Things That Chap My Ass About Customer Service

Business is bad.

That’s what you hear, everywhere you turn.

The economy is in the crapper, people are out of  work, customers don’t have disposable income, and so on and so forth. Woe, woe is us.

That light at the end of the tunnel? Not only is it an onrushing juggernaut, it’s an overloaded circus train driven by Curly, Moe, Larry, and their idiot cousin, Shemp.

It’s bad, business is. Bad and getting worse.  I’ve written about business before, and specifically things that you shouldn’t have to tell business leaders, but do anyway apparently.

Today, lets focus on customer service.

Now, in this climate, you’d think business would be doing all it can to woo, attract, keep, satisfy, cosset, pamper, spoil, indulge, cater to, humor, dandle, mollycoddle, green stamp, suck up to, appease, mollify, placate, soothe, and otherwise kiss the big bulbous ass of each and every precious customer. In fact, if business wants to see me and my money on a regular basis, it really ought to be coming over to my house and washing my car, raking my leaves, calling me Mr. Selleck and asking if I’ve lost weight. 

And, you know, it sure wouldn’t hurt if business swung by my favorite coffee stand and picked me up a large triple-shot latte on its way over.

Instead business seems hell bent on pissing off just as many customers as is humanly possible.  

As a business model, that’s generally a bad idea.

Especially in this climate.

 

What?

 

Oh, you think that would be obvious?

Well, you are so wrong.

You do have to tell business. You might even have to beat them about the head and shoulders with it.

Whoa, now hold on there, Jim, I hear you say in that contemptuous voice you use when you’re looking down from the 53rd Floor of the BOA Tower and the Occupy Wall Street Rally below finally makes you understand that what people really want is an additional monthly fee to use their own money. Just settle down there, don’t make us get out the pepper spray. This is America, we can do that, you know.

Yes, I know. But the joke’s on you, I’ve been pepper sprayed before.

Several times.

And frankly, there are days where I’d rather be maced than spend my money in your damned store.

Here’s the thing, if your business is so good that you don’t need my money, well, you know that’s your choice. But if you want me as a customer here’s some advice:

Stop trying to be hip.  Seriously.  Just stop it. It’s embarrassing.  It’s midlife crisis gets hair-plugs and a Camaro and cruises past the local High School embarrassing.  You ever see the movie Better Off Dead? Remember that part where Lane’s dad reads the book How To Talk To Your Teenager? You’re really bringing me over, man.  Like that. Exactly like that. That’s what you look like when you try to be groovy.  Look out there. See those people? The hip ones with the black eye shadow and shitty attitudes who smell like a combination of burning rope and ass? Sure they’re hip, but they don’t have any money. They’re unemployed. That’s why they’re hanging out at the mall.

The Sound Track.  I was in three different businesses yesterday:

- The phone store was playing speed metal at high volume, either that or somewhere behind the counter an angry baboon was humping an air raid siren in a rock crusher.  We went in to talk about a billing error.  This particular billing error has been going on for three months despite repeated requests for correction.  It does not surprise me. Because it is utterly impossible for anybody to concentrate on business or perform any cognitive function more complex than imitating an aquatic plant with that noise grinding out from the speakers. 

- In the bookstore they were playing Frank Sinatra at a level that made me want to punch Old Blue Eyes right in the throat and watch him choke to death on his crushed larynx. I came in to look at books not catch a show at the Copacabana.  You know how I feel about modern bookstores anyway, Frank yodeling over my head was the final straw. I went home and in the peace and serenity of my own living room, downloaded the half dozen books I wanted in electronic format from the store’s online competitor.

- The restaurant was playing Air Supply.  There’s a reason why people hated the goddamned 70’s, and no, it wasn’t Nixon or tie dyed jeans or the Ewok Christmas Special. It was Air Supply.  It was Chicago. It was Journey.  It was Abba.  It was disco. Honest to God, man, it’s a restaurant, you’re playing music that causes intestinal cramps.  I mentioned it to the waitress. Yeah, everybody hates this crap she said, everybody complains about it. Duh. Well, let’s just keep it on permanent loop then, why don’t we?

Don’t Let Morons Answer The Phone.  Everybody hates those damned automated answering systems, but you know what’s worse? When you finally do get an actual live person on the phone – and that person is an idiot.  I’m not talking about tech support. I’m not talking about billing or something complicated.  I’m talking about calling a place to find out if they have what I’m looking for and and the toad who answers the phone knows less about your inventory than the aforementioned idiot cousin Shemp.  Gas is five goddamned dollar a gallon, before I drive fifty miles I’d really like to know if you have what I’m looking for or I’m going to order from Amazon and wait a week.  However, to be completely fair, I will come by your place later – for the going out of business sale.

Speaking of the phone, if the person waiting on me stops to answer the phone in the middle of our transaction, you’ve lost me as a customer. This is non-negotiable.

Of course, it doesn’t surprise me that your cashier doesn’t know how to focus on the customer.  It doesn’t surprise me because about half the time the manager is standing next to her discussing something other than keeping me happy.

Free Samples. There is nothing I hate so much as those people who hand out free food samples in the grocery store. No, strike that, I don’t hate those people, I hate the herd of eager bovines clustered in front of the sample cart. It’s a tiny little cup of some crap that you’d never buy, but these people act like they’re handing out free Viagra. It could be liver flavored asbestos coated Brussels sprouts in Satan’s ass sauce and people will get into a shoving match for a free cup of it. Once they’ve got a sample, they wander slowly through the store, elbows resting on their shopping cart, ass sticking out, licking their little wooden sticks and making smacking noises like Homer Simpson, mmm, I love you free sample, nom nom nom. But here’s the thing, nobody ever buys that crap, all you’re doing is blocking the damned aisle. Between the free sample cart and the giant display boxes every three feet and the shelf stocker, it’s a wonder anybody can actually get through the store – and when did we start stocking shelves during business hours anyway?

The help. Ten percent of America is out of work. Ten percent.  There are literally millions looking for employment, and these chowderheads are the only idiots you could find to hire? Look, I have serious doubts regarding the advice offered by your employee when he’s a forty year old guy with a fauxhawk, pieced tongue, and flip-flops. Ditto the gum chewing girl with the bare midriff and a whale tail.  I’m not asking that your people be in tuxedos, but is it too much to ask that they keep their underwear on the inside of their clothing?  Or that they wear underwear at all? Seriously, what’s with the recent outbreak of asscrack? 

Ever go in a place and get the Stink Eye? You know, the place where they follow you around like you’re going to steal something? Boy, that makes me want to come back.

How about the Grumpy Greeter? I’m talking about the mean old guy who meets you at the door.  Hi, welcome to Wal-Mart, Dickhead, don’t steal nothing. Here’s a sticker for your ugly kid. (Ok, I can sort of sympathize with this guy, and, yes, I’ll probably be him some day).

It’s bad enough when you can’t find an employee, but too much help is even worse. I spend a lot of time in hardware stores. I used to love the little hardware stores that you could find on any Main Street in America. There was always a helpful middle aged guy behind the counter, he knew everything there was to know about hardware and knew exactly what you needed before you could even ask. He also knew when to leave you the hell alone.  Unfortunately, those places were all eaten by Big Box stores filled with clueless morons, and you know how I feel about that.

True story: I’m looking at bins full of nuts, bolts, and washers:

1st Guy: Hi! Can I help you?

Me: Thanks. I’ve found what I need.

1st Guy: Ok! Just ask if you need help!

Me: I think I can handle it.

I start counting out bolts.  … nineteen, twenty, twenty-one…

2nd Guy: Hi! Finding everything you need?

Me: I’m good.

2nd Guy: Ok! Just ask if you need help!

Where the hell was I? Twenty? Damn it. One, two, thr…

3rd Guy: Hi! Let’s build something together!

Me: Fuck. Off.

3rd Guy: I think that’s in aisle three, this way!

Grrrr. One, two, three, four…

4th Guy: Hi! How can I help you!

Me: Stand right there.

4th Guy: What?

Me: Stand right there. Shut up. Don’t move. Every time another vest wearing idiot comes along, you wave ‘em off.

4th Guy: I, uh…

Me: You asked how you can help? That’s what I need. Defense.  Stack up a couple of those display boxes and barricade the aisle. 

 

Business is bad.

Frankly, I can’t imagine why.

What chaps your ass about customer service these days?

Consequences

Arabs call it Rub’ al Khali.

The Empty Quarter.

Most Westerners have never heard of this place. 

Few outsiders, very few, ever venture there.

The Rub’ al Khali is a vast, vast forbidding sea of sand and searing brown rock, a desolate lonely place that takes up more than a third of the Arabian Peninsula, including a large part of Saudi Arabia itself,  along with parts of Oman, the UAE, and Yemen.  It is the largest sand desert in the world. During the day temperatures can reach 125°F or more and the ground is so hot that it will literally burn skin and raise blisters. It is as if the sun is somehow closer to surface of the earth here than elsewhere in the world. And then, at night, under a vast milky river of crystalline stars the likes of which are rarely seen anywhere else on earth, you can die shivering of hypothermia.  The air is thin and as dry as the surface of the moon, you can feel it sucking the moisture right out of your body leaving your nose bleeding and your skin cracked and bleached like old leather.

It smells of flint and powered cement.

On the southern edge of the Empty Quarter lies the Yemeni administrative province of al-Jawf.  It’s cooler here and sometimes it even rains,  there are small towns in the central highland desert, dusty places where people still herd camels and tough little goats.  In the wet years there is enough rain to plant crops of wheat and barley and to scratch out a living from the poor soil. During those years, runoff from the crops forms into streams that will evaporate before they reach the sea, leaving behind a crust of salt and a poisonous rime of chemical fertilizer.  The people there have this look, as if they are one and all ancient, raised whole from the hardscrabble by malicious djinni and weathered by wind driven sand, desiccated, carved from beef jerky and left to dry in the sun.

This forsaken place has always been a fairly lawless land, a natural base for pirates, criminals and cutthroats, bandits and pissant warlords. 

It is fitting then, that in recent times al-Jawf, on the edge of the great Rub’ al Khali, has become a hiding place for terrorists.

Last Friday morning, in the desert five miles outside of a small al-Jawfi town called Khashef, a party of men stopped alongside the dusty road.  Muslims, they knelt in the desert and made their mid-morning prayers.  Then, while it was still reasonably cool, they ate breakfast.  Figs perhaps, strong coffee, hard cheese and bread maybe. 

This would turn out to be a mistake.

They should have kept going.

Al-Jawf is a dangerous place, even in the best of times, and lately it’s become even more deadly. New predators patrol the skies alongside the sharp eyed desert hawks. 

Perhaps they heard their death approaching.  The American drones are ghostly silent – sometimes though, if the wind is just right, you can hear their thin keening buzz from a distance.  Or maybe they saw those slim black silhouettes outlined like the grim reaper’s shadow against the blinding blue sky.  Of course they would have been alert for just such an attack.  They were, after all, some of the most wanted men in the world, dangerous and cunning and experienced. They had all been hunted from the sky before.  They would have watched for those deadly raptors the way a desert mouse watches for a hawk.  And so, somehow, they sensed death approaching.

Like the mouse, they ran.

Four of them made it to an SUV and attempted to reach the relative safety of Khashef. 

Another mistake, and the last one they would make. 

The AGM-114 tactical missile is small, comparatively cheap, accurate, and deadly. They’re designated Hellfire – named for the weapon’s original mission: HELicopter launched FIRE-and-forget.  They were designed to kill tanks – later it turned out they worked pretty well against a wide variety of targets, including SUV’s.

Hellfire, if ever there was an appropriate nickname for a weapon, that would be it.

Two of the missiles dropped off of the drones’ munitions hardpoints and streaked towards the fleeing SUV – and the end was inevitable at that point. Once the missiles are locked on, it’s all over but for the bang. 

Four men died in the explosion.

And in that moment, in that hellfire, the world became a measurably better place.

Those men were terrorists, committed, enthusiastic, and unrepentant.  They were terrorists in the purest sense of the word – in that they deliberately created, encouraged, promulgated, and enabled terror.  Terror was not a byproduct of their campaign, it was the very reason for its existence.  It doesn’t matter why.  It doesn’t matter if they felt justified or moral or compelled by God. They were terrorists and they reveled in it.  The only argument is in the details and the degree.

These men were not only the self-proclaimed and sworn enemies of America, they were the nemesis of civilization everywhere, including and especially in Yemen. 

Quite simply, these men declared war on the entire world and thus made themselves the enemies of every single man, woman, and child on the planet.

Two of them, as it happens, were also Americans.

And therein lies the rub.

 

President Obama’s former Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, was once pilloried for saying, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste” (often misquoted as “never let a good crisis go to waste”).  Crass? Maybe. Maybe it was just crass to say it so bluntly (Oddly, Emanuel’s enemies are the ones who pride themselves on speaking plainly and who eschew political correctness, perhaps they simply couldn’t abide seeing their own thoughts reflected back at themselves. But I digress).  Crass or not, Emanuel was simply stating a basic tenet of all politics, Left, Right, and other.

Never let a crisis go to waste. 

Here’s the corollary: If there is no crisis, create one. 

And here’s the rest of it: Never, ever, let a victory by your political opposition go unchallenged.

In some cases, it is hard to tell if the pundits and the politicians calling for the impeachment of Barack Obama today truly believe what they are saying. In other cases, the intent, and the astounding hypocrisy, is perfectly clear.

I spent three days reading comments from people across the political spectrum, the general response to the targeted killing of Anwar al-Awlaki seems to fall into four basic categories: A) USA! USA!  B) Ok, but I don’t like how we did it,  C) Boo, we shouldn’t be engaged in targeted killing, period, and D) Al Whosis now?

I think category (A) is self-explanatory. 

Let’s take the rest in reverse order:

D) If you’re an American of draft age or older, don’t suffer from some form of debilitating brain damage, and can eat pudding without help and you don’t know who Anwar al-Awlaki is, you’re a big part of what’s wrong with America today.  Don’t comment, don’t offer an opinion, don’t stand on the corner waving a misspelled sign demanding the resignation of the president, and for God’s sake please don’t vote. Get yourself another fudgesickle out of the freezer, go back to watching SpongeBob and be quiet.

 

C) Targeted killing.  I have never understood the moral objection to this.  Oh don’t get me wrong, sure it’s immoral.  So what?  Killing is killing, you can gussy it up all you like, it’s still killing and it’s all immoral.  That’s the way it is, you’re just arguing over semantics. If you’re on the receiving end, it doesn’t make one good goddamned bit of difference if death finds you from some random bit of shrapnel or if the bullet has your name written on it. Dead’s dead. Trust me on this, I’ve been there.  After a decade of war, so have a hell of a lot of us.  Killing people on the battlefield, zapping them in the electric chair, putting poison into their veins, or dropping hellfire on them from the sky – it’s all killing. Morality has got not one damned thing to do with it.   Frankly I fail to understand how it was more moral or honorable or even economical to let thousands of people die during the revolution in Libya, for example, than to just drop a Tomahawk on Khaddafi on day one. Bang! There, the asshole’s dead. Toss his body over the balcony railing and let the mob use it for a piñata, we brought sticks, no pushing there’s enough for everybody. War’s over. Long live the Arab Spring and don’t forget who your friends are.

How many lives would that have saved? How much good will would that have bought us with the Libyans and the revolutionaries? What kind of message would that have sent to other America-hating, terrorist-sponsoring dictators?

Yes, I know, where does that end? Tehran? Pyongyang? Austin? There need to be boundaries, there needs to be oversight, there needs to be checks and balances and accountability.  There needs to be very clear rules of engagement.  But then this is true of any executive power – including wiretaps and detentions and renditions and no-fly lists. We’ll come back to that.

Yeah, but what about targeted killing of Americans?

We’ll come back to that too.

 

B) The President ordered the killing of an American, that’s unconstitutional, he should be impeached.

The basic argument being The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, to wit:

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law;

The Americans making this statement fall into two basic categories, those who have only recently discovered that the Constitution has parts other than the Second Amendment, and those that have been sounding the alarm for the past ten years.

If you’re a member of the first group, i.e. if you’ve spent the last decade calling the second group enemies of America and weak on terrorism and limp-wristed sissies, if you’ve spent the last ten years telling us why waterboarding and rendition and naked body scanners and warrantless wiretapping and warrantless property searches and no-fly lists and the secret provisions of the Patriot Act were such spiffy ideas, well, all I can say to you is, welcome to the party.

This is exactly what we’ve been warning you about.  If you give a rightwing conservative Christian America-lovin’ Texas patriot the power, you’ve automatically given his successor, the tofu-eating sissy socialist Muslim Kenyan-born Commie America hating Liberal, the power too.  You’ve got no one to blame but yourself, you stupid silly bastards. What the hell do you think we’ve been telling you? Now? Now, you’re all upset? Now you want a fair trial? (question, say we caught al Awlaki instead of blowing him up, could we have his terrorism trial in your state? Since he’s an American? Hello, is this thing on? Hello?). Now you’re all worried about the Constitution? Now?  Because the President blew up a couple of avowed terrorist shitheads who were trying to kill the rest of us? Seriously?

That’s rich, it really is.

Get yourself a fudgesickle, go sit on the couch and just shut the fuck up.  

Honestly, after a decade of watching Americans give up their rights one after the other, the fact that President Obama dropped the hammer on Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan bothers me about as much as stepping on a couple of cockroaches.

Frankly, I think both of them gave up any claim to Fifth Amendment protection long, long ago – they were no more Americans than Osama bin Laden.  They renounced their membership in our society and pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda. They swore to bring down the United States and her allies and to kill as many of us as they could.  Should they have been captured and brought to trial? Sure, in a perfect world.  But in the real world it just wasn’t possible, not without risking even more American lives. And I’m going to remind you right here that the people complaining most bitterly about this are the same folks who complained bitterly about risking the lives of US Navy SEALs to capture bin Laden or rescue Rangers.  How many more of their lives would al Awlaki have been worth to you?

The CIA had a shot and they took it. They liquidated a major terrorist without risking a single soldier’s life. Good on them.

Yeah, but…

There’s always that but, isn’t there?

Something I’d point out to you, this isn’t the first time.

We’ve killed Americans on foreign soil before. You grandfather did it.  In Europe.

That’s right.

Those Americans, the ones we killed, didn’t look like filthy Muslim terrorists either.

In fact they looked just like blond-haired blue-eyed all-American boys, because they were.

They were the American Free Corps, known as the George Washington Brigade – a unit of the Wafen SS. 

What’s that?  Yes, I see your surprised face. You didn’t know Americans fought for the Nazis, did you?

Some of them came from America of their own free will in answer Hilter’s call for all true Aryans to return to Germany, many others were turncoat American soldiers recruited from POW camps. And some were out and out traitors, like 2nd Lieutenant Martin Monti, an American pilot who defected from the US Army Air Corps by stealing a P-51 Mustang and flying it to Axis territory.  He then joined the Wehrmacht and was commissioned a Lieutenant in the German Officer Corps. He was assigned to make anti-American propaganda broadcasts under the pseudonym Martin Wiethaupt – not at all dissimilar to al-Awlaki or Samir Kahn (except for the fact that Awlaki was much more effective, by most accounts Monti was a shitty propagandist). 

A number of Americans fighting against America for the Axis were killed by Americans, and nobody shed a tear.  Monti? He survived the war, surrendered to the allies, was tried as a deserter and sentenced to serve a hitch in the US Army (I swear I’m not making this up). In 1948 the FBI caught up to him, and he was tried for treason and sentenced to prison, where he remained until 1960.

The simple truth of the matter is that these people, Anwar al-Awlaki, Samir Khan, John Walker Lindh, Martin Monti, the George Washington Brigade, and, hell, the citizens of the Confederate States of America gave up their rights, including any claim on the Fifth Amendment, when they declared war on America. 

Whether or not we give them back those rights is our decision, or rather that of our elected leaders – and if you don’t like that, maybe you should think carefully about who you elect. And maybe, just maybe you should think very, very carefully about the kind of power you want to give them. Just saying.

These men were terrorists, but they were also Americans. That makes them our responsibility. They were hiding in Yemen, and Yemen asked for our help in apprehending these criminals.

Robert Anson Heinlein, American writer, veteran, libertarian, patriot, once wrote: “A man shoots his own dog, he doesn’t farm it out. That doesn’t make it better, it makes it worse.”   He was absolutely right. These were our dogs, and our responsibility.

Bottom line, they could have surrendered. They could have surrendered at anytime, right up until 9:55AM last Friday morning. Even then, they could have faced the Predators, threw down arms and raised their hands and claimed their rights as citizens of the United States of America.

They didn’t.

They chose to die.

They chose to die as martyrs to a cause hostile to their own country. They welcomed it.

They chose to die as terrorists, not as Americans.

They made their choice, let them suffer the consequences.

Everything I Need To Know About Democracy, I Learned From Star Trek

 

You ever watch Star Trek?

Sure you did.

Each Trekkie has their own favorite flavor, from The Awesome Original Series to the excretable Enterprise.

Whenever I think of Star Trek, I think of the Captain James T. “I can’t hear you over the clanging of my enormous testicles” Kirk version, but for the purpose of this discussion any of the various iterations will do. 

Now I love me some Star Trek, I do, but if you watched the show you were forced to accept a lot of outright absurdity: convenient time travel (until it wasn’t), critical equipment that always malfunctioned when you really needed it but otherwise worked without a hitch especially that damned unreliable transporter (Windows Vista is apparently still with us in the 25th Century), physics better suited to a Road Runner cartoon, biology that defied the basic laws of nature including pervasive inter-species breeding resembling the social norm of Appalachian hillbillies (or Scottish sheep herders, depending on which continent you happen to be reading this from), selective causality (Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Ensign Redshirt beam down to the planet, guess which one gets his insides liquefied into a thin gruel), miniskirts and fishnet stockings and the Twin Torpedoes Miracle Bra (Who designed the TOS Starfleet Girl Uniform? Hugh Hefner? Of course, that was way better than that “unitard” uniform all the girls in later generations wore. Ugh), the utterly predictable moral failing of the frailer sex (Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Ensign Suzy beam over to the Burly Barbarian Ship, guess which one will succumb to her hormones and sell them out), the  techno-babble verging on gibberish disguised by pig Latin, and engineering usually indistinguishable from magic (and not the cool Arthur C. Clarke kind of magic technology either). 

And then there was the Prime Directive – which the heroes managed to boldly disregard with such predictable regularity that you really had to wonder if that wasn’t the whole damned purpose of their five year mission in the first place.

But hell, Trekkies didn’t watch the show for any of that.

See, they say that enjoyment of science fiction stems from the willing suspension of disbelief.  And while Star Trek often stretched that idea to truly ridiculous proportions, it was a great show anyway (well, except for the aforementioned excretable Enterprise).

We watched the show for the characters.  And as a diehard science fiction fan, I could happily suspend my disbelief for an hour each week and the enjoy the show. 

Except for one little thing.

There was always one thing that bugged the ever living green blood out of me.

And that was this: Anybody, and I mean anybody, could relieve the Captain of his command.

Seriously, embarked admirals, Starfleet Commodores, the First Officer, the doctor, Starfleet cadets, visiting politicians, the Computer, random passengers, time travelers, potted plants, anybody, could relieve the Captain of a Federation Starship. Robot Space Janitor 3rd Class Roomba could relieve the Captain whenever it felt like it.  Hell, I’m pretty sure I remember an episode of the excretable Enterprise where Captain Archer was removed from his command by his pet beagle (Just go with me on this. Besides, it could be true, it’s not like anybody actually watched Enterprise anyway).  Every single time the captain did something that somebody didn’t like, he was threatened with being removed from command – but in the end, somehow, he (or she, if you’re one of those weirdo Voyager types) always managed to just squeak through and hold onto the Captaincy.

 

Pithy observation, Nerd Boy, I hear you say in that dubiously apprehensive tone you use when you suddenly find yourself sharing a hotel elevator with a bunch of drunken Appalachian hillbillies dressed up as a Klingon war party. What brings this up?

 

Well, see, I was reminded of that bit of Trek trivia over the last three days as I watched various politicians threaten, yet again, to shut down the US Government.

Honestly, is it just me? Or does it seem government shutdown is the go-to threat these days?

Better do it my way, or I’ll shut down the government! Yes, Sir, I will and don’t think I won’t! I’ll shut it right the hell down, turn off the lights, take my toys and go home.

Seems anybody can threaten a government shutdown. Don’t like the president? We’ll show him, let’s shut down the government!  Don’t want to compromise? It’s my way or I’ll shut down the government!  Need to score some political points? Hey, if I have to shut down the government it’s not my fault, it’s those other guys they made me do it!  Junior Freshman Congressman? Make your mark, get national recognition, become a household name, shut down the government! Running for president and want to grab some free attention? Look at me shutting down the government! Congressional dining room made your roast lamb filet medium-well instead of medium-rare? The filthy Nazi bastards! Shut down the government! Come on, who’s with me? Let’s shut her down!

Shut down the US Government?

Honestly, when did that become an option?

And not only an option, but the option?

Every damned week it’s another threatened government shutdown. Thursday, the media announced with breathless relief that the House had managed to pass another stopgap spending bill. Yay! The government can stay open!

Right.  Big whooptee fucking doo.

The bill managed to avoid shutdown for a whole week. And then? Well, next week lawmakers will have to drag their raggedy asses back from vacation and pass another stopgap bill, or – wait for it, waaaaaaiiiit for it – the government will shut down! 

Oh noes! 

That bill, if it passes, will keep the government clunking along for seven more whole weeks.  And then? Well, then the real show begins, because that’s when next year’s budget is due. And, man, if we can’t pass that, well you know what happens then, right?  

Congress is already making noises about how they might have to shut the government down, oh noes Captain! I dinnae think she can take it! Woop! Woop! Woop! Red Alert!

Frankly, I’m getting more than a little sick of this bullshit.  Since 1977, the House has threatened government shutdown, with varying degrees of will, more than one hundred and fifty times – one hundred and fifty seven times, to be precise, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. That’s an average of four times a year.  In fact, since 1978, Congress has managed to complete and pass the annual appropriates bill, i.e. the federal budget, by the due date only three times. 

Three times out thirty-three. 

You should be able to do the math in your head, but for those who went to the schools where they teach that cavemen frolicked with dinosaurs, your sworn representatives have managed to meet what is arguably their most important constitutionally mandated obligation a bit less than ten percent of the time.

Honestly, what employer would put up with that kind of  piss-poor performance?

The federal budget has been due in October every single year for more than two centuries – it’s not like it’s a surprise.

Sure it’s complicated.

Sure it’s fraught with partisan passion.

Sure, about half the time you have to compromise with parties and a president you don’t like.

Sure it’s damned hard and it gets harder and more complex and passionate every year. So what? That’s the job. That’s what congress gets paid to do.  That’s why, and I’m just saying here, maybe they ought to get ahead of it, instead of waiting until the last minute, instead of grandstanding and chest beating, instead of threatening us with yet another goddamned government shutdown.

It’s always something. It’s always a crisis.  There’s always a growing national debt or communists or terrorists or a war to be fought or an evil empire to be contained or an election to be won or jobs to be created or a bunch of earmarks in states that don’t deserve them or foreign aid to some blighted place. And, hey, if none of that can be used to threaten government shutdown, well then guaranteed Jesus is pissed off about something or other involving a poor woman’s uterus and healthcare for solar powered gay environmentalist weapons manufactures.  There’s always some goddamned thing Congress can find to fight over instead of getting the job done on time. Honestly, who acts like this?

The issue this time was disaster funding for victims of the recent east coast hurricane. 

Now, to be clear and before we go any further, I do think that we have to get federal spending under control.  I don’t think that we can just keep borrowing money from our kid’s future.  I do think that American taxpayers have every right to be pissed that their hard earned money went to bankrupted companies or industries that don’t, in fact, need the money. I do think that FEMA and other federal agencies should be held accountable.

However, try as I might, I fail to understand how repeatedly threatening to shut down the government accomplishes any of that.

Just like the bit with the Enterprise’s Captain, this shutdown threat has become a trope – something that happens so often that it’s become a predictable cliché.  They have come to the point where they disregard their Prime Directive so often that it’s business as usual. That’s what the US Congress has become, a tired dysfunctional cliché.  With every day that passes, it takes a greater and greater suspension of disbelief to put up with exponentially increasing levels of absurdity. 

Honestly, it’s really starting to look like a recycled science fiction TV show.

Yesterday there was the mirror universe episode, the one where everybody has a Fu Manchu mustache and is the reverse copy of themselves. You know, the one where the sissy liberal gave the orders to zap the terrorists inside the boarders of an allied country and the conservatives rail about the civil rights of Americans and fair trials.

The day before it was the time travel episode, the one where they go back to Earth in the 1960’s and there are missiles in Cuba – and, of course, it all turns out to be an alien plot.

The week before that it was the bizarro world episode where nothing makes sense – like a rich guy demanding to be taxed more and the greedy politicians demanding to see his tax returns because they think he should give them less money. Meanwhile, banks that were bailed out by taxpayers after cutting  30,000 jobs imposed new fees on the same people in kind of a crucifixion and lions bit of irony, charging them to use their own money while giving the rich a free pass along with the same assholes who caused this mess in the first place.  The only thing missing was a large rabbit and the Black Knight.

There was the episode where the smarmy bastard with good hair raises an army of shambling Yahoos with protruding brows in order to overthrow the government, or in this case the Department of Education. My favorite part was the impassioned comment by the Yahoo King where he explained why the masses don’t need no education, “i keep reading ‘republicans don't want education’ i dont think they are the ones who need it, some of you dems do. read this piece and then look at our education levels compaired to the rest of the world. we spend more per child than most and we are producing dummer than most. does this make sence to you, it does not to me. [sic]”  It didn’t make sence to me either, they must have let Shatner direct again.

Of course, it wouldn’t be Star Trek if there wasn’t one of those weird sexual mores episodes – you know, the one where they beam down to planet Santorum  and the entire army is supposed to be celibate, then Riker causes an interstellar incident by boning some nubile Lieutenant.

 

You know, I’d be willing to suspend my disbelief, I really would, if the cast was at least likeable.  Or if they at least advanced the story. But, seriously, the same damned clichéd crap week after week, a disagreeable cast of b-string actors, and a ten percent accomplishment rate?

If this was Star Trek, these childish idiots would have been dumped unceremoniously out the airlock and left on the planet of ravenous flesh eating space zombies long, long ago.

Of course, if it was left up to me, I’d beam a whole bunch of tribbles right into their …

Uh, never mind.

A Funny Thing Happened On the Way To The Debate…

As a voter, I’m not a big fan of political debates.

Especially primary debates.

I’ve never really been sure what purpose they’re supposed to serve.

I mean, it’s a primary, right? So, by definition the incumbent party typically has already chosen their candidate – and let’s be honest here, unless the president actually sprouts sharp little horns from his temples and then eats an actual fat squirming little white Christian baby on  live TV in the White House Press Room while proclaiming himself the literal Prince of Darkness (insert Satanic Mawahahahahaha! here), and maybe even then depending on who the opposition candidate is, he’s going to be that party’s nominee. 

So, the only primary debates are among the opposition party, i.e. people who already basically agree on everything important.  

Take the CNN/Tea Party Republican Party Debate last week.

Most of you, conservative or liberal, didn’t even bother to watch because you already knew what they were going to say.

Abortion? Hate it!

Gays? Shame! Shame!

Illegal Immigrants? No bueno!

Taxes? Not on my watch!

Obama? Nazi!

Deficit? Bad!

Debt? Double Plus ungood!

Stimulus? Why, I never!

Jobs? Mawr!

Jesus? Awesome!

Guns? Ook! Ook!

And there you have it folks, thanks for coming and drive safely.

Really, was anybody actually expecting a surprise?

Did you expect Bachmann to come out in support of a woman’s right to manage her own uterus? (Hell, she doesn’t believe she owns her own body). Did you expect Perry to say he’s suddenly all about Social Security? Or Romney to endorse Obamacare? (Or Romneycare for that matter).  Did you expect Paul not to make the outrageous claim that he can balance the federal budget in a year without raising taxes? Or Newt not to brag about his glory days (you know, right before he resigned in disgrace).  Or Cain not to make some bizarre off the wall non sequitur? Did you expect Huntsman not to come off sane and reasonable – and therefore inconsequential?

The point of a same party primary debate isn’t to stake out your position, everybody knows your position.  The purpose of the primary debate is to declare yourself the bestest and most devoutly true member of your ideology, while at the same time calling everybody else on the stage heretics and faithless assholes.

I mean, sure, it would have been awesome if, say, Newt suddenly ripped off his shirt, grabbed the mic, and started singing It’s Raining Men! while hip thrusting across the stage with Ron Paul riding on his shoulders waving a little top hat in a spontaneous parody of Master-Blaster from the Queer Follies’ musical remake of Beyond Thunderdome (you’re welcome). Hell I would have settled for Romney and Perry engaging in actual fisticuffs, instead just calling each other poopyheads, shin kicking, and the mussing up of each other’s $500 haircut.  I would have been amused if Bachman had, in an attempt to be more White and Right than Pat Boone, outed herself as a complete batshit bananas fringe lunatic conspiracy nut.

Yeah, that would have been awesome.  But of course, nothing like that happened…

 

What?

 

Okay, you got me.

Heh heh.  

I was just checking to see if you were paying attention. Yes, as a voter I see no point to “debates” among people who are basically just different shades of the same dull battleship gray. However, as a humorist and political blogger, man, you know, dayumn!  It’s the mother lode! Thanks. Sincerely. No really, thank you. More! More!

See near as I can figure, the entire purpose of a primary debate is to provide a fresh source of ridicule, sarcasm, jeering, and mockery. 

By now, unless you are either one of those primitive tribesmen who speak the click-click language and live deep in the rainforest eschewing all technology developed after the late Paleolithic or you are in fact a person-shaped turnip masquerading as Paris Hilton, you are aware that Michele Bachmann has declared herself the Motely Fool.

I waited a week. 

I wanted to be fair.  Everybody else was pointing and laughing, but I figured she’d veer towards the middle of the Conservative hardtack and adopt the party line.

Instead, she went on Leno.

“I wasn’t speaking as a doctor, I wasn’t speaking as a scientist. I was just relating what this woman said. She came up and … I wasn’t soliciting that information, she gave it to me. But the bigger issue in all this was the abuse of executive privilege and also just the connection of crony capitalism if you have a political donor that is giving to you and an action is taken by a government official that could potentially benefit that donor, that’s really the issue right now. That’s what people are worried about.”

I had to watch that twice, and then read the transcript to make sure I’d heard right.

Bachmann was, of course, trying to explain the accusation she had leveled at Rick Perry during the debate. Specifically this:

“To have innocent little 12-year-old girls be forced to have a government injection through an executive order is just wrong. Little girls who have a negative reaction to this potentially dangerous drug don’t get a mulligan. They don’t get a do over, their parents don’t get a do-over.”

She was attacking Perry for signing an Executive Order requiring that middle school girls in Texas be vaccinated against the Human Papillomavirus, i.e. the virus that has been positively linked to cervical cancer, genital warts, and a host of other adverse conditions in women (and men).  It is typically transmitted through sex, and not just the sparkly Jesus-approved kind either.  A lot of people carry HPV, maybe as many as a quarter of the population – including those who only engage in the Jesus-approved missionary style sex (yes, yes, I don’t mean you, of course, you’re an animal). Not all of those people are going to get cancer or even have any adverse effects – but a significant fraction will (oh, by the way, it isn’t just women who are affected. Men can suffer from it too. HPV can make Mr. Wiggly drop right off from penile cancer. You might want to think about that. After you stop clenching your legs together. Just FYI). 

I’ve got to be honest, frankly, I don’t see mandating the HPV vaccine for both girls and boys as anything particularly egregious – no more so than mandating any other childhood vaccine (Yes, yes, I know, torches and pitchforks are by the door, help yourselves). The drug is as safe as any other, more so actually.  Most adverse reactions are mild.  The odds are significantly higher that you’ll get cancer from the nearly inevitable HPV infection than that you’ll have a severe and lasting reaction to the vaccine. Parents can opt out if they so choose. 

I just don’t see much in the way of controversy when it comes to vaccination, at least in principle.

Obviously though, as governor, Perry went about it the wrong way, at least according to the Texas Supreme Court who struck down Perry’s Executive Order.  And, of course, as Bachmann alluded, Perry might have signed that order at the behest of a drug company.

So, when Bachmann brought it up during the debate, I figured that was her angle – executive overreach.  Payoff. I figured she’d nail Perry for exercising executive fiat … and then compare him to Obama (Obama as Nazi dictator being sort of a gimme in that forum). 

Instead, she went for the sound bite.

She went for the tweet: Girls don’t get a Mulligan.  She couldn’t wait to use that line. She had it all ready.  She expected it to flood social media, she expected it to go viral. Girls don’t get a Mulligan.  Some hip young staffer with a goatee came up with that zinger, I’ll bet you even money.  The problem is, the sound bite doesn’t work unless you come off as some kind of anti-vaxxer loon.  It wasn’t, as a governor you can’t take back an executive order, politicians don’t get a Mulligan.  It was, girls who have a reaction to this “potentially dangerous drug” don’t get a Mulligan. 

Dangerous drug. Dangerous drug.

And that only works if you believe, and you assume everybody else believes, that the HPV vaccine makes a significant number of young girls retarded (or even one, but I digress. Again).

Huh?

I’d fire the guy with the goatee. Soon.

Vaccination via executive mandate? Bad. Sure. I don’t get all riled up over it, but yeah, I can certainly see this given the Republican song and dance about executive overreach. Keep your government needles out of our daughters (of course, it’s perfectly ok for the government to decide whether or not that same daughter will bear a baby, but that’s not hypocrisy. Oh no. Totally different. Move along, nothing to see here).

Governor in the thrall of Big Pharma. Bad. Sure. I think we can all agree on that. (It won’t change anything, but I think we can all agree that would be a legitimate debate point).

Hell, I half expected her to pull out the standard conservative canard: vaccinating 12-year old girls against HPV will turn them into filthy whores, just like their mothers (Question: if the HPV vaccine makes girls into dirty sex monkeys, how come penicillin doesn’t? Or Tetracycline? But, again, I digress).

HPV vaccine makes your kids retarded. Wait. What?

So I waited a week figuring she’d back away from that last statement.  I thought, you know, she’s crazy but she’s not crazy crazy.

Instead she doubled down.

And then last night on Leno, she said:

I wasn’t speaking as a doctor, I wasn’t speaking as a scientist…

I damned near fell off the couch. Wait, what? Say that again.

I wasn’t speaking as a doctor, I wasn’t speaking as a scientist?

I’m not an expert.

Oh really?

 

You know where I’m going next, don’t you?

 

When exactly does Michele Bachmann speak as a doctor?

When does she speak as a scientist? 

When she’s speaking about History? Creationism? Climate change?

How about when it comes to “curing” gay people?  Is she a doctor then? A scientist?

No really, I’d like to know.  When exactly is Michele Bachmann qualified to speak as a scientist or as a doctor?

 

I wasn’t speaking as a doctor, I wasn’t speaking as a scientist.

Of course she wasn’t.

When the hell has that ever stopped her?

She told Leno that she was “convicted” in her views.

“Convicted. I’m convicted,” she said.

“Convicted?” Leno replied. “No, you don’t get convicted until after you’re in office. That’s later. You have to get elected first.”

Convicted.  It’s like the jokes just write themselves.  Even Leno was able to get a laugh, and that’s saying something.

Convicted? Committed is more like it, as in “ought to be.”

But hell, maybe she’s on to something.

Sure.  Ask yourself this, when did the anti-vaxxers become such a force that presidential candidates need court their vote? Because that’s exactly what Bachmann was doing, pandering to the nuts.  Crazy? Maybe. Maybe crazy like a fox too.  Think about it, what other candidate is courting the crazy vote?

See?

There are a lot of crazy people out there.  Why, it could be an untapped gold mine!  UFO Abductees? Moon Landing deniers? 911 Truthers? Grassy Knollers? Hell there’s a woman in Ohio who doesn’t believe in gay people. Just flat out denies their existence. That could be the tie breaker right there.  Bachmann would be nuts to let that vote go by.

Remember what I said about Obama sprouting horns and eating babies?  Who’s courting the anti-Christ vote? Huh?

It’s not the vaccine that makes you brain damaged.

Bachmann 2012!

Don’t just embrace the crazy, sidle up next to it and lick its ear.

 

 

 

---

ATTENTION: If you’re one of those Vaccines Are Teh Eeeeevil people and you’re about to make the standard outraged kneejerk ZOMG! AUTISM! or ZOMG! GOVERNMENT IMPLANT TRACKING DEVICE ZORK ZORK! comment, stop. Take your fingers off the keyboard. Walk away.  Don’t comment. Just leave. Go back to the mothership. Quietly.  I’m not kidding, I will delete your comment. Go away. Yes, I mean you.

Brother’s Keeper

What do you tell a guy who is sick, goes into a coma and doesn't have health insurance? Who pays for his coverage? Are you saying society should just let him die?

That’s the question put to Representative Ron Paul (R-Texas) by Wolf Blitzer in the closing moments of Monday night’s Tea Party Express/CNN GOP Debate.

Before Paul could answer, several members of the Tea Party laden audience enthusiastically shouted out “Yeah!”

Yeah, let him die! Yeah!

Nobody in the crowd objected.

And then, right there, you got to see exactly who and what Ron Paul really is.

Right then, in that single moment, Ron Paul revealed not only his true character, but the moral failure that defines the modern American libertarian.

In a word, the answer was an unabashed: Yes!

Let him die.

Let him die, he deserves it.

Paul’s response was, “We never turned anybody away from the hospital. We have given up on this whole concept that we might take care of ourselves, assume responsibility for ourselves, that's the reason the cost is so high."

We never turn anybody away. That’s why the costs are so high.  Logically therefore, if we turn people away, if we let them die, it’s money in our pockets.

Moral failure I said, moral failure it is.

The rest of Paul’s response and the comments he has repeatedly expressed elsewhere make it very clear that in his opinion we should have turned people away, we should have let them die – or rather Government should let them die.

Paul’s viewpoint embraces the libertarian ideal of personal responsibility.

And sure, personal responsibility sounds good, I mean we should all be responsible for our own actions. Right?  Including that guy who didn’t buy himself medical insurance.

The problem is that the idea of personal responsibility when used in this context is nothing but white noise, it’s a chimera. 

Like “common sense,” when used in the context of government, personal responsibility is indefinable and unquantifiable in any but the most vague sense.  For personal responsibility to be a valid standard it would have to be measurable – and either we would all have to be created equal and identical or we have to have a valid and useful way to quantify each individual and determine the proper baseline of responsible action. In other words you first have to define what responsible action is, and then you have to determine if responsible action is an absolute or if it is something measured relative to each individual.  What might be considered responsible action for me is likely quite different from what it would be for you, or for someone with autism, or a corporate titan.

Again, the idea is only useful in only the broadest of terms and the libertarian version on display Monday night completely ignores situational context.

Take the example of the man in the coma, he doesn’t have insurance.  Blitzer didn’t say that he chose to forgo coverage, but that was the assumption by the libertarian crowd.  So let us say it was true,  According to Blitzer’s scenario, the man chose not to buy insurance.  Irresponsible?  Maybe. But maybe he just can’t afford to both feed his kids and buy insurance despite working two full time jobs, because those were the only kind of jobs he could get in this economy. So maybe he chose to buy food for his children and pay his electric bill instead. Does that make him irresponsible?  Maybe, just maybe, he was living near one of those rivers that overflowed last month, and he lost everything in the flood and guess what? He had homeowners insurance but the claims adjuster decreed his loss to be not covered because, and dig this, he didn’t have actual flood insurance, or earthquake insurance, or Little Green Men From Mars insurance – and now he’s lost his home and business and health coverage and lives on the street.  Irresponsible? Or was he just fucked over by God and State Farm?  Don’t think that’s happening right now? You’re fooling yourself.  It happened to members of my own family after hurricane Ivan – they had hurricane insurance, but when the storm surge roared more than a mile inland and destroyed their house, the insurance company said, sorry, that’s flood damage and not hurricane damage even thought the flood was caused directly and provably by the hurricane. Too bad for you. Maybe they could have sued, if they were Ron Paul, but poor people don’t get that option – and so they would have lost everything and been homeless, but for FEMA.  They did everything they were supposed to, but the insurance company moved the goal posts and denied 50,000 people their claims. Were those people irresponsible?

To libertarians it just doesn’t matter, can’t pay, it’s not my problem.

Paul and his Tea Party supporters use the term personal responsibility in the simplest and most childish manner, responsibility is always black and white.  The man does not have insurance. He cannot pay. No one will pay for him. Therefore, turn him out, let him die. He is not my responsibility – this, in the very essence, is the bankrupt selfish philosophy of libertarianism.

The real Ron Paul is a cold calculating selfish little son of bitch.

The real Ron Paul is the kind of doctor who thinks that it’s OK to let a man die – if he can’t pay.

And if as a doctor he doesn’t actually believe that, then as a politician and the man who would be President of the United States he’s perfectly willing to go along with the lynch mob in order to curry favor from those who do – and in the final count, it makes no damned difference whatsoever, the result is the same.

Paul had a moment, a moment, to push back the mob, to demonstrate authentic leadership and actual moral courage – and did not.

He did not, because his words and actions clearly demonstrate what kind of man he really is. And that man is sorely lacking in moral courage.

Note that none of the other candidates on the stage raised an objection either.

The libertarians, including Ron Paul, who make up the stony bitter heart of the Tea Party beat the drum of personal responsibility and wave the bloody red flag of individual liberty, but at their core they are cowards.  It takes courage to place duty, honor, and the welfare of society above yourself. It takes courage, moral courage, to place the welfare of others before your own selfish desires.  It takes courage to do the right thing even when it may cost you personally, even when nobody is watching.  All the charity and pro bono work in the world doesn’t change that, courage is what you do when it matters.

There is no honor, no morality, no courage in letting a man die because he can’t pay – even if he came to such straights by his own device or his own choice.

Now it is true that Ron Paul did not, in point of fact, actually say “let him die” – and a vocal number of Tea Party types have their genuine Ayn Rand underpants all in a bunch today pointing that out.  They’re right … and they are still wrong.  Paul may not have said “let him die,” but he mostly certainly implied it – that’s exactly where this nonsense of institutionalized personal responsibility comes from. However, note that Paul himself fails to take personal responsibility for the implications of his own words. Instead of saying exactly what he really meant, i.e. let him die, Paul tries to weasel out of responsibility by saying that while the government should let the uninsured die, charity and church should step up and save the man.

And just like the libertarian ideal of personal responsibility, this nonsense of church and charity doesn’t hold water when put to the actual test.

Prior to social safety nets, millions died because church and charity wasn’t enough.  It is never enough.

Ask yourself something, how exactly does this work? Specifically. Do you really expect those who embrace a stunted me-first philosophy of selfishness, and who vocally enjoin others to do the same, will actually look out for each other? Really? On the same scale as the federal government does now? You really expect those selfish people to do that from the goodness of their hearts? Hell, those were the same bastards shouting “let him die” on Monday night! Do you really think that churches and communities made up of those same self centered sons of bitches will suddenly embrace charity?  Are you goofy?

Communities made up of selfish people are selfish communities. They’re often easy to spot, the gates give them away.

Churches made up of selfish hateful bigots are selfish hateful bigoted churches. That’s not an opinion, that’s a goddamned fact.

Ron Paul’s libertarian wet dream fails at the most fundamental level.

I’ve said it before and I’ll keep right on saying it, the purpose of government is to protect the weak from the ruthless, otherwise what damned good is it?

Paul, and those libertarians like him,  are social Darwinists. They strongly believe that those who find themselves at the mercy of the mob, deserve their misfortune. These are the same folks who think their own station will never change, that misfortune will never find them, that their God will always favor them and theirs, and that they themselves will never be the uninsured man in the coma. 

These are the same people who think that a family who can barely afford to put food on the table, or shoes on their kids’ feet, or pay the electric bill, actually have a choice when it comes to purchasing several hundred dollars worth of health and dental insurance each month. 

These are the same people who seem to think that minimum wage jobs and part time employers actually provide affordable health benefits.

These are the same hysterical idiots who accused Obama of creating “death panels,” but would now let a man die because because they do not deem him worthy.

And these are the same hypocrites who would let a man die because he could not pay, and yet would mandate that a poor woman, who also cannot pay, bear an unwanted baby to term – and then complain about having to pay for its healthcare (yes, a poor woman, a rich woman can always find a safe abortion, whether it’s legal or not).

These are the same frightened assholes who embrace torture, so long as it’s done in Jesus name (and to others).

These are the folks who, like Michele Bachmann, seek and take government money in the form of subsides even though they don’t need it, but decry such government programs when others they deem unfit receive similar largess.

These are the same people who would hold a man accountable – to the death – for failing to foresee the consequences of being uninsured, but would not hold a corporation, even though it be legally defined as a “person,” to the same standard – because that would be bad for business.

These are the self-professed Christians who every single Sunday hear their prophet’s very explicit and unequivocal command to feed the hungry, clothe the poor, and heal the sick, and would self-righteously let a man die because he could not pay – and these are the same folks who would cheer wildly at Rick Perry’s execution tally.

These are the very same folks, specifically including most of those standing on that stage Monday night, who would piously proclaim this a solely Christian nation and who have stated their desire to see the United States under Biblical law, and yet – and yet – seem never to have heard of the  passage for which this post is named. Why is that, do you suppose?

Understand something, whether or not, the man in question, the one without insurance, is a lazy worthless bastard who has come to dire straits through his own shortsighted foolishness has no bearing whatsoever on either your responsibility or your morality.

Certainly, he might be a rotten piece of human jetsam, useless, worthless, a blot on society and parasite on mankind, in a coma because he was shot while robbing a liquor store – maybe he made a choice to be who and what he is and he is responsible for the consequences, or maybe he is just the victim of circumstance.

All of that changes not one iota the morality of letting him die because he cannot pay.

His immorality and irresponsible behavior has no bearing whatsoever on mine. And my moral compass says we don’t let a man die if we can prevent it.

Oh most certainly saving his worthless scumbag ass is hard. It’s downright galling.  You goddamned right it is. You’ll get no argument from me on that score.  Nevertheless. 

If doing the right thing was easy, everybody would be doing it.

If responsibility was easy, we wouldn’t need government.

If morality was easy, well then God wouldn’t have to threaten Christians with hellfire and damnation now would He?

Don’t agree?

Two days ago, in Salt Lake City, a motorcyclist collided with a car.  The wreck was horrific. The biker ended up trapped beneath the burning wreckage where he would mostly certainly have died an agonizing death.

A group of onlookers risked their own lives and lifted the burning car with their own hands and pulled the gravely injured man to safety.

Why?

No really, why?

Motorcycles are dangerous.  More, the motorcyclist wasn’t wearing a helmet.  By definition, he put himself in that position – yes he did, if he’d been driving a large safe SUV, he would never have ended up under that burning car.  Maybe he couldn’t afford a safer vehicle because he’s unemployed or a lazy bastard. Maybe he just loved the thrill of riding a motorcycle. Maybe he should have taken public transportation, or walked, or stayed home. Whatever, it was his choice to ride that bike, and to do it without a helmet, to deliberately endanger his own life.  Hell, maybe he was an asshole, maybe he beats his dog, and steals his neighbor’s newspaper, and parks in handicapped spots. Maybe he was a broke worthless bum.

Should those people have let that man die?

No?

Well why not?

Same thing.

The morality of your action is not determined by the worthiness of others. 

Likewise, your personal responsibility has absolutely nothing to do with anybody but you. 

Yes, say the libertarians, exactly! Taking personal responsibility is my choice, my right.  If I help somebody it should be because I choose to do so, not because the government makes me. 

These people are arguing semantics.  They preach personal responsibility, but look the other way when it comes to public responsibility.  They want to enjoy the benefit of society without having to be accountable for it. The nation they so benefit from includes the poor and the lazy and the infirm and the uninsured, and they would avert their eyes from that and pretend that it is not their moral responsibility.

In the end, either you are the kind of person who would let a man die because he cannot pay, or you are not.

In the end, either you are the kind of person who would let the poor die because by your standards they are not worthy of society, you would let the hungry starve because by your measure they deserve it, you would let the ragged ones go unclothed because they have not earned their place in your world, in the end you are that guy, or you are not.

In the end, you either choose to participate in society and thereby help your fellow man, whether or not he is worthy, or you do not.

In the end, either you are the kind of citizen who takes public responsibility for civilization, i.e. you are your brother’s keeper –  or you damned well are not.

It’s really just that simple.

 

 

---

Update: Comments for this post are now closed, they’re going to stay that way.

I turned commenting off last night, because with the sudden influx of trolls, illiterates, and frothingly rabid Paulistas, I was not willing to let the forum go unmoderated after I went to bed.  This turned out to be a wise choice.

I’ll say this, if you want to incur the mindless wrath of a whole lot of very very angry fanatics, you can either shank Jesus right in the kidney or say something unflattering about “Dr Paul.”

Here’s a sample from this morning’s hate mail (all quotes are verbatim):

- Lazy, fat, certainly mindless

- HOW DARE YOU!

- You. Are. A. Fucking. Asshole!!!!!

- I demand to know who your agenda is.

- RON PAUL 2012! (repeat about 100X)

- What NOT MY COMMENT POSTED?! DID YOU DLETE MY COMMENT! YOU EVERY HERE OF THE 1ST AMENDMENT ASSHOLE

and my favorite so far:

- WHOS PAYING YOU???!!!! WHOS PAYING YOU??!!!

That was just from the first couple of emails. I deleted the rest without reading them. And as amusing as that is, I’ve got other shit to do today and don’t feel like devoting my weekend to weeding out the nonsense.  

However, don’t despair, comments will be turned back on - after Ron Paul has been dead for at least a decade. 

Really though, fine bunch of people you got there, Ron. Really, really, stellar group. 

Variety Show

I flipped on the TV last night and thought, “Oh Boy! It’s Shark Week!”

I had a splitting headache, but man, nothing perks me up like a good feeding frenzy.

I wrung the neck of a Killian’s tall boy, chased a handful of Excedrin with a swig from the bottle, and settled into the recliner. 

The pain in my head made it hard to focus, but it looked like there was already blood in the water. Awesome.

Wait.

What the hell was that? A squid? A sea cucumber? Some kind of weird aquatic mating dance?

I squinted at the screen.  Either they’d over-chummed the water or something was seriously awry.

Was that some kind of barnacle covered sea mammal?

I pressed the cold frosty bottle over one throbbing eye and tried to focus on the screen with the other.  What in the wide world of sports was Wolf Blitzer doing on Animal Planet? Sure, the hack hasn’t really been a journalist since his salad days in Bagdad during Gulf War, The Prequel, but this seemed a little ridiculous – what’s next? Fruit of the Loom commercials in the banana suit? Had I stumbled into an episode of SpongeBob by accident? And why did the sharks look so tan and unnaturally smooth and have really, really good hairdos? (Well, except for that little grey wrinkly one on the end)

That’s when I realized somebody had left the TV tuned to CSPAN.

Ah, that explained it.  They weren’t sharks – they were Republicans.

It was the sharp toothy smiles that had fooled me.

It was the CNN/Tea Party “debate” and oh there was blood in the water indeed.

Wolf tossed another big bucket of fish heads into the pool and that’s when my head really began to pound.

Frankly, I don’t think it worked as a debate, and in fact from the evidence I’m pretty sure none of the participants even knew what the word “debate” actually meant (That’s ok, with the single exception of Jon Huntsman, none of them seem to know what the word “theory” means either, but then Huntsman isn’t really a Republican is he?).  Any high school egghead knows what a debate is. Hell there are whole organizations dedicated to the art of debate. There are college debating teams.  There are professional debating societies. There are debates over the various styles of debate.  There are debating rules. They teach classes in it. Debate is a long refined art form.

I’m not sure what the hell it was that I watched last night, but it wasn’t a debate. 

It would probably make a pretty good classic TV comedy variety hour though.

No really, go back and watch it again. Watch it again with the sound turned off, only this time substitute Carol Burnett’s voice for Michele Bachmann’s shrill banshee-like screech.

See?

Even in the best of times, Bachmann’s strident squall makes my gums bleed, last night I’m pretty sure that if I had listened to the caterwauling drone of her pandering mirror universe agitprop for more than a few seconds my aching eyes would have exploded from their swollen sockets and crawled around my head to jam themselves into my bleeding ears like fleshy corks. 

But dub in Carol Burnett’s voice and Bachmann is hysterical.

And she’s already got the crazed rolling-eyes look down pat. 

Think of Ron Paul as Dorf On The Economy.  His garrulous old man routine is beautifully Conwayesque. The way he shuffles around wheezing asthmatically and mumbling aaeehhhhhheeeeez end the fed end the fed aaaaaeeehhhhsss no taxes no taxes! just kills me. Paul does a damned good Artie Johnson impression too – though his act needs a monocle and ersatz German accent to really sell it.  He’s funny as hell by himself, but he really shines as part of a duo, not so much Butch Cassidy’s Newman and Redford, but more like Conway and Knotts in The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again.

And speaking of Don Knotts, I bet a whole lot more folks would tune into these things if they got him to be the moderator instead of Wolf Blitzer. 

Yes, I know Mr. Knotts is deceased. Do you have an actual point?

Tell me Rick Perry isn’t the spitting image of Harvey Korman’s tight ass Heady Lamarr (oops that’s Headley, Headley Lamarr!) from Blazing Saddles.   Lamarr had this cornball western accent and created a glut of shitty jobs on the backs of minorities.  He tried to swipe a bunch of land from his constituents to build a highway. He was huge on the death penalty, hell, he even hung a horse. No no no. Not hung like a horse, hung a horse. From a gallows.  See, the horse was an accomplice in a bank robbery, being the getaway driver so to speak. What? Oh like you haven’t sentenced somebody to death based on flimsy evidence, could happen to anybody. Especially in Texas. Hell, Rick Perry has killed more men than Cecil B. DeMille!  See?  It’s the same character!

Trust me on this, once you realize that Perry is doing a tribute to Korman’s Snidely Whiplash, the debates are a whole lot more interesting.

Mitt Romney?  Dick Van Dyke from the Mary Poppins era, the lovable goof with the heart of gold. I kept expecting him to whip out his umbrella and poke Perry right in the eye, playfully of course, then break into a gangly vaudeville rendition of A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down when asked to explain RomneyCare.  Boy, talk about connecting to your audience, Mary Poppins being the  feel good story of the implosion of Fidelity Fiduciary Bank, the bank that actually supplied the money for the shipment of tea dumped into Boston Harbor by the very first members of the Tea Party. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!

I thought Jon Huntsman did a credible Lyle Waggoner.  Who? Lyle. Lyle Waggoner. Good lord, Man, Waggoner was a Carol Burnett Show regular for seven seasons. Lyle. Lyle Waggoner. Tall fella. Handsome. Kinda quiet. You know. Lyle.

And of course, Newt nailed Vicki Lawrence. 

Er.

I mean he reminded me of Vicki Lawrence – though obviously the other way works too. 

Seriously though, Vicki Lawrence as Momma from Momma’s Family? Go on, tell me you don’t see it. 

Really?

Try picturing Newt in a shawl. See? Ah ha! Told ya!

I figure Herman Cain and Rick Santorum for walk-on guest parts, say Flip Wilson and Soupy Sales – accomplished comedians and funny as hell for a couple of sketches but nobody was offering them a permanent gig on the show. Seriously, every time Herman Cain gets all wild eyed and starts talking about Dominos I expect him to end with “The Devil made me do it, Sugar!” (Right. I’m the only one in the room old enough to get that. Sure).  And Santorum looks like a guy who’s going to spend the next twenty years on The Hollywood Squares.

Now, with a cast like that, you know you’re going to have a good show full of belly laughs.

The song and dance routines were pretty good, especially Perry’s playful “Stimulus Man Don’t Make No Jobs” tap number and Bachmann’s satirical rendition of “Obama Done Stole $500 Billion From My Poor Ole Mama(‘s Social Secur-it-eeee), whoo oh, do wop do wop.”

The Ponzi Scheme Schemers skit was hilarious. Especially the part where Romney started humping Perry’s leg and Perry was dancing around trying to shake Romney off and Bachmann came running up and bit Perry on the ass.  Comic genius.

The jokes were old, but they told them well.

Perry: We need to have a conversation about Social Security

Romney: We are having a conversation.

Perry: When?

Romney: Now!

Perry: When?

Romney: Right now!

Perry: Right now? It’s Ten Two!

Romney: Ten to what?

Perry: Tend to your own damned business!

Huntsman: Business? Why I created more jobs than you’ve ever seen!

Santorum: No no, it’s me that’s a job creatin’ machine!

Perry: Vaccine?

Bachmann: To have innocent little 12-year-old girls be forced to have a government injection ...

Newt: That’s what vexes us! There ain’t no innocent 12 year old girls in Texas…

Paul: What’s that? Taxes? At my age, taxes is the only thing they can raise!

Huntsman: Look at me everybody, I’m Kurt Cobain!

Cain: Kurt Cobain? Oh if you only had a brain … Shit. Isn’t this the Wizard of Oz sketch? Wait, this is that dream where I went to school in my underwear again, right? Hello? Wake up Herman! Wake up!

 

Remember, folks, when it comes to surviving a presidential election season debate, it’s all in the delivery.

I'm so glad we had this time together

Just to have a laugh or sing a song

Seems we just get started and before you know it

Comes the time we have to say, 'So long.

Good night, Everybody.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go see what’s on Animal Planet.

911 Ten Years On

It’s been ten years now.

A decade today.

And frankly, I think that’s about enough.

There comes a point where you have to stop reliving horror over and over.

There comes a point where you have to say enough, this and no more.

I think a decade is enough time.

Now, don’t get me wrong, the events of September 11th, 2001 were traumatic on a national scale.  911 was a shock like no other in American history, hell, maybe even in world history.  The modern Information Age saw to that, bringing it right into our living rooms without any delay to soften the impact, live and in horrifying color. 

All of us remember where we were and what we were doing on that terrible morning, I know I certainly do. 

I’m not in any way saying that we should forget, but there comes a point where you have to allow history to become history.

There comes a point where you have to move on.

Today marks a decade now, since 911.  In that time, we went to war and seven thousand more Americans, some of our very best, died.  Tens of thousands more were maimed and scarred and damaged forever.  Hundreds of thousands of innocents died.  Entire countries were laid waste and we became a callous people who could look upon those devastated lands and say, well, you know they had it coming, all of those bastards had it coming including their goddamned children. We became a nation that tortures people and disappears people and detains people, including our citizens, indefinitely without trial or recourse in abject repudiation of the very spirit of our nation’s own founding – and we are unashamed of that and unrepentant.  We have become a nation where, as an American, you must put aside your freedom a dozen times a day. You must show your papers. You must submit to naked body scanners and you must allow unsmiling uniformed men with the force of secret laws behind them to grope the most intimate areas of your children and yourselves. Such has become the price of freedom in America. We have become a nation  where you – as an American – can be detained for a glance or a gesture or a careless word or for checking out the wrong book from the library or for worshipping the wrong God.  We have become a nation where the only acceptable response to uniformed authority is immediate and polite submission, talk back, question, stand pat on the rights of previous generations and you’ll be branded an enemy. We have become a nation that claims to revere liberty and justice, but believes those things can only be had when secret agencies monitor our every email and our every communication without warrant or probable cause. 

The day after 911, September 12th, 2001, Congress stood upon the steps of the Capitol with the smoke of the burning Pentagon still hanging in the air above their heads and solemnly pledged to the American people that they would put aside their partisanship and their personal agendas and work together for the sake of our nation.  And in the decade since we have become a nation divided instead, a nation of partisan rancor writ large – and those who stubbornly proclaim their patriotism loudest are the very ones who would lead us into civil war and secession.  They would destroy what terrorists could not.

In the decade since 911, we have found those responsible, rooted them out, and ground them into dust.  It took ten years, but Osama bin Laden is dead at the hands of Americans.  So is his successor. So are hundreds of his lieutenants.  So are thousands of his foot soldiers.   So are many, many others, including Americans.

But it has not brought us closure.

It has not brought us peace.

It has not healed us as a nation.

911 was horrifying. It was personal to us all, every single American. It left us scarred, as a nation, traumatized.

And we keep using that horror as an excuse to lash out in a massive case of collective post traumatic stress disorder.

The wounds of that event run deep and are still raw a decade later – but those wounds will not heal so long as we keep picking at the scab over and over and over.

Today, we will relive the horror yet again – a fevered nightmare that simply won’t go away because we will not allow it to go away.  

Again, don’t get me wrong, we should always remember the events of September 11th, 2001, just as we remember Pearl Harbor or the assassination of John F. Kennedy or the hundred other events that shocked and traumatized our nation. But if we are to heal, if we are to move on, we have to stop reliving that horror over and over. 

Certainly we should build the memorials and lay the wreaths.

We should always remember the names of the fallen and hold them sacred.

But we need to stop covering ourselves in the blood of that day.

Today, right now as I write this, hundreds of media channels will play the recordings of those trapped in the towers.  They’ll play those recordings over and over and over again. Recordings of the tortured calls to emergency services and the final calls to loved one.  And we’ll listen, yet again, to the intimate agony of those dying people.  They will play on endless loop the videos of those who jumped seventy stories to their death, lingering lovingly on their faces, speculating about their last moments, reveling in the horror. They interview those who witnessed the death and destruction and horror and they’ll beg, “Tell us what you were thinking. Tell us what you were feeling at that very moment.” We don’t need to know what they were feeling, what they were thinking, because we felt the same exact thing. We’re still feeling it. But we’ll listen anyway. And we’ll watch the towers fall. We’ll see the Pentagon crumple and explode.  We’ll hear the tapes of the air traffic controllers, of the horrified confusion in the towers, and the phone calls of those Americans who fought back above the corn fields of Shanksville, Pennsylvania.  

I hear those tortured voices, I see those dying faces, and I don’t feel hate. I don’t feel a need for revenge. Instead I feel revulsion.  There is something obscene about listening to 911 calls, any 911 call.  While those records may have value to history, it is nothing but a voyeuristic grotesquery to broadcast those intimate communications to a public jaded by reality TV and violent slasher flicks. 

It serves no purpose whatsoever but to keep open festering wounds that should be long scabbed over.

Today, pundits and politicians will use this anniversary to drive us further apart, to reopen the wounds, for their own selfish agendas, to further inflame partisan fervor and to brand their neighbors as enemies and un-American. 

And we will let them do it, because in the decade since 911 we’ve become a nation of cutters who hack at our own flesh with mean abandon.

 

Since 911, an entire generation has been born and grown to self-awareness.

Those young Americans have never known their nation at peace. 

They have never known a nation that is not divided.

They have never had a single day where they weren’t told to hate their neighbors and to report them if they don’t seem patriotic enough.

They have never lived a single day in a nation that wasn’t bent to the terrible business of revenge.

They have never known a nation that didn’t roil in fear and cringe in terror every single day.

They have never flown on an airplane without having been treated like a criminal.

They have never checked out a book from the library without having been subject to secret scrutiny.

They never sent an unmonitored email or made an unmonitored phone call.

They have never lived in a house that isn’t subject to unwarranted search.

They have never had the right to redress or legal challenge when their name is placed on secret lists – and in point of fact, they don’t even have the right to know if their name is on that list at all.

They have never lived in a nation where they have the right to confront their accuser and demand proof of more than just suspicion.

They have never lived without the threat, however unlikely, of being disappeared.

They have never lived in a nation that didn’t regard the torture of human beings as an acceptable option.

This new generation has lived under the shadow of those falling towers every single minute of every single day since the moment they were born.

 

The terrorists didn’t do that.

We did it to them.

 

It’s been ten years today.

It’s time to move on.

The Good Old Labor Days

You ever stop to wonder what you life would be like if it was 1911 instead of 2011?

Imagine.

Imagine what it was like to be your great grand parents.

In 1911, the United States was in the middle of the Second Industrial Revolution.  It was a time of wonder and ever advancing technology. It started in the 1860’s and would last right up until the beginning of World War I. It began with steel, the Bessemer process to be specific, a cheap and easy way to mass produce strong and reasonably lightweight metals.  Strong lightweight steel was the skeleton of the modern age, the core of everything from the new cars to steamships and oil rigs to utensils and lunchboxes, to the machines that manufactured the future, to the finest handgun ever made – Colt’s model 1911, named for its year of first issue and still in production a century later.  In 1911 a tall skinny fellow by the name of Eugene Ely landed a Curtiss #2 Pusher on the deck of USS Pennsylvania and took off again – and thus was born naval aviation, a profound moment that would change the very way wars were fought and thus change almost everything else too. Many of the pilots who, a few years later, would fly over the battlefields of WWI carried Colt’s Model 1911.  In 1911, for the first time, you could buy a Cadillac with an electric starter – and despite the fact that there were still plenty of horses out there on the roads, the car had become so ubiquitous – due in part to Henry Ford lowering the price of a Model-T to $690 that year – that Michigan created the first modern roads when the state started painting white lines down the middle of the more heavily traveled avenues. Electricity itself was no longer a novelty.  Though many factories were still powered by steam, electricity was becoming increasingly common.  The first modern public elevator began operation in London, England, and soon became common everywhere – leading directly to the modern city skyline.  And above that skyline in 1911, Goodyear flew their first blimp.

In 1911, America was booming. Her factories were churning out new products at a record pace. The western frontier had all but disappeared – oh, there were still a few bandits and cattle rustlers out there, but the wild wooly west was long gone.  The gold rushes, the boom towns and gun fights were long over.  Hell, by 1911 Wyatt Earp was living in Los Angeles working as a “trouble-shooter” for the city police department.  He’d fought his last armed battle a year before and would soon move to Hollywood as a consultant for the new movie industry. 

It was certainly a marvelous time.

If you could afford it.

If you lived through it.

See, those churning factories were horrible places.  In 1911, most were still powered by a massive central steam engine which drove an enormous flywheel, which in turn powered shafts and belts and pulleys, which finally powered the machines.  And though, as noted above, electricity was becoming increasingly common, most of those factories were still poorly lit simply by the light coming in through skylights and banks of single pane glazed windows.  Often boiling hellholes in the summer and freezing dungeons in the winter – both air conditioning and central heating were still decades away – the buildings were filled with smoke and poisonous fumes from the various manufacturing processes, lead vapor, heavy metals, acids, chlorine, bleaches, all were common.  Normal working hours were from dawn to dusk, typically anywhere from twelve to fourteen hours a day, sixty and seventy hours per week for wages that would barely pay the rent and put food on a factory worker’s table.

Child labor was common, especially in the textile industry, though in some states there were supposed to be laws regulating it.  The kids toiled right alongside their parents.  The children typically worked the same hours as adults, but for a quarter, or less, of the pay.  Pictures of the time show children working barefoot among the machines, ragged sleeves flapping near the flying belts and spinning pulleys.  Whole families hired out to the factories, the men doing the heavy labor, the women and children doing the more delicate tasks. Towns sprang up around the mills, often controlled by the factory owners. Company towns, where workers very often became little more than indentured servants.  Life in a company town was often better than the alternative on the streets of places like Hell’s Kitchen or out in the fields of the South. Company towns gave workers a higher standard of living than they would otherwise be able to afford. But the running joke was that while your soul might belong to God, your ass belonged to the company.  Mill towns and mining towns and factory towns and logging towns were common across America, places where the company owned everything from your house to your job to the church you prayed in to the store you bought your food from. And prices were whatever made the company the most profit and in many places there were laws that prevented you from renting or buying outside the company town.  The company might pay you a decent wage for the time, but they got a lot of it back too.  Get crosswise of the company and you lost it all.  Get injured on the job and could no longer work, and you lost it all. Get sick, and you could lose it all.  Get killed, and your family was out on the street.  There was no workman’s comp. No insurance. No retirement but what you managed to save – and since you probably owed a significant debt to the company store, your savings were unlikely to go very far.

Of course, you could always take a pass on factory work and return to the land.  In 1911, millions of Americans were farmers.  Farming, especially in 1911, was hard back breaking work (it still is, just in a different way) – so hard that seventy hours a week in a smoke filled factory with a high probability of getting maimed or killed looked pretty good in comparison.  Most of those farmers, especially in the South, didn’t own their fields. They were sharecroppers, living in conditions little better than slavery or the serfdom of the Dark Ages.  Of the small farmers who did own their own land or rather owed the bank for their own land, more than half lived in abject poverty.  In the coming decade, the decade of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, most would lose everything.

Most of America was powered by coal in those days and if there was anything that would make life in a factory town or in the sweltering fields look good – it was working in a West Virginia coal mining town.  It was a race to see what would kill you first, explosion, cave-in, or the black lung.  And just like in the fields and factories, children worked alongside their parents – if they had parents, orphanages were also common. And orphan labor was even cheaper than the average child, both in life and in pay. Renting out orphan labor was a good gig, if you could get it.

You could always become a merchant seaman, though life at sea was damned rough. You could move west and become a logger, though you’d probably live longer in the mines of West Virginia. You could still be a cowboy, or a cop, or carpenter none which paid worth a good Goddamn and had the added benefit of a short lifespan.

Since people got sick and injured a lot, and most couldn’t afford even rudimentary medical care, many turned to patent medicines.  The pharmaceutical industry was only loosely regulated, but by 1911 there were some few laws in a handful of states regulating the more outrageous claims for the various elixirs. The big medicine shows were gone, but in 1911 there were still plenty of drug store shelves stocked with hundreds of varieties of patent medicines. Some were mostly benign – like Coca-Cola – and some were downright toxic – like Radithor, made from water and radium.  As late as 1917, The Rattlesnake King, Clark Stanley, was still making Stanley’s Snake Oil, a worthless mixture of mineral oil, turpentine, and red pepper, and fleecing sick people out of their money and making them yet sicker (hell, as late as the 1960’s TV’s commercials touted the benefits of smoking for sore throats. And, as late as 1970 there were still X-ray foot measuring devices in use in a handful of shoe stores across America).

In 1911, only a few states mandated that your kids attend school, and then only though elementary.  In the South segregation and Jim Crow Laws were in full force and civil rights were decades away. Lynching was common.  On the other hand, women could actually vote in exactly five states, well, six if you included California which grudgingly acknowledged in November that females might be citizens too despite their unfortunate plumbing. 

In 1911, maybe three out of ten Americans could ever expect to own a home, most would pay a landlord their whole lives. Few had any rights in those relationships either, you paid the owner and you lived with what you got or you got thrown out. Period.

In 1911, a lot of Americans were hungry. More than fifty percent of seniors lived in poverty, but then the average lifespan was only about fifty-five, maybe sixty if you hadn’t been breathing coal dust or lead vapor all you life.  Few of those seniors had pensions, most lived on the charity of their families – if they were lucky enough to have families.  Sanatoriums were a common place for the aged and infirm to spend their brief final years. 

In 1911, if you had ten kids, you might expect six of them to survive to adulthood.  If you were lucky. Polio, tuberculosis, measles, mumps, pneumonia, whooping cough, hard labor in the mines and factories and fields, lack of social safety nets, lack of proper nutrition, lead paint, food poisoning, poverty, orphaned by parents killed by the same, would probably claim at least four of those kids. Likely more.

 

People from that generation always wax nostalgic for The Good Old Days – and then they immediately proceed to tell you why life was so much harder and more miserable back then.

 

The simple truth of the matter is nowadays, even in this time of economic downturn, we Americans live a pretty damned good life.  And we live that good life because since 1911 we’ve put systems and laws and regulations in place to improve life for all of us.  Programs like Social Security and Medicare have a direct and measurable affect on how long we live, and how well. Regulations governing working conditions and workplace safety have a direct and measurable affect on the probability that we’ll survive to retirement.  Laws that prevent the rich from owning a whole town, or abusing workers, or turning them into indentured servants, or hiring children at pauper’s wages to maintain the machines in their bare feet, have directly benefitted all but the most greedy few. 

The American dream isn’t dead, far from it. 

I’ve been to countries where dreams have died, America is far, far, far removed those hellish places. 

It is a measure of just how far we’ve come, and just how big an impact that those laws, regulations, and social safety programs have had that those who directly benefit from those very same laws, regulations, and programs can complain with full bellies just how terrible they have it.

Things like Social Security, Medicare, Workman’s Compensation Insurance, The Federal Reserve, Federal Deposit Insurance, child labor laws, federal minimum wage, occupational health and safety standards, the Environmental Protection Agency, The Centers for Disease Control, The departments of Education and Health, Labor Unions and workers’ rights, and yes, even Welfare, all of these things were created for a reason. For a good reason. For a compelling reason. 

These things were created because when you leave it up to the church and charity to fed the hungry and clothe the poor and heal the sick, a hell of a lot of people go hungry and cold and ill.  It is really just that brutally simple. 

These things were created because when you leave it up to charity and family to take care of old people, a hell of a lot of old people end up stacked like cordwood in institutions. The moldering remnants of such places are all around us.

These things were created because when you leave it up to people to save for their retirement or a rainy day or for accident and infirmity, a hell of a lot of them don’t, or can’t, or won’t.

These things were put in place because when you leave it solely up to the market to weed out poor products and fake medicine and unsafe machines, they don’t, or can’t, or won’t. 

These things were put in place because when you leave it up to industrialists and share holders to treat their workers with dignity and respect and to pay them a living wage for their hard work, you get indentured servitude.

These things were put in place because when you leave it up to devoutly righteous people who go to church every Sunday to decide what is right and proper and moral, you end up with lynchings and segregation and Jim Crow. And that is a Goddamned fact.

These things were put in place because when you leave it up to the factory owners to decide wages and safety and working hours, you get this:

 

When you leave it solely up to bankers and the factory owners and the industrialists, well Sir, then what happens is they end up owning it all and you get the scraps.

And right up until very recently that’s exactly how it was.

Fundamentally, government exists to protect the weak from the ruthless, otherwise what damned good is it?

 

Lately there are a lot of folks who think they want to live in 1911, rather than in 2011.

Chief among those people is this ruthless idiot:

Ever since the dawn of the so-called Progressive movement over a century ago, liberals have used every tool at their disposal — including notably the Supreme Court — to wage a gradual war on the Constitution and the American way of life…

(Click on the quote to find out which presidential candidate said it, and what else they think about the last century’s progress)

 

The question you need to ask yourself, on this of all days, is what century do you want to live in?

 

Happy Labor Day folks.