Ch 20 Auto Salesmen

Culture War, Class War, Chapter Twenty:

Auto Salesmen

So Far Above Us, They

Well That Was Fun, But Seriously, Folks: Paulson, Goldman Sachs

Well that was fun. But, more seriously, we find that there was plenty of help for Bush in pulling off his Ocean’s 12 caper. Take Paulson. Respected, regarded, head of Goldman Sachs, the acknowledged best and brightest of the Wall Street analysts, savvy folks who at the beginning of the banking crisis, as brokers like Merrill and Lehman were crumbling, some never to be heard again, Goldman Sachs was rumored to have come out quite well. It is said that they, when nobody else saw it coming (there’s those words again), invested to protect themselves in case of a downturn; perhaps shorting or buying puts, I’m not sure.

“Goldilocks economy”!?!

But that even struck me as rather astute as I had been doing the same thing, foreseeing a financial collapse, and not taken up with the Bush Administration’s cheer-leading of its own economic policies measured in the stock market and led by CNBC analysts all,

especially the slavish Kudlow and his claims that Bush had produced a near perfect “Goldilocks Economy.” This he repeated over and over, even as the market slid. And when it did it was always the fault, according to Kudlow, of someone who had it out for Bush and his policies. Seriously, hearing this guy daily, salivating on and on about Bush, you’d wish they’d just a got a room.

TARP handed out like candy

Getting back to Goldman Sachs, however, Paulson long gone, not even leaving records of where the money went, apparently just handing it out like candy to his friends. And we were told that we just had to trust him, for it was so dire, and yet so far beyond our ability to understand.

To collect a debt, steal money and give it to your borrower to give back to you?

Maybe so, but then when it turned up recently that a huge chunk of that money went from Paulson to a European bank (a German one, I believe, not that that matters). And that this bank turned around and paid Goldman Sachs $16 billion. To which I can only, sarcastically (what other attitude can one have and still remain comfortable while writing!!) add, well, way-ta-go there Paulie, good job, Paulie, now that’s one round about but rather effective way of collecting a debt.

Just who’s “civilization” was at stake?

Makes me wonder then just whose nuclear meltdown would be in the offing, just whose civilization would end. As we will see further on, these people are and always have been seeing themselves as SO FAR ABOVE US, and they manage to convince the rest of us that they are that (just look at how they convinced Congress and are going around a second time and are succeeding again!)

They are SO FAR above us that they truly, and I mean this sincerely for reasons that I will get into, they truly see their fates, fortunes, and futures as equivalent with all the rest of us. I.e., and now I’m tipping my hand a bit, like kings of old who might suffer depression and soon all in the kingdom would be claiming to suffer depression too (or would be obliged to say they did?).

We are Borg, you will be assimilated.

And, by the way, this is nothing like the kind of Unity of Consciousness I speak of later. No. No. Think of this more along the lines of “We Are Borg. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.”

Daddy power demands your soul loss.

And more exactly it is this 25,000 year old pure and simple patriarchal authoritarian daddy power and their ability, with all their underlings depending on them for survival, to require the soul-loss and the robotic obedience of a group, each of whom know they will fare better materially (and being kept, most often, at a mere subsistence level) any improvement would be dearly competed for.

How dear the slavish underling

And how would they compete, you might ask. Well, how dear to a king’s heart is the underling who it seems so loves the king that he also suffers whatever the king does. Now that’s a pretty slavish thing, as humiliating acts of self-annihilation go, the aping that one is so in unity with the king that indeed they will suffer the same. (OK, now you say it with me, “Get a room!!”). [Continued below audio]

Message in a Bottle/ Time Capsule, Part Two

an Audio Reading by SillyMickel Adzema

Here is an audio of the author’s impassioned, sometimes, humorous, reading of this part. Though it is of the first, unedited and unpolished version, and it does not contain all the detail of its current form here, it does capture the flavor of it all. I offer it here for your listening pleasure. For the reading of this part, “Message in a Bottle/ Time Capsule, Part Two” click on the link to the audio site above or click the link to the audio player below.

http://ecdn0.hark.com/swfs/player_fb.swf?pid=srwkrsvcdz

Image of “Message in a Bottle A Message Arrives from Nine Years in the Past Predicting Today’s Events Part 2” by SillyMickel Adzema

Auto Salesman Paulsen

But this point is to explain the seeming inexplicability of the power of such people, even over against that of a Congress that was trying to show some spine at that time, even though it was still dominated by Republicans, even they were having qualms of this kind of railroading, which several decried—and this is where I got it from—as seeming so much like the tactics of a slick auto salesman.

Auto Salesman Example of Congress Extortion

“Tell ya what, I’m going to do. You just sign this paper here; it’s only got a tentative price on it, I won’t hold you to it, but this will guarantee that beauty won’t be scooped out from under you tomorrow morning before you’ve had a chance to come in.

“Now, I know you love that car; and, quite honestly I want to see this deal go through, because I know a good match when I see it; and that car will be great for you. Leave it to me, I’ll talk to my supervisor tomorrow, I’m going out on a limb here, ya’know. But if I didn’t make my customers happy, I wouldn’t be happy, for that is what it’s all about to me.

“Just sign here, next to that number, and tomorrow we’ll see what we can do as far as bringing that down so it’s more affordable to you.

“You know, I wouldn’t do this for anybody else. But you strike me as a man of class. And I just know that you’re not going to let some minor discrepancy or other get in the way of your getting the vehicle that someone of your stature really deserves.

“And that’s what I’m I’ll about, I’m here to serve you and to get you the car you deserve. No, don’t worry about signing, it’s not a contract, really. In fact, if you change your mind by tomorrow, I personally will guarantee you that I will put in any time necessary to find the one of your dreams.

“Now you couldn’t do better than that, could you? Really now. I guess I’m just a sucker, but hey, I don’t see this job as selling machines, but more like arranging marriages. Like the Matchmaker—you know “Fiddler on the Roof”—ha ha!

(“Yea, right there anywhere, will be fine… oh, that pen not working, well here I’ve got plenty, in fact here have a couple, give one to your kid from me.”)

“There you go, now you’re doing the smart thing. I figured you to be a smart person the first time I saw you on the lot a little while ago.

“Well, anyway, I know you want to get home to your family, and tell them the good news.

“Well, of course, we’re still going to work on those figures tomorrow. Let’s just say I’m pretty damn sure I can get my supervisor to see it more your way, so I’m assuming we’re going to have the deal that’ll make you happy.

“So g’won now you old charmer, before you get me to throwing in a second car in the deal just cause you’re such good people.

“Yea, it was good getting to know you too. So I’ll see you bright and early tomorrow.

“Oh, yeah, OK, I understand you can’t get here till late afternoon, I just assumed nothing would be able to hold you back once you thought of it at home. Yea, g’night….”

Pause. Now salesmen talking loudly at the man as he retreats:

“Oh, Mr. Bonior, just one small detail, if you don’t mind.

“Now, I know you weren’t sure about that undercoating, but I’m telling you that it’ll add years to your car, and, like I said, that may be something we can throw in; and if not, well it’s not that much.

“So d’ya want me to have that taken care of before you come in tomorrow? I can guarantee to put my best guy on it first thing in the morning, so the only thing you’ll have to think of is how luxurious it will be driving home in this sweetness.

“No, you say no? Ya sure now? I mean you look like a great couple to me (chuckle). Not getting cold feet at the altar are you? (chuckle, chuckle)

“You’re sure you don’t want it, not yet?

“Okay, tell you what I’m going to do. You ARE a hard bargainer, darn you. (he he). Look I’ll put my best guy on it, he comes in at 8am. I really think that when you leave here you’re going to want to take this car away tomorrow, not another day.

“Now, now, relax; I heard you, just let me finish. I’ve been in this business a long time and by this point I hardly ever, if that, miss one of these “love at first sight” affairs I saw tonight. So, hear me out, it’ll be the best deal of your life, call it my “wedding gift”:

“Like I said I’ll put my guy on it in the morning. But if you call and let me know before that, well, then I’ll just take him off it, and crack it up to I just didn’t know you as well as I thought I did.

“On the other hand, here’s my “gift,” let me have it put on for you and—like I said I can probably get the cost completely waived—but let’s say I can only can half of it waived. Well, I’ll personally split the difference on the remaining cost with you; take it right out of my commission. It might mean I make $5 on this deal, but what the heck. Like I said it’s all about making you happy.”

Mr. Bonior turns and throws up his hands and walks to his car.

“OK, great, sounds like we got a deal. So, see you tomorrow, you’re going to be glad you came walking in her today, believe me. G’night again.”

Back to the astonishing “Paulsie” scheme, as one person astutely put it, “When anyone tells me I have to sign on the dotted line that day, or else . . . well, never once has a situation like that turned out right.”

Someone, I don’t remember who, was way ahead of everyone else. He used the word, “extortion.” We found out later how close to or exactly like extortion have been some of the tactics of the TARP money’s recipients toward the very Congress that provided them the money.

Other Unforeseen Events (Who wudda thought?)

Once again, no matter the situation, and despite the outcries of the American Republican Administration, who claimed to have encountered one after another of unforeseen and unprecedented events, no one ever dreamed could happen before. Such was always the refrain: “Who would have imagined such a thing could happen….”

Other Examples of Incompetence by Republicans, Katrina etc…Leading Into Stock Market Crash

In case I need to use an example or two to remind some readers of the prevalence of that claim and the absurdity of it as well: We see, Katrina, the unholy disaster wrought by that hurricane. Louisiana is devastated, particularly New Orleans.

Katrina was such a horrible blunder, they had to cover up the numbers who died!

The Bush Administration responds so horribly that the death toll is eventually no longer being announced in the media. Claims that it might be in the thousands were quelled by daily counts that only slowly recovered the dead, so that as the toll rose into the teens and 20s and up to 50, it was telling all of us listening that it may not have been as bad as we thought in terms of the loss of life.

Not so, actually, as I told my wife, many people died in their attics, inside their homes, and they haven’t even gotten to those neighborhoods. Indeed, I listened and only heard one time, years later and as an afterthought how several thousand had indeed been killed in that horrible flood. Recently a sign put there by someone was broadcast on TV: “4000 died here!” No doubt I am not the only one noticing the extent of the tragedy there was covered up to diminish the degree of political culpability.

First thing, the media colluded to keep anger at Bush Administration in check.

So, two things we notice in this example. The subtle way the media keeps anger at the administration in check by downplaying the horror. They couldn’t have done it any better had they been directly in the payroll of the government as the forces are who obeyed Bush’s commands to not let there be any TV coverage of Iraqi soldiers returning home in pine boxes and that even the graveyards were not to allow open caskets. So there is this collusion that is hard to understand. We’ll look at that a little later.

Second thing, again the refrain—“Who wudda predicted…?”

But, the inane refrain is always, and everywhere, and loudly proclaimed on all the airways, the Republican lackeys, along with Bush himself, proclaiming, Bush, in an innocent voice: “Who would have thought the levees would breach? This is horrible for the families, and blah, blah, blah, (but now back to covering my ass again:) We had fully prepared for a big storm, but no on predicted the breach of the levees.”

Did he really think you would believe that?! … (Did you?)

There is no euphemism for that kind of outright lie, and he deserves no covering up from anyone; he’s had too much already. No, indeed, I myself listened to storm reports over and over again for three days preceding landfall and sure enough, there was that one thing that was of concern to all: that the levees would breach. It was described what a devastation that would be; New Orleans being like a bowl, with much of it below sea level so a breach would not flow back out on its own.

More was said: how the levees had been a cause of much concern for years prior to the storm as those in the city knew that they needed work and strengthening in a big way, for they knew that if the big one hit, it would be about as devastating as it turned out to be.

But we hear from Bush: No one expected the levees to breach. Truly astonishing was the degree of lying that Bush-Cheney and others in that administration proclaimed, and which, despite even the media making at least some minimal amount of noise about certain things not being exactly congruent with certain facts, and so on. (One could do a great study of euphemisms for the many and varied ways that the media covered Republican comments without ever, not once using the word lie, or liar.)

I promised two examples, so how about the gem I discussed earlier in which Condoleezza Rice, year after year, takes refuge in this idea that “No one could have foreseen terrorists using planes to crash into buildings,” despite specific warnings delivered to the U.S. and specifically brought to her attention, which said exactly that.

But remember, when one meticulously surrounds oneself with only true believers, and fills posts with of importance with people with questionable theology degrees, and routinely stifles dissent (as was viciously done to Valerie Pflame to get back at Joe Wilson’s speaking out), then how will you ever get any information except that which you already know; or better yet, how will you every learn anything that does not in fact reinforce your beliefs, so how will you learn anything different that you might need to learn?

Checklist—So How Did We Do? Economy?

I reread my words of a decade ago. Example,

I believe we are in grave danger of losing, not just an election, not just a Supreme Court, not just our environment, not just our good economy, not just our recent relative peace in the world but things far worse than those horrors. I believe we are in danger of losing all hope of maintaining, let alone progressing, in the freedoms and privileges that we take for granted.

What? Me Worry About the Economy?

Hmmmm. Supreme Court? Check. Environment? Check. Our good economy? Well that topic demands more than a mere “check.” In the overnight change and the way it was done, the way it should have been foreseen, the way there was collusion at all levels… happen and the obvious conclusions to be drawn as to who made it happen and why, based on all the foreknowledge.

Was it intentional to destroy a country’s wealth and bring its workers to their knees?

Was it intentional to devastate the richest country in the world and to bring its workers to their knees? As well as the American government, before all the nations of the world having to humiliate … homeless beggars pleading for a handout also on its knees? What kind of American would engage in undermining this country, an outright act of betrayal?

Another betrayal

Just a side thought that might have value for some: In writing that last, I was reminded of Judas selling out to Jesus for thirty pieces of silver. So Judas, not being a typical Jew, was not a very good bargainer. He only got himself thirty pieces of silver, but still he was going to sell out Jesus.

And I was struck by the longevity and potency of a template so simple in this age of Ocean’s Eleven, high tech wizardry that could have been employed and indeed was employed, for example, for the 911 caper. Yet this simple motive is still moving people?

Apparently so aligned with the human nature hardly changed. A few bags of silver?

Utopia undone

Anyway, back to the economy, remember folks at that time, still under Clinton and before Bush took office we had a budget surplus that we were eagerly debating how we could use to benefit our country and world, including happy notions like universal solar for all homes, universal health care.

So many other things, so many ideas were bandied about, all real possibilities considering the size of the surplus which had been created by—this should be kept in mind for it is hugely important later, and now—the surplus was created by a moderate tax increase on the extremely rich and the creation of millions of new jobs, all tax paying jobs, combined with strict oversight of the class of government programs and the reeling in of any that had the marks of beginning to get out of hand.

All those happy ideas of how to use the surplus. Yet no one envisioned the possibility that actually occurred, requiring, as it would, that people of unnatural stupidity or intent to harm would not only manage to win an election but also take over government so thoroughly and eliminate intelligent input so thoroughly and seamlessly and obliterate any and all objection at any level, including that of the media, and therefore the population. Well, who would have foreseen such an elaborate and abhorrent possibility?

“Bring back the flat Earth!”

For one thing its abject failure recently apparent, its certainty to benefit few if any, its guarantee of destroying huge benefits possible that would benefit virtually everyone, and alongside that no media or public outcry? Impossible, it was thought. Who would have considered that? Who would have considered the surplus eventually being thrown into the “bring back the flat Earth” bin, essentially reviving the disproven economics of only eight years prior to when Bush, in his first term, the beginning of it, lowered the taxes for the filthy rich. {pic of insanity of Congress in doing the same thing and it not working out}

Einstein says, “The definition of insanity is…”

And so it was reviving the failed economics of eight years prior to that which had resulted in a great recession, a Clinton victory, and the reversal of that policy with the spectacular results I was reporting on.

So, in considering that possibility, a person would have to ask, has this person been asleep for twenty years, eight minimum? Or hopelessly self- and other-destructive? What?

Still don’t know the answer to that question.

Back to that time, however, still setting up the context that preceded the one of the last eight years. Clinton’s plan was simple and it worked. So, simple policy that ordinary folks employ in balancing their household budgets, not rocket science, applied sincerely by Clinton, had achieved what had been considered the impossible and as elusive as the Holy Grail: the quest of the Balanced Budget. Many a Republican President had claimed it as a top priority and made it a central plank in their election platforms. But in Reagan’s case, for example, a term or two later, after absolute failure and in fact causing a tripling or quadrupling of the National Debt instead, they had claimed it was as elusive and difficult to achieve as the Holy Grail, and also blamed the Democrats, largely for programs instituted in the past, like Social Security and Medicare, and so on, which they knew coming into office, and which they slashed. But still they could not achieve a balanced budget.

Conservative goal achieved only by “free spender”

Then, in comes Clinton, from the supposedly “free spenders” party, roundly criticized for budget-busting and National Debt increasing policies. Somehow the media and the Republicans had managed to conflate the two even after twelve disastrous years of Reagan-Bush that had proved…and dear people if only it had been remembered…proved for all time and had become a huge national debate if not uproar when George W. Bush’s first act was to reverse the economic policies of Clinton and reinstitute those of Reagan-Bush, with everyone in remembrance of the debacle that had been once.

You’re unlikely to know this, however.

But this is not brought out in the media.

In a country with a truly free press, not owned by the very people who would benefit by such a reversal, this renewal of the disastrous policies of only a decade earlier would have been all over the place and the analogies would ripe for picking, like: “Bush elects rebuilding the Titanic exactly the same way as before. Claims we as Americans are not dumb enough to run into icebergs as Europeans are.”

… ok, I’ve gone back about fifty, seventy years….

How ‘bout them kindly corporations, though?

Or, how about: “Bush proposes eliminating Food and Drug Administration, saying it will save taxpayers’ dollars. Claims no longer needed because the kindly corporations of the current era no longer need the regulations of the past, which were directed against people of a time that contained more unsavory, non-patriotic, non-American types, not like the corporations of today.”

Even as I’m saying these ridiculous things I can’t help thinking how variations of them were used in pushing through the changes that resulted in the debacle currently. As one example, even Greenspan is reported at one time, I believe it was toward the end of the Clinton era, to have said…check this out…that we have reached the point of corporate and monetary discipline, wherein corporations can be expected to be self-disciplining.”

Boy does that gall me. Homes in foreclosure, Chase Bank, out of the clear blue sky tripled our interest rates…. Yea, ok….

Greenspan, yea, you’re “sorry” alright.

Anyway, back to this: “…self-disciplining and not requiring the regulations of the past, which, if now acting as restrictions, if loosened, and trusting in their self-discipline…” This is all Greenspan speaking, now. …”would free their creativity eventually benefiting all…” I’m paraphrasing of course, but certainly Greenspan has been named one of “the dirty dozen” by CNN. Dirty Dozen being primary ones who created the economic debacle currently….

Muddling through, and looking decades down the path for relief. Anyway, this sorry character, Greenspan, that is, has admitted his part in his wrongness of vision, advice, and recommendation. But that example, with the very words that Greenspan used and the video of it kept in the archives and his clear retraction afterward, again in his own words and captured unmistakably on videos is slam dunk proven example that this inanity existed.

Idiocy rose to the top.

But the question that comes up… yea, and inanity at the highest levels, too… but the question that comes up, Is that not just an isolated example? Wish that it were so. For this I have not at hand though I’m sure there are loads of written testimony and concrete examples on the books that correspond nicely that Bush’s idiocy rose to the level portrayed earlier, disbanding the protections of the American people, using inane ideas meant to pander and gather acceptability for disastrous policy reversals.

Oh, one more spoken one in evidence before I get to the less obvious but more comprehensive reversal that has Bush fully opting to remove all the protections deemed by legislators over hundreds of years to protect the average American from the tendency of the corporations in their greed and their pressures of competition to overreach with disastrous consequences for ordinary Americans, including their loss of life, health, and finances.

With all their wealth, they couldn’t see Maddof coming?

What I’m speaking of has to do with the Maddof scandal. Called the largest Ponzi scheme in history, bilking so many of those who are in the know on Wall Street, or perhaps should have been.

For they had amassed enough wealth to have had it thoroughly checked out ahead of time and foreseen it. The pundits were nonstop in their analyzing various aspects of it that should have given rise to suspicion and led to investigation long before it actually occurred.

But there seemed to be no end to the, “I don’t know how this happened. It shouldn’t have. It seems impossible”…again that refrain. Lacking insight, history, and perspective and having gotten your job partially because of having a lack of understanding of the areas you cover as opposed to a better understanding, well, these things don’t seem to have any causes any more than that chemicalized frozen chunk of waste from airplanes landing here as opposed to there.

Well that kind of, “well, somebody should have known” and “We don’t understand why they didn’t” got blown out of the water when a former SEC (Security and Exchange Commission) official and investigator, or at least a would-be one, came before Congress.

Well before reiterating what transpired, let’s not forget those weeks of “How could this have happened?” spewed endlessly. The result of the testimony in Congress was that the SEC under Bush was told to lie low in investigating anything.

And well isn’t this the way a C student would think? Essentially they were given the directive to look like they were busy, but not to really accomplish anything or to do their jobs.

C-Student, Bluto-Bush

Bush’s response is always, he don’t claim to be an A-student. What is it with these Republicans all thinking they’re Hermann’s Hermits?!

Bluto-Bush

What are you in “Animal House,” Bush? Who are you? Bluto? Telling your housemates,

“Hell, buds, ain’t no need to do any studying or any of that crap.

“Look, we got a good gig! I got elected President.”

Ok, maybe that part wouldn’t be Bluto. However…

And that means…now sounding like Cartman…

“I can do what I want!”

Now like Bluto-Bush,

“So nobody tells us what to do, and we’re gonna pa-a-a-r-ty! Wo-o-o-o-w!

“So don’t worry I’ve got it all worked out, that we’ll get the answers before exams so that we’ll look like we’re doing something. Don’t worry, you’ll get your checks. And in the meantime…might I say…

“There’s a kegger that’s just been tapped in the kitchen…a-a-a-a-n-n-d! … “

…bringing the volume down low now, conspiratorially like…

“And for those so inclined *snif* if you catch my drift…don’t kill each other in the crush…be cool…well let’s just say *snif* the microwave and toaster, I hear *snif* have been enlisted in cookin up something not so much for the palate, but…”

*long, long, snif*

And at that many of the frats had already started dashing toward the kitchen.

Bluto-Bush, raising his voice over the clamor and hollering above all:

“Let’s just say that if the right is right then right is white! Ain’t no better breakfast than that served on a mirror, yyee-oo-ha!”

Well, if you didn’t enjoy that folks, at least one of us did.

C-students all

So before attributing obvious blame, let us not overlook this example, this one example of something rampant throughout the media and throughout government at all levels for eight years of Republican dominance.

For eight years, Bush had let it be known that the SEC should not have to, in fact, should back off from investigating. Basically, the SEC was told not to do its job, basically the SEC was told to collect checks, to engage in busywork. And, it wasn’t the only agency that was disabled by Bush.

You ever notice how the ones claiming government can’t do anything right are the same ones making it that way?

But my point has more to do with journalism. For the question is, how could Bush have gotten away with all this? How could his dismantling of the functions of government, put in place long ago by people…well…no stretch needed here…obviously smarter than him!…gone unreported. In any other time, does it not seem likely that this sort of disabling of the SEC would have been uncovered by the Fourth Estate? Over the course of so many years? Were there no longer any investigative journalists in Washington? Were there just photogenic media personalities with little knowledge of the area of their reporting? Which is what Walter Cronkite had predicted was going to happen.

Well, the camera likes them.

Well, anyway from the sound of those journalists

…without a clue about the Maddof scandal … …y’know, I mean, with all this evidence nobody did anything… they were doing lots of scratching their head and wondering, and “Gee, I dunno” “Hard to understand” and such instead of off-the-air investigation which would have resulted in that time being used to enlighten the public about the unheard of government hand in undoing the government’s work instead of giving everyone the feeling that these things don’t have individual actors behind them…no one accountable for them…no one to blame, and no one to stop, and therefore life is just a random series of accidents…

Breaking news, this just in: To my brain, question! (di di di di di di di)…

…Well my brain had the breaking news so my brain had to do sound effects…

Anyway, question: Is it possible that the what-me-worry president’s philosophy…let’s say, encapsulated by “gee I don’t know how such a thing like that could happen and besides it’s hard work, so, as for responsibility, well…what, me worry? Ok? As for the source of responsibility, well, what, me worry? Got it all? Ok, it goes like this:

Besides, it’s “hard work.”

His philosophy is “Gee, I don’t know, nobody ever imagined such a thing like that could happen, and besides, it’s hard work, so as for responsibility, well “What, me worry?”

Ok, understand now? You know, the befuddled C student’s view of the world. Learned enough to know the kinds of things that could happen, but not having studied enough or curious enough to have learned why they happened and crucially how they are prevented, if not wanted, or made to happen, if desirable.

For that would have gotten a B or an A.

The question remains, did he bring in a world of C students with him? Well, there is lots of evidence of exactly that happening in his government.

But in the media? Well, is it possible that he set the example of “gee, I dunno, I dunno” becoming acceptable?

Pretty convenient to gut education if insightful people would resist you.

Well, it’s not so outrageous when you consider that Reagan did something akin to that: Setting up the average no-nothing as somehow more astute with genetically predisposed intuitions without having to know, to check, to search, find out, or discover…may sound a little confusing, but you’ll see in a second…making the average shmuck feel like he’s college educated. Pretty convenient too when your policies include cutbacks in funding at all levels of education.

So Reagan’s perfect scheme: Republicans know that educated people vote by greater percentages more for Democrats than for Republicans. So, first part: Gut education; make education more expensive.

Also, continue to change higher education…as started in 1971 so…as I saw it happen…so it is swept of all the kinds of content and courses that often lead to insight, that lead to people becoming individuals. Instead heavily fund highly specialized programs of ethically neutral technical information. Forget the arbitrary culture- and time-bound and ephemeral and changing nature of those technicalities.

Trivial Pursuit became a popular game…and a way of life.

I mean, c’mon. If you need an example of that, I’ll give you an obvious one: There was one time when I was in school, before, just at the time when the first PCs were coming out, personal computers. At that time I was learning computer programming and I was learning it from huge machines and we were putting punch cards in them. Now, I could have spent years learning that kind of stuff. Imagine how useful that would have been today? Or how useful that would have been in a few years?

But that’s the kind of stuff they’re being taught. Y’know, the kind of stuff that when you go to a very technical job they teach you. But you’ll never be able to find a place that to use that training anywhere else because it only applies to the thing that they were doing there? Well, that’s what I’m talking about. The more specialized you got…and this is even at the junior … at the bachelor’s level… this is supposed to go on, if then, at the Master’s and certainly not until the Ph.D level.

So, they’re learning things that are peculiar to a particular corporation, a culture, and a time, and they could change.

However that’s what’s being pushed and these are programs that are designed by the corporations in fact. So that they would produce the work pool that they could feed from. So they would get an already paid for, trained by the government, pool of employees. Something that they had had to do in the past.

Pander to the uneducated (to seduce them while picking their pockets).

Now, as for all those who don’t go into higher education for lack of resources and would not have gone anyway? But who would have felt inferior because of that? In the anti-intellectualism that you put out, something that is a technique of every totalitarian government ever to have existed…I’m talking about Reagan putting it out now…they encourage the uneducated to feel they’re smarter than if they had gone, and encourage them to look down on and despise the educated and what the educated come to discover.

Pump up their egos (while undermining their security).

If for example, like global warming… or the environment…in Reagan’s time. Or, the dangers of nuclear anything…again Reagan’s time…. Well you can appeal to the uneducated to simply feel better. Appeal to them to just feel better and to feel superior. And to think of the idiots who come up with that stuff as being people who sadly have scared the crap out of themselves with all of that book knowledge, when you, yourself have the intuition of the common, hard-working, uneducated man to inform you of what’s what, along with the help, of course, of a Republican Party (and now of course blatantly in the media with Fox “News”) a Republican Party that understands you like a daddy would.

“And to hell with what they say the Republicans are doing to our wages and such. Hell, I just know that they’s good people, and noticing that I’m a better person than my smarter brother…cousin, father, sister, whatever…who went off to college and got their dang heads all messed up with words that don’t mean nothing, so…what, me worry?”

So, anyway, now that I’m back from…wherever that was, Kansas or something…Anyway…sometimes I feel like I’m in “Sliders,” y’know?… I feel like I’m in that show, “Sliders”…sliding from one place to another, one person to another….

Continue on this site with

Culture War, Class War, Chapter Twenty-One:

C-Students All