No wonder life sucks--it's run by sociopaths

Most of us want a world in which we have some control. At least that's my working theory as to why so many are eager to blame the ills of the economy on people who borrowed and lived beyond their pay scale.

They want to blame individual choice when in fact, entire industries are mobilized to influence regular people to make unwise choices. It plays right into the very American belief that the sun will come out tomorrow. If you think you can't be manipulated, you are lying to yourself. Some of the best minds in creation work on it 60 hours a week--middle management and everyone who's below them on the corporate tree. They're good at their jobs, and in the interest of disclosure, I used to be one.

Capitalism got a few out of serfdom and into the merchant class, but let's remember that there never was a stable, large middle class until the balance of power was shifted. That meant bloody and sacrificial battles that brought us unions, civil rights, safety nets and all those things that have systematically dismantled by the Republican Second Coming, Ronald Reagan.

I'm not saying he set out to make life so damn hard for so many, I don't think he really was smart enough to think that far ahead. I'm just saying there wasn't a widespread homeless population until he closed mental health institutions. Everything that gave the little guy something became low hanging fruit, ripe for picking and turning into dessert for them that already had as much fruit as they could eaten in a lifetime. Remember the trickle down theory? It was a brilliant and superficial notion that never really goes away. The rich know how to spend money. The poor don't. The rich do the hiring. So let's give them more money. This notion sounded just plausible enough that it justified the largest transfer of wealth from the many to the few. The little guy bought it. Never mind he did it against his own welfare, not to mention Reagan borrowed most of the money to do it.


In today's edition of AlterNet, this caught my attention:

It's Not Hard to Be a Job-Slashing, Pension-Grabbing CEO -- If You're a Sociopath

By Thom Hartmann, Smirking Chimp. Posted July 28, 2009.

CEOs in America pull in the big bucks because there's a shortage of people willing to destroy the lives of many other human beings.


The Wall Street Journal reported last week that "Executives and other highly compensated employees now receive more than one-third of all pay in the US... Highly paid employees received nearly $2.1 trillion of the $6.4 trillion in total US pay in 2007, the latest figures available."

One of the questions often asked when the subject of CEO pay comes up is, "What could a person such as William McGuire or Lee Raymond (the former CEOs of UnitedHealth and ExxonMobil, respectively) possibly do to justify a $1.7 billion paycheck or a $400 million retirement bonus?"

Those who won't make an arguments on its merits might accuse me of envy, but really kids, there's nothing to envy beyond a given amount of worldly goods. In a world where babies die of hunger and diarrhea and mosquito bites, who can honestly justify the top guns bringing in a third of a nation's salary?

These are the very same people Obama is trying to appease with concessions that protect their status quo, one that feeds an undeniable urge to have as much as possible and to hell with the greater good. Look at the smiles in Big Pharma. They're funding Harry and Louis commercials in favor of health reform because they'll have it better than ever. At least now, my dad can send off to Canada to fill the hole in donut. Not after reform. No negotiations for lower prices either, and the patent period is extended to 12 years.

The sociopaths yield so much power and influence, they even have middle class folks who won't be able to afford college for their kids that the blame lays with people whose eyes are bigger than their income. Their eyes devour the world.

They hide under the impenetrable fog we call capitalism and damn all else by calling it socialism. There's a place in between. Where no one goes without the necessities and yet personal effort is rewarded. Who in the world is worth more than a million while hunger is widespread, largely due greed and sociopathic inhumanity?

Weak and way too feeble for a woman with my strong opinions

Hurrah, I suppose. I've survived yet another near death experience. They'd rallied the family, even my parents' minister and aunts who were; waiting in the wings not on my account, but to catch my parents when they collapse with grief at the death of their eldest, seriously flawed daughter.

Wasn't what happened, obviously. My sister says she's sick and tired of my dying all the time. Either do it or not so they all aren't constantly on the edge of their seats.

Geesh I wear people out, mainly my best people. Shit.

I got out to take a few photos the other day and literally fell into a bed of fossils. Fossils make me happy.

Breathless and swooning hearts in midamerica

My breathing sounded like blues harmonica, with a staccato urgency to it. The been done wrong man gently urged me through the snow with oxygen, and I gasped eternal truths during the trip to the nearest ER. He hasn't voluntarily spent time with me in years, and our 24th anniversary went unnoticed by either of us. I still make him laugh. He makes me laugh. We want happiness for one another and know togetherness isn't always the recipe.

The intellectual journalist with the wise and gentle heart I married now listens to books on tape as he drives a big rig cross country to keep the rent paid, having lost our house way too long ago. I'm a clever but useless partner. He doesn't care about anything but getting the bills paid and living up to his obligations.

He was for the war. I was on the steering committee of the Instead of War Coalition.

He left the hospital and drove through industrial ruins to the hub and headed up through Illinois. He got to Effingham when he had chest pain, pulled over and CALLED A FUCKING CAB! They medivaced him back to St. Louis, he'd had a minor heart attack (as if). He was here at least 12 hours before I knew about it because I finally called him and he had to tell me what happened. He didn't want me worrying.

Effingham has earned its name in my book. He's a weird and callous, crusty old booger, but he's my crusty old booger and hero to my children. A cab???; Have I taught him nothing?

WTF MotherKiller?

So I've come out all international now. I used to be a drunk. And I went to AA and was still a drunk by their standards, though I mostly didn't do shit. That's not fair, and I don't care who you may be.

A kindergartner could figure out what my classy liberal arts education couldn't prepare me for. That they're just fucking wrong. Once a drunk, always a drunk?

Wrong.

A disease?

Wrong. If not, then the scientific model has to go as it's the only ailment for which the only "official" cure is religion. The courts back me on this one, too, so already just shut the fuck up about its being a spiritual, not religious, program. Their roots are culty feely Christiany gone bad. That it's become the American standard for treatment of addiction is more ludicrous than anything even Schizoid the Prez has come up with. We are fucking blind, and we do not want to see, at least mostly, most of the time, most of us. Thank justice that there is a bit of sophiticated thinking to be had on this point.

It is the only way to have either/or sobriety and/or stability and/or life.

Wrong. So wrong. So, so wrong. By its own stats, AA has a five (yes 5) percent population retention at one year. And I can guarantee you that's not the same as sober, happy, free, or anything other than a warm butt in a metal chair.

It works if you work it.

Wrong. Just because it works for a sweet and wondrous precious few says nothing about those steps. It says a lot about those sweet and wondrous precious few being ready to be done with being so nuts. Most folks have issues at one time or another with a substance and almost all get over it because it's time to get a life worth having. This is not a credit to anyone, and I wish we could put someone's good future into their present as much as anyone, but life is not that way. Sucks, doesn't it. Our lack of control over anyone else's interior life. But there you have it.

My [fill blank] has been in AA {xx] years and it's changed their life.

Lucky them. Lucky you. I have a lovely face, and lucky me. Luck. Luck. Fuck.

AA is the source of life for people who attend, and saying otherwise is like shooting the jumper off a building.

A tempting proposition for the truly lovely among us to shut the fuck up, no? Except that people who go to AA have a 29 percent suicide rate. That's because their guilt for trespassing is so enormously overwhelming they can't imagine the humilation of returning to that group with their rank stripped, a base rookie, consigned to the stupid corner until later notice. This happens. It is endemic. It is the primary damage of this program as I have experienced it. Utter humiliation is not good juju for the soul. You didn't work it, it's your fault, you're "constitutionally incapable" of being honest. WTF???

I'm now so angry that i have to go calm down before I go on.

More later.

Killing a mother is unforgiveable, so forgive me already. Please.

So I' ve been so sick. Sick almost to death and it's largely my own damn fault for my love of a good smoke. Even now, with oxygen and a gasp to die for, I suck on these fuckers like the teat of life itself.

I am a deeply flawed individual.

But I have good days, too.

So let me tell you what I think.

I think people are largely mysterious, no matter how rational their self examination may seem. I've noted this outside my immediate gene pool, so I suspect it's not just me.

I happen to be a particularly non-spiteful mystery, as humans go. But I'm not particularly holy at all, and love succumbing to temptation as much as a gay preacher with snakes in a drawer. And I mostly cop to it, so that's something.

See how defensive I am from the get go? I'm defending myself against an assumed thought in your head, even as I write. I am so fucked unto the Lord or whatever that I begin with the reasons I'm worthy. Jeezus would say sheeyut.

But I'm fun to have a beer with and am told I'm smart as they come. Not that it has made much difference.

Smart folks can be so dumb. We think it's a virtue when it's just an adjective. That's unless we're crediting our own hard work, and I know that's mainly a lie. Mainly because when I've worked hardest, I've been my best, most transcendent self. But it's never lasted long enough for any righteous infinite jest, which is William James' definition of transcendent wisdom. I may be an iconoclast, but having read that book, I will adhere to its definitions, as is my right. So do not fuck with the James boys. There's no future in it.

I'd love to live in a world in which my own transcendence delighted me constantly. Since I don't, I rely a lot on substances and such to maintain daily, a sin as big as there is, I'm told. And yet, on this New Years, I'm putting my wide foot down that this is not so bad if it keeps you going mostly without hurting others. That's of course excepting friends and family who love me. They can't help but hurt at my diminishing presence, and they mourn it more than I do, which is something.

I am guilty as I am. I am guilty. I am. There it is. Feed as long as necessary. I am naked and flayed prostate before your judgment, and if you only knew, you'd know which line in this bit is the most central and agreed upon fact ever in the history of my life. Then you would come clean my house for me and love me for having taken this mantle so far so long. Or not.

Me, I'm wondering on all my guilt and its value in a gold-based economy. Not fucking much. And I'm dying. Not today, not tomorrow, but before my time. So?

So I have work to do that is different from other work I've done. I am selfish and narcissistic historically, yet I've lost real interest in my own life except as it is killing my family, mostly those three kids. Damnit. That I probably did it so, so long ago is just dawning on me.

We all have to answer to something, and having given up the traditional subjects of devotion as unworkable in my world, there are those people I love that I wouldn't hurt if I could help it.

And I wish I could help it. I'm a cipher. If I were my own judge, I would not be silent and sanguine, for killing a mother is an unforgiveable act. Yet I have to find a way to forgive myself so I can leave my children without a gaping maw where their ma used to be.

They deserve as much high minded positive projection as my soul can deliver, and frankly, I do too.

My smartness has finally revealed to me, ta-dah that the 25 years I spent in a cult was waaay bad. It hammered me from every direction that I was powerless in the face of my own evil nature, unchangeable in that stain, insane, incapable of rational thought, too smart for my own good, and destined to die a hideous death unless I adhered to their commandments.

Understandably, this took some of my good juju away and kept me on a spiritual search that I only put on the shelf quite recently as impossible and indecent. All those years I sought strength in a soul-zapping death cult without even knowing it. Others have had different experiences, including my two most central menfolk. It was a rebellion I couldn't help and wanted not to have and couldn't live with or without. But, the truth will out.

That I stayed says something about my fortitude, and my leaving says yet more. The demonic corruption of my best years?

Alcoholics Anonymous.

More later.

Caroline Kennedy, let's be reasonable

Maybe it's because I remember her losing her daddy that preps me so well for a Senator Caroline Kennedy. I was only eight at the time and losing my dad was the worst thing I could imagine at that age.

But I think that just makes me an empathetic human from an early age, not a knee jerk Camelotophile.

Am I the only one a bit grated by the comparisons being made to other political dynasties? Hillary, Dubya, Jeb et al have so much more to answer for. Caroline Kennedy seems as close to a saint as I've witnessed in the public eye, though I fervently hope there's more to her story. Saints are ever so boring.

Even so, no on is arguing her endeavors have been less than noble. She has not sought celebrity. She has gracefully and graciously worn the mantle of her birth without exploiting it for base purposes, which has got to take some kind of restraint I'm fairly sure I don't possess, and I think you probably don't neither. Say I'm wrong.

That she has been awkward before the press of the press seems a plus for me. I'm sick of the savvy and yearn for the ideals of the heart put into action. Has Obama leached all our capacity for fine feeling for an individual? Perhaps.

But as of this day, I see everything to love and nothing to genuinely suspect about Caroline Kennedy. That's my story and I'll stick to it as long as the facts back it. Isn't that what critical thinking is supposed to deliver? Geez folks, let's be smarter for once, from the get go.

Such Nice Boys

Proving yet again that point of view can be everything. Don't miss these men of true grit, even though theirs is aimed at our own.

VICE Travel: Darra, Pakistan
by Top-Notch112

Need Inspiring? Generic Inspirational Speech PDQ

I grabbed this off of Phil Gerbyshak's Twitter feed. Phil's one of those unstoppable optimists I am drawn to, probably because unspottable optimism isn't one of my more obvious assets, I guess. He's the real deal,though. And that's why he's appealing: others try to wear this powerful personality like a trench coat,but it shows. But with Phil, it's the way he rolls.

Here's a mashup of some 40 rile-the-masses speeches in just over two minutes,ammassed by Matthew Berlinke:



I can't say athis inspired me to do squat on a cold Sunday night, but it was entertaining. Thanks Phil.

A digital valium with a glass of wine, kind of

Friends, the world is a heavy place. The buoyancy of Obamahope has sunk under the weight of the extent of the criminal organization still in charge.

I'm tired.

I've been outraged for so long.And now, when we deserve a bit of lightness in our hearts, the news gets grimmer and grimmer.

So, I read Vogue's feature on Michelle Obama and it was a tonic to my soul, better than a glass of wine and a valium, not that I would know anything about anything like that.

See if it helps you feel a bit brighter.

Boy Jesus discovers the truth about Santa

Thanks, TruthDig

Gay marriage is about love and a seat at the family table

Our great national treasure boils it down to the essence and takes away Huckabee's gay marriage argument.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Mike Huckabee Pt. 2

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

The inevitability of mathematics

Remember when we yearned to live in a reality-based world? I'm maybe going a little soft on reality these days, but it's up to the grownups to behave like grownups. This is just the first part, the rest are easy to find.

Name this impressive obsession

I've been with the lovely folks at St. John's Mercy Hospital recovering from the vapors of having an election go my way.

Which has me wondering what DSM category they'd put this particular obsession under. Is it animal or mechanical, and really, what goes on behind closed doors up to 20 times a day anyway? Not that there's anything wrong with that.


Very Smart Squirrel - More free videos are here

Sarah Palin's Unntentional Comedy Amazes and Delights

Norm over at One Good Move, posted a link to this bit of brilliance from Language Log. Years ago, I majored in Literature and Language, a bit of study which included an emphasis on linguistics. Perhaps that's why I belly laughed at this erudite commentary. Anyhoo, it brightened my day considerably, so I'll share it with you in full for your personal edification.

Blurt and babble

November 18, 2008 @ 1:18 pm · Filed by Geoffrey K. Pullum under Language and politics




Mark struggles to maintain some sort of balance to counter the amateur linguistics we see in the press concerning the language used by political figures, even to the extent of trying to defend Sarah Palin's often incoherent public pronouncements. But I think she'll continue to outflank him. Here's a recent quote, from the Larry King show (on display in the Doonesbury site's "Say What?" feature over the last few days):

If there is anything that I can do in terms of assisting there and allowing the credence, the credibility that that great vocation, that cornerstone of our democracy called the press, if I can help build up that credibility in the press and allow the electorate to know that they can believe everything that is reported through the airwaves and through print, I want to be able to help.

I'll grant you that credibility is a replacement, signalling a return to fix what she felt was a false start with credence; and that cornerstone is a replacement for another false start with vocation; and that if I can help is a third repair effort, restarting the whole passage that began with if there is anything that I can do in terms of assisting. And certainly, we all make at least some mistakes and repairs in our sentence planning, roughly of the same sort as these. But if I have understood the above 69-word utterance correctly, all Palin was trying to say was "I'd like to help build press credibility." That shouldn't be such a difficult thing for a journalism major to express orally after some experience in state politics.

I have to confess that I don't think anybody who regularly engages in this sort of chaotic blurt-and-babble speech in interview situations can be regarded as suited to a position involving political leadership or executive responsibilities in the government of a democracy.

I think being so utterly unable to explain what one wants to say is truly and reasonably regarded as a defect in one's qualifications for office — partly because being so inept at talking in a controlled and sensible way strongly suggests that there was no sensible thought back there, and partly because even if there were sensible thoughts back there somewhere, a leader needs to be more skilled at articulating them.

Having a president who regularly spluttered and stumbled like this when speaking off the cuff is part of what made the past eight years so awful for those who would like to be proud of the USA and its leadership.

It isn't primarily about Palin's politics: I cringe when I hear Democrats floundering to this extent too. Ted Kennedy has on occasion attained a degree of incoherence comparable to that of the Palin quote above (remember the classic Doonesbury strip: A verb, Senator, we need a verb!). I just think it means these people are underqualified for public life (albeit perhaps not vitiatingly so), and pointing that out is a legitimate criticism of a candidate's ability to do the job, just like presenting evidence of the candidate's venality or dishonesty would be.

Well, I say it's not primarily about Palin's politics; but of course it soon would be if I were so foolish as to open the comments area on this post. But I (have you noticed this?) am not foolish. By the way, to fully understand the scholarly achievement that Mark's careful and dutifully unbiased analysis represents you really need to contrast it with something like (what Language Log reader Jonathan Lundell pointed out to me) Wonkette's remarks on Palin's "hellish, primordial shitheap of misplaced modifiers, abrupt switchings of tense, and sounds that simply are not words … And gerunds … so many gerunds in places that do not need gerunds" (she refers to what The Cambridge Grammar calls gerund-participles; a commenter called Capitol Hillbilly says pompously that "she doesn’t know the difference between a gerund and a garden variety participle", but in fact there isn't one). Wonkette does not have the same duty of scholarly care and linguistic exactitude as we do. They can be polemical. They are Wonkette. We are Language Log.

And because we are, just one more linguistic comment. A commenter at Wonkette called Ivenson says: "Gave up when she said 'you guys are wanting to dissect the past'. Awful passive voice manner of speech, she looks terrified." Terrified she may be, and look. And awful her manner of speech perhaps is. But You guys are wanting to dissect the past does not contain any instance of the passive voice at all. As is customary in popular discussions of syntax, the passive voice is being blamed for things it isn't guilty of. Remarkably few educated Americans can accurately distinguish passive clauses from active ones. They use the term "passive" to allude to some extraordinarily vague and broad notion that has something to do with not being very specific, and in particular not being specific about agency and responsibility for actions. You can find this discussed in a large number of Language Log posts about the passive that are listed here.

MIT Logo in Origami -- Applied Science

My former business partner has a boy at MIT on full scholarship. I can only hope he's up to similar amazing endeavors.

Prepare to be well and properly amazed. This is genius.

Scott McLellan: Bush Authorized Outing Plame

Geez, it never stops, does it?

The Obama Faith Interview: 2004

The belief Obama describes is my own, sans black church services, yet I label myself an atheist. He's really quite Unitarian Universalist (the grandparents were Universalist before the merger). He's not a literalist and refuses to call himself "born again."

Here's the trancript of the interview, printed in its entirety for he first time ever.

Rowan Atkinson: The Miracles of Jesus

A New World

Obama Family Values

The Obama family. These videos remind me all over again why they're moving to Washington despite every naturally occurring disadvantage that can happen in one three-word name.

Their natural affection is evident, as is their respect for one another. This cannot be faked. When Michelle Obama , talks about "this guy I married, whom I'm so proud of, first of all because he's a good guy," I believe her.

There's a wonderful moment after she introduces Malia and Sasha Obama and their dad, "BARACK OBAMA!" then nothing happens for maybe 20 seconds. When they finally emerge, poor 10-year-old Malia is so painfully self-conscious about all this attention, that she speaks to my inner child, how about you?

Little Sasha wears her happy kid beam, reveling in it all as she roams among her parents' long legs. Before going on, though, Dad's concern is his daughter's comfort, and he lets the crowd wait as he bends down, being sure to lower his mike, and whispers daddy magic that makes her smile her first genuine smile of the evening.

How often do kids really come first like that?

I'm newly reminded of the thrill of a candidate who, as his wife put it, will wake up every morning to make this a better place for all of our children, and will do everything he can to help life be not so hard for regular people.

Think that ever occurred, really, to the Usurper?

I'm including a third video. Stick with me here, because you'll wonder if I've gone all Harlequin on you. I would have chosen different music, and there would be no pink valentine frames with white script. I watched it through, ready for a wince that really never came.

Image after image, their connection reminds me of the John Donne's poetic image of a mature and satisfying love he compares to twin compasses (think geometry) that circle widely, strongly and independently of each other, but when those twin orbits intersect, it's the most powerful and profound meeting of hearts and mind.

It's not moon-June-spoon, gazing into lipid pools so often described as the ideal. When they look at each other, they're equals, a team. We catch their intimacy not because they have it one display, but because it is real. One look at what must have been Annie Lebowitz's photo of a the two, and you get it. They may be the first happy marriage since Truman.

It's when they're looking in the same direction that their mirrored expressions made me cry before it was over.

I'm sure I'm punch drunk from years of being forced to sustain outrage, but I believe all over again in the promise of this exceptional family. Like Malia said in their one and last family interview, it makes the kids feel good when their parents love each other. Me too, Malia. Me, too.