It's no wonder attack has become the primary political strategy whether one is running for dog catcher or president. America is a joke. Worse, America is a lie.
Once awakened, we realize that The Great American Dream is really a nightmare, a siren song entrancing us, luring us onto the coast where our vessel is crushed between tide and rock. Once visited, we discover that The City on The Hill is a rat-infested slum that provides penthouses for a few and bitter lies to the rest who wear the lies proudly, believing that someday, they, too, or their children will be given access to the upper levels. Where once we imagined living among giants, we strip off the distorting glasses to see a mass of little, hunched-over people with sour faces, drooling and swearing, shoving and pushing, stealing and hording simply because they can.
Walk the talk. Give me a break. Christian super-ministers and born-again members of Congress fondle little boys. Liberal do-gooders restrain themselves from acting in the public interest if it could mean one more seat in Congress on Tuesday. Hungry children? Sorry, we simply have to win the 6th in Indiana.
We don't have sides, we have slogans. It's easier to remember slogans, and, if someone challenges you, you simply repeat the slogan louder and louder until the little pest goes away. We don't have ideas, we have ideologies which, when stripped of their very expensive veneer, are revealed to be religions masquerading as policy.
And they expect us to vote after we jump headfirst into the cesspool of modern politics and emerge cleansed of all ideals.
It's so easy to attack. It requires no great intellectual prowess, it demands little of our critical faculties, and it feels good even though, if we were honest with ourselves, we'd recognize that the attacks on our opponents resonate only with those who already agree with us.
We create caricatures of our political adversaries regardless of accuracy, and we show our most venal, angry, petulant sides attacking those whom we presume think differently than we do. And different must carry some malevolent characteristics that, by themselves, stand as reason enough to call down the wrath of the almighty. How pitiable we've become.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Arch Conservative
America is broken. We are not who we want to be, we don't act in harmony with our beliefs and values.........
Who's we?
Our beliefs?
The problem is there is a culture war going on in America today regardless of who denies it.
The far left in this country wants to turn this nation into a completely secularist, socialist, nation that maintains no sovereignty because international law is to be the only law, and where there are no borders and people from anywhere are allowed to waltz into this nation at their leisure unchecked.
I'm sorry Mark but those are not traditional American values. SO I say fuck that and fuck all the people that are beholden to those with this worldview who wield influence(ie the Democratic party.)
2 - Peter J
BRAVO!!!!!!!!!!!!
Goddanm Mark, well put. You said what so many feel but are afraid to speak. No one wants to be publically challenged, as most cannot verbalize their feelings and wind up bullied and silenced by what has been a majority. There is no one more intimidating than a bible thumping conservative who will not so much as admit to an error in judgement or action. The reason this won't happen is because there are no errors made by these people, everything they do is calculated and deliberate. This is not only the trappings of conservatives either, it's the same game with a different face for the liberals. I don't see any viable answers coming from their corner.
The people who claim that the economy is doing so well because the stock markets are up have never walked the streets, lived the life or even have known a family living on the pittance of pay that so many Americans are trying to get by on. They talk about raising the minimum wage, that's even a joke. To say anyone should try to live on $6.35 an hour is a sin. WE have a very small percentage of people in this country who are living a nice comfortable life, nice away from home vacations, overseas travel, many extravagences that 80% of this country will never know.
I was around for our failed revolution in the 60s and the failure comes from a change of the guard. For this type of revolution to work you need several generations to pick up and carry the torch, but by the time that their time comes the estaablishment is smart enough to make sure that the following generations are a bit better off.
I keep thinking "maybe some day" but obviously it woon't ever happen. The establishment is not accidentally successful. it's all in the workings. An answer? I just don't know.
I've said many times that the end of hope in this country was a time when a man who was a part of that establishment tried to fix things for all, he wound up with a bullet in his brain.
3 - Peter J
(sorry about the mis-spellings, the meds just kicked in)
4 - Mark Schannon
Arch, I'm afraid you're one of those trapped in ideology to the point where you've got your slogans and little else. The left supports socialism and the primacy of international law? Since when? That some spout that stuff simply balances out your banner waving.
I would bet that if you and I sat down for one hour, at the end of it we'd still disagree on tactics, but we'd discover profound agreement on core values. How they're manifested through law we may always disagree about, but at least we can disagree respecting the integrity of our opponent.
And Peter, you're doing the same thing--go on the attack against the Bible thumpers. You think liberals will admit to mistakes made? The Great Society was one of the most wonderful disasters ever perpetrated upon us. In theory magnificent, in execution, how pitiful.
Throw away your slogans. Listen to the Bible thumpers--really listen. Ask questions for knowledge not to score points. Find out what scares them...and you'll likely discover it's the same that scares you.
We don't have to agree on specific laws. We should at least attempt to discover if there are any grounds for philosophical agreement.
We're being strangled by labels. Give them up. They're killing you (and Arch).
In Jameson Veritas
5 - Clavos
Mark,
Impressive article; too few in the political world today advocate a stance like yours, seeking to find commonality rather than division.
Your article talks the talk.
And your comment #5 walks the walk.
Kudos
6 - Mark Schannon
Thanks,Clavos. The two responses demonstrate how trapped we are by our ideologies. What I don't know is how to overcome that.
7 - Arch Conservative
"The left supports socialism and the primacy of international law?"
Duh! They're always taking about universal government funded health care and trying to raise our taxes for more social engineering by the state aren't they? Not too mention there love for the UN which is so great that liberals believe it is appropriate to have reps from the UN come to American polling places during elections to monitor.
"We're being strangled by labels. Give them up. They're killing you (and Arch)."
There is no middle ground Mark.
The ACLU and their secular progressive commando followers are constantly misusing the first amendment in their jihad to completely eradicate all signs of Christianity from our culture and you're telling me I can't refer to them with a label?
Get a fucking clue.
You're sanctimonious "why can't we all just get along" bullshit is tired. I don't need to tell you how I misunderstand people who don't agree with me. I have two fucking eyes and a brain and I can see what the far left in this country is all about and I don't like it one bit. So I will continue to use my labels and anyone who has a problem with it can fuck off!
"Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions."
Ever heard that one Mark? Morality isn't relative.
"I would bet that if you and I sat down for one hour, at the end of it we'd still disagree on tactics, but we'd discover profound agreement on core values"
I can guarentee you that if I sat down with the fine folks at Planned Parenthood, Moveon.org or ANSWER for an hour we would all find that our values had absolutely nothing in common.
So I suggest you take your feel-good, let's all come together and all sing kum-ba-yah crap and peddle it somewhere else. We're all stocked up on crazy here already.
8 - Mark Schannon
Well Arch, you inadvertently prove my point with every line. You've now created a banner for me that you can wave to prove that you won't be taken in by anything that challenges your ideology.
But do you at least see that there's nothing I can say that will cause you to question yourself? Not admit I was right or change your point of view, but at least ask if you're seeing the world accurately. Your shuttered tighter than a shack facing a hurricane.
The world is scary--but consider for a moment that your far left loonies (and you do tend to wave labels that fit no one around like confetti)are as scared as you. And nothing distorts our rational capabilities as radically as fear.
Something I said made you very angry--otherwise, why the personal attacks? If I were just spouting gibberish, why not just ignore it or make fun of it or show me where I'm wrong. If nothing else, ask yourself why you got so angry. That'd be a start.
We do agree on one thing, however: morality is not relative.
In Jameson Veritas
9 - Les Slater
"What should break your heart is that, if you truly came to understand the majority of people around you, you'd find deep commonality and purpose, a desire for justice and fairness. But we live on the surface where tactical issues are the ammunition we feed into our weapons of human destruction."
This is quite true, and I believe is part of the reason things are getting a little crazy.
I drive quite a bit. Been across the country a couple times in the last few months. When I'm in some 'liberal' state like Massachusetts, where I am currently, I sometimes get dirty looks while driving with my Texas tagged car.
Who knows what they're thinking.
In other 'conservative' areas I walk into a bar, someone will ask me where I'm from, I'll say Texas, and they will start talking as to a fellow conservative. It's nice not to have built-in hostilities when you start to talk.
We talk some small shit but get to real concerns. Like Mark says, 'you'd find deep commonality and purpose, a desire for justice and fairness'.
The reason is we have much in common. I don't meet rich people in bars or on the street. I meet workers, unemployed, small businessmen, farmers, students, retirees.
How does this relate to things getting crazy lately? Well, for one thing, more and more people are realizing that we have much in common. Like the much greater acceptance of gays.
Who's telling us that we are so different? And why? It's coming from the pols, the pulpit, and the media. It's all connected with power, and wealth.
The wealthy own the pols, the preachers, and the media. They don't want us to notice that there are real differences between them and the rest of us.
10 - Jet in Columbus
We don't have sides we have slogans.
Very profound and a good read Mark
if only the whole thing weren't all true.
I like your viewpoint
Jet
11 - Clavos
Les, You had me with you until here:
The wealthy own the pols, the preachers, and the media. They don't want us to notice that there are real differences between them and the rest of us.
I make my living selling very expensive toys to very rich people. The job entails getting to know them and convincing them to part with large amounts of cash for something that's totally unnecessary. The process usually involves some real hardball negotiating. I'm decidedly not wealthy myself, nor are any of my social friends.
For the most part, I don't find the people I deal with to be very different from me and my friends, just a lot richer. Most of them are pretty down to earth, warm and kind. A few (some of the self made ones) are a bit rough around the edges, one or two you might be inclined to think of as rednecks if you met them in a bar, but deep down, they are just people, and not terribly different from the rest of the world.
And they all put their pants on one leg at a time.
12 - S.T.M
Clavos said: "And they all put their pants on one leg at a time."
Geez, what a waste of energy that is, especially when you overbalance and end up hopping around on one foot.
Both legs at the same time, whilst sitting on the edge of the bed!
Clavos, you've been hiding under a rock all these years.
The only thing you put on one leg at a time is a wetsuit.
13 - Les Slater
Cavos #11
"I make my living selling very expensive toys to very rich people."
"For the most part, I don't find the people I deal with to be very different from me and my friends, just a lot richer."
I've known a few rich people fairly well. Most of them have been former bosses. They do seem very much like the rest of us. They are, after all, human. They have children, they feel pain, there are many things in common.
But like chimps having 99% of the same genes, there are differnces, in this case not biological, but social.
It wasn't an issue of what income differences there were, in some cases I made about the same as the boss. In one case they had to give themselves raises so they would be making more than I demanded, but they did it and hired me.
I watched, from very close up how they dealt with competition. Some of what I learned was valuable to help me understand economics. Some was ruthless and I saw them at odds, not only with the interests of their employee's well being, but also short sighted from a business point of view.
All these companies, ended up on the ropes, and most are now departed.
I saw them, not personally, but as a class, as enemies. They couldn't help themselves.
Their need to compete, especially as things got rough, put them square at odds with their employees, especially production line, shipping, etc. The need to drive down labor costs had an effect on their mentality. They begin, and progress, to think politically, in a practical sense, what is good for their profitability.
14 - Clavos
STM #12:
Fair dinkum, mate.
I'll try it.
15 - Clavos
Les #13:
I watched, from very close up how they dealt with competition. Some of what I learned was valuable to help me understand economics. Some was ruthless and I saw them at odds, not only with the interests of their employee's well being, but also short sighted from a business point of view.
All these companies, ended up on the ropes, and most are now departed.
You're absolutely correct; that's incredibly short sighted, not to mention stupid, as evidenced by the fact these businesses no longer exist.
Before I began my present livelihood, I worked three decades in business. Perhaps I'm reading too much (or possibly, not enough) into what you say above, but it seems to me you experienced a series of exceptionally poor entrepreneurs/managers.
Their need to compete, especially as things got rough, put them square at odds with their employees, especially production line, shipping, etc. The need to drive down labor costs had an effect on their mentality. They begin, and progress, to think politically, in a practical sense, what is good for their profitability.
What you describe here is just plain bad management. I learned very early on in my management career that my most important asset in business was the people, and that treating them decently, empowering them, paying them well, and providing good benefits generated more, not fewer, profits.
I'm certainly not unique; there are literally millions of entrepreneurs and managers in business who are very successful. One trait 99% of them share is knowing how to manage people well.
I saw them, not personally, but as a class, as enemies. They couldn't help themselves.
Based on what you experienced, not surprising. If all entrepreneurs/managers were like those you describe, there would be no successful businesses.
16 - Lumpy
Mark the problem you bring up here is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The negativism you display in this article - the negativism of the left - is what is pushing our country to become the horrid pkace you describe. Mindless despair and manufactured fear are the tools of societal destruction wielded by opportunistic nihilists who, like satan, would rather rule in hell than serve in heaven. The left goes beyond the politics of personal destruction to the politics of national desttuction.
Ask a conservative the same questions about our society which are raised in this article and the picture he would paint is largely positive, that attitude is also self-actualizing. Given the choice between positivism that looks for solutiona and the left's relentless negativism I'll take the hope and psitivism offered by the right.
17 - Bliffle
Yeah, one day Clavos will tip over and fall on the ground, embarrassingly, putting his pants on that way. And how would he know how all those other guys put their pants on? Is he in their bedrooms in the morning? Is that part of his sales strategy? Some Very Special male bonding? Such are the perils of reciting trite homilies.
18 - JustOneMan
Lump and Arch...
This is the same old left wing bullshit..the reasons that America is turning into a third world country is due to the fact that this is part of the long-term leftwing agenda..
Destroy all that is good - Church, marraige - between and man and woman, respect for life (born and unborn) and society (Boy Scouts,etc).
There is hope! If we stay true to our convictions and beat these bastards back into their holes!
JustOneMan
19 - Clavos
Such are the perils of reciting trite homilies.
Especially where trolls lurk...
20 - Les Slater
Clavos #15
"...it seems to me you experienced a series of exceptionally poor entrepreneurs/managers."
I have. I also experienced good managers; well, at least from the perspective of success.
I have worked for some big companies, all have had some great successes, at least in their time, IBM, Digital Equipment (DEC), and General Electric (GE). Some smaller ones like Zoom Telephonics, Belkin Research have also had successes.
It isn't all about management skills. I saw some incredibly stupid managers at GE that kept on being promoted while others cleaned up the messes left behind.
I never worked for Intel but have had relations with some of their technology people at fairly high levels. They did try to hire me in their early uProcessor days. I have had numerous discussions with them on future products and some of their features.
Intel has been impressive and quite successful. But their model has weaknesses too. They become a victim of their own success, like X86, long pipelines, etc.
DEC had the problem of VAX's infallibility. They stuck with it until it was too late.
But I really don't want to talk business strategy. We know the experiences of the proverbial 'buggy whip' industry, to steel, auto, rust belts, etc.
What I am talking about is the political mentality that they inevitably develop, whether successful, or not. And it isn't that they all turn out to be Republicans either. Their class instincts lead them to support one, or the other, or both of the two major capitalist parties. Some find themselves supporting a 'third' capitalist party.
The point is that they support these parties from the their real, even if short sided, interests.
Most of the rest of us support these parties also, but this is not in the material interests of most of us.
The attacks, the pornification of politics, is intended to keep us off balance, to keep us fighting each other instead of seeing who THEY are, and what they represent.
21 - Nancy
Clavos, I sympathize with your need to make a living off these people (the rich), but they ARE different, if not physically, certainly mentally. Like you, I spent a considerable amount of time among the rich & very rich, altho not selling them stuff. As a class, they are arrogant, self-centered, selfish, shallow, materialistic, & far too many of them are entirely lacking in any sense of ethics or compassion involving any other living thing. Of course there are exceptions, but I found them to be extremely few & far between. The rich that I did find to be "normal" folks were mainly those that were self-made rich. The bulk of them had been born into the Privileged Class, and they, frankly, are a pack of moral monsters - and the richer the background, the more monster the subject, IMO. Their innate sense of entitlement & being above the law, born from the money & privilege of the social strata they sprang from, renders them insensate to any & all claims of decency from others less fortunate, or not on a socio-economic par with themselves.
One characteristic of the born wealthy I encountered almost without exception was their outstanding sense of greed: no matter how much they already had, they wanted more. Enough was never enough. Since the easiest people to take it from are those less well off, of course it then becomes the common people who are the targets of the wealthy, usually through some form of abuse of employees or through ripping off the public. Egregious examples of this these days are common, as CEOs everywhere are busy throwing thousands out of work either by directly stealing from them, as in the case of Enron, WorldCom, and other notorious cases of executive fraud & abuse, or through instances where CEOs deliberately throw employees out of work, then turn around and award themselves huge & obscenely disproportionate salaries, perks, and bonuses, when they are already awash in vast amounts of money they haven't honestly earned.
These are the sorts that have in the past historically paid the price for their arrogance & hyperprivilege, and frankly I'm continually astonished that in this country they continue to get away with this kind of behavior with their victims apparently content to, at most, take them to court instead of lining them up against a wall & wiping them all out, as they so richly deserve.
The rich are NOT like you & me; they're a lot nastier, & a lot greedier. As a class of people, they're typically more like parasites who live off the efforts & labor of tens of thousands of others, without regard for the lives or welfare of those they exploit.
22 - Nancy
Mark, well written, but I'm afraid there are too many persons like Arch who not only don't want to listen, but are constitutionally unable to do so, and furthermore have no desire to reach a commonality with anyone not mirroring their own narrow interests. In some regards and on some issues I have to plead as guilty as Arch.
The major obstacle to compromise is obviously religion. The terminally religious (especially christians) take it as their right & mandate to prosyletize & foist their beliefs onto everybody else. They refuse & don't want to understand that the very reason secularists promote secularism is not because they are adhering themselves to some odd form of non-religion, but precisely so that those who DO hold a particular religion can practice it without harrassment from others like themselves who are intent on forcing everyone else to live according to their strictures. I shouldn't think this would be a tricky thing to comprehend, but the religious & most conservatives don't seem to be able to understand, that if they want tolerance themselves, they must be tolerant of others to at least some degree. They entirely fail to understand that THEIR right to prosyletize ENDS where MY rights to privacy begin. In their minds, no one has any rights except themselves, and no one should have any rights except themselves, because they & only they are 'right', so to speak.
You can't reason with people of this mindset. They don't reason & they don't want to.
But it was a nice thought, Mark.
23 - Clavos
OK, Les.
So we're back to where we've been before: I believe in capitalism and you in communism.
The main problem I have with communism is related to many of the points you've made in this thread:
I'm not nearly as familar as you with all the different approaches to communism, but if I'm correct, all place control of production in the hands of the workers and/or the state. Given the very kinds of human nature problems you allude to in your posts this morning, I think this is unrealistic.
With a few notable exceptions, most collectivist systems have eventually collapsed into ditatorships or chaos, in large part (IMO) because of the difficulty of running anything by committee.
Collectivism and the concept of "from each according to his ability and to each according to his need" kills individual incentive, resulting in work not getting done, except by coercion.
Capitalism, too has a lot of problems; not the least of which is unequal distribution of wealth to a degree that engenders class resentment and even class warfare. But I don't think that the inequality is inherent in the system--I believe that human nature skews the free market forces, either serendipitously or by design, to cause this.
Obviously, I've reduced all of this to a very simple level; there are far more complex and subtle problems with both systems, but these are at least some of the basics.
24 - Bliffle
There WILL be a revolution. Society will change, which may seem obvious, but that doesn't stop people from trying to stop everyone in their place and freeze relationships, no matter what extremes that might require. Produces a lot of conflict.
The revolution may come from within or it may be imposed from outside. Society has a choice. But if internal reform is stifled then, as it's existence manifests itself to the outside world, that outside world will eventually take action. For example, Islam seems to be incapable of reform. It seems that there is no basic mechanism within the system that can rid it of failed ideas and groups. Different sects form around tribal differences rather than intellectual and political reforms such as christianity has with it's reformations and protestantist methods. By contrast, the US constitution is all about change and the methods of change, with a few whitelines to keep people generally in the playing field.
But every system is subject to the ascendancy of the Control Freaks who believe that all that is required for universal happiness is for themselves to rule everything. Of course, that's impossible and leads to the radical revolutionism that destroys indiscriminately. Interesting that radical leftism and radical rightism both result in anarchy.
As for us, well, this too shall pass. The excesses of the current administration are already beginning to result in the kind of outrages and abuses that finally cause the electorate to reach for any contrary party, even the despised democrats.
Too bad we can't change before a crisis develops. Maybe the contrarians need more membership, so as to put a brake on both right and left before they become outrageous.
25 - Mark Schannon
My word, I'm not used to getting such thoughtful responses from both sides and not a moron in sight! Well...we'll ignore the one that showed up. Anyway, what a treat. Even those of you who completely disagree with me, I could tell you thought about the article--mostly--and just didn't respond in some programmed-like manner.
Nancy, your honesty about yourself is such an important first step. I too have to plead guilty more often than I'd like. In a way, I've been lucky in my career, a liberal/libertarian housed among conservatives deep the business world. At a meeting with an outside group, one CEO of a major chemical company was introducing everyone and, when he got to me, said, "He's our house liberal."
It wasn't said with the slightest negativity. I learned because I had to that most conservatives/Republicans are good people. The same is true for most highly religious people I've met. There's a lot we don't agree about, but I've discovered that I value my discussions with them probably more than my liberal friends because we're always agreeing with each other.
Lumpy, you really believe that conservatives represent optimism and liberals negativity? That's a banner, not a fact. Come on, man, you know the world isn't that simple. The part of my article that talked about ignoring everyone else in the world and just taking care of one's self and one's family came from one of my best friends--a very conservative Republican.
I have more friends who are Republicans than Democrats because I've worked in corporate America my whole career. The feelings and thoughts I offered come from people across the spectrum.
Les & Clavos & Nancy -- before we can understand what's going on, we have to stop looking for the villains. It's not "the wealthy" or "the business owners."
First look in the mirror. Neurologists, psychologists, and economists, and others have found that homo sapiens is not a rational animal--our wiring for emotion and reason is inextricably intertwined. Remember the old Pogo cartoon (if you're over 45 or 50) "We have met the enemy and he is us."
Second, figure out how to ask questions and listen rather than wave a banner. This isn't the forum for that, I fear...too crowded.
Third, look for commonality, not difference.
When I talk about a revolution, it's not the left against the right, the rich against the poor, the workers against the owners...hmmm, makes it hard to figure out who we're revolutioning against, doesn't it? It's us...if all these posts demonstrate one thing, they show how we are all shackled chains.
Don't know who made them but we willingly put them on. Now we have to throw them off. And then...do nothing for a while...enjoy true freedom. I don't know...hell, I'm no philosopher.
In Jameson Veritas