The Shutdown Explained : Another Dark Carnival Brought To You By The Vampire Squids

10/12/13

The Shutdown Explained : Another Dark Carnival Brought To You By The Vampire Squids.

The Insane Clown Posse (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insane_Clown_Posse) is a hip-hop group out of Detroit, the US city that recently went bankrupt. Their fans are known as 'juggalos' - though this term also refers to fans of Psychopathic Records, which was the record company label under which the ICP released their first few records. The term 'juggalo' has even come to refer to a sub-culture which, according to Wikipedia, has been associated to criminal and gang-related activity by "self-described 'Juggalos' in recent years, including assaults, drug trafficking, vandalism, burglary, shootings, theft, robbery, and numerous murders." [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juggalo ].

Recently, another Insane Clown Posse has revealed itself to the world: Members of the Republican Party in the US Congress who engineered a US government shutdown, and threatened to prevent the US Treasury from borrowing any more money, all to prevent the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare. The fans of this Insane Clown Posse are known as "Tea Partiers", though this term also refers to fans of any attempt to thwart Barack Obama, a black man who happens to be the US President. The term 'Tea Party' or 'Tea Partier' has even come to refer to a sub culture which, according to me, cannot define the word 'fact', does not know the difference between knowledge and belief, in the service of belief and sociopathy puts the lives and well-being of others at risk, both here and around the world, and expresses collective outrage whenever actual facts compress their bubbles of self-delusion. I say 'compress' here because the truth is those bubbles will never be popped. Kant expressed the phenomenon best : "Reason is invisible to the man who has none."

Logic and Reason. Nice concepts poorly executed by human beings. They can't be executed at all by people who don't know what they are.

There is no question that, by various (though not all) measures, the US is the most "powerful" nation in the world. Recent history (the so called 'Financial Crisis' as well as the latest 'Shutdown Fiasco') suggest that logic and reason have, like Elvis, left the building. A nation presenting itself as the "leader of the free world" and the manufacturer of "the world's reserve currency" (the dollar), cannot retain either of those two responsibilities if Insane Clown Posses have the power to alter the law and policy of that nation. Such a nation does not propose and seriously consider the policies of Insane Clown Posses, much less implement them. The problem is, the Insane Clown Posse is implementing policy and dominating the political landscape because the "have the votes" in Congress to do so. Progressives hope that after the latest Shutdown fiasco, this will change in the 2014 election cycle. But, the Insane Clown Posse isn't going down that easy. They are well-funded, and -as we all know- "corporations are people" and "money is speech" according to the other Insane Clown Posse in the US Supreme Court, which is also well-funded by the Justice Department and not elected at all.

As I write, Saturday, October 12, 2013, the Shutdown hullabaloo is still going on. The Republicans just can't bring themselves to put a "clean" bill to end the shutdown and raise the debt ceiling on the floor for a vote. This is *in spite of the fact* that most polling shows a catastrophic drop in favorable ratings for Republicans (who are being blamed by the public), the Tea Party (who don't care about opinion polls, unless they support a woman's right to not have a right to choose), and Congress (which, at about 5% favorability, is now engaged to their heartthrob, Zero). Conditions are always added, future requirements to hamstring programs, or mandate topical negotiations, are inevitably added. Why? Note the word "Insane" precedes "Clown Posse". Clowns try to make kids of every age laugh. That is, on purpose. "Insane" clowns try to do anything nearly as redeeming, and they certainly don't read polling data. However, they make us laugh anyway - partly at our own misfortune to be saddled by them. 

The reason they can't propose to keep the US government running is because they find themselves in possession of only one form of power : the power of negation. They don't like the ACA, so they propose to negate (i.e. "defund") it. They can't accomplish this negation, so they move on to the next level in the negation ladder: Negation of government itself.

Negation is not a positive power. It cannot create solutions to problems intertwined with the operation of a complex, technological, capitalist, society. Let's say we recognize that the lack of health care for 40+ million people is a "problem." People can view it as a "problem" for different reasons. A progressive secular humanist, or even a Christian, might view it as a problem on humanitarian grounds. A less moral person, one interested in the relative power of the United States, or interested solely increasing the rate of profit in capitalism, might view it as a problem because those millions without healthcare represent lost labor, lost output, and therefore lost profits. Or, in narrow financial terms, one might view it as a problem because it actually costs the society and the government more to provide healthcare through the emergency rooms in which those without consistent healthcare often end up, than it would with a consistent healthcare delivery system that covered those people.

But this is how the Insane Clown Posse views the problem : It's not a problem. When asked about the need for a more consistent national healthcare system, former presidential (and Insane Clown Posse cadet) Mitt Romney said, in effect, that people without health insurance in the US get healthcare when they go to the emergency room nearby. That is, it's not a problem. 26 Republican governors in the US (more than half of the states, but less than half the population) *refused federal money to expand medicaid to cover people who would still be uninsured after ACA is implemented*. That is, those people can go to the emergency rooms like they always have. That is, it will cost those states as much or more to continue to deliver healthcare that way because of this refusal. (Thanks to Jon Stewart for his piece pointing up this piece of insanity). That is, those people will end up dying younger than those with consistent healthcare delivery. That is, there is no problem. That is: Insane.

How is it that such a generous helping of insanity came to control such a large segment of the American Polity? Simple : Vampire Squids. The people who brought us the worldwide financial meltdown. (Are we still melting down or has the wax started to congeal? I can't tell.)

During the really, really, viscous part of the meltdown (2008 and 2009), Matt Taibbi [http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog] wrote a fantastic piece in Rolling Stone in which he described all of the Wall Street mavens and moguls as Vampire Squids, who were more interested in sucking the marrow out of the bones of the world financial system than doing, well, anything that any reasonable person would consider constructive. They, the Vampire Squids, do this because of a subjective belief that their destruction by definition creates something better, which originates from Joseph Schumpeter. [ http://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/creativedestruction.asp ] Note here that 'creative-destruction' is often just destruction for most people. This is especially notable if one is roughly aware of the effects of the Financial Meltdown Dark Carnival, which destroyed about 30 million jobs worldwide - jobs where people built things and/or helped people. We are still waiting for the "creative" part of that destruction. Note here that 'destruction' is the power of negation. Note that this is the same limited form of power exerted by the Insane Clown Posse.

It is these Vampire Squids which funded the groups that support (financially and otherwise) the Tea Party wing of the right wing of the right wing party. The Vampire Squids, for the last 40 or 50 years, have simply negated (unravelled) the common-sense regulation of the financial and banking system which emerged in the aftermath of the Great Depression. It is the Vampire Squids who have negated campaign finance regulations; naturally, since they are a tiny demographic minority the only way to tilt the playing field is to convert money into domination of the political debate, and thereby the political framework itself. Without the money and political domination of the Vampire Squids, you have no Insane Clown Posse in Washington. It is Vampire Squids who negate climate science, because forcing corporations to account for future damage to the habitability of the planet means less (or, no) profit for them. And yes, if this damage isn't stopped, it is negation of us. All of us. Or, at least anything we would recognize as a civilization.

The poster boy for the Vampire Squids is none other than Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs. He, who famously said, at the critical meeting in New York's Federal Reserve building at the height of the Financial Meltdown Dark Carnival - no, not "How can we help stabilize the system?" nor much less "How can we structure this crisis so that less people are negatively affected?" -- but rather: "I want my fucking money." Recently, this poster boy said he was doing "God's work." Amazingly, this comment wasn't really criticized in the financial media very much (indeed, it was praised in some circles. Literally). Or, perhaps that isn't amazing at all. Anyway, one can speculate about whether or not Blankfein remembers the part about the rich man and the eye of the needle in the New Testament. Or, maybe Blankfein is just thinking about the god of the Old Testament (the destructive god of negation). Or, maybe Blankfein doesn't realize that, according to many theologians, Satan also does "God's work."

This is the sort of person at the helm of the world capitalist ship now. Blankfein-Satans, Vampire Squids, and Insane Clown Posses. The problems that the rest of us have will not be solved by them. They are the reason we have those problems.