Bernero...embarrassing. (Followed by a fake tweet ostensibly from Virg Bernero reading "I am calling out my opponent for misleading voters during our debate last night. He refused a wedgie saying he WASN'T a NERD!"

    What you’re looking at is Saul Anuzis sharing a fake tweet from a Twitter account that I frankly suspected at the time but could never prove Anuzis himself was operating. Certainly whether he was or not, he treated this obvious parody as legitimate and responded to it just as though it was really written by Democratic gubernatorial candidate Virg Bernero.

    He even doubled down on it in the comments:

    Facebook comments from Anuzis on the photo thread: Saulius Saul Anuzis Even Democrats have to be embarrassed over a Twitter post like this...come on folks...this is serious business. Saulius Saul Anuzis Bernero shooting to beat Feiger...maybe get 37%!?!

    I took exception to this.

    In fairness, it wasn’t photoshopped; it was just a fake account.

    Transcript (too long for alt text):

    Don’t we think our electoral process and government are quite screwed up enough, without injecting photoshopped lies into the equation?

    Why not just photoshop Bernero’s head (or Obama’s, since that’s your ultimate target) into a picture and make it look like he’s peeing on the Bible, burning the flag, and r—ng a child [2023: redacted because I wouldn’t use this language in 2023, nor use the example at all, and I regret it…but I won’t deny I did it either, because I’m not a lying jerk -jh] and be done with it, if that’s the level of “integrity” that we’re bringing to the table?

    I mean, if you’re just going to insult people by lying to them and assuming they’re stupid enough to believe what you say just on faith, why not go for the BIG lie?

    As an ostensibly serious contender for the national chairmanship of the Republican Party, you should be aware that it is precisely this kind of childish and insulting behavior that keeps me resolved to never, ever trust a Republican. At least ONCE in a while I can find a Democrat who cares more about winning clean than about winning.

    The Weekly World News had better ethics than this. Shame on you.

    <insert lame “it was just a joke” defense, equally lame “I don’t get this internets stuff” defense, or a disappeared comment and personal ban here>

    Of course some troll had to jump in with the usual stalking routine, poverty shaming (told y’all I’ve been broke for a while), dumb word plays on my then-current domain names…which just opened the door to further analysis of Mr. Anuzis’ egregious misrepresentation. I’ll trim the troll BS and stick to the substantive parts:

    Partial comment screenshot from JH: "You see, Harry Reid didn't publicize a fake statement from the President and treat it as though it were real. That is what is happening here. I realize it's hard to keep track, what with that all-important ad hominem attack to launch, but try to focus, would you? There are serious considerations at stake in this election. Maybe it's pleasing to you, or to Mr. Anazis, to treat your solemn duty as though it was just another game of beer pong back at the frathouse, but some of us are just about at the end of our ropes with the ongoing descent of our political processes into sheer fiction. Maybe you prefer for YOUR leaders to lie to you, Mr. Joseph. I don't."

    Further relevant trim from the back-and-forth with the troll:

    The funniest part of all of this: You've not only failed to make a single assertion of any relevance, you've also failed to mount so much as a token defense of your candidate's behavior - and out here in the real world where the sky is blue, your candidate definitely has some defending to do. At the very least he's guilty of remarkably poor judgment.

    And then – right on schedule, as predicted in the first comment, here comes Our Boy to make his excuses:

    Saulius Saul Anuzis Actually, this is the "fake" Virg Bernero Twitter account...just sounded too much like him..my mistake. Virg's real account is @VBernero
    Always with the implausible “plausible deniability.” Knowing something like this was coming was precisely the reason I included the remark about poor judgement in the prior comment.

    Sure enough, it’s the “I don’t get this internets stuff” defense, with an attempted twist at “well it sounds like him!” It doesn’t. At all.

    So I called him out on that too.

    Crappy writing with the unfinished thought in the first paragraph…but the point was made, and firmly. This is not a man who should be leading anything or anyone; he demonstrably lacks the character for it. Thanks to the troll’s suggestion that I “write it up on your silly little website,” I did exactly that. The bulk of that material is below, trimmed of minor and irrelevant padding.

    This guy…wow.

    It’s one thing to create a parody Twitter account, although I question the ethics of doing so if you are a leadership candidate for one party and the parody is of another party’s candidate.

    I will also note here for the record that I have no evidence that Anuzis is in control of the Twitter account he supposedly is reporting on here…but it’s obviously not Democratic candidate for Michigan Governor Virg Bernero in control.

    So sure, parody.  Fine.

    Except Anuzis, as you can clearly see from the screenshot here, is deliberately playing this obvious fake as though it’s a legitimate public statement by Virg Bernero.

    – JH in the original article
    […]

    Now maybe if Mr. Anuzis was a college student pulling a prank or a young guy talking trash when he shouldn’t be, this would be a forgivable mistake.

    However, Mr. Anuzis is a candidate to chair the Republican National Committee.  He’s not just trying to have a voice, he’s trying to be the voice of the Republican party.

    And now he has demonstrated that his idea of ethics and integrity include treating an obviously fake public statement by an opponent as real.

    This is precisely the problem with not just the Republican party but with most politicians in this country period, and the people that vote for them:  we don’t seem to care about principles and ideals anymore.  Rather, it’s about who can make the most LOLs.  Hur hur hur, you are so clever.

    Maybe I’m at odds with the Republican party base on this – certainly your last successful presidential candidate would suggest that to be the case – but I’m not really interested in having a ham-handed giggling child in a position that includes the potential for him (or her) to influence public policy.  This is a position of national and world power, sir – tittering behind your hand like someone just made a wee-wee joke and you can’t help yourself is, at the very least, bad form.

    This is to say nothing, of course, of the outrageous ethical lapse in even pretending to believe that the quoted passage was actually a public statement by Virg Bernero.

    If this is what passes for “leadership” in the Republican Party, we may as well resign to becoming a one-party nation.

    – JH, extract from original article

    That was the end of the conversation, on October 12, 2010.

    By October 15th, Mr. Anuzis was no longer being spoken of as a serious contender for the Republican Party chairmanship. Indeed, Mr. Anuzis has done nearly nothing of note in politics since. His only activity of any real prominence was being part of the bipartisan coalition to push Michigan to sign on to the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact…and he still holds no titled or publicly disclosed position of significance within the state or national party.

    Oh, that vote for chair?

    Wikipedia

    He placed dead last in the first four rounds of seven, only managing to make it to second of three with the help of cast-off votes for candidates who had withdrawn from the race…and the third-place candidate was a woman, so not terribly likely to win a Republican election for anything anyway.

    Maybe I’ve heard some rumors that a certain candidate for RNC chair was told sometime around November first of 2010 that he was not going to win that seat because of certain past public indiscretions that may call into question his integrity, his affinity for the online campaign work that had become the top priority for anyone in electoral politics by 2010, and his perceived seriousness as a candidate, even if they had to bring in the current chair to split the vote and keep Anuzis out of any serious contention.

    What is known for certain is that incumbent chair Michael Steele announced his candidacy for the position on December 13 – long after the other candidates – and then dropped out in the fifth round of voting. His votes were then distributed among the remaining candidates, with Anuzis receiving the second-least in round 5 of 7. He picked up 8 of Steele’s 28 votes; Preibus 9, Maria Cino 11, and Ann Wagner none. In the sixth round, Wagner lost 11 votes and Cino lost 6; of the 17 open votes Anuzis got five and Priebus 13…which means Anuzis also lost a vote to Priebus in that round, as that’s one more vote shifted than had been previously committed to candidates who dropped. In the final round, Cino lost 6 more votes and Ann Wagner dropped out, leaving 23 votes to distribute; Preibus picked up 17 of them.

    Certainly it would be ridiculous for me to take credit for effectively ending the man’s political career. Anuzis blew it and displayed poor judgement at best and almost certainly poor ethics given the great likelihood he really knew the Bernero account was fake when he tried to put it over as legitimate.

    Of course, poor ethics has never been a bar to Republican leadership…but a situation in which the party chair could reasonably be painted as a technologicially inept doofus was a weak spot the Republican Party simply wasn’t willing to risk.

    Aside from a brief stint as a RNC national committee representative to fill a vacant seat, which was immediately lost to a Tea Party candidate in the following year, to this day (as of October 6, 2023) Anuzis has not held a single elective position within the Republican party, nor any appointments of significance. His only designated party position at all since that time was as senior advisor to Ted Cruz’s 2016 presidential campaign, and we all know how that went.

    (A final note: it never stops making me laugh that if you take all the vowels out of Reince Priebus, you end up with R–NC- PR–B-S.)

  • Dress Codes? Seriously?

    While this curated article was originally written in 2010, the subject of school dress codes continues rearing its ugly head – if anything even more frequently now as the Trump-empowered autocratic-fascist contingent in our culture feel confident in their victory over the evil forces of individual identity. There are few more overt and clear mechanisms of deranged, malicious powermongering than bullying a little kid for how they look. While this odious, evil behavior is most often directed at young women showing “too much skin” they’re not the only ones targeted. Anyone who gets behind this particular type of oppression and suppression is a mortal enemy of everything good in the world.

    Now here’s a story that’ll get you raging against the machine like a gutter punk in short order.  It seems that a four year old boy in Texas has been suspended from school…for having long hair.

    The school district responsible for this pornographically obscene attempt at powermongering, mandatory indoctrination to the status quo, and non-consensual behavior modification is Mesquite, Texas.  According to the news story from the AP, their dress code is justified as follows:

    “students who dress and groom themselves neatly, and in an acceptable and appropriate manner, are more likely to become constructive members of the society in which we live.”

    I have a whole list of problems just with this sentence and the thought processes behind it.  Who is to decide what constitutes “neatly,” “acceptable,” “appropriate,” and “constructive?”  Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Jim Jones, and Bill O’Reilly all dress well.  I would hardly call any of them ‘acceptable,’ ‘appropriate,’ or ‘constructive.’

    And let’s look at the other side, shall we?  In the early 19th century the works of Beethoven were derided as ‘longhair music.’  If our world only counted as valuable that which the Mesquite School Board finds acceptable, here’s a quick list off the top of my head of people who would not have done the things they did.  Each of these people was, at one time or another, longhaired, unacceptable, and inappropriate:

    • Beethoven
    • Edgar Allen Poe
    • H.P. Lovecraft
    • George Orwell
    • H. G. Wells
    • Robert Heinlein
    • Issas Asimov
    • Jesus
    • Moses
    • Abraham
    • Lot, and especially his daughters
    • Hippocrates
    • Socrates
    • Homer
    • Shakespeare
    • The entire musical genres of blues, jazz, rock and roll, rock, rap, hip hop, country after 1956 or so, and all their derivatives, plus half their roots, and every artist in them from Robert Johnson to Miley Cyrus.
    • George Washington
    • Thomas Jefferson
    • Abraham Lincoln
    • John F. Kennedy
    • Barack Obama
    • and thousands more

    While I recognize the need for the school district and their teachers and employees to be able to maintain order, I submit that it would be much more valuable an exercise for an educational body to work diligently at the task of teaching kids to understand WHY maintaining order is important, and WHAT actual order is (versus sullen compliance under duress), and then the kids will tend to choose and respect order to a healthy extend (and to reject it to an equally healthy extent). 

    It is very possible to have a mob of angry, well-dressed schoolchildren trash a school. 

    It’s equally possible for a bunch of long-haired, starry-eyed idealists to change the course of human history forever and create the greatest framework of human liberty ever known.

    Across our nation our schools are failing miserably to educate our children.  This has been a problem for generations, and it continues to be a growing problem that long ago reached epic proportions.  Not only are we falling behind the rest of the world in the classic “three r’s,” but five minutes on the ‘net or reviewing current popular culture trends will make clear that we’re failing to teach deductive or inductive logic, ethics, critical thinking, complex reasoning, independent thought, or genuine self-respect (as opposed to regurgitated slogans from 12-step groups that kids just roll their eyes at), and in some families we’ve been doing so for five generations or more.

    I am hard-pressed to think of any recent example that more clearly and completely demonstrates Where And How We Have Gone Wrong than this story.  “YOU!!  FOUR YEAR OLD!! YOU ARE DOOMED TO A LIFETIME OF INCOMPLETE EDUCATION BECAUSE YOUR MOM THINKS YOU LOOK CUTE WITH BANGS!!”

    The best part is the actual dress code, which you can find here. (Click the paragraph headings, and don’t feel bad – it took me a minute, too.)

    Do me a favor.  See that little “share” button up at the top of the page?  Click on it, and share this with everyone you know.  Enough is enough.  I can’t and won’t speak for anyone else, but I’m sick to death of seeing the “land of the free” usurped by a collection of self-important, mediocre failures, lacking in passion and clarity of thought and consideration of others while loudly decrying everyone else’s ignorance and selfishness.  Seriously.  Spread this around.  Enough is Enough.

    Great things are rarely, if ever, comfortable.  Nor are they generally safe, acceptable, appropriate, or neat.  The United States Constitution was conceived of, written by, defended by, and ultimately enacted by a collection of longhaired miscreants who had the unmitigated gall to think for themselves.  That gall, that drive, that chutzpah, that underdog-to-the-top dream of living comfortably simply by being who you are and doing what you do best and enjoy…that is America.  Every last bit of it.  Not one single man, woman, or child among us would be here – would even exist as we are – if it wasn’t for the long-haired, the socially unacceptable, the ones who refused to let others think for them, and this blue-nosed attempt to turn children into little automatons is child abuse on it’s face, and absolutely un-American at it’s heart.

    I will not stoop to speculating on the personal psychological defects that drive the individuals responsible for writing and enforcing this policy; I don’t know what individuals are personally responsible, and if I did know their names I know nothing about them personally.  The individuals involved should not be attacked personally by word or deed; they are merely the mindless yeast-like propagators of the failed system that spawned them.  Anything directed at them other than genuine pity is about as useful and meaningful as spanking a dog dropping because it’s on the living room rug.

    (They SHOULD, of course, be immediately removed from their positions, along with all their friends, family, college roommates, and so forth whom they have hired, and replaced with competent personnel.  That’s not a personal issue; it’s a functional one.)

    But I know that they are wrong.  Wrongest, even.  This whole situation is a perfect encapsulation of the nature and scope of our failures in education over multiple generations. 

    Dearest School Board, and all the School Boards like you:  Your job is to teach children to THINK, not to OBEY.  Children who can think, will obey any rule that makes sense to them…and if you are incapable of explaining the rules to them without falling back on “because I said so,” then you are a miserable failure as an educator and should retire immediately.  If you and everyone like you clears the system, those of us who believe that teaching should be among the highest-paid, best-rewarded, and most-respected positions in any developed society can begin making our case credibly.

    My forever longhaired, unacceptable, inappropriate, and unconstructive thanks in advance for your collective compliance.

  • God, Glue-Guns, and Glory

    This curated-and-updated post was originally published Oct. 29, 2009, and centers around a situation in which Home Depot terminated an employee named Trevor Keezer for refusing to remove a pin from his work uniform, while working, that read “One Nation, Under God, INDIVISIBLE.” You may recognize this as one of the many Islamophobic slogans that was flying around during the decade or so after 9-11 (and to some extent still are). The company’s policy was that employees may not wear anything on their uniform that wasn’t provided by the company. While a great deal of noise was made in right-wing media over the whole thing and indeed a lawsuit was filed, there’s no indication it ever went to court, and indeed it seems to have just been quietly dropped after a year of right-wing media outlets trying to drum out outrage over the “discrimination” against Christianity.

    This essay is presented as originally written in the immediate aftermath of the event, with minor editorial corrections and edits. -jh

    I’m definitely missing my camcorder today as this pointless, divisive kerfluffle over some redneck getting fired for pushing his religion on people on the workplace.  What a great topic for a video rant…

    I find it hilarious that so many people get all het up and whiny about BOYCOTT HOME DEPOT THOSE ATHEIST EVUL COMMIES, but boy wouldn’t they feel differently if the guy expressing his religious views on his work uniform was a Muslim, druid, or follower of Cthulhu?  But no, it’s shove those noses in the air, start wringing your hands, and quick everybody get wrapped up in a my-god-is-better-than-your-god argument that solves nothing and distracts us from dealing with the very REAL and PRESENT and OBSERVABLE problems that we are wrapped up in.

    A friend on Facebook linked to the Today show’s little fan page there, where one such conversation is taking place.  it’s hilarious.  “It’s not freedom FROM religion it’s freedom OF religion!”  Uh…same thing, Captain Logic  Freedom of religion by necessity includes the freedom to not participate in any religion at all without fear of persecution or discrimination.  And then it’s the same tired old arguments that have been shot down time and time and time again over how this is a ‘Christian nation’ (it isn’t and it never was) or how anyone who doesn’t believe in Jethro Bodine’s particular concept of “God” is unpatriotic and evil and should LUV IT ER LEEV IT.

    Now there’s a proud American sentiment, eh?  You must worship according to our rules or be rejected from society.  Oh, hey, waitaminnit, that’s the whole reason we (well, YOU.  My people are native american, dutch, and black) left England in the first place, isn’t it?

    What I can’t figure out is where all of these ‘good Christians’ get the fancy bibles that are missing the first part of Matthew 6.  Especially verse five:

    And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.

    This is one of the most important verses in the Christian canon, and one of the most overlooked.  In short, it says “you keep your religion between you and your god, rather than displaying it openly so that you can make money or impress people with your piety.  ‘God’ does not care if your friends are impressed with how holy you are, so STFU and keep it to yourself.  Anything else is stagecraft and hypocrisy.  I AM, that which I AM, and I do not need to pursue or convince my creatures of my power, nor need I for you to pursue or convince them on My behalf; they will choose to come to me.”

    I’ve seen this behavior at many large companies I’ve been employed by over the years, people decorating their cubes with their little holier-than-thou displays of bible verse and self-aggrandizing piety.  It made me terribly uncomfortable, afraid to express myself openly.  I even had colleagues ask me what church I attended – love that assumption that I attend ANY church, let alone that it’s anyone else’s damn business which one.

    (Sidebar:  One of the precious, self-righteous jerks I observed made the remark that one of HD’s competitors offers a standard military discount, so they were a better store anyway.  My first thought:  WTF lady you sent your husband off to die so you could get a good price on f’n gutters?!  How callous.)

    I don’t have anything against believers, personally.  I just don’t believe that your beliefs give you the right to force those beliefs on anyone else, particularly when you’re in a public-facing customer service role; it’s obnoxious, unwelcoming, and exclusionary to anyone who doesn’t share your beliefs – which, frankly, is the entire point of doing it so let’s not kid ourselves. 

    You want to blog about Jesus and pray in your facebook status, that’s no skin off my nose in the least. I don’t want to be prayed over at Home Depot or have my soul saved at McDonalds or get into a long discussion about my religious beliefs when I try to buy a slurpee.

    I still can find no Christian principle is supported by wearing buttons and slogans on my clothing to push my views on other people when I’m at work.  That guy wasn’t being paid to proselytize, he was being paid to stock shelves or run a cash register.  When I’ve had corporate jobs I haven’t decorated my workspace with political or social or religious messages.  Of course I have opinions, that much should be no secret by now, but I also have enough grace and respect for others to not make their work day uncomfortable by broadcasting them in that forum.  That’s not where they belong. 

    Believe what you want.  I won’t hold it against you, in and of itself. Do I have things to say about these issues?  Of course…but not when I’m working for someone else.  If I’m stocking shelves or building databases or whatever, I’m being paid to do that, and all of my time save that which is necessary to attend to the necessities of human body function – i.e. eating, drinking, restroom, and a short step-away every few hours to ‘cleanse the palate’ and clear the head for more effective work function – should be spent doing that.

    But more than anything else, what really chaps my ass about this whole thing is the smug tyranny of the majority, that obnoxious and distinctly un-Christian attitude that so many self-proclaimed followers of Jesus display to the rest of the world.  You know, that condescending crap they wrap around themselves that screams to the world, “I am a member of a special club, and if you don’t do things my way you can’t join my special club, and then I and all of my special friends will make fun of you and not rent apartments to you and not let you eat at our restaurants or date our daughters or work for us, because YOU are not one of US, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it because GAWD is on MY SIDE.”

    This root and its derivatives are, and have always been, among the fundamental causes of human misery.

    Isn’t it ironic that so many followers of the “Prince of Peace” will cheerfully do violence and wage war in his name?  Isn’t it ironic, that so many followers of the man who said “Be ye kind one unto another, tenderhearted, forgiving…” (Ephesians 4:32) are so cruel and heartless in their dealings with one another.  That the religion which gave us the concept of pride as sin should give rise to such pride-filled followers; that the religion which purports to teach us that judgment lies solely in the hands of the Almighty should generate so many adherents who incessantly judge others on their mode of worship, their sexual habits, or whatever else, rarely if ever exercising such strict judgment on themselves.

    Every one of us – every one of us – has skeletons in our closet.  We are all human, we are all fallible, and we are all in this together.  Anything that separates us one from another in the greater sense, as religion unquestionably does, is by definition genocidal…if slowly.

    The guy shouldn’t have had the pin on his uniform.  When the whole story’s out, it’s likely that he was asked/told/warned about this several times, and further that his decision to start publicly practicing his religion at work was intended to get him fired and provoke just this kind of self-righteous indignance, once again warming the fires that keep us from coming together as one people to solve our common problems, face our common threats, and improve our common state of being. [Ed. note 2023 – the eventual playing out of this case in one brief announcement of a lawsuit a year later followed by dead silence from all sides bears this analysis out entirely. He was in fact asked, told, warned, and even offered a company approved pin reading “United We Stand,” which is the same sentiment minute the Islamophobia/Christian proseltyzing. -jh]

    tl;dr:  deer xtians more cheekturning plz

  • McCain Hands Obama The Presidency

    This is a curated post originally written Sept. 25, 2008. It requires a little context; this was the last two weeks of the US presidential campaign pitting Republican Senator John McCain against Democratic Senator Barack Obama. There was a fairly serious conflict happening in congress regarding a congressional debate over a proposed funding bailout of “Wall Street” investment banks, and McCain made the abrupt and surprising decision to “suspend his campaign” in order to go back to Washington and debate the bill in the Senate. There was also a scheduled debate for the day after, September 26th, which initially McCain had said he would not attend but he ended up doing so.

    For a more in-depth review of those events I direct you to this contemporary article/timeline at National Public Radio.

    It should be noted that the question of whether McCain would’ve fared any better in the election had he not done that is not as open as my writing here would suggest; Obama was enjoying a strong campaign run and the great likelihood was he would win regardless. Still, it’s an interesting look into that election in its last few weeks, and in the major missteps made by McCain that certainly didn’t help his performance, whether it can be rightly said that it cost him the election or not. -jh, 3-Oct-2023

    A final note; this was about a year before I began my college education, and the discerning reader will note some minor errors in the use of labels and language, such as referring to myself as a “liberal” rather than the more accurate “leftist.” It was precisely these sorts of errors that led me to choose the educational path I did.

    So by now the evisceration of John McCain by David Letterman last night is fairly old news (even though it just happened).

    What I hate about this is that Dave made a lot of points I’d been planning to make myself.

    While it would be easy for the liberal in me to take great joy in watching the Palin legend implode, the reality is it just kind of makes me sad. With all due respect to my Republican friends, I just don’t see how you can continue to support the McCain-Palin ticket after this week. Not only did McCain completely blow a chance to take a lead on the current financial crisis, he managed to hand Obama the election while doing so.

    Consider the position that McCain is now in. If he refuses to attend the debate, Obama can blast him for lack of multitasking skills and an indifference to the needs of the voters to be informed about their candidates’ positions. If McCain attends the debate, then he’s reversed himself, as it’s clear that this is simply not an issue that can be meaningfully resolved in two days.

    Perhaps more importantly, however, is that McCain has once again tipped his hand in several different ways. First, he’s impulsive – sometimes recklessly so – in making decisions. Second, he spins and spins; it would take a truly dedicated Believer to not suspect that the real motivation for McCain wanting to delay the debates is rooted in not only his own lack of preparation, but in a fear that his running mate will fare even worse in the veep debates. Third, it says something very unpleasant about the man’s leadership skills that when the merde hits the fan, his reaction is to slam on the breaks, panic, and demand drastic changes in plan that aren’t actually justified by the situation.

    But all of this is secondary to the real revalation hidden behind McCain’s ‘suspension’ of his campaign – the fact that he has zero confidence in his running mate to step in and handle the duties that he would otherwise be performing. There’s no reason that Palin couldn’t have done Letterman last night. There’s no reason that she couldn’t step in for him nearly anywhere other than the debate itself, but it wasn’t even suggested.

    Palin’s performance thus far has been utterly abysmal outside of her stump speech – which aged so fast you’d think it was suffering from Progeria. Her three major interviews thus far have been populated with stock, rehearsed answers, a glaring lack of meaningful responses, and a recurring impersonation of a deer in the headlights of an oncoming Peterbilt. She even managed to make Katie Couric look menacing and tough, and with no disrespect intended to Ms. Couric, that’s not exactly her strong suit. I mean, come on. “I’ll find out and get back to you?” Did a moose eat her homework?

    The shine is off the Palin apple, I’m afraid, and what’s left is just not much to look at. Throughout this campaign, Obama’s decisions and responses have been measured, reasoned, and careful. McCain’s have been impulsive, reckless, fearful, and pandering, from his selection of Palin as running mate to this latest kerfluffle over ‘suspending the campaign.’

    I submit to you that John McCain has indeed handed the Presidency of the United States to Barack Obama, and now it seems the only thing left for the Republican party to do is leave him as big a mess as they can possibly manage, so they can blame him for not cleaning it up. At every possible turn, McCain has said and done exactly the worst possible thing, and frankly at this point my expectations for him are so low that if he just manages to not blow his top and say something ridiculously impulsive, it will count as a victory.

    It’s a pity, really. Eight years ago, I could have seen myself voting for McCain. Unfortunately, the 2008 John McCain is just the same old neo-conservative, trickle-down, right-wing panderer that the previous candidates from his party have been. Any touch of the ‘maverick’ he once was is long gone; while some folks are just coming to that realization, for me the turning point was when he agreed to speak at Liberty University, after criticizing other candidates for speaking at Bob Jones and labelling Liberty founder Jerry Falwell an ‘agent of intolerance.’

    Politicians are human beings. I accept that, probably more so than most voters. I don’t expect them to be perfect. But McCain has been stepping on his johnson for years, and has made a complete mess of this run at the presidency. The Palin selection was a horrendous move, but then to flat-out lie to Letterman about ‘rushing back to Washington’ only to be caught on feed talking to CBS news when he was supposed to be on Letterman is just the icing on the cake. He flat-out lied. Whether it was appropriate for him to appear on a comedy program or not is beside the point – he could have said that honestly. “Dave, I love being on your show and you’ve been a good friend for a lot of years, but I just don’t feel like a late-night comedy/variety show is the place for a presidential candidate to be in the middle of an economic crisis. I’m going to do the news with Katie tonight, can I take a rain check for say two weeks from now?” That was the approach Obama took with his SNL appearance a couple of weeks ago when Hurricane Ivan was heading for Galveston – he backed out honestly.

    With his bumbling ineptitude, his cynical attempts to pander to any voting bloc he can define, and the consistently dishonest tone of his campaign from the lies in his advertising to this most recent gaffe with Letterman, John McCain has shown clearly that the only change he’s going to bring to Washington is the name plates on the doors.

    Hero? Absolutely. Presidential material? Not on your life, and frankly I think he’s realizing it.

    So on January 20th as President Barack Hussein Obama is sworn in as the 44th President of the United States…be sure to spare a moment of thanks for his opponent in this race. Obama couldn’t have won without McCain’s diligent effort to throw the fight.

  • Thanks, America (2008)

    It’s still sinking in.

    I’m 38 years old.  I was born in 1970, at the height of the Vietnam War.

    In my lifetime, my country has been led by:

    • A crook
    • An oaf
    • A man whose good intentions and peaceful nature rendered him too soft on foreign aggression and inept in the management of the economy
    • A bad actor who shut millions of people out of the process of government, refused to confront the most pressing domestic issues of his time, and created a culture of greed that we have yet to grow out of
    • A spy
    • A philanderer
    • Another oaf, this one with an unfortunate mandate provided by circumstance that has allowed him to abuse our military and destroy our standing in the world

    Yesterday, on November 4th, 2008, for the first time in my life…we elected a leader.  A man of courage, of vision, of honor, and of hope.  A man who has spoken his mind, stood his ground, and encouraged us all to reject the politics of hate and fear.

    A black man.

    Last night at 11 pm EST, The United States of America turned the page on nearly two hundred and fifty years of unrealized ideals and unfulfilled potential.  We the people have rejected hate, fear, and division.  We have rejected hypocrisy and greed and envy, and for the first time in our history, we have taken a major step toward living up to that precious founding assertion that all men are created equal.

    Even as recently as a year ago, it was inconceivable to me that a black man could be elected President.  I liked Obama, and I wanted him to win…but I didn’t think he could.  I didn’t think we were ready, as a country. to elect a black person to the Presidency.

    I am proud and honored to say today that I was wrong.

    I am sure that Barack Obama will make mistakes.  I am sure that he will do things I don’t agree with.  I am sure there will be controversy and conflict.

    But I am equally sure that never again can the world look at us and say ‘before you take the mote from our eye, remove the beam from your own.’

    The next four years will be tough.  You don’t need me to tell you what’s going on in the world, you’re well aware.  We have a lot of problems to solve, at home and abroad.  We have errors to correct, and we have some major repairs to make in our systems and processes.  We have a baddly tattered national psyche to heal – one that has never really been healthy in the first place – and we have some soul-searching to do.

    A week ago today I wrote, “…it’s not just time for them to change…it’s time for us to change.”

    Last night, in the most significant positive historical event of my lifetime, we began that change, and for the first time in my life I can say without hesitation or qualification:

    I am proud to be an American.

    I don’t want to get too wrapped up in navel-gazing.  There is work to be done, and it’s up to us to do it, working with our leaders instead of working in spite of them.  This is not the end of struggle, merely the end of the beginning of a long journey.

    But at long last, that journey has well and truly begun.

    Savor this moment, if Obama was your candidate.  If he wasn’t, consider that maybe you have bought in to ideals that are less than ideal, and maybe it’s time for all of us to look inside ourselves and see what could use some adjustment.  Rest assured that although I have great faith and confidence in President-Elect Obama, I will hold him to the same standard, if not a higher one, that I have held our previous leaders.  Don’t think that if you are a card-carrying Democrat or liberal, that your agenda just got a blank check, because it didn’t – I suspect that those lawmakers on the left who still cling to their outmoded methods and ideologies (lookin at you here, Pelosi) are in for a bit of a rude awakening, because we’re still trillions of dollars in debt and we still have major steps and sacrifices to make, and there is much to be corrected and abandoned as useless on all facets of the political spectrum.  For too long, the starry-eyed idealism of our social conscience has been either untempered by pragmatism, or defeated by cynicism.  

    Today, we begin to find the balance.

    The whole world is indeed watching, and in this one night America has taken a major step to not just reclaim the honor and respect we have sometimes enjoyed in the world…but perhaps, for the first time in our history, to make a strong case for deserving it.

    And now…now we have to get to work on maintaining it.  Each of us has our part to play in rebuilding and building up this nation.  Some of us may not know what that role is yet…but we each have one, and it is vital.  If you don’t know yet where you’re going or what you’re doing, then my best advice to you is to work now to get yourself in fighting shape so that when the call comes, you’re prepared to answer.

    Yes, America, we can.

    My congratulations and my thanks to everyone who has played a part in making this happen.  

    Now let’s get to work.

  • The Price Of Fear (2008)

    Curated post, originally published 10-Oct-2008

    The lies and bile of the McCain campaign are officially Not Funny Anymore.

    I’ve been quietly concerned as I read and participate in various message groups and discussion fora at the level of seething hatred some McCain supporters – I won’t even call them conservatives at this point – have for Barack Obama.  We have seen a few scattered reports over the last week or so, mostly from Palin rallies but at McCain’s as well, of crowd members screaming such unjustified and ugly things as ‘traitor,’ ‘terrorist,’ ‘liar,’ and worse.  In one instance, at a Palin rally, even the chilling refrain, “kill him!”

    This evening, I read this story, detailing how John McCain got booed at his own rally for saying that Obama is “a decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared of as president of the United States.”  The story includes quotes from McCain’s followers at a “town hall” style meeting, complete with ‘socialists taking over this country’ and ‘I don’t trust Obama…he’s an Arab.’  These are clearly the same people that many of us who support the Obama candidacy have been laughing off.  Let’s face it – they’re pretty damned stupid, making political decisions based on rumor, innuendo, and negative ads.  In the exercise of what is, regrettably, a fairly common liberal trait of condescension toward the credulous and naive, we have basically ignored these knuckle-dragging noisemakers because frankly, we find it difficult to believe that anyone is dumb enough to buy in to theridiculous, irrelevant nonsense being churned out by the McCain campaign.

    But it’s gone past funny over the last week.  There’s nothing at all funny about an American citizen shouting ‘kill him’ at a political rally.  There is nothing funny about accusing a presidential candidate of terrorism or treason.  

    People everywhere, across the political, religious, and ‘class’ spectra, are hurting, angry, and frightened.   As the Obama campaign has worked to stay positive – not always with great success – McCain-Palin and their Atwater-Rove-inspired hate machine have continued throwing the negativity in ever-increasing intensity toward Barack Obama.  The Republican’s haven’t just failed to control the negativity, they have actively encouraged it at every turn.  They intentionally stoked those fires in the mistaken belief that the solution to the ineffectiveness of their negative message is to ramp up the negativity; portraying Obama as a terrorist, someone to be afraid of, someone who cannot be trusted, someone who is ‘different than us.’

    And now, it’s spinning out of their control. 

    It seems to have finally dawned on Senator McCain that the politics of hate aren’t winning this election for him, and when he tried to rein them in…his own crowd turned on him. 

    Frankly, I don’t have enough respect for John McCain any more to believe that his attempt to be less negative toward Obama is motivated by any sense of shame, or of concern at the intensity of the hate he has engendered.  I think he just noticed – after weeks of failure – that his negativity isn’t bringing in the voters.  The problem is that in ‘energizing the base,’ McCain and Palin have given those who would themselves aspire to radical terrorism a sense of validation and righteousness.  

    John McCain has deliberately turned the slim possibility of Obama’s assassination into something that is frighteningly plausible.  We are faced with two possible scenarios:  either McCain is just too ignorant to have understood the power he was unleashing, or he understood it and unleashed it anyway because he cares more about getting elected than about the consequences of his filthy, digusting, fear- and hate-mongering tactics.

    Now – too late – he tries to put the brakes on, and like the fabled sorcerer’s apprentice, he is faced with the frightening fact that no matter what he does, the brooms continue to fetch water even as the house is flooding.

    I’m forced to wonder if McCain or his ‘brilliant’ team of strategists who have engineered this pretty hate machine have considered the fear that’s going through my mind right now…the fear of how big the explosion will be if one of these ignorant, hate-filled, seditious domestic terrorists actually manage to make a meaningful attempt on Barack Obama’s life.

    Senator McCain can’t un-ring this bell.  The brooms keep fetching and the water keeps pouring in, even as the apprentice who thought he was commanding the brooms is overwhelmed and drowned.

    And that’s a cute, funny little analogy, you know.  John McMickeymouse waving his wand ineffectually at all those disobedient brooms that he’s brought to life.  The problem is, it’s not funny anymore.  It’s getting ugly.  Bobby Kennedy ugly.  Abraham Lincoln ugly.

    John McCain has failed, miserably, in his first real test of leadership.  A leader would never have opened this Pandora’s box in the first place.  A leader knows that you do not set loose forces that you can’t control. A leader knows that in a place and time when people are already frightened, angry, and suspicious, to further encourage that and direct it against a political opponent can have dire consequences.

    John McCain brought those brooms to life.  The man is 72 years old and has been a national leader for nearly 30 of those years…and yet he lacked the foresight and judgment to consider what sorts of consequences would be in the list of potentialities if he chose to pour gasoline on that fire for the sake of his own ambition.

    If for no other reason, this stunning lack of judgment and blind ambition make it clear:  John McCain is not fit to be the President of the United States, and that hate-filled, bigoted, wretched joke of a woman he selected for his vice-president doesn’t deserve the slightest bit of attention or respect from the people of this country.  Time and time again, through poor judgment, through the abuse of power, through the malicious disregard for the sancitity of the offices they hold and seek, they have proven themselves profoundly unfit for service.

    Let’s just hope the gun they’ve loaded with such irresponsible avarice is never fired…unlike Barack Obama’s “relationship” with Bill Ayers, the results of such a tragedy are something that is really frightening.

  • You Say You Want A Evolution…

    You say you want a evolution, well, you know. We all want to change the world.

    There can be no serious question that right-wing authoritarian structures like fascism and autocracy are on the rise around the world, even in places once thought to be resistant or impervious to them like the United States.

    This isn’t merely happening within governments but also in the media, both news and entertainment.

    There can be no serious question that the interests not only of human liberty but of human survival lie in resisting those structures with all our energy.

    I need you to listen to me now:

    The best way to fight fascism is, first and foremost, to simply not be a fascist.

    To not be a fascist means doing the hard work of understanding that human thinking has been broken since day one, and it means understanding what we can do within ourselves and out in the world to fix it, as best we can with whatever resources and ability we may have.

    Not being a fascist means being consistent and firm and honest within ourselves about how and what we think. It means being the voice in our own head that asks hard questions like “wait…that’s a little racist, isn’t it?” or “am I really being fair here?” and answers them honestly, even when we don’t like the honest answer.

    Not being a fascist means resisting that urge to “go along” with microaggressions that aren’t targeted at you…or that may even benefit you.

    It means not allowing yourself to fall into the trap of believing that your freedom lies in your ability to imitate those who enslave you by enslaving others, by declaring others less than (or greater than for that matter) by virtue of some ridiculous external characteristic like skin color, gender or gender identity, or sexuality.

    It means not merely “class solidarity” or solidarity with some other identity group like our ethnic heritage, gender expression, or sexuality, but life solidarity: understanding that we are all nodes in an incomprehensible mesh of interacting interactions interacting with interactions ad infinitum, and fundamentally we *must* all work together, as best as we can understand how, to ensure that life exists and persists. 

    That IS the “meaning of life.”  To create and propagate more life.  It’s what we’re “here for,” one way or another, and as a much wiser man than I once wrote, “all things serve The Beam.” Sagan: “We are a way for the universe to know itself.” Hicks: “We are all one consciousness, experiencing itself subjectively…we are the imagination of ourselves.”

    The grand procession of Life is all about keeping live alive and evolving so we can imagine ever more wonderful selves as we grow and evolve over time, always knowing that fundamentally there is no finish line to evolution. Either you keep evolving, or you go extinct. (Except you, mister horseshoe crab. Contrary bastard.)

    It’s fairly ludicrous to suggest that in an effectively infinite universe, intelligent life only exists on this one backwater rock…but it’s also a non-zero possibility. 

    We may be IT. We and our companions here on this rock, could be the only developing intelligent life in the universe.  I’d say it’s much more likely given the span of time that we’re not, but it’s possible – *someone* had to be first.

    It is our duty to life, to do our best to keep life moving forward. That is what we’re here for, in whatever ways our individual lives present the possibility.

    You know this, and we know this together, but we are steeped in literally *our entire history* of thinking differently. We’ve gone through all the things we’ve gone through from the caves and treetops through all manner of strife and abuse and thousands of years of struggle, and now we are here. This is the moment when humanity becomes Next. It’s happening around you, and to you, every minute.

    Keep moving forward. We are breaking the chains of the past and writing the direction of the future all at once, and we owe it to ourselves, to all who came before us, and to all who will come after, to get it right as best we can.

    Part of that process is eradicating fascism and the dark human tendencies that fuel it as completely and irrevocably as possible.

    That starts with each one of us, in our own minds, every day.

    Don’t be a fascist.

  • TLDR – Jason Aldean: Small Town, Big Deal

    So the internet noise machine has been trending this last week or so due to an execrably antagonistic and jingoist track called “Try That In A Small Town,” recorded by country “singer” Jason Aldean.

    First, let’s be 100% clear: this song is just…junk. Musically it’s as cookie-cutter and formulaic as they come in every possible way. The video immediately validated my suspicion that country music in 2023 is just hair metal with steel guitars and flags. I swear they lifted part of this directly from Bo Burnham’s Country Song.

    Pictured: A rube propagating propaganda

    This all started because I heard the beginnings of the big controversy and just for grins I read the lyrics.

    Here’s the thing, man – to even take this song on without burning the lyric sheet and hoping it doesn’t summon a demon, either you’re the rube who falls for this junk, or you’re a carefully constructed façade masking a steel-trap mind engaged in the deliberate subversion of American cohesion and community by fearmongering and playing on racist and “othering” tropes while clearly holding the intelligence and culture of your audience in contempt (and not without some reasonable basis given that you do in fact have an audience, which is definitely contemptible).

    I’m gonna go with “rube,” and assign responsibility for the rest of it to the committee of faceless hacks who take responsibility for actually writing this dreck.

    First, let’s start with the dystopian fearmongering nightmare of the first verse:

    Sucker punch somebody on a sidewalk
    Carjack an old lady at a red light
    Pull a gun on the owner of a liquor store
    Ya think it’s cool, well, act a fool if ya like

    Cuss out a cop, spit in his face
    Stomp on the flag and light it up
    Yeah, ya think you’re tough?

    “Try That In A Small Town”

    This is a master class in “agitprop,” agitating propaganda. Propaganda subverts critical thinking by appealing directly to emotion; agitprop specifically targets emotions like anger, outrage, and frustration, and can reasonably be seen as one means of engaging in stochastic terrorism.

    So in the first verse you’ve got the setup – “those people” are comin’ to “our town” to sucker punch meemaw while they’re jacking her 93 Tercel so they can go rob Jimmy’s beer store! Be afraid! All Is Chaos!”

    Let’s be clear: crime happens and that sucks. But these are cherry-picked, isolated incidents far less common than, say, unarmed young black men being murdered by police. The purpose is to make you mad and get your blood pumping, because ol’ Jason here is gonna tell you just how to solve that problem in a minute. Let’s take a look at the chorus:

    Well, try that in a small town
    See how far ya make it down the road
    Around here, we take care of our own
    You cross that line, it won’t take long
    For you to find out, I recommend you don’t
    Try that in a small town

    “Try That In A Small Town”

    It gets really creepy in the second verse, all about grampa and some firearms put to good use against those others who aren’t “our own,” with vague references of what’s gonna happen when “they” come to take our guns.

    I can’t help but think of how many “small-town” folks I know – I lived in Oxford, NC for many years, and I’m currently sitting where I was born and raised in Kalamazoo, Michigan, which isn’t exactly Midtown Manhattan – who aren’t drawling, drooling, bigoted, ignorant, stereotypes. The contempt these “songwriters” have for the intellect of their audience is palpable, and that audience should be insulted to know someone believes this kind of bigoted dogwhistle – and it is one, those details have already been more than adequately covered by others at this point – will appeal to them.

    Listen: If a ratty old “NO FEAR” t-shirt covered in layers of Doritus and beer stains that are almost invisible because the beer that was spilled on ’em is some crappy, watery thing in a plastic bottle suddenly became a song lyric, this would be them.

    If you need to know exactly how many pounds of copper wire it takes to get a box of cold medicine, this song’s got you covered.

    This song’s gonna get that back door fixed one of these days but who CARES, Bobbie Sue, it’s the BACK door ain’t nobody can SEE it!

    This song spent thirteen thousand dollars on new suspension parts trying to get their ’78 Nova to stop dog-tracking…and six thousand of that was because the struts had rebel flags painted on ’em.

    This song used to have long hair until it got tired of cleaning the remains of last night’s alcohol overdose out of it.

    This song’s gonna chest-thump and in-group and passive-aggressive all OVER you, and what are you gonna do about it, SITTY BOAH? Ain’t been doin these twelve-ounce curls all m’life for FUN, son. *belch*

    It’s just dumb and gross and needs to stop. All of it, including the mediocrity of the music itself. Spare me the arguments about whether or not it’s a racist dogwhistle, it very clearly and obviously is, everybody knows it, the only people pretending otherwise are the dogs being whistled for, and everybody knows that, too, including them.

    Enough.