You Built That, Just Not By Yourself

And in this exercise in screaming into the void that is the internet when nobody's paying attention to you, I'll be tackling the biggest and most perpetuated lie the GOP has continued to sell its base on for decades. The Lie That Was the Lie. The One Lie to Rule Them All: self-reliance.

Why I’m calling it a “lie” and not merely a “myth” is because with myths, those who perpetuate them know they aren’t true and don’t expect anyone else to believe they’re true. They’re good marshmallow-toasting tales to entertain your friends with (and possibly make them afraid to sleep with the lights off ever again). A lie, on the other hand, is something the teller knows is bullshit, and expects the sucker he’s telling it to to believe him anyway. In fact, he’s counting on it. When Republicans talk about self-reliance and getting on that ladder, they’re lying, because they know as well as the Democrats that the end of that ladder isn’t resting on the ground; it’s rather high up, and unless you’re tall enough to start with, you’re going to need help reaching it.

The difference is that the Democrats want to help people reach that ladder no matter how short they are. The Republicans want to keep the short people off it so that their success doesn’t lose any of its specialness.

Self-reliance is a lie because unless you’re a 16^th-17^th-century pioneer (in which case, how the hell are you reading this?), you are relying on others every single day. You may not be able to see them and many of them you will never meet, but you rely on them just the same.

Somebody built your house or apartment. Somebody built the electrical grid that powers your home and laid the pipes that bring you water. Somebody grew and made the food you ate today. Somebody cleaned up the water you drank so it would hydrate you instead of kill you. Somebody printed the money you used to buy that food and water. Somebody built the road and the car or bus or train you used to get to work today. If you have a job, somebody hired you. If you own a business, somebody is keeping you in business by buying whatever goods or services you provide. Somebody is also keeping your business moving by delivering and mailing your parcels and handling your money and giving you a line of credit to buy things you need. Somebody also built the computer or tablet or smartphone that you’re using to read this post.

And chances are, none of those “somebodies” up there was you. There’s an even better chance that you can’t call a single one of them by name. But they’re not invisible pink unicorns; they do exist, even if you have no idea who they are. Because these things got done somehow, and if you didn’t do it, then someone else had to.

No, what the doctrine of self-reliance is is a way to look down on others who aren’t tall enough to reach the end of that ladder, and a means to dismiss them as unimportant.

Because I love pop culture, and I think movies are some of the most biting social commentary we have as well as entertainment, let’s take a look at this quote for a minute from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade:

Indiana Jones: It was just the two of us, dad. It was a lonely way to grow up. For you, too. If you had been an ordinary, average father like the other guys' dads, you'd have understood that.
Professor Henry Jones: Actually, I was a wonderful father.
Indiana Jones: When?
Professor Henry Jones: Did I ever tell you to eat up? Go to bed? Wash your ears? Do your homework? No. I respected your privacy and I taught you self-reliance.
Indiana Jones: What you taught me was that I was less important to you than people who had been dead for five hundred years in another country. And I learned it so well that we've hardly spoken for twenty years.

Sure, it’s one of the most famously bitter father-son duos verbally duking out their problems over some whisky while being chased by Nazis. But if you look closer at it, it’s also some insightful commentary on the GOP’s current delusion. Like Henry Jones, Sr., they think neglect is just a way of teaching you how to fend for yourself.

In a twisted way, it is. But it’s not going to teach that lesson any better than throwing someone into the deep end will teach them how to swim; you only learn something if you don’t die trying.

In the end, we all want to get on that ladder. But until that ladder comes down to the ground where everyone has a fair shot at reaching it, there’s only one way to make sure that success is not just limited to tall people: build the short ones something to stand on.

Lifestyles of the Rich and Shameless: Why Republicans Hate the Poor, But Love Poverty, Part 1

You remember when you were in gradeschool, and some jerkass member of the opposite sex made your life hell?  And when you complained about it, you were told "that means s/he has a crush on you?"  And it seemed like total bullshit because what kind of childhood sociopath would act like a raging bag of dicks toward people they liked?  And if they're a raging bag of dicks when they like you, what truly awful things have they done to people they actually hate?

Yeah, I never understood that explanation, either, until I started following politics.  Because the GOP has exactly that kind of crush on the poor.

On the one hand, they hate poor people.  Because they buy into the whole "But...But...Bootstraps!" thing which makes life a lot easier for them when they can ignore that you have to have bootstraps in order to pull yourself up by them.  So it's a quick, easy way to feel superior to others no matter how much your life sucks otherwise.  Your wife may be filing for divorce because she caught you banging your secretary and her husband because you left your webcam on, and your two-point-five children have cut you off because you couldn't put down the golf club and the bourbon long enough to be involved in their lives, but at least you're not that poor fucker who had to deal with your angry phone call when the cable went out.

After all, you're responsible and hardworking enough to not have to deal with assholes like you all day.  Go you.

On the other hand, Republicans love them some poverty, and they will be all too happy to count the ways if you let them.  All of their policies are carefully crafted to ensure that people who are already broke will stay that way.  Because poor people tend to be too tired from having to make major financial decisions all day, every day to think about all the ways they're being screwed.

It's part of a larger sick system that helps people who don't deserve it stay in power no matter how absurd their positions seem to the rest of us.

It's far less work to slyly manipulate people into needing you than to make them want to stay in your corner by being someone they like and respect.  Being a likeable, respectable person (or political ideology) requires empathy, compassion, and concern for other people.  For bona fide assholes like the current Republican party, that's too much work.  The sick system is easier.  And unfortunately, a lot more reliable.

For proof that it works, look no further than this study: the poorest people in the country also tend to be the staunchest conservatives.  When you look at the outline of what a sick system is -- mental exhaustion (policies that gut social programs, and national financial crises manufactured purely by political obstructionism) peppered with intermittent morsels of bread-and-circuses-style temporary reward (tax breaks, religion, and patriotic fervor), it suddenly makes sense how people could feel in any way loyal to a political ideology that exploits and abuses them and laughs all the way to the bank.

We're Still Having This Conversation Because Stupid, Insecure Men Still Think Confident Women Are Going to Cut Off Their Dicks

It's the year 2013, but due to the rhetoric uttered by old men who still can't stop saying dumb things about rape even after losing two Senate races because of it, it can be easy to forget that and scribble "1970" the next time you need to date something.

See, in case you haven't figured it out already because the world hasn't completely ruined you yet, "pro-life" is a complete, intentional misnomer.  It's the candy they hand out the back of their windowless van; once you figure out the far more insidious truth, it's a little too late.  And no, the analogy really isn't that far off.

Because if it was really about the babies, these people would be all over birth control.  They'd be putting it in vending machines right next to the green M&Ms and giving out complimentary condoms like a steakhouse hands out after-dinner mints.  They'd be doing everything humanly possible to encourage people to practice that which prevents the need for abortion: safe, responsible sex.

But they don't do that.

These are instead the same people who pitch the -- oh yes -- mother of all hissyfits over making insurance companies cover contraception, but are tellingly silent about why Cialis and Viagra need to get put on the corporate tab.

What the "pro-life" movement is about is not saving the lives of fetuses, but controlling female sexuality and punishing the women on whom those fetuses would depend, because how dare a woman step outside her historical place.  How dare a woman be in charge of her own body.  How dare she think sex is something she gets a say in.  And, horror of horrors, how dare she enjoy it without asking a man's permission or begging his forgiveness.

Because yes, it's 2013, and the very idea of a woman realizing she has agency and not being afraid to use it is something a significant -- but thankfully shrinking -- number of men find utterly terrifying.  Because just like their bowels in a rented tux, they're losing control and they know it.

And it should come as a shock to absolutely no one that the men most afraid of this eventuality are those who have the most to lose.  But in a self-fulfilling prophecy straight out of Minority Report.

What these men have to lose is the power they've enjoyed over women since before we started writing this stuff down.  The salve they've been taught to put on their bruised egos since birth that no matter how much they might get kicked around by other men in various posturing power struggles, there is always someone they count on to respect their authority, and that someone is women.

Not having anyone to easily reassert power over at the end of the day?  Means they'll have to start -- and this is the really scary part -- being respectable instead of assuming people think they are.  They'll have to start earning respect through something other than fear and force and manipulation.  And, what with this form of respect being completely new to them and all, they'll have to learn it like a yuppie learns how to tip at a nightclub in Overtown: by screwing up, and getting told in excruciating detail just how you screwed up and why you should never screw up that way again.

For the man who is typically just hitting that point in his life where he blows his life savings on a Ferrari to cruise around town and pick up a date young enough to be his daughter, this is the absolute last candle on the sanity cake, and it's just been blown out.

The real irony, of course, is that he would not have anything to lose if he wasn't so damned scared in the first place.  But that's just it: men who are decent people and know they're decent people don't need to prove it by basing their entire identity off maintaining a place in some perceived pecking order.  Men who are decent people don't feel threatened by sharing equally with women power and respect, because they're already doing it.

If you remember The Neverending Story and the Magic Mirror Gate that Atreyu had to pass through in order to get to the Southern Oracle?  It's kinda like that.  These are kind men discovering that they're cruel.  Brave men discovering that they're really cowards.  They're confronting their true selves, and running away screaming.

And the decent people of the world are all too content now to just let them run.  The further, the better.

Government Is Not a Volunteer Service

Or rather, why paying taxes is important and people who truly want free stuff need to stop whining about money that was never theirs in the first place.

Yes, let's get this notion out of the way first: the money you pay in taxes is not your money, and it never was.  It's the government's money.  Taxes are not donations; they're taxes.  You are required to pay them.

And why are you required to pay them?

Because all these nifty government services you use every day whether you realize it or not cost money.  Delivering running water and sewer costs money.  Picking up your trash every week costs money.  Maintaining traffic lights and roads and bridges costs money.  Police and firefighters need to be paid.  The service that mails your letters and parcels costs way the fuck more than the actual postage you pay.  Inspectors that make sure the food you eat doesn't contain rat poison also need a paycheck.  So do the clerks who make sure you still exist on paper tomorrow.  The transit workers who get you where you want to go if you don't have a car.  The teachers who guarantee every kid has a shot at an education.

You get the idea.

These people are not volunteers.  They work.  And they work just as hard as anyone in the private sector, and for substantially less money because everyone needs to have access to the services they provide.

This is why we pay taxes.  Because unless you can afford to buy your own private island and start your own country of one, all of these services that make life a lot less miserable (and dangerous) require other people to have jobs.

So you can stop bitching and moaning about "your" money going to other people without your permission anytime.  For one thing, it's not your money.  For another, that money is, in fact, coming right back to you through these vital services.

The fiscal speed bump we just went over?  Is making sure you can still receive these services.

Would I like to pay lower taxes and still receive the same benefits?  Not gonna lie, I sure as hell would.  But that really isn't possible.  It's one thing that we need to stop plugging our ears and admit:

Many of the Bush tax cuts that a lot of us have benefited from in the short term (including Yours Truly)?  Were a mistake in the long run.  An enormous, expensive mistake, and we're only now beginning to see the longer term effects of it.  Trying to run an effective government, period, as a skeleton operation doesn't work.  And as much as Republicans are trying to force it to, We the People saw through that smokescreen in November.

A deal to keep the lower taxes for the middle class would be awesome.  But I don't think it can work.  We can't just climb out of this one.  The hole is too deep, the sides are too smooth, and there are way too many of us.  We need to dig sideways and then start digging back up so we have something to stand on that isn't the backs of those below us.

And that means everyone needs to grab a shovel.

A Lame Duck Can Still Beat You With His Cane

As the GOP still refuses to take its pills and pretends Romney won the election because that's what the alien microbes that live in their cellphones told them and the alien microbes know better than everyone who isn't owned by Rupert Murdoch, they have proposed a "counteroffer" to the current administration's plan to avoid the fiscal cliff.  And the quotes are necessary because it's less like a counteroffer and more like one of Wile E. Coyote's diagrams for a jetpack powered by Chupacabra farts.

For one thing, in case you haven't heard it already, the fiscal cliff is only being referred to as such because "cliff" is a scary word that makes everyone who hates math and failed high school economics think of the ending to Thelma & Louise.  Putting a life-or-death spin on it has a funny way of getting people to listen.  In reality?  It's something we can easily survive.  Because we have before, and under very similar circumstances.

Coming out of Bush 41's one-term disaster in 1992 -- due mostly to his own party turning on him for not being half as crazy as they hoped he was -- with even the national unemployment rate only slightly lower than it is now, we took the higher tax rates for the wealthy that Clinton signed into law in stride, right along with the breaks for the middle and lower classes.  And we did more than just okay.  We did pretty damned awesome compared with what we'd just come out of.  We had a surplus.  Unemployment dropped almost three full percentage points over the next eight years.  At least until He Who Must Not Be Named started two completely unnecessary wars while telling the world we'll figure out how to pay for it later and people like Mitt Romney can game the system for as much as the Cayman Islands will hold at the expense of as many people as they want.

Going back to the Clinton-era tax rates at the moment isn't ideal, only because the tax rates for the middle class would also increase.  But it won't ruin us, either.  So we can stop acting like this is what the Mayans were on about any time.

Secondly, the "counteroffer" Boehner and his cohorts just put on the table is not only impossible, it's impossible in a way that makes the cliff look like the better option.  The cliff, while raising taxes for everyone, doesn't disembowel the programs that people who aren't rich depend on because even if they worked their minimum wage job 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, they still wouldn't have enough to cover all their bills for the month.  And the cliff doesn't gut these programs so that people like the Koch brothers and Bernie Madoff don't have to give up that sixth house in the Maldives.

Thirdly -- and I've saved the best for last -- is that if the GOP gave half the crap that they shat on Election Night about reducing the deficit as much as they pretend to, they would be flooring the gas to get over that cliff as fast as possible, because that's exactly what the cliff is going to do: reduce the deficit.

But they aren't.  They're trying, instead, to put on the brakes even if it means blowing the engine and stopping the car dead.  And the only reason they care enough to do so is because the tax hike would affect the top 1% who are supposed to line their coffers and rig the voting machines for 2014.  If the tax hike was only on the middle class, we wouldn't be having this conversation.  Also, Medicare/Medicaid, social security, and food stamps are an evil scheme to breed more gay atheist brown people to take over the country and we need to eliminate them before the Great Pumpkin and his army of Killer Tomatoes take vengeance, according to the cellphone-dwelling alien microbes.

It's a cognitive dissonance in that they're half on board the HMS Keynes, but don't want to admit it because they're afraid the captain of the Menger will give them a taste of the lash for such vile sedition.  And it'd be hilarious if it wasn't gumming up the works so much.

So, as a solution, I propose this: every single Congresscritter who agrees with John Boehner should be barred from introducing or voting on any legislation regarding the economy until they've passed the Advanced Placement Government and Economics exam with a score of 3 or higher.  If they do not pass it, their seat is recalled, and their state will hold a special election.  All candidates for these elections must also pass the Advanced Placement Government and Economics exam with a 3 or higher before they can appear on the ballot.

Because what the GOP has yet to realize is that Obama being a lame duck President doesn't mean he's lost his power; quite the opposite.  He doesn't have another election to worry about winning for the history of ever.  He doesn't have to watch his step, because he has nothing left to lose for the next four years.

They do.  About 214 things, to be precise.

"Job Creators" Are Much Like "Inconceivable"

...If you're a Republican, it doesn't mean what you think it means.

The thing about "job creators" that the Republicans have missed the last four years and will keep missing the next four unless the lot of them get bashed in the face with a clue-by-four is who they actually are.  Obviously, people who create jobs.  But what the GOP fails to understand is who really does that and how they do it.

The people who directly create jobs are very often well-off enough to have a business of their own, yes.  But the thing about a business is that it needs income in order to pay its employees and buy its supplies and still have profit left over.  Where does that money come from?

Look in the mirror.

Yes, you.  That money that keeps businesses running and keeps the paychecks flowing comes from you.  It comes from me.  It comes from your friends and neighbors and your bus driver and your teacher and that woman who bags your groceries and that college kid who made your latte this morning.  It comes from everyone in the country who buys things, and the majority of that everyone is not made up of Fortune 100 CEOs.

Rich people do have more disposable income than the rest of us, yes, and can spend much more than any of us can as individuals.  But there are a lot more of us than there are of them, so collectively we spend money in far greater quantities.

I see it at my job all the time.  The majority of people who come into my store looking for new cool stuff they don't really need but really really want are not upper class.  And you can tell they're not upper class because the average person who makes $250K/year is not going to do a ten-minute cost-benefit analysis with you on an item that's under $50.  The average person who makes $250K/year is not going to camp out on Thanksgiving in anticipation of Black Friday because their sleep is more valuable to them than the money they'll be saving on that doorbuster.

And there is absolutely nothing wrong with not having the money to drop $50 on a whim, and to have to shop on Black Friday because you won't be able to afford that item otherwise.  My point is that the millions of people I see every day who do that are not rich.  But I see way the hell more of them as customers than the ones who have the money to buy out my entire stockroom, and still have enough for dinner at Joe's Stone Crabs.

It's the middle-class people who are the fabled "job creators" because it's their money that gives me my tiny-but-vital paycheck.  If they weren't buying things, there would not be demand for my job.  And no company worth its salt is going to create jobs they don't need to just to put people to work.

With this in mind, now remember the trickle-down economics that the Republicans have been trying to sell you for decades, and see if you don't feel like you're being approached by some creepy guy on a subway platform trying to get you to buy a wooden iPad for $200.

Because giving rich people more money that they're not going to spend in enough quantities to matter will not grow anything except their bank accounts.

You grow an economy the way you grow a tree; by watering the soil, not the leaves.  So that you have solid roots and a strong trunk so it doesn't get blown over in the first nasty wind that hits it.  You can even have a tree with no leaves at all in the wintertime when resources are scarce.  You can't have a tree without a trunk and a root system.

 The GOP's policy of watering the leaves and assuring us that it will somehow reach the rest of the tree, biology be damned, is going to do nothing but destroy the parts of the tree that make it a tree in the first place.  Trickle-down economics does way worse than merely not work; it prevents any other strategy or action from being taken.  When the tax cuts are going to rich people, who in turn donate to the lawmakers who give them the tax cuts so they can get re-elected and then pocket the rest, what you have is an infinite closed loop of money that doesn't create one single goddamned job.  Because it's not reaching the people who truly create those jobs: us.

How to Lose Gracelessly: The Republican Handbook

I never much liked sports when I was in school.  I partly blame the South Florida sun and humidity that makes your clothes stick to you like a lot of Post-It notes in embarrassing places, but most of it is because gradeschool sports culture is a swamp of hurt and grudges and all around foul sportsmanship.  Which is to say it's a lot like the GOP this past week.

The one piece of advice that every P.E. coach I ever had tried and failed to drill into the heads of my classmates was that sports was about having fun and getting your fat ass moving more than it is about winning or losing.  "It isn't whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game," was chanted like a mantra.  And if you're going to lose, at least do yourself a favor and lose with dignity and learn why you lost so you can play a better game next time.

In this case, the GOP strategy for losing is about as screwed up as their campaign was.

From Paul Ryan blaming black "urban" voters, to Romney blaming "gifts", to Rove claiming voter suppression on the part of the Democrats because they convinced people not to vote for Romney -- Karl, that's called campaigning, voter suppression is what you guys tried to do in Florida and Pennsylvania and Ohio, among other places -- it's like a handbook for how to lose in the sorest way possible since Kenneth Pinyan.

And if they're not trying to blame black people and poor people and women and gays being allowed to vote as the reason they lost, they -- or at least Fox News, but these days same difference -- turn to the old standby, the batshit conspiracy theory.  They turn to Benghazi and Fast and Furious as an empty "I told you so" to anyone who will listen.  Which, strangely enough, not even they're doing.

This is not how you lose if you ever want to win again.  Not just because it's dickish.  Not because it's racist.  Not because it's condescending.  Not because it's a turnoff to everyone but your most brainwashed sycophants.  It's all of these things, yes, but there's an even bigger reason that even someone who is a racist, condescending dick should be able to appreciate:

If you're blaming everyone else and shooting Oliver Stone films in your spare time, you aren't learning a goddamned thing about why you actually lost.  And if you don't do that, if you don't look back at the game footage with a critical eye to see exactly where you screwed up and how you should avoid screwing up that way again, you will never be able to win another title.

When even Bobby Jindal -- the guy who allowed Creationist propaganda to masquerade as science in Louisiana public schools -- is telling you to "stop being the stupid party", I think it's time to face the room full of addicts and admit you have a problem.

Why the GOP Has Lost Far More Than the Election

November 6, 2012 was a win.  Not just for President Obama, but for everyone in the United States with a firm grip on reality.  For those who truly care about making this country better for everyone who lives in it, not just the privileged few at the top.  For those who want to see this nation succeed in spite of one half of its two-party system doing damn near everything to sabotage it.

Which means, of course, that it was a loss for the Republicans.  Just the latest in a long line of losses that stretches back the last two decades.

And what they have lost goes way beyond mere elections.  They have lost their anchor in the fabric of the world.  Some out there will invariably say that Mitt Romney was not elected because he was merely unlikeable; he let his true colors come through too often, and the American people decided they just weren't as into Piero Manzoni as his strategists had anticipated.  But it goes so much deeper than that.

The first problem the GOP has is that it's trying to appeal to an America that no longer exists.

This is only a slight oversimplification.  The demographic the GOP has always depended on to vote them into office -- the white, upper-crust churchgoing men with trophy wives and two-point-five children -- has been steadily shrinking since the late 1980s.  America has gotten browner, gayer, and less concerned with who created the universe.

Compounding this is that the GOP depends on that white, upper-crust churchgoing man to be not just staunchly conservative, but fearful of change.  Because that fear is to their power what the One Ring is to Sauron.  It's the basis for everything they do.  They can't use gays, atheists, and brown people as threats to the American way of life unless the white men they're pandering to have enough sphinctre-loosening terror to prey upon.  And that fear has been steadily dissipating for the last eight years.  Ever since Massachusetts made it clear that people can marry who they want, and the Earth will keep spinning and the sky will stay up because astrophysics and human sexuality have the same effect on each other as iocaine powder does on The Dread Pirate Roberts.

This is not to say that there aren't still some scared, angry white guys out there.  There are plenty.  That Obama's win in this race was significantly less of a landslide victory than it was in 2008 against a far less extreme opponent and with record numbers of minority voters is clear evidence of that.  But there just aren't enough paranoid, angry white people to sustain the GOP as they are.

The second problem for the GOP is, quite frankly, the internet and the age of free and immediate information that it has fostered.  Thirty years ago, it could take days or even weeks of research to refute a false claim in a political ad or a debate, and even longer to put that new information into people's hands.  Now, with the internet being more popular than television as a news source, people all over the country can fact-check what you say as you say it and put that information out there before you even know what your next lie is going to be about.  You can't just swiftboat your way into office anymore.  As this election and the 2008 election have proven, people do care about facts.  And now that those facts are available on-demand, wherever and whenever they're needed, people care about them more than ever.

The third, and biggest problem, is that the GOP refuses to acknowledge the first two problems.  It refuses to face reality, because reality is hard and unforgiving.  It's a very childlike mentality of hoping that if they ignore unpleasant things, they will go away.

First, they selected Mitt Romney as their frontman.  The upper-crustest, churchgoingest, angriest, whitest unless he's appearing before an Hispanic audience guy they could find.  Next, they ignore every piece of bad news that surfaces about him.  They ignore his unreleased tax returns.  His record of assaulting classmates with scissors.  His seemingly pathological need to lie.  His inability to do simple math.  His hypocritical denouncing of his own policies.  His contempt for nearly half the country he's depending on to elect him.  And the train-loads of smarm that ooze from every pore of him like poison ivy.  It's less like ignoring the elephant and more like ignoring the giant pile of elephant droppings while everyone else in the room is gagging on the stench.

It's a policy that clearly doesn't work anymore when not even the most blatant attempts at voter suppression since the Reconstruction Era could save their candidate.

What they must take from this election if they're ever going to win another one is that progress is like a glacier; slow, almost imperceptibly so at times, but ultimately unstoppable.  And as with a glacier, you have three options when one is bearing down on you: 1) move forward with it, 2) get out of the way, or 3) get buried by it.

The GOP's fact-free fantasy bubble of being able to rely on lies and paranoid white men can't shield them any longer.  The principle of evolution applies as much to politics as it does to biology: you either adapt, or you go extinct.