Agreed-on mirror
Haven't taken note of a shared lie in quite a while.

Simple shared lies are statements like "Bush is a cowboy who always goes to war alone" or "Fox News is a right-wing network." The statement is false, but both "sides" agree with it for their own purposes, with opposite emotional connections.

This one is more complicated. The statement is false. One side agrees with it for its own purposes, and the other side wishes it were true for its own purposes.

Even if it were true, it still wouldn't be true.

Basic statement is the old Tocqueville thing about largesse, modernized to the 47% meme. In simple language, "Providing welfare to the masses is the best way to get votes."

All Randian yappers (Rush and acolytes) constantly quote the largesse thing, and constantly run the 47% meme.

If this were true, any politician or party who increases benefits should be in office forever, and any politician who decreases benefits should be tossed out quickly. I've already disproved this notion with plain old history. Politicians continue to act like it's true, continue to promise or provide more benefits, but it doesn't help them.

Now we have the wishful lie from the other side. The Vox website reviews Linda Tirado's book on the costliness of poverty. Most of it is powerfully true and valid. When you're poor you can't make long-term decisions, can't form shock-absorbing cushions of money or property, can't hire bullies (lawyers, insurance companies) to take your side against other bullies (lawyers, insurance companies, banks, hospitals). Every expense and problem crashes head-on into your life, knocking you backwards. You continually fall behind in every literal and metaphorical sense.

But when the author tries to find a bright spot in "civic engagement", she goes wrong.

I think that's utopia — full participation. And that would be great, because if we had full part we'd have policies that reflect the actual nation, et cetera, et cetera. Everybody knows the argument. The trouble is you can do as many [get out the vote] programs as you want to, but until [low-income Americans] start feeling like they have some connection to the people that are in authority over them, until they stop feeling like they're condescended to, until they start feeling like anybody actually gives a shit about what they're saying or hears their voice, you're not going to see anybody come out to vote.

You're literally asking us to please take time off work, reschedule our days, figure out what to do with our kids, so that we can go possibly wait in line for five minutes, maybe for seven hours, nobody really knows.

Unfortunately delusional. The 47% thing doesn't work now, and it wouldn't work if you tried it.

Politicians at all levels are already fully locked into their sources of money. Their input jacks are fully saturated. Other inputs (e.g. this peculiar vaporware called "voting", whatever the fuck that might mean) cannot enter.

On the federal level all inputs come from the Jew casinos (Goldman, Morgan, etc). On the state level all inputs come from Italian or Indian casinos. On the city level all inputs come directly from Michael Bloomberg himself. No politician can get anywhere near an office unless he's plugged into the correct input for his desired level.

Unless the poor can become a casino, or become Michael Bloomberg, they have no chance of "civic engagement". The former is at least theoretically possible through crowdfunding; the latter is physically impossible because Michael Bloomberg already occupies the body of Michael Bloomberg. "Civic engagement" for anyone else is a myth. All the gears are engaged.

Labels: Shared Lie

  ¶ 3:35 AM