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No one seems to know the real meaning of this tried-and-true anthem to time passing, etc., but somehow in the forgetful Rethuglican joyous wake, it seems like almost anything can be forgotten (and forgiven).
And as Billy Crystal said in When Harry Met Sally, "Maybe we got to remember that we forgot them?"
Auld Lang Syne
I believe Tom Frank has struck quite a jangly (so to speak) nerve with this essay.
About time!
Sunday, January 8, 2012
TomDispatch.com
Pity the Quarter-Billionaire: An Open Letter to the Tea Party
Take a Ride on the RINO in 2012
Thomas Frank
Dear Tea Party Movement,
For the last few months, the world has been fascinated by your frenzied search for a presidential candidate who is not Mitt Romney. We know that you find the man inauthentic and that you have buoyed up a string of anti-Mitts in the Iowa polling - Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich - buffoons all, preposterous figures whom you have rightfully changed your minds about as soon as you got to know them.
It was quite a spectacle, your quest for the non-Romney - and I think we all know why you undertook it. In ways that matter, Romney is clearly a problem for you. His views on abortion, for example, change with the winds. Ditto, gay rights. He designed the Massachusetts health insurance system that was the model for Obamacare. And he’s even said that he approved of the TARP bank bailout, the abomination that ignited the Tea Party uprising in the first place.
Grievous offenses all, I have no doubt. Still, my advice to you idealists of the right is this: get over it. Not for sell-out reasons like: Romney has the best chance of beating Obama. No. You should get behind the charging Massachusetts RINO (your favorite term for a Republican-In-Name-Only sellout type) because, in a certain paradoxical way, he may turn out to be the truest of all the candidates to the spirit of your movement.
After all, given everything you represent, why wouldn’t you line up behind this quarter-billionaire who’s calling for just a little human love and sympathy for billionaires? I’m sure you already understand me perfectly well, but just to be certain, let me make the case.
The Gimme Candidate of 2012
Start with those issues where Romney’s positions so offend the sensibilities of you Robespierre Republicans. First, of course, the social issues. If nothing else, you in the Tea Party movement have spent the last three years teaching Americans that they no longer matter - not when we’re supposedly in a battle for the very soul of capitalism.
And here comes Mitt Romney, the soul of American capitalism in the flesh. Look back over his career as a predator drone at Bain Capital: Isn’t it the exact sort of background you always insist politicians ought to have? Isn’t it the sort of titanic enterprise for which you lust, as you wave your copy of Atlas Shrugged in the air?
You accuse the former Massachusetts governor of opportunism, but from where I stand, the bad faith is all on your side. What offends you about Romney’s Massachusetts healthcare plan, for example, isn’t that it crushes human liberty, but that it provided the model for President Obama’s own healthcare overhaul, which you spent the last two years decrying as the deed of a power-grabbing socialist.
If the public ever learns about the Republican provenance of Obamacare - and if Romney is the candidate, they most certainly will - it will become obvious that your movement was not telling the truth about all that Kenyan Stalinist death-panel stuff. It is indeed a moment to fear, that day when the nation finds out that you were, ahem, exaggerating in your bullhorn pronouncements about the communist in the White House. Still, if the Tea Party movement is all about truth-telling and straight shooting, then you need to face it like a patriot.
And yes, Mitt Romney has also said that the bank bailouts of 2008-2009 were necessary, while you regard them as a mortal sin against free-market principles. (To his credit though, at least in your eyes, he was also a total hardliner about the auto industry bailouts, displaying the pointless meanness you seem to admire in nearly any other politician.) In truth, though, the candidate’s only offense on the bailout question was his candor. He merely admitted what should be obvious to any billionaire from a study of bank history: that conservatives have no problem doling out, or grabbing for, government money when the chips are down.
After all, President Herbert Hoover himself distributed bank bailouts in the early years of the Great Depression. Calvin Coolidge’s vice president, Charles Dawes, helped out in Hoover’s bailout operation, later changing hats and grabbing a big slice of the bailout pie for his own bank. Ronald Reagan’s administration rescued Continental Illinois from what was then the largest bank failure in our history.
Citibank’s market-worshiping CEO Walter Wriston begged for (and of course received) the assistance of big government when Citi needed it - after making loans to the troubled Penn Central Railroad. And don’t forget, every single one of you is guilty of taking a government bailout any time you make a withdrawal from a bank that’s been rescued by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
The reason they - I mean, you - do these things should be as obvious as it is simple: “free market” has always been a high-minded way of saying “gimme,” and when the heat rises, the “market” is invariably replaced by more direct methods, like demanding bailouts from the government you hate. Banks get bailouts for the simple reason that they want bailouts and have the power to insist on them - the same circumstances that got them deregulated in wave after wave in the Eighties, Nineties, and Aughts.
In this sense, Romney, who is loud and proud when it comes to the need for further deregulation, has actually been more consistent than you. He’s the gimme candidate of 2012 and so he should really be your guy.
Promethean Job Creators and Heroes of Venture Capital
You say Romney is an unprincipled faker. Fair enough - he is. He’s so plastic he’s almost animatronic. But have you looked in the mirror recently? Aren’t you the ones who fall for it every time Fox News wheels out some Washington hack to confuse this or that corporate issue with the sacred cause of freedom or states rights or man’s inalienable right to mine uranium in his backyard? Aren’t you the ones who thought that Glenn Beck’s tears were markers of emotional sincerity? And for Pete’s sake, your populist Tea Party movement was actually launched from the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade!
I know, I know: for almost three years now you’ve dazzled the world with your proclamations that we’re being dragged into “tyranny,” that the country is being “destroyed,” that America needs to be “saved” - and now here comes Mitt, with his fondness for workaday compromise, ruining your carefully contrived atmosphere of panic.
That must be disappointing, but don’t lose the faith! Give the man credit: he has tried. He’s no stranger to the core Tea Party myth of the noble businessman persecuted by big government. Indeed, at the Conservative Political Action Congress in 2009, he opened his talk as a stand-up comic this way: “I gotta get through this speech before federal officials come here and arrest me for practicing capitalism.”
Meanwhile, he has the perfect Tea Party sense of social class. A centimillionaire who made his pile as a venture capitalist, Romney has both deplored class warfare - meaning, certain criticisms of Wall Street - and practiced it, taunting President Obama as a modern version of Marie ("let them eat cake") Antoinette.
There’s no contradiction in any of this, either for him or you. When someone has made his way in life via academia, like the president, he is, of course, a snob, and part of the ruling elite. When, on the other hand, a person’s multi-millions were visited upon him by open-market actions directed from the C-suite, he is automatically a man of the people, a horny-handed son of toil. In fact, Romney takes this kind of market populism a step farther than you ordinarily dare: corporations, he has famously announced, are themselves people.
And keep in mind that, with Mitt Romney, venture capitalist, carrying your banner in 2012, you will finally get to submit your capsized vision of social class to the verdict of the people - the actual flesh-and-blood people, that is, not the corporate “people” who make up the S&P 500. You will get to defend exactly the sort of “person” your movement has longed to defend since it was birthed by a CNBC reporter almost three years ago to the cheers of a bunch of derivatives traders in Chicago.
You will get to explain your peculiar conviction that the way to react to a gigantic slump brought on by frenzied finance is to unshackle Wall Street. You will get to line up behind a heroic businessman, like those rugged, resourceful fellows in the Ayn Rand novels you love. You will get to go into battle for the job creators, which is what all capitalists are, right? (Well, okay, maybe not the guys at Bain Capital, the particular outfit where Romney made his pile, but the theory is all that really matters, isn’t it?)
Indeed, your leadership cadre is already playing up the inevitable criticisms of Romney as a job decimator as a way of launching a grand debate about capitalism - by which they mean, of course, freedom itself. When Newt Gingrich criticized Romney a few weeks ago for his career in private equity, the airwaves of your winger-tainment world exploded with outrage. “This is the kind of risk-taking, free-market capitalism that most people who call themselves conservatives applaud,” intoned Brit Hume on Fox News. If Newt had a problem with Bain’s operations, announced syndicated columnist Jonah Goldberg, “then Gingrich really doesn’t believe in capitalism at all.”
Washington Post columnist George Will declared that what Romney did in his venture capitalist days was an “essential social function,” that his company was “indispensable for wealth creation.” (Just whose wealth was being created he left discreetly undefined.) Yaron Brook, head of the Ayn Rand Center and a familiar figure at Tea Party events, is no fan of Romney’s, but he had this to say about Romney’s career: “private equity serves an incredibly important productive function in our economy . . . . Private equity is in my view a heroic activity.”
“Heroic”: that’s exactly the word!
In Romney we have finally found a quarter-billionaire to cry for. And so Suzy Welch, author and wife of Jack, appeared on Fox Business to wonder why Romney wasn’t defending himself aggressively against criticism of his business career. Romney, she announced, is “an American hero to people who believe in free enterprise, or he should be.”And that combination of tragedy and heroism, my friends, is why you will soon be signing up for the Romney juggernaut. In him you will see the saintly victimhood of Sarah Palin melded with the Promethean job-creator who was the cult object of your 2010 efforts. Social issues be damned! Romney will ensure that we get the one thing that this country can’t do without on its path to hell: further deregulation of Wall Street.
The nation’s all-powerful elitist socialists will, of course, disagree, and you’ll have a field day, raging and weeping at the way they are going to set out to persecute this noble, wealth-creating soul.
Pity the billionaire: it will be a powerful rallying cry for 2012.
Yours in petulant individualism,
Tom
Thomas Frank
(Thomas Frank is the author of the just-published Pity the Billionaire: The Hard-Times Swindle and the Unlikely Comeback of the Right (Metropolitan Books). His other books include The Wrecking Crew, What's the Matter with Kansas? and One Market Under God. He is the “Easy Chair” columnist for Harper’s Magazine and the founding editor of The Baffler.
Comments
Jan 8 2012
I remember looking through old public telephones books for San Francisco that were published in the early 1900s. At that time in addition to names and address they also listed occupation. I was amazed at how many capitalists were listed.
If Romney wins it will be a victory for crony capitalism. A capitalism that can be manipulated for not only economic gain but also political power. An invitation to fascism. Obama is not our dictator, he’s our dick taker.
Whorporate America now has a son who is protected by the Constitution. The American citizen has been renamed consumer.
Posted by FVHorn
Jan 8 2012
Yes, human greed is nothing new. Speaking of San Francisco, the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 had these 'capitalists' make a simple, quick and hard 'business' decision. Since many of them had FIRE insurance, but NOT earthquake insurance, arson became the vehicle of choice to obtain insurance payoffs.
So they wound up BURNING DOWN THEIR CITY in order to defraud the insurance companies! As well, one of the most dramatic building collapses from the earthquake was the new Town Hall. And this was due to the fact that the 'capitalist' contractor was found to have used wadded-up old newspapers and trash as supporting structure within the walls... guess he found a way to use public money "more efficiently" than those no-good expensive public workers!
And Bravo and Encore to this article/'open letter'! He hits the Teabag "Party" right on the nose, exposing it as merely the astroturf 'frontman' it is for the Capitalist Hard-Right of the Republican Party. And he ridicules the fact that the duped people who think they are 'tea partiers' have no idea nor control about what is done in the name of the Tea Party by its Real behind-the-curtain controllers, Karl Rove and the Kock (sic) brothers.
As Bill Maher stated, there are just two major parties in this country now, a Center-Right and a Crazy Hard-Right. The Left has completely failed the nation, failed to bring inspiring leaders to the fore, failed to create a real viable alternative, failed to politically intimidate and motivate Obama, and failed to catch the imagination of the American people, as at the same time the people are constantly bombarded by Right-wing propaganda and deception, backed by so much money it has miraculously resurrected the Republican Right, even after the debacle of the Bush era (well, it was a debacle for everyone else in the world but the Top Rich, so I guess in a way it was a success to Them.)
So, first the Left must destroy the Republican/Teabag Party... if it can even do that much, against these supremely-monied Capitalist extremists, who, like those capitalists in Old San Francisco, are once again, 'burning down' their own community and people, as their 'business' decision is to do so in order to collect the booty.
Posted by Siouxrose
Jan 8 2012
This is a ridiculous comment, worthy of a right wing rag:
"The Left has completely failed the nation, failed to bring inspiring leaders to the fore, failed to create a real viable alternative, failed to politically intimidate and motivate Obama."
I really grow weary of repeating myself, but I am not one to let false witness stand in the place of the Truth.
Our society, like much (but not all) of the world has fallen into homage towards mammon. It is hard capital that now controls the media, hard capital that determines who can run a viable campaign, and the odds favor those who spend the most, with winning the seats they lust after. It is capital that determines many of the programs universities feature, and much of the academic cast chosen.
When capital, i.e. BIG MONEY, controls the elections, academe, and the media, how is it that logic would place blame on the LEFT for not creating a compelling narrative or candidate? If you tie a person's hands behind their back, you cannot accuse them of lacking writing skills!
I am tired of the frauds who enter these threads to deny climate change, affirm the "safety" of nuclear power, pretend that our elections are viable, and that the public actually has a choice in who will represent them. I am tired of those blaming feminists or the Left, or environmentalists or the poor, for the bankrupt design of our society that's been engineered by the top elites.
No. The LEFT has not failed. It's been marginalized, silenced, pushed outside of decision making circles, and then demonized.
If you don't have access to media to SHARE your platform, how the hell can you get a message out there?
Now if you want to say that the very wealthy few on the left (for it's been historically true that "it's harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven than for a camel to move through the eye of a needle") failed to FUND the Left, that is another matter.
Most people with great sums of money wish to preserve it. Therefore, with notable exceptions, they will vote for measures that retain a tax system that asks little of them. That makes them lean conservative. They may feel good by writing a 6-figure check now and then to UNICEF or ENVIRONMENT DEFENSE, but beyond that, they are not going to support a LEFT that may part them from their vast fortunes.
These matters are not the fault of the Left! You lie! Plus I seem to recall that you act as reliable Democratic party apologist in these threads. Of course to do so, makes your entire position a LIE given the FACTS of Obama's policies, and the awful degree to which they have held steady with all the egregious FAILURES of the Bush Administration. Not exactly change that anyone paying attention still believes in!
Our nation has been sold off to Hades!
Posted by raydelcamino
Jan 9 2012
I would not have been as diplomatic telling FV Horn where to shove that BLAME THE VICTIMS comment.
During the past four presidential elections, the left HAS fielded a candidate with 50 years of success in challenging corporate power. Too many left of center voters, however, wasted their votes on Democats and kept Ralph Nader out of the white house.
Posted by NateW
Jan 8 2012
The Tea Baggers are this era's equivalent of the Know-Nothings. Unless the GOP can resurrect Grandpa Caligula (Reagan), they will not be happy at all.
Posted by clharlos
Jan 8 2012
And the Dems are Whigs.
Posted by bittymouse
Jan 8 2012
All the republican candidates are buffoons? Those darn pesky republicans. Darn pesky Tea Party types.
I just love it when some columnist or author, some professor underestimates the opposition. This looks like a lot of the absurd rhetoric we saw just before getting our butt's kicked royally in 2010. This is about far more than the Presidential race. Fact is local and state elections will determine our future more than Obama and Romney.
Does anyone think that an Obama administration that is making Harding's administration look altruistic is not being noticed? The republican establishment may just be stupid enough to let Obama achieve a second term by their silly insistance on maintaing control all by themselves, but the House will gain more seats and they will take the Senate.
Posted by dkshaw
Jan 8 2012
Fact is local and state elections will determine our future more than Obama and Romney.
So your township or your state may at some point attack Iran? Your township or your state may terminate Social Security and/or Medicare? Your township or your state may appoint the next Supreme Court judge? Your township or your state might cut or raise federal income taxes and/or federal capital gains taxes? Your township or your state may accuse you of material support for al qaeda and lock you away for years without charges or due process? Shall I go on?
Posted by raydelcamino
Jan 9 2012
Perhaps bittymouse is not aware that Federal actions have bankupted local governments?
Posted by Leezasky
Jan 8 2012
Rick Perry just the other day said that he believes the US should invade Iraq again, right now. Buffoon.
Newt Gingrich has a long history of gross selfishness, greed, and asinine "ideas". Buffoon.
Herman Cain, owner of Godfather Pizza (geddit? Italians are gangsters who eat pizza!) forgot that when you run for president, all your sexual buffooneries will be brought out to bite you. Buffoon.
Michelle Bachmann has made a fool of herself so often, on so many issues, that even her fellow Iowans told her to get lost. In the only smart decision of her entire campaign, she did. Buffoon.
Ron Paul, I would add, is a fool of a slightly different variety: a loony who sincerely believes what he says, a true believer in the "Austrian School" of economics, a modern day John C. Calhoun, a worshipper at the shrine of the charlatan Ayn Rand. A Confederate hero, he should receive the Jefferson Davis Award for his consistent opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Buffoon.
Obama has been a patsy for Republicans like these buffoons, sucking up to them when he should have kicked their asses. He doesn't deserve reelection, but will probably get it, given the woefulness of his opposition.
Posted by dkshaw
Jan 8 2012
Herman Cain, owner of Godfather Pizza (geddit? Italians are gangsters who eat pizza!)
I know!! What a racist asshole, and no one ever calls him on it. Remember Sambo's? Went out of business due to their racist business name and logos from its early days. Owned by Sam Battistone. Maybe ol' Cain just figured a little tit for tat would work out okay.
Posted by hellodarling
Jan 9 2012
Speaking of racist assholes, what about the 'mystique' of the U.S. prison system?
Most people won't hesitate to make a joke about some black guy named "Bubba" who is a serial rapist. That is so blatantly racist!!!
Why can't it be that when someone is sent to prison people say, "Watch out for that white guy Bruce! He'll rape you if you drop the soap! Hahaha!"????
I guess many Merkins just prefer to think of black men as prison rapists.
So sad.
Posted by Siouxrose
Jan 8 2012
This was a very disappointing article from the usual cutting-edge reporting frequently found on TomDispatch.
What Frank has done is set up a contest where the prize is intended for which ever party "successfully" bailed out the banks or put together a phony health care (pay-off to Big Insurance and Big Pharma) agenda. He uses these "successes" to pit Obama against Romney, or any other tea party "type." Like psy-ops, what passes into the readers mind is that these approaches were GOOD ones. Who gives a flying f--k if the bail-out to insurance had Romney's name or Obama's on it! It's what it means to the nation's ACTUAL health care delivery systems that's at stake!
This article is a ridiculous apology for the politics of no substance, the politics that reliably answers to its big money donors. No surprise there.
Its tone and content read like David Michael Greene, before his Wake Up Call.
Then, Frank thinks he's being glib by decoding competitive species of greed, and elaborating on the ways Romney came into his Dark Fortune. As if anyone from the big money club has clean bona fides, or a conscience!
Pabulum! Obfuscation! And it's too late in the game for those deceptions. 90% of CD readers see through the B.S.
Posted by Cathy Mason
Jan 8 2012
You completely misunderstand Frank’s game in this article. He’s calling out the Tea Partiers for hypocrisy and/or stupidity for railing against Romney when the truth is that he is an ideal example of what they claim to be for. Obama figures only in the sense that the Tea Party’s animus against him also makes no sense because in reality many of his actions also should be a Tea partier’s dream.
“If the public ever learns about the Republican provenance of Obamacare - and if Romney is the candidate, they most certainly will - it will become obvious that your movement was not telling the truth about all that Kenyan Stalinist death-panel stuff. It is indeed a moment to fear, that day when the nation finds out that you were, ahem, exaggerating in your bullhorn pronouncements about the communist in the White House.”
When Frank points out that Obamacare embodies conservative Republican principles – as it does – he is hardly calling it a good thing. Quite the contrary. And as for bank bailouts:
“Citibank’s market-worshiping CEO Walter Wriston begged for (and of course received) the assistance of big government when Citi needed it - after making loans to the troubled Penn Central Railroad. And don’t forget, every single one of you is guilty of taking a government bailout any time you make a withdrawal from a bank that’s been rescued by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
The reason they - I mean, you - do these things should be as obvious as it is simple: “free market” has always been a high-minded way of saying “gimme,” and when the heat rises, the “market” is invariably replaced by more direct methods, like demanding bailouts from the government you hate. Banks get bailouts for the simple reason that they want bailouts and have the power to insist on them - the same circumstances that got them deregulated in wave after wave in the Eighties, Nineties, and Aughts.”
Frank is saying here that the mantra of “the free market” is nothing more than a fancy way of describing unmitigated greed.
“This article is a ridiculous apology for the politics of no substance, the politics that reliably answers to its big money donors. No surprise there.”
Apology! Did you not read this?
“You say Romney is an unprincipled faker. Fair enough - he is. He’s so plastic he’s almost animatronic. But have you looked in the mirror recently? Aren’t you the ones who fall for it every time Fox News wheels out some Washington hack to confuse this or that corporate issue with the sacred cause of freedom or states rights or man’s inalienable right to mine uranium in his backyard? Aren’t you the ones who thought that Glenn Beck’s tears were markers of emotional sincerity? And for Pete’s sake, your populist Tea Party movement was actually launched from the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade!”
Posted by Siouxrose
Jan 8 2012
Do not condescend to me. Ms. Mason. You have gone on record LYING about The Fed, and even when corrected, repeated the same bogus allegations.
I read the article in full, and found it wanting for all the reasons I stated. I realize he critiqued the Tea Party types, but by doing this, he gave the Democrats who are PASSING ALL OF THESE SAME POLICIES an easy pass.
Because a writer points out the flaws in "one team," doesn't mean he's being honest about the big picture. That is especially true when those on the purported other side of the political aisle, are passing the same ridiculous (and noxious to 90% of Americans) legislation... like NDAA!!!!!!
Those of you who see merit in this article are like the dummies who follow the magician's sleight of hand and miss what he's ACTUALLY doing. Don't lecture me because you confuse the obvious with the slightly more covert(and heavily implied) content.
Posted by csul
Jan 8 2012
Wowza, Siouxrose, I think you're mistaking the tone. This is satire, not reporting.
Posted by rtdrury
Jan 8 2012
'Washington Post columnist George Will declared that what Romney did in his venture capitalist days was an “essential social function,” that his company was “indispensable for wealth creation.”'
Of course the venture kapitalist role is 100% non-essential, and wholly dispensable. Wealth creation is accomplished not by elites, but rather by nature and by the people.
The enlightenment of Massachusetts is personified by Romney I guess. We see how the greater and lesser evils in Merka work so tightly together.
Remember, Merkan prosperity is due to Merkans enslaving themselves to their masters at twice the hours/week as the world average, and consuming four times the energy/materials as the world average. I guess anyone could do that if they were greedy enough.
Posted by Leezasky
Jan 8 2012
Thank Heaven for Thomas Frank. it's so refreshing to read well written, well targeted political satire, by a man who knows his stuff and doesn't take shit.
His main point continues to be that the money machine operated by the corporate elite has so confused American working people that they vote against their own clear economic and political interests time and again.
Posted by Siouxrose
Jan 8 2012
Your post is a smokescreen.
This is a neat little way to make IT about the voters:
"His main point continues to be that the money machine operated by the corporate elite has so confused American working people that they vote against their own clear economic and political interests time and again."
I'm sure you caught the article published by CD that cited the actual NUMBERS; you know, what it COSTS to run a "successful" campaign. So it's big money that places the horses at the gate, and big money that largely determines who will be the front runners. Yet you turn this masquerade around into blaming the voters.
The honesty deficit apparent in the CD threads is something that probably merits actual gyrations on The Richter Scale... especially when election time looms near.
Posted by Lashe
Jan 8 2012
“ . . . - Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich - buffoons all, preposterous figures whom . . . ”
I can’t figure why this guy is supportive of another buffoon, Mitt Romney?
Posted by clharlos
Jan 8 2012
Mitt's my hero, too. Born in rank poverty (single room, dirt floors, no plumbing), 5th grade dropout who helped hid father sharecrop, Mitt's is a rags-to-riches story the exemplifies the wondrous American System, where any man or woman, willing to work hard, play by the rules, not accept handouts, not read seditious books, and not be queer, for Christ's sake, can get stinking rich and achieve the highest elected office in the land. Once there, he will surely fumigate the White House to remove the stench of the coloreds who lived there for 4 years (an affront to Jesus..have mercy), and then work tirelessly to help others get as filthy rich as he. And nuke the shit out of the heathen Iranians. And save our precious military from those dreadful budget cuts. And, best, eliminate Medicare and Social Security before those communist programs ruin Wall Street and the USA. Go Mitt.
Posted by braithwa842
Jan 9 2012
... we actually got a response from the tea party.
Posted by TheGrandChessboard
Jan 8 2012
Who did you actually write this column for, conservatives? Posting it on a leftist website means you are preaching to the choir. Who the hell are you writing for, I am Ron Paul supporter bitch
Posted by lord_buckley
Jan 8 2012
So, what's new here? The GOoPers will nominate a fascist lunatic for President. The Dems will run their fascist butcher incumbent. And...?
Posted by Homeostasis
Jan 10 2012
"Pity the Billionaire"
Here's some of the best news I've read of for years, and it's from Roman philosopher Seneca, about ANGER.
He would know being a world class expert, for decades having to hold his tongue (and maintain a pleasant smiling demeanor), or risk immediate grievous torture and violent death at the hands of his insane student NERO, one of the most cruel, heinous, psychotic, and psychopathic of all rulers -- ever.
U L T R A - R I C H _ U L T R A - A N G E R
It's seems that the extreme and ultra-rich are severely hyperbolic and apoplectic raging, about even the littlest frustrations - as they sincerely feel entitled to having their unencumbered and easy way in everything.
U L T R A - R I C H _ S U F F E R I N G
They fallaciously presume that their wealth will prevail and insulate them from the usual set-backs of life, as they foolishly and absurdly believe that they're the total masters of their own destinies - so that their expectations was somehow guaranteed.
The elites, even more than the rest of us - overestimate their capacity to change what is occurring and control the results - and their resulting frustrations when thwarted, and having their expectations dashed, is quite a bit beyond mere violent RAGE.
What I mean by good news, is that OCCUPY EVERYTHING, is indubitably making them boil in unrelenting rage, that mere common people have the Dickens of temerity to ask "for more."
U L T R A - R I C H _ D U M B I N G _ D O W N
Since anger shuts down higher brain functioning, they will make bigger and worse mistakes, the angrier and more frustrated they get. People will thereby learn faster and better, who we are really dealing with. For every counter-measure that fails to erase OWS' influence, the ultra-rich will become intellectually less capable of defending their long sustained rapacious usurpations and relative calm.
Is not the extreme anger and rage of the ultra-rich - more than enough reason to continue to OCCUPY EVERYTHING - even if nothing else materially appears to be beneficially happening ?
Elsewhere I posted about the benefits of forgiveness, but this is completely independent of the healing we need to do to get on with our lives, and my knowing that they self-destructively suffer so much (while having so much), is an amazing boon and source of personal happiness to me.
OCCUPY EVERYTHING !!!!!!!!!!!
____________________
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