Gunning 'Em Down

"313 is not my lucky number."

I'm recently involved in an email conversation with a dear friend who thinks we should just "wait" before we come to any conclusions about what happened in Ferguson, MO. I politely demurred. I don't think there's any question about the broad outline of the story: a cop shot an unarmed black teen (Michael Brown) to death. How exactly did it happen? Some witnesses say the guy had his hands up and was basically in a submissive position; others disagree. In fact, there are several versions. You can find a video of what the victim's friend, who was with him during the incident, said here and here. Both of these accounts are in sync. Does this guy look like he's making it up as he goes along? Fabricating a story because he and his friend were actually the villains of this piece? Or does it sound like a guy who's just seen his friend shot down and was scared shitless himself? I suppose we're going to get several different stories on this whenever the "investigation" of the incident gets finished. (I've read that there are going to be at least three investigations, including one by the Justice Dept.) But we now do know that this one cop, Darren Wilson, shot the guy six times, twice in the head. Something's not right here.

I'm not prejudging--or am I?--when I observe that cops shooting and killing young black men are hardly a rarity in the Land of the Free, which is why I don't see that "waiting" for a answer is really going to change much of anything. This article, and accompanying data, contends that a black man is shot by police or vigilantes once every 28 hours in this country. That's 313 in the year 2012. It would repay your glancing at it. The numbers are convincing. And even if it's only half-true, that's still a dead black man at the hands of cops three times a week. Does that sound like we don't have a problem?

Here's what Some Assembly Required has to say, a different tack:

Inquiring Mind: What makes you think that the clash between the poor and the police in St. Louis is about race, rather than the continuing economic slavery the descendants of slaves have been kept in for 125 years? How long before the 50 million Americans who are poor realize that being poor gives them more in common than the shades of their skin divide them, that being poor is as big a crime as being black? That united they would be unstoppable? Maybe it starts in the #QuickTrip People's Park.

And that's a good argument too, except the "descendants of slaves" are all African-Americans, and the institution they descended from in America was strictly race-based.

Who's on Welfare?

Well, let's have a look. I know the answer to the question, and I've known it for a long time because I've made it a point to be informed. Which 90 percent of the time means: if the masses believe it, don't even begin to think it's true. What's my sidebar quote say, the words of wisdom from Seneca: "Avoid whatever is approved of by the mob."? Well, it could just have well have said "Don't believe anything the mob believes."

Point of fact. The whole question of government assistance to those evil poor people. We all know about how they're bilking the rest of us honest, hard-working citizens, and living on our initiative and energy. Right?

Well, that's never been true, but it's never been not embraced by the vast majority of mallet-heads in this society.

Here's a video that talks about that and a lot more. If you want to get spun up on the latest thinking about the consequences of policy. Have a look.



And then share with your kids and friends.

Just a Reminder

Here are the facts of the matter.

 

Not something you've not seen before. Just a reminder once again about just where we are. 

Have a look at where the red line was until the advent of the Reagan era and the change in thinking about the value of social programs, safety nets, unions, and the effectiveness of government to address the question of income inequality in this country. And since then . . . well, see for yourself. It's the very rich getting richer and richer, and the rest of us treading water at best. These graphic curves have become so common that few people who are paying attention are not aware of them. And the ones not paying attention are too busy trying to make ends meet to be aware of anything except that they seem to be getting nowhere.

I don't think it's necessary to underscore that situations like this will not stay this way in the modern age before it all comes crashing down. And when that happens, a lot of people get hurt, get killed.

My Kinda Pope

Pope Francis is causing an absolute furor among all those pious (and impious, too) free market capitalists out there. Fox News, for example. He has said what needed to be said by the Church long since. In effect that the trickle-down nonsense that's been served up by the conservatives since before Reagan--you know what I'm talking about: the notion that wealth will trickle down from the rich in society to the less rich and poor by some sort of magical process involving tax cuts for everybody, but especially the really well off. See Wiki article.

In a new 85-page "apostolic exhortation," (You can find a good summary of the document's salient points here.) Pope Francis has basically played the bullshit card. A couple of samples:

The worship of the ancient golden calf has returned in a new and ruthless guise in the idolatry of money and the dictatorship of an impersonal economy lacking a truly human purpose. The worldwide crisis affecting finance and the economy lays bare their imbalances and, above all, their lack of real concern for human beings. (So much for Wall Street.)

How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points? This is a case of exclusion. Can we continue to stand by when food is thrown away while people are starving? This is a case of inequality. (So much for income inequality.)

And this beauty, which no one can misunderstand:

Some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system. Meanwhile, the excluded are still waiting.

I like this guy. How can you not like him when he gives Rush Limbaugh apoplexy?

 

Who Is This Guy?

Well, he's named Russell Brand, and I had to look him up on Wikipedia. I had never heard of the guy before, and if all you did was read in Wikipedia about him, you'd likely not be too impressed. But you can't get a full picture of anybody from words on a page. Perhaps you should listen to him and then decide. I cannot tell you how I stumbled across this interview, or rather, what caused me to click it one and listen. I found it on Alternet. They advertise this interview as "a brilliant tirade against a broken political system." I concur. Watch for yourself.

Bye the bye, the interviewer is one Jeremy Paxman, " (born 11 May 1950) is an English journalist, broadcaster and author. He has worked for the BBC since 1977, and is known for his forthright and abrasive interviewing style, particularly when interrogating politicians. His regular appearances on the BBC Two's Newsnight programs have been criticized as aggressive, intimidating and condescending, and also applauded as tough and incisive."

But our boy Russell shuts his face right up . . . behold.

A Richly Distorted View

A couple of interesting studies out of the University of California, Berkley. Both of them, here and here, indicate that the richer you are, the less likely you are to behave in certain fundamental areas than the rest of us. One study says you're less likely to have empathy for your fellow humans. Another study indicates a certain predisposition to unethical behavior the richer you are. I don't need to tell you that these findings are controversial, but I ask you consult your experience on this. Of course, I can't tell you about your experience, but I can tell you I have no trouble believing the first of these propositions. A junky car with a working class guy is much more likely to stop and help you on the road than a Beamer or Lexus. Watch what kind of people give to beggars on street corners or cripples on the sidewalk. Again, it's been my experience that it's not the rich people who first step up here.

Here's a quote from the second study: "Studies conducted by psychology professor Paul Piff found those who drive luxury cars were less likely to stop for pedestrians, those with more money were more likely take candy from children, and the wealthiest among us were more likely to cheat in a game with a $50 cash prize."

I leave it to you as to what to make of these matters. But evidence also exists that these reactions are rooted in the situation, not the personality. If the rich get poorer, they tend to take on the characteristics of the poor and vice versa. Hmmmmm.

What We Think About Socialism

The Republican crazies, the Tea Party types and their parrots, are continually hollering and blathering about Obama being a "socialist." Let's lay aside the fact that the likelihood of these ninnies actually knowing what socialism is is pretty damn remote and concentrate what the numbers below are saying. Anybody who's truly worried about socialism can look at these numbers and be either worried or not. Only 3 out of 10 of us are favorably inclined to socialism, but 4 of 10 aren't high on capitalism. But the less advantaged demographics--blacks, Hispanics, those making less than $30,000 a year are much more favorably inclined towards socialism than the rest of the society. And it's no secret that the number of them is rising.

Of course, I should note that there's no guarantee that the respondents to this survey know what socialism is either. Still, I find these numbers pretty intriguing.

Related articles

• Why Does The Working Class Have To Pick Up The Pieces Caused By Wall Street & Tea Party Deficit Hawks? (crooksandliars.com)
• Socialism! (krugman.blogs.nytimes.com)
• What Kind of Socialist Is Barack Obama? (bobusnr.wordpress.com)

Cannot Be Right

I've seen the numbers in this Atlantic piece before. Although the article itself is more elaborate, the gist of it can be summed up pretty easily and illustrated simply as in the chart below which shows what Americans think the distribution of wealth in the country is and what is is really. Each quintile represents a fifth, or 20 percent of the population.

Bottom line: the inequality of wealth in America is stark. The top 20 percent hole 84 percent of the wealth, the bottom 40 percent, a barely perceptible percentage. For all intents and purposes, the bottom 40 percent have nothing. And the next 40 percent have 16 percent of the wealth. You have to let these numbers sink if and swirl around for a bit to understand what we're talking about here, and what this means. It means we have a huge number of very poor people in this country compared to a middling number who've got almost everything. This cannot be right.

It's Much Worse than We Think . . .

And it isn't. People know this and the way it comes out that they know it is what they tell you when you ask them to say what they think the ideal distribution of wealth in a society in which they would consent to live should be. What they say appears in the dark black bars below. And here's the amazing thing about these numbers to me. There was virtually no difference between Democrats and Republicans on this question . . . or among other demographic divides either: gender and income. Amazing, really. This is something that Americans across the board agree upon. Like motherhood and apple pie.

. . . But We Would Like It to Be Much Better

We Deluded Americans

What are some of the most interesting or shocking things Americans believe about themselves or their country? An intriguing question, don't you think? It was to me too when I ran across it at this site. How would you answer it? Well, I discovered that I would respond pretty much the way thoughtful people who answered the question did. I've just pasted responses from various people in verbatim and commented where I felt moved to. As you will see, the quality of the observations vary, but they all have this in common. They are true.

1. American exceptionalism: that some magical combination of Anglo-Saxon liberties, Protestantism and capitalism made the US new, unique, better, and outside the normal rules. [Number one. As well it should be.]
2. That now or ever, there was a mass public in foreign countries praying for United States Armed Forces intervention.
3. That the quality of life in the US is better than in Europe.
4. That Detroit cars are as good or better than Japanese cars like Toyota and Honda.
5. That women from the US need to worry more about their safety in Europe.
6. A large fraction of Americans believe that humans have only been on Earth for about 6000 years, and that evolutionary biology is false.
7. That a public healthcare program would be socialistic [well, actually it is socialistic, but that doesn't make it bad.]
8. That President Obama is a socialist, a Muslim, and was foreign-born.
9. That all Americans have an equal chance to become wealthy. [how people actually believe this has been a mystery to me for decades]
10. That the UN is a dangerous concept.
11. That American society is truly "classless."
12. That there is no need for labor unions.
13. That corporations are people [according to the law. A bizarre 19th century construction that has wreaked untold havoc on our political system]
14. That there is nothing of significance that the US could possibly ever  learn from other countries
15. That no matter where Americans are in the world, they will never be more than a few feet away from someone who speaks English [Something I observed over and over when I lived abroad.]
16. That the corporate-owned mainstream media is liberal. [Another completely counter-intuitive belief]
17. That our national government is less corrupt than most other nations. [Everything floats of a sea of falsehood in government, not to mention business, and just about any other field of endeavor you care to mention.]
18. That everyone carrying arms somehow makes our society safer and deters crime. 
19. That the military is the most honorable, truthful, and virtuous constituency in American life, and the corollary that U.S. military intervention anywhere is be definition necessary, well-intentioned, and desired by the people of other countries. 

This last one is mine. There were were many more, and you can probably come up with a list of your own. The bottom line is as a people we probably rank at the top in self-delusion.

Related articles

• Obama, a European Socialist? I Wish! (tnr.com)

Compassionate Conservatism

Social Darwinism at Work

"I'm Not Concerned . . ."

Can this guy Romney really be the best the Republicans can dredge up to run for the presidency against Obama in the fall? You have to be kidding me. Here's a guy who's so clueless he stands up in front of God and everybody and says, and I quote, "I'm not concerned about the very poor" because we have a safety net there to take care of them. And he continues, ". . . and I'm not concerned about the very rich. They are doing just fine." Yes, we know they are doing just fine. And the Republican party is just dying to make sure they keep on doing just fine, and maybe even finer.

We can pretty much assume that a guy like Mitt Romney, who was to the manor born, is not concerned about the poor. He's not concerned about poor middle class slobs either, although he's at great pains to tell us that the mass of Americans in the middle class are who he's worried about.

Let's set aside for the moment the utter crassness, the utter stupidity of a politician saying he is not concerned about poor people--I'm not even going to get into just how illustrative this is of the class of people Romney issues from. They are just not living in the same world as he rest of us. Hell, they don't ever lay eyes on poor people. May never have except in those third world countries where poor people (but not the poorest) serve them frosty cocktails on their expansive verandas overlooking the sea. No, let's look at the smugness and haughty statement that he's not worried about the very rich. They are doing just fine, he tells us. And in the next minute, he advocates policies that will only make them richer. And the other side of that coin is that he likewise favors policies that will decrease assistance to poor people. We're in Alice's Wonderland, people. This buffoon could end up being president. Not like that would be setting any precedents.

Update I: Paul Krugman's column on this incident is great. See it here.

Related articles

• Romney: 'I'm Not Concerned About the Very Poor' (thedailybeast.com)
• Pat LaMarche: Romney Just Keeps On Telling the Truth (huffingtonpost.com)
• Romney defends 'poor people' remark (firstread.msnbc.msn.com)
• Conservatives blast Mitt Romney for hating on the poor (too loudly) (dailykos.com)

The End

The truly amazing thing about these people who throw "class warfare" around is they don't have a frigging clue what they're talking about. True class warfare would have these people strung up long since.

Related articles

• Who is waging class warfare? (dailykos.com)

Tidbits

Gleaned from various spots on the Web today:

• The OWS (Occupy Wall Street) movement is gaining steam. (Can there be the slightest doubt that this avenue for the mass of aggrieved to protest the present state of affairs will be seized by them? To wit: the gross inequity of our system and the drones at all levels of government who seems to consider it their job to keep things that way.
• Writer Taylor Clark argues in Slate that The Strokes' Is This It is the best album of the past decade. "Is This It" was a decade-defining record that set the agenda for how rock sounded and even looked throughout the aughts." Naturally, a bizillion people will disagree, some vehemently, but that's what the nature of these sorts of pronouncements are all about. BTW, I have the album and think it's really good, but I would have to study the question more deeply to be definitive about the best of the decade.
•  Also debate going on today in Slate whether too many kids go to college. I vote yes.
• Tomorrow the magical, mystical iCloud descends upon us, for good or ill. Pretty long piece on the Atlantic website argues it will be ill.
• Washington has benched Mitch Moreland tonight for the playoff game in Detroit. Michael Young will be at first, Nap DH, and Torrealba catching.

Go Rangers!

Related articles

• #OccupyWallStreet update (americablog.com)
• Rangers' Young, not Moreland, at 1B in Game 3 (espn.go.com)

Long Live Socialism!

Title of the post grabbed you, didn't it? As did the title of this piece by Jack Lessenberry at "The Smirking Chimp." I'm still in the frame of mind I was yesterday. Disgusted with the nonsense, the tripe, dispensed by Fox News 24-hours a day, every day. And it is the most popular news on TV, by far. I tell you again. We are a doomed people.

Lessenberry makes all the points I've scattered all over the place here at "Powderfinger" over the years. So I thought I would just put all these points in one post. For convenience. Doesn't mean I won't be making them again. I can almost promise I will. But at least here you will have everything conveniently summarized.

• The rich rail against socialism, but in fact they are in favor of it . . . for the rich.
• And they approve other aspects of socialism such as police protection, roads, agencies protecting food, for example.
• Libertarianism which favors virtually no government, except maybe for defense, is "a great philosophy for teenage boys."
• National debt now is not as large as "right-wing howlers in Congress" would have us believe. But is cause for concern. Only $1 trillion when Reagan took office.
• Deficit is $14 trillion and growing by $1 trillion a year. Yes, Obama added $2 trillion in "narrowly successful" effort to stave off a second Great Depression.
• Big lies the Republicans proclaim about the cause of the deficits:
• "entitlements" too high; can't afford health care, and maybe not even Social Security
• wages and benefits of public employees
• Raising taxes, especially on the rich, is no solution to lowering the deficit.
• This is "bullshit and blatant hypocrisy"
• But remarkable they have convinced "an astonishing number of us to believe this."
• Myth that we can all be rich "another howler we've been sold."
• Mess we're in is in large part because of huge redistribution of wealth in the country, starting with Reagan. 
• We have been transferring wealth from poor to rich, especially the richest one-tenth of one percent of the population.
•  Budget surplus at the close of Clinton presidency and were beginning to reduce national debt.
• George W. Bush ended surplus, had Congress enact massive tax cuts, "vast majority of which went to the rich."
• None of this in dispute.
• Defense of tax cuts that rich use tax cuts to produce jobs and they spend money to stimulate the economy is "nonsense." Top earners who get the tax cuts don't spend as much of their income as the lower earners. They sock it away.
• Back in the '50s and '60s, the rich paid as much as 90 percent on incomes above a certain level, and they "still got richer."
• "We can fix this if we have the guts, or we can go on becoming a society with a very few rich and a whole lot of poor." 

Karl Marx said that was bound to happen someday. And guess what he said was bound to happen next?

Class Warfare

The Daily Show - World of Class Warfare - Warren Buffett vs. Wealthy Conservatives
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

A snippet from a recent episode of "The Daily Show." Jon Stewart knows how to skewer the pretentious blowhards from Fox better than anyone I know. But behind all the laughter this invokes, just remember that there are (many) people who think taxing the rich is "socialism." And "class warfare." Every time anything derogatory about the rich is said, they pronounce it class warfare. Anytime there's a suggestion that these people ought to be paying their way for the advantages this society affords them, it is pronounced by the bozos at Fox and others on the right. These jokers talk about socialism and class warfare as if they knew what they were talking about. Dumkopfs all . . . and the people that believe this crap, I'm afraid to say, are even dumber.

This is the continuation of the sketch above. They are of a piece. Underneath the laughs, I repeat, there's a really mean and sinister purpose. As Stewart puts it in his inimitable way at the close of this clip: "F--k those people . . . the poor."

The Daily Show - World of Class Warfare - The Poor's Free Ride Is Over
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

A Frightening Image

This is what the chair of the Democratic Black Caucus called it. He wasn't kidding; he knows whereof he speaks. The so-called deal passed on Tuesday is going to go hardest on the poor in society, and if you haven't heard, that means people of color basically. Cutting domestic spending falls disproportionally on programs that assist them. This is of course right in line with the aims of a substantial portion of the Republican party--I'm being as fair as I can. Maybe there's a Republican under a rock somewhere who does not want to cut social programs that help the disadvantaged and the middle class people of this country. For the life of me I cannot understand how anybody not in the economic top tier of the country can possibly think the Republican party has their interests in mind. Think about it for a second. What do they actually espouse that helps the 94 percent of the US people who have less than $100,000 annual household income? Think about it . . . I can't think of anything right off the top of my head. Indeed, all I can think of are policies and programs that help the other 6 percent, the people with all the money already. Now, I'm not against people making money. Not at all. But I am against greed and selfishness. My position is simple: citizens of the US who have been abundantly blessed by this society owe that society in proportion to their blessings. That's called fairness. That's called justice. Two things that the Republicans oppose, from every indication I've observed in them for years and years now.

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Definitely a Good Thing

Who out there among us doesn't think the impending release by Wikileaks of a huge chunk of Swiss bank records is not a good thing? According to a story today in Raw Story, data from thousand of Swiss bank accounts will soon be released into cyberspace. Rudolf Elmer, a former employee of the Swiss bank Julius Baer "released two optical discs he said carried files showing massive, unmitigated tax evasion by American, Asian and European individuals and corporations. He said that many of the records dealt with accounts held by organized criminals, politicians and celebrities around the world." He says he opposes "the system [of secret banking]" which damages society. Well, I would think so.

Well, let me guess who doesn't think this is a good thing: Swiss banks, all banks, organized crimes, and the thousands upon thousands of fat cat tax dodgers. Now, I haven't yet seen reaction to this news--it's pretty fresh right now as I type. But can you imagine the howl of anguish that's going to arise from people who are about the be exposed? And the law suits? This in itself will be proof positive that the data needs to see the light of day. I shake my head almost daily over the myriad ways ordinary people are being screwed by rich people who refuse to acknowledge any debt whatsoever to the common good and who do everything in their power to avoid contributing to that good.

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They're Not Like Us

Rich people. They aren't like the rest of us. A study in the journal Psychological Science indicates that the more affluent have trouble detecting the emotions of other people. The Huffington Post article where I found this info, says, "Rich people don't choose to be rude. They simply can't help it." I'm not willing to go that far, although I've been convinced for a while that the plane of operations for the wealthy doesn't in the least way resemble the one the rest of us play on, so it's really two foreign countries we're talking about.

The fact is, the rich are desensitized emotionally from the concerns of all the "little people" who don't share their level of security and comfort. Maybe this explains why the millionaires in Congress are so oblivious to the real suffering of countless people. I'm thinking in particular of the adamant refusal of the Republicans in the lame duck Congress to even consider extending unemployment until the wealthiest two percent of the people in America were guaranteed a tax cut. The notion is just outrageous, utterly indefensible . . . and yet, it has come to pass.

This is just another piece of evidence that the wealthy people in American society (a generalization of course, there are always exceptions) don't give a tinker's damn about the rest of us. What is the most amazing thing to me is how the pronounced majority of the American people still believe that anybody in this country can become fabulously wealthy. What a crock! I need to look this up so I can present it here, but I know that of the super super rich, probably not one in ten has actually earned their fortune. It's mostly inheritance. And yet, the national myth that Republicans never cease trumpeting, everybody who has money has it because they worked for it, continues to mesmerize the millions upon millions of suckers who will never have money but who willingly lick the boots of people who would just as soon flush them down a toilet as look at them. Only in America.

Related articles

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• Analysis Shows Rich People Save, Not Spend. Obvious Solution? Bigger Tax Cuts! (crooksandliars.com)
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• Do Progressives Hate Rich People? (firedoglake.com)

How Broken is Washington?

Pretty damn broken. I quote from a piece in The Huffington Post of the same title.

How do you reach a point where the political center point of our nation seemingly represents the interests of the top 5 percent of the population? The answer is massive and growing inequality in America. Our society is amongst the most unequal on earth. Statistics show the severity: the top 10 percent possess 80 percent of all financial assets, and the bottom 90 percent hold only 20 percent of all financial wealth. These incredible and morally disastrous gaps are growing worse by the day. Consider that between 1980 to 2005, more than 80 percent of the total increase in American incomes went to the richest 1 percent.

Wealth concentration like this is becoming a serious threat to America's greatest gift to the world, our democracy. Billions of dollars from the wealthy now flood into our political and electoral systems. Unleashed by a conservative Supreme Court, independent groups are spending staggering amounts of special interest money. Republicans now openly plot their election and political strategy with "titans of industry -- from health insurance companies, oil executives, Wall Street investors, media conglomerates and real estate tycoons." (MEMO: Health Insurance, Banking, Oil Industries Met With Koch, Chamber, Glenn Beck To Plot 2010 Election)

And let's not forget who makes up our government: rich people. The median wealth for a member of Congress in 2009 was $911,510, about 8 times the wealth of an average American.

The result is that every GOP Senator can stand up to middle America and say without hesitation or bashfulness: the rich come first. If Lincoln were to deliver his famous address today he would honestly have to describe our government as "of the wealthy, for the wealthy, by the wealthy."

And they all shouted: "AMEN." For all the good that will do in this benighted society . . . but then maybe providential intervention is what it will take. So let's all say "Amen" again.

Related articles

• 10 Things You Can Do to Starve the Wall St. Beast and Grab Yourself a Piece of the Pie (alternet.org)
• Americans Overwhelmingly Support Wealth Redistribution to Fairer Levels (crooksandliars.com)
• Bob Burnett: Who Should Pay to Fix the Economy? (huffingtonpost.com)

Cops and (Unfortunate) Robbers

I've been meaning to post this for a while now. So it stands to reason that this piece by Gore Vidal is not exactly fresh in my mind. The link has been sitting on my desktop for some weeks. So my memory of the specifics of this piece are hazy at best. But the main point is not gone. It's something I've alluded to and discussed here before. And that's the violence the police in this regularly visit upon the citizens. Vidal laments the situation in his inimitable way, and I don't think he exaggerates to call the country we live in a police state. But as always, he is incisive. The root of the whole matter, he writes, is the class divide in the US. This is not something you're going to read about every day in America, the land of opportunity.

The real issue is class. We have the greatest divide between the very rich and the very poor of any country on Earth, surpassing even France. And this division gets wider and wider as financial disasters overwhelm us. We were already in pretty bad shape before things began to fall apart a year or two ago. We must acknowledge that our character, never much good in these matters, is now reprehensible, and the police seem to have taken it upon themselves to exact revenge for a full professor and his—plainly, in their view—insulting income, which they figure must be considerable. [Vidal's takeoff for this article was the arrest of a black Harvard prof on the porch of his own home.] The days of greed through which we all lived now have not done us much good, nor have they taught us any lessons, but you cannot live long with such divisions, which in my view as an outsider overlooking the scene seems to be a nation of total liars. Everybody is lying. 

Call me an alarmist, but when's the last time you thought about the power of the police in this country? Check this article and accompanying videos out for some seriously disturbing examples of what is going on out there on the streets of our country every day. Seriously, have you taken a look at swat teams and rapid response guys in the police lately? They look like armies. And in fact, they are more heavily armed than ever and the shower of anti-terrorism money has really beefed these guys up. Have you checked out the assault gear and armored vehicles these guys have? How come nobody but Gore Vidal and I worry about stuff like this?