Thomas Sowell is an idiot. He wants to know why the left-wing is so angry all the time. Why do we do vituperative stuff like take to the streets and protest? Why do get upset about tax cuts for the rich that cause massive deficits and pinch social programs? Good questions, no? How about this gem?
Often it is an exercise in futility even to seek to find a principle behind the anger. For example, the left’s obsession with the high incomes of corporate executives never seems to extend to equally high — or higher — incomes of professional athletes, entertainers, or best-selling authors like Danielle Steel.
Here’s a fucking clue for you, Sowell.
Derek Jeter gets paid to hit, run, and field. He doesn’t set the hourly wage for the groundskeepers and the guy with the cotton candy. He doesn’t lay off the ticket taker so he can deliver a quarter point rise in his company’s stock. He isn’t going to move the Yankees to California if he doesn’t like the way he is treated by city hall. And, if Jeter doesn’t hit, run, and field, and the Yankees come in last place, Jeter won’t get a huge severance package followed by another huge contract with another team.
But, you know what? Jeter and his teammates make too much damn money. In order to pay them, Steinbrenner charges me $8.50 a beer and an ungodly amount for parking…not to mention the soaring ticket prices. I used to go to five games a year. Now I can only afford to go to one. And that makes me angry.
Here’s what Sowell thinks makes us angry:
Their greatest anger seems to be directed at people and things that thwart or undermine the social vision of the left, the political melodrama starring the left as saviors of the poor, the environment, and other busybody tasks that they have taken on.
It seems to be the threat to their egos that they hate. And nothing is more of a threat to their desire to run other people’s lives than the free market and its defenders.
Effing brilliant. Not one mention of the war, the torture, the warrantless wiretapping, the vote fixing, the Terri Schiavo case, the abortion restrictions, the gutting of the DOJ’s civil rights division, the FBI’s national security letters, the politicization of intelligence, Katrina, our standing in the world. Nope, I’m just angry because my ego is too big.
Concerning economic issues, I’m angry because I don’t believe there is a right for anyone to be wealthy when anyone who is able and willing to work goes hungry. When some thirty percent of the homeless population works full-time jobs, no one has a right to a fucking Lexus. And insofar as two centuries of capitalism have done little more to alleviate poverty than to stuff it into the less-visible corners of our society and the third world, all that free-market-messianism doesn’t carry much weight with me. Things are manifestly getting worse in step with rollbacks in the regulatory system (a little melamine in your soup, sir?), and it angers me to have shit-artists in Armani suits tell me, “Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?”
It particularly angers me that these same shit-artists are saying that the left is angry when it is the right and their slavering fanatical base who fill the airwaves with hate, lashing out at women, gays, racial minorities, the poor, other religions, and personal choice and freedom in general. You can go from cradle to grave without being beat up in a parking lot by a liberal, but you better make damn sure you don’t go a whole bunch of conservative-frequented places with the wrong bumper sticker. Am I angry? Sure, but at least I’m not a fucking psychopath.
The not inconsiderable anger coming from the right is apparently not worthy for such fine journalistic treatment.
Gee, and here I thought it was because of notions of social justice my parents ingrained in me from a very early age.
Silly me, it’s my EGO!
Thanks Tommmy-boy. Hey, care to go fuck yourself pal?
In a way such a column is a good sign. It is an indication that we are having an effect.
The only time I have seen Sowell depart from his conservative orthodoxy was when The Bell Curve came out. He was so pissed that someone might suggest his genes might make him the intellectual inferior of whites that he wrote an entire book claiming that differences in intelligence test scores was all based on culture.
Otherwise he’s been more than happy to labor in the fields of conservative (mostly white male) think tanks promoting the “company line.”
I have no idea who Sowell is, and judging from the quotes there’s no reason I want to find out. Idiots who continue to flog the myth that there is a “free market” in the United States, rather than a plutocratically controlled economy are not worth the time of day.
Nor are people who feel no anger at the fact that their government has enabled the murder of half a million civilians in their name. I’m sure Sowell would be equally unable to comprehend what Jefferson and Paine, Lincoln and Sojourner Truth, were angry about. Those who sell out their country never seem to get mad, do they?
The left has no real alternative to the free market. Socialism and communism put different asses in drivers seats. Hierarchy, the problem, remains. Hierarchy’s alternative, classlessness (utopia)seems so far beyond us as to be lunacy.
The real lunacy is the free market which permits individuals to consider themselves “superior”. Their urge for superiority stems from negative collective imagery, the notion human nature is bad. Our leaders strive to distinguish themselves from a mass they despise. Superiority pursues an illusion. We die. Nothing we do in this life alters our humanity. That we think we can prove ourselves special is unrealistic to the point of psychosis.
If you care to read the theory in detail go to http://www/egalite.com
Actually, the free market itself is an illusion. In reality, any company or industry that claws and stabs its way to the top of the pile immediately starts using whatever economic and political clout it can muster to prevent the “free market” from affecting its current and future profit margins. It is apparently the real goal in a “free market” to become so advantaged and powerful so as to be able to ignore or control the very market forces that would otherwise keep a given corporation from doing anything totally stupid….
sowell is simply a fool. Thus- why waste our anger(Ha!) on a fool? Once again, a fool is preaching to the choir-unless- another fool offers the original fool a platform!
To hell with him- just ignore him. There is definitely items are waiting to be commented on that are so much more important than this fool.
bill-
why don’t you send me, each morning, your pre-approved list of shit that is worth discussing.
I don’t mean to be snide, but not everything I write about can be the most urgent matter ever.
That just some wingnut trying to project his feeling onto Democrats.
It is nothing more than a mind game to put Democrats on defense.
They are projecting their own feelings. Nothing more.
Don’t you people get it by now. The wingers always accuse Democrats of doing or thinking what they are doing or thinking.
You are angry because the yankees SUCK and your $8.50 beer is shite recycled from teh 2nd tier urinal.
Go A’s! Go Giants! At least you can get a microbrew and some sushi for your $8.50. Oh, and a ticket to get in.
“Their greatest anger seems to be directed at people and things that thwart or undermine the social vision of the left”
This was so true, in 1979. I wanted poor kids to be able to go to Astros games at the Dome. Now, I want a middle-class family to be able to go. Jeebus (h/t Homer Simpson), why don’t we add a few more luxury suites to Minute Maid?
Anyway, I like my liquid bread and my MLB circus.
And Thomas Sowell can go Cheney himself (a not-so-veiled reference to Right Wing anger).
It’s the frame – it’s the frame – it’s the frame – Rinse and repeat. Over and over ad infinitum is the relentless repetition of bullshit which is finally not even recognized and challenged.
Repeat after me. We are not the ‘Left’. We are the f***ing majority.They are so far “Reich” that mainstream is radical. Don’t buy into it or allow it to go unchallenged. 28% Approval people ! That’s the Republican government.
BooMan – I’ve found even Steve Clemons having trouble knowing when he’s being had. dKos and Needlenose both put out info I’ve Blogrolled at my home site and TPM Cafe. Look for ‘Moving the Overton Window’ and ‘Why the right Wing Gets It…’ under ‘Intel’.
Whoops. That TPM stuff is only on Tom Earnhardt’s analysis of the ‘rationale’ for Iraq. Just check http://opit.wordpress.com/
It’s all about manners:
If you burned down his house or tortured his neighbors in a genial, non-confrontational way, Sowell would scarcely be annoyed. Indeed, he wouldn’t even hate the devil incarnate, if said devil didn’t raise his voice. (Or have I misread what he’s trying to say here?)
Sounds like projection.