RoR: Forum

Post 0

Wednesday, November 5 - 8:10pm

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This is a bit glib, Bill. Do you really believe it? I've met a lot of politicians in my time, and almost invariably they strike me as being relatively intelligent, educated, honest, brave, decent, humane, earnest, candid individuals. The voters and the man in the street, however, strike me as being generally petty, mean, narrow, limited, prejudiced, nasty, cold, ignorant, arrogant, uneducated, ill-informed, proudly and defiantly stupid, proudly and defiantly malicious, etc. It's so easy today for the massman -- and even the lazy, sloppy intellectual -- to blame "the lying politicians" and "da gobiment" for everything. But is this just? Is this the correct analysis?

Post 1

Wednesday, November 5 - 9:43pm

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Well, now that you mentioned it . . . ah, er, well . . . YES! The man in the street usually has a real job and is self-supporting. The man in gum-mint survives as a parasite off the man in the street.

Post 2

Wednesday, November 5 - 9:50pm

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LOL, thanks Bill. I got a good laugh. My gripe with so many career politicians is that they never had a real job, never owned a business, and just go through life passing regulation after regulation with a total disconnect from reality. I think that's why Palin was so appealing to so many Americans, her life story didn't have that disconnect.

Post 3

Wednesday, November 5 - 11:11pm

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Of course politicians seem like "relatively intelligent, educated, honest, brave, decent, humane, earnest, candid individuals" - If they didn't, how would they con a majority into voting for them again, and again and again!

And if they really were "relatively intelligent, educated, honest, brave, decent, humane, earnest, candid individuals," then tell us who the hell created, funded, supports and wants more government than we already have with our "...15 Cabinet departments, nine of which control various aspects of the U.S. economy. They are the Departments of: Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, Health and Human Services, Education, Energy, Labor, Agriculture, Commerce and Interior. In addition, there is the alphabet soup cluster of federal agencies such as: the IRS, the FRB and FDIC, the EPA, FDA, SEC, CFTC, NLRB, FTC, FCC, FERC, FEMA, FAA, CAA, INS, OHSA, CPSC, NHTSA, EEOC, BATF, DEA, NIH and NASA."[Walter Williams]

And who is that keeps finding new things to tax till the average tax payer works from Jan. 1 till into early summer just to pay taxes? Isn't this the same group of wonderful people that have done their best to make American industry uncompetitive with the cost of regulations and taxes on business? The same group that have made government schools the most expensive per student in the world will the quality of education is dropping to something like 27th? The same group the created the Income Tax in all of it's wonderfulness, and who like to take our money and send it to foreign dictators.

And before I end this post, which go on for sooooo much longer, isn't this the same group behind the housing bubble and credit collapse what wiped trillions of dollars in pension plans, IRAs, and 401Ks out existence and then turned right around and decided to nationalize large parts of the credit and banking systems at a cost of further trillions?

Yeah, right - I always think "intelligent, educated, honest, brave, decent, humane, earnest, candid" when I think of Barney Frank, Ted Stevens, Murtha or who was that stalwart fellow that kept his kickbacks in his freezer?

I'm for giving Lily Tomlin some kind of medal for getting it so right!

(Edited by Steve Wolfer on 11/05, 11:15pm)

Post 4

Wednesday, November 5 - 11:27pm

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Zantonavitch is so inconsistent it's actually humorous. Only a few months ago he was writing that the handgun was made so we could 'slaughter' politicians and bureaucrats. Now he says they, the to-be-slaughtered, are the only decent people alive!

Good response 'other' Steve.

Post 5

Thursday, November 6 - 5:51am

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John Armaos makes some good points about career politicians which don't know about real life and the actual world of economics and business. That's why I think term limits are a good idea for all politicians, not just US presidents. Being a legislator should also only be a part time job in my view. Maybe we should only pay them for three months a year -- to better encourage them to stay out in the real world.

But Bill, even tho' you describe government employees as "parasites off the man in the street," you may be forgetting that these average Joes are the ones who invariably elect the incompetent, corrupt, predatory politicos. This doesn't seem very respectable to me. The average voter in America has consistently voted for the ever-more-tyrannical Republicans and Democrats for over a hundred years now! Lilly Tomlin's "decent" people have consistently voted wrong, and for Big Brother, for a long time now.

When I personally compare average politicians to average voters, it almost always seems to me like the noxious insect voters are putting impossible, undesirable, and contradictory demands upon the pols. Relatively speaking -- considering what they have to work with, to curry favor and be successfully elected -- the politicos seem to respond almost magnificently. At all those recent town meetings with John McCain, I almost always felt sorry for McCain, and felt contempt for the largely vulgar, insipid, malicious voters questioning him.

Post 6

Thursday, November 6 - 10:19am

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Zantonavitch should be banned from this site and any other for his long history of racist remarks.

Now, on an Objectivist site he expresses his desire to physically harm anyone that voted Republican or Democratic - showing no understanding of individual rights.

And he finds himself favoring those who violate the rights of others (politicians) and sees them as magnificent, while he sees the private citizens, the victims, as 'insects' and feels contempt for them as 'largely vulgar, insipid, and malicious.'

Post 7

Thursday, November 6 - 6:10pm

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I thought you were being facetious, Kyrel, but I guess not. I still find it difficult to believe that you were serious. Yes, the man in the street elected them, but you could make a good argument that politicians are little more than professional con artists. How else do they convince the average man in the street that he should let them pick his pockets -- that he should produce while they dispose of his product -- that he should gracefully accept his status as a slave of the political ruling class?

The man in the street has been so propagandized and indoctrinated that he is now an emasculated pawn of the government, who will endure any humiliation and accept any form of tyranny, so long as it's sold to him by a smilingly benign and charismatic authority figure who exhorts him to ever more self-sacrificial service to "this great nation of ours."

How else could people role over and accept a $700 billion bailout of wealthy financial institutions to be paid for out of their hard-earned money? Where were the protests -- the street demonstrations -- the grassroots challenge to political orthodoxy that we're so accustomed to seeing against the war? Instead, delirious young, cherubic faces gleamed with rapture at the sight of their hero, the new president, who will undoubtedly conscript them into the service that he thinks they should be performing for the good of society. Here were people being led to the poor house and the chain gang weeping beatifically and with great joy over the election of their New Leader.

Yes, they bear responsibility for this electoral debacle, but they were as much clueless victims as they were perpetrators. People get the rulers they deserve, but those rulers are practicing the kind of slavery and thievery that no person in his right mind would accept were it not enacted under the guise of legal and political convention.

If I have to make a choice, I'll take the man in the street any day over the slick and phony thugs in government who seek to manipulate him for their own political gain and personal ambitions.

- Bill