The late, cantankerous Frank Zappa once wrote that "Politics is the entertainment division of the military-industrial complex." Zappa was no modern Liberal, and his politics to me always seemed to pre-date the Boomer era. He was more of a creature of the WW2 generation, but I think he was way ahead of what happened in our country, as I think he wrote what I just paraphrased some time in the late '80s.
We've always been a nation of "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" (a saying I think often attributed to Mark Twain... but it's too early in the day to Google for a comments section). So there has always been a false belief held by Everyday Joe American that THEY are Members of the Club, that THEY are part of the Smart, Advantaged class... if it only weren't for THOSE PEOPLE.
Wingnut Media and Fox News turned professional political grifting into a competitive team sport, where You Too can compete, can sweat, bleed, cheer and root for Your Team. Just like you cheer on the New England Patriots, or the Broncos, or the Red Sox.
And much more importantly ROOT AGAINST the Other Team. Those Lousy, Dirty Losers!
By "glamming" up politics into a pro-sport game, they turned two generations into rabid fans, super-fans. And because there's really only one side who pushes these events as purposely, forcefully and dramatically as Entertainment, they turned it into an Us vs. Them thing the way Pro Wrestling did. There's only 2 teams in pro wrestling. It's not split into different regions, where fans support their hometown. There's literally "good guy" wrestlers and "bad guy" wrestlers, and every event is on the same network, the same channel, covered by the same commentators.
Dirty tricks, low hits, no holds barred... it's all part of the game—on both sides. All those things are an intrinsic, essential part of the game. But the OTHER SIDE is much worse with all that stuff, the Bad Stuff! So it's ESSENTIAL for Our Side to mercilessly overpower The Other Side.
I still haven't had enough coffee. But basically, wingnut media made politics popular and turned it into a one-sided version of accessible, digestible Drama. The true Entertainment Division of the Military-Industrial Complex.
I think there's always gonna be complete mobsters who use crises to grab all they can get no matter when/where. But now they have a Cheering Section, and die-hard Superfans.
Short answer = yes. There were war profiteers in WWII (there's a popular post-WWII play that features one - my Google-fu is weak today and I can't remember the name of it). Ditto in earlier wars - Lincoln's first Secretary of the Army was, per Lincoln, so corrupt that "he'd try to steal a red-hot stove."
OK, Boomer here, with a somewhat potted history of the world.
I was just eight when JFK was killed and nine when the Civil Rights Act was passed and I had the sense, growing up, that of course everybody would come together in a time of tragedy and danger, except for the fossilized Southern racists, and obviously they were on the way out (look what happened to Goldwater!) And I would have probably granted even them a basic concern for the public good, misguided though they were. Of course liberalism and progress were the inevitable long-term outcome of history, maybe with a few bumps along the way.
Then came Vietnam, Nixon, Watergate. But even during Nixon's administration, the liberal consensus was still going strong in many ways; think of the creation of the EPA, the investigations of the CIA, etc. I think what happened next, which really turned things around, happened under Carter: the Empire, or at least the chamber of commerce, struck back. Every paper you read would have ads from Mobil talking about the glory of Freemarket and the menace of Socialism. "Centrist" columnists for "liberal" papers followed suit, worrying furiously about whether we had gone too far in pursuit of equality. It turned out that the liberal consensus was like the little bear muzzle in that Far Side cartoon, and the bear had only to discover "What the hell, these things come right off!"
So we went from a kind of Adam Smith revival, in which we were allowed to feel distrust or even loathing for the malefactors of great wealth, so long as we recognized that the worst things they might want to do would be prevented by their own self-interest in not being seen as Scrooges to their workers, to gradually (or not so gradually) being told (as you note) that Scrooge was the hero, and fuck that moocher Bob Cratchit and his parasite spawn with him. And after that, it became not just "Scrooge has, and should have, the law on his side when he locks the workers to their desks and lets them die in a fire," but "thank God we have men like Scrooge to keep The Economy going," and even if The Economy isn't going all that hot by any humanly recognizable standard, thank God for him anyway, because he's showing us the difference between Makers and Takers.
And the old me would say, "it's just a temporary blip, we'll resume our upward climb, even if it takes another depression and a new FDR to get us there," but new -- that is, older -- me is inclined to worry that today's Morgans and Rockefellers have learned how to outmaneuver any would-be FDR. Our best hope remains that, as the saying goes, these aren't very smart guys, and they'll find themselves in over their heads, or (a guy can hope) deprived of their heads.
My childhood was spent in suburban Cincinnati; not a Democrat in sight including my parents. But they and their friends were the ones who pitched in to get the district to raise property taxes to run busses for the kids so we wouldn’t get killed trying to walk the roads- no sidewalks-to school. It was always a fight. Just a comment on how us vs them has changed, not about grift (education for the next generation vs not my problem fuck you). The stakes were too low for grift.
I’d say yes. I think the grift was always there, but as the Tone and Civility Police are so quick to point out, it was partially hidden under the guise of patriotism, free markets, and professional decorum. I think what the era of Trump has done is both accelerate the pace of the looting and dispense with the pretense that the elites aren’t smashing and grabbing just like a street criminal. The difference is the affluent use accountants instead of a sledgehammer.
Of course the MAGAts love it even when the hand is being thrust into their own pockets, because causing pain to the libs is more important than their own well being. Even a year or two ago I didn’t think they were so far gone that “dying of COVID-19 to own the libs” would be a thing, but here we are.
The first thing I thought of was Tammany Hall; there have been many examples at the state and local level. However, there has been nothing like the extent of corruption in the Executive Office. Teapot Dome? Sherman Adams? I remember that one. Adams, Ike's chief of staff, had accepted a vicuna coat and oriental rug from a man under investigation bye the FTC (OK I had to look up the details). And don't forget Checkers and Pat's good Republican cloth coat.
We've always sucked somewhat, but there used to be both more respect for actual Virtue and, maybe more importantly, enough concern with Keeping Up Appearances that more simulated but still beneficial Virtue was in evidence.
(Yes, along with 'Virtue' went evil shite like persecuting unwed mothers; I'm not mourning that.)
Think of the concern for the workers many of the rich used to simulate when they were afraid of the Bolshies.
Vice paying tribute to Virtue at least admits that Virtue exists. We need ideals to aim-at, so when we fall short of the stars at least we're in the gutter; Trumpism and similar holds the gutter up as the only reality, and ends-up in the sewer.
This country has a history of using military force to make us treat each other like human beings. Over and over, and even then, whenever a group "goes to far," we've collectively agreed to use that same military force to stomp the living shit out of them, almost gleefully. There's a not insignificant portion of the population who see what Loeffler's done as "being smart," just like Trump not paying taxes and screwing over his contractors was "good business". Even with the boot on their face and their children being fed to rich people's pets, they'll defend the wealthy circumventing the law to make more money as "the way things should be".
There have always been racists, grifters, torturers, and mobsters. However, during our current troubles, with that viscious orange prolapse having all those "qualities" in spades being ensconced in our house, all the poisons in the mud have hatched out. The evil in people is being gleefully expressed because it's expressed at the top.
I only know that America desperately needs to let Bernie Sanders be President. But it probably ain't gonna happen and everybody knows... https://tinyurl.com/yx3jbzll
I live in this country by choice. I moved here from Canada almost thirty years ago, and I've held on here without a permanent visa except for brief periods ever since. Canada is for all practical purposes a conglomerate of mining companies with a good health plan (unless you're First Nations) and a rule that 25% of the music on the company radio stations has to be made by employees' kids.
There is very little doubt in my mind that many of the aristocratic slavers, vulture capitalists and pirates who made up the Founding Fathers would be appalled at how far their plans have gone. Not all of them, but many. Some of them were actually admirable people, and like most genuinely great men your personal opinion of their greatness would likely change from day-to-day if you actually had to work with them. They were mostly English gentlemen of a certain sort, and all you need to know about them is in the Monty Python skit about the professionalism of the Officer class.
But unlike the Old Country there is far more to the United States than the crooks who started it. In Canada the French and the English aristocrats joined with monarchist refugees from the US to prevent change, adopting Bismarck's prophylactic strategy but without the warmth. In the US those founding documents have set up a daily moral ideal that forces Americans to try to do better. And the cultural dynamism is unmatched. Its very difficult to get an American to shut up, as people around the world will tell you. Americans may love their 2nd amendment, but the 1st entitles everyone to be a clueless loudmouth. And while a lot of what comes out of the collective American mouth is just babble, there's also the Letter from Birmingham Jail and Kennedy's Inaugural Address, to name just two within just years of each other.
People like Loefler and Trump are everywhere, in every country. There's Canadian billionaire pedophiles too, and mobsters in Italy, and crooks in Swedish government procurement. What you won't find in Canada, or most other places, is the brash, loud, abrupt and argumentative willingness to try. Most of that noise is totally full of shit, the verbal equivalent of the first rehearsal of a teenage punk band. But what every citizen on the planet knows is that the place to go be noisy and, if you're any good, get a chance to be heard, is the United States.
The founding documents are so integral to the way the culture functions that the professional White Folks who think there's anything to "White culture" that isn't just Cavaliers vs. Puritans are, as everyone who reads Roy already knows, purely deluded. And while those founding documents aren't perfect, is anything? This country started out as a voluntary union, the first one. Others have followed, and tried, and some have succeeded. But they've all started with the structure Jefferson et.al. stole from the Haudenosaunee, and then merged and tweaked so predatory capitalism would be forced to compromise with the Quakers.
Its human to be corrupt. Its very American to shout "throw the bums out!"
So far as I'm concerned, always... Read the history of this country, it's based upon theft, genocide, racism and exploitation of the natural environment.
Weren't there companies dinged for profiteering in WWI and WWII? Hell, the Civil War, too? Were there no Robber Barons? Was there no Gilded Age? To ask the question is to answer it.
I recently read about Bacon's War in 17th Century colonial Virginia. Nathaniel Bacon, a privileged young English aristocratic sprig, led an uprising against the government in righteous indignation for preventing Bacon and his pals from attacking the local Native Americans, killing them, and taking their valuable land.
This was about 350 years ago, before the republic even existed. So, long answer to your query, yeah, it does look like we've always sucked really hard.
We have always had grifters and people with their hands in the public till. It's part of human nature to take advantage of any opportunity, with the word "opportunity" being heavily defined by one's own moral compass.
The big difference today is that half of our polity--the Republican Party as an entity--is now devoted to undermining our system of government in order to both prove an ideological point and to allow the absolute worst in its adherents to be normalized and accepted. Thus we end up with people like Loefler there, profiting from inside information. Or the mysterious GOP political operative who's retiring from politics because he's somehow got his hands on hundreds of thousands of masks, gloves, and gowns that he's now going to sell (odd that Trump has been accusing doctors of stealing and selling these same supplies, isn't it?). And, of course, a President who revels in the chance to direct the government money spigots into his own pockets.
It's the normalizing (and, now, celebrating) of the worst traits of people that's different. Where once we were horrified at anyone who would make money by aiding death, we now simply accept that people do such things. And if they make enough money killing others, we celebrate them for their genius at making money.
There have always been crooks and profiteers of course. But it seems like in previous times they had to be at least a bit circumspect about their crookedness. Even their crook colleagues might call them out if they got too brazen, if only to keep up the illusion that rules continue to be rules and to distract from whatever hustle they might be running. But now it seems like it's been decided that it just doesn't pay to punish anyone. I mean, there are mechanisms in the Senate for disciplining ill behavior, even if you aren't going to go so far as to involve the law. But none of it is being applied. I guess it's just the Republican social contract: I'll cover for you your racket if you'll cover for mine. And either no one on the other side is saying anything about it, or else they just aren't able to get ahold of the mic. It's ridiculously dispiriting.
It's modern Wall St. capitalism, where the entire purpose is to rig fucking everything in order to acquire enormous sums of money for doing absolutely nothing (vide the behavior of practically every private equity firm, hedge fund, or investment bank. Not to mention Big Honking Bailout #1 in 2008). Insider trading is a fun sport, whether it's about death and disease simply doesn't matter -- there's money to be made! This is SOP for Wall St. and the sums involved are astronomically ridiculous.
Case in point: Steven A. Cohen. In 2015, his hedge fund, SAC Capital Advisors (just a coincidence that it bears his initials), pled guilty to securities fraud as part of a landmark criminal insider-trading settlement and had to pay a $1.2 billion fine. Which was cool because Steven A. Cohen, the person, made $2.4 billion that year, but luckily it was his firm that pled guilty, not him. He also had a lower tax rate on that amount then probably anyone reading this, and the fine was tax deductible.
Stevie’s firm has been renamed, and he’s still not in jail, in case anyone was wondering about that. (Fun activity: Google "Steven A Cohen home" for a glimpse of just a few of his little domiciles)
Ivanka steps over to the penthouse window and pulls the curtain aside. She looks down the many floors to the side walk below -
" Kelly - Tell me. Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you twenty thousand dollars for every dot that stopped, would you tell me to keep my money, or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare? Free of income tax, like Dad always says. Free of income tax - the only way you can save money nowadays.
No wonder the US is short of PPE for health workers. Even though the masks are getting ripped off so many scumbags lately, they can't be re-used because of, well, ewww....
America's exceptionalism was more a matter of geographic luck enhanced by genocide. But I don't think Americans are any worse or better than people in other countries. We just have more wealth with which to create more trouble. And that to me is further evidence that those who benefit the most need to have their privileges taken away, before they cause any more trouble. Hopeless dream, I know.
Goes back to 9/11 when fear from actually being attacked like every nation ever and/or scared because our leaders (who didn't give a shit in the first place) failed to protect us. As a result, we became a nation of cowards willing to take infinite abuse from sociopaths who cared only for themselves.
The seeds, as it were, go back to the Reagan administration that put on the road away from everything good about the nation; you name, the GOP (and their special interests) are against it. Most recently, choosing to be unprepared for the pandemic crises and then being slow to act because they don't give a shit.
Look up Secretary of War Henry Knox. Pay particular attention to the Battle of Wabash River. This dude is personally responsible for George Fucking Washington inventing executive privilege, and hasn't *that* been a special treat for us?
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Simon-Cameron
http://www.civilwarbummer.com/lincolns-war-profiteers-or-the-gruesome-twosome/ (from a guy named "bummer" so I'm pretty sure this was cut and pasted from an authoritative source)
I’m gonna say ‘always,’ Roy. I think that the sense of purpose has always been tribal, not national.
The late, cantankerous Frank Zappa once wrote that "Politics is the entertainment division of the military-industrial complex." Zappa was no modern Liberal, and his politics to me always seemed to pre-date the Boomer era. He was more of a creature of the WW2 generation, but I think he was way ahead of what happened in our country, as I think he wrote what I just paraphrased some time in the late '80s.
We've always been a nation of "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" (a saying I think often attributed to Mark Twain... but it's too early in the day to Google for a comments section). So there has always been a false belief held by Everyday Joe American that THEY are Members of the Club, that THEY are part of the Smart, Advantaged class... if it only weren't for THOSE PEOPLE.
Wingnut Media and Fox News turned professional political grifting into a competitive team sport, where You Too can compete, can sweat, bleed, cheer and root for Your Team. Just like you cheer on the New England Patriots, or the Broncos, or the Red Sox.
And much more importantly ROOT AGAINST the Other Team. Those Lousy, Dirty Losers!
By "glamming" up politics into a pro-sport game, they turned two generations into rabid fans, super-fans. And because there's really only one side who pushes these events as purposely, forcefully and dramatically as Entertainment, they turned it into an Us vs. Them thing the way Pro Wrestling did. There's only 2 teams in pro wrestling. It's not split into different regions, where fans support their hometown. There's literally "good guy" wrestlers and "bad guy" wrestlers, and every event is on the same network, the same channel, covered by the same commentators.
Dirty tricks, low hits, no holds barred... it's all part of the game—on both sides. All those things are an intrinsic, essential part of the game. But the OTHER SIDE is much worse with all that stuff, the Bad Stuff! So it's ESSENTIAL for Our Side to mercilessly overpower The Other Side.
I still haven't had enough coffee. But basically, wingnut media made politics popular and turned it into a one-sided version of accessible, digestible Drama. The true Entertainment Division of the Military-Industrial Complex.
I think there's always gonna be complete mobsters who use crises to grab all they can get no matter when/where. But now they have a Cheering Section, and die-hard Superfans.
Short answer = yes. There were war profiteers in WWII (there's a popular post-WWII play that features one - my Google-fu is weak today and I can't remember the name of it). Ditto in earlier wars - Lincoln's first Secretary of the Army was, per Lincoln, so corrupt that "he'd try to steal a red-hot stove."
OK, Boomer here, with a somewhat potted history of the world.
I was just eight when JFK was killed and nine when the Civil Rights Act was passed and I had the sense, growing up, that of course everybody would come together in a time of tragedy and danger, except for the fossilized Southern racists, and obviously they were on the way out (look what happened to Goldwater!) And I would have probably granted even them a basic concern for the public good, misguided though they were. Of course liberalism and progress were the inevitable long-term outcome of history, maybe with a few bumps along the way.
Then came Vietnam, Nixon, Watergate. But even during Nixon's administration, the liberal consensus was still going strong in many ways; think of the creation of the EPA, the investigations of the CIA, etc. I think what happened next, which really turned things around, happened under Carter: the Empire, or at least the chamber of commerce, struck back. Every paper you read would have ads from Mobil talking about the glory of Freemarket and the menace of Socialism. "Centrist" columnists for "liberal" papers followed suit, worrying furiously about whether we had gone too far in pursuit of equality. It turned out that the liberal consensus was like the little bear muzzle in that Far Side cartoon, and the bear had only to discover "What the hell, these things come right off!"
So we went from a kind of Adam Smith revival, in which we were allowed to feel distrust or even loathing for the malefactors of great wealth, so long as we recognized that the worst things they might want to do would be prevented by their own self-interest in not being seen as Scrooges to their workers, to gradually (or not so gradually) being told (as you note) that Scrooge was the hero, and fuck that moocher Bob Cratchit and his parasite spawn with him. And after that, it became not just "Scrooge has, and should have, the law on his side when he locks the workers to their desks and lets them die in a fire," but "thank God we have men like Scrooge to keep The Economy going," and even if The Economy isn't going all that hot by any humanly recognizable standard, thank God for him anyway, because he's showing us the difference between Makers and Takers.
And the old me would say, "it's just a temporary blip, we'll resume our upward climb, even if it takes another depression and a new FDR to get us there," but new -- that is, older -- me is inclined to worry that today's Morgans and Rockefellers have learned how to outmaneuver any would-be FDR. Our best hope remains that, as the saying goes, these aren't very smart guys, and they'll find themselves in over their heads, or (a guy can hope) deprived of their heads.
My childhood was spent in suburban Cincinnati; not a Democrat in sight including my parents. But they and their friends were the ones who pitched in to get the district to raise property taxes to run busses for the kids so we wouldn’t get killed trying to walk the roads- no sidewalks-to school. It was always a fight. Just a comment on how us vs them has changed, not about grift (education for the next generation vs not my problem fuck you). The stakes were too low for grift.
I’d say yes. I think the grift was always there, but as the Tone and Civility Police are so quick to point out, it was partially hidden under the guise of patriotism, free markets, and professional decorum. I think what the era of Trump has done is both accelerate the pace of the looting and dispense with the pretense that the elites aren’t smashing and grabbing just like a street criminal. The difference is the affluent use accountants instead of a sledgehammer.
Of course the MAGAts love it even when the hand is being thrust into their own pockets, because causing pain to the libs is more important than their own well being. Even a year or two ago I didn’t think they were so far gone that “dying of COVID-19 to own the libs” would be a thing, but here we are.
The first thing I thought of was Tammany Hall; there have been many examples at the state and local level. However, there has been nothing like the extent of corruption in the Executive Office. Teapot Dome? Sherman Adams? I remember that one. Adams, Ike's chief of staff, had accepted a vicuna coat and oriental rug from a man under investigation bye the FTC (OK I had to look up the details). And don't forget Checkers and Pat's good Republican cloth coat.
It always was. But 1) the veneer of civilization has eroded, and 2) all the decent folks been run out of Dodge
We've always sucked somewhat, but there used to be both more respect for actual Virtue and, maybe more importantly, enough concern with Keeping Up Appearances that more simulated but still beneficial Virtue was in evidence.
(Yes, along with 'Virtue' went evil shite like persecuting unwed mothers; I'm not mourning that.)
Think of the concern for the workers many of the rich used to simulate when they were afraid of the Bolshies.
Vice paying tribute to Virtue at least admits that Virtue exists. We need ideals to aim-at, so when we fall short of the stars at least we're in the gutter; Trumpism and similar holds the gutter up as the only reality, and ends-up in the sewer.
This country has a history of using military force to make us treat each other like human beings. Over and over, and even then, whenever a group "goes to far," we've collectively agreed to use that same military force to stomp the living shit out of them, almost gleefully. There's a not insignificant portion of the population who see what Loeffler's done as "being smart," just like Trump not paying taxes and screwing over his contractors was "good business". Even with the boot on their face and their children being fed to rich people's pets, they'll defend the wealthy circumventing the law to make more money as "the way things should be".
So I'm going to say "yes".
There have always been racists, grifters, torturers, and mobsters. However, during our current troubles, with that viscious orange prolapse having all those "qualities" in spades being ensconced in our house, all the poisons in the mud have hatched out. The evil in people is being gleefully expressed because it's expressed at the top.
I only know that America desperately needs to let Bernie Sanders be President. But it probably ain't gonna happen and everybody knows... https://tinyurl.com/yx3jbzll
I live in this country by choice. I moved here from Canada almost thirty years ago, and I've held on here without a permanent visa except for brief periods ever since. Canada is for all practical purposes a conglomerate of mining companies with a good health plan (unless you're First Nations) and a rule that 25% of the music on the company radio stations has to be made by employees' kids.
There is very little doubt in my mind that many of the aristocratic slavers, vulture capitalists and pirates who made up the Founding Fathers would be appalled at how far their plans have gone. Not all of them, but many. Some of them were actually admirable people, and like most genuinely great men your personal opinion of their greatness would likely change from day-to-day if you actually had to work with them. They were mostly English gentlemen of a certain sort, and all you need to know about them is in the Monty Python skit about the professionalism of the Officer class.
But unlike the Old Country there is far more to the United States than the crooks who started it. In Canada the French and the English aristocrats joined with monarchist refugees from the US to prevent change, adopting Bismarck's prophylactic strategy but without the warmth. In the US those founding documents have set up a daily moral ideal that forces Americans to try to do better. And the cultural dynamism is unmatched. Its very difficult to get an American to shut up, as people around the world will tell you. Americans may love their 2nd amendment, but the 1st entitles everyone to be a clueless loudmouth. And while a lot of what comes out of the collective American mouth is just babble, there's also the Letter from Birmingham Jail and Kennedy's Inaugural Address, to name just two within just years of each other.
People like Loefler and Trump are everywhere, in every country. There's Canadian billionaire pedophiles too, and mobsters in Italy, and crooks in Swedish government procurement. What you won't find in Canada, or most other places, is the brash, loud, abrupt and argumentative willingness to try. Most of that noise is totally full of shit, the verbal equivalent of the first rehearsal of a teenage punk band. But what every citizen on the planet knows is that the place to go be noisy and, if you're any good, get a chance to be heard, is the United States.
The founding documents are so integral to the way the culture functions that the professional White Folks who think there's anything to "White culture" that isn't just Cavaliers vs. Puritans are, as everyone who reads Roy already knows, purely deluded. And while those founding documents aren't perfect, is anything? This country started out as a voluntary union, the first one. Others have followed, and tried, and some have succeeded. But they've all started with the structure Jefferson et.al. stole from the Haudenosaunee, and then merged and tweaked so predatory capitalism would be forced to compromise with the Quakers.
Its human to be corrupt. Its very American to shout "throw the bums out!"
Uh, yes, not in other ways, but in those, yes. Final answer, Regis.
So far as I'm concerned, always... Read the history of this country, it's based upon theft, genocide, racism and exploitation of the natural environment.
Weren't there companies dinged for profiteering in WWI and WWII? Hell, the Civil War, too? Were there no Robber Barons? Was there no Gilded Age? To ask the question is to answer it.
I recently read about Bacon's War in 17th Century colonial Virginia. Nathaniel Bacon, a privileged young English aristocratic sprig, led an uprising against the government in righteous indignation for preventing Bacon and his pals from attacking the local Native Americans, killing them, and taking their valuable land.
This was about 350 years ago, before the republic even existed. So, long answer to your query, yeah, it does look like we've always sucked really hard.
We have always had grifters and people with their hands in the public till. It's part of human nature to take advantage of any opportunity, with the word "opportunity" being heavily defined by one's own moral compass.
The big difference today is that half of our polity--the Republican Party as an entity--is now devoted to undermining our system of government in order to both prove an ideological point and to allow the absolute worst in its adherents to be normalized and accepted. Thus we end up with people like Loefler there, profiting from inside information. Or the mysterious GOP political operative who's retiring from politics because he's somehow got his hands on hundreds of thousands of masks, gloves, and gowns that he's now going to sell (odd that Trump has been accusing doctors of stealing and selling these same supplies, isn't it?). And, of course, a President who revels in the chance to direct the government money spigots into his own pockets.
It's the normalizing (and, now, celebrating) of the worst traits of people that's different. Where once we were horrified at anyone who would make money by aiding death, we now simply accept that people do such things. And if they make enough money killing others, we celebrate them for their genius at making money.
There have always been crooks and profiteers of course. But it seems like in previous times they had to be at least a bit circumspect about their crookedness. Even their crook colleagues might call them out if they got too brazen, if only to keep up the illusion that rules continue to be rules and to distract from whatever hustle they might be running. But now it seems like it's been decided that it just doesn't pay to punish anyone. I mean, there are mechanisms in the Senate for disciplining ill behavior, even if you aren't going to go so far as to involve the law. But none of it is being applied. I guess it's just the Republican social contract: I'll cover for you your racket if you'll cover for mine. And either no one on the other side is saying anything about it, or else they just aren't able to get ahold of the mic. It's ridiculously dispiriting.
It's modern Wall St. capitalism, where the entire purpose is to rig fucking everything in order to acquire enormous sums of money for doing absolutely nothing (vide the behavior of practically every private equity firm, hedge fund, or investment bank. Not to mention Big Honking Bailout #1 in 2008). Insider trading is a fun sport, whether it's about death and disease simply doesn't matter -- there's money to be made! This is SOP for Wall St. and the sums involved are astronomically ridiculous.
Case in point: Steven A. Cohen. In 2015, his hedge fund, SAC Capital Advisors (just a coincidence that it bears his initials), pled guilty to securities fraud as part of a landmark criminal insider-trading settlement and had to pay a $1.2 billion fine. Which was cool because Steven A. Cohen, the person, made $2.4 billion that year, but luckily it was his firm that pled guilty, not him. He also had a lower tax rate on that amount then probably anyone reading this, and the fine was tax deductible.
Stevie’s firm has been renamed, and he’s still not in jail, in case anyone was wondering about that. (Fun activity: Google "Steven A Cohen home" for a glimpse of just a few of his little domiciles)
(Interesting documentary on Cohen and SAC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVeLrU2W1hE )
“The political and commercial morals of the United States are not merely food for laughter, they are an entire banquet.”
Mark Twain
Habari zenu wapendwa
Ivanka steps over to the penthouse window and pulls the curtain aside. She looks down the many floors to the side walk below -
" Kelly - Tell me. Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you twenty thousand dollars for every dot that stopped, would you tell me to keep my money, or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare? Free of income tax, like Dad always says. Free of income tax - the only way you can save money nowadays.
Kelly replies -
"Hell yeah! Oh Hell Yeah! Sign me up!"
If you can believe Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine (and I think it's brilliant) then Yes, we've pretty much always been this way.
No wonder the US is short of PPE for health workers. Even though the masks are getting ripped off so many scumbags lately, they can't be re-used because of, well, ewww....
America's exceptionalism was more a matter of geographic luck enhanced by genocide. But I don't think Americans are any worse or better than people in other countries. We just have more wealth with which to create more trouble. And that to me is further evidence that those who benefit the most need to have their privileges taken away, before they cause any more trouble. Hopeless dream, I know.
Goes back to 9/11 when fear from actually being attacked like every nation ever and/or scared because our leaders (who didn't give a shit in the first place) failed to protect us. As a result, we became a nation of cowards willing to take infinite abuse from sociopaths who cared only for themselves.
The seeds, as it were, go back to the Reagan administration that put on the road away from everything good about the nation; you name, the GOP (and their special interests) are against it. Most recently, choosing to be unprepared for the pandemic crises and then being slow to act because they don't give a shit.
Look up Secretary of War Henry Knox. Pay particular attention to the Battle of Wabash River. This dude is personally responsible for George Fucking Washington inventing executive privilege, and hasn't *that* been a special treat for us?