Spiro Agnew Was Right! Nattering Nabobs of Negativism Edition

Foto by tgw, New York City (looking west), 2010
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The Man Himself: The Daily Growler Hall of Famer Spiro T. Agnew
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Are the Pundits Punning Us?
The pundits around the Internet are all confused by the complicated political system we've backed ourselves into, a political system ruled over by a bunch of morganatic bastards in the Old World sense of our Power Elite becoming a Power Effete because it's gotten so inbred. Remember Spiro T. Agnew? Then you remember Spiro's famous use of "big" words, calling the lefty politicos and pundits of his day "effete intellectual snobs." Here's one of Loose Wig Spiro's most famous comments: In the United States today, we have more than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism. I like that; I can see myself through Spiro's eyes as a "nattering nabob of negativism"--except as a Sociologist I am a positivist--so I could be a nattering nabob of positivism. Same thing since positivism to Spiro was negativism. Spiro's Power Effete insanity is best seen in this Spiro statement: Three things have been difficult to tame: the oceans, fools and women. We may soon be able to tame the oceans; fools and women will take a little longer. And, yes, Spiro's right--since women's cycles are based on the tides then yes I too can see that taming a woman is like taming the ocean except taking a little longer to tame than an ocean. Fools? Well, you tame a fool by ignoring him...well, I suppose that's how Spiro would tame a woman, too.

This foolish sort of reasoning is still going on in the Conservative ranks. I briefly visited some Sunday pundit sites, like I saw the millionaire idiot Chris Matthews spinning bullshit with some politico I recognized but really didn't know who he was. It was one of those plastic Jesus politicians like Mormon Romney--I also think I saw that Perfect Fool Steve Forbes still peddling his wild brand of Forbesian Capitalist Tool reasoning--totally backwards thinking at its dumbest--on the Mickey Mouse channel--and staying on Mickey's own network, ABC, where I listened very briefly to without a doubt one of the dumbest backwards thinkers there is in the millionaire news-blabbing business, George Will. His comments were so off the wall they made me think of Spiro Agnew. Will has no idea what he's saying when he starts to speak. It's like he makes his bullshit up as he prattles along with his off-the-wall attitude about Dumbocrats and the majority of Amurican voters. Will truly believes most Amuricans are as rabidly off-the-wall as he is, and perhaps he's right. Amuricans are Yahoos; George Will is definitely a Yahoo. In looking up some George Will quotes--none of them impressed me--I saw a list in the margin saying Will compared to these witty celebrities, one of which was Dr. Hunter S. Thompson! Wow, that comparison got me to trying to reason it out.

So let's see, here's what Doc Thompson had to say about us: America... just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable. I suppose that's equivalent to George Will saying football is a horrible game because it is so violent and run by committee meetings--as if baseball isn't run by committee meetings.

More Doc Thompson: I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours.

More Doc Thompson: The TV business is uglier than most things. It is normally perceived as some kind of cruel and shallow money trench through the heart of the journalism industry, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason. The Doc is attributed as saying this same statement about the music business--and definitely the TV business is the exact same set up as the music business--in fact, at the current moment television is deciding who our musical artists are, who they are today and for far into the future unless their ratings tank--and that includes as distant a venues as Fox's "American Idol" and PBS's promoting of total droopy-drawer musicians like David Foster (a Canadian), Josh Groban (god I can't stand this dude), Michael Boob-bell (read: Dumbbell)--where did this effete musician come from?--or in the past they've promoted true phonies like John Tesh and Yanni. Whatever happened to Yanni?

Politics is loping along same as usual. The boys and girls in Congress are staging their acts to conform to the coming national elections in November. We'll see a lot of bullshit stances in coming months. The older farts in Congress are fucking up big time--like Charlie Rangel getting caught with his old withered ass in a sling, though what Charlie did is probably pretty common among Congress folks. Certainly what Charlie did wasn't as criminal as what Ben Bernanke and Little Timmy Geithner and Good Ole Hank Paulsen did; yet they're still praised and promoted by our President. Obama however did not give Charlie Rangel any kind of backing. Obama maybe doesn't like Black men. Geez, that just came to my mind. I mean this dude hangs with Joe Biden, about as White a man as he could hang with. I suppose he doesn't want to be seen favoring Black men politicians or else the racist Congressionalists, and most of the White ones are racists (I'll stand behind that), will pounce all over him as a reverse racist. That's what Obama is trying to avoid. He can't afford to be seen as anti-White. Besides, he's half White--something racists certainly have avoided bringing up--he's not only half White but he was raised by his White side of the family. He didn't have much to do with his Black relatives--like his father. So here's an obvious (according the skin color, facial features, and hair) Black male who is literally half White to the point where though his appearance is Black his actions so far as President are very White.

Rangel is a powerful Black man in Congress. Rangel took over from Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., after the old South Dumbocrats drove him into exile on Bimini Island in the Bahamas. Rangel took over from Adam Powell way back in 1971. Plus Charlie is now 80 years old and getting very decrepit--he's overweight, hunchbacked, and slips and slides along when he walks--kind of like old Pappy (GWH) Bush when he wobble-walks these days. Old farts like Rangel and Pappy Bush live good long lives no matter how raucous their lifestyles--like partying every night, always a dinner or a banquet to attend, with few Scotches along with those Kobe steaks, while hobnobbing with the powers who be--and what a good life it is.

Charles Bernard Rangel at his best. Here he is at his Dominican villa--the one he didn't think he had to pay taxes on when he rented it out when he wasn't lollygagging around there. It really pisses you off when you think these birds's wealth comes out of We the People's earned incomes. And Congress people are supposed to be servants of We the People--yeah, sure.

Nancy Pelosi. Let's check out our speaker of the house. Originally from Baltimore. Her father and brother became mayors of Baltimore. She grew up in politics. Being a Maryland Catholic (originally a Catholic state--Lord Calvert; Lord Baltimore (both at one time names of whiskeys)), she was sent to a Catholic girls school and then got her higher education at a Catholic college in D.C. Nancy girl lucked out when she met and married Frankie "Goombah" Pelosi while in college. Since then, Nancy's done a bit of alright for herself:

The Pelosi family has a net worth of nearly $12.5 million as of 2008, largely from investments. In addition to their large portfolio of jointly owned San Francisco Bay Area real estate, the couple also owns a vineyard in St. Helena, California, valued between $5 million and $25 million. Pelosi's husband also owns stock, including $1 million in Apple Computer, and is the owner of the California Redwoods of the United Football League. Pelosi continues to be among the richest members of Congress.

The richest Congress people are worth huge millions--like John D. Rockefeller, Frank Lautenberg (yeah, the old withering senile fart from New Jersey), Uncle Teddy before his demise, Lamar Alexander, John Kerry (did you know Kerry's worth around 300 million bucks!), Kay Baily Hutchinson (the Texas hussy politician who just got swamped in her bid for the Repug candidate for Governor of Texas by Rick "Big Wig" Perry, the current Church of Christ Racist, "execute 'em if they black," governor of my home state of Texas), Hillary Clinton, Ben Nelson, John McCain, Olympia Snow are all worth double-figure millions--Hillary in 2006 was worth 30 million bucks. Kerry is the richest man in Congress now--unless Herb Kohl of Wisconsin is still in the District of Corruption--believe it or not, Herb topped old John Kerry's 300 million bucks by a fistful of millions of bucks.

I can't imagine being so rich. I can't imagine even being a millionaire. The only way I'll ever become a millionaire is through luck--winning a jackpot. My father told me once the only way I was going to get rich was if a bag of money fell from heaven--the problem my dad said was that that bag of money would probably fall on my head and kill me. I find it difficult in today's market (I am involved in a collectibles business) to make 200 bucks. What's it like to be worth 300 million dollars! Or what's it like to be worth a double-figure billion dollars--like our honorable bullshit mayor of New York City. It must be totally boring to be so rich else why would these well-heeled crooks want to be mayors and Congress people?
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A Short Course in the Sociological Thinking of Pitirim Sorokin (known as an Altruist, Sorokin was at one time one of my favorite Sociological thinkers)

Sorokin reviled expansion of government control to complete totalitarianism but, as discussed below, could explain why a people sometimes not only accepted expanded government control, but demanded it. Four brief definitions of complete totalitarianism are 1) “absolute power, especially exercised unjustly or cruelly; 2) a political doctrine advocating the principle of absolute rule; 3) a system of government that is centralized and dictatorial and requires complete subservience to the state; 4) a dictatorial form of centralized government that regulates every aspect of state and private behavior.”

Sorokin explained that social relationships fluctuate during the four calamities, which he reduces to three later on in his life: war, economic impoverishment, and social emergency of any kind. “Other conditions being equal,” he wrote, “governmental control in a given social system tends to increase in periods of great social emergency; and of these emergency conditions, particularly in the times of strenuous war and in severe economic crises where there is scarcity of the most important means of subsistence for a large part of the population. The emergency conditions call forth an extraordinary effort on the part of the state government, which leads naturally to expansion of its activity, control, and regulation.”

Pitirim Sorokin.

For example, as soon as a society enters war, the

“curve of government interference at once jumps and the state network of social relationships becomes more complicated. Instead of normal laws, martial law and a state of siege are introduced, which means an enormous expansion of government control. Many economic relationships heretofore uncontrolled by the State now become regimented by it: production, distribution, and consumption…Military rule is absolute; it may concern anything that is urgent from a military standpoint; it imposes upon the population anything that is deemed necessary for military purposes. It may impose not only the draft into the army, but even mass execution of groups in the population. In a word, the fact of a sudden expansion of government control in time of war is unquestionable.”

The reason for this “totalitarian swing” (his term) is the need for victory. “Of two nations equal in other respects, the nation that imposes a centralized and rigid discipline upon its population has more chances of being victorious than the nation whose efforts are not organized; which does not have a centralized system and strong discipline,” Sorokin wrote. The army is by its very nature a totalitarian institution, he asserted. “The best creators of totalitarianism, including the state socialism and state communism, have been not Marx or Engels or Lassalle or Lenin, but the greatest organizers of military forces and military empires: Jenghiz Khan, Tamerlane, Caesar, Napoleon, and the like.”

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Hail Caesar and Mary Full of Grace for Sociologists like Pitirim Sorokin--the most fair-minded observers there are on earth--That last statement above of Sorokin's really is a truth of history. If you check out American history, on the timeline, you come across very few long periods of peace. War is always on our horizons. The militaries of the world do get rewarded for their war services much more than peaceful men get for their peaceful efforts--like the US Military budget this year is 800 billion dollars. Had the Nobel Prize committee not been fooled into thinking Obama was a man of peace and had given their prize to a true man of peace that person would have only reaped 300,000 bucks. Robert Gates's salary as head of Defense is probably three or four times 300,000 bucks. (What charity did President Obama give his Nobel Prize money, too? I never saw.)
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The Wisdom of Henry Miller

I have never been able to look upon America as young and vital but rather as prematurely old, as a fruit which rotted before it had a chance to ripen.

Honest criticism means nothing: what one wants is unrestrained passion, fire for fire.

In the attempt to defeat death man has been inevitably obliged to defeat life, for the two are inextricably related. Life moves on to death, and to deny one is to deny the other.

Madness is tonic and invigorating. It makes the sane more sane. The only ones who are unable to profit by it are the insane.

One has to be a lowbrow, a bit of a murderer, to be a politician, ready and willing to see people sacrificed, slaughtered, for the sake of an idea, whether a good one or a bad one.

We have two American flags always: one for the rich and one for the poor. When the rich fly it means that things are under control; when the poor fly it means danger, revolution, anarchy

thegrowlingwolf
for The Nattering Nabobs of Negativism here at The Daily Growler (a blog for human animals)