There are Blacks and niggers, Africans and kaffirs, Whites and crackers, Aussies and ockkers. I guess Vietnamese would have their own term for calling out someone that ACTS like they're from the wrong side of the tracks.
As far as installing Kamala being a 'fuck you' goes - so will installing Trump. Damned if they do and damned if they don't; American people aren't going to gain anything by installing either of the two massively pro-Israeli war candidates.
That sounds terrible Tom, until you ask the unanswered question of this article: as opposed to what? Heavily socialist or communist government? As bad a choice as having to decide between Kamala or Donald?
Dr Richard Wolff is a PhD American economist. He often makes the point that he learned the most establishmentarian, main-stream economic policy at three of Americas best institutions of higher education: Stanford, Yale and Princeton. (One of his class mates was Janet Yalin who was Secretary of Treasury and I believe is now on the Federal Reserve Board.) He taught economics at Yale and U. Mass and now as prof. emeritus teaches at The New School in NYC.
The point being he is no bomb-throwing, radical left, wild-eyed anarchist. He is very much out of the American main-stream capitalist economic tradition.
He does not so much advocate for socialism or communism but rather what he does advocate for is a more equitable work place for American workers such as cooperatives in which the workers own and run their business. The way American capitalist business is set up now a small group of private share holders (stock owners) get most of the profits of a business or company. Usually the CEO is part of this privileged inside group. These people get most of the profits of a business while they in turn pay their workers a few dollars an hour. The federal minimum wage in The States has been stuck at $7.25 an hour for 15 years now. Really a de facto slave wage which no one can live on with America's high rents.
Dr. Wolff is not some pie in the sky advocate of unrealistic economic theory. His theories have been empirically proven successful by the Mondragon cooperative in Spain. It is a 65 year old very successful cooperative that its tens of thousands of workers own and are paid a good, living wage from. It's high level executives are allowed to make only 8 or 9 times the lowest paid workers' pay; not the hundreds of times more compensation that American CEOs get. (American CEOs often get compensation of tens of millions of dollars a year while their workers are getting 10 or 15 dollars an hour.
One might ask oneself why a putative "democracy" like America is supposed to be gives us so little (really no) choice between Kamala and Donald (tweedledum and tweedlede as Ralph Nader said) and capitalism for the rich and capitalism for the even richer? Doesn't sound like much of a democracy to me. Sounds more like an oligarchy of the wealthy ruling over the masses. One might peruse Princeton economists Gilliam and Page's paper on how America became an oligarchy run by and for the rich. https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746
I dont disagree with this Tom. I watched a doco many years ago about the owner of the largest scrap steel company in US who keenly felt this inequality and enacted that sort of sensible reform of his business with a cap on executives returns, etc, etc, proving it could be done, and done well. I dont remembeŕ the details unfortunately. But we have to accept that we live on a planet with a very low level of evolution and seek to make it better within ourselves first of all.
A few grungy folk looked up at me. The women, as usual, ignored me.
"What are you talking about, dude?" Some unsavory characture exclaimed.
I said, "Like, ya know, we gotta' save the whales! Like right now!"
The guy gave me a stoney glare. "Man, are you still in the 80's or what?"
"What's wrong with that?" I said, genuinely perplexed.
"Like, dude" he said, "If you wanna' get some chicks, this year you gotta save the Palestinians!"
"Pala...pala... what?!" What ocean do they, like, swim in, man?"
"No bro." The guy smirked at me with a George W. Bush Jr. smirk. Thy're people man. You know like brown people, bro.""
"People?!" I was incredulous. I honestly thought we were saving the whales. "Where do they live?"
" I don't know, dude. " He shrugged his shoulders indifferently. "Like, somewhere, I guess."
I let this sink in for a while. Then I went to the next cafe' (the only two in Bridgeport; people here don't go to cafes. There's too much good T.V. ("must see T.V." is how the marketers tout it) that one might miss. Like Donald Trump's "Apprentice" in which Americans are disciplined by their corporate masters to become accustomed to how precarious their lives are under American capitalism with the terse, life upending admonition, "Yur' Fired!"). "Save the whales, uh, I mean the Palestinians, dude." I mumbled. "Whatever." Too many years in California had left me hunting for cetaceans.
I buy (or steal, depending upon the circumstances and what I can get away with) a lot of porno magazines. It's the only opportunity I have to see an attractive (even if AI generated) woman looking me in the eye and smiling. I'm the sad, pathetic result of a society in precipitous decline. At least for those, like me, who make less than $100,000 per year.
Also, I have a tendency -- arising to a need -- to blame other people for my own pathologies. If I didn't I'd probably have to kill myself.
If you make good money in this society everything is great. If you're poor as I am, not so good.
Some people are open, lusty xenophobes. They openly and with relish just simply hate everyone they perceive to be "the other." Or the outsider. Then there are the reluctant, "gosh, I wish I didn't hate other people so much" xenophobes. They know society wants them to like everyone but it's just too hard to do. They'll be going along real smooth and cool and then the next thing you know "nigger!" or "wap" or "chink" suddenly pops out of their mouth. "Opps, my bad!" They'll say. Smirking surreptitiously to no one in particular. That's me. The loser in a loser society. "Opps! my bad!" Laughing up my sleeve. You'd think I'd learn by now. But nope... . These sorts also use a lot of ungrammatical English like "yep", "nope" and "sheeet! It ain't my fault!"
Last night I drank a cockroach swimming around in my vodka and grape juice cocktail. It's hard to see them swimming around in the glass when one is sitting in a darkened room drinking a dark drink on a dark night, with only the light of the laptop computer screen staring one in one's hate distorted countenance. "Opps! My bad... ."
I simply must invest in a hard copy dictionary of slang. Seeing the offbeat in print, still engages me. First time I remember was in Huckleberry Finn. Had to wade thru Slave Jim's nigger talk slowly, carefully. A lot of work for a lazy young reader, but unconsciously I was introduced to the idea of parsing language: reading for more than just narrative content.
Linh's photo of London's Argus headline sent me scurrying to discover OAP means Old Age Pensioner. Hey, that's me! A couple of corrections to my fellow pensioner: wop (uncouth Italian) not wap (wet ass pussy) and more flagrantly, oops not opps. Pardon me, Tom, but I do have a minor degree in fuss pottery.
Forget who wrote it but I recall reading a statement about whores being, "America's highest-paid professional women." America being quintessentially neoliberal capitalist, the statement is undoubtedly true even if said high-paid professional woman hasn't ever had sex for money.
There are Blacks and niggers, Africans and kaffirs, Whites and crackers, Aussies and ockkers. I guess Vietnamese would have their own term for calling out someone that ACTS like they're from the wrong side of the tracks.
As far as installing Kamala being a 'fuck you' goes - so will installing Trump. Damned if they do and damned if they don't; American people aren't going to gain anything by installing either of the two massively pro-Israeli war candidates.
And pro-capitalist. Don't forget the the pro-capitalists. More subsidies and tax cuts for the rich; more "let them eat (sh*t) cake for the poor. https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/08/06/the-undemocratic-reality-of-capitalism/
That sounds terrible Tom, until you ask the unanswered question of this article: as opposed to what? Heavily socialist or communist government? As bad a choice as having to decide between Kamala or Donald?
Hello Ms. Drew,
Dr Richard Wolff is a PhD American economist. He often makes the point that he learned the most establishmentarian, main-stream economic policy at three of Americas best institutions of higher education: Stanford, Yale and Princeton. (One of his class mates was Janet Yalin who was Secretary of Treasury and I believe is now on the Federal Reserve Board.) He taught economics at Yale and U. Mass and now as prof. emeritus teaches at The New School in NYC.
The point being he is no bomb-throwing, radical left, wild-eyed anarchist. He is very much out of the American main-stream capitalist economic tradition.
He does not so much advocate for socialism or communism but rather what he does advocate for is a more equitable work place for American workers such as cooperatives in which the workers own and run their business. The way American capitalist business is set up now a small group of private share holders (stock owners) get most of the profits of a business or company. Usually the CEO is part of this privileged inside group. These people get most of the profits of a business while they in turn pay their workers a few dollars an hour. The federal minimum wage in The States has been stuck at $7.25 an hour for 15 years now. Really a de facto slave wage which no one can live on with America's high rents.
Dr. Wolff is not some pie in the sky advocate of unrealistic economic theory. His theories have been empirically proven successful by the Mondragon cooperative in Spain. It is a 65 year old very successful cooperative that its tens of thousands of workers own and are paid a good, living wage from. It's high level executives are allowed to make only 8 or 9 times the lowest paid workers' pay; not the hundreds of times more compensation that American CEOs get. (American CEOs often get compensation of tens of millions of dollars a year while their workers are getting 10 or 15 dollars an hour.
One might ask oneself why a putative "democracy" like America is supposed to be gives us so little (really no) choice between Kamala and Donald (tweedledum and tweedlede as Ralph Nader said) and capitalism for the rich and capitalism for the even richer? Doesn't sound like much of a democracy to me. Sounds more like an oligarchy of the wealthy ruling over the masses. One might peruse Princeton economists Gilliam and Page's paper on how America became an oligarchy run by and for the rich. https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746
I dont disagree with this Tom. I watched a doco many years ago about the owner of the largest scrap steel company in US who keenly felt this inequality and enacted that sort of sensible reform of his business with a cap on executives returns, etc, etc, proving it could be done, and done well. I dont remembeŕ the details unfortunately. But we have to accept that we live on a planet with a very low level of evolution and seek to make it better within ourselves first of all.
Hi everyone,
I just sneaked in a penultimate paragraph. There are usually addtions to these pieces when they're published as books.
Linh
I went into a local cafe here in Bridgeport.
"Save the whales, man. Save the whales!"
A few grungy folk looked up at me. The women, as usual, ignored me.
"What are you talking about, dude?" Some unsavory characture exclaimed.
I said, "Like, ya know, we gotta' save the whales! Like right now!"
The guy gave me a stoney glare. "Man, are you still in the 80's or what?"
"What's wrong with that?" I said, genuinely perplexed.
"Like, dude" he said, "If you wanna' get some chicks, this year you gotta save the Palestinians!"
"Pala...pala... what?!" What ocean do they, like, swim in, man?"
"No bro." The guy smirked at me with a George W. Bush Jr. smirk. Thy're people man. You know like brown people, bro.""
"People?!" I was incredulous. I honestly thought we were saving the whales. "Where do they live?"
" I don't know, dude. " He shrugged his shoulders indifferently. "Like, somewhere, I guess."
I let this sink in for a while. Then I went to the next cafe' (the only two in Bridgeport; people here don't go to cafes. There's too much good T.V. ("must see T.V." is how the marketers tout it) that one might miss. Like Donald Trump's "Apprentice" in which Americans are disciplined by their corporate masters to become accustomed to how precarious their lives are under American capitalism with the terse, life upending admonition, "Yur' Fired!"). "Save the whales, uh, I mean the Palestinians, dude." I mumbled. "Whatever." Too many years in California had left me hunting for cetaceans.
I buy (or steal, depending upon the circumstances and what I can get away with) a lot of porno magazines. It's the only opportunity I have to see an attractive (even if AI generated) woman looking me in the eye and smiling. I'm the sad, pathetic result of a society in precipitous decline. At least for those, like me, who make less than $100,000 per year.
Also, I have a tendency -- arising to a need -- to blame other people for my own pathologies. If I didn't I'd probably have to kill myself.
If you make good money in this society everything is great. If you're poor as I am, not so good.
Some people are open, lusty xenophobes. They openly and with relish just simply hate everyone they perceive to be "the other." Or the outsider. Then there are the reluctant, "gosh, I wish I didn't hate other people so much" xenophobes. They know society wants them to like everyone but it's just too hard to do. They'll be going along real smooth and cool and then the next thing you know "nigger!" or "wap" or "chink" suddenly pops out of their mouth. "Opps, my bad!" They'll say. Smirking surreptitiously to no one in particular. That's me. The loser in a loser society. "Opps! my bad!" Laughing up my sleeve. You'd think I'd learn by now. But nope... . These sorts also use a lot of ungrammatical English like "yep", "nope" and "sheeet! It ain't my fault!"
Last night I drank a cockroach swimming around in my vodka and grape juice cocktail. It's hard to see them swimming around in the glass when one is sitting in a darkened room drinking a dark drink on a dark night, with only the light of the laptop computer screen staring one in one's hate distorted countenance. "Opps! My bad... ."
I simply must invest in a hard copy dictionary of slang. Seeing the offbeat in print, still engages me. First time I remember was in Huckleberry Finn. Had to wade thru Slave Jim's nigger talk slowly, carefully. A lot of work for a lazy young reader, but unconsciously I was introduced to the idea of parsing language: reading for more than just narrative content.
Linh's photo of London's Argus headline sent me scurrying to discover OAP means Old Age Pensioner. Hey, that's me! A couple of corrections to my fellow pensioner: wop (uncouth Italian) not wap (wet ass pussy) and more flagrantly, oops not opps. Pardon me, Tom, but I do have a minor degree in fuss pottery.
Forget who wrote it but I recall reading a statement about whores being, "America's highest-paid professional women." America being quintessentially neoliberal capitalist, the statement is undoubtedly true even if said high-paid professional woman hasn't ever had sex for money.
Hi Optera,
Isn't this true of men also?
Linh
Essentially, but then we'd be talking (primarily?) about gigolos.
Hi Optera,
It's safe to say every American academic, journalist, doctor and politician, etc, is a seasoned and cynical whore!
Linh
P.S. The last straight talking American politician, Cynthia McKinney, is living in Dhaka!
For sure, and Snowden is in Russia. If you want to tell (or know) the truth about anything there's no point living in an empire of lies.
"Empire of Illusion" by Rev. Chris Hedges. Probably one of the most insightful and important books about American society in the last thirty years.