All We Want for Christmas is a Level Playing Field

The next time some dipshit conservabot, be it online troll or angry drunk uncle, pulls that "what about George Soros" bullshit on you, they deserve two responses:

1. A fervent wish that they get cancer in an extremely painful and sensitive area of the body.
2. What about George Soros? Seriously, what about him?

It's one of the more asinine articles of faith among the cultards that Soros (who's a wink-wink-nudge-nudge J-O-O, y'know) underwrites every act or article of librul perfidy that rankles their tender buttholes. Every protest, every op-ed -- hell, every vote against Dear Leader is taken as gospel proof of Soros' nefarious, far-reaching ways.

As with most of the plaints from these simpering simpletons, it's either total projection or complete ignorance. The fascist wingnut welfare system has flourished for at least half a century, and has been in full bloom at least since Saint Reagan (PBUH) doddered his way through the office, setting a precedent for the current sundowner.

There is no truly liberal counterpart to Faux News or to the welter of wingnut rags (National Review; Weekly Standard; ad nauseam), not when you take into account the respective ownership, audience, influence, and operating procedures. Your typical "liberal" "lamestream" news outlet spends a certain amount of time quivering in dickless equivocation, a futile attempt to pre-emptively placate the critics who simply find something else to critique.

And there is simply no responsible publishing outlet who would bother with loss-leader screeds from the likes of Ann Coulter or Laura Ingraham or Dinesh D'Souza. It's not just because they're performative liars, as a deliberate career choice. It's because they're a bad business investment -- no intelligent person actually reads their jabber. That stuff is there merely to provide the veneer of legitimacy for the losers on the various Faux panel shows to impart to the suckers watching them.

The wingnut outlets spend no time at all on such equivocation. They are quite open about their agenda, and are not in thrall to such outmoded concepts as objectivity and probity and contextual analysis. It is pure Skinner-box hamster-smacking-a-metal-plate-to-get-the-daily-outrage-pellet agitprop. To the extent that there is even an acknowledgement of the quiet funding of the Koch brothers or the Mellons or Scaifes or what-have-you, it is only as a supposed equalizer to the nefarious pelf from the Soros types.

Except there really aren't any Soros types to speak of. You really don't have any deep-pocket true-blue libruls who bother with it on that level. Even back in the day when Ted Turner owned and operated CNN, he delegated most of the daily ops and opinion pieces, and did not interfere on any level approaching how Rupert Murdoch has always run his rape-and-golden-parachutes network.

I keep seeing this stupid Tom Steyer commercial about getting some sort of movement going to impeach Fuckface Von Clownstick. Great, except that doesn't happen without a serious electoral landslide for the Dems, and that doesn't happen without changing some minds out there in Real 'murka. If Steyer wants to help out, maybe he should fund a few House and state legislature candidates or a media outlet, maybe some agitprop books to incite the faithful.

An actual liberal propaganda machine would make hay out of -- just for an easy starter -- this useless asshole, and there are plenty more like him. The problem is that all rich people, regardless of the political badge they flash when they need to, swim in the same pool, and it's a pool that keeps everyone else out. So the putatively liberal ones will only exert so much effort, while the Kochsuckers are tireless -- and their efforts have finally paid off bigly.

Autocannibalism

Although I suppose I read a lot more non-fiction than most people do, my usual intake is about 50-50 between fiction and non-fiction. And I don't really make distinctions between "popular" or "unknown" writers as a barometer of what's "good" or not; if it's good it's good. So I've been a huge fan of Stephen King's writing for most of my life, since probably about seventh grade, 1980 or so.

One of my favorite short stories of King's is Survivor Type, a perverse little number about a drug-smuggling surgeon who survives a plane crash and finds himself marooned on a remote Pacific atoll with nothing more than his wits, his surgical tools, and some heroin. Because it is Stephen King, you expect the natural goo and gore of a man slowly devouring himself, piece by piece, going mad the entire time.

What might be less expected, but is barely subtextualized, is how the demented drug-smuggling doctor tries to convince himself throughout, first as he amputates and eats a foot, then the other foot, working his way up each leg until he's eaten everything below the waist, that he will pull through this, that he can survive, that as bad as it gets, it is still worth surviving, that if a ship somehow came out of the horizon and pulled this raving half-man aboard, he could still rehabilitate himself and move on with the rest of his life.

Which brings us to the much-publicized anti-Trump manifesto released by National Review the other day. It's almost too sad and pathetic to watch, this marooned half-man thinking that there is some deus ex machina out there providentially about to restore his loss.

The Right, Stuffed

Of course "right people" can (and for the most part should) be interpreted to mean whites, but the teabaggers' disdain runs deeper and broader than that, and who comprises the "right people" is even simpler than that. They really just don't want any gubmint dollars going to anyone besides themselves, or some rich asshole who might "create" a "job" for them, even if they're beyond working age, or don't have any marketable skills, or are too addled on meth and/or oxy to do much in the first place.

Working in social services for several years now, I've seen and heard many people and stories in this area, both pro and con. One of the most common sentiments is that people shouldn't have children they can't afford, which is reasonable enough in principle. Nobody wants to feel like they're being forced to subsidize the bad habits and poor impulse control of others.

But many of the people saying that have nothing at all to say about the billionaires and corporations that they're also forced to subsidize. They have an iPhone, but no reservations about the conditions under which their devices are constructed, and no thoughts about Apple offshoring billions of dollars in order to avoid paying taxes. They shop at Wal-Mart, but can't be bothered to care about the fact that if the employees can't get by on their shit jobs (and can't get a second job because of unpredictable scheduling constraints), they have to seek gubmint services to supplement the shortfall. Great racket for the multi-billionaire Walton family, to soak up the profits and force taxpayers to pick up the tab for food stamps and medical care.

The teabagger "movement" itself, regardless of what its addled adherents think, is bought and paid for by Koch Brothers types who hire shithead consultants who know how to sell shit to these rubes, over and over again. These are the people who lose to tic-tac-toe-playing chickens at county fairs. That people like Reihan Salam and Frank Luntz and all the others continue to have lucrative careers either selling the scam or writing about it proves that maybe the rest of us should just get in on the racket, since it never seems to run dry.

We Agree On What You Are, We're Just Haggling Over the Price

The Duke Brothers are pretty upfront about their intent, their willingness to pony up $889 million to purchase what they consider democracy. Apparently rounding up to an even billion would have been, I dunno, unseemly or something.

At this point, I don't think most of us give half a shit whether it's the Kochs or George Soros or whoever -- the influence of money needs to be removed from the political process by any means necessary. The media now have the perpetual campaign industry, virtual smokestacks belching shit into our brains 24/7/365, so that before the results are even in from one election, the next one is already being gamed out, two or four years down the line.

Now, the media can keep their bookmaking operation if they must; I suppose a great many anchor careers and behind-the-scenes jobs depend on manufacturing this nonsense. But taking the money out of it would render it a process that, while it will never be truly 100% even, at least makes an honest attempt to curb somewhat the overwhelming influence that filthy pelf has.

Which, of course, is why it will never happen. Not enough peons care enough to do anything about it. And yet, that makes perfect sense -- when your political system and its products aren't even talking to you anymore, but only to each other and their ownersdonors, then maybe it is time to disengage from a corrupt process, with an informed perspective.

Shorter Charles Koch

Who you gonna believe -- me, or that fucking commie your hippie neighbor voted for? I'll buy your soul and feed it to you, drop by drop, and you'll thank me for it.