Bon Voyage!

posted by The Vidiot @ 8:22 PM Permalink

I'm not leaving the blog. BUT, I am leaving the country for a while. Hopefully, I'll be able to post.

Labels: summer 2011

1 comments

Hello from Tornado Land!

posted by The Vidiot @ 10:34 AM Permalink

Labels: blogging, politics

1 comments

Whatever your feelings are for Ron Paul...

posted by The Vidiot @ 11:33 AM Permalink

Love him, hate him, whatever, I don't care. What I do care about are gross misrepresentations of anybody's viewpoints.

The media are reporting, after this interview of Ron Paul by Chris Matthews, that Ron Paul wouldn't have voted for the Civil Rights Act. The media narrative that they're trying to construct is that Ron Paul is a stealth (or not so stealth) racist. They know full well that the easiest way to discredit anybody these days is to call them a racists or an anti-Semite or some other sort of bigoted fool.

Paul's real stand on the Civil Rights Act is, judging from what he actually said, that governments are the ones that first implemented policies of segregation and racism. He simply wants to repeal those laws that systematically segregate people on the basis of race, ethnicity, etc., and not codify so-called non-discriminatory laws. He trusts that people will do the right thing and they don't need any laws to tell them to do it. What the media is trying to do is go back in history and say oh well, Ron Paul is advocating a return to our racist past. What Ron Paul is really doing is he's looking towards the future. He knows the world wouldn't return to a racist past.

Bottom line, the laws that the US government has passed in the form of the Civil Rights Act did little to end segregation and discrimination. And here's where it become complicated.

Culturally, the American people are not racist. The few who are are irrelevant because racists are generally ostracized by civil society. What is true is that despite whatever laws the government wants to pass or has passed, American apartheid is still very much alive in the United States. Black and other minority groups remain spatially and geographically isolated and, as most sociologists would agree, hyper-segregated from the rest of US society. Hyper-segregation is a term to describe how black and minority groups are segregated -- not just spatially, but culturally, economically, politically, and socially -- from the dominant society. And don't forget, that it's the American government that created laws that segregated and discriminated against people and what Ron Paul understands is that their laws to end their mistakes did not curtail the problem. It was the American people, not the beloved nation state that ended segregation. It wasn't casting votes that ended it, it was the will of black, white and women revolutionaries that took to the streets and demanded government end their racists and discriminatory ways. It was the people that ended it. Not the government.

Ron Paul gets this and so other critical thinkers like Chomsky and Zinn, et al. They, Chomsky, Paul, et al, advocate the end of government interference, whether it's creating racist laws or laws to ameliorate racist laws, because the American people can handle it from here. The government can go home.

When we look at the so-called objective nature of government policies, the managing of all our human social institutions, we can see, under closer inspection, that government laws are far from neutral and objective. In fact, under the cloak of objectivity, lies overt racism. In our educational policies, we see eurocentric, white-dominant, bourgeoisie values that take precedent over values that exist in the many different heterogenous populations and minority groups in the US. We see white-dominant values in our legal system over the values of our hispanic, black, native american and women groups. We see laws of all kinds situated within all our institutions that instill dominant white values that uphold the dominant class at the expense of all other groups. There is nothing objective or neutral about any of our laws.

These laws support an obvious dominant class in the name of democracy, but democracy is far from what we have. The proof is who commands the dominant institutions and how those laws and ideas and values perpetuated by government economic elites make laws that serve their own interests and legitimate their own power. As its very essence, government cannot pass laws that are against its own self- interest. Its preservation is its first priority; the preservation of the status quo and the preservation of the commanders of the dominant institutions.

Though Ron Paul's ideas are progressive, they're not perfect, but at least they are a start.

But those ideas sure as hell don jibe with the media narrative.

And that's my point. Take him or leave him, I don't care, but at least be honest about what they guy says.

Labels: corporate owned media, MSM, racism, ron paul

1 comments

I feel the need for a reawakening to shed this country…

posted by Bill Arnett @ 1:36 PM Permalink

…of all this hatred, bigotry, homophobia, etc., and that's just in politics. Perhaps I was just lucky in my choice of music during my formative years. I think this song, almost revered as a new national anthem by the people with whom I hung out and who hung onto every word of one of the most socially relevant songs ever, now as then.

Would you knock a man down if you don't like the cut of his clothes
Could you put a man away if you don't want to hear what he knows
Well it's happening right here people dying of fear by the droves
And I know most of you
Either don't believe it's true,
Or else you don't know what to do
Or maybe I'm singing about you,
Who knows.
It's incredibly sick, you can feel it, as across the land it flows
Prejudice is slick when it's a word game, it festers and grows,
Move along quick, it furthers one to have somewhere to go
You can feel it as it's rumblin'
Let emotions keep a tumblin'
Then as cities start to crumblin'
Mostly empty bellies grumblin'
Here we go
People see somebody different fear is the first reaction shown
Then they think they've got him licked the barbaric hunt begins and they move in slow
A human spirit is devoured the remains left to carrion crow
I was told that life is change
And yet history remains,
Does it always stay the same
Do we shrug it off and say
Only God knows
By and by, somebody usually goes down to the ghetto
Try and help but they don't know why folks treat them cold
And the rich keep getting richer and the rest of us just keep getting old.
You see one must have a mission
In order to be a good Christian
If you don't you will be missing
High Mass or the evening show
And the well fed masters reap the harvests of the polluted seeds they've sown,
Smug and self-righteous they bitch about people they owe,
And you can't prove them wrong, they're so God damn sure they know
I have seen these things with my very own eyes and defended my battered soul,
It must be too tough to die,
American propaganda, South African lies
Will not force me to take up arms, that's my enemies' pride,
Ands I won't fight by his rules that's foolishness besides,
His ignorance is gonna do him in and nobody's gonna cry,
Because his children they are growing up
With bigots and their silver cups
They're fed up, they might throw up
On you

Stephen Stills Word Games

This is once again as close a description of what's happening in America as when this song was released (in this case) in Still's Electric/Acoustic Album of 1975.

So I seem to have returned to my senses and lucidness, both of which I celebrate. I really let those assholes get under my skin and I'm more than a bit embarrassed and chagrined that I allowed that to happen.

I have never been a hater, and I renounce all hatred again, now. It is a useless emotion, life-draining, quality of life diminishing, bringer of depression and, altogether the wrong reaction to the clowns, buffoons, and carnival barkers that have succeeded in so embarrassing both the teabaggers and the gop that they now see the beginning of their imminent breakdown and abject failure that will leave them the laughingstocks they deserve to be so seen.

I see it now in the eyes of the MSM talking heads the contempt for people who stalwartly espouse positions that are absurd. As this contempt grows, as the political actions of the teagagging gopers grow evermore ridiculous in their positions, Americans are waking up, really listening, and everyday more of them are beginning to feel the same sense of contempt and ridicule and they, too, finally have to laugh at the sheer silliness of a silly party run by silly people seeking wildly insane expansions of authority that will never take hold in my America.

Ya just have to love your country more than you hate its political rabble and losers, and I do.

Love America. Laugh at the loony teabagging-gop-ers and as catching as laughter and the power of satire continue exposing these pitiable people to the public, the louder and further the laughter spreads, the more people of that ilk will stop exposing themselves to ridicule.

We're winning this one quite handily and I have to admit, I'd be scared shitless to play poker with President Obama; I'd laugh all the way through a game of horseshoes (I'm only guessing that would be a game in which they might excel, shoes, ass, all the same to them!) with any gop candidate.

LOVE AMERICA AND AMERICANS, and save your best belly laughs for people like Ryan, Boehner, Mitchell, Trump,
and teabagger-gop-ers in prticular.

Labels: bad politicians, civil rights, class warfare, neocons, President Barack Obama, presidential candidates, teabagger-gop-er

0 comments

One of the main points upon which Obama is to be congratulated…

posted by Bill Arnett @ 2:08 PM Permalink

…is his highly dignified decision to NOT place his thumb on his nose, waive his fingers to the crowd, and go, "Neener, neener, neener, your C- Princeton cheerleader can kiss my ass! It takes a real, intelligent man to catch a terrist! Neener, neener, neener!"

That is all.

Ciao, bella ámi.

Labels: osama bin laden, President Barack Obama, Terrorism

0 comments

The apex of cynicism

posted by The Vidiot @ 11:43 PM Permalink

When I heard that Osama bin Laden had been killed, I thought the following:

Oh really? You mean they killed a guy who has been dead for nearly 10 years? That's a trick.

and

Why announce it now? Why does it make me so uneasy? What are they prepping us for?

and finally

Is this how they're starting off the election year? This is them coming out of the gate at full speed? Seriously?

So, I have to ask, is there anybody more cynical than I?

Update: They dumped his body into the sea? Really? WTF for? Even Che got multiple pictures take of his body, bits and pieces of him cut off and examined. I mean, hell, that's what's supposed to happen to enemies of the State.

No, no, no. It there wasn't something hinky before, there is certainly something hinky now. I almost feel like like Obama didn't order the dumping of the body but now has to deal with it. Why go on about proof if you dump your proof into the sea? Did somebody just screw Obama?

I dunno.

Listen, all we know is that the US government wants us to think they they killed Osama bin Laden. That's all we know for sure. Everything else is just speculation.

Labels: osama bin laden, propaganda

7 comments