Getting crime to pay

We haven't seen much that's been particularly inspiring at the Michigan Theater in recent days, when we've been seeing things at all. Yesterday's offering was also not something that would have ordinarily jumped out at me, but when faced with few or no choices, you take what's there. That, of course, is also one of the central themes of Emily the Criminal. The film is the first feature-length effort as either writer or director for John Patton Ford and it's a pretty solid starting point if he's choosing to make a career out of this whole cinematic thing. The choice of career is also the quandary of the central character of the story, Emily, played by Aubrey Plaza, formerly of comedic fame in stand-up and Parks and Recreation. It's a story about contemporary LA, the economic difficulties faced by much of the modern generation, and the sacrifices one is willing to or is forced to make to overcome those difficulties. It's a pretty straightforward scenario, as Emily, an artist weighed down with tens of thousands in student debt, gets a tip from a co-worker that leads her to a credit card fraud scheme that brings immediate, albeit risky, returns. Seeing it first as an amusing distraction and then later as a real opportunity for cash, she gets in deep with both the scheme and its co-owner, Youcef (Theo Rossi.) We can see where this is going a long time before it gets there.

Emily is a fully-realized character and Plaza plays her well. It's not difficult to either believe or understand why a woman with a history of impulsive behavior and unwise choices might choose to participate in the venture. Those poor choices also persist and make her life more difficult than it already is, which is saying something, even if she's not immediately impoverished as so many others in our society are. The film is also rather pointed with its social commentary, not only in reference to the obvious things like the onerous weight of student loans that accumulate interest faster than payments can reduce the original amount, but also to the social disdain that people Emily might once have considered peers express toward her and her co-workers as they bring food to company gatherings. It does get a bit heavy-handed in spots, like when her boss points out that she's an independent contractor and, therefore, has no ground to stand on when he reduces her hours. He points out that she can't go complain to the shop steward because she's an IC. I'm not sure how many people that might watch the film even know what a shop steward is, given the reduction in organized labor in this country, so pointing out that she, like so many other workers, simply has no rights was probably sufficient. In the end, Emily continues to make what she feels are the only reasonable choices available to her and we begin to realize that her situation is not too far from a certain irascible chemistry teacher,,,

After we got home from the film, we sat down to watch the final episode of Better Call Saul. I have often said that The Wire is the best thing ever put on TV, but that Breaking Bad is a very close second. BCS has been very close to its progenitor in quality and not simply because it takes place within the same setting and involves many of the same characters. Unlike BB, where showrunner, Vince Gilligan, went into it with the idea that he was going to tell the story of a lead character who becomes a lead villain in the audience's eyes, I think his approach to Saul, along with co-runner, Peter Gould, was a bit more textured. Since it was a prequel, the act of building drama is sometimes more complicated, especially in a post-Game of Thrones world, where you know that anything life-threatening to lead characters that have appeared in later times isn't actually that dire. That doesn't keep the story from being interesting. It just means that you have to use different approaches to keep the audience really riveted to what might happen to our (anti)hero.

But I think the other advantage that Saul/Jimmy as a character had is that, unlike the force of nature that Walter White became, Jimmy often remained sympathetic even while he was engaging in acts that ranged from petty to downright awful. Sure, he was Slippin' Jimmy, scamming people out of their money because he couldn't be bothered to earn an honest living. But he was also James McGill, partner to Kim Wexler (the truly excellent and underrated Rhea Seehorn) and showed a genuine concern for the well-being of others, even if it only sometimes appeared when he realized that what he'd done had real consequences for others. He'd go through his period of recrimination and anguish and self-doubt... and then he'd be right back at it because that's who he was. In a genuinely impressive summation, all of those themes came to the fore in this final episode, including the acknowledgment that he was, even after all he'd done, still a really likeable guy, as displayed by the respect and affection shown by the other inmates in his final destination. Like Emily, I think Jimmy was a fully-realized character; an actual human being with all of the foibles and bad choices and sentimental strengths and failings that inhabit all of us, to one degree or another. That made the series eminently watchable and sets a very high bar for any storyteller to aspire to. Whether it pays off or not, the pursuit of the goal may be the most important thing.

The fascism of the oompah-loompahs

Now that Donald Trump has become the most likely winner of the GOP presidential nominating contest, the attitude toward him from most of the major media outlets has transformed from one of disdain to one of outright fear and concern. Where before the hook was "How could modern America actually be nominating this guy for president?", now it's become "How could modern America actually be looking like 1930s Italy or Germany?!" And that is a many-layered question and, consequently, a many-layered response.

First off, there's a certain segment of America that's always looked like 1930s Italy or Germany. Always. From the time of the Alien and Sedition Acts to the Know-Nothings, determined that immigrants shouldn't ruin the glory that was America, the Immigrant Nation, there's always been a portion of the electorate only too happy to blame their problems on "the other." The modern manifestation of it was, of course, Nixon's Southern Strategy, where it was convenient to sweep up racist Southern Democrats' votes because the Johnson Democrats new policies wouldn't let them continue in the historic tradition (i.e  telling poor white folks that their misery, created by rich white folks, was actually caused somehow by poor black folks.) Trump's other is two-fold: it's not only poor Mexicans stealing your jobs but it's also Muslims coming here to kill you (who are, inevitably, Arabic Muslims because how else could you tell them apart from non-Muslims at the border? Plus, what other kind of Muslims are there?!)

Psst. Don't look here.

Interestingly, though, the original fascists, Italy's National Fascist party, didn't really have an "other". There was no racial or religious component to the Italian Fascist ideology. It was simply hyper-nationalist: the idea that Italy should be great because ancient Rome was great and ruled most of the ancient Western world at one point. Sounds like Trump, right? "Make America great again!" Why? No reason. Just because America should be great because it's... America. City on the hill. Greatest nation evah.

It was only later that the racial elements become dominant in the popular conception of fascism because they were so integral to the German brand of the ideology, tied up in the concepts of eugenics and the Master Race and so on. Germany couldn't be great because some ancient precursor had been great. There's wasn't one. Germany had to be great because its people were inherently great. And because die Juden were keeping it from being great. Of course, Godwin's Law springs into effect as soon as any comparison is made between Trump and the Nazis because, of course, no one can be as bad as the Nazis! (Certain regimes, like Stalin's USSR and Pol Pot's Cambodia, beg to differ. Actually, they probably wouldn't beg.) But I don't think anyone is saying (now) that Trump is as bad as the Nazis. They're drawing a comparison between the movement supporting him and the historical movements that emerged around people like Mussolini and Hitler because the similarities abound.

Take, for example, the polls that indicate the number of Trump supporters who dislike Muslims, in general. This is indicative of a populace who's been given a boogeyman without any foundation in reality. It doesn't help that the leader of their particular political movement of the moment fuels that fire by suggesting that he'd institute a way to register and track Muslims in the US. I mean, obviously you probably won't tag them with a yellow Star of David like they did back in the day, but I guess a yellow crescent would be OK? Maybe? The hilarious part of this is that the "news" outlet so responsible for creating the boogeyman that Trump is so interested in tracking, Fox News, has been one of the leading voices trying to kill the Frankenstein's monster that they created, usually kind of sidling their way into the idea that Americans aren't really racists (read: fascists.) But, of course they are.

The Tea Party began as a response to one man: President Obama. And, no, it's not because Obama is a socialist. Far from it. As I've mentioned before, nothing in Obama's record or anything he's done in the Oval Office would indicate that he's a socialist. What he is, of course, is black. The kneejerk response to this disruption of the social hierarchy ("It's not just black people takin' OUR jobs! Now they've taken THE job!") was to form a party that spoke for the Common White Man, since neither of the major parties was interested in doing that anymore (Just FYI: They never really have been.) Hence, the Tea Party and the immediate labels of Obama being a Muslim, a socialist, not an American (Remember one of the loudest voices proclaiming the birth certificate controversy? One Donald J. Trump...) or anything else that would get an immediate response from the bulk of the electorate that is both ignorant and has been encouraged to think that they have no impact on the political process and no avenue by which to change that status, other than to vote for rich, white guys who promise to change it. Somehow.

Fascism, of either stripe, is not new to Americans. It's been here for a long time. The fact that it's now the dominant aspect of one half of the major party is as inevitable as the Mississippi changing course. A lot of people just don't like to admit it because things like systematic racism (in the name of freedom!) and registration (in the name of freedom!) and internment camps (in the name of freedom!) just don't tend to ring out the tones of the Land of Opportunity and Liberty for All. But those have always been nice illusions, too.

So, yeah, calling Trump a fascist is not a label that anyone should shy away from. He could also be labeled "demagogue" because he's that, too. But the bigger question is why it takes the public and the assembled media so long to admit the truth that's been right there in front of them. The real question isn't why a buffoon who looks like the loudest and most abrasive of the Oompah-loompahs is a leading candidate for president. It's why the apparently most popular candidate opposing him is a war criminal (among a host of other less-than-salutary activities over the past 20 years) and why that whole situation seems to be acceptable to the bulk of the populace. It's just like what happens after every time someone pulls a gun and commits a mass murder: "There's nothing we can do!" says the only industrialized nation in which this happens on a regular basis. At some point, you'd think people would get tired of it.

Clown Car, part deux

So, 10 guys go to a funeral to meet up with this one woman who knew it was actually a business meeting... That's pretty much the encapsulation of last night's clownshow which was only too ready for punchline after punchline. The continued pontificating and breathless grasping at the MLK moment ("I have a dream... that someone might say something of actual substance so that we may measure the content of their character instead of CNN's constant trolling...") all came in utter contrast to the one person who talked in blunt terms and short sentences. That's why many people think Carly Fiorina "won" the "debate", which is like saying someone outran a bunch of toddlers to the juice box table where everyone still got one. Hooray?

Fiorina answers questions like she's in a boardroom, which is precisely what you want if you want someone to talk about basic facts. She's still evasive as hell when someone asks a direct policy question (it's way too early to establish positions that could be picked apart for their inadequacy) but she keeps it short, spares everyone the flowery prose, and makes her case. People appreciate that, especially when it's down the dais from the bloviating Trump and his ego which only barely share space between themselves, much less Dexter Bush and the Right Reverend Huckabee. That makes Fiorina come across as halfway intelligent, even if she wasn't already standing out as the only female clown on stage. And on matters of sex and sexism, she did have the best genuinely funny moment (as opposed to all of the unintentionally funny moments) when she responded to Trump's idiocy from the last debate with her simple line: "I think every woman in America knew exactly what Mr. Trump said." That was worth a Kelso:

Of course, as soon as she wandered off the rez and decided to try to impress us with her prose, she withered. Note the pseudo-closing statement (dressed up nicely by CNN with their softball about what their respective presidencies would look like (You mean other than The Handmaid's Tale?)) where she blathered on about her personal manifest destiny, the return to the glory of the City on the Hill, and yadda yadda yadda (Gotta include the Yiddish phrase for all the Israel references when people were talking about what their American presidency would look like...)

[Tangent: It's hilarious to note the omnipresence of said references to Israel in most GOP discussions of foreign policy as perhaps the one hot button they can still press to get a visceral, red meat response from the masses. Said masses don't really know shit about foreign issues other than "Foreigners are weak [French], out to steal our jobs [Mexican], communists [Europeans, in general], and crave American leadership." but you can name drop "Israel" into almost anything and immediately get the kneejerk that equates to "Spend billions on the military to protect pseduo-Christians from evil Muslims and prepare for the Second Coming!" That latter part is most important to people like Huckabee, who always fail to see the disconnect between supporting the militarists in Tel Aviv so that they may bring about their own damnation when only Christians are allowed into Heaven. /tangent]

Speaking of CNN and their softballs... Ugh. These things are a complete farce in the first place, even if we weren't watching in glee over just how many clowns will do a pratfall as they climb out of the car, but CNN's questions were brutally bad. I know they're ratings-conscious and are aware that a large segment of the audience is watching for entertainment and not because they'll even consider voting for one of these idiots, but could they at least give a nod to propriety? The vast majority of the questions were the equivalent of conversation on a middle school playground: "Hey! I heard he said X about you! What are you gonna do about it?!" All they're doing is continuing to feed the perception that "the media" (whoever the hell they are) is out to get the GOP/right-wing/Trump/America's hayseed population. Even if that perception is inevitable, at least try to show a little class.

A couple highlights:

Christie: "Don't prosecute these people after the crime is committed, intervene before the crime happens!" I know what his intent probably was, but given all the other 1984 trappings that hang over much of GOP discussions these days (including the oft-quoted "Strength is peace!"; Ignorance, therefore...) that was totally a Minority Report moment.

Huckabee: "Vaccinations are a part of big government!" Why, yes. Yes, they are. Most people don't complain about the eradication of things like polio.

Trump: "We're three trillion in debt!" followed by "We're not spending enough on our military!"

This, of course, is a perfect example of the disconnect between the embedded disdain for George and Dick's Excellent Iraqi Adventure walking hand-in-hand with the earnest shouts to go balls out in Syria, because that worked so well the last time. Your Republican candidates, America. Exxon's biggest nightmare is someone hooking up a power cable to Goldwater's grave because he's not gonna stop spinning anytime soon.

Coke and a smile, people

So, one of the resident conservative iconoclasts put this on the board today in response to Coke's ad during the Super Bowl:

You know what? I actually think the adverse reaction (which seems to have been pretty minimal) is more than anything else a case of people being annoyed at being told what to think.
Posted on February 3, 2014 
 
There are a lot of social signals that one has to conform to certain ideals. Diversity is good. Gay people deserve equal treatment. Bullying is bad. The rich don't pay their fair share. Poor people deserve a leg up. Prejudice is bad. Burning carbon is bad.

I think people at some point just resent being "herded" by broad, mass media social signals into viewpoints that are selected to be good by some collective agreement by some opinion makers. I think it is actually okay for some people to think, yes, America is the product of immigration, and is an example of diverse people from diverse cultures with diverse languages forming a new society--and continually adding diversity through immigration. But a cherished paean to America should preferably be sung in America's language--which necessarily is English even if plenty of Americans speak a different language as their first language.

In this case, I think I find the reaction to the reaction (calling people neanderthals etc.) more troubling than the reaction.

(Oh, and sometimes bullying is good. Some people deserve to have their ass kicked. And carbon energy has been a great boon to people in general, and has really improved the quality of the lives of billions of people. The doctrinaire attitude on some topics is sometimes worth questioning.)

There's so much ammunition there that it almost brought me to the point of immobility... but nah. I did sit there for a moment trying to decide whether it was more disingenuous or fatuous (definitely something with an "ous") but, in the end, it's like playing Tee ball.

The central theme is the usual pseudo-Libertarian horseshit that essentially states that people who aren't tolerant of intolerance are hypocrites. Coke, instead of presenting the song "America the Beautiful" in its proper language of English (how offended must the English be that their language has been abducted by idiots?), has done all independent thinkers (read: racists, super-patriots... oh, and idiots) a disservice by encouraging the social mores that state that diversity and respect for cultures and languages that are not explicitly whitebread 'Murrican are, in fact, a good thing.

First off, it certainly is trying to "tell you what to think." It's an advertisement. It's telling you to think about buying Coke. That's how they do. But you're saying the rest of society is telling you how to think about non-whites and gays and the environments and bullies? Who's telling you? The people that object to all of that anti-social behavior? Yeah. Life is rough that way. Most decent people will tell you that it shouldn't matter what color someone is or what language they speak (aka "Diversity is good.") And they'll tell you that gay people should be treated equally since they're, you know... people; that treating people poorly ("Bullying") is wrong; that poor people could use your help; that prejudice is bad... What intelligent person doesn't think those things? Certainly is a helluva lot easier to get along with your neighbors if you don't hold preconceptions about them before you even get to know them. Fer reals. It's, like, been proved and stuff.

Secondly, what could honestly be so offensive about singing a song in another language? Would you shout down a chorus in France if they dared to sing "America the Beautiful"? Are you saying that people who can't speak English aren't allowed to sing that song about their home (because that's quite a few residents of this nation)? I mean, that's what these people are saying:

No wonder I am a Pepsi man. #boycottcoke
— CUZ_55 (@Cuz_55) February 3, 2014

You know what's NOT American? America the Beautiful in a million languages #boycottcoke
— John (@JRaw1285) February 3, 2014

I love diversity and what not, but the Super Bowl is an AMERICAN tradition. #boycottcoke
— Macy (@Macy_Lewis) February 3, 2014

Last time I checked this is America and we sing patriotic songs the way they're written #boycottcoke
— josh (@joshmunti) February 3, 2014

You can't sing an American song in another language! #boycottcoke
— spencinator (@taylorspencer3) February 3, 2014

The most unamerican coke commercial ever. National anthem in non English #boycottcoke
— K C (@TheBoyCrispy) February 3, 2014

(H/T Midtown blogger for the list.) I bet you're really discouraged that you didn't hop on Twitter last night and number yourself among Mensa candidates like that. Such a lost opportunity. I especially like the last guy, since Coke has not only told him what to think but drinking too much of that crap has clearly corrupted his memory of his own national anthem.

What a number of people likely failed to remember is that Coke was bouncing off of their own 40-year legacy of having produced this commercial:

which explicitly and implicitly called for unity and goodwill among races and nations (albeit from the foremost front for the CIA in destabilizing and disrupting many of them...) Given that and the current rather divided status of these United States, what message would you have preferred to hear? "America is beautiful as long as it's sung by and filled with white, hetero, sometime bullies who don't want to be reminded that they're racist, homophobic assholes?" I mean, I'm sure there's a song out there like that but probably not from any composer this side of the Aryan Nation.

Now, of course, I'm being facetious (another "ous") because there's no way you'd (publicly) admit to thinking that because it would be stupid and make you look and sound every inch the Neanderthal that those fools did on Twitter last night. If one is so weak-willed as to object to being "told how to think" by a commercial or is objecting to the broad-based message of inclusion despite difference that said commercial is presenting then, yeah, I think you deserve every epithet being tossed your way, especially if you're willing to do so in a public forum like Twitter.

And, again, suggesting that people be tolerant of your obnoxious attitudes for fear of hypocrisy is perhaps the most asinine idea put forth in that post. Contradiction is not intelligent refutation (thank you, Michael Palin.) What you see as heavy-handed social engineering, the rest of us see as simple common sense. There's all kinds of people. Getting along with them should be the first order of the day, every day.

They already know everything because you let them

Edward Snowden is now being heralded by no less than Daniel Ellsberg. Snowden, of course, exposed the rampant NSA spying program and fled to China in order to escape what will surely be energetic attempts at retribution by the US government. The program is being labeled an attempt at "security". The question that no one is asking is: Security from what?

A "war on terror" is deliberately left wide open to be pursued in any direction. Nameless, stateless; it could be anyone and anywhere and, most importantly, it could be us. The first time government of, by, and for the people was mentioned was the last time it existed. Now the only question is why.

Why would the government be so obsessed with controlling its citizenry? Because people left with no other choices tend to revolt. Revolt would be bad for those in power, not least because it disturbs their carefully crafted image of the land of opportunity/greatest nation in the world/(insert pathetic slogan here.) It's been less than a couple weeks since the last time I was attacked for rejecting the benefits afforded me by being part "of this great nation." People believe this stuff, even when the evidence of rampant inequality, perhaps the highest in the history of said nation, is everywhere. If much of the population is doomed to work low-wage jobs for the rest of their existence, with little prospect of change, what hope do they have other than violence? If the highly educated segment of the population is largely demoralized because that education has been devalued if it doesn't produce instant profits, what message might they deliver to people actually willing to read their books, view their art, and listen to their speeches? Is it hope? Is it opportunity? Or is it "don't bother following me here"?

A populace without choices is a populace without hope. No hope means nihilism. Nihilism means violence. Thus, the control. That control is already so effective that much of the population, urged on by wealthy and compliant media sources, screams for more whenever a violent event occurs. After the Boston Marathon bombing, some of the first responses were complaints about the government not knowing enough and/or acting quickly enough. The only way to know that much and act that fast is with the type of program that Snowden revealed. It's a howl of outrage, not that two men took such actions, but that the government wasn't hovering over them to stop those actions. It's easy to do when it's "crazy Muslims" aka NOT ME. I don't have anything to hide! I don't have anything to answer for! They shouldn't be spying on me! Just the bad people! It's NOT ME!

But it is you.

Just like animals in a very pretty and comfortable enclosure at the zoo, it is you. If you're lucky, you have food and a nice place to stay and despite the fact that you walk the same boring path and look at the same boring plants every day, it's easy to not think about how your entire world is 50 square yards. Until perhaps you lose that nice job of being looked at by the tourists. Or you lose that good food. Or that enclosure isn't so comfortable anymore. And then you realize that they have been watching you, guiding you, controlling you... because, at its root, they're afraid of you.

They're afraid because they know that if enough animals in the zoo that are less equal than others decide to band together and resist the controls, revolt against the keepers, and abandon the enclosures, they might be in trouble. Without doubt, their profit margins would be in trouble and that is, in the end, the most important thing to any member of Congress and any president elected in the past 150 years, at least.

So, should people be outraged about the NSA program? Sure, I guess. It's just one more symptom of how the system is maintained. But what they should really be outraged about is not that the system of control was exposed, but that it exists in the first place. The NSA program is one element of a massive problem that is summed up in one simple phrase: rule by the rich. As long as that exists, you might as well relax and perform for the watchers. Nothing you do will matter until that changes. And, incidentally, if 1/10 of the outrage currently being spewed about the spying were directed at the massive economic and environmental problems in this country, things might actually start to change.

The Man's got a surefire system
An economic prison!
Ya gotta get out!
Ya gotta get out!

They've won. Again.

Nation of sheep. Ruled by wolves. Owned by pigs.

Election season arrives at its two- to ten-month hiatus, depending on your status (local, state, federal) and obsession (What will Fox and Friends choose to obsess over and will the term "lame duck" begin to be used for a president's entire second term?) Last night was similar to 2008 in that I kept only vaguely in touch with the proceedings until it was all over but Karl Rove's shouting (Well, sniveling, really.) Then it was a mix of laughing uproariously at the funereal air enshrouding Fox News and nauseous disgust at a lot of the blather on Facebook and other networks where friends, associates, and colleagues of mine seemed to revel in the idea that a Democratic president had been reelected to continue to plague the nation with both action and inaction.

He doesn't even need the rock rolled away first. (H/T gamesthirst.com)

This is a man who justifies the assassination of US citizens from afar without due process or trial, who claims that the death of children in the process of these assassinations is also justified because they are of "military age", and who maintains a "kill list" of people he most desires to see in the crosshairs of the nearest unmanned drone (regardless of the nearby presence of a few dozen Pakistani villagers.) This is a man who employed Tim Geithner as his Treasury Secretary (the primary goalkeeper for the interests of the banks who nearly destroyed the global economy) and Larry Summers as his primary economic adviser. Summers is perhaps the one person about whom I could accept the concept of public lynching, as would doubtlessly happen were he to set foot in the Baltic nations or Russia anytime soon, where the people who lost savings, homes, livelihoods, and relative after relative to suicide as a direct result of Summers' "shock therapy" transformation away from communism would descend on him as soon as he appeared in public. This is a man who not only extended the duration of the most virulently anti-privacy and anti-individual rights law since 1790, but expanded upon its tenets. The Patriot Act is now even more oppressive than the previous administration had hoped for and we have liberal, socialist, Muslim Obama to thank for it. Don't you all feel safer?

I mean, to a certain degree, I'm used to this. I've been involved in electoral politics even before I could vote (1988) and it's no surprise to see the public mindlessly flock to the polls every 2 and 4 years to elect people who think of them as beneath contempt (i.e. easy targets for unmanned drones and the economic dreams of Larry Fucking Summers) and then revel in it as if this time they finally found the right guy. In this case, they found him again, even though he spent the last 4 years doing everything he could to dissuade them of their fantasies. What makes it even more galling was seeing a number of people whom I, at one time, considered political allies crowing about the reelection of a man who's done everything he can to make "Hope and change" into a punchline, rather than a mantra.

"But health care!", they say. Right. A money soak for the already wealthy insurance industry and a "solution" that does nothing to address the real problem of lack of government price controls, even in government programs, and the ever increasing costs created by medical professionals too willing to soak the system. As always, gotta protect those big donors. "But social issues!", they say. The Democrats' response to most social issues is the equivalent of someone attacking the tide with a broom. Obama's lone progressive social moment in his first term was a last-minute acknowledgment of the right of gay people to have a publicly recorded relationship with the person of their choice and he only did that when it was clear that his poll numbers were wavering. Glory fucking day. Otherwise, he essentially served out George W. Bush's third term.

Those social issues, while important in the long run, are also often seen as inevitable in that same period of time (witness Colorado and Washington's legalization of marijuana; anyone want to make a bet with me that Obama doesn't touch that issue for the next 2-3 years? The prison industry donates a lot of money to Democratic coffers.) Said issues also do absolutely nothing to alleviate the fact that those soon-to-be-happily-married gay people are just as economically screwed as the rest of us. It's the equivalent of the GOP getting angry, poor, white guys to vote for guns and against abortion while draining their wallets of anything meaningful. We've arced past the inequality of the Gilded Age. What do we call it when everything is plated in platinum?

This is the wealthiest nation in the history of human existence... but more people are going hungry now than at any time since the 1930s. This is the fabled Land of Opportunity... but social mobility is lower now than it has been in a century and getting worse. We'll have spent $707 billion on guns, planes, tanks, and soldiers in FY 2012 but somehow teachers' salaries and their pensions are the reason that our municipal, state, and federal budgets are out of whack. Progress on social issues? You mean we're finally approaching the level of devoutly Catholic Spain, which permits gay marriage and abortions as national policy? Awesome. Is that happening because of or in spite of the fact that people keep gladly electing criminals to public office and then throwing a party at their own funeral?

Hello, um, America. And goodbye.

Now, you could say that the outpouring of emotion last night and today is a product of the relief of a closely fought election but the worst part about that supposition is that all of this was easily predictable, months ago. Sure, Nate Silver is properly getting his 15 minutes because he actually paid attention to the numbers and understood what was happening, whereas the rest of the political world was still trusting its collective gut, which all too often has shit for brains. But all of this was obvious even above and beyond Silver's data. Romney was an historically bad candidate with a campaign that will be the benchmark for what not to do for decades to come. Who lets their candidate on a yacht named Cracker Bay(!) for an exclusive "thank you" dinner for big donors in the midst of economic hard times? What GOP candidate in the past century could have imagined having the CEOs of two of the biggest multinational corporations in the nation tell him that he and his ad crew were "full of shit"? Even at a private dinner, who dares to state that almost half the electorate is beneath your notice? The incompetence displayed by the Romney campaign over the past year is astonishing and I have a hard time believing that any of those who led it could possibly find another job in 2014.

Put simply: There was no doubt that Obama was going to win. There was as little doubt as in 2008 when the Alaskan Dingbat Carnival took over the McCain campaign. There was no struggle of values here; no hard-fought engagement for the future of the American people. It was two rich guys slinging crap at each other in an effort to make themselves seem less bad (as in, more attuned to people who won't make in 10 lifetimes what either of them will make next month) and betting heavily on the idea that said people are too weak-willed or defeated or distracted to ask for something better. It makes me physically ill to see people claim that their vote doesn't matter because of where they live so that they feel free to vote for what they actually want and believe in, while others bemoan the fact that their state isn't "safe" and they therefore don't feel justified in choosing the candidate that they truly desire. This is the Democrats' Boogeyman Syndrome written into stone. It's no longer used as a threat to scare people. It's now a moral obligation to heed the fact that the Dems' candidate gives better lip service to the ideals that those voters favor and that said voters must accept personal blame if their vote leads to the GOP candidate winning who, in the example laid out for us by Obama, is only slightly worse, if at all. Think GWB would have been in favor of the indiscriminate bombing of the Pakistani countryside? I'd give a lot to be able to see that interview, especially now that he's out of office.

So, yeah: Four more years. Hoo. Ray. Four more years of killing, hedging away from anything the public actually wants, and rule by the monied elite. The below picture was perhaps the best summation of the whole thing. I wonder how big the party will be in 2016 when they get elected for a third time.

(H/T Not a Dime's Worth of Difference)

Things

Low output lately. I wish I could say it was because I was diligently at work on something else, but I can't. There's more than one "something else" and diligence has only occasionally been a part of it. I don't get writer's block. I get low-grade writer's malaise and it's not (always) about the content of what I'm writing. It's more about futility, in general. Already racked up my first two rejections in the fiction market. Same as it ever was. So, I thought I'd just leave some brief thoughts:

1. Some of you whom were watching the Super Bowl (I was because there was food (Margot food) and good people) in the Michigan area may remember this ad:

Here we have the young Asian girl, bicycling along the rice paddies in her yellow shirt and speaking clear but slightly halting English about the threat of (presumably) Chinese people like her stealing American jobs because of Senator Debbie Stabenow's (D-MI) personal spending policies. What people immediately jumped on was the unmitigated racist nature of the ad (Foreigner! She took our jobs!) and, from a marketing standpoint, it's ridiculously over the top. Of course, most Midwesterners wouldn't know a rice paddy if they fell into one and drowned, but it was a nice touch all the same. Immediately, the media descended upon Hoekstra, with the state party saying it would have nothing to do with insufferable conduct of that vulgar nature. Pete, for his part, stood his ground, claiming that the intent was not racist and saying absolutely nothing about the fact that the entire spiel (Chinese people stealing American jobs because of the out of control spending of the US government) makes not a bit of sense in any way, shape, or vaguely economic form. Stabenow doesn't even sit on a significant trade committee and has been a back bencher of small repute on the Senate Budget committee in the most ineffective and largely invisible sessions of the US Senate in recorded history.

Pete's campaign had already been largely given up for dead when he unleashed this seemingly suicidal assault on the tender political sensibilities of the modern state. Most people considered it a grave "error". But no one who's been in the game as long as Hoekstra and whom spent the considerable outlay for a Super Bowl ad makes an "error" like that. Pete knew that if he wanted to get ahead in the primary struggle, he'd need a horde of wacky fanatics to give him the boost amidst the collection of milquetoast individuals then vying for the nomination. As soon as the media began its tirade, Hoekstra assumed the modern conservative stance of oppressed victim in a largely conservative and religious state. The Tea Party sycophants flocked to his side and a huge infusion of cash hit his coffers (doubtlessly a good thing since he probably broke the bank paying for the ad time.) Pete was telling it like it really is and the "librul media" and the "lamestream Republicans" weren't going to hold back the righteous hordes. 'Lo and behold, Pete wins the primary.

Thus, we come to Todd "legitimate rape" Akin, who has now been asked by the Romney campaign to step down for comments made a few days ago. Of course, he still leads Democrat Claire McCaskill (D-MO) in the general polls and there are no doubt a flock of "real Republicans" pouring cash into his pockets to protect him from those who don't want to hear the truth about illegitimate rape. Akin, of course, didn't plan this like Hoekstra did, but he can take advantage of it in the same way. Mind you, this is only a feasible political strategy if the bulk of your electorate is dumb as a fucking bag of hammers, but, there you go...(Just as an aside: Pete knew without a doubt what he was doing, as the ad ran largely in markets that are heavily populated by people to whom this kind of marketing would appeal, e.g. not the main urban centers of the state.)

2. In listening to one of the endless NPR homilies on the plight of the jobless a few weeks ago, I came across a phrase that stuck with me. I wake up some mornings with it in my head, quite possibly because I understand the deprivation and discouragement of the speaker's circumstances. The topic of the show was unemployment and underemployment. The caller was from Tennessee and he'd been a philosophy and divination student at Vanderbilt and a couple other schools and held multiple advanced degrees in those areas. He'd been unable to find work teaching and so had finally answered an ad for a house painting job and was still employed in this work at the time he called. The host of the show asked him if such work paid the bills and he replied: "Well, I've got peanut butter, no jelly. Sandwich, no chips. But you get used to it."

Here was a highly educated and intelligent man whose possession of those qualities matters not at all to our modern society. And he knew it. Just as so many other people that I know whom are in similar straits also know it. Society does not want them because they cannot do anything "productive" (i.e. profitable.) Even most universities don't want them. Our grand society.

3. I was thinking of doing some more detailed analysis of Hell on Wheels, as I've seen the first two episodes of the second season (including the first episode not written by the Gayton brothers, the show's creators) and it might, maybe, kinda, sorta be veering its way toward some interesting material. I think the potential for the setting is boundless (railroad expansion immediately after the Civil War, with a mixed crew of laborers, and venturing through Indian territory) but, while the Gaytons created some great characters, their ham-handed dialogue and mono-chromatic storytelling was letting a lot of the air out of the balloon by the end of last season. I mentioned this on the board one day and a lurker spoke up, saying that he was friends with someone at AMC who was connected to the show and that they were bringing in a stable of writers for the second season. The Gaytons wrote the first episode this year, so I was wondering if the plan was still in motion, but the second was written by John Shiban of X-Files fame and it began to seem almost human, so I'm looking forward to more. It's no Breaking Bad or Deadwood, but few things are. Anyway, if anyone among the half dozen or so of you out there has any interest, say so.