Category: snivelry

3 December 2017

(Some very dear) Leftie friends of mine have been taking pains of late to school me on “White Privilege.” I still don’t buy it, but I guess I get it. You have to redefine it so that it no longer means “Private Law” (literally) or “Elite access” (generally) but rather “relative freedom from inconvenience or danger or suspicion.” Okeh, if that’s our metric, since the police rarely think that I resemble any suspects on their beats, then I’m “privileged.”

Who else is privileged? Well, everybody who still doesn’t require corrective lenses. I could go for some of that privilege. But I shouldn’t grouse, I still have both legs, arms, ears, eyes, kidneys, and testicles, so I guess I’m plenty privileged. Furthermore, if I make a lot of bad decisions for a couple of decades, I just might win me a Privileged Parking Pass, then I could park right up front at McGreasetrap’s™.

Such an inclusive definition of “Privilege” is so sophist and specious as to render it of little value in coherent discourse.

On the other hand, considering that some forty plus per cent (or more?) of Americans PAY NO INCOME TAX, the Lefties have given me a supportable argument (on THEIR alleged merits) to refer to them henceforth as The Privileged Poor.

update 171205:  correspondent ML writes “No… you still don’t get it cause you don’t wanna get it. The fast and loose playing with statistics — like that forty per cent comment (why d’ya suppose they don’t pay income tax?) reveal a mind that is closed to new information and only being used for snarky debate tactics, so sad [bemoanji] — such a waste of a potentially first rate intelligence.”

I’ve addressed the personal insults on another forum (FascBuch). To the substantial portion of the response, and the only actual question: The Privileged Poor pay no income tax because the progressive income tax excludes the lowest echelons. The Privileged Poor DO pay taxes, as do we all — consumption, excise, and the corporate income tax component of just about every product that we buy. So of course, they definitely have cause not to FEEL particularly “privileged.“ Which is just what their civil masters want, as a large cadre of jealousy and resentment are the perfect clay to be molded into Gimmecrat voters. What keeps The Privileged Poor in those (income) tax brackets? Well, in addition to their own misbehavior (bears mentioning and dismissing, as bad choices are rife throughout the human spectrum) there is government action.
Minimum Wage legislation criminalizes apprenticeships and training wages. If a person can only bring fourteen bucks of value to an employer, a fifteen buck concrete barrier precludes many from taking that first step.
Licensing and regulation exist (contrary to their rhetoric) to protect entrenched contributors from competition, thereby denying The Privileged Poor their natural human right to pursue their own entrepreneurial aspirations.

update 171225:  correspondent and creative reader ML discerns other than blank space between the lines: “So forty per cent of the population is poor enough not to pay taxes because of their own misbehavior??”

To repeat and amplify, let’s DO make it personal. The reason that I remain generally among The Privileged Poor probably IS due to my own misbehavior, beginning in school with my inability to “play well with others” and culminating in my refusal to submit to the requirements to receive a Certificate of Approval from Spartan High. Once into the job market, I still usually failed. In addition to my unwillingness to give 110%, kick it up a notch, or take it to the next level, I was also nowhere near as good as Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer at pretending to care about people nor as skillful as Charlie Manson or Jim Jones at inspiring subordinates. And, of course, I consistently failed to reach for the rectum during job interviews.

But that’s just me. I am hardly representative of The Privileged Poor. Nevertheless, that’s why it “bears mentioning”, because there ARE a few like me, and your adversaries WILL bring us up. And it is worth dismissing because we are anomalies. MOST of The Privileged Poor are blocked by minimum wages, licensing boards, arbitrary regulations designed to thwart would be competitors to your loving legislature’s corporate sponsors (Halliburton, Solyndra, et al) and a whole host of interfering bureaucrat buttinskies.

12 June 2021

I don’t hide the fact that I am a reformed terrorist (Strategic Air Command, ca. 1980), so it is hardly hypocritical of me to follow the lead of leftists and paint people with broad brushes.  (But in my case, for the sake of fun-filled rhetoric, of course!)

My brother and I both indentured ourselves to the War (“Defense”) Department during the same time that the F’eral Government (on behalf of “Our Democracy”) was violently suppressing cannabis and free enterprise.  Therefore, as GIs, we were fighting to have peaceful potheads and merchants beaten up and thrown into cages.  You may dispute that as stupid, provocative, and faulty reasoning (and so would I), but I merely follow the same path I’ve heard since childhood.

Robert E. Lee fought for the Commonwealth of Virginia at a time when Virginia violently protected the legal institution of slavery, therefore Lee fought for slavery.  In fact, it was Lee, the Abolitionist who wrote that “[S]lavery as an institution is a moral and political evil,” who surrendered to Grant, the last legal slave owner in Richmond, who only freed his slaves when the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment finally forced his hand.

Putting relevance aside, I wonder today: 
Is an affable goof who confidently misspells “potatoe” really worse than a superficial fraud who can’t decide which pronunciation of her given name (“Cam a luh” or “Comma law” or “kuh Maula”) has the greatest ethnic heft? And were they both put into their lofty positions to make doddering ex-Vice Presidents seem not so bad after all?

24 April 2021

Guest commentarie from correspondent Otmia Unogsy:  “You know what’s awkward?  Being dubbed an American but loathing everything about its military.  I’m civil to militarists, because they’re human and they’re at least 90% or more of Americans, and I’m not the hating kind anyway.  I actually like humans and their stellar potential.  But evangelical militarism is everywhere in the U.S.  It’s a fucking religion.  And I’m militarily atheist.  It’s AWKWARD to the point I’m not comfortable here.  And I have to shut my mouth for fear of who knows what would be done to me if I say how US militarism makes me vomit.”

I don’t fully relate to Otmia’s frustration, but I share it a lot.  Still, it sounds like it’s more comfortable being me.  Either I’m not as concerned with feeling awkward myself, or I’m less empathetic toward others’ awkwardness, or I get more of a pass from my reformed terrorist status (Strategic Air Command, ca. 1980), allowing me to talk candid shit about the Occupation.

Otmia continues:  “I just passed a billboard going into town earlier, that was advocating seductively, targeting youth, to join the marines.  Puke.  Recruiters in the schools!!  They target elementary kids.  Principles are former military, they have all the military worshipping regalia in their offices.  Half the staff in government schools are former military, and they preach militarism to the kids.  It’s sick.  Militarism is in half the TV shows.  PUKE.”

I still have a hard time disputing it, and I share many of Otmia’s concerns as well, but I think I’m generally less alarmed.  A little anyway.  Still… the worship of the state, and not just the enforcement branch of that vast criminal enterprise, is just as worrisome, and I would be considerably less alarmed if equal time were given to anarchists and peaceniks as is given to statist orthodoxy.  Meanwhile, I thank Otmia for her vigilance and attention to these matters, and hope she finds as comfortable an emotional accommodation to the real world as have I.

Otmia concludes:  “OK, I’m [removing] this post.  Too many people [at this venue] take offense.  Apologies.”

I hope no part of that apology is for me because I not only was never offended in the first place, but I also don’t blame her for ducking the additional heat.  The venue in which the comments first appeared is indeed aswarm with blood-soaked leftists who’ll seize immediate offense at any sort of anti-state or a-martial heresy.

Vaya con Carne & Sic Semper Shalom!