Perhaps it’s paranoia due to all their close friends and associates being psychopaths as well?
“Now you say you’re lonely
You cry the long night through
Well, you can cry me a river
Cry me a river
I cried a river over you”
One of Hitler’s reasons for persecuting the Jews was that he believed they were secretly colluding and controlling the world’s financial markets to their own benefit and everyone else’s detriment. They weren’t.
Maybe Perkins invoked Kristallnacht because he knows the 1% aren’t exactly innocent of that same charge.
I don’t know of any legislation being discussed to take away all his rights and ship him off to a camp, the “persecution” he seems to be afraid of is. . . his taxes being raised. (Oh the horror!)
And actually Obama hasn’t even raised his taxes, but if you remember, Clinton did raise taxes on the top marginal earners by a tiny percent, and the rich stayed wealthy somehow.
I object to the 1% neologism as being the product and oversimplification of soundbyte culture with the intention of lessening actual debate and critical thinking and to endumbin’ the population.
Maybe the rich are crybabies because all humans are greedy and they hate when rules change that take away or reduce what they have, regardless of whether they can afford it.
Good one! However, it may not be the people themselves, but the “vision” and policies of the system they navigate in.
To paraphrase Richard Dawkins, religion and corporate mindset makes otherwise sane people do insane things.
Okay. Even if Perkins is right, who cares?
String the parasites up. Fuck 'em.
Considering that fascism is the defence of the wealthy, his complaint is incredibly ironic. Fear of democratic collective action to reduce inequality is exactly what powers fascism, which is why they have been rabidly anti egalitarian.
So . . .
They have cognitive dissonance, just like the rest of us?
I mean, to be fair, they’ve been raised to think that they’re doing is okay, and it’s hard to argue with them too much if you watch TV every now and then.
I want to change things as much as anyone, but I think you can’t lose sight of the fact that they’re human beings too and we’re all living as part of a completely batshit crazy and generally unenjoyable worldwide LARP that we can’t stop playing because it’s the only game on the planet. They just had different starting places as often as not.
That letter to the editor reads like satire - either that’s unintentional, and he’s displaying an absolutely staggering level of narcissism and lack of awareness, or he’s deliberately done a modern version of Swift’s Modest Proposal, and it’s being mistaken for earnestness. Based on who supposedly wrote it, I’m assuming it’s the first, but I’m also entertaining the possibility that someone else wrote it satirically in his name, because it’s rather mind boggling to think that someone might have written that seriously.
No, even their cognitive dissonance is bigger and more impressive than anyone else’s.
There are a couple quotes around to effect that "Fascism comes disguised as anti-Fascism," and this guy is making classic Fascist statements. Also there seems to be a corollary to Godwins Law that when a conservative invokes Hitler, he will then start spewing stuff plagiarized from Mein Kampf.
In this case, he’s pretty much in full agreement with Hitler: The liberals are the real racists, the liberals are going to enslave us, the liberals are the real genocidal maniacs, the liberals are the real Fascists.
See how easy it is to embrace Hitler? Just dust off Adolphs old scripts, rinse, lather, and repeat. and there you are, presenting Fascism as anti-Fascism. Killing liberals is justfiable and practically a moral imperative.
At the same time, the slogan gets used to condemn anti-fascists as fascists.
reality check: fascists have beaten me unconscious for being queer and autistic, and want to exterminate everyone like me. anti-fascists have not, and do not. there is no moral equivalency.
The bit about “our number one celebrity, author Danielle Steele” pinged my troll-o-meter pretty vigorously. But as you say, considering the source…
Way to dive in to the competition 
Heh.
And seriously, they may be part of the problem now but as often as not their wealth is based primarily on luck and birth circumstance. One can’t separate that from the person and pretend that all the rest of us would’ve gave all of our wealth to charity.
We’re talking decades of training and acclimation here. You don’t solve anything by looking for black and white perspectives where only greys exist.
Because they dodged and hid their money offshore and on (remember Enron and Worldcom’s fancy bookkeeping?), and then Bush repealed those tax increases and allowed even more tax havens.
The capital gains tax is, frankly, far too low, and loopholed to the max. It should be calculated from unadjusted revenue minus unadjusted gross expenses for real goods and services, and those goods and services transactions audited as far down the dollar chain as it’s possible to go, so that false or shady transactions can’t reduce the tax burden. And that’s the rate. It can be a low rate or a flat rate or a progressive rate or whatever rate you want, but it should apply evenly across all corporations and people without exceptions. Should even apply to churches, nonprofits and charities. No exceptions to the capital gains tax. Then we’d have a system that isn’t gamed and subjective.
And then, of course, address seriously all the disparities and lopsided shit like drones and stealth bombers that we buy with all that tax money, because if we had a fair tax system, we should have a non-insane spending system too.
And while I’m at it, My Little Ponies for all the children, beer for the dads and girls’ night out for the mommies. And unicorns and rainbows coming out of my butt, with a pink cupcake and Greek Gods serving us free Starbucks from little push-carts that roam the neighborhood, and stacks of money thrown on our doorsteps by conga lines of happy Oompa Loompas who don’t feel oppressed.
That world.
Or revolution and just take back what the 1% stole from us and frog march them to the guillotine…
I’m good either way.
Imma leave this here…
Fascism: Global conspiracy theories that single out the powerless (the enemy within), obsession with sexual conformity, patriarchy, fertility, xenophobia, racial purity, heroic death, nostalgia, and wars of expansion. Also, Fascism is almost always strongly religious and usually includes an official state religion.
Non-insane spending?
That would be madness!
