teh Mexigogue

When fighting erupted between Israel and Lebanon it was my view that, rather than send Condi in to broker an immediate cease fire, we should let them fight. My reasoning was that I don’t like war and, for that reason, those involved should be allowed to engage in fighting until they could both taste the ramifications of those actions. Lo and behold, about a month or so in, a Hezbollah leader was quoted as saying that if he had known that kidnapping of Israeli soldiers would have led to the invasion of Lebanon he would not have ordered it. And there you have it: if you want someone to learn from their bad decisions, you don’t bail them out, you make them live with the consequences of their actions.

Ok, we seem to get it on the international front (at least in the above instance), but it baffles me why our domestic policy is so different. Problem: a percentage of people engage in actions which lead them to poverty. Solution, WIC, foodstamps, government housing, medicaid, and state subsidized burials. See that? You’re covered from the cradle to the grave so long as you do not achieve. One statistician with whom I debate online is fond of saying that welfare comprises only 1% of the federal budget. I can’t vouch for the validity of that claim but even so what she is ignoring is the cost of rewarding people for underachieving (the government is encouraging learned dependency among a group who otherwise might have become productive). And then there is the other thing: saying this evil is only 1% of the budget is like me pointing out the existence of a Nazi and then someone else responding that the Nazi is only four feet tall. That would not change the nature of the charge. Evil by any measure is still evil, Hitler doesn’t get points for being small!

My point here isn’t to indulge my resentment against welfare recipients because, truth be told, I don’t really interact with them (besides arguing with them about parenting time) and the issue does not affect me directly. My point today is I am wondering why helping the poor is universally regarded to be a virtue. Is it a virtue to not have money because being broke doesn’t make me feel especially virtuous. Is it a virtue to reward people for engaging in non-productive (and often destructive) actions? If so, why? Does this stem from the concept that money is evil and so we therefore strive to send it directly to the people who are most likely to mishandle it? Because if you really want bang for your buck I say don’t send it to the poor who are more likely to turn it into cigarettes or nail extensions, send it to the rich as they are more likely to put it to good use.

I think the impetus to give money to the poor belongs to a bygone era where wealth wasn’t being sufficiently produced to reward the majority of the people, regardless of their actions. In those days you might do all the right things and still not make enough to get by so, since virtue (best effort at productivity) was not enough to get by, people gave and accepted alms. But nowadays there is sufficient resources and opportunity available for us to be able to make a distinction. If you don’t make enough to feed yourself then (absent physical or mental disability) you’re absolutely doing something wrong and you should have to eat that.

If people were treated like that they would learn that bad decisions would earn bad results and they would move away from those things. Failing that we have people who won’t work, don’t feel they have to, think they are owed something for their non-efforts, and in the face of impending doom will sit in their houses and wait for the government to come in and rescue them from natural disasters because they think they have a constitutional right to be protected from the weather. And, as bad motherfuckers as the Founding Fathers were (George Washington will kick you apart), they neither tried, nor claimed it was their duty, to stop the rain.

Ooh, nice hairstyle. If I knew her I would sneak up on her with a rolled up newspaper: don’t move, I can kill it!

When I was in high school I remember trying to figure out what electives I would take. Typing and band were foregone conclusions (I must have had a vague idea about a scenario where being in a marching band would result in me getting tons of money and all the bitches), but what else to take? Philosophy? Psychology? Political science? Everything sounded so interesting and yet so different.

I know now that those subjects, while areas of specialties, are in fact all tied in together. How can one develop a philosophy of the proper mode of human existence without having knowledge about how the mind works? What is politics (money, power, thanks for the tip Louis Farrakhan, you fucking genius) if not the attempt to implement the other two in the most effective form for the desired outcome?

In retrospect in my early years I could have used some instruction in ethics and critical thinking. Because as I began picking up knowledge here and there I was at a loss for how to apply it. I had read Malcolm X’s anti-semitic rants in his autobiography. In a political science class I learned that in the Arab world CNN was preferred over the other major American networks because the others had Jews in prominent positions. I read in the newspaper about that time that while Jews comprised a very small percentage of the American population, they represented about 25% of the writers for major newspapers. I took these, at the time, to the conclusion that the Jews “control the media”.

Old Mike, meet the new Mike: Even assuming that fact is correct (and I can’t vouch for those numbers as I can’t cite the source), if 25% of the writers are Jewish then it stands to reason that 75% of the writers are not Jewish. How then do the Jews control the media? What might be said rather is that the Jews have the potential for exerting a disproportionate influence on the American media (and this is presuming they allow personal bias to significantly affect their reporting of the news) but if this is due to their particular success in an area then who can be blamed for that? Rather than question why one group excels at a particular endeavor why not ask why other groups do not? Are we to strive to impose demographic representation in all jobs? If so who is going to bust up the female domination in the field of education and the Mexican overrepresentation in the landscaping and housekeeping services? This line of thought can continue ad funny and ad absurdum. I will at this time, however, focus on the second.

The point is that the fact of a greater achievement of a particular group is not, in and of itself, evidence of a vast conspiracy or an evil plan. The danger of that line of reasoning is that, among other things, it will necessarily lead to resentment of success in certain groups which is entirely innappropriate unless you posit failure as a positive value. On another level it could lead to a resentment of Jews which, in my case, didn’t make any sense since the only Jews I had ever known had been pretty benign toward me (in the brig my Jewish counterpart Tom Heyward lent me $5 and he didn’t even charge me usury!)

Fortunately I ultimately came to reject the ethics of collectivism (there are two words that don’t go together right there) and by extension I also rejected the idea of collective guilt. For once this isn’t just about me though. This is why I rail against collectivism in all its forms (especially in non-funny racism). As people, as citizens, and good human beings, in order to overcome the sources of injustice, we must work to dismantle injustice itself. This means we must thoroughly pwn every one of its premises.  This can be achieved with a proper understanding of philosophy, psychology, and politics.  Failing that it should be curable by a large dose of propaganda which ought to be no problem since the Jews control the media!

I hate poems. I find them pompous, flowery, dripping with emotion, and utterly unreadable. That’s why I find it strange that I’ve written about four poems in my life (I don’t count the haikus I’ve written, haiku is the far east equivalent of a limerick, yeah that’s right Asians, I said it!) Here is one I wrote on a whim when I was at my desk in 1996. I immediately sent it to Natalai, a former co-worker chick I liked. That’s the only reason I still have it to this day. The poem is as follows:

Playing games with my religion. . .
my concept of God and Truth
Peace is my greeting, but they say
that we sanction violence
I disagree and gently with words I prod them to see
my Vision, my understanding
of God
And if, after my eloquent, intellectual elucidation
they yet disagree
I will strap on a city block’s worth of explosives
and blast them to Kingdom Come

Thank you vurry much!

Other poems I’ve previously posted

I finally had the opportunity to meet Valentina from the INTJ lists yesterday. I had some bidness to attend to in Detroit so we made arrangements to meet up at the noon hour. I was going to be in the area of the Coleman Young Municipal Center so I said “Isn’t there a statue of a person we can meet up at?” She said “Yes. There’s also a statue of a fist.” Oh hell yeah, I thought. “Oh hell yeah” I said (sometimes I say what I think), “Let’s meet up at the fist!”

So I’m wandering around the front of the Coleman Young Center. I see the statue of the man holding up the Death Star but the fist is not to be found near the building. On a hunch (and with the sneaking feeling that someone might be observing me from another direction) I turn and look in a little median area in the street and I see it, Joe Louis’s Giant Fist. A person is sitting there looking all amused and waves at me. I presume it’s Valentina but just in case it might be a person waving to someone else near me, I give a little jerky hiccup of a wave that might be explainable as me adjusting my sleeve if it turns out to be a case of mistaken identity (always maintain plausible deniability).

It’s Valentina all right and she immediately begins talking to me as if it’s old times. Well, to all you people who might be reading this 100 years in the future this IS old times as far as you’re concerned. But from my perspective these are new times. This is actually the second time I’ve talked to Valentina though because we had a phone call once back in the days and I recognize her voice. She has something of an accent but of course that’s a very familiar situation for me since there are a lot of Mexicans in my family. Valentina speaks passable Italian and she has giddy fun making fun of the fancy Italian phrases they put on the menu at the place we go to eat which is in the Resaissance Center.

The lunch was great (something with shrimp and crab meat) but the food is almost besides the point since we’re having some rip roaring discussions (remember, this is from my perspective, from her perspective I might have been a total bore or some taco bell doggish type weirdo). We had a lot things in common as far as subject matter (she’s married to a Muslim pool afficianado). Oh get this: her husband if proficient with English but sometimes still uses the wrong word. A trip to intensive care somehow turned into a trip to ‘insensitive care’. Man, when I get hurt I wanna go there! I think that’s the place you go where they patch up your injuries but call you a towel-head in the process. Stellar!

When the meal was over and we were getting ready to go she saw me looking all around like a beagle looking for a place to take a piss.

“What are you looking for?” she asks. “Um. The. . . the watchacall, the bill. What happened to it?”

“I took care of it.”

(slow motion movie theatrics): “NOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

“Yes. That’s the rules. I invited you to lunch, I pick up the tab. That’s the way it works.”

“Ok. Thanks very much. I had no idea!”

After the lunch she invited me to take a tour of her office. I said yah so we went to the Penobsc, Penoscb, Penabs. . . Very Tall Building and went up to like the forty-something floor. The office had a very nice vantage pointwhere you could look across the Detroit River and see into the foreign land of Canadia. I could see Canadian casinos and when I squinted I could see Canadians with their beady eyes and flapping little heads. Also you could see Ford Field and Tiger Stadium. It kind of reminded me of looking out the window of Phelps‘ office in Very Tall Building in Dallas from where you could see Kennedy being shot.

Unfortunately the meeting ended rather abruptly as I suddenly discovered that I was running short of time as I had to get to that office and do that thing. We bid each other a fond adieu at which time there was much weeping amid vows and counter vows of suicide if we should not meet each other again, you know, the usual thing. And thus went my wonderful afternoon with Valentina and a fist!

Rain is ignorant. So is lightning. Three quarters of the lights just went out on my floor after one particularly loud bolt from the heavens. My computer is still going but what I’m really worried about is how I’m going to get my mid-day burrito without getting wet. I might have to wait until the rain dies down. The dark cubicle and the glow of my computor monitor on my face is making me sleepy. Or maybe it’s the fact that I played 9-ball on the big tables until midnight.

I hate 9-ball on the big tables. I’m no good at it. What made it even worse is that Shawn Allison was there and although he wasn’t laughing on the outside, deep down I know he was yucking it up. He asked if I’ve seen this person or that person or the other person lately. I said I see almost no one, I’m turning into a hermit.

Goddamn the sky is exploding with cracks of thunder. It sounds like God and Chuck Norris are playing a monstrous game of thumps. I imagine the rain is God’s tears as he struggles through the pain. I’ll have my burrito yet.

One final thought, I’d rather stay kidnapped than to be rescued by Jesse Jackson. Seriously. I mean, the valiant taste of death but once, but I’ll be damned if I listen to a rhyming preacher if I don’t have to. I can see it now:

Hezbollah: All your base are belong to us!

Mexigogue: Very well.

Hezbollah: However your release has been arranged. You are free to leave now with Jesse Jackson.

Mexigogue: No

Hezbollah: Say again?

Mexigogue: I don’t like Jesse Jackson. I would rather stay here.

Hezbollah: But. . . we might kill you.

Mexigogue: Are you going to say outlandish shit and rhyme while you do it?

Hezbollah: Um. No.

Mexigogue: Then that’s a chance I’m willing to take. Can I have another of your angry falafels please?

Man I need a burrito.

The George Washington video (linked in yesterday’s comments) reminded me of a story my son wrote which we put on a website some years ago. The character’s name is Jones Lee. He is an Italian kung fu fighter from Mississippi (don’t ask, I don’t even begin to know why). Anyway we made it into comic book form. At the bottom of each page you should see a link to take you to the next page. Here it goes!

Click here for the Ultimate Battle.

The eighth of a mile strip ranging from Walnut to Princeton on West Saginaw in Lansing has more stranded people per capita than any other place in the industrialized world. This guy stopped me the other day. “Hey man, can you help me out, I’m from Detroit and I’m stranded. Anything, a dollar or two?” Two women stopped me Saturday morning when I was was walking with my 11 year old son: “Sir? Sir? We’re stranded, can we get just a couple dollars?” I hate to see people in need so I started walking faster. It isn’t just this past week, this happens in that area all the time.

What are the chances, what is the likelihood of such a conglomeration of stranded people regularly coming together in one spot? Being as I’m a natural skeptic, I couldn’t chalk it up entirely to chance. That’s when I began noticing a pattern: the liquor stores.

The corner of Pine and Saginaw is a hubbub of activity for beer runs, Quality Dairy on one corner, the ghetto chicken Citgo diagonally across also sells beer. Princeton and Saginaw is home to Toolins, where you can get not only liquor, cigarettes, and lottery tickets, but you can also get pork in a can caked in gellatin just like The Man intended. But who is this Man, and why are these areas frequented by stranded people in search for that ever-elusive tree fiddy? Then the answer hit me: it’s the Masons!

It is my theory that the reason cars keep breaking down over here (and they must be hella broke down because I always see stranded people but never their cars that time and reality have abandoned) is because these areas are home to some disruptive magnetic fields. Back in the days before LBJ’s Great Society cars used to run with only basic automotive technology so magnetic fields wouldn’t be an issue. But now when cars are largely computerized these magnetic fields will cause cars to suddenly break down. And who but a secret fraternal order such as the Masons would be smart enough to know both where the magnetic fields are and that it would be advantageous to build liquor stores there? Because when people get stranded they lose the ability to get anywhere. And then they get depressed so they naturally will turn to liquor.

At this point this is just a theory but my trip down that way last night seems to have confirmed my suspicions. Last night same area, same lady, still looking for that same dollar. If she’s still there a whole day later then she really is stranded. A captive audience has been created, The Man strikes again!

Now I’m reading “Ethnic America” by Thomas Sowell. He discusses violence between the Irish and other ethnic groups in the late 19th century and early 20th:

The usual difficulties of determining the initiator of hostilities are not so great in some of these instances. Some of the groups with whom the Irish had numerous clashes were groups that lived relatively harmoniously with other groups. For example, the Jews and the Italians generally lived peaceably with each other, although neither could get along with the Irish. The Chinese Americans seldom, if ever, attacked any other ethnic group. The historic hostility between blacks and the Irish goes well back before the Civil War, at a time when there was only a relative handful of free blacks, and it would have been suicidal for them to launch unprovoked attacks on the numerous Irish. Germans sometimes initiated conflicts with the Irish, but on other occasions “Irish rowdies interfered with German picnics, frequently for no apparent reason except to add excitement to an otherwise dull Sunday.”

Heh! Look out Itchy he’s Irish indeed!

A federal judge has ruled that the NSA eavesdropping program is unconstitutional as it violates free speech and privacy. Good. The problem with the President’s contention that this is an emergency program that is necessary to fight the war on terror is that the war on terror will never have a fixed end. An infringement on our right to privacy for the duration of this war would in effect be a permanent end to our rights to free speech and privacy as we know it and the judicial branch ain’t havin’ it.

And just so we make this clear, these freedoms aren’t just some hippie-friendly rights tossed into the American system as an afterthought kind of like the parsley you just laugh at while you’re eating your burger, these are part of the foundations that make America what it is. Without these there is nothing worth fighting for besides the lives of 300 million barnyard animals. The operating American philosophy has always been give me liberty or give me death. Our freedom is what makes us great. Without that we should just rename ourselves The Peoples Republic of Leroy’s and turn in our blogs at the door.

For those of you on the left who are fond of comparing George Dubya to Hitler, take note. The system of government in Nazi Germany did not allow for judicial oversight on the tactics of the Fuhrer. The American system has checks and balances precisely to curtail any running amok within the system. Also take note that by the time Hitler began invading neighboring states, he preceded that with carefully choreographed stories in the press meant to incite popular opinion. The American Presidents have never had, nor ever will, have control of the press so there is another impediment to your Hitler analogies right there. Our freedom of speech, both within the traditional press and on the internet, will prevent that type of mind control on such a mass scale from ever happening over here. That is unless we surrender those freedoms in the name of a war on terror.

The American President is not the Fuhrer, he couldn’t be even if he tried, and we have the separation of powers to thank for that. And even failing that he’s not nearly good enough an orator to incite the public to genocide on a mass scale so don’t even begin to worry about it. No, if American freedom is imperiled, it will not come in the form of an assault on freedom from the top down, it will be because the voters, the legislators, and the judiciary allow our nation to become a police state by voluntarily handing over “temporary” emergency powers. Right now we can thank a federal judge in Detroit for not allowing that to happen.