Tuesday, May 15, 2007

First Post!

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This is my first post on my new blog. I think a good introduction to me and some what this blog is going to be mostly about (although it lacks in my other interest in skepticism of paranormal and pesudo-science.)

The Betrayal of the Betrayal

OR
How I became Disenfranchised with the Liberal Punk Movement.
Back in 2000 I became politically charged after hearing a speech from Jello Biafra someone had sent me over the internet about marijuana laws (Grow More Pot) and began diving into his other works. I couldn't help myself agreeing with about 98% of what Jello said in most of them, and found myself to be a progressive like him. Mostly because of my ideology that any use of force is wrong and unjust and government should say out of peoples private lives. Both are values I still hold to this day. I became very involved with the local Green Party and helped Peter Camejo's campaign by volunteering both of his gubernatorial campaigns in California.
With all the problems plaguing us; war, poverty, invasion of privacy, gun violence, terrorism, corporate crime, and on and on it was only instinct that government should step up to the plate and fix these problem. Why? Well they're here to protect us. No other system could possibly eliminate these issues, right? Well I thought so, even before I heard Jello's comforting voice assuring that we follow his plan to salvation.
I couldn't help myself getting on the bandwagon, especially during the 2004 election and finding myself to be on the A.B.B. (Anybody But Bush) train to nowhere because after all Bush was evil. He was stupid! Bushisms were scattered all over my wall from a calender of bad Bush quotes. He was wrong and immoral! I mean to be anti-terrorism and to allow the assault weapons ban to expire.
This would be my first presidential election I would be participating in. in 2000 I was only a month shy of being 18. Otherwise I would have voted for Nader. Now that I know where I stand I know I made a huge error. I see now that neither Bush, nor Kerry, nor Nader, nor Cobb were the correct answer to the problems in America.
Living in Southern California in my whole youth I got to see the first hand failures of government "solutions" in play. I even used the term "good enough for government work" freely and with out thinking about my own personal politics. I seen my friends denied government assistance when it was most needed at a time that Old Dirty Bastard from The Wu-Tang Clan was collecting welfare checks at a time when he was a millionaire. I seen me and my own classmates struggling in public school. A teacher at a continuation high school deliberately throwing my homework and classwork away, getting caught, and resuming work as if nothing happened because of tenure. The gun violence in a state with some of the most restrictive gun laws in the nation. The growing methamphetamine problems in the Riverside/San Bernardino areas. Riversides ban on cyber gaming cafes because of it attracted "gang and criminal activity." My grandmother fighting for almost every well deserved social security check. The government's inaction during the Enron scandal and the California energy "crisis." I could go on all day!
So how could a band that wrote such gems as "The Plan" write crap like "Franco Un-American" and allow it to be played on the radio? How could other bands who sang the praises of anarchism and minarchism stab the punk community in the back for economic slavery to pay for a nanny state, and why did I follow along? Simple answer to that: publik skoo.
The very system I was promoting was a center for socialist brainwashing. The reason the left shouts that the second amendment is too vague and the right shouts we need assault rifles to shoot deer is a direct product of 60 years of government indoctrination centers controlling the minds of the youth to become obedient mind slaves for big government. The founders wanted us to have guns to make the government fear us and to be ready for the next revolution against our own government. That and along with the bastard idea that America being a democracy when it was clearly expressed by our founders that it was indeed a constitutional republic and that democracies were the "tyranny of the majority." Also, like any government agency, is is doomed to fail. Take for example; me.
I was the kid while other kids were playing tag in the streets I was reading encyclopedias. Before I entered kindergarten, I had already devoured the 1958 Book of Knowledge with full comprehension. So why was it I had a 1.5 grade average in high school and had to weasel out with a G.E.D.? Not because I was stupid or lazy, but because the school was stupid and lazy. Even with the billions of dollars California pumps into this sinking titanic, it was only getting worse. Even to this day they are using health books from the 1970's.
Why not let people keep the money they spend on income and property taxes to send them to private schools that will compete for the best education at the lowest cost and have private charities help educate the less fortunate? Because people are selfish and greedy, therefor we need to hold guns to peoples and and force the money out of them to indoctrinate them into their style of thinking right? Because we all know, the IRS is very good at saying please and thank you.
But wait! That's capitalism! Capitalism is evil! It's leaves the poor and unfortunate people in the gutter and transfers wealth to the hands of a few. We can't have that! We need saftey nets and security blankets and mommy government to protect us from evil capitalistic swines here to rob us of our essential living supplies. YOU DON'T WANT THEM TO PRIVATISE WATER DO YOU?!
Sure why not? Why not end the water monopoly the government has for competition? If you have one water supply ran by the government the price will be set and you have no choice but to pay it. OR You can have 3 companies providing water to your area and they can compete for the cleanest and cheapest water. Also wouldn't have to wait years for the government bureaucrats to rubber stamp things like better filtration.

Sure we know what Bechtel did in Bolivia when it "privatized" it's water supply and the citizens rioted because of the insane amount per gallon it cost to buy it. What we fail to realize is this is not privatization. It's mercentilism which is government handing out government functions to 1 private company and funding it with tax money. As with government ran programs, it cannot work because of lack of incentives to provide the best service for the lowest price as would true privatization would in a completive free market with out government regulations or control.

Well what about the ecosystem? Surely we are killing our selfs with pollution that causes global warming and cutting down all the trees at an alarming rate, right?! Surely government can help in this area? Right?

WRONG!
[Update: I no longer subscribe to global warming denialism. While I do think that global warming is a fact and CO2 plays a heavy role, I do has some slight reservations about how much of a role humans play and if the state can be trusted or even be effective curbing it. I'll leave the rest untouched for historical sake] 
If we were to assume that CO2 that cars and factories emit are the greenhouse gases that cause global warming we would learn that the vast majority of the problem comes from 2 main sources:

Volcanoes and governments including our own.

Yea, governments and natural occurrences are the prime evils to our world. So why hand them the power to stop it? Not to mention the fact that not all scientists are in agreement with the global warming debate. In fact, nearly half of scientists who study climate change contend that this is simply a natural progression of the earth's heat cycle and the main 2 contributors of the warmth we are seeing now is water vapor and sunlight. These people are also listed on some IPCC reports as supporters of these theories even after they requested to be removed from the list because they "didn't listen to their side." That didn't stop the IPCC from printing it anyways as if these guys really did support the global warming myth. Besides, I don't know if you all know that. You know that stuff we breathe out? That's CO2. You know that temperature Al Gore keeps saying will melt the polar ice caps and kill us all? That was exceeded by leaps and bounds in the middle ages yet Italy and England wasn't submerged. Rather England benefited from the warmth by higher crop yields and boosting their economy.

And while we can point that Republican dominated Texas with it's deregulated pollution standards made Huston one of the most polluted cities in America, we can show that the Inland Empire in California, with it's highest pollution regulations is the highest pollution rate.
It took me a year of self transition to realize that capitalism wasn't so bad, it was only muddied by the socialists and the cronie "capitalists" in Washington to make me think that big government was essential for a stable country. Yet the Left and the Right point the finger at the other and blame them for their own inadequacies, when they need to see that the problem was the the ass they seen in the mirror every morning.
Best I ask now that Jello Biafra finally released another spoken work album. I was much anticipating this album for quite sometime. In that time I found out how full of shit Karl Marx's ideas were and how they couldn't stop the capitalist behemoth that was fact. We can spit whine cry and moan how bad capitalism is; we can only see that as it is defined by the Austrian School of Economics is how money works. Period. It's not just an ideology. Even within socialism, communism and liberalism it is the only tool that had ever kept these systems alive more than 50 years.
I urge the liberal punk community to look at yourselves and your surroundings. Is this punk rawk? Is anarchy bloating government and stealing from you for what you can do in a free market or charities? Can you find a single government program that hasn't hurt the very people it's intended to help? Can you use force to achieve peace and piece of mind? Is anarchy trying to increase power to the very system you know to fail? What has happened to the punk community? How did this come to play? More importantly:
Did I betray the punk community, or did they betray me?