Hate Mail from my Hate Mail Response

The cool thing about hate mail is that when you respond to one whiney little crybaby you inevitably get another one in the comments. Around here I’ve got this sort of perpetual hate mail machine. If only I could harness the power of liberal angst. I could probably power my house just off the friction from all the hand wringing.

After this post last week, http://larrycorreia.wordpress.com/2012/01/05/more-fun-with-hate-mail-time/#comment-23186 I got this bunch of nonsense from Bags. I responded in the thread with a short post, but then decided to share with you guys. Y’all seem to enjoy these posts, and who am I to disappoint the Monster Hunter Nation?

Well, Larry, I’m sure you would have pulled yourself up from the bootstraps if you were born in a slum in India, too. You know, India has a much smaller, much less powerful government that taxes much less than the american one.

And thus begins an exercise in Reductio Ad Absurdum. What that term means is that when you are clueless and have no intelligent way to respond to someone’s argument, you take their argument and then stretch it out into absolutely ridiculous territory to try and disprove it.

Reductio Ad Absurdum is pretty much the favorite argument of the left. You think the government is wasteful and spends too much money on social programs? Then obviously you want all the old grandmas to starve to death in miserable agony. You are in favor of the 2nd Amendment? Then obviously you want UZIs in vending machines at elementary schools and blood to run in the streets. Lefties love doing this, and they do it so much that it is the default setting for what passes for political commentary in our country now. For example, think of last week’s news coverage about Rick Santorum once he tied in Iowa… Because he’s a staunch Catholic in his personal life he obviously wants to declare Catholic Sharia law and will ban birth control (because everybody knows that is exactly how our system of government works!).

In the mind of the media, Republican Catholics = Spanish Inquisition II. Democrat Catholics = Totally Awesome (unless they get in the way of Michelle Obama’s political ambitions in Chicago, then they are just no good paddy crackers). Of course Rick Santorum, because he has personal beliefs, will declare Sharia Law in America! Meanwhile the actual people that want to declare Sharia Law in America don’t get talked about, because that would be culturally insensitive…

Now that we’ve got that cleared up, back to our hate mail…

It also happens to have de facto control of around 70% of its land-mass, while the rest is controlled by armed gangs.

Like most countries with really strict gun control. Go figure.

People starve in India, but you wouldn’t have been one of them, because I’m sure you’d have improved your situation. Somehow.

Sadly, I could not live in India, because despite my love of curry, I am simply terrified of the Monkey Man.

Probably, since you don’t believe in hand-outs,

This is an interesting one to me. Because I’m against the welfare state, the hate mailers always assume that I’m against helping altogether. Not at all. I actually give a relatively high percentage of my income to charity. (way higher than Joe Biden, that’s for sure). The thing is to those of us on the right, there is a huge difference between choosing to GIVE money for something, rather than having someone else TAKE it from us, to then give to people/causes that we personally have moral qualms with.

you wouldn’t go through any kind of publicly funded education system.

I’ll have you know that I’m a proud graduate of the California Public School System and Junior Gladiatorial Academy, thank you very much! I didn’t actually learn much outside of Ag and Shop, but man, I can take a punch with the best of them. (sadly, looking back, I learned a lot more by reading library books on the long bus ride than I ever did in class).

Wandering off topic again, I think public education is a vast joke. You want to be filled with rage? Watch Waiting for Superman. Same guy that did Inconvenient Truth, only since this one poked at a sacred liberal institution it didn’t get truckloads of awards.  

You’d have probably got a loan and gone private. Oh wait, you wouldn’t have been able to get a loan. But you’d have worked your ass off, got some relevant skills – oh wait, you’re living in a slum, and you don’t believe in hand-outs, so no public transport means you can’t get to jobs that are further than 10 miles bike-ride.

One of my associates read this post before I approved it. He looked at me and said, “Knowing you, you would’ve worked your way up to head slum lord or something.” I took that as a great compliment. My goal would have been to work really hard until I made enough rupees to put in a Monkey Man proof fence around my slum.

Sucks to be you.

Actually, my life is really awesome.

People like you don’t realize how privileged you are,

Not really. I totally recognize how blessed I am. I was born in America, the land of opportunity. That alone gives me a huge advantage over the rest of the world’s population. All those little whiney We Are the 99% morons are the ones that don’t realize how privileged they are, because to the rest of the Earth, they are the 1%. “Oh no, somebody needs to pay my student loans” vs. “Man, I really wish I didn’t have malaria and gigantic Gambian rats gnawing on my children”.

The thing is, the reason why we’re privileged is that we live in the greatest nation that has ever existed. Why? Because it was founded and built upon freedom and capitalism. I’d like to keep it that way so that my grandkids and great-grandkids can also be born into privilege. The other option would be to continue spending America into oblivion, because then we can all suck equally.

and how damn hard it is to pull yourself out if you’re not born out in the first place.

Hmm… No. That’s just more loser talk like last week’s defeatist loser. My position is that despite how you start out, you can go on to improve your lot in life. That’s my fundamental belief. Americans do it every single day. Your response is to bring up someone born in the worst slum on Earth as an example that you can’t. The thing is, I’m talking about America. Shockingly enough, I don’t have too many blog readers in places that don’t have things like computers, electricity, or literacy.

So, sticking with America, barring the extreme circumstances of your birth on the bell curve (i.e. you were born a radioactive mutant or have flippers), you can AND SHOULD improve your lot in life. I grew up rather poor* and had some early strikes against me, but I did something about it. That’s not so weird. Most of us that are doing okay right now have similar stories. I’ve got one neighbor on Yard Moose Mountain that is a doctor, but he grew up with seven siblings in what was literally a tin roof shack. That’s life in the greatest nation in history.  

*on this note, I once had someone I argued with on this blog try to prove that I had not been poor growing up, but had in fact, grown up rich. (Which as all liberals know is the only way you can end up rich) So he went to Google Earth and stuck in Correia Dairy, Modesto California, which revealed a huge, very nice looking farm. Ah ha! Gotcha! And he posted that as “proof” on his blog… However I’m not from Modesto. I’m from El Nido, which is in Merced County. And the San Joaquin Valley is filled with Portuguese families and Correia is the last name commonality equivalent to Tanner in the English world, so it is relatively common there. Besides, if you go to Google Earth the farm I grew up on is now underneath a very large chicken plant now anyway. This moron’s research talents were wasted on me. He really should be writing books about Sarah Palin or something.  

 You’re very eloquent, but there’s a hell of a lot of sloppy thinking going on.

Disagreeing with liberal dogma = sloppy thinking. Gotcha. And I must have been born eloquent, because everybody knows you can’t learn a skill like that. Especially Indians*, because they’re too busy being terrorized by Monkey Man to learn to write good.

*in reality I’ve got a lot of respect for India. That’s a country that is not dinking around. They’re serious about getting their crap together and they are in it to win it. Same can be said for Brazil and many of the other up and comers. If we don’t stop our venture into socialism, then in a couple of generations when we’ve managed to completely destroy our productive class and America is sliding into irrelevancy, I’m sure our grandkids will be able to get jobs working at call centers to provide customer service to consumers in New Delhi.

If your going to complain about your tax bill, complain about military spending.

Obviously not a long time reader. I’ve worked for the Army and the Air Force. Believe me, you give me a team of Assault Auditors and control of the budget committee and I could do some slashing.

That’s where most of your tax dollar is going.

Actually, no. That’s not true. Medicare and Social Security are bigger than the defense budget. But of those three things, only one of them is mandated as a federal responsibility in the Constitution.

The hand-outs are pennies in comparison, and they’re mostly to stop old biddies from dying of hypothermia come winter.

See? What did I tell you? All those entitlements that are bankrupting us? Cut any of them and all the old people will die! Why do you hate old people and puppies, Mr. Correia? And sunshine and Monkey Man! Why are you such a hate monger?

Also, taxation’s more complex than a choice between high or low.

Really? I’ve only been a professional accountant for over a decade… I never realized that taxes were complicated! Herp de derp!

Many european companies tax middle-class guys less than america does, but still pay for poor old bastard’s healthcare because they tax the top ten percent more.

Do these guys actually pay any attention to the world around them, or do they just float through life in a bubble of wishful thinking? The world is what I think it is. La la la la. Europe is doing AWESOME! They’ve got so much money that all the Greeks can afford to retire at thirty and still have money left over to pay disability to all their pedophiles!*

*Germany could not be reached for comment. The country couldn’t pay its internet bill because they were too busy paying for everyone else’s good time.

This link: http://xkcd.com/980/ is pretty interesting in this regard. You can get a good idea of where the money is, where the tax money is coming from and who’s being hit hardest, and so on.

Hardest hit? I just wrote a 4th quarter withholding check big enough to buy a new Hyundai. That’s a groovy infographic. Xkcd is usually pretty clever. I have absolutely no idea what your point is though, other than you think that posting links with numbers on them makes you seem smart or something.

So that’s all for now. I’m sure I’ll be receiving more hate mail soon, probably from someone who thinks I unfairly criticized Monkey Man and his reign of terrible scratching.

Picture Time Fun, MHI tattoos, grips, D6 art, and my best mini yet
The Burning Throne, Episode 11: Lighting the Paper Lanterns

66 thoughts on “Hate Mail from my Hate Mail Response”

  1. Jolly good, old man. Being a former unwilling cultist raised in a strange little commune and getting the FRAK away from it as soon as I could, I know a thing or two about pulling oneself up, too. Most of my former associates are raving liberals.

    Not I. My problem is that I like to think hard, study hard, and then form my opinions. This makes me pretty conservative.

  2. Larry, I have no idea how you manage to not only put up with people like that, but to do it with style, class, alot of humor and a little panache.

    Hats off

  3. Funny, I install a lot of very expensive satellite dishes on a lot of mcmansions owned by owners of various businesses and they almost all seem to be getting the Hindi mega pak. Seems to me that if you want to get out of a slum in India you work really hard, get yourself to the USA, work really hard, and then send your kids to med school or MIT. But what do I know. I’m just a redneck in Alabama who puts in satellite tv for a living.

    1. My wife is from an area with a huge Indian population (and the food is AMAZING). Pretty much all of them that she associated with fit into the immigrant stereotype of get here however you can, work your ass off, make as much money as you can while saving as much as you can, and give your kids more opportunities than you had. Repeat. We used to call that the American dream, but I suppose that’s not nearly as awesome as just sitting around and whining about other people having more stuff than you do. Man, even the demographic the dude picked for his reductio ad absurdium doesn’t really fit, since the successful ones there are doing pretty much the same thing I advocated for last time, while the people that perpetuate the problems are the socialsts and bureacrats.

  4. Santorum has stated an opposition to all birth control, and would like the states to have the power to ban it under all circumstances. Whether or not he could accomplish that, it’s as objectionable to me as 0bama wanting some “new tactics” on gun control (which the left insists is not at all a problem, he hasn’t taken our guns yet, see?)

    That aside, I think it’s terrible you’re picking on this poor man, emailing you from the slums of India. You should totally send him five bucks to buy a week’s worth of food.

    Oh, wait, he’s not in India? Then I think he should totally go there and do good deeds as an example to others.

    1. Mike, I thought a super Libertarian such as yourself would be all about turning something over to the states. 😀

      And besides… Nope. http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/287330/santorum-contraception-charles-c-w-cooke Having personal religous beliefs, and flat out saying that a state has a right but shouldn’t do it, isn’t even close to being as objectional as new tactics for gun control. (such as Fast & Furious). There’s plenty of things to disagree with a candidate over without buying into the crazy liberal soundbytes.

  5. Too bad we can’t just pull Owen Z Pitt out of the book into Real Life a few times, and send him to work at cutting the Congressional Fat… As always, love you ripping apart those liberal asshats… Did he violate Rule # 2 enough?

    Hey, you never know… Correia 2016 could take the nation by storm 😉 Of course, I’m sure you could continue to be a National Bestseller and President at the same time without hiring someone else to write the book for you and put your name on it.

        1. Whomever said return the office of SecDef to Secretary of War deserves a signed copy of a book. Or a beer. I’d love to provide a nice .45 fully comped race gun, but that’s beyond my abilities at this time.

  6. “So, sticking with America, barring the extreme circumstances of your birth on the bell curve (i.e. you were born a radioactive mutant or have flippers), you can AND SHOULD improve your lot in life.”

    C’mon now Larry. Radioactive mutants and flippermen are completely capable of improving their lot in life.

    1. Um, Security? Subject in Cell 9 needs another brainpan. He should NOT know this highly sensitive information.

      Unless he’s a telepath, in which case he’ll need to be transferred to the Psycho Ward.

  7. Actually I am curious, since I do not think that I have seen it in your other posts, as to what you feel the government should be spending its money on? How do you feel in general about corporations and the like dicking over consumers by buying politicians and news (read: product promoting) outlets and thus helping to create the laws that allow for their behaviour (or circumventing those laws in the first place)?

    Also, I am a social liberal/fiscal conservative…not quite sure what that makes me. 😀

    Finally, I LOVE the books and I cannot wait for Legion. I do find it funny though that people have not already figured out your contempt for government by how you show the bureaucracy/hypocrisy of the Federal “MHs.”

    1. I’ve posted before. What should the federal government be spending money on? Things mandated in the Constitution, and the big one there is provide for defense. Other than that, it should be taken care of by the states or privately. Pretty much everything the federal government gets into gets worse. Over the last hundred years they’ve become the answer to everything, but the answer quickly becomes bloated and inefficient. What does Health and Human Services do? What does the Department of Education do? Cut like crazy. Entitlements were stupid when we came up with them in the 1930s when they at least worked out mathematically, but have gotten increasingly stupid as the math has become unsustainable. Phase them out as rapidly as possible, and for the love of everything, quit adding new ones.

      How do I feel about corporations dicking over consumers? The thing is I can choose who to spend my money with. I can choose who to work for. If a corporation sucks, it doesn’t stay in business for long. If a government program sucks, they throw more money at it so that it can suck harder. I’ve got no problems with laws against fraud, theft, extortion, embezzlement, etc. I think that corporate officers who break the law should be punished accordingly, just like anyone else that breaks the law. However the laws that get circumvented by everyone are usually the pointless laws that were put in place in a vain attempt to control an outcome or pick a winner by a bunch of congressmen who have zero understanding of how business actually works. The vast majority of these “much needed” business regulating laws just create a lot more useless paperwork.

      1. “How do you feel in general about corporations and the like dicking over consumers by buying politicians and news (read: product promoting) outlets and thus helping to create the laws that allow for their behaviour (or circumventing those laws in the first place)?”

        Those laws shouldn’t even exist, particularly at the federal level. There wouldn’t be any reason to buy politicians.

        When laws and politicians control which products can be brought to market, it is in the businesses’ best interest to control the politicians and to control the laws, regardless of harm done.

        When the laws only punish actual wrongdoing, it is in the businesses’ best interest to do no harm.

        Why is this so hard to grasp?

    1. Considering I don’t think we have Monkey Man in the USA, I don’t think the Federal Government would pay a PUFF on it. I think the reason they got PUFF for the Boat incident was because of the fact it was in US Waters.

      1. I figured, but what of the contingency that the Monkey Man takes a vacation over here? Is it poppable?

        God, I sound like Carlin talking about sins and guilt alleviation to a priest.

        “Suppose that the Monkey Man gets on a cruise ship, and it heads into U.S. waters. Then, the ship gets attacked by seawolves, but the Monkey Man defends the passengers. Would it be exempt then from PUFF?” =o)

    2. I don’t quite understand it anyway. Larry lives in Sasquatchia, and is worried about a “Monkey Man”?

  8. The internet has spawned so much incivility. In real life you are circumspect in how you talk to people cause they might just kick your ass.
    I think every computer should be given the ability to send a signal to another computer and make it melt down but it will also send a signal proving who did it to the authorities. Anyone willing to take the criminal damage charge could light up a retard’s computer and make him feel the sting. The criminal charge would keep people honest and not doing it at the drop of the hat and it would make people think twice before posting. Maybe put a limitation that you had to initiate your burn within 18 hours of the offending post.

    1. Ever read the campaign ads that were taken out in the 18th century? We’re fucking pikers compared to those guys. And many of those ads were written by the candidate themselves, not some barely literate moron.

      Shit, back in the early days, politicians were known to hash out their differences on the dueling field; at one point, congressman outright brawled during a session right on the floor of the chamber. No, as bad as it’s gotten, we ain’t got nothing on the founding generation (or the four or so proceeding generations, for that matter).

  9. “You know, India has a much smaller, much less powerful government”

    This ignorant ass is apparently unaware of how many bureaucrats must be appeased – how many layers of government have the power to say “no” – in India. It’s one major reason that entrepreneurial Indians come to the US to be successful.

  10. If only we had assault democratis teams that we could call up to take down whack-jobs like the guy who insulted you, Larry. I’m frigging 15 years old, and I’ve had a job for close to a year. Those quacks in government don’t understand that, in order to work and get money for them to tax us, people need jobs. God Bless America, but not the government.

    P.S: I’m pretty sure that some of the government hacks are possibly vampires. Send in Owen and the gang, please

        1. Since lawyers make up the bulk of one party’s Congresscritters, the following seems apropos:

          Darla: We’ve played them together for over a century.
          Cordelia Chase: Yes, but you were just soulless, blood-sucking demons. They’re lawyers.
          Angel: [to Darla] She’s right. We were amateurs.

  11. Man, I love that!!! Using XKCD (which I read religiously, btw, love that comic!!) as “proof” of your lack of accounting skillz? Seriously…I bet he pulled the rest of his “facts” off Wikipedia, too.

    Reminds me of an article I found on Google News about the environment, linked to (if I recall correctly) a New York Times article, where the article discussing global warming started with a quote. From Abe Simpson. Of “The Simpsons” fame. Yep….Homer Simpson’s father, a cartoon character, is now the NYT’s spokesman on global environmental issues.

    *sigh*

    1. Are you kidding? I wrote that in 30 minutes while eating take out from Panda Express.

      And besides, both activities are cathartic, but my fan base enjoys one more. 🙂

      1. 30 minutes? Okay you banged the response out and I know how long it takes to do a decent mini.
        In my old age I’m beginning to mellow. I would have enjoyed verbally flaying a clown like him in my younger days and would have nodded my approval of anyone else who nailed him to the garden gate.
        My apologies.
        And I am a part of your fan base.

  12. “This ignorant ass is apparently unaware of how many bureaucrats must be appeased – how many layers of government have the power to say “no” – in India.”

    ISTR that India regularly elects socialists, and that free market reforms are relatively recent. I do know that during the Cold War, they were closer to the Soviets than to the US — the big reason Pakistan counts as a “long-time allay”.

    And Heritage ranks India 124th in the world for economic freedom — between Pakistan and Djibouti. Under “business freedom”, they state: “Potential entrepreneurs face severe challenges. The regu­latory framework is burdensome, and the legal framework is weak. It can take almost 200 days to obtain a construction permit.”

    In other words — the government wants to control what you do (“regulatory framework”) but won’t necessarily protect you and your property from others (“legal framework”).

    1. It can take almost 200 days to obtain a construction permit.

      Better than Oregon. Took my parents over a year to get permission to build their retirement home on land my family already owned and on a plot that already had a house on it.

  13. That’s funny, I just recently had the same “You don’t want the government to steal your money and give it to druggies? You must want all poor people everywhere to starve to death in the cold.” argument with my Uncle.

    Likewise, he couldn’t believe that anyone anywhere would voluntarily donate to welfare and charity causes, or try to help a neighbor out.

    Of course, he’s a former Navy, still served by the VA, living off Social Security and Medicare, while working part-time for the Department of Labor.

    And I liked that XKCD when it came out. That Randall Munroe guy has a talent for infographics.

    1. I’m retired Navy, still served (poorly) by the VA, not quite old enough to live off of SS or Medicare but drawing a pension and using Tricare when needed (I paid 20 years of my life for it, thankyouverymuch, and am well aware it can be, and sometimes has been, taken away on a whim), but no longer working for any branch of the USG (other than the Treasury Dept, damn their eyes). He’s an anomoly, it is my experience that most of us end up being more libertarian than socialist.

      1. That’s excellent, Larry. I think my uncle might be in that state of cognitive dissonance where he cannot admit he’s living on plunder taken from others against their will.

  14. May we PLEASE have a segment were evil liberals are eaten alive by Monkey Men? I know I’m outing my inner Transhumanist hatred of humanity here, but that would be so … refreshing. Speaking of the Bell Curve, when you are above 3 sigma, it’s different. I don’t know how my brother in law deals with it. He is a Ph.D. Particle Physicist, and is above 4 sigma, and they are not sure how far to or past 5 sigma he is … but he isn’t a millionaire. He’s a nice guy. People tend to equate intelligence with wealth, and that’s not the case.
    He’s not a radioactive mutant, nor does he have flippers. Given that he lives near Seattle, he may not want flippers, because of the killer whales.
    India – You know why India is effed up? Fabian socialism. I’ve heard this from every Indian I’ve met. The most capable come to the US. The women will literally kill to get and stay here. They still giggle like schoolgirls when I hold a door open for them – being treated like actual humans is so novel for them.
    Liberals – they have their uses – sex toys, organ donors, monster bait, comedians. Soylent green after irradiation.
    I haven’t even started on the bribes Indians have to pay to get the most basic legal items done.

  15. On target as usual, Larry. As a person whose work is entirely at the mercy of government grants, I don’t knock government support of some activities, but as a taxpayer, I’d like to see better stewardship of our money and more private funding of research (but of course the government is trying to make that impossible, and the liberal media taints it as “blood money”).

    My own “bootstrap” story isn’t as compelling as yours. I was born to a (mostly) white collar family, but we didn’t have a lot to spare as Dad was always trying to do better – including getting an MS and MBA while working full time and supporting wife and 2 kids. I commuted to college, and worked. Spent 3 years at home, then another 9 away for M.S. and Ph.D., working the whole time, and living in ghetto conditions for part of it. Your catchphrase is “bread truck”, mine is “cockroaches” (in the med/grad student housing). And there’s nothing quite so demoralizing as being a 24 yo. working for gas money tutoring 34 y.o. med students that were full scholarship students and would not be allowed to fail because a few years before a 30 y.o. won a discrimination case.

    I can remember being thrilled when I got my doctorate and could finally make $18k a year.

  16. If I’m reading it right, the xkcd graph shows that Social Security is a bigger outlay than the Military in a single year’s budget, or that eight years in Iraq cost about the same as one year of Social Security.

    1. No. Obviously you must be reading it wrong. As Bags told us, entitlements are nothing compared to the military. Those are mere pennies used strictly to keep grandmas from freezing to death.

      Man, it must suck when your own linked infograph comes back to bite you in the ass.

      (awesome chart though)

  17. Just to set it straight ref. India and the military. One of the best Soldiers in my Combat Support Hospital is a young man, originally, from New Delhi who immigrated to the US with his wife. He quit a six figure job in San Diego to join the Army. He has two Masters degrees and is working on his Doctorate. However, the only sure way that he felt he could deploy and, in his words, “give something back to his new country” was to become a medic and get to a deploying unit like a CSH. Smart, hard working, dedicated, and I wish I had 300 of him to take to Afghanistan.

  18. I love this. I might be going out on a limb here, but it seems that the basic principle of refuting someone else’s statement is by providing proof through a reasoned argument, rather than just starting a rant, has been forgotten by those that send Hate mail.
    Don’t these people know that if you write an angry email in response to something you have read, you don’t send it straight away. You write it, then go away, cool down, come back, read it, delete all the profanity and then start to make a reasoned argument against what you have read.

    On a slightly different note, I recently watched a television show about Mumbai’s Dharavi slum – http://www.abc.net.au/tv/programs/kevinmccloudslummingit.htm OR http://www.channel4.com/programmes/kevin-mccloud-slumming-it/episode-guide/series-1/episode-2
    The comments provided by the presenter were interesting, such as the slum having something like 85% employment and that pretty much all plastic used in the Dharavi area gets recycled.
    I do remember there being a saying of “believe 50% of what you see and none of what you hear”, but even if parts of what the show presented are true, then it goes to show just what can happen if you provide the effort.
    You might not be able to become an overnight millionaire, but if you can provide a better life for your family – then the effort is worth it.

  19. When I see stuff like your Hate Mail, it almost always brings to mind the following Heinlein quote;
    “Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
    This is known as “bad luck.””

  20. >I’m sure our grandkids will be able to get jobs working at
    >call centers to provide customer service to consumers in
    >New Delhi.

    After learning to pronounce English plopelly.

    Thanks, you made me smile 🙂

  21. Eyewitness says it is 5’6″, wears black and sports a helmet, with shining red eyes

    Ooh, scary.

    Glad I have an alibi.

  22. Having actually been like, born there and grown-up in India, a place I returned to live and finish high-school, and which provided the background for my Anthropology Thesis on a particular local-historical religious site/phenomenon of the region where we lived – I’d have to say that “Bags” is a bag full of ignorant shit.
    But that’s just because I’ve actually spent a lot of time there – though not particularly recently. The Government there may be small but it’s incredibly dense, like the heart of a neutron-star jam-packed with a HUGE do-nothing Union-like Civil Service which is a veritable definition of Petty-Crony-Bureaucracy, where the same petty family insecurities and jealousies are multiplied 10-thousand Lakhs, by all the relatives and hangers-on who inhabit that particular dysfunctional, non-working, babu-workspace that directly CAUSES people to starve through over-regulation, self-entitlement, and a scale of inefficiency that would make all the desperate overweening careerists in the State Department, NASA, and the Pentagon seem benign and meek by comparison.
    A Government and Local Bureaucracy still operating on the ancient principles of CASTE which is racist in nature and based on Skin-color, where people starve because they are low-BORN and can’t get any job better than a street-sweeper or a mud-brick maker and those who do feel BLESSED because the “system,” as wholly corrupt, inefficient, illiberal and ass-backwards as it is somehow finds a nasty-crusty low-level Niche-of-Misery for them to inhabit – right next to the Un-Free, born-to-be-a-whore Temple-Girls, the born-to-be-a-thief Robber-Castes, the born-to-be-a-rickshaw-drivers and born-to-be-a-shit-sweeper and born-to-be-a-salt-maker or dead-animal-cleaner – and ALL the rest of the various and different socially-systematized Jatis, the groups who jealously guard their Union-like sinecure-of-shit against any interloper who might make off with the slightest crumb or two while the really-really rich Babus and Zamindars and Movie Stars who live well beyond the .001% of India – and this by comparison with America, where even the poorest Urban-Invalid and Welfare-Queen in the US has a Buick or some Detroit Iron, big flat-screen color TV, a cellphone plan, and $100 Nike Air-Jordans – flat out the guy’s an idiot-bag.

    Anyhow thanks for letting me blow off that steam, I gotta go back to my book on the subject of the Jagganath Temple… I’m stuck on a chapter dealing precisely with the incredibly hurtful, dysfunctional and thoroughgoing pervasiveness of the Caste System which is a lot like the Unions in the US – and if Union-Brahmins had a social-goal (which they do, actually), the Caste System would be the inevitable zero-sum Malthusian do-nothing result.

  23. The thing is, the reason why we’re privileged is that we live in the greatest nation that has ever existed. Why? Because it was founded and built upon freedom and capitalism. […] My position is that despite how you start out, you can go on to improve your lot in life. That’s my fundamental belief. Americans do it every single day.

    Nope.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/05/us/harder-for-americans-to-rise-from-lower-rungs.html

    “WASHINGTON — Benjamin Franklin did it. Henry Ford did it. And American life is built on the faith that others can do it, too: rise from humble origins to economic heights. “Movin’ on up,” George Jefferson-style, is not only a sitcom song but a civil religion.

    But many researchers have reached a conclusion that turns conventional wisdom on its head: Americans enjoy less economic mobility than their peers in Canada and much of Western Europe. The mobility gap has been widely discussed in academic circles, but a sour season of mass unemployment and street protests has moved the discussion toward center stage. ”

    You want to live in a country where you can improve your lot in freedom? Move out of America and go live in Canada or Germany…

    1. Are you smoking crack? You can’t get a permanent job in Germany, because they can’t fire you. The “researchers” cooked their numbers, like so many other researchers, to make their results equal their beliefs.
      It’s like the current neutrino FTL debacle – there must be an error somewhere, because everyone “knows” nothing goes FTL, except quantum effects. So they keep cooking the data, looking for the error.
      Trust me, I’ve worked with people in Canada and Europe a lot over the last 15 years. They have some goodies, but nothing like the freedoms we enjoy.
      And I don’t see the Indians, or the Chinese, flocking to Germany to make their fortunes. It’s still the US. There are a lot in Canada, but that’s because they’ve got family there. There is a lot of cross border movement, and it’s a lot easier to get into to Canada in the first place.
      People die trying to get into the US. People are not dying trying to get to Germany, Canada or anyplace else – with one sole exception.
      There are North Koreans who will die trying to get into Communist China. That’s how bad the DPRK is ….
      And let me add, “Communist China” dates me – it’s actually the :Oligarchy of Chinese Generals and Engineers”. Not a bad deal, if one is an atheist, military officer, engineer. I don’t speak Mandarin, and they are racists, so don’t even think joining them is a good idea.
      There’s plenty of mobility in the US. We just refuse to take crap jobs at crap wages in NJ, NYC, California or some other liberal hellhole. I’d rather actually shovel shit in Utah, where I’d be a 4th class citizen as a Transhumanist who likes caffeine, alcohol, and might even smoke [if it didn’t make me sick now], than be the god-like engineer I am in Silicon Valley, where my gun collection and politics make me anathema.
      Another data point – almost all the NORAD Canadian officers I’ve known have retired to the US. They still get their Canadian military retirement, and send their medical bills to Canada, but they live here. That should tell you something.

  24. Are you smoking crack?

    Are you drinking the Kool-Aid?

    You can’t get a permanent job in Germany, because they can’t fire you.

    There are a million temporary workers in Germany – which represents 3% of their labor force. 97% are permanent. You were saying?

    The “researchers” cooked their numbers, like so many other researchers, to make their results equal their beliefs.

    Proof? As we can see above, your uninformed opinion is worthless.

    Trust me,

    Hmmm – a random Internet commentator who has already demonstrated he doesn’t know what he’s talking about?

    Nah – I don’t trust you.

    I’ve worked with people in Canada and Europe a lot over the last 15 years.

    And I’ve worked with people who got out of the USA because it was going downhill.

    They have some goodies, but nothing like the freedoms we enjoy.

    You have the freedom to work longer hours for less chance of advancement, more fear of bankruptcy if you or your family get sick, and shittier conditions.

    If you just keep mumbling to yourself how great you have it, I’m sure you won’t even notice.

  25. Bags here, sorry, have been busy for a while, had no idea my comment would arouse this kind of response. It wasn’t too watertight because, you know, I wrote it in about 3 minutes before turning in for the night.

    I’ll admit you raise a few points that are certainly interesting. Personally speaking, I’m very interested in being able to see the right-wing viewpoint from the inside, so to speak, so these discussions are always fairly educational. Equally, I have a vested interest in right wing governments staying out of power, because as a partially sighted man, they make my life tangibly and obviously more difficult. I live in the UK, and the conservative government has just cut bus services to my entire area. This means I now have to beg lifts off friends and family to get anywhere. Along with some other ‘efficiency savings’, my life has got considerably harder in the few months they have been in power.

    On the issue of charity vs taxation, I would say my case is paradigmatic. Charity organizations simply don’t have the muscle to create something like a regional bus service, it’s not profitable enough to entice private investment, but, all the same, it is essential to the economy around where I live. This isn’t even considering the boost in quality of life the service used to confer to the old, the young, the poor and the disabled.

    This is the kind of situation where I believe taxation is pretty righteous.

    Furthermore, I think when we talk about freedom, we need to distinguish between two senses of the word. The first is economic, and the second is personal. China, for example, has a great degree of the first, and very little of the second, which is why it’s great for investment. There isn’t really much in common between the two kinds of freedom – economic freedom means you can, say, build a chemical plant without worrying about planning permission and without paying too much tax. Personal freedom means you can, say, own a gun, or organise with your colleagues at work to bargain with management to prevent a pay cut. China-style freedom means you can do the first kind of thing, but if you do the second you might get shot.

    I don’t actually think there’s much wrong with economic freedom, providing toxic waste isn’t dumped all over the place, but, it seems to typically come packaged with a decrease in personal freedom. SOPA is the classic example. The media industry wants the freedom to sell their stuff, and to get that, they lobby to get some shitty orwellian legislation into law. Personal freedom suffers in this situation. I don’t think it’s inevitable that this will always be the case, but that’s certainly how it has happened in the UK, and the US, over the past 40 years or so. Personal freedom has suffered because people have assumed that the freedom to build a chemical plant and the freedom to speak and so on are the same kind of thing.

  26. Oh, also, Reductio ad Absurdum is also used by logicians. It’s pretty good argumentative form. And I don’t think India can be counted as an absurdity, since it both exists and follows the governmental model many right wing americans and english people propose. But that’s just a quibble.

  27. Bags,
    Reductio ad absurdum doesn’t require that India is an absurdity, merely that the argument is taken to logical extremes, which is where the “absurdity” comes from.

    India is (of course) actually a well known example of Fabian Socialism. Which is why it had a dreadfully sclerotic economy and absurd levels of regulation. They didnt call it the “permit raj” for nothing. Why you think that India is following the governmental model espoused by right wing americans and english people is bizarre – India until the 90s was a great example of what happens when you allow the left to set the agenda. Even today it is bedevilled by regulations and lots of idiotic populist policies (eg absurdly low electricity prices, which means constant power cuts because it isnt worth installing new capacity). Post independence India = Socialist disaster.

    You cannot take the level of taxation in a developing country and compare it to that of the US. In India a significant proportion of the workforce cannot be taxed efficiently as they are subsistence farmers or the workers in the informal economy. Most of the problems you ascribe to them reflect their history, bad choices made by the British and successive Indian governments and a healthy dose of socialist “solutions”.

    The closest example of the neoliberal ideal is probably something like Hong Kong, but because it is a city state, its value as an example is probably limited. Hong Kong has, however, done very well from its low taxes, still having an excellent education system and solid infrastructure.

    As for your criticism of the ending of your local bus service, I’d assume that rather than being a direct result of the central government, that it is the result of decisions being made by your local authority, which has decided to prioritise other services. The UK is presently running an absurd government deficit, despite the efforts of the “right wing” government to slow the rate of increase and it has increased taxes. Some things have to go and if it is neither profitable nor high on the local government’s priority list, it sounds like a sensible choice to cut bus services. Or would you prefer that they cut other services?

  28. The only problem with hate mail is you never get to see the guys either A confused face, or B angry and furious, about how you are ridiculing him. on second though why would you care.

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