Semi-coherent raving

(the above being a genuine, undoctored screenshot)

This whole anti-union business fills me with such rage I just want to punch someone in the face, hard, but it's really a whole system, and there's no one person whom I could punch that would hurt the whole system--though I guess that evil fuckstick Scott Walker would be a decent enough substitute (I mean fucking christ-- at some point, you probably thought that the overseers in Upton Sinclair novels have to be exaggerations, or at least that their real-life versions probably weren't quite so gleefully aware of how evil they were--I HATE the fact that I am constantly being revealed to have been laughably naïve). I don't even fucking understand how it's possible to say to people "oh, sorry, you're not allowed to band together in order to demand better working conditions or higher wages." What the fucklety? Look, I know goddamn well that the "conservative" ideal is a state of fucking anarchy where the billionaires live in their palaces of gold and the rest of us eat each other, but the very idea that they can actually mandate by law that we're required to do this--fucking unbelievable. Thousands of workers fought and died (were murdered, frequently, and don't think there aren't plenty of people who'd like a repeat of that--most of them just aren't dumb enough to say it in so many words) frequently to live slightly less shitty lives, and for what? It's like it's fucking 1917 all over again. These conscience-less motherfuckers want to repeal the entire twentieth century, and...they're doing a pretty good job of it! And we're pretty much cool with that. Long as it doesn't involve taking away our Shiny Objects, not being trampled upon by robber barons isn't really a priority.

On a semi-related note, here is a fucking unbelievable quote by Mark Murphy, CEO of the Green Bay Packers, which I always thought was supposed to be the non-evil team:

You know, right now our current players if they’re vested, and you vest if you play three or more seasons, you get health insurance coverage for five years, which is great. But I look at it, too, and the transition for players from playing in the NFL to finding another career and establishing themselves is very difficult, and I really wonder, sometimes, if we do too much for the players. They’ve got severance pay and a 401(k) plan. I guess what I’m saying is that sometimes it’s not all bad, and going back and talking to some of the players who played for Lombardi in the ‘60s — you know, they worked in the off-seasons, and they made a very smooth transition into their second careers because they had to. And so I’m a little worried that if we do too much for players in terms of compensation after their career’s end, and health insurance — it’s not all bad to have an incentive to get a job. And, so those are just some of the things we’re thinking through and talking through.

Or, to put it another way, "if we take some responsibility for destroying their bodies, they just won't have the incentive to go out and get jobs. The lazy slackers--they're all like 'oh, I'm too crippled and brain-damaged to find a magic job that provides the health insurance I need! I'm a girl, and I like playing with dolls!' Whine whine whine--suck it up, ya buncha pussies!"

Yeah, I know, former player, former union rep--but here and now, he is making the argument of a psychopath. At some point, something in his brain clearly just broke. While I don't think Murphy deserves anything like sympathy, he may deserve something like pity: people like him hold money as the highest good, and why the heck wouldn't they, since that's our constant drumbeat--not "enough money to live a decent life," but "more more more" in a totally asymptotic way: there will never be enough. And having internalized that, it suddenly becomes totally reasonable to construct arguments in support of that--arguments that, to non-insane people, inspire only horrified revulsion. And the thing of it is, Murphy is probably arguing completely in good faith here--he probably believes that "I really wonder, sometimes, if we do too much for the players" is a reasonable thing to say, never realizing that the only reason he thinks as much is that his brain has been infected. Perhaps you think it is patronizing of me to analyze him thus, but what's the alternative? That he's just a plain ol' bad person by his very fundamental nature? To me, that sounds worse, and besides, it doesn't jive with his history.