The Best Rant I've Read In A Long Time

by **heyjt** » Sun Jan 22, 2006 4:44 pm

I believe this is the best social commentary I've read in a long time. "The Revenge of The Mutt People", by Joe Bageant is a striking essay about the hopelessness and pride of the impoverished decendants of Scots/Irish stock found in rural America. Holy crap, this guy can write! I can't say I completely agree with everything but he is brilliant in the way he describes a part of our culture that most people would rather sweep under the rug. A warning-- it's crudely descriptive and quite long, but well worth the read... <a href="http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2006/01/revenge_of_the_.html">www.joebageant.com/joe/20..._the_.html</a>

by **zangtang** » Sun Jan 22, 2006 5:39 pm

well worth the read! hard as nails

by **marykmusic** » Sun Jan 22, 2006 6:16 pm

In case you ever wondered where torturers like Lynndie Englund came from, and why. Here's one of the most succint explanations I've heard in a long time. --MaryK

by **chiggerbit** » Sun Jan 22, 2006 6:18 pm

We called that branch of the family "Scotch/Irish" (yeah, I know that isn't the "proper" term, but we used lots of different words and terms than other people). And we didn't kick our chickens to death--we put a broom handle across their necks as we held them upside down by the feet, and then we pulled their heads off.

by **manxkat** » Sun Jan 22, 2006 6:35 pm

Yeah, that pretty well says it. This guy is quite believable too as he lives in Winchester, Virginia, and hangs with the locals there. If you don't know Winchester, let's just say there are an abundance of chicken torturers there.

by **marykmusic** » Sun Jan 22, 2006 6:36 pm

We considered "that side of the family" lace-curtain Scots-Irish, and I remember Grandad killing chickens by grabbing their heads and then spinning their bodies around. One time would do it. Then we had that moment of hilarity as the headless chicken ran in a circle while the blood pumped out. And "those others" who still used the N-word were considered white trash; not related to MY family. Of course, we were heavily outnumbered. --MaryK

by **finishedqq** » Sun Jan 22, 2006 7:13 pm

Just to point out that the punishment for all crime in Scotland until 1851 was transportation to the colonies. The reason American colonists were seen as second class and unworthy of a vote was the attititude that the majority of them were criminals, prostitutes and their children. "Sir, they are a race of convicts, and ought to be thankful for anything we allow them short of hanging." Samuel Johnson on Americans. The rest of the Scots were mainly indentured servants (basically white slaves) in places like the Carolinas early on. In the first part of the nineteenth century the highland clearances moved great numbers of the poorest crofters to America and Canada to make way for more profitable sheep. This was followed by the Irish potato famine where millions of the least able peasants again moved to America. There was no doubt a very deliberate policy by the British aristocracy to get rid of the least productive, worst educated parts of the population to the colonies plus of course the criminals. That's where the white trash came from. I Think Lindy England's family probably came from England by the way!

by **Pirx** » Mon Jan 23, 2006 3:10 am

Wow, I'll need a shower after reading that. He's spot on with many observations, and those attitudes are not confined to the rural areas either. I will have to forward this to some fellow mutts. Thanks (I think)

by **Pirx** » Mon Jan 23, 2006 3:21 am

<blockquote>Quote:<hr>Just to point out that the punishment for all crime in Scotland until 1851 was transportation to the colonies.<hr></blockquote> Yeah, my ancestors fled Scotland to AVOID prosecution...and where did they go? To the colonies. Go figure.

by **sceneshifter** » Mon Jan 23, 2006 4:32 am

dear joe bageant - thank you for your writing - i greet you as a brother - i hear your pain, your [righteous] anger, your detachment and responsibility and maturity i think that you might have the passion, intelligence, love and sorrow for the human condition we are all in, to be interested in my points, which i think are crucial to the survival and the happiness of humanity, this species still 98.4% identical to chimps i have much that i would like to share with you - i dont know where to begin your writing confirms many points i have striven to make - and gives the gritty feel that is needed to supplement my words - to give them realism - my words at www.globalhappiness.org [not an org] you have studied and reflected much the following partly reviews what we all know the root fact is that wealth and poverty have been growing for millenia, and your writing vividly portrays the effects - we all know 'the rich get richer and the poor get poorer' - it has been going on at least since the invention of money - and terrible are the effects - pay, in this sad mad bad world that human intelligence and stupidity has made, today ranges from one dollar a fortnight to one billion dollars a fortnight - about as far from justice and equality, liberty and democracy, decency and fraternity, as you could get - injustice is a fancy word, a euphemism, for theft - justice is equal pay for equal work - the rich work less and less and the poor work more and more - everyone can see that, if you have a community of say, 1000 people, all working more or less equally hard, all giving more or less equal amounts of their time to create the goods and services that we all use, and in that community, hourly pay ranges very very widely, you will get violence, and all sorts of problems - the rich are thieves - and thieving makes people angry - how do you and most people react if they find someone in their house, stealing something? - with anger, with violence - with righteous anger, with righteous violence - we at least want to see the thief to be punished so violence in the world is proportional to theft - and theft is very great - few people are aware that over 90% of earnings are stolen every year - about US$65 trillion out of an annual world income of [2005AD, doubling every 12 years or so] US$75 trillion goes, not to the people who did the work that created the goods that the money represents, but to people who didnt do the work that created the goods that the money represents everybody works more or less equally hard per hour - plus or minus say 10% - but hourly pay ranges from 1c to a billion cents, that is, $10 million - a theft/injustice factor of one billion - and violence proportional isnt it time - or rather long overdue - that we made ALL theft illegal? - there is enough work done each year to pay everyone - including housewives and tertiary students - US$15 an hour - for every family in the world to have an annual income of US$75,000 - a family could save US$25,000 a year and retire after 40 years with a million - which would give an annual income of US$50,000 forever at 5% and violence - reaction to theft - would drop dramatically, enormously - and ignorance, bigotry and brutality ditto a big enemy is custom - we have had 1000s of years to get used to wealth and poverty and violence - we think of them as natural, inevitable - 99% of people are underpaid - paid less than a fairshare, paid less than US$15 an hour - 75% of americans are underpaid, stolen from, paid less than US$15 an hour - therefore 99% of people, and 75% of americans, will be financially benefitted by equal pay per hour - equality should be popular with them - the world's workers will be on the receiving end of 10 times as much money - the 90% of money that the 1% overpaid steal will return to its creators and 100% of humans will benefit from reduced violence, ignorance, bigotry and brutality obviously, the bigger thief you are, the more people you have trying to steal from you - the greater your security costs are - and the violence is escalative, it grows and grows and grows, as the fight goes back and forth, until it eats all the money stolen - the richer you are, the sooner you fall - assassination and kidnap and corporate infighting and hostile takeovers happen to rich people - the goths and vandals head for rome - the terrorists [american or foreign] hit new york justice equals happiness, theft equals misery - we have the most superhyperextreme injustice or theft - therefore WE CAN BE SUPERHYPEREXTREMELY HAPPIER - our world can be better to a degree we cannot imagine, it is so far beyond our experience and the experience of human history we are all victims of a fatal side-effect of money - money automatically tends to injustice, to theft - if there was no greed or dishonesty in the world, money would still drift from earners to nonearners - we started specialising in work, and exchanging goods we made to get the goods we each want - money facilitates exchange - it is portable, divisible, nonperishable - it is an artificial, ideal exchange item - the fatal side-effect comes in because no one can know the exact value of anything - every pair of things exchanged have unequal value - it cant be avoided, tho we try to minimise it - so a transfer of wealth, equal to the difference in value of the things exchanged, happens in every transaction - over billions of transactions daily, over time, money drifts silently and automatically, ceaselessly, from earners to nonearners - the effect speeded up by greed and theft - everyone trying to up price and down costs - everyone happy to receive as much as they can, with no limit - no one aiming to get out of the social pool of wealth no more and no less than they put in by their work - no one aware that theft means violence ever-escalative - no one aware that war and weaponry have grown for millenia because of theft - deliberate and illegal theft, and automatic and silent and legal theft the goods are pooled because everyone specialises in work - but then, if everyone tries to take out as much as they can without limit, there is much for the few, and injustice, violence and brutality for the many - and money is power, so the richer have more power to get more money, so the inequality accelerates the american dream was founded on limitation of fortunes - the first thing they did after signing the declaration of independence was try to limit fortunes, by prohibiting entail and primogeniture and fixing clergy salaries - it was obvious to thinking americans like jefferson that the european tyranny they fled from depended on overpay - theft - no overpay, no tyranny - defeated by the corporation, which jefferson and lincoln warned america against - now america is as tyrannous as the europe they fled from with their dream of ending tyranny - jefferson thought a revolution to destroy theft was necessary every 20 years - can such a vast change towards survival and happiness be effected? - can humanity learn to abhor and fear injustice and theft, legal as well as illegal, as the root of 99.9% of human misery and danger? - well, 99% will be better off financially - 100% will be better off by survival and superhyperextreme happierness - how insane are we? - how much can people understand? - how much thoughtfulness, thinkingness, maturity, responsibility is there in human nature? - we would seem to be amply intelligent enough to grasp these blazing, glaring, shouting facts - intelligent enough for 10% of us to grasp these facts, and for 90% to follow the 10% bellwhethers the great enemy is the inertia of custom - many people feel that if it isnt customary, it isnt right - many people have as little power to question the status quo as animals have - although we have moved from nature to the artificiality of job-specialisation and money, we carry with us the faith in the status quo that the other animals have - we used intelligence to alter nature, but are illequipped to use intelligence to alter the artificial we created - the bellwhethers who led us into money have to lead us out of legal theft major ways of legal theft: a person can buy a piece of land in a wilderness for beads, others can make that land valuable by building a city around it, and the owner gets rich - then there is the scandalous and mad situation of the money power being in private hands, because the people did not have enough knowledge to understand how bad that was: the moneymakers control the money supply, making money cheap and dear when they will, and so can buy when money is cheap and sell when money is dear, and thus repeatedly, endlessly pump money from the nation to their pockets scarcity puts prices up, oversupply pulls prices down, so the rich and powerful manipulate scarcity and oversupply to make expensive and cheap - close down the country so people are forced into cities, creating slums and oversupply of labour - control food to make food dear then new technology is always scarce - the demand is there, but the supply is young - so new technology is a surefire way to pull money from earners to nonearners - electricity compared to gas, computers compared to filing clerks on the assumptions that no one can work more than 100 hours average a week for 50 years, and that no one can work more than 10% harder than the average worker per unit of time, and the fact that the world average pay is US$15 an hour, we can know that the most a person can truly earn in a lifetime is US$4 million - minus a lifetime's spending we could choose to say further that it is not good for any person to work more than 50 hours a week, and so bring down the maximum fortune to US$2 million minus a lifetime's minimum spending - then no one could have more than US$2 million more than they have earned - overwork is theft from self, family and community the advantages of justice are myriad - i list 58 major advantages - but we need consider only: no tyranny, no theft, no violence, no slavery, no unfreedom, no undemocracy, no need for revolutions, no taught brutality, minimal ignorance and bigotry, no giants of overpay and overpower treating people like ants the more equality there is, the more capital there is for investment - extreme rich-poor countries have zero capital formation the more equality there is, the faster incomes grow - lower violence costs history is unanimous that equality is beneficial, theft is fatal - it is the blaring lesson of history we have not yet heard, though it is obvious to all: everyone will agree that, if a government rearranged incomes to range very very widely per unit of work, you will immediately have extreme and ever-escalating violence, and damage to every facet of human life everyone will agree that if you set 100 children grabbing as many as they can of 1000 sweets, and they can grab from each other too, that you will have 100 desperate unhappy children, all stealing, all stolen from, endlessly - change the scenario from sweets to food, and violence will be greater everyone can see that if everyone goes mad and tries to be top of a flagpole, you will have everyone, from top to bottom of the heap, being trampled from above and pulled down at from below - incomparably worse than everyone standing on the ground in equality and justice, no one being trampled or pulled down at can enough people learn? - are enough unhidebound in their thinking to see the blaring? - can enough be done with the 1.6% we differ from chimps to pull us out from war and weaponry escalation to extinction, tomorrow? and yet, everyone seems to be programmed to switch off when limitation of fortunes is mentioned - like gamblers gambling away the housekeeping money, the faith in wealth is enormous - the higher wealth goes, the better we like it - the enormous damage to ourselves we do not see - no one looks down - at the 90% who are paid between a 10th and a 1000th of what they contribute to social wealth by their work, at the 99% who can get out less than they put in to the social pool of wealth - no one thinks of the violence that must be generated by such enormous theft - no one sees that wealth is a crime, the greatest crime - for it is theft, and then it is murder of millions, for 50 million would not die each year by starvation and war except for overpay wealth, and then it is traitorous, for it brings every nation to decline and fall and death - communism, taking everything off everyone and giving it to the state, that is, to the top man, was the most extreme theft and it generated the most violence and terrorism, state and private, and brought the soonest and hardest fall - america, where 50% of people have fortunes less than $2000, is only somewhat better in degree, somewhat slower to fall britain raided the world, and became such a focus of revenge, that it slid from top to middle in less than 100 years - before britain, it was spain, and then holland - in the 20th century america arose and in the 21st century, atom bomb permitting, it will fall - in the 21st century japan and/or china will arise, and in the next century fall - the brief crests on a very seasick ride for us all - if the ocean was as rough as our injustice, the ocean would be wetting the moon - even if the moon were ten times further away - average depth of ocean is 4 kilometres, highest hourly pay is a million times average - hence crests at 4,000,000 kilometres - moon is only 400,000 kilometres from what i have seen, chimpanzees are a reckless animal - certainly lions get the hell out as soon as they think they are going to get injured - how was it that germany, so recently humbled and enfeebled, could take on the world for a second time? - recklessness 'the nation built on injustice cannot stand' - how long will we try to prove this wrong? none of the reasons for paying anyone a higher than average hourly payrate - business risk, responsibility, merit, brains, skill, experience - stand up to scrutiny if you pay tertiary students for studying, you dont in justice have to pay them a premium ever after for having studied even if any of the reasons given for paying higher than average hourly payrates did stand up, it would be necessary to prohibit it in the name of survival and happiness - inequality only grows, and grows and grows and grows - you can only have justice or extreme injustice - we allow them to steal, and then they beat us into the ground at will with their power - are we mega-masochistic, or just duh-duh dumb? - all necessities and millions of desires are obtained with fairpay, so overpay can add little to happiness - and so very much to misery - both overpay and underpay bring misery - we can destroy both - as we can get rid of humps and hollows in our roads by putting the humps in the hollows would US$15 an hour for every worker in the world, including housewives and students, be bad? - be worse than what we have? - no, a million times better, even if it were unjust - surely equality of man means that if two people sacrifice equal amounts of their time and life to create wealth by work, that they should be treated equally? - isnt saying: an hour of your time and life is worth less than someone else's, the greatest insult, and invitation to a blood nose? - when you create a class that is so insulted, arent we breeding danger for ourselves? hitlerian anti-intellectualism and the cultural revolution in china were revenge against the brainy who had demanded an unfair share of power and privilege - stealing is bad for your health - the losers you make by theft are not angels why should anyone be paid for having received gifts from nature? - such payments are a tax or fine or theft on the rest without as many gifts - even if it were true the gifted should receive payment for those gifts, why should the less gifted pay it? we think that we can injure without generating reaction - without making enemies - we think that we can steal without polluting our environment with violence and unsafety - we think that people are nonreactive - the bully feels safe - but he is only thick - even the totally selfish sensible person will minimise his enemies by being very nice to all, by being solicitous to repair any injury he causes - the golden rule is just simple good sense - no one is a doormat - anyone can kill if we can teach this lesson to just one person a month, we will reach everyone in the world in 33 months - just by word of mouth - and at least 99% will be very keen for the change, if they can understand, and if they can get the blind baseless faith in the status quo out of their heads - and when 99% understand its enormous advantages, they can prevail against the mega-insane hard core of the 1% who cant see sense - if 99% see sense, the hardcore insane cannot buy enough protection to survive without releasing their illgotten gains on the other hand, we have watched war and weaponry escalate for 1000s of years without alarm or fear or thought - we live in the presence of the power to destroy the planet 60 times over without alarm or fear or thought - no peace foundation yet knows that injustice is the cause of war and other violence - all socalled race and religious wars have an economic element - get a situation where there is race or religion and no economic disparity and you get no violence - the robbed collect under a race or religious banner, become pawns of demagogues striving for wealth and power - christians massacring christians in the second century over whether jesus was like god or the same as god - it was just a powerstruggle between bishops the most extreme poverty perpetually generates the most vicious and inhuman theft, trains the most mindless and evil fighters, who then claw and tear their way up through every level of society till they reach the top where they fight it out with every other meanest toughest fighters perpetually arriving at the top from the bottom - like the mafia - damaging every class with the numbers game, prohibition alcohol and now drugs - so that every inequitous country is led by the greatest haters, the most mindless and most reckless, not by the greatest lovers of humanity, like lincoln and jefferson - naturally the poorest are most attracted to the richest, so the richest have to fight most furiously, and fall fastest - where is intelligence? - where is maturity? - where is response-ability, ability to respond? this is the insight einstein didnt have - maybe, when it is pointed out, it is obvious, and will take like wildfire - or 100 genius human monkeys will get it and suddenly everyone will get it anyway, i write to you, a voice in the whirldermess calling to another voice in the worlddirtnest an idea can change things overnight - if hedgehogs got the idea of traffic, hedgehog fatalities would stop overnight if a leaf poisons your child, think big - chop down the whole tree even monkeys learned to copy the monkey who thought of washing the sand off her potato if everyone had money, there would be ten times as many brainy people improving the world - 80% of medical research money goes to finding generics to get round patents, instead of going into real research - so medicine would go ahead at 50 times the speed the benefits are endless, the disadvantages zero 'the country with the least injustice will stand the longest' - therefore, to be a patriot, you have to pursue the illegalising of all theft the highest paid gets 50,000 times as much as the average, on average, and peaks at 1,000,000 times the average - and we have not yet the notion of overpay, or that this is theft - a person does one hour's work and gets paid a million hours' work for it, and we dont know yet we are being robbed - obviously the rest of us have to put in one million hours' work and get out one - every hour people cannot think that justice could shower benefits on them - they are convinced that pursuing justice would be a sacrifice of their interests, that it would benefit others, not themselves - i think we can thank false religion - religion totally corrupted by power - for this fatal falsehood it took us 100 years to get safety belts into all parts of cars - and for decades parents wore belts and left the kids in the back loose - so that their bodies hit the parents with the force of a sack of fertiliser dropped fifty feet - we were so sensitive, we couldnt bear to look at photos of accidents, so we delayed learning and prolonged suffering - we chose being in accidents to looking at photos of accidents - and yet no other animals are insane, are selfdestructive - where did we get it from? - total mystery - we are the most imaginative animal, but we dont imagine hitting a windscreen at 50 mph i think planet earth may be a dumping ground for the galaxy's incurably insane - they send a ship by every now and then to see if anyone has gone sane - and get them off the planet before the insanity drives them nuts - im expecting the ship pick me up any day now it just occurs to me - a new idea! - that people reason thus: i am sane, so any and all sane schemes for happiness have already occurred to me - so any scheme suggested to me must be faulty - somehow, somewhere - i dont even need to check it out - that's why they dont check it out! 'love of money is the root of all evil' - it doesnt mean it is wrong to enjoy your paycheck - it means love of overpay, love of others' earnings, love of theft, love of money for nothing [except the violence it brings] is the root of all evil [or 99.9% of evils] - 'let no one be paid without working' - this we do not apply to the overpaid - although overpay is pay without working - [unemployment is another trick of the overpaid - keep unemployment to keep workers cowed although underpaid - unemployment can be solved at any time, just by lowering the point at which time-and-a-half kicks in, so that employers will employ more people rather than pay overtime - the overtime point should go up and down with the business cycles - everything in the economy goes up and down, so the overtime point should too - so many problems would be solved if the intelligent were not pushed out of overpaid professions by the greedy aggressive] society has to do better than nature to justify its existence - and in nature everyone has work - so work is an unalienable right ah, just imagine the world with every family in the world on US$75,000 [doubling every 12 years] - [more or less, as they work more or less than the average]! goodbye, goodbye, selfhurting hairless chimpanzee! - my ship has come in - im to spend 6 months on a halfway planet being debriefed and deloused, and then i can join the sane - remember: always trust yourself, even if you make a million mistakes - never donate your body to the purposes of another - for that is suicide of the mind - never join anything where you are forbidden to have your own opinions - never join anything where there is force not love!

by **finishedqq** » Mon Jan 23, 2006 10:09 am

"Yeah, my ancestors fled Scotland to AVOID prosecution" What kind of criminals were they, murderers, sheep stealers, what ? Paradoxically one of the reasons for American wealth is the intellectual defectiveness and lack of education of its citizens (Aldous Huxley wrote Brave New World after visiting a Ford car factory). You don't need to be intelligent to work in a car factory, quite the reverse. Americans still work much harder and for longer hours than Europeans. They are conditioned to believe that working like a slave for someone else is virtuous. Having the worst education system in the industrialised world is a very deliberate policy which perpetuates the above. Now it's coming to an end, even Scots, Irish and African former slaves are more expensive than the Chinese.

by **Pirx** » Mon Jan 23, 2006 11:49 am

<blockquote>Quote:<hr>What kind of criminals were they, murderers, sheep stealers, what ?<hr></blockquote> Cannibals. And they refused to wear skirts. um... kilts Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=pirx@rigorousintuition>Pirx</A> at: 1/23/06 8:51 am

by **finishedqq** » Mon Jan 23, 2006 12:45 pm

You mean this guy ? <a href="http://www.barryoneoff.co.uk/html/sawney_bean.html">www.barryoneoff.co.uk/htm..._bean.html</a> Cannibals in Scotland. Everyone has heard of, or seen the films about, Hannibal Lector. You may have been horrified at the thought of some of his crimes. "Hannibal the cannibal", as he is better known was a fictional character, although there have been many like him in real life. People actually kill, and eat parts of the victim, but none, be they real or fictitious, could ever match the deeds and way of life, of a man named Sawney Bean. Although this happened many years ago, it is still one of the worlds most horrific true stories. Are you sure you can handle it...? By the way, the Scotland people read about today was invented by Walter Scott and others for Victorian English tourists including the kilt. I believe it was originally a primitive wrap around garment. Queen Victoria spent her summer holidays at Balmoral Castle near Braemar and Scotland became fashionable. It was also a way of reinventing real Highland culture as a harmless artefact having been destroyed at the battle of Culloden after the disasterous Catholic '45 rebellion. A rebellion Scots should be glad was put down, it would have sent Scotland back to the dark ages of popism and the divine right of kings (Charles Edward Stuart, the young pretender, Bonnie Prince Charlie). cheers

by **Pirx** » Mon Jan 23, 2006 1:14 pm

<blockquote>Quote:<hr>You mean this guy ?<hr></blockquote> I hear the whole isle is chock full of cannibals, they only picked on the Beane family because they lived in a cave. <blockquote>Quote:<hr>Are you sure you can handle it...?<hr></blockquote> With the right sauce, mmm, better than chicken. <blockquote>Quote:<hr>I believe it was originally a primitive wrap around garment.<hr></blockquote> I'd heard that, silly Highlanders, always dressing funny. Our clan had a place on the beach and wore pants.

by **PeterofLoneTree** » Mon Jan 23, 2006 1:39 pm

My introduction to Joe's writings came with this Counterpunch article: "OrdinaryPeople are Starting to Ask.... Is Our President a Whackjob? Does It Matter?" <a href="http://counterpunch.org/bageant07012004.html">counterpunch.org/bageant07012004.html</a>