09.06.16
Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, The Corporate Bund at 3:10 pm by George Smith
From the New York Times, something obvious but germane to our Culture of Lickspittle:
Why, then, are well over a million and a half Americans over 50, people with decades of life ahead of them, unable to find work? The underlying reason isn’t personal, it’s structural. It’s the result of a network of attitudes and institutional practices that we can no longer ignore.
The problem is ageism — discrimination on the basis of age.
“Age discrimination in employment is illegal, but two-thirds of older job seekers report encountering it,” it continues.
Lots of practices in our corporate Bund are illegal. But you have to have agencies willing to police it and take corporate America to the mat. None of that structure exists. And so we have a civilization that marinates its people in a daily sauce of banal contempt. Which is what the article documents, in vignettes.
Finally:
Recruiters say people with more than three years of work experience need not apply. Ads call for “digital natives,??? as if playing video games as a kid is proof of competence. Résumés go unread, as Christina Economos, a science educator with more than 40 years of experience developing curriculum, has learned …
Discouraged and diminished, many older Americans stop looking for work entirely. They become economically dependent, contributing to the misperception that older people are a burden to society …
It’s a grave social ill, so to speak, right?
So let’s get back to that and again read from the wisdom of someone at the American Enterprise Institute:
What do unworking men do with their free time? Sadly, not much that’s constructive. About a tenth are students trying to improve their circumstances. But the overwhelming majority are what the British call NEET: “neither employed nor in education or training.??? Time-use surveys suggest they are almost entirely idle—helping out around the house less than unemployed men; caring for others less than employed women; volunteering and engaging in religious activities less than working men and women or unemployed men. For the NEETs, “socializing, relaxing and leisure??? is a full-time occupation, accounting for 3,000 hours a year, much of this time in front of television or computer screens.
The AEI scholar, is Nicholas Eberstadt. His essay assumes most of the subjects he’s writing about are uneducated and without training.
This is largely horseshit. There are huge slices of American workers, sophisticated, science-trained and able, all dislocated from the American experience. They range from computer science programmers and engineers to science instructors and all points in between. The Times piece anecdotally hears from another miscellaneous bunch, this time focused on age disqualification.
Ageism is only one of a slew of problems. What is required as remedy is to literally destroy all the received wisdoms about capitalism, its alleged lubricant to democracy, and work in America ingrained in the last few decades and to recognize that there has never been a shortage of human capital here.
What we have is a system, an establishment, that is fine with discarding that, as long as it does not personally affect them, the entropy is monetized, and maintains an illusion of standards and opportunities.
“Age segregation impoverishes us, because it cuts us off from most of humanity and because the exchange of skills and stories across generations is the natural order of things,” writes Ashton Applewhite. “In the United States, ageism has subverted it.”
Yeah, nice words from a wise person. The rest of the time, grave social ill or NEET?
On the money or what?
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Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Decline and Fall, Made in China, Rock 'n' Roll, WhiteManistan at 1:10 pm by George Smith
Old White Coot — field recordings in stereo! Collect them as they come. Perfect for readings on the Culture of Lickspittle.
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09.05.16
Posted in Bombing Paupers, Culture of Lickspittle, Decline and Fall, War On Terror at 5:27 pm by George Smith
In the fall of 2016, fifteen years in, college football games suddenly need war-on-terror bags and some metal detector screening.
At Beaver Stadium, where Nittany Lion football still makes State College the third largest city in Pennsy every Saturday. Metal detection.
USC institutes metal screening at the Coliseum:
With the first home game coming this week, USC officials were urging fans to comply with new security rules in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
All patrons will be subject to new metal detector screening, said USC spokesman Tom Tessalone.
Bags that are carried into the stadium must have clear plastic sides and be no larger than 6 inches wide, 6 inches deep and 12 inches long, USC officials said.
Cal at Berkeley:
In response to terrorist attacks around the world, Memorial Stadium will only allow fans to bring clear bags into the venue during football games, starting with the this season’s first home game on Sept. 17.
The new policy was adopted to increase security in the stadium after high-profile attacks in Europe and Asia. UC Berkeley Associate Athletics Director Wesley Mallette said the changes in policy are in line with security measures adopted in stadiums for professional baseball and football.
The same security measures will be put in place at Haas Pavilion, starting with the volleyball season this month. Eight of the PAC-12 stadiums have implemented similar policies.
The Rose Bowl for Bruins games.
The University of Central Florida.
The Volunteers:
KNOXVILLE – Football season is kicking off next week with a new bag policy at Neyland Stadium.
UT introduced the new rules last month. They state that fans will only be allowed one clear plastic bag no larger than 12 inches, by 6 inches by 12 inches.
With just over a week until the first game, fans are stocking up and clear bags are proving to be difficult to find.
Do you think there are terrorists plotting against Texas Tech out in Lubbock?
Texas Tech fans going into Jones AT&T Stadium for Red Raider football games starting Saturday should keep one thing clear: their bags.
Texas Tech athletics department officials, along with local business owners and managers, have been reminding Red Raider fans that only clear plastic, vinyl or PVC bags will be allowed into sporting venues after Tech officials announced the new policy ahead of this football season.
The clear bags must be smaller than 12 inches by 6 inches by 12 inches, or fans can bring a 1-gallon clear plastic freezer bag to carry their belongings.
The list goes on and on. It’s nationwide. Not a coincidence. Someone issued an order.
Now does this look to you like the American Wehrmacht’s bombing of the Middle East is making life better?
Note the exploding market for Homeland Security-approved public gathering and event plastic I-am-not-a-terrorist bags.
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Posted in Bioterrorism, Decline and Fall, Ricin Kooks at 3:14 pm by George Smith
For the last decade and a half the American media has raised the poison found in castor seeds — ricin — to mythic proportion. And I’ve spent years doing my best to dispel the mythology.
Ricin has never been “easy to make.” And the mash of castor seeds is not a weapon of mass destruction. I’ve even been furnished expert consultations in criminal/terror cases involving it.
There is, however, a chemical that’s come to America’s white population. Carfentanil, a knock-out compound, with no real practical use other than tranquilizing elephants. And it is quite potent and already doing a great deal of harm.
From the New York Times:
Mr. Hatmaker became one of more than 200 people to overdose in the Cincinnati area in the past two weeks, leaving three people dead in what the officials here called an unprecedented spike. Similar increases in overdoses have rippled recently through Indiana, Kentucky and West Virginia, overwhelming ambulance crews and emergency rooms and stunning some antidrug advocates …
In Cincinnati, some medical and law enforcement officials said they believed the overdoses were largely caused by a synthetic drug called carfentanil, an animal tranquilizer used on livestock and elephants with no practical uses for humans. Fentanyl can be 50 times stronger than heroin, and carfentanil is as much as 100 times more potent than fentanyl. Experts said an amount smaller than a snowflake could kill a person.
The implicated carfentanil is believed to be made in Mexico or China and put into heroin shipments, probably precisely because of its power, the manufacturers believing, perhaps, that it would lead to faster addiction and complicate forensic analysis.
But this is a clear miscalculation because he drug is so powerful.
“[Police] officers and sheriff’s deputies are so concerned about the potency of carfentanil and other synthetic opioids that they carry overdose-reversing naloxone sprays for themselves, in case they accidentally inhale or touch the tiniest flake,” reads the newspaper.
The chemical activity of carfentanil and the less powerful but more common fentanil, employed to spike heroin formulations now coming into the US, has catalyzed an exploding health crisis in rural and ex-urban America.
For the numbers, which are astonishing, read the rest of the piece.
In 2002, Russian special forces used fentanil when storming a theater in Moscow where 800 people were taken hostage by Chechnyan separatists who’d rigged themselves and the building with explosives. The results were catastrophic. One hundred and seventy people were killed due to the use of it.
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Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Decline and Fall, Shoeshine at 1:47 pm by George Smith
From the New York Times, over the weekend:
At a private fund-raiser Tuesday night at a waterfront Hamptons estate, Hillary Clinton danced alongside Jimmy Buffett, Jon Bon Jovi and Paul McCartney, and joined in a singalong finale to “Hey Jude.???
“I stand between you and the apocalypse,??? a confident Mrs. Clinton declared to laughs, exhibiting a flash of self-awareness and humor to a crowd that included Calvin Klein and Harvey Weinstein and for whom the prospect of a Donald J. Trump presidency is dire …
But Mrs. Clinton has been more than accessible to those who reside in some of the country’s most moneyed enclaves and are willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to see her. In the last two weeks of August, Mrs. Clinton raked in roughly $50 million at 22 fund-raising events, averaging around $150,000 an hour …
It’s easy to declare Donald Trump an unacceptable choice as President. And it’s become far too easy to think very poorly of the Democratic Party’s selection. Many say there are still orders of magnitude difference in suitability for the job. I agree there’s a difference — but not to the power of 100 or even 10.
HRC is custom-made for leadership in the Culture of Lickspittle. It’s not a virture.
From the Times today:
“He’s a racist, and she is a liar, so really what’s the difference in choosing both or choosing neither???? another young black woman from Ohio said.
Feel free to add to your collection of tracks from Old White Coot.
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09.02.16
Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Shoeshine, The Corporate Bund at 1:22 pm by George Smith
For the past couple of years I’ve posted on the corporate dictatotship’s great tradition — publishing anti-labor opinion oieces as good cheer on Labor Day. Despite inequality so high it menaces social cohesion nationwide and has brought on an election featuring the two most unpopular candidates in my lifetime, there’s never a shortage of white male douchebags from the right or some worthless corporate-cheerleading business institute pushing opinion pieces insisting the working man and labor has it too good on Labor Day. And the great thing about them is they’re all passed off as well-wishing or defenses of the rights of the commoner.
You could hang a few of America’s CEO’s from lampposts and set them on fire with napalm and white phosphorus, viewable by streaming on the web, and these guys would still be at it, railing about socialism, the necessity for more right-to-work legislation, the need for increased tax incentives/bribes for businesses (so they’ll allegedy hire more — which somehow never happens) and the holy sacraments of America’s free market and entrepreneurialism.
So roll this year’s selection…
Here’s Idaho’s governor insisting that firing local government workers during the Great Recession was virtuous.
Even in 2009-2010, when the private sector was taking it on the chin to the tune of an actual 1.1-percent decline in Idaho jobs, our State government reduced its employment by 5.3 percent. — the governor of Idaho, C. L. Butch Otter
Here, a simple and straightforward pack of lies from Paphlygonia on Shit Creek in Arkansas.
Labor Day signals need for labor reform … the labor movement is now turning its back on employees. — The Mountain Mail of Upper Arkansas
From someplace in New York pretty much like the middle of Pennsylvania.
I championed cutting taxes on small businesses and manufacturers so they can have the capital they need to expand and to create good jobs … I will continue fighting to create and keep good jobs in Central New York. — Madison Cunty Courier, New York
Can’t or won’t find anything nice to say about people? Pimp for mega-corporate beer owned by foreign interest.
The Budweiser Labor Day USA Survey touts itself as “a new national study that dares to ask the toughest questions about America’s most flag-waving, beer-drinking and charcoal-grilling end-of-summer holiday. — Watertown Public Opinion
With private sector membership in labor unions at its lowest in my lifetime, thats still too much. Competitive enterprise, my foot.
With Labor Day around the corner, a traditional holiday honoring American workers, it’s an apt time to take a hard look at the value of labor unions. — Newsday, opinion contributed by the Competitive Enterprise Institute
While workers here in Michigan can now refuse to pay dues, even while working under the terms of a negotiated contract, thanks to the signing of the Right to Work law in 2012, most feel intimidated and are afraid to exercise that right to resign from the union due to implied repercussions from union bosses and union loyalist coworkers. — Two page letter to the editor by a Right-to-Work anti-labor rep in Macomb County, Michigan
Then there’s the middle-aged white guy who imitates your grandfather at Sunday dinner get together to keep himself in good stead with the local chamber of commerce or whatever.
In fact, my father worked there during the 1950s and ’60s for a whopping $1.50 per hour (around $9 in today’s money), and that was some 30 cents higher than the minimum wage at the time … In my opinion, hard work is something to which a lot of modern Americans today seem to be allergic, for lack of a better description … I come from a long line of hard workers. There was no privilege in any branch of my family ... A corporate businessman we-ate-shoe-leather-and-we-liked-it type, G. L. Deer in the Point Pleasant Register of Ohio
And the cranky old white guy from way way out in flyover country who quotes from someone you’ve never heard of from 80 years ago because America is a socialist colony of quislings sucking the lifeblood of liberty and money-making.
Clark’s talk often referenced the roots of socialism that were planted by Roosevelt, the roots that have grown in size and today threaten to replace the Founder’s “Tree of Liberty,??? the tree the Founders planted in 1776 … When Americans think of treason, betraying one’s county, they often think of Benedict Arnold. Today, America has its Benedict Arnolds. They are in the unions, in management, and in government … — old man named Conkey in the Cherokee Tribune Ledger News of Georgia
Right wing business cheerleader think tank most people have never heard of, even in Michigan.
The state took a brave step forward by passing a right-to-work law in 2012. That reform did wonders for economic growth … More of this, please. The more we can root out many of the entrenched problems associated with compulsory unionism, the better. While much has been done in private sector unions, it’s important to move serious union reforms further in the public sector. — opinion in the Detroit News, contributed by employees of the right wing anti-labor Mackinac Center for Public Policy
This one is great because it’s an uncomplicated fuck you, I’ve got mine. Shut up, get a job, because life’s hard and then you die.
Let’s stop telling young people to find their passion and start telling them to find a job … The work you do in the world is not supposed to make a fulfilled individual; it’s supposed to make you an employed individual. — “Get a job!” type in the TCPalm of Stuart, Florida
I include the next one precisely because IT IS NOT like the others. Here’s one honest man.
Can we stop with the platitudes about celebrating the workers and face the reality of America?
For starters, let’s do something about the name of this three-day weekend. Instead of Labor Day, let’s call it Plutocrat Day or maybe Oligarch Day. — Bob Franken, The Sun Prairie Star, Wisconsin
And the very last, from the Wall Street Journal, deserving of very special notice. Because IT’S ME and 10 plus or minus a couple million more!
What do unworking men do with their free time? Sadly, not much that’s constructive. About a tenth are students trying to improve their circumstances. But the overwhelming majority are what the British call NEET: “neither employed nor in education or training.??? Time-use surveys suggest they are almost entirely idle—helping out around the house less than unemployed men; caring for others less than employed women; volunteering and engaging in religious activities less than working men and women or unemployed men. For the NEETs, “socializing, relaxing and leisure??? is a full-time occupation, accounting for 3,000 hours a year, much of this time in front of television or computer screens.
Clearly big changes in the U.S. economy, including the decline of manufacturing and the Big Slowdown since the start of the century, have played a role. But something else is at work, too …
Regardless of its cause, this new normal is inimical to America’s national interests … In short, the American male’s postwar flight from work is a grave social ill. — The Wall Strret Journal, contributed by the American Enterprise Institute, corporate policy and ideology of which, over the decades, have contributed to the condition described
I fully intend to devote the remainder of my life to living up to the reputation of being a grave social ill.
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09.01.16
Posted in Rock 'n' Roll at 2:48 pm by George Smith
Just in, digital copy of Chuck Eddy’s “Terminated for Reasons of Taste,” published by Duke University Press.
I am entertained by the story of Eddy in the Army in Germany in 1983, where as a 2LT he’s commended by his reviewing officer for having whipped his unit into fine shape. Just in time for Able Danger Able Archer, a NATO exercise the Soviet Union thought was going to be a first strike, mostly due to Ronald Reagan’s brainless yack about “the evil empire” and the deployment of the Pershing missile to Europe. So far, fine lunchtime reading.
I’ve know Chuck Eddy for quite some time. He was the first rock critic to review my “Arrogance” record for Creem magazine way back in the mid-Eighties. And much later, he was one of my editors when I free-lanced for the Village Voice from 2000-2006.
The title is taken from the reason given for his firing by the Village Voice when new ownership took over in 2006.
I’m enjoying it and will have more to say later. But, yes, I do review books.
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Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Psychopath & Sociopath, Shoeshine at 1:59 pm by George Smith
From the Guardian, an opinion page piece on HRC’s hard-to-ignore outreach to those who should be shunned:
he Clinton campaign has now spent months trying to convince relatively obscure former Republican officials to endorse her campaign while also adopting many Republican slogans and arguments in her quest for the presidency …
Clinton gave a speech in Ohio on Wednesday with yet another former Bush official, James Clad. The speech was billed as touting “American exceptionalism???, one of the more repellent nationalistic concepts that Republicans have used to shame progressives in the past. She spoke mostly about foreign policy, a subject in which Clinton – with her penchant for supporting foreign wars and beefed up US military presence everywhere – seemingly has more in common with mainstream Republicans than the Obama administration.
To paraphrase Julian Assange: Cholera or gonorrhea?
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Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Cyberterrorism, Shoeshine at 1:15 pm by George Smith
For the past six months the press and Democratic Party have been trying to fit Julian Assange as a Putin/Russian intelligence service sock puppet. Not buying it.
Assange has always been quixotic, sometimes erratic, but no one manipulates him. Animosity on his part toward the US government is understandable. It’s always been my impression he was and is inimically opposed to the American empire.
Assange wound up seemingly forever stuck in the Ecuador embassy in London when HRC was Sec’y of State after it was her department that was hashed by Chelsea Manning’s Wikileaks Cablegate release. By definition, Clinton’s position at the virtual apex of our empire has made her a natural target for Wikileks spills. Why this would be considered shocking or unusual is a mystery to me.
Paradoxically, at one time the NYT and others were all too happy to work with Julian Assange. In truth, his relationship with the domestic and western press has always been fraught.
A long long time ago and before Wikileaks, Assange was a hacker and he subscribed to my old electronic newsletter.
Suelette Dreyfus, an Australian journalist whose book, Underground, I reviewed for it featured Assange as one of that country’s notable hackers. On Assange and Wikileaks, Dreyfus had this to say to the New York Times this week:
“This is not an East-West fight …[though] it is being presented as such by people with an agenda.”
The Clinton campaign is behind a great part of the effort to paint Assange as a tool of Russia. Not really a surprise, considering how Wikileaks has fed into the perpetual aggravation of Hillary Clinton and her private server e-mails. However, thinking that Assange and Wikileaks might tilt the election with an “October surprise” of some kind is a bridge way too far.
In sort of related news from the left, the idea that journalist Michael Isikoff would know how hackers might/could sway the election in a swing state is just laughable.
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08.31.16
Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Cyberterrorism, Shoeshine, The Corporate Bund at 1:42 pm by George Smith
Hillary Clinton spoke in front of an American Legion audience today. She gave a special shout out to its Boys Nation thing:
“You help raise the next generation of American patriots. I want to give a special shout out to Boys Nation, which meant so much to my husband when he was growing up.”
And it was a small part in a longer pep talk about American exceptionalism and an extended pandering to military service (which the Clintons like the vast majority of Americans including myself had and hve no part of) and patriotism. This goes hand and hand with the America never stopped being great meme. which from the vantage point of the Clinton class, the wealthy and their still employed enablers, is all true. You see, America is always great, never stops being so, shame on you for thinking it, you must want American Hitler to be President.
“[When] Vladimir Putin, of all people, criticized American exceptionalism, my opponent agreed with him, saying, and I quote, ‘if you’re in Russia, you don’t want to hear that America is exceptional’,??? Clinton continued. “Well maybe you don’t want to hear it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true.”
I’m not from Russia. But the exceptionalism shtick is drivel. But it is surely tailor-made for HRC’s kind of audience.
I was dragooned into attending the American Legion’s Boys State/Boys Nation thing when I was in high school. I did not care for it. But it was a great thing for budding fascists, bullies and bootlicks, though, so it makes sense to me that the Clintons would think highly of it. It was probably perfect for them, being real American “meritocracy” stuff.
You’ll surely get a kick out of my tribute to it, too, so here’s a reprint/dredge-up from about a decade ago.
JUNE 2007 — [Summer camps] must be about pain and embarrassment. It’s also important they be totally useless. It’s a bonus if they’re scarring, too.
Boy Scouts of America summer retreat in Pine Grove, Pennsylvania, was good for all three decades ago. You went, more accurately — were sent — to be physically purged and have a week gouged from your summer.
It reliably meted out punishment to those who had committed no crime.
If you slipped up in even the pettiest way — made the biscuits wrong — you had to do push-ups in front of the troop leader, a thirty-something man with an icky fondness for watching his charges do physical training with their shirts off.
On a par with Boy Scouts of America summer retreat was Keystone Boys State.
Keystone Boys State was a one-shot, eligible to you only when you were between junior and senior year in high school.
This year’s Keystone Boys State is at Shippensburg College (Shippensburg State Teachers, originally), running between June 24-30. (That was for 2007. -ed) Perhaps Keystone Boys State campers will Google this essay and be persuaded to threaten their parents with reprisals should they be forced to fulfill their commitment later this month.
Kids, don’t go!
DD is giving it to you straight. Keystone Boys State is not the Army but you’ll get a little dose of it later this month. Except you won’t be able to drink heavily, shoot guns or patrol foreign boulevards for prostitutes. You won’t be made Army Strong.
Naturally, DD did not volunteer for Keystone Boys State. I was drafted by irresponsible vainglorious parents and members of the local American Legion who thought of me as a utensil, an honors student at Pine Grove Area High School, something to be offered to the state Legion leadership. In a small town like Pine Grove, kids didn’t have the luxury of snubbing their noses at “gifts” from the local American Legion-VFW. Parents wouldn’t have it.
My Keystone Boys State was held at State College. It is a tribute to Penn State University that the American Legion sponsored operation wasn’t capable of bringing out a loathing in me for all things Nittany Lions. I remain a fan of the college football team and Joe Paterno.
Indeed, it’s astonishing that Penn State University would have allowed the use of its facilities to an organization and operation which determinedly obstructed any efforts by campers to enjoy Penn State, or even get to know about the school.
You see, attendance at Keystone Boys State didn’t give camp-goers much of a glimpse of the university.
When I attended, Boys Staters were restricted to two dormitories, a nearby cafeteria and attached playing fields.
How Keystone Boys State managed this in the Seventies was nasty business.
Upon arrival in State College, campers were separated into platoons, with each platoon being assigned a nominal city, named after some Pennsylvania government functionary.
DD was assigned to “Bethman City.” Each city resided on one floor of a dorm. Each city’s adult minders were from the active ranks of the US military. Bethman City’s minder was a USMC man from Parris Island. I’ll call him Gunny, although that was not his real name.
Gunny was a power drunk with a talent for cussing, neither of which DD thinks could be any liability in the Marines, although it was momentarily surprising to see him lay it out so plainly within 60 seconds of arrival.
The first thing Gunny told us about was screening at Parris Island. He was specific in his description of a Marine Corps recruit found with a rubber dildo in his rectum. Why this was important to tell a bunch of high school boys, other than it being an X-rated shaggy dog story, was not immediately obvious.
More pressing, Gunny said, was that we campers recognize we were to stay within the bounds of Keystone Boys State. Under no circumstances were we to take walks to downtown State College, described as a potentially dangerous place.
At this point, DD’s high school eyes rolled, having already been to State College a number of times to see Saturday football. Since I was in the back, Gunny did not see the contempt in which I held him and his developing tale. If he had, perhaps I would have been ordered to do some push-ups without my shirt on.
Gunny explained that there were women who were pros in downtown State College and they were eager to take advantage of us. It was such an outrageously stupid story, a few of us assumed he’d been told to tell it by someone old and weird and higher-up from within the American Legion.
The current website for Keystone Boys State advertises it as “non-military.”
Whether this is true now I don’t know, but in the Seventies the claim was utter horsecrap.
The camp was functionally administered by US military men. Every morning there was inspection — the kind in which a military man examined your bed and opened the drawers of your empty desk to see if there was any dust in them. If there was dust in an empty drawer, it was scooped up and put on your bed or on the top of some of your property to teach you a lesson. Whatever miscellaneous lint or dirt was found during inspection was always deposited on your belongings or personal space. This kept up until our military counselors realized we’d stopped giving a shit about what they thought and did, around mid-week.
How well a Boys Stater’s city did in inspection determined in which order you would eat lunch during the day. Bethman City always did poorly and, as a result, we always ate lunch last or near to last.
In late afternoon, after some worthless class on state government and a round of compulsory softball in the sweltering heat, the camp retired to the drill field to practice calisthenics, marching in formation and pass-in-review. During the exercises, each city was judged on its form and ability to follow orders snappily. That determined in which order you ate dinner.
Bethman City, you guessed it, often finished last.
By mid-week, Gunny had reported in for Keystone Boys State duty drunk or with savage hangover too many times. He was dismissed and the slack taken up by an USAF man.
At that point, the boys of Bethman City made the decision to stop paying attention to cleaning up bathrooms, sweeping rooms atomically clean and making beds quarter-bounce-worthy for inspection. Then we always finished last.
Being snappy on the drill field went out, too. On the last day of camp, when all the thugs from high-school football teams and their assorted camp lackeys had been “elected” leaders of Keystone Boys State and allowed to go into the reviewing stand as the elite who watched the rest of the lumpen pass-in-review, we dropped our pants while trudging past the bleechers. We ate last.
The people who ran my Keystone Boys State liked nothing better than to order around teenagers, mostly for what appeared to be the sheer sake of it.
“A week at Keystone Boys State condenses what might take several months in real life to less than 168 hours,” informs the official KBS website. “This compressed simulation helps people learn lessons about the actions and consequences of leadership in a very realistic way.”
Yes, one thinks learning to suck up, march in formation and follow pointless orders does teach something about life but one ought not to ask teenage kids to give up a week of summer to learn it. The current website seems to indicate Keystone Boys State is big with those junior ROTC operations which haven’t yet been run off public high school properties.
“The effort to get everyone involved at [KBS] manifests itself by having every ‘citizen’ elected, selected, assigned or appointed to leadership positions throughout the week. Each citizen also is provided with text materials based on organizational science and personal development exercises. Much of what we do is a spin-off of the Stephen Covey text, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective [People],” the boys camp proclaims.
“All citizens should become familiar with parliamentary procedures, ‘Robert’s Rules of Order’ and Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People – NOW ! ! !”
“The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” wasn’t required reading when DD attended Keystone Boys State, probably because it hadn’t yet been written.
It is another in a long line of publications from the self-help industry, filled with the kinds of slogans and advice people used to following orders and doing pointless institutional or corporate busy work for work’s sake think will help them improve their attitude so they can earn a quick million dollars, get promoted and exit the logjam of daily life.
Some of its tenets: Think Win/Win! Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood! Synergize!
Adoption of such a thing indicates the Keystone Boys State experience is, more than likely, an even more annoying and brainwashing experience in 2007 than it was in the Seventies.
It was true that every “citizen” of Keystone Boys State had to hold a “political” position by the end of the week.
This meant that as the inner core of apple-polishers was exhausted during the awarding of positions of “leadership” within the quasi-state camp apparatus, other positions were handed out on the basis of an ad hoc cronyism until, by the end of the week, everyone had one. It was mandated that everyone hold a public office.
I was made Bethman City dog catcher on the last day of formal camp operation. It didn’t require a vote.
For kids stumbling into this, if you must go to Keystone Boys State (and you SHOULD NOT if possible), I recommend you take a musical instrument, even if you aren’t in the high school band. Campers with instruments got to be in the Keystone Boys State community band. Perks were associated with it, like getting out of marching-in-formation and being allowed to eat ahead of everyone else, regardless of how badly your city did during inspection.
In the weeks following Keystone Boys State, I was able to make productive use of the camp one time and only once.
Everyone from Pine Grove High School who attended KBS was required to attend an American Legion dinner at the local Veterans of Foreign Wars banquet hall. After dinner, the campers would be asked to speak about their experience at Keystone Boys State.
I had no interest in attending and told my parents that if they forced the issue, like they’d forced KBS, I would tell the Legion dinner audience exactly what KBS was like. I would start with Gunny and his stories about a Marine recruit with a dildo up his ass and hookers patrolling the streets of State College looking for fresh-faced young boys.
That was all it took, really. When Mom and Dad asked what they should tell the organizers of the dinner, I told them to say I was at … another camp for the week.
Now that it one hell of a story, isn’t it? Real gonzo journalism. There ain’t nothing the Clintons could put down on paper to top it.
Anyway, moving on, about halfway through her speech today, Clinton gave a little spiel on computer security for the 1 percent. Computer security for the 1 percent is the years old story of China stealing all the intellectual property of America’s wealthiest companies, particularly it’s arms manufacturers
More recently, Russian hackers have taken their place. Worse, from the meritocratic and all-knowing point-of-view of the Democratic Party, Russia is attacking the DNC in cyberspace and possibly setting up to jigger the vote so as to throw the election to Trmp.
HRC is on the case:
We’ll invest in the next frontier of military engagement, protecting U.S. interests in outer space and cyberspace. You’ve seen reports. Russia’s hacked into a lot of things. China’s hacked into a lot of things. Russia even hacked into the Democratic National Committee, maybe even some state election systems. So, we’ve got to step up our game. Make sure we are well defended and able to take the fight to those who go after us.
As President, I will make it clear, that the United States will treat cyber attacks just like any other attack. We will be ready with serious political, economic and military responses. And we’re going to invest in protecting our governmental networks and our national infrastructure. I want us to lead the world in setting the rules of cyberspace.
If America doesn’t, others will. So in short, we have to be ready to win today’s fights and tomorrow’s.
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