The Childish and Cruel Nature of harpercon Attitudes About War

By now, everyone's heard of the corrupt idiot Julian Fantino's non-interaction with Jenifer Migneault, the wife of a Canadian Forces veteran with PTSD. Evidently, Mrs. Migneault has been trying to speak with Fantino (or someone in authority) about how maybe the spouses of veterans with PTSD and other problems, should get training in how to deal with their spouses' problems. She can no longer work as her husband needs 24-hour monitoring because suicidal thoughts are never far from his mind.

I can imagine that the more slobberingly stupid members of the "Blogging Tories" might be speculating that this latest generation of veterans must be of weaker constitutions than their forebears. Something about how feminism and gay-rights has enervated our society so that even manly men in the military end up not being able to cope with the stresses of war. This is of course bullshit. Veterans of the Second World War and the Korean War (not all of them) were traumatized by what they experienced. Some became alcoholics. Some committed suicide. Some were plagued with a lifetime of depression.

I'm writing a story about World War Two because it was an epic tragedy that radically altered the course of world history. I believe that, because of their murderous racism, it was good that the Nazis lost that war. I also believe that had Germany and Japan triumphed, it would have signaled a victory for blatant militarism and, essentially, fascist insanity worldwide. To make a long story short, for all their shortcomings and evils, the better side won that conflict. And I think the same thing about the Cold War. I now think that corporate-capitalist America's victory has infected them with excessive, unchecked hubris and inhumanity. Hopefully they are the last enemy to face before the dawn of a humanistic socialist democracy. But I strive mightily not to make the sections dealing with actual combat into some sort of mindless, childish celebration of action-movie excitement.

But it seems that childishness is the order of the day for the harpercons when it comes to war. These grown men and women actually conjure up images of Canadian "G.I. Joes" fighting with two-fisted fury against the evil forces of C.O.B.R.A. (or Al Qaeda, the Commies, or whatever). It really is brawny he-men marching to victory and handing candies out to the liberated children of wherever it is we're liberating. And then, soldiers either die "gloriously" in combat, or at home, in dignity, after having attended numerous Remembrance Day ceremonies where they say Conservative Party of Canada luminaries honoring both the living and the victorious dead for their noble sacrifices.

Veterans sitting maimed and depressed in hospital wards, or living on the streets as their personal demons and their substance abuses made them unemployable, or screaming at their families, or any of the realities of the response to combat, none of this exists for idiot harpercons.

And then there's the cruelty. Since these people don't exist, they don't matter. Since they don't conform to stephen harper's childish, stupid picture of war and veterans, all they are is a bothersome expense. And, in the end, it seems part of the psychosis of war mongers, that they genuinely don't give a shit about "the troops" (anymore than they do about the people they tell us we're "liberating" or "defending"). stephen harper holds "the troops" in the same contempt that he holds Parliament, which is to say, TOTAL. (Don't ask me why. Just like Newton could not explain gravity, he just discovered it, so I cannot explain this inherent hatred of soldiers on the part of right-wing war mongers.)

Julian Fantino's behaviour is not an aberration. All right-wing scuzzballs would behave the same way. None of his colleagues have come out and criticized his revolting behaviour. They probably masturbate themselves thinking about the grief he's causing and wish they could do it themselves.

ETA:

I meant to mention the transparently stupid excuse Fantino offered for his $4 million on propaganda to insist that, contrary to the perception, the stephen harper regime is providing all sorts of services to veterans in need. Fantino is, I believe, too moronic to grasp how idiotic of a lie this is. The only perception that matters is that of the military community. Indeed, their protests about their shoddy treatment at the hands of the harpercon chickenhawks is the source of the general public's perceptions. It would therefore stand to reason that instead of wasting $4 million on ads for the general public, that the harpercons spend that money reaching out to veterans and their families; either to inform them of the programs that exist, or to finance things like training for PTSD support workers as Jenifer Migneault is asking for.

Fantino, who is himself stewing in his own corruption, is blissfully unaware that the harpercons are mega-corrupt. The billions spent on outside lawyers, advertisers, the separatist-funded SUN News Network, and on mercenaries, security consultants, and political consultants, dwarfs the Liberal "AdScam" scandal by magnitudes.

But that's why there's no money to train the spouses of veterans suffering from PTSD. It's all gone to reward harperccon scumbags and their friends in the corporate-criminal community.

Obama Defends His Foreign Policy???

Don't get too excited folks. He's defending himself against that portion of humanity who think he's been too restrained. Too meek and mild.

Yep. He's defending himself against the Sean Hannity/Bill Kristol/Dick Cheney school of chickenhawks. The people who are so completely delusional that they think the invasion of Iraq was a success! They call Obama, he of murderous drone-strikes across the Middle East, he of troop surges in Afghanistan, he who tried to negotiate an extension of the presence of US troops in Iraq after bush II's negotiated withdrawl date, he of the coup in Honduras and several attempted coups in the rest of Latin America, he of the regime-change in Libya, he of the cynical financing and support for fundamentalist mercenaries in Syria, he of the coup and sabre-rattling in the Ukraine, ... they call him "Obambi."

It's not just people like us who are being treated as if we're of no account, with Obama apologizing to his delusional shit-head critics, rather than the humanitarians and otherwise sane people. The vast majority of people in the United States agree with us and not with Hannity, Kristol and Cheney. This craven idiocy just shows how unimportant the vast majority of the American people are in Obama's eyes. If Obama wanted to, he could face-down his idiot detractors in no uncertain terms and tell them that their war-mongering is over. That they can drag their asses to the front-lines themselves if they're so eager that Americans fight and die for stupid, cynical causes. But Obama doesn't want to. Despite the different tone of the rhetoric, there is no difference in the reality of US foreign policy. None whatsoever.

The point is to have Republican "hawks" bang on their chests and talk like idiots, while Democratic "doves" speak of moderation and restraint, in order to project the illusion that there is a debate when there isn't one. Also, by treating the genuine peace as if it doesn't exist, even when the majority of the American people are on their side, Obama deftly performs the Orwellian trick of thought control. How can you mobilize around something that doesn't exist? If the Democratic Party is the only option you have for "moderation" and "restraint" it's pointless to even think about an alternative.

It seems to me that the imperialist community in the USA is becoming more isolated, more disconnected from reality with every passing year. But, given the zero effectiveness of the opposition and the negligible impact of the will of the majority, this simply doesn't matter. The Democrats and Republicans would have their ridiculous, and ridiculously expensive electoral contests fighting over a mere 30% of the eligible voters, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh could have audiences reduced to the tens of thousands, Bill Kristol's magazines and books could be sent out free to right-wing subscribors who never read them, and US capitalism would subsidize it all to make it seem like there was a genuine debate between the only possible alternatives.

Economics: Go With Your Gut

Somebody found some errors (maybe) in Thomas Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century. The whole thing might be a little overblown though.

But remember the errors that were found in the Reinhart and Rogoff study that said that high debt levels cause radical slowdowns in economic growth?

Here's a video clip that sums it up most cogently.

Whatever the case is, I know that economists argue all the time. I know that statistics are increasingly dodgy. I choose to go with my gut instinct after decades of immersing myself in this crap. I know that inequality is increasing. I know that poverty and insecurity is increasing. The political movements in Latin America, the Middle East and Europe all attest to these facts.

I'm not capable of going toe-to-toe with the best liars and rationalizers in the world. But I've never thought that. I keep plugging away at stuff because I know I've got the big picture right.

How Does Civil Society Influence the State

Right. So, bourgeois democracy is a crock of shit. It's a fool's errand that only the dull and the deluded participate in. What's more important than the state is civil society. The collective will of the people. The power of groups outside of the state apparatus.

What is this power that we speak of? On its side, the state has the police, the surveillance, the courts, the prisons. The money supply. On our side, we don't have the law. Many profound thinkers have schooled me to the fact that the rule of law is a complete sham in this country. We have no rights. If our rights become inconvenient to those in power those rights will be swept aside regardless of the damage to the law's credibility. We should put zero trust and, more importantly, zero effort, in trying to get elites to respect the rule of law.

What do we have? THE POWER OF PROTEST! But bear in mind that we have zero human, civil, and legal rights. So, if twenty disgruntled environmentalist/anarchists go out and block a street for an hour, they'll be physically crushed. They'll be placed in police vans with their wrists tightly plastic-cuffed behind them, which will cause excrutiating pain after a couple of hours, during which they will probably soil themselves. So, don't block that street I guess. Best to stay on the sidewalk. There, you'll probably only be truncheoned and tear-gassed.

But THEY CAN'T JAIL US ALL!!! Of course, they won't have to. Most people don't protest. They know the score.

Now, the wealthy can influence the state. "Civil Society" in the form of corporate front groups and corporate lobbyists and, simply, wealth and power, which exist outside the realm of the state, can do such things as withhold funding for political parties, withhold investment in the economy, or even engage in capital flight should the state enact policies against their interests. Of course, if such shenanigans harm the interests of the state enough it's always possible that a Putin sort of character could be barfed up to use the police and courts to bring some of  the more outrageous types to heel.

But that's not what progressives tend to mean about civil society anyway. We're talking about environmentalists, no matter if they're national or local campaigns. We're talking families where a child has a special need and the families want the state to provide some assistance. We're talking about peace activists marching in the streets and writing letters to the editor and, in so doing, having zero to 1% effectiveness in ending over a decade of war in Afghanistan. We're talking about any number of initiatives, both effective and ineffective in effecting this or that policy.

When you think about it, the power struggle between civil society and the state seems woefully lopsided.

What about elections? At least we can throw out a pack of bums who have grown too corrupt and too complacent. That's something, isn't it? I suppose it is. I think politicians genuinely like power and the existence of an organized group of power-hungry amoral hacks willing to replace them should the vast majority of the electorate grow disgusted with blatant corruption and incompetence does put something of a brake on their depredations. Of course, the more far-seeing and "radical" amongst progressives reject even this. According to them, we must either go live in a shack in the woods, (to get really extreme, swear-off eating meat - the murdered flesh of other sentient beings - whilst living in your shack in the woods), or, if we like the amenities of urban living, stay there and write pamphlets and organize tiny rallies of like-minded, radical, isolated, unpopular comrades. (Or, just pontificate on the internet. Whatev's.)

But even if we participate in the electoral process, 30% of the public is so ignorant or deluded or debased as to vote for revolting parties of racists, hard-core class warriors, anti-environmentalists, misogynist, homophobic, religious bigots. Another 30-35% vote for corporate liberals who are, as we see with Chretien, Martin, Clinton and Obama, as vilely imperialist, anti-social justice, and anti-human rights as their more cromagnon counterparts. And then we have the "social democrats" who can't decide whether to emulate their liberal counterparts (or in the case of Andrea Horwath's ONDP, aspects of their right-wing counterparts) or whether to pull left. And, then we have the Greens who veer from free-market greens to radical vegan-granola types.

We, as progressives, have failed miserably at making our influence felt at the political level. And civil society is SUPPOSED to influence politics or else its just pointless narcissism. And we have failed because we cannot get our arguments out to the vast majority of the population. What arguments do reach them are either so distorted as to be objectionable to people who would embrace them, or they bounce off the walls of entrenched bigotry and brain-washing of the hegemonic cultural norms.

We have to change this. But I see very little effort on this matter from the organized left and its institutions. I see a lot of repeating of the same useless activity in the absence of any indications about what else to do.

How do you, gentle readers, propose that we change this?

Women Seem Wicked When You're Unwanted

So, I recently added "We Hunted the Mammoth" because he's funny in the way he critiques patriarchal jerks in the way Canadian Cynic was funny when he critiqued the Blogging Tories. (The blog's title is based on some pompous entitled dolt imagining that women have had it easy throughout history because of all the things men have done for them, including the hunting of mammoths. I actually preferred the blog's earlier title "Man Boobz" because I like puerile humour like that.)

So, just as Canadian Cynic was able to stomach going down into the depths of right-wing stupidity and then letting them have it, "We Hunted the Mammoth's" David Futrelle really makes these sexist jerks look the like the total idiots that they are through the application of just the tiniest bit of sarcasm to their own words. In a short time, I've come to have a decent understanding of who MRA's, PUA's, and MGTOW's are. (As well as "anti-PUA's" who are just disgruntled customers of the PUA's.) Go to his blog if'n you want to know about them yourself.

So, reading Futrelle's blog gave me a better understanding of the very recent tragedy when Elliot Rodger went on his shooting spree after making that vile, self-pitying YouTube soliloquy. Rodgers was an "anti-PUA" type. He'd tried to use the bullshit methods of so-called "pick-up artists" and, not surprisingly, he failed. He appears to have been a very shallow, confused, angry person, and these afflictions couldn't be alleviated by following sleazy methods of manipulation to get young women plastered and into his bed.

The thing that I get from reading about Rodgers' murderous rage, and all the misogynist bile of these MRA's, is that they have absolutely no sense of perspective. While it's true that its painful and frustrating for men to approach women and get rejected, its also true that its painful and frustrating for women to be harassed by strangers. It's also true that women occasionally put their own pride and insecurities on the line and approach men only to be rejected. It's true that there are a million ways that women drive men straight up the wall, it's a sign of maturity to realize that we do the same thing to them. Yes, women have some advantages. But you show yourself to be a total ignoramus to deny that men, especially white men, have WAY more advantages at the starting gate than do women.

Whatever is genuine and true within the toxic, hateful stew of misogynist ravings of these guys, the final analysis is that they're stupid, childish, sexist morons. And their hatred gets innocent people killed.

People Invested in the System

How is it supposed to work?

"I know you worry about having a job and feeding your kids, and that you're able to do that the way things stand now, but I want you to join me in destroying the system, and to trust in some vague collection of generalities that you'll somehow be better off afterwards?"

The fact of the matter is that Canada is a rich country and many people are doing okay. Less and less people are doing okay with each passing year of neoliberalism, and our values are fucked-up and delusional, and etc., ... but we need to face facts: We need lots of boring, non-radical people on our side to achieve real change, and we're not going to get them on our side with radical rhetoric.

Way to go Jack Layton!

I very much had my differences with him. But, even as with my adversary, Andrew Coyne, i know that Jack Layton respected Parliament and our institutions. 

You fought for human rights for gay people! You created real benefits for real people there!

You respected the results of our electoral process and tried to make Parliament work!

When Paul Martin showed himself more corporate capitalism's servant than Parliament's, you pulled the plug.

When stephen harper showed himself unworthy of Parliament, despite your cancer battle and the rigors that you knew a federal election would hold for you, you rightly declared him in contempt and fought him.

You won, but your victory was stolen from you. Through fraud, stephen harper stole a majority. But all will be made right in the end.