Tom Toles for February 15, 2013

As my conservative Daddy used to tell me with approval: “The world is governed by the golden rule: he who has the gold makes the rules.” When the country is governed by and for the majority of the money, they call is justice. When the country is governed by and for the majority of the people, they call it socialism or class warfare.

A couple of days ago, I was at my local Post Office here in Livermore, California.…Two people from the local East Bay TEAParty organization were set up at the corner of 2nd and Livermore Avenue in front of the Post Office with their table and their umbrella protecting them from the sun along with their “Impeach Obama” signs, complete with the “Adolf Hitler Moustache” drawn on.…When I encountered them, they seemed friendly enough, and I told them that “I liked their sentiment, but what do you intend to do if you get your way, because we can’t be having more of the same?”…These people had no answer.…I had to explain to these folks that even if they got rid of the politician they hated so much, they still weren’t going to get rid of the system that allowed that politician to become president in the first place, let alone get re-elected to a second term and that if this one was removed from office, the same system will put in another that may be just as bad or even worse and that these TEAParty folk needed to address all the flaws that this system has and not just its leadership.…Then one of them asked me what I had in mind.…I told them that we needed another civil war and that 1/3rd of the population had to be killed off fighting it and if the Federal Government was intent on keeping the Union together so that it could continue doing what it has been doing to us, regardless of whoever is in charge and/or their political/familial ties to the other families and parties that are choking the life out of this republic, perhaps that government needed to be done away with and overthrown, too.…I also told them that the western states in both the Breadbasket and points west needed to secede, either walk out on the Union as one group or separately, asserting their own national sovereignty as necessary.…And the more details I gave to these TEAParty people on this corner of 2nd and Livermore Avenue in front of the Post Office, they thought I was crazy and did not want to talk to me any further.…On the next day, these TEAParty folks were still there on that street corner still trying get signatures for their petition, which I didn’t sign, still trying to hawk their own agenda, which in my opinion doesn’t go far enough in solving the problems we have these days.…Once again, we must invoke something similar to what is written in the Bible for addressing folks out there who believe that their words and interpretation are The Word and Interpretation of scripture before all others, which was recently invoked by “Boyd Crowder” in a recent episode of “Justified” when he challenged a tent revival snake-handling preacher in his midst this season:_“…[D]o not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. (I John 4:1).”_And when it comes to people trying to sell us on what needs to be done for our “national salvation”, we should be taking the same approach and question them.

Has anybody here read “The Revolt Of The Masses” by Jose Ortega y Gasset?…How about “The Myth Of Sisyphus” by Albert Camus?…Both of these books talk about the rise of the common person and their rights in the 20th Century world but they still ring true today.…The problem here is that the bulk of the people were “bought off” with the right to vote and the right to express their views.…These are the “safety valves” out there by which a government can avoid the hassles of civil war and revolution for far longer periods of time than an absolute monarchy or military dictatorship could and that all that the peasants needed to do was band together and use their very numbers alone to affect the change they wanted.…However, most people these days don’t care about that because they take their rights of reasonably free speech and reasonably free expression for granted along with their right to vote thinking that they can affect the changes they and their neighbors and friends want with the ballot instead of the bullet fired from the barrel of a gun, thus perpetuating a great lie that we now have to face these days.…And that this great lie—believing that our votes count and that we can make change effective through our votes as well as our speech—has crippled us in the process.…As a result, ballot initiatives have been brought forward time and again asking us to vote on things like closing down a nuclear power plant, denying immigrants and gay people rights (or “special” rights), and that all these ballot initiatives have shown is that they are written by parties that want something from us, as in the case where PG&E was making it difficult for cities and counties that wanted to switch their power grids over to other companies and cooperatives instead of letting a private company exercise their monopoly and give their executives and shareholders more money.…Another disastrous result here is that the Middle Class, or “middling class” or “muddling class” these days has basically been hoodwinked.…The reality here is that we are still peasants, just like our ancestors were in the old world or in the days when my family were subjects of the Crown even though they moved from Lancashire and Yorkshire into Massachusetts Bay, New York and Virgina.…It may have been the wealthier families, or the ones that got here first (not counting the indigenous because the Doctrine of Terra Nullius did not count them, either), were the ones to establish the oligarchies and the plutocracies that have come and gone since those colonial times, but the reality is that they did not get that way on their own, but on the labors of families like mine, who actually did the dirty work of clearing the lands, plowing the fields and even fighting the wars to make their lives possible.…And in return, we have the right to speak our mind and vote, even though these may come with caveats and restrictions so that what effect these may have is rendered meaningless and life around here as we know it is dictated by the whims of a few like the Alameda County Board of Supervisors and their “Bag Ban”, which should have been a ballot initiative put to a vote by all of us registered voters here in Alameda County and not just those 7 people made up of nepotists, shoplifters, drug addicts and sex fiends, because that decision affected ALL of us, the people of Alameda County.…But regardless of the will of the people or the wants of the masses, as long as the “safety valves” are in place and the majority of the people believe the lies that their opinions matter and that their votes count, nothing is ever going to change for the better.…Perhaps a few heads need to be lopped off every now and then, people have to change their opinions and political orders and affiliations have to be re-examined time and again to see whether or not they still work for us and that our families can benefit.…And if what is existing now does not work for us, our neighbors and our families, then we need to work on changing what does not work and replacing it with something else, either through reform or revolution.

Is the yellow part the food-stamp crowd?

I completely agree with you Night Gaunt. The Plutocrats have, throughout history learned to team up with the priesthoods of organized religions to keep people ignorant so that they’ll be easily manipulated into voting against their own best interests and so those two major centers of power keep their power. Two quotes that I agree with I’ll cite here: A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves-Bertrand de Jouvenel Faith must trample under foot all reason, sense, and understanding.—- Martin Luther 1483-1546

The County Commission voted to spend $6.25 million for road improvements around a new Bass Pro Shops store.Originally the plan was to spend $15 million but small business owners started asking why a huge megasttore got taxpayer money and they didn’t.The store is supposed to create 300 new jobs, 45% of which will be full time with average pay of $11.60 an hour.I am among those who think $6.25 million could be better spent.

I haven’t seen a comment from Morty in a couple of days.I had trouble getting back on this site yesterday and finally when I was back on had to go catch a TV show.Hope everything is OK.

The GOP hates the middle class. The joke is that so many of the poorest of them still vote republican.

Try telling that to the scores of Dems who are employed on Fox.

Yes, it’s the only news program that doesn’t get a tingle up their leg.