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Now I'm Just a Monetarist Cunt

2007-Jan-6 -- I’ve been called a lot of things in my day (like Fat Nigger and "socialist" by those who have never lived abroad when I compare America to Europe), but this REALLY takes the cake.

As an openly gay man in Manhattan I am considered to be very liberal to some of my fellow Americans.  I've always argued I'm less liberal than many a bleeding heart, though.  Watching Lou(d) Dobbs on CNN I've been thoroughly disgusted as of late.  He is no bleeding heart, of course, but I'm shocked at how a lot of people both on CNN and who I've spoken with consider themselves liberal and still think he's "the man."  Dobbs recently went on a campaign about his purportedly "novel" perception he had about the war on the middle class.  Duh.  There has been a war on the middle class for all known history.  If you look back far enough you'd find that this country has a huge middle class that most countries don't enjoy.  Do I think it is fair and equitable and that we have a great economic system that works flawlessly?  Hell no.  Do I wish the middle class was larger and that no one was poor?  Of course.  But what populations are we talking about?  That is the crux of this insult that I had flung at me.

More and more when I question these bleeding hearts on who it is they are trying to protect, I come across sounding like the conservative in the crowd, and perhaps economically/fiscally I am a conservative.  Now I have not had this discussion with any bleeding hearts who have a history of studying political science and economics, as I have (my major and minor), but a long-time chemist friend of mine recently screamed at me in a restaurant that I was a "monetarist cunt" a few times, for good measure, because of my opinions.  The next time I debate the molecular breakdown of an atom, I'll let him win, but I'll be damned if I'm going to let someone who stoops to name-calling in public think he knows what he's talking about on one of my favorite subject -- socio-economics.

What the hell is a monetarist?  Well, it's a lot more complicated than I care to delineate here.  Because it was preceded by the word "cunt," I also find it very hard to take the insinuation seriously.  It's definition, in any event, is, "An economist who holds the strong belief that the economy's performance is determined almost entirely by changes in the money supply."  While this had nothing to do with minting more currency, the subject came up when I noticed how my bleeding heart friend insisted on leaving a much larger tip than tradition would have one do for a waitress because he is so much more pro-labor than I am.  I guess he wanted to one-up my admiration for the labor movement -- that being the world labor movement, not just the xenophobic American excuse for a labor movement.  While I did not come from the one-factory town he did, I do believe that it is inefficient to put all your eggs in one basket, economically speaking.  I moved across the country in large part for economic reasons.

So what is my stance?  Lou Dobbs is a slipshod economist who couldn't find work so he stumbled upon an opportunity to read the teleprompter for the boring financial news.  He wanted more attention as a broadcaster since he wasn't doing anything exciting talking about numbers, so he wrote a book and had CNN launch a nauseatingly-long campaign to coincide with the pre-xmas release of his book on this suddenly interesting war on the middle class.  Lou Dobbs thinks he has it all figured out.  What Dobbs did in a lot of his interviews promoting his propaganda was play up his middle class ambitions.  At the same time he managed to sneak in his racist anti-Mexican immigration hate agenda.  He calls for extraordinary limits and punishment on the hiring of "illegals" because it is ruining our economy and supposedly hurting the middle class!!  When is Dobbs going to start picking cotton or tomatoes some of these jobs the Mexicans are being recruited to America for so help save our country's economy?  Are these Mexicans being hired by other Mexicans who are not American nationals?  His racism is so blinding that many Americans are jumping on the bandwagon.  It is almost fashionable to be liberal and racist if you follow this logic all the way through.

But here's where the hypocrisy really starts getting me aggravated.  While I love me some Michael Moore and I agree with almost 100% of his agenda, whining about economic realties that affect geographic locales is not going to get America and other parts of the world moving forward.  If we are really concerned about progressive politics and avoiding exploitation of labor, history has shown, labor force movements MUST be international.  As soon as a company sees labor unify, they can move to a poorer jurisdiction. 

For the purpose of this writing, I will define a "bleeding heart," as someone who is ready to move to another country because he is so sick of American politics being so far to the Right.  I myself am considering utilizing my own European Citizenship eligibility, but I am not subscribing to Dobbs.  So when a bleeding heart sounding like Bubbah South complains about jobs being taken away from Americans, WHO are these people trying to help?  The Americans that they are trying to ABANDON?!  Or are they really concerned about ALL people of the world, including the immigrants for whom those "slave wages" would buy them a lot of things back home to the families that they came to America to support?  Do you really think these people wouldn't rather be back in sunny Mexico if they could have the standard of living they can get working in Chicago's South Side?  If these bleeding hearts are such damn good American patriots and want the jobs left to the Americans (especially the white ones who have been here longer than the illegal Mexicans?), why the fuck are they moving out of the damn country in disgust to avoid BEING an American?!  Do you see why I think it is inherently racist to subscribe to Loud Dobbs' cockamamie logic?  What a monetarist cunt I am.

This page was last updated 28-Dec-2007.