Downlo

From William Saletan:

Progressives like to think they’re the engine of history. They fight for change, and eventually conservatives succumb. But it doesn’t always work out that way. History is littered with liberal ideas—pacifism, high taxation, single parenting by choice—that conservatives challenged and defeated. Progressives may drive history, but conservatives filter it.

1. No one has “defeated” pacifism; it’s also not an exclusively progressive idea. Plenty of conservatives, such as devout Christians, are anti-war/anti-violence. Also, why would you want to claim being pro-violence for the conservative side?

2. Getting rid of high taxes isn’t a victory for conservatives. It’s led to ever-increasing economic inequality and the shrinking of the American middle class. In no way, shape, or form are these good things. High taxation is also not a “defeated” idea—Obama ran and won two elections on the promise that he’d repeat the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. If exit polls are accurate, the majority of voters want to see taxes increased.

3. No one has “defeated” single parenting by choice. I don’t even know where to start with this one.

The rest of the piece is fine, I guess. I just can’t get over how half-baked and ridiculous that intro. paragraph is.

thenoobyorker:

alexholzbach:

“Libertarians are incapable of being a racist, because racism is a collectivist idea.”

-Ron Paul.

Ron Paul’s brand of libertarianism, not even once or just say no.

“A sect or party is an elegant incognito devised to save a man from the vexation of thinking.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals, 20 June 1831

With a 2012 election looming, GOP candidates and leaders are insisting that we ought to blame a Democratic president who’s in his first term for decades of Republican policies. Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, and Republican leadership are asking us to overlook the calamitous and pretty much continual failures of governance by the GOP in their bid to retake the White House:

Leave aside for the moment that Ronald Reagan tripled the national debt and increased the debt ceiling 17 times. Forget also George W. Bush nearly doubled the debt or that the Bush tax cuts were the biggest driver of debt over the past decade, and if made permanent, would be continue to be so over the next. Pay no attention to the federal tax burden now at its lowest level in 60 years or income inequality at its highest level in 80 years after a decade of plummeting rates for America’s supposed job creators who don’t create jobs. Ignore for now that Republican majorities voted seven times to raise the debt ceiling under President Bush and the current GOP leadership team voted a combined 19 times to bump the debt limit $4 trillion during his tenure. Look away from the two unfunded wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the budget-busting Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 and the Medicare prescription drug program because, after all, John Boehner, Eric Cantor and Mitch McConnell voted for all of it.

And John Boehner, Eric Cantor, and Mitch McConnell couldn’t possibly be wrong. They are, after all, Republicans.

As the recent campaigning by GOP candidates demonstrates, the party remains absolutely committed to the belief that cutting taxes (especially for the wealthiest) creates jobs and leads to economic growth. Just as Republicans refuse to accept scientific evidence for global warming, they are refusing to accept scientific evidence for the failure of their economic policies:

Rising income inequality, like climate change, is an ideologically inconvenient issue for conservatives. They would prefer not to discuss it altogether. If forced to discuss it, they will generally either deny its existence or simply carry on as if it doesn’t exist.

The underlying facts […] are stark. Over the last few decades, income growth for most Americans has slowed to a crawl, while income for the very rich has exploded. That’s a reversal of the three decades following World War II, when all income groups got richer, with the poor and middle class rising at a faster rate than the rich. Crucially, the Congressional Budget Office’s new analysis shows that changes in government policy over this period have made inequality worse

[…]

The Republican plan is to slash taxes for the rich and programs for the poor, thereby massively increasing inequality.

That is a hard position to defend in the context of exploding inequality, and conservatives would rather not defend it. Instead the right’s response has been to persistently deny or ignore the facts. Rick Perry, pressed by a reporter to explain why he was proposing a tax plan that would widen income inequality further, replied, “I don’t care about that.” The Wall Street Journal editorial page today dismissed the Tax Policy Center, whose calculations persistently show the ways in which various Republican tax proposals would widen inequality, as “liberal.” It didn’t even pretend to dispute the substance of the calculations. Eric Cantor gave a speech about income inequality centering on stories about how his grandmother worked hard and pulled herself up by the bootstraps in the old days. It was a nice speech if you like stories about plucky grandmothers. It failed to grasp the central dilemma, which is that it was a lot easier for poor people to move up sixty years ago, when tax rates on the rich happened to be far higher, than it is today.

I honestly can’t fathom just how deluded these fools are.

Putting aside the fact that dressing up as a marginalized group contributes to their marginalization, I’m also deeply annoyed by White people who complain that there are no non-offensive costumes they can wear for Halloween. This is wrong and stupid for the following reasons:

WHITE PEOPLE AND CHARACTERS DOMINATE POP CULTURE!

MOST HISTORY BOOKS ARE WRITTEN TO SHOWCASE WHITE ACHIEVEMENT!

That means, when you, a White dude, dresses up as Spider-man, you’re the ‘real’ Spider-man. When you, a White girl, dresses up as Marie Antoinette, you’re the ‘real’ Marie Antoinette.

Unlike the rest of us, you Whites have the luxury of being able to dress up as nearly every well-known pop and historical figure—and many contemporary famous people—for Halloween. If I dress up as Leia from Star Wars, I’m ‘Asian Leia’. If my Black friend dresses up as George Washington, he’s ‘Black George Washington’…or worse, ‘Black Guy Wearing A Powdered Wig For Some Reason (Possibly A Black One)’.

That’s why I find complaints about not being able to dress up as ‘an Eskimo’ or ‘a Mexican’ to be not only obnoxious and ignorant, but indicative of your deep lack of creativity, White people!

It is pretty damned shitty of you to complain about not being able to dress up as an ethnic stereotype for Halloween when you have a wealth of other choices.

ETA: I know the current Spider-Man is not White. But I feel safe in assuming that most people are unaware of Miles Morales and still think of Spider-Man as Peter Parker.

squeetothegee:

thegeniuswaitress:

• White
• More than half male
• Either old enough that they may have had a hand in the crisis (unlike my generation), or young enough that they’re definitely not actually paying income taxes, therefore NOT part of the 53%
• Have benefited from the system in some way (scholarships, bankruptcy filings, small business incentives by the evil government) and claim that they’ve done everything for themselves

Is this a joke? Do you chuckleheads actually think you’re a movement?

  

^^^

During a press conference, the mayor asked why demonstrators were picking on guys like Jamie Dimon (“an honorable person, working very hard, paying his taxes”) when, as he put it, “There are a lot of people who make a lot of money. You have actors and athletes, and you have business people making a lot of money.”

The difference between highly-paid financiers and highly-paid actors and athletes? The former are paid huge sums of money to make rich people even richer. The latter actually add something of value to people’s lives with their talent. Sure, they also get paid a lot, but they’re unable to rig the system to keep themselves on top even after they lose the ability to entertain. They also don’t use their money and influence to buy politicians and convince the masses to vote against their own interests.

….Which is why I think the criticism directed at Kanye West is wrong (and kind of suspicious, given the fact that I haven’t seen white entertainers being singled out for showing up at OWS). Athletes, actors, musicians =/= the plutocrats who routinely ruin the American economy through their own greed. Bloomberg is either being deliberately mendacious or sadly obtuse if he thinks so.

(Source: New York Magazine)

What is with the unsightly rash of smug, white, Galtian-types invading the 99% Tumblr?

Don’t these people have better things to do with their time than troll? Like learn how to perform surgery on themselves or make their own toilet paper or something?

We get it: you’re a special snowflake and think the rest of us are lazy, irresponsible whiners and any troubles we’re experiencing are entirely self-made.

Now kindly GTFO my social justice movement and go fuck yourselves…which seems to fit more with your whole, self-help, bootstraps ethos anyway.

(Source: wwwbuythebookcvcom)

I’ve been staying quiet about the Slutwalk NYC racefail so far because I didn’t feel like I had anything significant to add. There have been lots of WOC here on Tumblr and in the blogosphere who have written brilliantly about it.

But lately, I keep seeing people on my Dash bringing up Yoko Ono as an excuse of some sort. So, as an Asian American woman, I felt moved to finally say something. Here it is:

The fact that another woman used the n-word once to make a political point doesn’t excuse this fuckery, White people:

And it still doesn’t matter if the woman who coined the phrase and wrote that song was not White. In fact, she’s not off the hook for using the n-word either! Asians have had a long, shameful history of participating in White oppression of Blacks.

Plus, Yoko was writing from a place of profound ignorance about American racial politics. 1) She was an immigrant from a country where she was in the ethnic majority 2) She coined the phrase and co-wrote the song in the 1970s—hardly a time of racial enlightenment! Like so many other feminists, Ono and Lennon are guilty of having used Black women’s backs as a bridge to ‘progress’. How exactly does bringing Ono up excuse those White women in the picture above, the Slutwalk organizers, or their defenders?

What kind of damned fool thinks Asian ignorance and racism can be used to excuse White ignorance and racism?

Yoko Ono did not give White feminists a Hood Pass! John Lennon did not give White feminists a Hood Pass! There’s no such thing as a fucking Hood Pass! There is no non-problematic way for a non-Black person to use the n-word. None.

It is downright pitiful that people keep trying to hide their racism behind a dead musician and an ignorant Asian.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a billionaire who made his fortune as a corporate executive, has said the demonstrators are making a mistake by targeting Wall Street.

“The protesters are protesting against people who make $40- or $50,000 a year and are struggling to make ends meet. That’s the bottom line. Those are the people who work on Wall Street or in the finance sector,” Bloomberg said in a radio interview Friday.

Bloomberg added:

“We always tend to blame the wrong people,” added Bloomberg. “We blame the banks–they were part of this, but so was Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and Congress and you and me. Everybody wanted the boom times.”

In other words, Bloomberg and his ilk continue trying to convince us that we were all EQUALLY at fault for the financial meltdown and that it’s unfair to single out Wall Street in particular.

Nice try, but that is patently false:

Actually, the median salary for stockbrokers is approximately $88,000 a year. But that is besides the point. The demonstrators are not targeting the individuals who work on Wall Street, they are targeting the financial institutions and practices they represent.

Recall, the banks were the primary actors who set off the global recession, and that recession plunged 60 million people into extreme poverty worldwide. By protesting in favor [of] things like a financial transactions tax, Americans can hope to get some of that wealth back from financial institutions that are anything but “struggling to make ends meet.”

(Source: miamiherald.com)