To recap: I roused Feelgud’s ire when I said that the typical Republican was an ignorant, selfish and insecure millionaire wannabe. Miraculously, while defending his politics, he has managed to illustrate every aspect of the cartoon Republican. I welcome all readers to thank Feelgud, who should be preserved in a plastic trash bag so that future historians and visitors to the planet can observe the real article…
…THE MAN WHOSE DEEPEST UNDERLYING FEAR IS THAT HE IS NOT AS WELL-EDUCATED AS THE LOCAL BANK TELLER.
[The Blow-by-Blow: I offered Feelgud some non-economic reasons why an educated populace is in the public interest: b/c they are citizens in a democracy. Note that Feelgud has loudly been proclaiming his strong devotion to the community. Watch the consumate skill with which he proves that he has devotion to nothing but his own wallet and pathetic creed]
“— You stupid fuck. All that’s well and good, but I see no reason why I have to pay for their education so that they might become better parents, etc. FYI, I paid for my own schooling.”
Isn’t this beautiful? How much do you want to bet that Feelgud went to a public school that depended both on state and federal funding? And, assuming that Feelgud has any higher education, we can be certain that instituation gets some federal support and/or that Feelgud got himself a student loan which was subsidized by taxpayers like you and me. Don’t you love the way he claims he “paid for [his] own schooling,” implying that if he went to a private school in the third grade that he and not his parents paid for it.
Gosh, think of the adversity this man has overcome! It’s like another Abraham Lincoln, trudging twenty miles through the snow to get himself to school. Poor orphaned Feelgud, paying private tuition for his own kindergarten while working long nights as a bank-teller.
[Study the following closely, as it will give you great insight into the cartoon Republican’s psychology]
“— You stupid fuck. You dumb shit. A lot of people use college as a hiatus, between jobs or because they don’t want to work. Why the fuck should I pay for it?”
Okay–this is just the typical blind selfishness. As the if the tiny bit of Feelgud’s taxes that goes to public schools and universities doesn’t given him anything back. As though he’d like to live in a state that doesn’t have a major university in it, so that there’d be no college football for him to watch and no brain surgeon to operate on him when (as, in his case, could happen any second) his overtaxed cerebrum implodes.
That’s all to be expected, but watch this subtle shift…
“— The big lie is that you’ll get a better job with better education. But when everyone has the same qualifications as you, you’re no different than if you didn’t have no edukatsion.”
Could Feelgud secretly feel underrecognized? Have his own stellar merits failed to attract sufficient respect, slighted as he is by the PhD-bank-tellers in his town? Poor, poor Feelgud.
[Here now is a classic move to Darwinian oversimplification. One of my favorite Republican hat tricks.]
“It’s survival of the fittest. Shit for brains, that’s what you are. Communist dirtbag.”
Need I say more?
[Here I tried to put the need to educate Americans–recognized as a top priority by most economists and the majority of American people–into an economic context for my mentally challenged friend.
I said, “We are in a globalizing economy where almost all low-skilled work is being done by machines or by Chinese and other developing-nation people making as little as 50 cents an hour.” Feelgud revealed that he understands as little about globalization as he does about almost every other aspect of the twenty-first century.]
“If people couldn’t survive on 50 cents an hour they wouldn’t be working there you stupid moron.”
Will someone please explain to Feelgud that the average Chinese worker has as much choice to change jobs as Feelgud has–would that he could!–to ask for a new life. In this instance he is actually more naive and ignorant than I ever thought possible.
He is also illogical. Since he claims to be the world’s greatest enthusiast of free-market individualism how can he possibly justify supporting totalitarianism in other countries with his own consumer dollars? I find it really hilarious that people like Feelgud don’t hesitate to call a democrat a “Communist dirtbag” while they provide financial and political support for an abusive communist regime like China’s.
Why does he do it, friends? The reason is almost laughable. Feelgud is so desperate to buy another $5 pair of Chinese sweatshop sneakers from PayLess that he never considers that a huge portion of his tax dollar (and even more under either Bush or Gore) goes into beefing up the military so that we can fight the Red Commie Menace–alias, the same quasi-slave laborers who have pieced together Feelgud’s entire wardrobe from WalMart. Don’t you just love the irony?
[I said I hoped wages would improve for workers in the global economy; Feelgud, hoping to make me quake in my boots, replied…]
“— When it does, you stupid fuck, you’ll be paying $99 for t-shirts and $250 for shoes.”
The funny thing is, this is not so far from my own self-imposed reality. I have a pair of Doctor Martin boots made in the UK and a couple of other shoes. I don’t need to load up my wardrobe with a bunch of cheap crap. I’d much rather pay $50 for a good shirt that will last five years, than stock up Kathy Lee’s signature sweatshop brand.
Wouldn’t it be great for our economy if the people who made our t-shirts and sneakers could afford to buy American software and other products? Maybe then we wouldn’t have a trade deficit with China in the trillions–which, in the long run, is likely to turn Feelgud’s mutual fund to shit.
[Feelgud mouths another classic Republican platitude]
“— The US economy has turned to a service economy.”
Check the facts, Feelgud. What exactly is this service economy? The middle class continues to shrink. Managerial jobs are being downsized and downsized again. Small-business owners find it harder and harder to compete. No serious economist is sanguine about these trends. But you haven’t even begun to acknowledge them.
[Me: “You may be happy living in a nation of lifelong burger-flippers but I am not.”]
“— You stupid fuck. This is another big lie. Some one has to be a burger flipper. And it looks like from your communist rhetoric, it’s you.”
Actually, it was Ross Perot who first popularized the burger-flipper issue back in 1996–hardly a flaming pinko, I think anyone will agree. Of couse, someone has to be a burger flipper. Typically, it’s a teenager making some pocket change (the same person who Feelgud secret fears is way better educated than he is).
Notice that here Feelgud as much as admits that his idea of a suitable “service economy” future, is a nation of 35-year-old burger flippers with (if he can help it) no education.
[more classic spew]
“— The truth of the matter we pay a lot to subsidize history, psychology majors so that they can be bank tellers and insurance salesmen.”
Do me a favor Feelgud, and find out exactly how much you pay. Check out what small percentage of your tax dollar goes into your state’s public university. Then find out how much money that university brings back into the local economy (and I speak in actual dollars, putting aside intangible things like how nice it is actually to have a conversation with someone who–unlike you–knows something about history.) In my state, the university brings in about $15 to the economy for every $1 that taxpayers spend on it. They couldn’t do better if they were investing state money in Chinese sweatshops!
“If we can make people study computer science it would be worthwhile paying for their education, but we pay for people to study origami.”
The would-be fascist rears his ugly head anew.
"We now get a lot of high-tech skilled people from overseas. "
Great. So Feelgud’s ideal future is a world were recent immigrants do most of the skilled work (fair enough for them)and people born in the US who used to get good-paying factory jobs become burger-flippers, WalMart cashiers and janitors at Microsoft.
[A word on Tort Reform, the darling of George W. Bush]
“— Tort reform means GM doesn’t have to pay $20 million to a kid who overturns his car because he can’t drive. Tort reform means Norplant doesn’t have to pay $5 to a woman who knew what she was getting into and was convinced to sue them. You are a stupid communist fuck.”
Under the current system, which is as American as the US constitution, companies can appeal an unfair decision. And elected judges already have a tendency to favor business interests since they, like most politicians, depend on campaign donations.
Texas “tort reform” puts an artificial lid on claiming damages from, for example, polluters who give people cancer.
To wit, Feelgud,you are a stupid tool for fascist fucks.