There isn't much evidence of American guilt but it's there. The perception of Texas is that it's nothing but goat ropers drunk on Lone Star who go out riding horses to shoot Mexicans ... but there are liberals all over the place here. Austin is one of the coolest places anywhere. So there's plenty of guilt in America, it's just lost in the noise from those with skin as thick as reptiles.
Lotho has got a bad case of Wanting to Save the World. So do I. That's why we bros. In my lifetime Rock'n'Roll Fuck Fantasy, I would play guitar and then I could get houses for my family and friends and all of us could hang out, getting hammered, making music, and having a whole lot of sex. There was never anything more to it than that as these were the sixties and we believed peace would one day come, we just had to prepare for it.
That didn't quite work out and Lotho didn't quite pull it off either but this isn't a story of regret as the world obviously still needs to be saved and neither he nor I are dead yet so that means there is still time.
Lotho has conservative guilt as he got sucked into the vortex of needing financial conservatism but not necessarily a formal Republican agenda. However, it doesn't work like Catholicism as you can't pick and choose which parts you will heed and then ignore the rest. Once tagged as a conservative, you, seemingly, own what they do and, oh fuck, I didn't ask anyone to go drone bombing children.
Conservative guilt is a bitch and I understand that as democracy is a fucked-up way to do business. A whole lot of dumb asses get involved and then it's impossible to make an intelligent decision about anything. That America survives isn't destiny, it's a fucking miracle.
The gigantic corporate behemoths concern everyone as to how they dominate various things in the world and they all have one thing in common: not a single one of them is run as a democracy. A good many of them are also stone evil (i.e. Nestle and 'we own the water', etc) so that's where you can argue the value of politics all night. And I do mean you can. I'll be playing tonight.
You're not going to lose your guilt in some ultra-dramatic revolution so the other choice is to make the democracy work. The existing parties are useless as there's no difference between them. They are all on the same team and they only argue over who takes home the Prom Queen. The only other option is a Hugely Futile Gesture: create another political party modeled after the Greens in Germany.
There is a Green Party already so how about you take on those cement head politicians with something real. Run Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders for real and take on the other parties straight-up. This is using the same strategy as the Tea Party only this time for something that's actually useful (e.g. rationalizing student loans, rationalizing military spending, etc, etc.) Even if the Greens cannot win, they can force these matters into the front of a campaign and there is no way in hell they will come up if you run tired old wankers like Clinton and whatever dregs the conservatives can find (e.g. Jeb Bush).
If you think that's stoner fantasy, take a look at Germany where the Greens are a significant political presence and you bet they pull their weight in determining policy for the country. They are not a majority but they are heard. You can be too.
One area in which there seems to be a huge conflict is in what constitutes financial conservatism. There is great left wing enthusiasm for regulating the tax tables to prevent the capital shift that has taken place and to rationalize the economic model as a whole. Conservatives typically get wild at this point as any thought of this will destroy capitalism, etc, etc. Moreover, taking all the money from the ultra-rich and giving it away to everyone else would only buy each one a cupcake or some such. However, that thinking is the flaw.
There is no intention of taking all their money and giving it away, even if for no other reason than it would be a ludicrous waste of resources and bad business. The actual left wing intention is not to give anything away but to make that money work. Build the schools, the factories, all the damn things that countries need get along, do business, have good lives, etc. This isn't charity, it's doing business. As we've seen in every developed nation, the birth rate drops as the standard of living goes up. In time, populations stabilize or even decline and, what do you know, which economic stratum do you think will dry up first (assuming the world is functioning according to a rational business model instead of one driven by combat for regime change).
Always I hear this can never happen, no way people can agree, no way we can do it. Um, yes, you can do it and it's not even that hard.
Yah, you're still thinking stoner crap ... but you aren't thinking of the Marshall Plan. This was the use of American tax dollars to help Europe rebuild after World War II. Boy, you sure lost your ass on that one, didn't you. Those tax dollars helped grow some of the most dynamic economic entities on the planet. Tax and spend, tax and spend ... are not bad things ... so long as you spend right.
Note also the tax rate on the rich in the post-War years was still what the rich currently consider too high. And yet it was one of the world's greatest periods of prosperity and out of it grew the European Union, no longer warriors but partners. This isn't preaching, it's fact. It doesn't seem it should be a tough package to sell to do the same thing that was done previously and has been seen to work.
One of the first things you need is to get your religion out of politics. There's time enough to deal with prostitution, prayer in schools, smoking reefer, etc. There is no time at all to wait for dealing with the matters that drive such things and these are the anger and despair that rampage around America. This isn't hyperbole as you can see it anywhere.
Kennedy said he wanted to go to the Moon. OK, America did that. Johnson said he wanted to end poverty. He made his steps toward that. Maybe you don't agree with them but that's not the point as these things defined direction. Right now there seems to be no more direction than killing Muslims and, regardless of your political persuasion, life probably needs to be more than that. In my view, they also kill America in their hunger for killing Muslims as there is no other direction and then people fall to ennui.
Even if the direction is to build a road under the Atlantic, so what. It's a direction. Right now if someone wants to get big into solar power then someone else will try to stop it. Saps the energy of the Sun, don't you now. Well, no, I don't know that. (It's rubbish) When everything comes down to yet another sparring contest, nothing can ever get accomplished.
If you want to lose some guilt, find a direction that means something and make it happen. You won't even have to sell it that hard if it's any good as America longs for it.
When you want to save all the babies, I know it hurts your heart but you can't. It's the same mistake America makes in coming up with Radin China 4 which was some type of high-production rice (i.e. matures fast, feeds many, etc) or sending food trucks to the middle of the desert. None of these things go to the problem which is too many fucking people. Some type of Marshall Plan approaches the problem altogether differently and, as we've seen, populations typically decline behind that.
The biggest population problem in developed countries isn't from internal growth but rather from immigration and, what do you know, a huge percentage of that comes from people trying to get out of Places That Suck. It's mystifying to me that people see no business sense in assisting them in the same way as Europe as everyone comes out golden from it. Population pressures moderate around the world if people just stay where the hell they are and most of them want to do that anyway. It seems nothing more than good business sense to help them do it.
A neo-Marshall Plan isn't direction, it's just doing sensible business. Finding the direction is on you.
Lotho has got a bad case of Wanting to Save the World. So do I. That's why we bros. In my lifetime Rock'n'Roll Fuck Fantasy, I would play guitar and then I could get houses for my family and friends and all of us could hang out, getting hammered, making music, and having a whole lot of sex. There was never anything more to it than that as these were the sixties and we believed peace would one day come, we just had to prepare for it.
That didn't quite work out and Lotho didn't quite pull it off either but this isn't a story of regret as the world obviously still needs to be saved and neither he nor I are dead yet so that means there is still time.
Lotho has conservative guilt as he got sucked into the vortex of needing financial conservatism but not necessarily a formal Republican agenda. However, it doesn't work like Catholicism as you can't pick and choose which parts you will heed and then ignore the rest. Once tagged as a conservative, you, seemingly, own what they do and, oh fuck, I didn't ask anyone to go drone bombing children.
Conservative guilt is a bitch and I understand that as democracy is a fucked-up way to do business. A whole lot of dumb asses get involved and then it's impossible to make an intelligent decision about anything. That America survives isn't destiny, it's a fucking miracle.
The gigantic corporate behemoths concern everyone as to how they dominate various things in the world and they all have one thing in common: not a single one of them is run as a democracy. A good many of them are also stone evil (i.e. Nestle and 'we own the water', etc) so that's where you can argue the value of politics all night. And I do mean you can. I'll be playing tonight.
You're not going to lose your guilt in some ultra-dramatic revolution so the other choice is to make the democracy work. The existing parties are useless as there's no difference between them. They are all on the same team and they only argue over who takes home the Prom Queen. The only other option is a Hugely Futile Gesture: create another political party modeled after the Greens in Germany.
There is a Green Party already so how about you take on those cement head politicians with something real. Run Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders for real and take on the other parties straight-up. This is using the same strategy as the Tea Party only this time for something that's actually useful (e.g. rationalizing student loans, rationalizing military spending, etc, etc.) Even if the Greens cannot win, they can force these matters into the front of a campaign and there is no way in hell they will come up if you run tired old wankers like Clinton and whatever dregs the conservatives can find (e.g. Jeb Bush).
If you think that's stoner fantasy, take a look at Germany where the Greens are a significant political presence and you bet they pull their weight in determining policy for the country. They are not a majority but they are heard. You can be too.
One area in which there seems to be a huge conflict is in what constitutes financial conservatism. There is great left wing enthusiasm for regulating the tax tables to prevent the capital shift that has taken place and to rationalize the economic model as a whole. Conservatives typically get wild at this point as any thought of this will destroy capitalism, etc, etc. Moreover, taking all the money from the ultra-rich and giving it away to everyone else would only buy each one a cupcake or some such. However, that thinking is the flaw.
There is no intention of taking all their money and giving it away, even if for no other reason than it would be a ludicrous waste of resources and bad business. The actual left wing intention is not to give anything away but to make that money work. Build the schools, the factories, all the damn things that countries need get along, do business, have good lives, etc. This isn't charity, it's doing business. As we've seen in every developed nation, the birth rate drops as the standard of living goes up. In time, populations stabilize or even decline and, what do you know, which economic stratum do you think will dry up first (assuming the world is functioning according to a rational business model instead of one driven by combat for regime change).
Always I hear this can never happen, no way people can agree, no way we can do it. Um, yes, you can do it and it's not even that hard.
Yah, you're still thinking stoner crap ... but you aren't thinking of the Marshall Plan. This was the use of American tax dollars to help Europe rebuild after World War II. Boy, you sure lost your ass on that one, didn't you. Those tax dollars helped grow some of the most dynamic economic entities on the planet. Tax and spend, tax and spend ... are not bad things ... so long as you spend right.
Note also the tax rate on the rich in the post-War years was still what the rich currently consider too high. And yet it was one of the world's greatest periods of prosperity and out of it grew the European Union, no longer warriors but partners. This isn't preaching, it's fact. It doesn't seem it should be a tough package to sell to do the same thing that was done previously and has been seen to work.
One of the first things you need is to get your religion out of politics. There's time enough to deal with prostitution, prayer in schools, smoking reefer, etc. There is no time at all to wait for dealing with the matters that drive such things and these are the anger and despair that rampage around America. This isn't hyperbole as you can see it anywhere.
Kennedy said he wanted to go to the Moon. OK, America did that. Johnson said he wanted to end poverty. He made his steps toward that. Maybe you don't agree with them but that's not the point as these things defined direction. Right now there seems to be no more direction than killing Muslims and, regardless of your political persuasion, life probably needs to be more than that. In my view, they also kill America in their hunger for killing Muslims as there is no other direction and then people fall to ennui.
Even if the direction is to build a road under the Atlantic, so what. It's a direction. Right now if someone wants to get big into solar power then someone else will try to stop it. Saps the energy of the Sun, don't you now. Well, no, I don't know that. (It's rubbish) When everything comes down to yet another sparring contest, nothing can ever get accomplished.
If you want to lose some guilt, find a direction that means something and make it happen. You won't even have to sell it that hard if it's any good as America longs for it.
When you want to save all the babies, I know it hurts your heart but you can't. It's the same mistake America makes in coming up with Radin China 4 which was some type of high-production rice (i.e. matures fast, feeds many, etc) or sending food trucks to the middle of the desert. None of these things go to the problem which is too many fucking people. Some type of Marshall Plan approaches the problem altogether differently and, as we've seen, populations typically decline behind that.
The biggest population problem in developed countries isn't from internal growth but rather from immigration and, what do you know, a huge percentage of that comes from people trying to get out of Places That Suck. It's mystifying to me that people see no business sense in assisting them in the same way as Europe as everyone comes out golden from it. Population pressures moderate around the world if people just stay where the hell they are and most of them want to do that anyway. It seems nothing more than good business sense to help them do it.
A neo-Marshall Plan isn't direction, it's just doing sensible business. Finding the direction is on you.
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