Get off your lazy duffs!!
Oct 29th, 2009 | 13 responses
Now that most economists, our government, the Federal Reserve, Wall Street Barons, and our ignorant and shallow 24/7 info-entertainment Media pundits have pronounced that the recession is over, there are no more excuses. For all those people still lounging around on unemployment benefits, given up looking, or working at temporary and part-time jobs, get off your lazy duffs.
There are no more excuses. Take Responsibility. You only have yourself to blame that you’re not successful and wealthy. You only have to think of your goals and they will be yours. These are some of the worthless shibboleths hurled at people in economic, financial or employment distress. They are part of our bankrupt Calvinist and Puritan ethics but being fundamentally wrong doesn’t mean they can’t dictate the relationship between Americans for decades beyond their actual usefulness.
These economic and social paradigms were created by some in our society to deflect the responsibility and blame from those who have the lion’s fault for our national mess: The greedy wealthy who inherited their fortunes, our timid and clueless political class, those lucky ones who struck it rich but forget that their success was due to the help of others and good fortune, and our financial and banking sector that created the greatest Ponzi scheme in over 80 years that fell apart due to greed, hubris, incompetence and arrogance. They actually had the unabashed callousness and mean-spiritedness to blame the poor in Cleveland and Detroit for starting the whole real estate mortgage meltdown.
With official unemployment continuing to rise unabated, despite all the statistical tricks of overlooking millions of people whose benefits have expired, given up looking for work when there are 6 applicants to every open job, or taken menial part-time work outside their experience and education levels, many individuals who are responsible for running our society, economic and political system, and many of our private enterprises are completely unable to feel empathy, understanding, or compassion for anyone but themselves unless they happen to be touched personally. Then they get all excited about a few narrow charities that deal only with the issues faced by their families and friends. In this manner they do not have to address the larger systemic and nationwide disasters this country continues to ignore.
There will be many in our society who will start over with their discredited economic and political theories as if they were not completely discredited by the events of the past two years that they also completely failed to anticipate. Now with this stunning recovery underway, we don’t need more federal stimulus spending to create new jobs but more tax cuts for the wealthy because they’re leading us out of this recession. We should cut back government spending unless it for national military escapades around the globe that perpetually prop-up our corrupt and wasteful military-industrial complex. We don’t need more spending on education because the best will always succeed without governmental assistance. We don’t need global environmental and national financial regulations because that would hurt the businesses that we need to continue this phenomenal recovery. We don’t really need meaningful healthcare reform because we can’t risk changing anything that might impede our great economic recovery.
For those members of the poor and middle class in our country who have yet to see any governmental assistance or employment prospects, you don’t deserve anything because you really are not important to the wealthiest and most powerful people in our country. Shocked? Well wake up and smell the manure you’ve been given and have happily eaten for decades.
Americans should be happy that Paris Hilton and her narcissistic bevy of co-celebrities have not suffered at all during this minor recession. Go ahead, vote for Republicans in 2010. They won’t change this national paradigm but skew it even further towards the wealthy. Don’t you remember the prior 8 years of George W. Bush and the previous 30 years when Republicans controlled the White House, The Congress, or Both? The winners in 2010 will be those who amass the greatest campaign war chests – the corporate Democrats and Republicans – aided by the fact that more than half of Americans don’t even bother to vote in Mid-term elections.
The dollar’s decline will have many unforeseen benefits. It certainly will increase our global competitiveness if the Chinese do not continue to manipulate their currency and trade policies unfairly. Our economic, political and military influence and responsibility for global events will not constantly drain our national attention and coffers to the detriment of addressing our internal needs. Higher oil prices will spur alternative energy development and more conservation so we do not have to be constantly pre-occupied by crazy autocratic regimes that sit over oil reserves and extreme religious anger toward the West.
Higher oil prices will increase global transportation costs rendering the manufacture of consumer products and business goods more economically viable back in our country closer to the ultimate customers. Permanently tighter credit will eliminate most irresponsible and financially worthless investments in favor of those that may make the most long-term economic and social sense. Other countries will lessen their dollar holdings transferring the full responsibility of our national debt and future deficit spending upon our own citizens who will finally have to make the hard choices on taxation and the government we want and can afford. Being a lesser power, we might stand up for our national interests more aggressively than when we were responsible for the entire globe.
As President Obama took office, he was handed a CIA report outlining the steady military, economic and political decline of the U.S. that will take place over the next 2 decades. This collapse is happening even faster than they predicted. We can only hope that our President guides us towards a soft landing. We must psychologically accept our future national roles as a former global empire responsibly addressing its internal challenges and cooperating on global issues as just one major player in a multi-polar world dominated by a half dozen countries other than ourselves.
Marc Pascal
N.B. I actually prefer a newer spelling for the word paradigm with its useless silent “g” to match how it is pronounced today: “Paradyme.”
13 Responses to “Get off your lazy duffs!!”
“the greatest Ponzi scheme in over 80 years that fell apart due to greed, hubris, incompetence and arrogance”
Well, Social Security dwarfs it, by far, but that scheme hasn't fallen apart yet. It will, eventually, though.
* * *
“I actually prefer a newer spelling for the word [']paradigm[']“
That would make it incorrect English — written rotten.
Also, note that in keeping with the traditionalist paradigm of Taking Responsibility (and its corollary, “It's All Your Fault,” as well as maybe “The Banks, Etc., Are Victims and Deserve Every Tax Dollar of Yours”), you neglected 1990s GOP lingo associated with it:
Empowerment
(also, Virtue)
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Well shoot, we could have moved up the timeline for social security falling apart if we'd only been willing to get on board that privatization bandwagon awhile back. Darn!
“Go ahead, vote for Republicans in 2010. They won’t change this national paradigm but skew it even further towards the wealthy.” ~ MP
You can bet your last dollar on that. Keep shrinking the middle class, widen the gap…
The Democrats, who had the best chance possible to score intellectual and moral as well as political points, at the time of the “privatization” initiative by BushCo, by acting to reform and save the program, chose instead to do absolutely nothing — other than to unabashedly oppose every possible reform and rescue attempt. They, as usual, were worse — in numerous ways, much worse than merely being able to take over a federally-”overseen” mammoth institutional-investment program.
“Paradyme” – that reminds me of a guy used to stand down in the Wall street area (Maiden Lane) most weekdays, his phrase was, “spare a dime?”. – somehow sounds appropriate for this new paradigm.
It's a more dynamic spelling for the word, or for the name of a Silicon Valley company.
(Extra bubble-head points if it's “Paradyme-dot-com”)
Conservatism IS a ponzi scheme.
They destroy everything that has anything to do with human progress out of fear and greed. A few dumb ditto head conservatives on this board that try to separate themselves from their philosophy’s massive political failings and sell outs to everything from Michael Milken to Deng Xiaoping by copying Rupert Murdoch’s subversive propaganda artist rhetoric and committing lies of omission for the sake of “winning” an argument have yet to realize just how anti-American they really are.
Virtually the entire developed world is more LIBERAL than we are AND MORE PROSPEROUS! These facts cannot be denied. But boy do they try! Truth is not a conservative value.
Our little “burst” onto the world scene after WWII is over. Unless we dramatically change to the economic liberal philosophy of a more equitable distribution of wealth, emulating what is virtually the world, the funeral pyre will be ours as WE are found dead upon the ash-heap of history.
No…just no. Many conservatives are of a much more calm sane rational and well thought out variety it is just that they have become marginalized over the last ten years or so. But no not everything conservative is bad and not everything liberal is good, sure this vein of it makes me want to grab a pitchfork but these shouters are standing on the heads of many good people who just happen to disagree not only with the current brand of Dem but usually with jackasses like this. People like this are the problem not our conservative neighbors nor our liberal ones and people like this are in both parties. The quickest example I can think of is liberal areas that have sky high tax rates specifically to gentrify the area and raise their home values, I am thinking of areas in LA and Portland, OR specifically but NY and the Bay Area have similar problems in certain areas and cities.
The GOP is rotten to the core but so is the Dem party, the difference is that the current GOP can't move us forward but the Dems can(opinion here) but conservativisim has many good elements and many good people they are just currently being blotted out by the current megaphone wielding stiletto wearing Frankfurter version of the GOP. I mostly say this because when they become sane again we need to embrace them as the brothers that they are because this battle is not about sides its about our nation and America has no reverse, sometimes conservatives just forget that.
Reagan won not because he was a better man nor a better president but because he could move us forward when the Dems hit a dead end. They needed to de-regulate so that later they could re-regulate sanely and for a different technological age. Now I think(could be wrong but I am holding on to this until proven wrong) that is what we are now doing as ugly as the sausage is to make I think we are now headed in the other direction for a good long while.
The talking heads though will not change, those who get paid to offend and incite will offend and incite. It is not that it is new, it is that it is out in the open and in my opinion the GOP is going through a large identity crises and much like watching teenagers its an ugly thing but in the end zits and all they are still Jon from down the street.
I don't have MSF's gift of speech, but I have to agree that there are a lot of intelligent, sensible people in all ideologies. There's been a tendency lately to attack people instead of their arguments, and it's leading us away from useful discussion. More frightening, there's a lot of people who will defend their ideology against the facts. For instance, the Glass-Steagall Act, which was passed after the Great Depression to stabilize banks, was repealed by a solid majority of both parties. But I constantly hear Democrat lovers blaming Republicans, and Republican lovers blaming Democrats, for this act of fiscal insanity. If someone proves the plurality that did it, they stick to their point — 'cause reality got it wrong. No ideology works perfect every time, and claiming that it does only lowers the standard of discourse.
. We don't want to move forward the way the conservatives “move forward”, because everything just gets worse and WORSE. Conservatism IS the problem and America is waking up to that fact. It is amazing how many propaganda artists out there that conservatives need to employ just to keep the population confused.
BTW, Ronnie Raygun was a crappy President and a dupe for the ultra rich.
Do you guys ever get tired of just sitting around and chewing on those famous grapes?
To some, Election Day, 1980 (or January 20, 1981), is A Day Which Will Live in Infamy.
(Thom Hartmann: “[Everything was fabulous!] And then: Along Came REAGAN [snarling]…”)
http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/politics/20…
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