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The following is an excerpt from a debate on Jim Goad’s Netjerk Lounge forum that started off about devastating insults, but jack-knifed into a discussion about the Tea Party.
The following is an excerpt from a debate on Jim Goad’s Netjerk Lounge forum that started off about devastating insults, but jack-knifed into a discussion about the Tea Party. Patton Oswalt apparently thought it would be prudent to throw himself to the wolves and criticize a redneck on an anti-anti-redneck site. We’re including it here it as a response to Luke O’Neil’s post, “So Sick of the Tea Party” because the only thing worse than Sarah Palin is all the liberal arts snobs who scoff at her.
PATTON OSWALT: … Let’s not forget the rare, escalating rant, which seeks to burn away every single molecule of pretension, delusion and bullshit around a subject.
Like this comment from a thread on DemocraticUnderground.com — a Vietnam vet, and his feelings on the Teabaggers and militia dildos:
“A little heads up for the Teabagger/Militia folks from [some]one who once packed heat for Uncle Sam.
If you seriously believe that you are capable of going up against the United States government, I would urge you to put your affairs in order, because you will be swiftly and efficiently fragged, tagged, and bagged. The idea that a bunch of rag-tag, candy-ass drunks believe they could stand up against even a platoon, let alone the full force of the US military is hysterically funny. You have no idea how stupid you appear, prancing through the woods in your camo, to individuals who have seen real combat. Deal with it, assholes. The C-in-C is an African-American. He was democratically elected (in a landslide). All the rest of your whining is bullshit, and you lack even the rudimentary courage to state your true objection to our President.
Fuck it, I haven’t worn a green suit for almost 40 years, but I just might re-up for a chance to put one in the ten ring of a few of you jackasses.”
JIM GOAD: This thread has suddenly taken a whiplash-inducing turn off the narrow, neatly manicured confines of Insult Lane straight into the dark, unincorporated swamps of Teabagger County, USA, and though I’m tempted to start a new thread, I recall that it was Patton, way, way, way, WAY back when this Lounge was founded, who said he preferred a one-threaded, free-association format.
I will respect his wishes on that count. And though I have some murky suspicions about why his own post did a 180-degree spinout from citing golden comedic insults to pasting a bitterly unfunny screed that ended with intimations of violence that I suspect he would have condemned if a “right-winger” had typed them, I would only be speculating if I articulated those suspicions. Patton’s always been very nice to me, and I’d like to believe I’ve treated him the same.
I’ve seen enough people entirely misquote, misstate, and misrepresent my words and motivations that I make a habit of never claiming that I know what’s in someone else’s heart or why they do things. I can sometimes speculate based on their actions and what evidence is available to me, but I never say for certain that I know what they’re really thinking.
And that is why this fallacious reduction of “Tea Party = Racism, Racism, More Racism, And Nothing Else” irks me so.
It’s been nearly two decades since I ceased believing that All Humanpersons Are Created Equal. I believe in the process of evolution, and I believe the process is ongoing. Therefore, I definitely don’t believe we all arrived at the Finish Line at the same time, nor that all social disparities can be explained away by “racism”—a term which, I’ve been told, was coined by Leon Trotsky, whose name at birth was Lev Davidovich Bronstein. I didn’t know Trotsky, so I can’t say for sure whether he invented the term, and you can bet that I’ll double-, triple-, and dodecahedral-check that allegation before I put it in my Race book. But if it’s true, it tends to form an intriguing link between communism and beating people over the head with allegations of racism.
Back when I was a Young White Wigger, it started to dawn on me that even though I’d laid down my Ethnic Guns, no one was demanding this of nonwhites. In fact, it was the same people who browbeat whites for racism who openly encouraged nonwhites to bask in racial pride and ethnic self-interest—often at the expense of whites who’d never oppressed a soul in their lives. That’s when the whole anti-racist jihad began smelling fishy to me.
See, I don’t hate blacks. Or Mexicans. Or even Jews. I believe that, generally, these groups tend to have different aptitudes and tend to excel and fail in different areas at unequal clips, but—miraculously, somehow—I’ve never wanted to harm anyone because of these beliefs. I also find it perfectly understandable that they’d want to act in their own interests.
What I hate is HYPOCRISY. And the ethnic double standards in this country have reached such an egregious level, it’s the anti-racists, with their incessant belittling of All Things White, who are actually creating more white “racists” than existed before they came along trying to stamp out racism forever.
You can only demean a group of people so long before they fall down prostrate and let you run over them…or they develop some healthy self-interest of their own and tell you to shove your imaginary guilt-tripping up your ass.
So, yes, I believe that in some respects, some members of this “Tea Party” movement are rejecting a hypocritical multiculturalism that celebrates everything except being white. If multiculturalism told EVERYONE to knock it the fuck off with ethnic self-pride—or, better yet, if it told everyone it was OK to be OK with your skin—I’d have no problem with it. It’s the double standard which I find loathsome and ultimately dangerous.
What’s also scorchingly hypocritical about all the verbal shit hurled at “Teabaggers” is the inherent level of seething hatred and incessant demeaning of the “cultural other.” Everyone knows I have no problems with hatred—but the anti-baggers are people who profess to be all about compassion. When they pull out their magnifying glasses in a desperate quest for someone, somewhere saying “nigger,” the palpable contempt and name-calling in their rhetoric seems—to me, at least—to exhibit a far higher level of true hatred than anyone they deem to be “haters.”
The danger in reducing all criticism of Obama to “racism” is that it will soon—sooner than you think—be perceived as crying wolf. Once people who don’t possess true harmful malice toward nonwhites get tired of being called “racists,” they won’t even care about being called it, and the arrogantly triumphalist white leftists who claim to understand what it’s like to be poor and nonwhite won’t have a wooden leg to stand on. Then they’ll have a fuck-ton of explaining to do regarding why the American standard of living has plopped into the toilet and why black communities are far more fractured, dysfunctional, and dangerous than they were before the Good Whites came along in 1965 or so to right all historical wrongs.
I don’t think the Tea Party movement is fundamentally driven by racism. Sure, it coincided with Obama’s election, but the bigger picture is that it coincided with a dying economy that still shows no signs of curing itself and a growing public perception that both major political parties represent only the interests of financial elites who have only scorn and contempt for working Americans.
I don’t know whether or not the guy on DemocraticUndergound.com was or wasn’t a soldier in Vietnam. But it’s a rank fallacy to imply, as he seems to do, that the Tea Partiers are devoid of people who have been shot at in Vietnam’s rice paddies due to the actions of our overreaching government. It seems as if his argument is that the government is so powerful that to even think about challenging it is an act of suicide. That may or may not be true. I don’t know. What I do know is that if people in 1776 felt that hopeless, we’d still be paying taxes to the Crown.
This one’s for you, John Goad, big brother o’ mine. You were my first hero, and you’re still my hero. You were shot at by communists. And if you think Obama’s a communist who’s trying to dismantle a nation you risked your life for, I’ll take your side on this one.
PATTON OSWALT: No disrespect to your brother, Jim — my father is a wounded Vietnam vet (three tours as a 1st Lieutenant) — but what evidence does John have that Obama is a Communist who’s out to tear down America? One of the things I’ve always admired about you — and, indeed, everyone on this board — is that, whenever they can, they present facts when making an argument.
And please — PLEASE — enough with the “white culture is under attack” nonsense. Last I checked, white culture is doing perfectly fine. Name one aspect of Caucasian culture that’s floundering. Most profitable music, live touring and record sales? Country. NASCAR and pro wrestling? Massive. The most profitable Hollywood blockbusters? Made for, starring, and about white people. The top ten moneymaking movies of ALL TIME are nothing but white people — and if they do involve blacks, Hispanics, Asians or any other culture, they’re pretty much represented as CGI aliens (Avatar), robots (Transformers) or talking animals (Shrek). And not only is television pretty much all white people, it’s white people who’re so white that even white people can’t relate to them (Desperate Housewives, The Hills).
We’re doing fine, Jim. It’s still great to be white. It sucks to be poor but, hey, that cuts across color lines. Always has, always will.
Also — when did I say anything bad about whites, white people, being white, etc.? I was — rightfully, in my opinion — ridiculing the Teabaggers and militia groups who are, also, angry about things for which they have zero facts. Where the fuck were they when Bush & Co. were sending their sons and daughters to war on a lie? Where were they when the Clinton Cabal was passing NAFTA? Where were they when Reagan was turning the American Dream into indentured servitude? There were plenty of liberal soy-douches out protesting, but everyone wrote them off as traitors and wimps. I’m sure the giant puppets and bongo-playing unicycle riders didn’t help.
And, most hilariously, they think Obama is a COMMUNIST. Obama is less liberal than Richard Nixon. Obama passed a de-fanged, de-spined health care bill, deepened our involvement in Afghanistan, hasn’t closed Gitmo (or foresworn the use of torture or wiretapping) and has completely protected the sociopaths on Wall Street who’ve done more to gut and cripple this country than any Commie, jihadist or trust-fund anarchist could ever dream. He’s completely in line with Bush — and yet the Teabaggers and militia groups have only voiced their anger since January 20th, 2009. Actually, a little before — anyone remember Rush Limbaugh’s November 8th, 2008 remark about the “Obama recession?”
And if, as you say, the Teabaggers and militia people aren’t racist, then why don’t they immediately censure, shut down, and shun the people at their rallies holding up racist signs, screaming, “Faggot!” and “Nigger” at Congress people, and walking around with fucking guns and “time to water the tree of Liberty” signs?
Also, the signs — where’s that old-fashioned American spell-check? Would the Colonists have rallied behind a “Don’t Tredd On Me” flag?
JIM GOAD: Patton, it’s telling that you mention “white culture” whereas I’m talking more broadly about white people. Regarding who raised the topic of race, it was your anonymously self-proclaimed Vietnam vet who, like so many others, insist on reducing all criticism of Obama to his skin color.
And when you mention “white culture,” the phenomena you cite are confined to pop culture—a world which my mind rarely inhabits—rather than, say, REAL-WORLD (and not the MTV kind) white guys in Denver who don’t happen to be country musicians or NASCAR drivers getting hunted down and murdered by Crips looking to attack someone “white” or white girls in Philly being permanently disfigured by black flash mobs chanting “BLACK BOYS!” and “BURN THE CITY!”
The real-world statistics regarding interracial violence—which will be presented in painstaking detail in my book—will reveal that white people are hardly doing as fine as you and Hollywood suggest they are.
The way the current argument is framed in American pop culture, “racism,” like domestic violence, is a practice in which only white males engage. I believe the evidence contradicts this somethin’ fierce.
You continue to suggest that the vocal upsurge in anti-government sentiment started PRECISELY on the day of Obama’s inauguration—or only a “little before,” when, to my recollection, militias were much more active during Clinton’s presidency—whereas I’ve already suggested that it more logically coincides with the economy’s collapse. As for your question of why weren’t any of these people criticizing Bush, I believe I’ve already demonstrated that, at the very least, my brother and I were doing precisely that long before either of us so much as heard of Barack Obama. And much of the libertarian-leaning folk in America, some of whom ally themselves with Tea Partiers but not many of whom belong to militias—welding the two phenomena is something upon which you seem to insist, just as many people like to link anyone who isn’t ashamed of being white directly with the frickin’ Holocaust, employing fallacies eerily similar to “Reefer Madness”-style arguments that smoking weed will lead to mainlining heroin within a week—have for DECADES seen little difference in the two major parties and view both entities as entirely sold-out to transnational corporations and international bankers. So it is, at worst, dishonest and, at best, uninformed, for people such as your faceless Vietnam vet to keep playing the Race Joker during this here card game. Plenty of people have been criticizing the entire system long before Barry O came along.
And since you threw down the gauntlet of presenting evidence and facts, I’d like you to present something more substantial than a black congressman or two’s claims that someone called them “nigger.” For every black politician who gets faxed a picture of a noose, I could trot out a dozen Jesse Jacksons and Al Sharptons disparaging “hymies” and “white homos.” I could unspool a toilet-paper-roll-length amount of RECORDED evidence of nonwhite American politicians disparaging whites in no uncertain terms, as well as ludicrously abundant—but again, documented—accounts of hate-crime hoaxes, but I’ll withhold doing that until you present me with something more than hearsay regarding your specific allegation.
Regarding spelling and grammar, I could go to any “by blacks, for blacks” pro-Obama site on the Internet and drag back more per-sentence grammatical atrocities than any Tea Party placard you care to mock, yet I don’t see you being fair and applying the same standards across the board.
Regarding dumb politicians, read this, take two aspirin, and call me in the morning.
Regarding the idea that all Tea Partiers should be held accountable for not censuring the purported actions of a few, some of whom are possibly leftist shills and “party-crashing” plants, I haven’t heard any righteous condemnations from you about New Black Panthers wielding clubs and taunting “crackers” outside polling places during the last presidential election. Likewise, I don’t see you criticizing groups such as La Raza—which, literally translated, means THE RACE—for being “racist.”
At the very least, let’s be fair here and apply our standards equally.
If someone actually screamed “nigger” at one of those rallies, then, yeah, he was a dumbass. Will you hold hands with me, transcend the boundaries that LSD taught us to transcend, and likewise condemn dumbassery when it comes from the other “side”?
You had asked for even a shred of evidence to support the idea that Obama may be harboring socialist/communist sympathies. Well, his deadbeat dad seemed rather keen on “African Socialism.” His deadbeat mom was said to be infatuated with the Frankfurt School’s “critical theory” method of assailing Western culture, an approach that was steeped in Marxist ideology. A reputedly huge influence on Obama’s thinking during his teen years was Communist Party USA member Frank Marshall Davis. He has expressed fondness for Saul Alinsky, and he launched his campaign for the Illinois Senate at Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dorhn’s house. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has light-heartedly suggested that Obama may be more left-wing than either himself or Fidel Castro. And Castro seemed quite happy with Obama’s healthcare bill.
There are your shreds. Do with them what you will.
As ludicrous as it might seem, at least on the surface, to imply there could be a connection between one-world communist nation-smashing and international corporate finance, there’s ample evidence that the Bolshevik Revolution was in no small part aided and abetted by capitalist bankers.
Lastly, thanks ever so much for the patronizing “we’re doing fine,” but you have, as you say, zero facts to buttress such an allegation regarding me or, for that matter, anyone with whom I normally associate. You may be doing fine, but across the board, everyone else I know is doing far worse than they were only a couple years ago. What’s worse, most of the media continue to slap them in the face by insisting that any grumbling they do about their deteriorating condition is rooted in psychological pathologies rather than measurable things such as nickels and dimes.
My father grew up in the Great Depression, didn’t finish high school, and yet, somehow, was able to pay for a house in full and buy a new car every three years. I graduated at the top of my class in college, scramble to pay rent, and have never owned a car that was made in the same decade in which I was driving it.
So please speak for only yourself regarding who’s doing fine, and I’ll do the same. Fair ’nuff, puddin’-pop?
Yesterday afternoon, before dragging my brother into this discussion, I called him and asked him if it was OK to drag him into this discussion. He said it was more than OK. Like me, he hears very little discussion from Tea Partiers about race and a mountain of concern about deficit spending, fiat currency, and the mathematically inexorable implosion such things will cause. He also, like me, doesn’t see much substantial difference between Bush and Obama, only that Obama is accelerating a downward economic spiral that began years ago. Like me, he also feels Obama is, perhaps unwittingly, only exacerbating racial tensions in the name of anti-racism and a hypocritically “post-racial” fixation on “racial justice.” He also wanted everyone to know he believes that until Obama came along, “George W. Bush was the greatest Democratic president we’ve ever had.”
Also—merely because I refused to make this particular discussion about popular culture doesn’t mean I don’t think anti-white sentiment abounds in popular culture while sentiments against nonwhites and Jews are verboten. The thing is, not only do I HATE pop culture and think it makes people retarded, I covered the topic of pop culture hatin’ on whitey over a dozen years ago in The Redneck Manifesto. I uber-anally detailed what I believe are persistently outrageous double standards in pop culture which allow free rein to anti-white depictions that would never be greenlit if they pertained to any other group.
I’d also dare to say that blacks, as 13 percent of the real population, are statistically over-represented on TV shows, movies, and commercials. It’s the Hispanics who are missing a voice in pop culture. But the reason I don’t like talking about pop culture is because I roll my blue eyes whenever anyone presents a scene from a movie as “evidence” for how things are going in real life. If one depended on movies, you’d falsely conclude that racial violence is a one-way street paved by the KKK. Sorry, Charlie, but that’s not how the numbers are skewing in real life.
For those who didn’t bother to paw through this muck, here’s the takeaway. Goad is a race-obsessed white Georgian who gets his cues from Limbaugh-types who think Obama’s a committed commie-type. Goad thinks he’s compiling meaningful statistics about an overabundance of black-on-white crime. Carry on.
both sides are using the tea party to bring up their pet issues. the tea party is about government spending and the deficit and the bailouts, not this whole populist platform, real or imagined.
the same goes double for the democrats. Guys, you didn’t lose thise election because of racism, you lost it because of the economy.
and I’m not just saying this to further MY thing, the economy, because I’m right about that. and people who say it’s something else are wrong!
Take away, take away
Take away this ball and chain!
patton for the win.
Why’d you fags bring your little debate here? Jim Goad is easily the most tiresome pop-culture personality on this site.
just because you talk louder and longer than everyone else doesn’t mean you won the argument Mr Goad.
I still don’t understand what americas problem with socialism is? Free healthcare and schooling rules. It works perfectly fine in many other countries (including the one I grew up in) and the taxes aren’t significantly higher at all. Personally I do miss not having to worry constantly that I might hurt myself and then not only be injured but in shit tons of debt.
But then maybe if the US didn’t spend all it’s tax payers money on starting wars it can’t win it might have a little left over to throw into pointless things, like education and healthcare.
And THAT is the real reason everybody is doing worse than a few years ago.
Patton comes across as the rational, intelligent guy he has always appeared to be.
I’m mostly white (1/2 to 3/4) and have never felt like I’ve been treated unfairly as such. Jim Goad’s rant here, smacks of white guilt.
Interesting how Goad gets the last word here. Also interesting how, when comparing this “debate” and Luke’s post, it becomes so clear that a gift for gab and anti-ideological-status-quo positioning can make bullshit so persuasive. That being said, those “shreds” about Obama being a communist (which, I have to say, probably have very little to do with why he’s being accused of such) are intriguing. Even if they do read like Six Degrees of Leon Trotsky.
Goad loves to talk about race. Have you heard he has a new book coming out about race? I believe it gonna be called Race.
@pfft – The American Dream, “Fuck you, I’ve got to get mine.” So long as everyone thinks they’rethiscloseto becoming filthy rich, they’ll never support any policy that puts the welfare of the nation first. How un-American is that?
@Jeremy – I can’t wait to read about how bad whitey has it and hope it prepares me for the impending race war. Here’s hoping my light skin and “good” hair allow me to serve as a double agent for the browns.
If you think public schools are fair and the teachers deserve their $60 per hour actually worked, check out the rigamarole you have to go through in order to fire them.
So long as everyone thinks they’rethiscloseto becoming filthy rich, they’ll never support any policy that puts the welfare of the nation first.
So, rather than not believing liberal policies “put the welfare of the nation first”, conservatives believe liberal policies are what’s best but only oppose them because of selfishness?
This is why political discourse is next to impossible in contemporary America – people only argue with caricatures of their opponents.
first off. the Tea Party is/was a well funded marketing/propaganda campaign used to justify the outcome of a heavily gerrymandered election. nothing more. they will not wield any lasting power in American politics. assholes like Rand Paul will begin to vote against any “libertarian” or “objectivist” platforms and, for reasons of political hegemony, will ally himself with the entrenched elite interests of the GOP. he’s a Senator now, not some lowly House representative.
but what i’ve never understood is why average American people are so hateful and terrified of “socialism” or “marxism” (and let’s be honest Socialism doesn’t really exist in America outside the Military). but, they don’t seem to mind the Plutocratic Oligarchy that is driving real wages down in order to enslave us all. the true gold standard is the value of Labor Hours Worked not an obscure fiat currency’s relationships with a rare metal. if you hate “liberals” and “educated whites” i suggest tuning into http://www.truthdig.com and reading Chris Hedges or Robert Sheer for a wider perspective.
and then along comes Goad (with all due respect, sir) stirring up racial tension by overstating the obvious. Yes…indeed it is okay to be proud to be white. But allying yourself with Anarcho-Capitalist swine isn’t necessarily the best course for the future of the American Melting Pot. And to state that “George Bush was a Democrat” is to take hyperbole into the realm of absolute insanity. Obviously, this comes from the same mouth that thinks Obama is a Socialist. get a grip, brother.
i like goad…oswald is fat
white power -
“the Tea Party is/was a well funded marketing/propaganda campaign used to justify the outcome of a heavily gerrymandered election. nothing more.”
so it had nothing to do with the unemployemnt rate? The people I know who voted for OBama in 08 and voted GOP in 10 did so because they were heavily gerrymandered and marketed too? that’s nuts.
“the true gold standard is the value of Labor Hours Worked not an obscure fiat currency’s relationships with a rare metal”
so if I work for an hour on something it has value? even if it’s something no one wants? me singing and Debbie Harry singing have the same worth?
Enough talk about Obama adding to the deficit. Here are some facts for you: https://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3086 Basically it states the the deficit will get worse and fucking worse because of policies enacted under Bush whose effects still haven’t been fully felt and not Obama.
@ white power: You’re speaking a little too much truth there, sir. You need co-opting ASAP. I’d buy you a Senate seat, but it’ll be two years until I can get one for you…Tell you what, I’m working on a project with another astute lefty [@ the revolution industry] who I encountered at the Rollins-bash last week, and you’re invited too, as follows:
I like your thinking, kiddo. Tell ya what, why don’t I have you ‘coptered to my decommisioned carrier, we’ll play a little polo on-deck (the turf’s finally grown in!) and we’ll talk about how you might fit with the project I’m working on with Gavin. It’s called GaVision/Fox-Lite and it’s going to promote/obscure the agenda for the student-loan/pharmaceutical derivatives markets.
On the fun side, I should mention this weekend’s especial incentive–Taki’s negress will of course be serving those famous canapes (wink, wink)!
Welcome to the team. And be assured—-although it hardly needs saying—-that your involvement, like Gavin and Henry’s, will be kept strictly on the down-low.
The following bits were excerpted from http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2010/08/fears-of-regime-change-in-new-york.html
“…When out on my rounds the day before yesterday, I ran into an old McKinsey colleague, who had subsequently had impressively titled jobs in Big Firms You Heard Of before semi-retiring to manage family money. He and his very accomplished wife were big Bush donors and had been invited to both inaugurations.
He made short order of niceties and got to the point: “We need more fiscal stimulus. Obama did too little and too much of what he spent on was liberal pork. We could and need to spend a lot on infrastructure. This is looking a lot like 1936. I’m afraid it could get really ugly. And I’m particularly worried that the Republicans will win big this fall. They’ll cut even deeper, that’s the last thing we need right now.”
No I am not making this up, and yes, this is one of the last people I would have expected to express this line of thinking…”
…[some interesting comments were made, then was contributed the succinct analysis below]…
…
Richard Kline says:
August 27, 2010 at 2:18 am
I’m not surprised to hear the tenor of remarks from your former associate at McKinsey. The right-wing media spin of the last 20 years would have it that ‘he could never defect from his class,’ but that’s just their swill. If this person is intelligent, informed on current policies, and had been previously voting his net worth rather than his prejudicies, his present perspective is where I’d expect him to arrive. The Republican Party currently had zero to offer the economy and their country, and the Tea Potters are of course an oligarch-funded freak show. The Demos are slack and bought, but there’s nothing else to look for. And most who expect a solution to be effected rather than eventuated understand that active policy intervention is necessary, even if the details on that are hotly disputed. He’s showing he has a clue and knows where to fit it in the puzzle.
To me, one of the under-represented issues of this ongoing financial crisis is the extent to which the policy conquest of the oligarchs is very inimical to the standing of the upper middle class, and even some amongst the truly wealthy. The oligarchs have sucked all the oxygen out of the pond. Consider the impact on medium sized banks of the TARP-and-government lie program we have in place; smaller, well-run places who never got in trouble are taking a big hit with credit rationing, higher regulatory fees, and loss of business to the government-guaranteed Too Big to Kill enterprises. The big boys are getting to unload their rotten ABSs to government buying while the merely rich who bought property at the top are stuck with 40% losses just like the middle class—but were even more leveraged in many cases, witness the remarks that many are just hanging on, keeping up appearances. Yes, the middle class has been a B-I-G loser in the policy outcomes of the last three years, but many of middling wealth feel those walls of ‘creative destruction’ being geared in on them, too, by the oligarchs.
Now being a radical personally, I’d be happier if a quasi-revolutionary outcome would result. I don’t see it. The middle class is politically neutered, voluntarily so, while the poor are politically conquered and heavily policed. There’s precious little resistance brewing down there. As long as those 37% of American young adults presently unemployed can, many of them, move back in off their much maligned Baby Boom (and younger) parents, there’s not revolutionary compression from_that_ lot. An alternative course to a revolutionary outcome, though, is Reform, with a capital R. Reform is the program of the bourgeosie, typically the true middle class more than the haute bourgeois, but still. And in fact, in the 1890-1910 period, the US got not revolution but Reform, in just this way. The trusts ran roughshod over the interests of the nation, and enough of the middle class together with portions of the upper middle class (such as university educated professionals) defected from traditional political alliances to coalesce a reform program. It is worth nothing that that program ran cross party and outside of existing centers of power. The Progressives in the Republican Party ran on good government platforms with litle backing from the oligarchs of the time running the Republican Party of the day, while social justice Democrats pushed reforms with only fragmented backing from the ethnic machine organizations of the urban dominance. Progressive and Democrat programs were not the same, but the reforms that resulted came due to the erosion of existing factions.
This, to me, is the most likely outcome over the next 5-15 years: Reform pushed by the upper middle class and some of the wealthy not in the Ring. Not simply for reasons of historical recurrence, though that is in play in a complex fashion I won’t detail. But more because this is the one group with both the resources and the motivation to actually strive for power in policy decisions. I don’t doubt for a second that this consituency would sell out the rest if offered what they want from the oligarchs but the oligarchs, like the trusts of four generations ago, are simply too toxic and too greedy for the rest to get and endure a handshake.
Seriously, check this out to put the whole Tea-Party nonsense into perspective:
http://leninology.blogspot.com/2010/11/class-basis-of-us-elections.html
I hate it when people use this argument: “THIS person from the other side says this, but if a person from our side said the same thing, the person from the FIRST side would have a cow!!!” Seriously stop using that argument. There are plenty of things to bicker over besides hypothetical hypocrisy.
“wolf. Once people who don’t possess true harmful malice toward nonwhites get tired of being called “racists,” they won’t even care about being called it,”
this is what is happening with criticizing Israel. People are basically embracing the anti semite label because it’s been tossed around so much it’s become meaningless.
Wondered about the ETHNIC pride (race?, human race?) thing. I, a black lady(I know you don’t usually hear an opinon from one of us…but thats another conversation…) saw an ad on a bus for the lesnar/velasquez fight and noticed velasquezs’ “brown pride” tattoo. I asked my self hm what is the difference between white pride and brown pride? Oh the brown black,etc. people have been oppressed in someway, but what if the white pride people think they have been opressed as well? Is it less valid? Who’s opression is worth more? Dicey situation. I try to avoid the politics and actually donate my time and effort to the less fortunate,providing what people are waiting for the government to provide, showing people how to provide for themselves, before they get angry enough to become “tea partiers” or decide to raise up arms over the frustration of people talking and not doing.
previous commenter makes a good point, patton oswalt is pretty fat.
also, maybe cuz im young, but my understanding of multiculturalism was that white people could be as proud as they wanted, its just that i saw it being expressed as pride of being italian, german, greek, etc. black people can’t really do the same cuz of, u kno, slavery rite.
^^^ @ fREDms: ‘black people can’t really do the same cuz of, u kno, slavery rite.’
You’re precisely right, but that is exactly what the resident dittoheads on here are refusing to acknowledge, la la la la. They want to pretend that the legacy of slavery does not exert damaging power up to the present, when it so clearly still does.
The end.
Cut WHAT spending? That’s all that matters. A movement ostensibly based on far reaching government spending, and I still don’t know what they want to cut other than health care. All the words in between are a waste of time.
“Name one aspect of Caucasian culture that’s floundering.”
College humanities departments and basketball and really fat short white guys with small dicks that aren’t particularly funny. Need I go on?
put a fork init nigguhs
I have YET to be invited to that fucking lounge.
By the way, if this country actually brought back conscription, any “pat-himself-on-the-back” partisan Leftist would be “nigger hating” along with the rednecks Tea Partying.
Alas we will never bring back a REAL draft. Just an economic one.
http://www.military.com/news/article/services-exceed-2010-recruiting-goals.html
does this photo make me think “two piles of hot hairy man love”?
seriously, this isn’t the kind of phrase that usually springs into my mind
Things that are socialist and work.
Road systems,police departments,fire departments,the military,sewage and water.
What if we privatized the police force?
They’re posing like Boner 1366.
@Salad
Google Blackwater.
again jim goad writes an unfunny ripoff of gavin’s troll articles. worthless
Jim Choad has a new book?
Black, white, whatever. Just try to smile when you open the door for me, mmkay? Remember, it’s almost Christmas bonus season.
Tl;Dr
98% of sbtvc are seriously stupid douchetits. i stay for the other 2%. where the fuck is vegan jules? vanessa? you people are so maddeningly intentionally dense.
Oligarch-funded Freak-show’s DAD:
COOL FUCKING STORY BROSEPH
Retard Pride!
I like to mention my hero brother at the end of my screeds to put an unassailable button on them, too.
You should put the father-son pic back up
http://www.flickr.com/photos/63353611@N00/964630146/
holy shit! I just realized Patton Oswalt plays the little butch looking friend Spence from King of Queens. Not gonna lie, I try to catch that show every day just because of Jerry Stiller.
Teabagging is for NUTS!
Obama is no socialist, shit he isn’t even a Liberal, he’s a motherfucking moderate republican. Its just that no one remembers what those were like. A Liberal would not have bailed out wall street, escalated another war, dropped the public option, etc. We NEED a Liberal president right now, someone willing to fight for the middle class. The super rich didn’t just endure a recession, they still were out yachting and fucking, the Hipsters need a bailout.
My problem with “white pride” is how vague it is. There are lots of different types of white people. Irish pride, Scottish pride, Italian pride, these are actual things with meaning, and I’m completely okay with them. There used to be discrimination against the Irish and the Italians in this country too, people tried to prove how inferior they were, but eventually you all ended up fucking each other and got to be plain ‘ol white folks like everyone else. Black power came about because we were told we were worthless for so long and few of us have the luxury of being able to trace our genealogy back to Africa. We say ‘black power’ because ‘black’ is as far back as we can get. You know where you came from, you have the ability to take pride in that specific heritage, and instead you lazily say ‘white pride’, because at the end of the day, as long as you’re white, who gives a fuck? Saying “white power” doesn’t have that kind of context, it’s not a reaction to something oppressive, it’s just gluttonous.
I know this shit is melodramatic, but I like this site and I don’t like feeling attacked on it.
STILL with the Jim Goad? Gavin, you are to be lauded for what your innovative work at Vice, but you have completely lost the plot — this shit is SO out of touch.
Its kind of like in recent Woody Allen movies, where the characters make the same cultural references as they did in his 70s movies (Bergman, abstract expressionist painters, etc — i.e. NOT what people talk about at cocktail parties anymore) because Woody is so completely out of touch and old, and he stays holed up in his apartment with Soon-Yee, and hasn’t interacted with the outside world in decades.
You guys are STILL fighting the PC culture wars of the 80s/90s, being angry about the lot of the white man who is “losing the country,” thinking that hardcore music is actual music, etc. Jim, stop trying to shock us with your “white pride,” it is old and boring. The only people that care are OTHER old, bitter punks who remember you fondly from their youth for whatever reason.
In Jim Goad’s mind, Geraldo is still on TV with a panel of skinheads and gangsta rappers, and Goad is angrily fuming at the television, yelling his opinions to all of Portland.
goad is full of shit…
“You continue to suggest that the vocal upsurge in anti-government sentiment started PRECISELY on the day of Obama’s inauguration—or only a “little before,” when, to my recollection, militias were much more active during Clinton’s presidency—whereas I’ve already suggested that it more logically coincides with the economy’s collapse.”
talk about mincing fucking words. average americans were not even remotely aware of the economy’s collapse in the boomin 90s, although the seeds were certainly sown. we can play the blame game all day but until the tea party stops putting nutjobs front and center i cant take them seriously. it’s all about rating these days and sarah palins are $$#. can you dig it?
“Tea party” stuff started way before Obama was even sworn in. In fact it was a Ron Paul thing first, back when Paul was freaking out on Bush about spending. “Where were all these people when Bush was president?” It was a nascent movement that grew as the economy worsened (and then imploded just as Obama was inaugurated).
Also there are like 2 total pictures on the internet from “tea parties” that had signs one could consider racist. And that’s applying a pretty loose standard of “racism.”
People don’t like when people don’t like their politics. Pure tribalism. Get over yourselves.
So, rather than not believing liberal policies “put the welfare of the nation first”, conservatives believe liberal policies are what’s best but only oppose them because of selfishness?
Basically, yeah. How else do you explain the belief that private business has a greater interest in the everyday lives of the public than our elected government (with the exception to what we can do with our bodies)?
This is why political discourse is next to impossible in contemporary America – people only argue with caricatures of their opponents.
Caricatures? You mean to tell me that the most visible conservative personas are not a fair representation of the whole?
@Archie
Though I agree with you that young people today are over race, PC is still a phenomenon that affects our day to day. Juan Williams was JUST fired from NPR for daring to say he feels a little uncomfortable when he sees a Muslim in traditional garb boarding his pane. Maybe it’s because old people are still around but PC is not gone. I see it every day.
@ Taeil
That was a rhetorical question.
I think privatizing the police force would be a horrible idea. Some people would get better care than others.
Just like our health care system.
salad- I wouldn’t say our roads and police works all that well. the roads are in pretty rough shape relatively to what we pay in taxes and the police are overpaid. I live in Boston, they make 6 figures and the mob still runs rampant.
The schools are a more obvious example.
@ Tael n Salad: Thanks for making the only interesting points in this entire ham-fisted debate. I look at it like this: Americans on a whole are some narrow ass thinkers, consumed with dichotomies, possessing the collective memory of a four year old. Take communism to the extreme you get cold-war USSR and the Khmer Rouge. Take capitalism/libertarianism to the extreme you get The War on Drugs and Between Drug Suppliers, Bernie Madoff, and Ferdinand Marcos.
Our tendency to compete fosters innovation and improves efficiencies, but we get the really important shit done when we call a truce, put on matching baseball hats and find the means to work collectively. What irks me most about the Tea Party or Libertarian mentality is that they look at their every penny and possession as “mine mine mine no I won’t share with you mine mine mine” when there is nothing nothing nothing in the world that can be eaten, held or hoped for that didn’t take at least two people rubbing their heads together to create or grow or bring to market.
At the same time shitting out a bunch of kids or sitting on your ass, smoking pot, dipping your dick in a can of paint and painting kitty faces on a canvas does not make you worthy of free lunch from Uncle Sam. Someone has to want to buy those dick kitty faces. You have to do something that makes other people’s lives easier or better or happier to be worthy of any benefits. We can’t all be soldiers or civil engineers; and that doesn’t mean someone can just take away what you’ve worked for.
The underlying problem is that humans have mastered the art of taking shit that isn’t their’s and claiming it belonged to them the entire time. See “The Last 2000 years” for an example.
There’s got to be somewhere in the middle, at point at which we say: For this service, YOU pay; for this other service, WE pay. Its like that now in a lot of ways, but the debate over which is which is dominated by a bunch of spoiled twits who would have you believe – and believe themselves – that they built that F-150 with their bare hands.
wow a whole lot of TLDR from two people i couldnt give a shit less about
U.S. Politics are invidiously moronically dichotomized because the U.S. Constitution is outmoded with regard to the role of political parties. It’s pretty much that simple:
http://www.watchblog.com/thirdparty/archives/001046.html
Today only three of the 36 countries with populations over 2 million people — the United States, Jamaica, and Canada do not use some form of Proportional Representation to elect an important representative body of government
@Steve Dave very well said.
@Dragler
This is not about your shitty little corrupt town of Boston.
The nation has one of the best highway systems in the world. Its one of the reasons people come here to start businesses even with our high tax rate compared to China and India.
@Steve Dave
Google Democratic Socialism. The idea that Capitalism can thrive alongside of certain government run programs that are in the public’s interest.
Such as HEALTH CARE and roads and the police and all that shit.
Uh no offense.
1.no one is coming here instead of china or India nowadays
2.anything the government provides we could just as easily provide ourselves, it’s our money after all. All they are doing is taking it and paying someone to build a road. We could pay those people directly if we wanted. and the government doesn’t even spend our money on roads, they spend it on crap.
@ dragler
“We” could pay the money if “we” wanted to…hmm. So what or who, pray tell, would be the agency of this collective “we”-will?
Cry like a little bitch.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_highways_in_the_United_States
I OWN your shit nigga. Private property? pffft.
It doesn’t matter what Tea Partiers are concerned about any more than it matters what the Green party is concerned about. Both are tools of the Republican party, which will do absolutely anything possible to get back into power so it can give tax cuts to big business. That’s all that it ever comes down to.
Anyone, tea partier or otherwise, who claims that Obama is a communist is an underinformed person who displays ignorance of gigantic proportions. I lived for thirty years under communist rule and I can tell you that if you call Obama communist, you know zero things about the history, politics and philosophy of communism. If we ever elect any leader who is even close to being a communist, I will be the first to march tirelessly in protest. To use the word communist about Obama trivializes the word and that is an insult to the millions and millions of people whose lives were ruined by communist regimes.
i beat a black dude one time in the 100m city competition. i feel very guilty, even though 12 years have passed. i hate races.
The green party is a tool of the Republican Party? Do you know how retarded that sounds?
@Diapertarianism- well, we pay for roads with the tax from the gas pump, but we could easily pay for our schools on an individual basis. There is a pretty complicated framework for non state police and law that people like Robert Murphy write about but certainly we don’t HAVE to have wars and subsidies for the well connected. That’s not the only way a road can be built or maintained.
The point is “the government” doesn’t build roads, our tax dollars do.
The Tea Party Plan for Deficit Reduction:
1. Cut the NEA.
2. $300 billion tax cut.
3. ???
4. Profit!
“Goad thinks he’s compiling meaningful statistics about an overabundance of black-on-white crime. Carry on.”
Lol, only on the internet can someone expect to automatically win an argument and convince people of their views by just dismissing the other person while not addressing any points they made. Just be sassy, snarky, and dismissive! I am just too above it to argue people!!!
Goad is both smart as fuck and completely wrong and that is why I always like reading what he’s written.
why is this an article? who hasn’t seen this same tired debate 1000 times already?
“The real-world statistics regarding interracial violence—which will be presented in painstaking detail in my book—will reveal that white people are hardly doing as fine as you and Hollywood suggest they are.”
Will Goad’s book compare these numbers to same-race-on-race crime? You know, because I need to know how afraid I should be of these marauding black gangs roaming the streets out for blood.
His transformation from self professed “wigger” to whatever the fuck he is now reeks of someone who’s been on a lifelong journey to justify using the word nigger.
LOL @ quoting IQ test scores to prove your point. Standardized tests are bullshit. I got an SAT score that many people would have loved to have, yet I went to art school and 10 years later I work in retail. Those test scores don’t make me smart and didn’t make me make good decisions at that time or since. That’s as retarded as using suicide statistics to measure a country’s collective happiness or arguing that diversity is bullshit because Mexicans hang out with other Mexicans in prison.
patton wins. where can i text my vote to kick jim goad off of street boners?
i agree with much. i believe Obama is so far to the left as to be Marxist. Your admiration for Saul Alinsky speaks volumes. i object to equating tea party members with militia or racists. just because people speak out against an intrusive government does not make them insane assholes. it is exactly the spirit of the Colonists in `76 that built this country. i see no purpose to these militia groups.
and i have nothing but scorn for anyone who demonstrates any kind of bigotry–against blacks, Jews, Catholics—anyone. i believe Obama is the most radical president we have ever had. i do NOT believe this healthcare bill is in any way DEFANGED. it provides for almost 1500 new taxes upon the people. it puts 1/6 of the US economy in government hands. it is so packed with lies, penalties and restrictions as to be stifling to private enterprise. and, in time, it will bankrupt America as it has other nations and states that have tried it.
I assume my posts will be deleted– but my apologies to Jim Goad for my behavior on his fan-page. The miracles of modern pharmacology have kicked in. I am better now. Everything said was under the influence of psychosis.
liberals disgust me. if you disagree with them—or the president–you are a racist, or just plain stupid. i could vomit from them .their small-mindedness is astonishing. as though this president has done anything worthwhile. but you can never change their minds. they are ideologues who only see things their way. i’ve been called names, especially by liberals–honky, cracker–you name it. oh–and of course, whitey. I mentioned this in another post. Name callers sicken me. Anyone who shares these racist or liberal views disgusts me. That’s why I can’t discuss politics in certain classes in school.
whats wrong with protesting hgovernment policies? thats what got this country started. but liberals think that ameircans are too stupid to think for themselves. that only big government can think for them. assholes.
dragler– some of what you say is true. the dem. loss was about the economy and the administrations failed economic policies.but there was also a socialist component to that loss—that government was too invasive in our lives. and it is.
pffft–you are dumb. there is NO SUCH THING as free anything!!! ronald reagan: for every dollar you give to someone, you have to take it from someone else. free my ass!!!! socialism discourages free enterprise, audacity, investment, entrepreneurship. why work hard—if you just have to give away what you make to those who wont work.
white power–your writing is a bunch of double-speak mouthed by a radical leftist. anyone dismissive of the tea party and what it was trying to say is simply blinded by their left wing ideology–as evidenced by your saying, and whats wrong with socialism or marxism. you blindly find it SO hard to believe that individuals are tired of being treated the way the government treats—and taxes us. that’s just stupid. England made that same mistake.
you people–you sound like a political science major– and most political science majors are just maggots.
young and dumb–what a shock. this obsession with sarah palin. i have nothing against her. i dont want her to run for president, but she definitely speaks to the majority of americans—those who dont live in nyc, san fran, LA and boston and the likes. you know—the rest of us.
stupid emo kissy face- you are another idiot. as if all the democrats were just plain poor working folks. like ted kennedy, john kerry, john edwards and his ilk.
you know—poor people like bill gates, warren buffet etc. all democrats.
but we dont want to mention that. it wouldnt fit the mythical mode of what a democrat is.
Smizety—one can adhere to points of marxist philosophy—without being a coummunist.
moreover, there are degrees of communism–from totally militant (like cuba) to china–which is more capitalist than we are right now. politically they might say they are communist—and they might treat their workers that way, but their economy is totally capitalist.
liberals– wait until you meet the real world and see what a paycheck looks like when the government gets done with it. your 80K jobs turn into 40K in take home pay. however– i am done here– arguing with liberals is as useful as banging your head against a concrete wall!
for those of you not wanting to read this, jim goad is a fucking moron