Individualized Conformity

Corporate America -
They who have to be
obeyed.

For the past few days, Mitt Rmoney and the entire corporately-controlled right wing of the nation has been attacking President Barack Obama for part of a speech he gave. The quip which they are using as their attack base was, as you'd imagine, taken out of context and conflated to mean something other than the original message, which was pointing out the simple fact that no one is not the beneficiary of being part of society and that we are all in this together. Instead, the right has twisted this message into saying it was a slap at those that have "succeeded."

Scott Feldstein gives us the entire context of Obama's speech, as well as some astute observations

When we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. Radical, I know. And when he’s saying “you didn’t build that,” he’s quite obviously referring to the “roads and bridges” of the previous sentence. If you seriously don’t get that…well, no. I don’t even believe someone doesn’t get that.

But wait! The president is still awful and a communist! He doesn’t seem to realize that the business owner himself paid the taxes that built those roads in the first place! He doesn’t get it!

Or maybe it’s the right-wingers who don’t get it. Sure, the successful business owner paid taxes for the roads. (Well, some of them do.) But here’s the thing your’e forgetting: So did everyone else. It’s not that “you didnt build that”–it’s that you didn’t build it alone. We built that road together, through our taxes, through our government. And having done so we created an environment where business can thrive–your business, my business, everyone’s business. If you are successful in America, you owe a little of that success to other Americans. The ones who helped pay for the infrastructure in which your business could thrive.

Obama's statement is not original in its concept. It's been something that has been repeated in different ways for centuries and even in modern times by - gasp - Republicans!

In fact, my colleague Jeff Simpson stole some of my thunder regarding this the other day, including using the Benjamin Franklin quote I was planning to use.

Zach Wisniewski, over at Blogging Blue, astutely points out that even Romney said basically the same thing as Obama. But Romney isn't an African-American Democratic President, so that makes it OK, apparently.

I would add to this Hillary Clinton's "It takes a village" meme as well as this quote from President Theodore Roosevelt from a speech he gave in Pasadena, California on May 8, 1903:

"There is not a man of us who does not at times need a helping hand to be stretched out to him, and then shame upon him who will not stretch out the helping hand to his brother."

So with something so easily disputed, why is the corporofascists using this line of attack?
Well, for one, it gives them the easy soundbite that the teahadists love, regardless of how incongruent they may be (See: Keep government out of my Medicare!)

But more importantly, it is another weapon in their arsenal to attain and maintain control of the country.

By selling the artificial construct that Obama's statement, like many of the others before them, is an attack on our individualism and just another example of overreach by the "nanny state."

I recall a conversation I had in June with Laura Hauser-Menting, candidate for the 71st Assembly District, regarding this mindset from the right. We both agreed that this was a depressing, and frightening, attitude to take.

By selling the people that the government, especially anyone on the left, wants to take away their individuality and their chances of success is not only blatantly false, it's utterly hypocritical.

You have teahadists like Ron Johnson, Eric Hovde and Marc Neumann who have gained by feeding at the government trough, even as they gripe about it. Even Scott Walker, who claims that Noah would never have been able to build the ark if the government was involved, turns around and dishes out government money to "successful" companies like Halloween candy even as he asks the feds for assistance.

Nor do the right encourage individuality. Look at the grief that State Senator Dale Schultz took whenever he voted his conscience and with his constituents, even when it opposed the corporate-driven agenda of his fellow Republicans. If one dare steps out of line, they get called a RINO or crazy or both. And if the gentle reader looks at any random picture of a teahadist gathering or Republican political rally, but I repeat myself, you will be able to quickly note the severe lack of diversity in those pictures.

Ironically, it's the left's encouragement of true individuality which often puts itself in a bind. While the right is able to provide an unified front, regardless of how self-destructive their position might be, the left is too busy herding cats to get much accomplished successfully.

By encouraging the false sense of individualized conformity, it enables the right to gain even more control and fortify the control they have. If a company or wealthy person does harm to a person, the person is pretty much screwed when it comes to receiving due reparations. Few people can afford to pay the legal fees that would build if they were to sue the malefactor.

If a company decides that their profit margins just aren't big enough, or if the CEO feels he needs a bigger bonus, they cut the workers' pay. If the workers complain, or God forbid, try to unionize like they're doing at Palermo's, they'll just fire the workers and tell the rest they should be grateful just to have a job, no matter how crappy they get treated.

In other words, they know that if they can thoroughly make people corporate serfs, they can break them of the will and the ability to stand up for themselves.

This is exactly why the corporate right has been attacking the unions with everything they have. By joining together, people in unions are able to pool their money and have more clout in getting reparations, and even more importantly, preventing the harm in the first place. In other words, unions act as an equalizer to the corporate interests and can prevent its members, and the community at large, from being exploited.

In sum, when the right is telling you that people like Obama are trying to belittle the "job makers," and push people to think that the only way to succeed is by pulling themselves up by their own personal bootstraps, they are not doing this to help the people. What they actually are doing is reinforcing the fear and smear attacks in order to keep themselves at the top of the food chain and to keep the unwashed masses in line.

And then the downward spiral where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer continues at an ever-increasing pace. It's time and then some for us to reverse this course.

How Dare You Call Him A Dictator!

Our counterparts on the right have been keeping themselves busy poring over pictures of the hundreds of thousands of people that have been in and around the Capitol Building for the past two and a half weeks.  Instead of seeing the larger picture of this sea of humanity joined together from all walks of life to raise their voices as one in outrage at the attempts of Scott Walker to remove many civil rights that goes to make ours a civilized country and state, they focus on the one or three people that had the poor taste of making a poster with a picture of Walker with a Hitler mustache painted on or someone making a comparison between Walker and Hosni Mubarak.

When they find one of these pictures, they start to squawk like parrots in their selective and hypocritical outrage.

And they are somewhat correct.  Walker is no Hitler.  As far as I know, Walker never tried to kill millions of Jews.  Likewise, he is no Mubarak, no Kim Il-Jong, no Stalin, no Genghis Khan, no Ayatollah Khomeini, or any of these people.

So don't you dare call him a dictator.

So what if he killed contracts that were bargained in good faith?  Don't you dare call him a dictator.

So what if he wants to remove long-standing civil and worker's rights? Don't you dare call him a dictator.

So what if he wants every single policy and procedure to be approved by him personally before it can be enacted?  And so what if he has put hand-picked cronies in positions to make sure his will is carried out? Don't you dare call him a dictator.

So what if he wants all medical decisions, as well as all Family Care, Senior Care, Badger Care program under his direct supervision, allowing him to play God on who lives and who dies, at least among the poor?  Just don't you dare call him a dictator.

So what if he wants the ability to appoint who gets what state assets without so much as anyone else's approval or oversight?  Just don't call him a dictator.

So what if Walker said that he would go to any unethical means, including endangering the safety and lives of Wisconsin, by planting agent provocateurs just to help his ideological agenda furthered.  Just don't call him a dictator.

So what if he illegally sent state police after members of the opposite political party, for no reason that other to enforce his will? Don't you dare call him a dictator.

So what if he wants to strangle another group of dissenters, or bust the unions, in order to be able to rule in peace? Don't call him a dictator.

So what if he's closed the People's House to the people, including bolting the windows shut (at least he wasn't welding them shut!), cutting off electronic feeds and Internet services inside the Capitol Building?  Just don't call him a dictator.

So what if he chooses to hold thousands of jobs, as well as some Democratic staffers, hostage, in order to ensure compliance from opponents and dissenters?  Just don't call him a dictator.

So what if he is unconstitutionally trying to take local control away from some counties and cities, just to further his ideological pursuits.  Just don't call him a dictator.

Even if Scott Walker talks like a dictator and acts like a dictator, don't you dare call him a dictator.

He prefers it if you call him "Your Majesty."

They Died As They Lived: In Love and In Control

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has a very moving story about an elderly doctor and his wife that chose to end their lives the same way they had lived them: In love with each other and in control.

An excerpt:

The two-page handwritten letter is dated July 16, and it is signed by both Gute and his wife, Katherine, whom he calls "Kitty." Kitty Gute had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease more than a year before.

The note describes Kitty Gute's failing health, daily indignities and chronic pain. It touches on their determination not to allow the vibrant life they had shared come to an end in a nursing home, where they feared their deaths would be no better than dragged out and wrested from their control.

"I am hoping that sometime this weekend I will have the guts to act to deliver us both from a more dismal situation," he writes.

"I have been thinking about this for a long time. It will not be easy. However, as time goes by it will not get any better."

One of their three daughters, Mary Witte, found Daniel and Kitty Gute's bodies Sunday.

The two were inclined toward each other in the front seat of Kitty Gute's car, which was parked in the garage of their River Hills home. They had asphyxiated themselves with helium, an inert gas they pumped into plastic bags that covered their heads.

Some of the early comments on that story call the couple psychotic and cowardly. Maybe they were. But I don't think so. I think that they were in full control of their faculties, and they had mutually seen the future, and realized that this is not how they wanted to end their lives. Instead, they did it of their own choosing in time, place and method, and tried to maintain as much dignity as they could.

It also reminded me of another story the paper ran a few years ago. In that sad tale, a 79 year old man stabbed his wife of 55 years to death, as opposed to seeing her go through another day of pain from her liver cancer.

I wrote about that then, still new to the blogosphere, and posting at folkbum's. Going back over it, I realized that I still feel the same as I did then:

I was able to completely relate to what Mr. Rogutich was feeling. The frustration, the helplessness, the impotent rage at the impartiality of fate. Also, the overwhelming desire to see his loved one put at ease. While I cannot condone his methodology, I understand his motivation.

It also made me wonder, in a world in which people are outraged at Michael Vick's cruelty, a world in which people will put their pets to sleep rather than let them suffer, that we don't offer the same consideration to people. Don't get me wrong, I am not advocating wholesale assisted suicide or abortion of a child that would grow up with defects. Those are separate issues. But if a person who is terminally ill, with no hope whatsoever for survival of more than a few days, weeks or months filled with excruciating pain, they should be allowed to choose to die with dignity. We come close with hospice care, but even in these places filled with such compassionate medical personnel, people can suffer beyond the powers of modern medicine.

Some may argue to the sanctity of life, but where is the justification in making someone suffer needlessly? I don't know of one hunter or farmer that would hesitate to shoot an animal to put it out of its misery, but we let these people linger in torment and pain, crying out for death, just to satisfy our own sanctimoniousness.

Everyone expects and works towards having a certain level of quality of life, not only for themselves, but for their loved ones. We should be demanding and working towards the same quality at the end of life. Then people like Mr Rogutich won't have to put themselves in the personal hell of having to take the matter in their own hands. Even though he has the support and love of his children, it will never take away the memories.

May these people rest in peace.