If you follow American politics at all, you’ve probably thought to yourself, “Just how stupid can this whole Tea Party thing be?”
If you follow American politics at all, you’ve probably thought to yourself, “Just how stupid can this whole Tea Party thing be?” Americans are by and large reasonable, right? Few bad apples making everyone look bad isn’t it? Short answer: No. Long answer: Also no. Allow me to introduce you to Arizona.
Arizona is like the fuck-up cousin of America that everyone else tolerates at holidays because he’s family, but you’re relieved when he finally leaves after skeeving everyone out all night, talking about his half-assed get-rich schemes. Also they both know a thing or two about meth. Or, to put it another way, in the grand Seinfeldian episode about nothing that is the American experiment, Arizona is the Kramer of states: You can always rely on them to say exactly what’s on their minds, no matter how offensive or absurd.
Remember that bit where the gang needed to let a friend know her hairstyle was bad, so Jerry and Elaine introduced her to Kramer, knowing he’d blurt out the first thing that came to his mind? That’s how politics in America works with Arizona. If there’s something weird on the minds of our citizens, we just wait for Arizonans to bring it up. Also, like the actor who played Kramer, you wouldn’t exactly be shocked to see Arizona flying off the handle ranting about “niggers.”
Or spics, to be more up to date with the current situation. While the Grand Canyon State has had its share of racist controversies in its relatively short 100 year history as part of the United States, you probably heard about its most recent boner when they tried to propose a law last year that empowered law enforcement to pull people over for driving while brown. OK, that’s a gross simplification of the scenario, and reasonable people can argue that the law was never intended to be implemented as institutionalized racial profiling, but there’s no place for reason when you’re trying to make a broad point like this. What’s the point? That’s racist, yo, that’s the point.
Maybe rational people, knowing how heated the fuels of anti-immigration sentiment were running throughout the country, particularly in border states, wouldn’t have freaked out over it if Arizona didn’t have such a deliriously stupefying track record of bullshit. I should probably point out here that there are indeed some cool pockets of Arizona, like in Tempe for example, and that plenty of people there are justifiably pissed off about how they’re represented nationally by a few oversize buffoons.
I wrote about this a while back in a piece that considered how the proposed immigration bill would have affected musicians and entertainers traveling to the state. This graph is a quick shorthand for how they do down there:
‘When it comes to race relations, Arizona has historically been one of the most contentious battlegrounds in the country. During the Civil War, it was one of the only territories in the West to fight alongside the Confederacy, and the state didn’t recognize Martin Luther King Jr. Day until 1992 — nearly a decade after it became a federal holiday. (In 1987, Governor Evan Mecham rescinded the holiday as his first act in office.) During the next several years, widespread boycotts of the state stirred the controversy, most notably with the NFL relocating the site of that year’s Super Bowl out of Arizona. Public Enemy commentated on the state in “By The Time I Get To Arizona” on 1991′s Apocalypse 91… The Enemy Strikes Black: “What’s a smiling face when the whole state’s racist? The cracker over there, he try to keep it yesteryear, the good ol’ days the same ol’ ways that kept us dyin’.”‘
Say what you will about Chuck D, but dude had the righteous fury on lock down back when. Oh, also Arizona gave the world John McCain, who was one grey pube away from nuking the world back into the stone age (when he was born, am I right?!) before losing to Obama. And their governor, Jan Brewer, is literally the worst person you could imagine. For real, try to think of a more harrowing zombie of outmoded politics and obliviousness who wields the power of bootstrap-earned and god-given entitlement better than this mess. (Strap on your helmets for this vid because you’re about to get concussed with the stupid.)
I’ll wait here ’til you get back with some ideas….
Didn’t think so. She also kicked up quite a stir when she claimed that the poors from down south were running around chopping all the white people’s heads off. “Our law enforcement agencies have found bodies in the desert either buried or just lying out there that have been beheaded,” she said on a local AZ television station. Turns out she was exaggerating on that one; crime is actually down along the border. But as far as political strategies go, telling people they’re going to fucking die in a ditch if you don’t keep the barbarians at the gate has a pretty decent track record (see: every fascist regime ever).
Decapitated bodies — not from Arizona
Brewer just won reelection, incidentally, despite literally disappearing into another dimension of space time for minutes during the debates. Maybe she was just talking to her biggest supporter. “God has placed me in this powerful position,” she once said. Thanks for fucking that up too, big guy. I wonder what god had to say about her throwing 47,000 low income children off the state’s insurance plan? Or rolling back insurance for hundreds of thousands of old people? I’m starting to think that pro-life doesn’t really mean what I’ve always assumed it meant.
Oh, woops, I almost forgot to mention Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the bad ass best known for running his country’s prison system like a post-apocalyptic warlord — only without all the laughs that implies. Tell me you wouldn’t be surprised to find out this guy had a sorority’s worth of co-eds on meat hooks in his cannibal dungeon.
He’s famous for setting up tent gulags out in the dessert for convicts to work in and for making them wear pink. (Because pink is gay, I guess?) If you saw a character like this in some awful sci-fi b-movie where the bad guy was a southern red neck fascist who ended up getting torn apart by a horde of zombies, you’d think it was too broad a stereotype. Except this is for real.
So it’s pretty bad over there, right? Well, the good news is, they can’t get any stupider, can they?
Of course they can. OK, but how about petty? Can they do petty down there as well as they do racist?
You don’t know the half of it: Remember how that health care legislation we passed over here empowered Obama to barge into people’s houses with his Black Panther goons and steal all of the money under the mattress so brown people could get illegal cold medicine and homosexual weapons imported directly from North Korea? This proposal in Arizona to set up a centralized curbside trash pickup service is exactly like that. Only, somehow — and I didn’t think this was possible — even scarier.
Let’s be honest, I’m probably not going to be able to use my powers of snark to make this whole thing sound any more ridiculous than it already is on its face, so I’m just gonna cut to the chase and skip ahead to the block quote from AZCentral.com:
‘A decision by the Fountain Hills Town Council to hire a single trash hauler and begin a curbside recycling program has been met with angry protests from residents who accuse town leaders of overstepping their bounds and taking a leap toward socialism.
Some even likened it to “Obamacare” for garbage, calling it “trashcare.”‘
Fountain Hills, the article points out, has two of their very own — you’re never gonna believe this — Tea Party groups. One is called the Fountain Hills Tea Party and the other is the Fountain Hills Tea Party Patriots, and just trying to imagine what sort of trivial differences in bullshit creation necessitates a town of this size having two separate wings of their fear-factory in operation is blowing my mind.
Probably no surprise that the Bolshevik agent who proposed this act of sedition is a Democrat:
‘Councilwoman Ginny Dickey, who also supported the measure, said she felt that her motivations were especially questioned because she is the only Democratic council member and worked for seven years at the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality.
“It seems counterintuitive, but in order for this proposal to pass, I believe I had to downplay the benefits of recycling,” she said. “When ideology prevents rational discussion of a really pretty mundane topic, trash, there is no perspective. Everything is suspect, which paralyzes us.’
So that’s how bad things are starting to get, and we haven’t even ushered in the new Congress yet. Can you imagine what sort of miniscule whining and Chicken Little wing-flapping these patriots are gonna cook up once they get the real shit-steamer rolling down hill?
How’s the old saying go? First they came to provide me with affordable health care and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a petty, ideological simpleton. Then they came to pick up my trash, and I was like, yeah, but as long as you’re not picking it up, in, you know that way [limp wrist motion]. Then I had a heart attack from all this bottled up fear of The Other and I didn’t go to heaven because it doesn’t exist.
Welcome to America.
WIN.
Fucking spot on, sir.
“…they tried to propose a law last year that empowered law enforcement to pull people over for driving while brown. OK, that’s a gross simplification of the scenario….”
Nice job making a point and then noting how retarded it is. The proposed law does not give the police the authority to stop people for looking illegal. What it stated was that in the course of being stopped or arrested for some other offense, if the officer has reasonable cause to believe that the person being stopped or arrested is in the country illegally, he may ask to see his papers — you know, those documents which all resident aliens have been required to carry since FDR was in office. And if you have an issue with the whole “reasonable cause” thing, then your issue is not with this law specifically but with the entire system of criminal procedure.
Why do you even bother writing about things you admittedly don’t even understand? You are completely useless.
@Krystal: “reasonable cause to believe that the person being stopped or arrested is in the country illegally”
How can you have reasonable cause for someone being in the country illegally without racial profiling?
so move if you don’t like it. I don’t understand this anti arizona stuff at all. if they don’t want mexicans there the mexicans have many other places they can go. If the people there are “racist” who’s business is that of anyone but theirs? Theres racism all over the world, it’s a fact of life.
and who cares if they were against an MLK holiday? Why should there be a federal hliday for a guy just because he was a good guy? by the time that song came out and Chuck D got to Arizona Public Enemy was played out
“also Arizona gave the world John McCain” okay, but it also gave us Barry Goldwater, the Ron Paul of his day and whose “Conscience of a Conservative” still rules.
I won’t attempt a defense, because there simply isn’t one.
“so move if you don’t like it”
“if they don’t want mexicans there the mexicans have many other places they can go”
“Why should there be a federal hliday for a guy just because he was a good guy?”
just…wow.
Did you mention that Gov. Brewer’s two closest advisors are shareholders in the private for-profit AZ prison-running company that would be greatly enriched by mass indeterminate detentions of wrong-place-wrong-time browners? Hmmm….
Umm, well, you know.
The Arizona sun has really done a number on those crows feet.
@Arv
Ready the fucking bill pisslips. You can’t walk up to a brown person who’s buying ice cream for his kid and ask him for his “papers.” They have to have committed a crime or doing something worthy of investigation like veering all over the road. AFTER they are caught being bad they MAY THEN ask for proof of citizenship. That’s the fucking law. Arizona is being vilified by the rest of the country INCLUDING THE PRESIDENT for enforcing the law.
@krystal – wow, that was a close one! i just came within a few keystrokes of arguing with someone on the internet. thank white jesus that i remembered how futile that is.
the temps in arizona consistently reach 115 plus degrees during the summer. that’s hot enough to make anyone hate life, immigrants, gays, and whatever else you got.
get back to me after you’ve actually lived down here for a while.
Yeah, the immigration bill is one thing, but how about this socialist garbage pick up program? The brainwashing of the populace works in mystery ways, but hitting people where they least expect it is the only way Soviet agents like me are going to really get a foothold on these shores. I know it hasn’t worked for 100 years, but I have a feeling we’re onto something this time.
What I never cease to find comical is that while parroting the conventional wisdom of the moment Leftists manage to convince themselves that they are being iconoclastic and individualistic. They still think they are being rebellious and “edgy” when they lampoon religious faith or tradition or Christianity or the South or what-have-you, when all they are really doing is repeating by rote the beliefs of the bi-coastal elite, which they were entirely taught by – God help us – the (aptly named) idiot box. The messages from the Brady Bunch and All In The Family et al are still echoing across the empty canyons of Liberal brains, and most have literally never taken a moment to sincerely question whether their favorite celebrities might be wrong. That is where this smugness comes from – knowing subconsciously that on your side are ALL the people that matter: filmmakers, actors, hip hop rappers and other such celebrities. It is the smugness that comes from knowing that one is safely regurgitating Establishment arguments, from knowing that rather than engaging in the dangerous business of speaking Truth to Power, one is speaking for Power, and to the unwashed, filthy, unfashionable masses. It is the smugness of the small child who taunts loudly and cruelly knowing he has a bully at his back.
I think it is no exaggeration to state that progressivism, as exemplified here, is not so much a political philosophy as a fashion statement. It is conformism in the most depressing sense, dressed in a gaudy yet threadbare nonconformist costume.
Do better.
The brainwashing of the populace works in mystery ways
I suggest you delve further into this line of thinking, friend.
Who ever said anyone was trying to be different or iconclastic? I have zero interest in that. Never got that response to “liberals” with their tattoos and their listening to music. It’s the same thing people say in response to anything “hipsters” do. YOU THINK YOU’RE DIFFERENT BUT YOU’RE NOT. I haven’t heard a single person, ever, in my entire life, say they wanted to appear different. Show me one person who thinks that without it being a case of projection from the grump looking for something to shit on. It’s misdirection on your part.
There is nothing edgy about ridiculing the religious right, you are correct. No one wants to be edgy. No one I know anyway. It’s possible, and I could be crazy here, that so many people do it because it’s a reasonable response to an unreasonable state of being.
White guilt.
oh.
http://gawker.com/5687148/arizona-town-warns-its-residents-dont-drink-from-the-toilet
Signs have been installed in the restrooms of the new City Hall in Chandler, Arizona warning residents not to drink the water from the urinals and the toilets. So, if you are passing through Chandler, consider yourself warned!
Signs have been installed in the restrooms of the new City Hall in Chandler, Arizona warning residents not to drink the water from the urinals and the toilets.
I’m sorry but that’s good advice. People crap in those things, in case you didn’t know.
If Obama had sensible economic policies there wouldn’t be a tea party movement.
“Signs have been installed in the restrooms of the new City Hall in Chandler, Arizona warning residents not to drink the water from the urinals and the toilets. So, if you are passing through Chandler, consider yourself warned!”
well, now you’re being a little more honest, aren’t you luke? this isn’t about the tea party platform. it’s about that group of people that progressives just love to make fun of: poor, dumb white people.
i mean, your whole set-up for your views on the tea partiers was this, “Arizona is like the fuck-up cousin of America that everyone else tolerates at holidays because he’s family, but you’re relieved when he finally leaves after skeeving everyone out all night, talking about his half-assed get-rich schemes. Also they both know a thing or two about meth.”
in other words, po’ white trash.
now what would you be willing to say if black people in alabama were trying to get a law passed with which you disagreed? i know, i know. it’s acceptable to make fun of poor, stupid white folk. black people, you wouldn’t dare. and that’s because you, like all good prog libs, simply pity them too much.
you self-loathing, racist fuck.
To the idiot who says that legal immigrants have been “required to carry their ‘papers’ since FDR,” uh no.
I don’t want my permanent resident wife arrested and harrassed by cop goons because she wants to go for a walk without her green card.
F U.
@Gavin: Listen fagstache, I’m not pretending I’ve read the bill or even saying anything about the bill. I was responding to the claim that Krystal made about the bill (“if the officer has reasonable cause to believe that the person being stopped or arrested is in the country illegally”), so if anything, Krystal misunderstands/has not read the bill. I just wanted to understand how “reasonable cause” is different from racial profiling.
^ i’m not really sure what sort of cirque du soleil acrobatics you’ve done to call this guy racist, but if i get the gist of it i think you’ve just made a totally hypothetical situation, assumed his opinion on that situation, therefore he is racist.
thats perhaps the most fucking retarded argument i’ve ever heard. please stop coming here.
‘And if you have an issue with the whole “reasonable cause” thing, then your issue is not with this law specifically but with the entire system of criminal procedure.’
Yes, I do have probs with as such, since court during clinton years watered constitutional wording from “Probable cause” to “reasonable suspicion”. That’s a corruption akin to how the courts have been granting corporations civil rights for the past 100 years –all with attendant devastations.
So, now you’re giving discretion to abusive cops to harrass on unfirm grounds? Any pretext will cover the initial detention, Gavin, as you well know. Or do you? White Canadian yuppy. You see through a miniscule soda straw. You can be funny tho, xoxo
The final word on the “papers, please” law is that most real beat cops who actually work the barrio oppose it, since it will drive away cooperative witnesses. Besides that it’s a federal, not state, issue.
what’s wrong with making fun of the tea party and/or poor dumb white people?
seriously, isn’t it being a little pc to get worked up over that?
“If the people there are “racist” who’s business is that of anyone but theirs? Theres racism all over the world, it’s a fact of life.”
Yes, you’re right. Racism has never caused any real problems, right? Because racists totally keep their racism to themselves, because racists are real polite like that and they don’t wanna bother anyone, so let’s just stay out of their business. Everything should be fiiiiiiiine.
Az is only crazy cause we get all of your crazy old people.
Also, we’re pockmarked with shitty small towns.
what’s wrong with making fun of the tea party and/or poor dumb white people?
seriously, isn’t it being a little pc to get worked up over that?
No. Making fun of whites or Southerners does not violate the PC code, which is, by design, anti-white. If one were to make fun of poor, ignorant blacks, THAT would violate PC.
“but if i get the gist of it i think you’ve just made a totally hypothetical situation, assumed his opinion on that situation, therefore he is racist.”
no, you don’t “get the gist” of it. his entire argument, the words he uses to support his position, are classist and racist, you stupid ballgag.
“what’s wrong with making fun of the tea party and/or poor dumb white people?”
if someone wants to make fun of poor, dumb people then they maybe they shouldn’t hide behind the ruse of disagreeing with a political platform which is as valid as the current corrupt regime in place.
and to call out tea partiers for being racist when his entire post is a slam against “poor, white meth addicted idiots who do things i don’t understand” is a bit fucking hypocritical. doncha think?
his entire argument, the words he uses to support his position, are classist and racist, you stupid ballgag.
There is a difference between bigotry and racism. This is an example of the former.
“Racism” is simply the belief that racial differences exist, which, incidentally, they do. Otherwise one must pretend to believe that the reason blacks dominate the NBA and not Asians is because of social conditioning, which would be ludicrous.
yes, but getting worked up over people making fun of whites is also hypocritical. Being anti pc should be about people being less sensitive in general, not being MORE sensitive to white people.
yes, but getting worked up over people making fun of whites is also hypocritical. Being anti pc should be about people being less sensitive in general, not being MORE sensitive to white people
Unless one is “getting worked up” over the hypocrisy and double-standard.
@Calhoun
yes.
to characterize his whole thing as a coded racist rant against poor whites smacks of PC to me. and me characterizing you as doing that is kind of PC.
The whole point gets lost in these 90′s style meta-arguments
big·ot·ry
–noun, plural -ries.
1. stubborn and complete intolerance of any creed, belief, or opinion that differs from one’s own.
2. the actions, beliefs, prejudices, etc., of a bigot.
arizona is a pretty nice state (except for that god damn heat) full of mostly decent people. like most places. it’s just that arizona’s social policies suck so hard they make us, as a nation, look like idiots.
also, i have tattoos and i am trying to be edgy and different!
I’m fine not calling it racism anymore if everyone is going to try to insert this false equivalency reverse racism bullshit into the argument every time and muddy the real point, which is an obvious one: people in power, acting against people without power,is still, and has always been, the only conflict that matters in the world. Durr.
people in power, acting against people without power,is still, and has always been, the only conflict that matters in the world
…said the college-educated elitist right after attacking poor white trash.
@”Say what you will about Chuck D,”
OK, Chuck D is a middle-class born-and-bred poseur from Long Island who is pro-Africa but knows better than to move there.
@”(see: every fascist regime ever).”
Fascist, schmascist. The communists killed far more. If you count living bodies equally, count the dead ones equally, too. You dutifully inserted the requisitely smarmy references to “Bolsheviks” in the tradition of winking hepcats who’ve mocked the idea of a baseless “Red Scare” for about 50 years now, but it was stampedingly anti-racist full-blown Red regimes who piled up the most bodies over the past century:
http://www.scaruffi.com/politics/dictat.html
http://www.amazon.com/Black-Book-Communism-Crimes-Repression/dp/0674076087
Seventy percent of the country apparently belongs to this wacky fringe of meth heads who’ve apparently lost their minds in thinking that national borders mean something. Still, Mexicans can’t seem to wait to get here. Their actions would seem to indicate that the truly fucked-up country in the equation is Mexico.
haha. you people really are hilarious.
person 1 “people with power shit on people without power.”
person 2 “you done gone to college and made fun of po’ white folks!”
a powerful discourse if ever there was one.
This article is dumber than mud fucked by retards.
I don’t know what he’s been up to for the past 5 years, but I imagine that Chuck D is, just like Bono and other decent people of all races, concerned with Dignity and necessary minimal political/economic agency for regular working Africans and African Diaspora folks, wherever they may be found.
Goad’s truly crackeresque “Chuck D should go back to Africa” yahooing says all we need to know about how his mind currently works. Namely, it doesn’t feel a necessity to proceed reasonably, and so it isn’t necessary for reasonable people to expend effort to engage him as such, until he proves himself worthy of restrained discourse.
As for Mexico, Oh man no one can disagree what a fucked up country that is. Justice is based on Napoleonic Law (guilty until proven innocent!), just for starters. Individual wetback incursions doesn’t justify subverting constitutional protections on the U.S. side of the border tho. Keep it clearly constitutional, despite the annoyance. No waterboarding, no mass incarceration/detentions. Case by case, innocent until proven guilty.
kramer and seinfeld are white trash now. stop ATTACKING the POOR WHITE TRASH SHOW ABOUT NOTHING!
this comment thread reeks of jim goads little chat room buddies…………
THIS comment, is fucking awesome:
“luke Says:
Who ever said anyone was trying to be different or iconclastic? I have zero interest in that. Never got that response to “liberals” with their tattoos and their listening to music. It’s the same thing people say in response to anything “hipsters” do. YOU THINK YOU’RE DIFFERENT BUT YOU’RE NOT. I haven’t heard a single person, ever, in my entire life, say they wanted to appear different. Show me one person who thinks that without it being a case of projection from the grump looking for something to shit on. It’s misdirection on your part.
There is nothing edgy about ridiculing the religious right, you are correct. No one wants to be edgy. No one I know anyway. It’s possible, and I could be crazy here, that so many people do it because it’s a reasonable response to an unreasonable state of being…”
kudos.
“gulags in the dessert”
sounds delish bro
finally, a reasonable voice. btw, people who try to be different for the sake of being different when it comes to real life shit like politics are remedial fucks. save the contrarian bull for your clothes and music.
mouth breathers like Kristal think asking for papers because someone looks Mexican is not racial profiling…spectacularly stupid
wow this ”
article” sucked
Fuck the Jews. They are the ones causing all this trouble.
Here’s my view of the law: if you are an officer stopping someone for breaking the law, does that person not have to provide identification? It’s my understanding that they do; therefore the law they created was already the standard. If the law is already law there isn’t any reason to do it over is there? In summary: the law was a pile of reactionary, racist bullshit and a complete waste of time.
White folks just can’t catch a break in this country.
By the way, Gavin is wrong. A police officer is authorized by SB 1070 to ask for someone’s papers under the pretense of “reasonable suspicion” at a “lawful traffic stop.” You may recall from being a teenager, or driving a car through any area where there are people drinking on a Friday night, that you need not be “veering all over the road,” speeding, or even thinking bad thoughts for Johnny Law to switch on the flashing lights behind you. Everywhere in America they can do this, so yes, the Arizona law is a reinforcement of existing procedures (aside from turning federal immigration laws into state laws), in the same way that pulling you and your road-tripping buddies over on I-70 for going 4 miles over is how Nebraska state troopers get the leverage to drug search your van. Just because it is nominally written out of the law, doesn’t mean that SB 1070 doesn’t incentivize Minutemen-sympathizing cops to get their racial-profile on. Gavin hides it under false indignation but he knows that full well, as should everyone else.
We’ll all look back one day and laugh at fat old people wearing Ben Franklin wigs with teabags hanging off them. They are easily brainwashed, which is why they like religion. They are completely missing out on the enlightenment of intelligence that is happening on the Left, its like the Left is evolutionarily passing the Right.
^^ @ Eine Kleine Arsemusik — Agree, Gavin is one disingenuous canuckian cracker, nothing new there. Overall, I do believe he’s simply incapable of genuine sincerity when he’s attempting to discuss matters of public policy. He consistently mistakes provocation for debate, Goad love him…
A comedian who I don’t remember once said “All racism was started by a really bad sunburn.” Throw in >300 days of sun in AZ and you’ve got the primordial ooze of bigotry.
So the new thing here is to post articles that wouldn’t even make it to Huffingtonpost? Luke sucks balls btw. Everything he posts contains some form of “race, class, blue vs red america” indoctrination type garbage.
He’s basically New England’s version of Jim Goad. But whereas Goad actually has some writing skill (to go along with his weird/borderline racist ideas), Luke’s writing is straight dogshit.
Hey Luke ked, you aw wicked gay.
@Calhoun, i hope you’re not from SC as your namesake suggests. you are full of shit and while the majority of my state will tolerate your psuedo intellectual bullshit i cannot.
“Tea party” stuff started way before Obama was even sworn in. In fact it was a Ron Paul thing first, back when Paul was freaking out on Bush about…spending. “Yeah, but where were all these people when Bush was president!!!???” Late in the Bush presidency, “tea bagging” was a nascent movement that grew as the economy worsened. It exploded when the economy imploded (just as Obama was elected).
Also there are like 2 total pictures on the internet from the hundreds of “tea parties” that had signs one could consider racist. And that’s applying a pretty loose standard of “racism.” Obama with hitler moustache=racist? Bit of a stretch.
All the hubub boils down to the fact that people don’t like when people don’t like their politics. And in this whole “debate” the same people who label their opponents crypto-racists are thought of as crypto-communists. It’s pure tribalism and it’s what defines politics.
Reading the Wikipedia entry on “fascism” was surprisingly eye-opening. People should really take the time to check it out. No, this isn’t an endorsement of the ethos
haha. you people really are hilarious.
person 1 “people with power shit on people without power.”
person 2 “you done gone to college and made fun of po’ white folks!”
a powerful discourse if ever there was one.
You are right, 100%. I concede that this was a poorly-made point, and withdraw it.
“Rebel Roy Says:
Fuck the Jews. They are the ones causing all this trouble.”
thats the truth.
@ Calhoun
Progressivism isn’t a fashion statement, it’s the reason women and minorities have suffrage rights, and it’s the reason you get reasonable treatment at work. Stop watching Glenn Beck you brainwashed tool.
correct. it’s also the reason your kids aren’t choking on coal fumes in a fucking pit right now and your dad probably didn’t get his arms ripped off by a machine in a factory.
our kids aren’t working in pits because theres no need for them too. yet. They did during the industrial revolution and they do on farms. You ever see Little House on the Prairie? it was very boring but accurate
and you could just as easily say libertarianism gave women and blacks the right to vote. Emma Goldman was an anarchist, for example which is much closer to a libertarian than a progressive.
SHIT. I totally forgot to include this guy who just own election in AZ that thinks we should all be responsible for inspecting our own eggs. Link to the story in signature.
GOP House candidate Jesse Kelly is running for Arizona’s 8th congressional district, and of course embraced that free market fetishism we’ve come to know and love at a campaign rally hosted by the Pima County Tea Party Patriots, telling a questioner it’s our job to protect ourselves from eggs with salmonella:
…
The exasperated voter asked once more, “Am I supposed to go to a chicken farmer and say I’d like you to close down because all of your birds are half dead?” Kelly once more answered, “There’s a new thing that comes along every day. But I know this: Every part of our economy that is regulated by the government doesn’t have fewer disasters, it has more”
@dragler: So the American garment industry is buying Asian child labor at bargain-bin prices because of economic necessity?
Eine Kleine Arsemusik- yes. and they are paying what people in asia are willing to work for. If those people wanted to work someplace else they could all leave. No one is currently offering them anything better. would you prefer they starve?
@dragler: “would you prefer they starve?” Bitch, please.
@ dragler
Wow, you should go marry Raymi, you two are perfect little peas in an enclosed self-pleasuring pod.
The magnitude of your simplistic arrogance is equaled only by the extent of your apparent ignorance. Spend a few hours inside the following site and get back to us, you head-up-yer-ass blinded by selfish-idealism college-edjumacated diapertarian idjit. I dare you to study the site with something resembling genuine motivated compassion, if you’re capable.
http://www.freetheslaves.net/
I dare you to read the following document with a truly open mind, if there is any way in to that hardened lump of self-regard.
http://www.freetheslaves.net/Document.Doc?id=14
@Dragler
I’ll give you your point on suffrage, but you missed my meaning. Libertarians certainly didn’t give us things like medicare and social security, those were progressive policies and they work. As to working in pits, a lot of people certainly do. Mining and other heavy industry is not part of some whimsical past, it’s reality and the people that do it are able to in a relatively safe manner because progressives helped us move past the days of scientific management theory.
Luke–Tell me you didn’t take down the necessary ass-kicking of the idjit @dragler
Gavin, I read your stuff and often love it. You are dead wrong about this invasion of our country and open boarders. Profiling is just fine with me. The cops did it to me for years and ..you know they were correct we were the dope smokin hippies they thought we were!
Pay no mind to the recent Mexican cartel-related beheading in Arizona:
http://www.azfamily.com/news/local/Chandler-police-ask-publics-help-in-finding-decapitation-suspects-105918728.html
http://www.policemag.com/Channel/Gangs/News/2010/10/27/Arizona-Police-Investigate-Beheading-As-Cartel-Hit.aspx
@Diapertarianism
Learned Hand
Fear of a Whacked Planet
Oligarch-funded Freak-show’s DAD
Oligarch-funded Freak-show
Brass Figlagee
(all from the same IP address)
Seriously, how many fake screen names are enough? And if you want to condemn oligarchs for funding political movements, why not avoid the stench of hypocrisy and mention George Soros, too?
i went to arizona once. trailers filled with q-tips as far as the eye could see. beautiful desert though!
@jg oh, ok, some guy has different screen names, so whatever he said is invalid. as i said to you before: al gore lives in a mansion, so global warming doesn’t exist.
@jg oh, ok, some guy has different screen names, so whatever he said is invalid.
Any other simplistically mangled Straw Man arguments you’d like to make before I proceed?
His multiplicity of screen names reveal someone who’s hiding behind multiple personas, possibly to create the false impression of a consensus. That’s the point I was making. It suggests some dishonesty on his part, even as he rails against the big evil capitalists and the barbaric poor white crackers, or whomever his “Other” happens to be today.
And the bigger point I was making is his incessant hammering on what I presume are the Koch brothers (the “oligarchs” funding the “freak show”) rings hollow if he doesn’t apply his standards equally and go after people such as George Soros, too.
Otherwise, he seems to be implying that only the dumb crackers can be manipulated and duped by big-money string-pullers. I don’t believe this is the case. A lot of dumb, inarticulate, subliterate black people swallowed a lot of cheesy, simplistic bullshit about Obama, too. But there’s a wall of silence about this. Care to explain why people such as you and the Lonely Oligarch exclusively save your ethnic venom for whites—you know, the “other” whites, the ones who aren’t like you? I’d honestly like to hear an explanation.
There’s big money behind all the major media. Big banker money helped fund the Nazis and the Bolsheviks, too. It doesn’t only go one way.
From all appearances, Mexico’s anti-immigration laws are tougher than Arizona’s:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/may/03/mexicos-illegals-laws-tougher-than-arizonas/
So Luke, since I’m sure you want to avoid the appearance of being a partisan tool who parrots talking points and cherry-picks facts to suit a ready-made narrative, when can we expect to see your scathing attack on Mexico’s xenophobic immigration laws?
You’ve ridiculed the “religious right,” fine. When are you going to ridicule the most truly intolerant and fascistic religious entity in the world today?
http://thereligionofpeace.com/
“When are you going to ridicule the most truly intolerant and fascistic religious entity in the world today?”
How about like two days ago? Islam is a fucking sham too.
http://www.putthatshitonthelist.com/2010/11/because-they-bleed-on-their-hands-you.html
Dude, no one should have any problem admitting that they’re inconsistent and human. I certainly do quite regularly.
Ah-HA! Very good! You’ve broken from The Mold. That is to be commended wherever and however it takes place.
Regarding Al Gore, the fact that he leaves a huge carbon footprint doesn’t invalidate global warming, but it does show he’s a hypocrite and that he may have ulterior motives for pushing the idea.
Although consistency might be ultimately impossible, I think it’s a worthwhile goal. In my tiny little moral universe, hypocrisy is the only sin.
@Jim Goad: do you say much about the idiocies of “poor white crackers?”
I use multiple handles to create a consensus. But my points are logically consistent. Real talk.
“Libertarians certainly didn’t give us things like medicare and social security, those were progressive policies and they work.”
I disagree completely. How does social security “work” if you die when you’re 64 and never collect it?
and the costs of medical care have gone way up and the care itself it not great and the paperwork is incredibly complicated.
http://mises.org/daily/3643
^ a real free market in healthcare would logically drive costs down via more doctors and more competition.
If social security is so good why not make it voluntary? If it’s as great as progressives seem to think it will have just as many people paying into it as now.
statism just leads to war and/or poverty.
It’s in the best interest of the state to have a populace that is encouraged to plan ahead for their retirement/have health insurance.
it’s in the best interest for people to do that too. We don’t need to be coerced into doing so. People in China save like 33% of their money. We save about zero percent. If anything social security has made us less responsible. It doesn’t help when they are shouting from the mountaintops to spend all the time. Seriously, when did liberals become advocates of blind comsumerism? anyone know?
According to Jim Goad, “In my tiny little moral universe, hypocrisy is the only sin.”
I highly doubt that.
@calhoun
“hip hop rappers”
@Jim Goad: do you say much about the idiocies of “poor white crackers?”
From “The Redneck Manifesto”:
“I’m not going to deny that a lot of trailer-park rednecks are stupid.”
From an article about my local congressman:
“Far be it from me to assert that Sarah Palin is intelligent or deserves to have her finger on the Doomsday Button—from my observations, she has roughly the same IQ as an Alaskan King Crab.”
On the other hand, if you ever hear an “anti-racist” crusader dare to say any black, anywhere, is stupid, it’s usually for disagreeing with their politics. It’s almost impossible for such people to admit that a black person can be innately as dumb as a box of rusty bolts.
Regarding race and intelligence, my experience has pretty much coincided with all available testing: Whites fall about square in the middle. Jews and Asians consistently outscore them. Our friends from Mexico and Africa tend to consistently score lower than whites, no matter who’s devising the test or who’s administering it.
Like I said, I aim at hypocrisy—you have a huge contingent of people, most but not all of them white, yammering about retarded, inbred, stupid, atavistic, drooling, knuckle-dragging “hillbillies,” and they do it with impunity.
But when you demonstrate that those hillbillies—and unless you’ve been to eastern Kentucky or the western outskirts of West Virginia, you wouldn’t realize these people exist in far more impoverished circumstances than anyone in even the South Bronx—continue to outscore impoverished black kids on intelligence tests, these same people suddenly say IQ is a “social construct.”
You can bet your ass if the hillbillies were scoring lower, they’d be wagging those tests in everyone’s faces.
If IQ tests were culturally biased in favor of whites, then somebody didn’t do a very good job, because whites never wind up on top of the intelligence-test heap. Then again, if such tests ARE able of being culturally biased, somebody better devise a test quick wherein blacks don’t average 10 points above “retard,” otherwise all you people who’ve been claiming that “racism” is the only thing that’s kept them down are going to start looking like the retards:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/09/education/09gap.html
And since this article seems to be about “xenophobia” on some level, allow me to suggest that a lot of you suffer from its counterpart:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oikophobia
@Dragler
Social Security is a safety net that keeps our elderly from falling into poverty, as was the case for many before its implementation. I’m certainly for personal responsibility, but safety nets are needed. Look at what happened to many responsible people’s retirement funds after the recession. Devastated.
As for your link, deregulation of pharmaceuticals is terrifying. Do you really want a bunch of snake-oil salesmen running around selling you drugs that haven’t been properly tested? People lie and cheat when it comes to making a profit. You could research the drugs you’d be taking all you want, but it doesn’t help if there are no checks and balances.
Deregulation of insurance is a nightmare too. Anytime you deregulate a necessity you wind up with collusion. They deregulated auto insurance in Alberta and competition didn’t drive prices down – they skyrocketed. New driver’s there are often priced out of driving at all.
http://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/commentary/deregulation-and-bcs-crown-corporations
@Goad
I’m with you on George Soros. Fuck that guy.
I, like most ignorant middle-class liberal douche stains, felt the same way when I heard that the Mexican bass player in a Black Flag cover band I once saw might be asked for ID if he was caught committing a crime in the state of Arizona.
Those multiple screen names were funny though.
zoom- -”Social Security is a safety net that keeps our elderly from falling into poverty, as was the case for many before its implementation. ”
I’m not suggesting people should play the stock market with money they’ve saved. I don’t think social security is the root of all evil either. I just don’t think it’s fair to say its “popular” when people have no choice but to pay into it or they will go to jail.
“Do you really want a bunch of snake-oil salesmen running around selling you drugs that haven’t been properly tested?”
I wouldn’t buy them if they hadn’t been properly tested. What about the drugs that work perfectly fine but have to go through tons of red tape for years?
What about the people who die waiting for those drugs to come to the market? Is that just “oh well”? those people could have lived and instead they died. I don’t see how one justifies that for the “greater good” or something.
“People lie and cheat when it comes to making a profit. You could research the drugs you’d be taking all you want, but it doesn’t help if there are no checks and balances. ”
the market is the checks and balances. And talk about pricing things out, people are going broke paying health issurance. Logically if there were more doctors and different kinds of plans that rewarded/ punish bad/ good health things would be a lot cheaper.
Not trying to be a cop out but I don’t know much about Canada and how they do things up there so I can’t really comment on their deregulation other than to generally agree that yes deregulation isn’t a utopia and there will always be shysters and so forth.
you sound like someone who really needs to see my 7 part play based on Albert Jay Nock’s “Our enemy, The State”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGkZxgzxTlk&feature=&p=FC0967FBEDE53CC1&index=0&playnext=1
note: all bad jokes are ironic Neil Hamburger “bad”, really
@Dragler
The FDA isn’t perfectly efficient, but it does prevent bad drugs from reaching the market. I don’t think there’s a need to go exposing the public to drugs that haven’t been proven. Yes, the market would constitute a check and balance, but at what cost? Besides, those who are truly desperate can always volunteer themselves for clinical trials. It sucks, but it’s reality.
As for health insurance, people are being priced out precisely because there are only minimal regulations. I know it seems counterintuitive, but giving insurers too much freedom is part of the problem, it won’t make it cheaper because there are too many barriers to entry for that industry. With only a few providers there’s no need to compete – they make more profit if they don’t. You don’t have to look to Canada to see the problem either, it happened with electricity deregulation in California.
I’m not a fan of giving the government too much power, but I’m not a fan of giving big business too much power either – and I think that’s where libertarianism fails.
big business and big government are the same thing. it’s called corporatism. Governments don’t act as a check on corporate powers as leftists like to believe, they are in cahoots.
Jim Goad wins every argument.