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.