Aug 8, 2011

Received this e-mail in response to my column from last week. I believe this cancels my statement that the folks who think I am an idiot have stopped reading my stuff.

“Pull out your Merriam-Webster and look up the powerful word "Reification." And no, you don't know the meaning based upon your...columns.

That will clarify for you the real problem in this country. One example: the Supreme Court's decision to make entities out of corporations.

Yes, the country appears doomed. But only because "you people"
(Isn't that Limbaugh's expression?) thrive on ambiguities and abstractions.

Soon the division between the super-rich and the rest of us will become obvious to you, but by then it will be too late.

Fortunately, being in the final stage of COPD, I won't be around to witness it.
And unfortunately, you're too deeply ingrained in a tea-bag mentality. What a shame. I'm sorry to see a fine mind that has gone wanting.                      Friend.”

So I wrote back…

Sorry, but I’ve not had my coffee this morning, so if I seem a bit dense just chalk it up to a caffeine deficiency. In response to your critique of my latest column…I’m not real sure what your point might be. I expect you know what you wanted to say. I’m just gonna have to fake it here, and trust that you will set me straight, as usual. That said…

I don’t listen to Mr. Limbaugh and have very little knowledge of, nor interest in, the tea party folks. Curious how any criticism of the nonsensical rush to bankrupt the country is always met with the same attacks. Isn’t anyone allowed to question the direction we are headed without being accused of being a dupe of some talk show host or Sarah Palen? I got that nonsense from my editor, and another columnist (who should have stayed in East Germany) when I was still with the paper. Who sets out the talking points for this?

I do sometimes toy with abstractions, but attempt to avoid ambiguities when possible. I am aware that the law recognizes corporations as individuals in certain contexts, but I don’t see how that relates to my last column. I have few people I would describe as rich in my circle of friends, and even fewer super rich, but I think I would know one if I saw one. Whether you refer to that rabble of overpaid actors and athletes or to the crooks who brought us the latest credit crisis, you certainly know that I have no use for either. And I don’t care whether it’s the Democans or the Republicrats that are overspending my taxes to corral power and perpetual re-election. They both suck.

I once had to look up the word iconoclast before I replied to Joie’s personal ad in the newspaper, cause I didn’t want to come off as a complete idiot if I didn’t remember it completely. So yeah, I looked up reify before replying to you. And this refresher perplexed me for a moment, for I saw no connection with my column. So I did a search, and way down at the bottom of the page I found reference to the writings of Karl Marx. Apparently, he liked to use the word, and those apologist self-proclaimed intellectuals who have tried to clarify his theories in the wake of the many failures as folks tried to live those theories, and in the process simply clutter up the language with unnecessary jargon, seem to love it.

Wow. I haven’t read Marx in thirty years. History has kinda run off and left him in the dust some time ago, as the carnage of once great nations still smokes following the disasters his thinking brought about. So I pay him little heed. That said, even Marx must have realized that a government that continues to overspend far beyond any hope of repaying its debt is going to crash some day. Certainly, the communists learned that lesson.

Marx would have raised taxes to balance the budget, at least on the folks he didn’t have to kill to gain power. To fund his utopian society, Marx would of course milk the wealthy first, to punish them, and shortly thereafter the rest of us until all were equally broken. But once he had bankrupted a nation he would have had to resort to government oppression, just like all those other folks who took his theories to heart. For once the government goes broke and begins to disappoint the gullible who fell into the trap of trusting it for their every need, they get cranky. And they too must be punished.

Socialism sounds great in the abstract. All them folks sacrificing for others out of the goodness of their hearts, and all leaning into the harness for the good of society. Problem is Marx never took human nature seriously. He never admitted that the people he claimed were so terribly victimized were just as selfish and crooked as the ones who squatted at the top. He attaches all the evil in man to the wealthy, and thus ignores the reality that every other life on earth walks around with that same evil.

Like Rodney King, Marx and his apologists wondered “why can’t we all get along?” But that is a naïve childlike expectation. Each time folks tried to live his theories, they failed, and they ended up crushed by the operational arm of the left, communism, or some other form of totalitarianism (consider the Nazis), to keep the righteously angry folks in line. And what a joy that was.

Marx’s notion that folks are too stupid to see when they are being duped into working by their very freedom, which I guess sorta sums up his whole reification theory, won’t wash. For they are far less anesthetized by promises than are those others who expect that all should come to those who merely sit and wait (while drinking).

I’d like to see some solution to our credit problems without having our nation end up living under marshal law, but I don’t have much hope for that. This country thrived and its citizens faired better than in any nation in history for two hundred years. But that success stemmed entirely from the ambition and hard work of a bunch of free people, not by the interference of government and its oppression, or by those who would sacrifice all to an overreaching government because they find that easier than striving to succeed on their own.

 Once people fall victim to total reliance upon government for their every want and need, societies and economies grind to a halt. Ambition, despite its obvious drawbacks, moves society forward. We are losing this virtue in our nation, and we are trading it in for a lowest common denominator mediocrity. And this is a shame.