THE BEAST REAWAKENS*
This "poem" was sent to me in a multiFWDed email. It challenged recipients to send it along if they were proud to be white. My first reaction was to, simply, not, since it re-inforced why I have never been proud to be white, and why I abhor those who identify themselves as such. But it has simmered, then boiled, and I cannot let it pass without rebuttal.

Proud To Be White

Someone finally said it.
How many are actually paying attention to this?
There are African Americans, Mexican Americans,
Asian Americans, Arab Americans, etc.
And then there are just Americans.

You pass me on the street and sneer in my direction.
You Call me "White boy," "Cracker," "Honkey,"
"Whitey," "Caveman" ... And that's OK.

But when I call you, Nigger, Kike, Towel head,
Sand-nigger, Camel Jockey, Beaner, Gook, or Chink ..
You call me a racist.

You say that whites commit a lot of violence against you,
So why are the ghettos the most dangerous places to live?

You have the United Negro College Fund.
You have Martin Luther King Day.
You have Black History Month.
You have Cesar Chavez Day.
You have Yom Hashoah.
You have Mauled Al-Nabi.
You have the NAACP.
You have BET.
If we had WET (White Entertainment Television) we'd be
racists.

If we had a White Pride Day, you would call us racists.
If we had White History Month , we'd be racists.
If we had any organization for only whites to "advance"
OUR lives we'd be racists.
We have a Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, a Black Chamber
Of Commerce, and then we just have the plain Chamber of
Commerce.
Wonder who pays for that?
A white woman could not be in the Miss Black American
Pageant, but any color can be in the Miss America pageant.
If we had a college fund that only gave white students
Scholarships you know we'd be racists.
There are over 60 openly proclaimed Black Colleges
In the US . Yet if there were "White colleges" THAT Would be a
racist college.
In the Million Man March, you believed that you were
Marching for your race and rights. If we marched for
Our race and rights, you would call us racists.
You are proud to be black, brown, yellow and orange, and
You're not afraid to announce it. But when we announce
Our white pride, you call us racists.

You rob us, carjack us, and shoot at us. But, when a
White police officer shoots a black gang member or beats
Up a black drug-dealer running from the law and posing a threat to society, you call him a racist.

I am proud.
But you call me a racist.
Why is it that only whites can be racists?
There is nothing improper about this e-mail.
Let's see which of you are proud enough to send it on.

A brief rebuttal:

I am not proud enough to send it on. I am ashamed not for our presumably similar skin color, but that you draw the same air as me. Please fuck right off.

The longer rebuttal:

This tried and tired bit of sophistry, couched as a "rational" response to presumed double-standards, comes wholecloth out of the playbook of latter-day American Nazis, hearkening particularly to the call of erstwhile Nazi and Klansman David Duke to simply say, "They're getting theirs, why can't we get ours?" Duke's establishment of the National Association for the Advancement of White People used just this fucking language. The implicit message, however, is always the same: shit sucks for me, blame my neighbor instead of the people responsible.

Sputtering reactionary dullards have trotted out this same shit since the 1920s, when the New Klan arose, masking its bullshit in the guise of patriotic nativism and stalwart all-Americanism, and it crashed and died violently then too. It re-emerged in the 1970s and 1980s as the conservative response to the long, hard-won advances of the progressive revolutions of the 1930s, then 60s-70s, rare times in which a grand national consensus found enough voice to call at least some amelioration of the sweeping institutional injustices done to too many of its citizens for too many years — among them, yes, ethnic minorities. Now that the government sought to actually live up to the promise of its founding principles and constitution, those who had long benefited from those injustices, then as now, fanned the flames of tribal rhetoric to rally footsoldiers to defend their old beshitted feudal ways, and as always they turned to linear-thinking dumbfucks — in this case white, for the ALL-WHITE POWER-STRUCTURE was what was at stake — to do the goose-stepping and call it a "populist" movement.

You know why "they" were finally getting theirs (even though "they" didn't really and still haven't)? Not because all white people always had it great – we're fucked as "them," a lot of us — but because our Caucasoid Lords for years systematically and institutionally deprived them of the merest fucking opportunity to seek theirs. Go into East New York, go to South Dallas, and tell me where the American Dream still lives there, and do not fucking tell me these American Townships are of "their" making. Don't dare tell me people live here because they love it, that they've decorated it in despair because they saw it on HGTV. Never fucking tell me that these are "their" ghettos, because ghettos are where people go who are not allowed elsewhere, who cannot afford elsewhere, who for A HUNDRED FUCKING YEARS after their ostensible emancipation were routinely denied a vote, decent jobs and a say in the future of the communities who consigned them there. Infrastructure, economic development, entrepreneurial enterprise, Dear White Pride Poet, occur over decades upon decades of education and fiscal traction and assimilation, decades upon decades our ethnic minorities bided in enforced deprivation and disenfranchisement, even wholesale institutional denial of capital and all but the most menial jobs.

And even when black communities have thrived, and "they've" become the decent, prospering neighbors you want them to be (but would still figure out a way to hate them, no doubt), the mere look or word at the wrong person (read: white girl!) might end up burning their communities to the fucking ground (read up on your Tulsa history, and countless other such massacres that still mire the economic history of American ethnic minorities).

These are not "their" ghettos, they're ours, asshole. They are not an alien tribe amongst us – and until you recognize this, yes, you are a fucking racist – they are us, they are the yield of public policy, old-timey "tradition," puerile propriety, unspoken dogma, and economic indenture that infest our history. You don't believe me, go to the wrong neighborhood in Davenport and hang out with the white meth thugs, or to the wrong side of Portland or Salt Lake and have a nice chat with a whitetrash skinhead who found no other recourse to rationalize his lot other than some age-old dogmatic scapegoatism — and those douchebags damn well should scare you as much as any Crip. Tell me where the jobs are, the things on which past generations have built lives, families and communities, in either of those places, or Waterloo, or Newark, or Buffalo or [fill in Rust Belt burg here] because you'll find they're mostly gone, with only the vast tracts of once-industrial infrastructure adjacent the inner city neighborhoods, because America doesn't make shit anymore because somebody with an address in Connecticut or suburban Houston or the Caymans or your local tracts of McMansions decided to go exploit even more exploitable people.

When did that start happening? In the 1970s, in the wake of the government starting to enforce the acts of Congress and courts that made us ostensibly equal under the law, first tentative baby steps towards removing the systemic bulwarks of our ethnic or cultural separateness. Wouldn't be as easy to put the proles at each other's throats anymore, fuck it, pack up the factory head to a country where we can still hire goonsquads to cow the fuckers, or disappear them in the night. Colombia's AUC is just a south-of-the-border Klan — the same rich white fucks make the money, they've just got different thugs doing their dirty work for them.

Quoth Bulworth: "White people got more in common with black people than they do with rich people." Take it to the fucking bank.

Black colleges, black entertainment, Latino business associations, Jewish defense leagues, whatever the hell else you find so inequitable that "they" can have and you can't, these approximated what Jewish ghettos were in Europe, an insular defense mechanism to attempt to fill the holes, to affect a cultural home, where they have been denied it. Minority groups and caucuses, like unions, bring a collective voice and power of numbers to a table where individuals had long been denied a seat, because individually they had no power. And fuck no, you can't do the same thing because "your" people had the seats, made the rules that denied them, and engaged in the demeaning, violence-implicit hatespeech was used explicitly to keep millions of people "in their place."

White pride, cock, exudes hatred because it presumes and proselytizes an oppression that never was, against which you hope we will react and, what, take something back? Take what back? The NBA? The motel industry? Are all major corporations run by Koreans now? Is 75% of the publicly elected leadership in this country suddenly wealthy Pakistanis instead of wealthy Caucasians? Seriously, are you out of your fucking mind? Your underlying notion is like healthy people organizing groups to protest schizophrenia and bipolar disorder and diabetes and cancer victims for getting all the meds!

Unless you subscribe to the "Jew Bankers"-running-the-world thing, which I can only assume you do. Maybe next time send out a FWD of The Protocols of the Elders of Sion, too, see how well that tired shit still floats.

As to your "white heritage," and your solemn right to be "proud" of it, let's be very very very fucking precise:

You have none.

There is no white heritage other than what has been concocted by Klansmen and Nazis and White Citizens Councils. You may have a Scots-Irish heritage, or a German heritage, or an Anglo-Saxon heritage, or Dutch or Nordic or French or Polish or whatever the fuck, but you have no "white" heritage. Your family may pass down recipes and customs from the old country, great, if that is something that gives your life warmth and meaning, celebrate and enjoy and keep your shit in your own way and maybe invite us to the party. If your party features a burning cross from which you derive warmth and meaning, however, don't bother.

But as to PRIDE in your heritage?

Why? Do you need validation that fucking bad, like a snot-nosed, cloying child whining for Mommy's attention every time she turns to one your siblings? Do you have nothing else to give your life purpose, culture, a cause, a job, a fucking hobby? Notwithstanding that most people who trot this shit out tend to hyperidentify themselves as arch-conservative Christians and that Christ very explicitly taught you pride is a FUCKING SIN – for what, exactly, do you need to feel pride in the long, meandering genetic matrix cobbled together in arbitrary and statistically improbable mingling of DNA? Did your matrix of DNA do things so much BETTER than other people's DNA? Or did they, like most societies to which we can attribute collective "heritage," do a lot of shit wrong to go with whatever meager shit they got right across the yawning epochs of starvation, impressed ignorance, fear-mongering, institutionalized torture, feudal oppression and disease that characterized most of Europe until a mere couple centuries ago?

Did they give fealty to capricious fucks who abused them and others, did they persecute their culture's true geniuses in the name of God, did they fight stupid, pointless wars for shit they in which had no vested, personal interest, and burn witches and some occasional hundreds of Jews? Did they forge the Protocols of the Elders of Sion, or follow the Pope's sweeping order to render the population of Africa to "perpetual servitude"? Did they emigrate and slaughter Indians, did they Uncle Tom-up and thug themselves out to the previous, now-wealthy generation of émigrés to beat down the most recent, did they sally out to subjugate myriad colonies of little brown people for gold and God, did they turn in their neighbors as commies, did they turn blind eyes and nod in silent, ignorant ascent as their leaders blew shit up in their names?

Yup. Sorry. Pick a "white" ethnicity, they did it all, and pretty stupidly, mostly savagely, and leaving a fuckload of bodies in their wake. Oh, sure, maybe it wasn't YOUR direct lineage, but we're talking about your "heritage," right, sweeping generational waves of people you don't know. Yeah, maybe your family, and other families did some good shit along the way, maybe they raised decent children and served their country and produced quality stuff for their communities and were kind to their neighbors, but they fucking did that, not their "heritage."

And don't get me wrong, I'm not just picking on white people, I'm picking on "heritage" because most "peoples" who ever lived in abject servility to asshole rich men invoking superstitious nonsense have some shit in their closet somewhere, if not a-lot-of-where. As a species we have done some pretty keen shit, but not enough, by balance of the misery and slaughter we've impressed upon each other, to call any of us Gods on Earth — much less a master race.

And, yes, "master race" is the argument you march down whenever you speak of white pride. When you need to reaffirm pride in something that has had precious fuckall to do with whatever the hell is ailing you, in a pallor that in fact gives you, by all statistical measures, gross advantages in society, then you are seeking pointless validation, not to mention conjuring victimhood where it doesn't exist. When you do so by seeking our assent in your little proselytizing exercise, you foment tribalism, which is the notion that groups are intrinsically separate, from which always comes notions of intrinsic superiority — which is utterly implicit in your above words. From tribalism, by all measures of history, comes ever more oppressive violent bullshit, because part-and-parcel to your pride is a sense of ascendancy, of destiny, better-ness, from which it becomes so easy dehumanize those not in your proud little club, which leads to Rwanda and Darfur and Sand Creek and Auschwitz.

See, pride is considered a sin in most thoughtful theology for a pretty consensual reason. Because it glorifies YOU, it assuages YOU, it makes you a little God of your world, which you aren't. When you think you are, however, it leads you down the apostate path of the narcissist, of ever looking out for yourself, not your neighbors, not of your greater society, which often devolves to doing things at the expense of your neighbors, and cobbling up reasons why you are separate and deserving of more than them — be it your choice of gods, your sense of propriety, your class, your nationality, your goddamn skin. If this sounds familiar, it informs your country's current economic orthodoxy and its current corpse-littered overseas quagmires.

But guess what? You're not superior to anyone. And you know how I know? Because "your people" – accepting for the moment your presumption of monolithic white imperium – had the upper hand, had the run of the world for long long long long goddamn time, and it didn't fucking work. It made for bad society, it killed and starved a lot of people for no good reason other than the enrichment of a handful of already wealthy imperious pricks, and people over the course rebelled, took a hand in their own destiny and made things, as much as they fucked up themselves, at least slightly better. Your reign, your White Man's Burden, marshaled up wars to keep millions of Chinese addicted to opium, rallied millions of hillbillies to serve their feudal lords, against their own economic interests, in a war over owning other people, sent soldiers under an American flag to wage a war of genocide in the Philippines in order to "uplift and civilize" its citizens, according to William McKinley; it rationalized rapacious public policies and shitty productivity and economic injustice, not even to mention the dark cloud of hypocrisy it cast over this republic's gleaming founding principles.

At its logical end, "white pride" goose-stepped behind a red-and-black banner and tried to take over the fucking world, and how'd that work out for everyone? Good? Was Hitler "just misunderstood"? If you think so, don't keep us in suspense; if you're so fucking proud, be upfront with your beliefs and bray your "seig heil," you crypto-Nazi pigfucking liar.

How's the war against the "sand niggers," the one you fascist fucks still cling to as some kind of righteous crusade, working out for the rest of us? Half a million bodies later, 4,000 of them young Americans, you still ready to drop the bombs, to exterminate whole nations, by dint of your lordly, clean-cut white leaders not even trying to understand or tolerate other cultures they seek to subjugate in order to get at the shit under their feet? If so, strap on the armband and be done with it, Bubba, and take the derision and the rot and invective hurled at you, because a grand majority of your pale brethren, myself included, have had it up to our ass with the blood-soaked fucking disasters your tribalistic bullshit feeds like an oilfire.

So, yes, when you decide to "march" to demonstrate your "white pride," the thinking humanity among us are going to be justifiably wary, if not loose our curses and saliva. Because rigid-ranked goose-stepping white people don't have a really great track record with the rest of us. They have, in fact, pretty much just fucked shit up.

At issue here, you cunt, is not the ascendancy or pride of tribes, it is the dull, tiresome inertia of tribalism in and of itself. While this might seem incomprehensible to one of your vast insecurities and narcissism, here's a newsflash: I – and a lot of people – don't want to be superior to anyone. I don't need to posture my "pride" against theirs. I want them to like my shit and do whatever shit they do in such a way that we intersect amicably and efficiently and maybe say hi when we do it. I want them to buy me beers the round after I buy them beers — as I have done with people of every random hue in the epidermal spectrum— and to pick me up when I fall down, and I don't give a fuck what God they worship or their melanin content when they do it.

Yes, black people and latinos might to call you names, yes, in some quarter they might be pissed off at you for nothing you ever did – but, FUCKING NO, YOU don't get to call them shit back. If somebody's being an asshole, sure, call them an asshole, but assholes come in all stripes and varietes. Assholery, you asshole, is colorblind. But your ethnic epithets, white people, no, NO, FUCK YOU. It is a fucking double-standard, and, y'know what? It's well earned, because YOUR epithets have been the tools of undisguised, unapologetic oppression. Your words were shackles and clubs, systemic admonitions to keep eyes averted and heads bowed, and if one did not behave, ropes and trees lay in one's future, wholesale murder that would go neither investigated nor punished. They were constant reminders that one could expect neither justice nor opportunity. Be crystal clear about this: Nobody ever called you a "cracker" to keep you in your place, to make sure you toed the line, said "yassuh," and went quietly back to your trailerhouse like a good boy, deprived of all dignity. Your words were the proper grammar of apartheid, and they helped keep people indentured and robbed of legitimized cultural identity for a hundred more years, I'll repeat, AFTER THEY WERE "FREED."

And as much as you might not have personally played a part in that, as much as you want the tabula to be rasa, it ain't. Genie doesn't just blink the Emancipation Proclamation and the 14th Amendment into existence and, poof, hundreds of years beat-downs and educational privation and second-class citizenship and night-rides go away, not in the 40 years since the Voting Rights Act, not in a hundred years if your simmering, mindless hatred continues to poison the hearts of your neighbors. And certainly not so long as you can continue to cheer on the mass destruction of those inhuman aliens overseas, and give nodding, smirking license to the besuited white criminals who so cavalierly flay and bomb "towelheads" in your name and in direct contravention of laws of humanity — you remember, the ones written in the smoldering ruins of the Third Reich, written specifically to guard against future such assholery.

No, sir, your "pride" in the cosmic accident of your skin color means nothing more and nothing less than shit. Suck it up and take the hit, bitch, because American society, which is your "heritage" too, gave silent and sometimes violent assent to that evil, predatory, exploitive status quo well beyond any sense and well beyond everyone's capacity to know better, and yeah, your society, the one of which you are a part, owes. Big time. It owes a lot of people a lot of things, but foremost among them, a sense of inclusion and means towards opportunity offered up to those it so long denied both (and against whom, yes, it continues to stack the odds by way of the neocon agenda freshly gutting of the nation's economic and educational infrastructure).

It owes people of all random tints these things, yes. That is what a constitutional republic is supposed to do, serve the needs of its fucking people, maybe with something resembling "liberty and justice for all."

Note the "justice" part. And the "for all" part. Fucking live with people. That's how you live with people, all of them.

I know, I know, you don't want to live with some of them, and that's your God-given right. Well, guess what? You don't have a choice, not anymore. We're all here now, aren't we?

In case there's any doubt, let's be clear:

We're all here now.

Fucking deal with it.

[*The title refers to a book by this name by Martin Lee, documenting the heinous and surreptitious influence American-ratlined Nazis and revisionist neo-Nazis have had on world affairs and domestic political discourse since World War II, including how Duke and other Aryan and Christian Identity groups have attempted to "modify tactics" to make their tribal bullshit more palatable to broader demographics. Read it and squeegee your third eye.]

From: flyingtree@verizon.net
Subject:
Date: Wed, 31 May 2006 07:33:47 -0500

I warned a local fan on her way to see Matt that his talent had crawled into a bottle with a copy of Lenin and died. She took great offence, then she listened to the cd she bought at the event and she wrote back and apologized for doubting me.

Matt's a great talent, but he needs some help. I hope he gets it.

Stephen Boone
Flying Tree

OUR REPLY: Ouch, man, consider me judged, juried and gave-a-fuck. Boy, glad you took the time to gloat to our promo guy about your meager bit of told-you-so, Stephen. Things were a little slow around the office, I guess. Well, different strokes, different aspersions out of the blue on whether someone is insane or alcoholic or you think they're a Leninist—a RED SMEAR, perhaps? Funny, we thought that particular monster-under-the-bed had been put to sleep, but thanks for the helping give meaning to our funny band name. Stephen also insisted in a subsequent email to Ed that Joe McCarthy was some kind of heroic crusader. Funnier, though, we received a different take from Bill from West Virginia. We'll post this as "counterpoint." Hmm, maybe people can disagree on aesthetics and ideas and not "need some help" . . . naaahhh, that'd just lead to heterogenous society.

From: "Bill Hedrick"
Date: Wed, 31 May 2006 19:40:37 -0400
It's been a couple weeks since the show but I thought I would let you know that the Red Smear/Hangdogs reunion show in NYC was amazing. I have been to quite a few shows and that one now ranks as the best concert I have ever seen. My friend and I drove 8 hrs from WV to make a pilgrimage to finally see the Hangdogs and were not disappointed. We were totally blown away when Grimm played "I'd call to say I love but I don't" twice because one of our friends missed it because he was "taking care of business" with a girl he met at the bar. We were totally shocked by how good Red Smear was. Every bit as good as the Hangdogs. Hopefully they can have a reunion every year or so.

Just consider us your enablers, BH. We'll work on getting back to NYC a little more often, or even, perhaps . . . MORGANTOWN??? bum-bum-BUMMMMMMMMMMM.

And now another rebuttal from Ferd:

From: fkibler@zoomtown.com
Subject: One man's opinion
Date: June 13, 2006 3:17:38 PM PDT
With all the talk on the website about the new cd, I honestly expected it to be a sloppy, self indulgent diatribe against the right wing. I know you don’t take compliments well, and with all the truly great songs you have written it is tough to say, but I think it is among the best work you have ever done.

Admittedly, I am a Matthew Grimm fan. I think “Something Left to Save” “and “Monopoly on the Blues” are two of the greatest songs ever. “Armies of the Lost” is on that list too. And your ability to have the listener actually envision the song like I do in “Come the Night” is incredible. Of all of your cds, there is only two songs I ever skip.

You are one of the very best songwriters out there. The reason I say that is while our politics are diametrically opposite (actually I think both sides are fucked up) but I believe Ronald Reagan was the best President ever, your songs still make me stop and think (especially Hey Hitler). And I think that is what songwriting is about.

I know personally things have been tough for you the last couple years so thanks for persevering and making this cd, it is incredible, not a song that is less than great.

Hopefully, you will hit Cincinnati, Lexington or Louisville soon, otherwise I have to figure out where Iowa is.

Take Care, I wish you the very best

keep rocking,
Ferd

Holy shit, the heretical cons who-agree-to-disagree yet still dig the new record and don't want to lynch us keep on coming. The hell? What happened to the hatey hate mail? This hate mail's, like, all nice.

From: Mike Fuller
Subject: Damn It
Date: June 14, 2006 4:03:56 PM PDT
We hardly agree on much politically, but gawddamn can you write a song and play music. I followed you from The Dawgs and just listened to the new Smear clips. It sounds great. Man, you have something....I don't know what it is...but I'm glad it ain't being bottled and mass produced. Never got to see ya'll play. You guys, Neil Diamond and Elvis are my only regrets to date in that area. Hell, I've seen Freddy Fender, El Vez and some incredibly talent less bands...but ya'll never made it much farther west than Texas and we Arizonans are afraid of that state.

So, rest assured, I'll be buying a few copies. Oh sure, I'll bitch about your leftist ideals, but in the end, I'll be liquored up and toasting places like Miles of Music for allowing us who, feign or otherwise, get "it" a resource where "it" can still be gotten.

Carry on!!!

And now some old-timey shit:

From: bmelgrande@aol.com
Subject:
Date: January 5, 2006 9:08:20 PM PST

MAN, ARE U FOR REAL? GO TO FRIGGIN' CUBA IF U DON'T LIKE IT HERE. GOD BLESS AMERICA.

Yay! Good ole-fashioned, raw, uncut linear thought! Don't like your house being trashed by some asshole? Move out! No Russia for a boogieman anymore, but keep plugging in sundry, wea alternatives, as if anybody else's assholes mitigate our own. While we're at it, any more dusty old chestnuts you want to trot out? "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segretation forever"? "My country, right or wrong" (only applicable, curiously, when wrong)? Jazz music maybe lead to "misceginaton of the races"? Any villages we need to destroy in order to save them? Oh, wait, that's our foreign policy.

Way to let slogans do what your fucking brain is supposed to do. Need more of these. Funny, funny stuff.

Sept. 12, 2005: This doesn't technically qualify as hate mail, per se, because the exchange was civil and positive, which made it well worth posting. This came in from a guy in the Army, currently stationed in Germany, who, as you'll see, actually takes the time to read and parse answers to his questions.

From: T. Joey [Xxxxxxxx]
Date: Thu, 8 Sep 2005 22:02:10 +0200
Subject: Just a question...

Ok, since when has the lower class been screwed? We could give the poor people the rich people's money, and in 5 years the rich people would have it back...there is a reason that people are rich, poor, ect...People say "oh, Clinton was the best...worked for the low and middle classes, boosted the economy, ect..." Yeah, people did make more money, and jobs were created, but the national average debt/disposable income ratio exploded from around 60% in the mid-80's to over 100% in 2001 after the bubble bursted on Wall Street in 2000. How do you explain that? The Clinton administration used the tech boom to distract the public from his tax hikes and ultimately make people feel more financially comfortable than they should have been....leading to the accumulation of debts that most wouldn't have normally taken on. Thats just my spin on things...

OUR REPLY: Hi, T., and thanks for the correspondence. You've got a few disparate issues here, so I'm not sure exactly what kind of response you're looking for, but I'll try to address your various points as best and coherently as I can.

First, best as I can tell, the lower class has been screwed since the dawn of civilization, obviously attributable to so-called social Darwinism, that the few on top throughout history have arranged their systems to maintain the status quo, which requires disempowerment of most everybody else. This is why most kings were dicks -- and why we threw off the yoke of ours back when -- even if they were "good" kings, because their system was basically to horde wealth and resources to the detriment of their subjects, who were expected to toil endlessly and even give their lives to gain their lords that wealth and those resources.

But the progress of "society," by most measures, has been to COUNTER the effects of Darwinistic predations, to create a commercial culture that allows and creates prosperity throughout economic strata, and that does not simply disregard and discard the "least" of the population as, say, the Spartans did. Activist government in securing/insuring this broader social welfare, the social safety net, as we have come to call it, is one step towards this. Neo-classical economic dogma considers one-man/one-economic-engine as the only step towards it, dismissing the social safety net as an impediment to it. This is the debate currently at play, though rarely discussed in contemporary American economics or politics: how much is left to government administration, regulation and oversight, versus how far one can winnow the state out of commercial and cultural parlance (supply-side versus demand-side, if that means anything).

The notion you cite of wholesale redistribution of wealth (and the smart people will just get all the money back from the dumb) has been used frequently by neo-classical apologists but it's based on a weighty fallacy. That is, it assumes a wholesale redistribution of wealth, which is not plausible, nor is it remotely proposed even by leftists such as myself. In other words, it uses a hyperbolic presumption to make the case for its extreme opposite. That's like saying Stalin was an asshole and his system hopelessly vile and corrupt, and BECAUSE of this, Sweden's healthcare system sucks. Stuff just isn't that simple.

Market economics, of which I am a big fan, is not anathema to activist government, which we know because it's been proven, by gradations, over the last hundred years. Your post-service GI benefits are living, breathing proof. The GI Bill, basic labor law, workplace safety laws, medical benefits (both state and corporate), Social Security -- these things buffered people from external fiscal pressures, thus allowing them give their kids better educations, buy more stuff and maybe save up for to move into better places to live (demand-side economics in a nutshell). Neo-classical (supply-side) voices argue this is simply unnatural, dismissing overwhelming evidence that it worked -- which makes their starting presumption more faith-based (dogma) than empirical.

But, with due respect, I think this is where DISCOURSE of this economic debate (not the economics specifically) tends to break down. If somebody like me advocates a universal healthcare system as part of the social safety net, it is immediately jumped on as "socialism" in attempts to queer the reasoned debate that might weigh its benefits and ills (The MARKET must always guide goods and services). Or, for another example, if I question the current administration, you jump to the presumption that, by such inclinations, I consider Clinton the be-all-end-all of enlightened liberal (if not left) leadership, which couldn't be further from the truth. It's not either/or, anymore than there are only the sun and the Earth in the sky. Clinton was a dick and a disaster and the New Democrats essentially betrayed of the demand-side system that first enabled lower-class citizens to become active participants in the economy.

Clinton continued apace the supply-side policies of the Reagan administration, the debt ratio you bring up, a very good point, pretty much proves it, fake investment in things of artificial value, prompting a bubble economy that collapses when real value doesn't materialize -- and, well, that's pretty much the whole of the economy once you let the hucksters loose. See Enron, Worldcom, et al., in re trading on FAKE VALUE, see the whole of Eliot Spitzer's indictments of the brokerage industry and the mutual funds industries, proving that one or two were not simply "bad apples"; all, in pattern, mean the problem is systemic. Money-grubbing schmucks WILL SCREW US, and fuck our 401Ks, relentlessly, if it means they can buy a few yachts more because they consider this the Darwinian ebb-and-flow of a sacrosanct market. If you don't believe that, check out the latest indictment of KPMG for helping rich people squirrel billions of bucks out of the country to avoid taxes, even AFTER their class has already reaped a $350 billion windfall with the Bush tax cuts. And if you insist that all that money gets reinvested in the domestic economy, creating all the mythical, meaningful NEW jobs, then where are they?

Let me cite this from die-hard conservative and former assistant secretary of the Treasury under Reagan, Paul Craig Roberts, who, while I disagree with him on a lot of stuff, is a much more venerable economist than myself:

The media gives a bare bones jobs report that is misleading. The public heard that 207,000 jobs were created in July. If not a reassuring figure, at least it is not a disturbing one. On the surface things look to be pretty much OK. It is when you look into the composition of these jobs that the concern arises.

Of the new jobs, 26,000 (about 13%) are tax-supported government jobs. That leaves 181,000 private sector jobs. Of these private sector jobs, 177,000, or 98%, are in the domestic service sector.

Here is the breakdown of the major categories:

• 30,000 food servers and bar tenders;
• 28,000 health care and social assistance:
• 12,000 real estate;
• 6,000 credit intermediation;
• 8,000 transit and ground passenger transportation;
• 50,000 retail trade; and
• 8,000 wholesale trade.

(There were 7,000 construction jobs, most of which were filled by Mexicans immigrants.)

Not a single one of these jobs produces a tradable good or service that can be exported or serve as an import substitute to help reduce the massive and growing US trade deficit. The US economy is employing people to sell things, to move people around, and to serve them fast food and alcoholic beverages. The items may have an American brand name, but they are mainly made off shore. For example, 70% of Wal-Mart’s goods are made in China.

Where are the jobs for the 65,000 engineers the US graduates each year? Where are the jobs for the physics, chemistry, and math majors? Who needs a university degree to wait tables and serve drinks, to build houses, to work as hospital orderlies, bus drivers, and sales clerks?

In the 21st century job growth in the US economy has consistently reflected that of a Third World country--low productivity domestic services jobs. This goes on month after month and no one catches on--least of all the economists and the policymakers.

So there's your trade deficit -- via policies wholly endorsed by Clinton and Bush alike -- and in the meantime, the national poverty rate keeps going up, and real (adjusted) median household income has been dropping since 1973. THIS is the lower class getting screwed, and much of the middle-class devolving toward the lower class, the net result of an ongoing 25-year-campaign to bust unions and ship manufacturing jobs overseas. Whatever the knocks against organized labor—its susceptibility to corruption always foremost, or, for the orthodox, its "unnatural" manipulation of individual value—its decline has been calamitous, especially in light of the consolidation (and ever greater influence on government) of the corporate world.

I'll try to bear this out with an example. The Commonwealth Fund, in its October 2003 study The Rise of Uninsured Workers at Large Firms, cited decline of union membership and manufacturing jobs and rise of ever bigger companies as major catalysts the growing number of uninsured Americans, now at 46 million. From 1987 to 2001, the proportion of uninsured workers at companies with 500 or more employees increased from 25% o 32%, those more likely working at the retail level (McDonald's, Wal-Mart, Home Depot) than uninsured at small companies (34% versus 23%). Big companies offered health insurance to 67% of low-income workers versus 89% of mid- and high-income employees, Commonwealth reported, and it found manufacturing firms 20% more likely to offer health coverage than the service sector, firms with "some" union labor 60% more likely. Given the growing proportion of the total workforce working for major corporations, the study concluded, "The reduced rate of unionization among workers in large firms accounted for 38% of the rise in the uninsured rate . . ."

Okay, I've gone on too long, but my point here is, it doesn't really do much good to write any argument off as Big Government/Socialism/Out to Redistribute Wealth, some kind of wholecloth template, because, when you do, it obfuscates the fact that there MIGHT be a better way to do things than how we do them right now. And we can disagree -- you might believe in social Darwinism, fine, I just don't -- but for the sake of meaningful discourse, presumptions and labels do little good because you're basically tossing out the experiment before looking at the data. Roosevelt tried new shit and the republic did not wither into abject communism, as neo-classical voices bellowed it would, and the Wagner Act and the GI Bill and even the willing participation of many great companies helped spread prosperity to everyone. And it's that system that Reagan/Bush conservatives and New Democrats alike have steadily dismantled.

A great American radical once deconstructed our system, in which he saw a "total absence of governmental control had led to a portentous growth in the financial and industrial world both of natural individuals and of artificial individuals—that is, corporations. The power of the mighty industrial overlords of the country had increased with giant strides, while the methods of controlling them, or checking abuses by them, on the part of the people . . . remained archaic and therefore practically impotent . . . These men demanded for themselves an immunity from governmental control . . . [They] oppose[d] minimum wage laws, insurance of workmen against the ills of industrial life and the reform of our legislators and our courts, which can alone render such measures possible. Some of these reactionaries are not bad men, but merely shortsighted and belated."

Theodore Roosevelt wrote that in his autobiography in 1913. My bitch is that we're coming full circle, and we don't have to, just because people with no imagination say that's the natural law of economics. And especially when we have ample evidence to the contrary. The world doesn't turn on Milton Friedman and Robert Nozick, even if the current administration consider their works canon law.

Again, it's not either/or, its trial-and-error and, above all, reason over dogma. What is just MY spin on things, for what it's worth, is that an activist government is instrumental in POLICING the vital economic components that create what we call the general welfare. Activist government does not have to be BIG government -- give me a line-item budget and i'll cut the shit out of federal spending today and everybody'll still be safe and we can bankroll everything i'm talking about -- but making it happen is about priorities in that budget, like, say, LEVEES. I want people to earn what they and their ideas merit in the market, but I DON'T think it's raving socialism to say, y'know, for the PUBLIC GOOD, we can re-district some things as out-of-bounds to fluxuations and predations of the market, like old people's retirement funds, like decent healthcare for everyone, like taking care of our poor until they get on their feet, like public schools with teachers well-paid enough to make decent people out of the sociopathic twits they're given (which, in neo-classical terms, is also socialistic). And if I need to, I can find money to do it by slapping those taxes back on the wealthy -- NOT the poor, NOT even the middle class -- because they can AFFORD it and because their wealth is derived by LICENSE from the republic, and if they decide to re-incorporate in the Caymans, where KPMG's already helped them to hide their money from the IRS, well, that's the "patriotism" of the rich for you. But, again my point, the fixes required are big, but ones of priorities and WHERE you flex your muscle and spend that tax money, and to whose benefit.

Shit, I'm sorry, this is way more than you even have time for, but I wanted to try to address your query soberly and meaningfully, and I'm not sober that often. I'm happy to expound or elaborate more particulars if I didn't answer to your satisfaction.

Stay safe.
mg

T. Joey's reply:

Well said, I must confess that I wasn't really putting up a well prepared statement, but even on my best day I couldn't rebuke half of your points, Mr. Grimm. Although my beliefs are mixed, more so to the right, I kinda fall in the same category as Bush...the compassionate conservative-ish genre...your reply may very well be the reason I scoot further to the left than I have ever been before. I have spent my entire life involved in this stuff, I spent my free time in Iraq debating the very same issues, as well as here in Germany, debating and sponsoring the Student Government and speech & debate club at the American High School here, and this is the first time someone has made me honestly concede the point. Thanks for the new insight you have given me and know that I will argue some of your points to my peers and collegues here. I will keep posted on your site and I hope to talk with you again sometime.

And we haven't even put out a record! It seems Christians might not like our Crosstika posters -- which surprises us because all our market research told us they'd be our TARGET FUCKING MARKET! Anyway, enjoy the dissembling, sanctimony and the pretense towards reason, all wrapped up in neat dogmatic reactionary package:

Matthew,
As I encountered your website, I was quite fascinated. I was not quite positive that ignorance exists on such levels. Of course, while your propaganda was mildly amusing (was that what you were going for?) it was also incredibly impractical.

In adherence to your suggestion, I am exercising my First Amendment right. Let's begin. You must believe that degrading the values, the ones upon which our nation is built, is a clever attempt to "bring down the system"(is that the phrase your people prefer?) Since it is apparent by your website that your are acutely ignorant of basic American governmental fundamentals, allow me to educate you. You are inherently opposed to conservative politics? Perhaps you would do well to realize that conservative politics are astutely loyal to stare decisis (it's latin, I wouldn't expect you to know it). Stare decisis refers to the basic principle of precedent; respect for those values our forefathers conjured. Therefore, as our forefathers drafted the Constitution, which contains the Bill of Rights, and therefore the First Amendment, it would seem quite to the contrary that "Christians AND Nazis AND Republicans, whichever is which!" would be opposed to preserving such fundamental rights.

Secondly, "crosstikas"? While it can be argued (weakly, but possible) that you have a legitimate contempt for contemporary American politics (and those who don't sing and dance and work a 15 hour week), it cannot be rationally argued that Christianity, in principle, is evil. This is what you imply when you associate the swastika, the epitome of evil, with the cross, the epitome of peace. Christians, true christians, root the basics of their belief in peace. Perhaps you are under the deranged disillusionment that all christians are bible-beating, socially blind fools. This reckless assumption could be equated to assuming that all anarchists are of your nature: irrational and unconstructive haters.Christians are compassionate, loyal persons who do the best they can to adhere to what they feel is morally right. Is this not the behavior you exhibit? Your website is a blatant illustration of your attempt to adhere to what you feel is morally wrong. Can so different creatures act so similarly?

Referring again to the First Amendment. You seem to value the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment, but completely lack respect for the measures by which these rights were obtained. Whether you acknowledge the truth or not, the struggle to obtain and maintain the rights Americans enjoy was not an easy one. In fact, this struggle was often marked by war, and national chaos and discontent. These are battles that are still being fought today; to ensure the rights for others which you so carelessly flaunt and take for granted. I would suggest a visit to Sudan; you'd be fortunate to emerge alive. Or Iraq. Hypothetical situation: while in Iraq, you create a website that criticizes the current Iraqi government. What do you think would happen to you? Maybe today you wouldn't be tortured to the death because the United States and it's allies have enabled democracy, in its infancy, to exist. But what about 5 years ago?

In conclusion, the type of hate that cripples your ability to think and act rationally is utterly futile. If you must hate, then hate rationally. If one is an anarchist, and one feels that government inhibits free will and intellect and love and peace, then one should read up on Dahl's hyperpluralism theory. Then, instead of creating a website which displays offensive and rudimentary perspectives on current government, one should lobby politicians, write letters, and otherwise utilize the dreaded "system" to your benefit. I sincerely hope that you will consider these suggestions, and perhaps you will evolve into a better activist, because you are really quite poor at it. As it is, you have little hope of "inciting the biggest Midwestern uprising since the Grange". The practice of criticizing an institution and failing to offer a remedy for a perceived malady is futile.

You are a moron. Godspeed.

Good Luck,
A Hardhitting Right-Fielder

YAY! What a pleasure to be proselytized, out of the blue, by someone who calls me a moron while at the same time spewing self-contradictory invective and acting upon broad assumptions for which there is no substantive foundation, without even bothering to sign his or her name. Dude, great "constructive engagement" -- I'm ALL EARS.

Admittedly, I haven't met a lot of good Christians -- I've met a lot of people who called themselves that and conveniently abrogated the living-by-Jesus'-teachings aspect -- and I've also met a lot of really kind, decent human beings who DIDN'T wear their particular superstition on their sleeve, most likely because they'd transcended sanctimonious dogma. And, admittedly, my view can be clouded by all the burning temples full of Jews over the years and the Pope's sanction to "reduce the population" of Africa "to perpetual servitude," not to mention all the colonial master-race stuff that drew the lines that still have assholes fighting over NOTHING and the twin fangs of guilt and fear used to cow children into servility and psychosis. And then there's all those Good Christians in the Klan robes and the lynch mobs. And all those "pro-life" people who get hard-ons when bombs rain down on foreign cities and applaud the executions of retarded people. And the denial of science, the basic means of problem solving intrinsic to the species' creation of this tenuous thing called Society, that's a funny one. Oh, and the sundry genocidal shit, that's tough to get around, the pointless murder and subjugation of indigenous peoples who were minding their own business.

So, yeah, maybe the Crosstika is a bit generalized as a communications tool, but let me say this: if you are a "good Christian" -- and I imagine there are some -- maybe instead of bitching at me, you ought to be reclaiming the title from the pricks who hijacked it to rationalize another Holy War and using that Holy War to rationalize the homogenization of thought and indoctrination of mass fear of all things "other." Maybe, if your particular superstition has been thusly hijacked, you ought to be wondering how it is that God's Grand Plan, and the execution tool that has become its symbol, has come to be the standard of NOT doing as Jesus taught you -- because I read the New Testament and I don't recall anything about torturing people and bombing the shit out of them until they signed over the rights to the resources under their feet to your fellow Country Club members. Or MAYBE, you let it be hijacked, because you buy the implicit authority of the State to manipulate meaning and to co-opt ideals -- in which case, see the Crosstika.

As for "stare decisis" -- you utter this in the same breath as you give unquestioning fealty to a right-wing cabal seeking to rewrite the rules to embed a dogmatic, servile judiciary, an administration that has already been caught LYING to shill a WAR? You're so easily swayed by hackneyed nationalist mythology that you abrogate your own spiritual foundation to smile and abide the systematic quashing of the pluralistic ideals upon which both were founded? You're so impressed with your word-of-the-day real politick crap that you don't bother to suss the dynamics of cause-and-effect? So, best as I can tell, you're so smart that the basic tenets of logic and reason don't apply to you. Hey, maybe YOU'RE God!

You want reasoned arguments, and an applicable alternate course to our present slouching-towards-Nuremberg, go to the parent website, www.hangdogs.com/hangdoggerel.htm, but given that your self-impressed posturing doesn't portend a capacity for lateral thought on your part, it'll be a futile trip. Meantime, enjoy your Milton Friedman and Leo Strauss pabulum as their bastard children destroy the world. Bow down to the false idols that assure your perfection and unwavering goodness without the actual deeds to back it up, and keep emailing people randomly to lash out without any knowledge of them, their ideas, their resume of community activism or any notion or how many times they've written their congresspeople, or anything resembling reason, because Jesus fully encouraged you judge others and foment mass cultural intolerance, didn't he?

Oh, wait, he didn't. That's right, he said NOT to. Good Christian.

Thanks for proving my point. Hope you look good in an armband.

Hugs,
Matthew

From: "The Red Smear Sucks"
Subject: I'll pray for you

I'm female. Dissappointing [sic] turnout at the green room, eh? Of course with that kind of massive following, you'll take over the world in no time right? A friend (the same one who informed me about your little website) asked me to visit after you published my letter. Impressive. Well, not really. This is very amusing to me. Even my worst critics never suspected my writing would end up in a shit hole like your website. First time for everything.

I write this for one reason: my contempt for people like you. People who are psuedo-activists. People who are too stupid to get a real job like grown ups. People who are uneducated and obnoxios [sic]. People who have nothing better to do than play shitty music to empty rooms. People who sit around and get fat while bitching about the government and offer no plan to "fix" the "problem".

People like you ARE the dregs of society and as much as you might like to think so, let me tell you that people like you will always be the way you are now; dumb and insignificant.You think the losers (all four of them) that attend your shows are your little followers? Do you actually think I CARE? Or that anyone does? Don't tell me you're that moronic. You'll be a bottom-feeding piece of shit for the rest of your life.

As much as a despise you (and I'm sure the feeling is mutual) I do not care to contunue [sic] this little drama(Of course, if you'd prefer, I'm game). I am far too busy to engage in this kind of degrading activity. Why, my friends at the Country Club would be just SHOCKED that I'm even associating with someone of your class! (cute, huh?) Anyway, I failed to mention in my first e-mail that I realize that I can't change your mind, or your perspective. And you must realize you can't change mine. Therfore, shall we call it a draw? You just go about your pointless existence and I'll go about my meaningfull [sic] one, and I 'm quite sure we'll never cross paths. After all, talent is a determining factor in the music I listen to.

Sincerely,
Brittani

PS: By the way, I look spectacular in an arm band

Yee-ouch. I guess that peaceful Christian stuff only goes so far, then it's all white-knuckled vindictiveness, prejudgment, bile, class-hatred, self-ardor and subspeciation. Again, going through my New Testament and coming up short on those things on the To-Do List. Oh, wait, here's something: "Do not judge, lest you too be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you." -- Matthew 7:1-2.

Hey, maybe that's a way to "fix" stuff, huh? Living up to what one supposedly stands for?

POSTSCRIPT: And one more thing. "Brittani" here is right -- she wasn't going to change my mind, nor I hers, which she managed to sputter out LONG after wasting both our time with her excercise in spite and self-validation, apostasy that she then, presumably, tried to mitigate with an email heading indicating that she would pray for me. Look, people, tell yourself whatever you want, or buy into whatever other people tell you, to make shit make sense for you. But pray for me on your own fucking time. You might as well rub pudding pops all over you and say you're doing it for me. It means exactly the same.

I don't give a shit how you try to rationalize the insanity of the world. Maybe your Jesus or your Flying Spaghetti Monster makes you a better person, or helps you think as much, and great if it does -- it empirically hasn't worked in the above case -- but where that ends is when you export it out of your mind and heart and into my face. The American Orthodoxy has three branches of government and FIVE DEDICATED CHANNELS of mindfuck yammering at the rest of us 24-7 -- thinking people have a half-hour four days a week on Comedy Central (and if you buy this horseshit canard CNN is "leftist," believe me you have no idea what LEFT is) -- so don't get hot-flashes when a meaningless little band website flings some shit back in your grill.