Hilter Would Be Proud

The right wing campaign against food stamps (which are no longer stamps but more like debit cards) is a good example of how right wing opinion makers use lies and distortions to affect policy. The big lie the right is promoting that "lazy, no good" aid recepients are eating on crab meat while the "good white working" (by implication White) people have to get by on hamburger. It's all a pack of lies but it workds for the right wing. The right has a vast apparatus starting with bloogers and talk radio blowhards who can infiltrate the right wing message into the mainstream media. The right used these tactics to destroy welfate and affirmative action. If they do the same to food aid, will be left with people starving to death in the streets. What good would that do?

Adolf Hitler himself pioneered the use of big lies to achieve political ends. In his book Mein Kampf he wrote "in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying."

The US Office of Strategic Services summed up Hitler's use of political lying: "His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it."

The american right has adopted a similar policy of spreading political lies in order to achieve their ends. Does conservatism lead to fascism? That's a question for another time.

The Law is an Asshole

Specifically Florida's "stand your ground law," which allowed George Zimmerman to go free after murdering Trayvon Martin. Basicall, that law allows whites to kill blacks or anyone else they don't like. It's worse than vigilantism, it's a return to legalized lynching. That proves that racism in it's most violent forms is still alive today.

Line Them Up and Shoot!

I recently came across an interesting article on Huffington Post. A series of behavioral studies of upper class individuals revealed some interesting facts about how the rich behave. According to the findings:

Seven studies using experimental and naturalistic methods reveal that upper-class individuals behave more unethically than lower-class individuals. In studies 1 and 2, upper-class individuals were more likely to break the law while driving, relative to lower-class individuals. In follow-up laboratory studies, upper-class individuals were more likely to exhibit unethical decision-making tendencies (study 3), take valued goods from others (study 4), lie in a negotiation (study 5), cheat to increase their chances of winning a prize (study 6), and endorse unethical behavior at work (study 7) than were lower-class individuals. Mediator and moderator data demonstrated that upper-class individuals' unethical tendencies are accounted for, in part, by their more favorable attitudes toward greed.

There you have it. The rich aren't rich because they are smarter, have more talent or work harder than everybody else. They got rich by acting like scumbags. These assholes are complaining about having to pay taxes. They are lucky we don't stand up against the wall and shoot them!

The full title of the article is

Higher social class predicts increased
unethical behavior
Paul K. Piffa,1, Daniel M. Stancatoa, Stéphane Côtéb, Rodolfo Mendoza-Dentona, and Dacher Keltnera
aDepartment of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720; and bRotman School of Management, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON,
Canada M5S 3E6
Edited* by Richard E. Nisbett, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, and approved January 26, 2012 (received for review November 8, 2011)

Published in Psychological and Cognitive Sciences.

Beware Doughnut Hamburgers

To keep matters straight, celeb Chef Paula Deen is in trouble not for saying "n--r" 30 years ago, but for saying that an African -American employee was "black as a board." Paul Deen however, is acting like she's the victim. It's an example of how the denial of racism is prevalent among Whites, and not just Southerners. This is taking place while Trayvon Martin was murdered just for being Black. Deen's bahvior may not be on the same level as killing a person, but she still keeps racist attitudes alive, and that doesn't help things.

Stubborn Stupidity Reigns in Texas

The Texas legislature is considering a bill that make abortion impossible to obtain by hitting abortion providers with various bogus restrictions. Anti-abortion fanatics tend to be ignorant, stubborn jerkasses preoccupied with interfering in other people's lives. They tend to be bigots and religious creeps, the kind of vermin who comprise the "Tea Party." The Late Molly Ivins referred to Texas politics as "the laboratory of bad government." Today, Texas politics has bedome more like a toxic wate dump. Texans have often shown a stubborn adherence to bad ideas; slavery, racial segregation, and religious fundamentalism, which is retreating in the rest of the country. The average Texan is a moron who will keep shoveling the same pile of manure because he thinks there' a pony in there.

Of course many other ex-confederate states are also trying to pass abortion restrictions. Is there a connection between the two? It would be interesting to find out.

Another Reason to Hate Ayn Rand

The impact that Ayn Rand and her pseudo-philosophy of "Objectivism" have had on Right-wing thought is probably not as great as Milton Friedman or Fredrick von Hayek but several top GOPers have taken to quoting her notions. Rand, who thought that selfishness was a virtue and that wealthy capitalists were superior beings, was basically a crackpot with a large vocabulary. It now turns out that she was admirer of a notorious murdere named William Edward Hickman. Hickman kidnapped a girl 1927, then killed and dismembered her. When caught he tried to blame someone else. Hickman was convicted and executed. It turns out that Rand admired Hickman for his ruthlessness. Which goes to show how twisted her thinking was.

The PRISM problem

The PRISM program actually started in 2007 under the Bush administration. It enjoyed the support of many Repubs who now claim to be "outraged" by the surveillance. The program has been defended by its proponents as having stopped many terroritst attacks. President Obama says "You cannot have 100% security and 100% privacy and 0% inconvenience" which may be true on the surface. But the program demands that we sacrifice too much privacy for a questionnable policy. Such mass based monitoring did nothing to prevent the terrorist attack committed by the Tsarnaev brothers, for instance. In fact such free lance terrorism might become the principal threat in the future.

In the case of the Tsaranevs, it was already known that they could be terrorists, but there was a lack of thoroughness. There has been an American tendency to rely on technology alone. That has to be reconsidered.