The Insanity of Political Partisanship

When I was growing up, there were a sequence of political scandals and financial scandals that demonstrated politicians are scumbags. For example, a bunch of politicians were involved in the Savings and Loan Crime wave of the early 1980's... There was the house post office scandal. There was some sort of gay sex scandal with the congress involving college aged assistants. Then, roughly at the same time in corporate America, things like the Love Canal pollution crimes were happening. Anyway, it was pretty easy to conclude that lots of the institutions in the US were utter frauds.

I don't think I consciously embraced the philosophical Cynic perspective until roughly 2008, though. I fell for the Red/Blue party scam briefly as a first time voter, but realized when Obama was elected that the system itself is broken and corrupt. Obama gave billion dollar contracts to inept cronies, and sold the American people on Obamacare, which was just another corporate scam, plus continued the Wall Street bailouts and crime wave.

In general the corruption and incompetence have gotten considerably worse since then. It's bizarre to me that there are any political partisans. It's dopey and infantile, but I have many friends and family members who are full on partisans for either the red or blue squad.

What will make people seek wisdom? I wonder about that on a daily basis. A bunch of words won't. Maybe harsh life experience will?

Governments: Always the Worst People

It seems like people in Geauga County do a good job, on average, taking care of their dogs, but when they can't and the dog ends up in the shelter, it's usually a happy ending. The dogs are well cared for by the staff and volunteers, and typically end up adopted in a week or two. The dog shelter even imports dogs from other places from time to time.

Weirdly though, in recent weeks the Trustees and Sheriff decided the Sheriff needs to take over the dog shelter. One of the possible motives for a bizarre power trip by douchebag local politcal cretins is the wife of the auditor is on the board of the "Rescue Village" and maybe the lady doesn't want "competition" from the Warden for her pet organization? Who fucking knows?

Anyway, it's just more evidence that politicians are the worst human garbage. They are defective weirdos who should be shunned and ridiculed. Imagine wanting to sit in regular meetings about roads and septic systems for years on end so your name might end up on a plaque hanging on a building that wasted millions of dollars of tax money. Ambition is absurd.

Governments are only capable of proscriptive negative action on behalf of cronies and self-interested weirdos, but many people look to the government to solve all their problems as if it were magical.

It will be interesting to see how all this plays out. The dog shelter is quite popular and many people have first hand positive experience with the facility and staff. Hopefully the cretin politicians involved get their careers vaporized.

Wisdom versus Vigilantism

The assassin character was ultimately revealed in the CEO assassin story. The guy's name was Luigi Mangione or something like that--it doesn't really matter. The story could be real, or fake and staged. It's impossible to know.

Is the predatory, parasitic system going to change because a single CEO was murdered? Probably not. If a bunch of similar incidents happened, let's say 20, maybe there would be a change for a while, but eventually it would revert back to its current predatory, parasitic path.

The only thing that would really change the whole system would be a change in the people. People are so stupid and foolish now that I'm not sure "the system" can even continue to function. Routine maintenance on basic infrastructure will soon become impossible because of a lack of competent people to do basic things like fix water and sewer lines.

"AI" and "robots" are a MacGuffin that will never really come to fruition.

Unfortunately, I think only hardship will make people wise up.

Nobody Gives a Shit about UHC CEO

It's interesting to read YouTube comments sections on a "hot topic" where people haven't been groomed to believe bullshit about a given subject.

The CEO that was murdered is not receiving an iota of sympathy in comment sections on even mainstream videos about his assassination. That's really pretty rare--usually at least some fraction of the comments will provide a poseur, scripted response on any given topic, but not this time. The people who want to post a comment on the subject are unanimously condemning the greed of health insurance corporations and aren't feeling a shred of empathy for a guy they consider a crook.

Syria/Russia Lose War

The neocons, aka jews, destroyed Syria, like they destroyed Iraq. I think their theory is Israel's jews will use US resources and manpower to dominate the chaotic, wrecked country and will eject Russia's naval base to score a "victory". It's pretty mysterious what the US gets out of any of his activity--more debt mainly.

I think the scenario really isn't much different than Iraq--one government gets replaced by another one but the population and culture remain largely the same and the lopsided demographics of the area don't change to favor the tiny jewish enclave in Israel.

Paying People Like It's 1970

US wages and productivity grew at the same rate in the post WW2 economy era, then diverged in the "neoliberal" era, aka the era of financial theft. It's not some huge mystery why it happened. The system is setup to do exactly that. The guy who just assassinated the United HealthCare CEO maybe will end up being the shot heard 'round the western world.

In the era of at least a nominal gold standard, money was essentially a token of productivity, or represented a share of the whole economy. In the funny money neoliberal era, the people who get money first benefit most from it, then its value declines every time it changes hands basically because there's always brand new monopoly money spewing into the system and acquiring ownership of corporations or property, or whatever.

The people who run this system want to transform what's nominally a "free market" (it's really not because of the monopoly money) into a command and control, two tier dictatorship, which is basically already is.

In the US, it's pretty obvious the system is breaking down. I see it in my day to day life. The local parks district now does a bad job grooming the ski trails--they used to do a good job just five or ten years ago. Why is that? The parks can't afford to pay people, I guess, so they get inexperienced crew members and can't keep them, and maybe can't find help in the first place.

To get competent people to do some job like putting shingles on a roof costs a lot today. Not all that long ago it was maybe $5000 to redo a house like mine, now it's more like $15-20,000. 

Unfortunately, there's no way to fix this system. Who's going to wait 50 years for the neoliberal system to be "reformed" gradually? Why would someone in his 20s sign up for a series of shit jobs to make slave wages, not afford a home, etc...? To that person the USD is already valueless. When a new car costs $40,000--plus the car sucks because the car makers can't afford to hire any good people to build them and dealers won't pay anyone to maintain them, the $40,000 is already trash.

The idea that robots and AI are going to magically fix the economy is sci fi retardation. I think the pie in the sky automation concepts will actually turbocharge the clusterfuck scenario.

Health Insurance CEO Whacked!

A few days ago the CEO of "United Healthcare" an insurance company was gunned down in the street by an assassin. The motives are unknown at this time. It could be a personal thing, like conflict with a spouse or friend or whatever, or some dirty corporate dealings, or a political thing--the assassin decided to take out the trash, basically.

I'm surprised this kind of thing doesn't happen more often, really. Insurance in general is a scam, but the health insurance industry in particular is gross.

I think it's appropriate that it happened as the neoliberal system is falling apart.