Happy birthday, Mein Furher

To-day is the Big One's birth day. The usual pleasantries about "hope for many more" and "wishing you well" shall be dispensed with, because Our Leader only desires our worship...

HEIL!!

Glory to the One who giveth much - stimulus, cash for clunkers, etc.

Hail to the master warlord, the Conqueror of Central and Southwest Asia!

Praise to He who straddles the continent effortlessly as he bestows his bountifullness upon the people!

Marvel at the Great One's miracles of levitation, of turning stones into bread!

And know far and wide that we praise Him for all this!

No matter how high the bodies pile, know that His will is law and thine majesty is eternal.

Utter ruin

Hearing the Grate One's primetime pronouncements this very minute, I am reminded of the old saying "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread."

Indeed, fools as always are pulling the levers of power, but in this case it can only lead to mass slaughter. There can be no better definition of pure evil.

B.O. has in twenty minutes proven himself to be the most economically ignorant and illiterate Leader of all time. (Not that this wasn't expected.) Given his predecessors, that's quite some feat.

His entire programme is standard Keynesianism, the ante upped per the ramped-up level of public fascism that runs rampant to-day. The only difference now is instead of billions we speak of trillions; but the ignorant and thoughtless "pump priming" ethos remains.

This can, of course, only lead to devastation, as only the few sane people seem to be aware. If B.O. and his powerful friends think's it's bad now...don't hold your breath, as the cities rapidly begin to resemble Port-au-Prince as they degenerate into chaos.

I quote the illustrious Lew Rockwell, who always translates exactly what I am thinking into the written word far better than I could:

I am listening to Boring Barack's economic plan, and thinking that Keynesianism, shorn of mathematics and academic jargon, even sounds stupid: print trillions in paper money, bail-out loser firms and banks, spend massively on political projects, and grow rich.

There was one fun moment when Obama noted that he was shocked that some some people (get ready for the outrage) question the efficacy of FDR's New Deal, a battle he thought had been won long ago.

Nope!

Welcome back to the 1930s. The abyss of starvation and death awaits us, our justly deserved fate as a country. With the likes of B.O. at the helm, it is becoming clear to even the dullest that the corpses are sure to pile in heaps.

---

And now they are talking about a "truth and reconcilliation commission" to investigate the late Bush regime, as if this was some dictatorship or something.

Oh, wait...

But dat won't fly when all the parties in Leadership have blood on their hands. So again, don't hold your breath.

Thug heaven

With the economy in free fall and the Church of Keynes providing answers, this should be hog heaven for the parasite classes.

What does not need to be subsidized just now is immoral, immodest, or profligate behavior. This is a time for restraint and retrenchment, not the proverbial handing of the credit cards to those who have long proven their lack of responsibility regarding, well, anything.

Yet with a disciple of Keynes and wanton thuggery now occupying the Imperial Mansion, it is certain that the coming "stimulus" is going to do exactly what should not be called for.

Expect the lazy and immoral to profit and grow fat from the coming lean times, while the productive are looted beyond belief.

Can't comprehend such an outcome? In the words of the old Braniff slogan, Believe it! In Bizarro-world such as we live in to-day, these things happen.

Reign of the superthug

In retail America to-day there is a growing trepidation. Stores are closing. Chains are liquidating and going out of business right and left. Places that were once safe to walk around and shop now pose a cold and forbidding presence. Husks of once thriving retail litter and blight the suburban landscape.

What is the common thread of this retail failure?

The state of the economy is an obvious answer. But it doesn't explain everything. Certainly the depression will bring a final denouement to the many failing zombie retailing firms out there (you know who you are). But even before the terminus of the late credit boom, malls were failing in large numbers. Certain chains couldn't put it all together even in good economic times (Kmart, Circuit City, etc.). Scarred commercial strips abounded on the bleak and fractured arterials of the predominantly blue collar inner suburbs, not to mention the urban core itself.

Retail space is still being expanded and constructed despite the depression; what is being built, however, is a highly selective portion of the retail scene. The good retail offerings increasingly have turned to thriving upper income areas. Retail growth trends favor these demographics. The newest and fanciest retail concepts find fruition here. Nobody builds enclosed malls and shopping centers anymore. Open air concepts such as "lifestyle centers" and strip shopping plazas are the order of the day. Like lemmings as always, the development community follows the alleged trends.

But there was already good retail infrastructure existing. So why build even more space? The retail sector is vastly overbuilt. There is simply too much space chasing too few tenants and merchants.

It is, of course, a factor of location. People want retail offerings to be located reasonably close to where they live and work. They do not feel like driving an inordinate distance (as inner city dwellers like myself must do) to shop for groceries.

But people also will not shop where they do not feel safe, no matter how convenient from a location perspective.

If you read dead retail tribute sites such as this one, you will come to notice a common thread behind the various stories of retail failure portrayed therein. You will come to notice that each mall or retail center started out with high hopes, and may have even thrived for a time. However, the end result is often the same: the mall becomes populated by the "inferior element" in society, and the retail offerings come to cater to their needs, providing the average suburban shopper less of a reason to visit. Inevitably the crime and shootings follow, which precipitates the final period of decline leading to eventual closure.

What is the culprit therein? Poor mall management? Economic misfortune? New and unforeseen retail competition? Developer greed? Cheep commercial credit? (Corn-Fed credit per Bernanke's non-stop printing presses indeed permits an excess of commercial development that otherwise would not exist. But that is an enabling factor. Why build anew, with all the issues that entails, when it is immensely cheaper to invest in the already existing capital structure?)

In Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, which happens to be the Urban Prairie Schooner Heartland, there are three enclosed shopping malls located within a few miles of each other, all located closely upon the east-west axis that is Interstate 10. Each mall serves its specific retail niche which it has assumed over time based on changing market conditions. Each mall has adapted to its competitors and continues to thrive and remain profitable for its owners. Each mall provides a safe, pleasant, clean shopping experience free from fears of the lack of security or safety.

Why do three shopping malls thrive therein, despite close proximity? Because people shop there with the expectation that they will not be molested or otherwise harmed by a criminal element.

These malls draw patrons from all over the New Orleans metropolitan region. In decades past, my relatives from St. Bernard Parish would make the long trek across the city to Metairie or Kenner to shop at the malls there. Why did they prefer to make this long trip rather than spend their money at retail centers more proximate to their homes? (For those unfamiliar, St. Bernard Parish has no enclosed malls located within its limits. The most the parish's retail offerings could muster were a freestanding Sears [now defunct, a hurricane victim] and a Wal-Mart Supercenter.)

For those of you who know the New Orleans area, you will remember that in years past, the single enclosed mall located east of the Industrial Canal was the now-defunct Plaza at Lake Forest. For those of you not familiar, please peruse this insightful article to discover for yourself the sordid history of that center. No wonder my relations refused to shop there.

Granted, this is a localized example, but instructive nevertheless.

Eastbank Jefferson Parish, as of yet, does not house a significant underclass resident population. The vast underclass abyss of adjacent New Orleans can only traverse the inter-parish frontier with difficulty due to a poor transit system. Even when entering the E.J., erstwhile thugs will be watched at all times by a vigilant and probably excessively violent police state apparatus which vests itself in the guise of the Sheriff's Office.

I do not condone the sometimes thug-like activities of the JPSO here, having been on the receiving end a few times in my life myself. But the point is that safety is a primary factor in the success or failure of a retail venture. When the superthug is admitted into the retail precinct and permitted to do his thing, events predictably devolve downward from there.

This is not the job of the State police, which only makes things worse in their own way. This is up to the mall management. The thug's progress must be arrested at the outset.

But it is an uphill struggle. Increasingly large sections of the population have turned to indolence, subsidy, and other elements of the thug life. The thug population is increasing rapidly, which should be no surprise given that thug values have become the more or less mainstream cultural conceits of modern Amerikan society: living for the moment, emphasis on materialism, disrespect of other human beings, rejection of responsibilty and the sacredness of those human bonds inherent in the institutions of marriage and the family, disdain of productive activity including work, inculcation of a subsidy mentality of obtaining something for nothing, increasing pathological and criminal behavior, increased rates of social disorders characterized as "mental illness", decline of moral codes and value systems, rejection of the intrinsic value of human life and in particular the right to life of the unborn, and of course increased practice of all these values and increased tolerance of all those others who practice thug values.

So it should be no surprise that our malls and shopping areas have fallen prey to them, particularly our older centers in those neighborhoods which thugs have either colonized or otherwise "gone thuggin'."

And so the newer centers arise in the far suburbs, in areas free from thug activity for the moment. But as the empire of thuggery expands and productive human activity presumes to occupy less and less space within the geography of the urban area, even these centers will one day fall, a futile fiat money regime attempt to keep a decent offering of retail alive with only a limited lifespan. (This is intrinsically known by those who develop these centers. They are so cheaply constructed and adorned, I can only presume they are working under the presumption that they will only be profitable for a short period of perhaps ten to twenty years before dropping to 'second-tier' status with the thug invasion and thus making an eventual appointment with the wrecking ball.)

And in the final account, the thugs will control our destiny, since they will comprise the absolute majority. But by that time, don't expect much retail to be left, since the thugs will be too busy murdering us for anyone to care about much save bare survival.

It goes beyond retail, unfortunately. The dead mall phenomenon is but the canary in the coal mine. The thug increasingly plays a larger and larger role in our nation to-day. In due time, this role will become pivotal.

Such is the endgame of allowing the superthug to rampage unchecked. And such is the epitaph of our society.

We're #1

...in something bad again. Why am I not surprised.

The truth behind this is, Chocolate City is home to the biggest, baaadest, and most moronic and narcisstic rage filled thugs out there.

Corn fed on a diet of State subsidy, self-pity and victim shilling; cut this way and that by the moral depravity and chicanery that is the Third World cesspool of the New Orleans political system, economic structure, and overall way of life; and taught the criminal way of life by a culture where theft is the means of sustenance and productive activity is only that which must be leeched upon, the New Orleans street thug is a product of the larger environment as much as he is of degenerated genes and domestic chaos.

And you wondered why I no longer live there. Much as I will always love New Orleans - it's home, after all - I beat it out of that quagmire soon as my two little feet could carry me.

And what's funny - I have never, ever in all my years been a victim of a crime of any sort (besides being targeted by panhandlers, and that's practically everyplace you go now). It belies the image of this state as being filled to the brim with murderers, rapists, and other thug-in-full characters.

Guess it's just a factor of whom you hang with, eh?

It is truly pathetic to see the depths of depravity to which the city has sunk. A gang of barbarian marauders has sacked the temple, once filled by the tribute of the productive, and looted the seed grain. And now there is very little left.

Such is the basis for the carnage. When there are only scraps left to fight over, it is slaughter your enemy or die anyway.

The worship of the gods of death in the Crescent City is total. 

Drowning in idiocy

With each passing day, seemingly another brand new piece of bad economic news falls our way. Either one company or another is at the verge of collapse, or the credit markets have evaporated into vapor, or the fate of homeownership as we know it in this country is in mortal peril! Yada, yada, yada it goes, out to the overfed obese diabetic morons in the heartland who couldn't tell apart a derivative from a dividend.

All these imbeciles know is that the sky is falling (because our Leadership says it's so!), and so it is declared that we desperately need a strong Leader who will act fast and decisively, with all the powers of the State granted to him (what happened to liberty?), to preserve prosperity and prevent the dickheadery and the trailer park class from having to actually, you know, produce something for a living.

These mental midgets have no ability whatsoever to engage in deep thought. If they actually used their gray matter for a moment, or at least attempted with some feeble effort to research the origins of the current cataclysm, the clarity of the situation would be greatly apparent: State makes crisis, State reacts to crisis by grasping for and obtaining more power, State sows seeds of newer, bigger crisis down the road while worsening the present crisis.

But even now, with this shell game long exposed by pages like this and other heroic efforts in print and other media, the sheeple clamor desperately for government protection.

This article may be of use in understanding the apparent contradiction therein, rooted in the abdication of sanity and critical thought which is the hallmark of our culture to-day.

The ignorance of to-day's Amerikana is startling.

It is said that the civic knowledge, or lack thereof, of the average Amerikan is shocking. I will tell you that it is not because people are necessarily afraid to use their minds and educate themselves on specific issues (though this is a large part of it).

They will gladly engage in feats of astounding mental agility if it suits them - memorizing the names of celebrities' babies, comprehending the convoluted plots of television soap operas, navigating the Kafkaesque labyrinthe of the welfare system and exploiting it for their benefit to obtain a greater share of their "entitlements" which they are "owed" by the rest of us.

Their insipid lives are focused on pleasure, self-gratification, and physical engorgement. The trailer park set lives for the lowest common denominator - a minimum of effort, producing a bare minimum of lifestyle, supplemented by the usual "disability" payments and other State-sponsored producer extortions.

And always in their lives there is chaos. The inner lives of the minds of the moron class is a rapid and vapid cacaphony of dueling and jumbled emotions both intense and shallow at the same time - emotions without rhyme or reason, appearing like fleeting vapors in the air and vanishing all at once, emotions derived of the sensations of the moment produced by the glands and the chemicals of the mind and bodily organs (including reproductive), products entirely of the momentary situation, a frightening and uncontrolled jumble of mysterious physical and mental processes which poses incomprehensible to the average public secondary school degree holder. This inability to take charge of their own lives and impose discipline on the wild forces of nature renders the existence of the trailer park denizen forever chaotic and terrifying.

Bouncing from crisis to crisis, their days are filled with the stuff of high drama that fills the plots of the average bargain basement soap opera to overflowing. (The producers of Dynasty would be proud.) Unlike the Carringtons, however, the end results of this crisis filled existence are hardly satisfactory. Days and nights are filled with incidents of sudden, completely random acts of appalling violence, arguments which rise out of nowhere and generally lead to physical blows, irresponsibility on a grand scale, etc. Between the swells of narcissistic rage lie the long, barren fallows of inebriated, stupefied apathy, generally spent in front of a television set and almost always accompanied by some sort of alcoholic beverage or high calorie, high sugar junk food.

They neither comprehend nor possess the ability to comprehend the society around them. The thrust of their life philosophy, such as it is, is to pick up the dominant moral ethos by mental osmosis (since critical thought has been shown to be beyond them) and carry it to its negative extreme, its logical bottom. The dominant ethos of our era is nihilism. Therefore the underclass (as we refer to them in PC-speak) represent and reflect the hollow and depraved nadir of that creed.

So Amerikan society collapses not with a bang, but with the wheezing of a morbidly obese, near mentally comatose dolt who has abdicated control of his life to those who are willing to do the thinking for him.

Enter the psychopaths, who swindle their way to the top with impossible promises of turning stones into bread - obvious cons, but which are readily believed by those for whom God means less to their lives than Mickey Mouse. They keep and hold power by similar sleight of hand and illusion - by the performance of economic magic tricks to feed the masses who refuse to work for their supper (which always blow up in society's collective face down the road), and to entertain a culture for which entertainment is the primary purpose of people's lives.

Enter the psychopaths - exit liberty. An ignorant citizenry begs to be enslaved. An educated people cherishes and preserves its freedom. 

With the dwindling of the last light of competency in this nation, liberty is extinguished.

The morons' brains will then be used for the purpose for which they are best suited:

Fertilizer.

Crimes and misdemeanors

Apparently the new type of petty thievery today among the underclass is to swipe from the tip jar which invariably exists at many small service sector businesses (mainly restaurants and taverns). This of course directly robs the hardworking everyday folks who work in these positions, usually earning subpar pay, actually attempting to, you know, earn an honest living and not survive by robbery as many of their social peers do.

Another example of robbing the working stiff to fund the epic subsidy racket that is the survival of the moocher class in this day and age. The tom-toms grow louder...

***

With the third anniversary of Doomsday looming, the failure of the all-elusive "recovery" to materialize in the lives of the unfortunates caught in its wake (except for the elite and well-connected, for whom profit taking at the expense of taxpayers is considered a birthright) poses a highly embarassing situation for the government.

Thus Bush was in the hometown today (hardhat and all; that must have made a nice photo-op) claiming the government's continued "commitment" to the rebuilding of that beleaguered city.

In Bushspeak, "commitment" is defined as emphatically saying, "We're providing all necessary resources to rebuild," while most of said resources (borrowed from the Chinese, to boot) falls into the pockets of the mecha-contractors (most not from around here) that squat like leeches upon the carcass of the Federal funds apparatus - all to fund the fat salaries and entitlements of the dickhead leisure class. Meanwhile, the common folk starve for lack of jobs, and bodies pile high like cordwood as violent crime poses the only outlet for obtaining income.

In Our Leader's case, I think Henry Rollins put it best:

YOU'RE A LIAR!!!!!

The "Suck My Dick" Caravan rolls on...

***

Check out these amazing videos of a once thriving Detroit from 1954.

Perhaps the greatest crime of all: the rape of a once great city by a looter class without remorse or moral scruple or question. A once productive population reduced to a simpering morass of barely human creatures all snarling at once in unison "WHERE'S MAH SUBSIDY???" and "YOU OWE ME!!!"

With a society built on morals such as these, it is no surprise that civilization has rapidly crumbled into dust in their wake.

This is the end result of a people whose only desire is to maximize their pleasure, completely eliminate any need for exertion of effort and thought in their lives, and exist in an idle, torpid state that equates to a perpetual childhood. It should come as no surprise that child-like behavior should logically follow, and that a once vibrant city created and sustained by human effort should come to reflect the apathy and sheer focus on self-pleasuring and self-indulgence that afflicts the looter class like a terminal disease. And as the looter class expands, with the encouragment of an omnipotent government, to take in nearly the entire society, the entire civilization falls into the state of dilapidation and ruin.

This can only lead to one place.

The dogs of war

Need I remind all those imperialist, "yer either with us, or geeet on out o'here!" blowhard yahoos who are just pining away for continued warfare and spreading of death to countries which pose no threat to us, that when a nation enters into a state of war it takes certain risks with its citizenry.

Of course men are killed and maimed on the battlefield, which is a crime in itself. But that is for another post. I am talking about something more primal.

Do the idiots in Washington realize how our warfaring ways are blatantly exposing our women and girls to the ravages of potential rapists?

Rape and pillage is the ancient way of war. Soldiers have considered this a privilege of victory since ancient times, even as recently as the Second World War and Vietnam. Is there any evidence that today's enemies are any more civilized than warriors of the past?

The Mongol hordes will one day reach our shores, enraged and emboldened by our consistent destruction of their nations. (Don't think "Homeland Security" will save you; the government's "finest" couldn't defuse a bomb to save their lives.) And they will enter a country which has long abdicated any ability to actually defend the 'homeland', having squandered its skill in self protection for twenty pieces of silver and the false protection of the police state.

Most men today no longer retain enough class or moral fiber to save a woman from ravishment, much less even know how to use a gun, or even know what a gun looks like.

Rape is the most brutal of all crimes save murder. It is a crime completely born of the primitive primal animal urges of lust, power, and destruction. It is a crime of barbarian savagery to a degree that no other insult can approach.

And real men should be ashamed that it is even allowed to occur, even in peacetime.

But there are no more real men. In this nihilistic age the old fine values of protecting the dignity of the female sex, the producers of new life, are long dead, replaced by an animal scraping for "rights" and a false belief in the almighty power of Government sponsored protection. Every man - and woman - for himself/herself.

Sorry, folks, but the Federal Government has not much longer to live. Economic collapse looms and the gilded offices of the parasitical class will cease to exist.

Then the jungle drums will begin to bleat, and the cries of millions of violated women will sound out in the night.

Not that anyone cares. Go back to your Cheetos and television viewing. No dark evil looming ahead to swallow us all into the vortex.

Dispatch from the end of civilization

The inexorable rise of petrol prices has pushed the retail price above $4 a gallon, marking yet another inevitable milestone toward civilization's gradual and now irreversible progress into the maelstrom of barbarism. As the end of civilization nears and the economy collapses around us, observe the canary in the coal mine in order to determine the rate at which we hurtle along the path to the state of feral chimpanzees on the open prairie.

When the folks at the very bottom - the ghetto Blacks - begin to starve in droves, you now know that the witching time has come, and Satan has come to call in his debts.

Of course, perhaps since the Negro underclass is subsidized to the extent he is today, their sufferings will likely pale in comparison to the working classes directly above them, fully exposed to the ravaging monsters of death which will soak this land in blood and broken bodies and unraveled dreams.

Again the working man must lay down his life for the comfort of the privileged. The undertaking profession will handsomely profit from the coming deluge. (Consider that fact when making a career choice today, young people.)

The playerz and golden boyz (and girlz) of the privileged classes cannot all be protected from the slide. It will be too severe for even their elites to paper over, with fiat money or otherwise. For those who have never known suffering, hardship, or in fact reality, the coming emergency will almost certainly be lethal and swift.

The expression "Let the bodies hit the floor" will take on a literal meaning, and sooner than you know.

No more nights of sickening frivolity chugging away with their other rich friends at the local pub for them. In this game they join the ranks of the many, for which survival has always been a day to day concern.

And there are only two outcomes to this game - bedraggled, desolate life or the cold slumber of death. In a way perhaps death is preferable in this situation.

What will future civilizations say of us, having unearthed the magnificent ruins of a once affluent society which unfortunately suffered from a terminal case of mass stupidity and moronia? Will they be able to resolve the conflict between the marvelous engineering feats revealed to them with the mindless and ignorant behavior of this age's social actors? Will they read these lonely blog posts and realize that there were people who lived who observed this age of madness, and understood precisely that the end was about to arrive?

The process has already begun. Gleaming cities are being replaced by open wilderness; music has degenerated from soaring melodies to grunting jungle drums. Intelligence has been replaced by intellectual sloth, competence by incompetence, work ethic by subsidy seeking, life by death.

The human animal has returned to his primal roots, his glands and dick dictating the warp and loom of his existence, mysterious biological urges and processes shaping his behavior which primarily consists of wanton thuggery, degenerated into a state no better than the ape he evolved from. The striving to rise above nature, the entire reason for the existence of higher civilization, has permanently ceased. No longer can the human being call himself better than, or superior to, the animals. He is one of them.

The few remaining civilized humans have been crowded out by the animal masses, their greasy and slimy paws fast groping for the rapidly evaporating scraps of subsidy which they can manage to obtain. In such a free for all for vanishing resources, ruthlessness and brutality is favored by evolution, and that individual who can murder his way to the top naturally assumes prominence in such a societal state.

When civilization reaches its final conclusion, such a state of ruthless anarchy will be greatly amplified, to a degree which will make all the atrocities of the twentieth century appear like chicken feed by comparison. Father will murder son, brother will murder brother, White and Black will engage in bloody and murderous race war, hundreds of millions will die. If humanity manages somehow to survive, it will likely be only in small bands of twenty or so, as hunters and gatherers scavenging the last scraps of civilization, in a total global population that will not exceed the thousands.

Consider that it took twelve thousand years for humanity to progress from a hunter-gatherer state to current modernity. This feat will not be repeated. Civilization will cease to exist, and will never be restored or reconstituted in any way, shape, or form. Native human intelligence of any shape will have been swallowed and consumed by the orgy of death, leaving the dullest of the dull, the most ruthless of the ruthless, to bring the human race to total extinction in another generation or two.

The Planet of the Apes will replace it, likely. (I don't know if that will actually happen, but then nothing makes sense anymore, so why not?)

The problem is simple. There are 6.7 billion people on earth. This level of population cannot be sustained except through advanced productive techniques (division of labor, et al.) and processes for implementation of specialized knowledge which only capitalism and free markets can create and sustain. (Pre-capitalism global populations were thus far lower than current levels. Global population levels of one billion was only reached around the year 1800.) When capitalism is rejected and replaced with a system of subsidy which consumes wealth without generating new wealth, by a process where the relatively few producers are raped to sustain the larger body of dead weight, the system collapses, and the surplus population so produced by a free market system ceases to live. In a society such as this one where there is much wealth, this process takes longer since there is more to loot and plunder, but the rule is the same. The wealth is eventually exhausted, the subsidy gainers can no longer sustain their game, and the house of cards collapses in a gigantic pile of corpses.

It is as simple as that. The current trajectory of events is leading to a collapse. The choice we are facing is stark - life, or death. Amerika (Fuck yeah!) and the rest of the world has tenaciously clung to its moronic subsidy fantasies, right in the face of heavy evidence that this course is unsustainable. They have chosen death, and death is what they will receive.

Believe me, what is coming will be big. There is a huge surplus population, about 6.65 billion people's worth to be exact. The law is inexorable. They will all die. Every inch of this globe will have to be plowed for cemeteries to store all the bodies.

Witness this baloney

Point your peepers to this story.

Child is obviously a product of typical stupid, permissive dumbass Amerikan parents.  A future school shooter in embryo.  I have no sympathy.  Of course they blame the victim here - the teacher.  Typical socialiste reaction.  It takes a lot to set off a kindergarten teacher in that manner.  

She was trying to save the boy, people! - to show that screwball, ghetto behavior that lacks consideration for other people wins you no friends and gains you nothing but enemies.  I should know, of course. Do ya really think those kids, at that juvenile age, were just playing along when they all chanted in unison their revulsion for our erstwhile five year old victim?

Ya know, worse things were told to me by my teachers when I was young.  I'm still alive, though - I tarried through.  It made me a better person.  Shit, their tough love probably saved me from a life of crime and destitution (that us, more destitution than I currently experience).  

I just wish corporal punishment was still used in schools.  Spare the rod, spoil the child.  Children are amoral beings - nobody comes into the world with right and wrong writ in their hearts.  They must learn it from caregivers.  If they don't, they become sociopaths. Care to understand now why our prisons are filled to overflowing with the dregs and scum of the human race?  No one taught them that there is right and there is wrong.  They developed what naturally occurs in that void - wanton thuggery, an extreme sense of narcissism and entitlement, where the first thing in order is having one's dick serviced - and slaughtering anyone who gets in the way of that pursuit.

Et tu, Bush?

Dead malls: why do they exist?

Some of the more observant of you may have noticed my interest in so-called 'dead' malls, listed on the bar to the right. But you ask, "What is a 'dead' mall?" Allow me to explain.

Certainly many of you may know of an enclosed shopping mall or two in your metropolitan area which does not meet the standards that you would expect to find for such a major retail destination as a shopping mall. These malls may have vacant anchor spaces; or high inline (that is, the mall interior hallway) vacancy rates; or the occupancy may be relatively healthy but the stores offered include few well known national chains and many locally owned, 'mom and pop' type affairs or eight different kinds of urban wear stores. These malls generally don't see the levels of foot traffic that regular, crowded malls do. These are known as dead malls. There is a rather large interest base out there which studies the phenomenon, and there are several websites currently dedicated to the subject.

So we know what they are, but the question you may have is "How can that be? How can a mall 'die'? They're too big to fail." Ah, but that is the great American conceit, "too big to fail." Nothing is too big to fail. Just ask the stockholders of Bear Stearns.

In any case, malls are commercial ventures and like all commercial ventures in this fiat money regime, there is a risk of either: having made an improper or unsound investment which presupposes retail demand that simply does not exist; or losing business to competitors for various reasons, and thus descending into insolvency. Most mall failures are a case of the latter, but some dead malls (especially "downtown malls") fall into the former category.

Okay, so malls fail because the market evolves and changes constantly, and consumers are fickle and will abandon one shop for another on a whim. Sounds simple, right? However, there are deeper trends working here besides this. The naysayers are, in a way, right. Malls are simply too large of an investment to be permitted to fail by their owners. They are generally quite valuable pieces of property, after all, and the owners are as interested in obtaining a profit as any other capitalist would.

And from the early days of mall construction in the 1950s through the 1980s, you never saw the commercial failure of a major enclosed shopping mall, anywhere, in the manner which has become rather common in the past decade and a half (except for one stark exception).

So what happened? Why are malls dying right and left today, after so many years of retail dominance? After all, don't people still go to malls? Isn't the mall as American as grandma and apple pie?

(Actually, no - there are shopping malls all over the globe now. But I digress.)

For one thing, the market for retail space has long been overbuilt and over-saturated, thanx to easy credit courtesy of a criminally benevolent State and the Bernanke Hi-Finanz Boyz who run the printing presses nonstop. A retail die-off is only natural, the course of a market working through a much needed correction.

Secondly, retail trends indicate that large enclosed malls have fallen out of favor with consumers - they now are supposed to prefer open air shopping centers such as strip malls. This is the reasoning by which the 'town center/lifestyle center' and 'power center' craze is being fueled. (Of course, this doesn't explain why healthy malls remain packed with shoppers, and doesn't contemplate that consumers might value climate controlled shopping far more that is currently estimated. After all, it sure beats shopping in the heat, cold, or rain, depending on the local climate.)

But I believe that something deeper is going on. And that something deeper, regrettably, is the rise of the thug, and the death of the American consumer.

As more folks, supported by an all too willing to acquiesce State, choose the thug life - the path of destitution and irresponsibility - logically their disposable income will decrease. And what little cash they have will be required for essentials such as food and illegal drugs (always essential to the thug). So they will not be spending much at the mall, except to buy some thug shoes and threads once in a while. (Ever notice how many dead and dying malls manage to retain a Foot Locker until near the end?)

Dead malls are never completely empty except at the very end of their lives. Generally there is a period where a declining center transitions from relatively healthy to second tier. This is the period when the thug element generally becomes dominant among the mall's patrons. Usually this ushers in a wave of criminal activity, which will be played up in the media and will eventually lead to the mall's final demise as a viable commercial property, and ultimately its closing.

Mall management and owners, try as they might, cannot usually save a dying mall once it is done for. Besides all the other things mentioned above, the American consumer overall is poorer today - thanks to lower real wages, inflation, increasing taxation, decreasing employment security, high personal debt levels, etc. So he cannot be counted upon to save the sinking ship. There are fewer dollars in play today, and what is available largely goes to the established, healthy, and dominant centers since American consumers are like so many lemmings, frequenting the places where everyone else goes. And the dominant centers have more shops to offer, provide more amenities, and generally anchor large and well-established retail centers centrally located in the suburbs.

The first mall ever recorded as having succumbed to commercial failure was exterminated by the rise and reign of the superthug. It is instructive to study the fate of this mall, which remains empty, unused, and standing among the ghetto ruins of its home city, thirty years after it closed its doors for business for the final time. For this is the wave of the future - the anti-civilization, the reverse of progress, the triumph of death over life - unless this country gets its act together and exterminates superthuggery from its culture and society.

Keeping it real

The culture of the American subsidy classes today is notorious worldwide for its lack of much effort expended on anything in life, save the pursuit of personal pleasure and mindless self-gratification. The warped view of ghetto society is such that anyone who acts and lives responsibly and plays by greater society's rules is a 'chump', worthy only of scorn. In a real sense this is a logical supposition by ghetto society, since when all is provided for by the almighty State, what need is there to support oneself and be responsible?

Much of ghetto society revolves around the maxim of 'keeping it real', which is a nebulous concept to those not acquainted with ghetto life, but has a very specific and direct meaning to inner city dwellers. In short, 'keeping it real' means acting and behaving in a manner consistent with ghetto morality - devaluation of personal betterment, shunning of responsible work or any other productive activity, deliberate criminal stupidity and ignorance, racial and cultural solidarity, instant gratification, ignoring consequences of actions.

This morality is of course destructive to anyone practicing it. And if the morality of 'keeping it real' were only restricted to ghetto moochers more or less confined to their desolate inner city environs, with no possibility of infecting the larger society, perhaps the poor character and habits of a subculture of this nature would not be of enormous consequence to larger society. Normal people could live their lives unimpeded, conveniently ignoring the cancer in their midst. Out of sight, out of mind, right?

Actually, no.

Regrettably the culture of the ghetto is not a benign cancer but a malignant one, as we can see every day around us, in the continued and ever-increasing coarseness of our culture and our lives. And as the low morals of the thug class metastasize throughout the rest of society, we as a people are laid low by those who drop out, to become unproductive burdens on the rest of us.

But datz what it's all about - 'keeping it real', right?

Make me wanna holla

As usual in this fascist age the politically connected and comfortable classes benefit at the expense of the rest of us. The greatest beneficiaries are the multinational contractors. These corporations essentially could not exist without the support of government contracts; that is their raison d'etre. They provide "services" for the public sector as diverse as acting as hired killers and war profiteers (Blackwater, Kellogg Brown and Root, Halliburton), to providing technical support and services to federal, state, and local governments in the form of planning, engineering, and other specialized support (URS, Fluor, CH2MHill, HNTB).

The first type of contractor is at least somewhat well known among informed people since they sometimes are mentioned in the media in connection with our current imperial adventure in the Middle East. They represent the in-your-face evil of the government-industrial complex.

However, the second type is somewhat more insidious. These firms, which grow fat from our tax dollars, support many well paid 'private sector' positions for white collar professionals, of which I would wager you big money are all massive sycophants for the total State and the fascist status quo: the unproductive, subsidized paper pushers, playerz, and boyz with their protected and secure lives of privilege, comfort, and empty status, with the average working man - those folks who manufacture the products we buy, serve customers at McDonalds, stock shelves at the local supermarket, drive trucks which transport vital goods and products from factory to market - left exposed to a dangerous and harsh world where political/social/economic oppression, dick sucking, and sudden violent death are the harsh, cold reality left to them by their leaders.

Of course life is brutal and circumstances can turn on a dime for anyone. However, when it comes to this fact, some animals are more equal than others. The comfortable and connected are somehow always taken care of in this society. Fascist morality, aka social Darwinism, demands it. The superior beings must not be made to suffer, or descend to the socioeconomic level of, heaven forbid, Black people.

In any case, I digress. The multinational engineering/planning/architecture/other firms are major employers of the professional class today. More white collar workers than ever receive their salaries courtesy of the generosity of the taxpayer. And thus more support for the total State is ensured among the classes which possess the requisite intelligence to question, and perhaps reverse, the actions of the current State apparatus.

****

In other news, supreme dumbass Ben Bernanke now admits that the possibility of a recession is in our future. Earth to Ben!!! We are in a recession, you monstrous dickhead numbskull!! Of course, in the world of the well-compensated dickhead where all bad things in life are magically taken care of, a recession is when you can't hire a dog sitter for that evening on the town because the agency which supplies them has laid off workers. Oh dear, what an inconvenience.

Guess that hasn't happened yet. So no recession, for now. Meanwhile, people are starving in the streets of my neighborhood. Recession? What recession?

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Another insult to decency has occurred of late, and where else but on TV. Last evening I happened to catch the latter portion of the worst television program I have ever encountered. This bucket of trash was a 'game show' (the way the network promoted it, it seemed more like a soap opera) entitled The Moment of Truth. My first thought when I watched was, "These 'contestants' have to be actors. This is all staged, right?"

So now as a society we celebrate the destruction of relationships, marriages, lives. And we get our kicks from watching this happen.

Sometimes I wonder if the folks we call 'mentally ill' or 'eccentric' in this society are the ones who are truly normal, and everyone else is insane. It would appear to be that way.

Of course, don't tell that to McCain, it might upset his (and his followers') mass murdering world view where the violent, depraved, and nihilistic dominate, and the people who want to just be left alone and quietly live their lives are slaughtered, because that's what's best for them, since they're sissies, cowards, weaklings.

How un-American it is to be a weak-kneed, Al-Qaeda appeasing sissy! Hail to the strength of the State!

More bullshit

In case you weren't aware, today is World Autism Awareness Day.

Just another round of bullshit perpetuated by society to explain away and/or justify incompetence and lack of moral character. Sure, there are people with major developmental disabilities, who actually cannot survive without outside care, and some of them can be classified as "autistic" as that word is defined. The 'autism' which piques my ire is the so-called 'higher functioning autism', which in reality is a diagnosis looking for a patient, or a psychiatric professional scrounging for an inflated paycheck.

I know this from cold, hard personal experience.

When I was a youth, I had severe discipline and moral integrity problems. To sum it up without elaborating too much, this was caused by nothing more than my desire to be an asshole, because it felt good at the time, due to my ponderous lack of character. (Sounds a lot like a thug, doesn't it?) These behavioral 'issues' - actually grave character flaws - were 'diagnosed' by several psychiatric professionals as high functioning autism, specifically a fictional concoction which I will not name here since I have no desire to advertise an invention of dickheadery. This 'disorder' is allegedly a moderate to severe social interaction handicap to those who are so 'afflicted', which cannot be treated (except, supposedly, with expensive anti-depressant drugs and the like, which do absolutely nothing except fatten the wallets of the pharmaceutical industry), and is slated to doom its victims to a life of poverty or as a disability pensioner.

When I finally graduated from school (somehow I was miraculously able to do so without being arrested or institutionalized beforehand - that's good old public school social promotion at work), and actually had to find a way to support myself as an independent adult (my parents making it quite clear that this was not ever going to be their responsibility), magically my 'disorder' ceased to assert itself and I was somehow able to take care of myself, find and retain full time employment, and interact with others without incident.

Wow, it's a miracle! Jesus saves!!

Actually, no.

I had learned by that time, after many years spent as a social and moral reject, that irresponsible behavior and inability to control one's demeanor does not lead to decent paying work (I also learned this due to no small amount of tough love from parents and teachers - thank the fates for them). Thankfully for myself, unlike the average ghetto thug I managed with my slight intelligence (which is doing better than most thugs) to make the conceptual connection that wanton thuggery = poverty, starvation, and death. And now this possible life course was staring me down in the face.

So I got my act together and shaped up.

And today I am steadily employed, not making the kind of money I would like but enough to get by. The years of youthful thug behavior have eliminated my chances for ever joining the middle class, but at least I still have a shot at a modicum of success.

So if I actually had a 'disorder', did it suddenly disappear overnight, when I received my diploma? Does 'high functioning autism' magically cure itself once the age of maturity is reached?

Or did the 'disorder' ever exist in the first place?

I notice that we are always hearing in the media about autistic youth - but we never seem to encounter any autistic adults.

Verrry interesting.....

Damn it feels good to be a gangsta

As many of you may have surmised by now, I live in the inner city, in an area which respectable people consider to be a ghetto. While it is not as bad as all that (the ghetto actually begins where the back of my apartment complex ends), it is close enough to be part of the same contiguous neighborhood as the blighted area. I do hear gunfire at night and all of it comes from behind us. Living here sandwiched as I am between two worlds, I believe I have a bit more perspective on the role of class in our society than the average person.

Much of my vitriol so far has been pointed toward the power classes as they carry the influence and pull the levers to potentially screw any and all of us over in this society. However, I do not by any stretch of the imagination acquit the underclass' role in our social crisis today. In many ways the underclass and the elites are two sides of the same coin; they both work hand in hand, and together, to squeeze the little guy in the middle.

You might think this illogical. "The poor are supposed to be the most oppressed and hated members of society!" you cry. That is certainly true of the broken souls at the very bottom - the hobos, the homeless, the mentally ill - for whom no one has any use. But with the rest of the so called lower class, the prevailing attitude is not "Give me a temporary hand up and I will use it to improve my life and the lives of my family," but "Canyouspotmefivedollarmanhuhhuh Ineedfivedollarman???" In short, they are looking not for a hand up, but a hand out. And guess who's more than willing to oblige? Yes, Hillary, I'm talking about you, but not in a good way.

When someone gives you something that is not specifically labeled as a gift, there is an unwritten and implicit assumption that at a future point that act of giving must be reciprocated on your part, either through directly paying back what you were given (as in a loan) or by returning the favor in kind. This gives the person a sort of power over you, until the item or act given can be repaid.

The powerful know this, and understand mightily that this the basis by which human liberty is extinguished.

In a free market, items are traded amongst market players constantly, as each individual human has different needs and wants. Each transaction is a direct trade - person A gets what he wants (say, a loaf of bread) from person B who is either remunerated directly (through cash) or through the intercession of person C who provides the goods with which to repay person B (a loan). If person B decides to borrow from person C, then person B is in debt (words do mean things) to person C. If person B defaults on his debt, person C can pursue remedies that are not too pleasant to person B - garnishment of income and/or assets, etc. But this is all only limited to tangible goods, and at no points are implicit rights such as the right to life violated. One could say that person B is pursuing his liberty by not repaying person C. However, that would be an abridgment of person C's liberty, as his possessions essentially have been stolen from him without compensation. Property rights are also rights, too, and are as important as all the other natural rights.

The same works in political markets, i.e. socialism, only far more perversely. The poor are considered 'needy' by virtually every thinking person today. (Of course poor folk in this country live like kings compared to poor folk in, say, Zimbabwe, land of 100,000% annual inflation and rampant starvation, but we'll save this politically inconvenient story for another blog post.) Someone (usually a True Bleeding Heart Believer Liberal Collectivist) cries out over this 'injustice.' The economically powerful (and not so powerful) sociopaths who form the backbone of fascism, whose desire to control their fellow man is quite limited by the free structure of capitalism, sense an opportunity, since they are above all things snakes.

Thus the welfare state was birthed - the desire of the True Believers and the moocher souls among us to 'help the poor' coupled with the elite's desire to "tax and tax, and spend and spend, and elect and elect", in the immortal words of Harry Hopkins.

The poor, many of whom have only a sparing desire to labor anyway (why do you think they are poor?), are greatly benefited materially by this action. The politicians are pleased as they have magically created a new, loyal, and constantly growing constituency out of nothing. The politicians find that the more benefits are increased and expanded to include more people, the larger their base of support grows. This of course gets no complaint from the new beneficiaries, save the taxpayers who have to pay for it all. Of course when the resource has been tapped a little ways, why not go the whole hog?

Soon enough, as more and more people accept the fruits of the system, the capture rate increases to the point where it encompasses the majority of the population (as it does today). And then the chances for liberty have been extinguished. When everyone has a stake in the continued existence of the vampire State, any and all crimes, destruction, erosion of liberties and rights committed by the State can be readily swept under the rug, with the help of a little convenient doublethink as circumstances demand. The elites get the support of the system's dependents with their votes and a free reign to do what they please, the bourgeoisie hangers-on to the ruling class get to share in the booty (if they play nice, of course), and the taxpayer who pays for it all - the working man, who have no claim or 'need' against society which to present - gets screwed.

Through it all, the underclass are the greatest supporters of the State. Sure, they constantly complain and whine, but that is only because they have come to expect a constantly growing basket of subsidies, so that the pot is never large enough. Otherwise they are unthinking, unfeeling dolts who only become politically aware when their welfare checks arrive late in the mail. They do not protest (much) the government's horrific law enforcement related policies (such as the so-called war on drugs) toward their numbers because they have no real political opinions. They have no political opinions because from a very real standpoint, they cannot. All their needs are provided for by Papa State. To question or oppose that which has power of life and death over you, which can deprive your method of sustenance in an instant, is impossible.

(This is the real reason why public employees under classified civil service protection are barred from contributing to political campaigns. To potentially demonstrate a separate mind from that of your direct benefactor is highly embarrassing to that entity.)

To question the legitimacy or policies of the State is tantamount to threatening the livelihood of the underclass and, by extension, their very existence. But it is a trade-off which the lower classes dutifully accept, in sheep-like fashion, being bereft of independent thought and manner. Notice how when the underclass do become politically involved, it is always in support of the political gang/faction which seeks to expand social benefits the greatest amount?

Conversely, they oppose elite enriching State activities such as warfare - not because they oppose war on moral grounds as the evil monstrosity it is, but because it might reduce the amount of available money which can be spent on their pension checks. In any case, many children of poor families go straight into the military after school. Why not? Hell, it's an easy government job (once boot camp is done with) with lots of benefits. Of course, you might have to engage in a little mass murder from time to time, but hey, you take the good with the bad, eh?

The welfare classes possess no work skills or discipline, having been absolved of the need to develop a sense of responsibility since all is taken care of, as if in a romantic paradise. Their sense of empathy toward other living human beings is extinguished, since by having no true concept of the value of tangible items (as in how much time and effort, through working, was required to be able to afford something), they cannot assign much value to intangible things which do not carry a price tag, such as life itself.

I once visited a state welfare office here as part of a work-related tour of local public facilities. The presentation given to us by its eager staff, and the manner of its presentation, was highly instructive. Apparently now it is easier to apply for, and receive, welfare benefits than it is to mail a package through the wonderfully efficient USPS, or renew a driver's license at that paragon of customer service, the DMV. They are always so happy to help you obtain your food stamps, your disability check, or your benefits for 'needy' families!

In short, the underclass are part of the whole system structured by the elites to bleed us dry. No one thinks of the true forgotten man - the man who has to pay for it all, through taxation and its ugly cousin inflation, whose life is made less pleasant and more bare by the depredations of a depraved elite who live large off the public purse, their white collar cousins who benefit via the power of government contract, and the morass of morons at the bottom who get something out of it, too - not much, but it buys their support and permits them to live their barren, empty lives the way they please - idle and dessicate.

Of course we all would like to live a permanent vacation and get a free ride. But there is no such thing as a free lunch. Ever.

Most people know this, and try to live their lives the best they can given the talents and opportunities available to them. Others just like to loaf around, let others do the heavy lifting for them, and then use naked power (the barrel of a gun) to extract the 'surplus' by force.

Deep down inside the hearts of men it is understood that a free lunch in life is ultimately impossible, but doublethink removes that inconvenient fact from the fascist mind for one more day. However, the piper always has to pay - maybe not today, but eventually the time to pay must come. That day is coming very soon. When it finally arrives, we are all fucked.

Thugocracy

We can safely assume in this day and age that the political power elites and their bourgeoisie enablers care nothing about the 'little people' - entrepreneurs, workers, businessmen, anyone not related to a politician.

We can also safely assume that thugs (see my definition a few posts back) by their very nature care nothing about the rights of others.

Elites = thugs ---> thugocracy? It would appear so today.

I went back to Ohio....but my city was gone.....

Listening to Chrissie Hynde's legendary description, put to music, of the all too common tragedy of our dying cities had me thinking again.

The long suffering working folk of the Rust Belt have long been the hardest hit victims of fascist State policies which have sucked the lifeblood of their communities - the industries that once produced assets of value and provided well paying jobs which sustained families and communities. Those states chose the Fascist/Socialist way one too many times - and their people are now paying the price.

But of course, we working folk everywhere in this once proud nation have suffered.

The State has taxed its industries and people to near ruin, through the depredations of incomes and earnings to fill its bottomless pit.

The State has provided legal protection and cover to extortion rings - excuse me, unions - which serve to bid up the price of labor beyond all reasonability and made moving that auto plant to Mexico far more enticing.

The State has subsidized the rape and evisceration of this nation's cities, once the thriving and vital heart of our nation, through the publicly supported construction of 'free' infrastructure and subsidization of mortgages which perverts all out of economic reality the true economic cost of suburban living, and left our cities open to the rise and reign of the superthug.

The State has co-opted what could have been the flower of our manhood into its foreign campaigns of imperial conquest, since there are few better job opportunities remaining for men (and women) of working age in Akron or Flint.

The State has sponsored the rise of the welfare moocher class through its War on Poverty, permanently infantilizing a large part of our population and turning our inner cities into barren, violent, jobless wastelands.

The State has devalued our money, the store of our wealth, through the grim mendacity of fiat currency, the government printing press, and nonstop inflation which has destroyed 95% of the value of the dollar since 1913 - coincidentally (or not), the year the Federal Reserve was founded. But of course, the well-connected Wall Street playerz and boyz have become rich off this scheme, so it has served its purpose.

The State directly robs us of our hard earned income by authority of the 16th Amendment.

The State has weakened property rights by socializing the treatment of social issues, so that pollution and crime have run rampant, and the fishermen of South Louisiana can no longer practice their livelihood as they must contend with the 'dead zones' in the Gulf of Mexico.

The State has only provided benefit to those who work for it (including myself - see, I'm part of it too), or are connected to those in power.

Why do we continue to hurtle down this course, when we can clearly see the brick wall into which we are about to smash headlong?

This year, reject mediocrity in public life and do as much as you can to support the true servants of the people.

Now for the serious stuff.....

The following is a reprint of an unpublished article (well, I guess technically it isn't a reprint then) that I wrote a while back when I was in a cynical mood. It bears great import for the future of our country and society!!

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An Assessment of Incompetence - Causes and Outcomes

All around us in this world we are faced with incompetent individuals. Perhaps for you it's that trashy next door neighbor that you always see sitting barefoot and shirtless on his front porch when you leave for work in the morning and return in the evening, and you doubt if he even has a job. Perhaps it's that disheveled, pathological loser coworker with the bad case of BO at the office, who can't seem to do anything right, no matter how simple or how much you try to break the task down for him. Perhaps it's a sibling of yours who has no job and still lives at home with your aging parents, who just can't seem to get her act together no matter how much you try to help her, and you're at the end of your rope there. Perhaps it's the obvious illiterates you have to deal with at the counter of the local fast food joint, who never can get your order right. You can find them in all walks of life. In any case, you know what they are. Do you ever ask yourself why they are what they are?

Why Incompetence?

The explanation is simple. Incompetent people have no desire to be active players in life or anything else. They are, in a nutshell, afraid of taking risks, because they are above all afraid of failure. They fear failure because they wish always for other people to think highly of them. They desire this because deep down inside, they know they are rotten, since their prime goal in life is to extract as much from others for exerting as little effort as possible in return. So they must have other people always thinking highly of them, in order not to permeate their thin skinned personalities, their narcissistic self images. Though they may appear not to possess much self-esteem at the surface, in reality they believe that they are far superior to everyone else on the planet, are thus special, and should be exempt from the requirements of life such as working to support oneself and related things. This permits them to morally justify, semi-consciously, negative actions which harm others ranging from the trite to the barbaric.

They desire above all to be coddled and have other people manage their affairs. This includes such things as supporting them, permitting them to indulge in their self-gratifications, etc. Think of a drug addict – the simplest yet most fitting example.

They respond primarily to people who respond positively to them by stroking their massive egos (often, these hapless, well-intentioned individuals, unintentional victims of the incompetent’s ego complex, are doing it unknowingly). Even the worst incompetent may, admittedly, have a few surface facets of his personality which elicit positive responses from peers.

Often nowadays, these individuals are flagged by their elders when still young for their unsociable behaviors or effects thereof, and are usually diagnosed by the psychiatric profession as having an attention deficit disorder or some form of higher functioning autism such as Asperger’s Syndrome. These “disorders” were more or less invented by the psychological profession to describe typesets of behaviors stemming from incompetence, and have no basis in biology. Diagnosis of a psychological “problem”, unfortunately, serves to remove the blame from where it lies – the individual’s moral character, which only he alone can change due to free will – and conveniently removes it from the incompetent, chalking up his negative, ultimately self-destructive behaviors to an “uncontrollable” fluke of nature which is beyond free will to control. It also provides a cover and a justification for the incompetent to continue his lifestyle – “I can’t help it.” A period of medication usually follows, which does not generally pose harm to physical health, though it produces no changes in behavior as the “disorder” is of a moral character, which cannot be touched by physical medicine.

The incompetent, in order to protect himself from the simple fact that his delusions of grandeur come nowhere close to the reality, is on a race to the bottom. The question of how the massive disconnect between presumed normalcy, or even exceptionality, and incompetence comes to exist, however, has not been answered. The answer is several pronged, and may not be the same for every individual incompetent:

• The individual is so consumed with protecting himself from being thought of negatively by others that all his energies are consumed in avoiding the undesired outcome, and thus work and life is neglected. Ironically, of course, this behavior produces the very attitudes among peers that the incompetent desires to prevent. (A somewhat more productive method to deal with this is to presume everyone hates you anyway, and then to leave it at that, or otherwise set out to far exceed their most reasonable expectations of you.)
• The individual is a pure narcissist who above all puts himself first; thus any task not meeting his immediate, self gratifying needs is secondary and unimportant, and thus done poorly if at all. This thug-like character has not learned, or desired to learn, that cooperation and doing work unrelated to your immediate needs (such as in a job setting) is one of the few ways of sustaining one’s existence.
• The individual has a poor work ethic due to circumstances (sometimes beyond control, sometimes not) and life difficulties that lead to mental disengagement from the workplace. He may not actually be full of himself, but has so many pressing personal issues weighing on his mind that his work performance declines. These cases are salvageable; removing the life stressors which cause the work deficiencies will generally take care of the problem.
• The individual is an absent-minded fool who has not taught himself the rigor of concentrating on a sustained task for a long period of time. This person is very prone to slipping up on details, leaving “finished” tasks uncompleted, and is generally seemingly unable to learn from previous mistakes. While not as much of a narcissist as the other types, he seeks to get his work out of the way as quickly as possible to make time for self-indulgence. He has not learned the value of rigor of detail and doing a job right, and that others might be harmed or otherwise negatively impacted by his mistakes. In short, he simply does not think of others, except in situations when the opinions and actions of those others threaten to harm him, or more expressly, his livelihood, lifestyle, and/or habits. He can be counted on to defend his work ethic, which he rightly binds up with his moral character (or more specifically, lack thereof), even in the face of severe criticism. Above all, he hates criticism – even slightly critical remarks can send him into a depressed mood for days. Generally his incompetence is not completely, if at all, willful. In certain elements he may appear to be a model employee. However, personal behavior traits combine with an underlying narcissistic personality to lead to incompetence. At first, it extends primarily to minor, petty things (though even that can get you fired in the secondary labor market); though over time, if left unchecked, manifestation of these behaviors in important matters is inevitable. Eventually the employee can not be trusted and, if not outright terminated, has his duties reduced to those work tasks which he has demonstrated in the past to have exercised a reasonable level of competence in performing. In short, if he remains employed, his career for all practical purposes is immediately truncated.
• The individual is a thug. Meaning, of course, that he is a sociopath, extremely narcissistic, and violent; almost always possessing a criminal record, a poor to nonexistent employment record, and a history of violent, brutal, and unpredictable behavior. In truth, these individuals have far deeper problems than mere incompetence, and so we will simply leave it by saying that even if there were an employer actually willing to hire them, their willingness to work at a legal job for which they are qualified (which is primarily confined to minimum wage work) is questionable indeed.
• The individual truly cannot perform the required tasks due to hereditary, biological limitations on mental (or physical) aptitude. In this case the person is actually just plain “stupid” or unintelligent, either due to biological disorders (e.g. Down syndrome) or simple dullness on the IQ scale (think Forrest Gump), and care must be given at the start when choosing what lines of employment to pursue given his limited mental abilities.

In certain cases (except for the last), perhaps most, more than one or even all of the above factors may be jointly at work.

Symptoms of Incompetence

Casual incompetence: ‘minor’ elements of incompetence, the person is able to get along in the world for the most part for a time, but will generally have trouble or complete failure at retaining steady employment, sustaining relationships with peers, and coping with life generally. Almost always the individual ends up as a ‘major’ incompetent.

• Forgetfulness of small but crucial details
• “Cutting corners” at work
• Generally incompetent at work tasks – usually employee is shunted towards the simplest, least complex, most repetitive tasks available
• Refusal to initiate interpersonal relationships or ‘do their part’ in sustaining same
• Pathological shyness
• Unsanitariness (not brushing teeth, bathing, general unkempt appearance)
• Poor physical shape – often overweight/obese
• Bare existence – usually lacking money for more than the basics
• Poor financial competency – little to nothing saved, disrespect for valuables which then must be replaced
• Willful ignoring of proper response stimuli to other people
• Complete disregard of other people’s rights, feelings, or needs
  
• Generally held in very low regard by peers – perception of contributing little to society
• Makes a “show” of contributing but in fact contributes very little
• Pessimistic – a ‘loner’
• Tendency to interrupt when other people are talking
• Prone to occasional violent and fascist leaning thoughts
• Believes that the cards are stacked against them, that society is “out to get them”
• Very self absorbed, selfish, self centered - generally an whiny, snorty thug by nature
• Perceives personal “enemies” everywhere
• Peers attempt to avoid their presence whenever possible; can hardly tolerate being in their presence
• Unmarried, with few prospects for marriage or children – if male, women will consider being around them something akin to a life threatening situation
• Extremely present oriented – unable to plan ahead or perceive anything beyond the immediate moment

Major incompetence: The ultimate end of casual incompetence, major incompetence encapsulates all of the above behaviors/traits and more. Generally the lowest, least valuable, and least productive members of society, major incompetents are the primary denizens of the moocher classes – the welfare mothers, hustlers, street people begging for change, and others who apparently have decided that they cannot get along in life without the subsidy of the productive and confident. They are absolutely unable to cope with the demands of human existence in a free society and often bounce from personal crisis to personal crisis. These are the net drains on society whose incompetent behaviors and inability to cope with life have led them to their natural bottom – the life of an animal.

• Believe themselves to be quite competent at life, despite their overwhelming incompetence – actually have great self esteem, are overconfident and ‘full of themselves’
• Heavily prone to violence and outbursts of narcissistic rage, particularly if something is being denied them that they feel is their ‘birthright’ (such as food if they lack cash)
• Believe they are entitled to far more in life than they have been able to earn with their feeble efforts
• Often dream big, but plans invariably fall through
• Are usually the beneficiaries of some wealth confiscation and transfer program (welfare, disability, etc.)
• Extremely narcissistic and refuse to delay self-gratification
• Gratify themselves to excess despite the fact that their energies should be focused on more productive endeavors
• Generally have produced several children out of wedlock, and if male does not (and likely cannot) regularly support them, if at all
• Unable to obtain decent paying employment
• Unable to retain any type of permanent employment for more than a cursory period
• Prone to ‘walking off’ (what they perceive as an undesirable) job, even after just a few hours of work; or by extension, not even showing up for work after being hired
  
• Prone to substance abuse (drugs, alcohol, tobacco, etc.)
• Have absolutely no regard or feelings for other people, and will definitely harm others to further their interests
• Frustration with life in general
• Very low to extremely low levels of inate intelligence (this is intelligence divorced from academic achievement, aka ‘common sense’ or ‘street smarts’)
• Other people are completely put off by them and cannot bear to be in their presence for an instant – elicit extremely negative reactions from peers and strangers, to the point that they feel threatened enough to call law enforcement
• Has often violent fantasies involving women
• Has violent delusions of grandeur involving exertion of absolute power over other people’s lives (many politicians exhibit this trait)

What We Can Do About It

For starters, don't become incompetent yourself. Do your best at whatever you do every day.

If you recognize yourself in the above description, and you understand the need for changing the way you are, you first need to understand that restoring yourself to the ranks of the productive is a long and difficult process. The most important thing, for the sake of your future employability and overall positive appeal to people who are not incompetents, is to restore your reputation as a productive, valuable individual. This never happens overnight; when people make up their minds about the kind of person you are, it's hard to change them easily. For many of the most far gone losers such as ex-convicts, it can take a lifetime (and then some) to restore themselves into society's good graces.

This inconvenient fact will likely make most of you turn around with your tail between your legs right back into the pathetic life you lead now. Just remember, before doing so, that incompetent people will be the first to die of starvation in the coming economic lean years.

Don't tell me you weren't warned.

The Modern Bourgeoisie: I've Got Mine, So Get Lost

There was once a time when the American middle class stood for and represented something that did not include profligate conspicuous consumption, moral and spiritual degeneracy, and intellectual dullness and sloth. There was a time when being middle class meant that one worked hard; saved diligently for a better future, but also against the prospect of a lesser one; treated others with respect and dignity; and participated in the life of the nation in a respectful and intelligent manner.

Was this ever the complete and true reality, or the product of another national myth? Probably there was a grain of truth to it, but doubtful that everything in the past was as rose-colored as it seems from this place in the cold and distant future, where the great and gleaming cities of the imagined tomorrow that existed in the minds of the inhabitants of that lost era have long been rescinded to the wilderness of a hundred blocks of wild green untamed nature where orderly civilization had once stood place. But it is certainly apparent that social mores have decayed since that time. After all, our ancestors did not have credit cards, or fiat money, to play with.

The most vile and repulsive attitudes among men today toward their fellow brethren are often held by that same American middle class that once solidly renounced war as a means of foreign policy; that once cared enough about their fellow man to understand that free enterprise was the only real workable system mankind had ever devised that would even come close to satisfying all his needs, much less work to eliminate want and nakedness; that once came close to understanding the warp and loom of history and that not knowing the past dooms one to repeat it. Of course the precise opposites of each above statement are the common run of the middle class intellectual consensus today.

The fascist leadership cult has done much to promote this state of affairs. However, it seems to me that allegedly educated people should know better. At some point native intelligence is being trumped by a form of doublethink, deliberately turning the mind away from critically important truths which demand attention - such as one million Iraqi dead due to our leadership's foreign policy turns, and all that.

The contract to join the ranks of the modern bourgeoisie is simple: Play the game according to the manner in which the system is set up, and we, the magnanimous leadership, will provide in turn. Help us achieve our goals in a small way, and we will take care of you a little better. Actively aid and abet our hearts' desires, and we will set you up for life. Like a credit card agreement composed by one party - by the power elites who determine who gets in and who stays out (consult your dictionary for the definition of the word "credential") - only one party (you guessed it) gets to modify it, and certainly it is in the power of that same party to cancel it outright if their whim decides it so.

So it is that the middle class motto today has largely become "go along to get along" if not by choice then by necessity of survival. That wellspring of old fashioned American inventiveness and ingenuity has now been conscripted into the service of their State backed masters, who dictate what gets invented and what groundbreaking concepts which might slightly threaten their power grip stay repressed. (There were supposed to be flying cars by now, as I recall, but the government's monopolistic regulation of air transport just might be a tad threatened there.)

Witness the attitude of the middle class toward their 'inferiors.' They have adopted the mannerisms of their elite masters to whom they have sold their souls. In the past the attitude of the average American to poverty and disappointment in their midst was "There but for the grace of God goes I." Now they take one look at life's legitimate failures, those who have tried their best and still fallen short, and instead of charitably lending a hand, they will blithely state to you, "Yeah, man, things are baaad, everywhere (as Mr. Professional looks on waywardly with his bloated, well fed gut sticking out). Well, someone's got to clean the toilets, man. Down the street there, man, there's a day labor office, they got work over there, go now before I call the cops on you for harassing me to death." Translation: I've got mine, so go f**k yourself. Depressing.

The American professional middle class, which regards itself as so smugly superior and hard working, for the most part no longer produces anything of tangible value, as in physical assets -- such as an automobile or a ton of steel. (Not to be said for many of their working class brothers in labor.) They have become a corps of paper pushers - an endless pit of TPS reports, pointless meetings, conference calls where nothing gets decided, forms and documents to be filled out and signed - in short, very similar to a State bureaucracy.

But there are compensations, of course, thanks to our benighted leadership and the magic of the government's printing press* - they get paid well enough to afford that $3000 flat screen plasma 'TV' (hard to believe it's something as mundane as that) and that $40,000 Escalade that they just had to have. So it's worth it for them, I suppose. Goodies like those can easily assuage the yuppie guilt of a clearly wasted, pointless, colorless middle class life.

Materialism is just stupid. Plain stupid. There are far more valuable things in life - such as the beauty of a summer sunset, or the pleasure of actually enjoying what you do for a living, or the love, respect, and attentions of an attractive and charming woman.

I am not saying by extension that poverty is virtuous. Poverty sucks, and a number of poor people have their own character issues to face.

The pursuit of a comfortable, privileged existence is the be-all and end-all of the modern professional middle class. (But a lot of young and soon to be economically superflous up-and-coming wannabe professional dickheads are going to be greatly disappointed in the coming years.) No deep thought into what causes the world's problems, or how to put the vast numbers of un(der)employed and talented people which populate our urban wastelands to productive and gainful activity, or what we can do to arrest the trend of increasingly bizarre State interventions in our lives. Our wise and noble leaders will surely come up with answers to all these problems. They can do no wrong, of course!

The answer to all this, of course, is freedom.

*Yes, that is the real web address of the US Bureau of Engraving and Printing. The frank honesty of it shocked me also. Makes my point quite succinctly, I might add.

Urban Prairie Blogopedia Entry #1

This is something I have been wanting to do for a long time now.

I have long possessed on my computer's hard drive various definitions, written Wikipedia style, for very important words and/or concepts which need clear definition. Now through the modern miracle of online posting, I have the means to bring these to the world (yes I know, you regular readers are fainting with anticipation, all three of you). This first entry defines the concept of the "thug."

Actually Wikipedia had a decent (if hip-hop centric) definition of thug at one time, but like so many things online it vanished into the ether.

As world events spin beyond anyone's means of control into the vortex of doom, this concept become timelier than ever. When reading the below text, please understand that as description it was intended to refer to petty street criminals; as I read through it again, I realize that so much of it is equally applicable to other criminal types -- as in State actors.

So here I present the real no-spin (not the O'Reilly version of 'no-spin') definition of THUG:

*********

A thug is an individual who is ruthless and will do whatever it takes to get what he (or she) wants. This type of person is generally oblivious to the feelings and natural rights of other people, and is not above committing harm, personal or otherwise, to obtain what he desires. From a physical and psychological standpoint, thugs are definitely capable of killing and maiming others (and often do) and are intensely self focused, with the majority of a thug’s energies and activities devoted to pursuing some form or another of highly indulgent self-gratification. They often belong to criminal gangs or organizations, often consume large amounts of addictive narcotics, and engage heavily in promiscuity and debauchery.

Thugs do not obtain income or support themselves by normal means. They disdain ‘regular’ jobs (generally because the legitimate employment opportunities for which they are qualified pay very little) as well as self-improvement activities which serve to increase income such as formal education and job training. Normal, steady employment is referred to as ‘chump change’ and ‘working for the Man’ and is perceived as unpleasant, insufficiently remunerative, and primarily benefiting others. Therefore most thugs survive by some sort of low level illicit activity such as drug dealing, arms trading, hustling, and petty theft. Some thugs eventually cross over into more serious crime such as murder, rape, and armed robbery for survival. Thugs will also commit crimes as their emotional urges dictate, e.g. killing someone after becoming enraged at a perceived insult. They think little, if at all, of right and wrong with regards to their actions or the potential consequences of freely engaging in illegal activity. To the thug, the satisfaction of a primal urge justifies the action, however brutal, violent, or horrific.

As touched on above, a thug’s life is dictated by animal needs, namely the physical needs and effects of his stomach, bowels, and private parts. A thug’s main pleasure in his generally barren, brutal life derives from satisfying his animal urges in a manner which allows him to gain and wield potentially lethal power over others. Thus people who bring a thug to anger are swiftly and brutally executed. Sexual activity and relations, while frequent, are fleeting and tenuous in terms of individual (wo)men, though most thugs produce several illegitimate children in this manner, a fact of which most thugs are proud (impregnating women, even complete strangers, is a mark of virility and manhood from the warped perspective of male thug culture). Indeed, many thugs produce several illegitimate children before meeting their maker, whether they are married or not. This complete lack of behavioral restraint and self-discipline is the universal trait of the thug, transcending all other specific behaviors such as propensity to violence (not all thugs are murderers) or drug use (not all thugs consume hard narcotics such as crack or heroin).

The hard drug use common to thug culture is a major facet of the constant need for self-gratification. Most of the popular drugs (heroin, crack, Ecstasy, crystal meth, and others) when consumed produce the desired feelings (or combination thereof) of power, physical and emotional pleasure (the ‘high’), and sexual prowess that thugs idealize. (This can also be true of other items, such as women and flashy possessions.) Of course, the ‘lows’ which are the inevitable side effect of the ‘wearing off’ of the effects of the drugs can be privy to lethal thug rages from which orgies of violence ensue. Additionally, once heavily addicted to hard narcotics or an acceptable substitute, these must be constantly available (the ‘fix’) to feed the addiction or withdrawal symptoms will occur, which are always particularly unpleasant but in a thug’s case can carry lethal implications. This is why thugs are always in a constant need for ready hard cash, in order to finance what turns out to become a very expensive habit. Much petty crime in the ghetto stems from drug addicted thugs desperately attempting to raise any sort of cash in order to obtain more of the addictive substance.

The appalling violence which tends to follow in a thug’s wake is another very common trait. Lives can end on the spur of a moment due to a thug’s mood turning sour at the wrong time. In addition, thugs are infamous for infighting among their ranks, even if the thugs in question are part of the same gang or clique. Conflicts among thugs quickly grow terribly violent and lethal, as anyone who watches the evening news certainly knows. A typical gang war can leave at least a dozen thugs dead, and innocent non-participants can be accidentally cut down in the crossfire if located in the wrong place at the wrong time. This orgy of death is compounded by the ‘revenge’ killings which so often follow the death of a thug compatriot, with each new dead thug being revenged in turn. These cycles of murder can continue for years, even decades, in the fashion of old-style family blood feuds. In this manner, lives are terminated, families are torn apart, much blood is spilled, and the law enforcement industry is given much business due to the utter stupidity and sheer waste of thug violence.

Thugs do not have much respect for anything or anyone else save themselves, with the general exception of their fellow thugs. Fraternal bonds are strong in the thug community and loyalty among thugs is highly valued, though as noted even these virtues can be consumed by death and gunfire if disagreements occur. The most highly respected thugs, of course, are those thugs who have become highly successful (in thug terms). These thugs have generally obtained a high degree of wealth and power from their various criminal (and occasionally non-criminal) activities. Successful thugs have derived great value from turning thug culture into a marketable commodity – to the degree that even privileged White youth in the suburbs aspire to become ‘thugs’, though their glamorized conceptualization of a thug is far removed from the grim, lethal reality. To witness the reality of the thug life, one must look within the nation’s correctional facilities, morgues, ghettos, and police blotters in order to see the true portrait, of which a few vignettes have already been presented above.

Thugs have no respect for social or cultural norms. As noted above, regular, steady employment poses an insurmountable challenge to many thugs who cannot abide the concept of exerting effort without the prospect of deriving immediate and massive gratification from that effort. Most deleterious for the life of a typical thug, however, is his lack of respect for the law. This is not necessarily referring to 'statute' laws such as narcotics prohibition (of which so many thugs, at least the majority of those in prisons, run afoul). The ‘natural law’ however, consists of basic rights and wrongs – do not kill other humans, do not take someone else’s property without just compensation, etc – which need no explanation and should be unquestioned by anyone. This is reflected in the mores of the major world religions. And yet these are precisely the rules which thugs routinely and persistently violate, day after day, incident after incident. The pile of the bodies of innocent victims of thugs throughout history would be so large it would cover the entire surface of the earth in corpses and blood one hundred feet deep.

The only way to stop a thug, if he threatens, is to kill him. Fundamentally, thugs respect only one thing in this world – lethal violence, or the threat of lethal violence (and sometimes not even a threat will suffice). (That is why most thugs generally tend to accord other thugs a modicum of respect, because a thug should always be considered armed and dangerous, and who knows that better than thugs themselves.) Remember that thugs are completely self-oriented, unafraid of violence, lack self-restraint, and possess a disturbed state of mind which justifies any action, no matter how barbaric, if physical or emotional satisfaction can be derived from it. As the saying goes, those who live by the gun, die by the gun……