A Matter of a Word

Those who have seen “The Butler,” a slightly fictionalized account based on a real person, are treated to an encapsulated history of the modern American civil rights movement.  It does not mean we have shared the experience.  White people, especially the young, who use the word “nigger” in any context, let alone casually, are guilty of the most appalling historical and sociological ignorance.  While the less unaware may believe they are doing a Lenny Bruce on the word by taking away its significance, they are mistaken.  And the clueless who view it as a “term of endearment and friendship” are pathetically delusional.  While it MAY sometimes be those things BETWEEN African-Americans, the time is FAR off when it can be so used generally by whites, whose skin color being associated with historical and occasional contemporary oppressions of the worst kind, means that time might NEVER come.

Fattening the Cow To Be Slain and Feasted Upon

It looks more and more like the Postal Service is having its pension and health funds artificially bloated (at great cost to short term finances of PO) so that when privatization comes, the privateers can loot the funds and leave the taxpayer on the hook. 

You Thought Voting Was A Right? Silly You.

Need a crash course in voter disenfranchisement?  Watch The Daily Show, August 5, 2013.

And remember, voter fraud, supposedly the reason for all the disenfranchising measures (it couldn’t be race, economics, or partisanship) is statistically non-existent.  And state legislatures around the country, with all the pressing problems, made this their top priorities?

Douchenozzles and Bitter Ironies

A friendly neighborhood pub was “stung” by an underage operation which consisted of this: a couple, both one month shy of being 21, went in, sat down and ordered.  Both looked not only 21 but actually at least 5 years older, maybe 26 or 27.  They were served by the busy bartender, didn’t touch their drinks, and walked out.  In came the alcohol enforcement officer, who cited both the bartender and the pub owner. 

The bartender was a veteran one of 15 years.  The owner, whose establishment does not exactly make a screaming fortune, was forced by the incident to hire 1-2 entrance guard/checkers a night at significant financial impact to his business.

Business owners often complain of government interference and regulation.  This is an example.  It’s not one that affects the plutocrats, who have the wealth and influence to neutralize any real impactful things to them.  It instead affects the middle class small business owners, many of whom are barely making it.

And the irony you ask?  Republicans often scream about excess government and regulation.  This alcohol enforcement officer, who spent public money to set up this overdone, entrapping, needless, and what will be perpetually harmful operation (for something that wasn’t a problem), is a son of..the local Republican Party chairman.

See It

“The Act of Killing”

Rabidity

As testament to how much the Republican Party has been captured by emotional whip saw ideologues, thoughtful Republicans voted against the UN treaty on disabilities, which had no impact on the US at all but was only an encouragement internationally.  Even with WW2 disabled vet (and their former fellow senator and majority leader) Bob Dole lobbying on the floor of the Senate for it, they turned it down.  They did so because their rabid bases and those bases’ irrational fears forbid them from agreeing to anything with “UN” in it.

Decay In Civilization's Teeth

Civilizations that are on tracks of continuance may do sub-optimal or even regrettable or tragic things as they confront problems.  Decaying and declining civilizations exhibit denial, delay, or even refusal to confront pressing problems.

America leads the decay.  The rest of “Western” civilization is making some attempts to confront its problems, albeit with significant drag from the millstone of the dysfunctional US colossus.  And Western Europe has a lot of problems, chief among them the same manpower and population problems it had during late Roman times.

Albert Einstein supposedly once worried that our technology would one day make us idiots and fools who don’t talk to each other, but at best only (and even then disconnectedly) to a limited group of people who “think” like us.  Wonder what he would say today?