Article: 261788 of talk.bizarre
From: jhw@wetware.com (strychnine)
Newsgroups: talk.bizarre
Subject: "Thanks for a nation of finks" --wsb
Date: 04 Dec 1995 22:59:47 GMT
Organization: Dr. Strychnine's Field Lab and Home For Wayward Pathogens
Lines: 124
Message-ID: <JHW.95Dec4145947@wetware.com>
[[ This was SUPPOSED to be posted on 01 Dec 95, but DEMONS ate it. ]]
Once again the bile has risen up past my molars, and I am impelled to
screed about The Nameless Horror feasting on the ignorance and
depravity of the people. Sometimes I wonder why I do it, because it
never helps, except to add yet another reason to the ever growing list
of reasons to think I'm totally screwless.
What has me all wound up again, you ask? The Same Old Shit really,
but this time it had to come from my father. You see, here in God's
Amurrica, we recently went through our annual Thanksgiving holiday, a
"family oriented" event mired in ancient ritual stupidity and noxious
historical revisionism. Almost nobody admits to liking it, but
practically everybody participates. Even the Korean immigrants who
proudly refuse to learn English (and rightly so, I think) get down
with the whole New England style roast turkey dinner. It seems the
opportunity to get the whole family in a room together and do a
psychological dance macabre over dinner is something that has
universal appeal. I expect my foreign readers may have some parallel
they can draw in their own twisted cultures.
It had to start with my father, so instead of taking it from him, I
gave it to him first. About the time it was time to go around the
room and say a little something about what each of us was "thankful"
for, I opted to say I was thankful that Judge Pfaezler recently struck
down one of the more fascist provisions in California's Proposition
187 earlier last month. I said it with a big grin on my face as if to
say without saying what everyone knew: "The Political Follies will
begin... NOW!"
The first rathole into which that conversation went (after I kept him
from straying onto some weird topic he got from God knows where about
the First Lady having someone arrested for giving her an eagle
feather), was the mess surrounding the upcoming California Civil
Rights Initiative. This is the referendum in my little shire that
would, if it passed, ban all "preferential treatment" in employment
based on race, sex, etcetera.
You might think this is a good idea. A lot of people in California
do. The polls say it's a sure winner, at least a sure winner among
the kind of people to whom the government listens (and, strangely,
they are the only people who find voting a worthwhile experience
anymore). But the trouble is the only kind of "preferential
treatment" that's still legal in California is "outreach programs,"
you know, that kind of program that the U.S. Army has to try to recruit
more diverse personnel. The people who drafted the California Civil
Rights Initiative reportedly considered language briefly that would
exempt these "outreach programs," but they eventually rejected it --
one can only guess, because they honestly believe that employers and
government shouldn't be allowed to promote diversity in the workplace.
Because you KNOW how evil "diversity" is, right?
You have to love these wacky conservatives -- they're like the
characters in a bad Hong Kong kung fu movie (not one of the good ones,
but one of the really cheesy ones that never get translated into
English and only run in Chinatown walk-in theatres that don't have any
seats). It's us and them. And them are all scum. Let's kill and eat
them. Yum.
Oh but wait. There's more. About the time Dad got bored with
championing the rights of the elite to feed on the ever growing mass
of the permanent underclass, he made a quick tack away from the
"affirmative action" tarbaby, and went straight for "privatizing
education." Bad move, Dad. You should have stayed with the mindless
screed about non-existent quotas and reverse discrimination. I'm
going to crush your head on "school vouchers."
School vouchers. This is the crazy Libertarian bugfuckery that's
gotten popular lately as a way to dismantle the pride of the United
States of America, its public school system. The basic idea: sell all
the public schools to greedy capitalist bastards with cheap suits and
bad teeth, then take some significant fraction of the money the
government used to spend on the school system and hand it out to
parents in the form of vouchers redeemable by private schools.
Might as well just write a check, but no, these gits actually don't
see the parallel between "school vouchers" and "food stamps." Why?
Because they're lying pigs with acetone for blood and the evil of the
nine hells blowing through their twisted brains like El Nino did
through Malibu during the 80's. "Instead of making sure everybody has
enough to eat, we'll just give everybody stamps they can trade for
food, but gee-whiz Bob, those evil wogs just keep blowing it on booze
and loud music, so maybe we should just let them try to steal their
food. Maybe we'll be able to catch them at it and put more of them
into our nifty cool prisons we built." Oh no-- no parallel there.
Check it out: my Dad is a big advocate of school vouchers, and I
asked him if he would support a voucher program with a twist. You get
the voucher, but it's only good at schools that meet government
standards, and if you use it, the school isn't allowed to charge you
extra for anything else-- it has to cover all the tuition, books, lab
supplies, all the rest. Know what he said? That he didn't see any
difference between that and what we have now.
Except it would mean the government wouldn't have any teachers on the
payroll, which is what they wanted out of school vouchers anyway,
right? No. Not good enough. Doesn't go far enough. People have to
be able to add their own money to the voucher or it's no good. So you
see, he isn't really for "privatizing education," he's for subsidizing
private schools with the money currently used to pay for public
schools. (Which, it is now widely known, didn't work in Baltimore.
It failed like a baseball bat made of raw pork sausage. You may have
to dig for this news item.)
At least he's open about it now. I finally got him to admit that he
isn't satisfied with keeping the abject poor locked in poverty -- he
wants their children enshackled with it too. Good for him. I'm glad
he's able to face it about himself. Now if only the rest of his
mutant jackal Libertarian nightmare pals from the Cato Institute and
their drooling wannabe toadlicking bullethead friends on syndicated
talk radio would join him. I'd be a lot less irritated.
Yeah, right-- then I'd finally get around to roasting these dickheads
about their wanting the U.S. to withdraw from the United Nations. "Uh
huhh hhuh, hey Beavis-- let's like... burn down the Capitol or
something." "Yeah! Yeah! That'd be COOL!"
Don't get me started. I'm trying to grow old gracefully.
--
j h woodyatt <jhw@wetware.com>
"eat more PANCAKES!" --eric scheirer