Firebrands

Man, what a day yesterday – for me personally. The phone was ringing off the hook, my desk overflows, and at the same time I tried to deal with that creature of the Internet – that Norwegian guy who spices up blogs with links but otherwise offers no substance.

By pure happenstance, as my muddled head tried to deal with both him and work at once, I inadvertently coined a new word. I take full credit as I have “researched it”, also “read about it.” Yeah, OK, I Googled it. The word is free for anyone to use, please do give credit now and then … it can sit astride the one we’ve been using for centuries to describe the attitude people feign when they want to give the impression they know far more about a topic that they do. These are the ones who are certain of their facts even as they don’t have a full grasp of the wide range of “facts” that can be marshaled to support any subject. After all, any assertion can be supported by disparate facts out of context.

Of course, the word I’m referring to, so useful because of it’s deep and rich meaning, is “bullshit.” The word I’ve coined to sit beside the original, but beneath it of course as the original cannot be topped, is “Foxshit.

So expect me to use it with regularity now .. as in “Swede, that’s just plain Foxshit!”

One thing that is clear out of all of the fun we had yesterday with the punking of Governor Scott Walker is that Scott Walker does not know and has never spoken before to David Koch. We lefties like to throw around the Koch brothers as the force behind everything that is happening in rightwingville these days, and it's not that simple. The Koch's are radical revolutionaries in a sense I'll get to below, but by no means are they isolated or unique. They are just rich and powerful enough to make things happen. The thrust of right-wing talk radio, the think tanks, the Tea Parties (stooges below, but money above), the Republican and Democratic parties, is a large and interconnected network of money. It encompasses vast swaths of our landscape and tens of thousands of people. It is immensely powerful.

I know that sounds like a conspiracy, but that’s just the point – it is not that at all. It’s too big to be managed unless there are common ideals and purposes. The Koch brothers may have been a large factor in Scott Walker’s campaign, and more importantly were behind many of the anonymous Astroturf ads that overwhelmed Wisconsin in the last election. Scott Walker may be the first governor who owes his election in total to Citizens United. But our minds are small, and so we need to put a face on the enemy, as it is hard to hate an amorphous blob of like-minded people.

The Koch brothers serve as that face. We need to get over them.

It’s a large and incredibly wealthy country we live in, and there has always been a power structure hidden in plain sight. It is corporate wealth with the interlocking directorships, wealthy families, the big charities and private universities and the non-profits. (Outfits like Manhattan Institute and Heritage and Cato are the intellectual hirelings of these same people – they are the foot soldiers, sophists and sycophants. Intellectuals throughout history have glommed on to power. They are, after all, smart.) They support most of our office holders via our intentionally loose campaign finance system. They don’t have total power, they do not meet (other than Bohemian Grove). It’s more like an ant hill – people unknowingly cooperating in a very large enterprise. There are tens of thousands of individuals going on about their business, but they have common purpose.

That common purpose gives focus and thrust to that blob of wealth, and the only way to counterbalance that power is to organize. And so it naturally follows that the blob despises any form of organization among ordinary people, be it ACORN or environmental groups. But mostly they hate trade unions. Historically, trade unions have been our most effective organizing tool. They have been a force for political expression. They have offered education to counterbalance standard indoctrination. They have given ordinary people a means of achieving a moderate slice of the pie.

The thrust of this army of ants since World War II has been to eliminate taxes on wealth, the social welfare programs that came out of the Great Depression and New Deal, and to eliminate trade unions. My god do they hate unions!

Most of our aristocracy is simply preoccupied. It takes time an effort to run a corporation or the local opera house or the United Way. And anyway, having a lot of money creates the need for expensive leisure pursuits. There are only a minority of firebrands – people so ideologically hidebound that they have no concept of greater good and at the same time are willing to work tirelessly for their cause. The Koch Brothers are exemplary of this, but not alone by any means. They’ve merely been exposed.

The Koch Brothers and their fellow travelers usually cannot hold public office, as like Steve Forbes, they are not terribly charming or smart or convincing. So they must work through others, sometimes charlatans, but usually true believers. There are on the right an army of people who have imbibed deeply of the Kool Aid of Ayn Rand, and suffer from immense certainty coupled with dense stupidity. It’s a dangerous brew.

I believed Scott Walker yesterday when he said to fake-Dave that he was trying to do the right thing. He really believes that busting unions will make our lives better. He’s not a thinking man, he’s not a visionary. He’s a revolutionary.

Here is the foundation of conservatism as I have understood it all of these years – it is straight out of Burke:

“Society is complex, and human nature unpredictable; therefore, it is not prudent to mess around with political and social arrangements that have stood the test of time.”

OK, I’m not quoting him – he would not have said “mess around.” I’m quoting someone who is summarizing. But that is his thrust. So what would Burke say to these radicals who want to do away with trade unionism, Social Security and Medicare, unemployment compensation, minimum wage and child labor laws … people who have no concept of the immense and unpredictable fallout from such changes? He would say that they are dangerous.

These are not conservatives that we are dealing with. These are dangerous radicals. They are not “evil.” They don’t take orders from the Koch Brothers (though I would like to know who penned the legislation that they are trying to pass in Wisconsin, Indiana and Ohio). Scott Walker, if anything, showed me yesterday that he is a man of honorable intentions who wants to bring about positive change. He also showed me that he is a radical who does not listen to opponents, and is so sure that he is right that in his mind he can justify any action he takes to advance his cause.

He is not knowingly bought. He is not intentionally dishonest. He is that combination of certainty and stupidity we see all day long on that news channel. Scott Walker is full of foxshit.

11 thoughts on “Firebrands

  1. Here’s some Slate(shit).

    “Madison’s liberal Capital Times newspaper got a flat denial of that claim. “We have no interest,” said Philip Ellender, Koch Companies’ president of government and public affairs, “in purchasing any of the state-owned power plants in Wisconsin and any allegations to the contrary are completely false.””

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    1. Uh huh. Denial is pretty easy once you get caught with your trousers down!, Ingrid. I hear that they’re gonna find Jesus next!

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    2. Honestly Swede – what else would they say?

      But I believe them – I really do. Frankly, after all the money they sunk into Wisconsin politics, that would look too much like quid pro quo.

      Somebody is lined up to buy those power plants. We don’t know who just yet. The only thing I know for sure: It’s not Enron.

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      1. Here’s a new twist on this chapter Mark. From National Review.

        “The vitriol from protesting Wisconsin workers towards the Kochs emerged quickly and intensely. Signs ranging between lame and vulgar (often both) dot the public-union marches.

        But what the protesters don’t realize is that they actually have a reason to root for the Koch brothers.
        According to the State of Wisconsin Investment Board (SWIB), the Wisconsin Retirement System owns $5.5 million in Georgia Pacific corporate bonds. (Georgia Pacific is owned by Koch Industries.) This is the retirement system in which the overwhelming majority of state and local employees participate. These are the pension benefits that public employees are trying so hard to protect.

        So here’s the challenge: Explain to a Wisconsin state worker that they are the ones helping fund the Koch brothers. Then sit back and watch the fun.”

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        1. National Review, eh? Used to be an egghead magazine. Is it Tea Party now?

          As long as we are talking things of tangential importance, here’s a joke I heard yesterday.

          David Koch walks into a restaurant with his pet Tea Party member on a leash. There’s a labor worker sitting at a table. The waitress brings out a plate with ten chocolate chip cookies.

          Koch takes nine of the cookies, and then sets his Tea Party friend loose off the leash and says “Quick – hurry! He’s stealing your cookie!”

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          1. Boiling it down one step further.

            “According to the State of Wisconsin Investment Board (SWIB), the Wisconsin Retirement System owns $5.5 million in Georgia Pacific corporate bonds. (Georgia Pacific is owned by Koch Industries.) This is the retirement system in which the overwhelming majority of state and local employees participate. These are the pension benefits that public employees are trying so hard to protect.”

            Now call the SWIB a TeaParty affiliate.

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            1. Your point is quite obtuse. $5.5 million is nothing. Pension funds have to invest money somewhere, though I would advocate disinvesting in anything associated with the Koch boys. It is morally repugnant.

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  2. Um, did you forget we have “batshit crazy” too?

    What is ti that we have to classify the various forms of shit depending on the animal that excreted it?

    I’ll bet that Big Ingy likes having his shit compared to a fox–sly and conniving, ears darting around looking for prey, ready to pounce and turn his next prey into: BigIngyShit, a messy puddle of undigested fat and bones that he leaves strewn across the blogosphere in the form of YouTubers and one-liners.

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    1. “Foxshit” refers to information gathered from Fox News and repeated as gospel.

      Typically you’ll hear someone say something like “Obama right after he got elected issued an executive order sealing all of his college records.”

      You ask where that information came from, and he/she will say that it’s been floating around.

      You say “You got it from Fox News, didn’t you.”

      They reply – “Oh no – I don’t watch Fox. Maybe I saw it on Huffington Post.”

      At that point, thanks to the newly coined word, you can say “That’s total foxshit.”

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