Friday, July 06, 2018                                                2:14 AM

A Republican Will Look You In the Eye   (2018Jul6)

Capitalism, commodification, monetization—all lovely stuff, and anyone that thinks up a new way to ‘package’ a need, gets to be a Baller—cool, how exciting.

Except for lobbyists, who corrupt our legislators and bedevil our laws, all in the name of profit; for extremists and hypocrites, who conflate our politics with their oh-so-profitable zealotry, and hold the line against legislation that might really enforce equality and fairness; for arms-makers, who are the richest pigs on earth (mostly because they’ve sold death for so long, they can pretend it’s a basic necessity); for investors who refuse to connect their personal profit with the ubiquitous inhumanity of banks, industries, and the overly entitled.

It’s true that changing this nation-turned-crackhouse back into a halfway-decent home is a seemingly impossible task. The only thing that stopped them before was politicians—politicians who got votes by promising to protect you from these greedy, soulless bastards. Somehow, in the eighties, people starting talking about the economy—about how everyone’s lifestyle hinged on a healthy economy, so it was bad to yell at the rich people.

I saw that for the bullshit it was, back when everyone else was talking about how cool Charlie Sheen and Michael Douglas were in “Wall Street”. But I was, and am, in a tiny minority of people. For over thirty years, wages have frozen, benefits and profit-sharing are history, work hours are longer, and work environments have become ever more dehumanizing.

When big industries lie to us now, we don’t laugh in their faces anymore—we actually listen to them, as if they had no profit-motive for every word, deed, or decision. We don’t even laugh at a clown like Trump—he has a whole TV news channel dedicated to spreading his ignorance and lies. And at least 30% of us are bitter and ignorant enough to hear what we want to hear, even when it’s so false, it contradicts logic. Thank you, Fox News—and Fuck you—very much.

A Republican will look you in the eye and tell you the $15/hour is just too much money to pay some people—that making the minimum wage $15/hour would only hurt business. Poor business—it might get an owie.

Let’s ignore the fact that that’s total bullshit—let’s just consider the fact that a politician (who presumably needs votes to keep the job) is publicly stating that paying a living wage, across the country, is no concern of the government—and that if it is, the businesses are more important anyway, so go fish.

A Republican will describe their big new bill as a ‘tax cut’, instead of the embezzlement it truly represents. A Republican will tell you they oppose abortion for ethical reasons—which would be easier to believe if they didn’t scoff at the ethical considerations of any other plank on their platform. A Republican will tell you that Trump has done nothing wrong—and is doing a great job. A Republican has nothing to say, however, when thousands of children are kidnapped, and are stilled being held in ‘detention centers’, denied reunification with the parent they were torn from, weeks, sometimes months ago.

A Republican will tell you that only 46 Puerto Ricans died from last year’s disaster—and that relief was provided, and all is well. A Republican will tell you that it was right to hold up Obama’s SCOTUS nomination, but it would be wrong to hold up Trump’s.

(Oh, and they’ll also tell you Trump is Not a racist). Though, if that is the case, then I have been using that word wrong all these years.