Oregon State @ UCLA (Baseball)

You didn’t say anything. You created a straw man, and you somehow turned equality into some theory.

Here’s a hint. Equality isn’t a theory. Equality is just equality. If the equation is not equal, it has nothing to do with equality.

The “flyover” regions are creating their own problems because their leaders scare them into believing “others” are taking from them. In fact, their leaders are the ones doing the taking. The power given to them by the “flyover” people allows them to keep “others” from having any semblance of equality. The problem is that the programs designed for the “others” are also those designed for the “flyovers.”

When these leaders decry social programs, for example, they do so with classic racist overtones. You yourself may not be racist in your mind. But when you passively accept Reagan’s propagandized form of the black welfare queen with the big screen TV, you act as a racist. So do I go by your actions, or do I take you for your word? The reality is that whites in the “flyover” regions are much much more numerous within the ranks of welfare recipients. Yet they elect leaders who want to take away those social safety nets simply because “others” are the ones receiving them.

In simple economic terms, less stability for these “flyovers” is being created by their own leaders cutting off their own rural noses to spite the urban “others.” There has been a redistribution of wealth over the last 40 years, and it has almost all gone to an increasingly shrinking upper tier.

That which made our country “great” was an understanding that that upper tier gained their luxuries because they were lucky enough to live in an enlightened society who valued the health and education of the masses, which in turn formed the foundation which would support that largesse. When you have a million dollars (an arbitrary number for the sake of argument), you don’t need any more money to live comfortably for the rest of your lives. Anything more than that is simply luxury. Since it’s a free country, you can go ahead and get that luxury if you want to do so. But you must know that luxury isn’t something to which you are entitled in a society based on freedom. The marginal utility of one’s luxury comes at a cost to everyone else. If that cost isn’t paid, equality does not exist.

Voting against your own self-interest just to spite “others” allows those who would hoard luxury to do so without paying for it. They piss on you, and they tell you it’s trickle-down. As a result, gentrification occurs at the same rate in rural areas as much as in urban areas. But because people aren’t stacked on top of each other, it’s not as noticeable. Entities who are allowed to hoard luxury tell the rurals that creating solutions to defy gentrification are inequitable because they help those urban “others.” In fact, they help the rurals just as much.

So anyone who would resist these programs in the name of a very narrow vision of freedom obviously developed in focus groups and repeated until it becomes rote inanity deserves to be called dumb. They have no freedom of thought, therefore, they have no freedom.

A great example would be Wal Mart. I’ll paint this in broad strokes for simplicity. Wal Mart wants to build a big box in your rural town. You don’t need it. You have 10 mom and pops who sell you food, clothing, hardware, gardening, automotive, etc. And when you purchase anything at those m&p’s, 70% of the income earned by them is returned to the local economy. They pay their dues to participate in society, and society rewards them with their patronage.

But Wal Mart tells you that you can be lazy and do your one-stop shopping with them. And you can save 5% in the process. What they don’t tell you is that 5% and more are being paid by you in the form of lost local revenues because their big box is subsidized. They get reduced property taxes. In return for not paying their fair share, they get brand new infrastructure which is maintained better than the road in front of the m&p’s. You save your 5% at the check-out, and the m&p’s are shuttered because they no longer receive your patronage. Nor do they receive local, state and national subsidies like WM does. That’s the vision of equality you seem to be supporting here. In reality, you might be acutely aware of all this. But you also might vote for the same people who think this is just dandy, thus enabling them. Why?

Businesses who were staples of rural downtowns were also good citizens who knew their patrons by name. They paid for their place in society, and society paid them back… until society was convinced that subsidized short term gain miraculously gifted to them by some unknown owner of some national retailer was a good thing. Were they educated well, they would not have made that choice, because the long term results are precisely what people like me said they would be. But they bought into this lord of the flies anarchy that resembles nothing of which Adam Smith wrote. And they shouted down people like me with sneering chants of SOCIALIST PIG WHO HATES CAPITALISM.

They gave up their own equality for the promise of a quick buck.

So forgive me for thinking that people who do dumb things then blame others for their own actions are just dumb. Forgive me for thinking that anyone who enables a loud, stupid, pussy-grabbing, racist wannabe wall builder is just dumb as hell… unless they are the same as him. Forgive me for thinking that anyone who believes that a trust fund asshat who received $400m from a father who owned city hall then turned that $400m into maybe $1b over the course of 40 years has zero clues about what a successful businessman looks like. Forgive me if I think people who elect gerrymandering cronies who tell us (literally) that if a single parent who works 60 hours a week at two different minimum wage jobs wants health insurance, they should just get a job as a CEO or a Congressman… are just complete idiots.

Or don’t. I don’t need forgiveness. Just not having dumb neighbors would be reward enough. When that happens, I’ll assume they can pick up a dictionary and read the definition of equality for themselves.

If you’re wanting to read a more comprehensive summary of how dumb people vote themselves into increasingly worse conditions despite being promised the world, I suggest Thomas Frank’s books, What’s the Matter with Kansas and Listen, Liberal.

Thanks for the op-ed on why you hate Capitalism.

Hilarious! You prove my point with the first words you type? I’m going to guess you didn’t even read it. Again… just hilarious. If you don’t want me to think you’re dumb, don’t continue to do dumb.

Why do progressives want absolute power over those deemed not intelligent enough to think for themselves or make their own decisions?

Again with the straw man that really makes zero sense. You forgot to add the “theory of equality” bullshit this time, but it still makes no sense. You point out all the progressives who voted for the PATRIOT Act… or want to get rid of net neutrality… or want to jail people for smoking (or eating or drinking) pot… or want to tell a woman what she needs to do with her body… and I will show you a null set. So long as you don’t impede your neighbor’s freedoms, I do not want anything to do with you in a managerial sense. I’ll tell you that you can’t steal from your neighbor or deprive him or her of sleep by mowing your lawn at 3am. If you want to call common decency and cooperative liberties “absolute power,” then you have serious issues with reality, not progressives or leebruls.

It’s a simple, honest question.

Simple is an overstatement. Honest is a lie. I don’t even believe you concocted the amalgam of stale, contrived focus group talking points that have been repeated ad nauseum for a couple generations now. You put your own twist on it, but the thoughts are not yours.

Absolute power, indeed. If knowledge is power, who needs the gubmint to have it over you? Wake the fuck up. Pay off all your debt that you can. And hope the Trumpster fire doesn’t kill your boys in any of the number of possible foreign wars he has seeded with his immense stupidity in the last three months.