Just what you always wanted -- yet another Cletus safari culminating in a Festivus "fuck 'em" profile. Despite the completely predictable quotes and observations and outcomes, it's still worth a read, if only to demonstrate clearly just how members of a cult process information and function in their lives of futility and acquiescence.
The more recent nature of the New Yorker article (the author visited the plant in November) can't capture the near-daily unraveling since the midterm elections, so maybe some of these folks have changed their minds, seeing as how they're facing a welfare Christmas because of their feckless leader's stupefying ignorance on every possible subject. But even leaving that aside, they're fine with everything he's done so far. We all get that no one wants to admit they've been conned, that for every schmuck that actually goes on teevee to lament how they got suckered by some obvious catfishing scam, there's a dozen or more that will never admit it, but Jesus H. Christ. The people at this nail factory need to be deprogrammed.
Considering that their $11.50/hour jobs are about to disappear, and they'll be competing for new work with the people who lost their jobs at the nearby Briggs & Stratton facility, the only thing that has a chance of deprogramming them is reality jamming one way up their asses and snapping it clean off.
One of the workers interviewed gave the expected reflexive response, the one that underlines just how utterly they misapprehend everything -- the people they vote for, their collective futures, and the people who profoundly disagree with them:
It is essential that we are all clear on one critical point: for someone who lies constantly, even about things that are weird and unnecessary to lie about, he has done or tried to do everything he said he would. On that he has been entirely consistent -- truthful even.
So it's not that Fat Jimmy deserves to lose his job, it's that there's no point in caring whether he loses his job or not, since he made the decision to support the person whose stubborn ignorance will directly cost him that job. Look, asshole, if you don't care enough about your job to pay attention, then why the fuck should anyone else care about it?
Every single thing that has occurred in this human centipede of an administration -- the belligerent incompetence, the lying, the grifting and profiteering, the nepotism, the laziness, the alienation of allies and friends, the fellating of brutal dictators, the abuse of the weakest and most vulnerable -- all of this was foreseen and forewarned.
There is no prize for recognizing that water is wet before jumping into the pool, no reward for knowing that gravity is a thing before getting shoved off the roof. You were warned. You chose to ignore the warnings because he hates the same people you hate. So you got what you wanted. Good luck with it. Enjoy every savory morsel, son. You earned it.
It's a continuing irony that the people who voted most intensely for him -- farmers and blue-collar types out in Real 'murka -- are the ones bearing the economic brunt of his foolishness. The "elite" types, you know, those smug know-it-all motherfuckers who have library cards and don't see the humor in dropping racial slurs, they're doing just fine. They're chugging right along. They aren't losing the only decent fucking jobs in their abandoned jerkwater towns because they voted for someone who literally does not understand how tariffs and trade deficits work.
But just like their hero, they too are remarkably consistent in their utter credulity, this bizarre need to believe -- no, to invest -- wholeheartedly in the empty slogans, the blatant fabrications, the idiotic bluster.
They voted to tell libruls and furriners and minorities to go fuck themselves. Okay then. How do such grand gestures usually work out, how does your boss or your spouse or the guy nursing a drink next to you in a bar react to such an invitation? Best case scenario is you get into a fight, and the best case scenario of that is that you "win" -- but the other person likely writes you off for good. Life is simply too short to donate precious chunks of it to stubborn, angry morons who refuse on principle to listen to reason.
What Chris Pratt and Jimmy Coffer and the rest of the eighty-percent gang at Mid-Continent Nail need to realize is that we're done trying to talk to them, and we're just writing them off. Democratic politicians can leave the door open to them, as it were, to return to sanity and competence, but any pol that comes across with some sort of "compromise" bullshit will absolutely lose my vote. I've had entirely enough of these people and their stupid bullshit, and I'm done compromising with them. Come back from the ledge or jump the fuck off already. I really don't care which one they choose.
One would hope that the abrupt resignation of Jim Mattis, the only serious person remaining anywhere near the corridors of executive power, would provide an important clue to the cultists. Unfortunately they are too obsessed with the trappings of cult, and therefore have no interest in anything besides making facts and events fit into their prism. They are too busy donating their unemployment checks to a Go Fund Me for a wall (or fence, I guess, now) that Mexico was supposed to be paying for. They live comfortably within a swirling black hole of cognitive dissonance, from which reason and logic are instantly disintegrated, and which threatens to engulf us all.
But Mattis' departure is significant, even if it is supposedly over "only" 2,000 American troops being removed from Syria. Complete withdrawal cedes the Assad-controlled majority of the country over to Russia as a vassal state, and screws over the Kurds who have been fighting side-by-side with our troops to corner and defeat the remaining ISIS cadres. It throws our entire Middle East strategy into chaos.
Trump is such a fucking clown, he made the decision after a phone call with Erdogan, with a tweet, without even consulting with his own Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Think about that for a second -- vital decisions involving generations of American strategic interests, which affect tens of thousands of American troops and countless lives in the region and abroad, were made on his fucking Twitter feed, without so much as bouncing it off of any of the generals whose expertise he professes to revere. We really are fortunate that he's simply too lazy and stupid to follow through effectively on his worst impulses.
Again, though, it's important to keep in mind that the Great War, the one that's been going on in fits and starts for the last hundred years, was less a result of a Serbian anarchist assassinating an Austrian potentate on a June morning, and more the predictable outcome of a power vacuum. Thanks to the dopey ruminations of Adolt Twitler, we are now about to see for ourselves what a power vacuum looks like. It's not going to be pretty. None of this is going to be pretty. 2019 is shaping up to be a year of anger and upheaval and recrimination. And more domestic terrorism. You just watch.
So, I dunno what to tell the stubborn humps at the ol' nail factory there, about to lose jobs that were going to be automated or outsourced eventually anyway. I worked lobs like that when I was young, so I know firsthand, the only jobs in that factory that make any real money and have transferrable skill sets are management and maintenance. You can train a chimp to push buttons on the machines and move boxes around. Those folks are in deep shit.
But this really is what they voted for, and he told them so beforehand. He told them what he planned to do. He was going to tell the world to go fuck themselves, and he did. The workers at the nail factory probably felt good about that at first. It's cathartic after all, finally screwing up the nerve to tell the people you hate how you really feel.
Turns out they have cards to play too, though, and decisions have consequences. When you tell someone to go fuck themselves, maybe they can't do anything about it right then and there. But they will, probably when you least expect it. Because you've motivated them with your insults, and your bullshit attitude. Go fuck myself? You go fuck yourself, podna.
And for those folks in Poplar Bluff, the fucking is just beginning. Not that they'd take advice from someone like me, but if I was in their shoes, I'd either find a way to move, or head down to the local library and start learning something of value. Your prayer meetings and reality-teevee marathons aren't going to help you now. Magical thinking is what got you into this mess in the first place.
The more recent nature of the New Yorker article (the author visited the plant in November) can't capture the near-daily unraveling since the midterm elections, so maybe some of these folks have changed their minds, seeing as how they're facing a welfare Christmas because of their feckless leader's stupefying ignorance on every possible subject. But even leaving that aside, they're fine with everything he's done so far. We all get that no one wants to admit they've been conned, that for every schmuck that actually goes on teevee to lament how they got suckered by some obvious catfishing scam, there's a dozen or more that will never admit it, but Jesus H. Christ. The people at this nail factory need to be deprogrammed.
Considering that their $11.50/hour jobs are about to disappear, and they'll be competing for new work with the people who lost their jobs at the nearby Briggs & Stratton facility, the only thing that has a chance of deprogramming them is reality jamming one way up their asses and snapping it clean off.
One of the workers interviewed gave the expected reflexive response, the one that underlines just how utterly they misapprehend everything -- the people they vote for, their collective futures, and the people who profoundly disagree with them:
Like others here, Coffer’s support for President Trump is unwavering—even though the President may cost him his livelihood. “People think I’m a dumb hick white boy who voted for Trump, and that I’ll get what I deserve,” Coffer told me. “But I’m not some redneck hick.” He believes that Trump is using the tariff as a bargaining chip for the new trade agreement with Mexico and Canada. “There are going to be some jobs lost,” Coffer said, “but, still, factories are opening.”It's not that they're getting what they deserve so much as they're getting exactly what they voted for. Like the treacherous snake he likes to evoke at the cult rallies, you knew what he was. He told you straight up. His so-called record as a bidness tycoon and deal-maker extraordinaire was there for all to see and read and consider. There are no surprises here.
It is essential that we are all clear on one critical point: for someone who lies constantly, even about things that are weird and unnecessary to lie about, he has done or tried to do everything he said he would. On that he has been entirely consistent -- truthful even.
So it's not that Fat Jimmy deserves to lose his job, it's that there's no point in caring whether he loses his job or not, since he made the decision to support the person whose stubborn ignorance will directly cost him that job. Look, asshole, if you don't care enough about your job to pay attention, then why the fuck should anyone else care about it?
Every single thing that has occurred in this human centipede of an administration -- the belligerent incompetence, the lying, the grifting and profiteering, the nepotism, the laziness, the alienation of allies and friends, the fellating of brutal dictators, the abuse of the weakest and most vulnerable -- all of this was foreseen and forewarned.
There is no prize for recognizing that water is wet before jumping into the pool, no reward for knowing that gravity is a thing before getting shoved off the roof. You were warned. You chose to ignore the warnings because he hates the same people you hate. So you got what you wanted. Good luck with it. Enjoy every savory morsel, son. You earned it.
It's a continuing irony that the people who voted most intensely for him -- farmers and blue-collar types out in Real 'murka -- are the ones bearing the economic brunt of his foolishness. The "elite" types, you know, those smug know-it-all motherfuckers who have library cards and don't see the humor in dropping racial slurs, they're doing just fine. They're chugging right along. They aren't losing the only decent fucking jobs in their abandoned jerkwater towns because they voted for someone who literally does not understand how tariffs and trade deficits work.
But just like their hero, they too are remarkably consistent in their utter credulity, this bizarre need to believe -- no, to invest -- wholeheartedly in the empty slogans, the blatant fabrications, the idiotic bluster.
They voted to tell libruls and furriners and minorities to go fuck themselves. Okay then. How do such grand gestures usually work out, how does your boss or your spouse or the guy nursing a drink next to you in a bar react to such an invitation? Best case scenario is you get into a fight, and the best case scenario of that is that you "win" -- but the other person likely writes you off for good. Life is simply too short to donate precious chunks of it to stubborn, angry morons who refuse on principle to listen to reason.
What Chris Pratt and Jimmy Coffer and the rest of the eighty-percent gang at Mid-Continent Nail need to realize is that we're done trying to talk to them, and we're just writing them off. Democratic politicians can leave the door open to them, as it were, to return to sanity and competence, but any pol that comes across with some sort of "compromise" bullshit will absolutely lose my vote. I've had entirely enough of these people and their stupid bullshit, and I'm done compromising with them. Come back from the ledge or jump the fuck off already. I really don't care which one they choose.
One would hope that the abrupt resignation of Jim Mattis, the only serious person remaining anywhere near the corridors of executive power, would provide an important clue to the cultists. Unfortunately they are too obsessed with the trappings of cult, and therefore have no interest in anything besides making facts and events fit into their prism. They are too busy donating their unemployment checks to a Go Fund Me for a wall (or fence, I guess, now) that Mexico was supposed to be paying for. They live comfortably within a swirling black hole of cognitive dissonance, from which reason and logic are instantly disintegrated, and which threatens to engulf us all.
But Mattis' departure is significant, even if it is supposedly over "only" 2,000 American troops being removed from Syria. Complete withdrawal cedes the Assad-controlled majority of the country over to Russia as a vassal state, and screws over the Kurds who have been fighting side-by-side with our troops to corner and defeat the remaining ISIS cadres. It throws our entire Middle East strategy into chaos.
Trump is such a fucking clown, he made the decision after a phone call with Erdogan, with a tweet, without even consulting with his own Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Think about that for a second -- vital decisions involving generations of American strategic interests, which affect tens of thousands of American troops and countless lives in the region and abroad, were made on his fucking Twitter feed, without so much as bouncing it off of any of the generals whose expertise he professes to revere. We really are fortunate that he's simply too lazy and stupid to follow through effectively on his worst impulses.
Again, though, it's important to keep in mind that the Great War, the one that's been going on in fits and starts for the last hundred years, was less a result of a Serbian anarchist assassinating an Austrian potentate on a June morning, and more the predictable outcome of a power vacuum. Thanks to the dopey ruminations of Adolt Twitler, we are now about to see for ourselves what a power vacuum looks like. It's not going to be pretty. None of this is going to be pretty. 2019 is shaping up to be a year of anger and upheaval and recrimination. And more domestic terrorism. You just watch.
So, I dunno what to tell the stubborn humps at the ol' nail factory there, about to lose jobs that were going to be automated or outsourced eventually anyway. I worked lobs like that when I was young, so I know firsthand, the only jobs in that factory that make any real money and have transferrable skill sets are management and maintenance. You can train a chimp to push buttons on the machines and move boxes around. Those folks are in deep shit.
But this really is what they voted for, and he told them so beforehand. He told them what he planned to do. He was going to tell the world to go fuck themselves, and he did. The workers at the nail factory probably felt good about that at first. It's cathartic after all, finally screwing up the nerve to tell the people you hate how you really feel.
Turns out they have cards to play too, though, and decisions have consequences. When you tell someone to go fuck themselves, maybe they can't do anything about it right then and there. But they will, probably when you least expect it. Because you've motivated them with your insults, and your bullshit attitude. Go fuck myself? You go fuck yourself, podna.
And for those folks in Poplar Bluff, the fucking is just beginning. Not that they'd take advice from someone like me, but if I was in their shoes, I'd either find a way to move, or head down to the local library and start learning something of value. Your prayer meetings and reality-teevee marathons aren't going to help you now. Magical thinking is what got you into this mess in the first place.
4 comments:
The New York Times also visited The Heartland. (Mizurah!) I guess the summer humidity and the tornadoes do something to the brains. In a County that went 70% for Trump, his random "pick an industry, any industry" trade plan is devastating the local wood products industry, as their customers in China that make the flooring are now tariffed. But we are assured by one Solid Citizen of said county that "Trump is a Biznessman. If I just sat down with him and talked biznessman to biznessman, he would correct everything! Yeah right, fuckaroo.
One does have trouble feeling sorry for them.
(Or on a more local note, I have sympathy, but why are Butte County residents eager to rebuild in their rural firetrap?????? Am I just heartless? Paradise should not exist.
Or the couple burned out of Santa Rosa who immediately chose to relocate to another, even more dangerous firetrap? I just don't know. I question why people (firefighters) should be risking their lives to save people who choose dangerous places to live. But then, maybe the whole State could say the same thing?
Awesome post.Thanks for sharing
Brian:
Yep, sympathy is wasted on suckers. Until they can see the con and admit it at least to themselves, it's a waste of time trying to reckon with them. Short of guarantees of better jobs, there is no point in any Democratic politician trying to hard to reach out to them. They're just not going to listen.
That's not partisan hate or anti-Trumpster rhetoric, it's just the way it is. They've been more than happy to tell us that themselves all along. The media monkeys are right after all, that maybe everyone else should listen and pay attention to what these people have been saying, and what they've consistently shared about their decision processes and their epistemic boundaries, to put it politely for once.
I think they've made themselves very clear, and it's time to start acting accordingly, and quit pretending they can be "won back" with better branding or more charismatic candidates or a snappier bumper-sticker slogan. Either put more money in their pockets so they stop wallowing in "culture war" nonsense, or cut them loose already.
------
I'll do more posts on Paradise as things slowly develop, but for now, my best guess as to people being anxious to rebuild is mostly that they can't really afford to go anywhere else. Housing prices have shot up in a 50-mile radius, in anticipation of all those insurance checks. But most Paradise real estate is not of comparable value as similar properties in Chico. And it will take years and tons of money to even start rebuilding the town's infrastructure.
I think it also has to do with the teleological assumptions many people are conditioned with (and the media certainly help to perpetuate, usually in the guise of "sympathy"), that whether their capricious, malevolent deity has blessed them with a natural catastrophe or another weekly mass shooting, the best (the only) way to react is to immediately engage in a very public process of Overcoming And Rebounding. So a lot of it's the usual wishful thinking that you get from any such disaster.
All that said, it really is a beautiful area up there. Most of the people who lived there chose Paradise and love it. It makes sense that they would want to go back. But I agree with you, that probably is not possible in the near future, certainly not to its previous state.
It is really beautiful, for sure.
I am a obsessive recreational cyclist, and Honey Run Road was always a favorite (and tough) bicycle route. I have photos on my camera from the route, including a CALTRANS sign for Magalia. :( I can certainly understand the love for the place. When I was there this past summer, the locals were just finishing up installing a series of nice historic plaques along the beautiful bicycle path that parallels Skyway. There was definitely a strong sense of community there!
Sad thing is my 457 and 401 A (has/had) just enough money for mortgage-free property in Chico or Redding. Guess I will have to just leave California when I retire. Fresno is still cheap. :(
Post a Comment