Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Samuel Pepys and Matt Taibbi


A short video on The Great Fire of London (1666).

From Taibbi:
...
Vast forests have already been sacrificed to the public debate about the Tea Party: what it is, what it means, where it's going. But after lengthy study of the phenomenon, I've concluded that the whole miserable narrative boils down to one stark fact: They're full of shit. All of them. At the voter level, the Tea Party is a movement that purports to be furious about government spending — only the reality is that the vast majority of its members are former Bush supporters who yawned through two terms of record deficits and spent the past two electoral cycles frothing not about spending but about John Kerry's medals and Barack Obama's Sixties associations. The average Tea Partier is sincerely against government spending — with the exception of the money spent on them. In fact, their lack of embarrassment when it comes to collecting government largesse is key to understanding what this movement is all about...


Sometimes all one can do is watch carefully and faithfully record for posterity what actually happened the day the fire came and ate everything.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am reserving most of my now white hot anger for the media that continues to allow these morons to drive this phony narrative unchallenged.
Day after day, it is treated as some kind of UFO mystery: Why are these people so mad? What do they want? How can they be placated? As if they didn't spring fully formed from the malignant brains of Dick Armey and all the other southern strategists.
There is almost never any counter to their absurd assertions about what they are really angry about even on shows that should know better (Bill Maher allowing Andrew Breitbart and that other Barbie fascist to drone on and on about deficits, spending and taxes.....) Deficits they created! Spending they exploded! Taxes for billionaire they cut!!
Rolling Stone is the last real print publication standing in the arena of calling bullshit on bullshiters. That and about 4 hours of MSNBC, and two damn comedy shows on a comedy network!
How in the hell did we get here?
I turn 49 in two days and I just don't recognize this place anymore....

Anonymous said...

Oh and P.S. I am supposed to be part of the "apathetic left". It is more like "apoplectic" most days. If the media really wants to find the people who are angry these days, they should talk to someone like me, because every time I turn on teevee any more, I become a fucking pitbull on crack.

driftglass said...

Anon,
I turn 50 in a month and I don't recognize it either. The pod people really have finally arrived: impervious to reason, riding Hoverounds paid for by Medicare, screaming in public parks about the Kenyan Usurper. Exhausted, they take public transit back home, grab their Social Security check out of the mail, turn on Glenn Beck, crack a beer (that has been federally inspected to make sure it won't kill them) and fall asleep thinking about what heroes they are.

Anonymous said...

I think the problem with people in our age group (at least with me in particular) is that growing up as children in the 60's, teenagers in the 70's ect..I always thought (in the back of my mind) that there was some inexorable base level of progress when it came to social justice, economic fairness, the level of civic and historic knowledge of the citizenry. I kind of tuned out of the political noise machine about the time they elected Reagen for a second time....thinking it was all some kind of bad dream that the country would get past eventually.
Sometimes it seems like I just woke in this world, where ignorance is literally being made a virtue and that base level of progress is seen by so many as a threat to their very way of life.
Even more ironic, is I can remember distinctly thinking in the late 80's that when computers where ubiquitous, and internet speeds put the vast compendium of human knowledge at everyones fingertips, we would undergo some kind of transformation as a society.
I had no idea the transformation would be the great "dumbening" we now seem to be witnessing.
Where I live, Fox news is on every single television in every single public place. Pod people describes them exactly. A visit to the hospital or any local business will find them staring upward like hungry birds at big talking heads on shiny flat screens: regurgitating lie after lie day after day.
Happy birthday in advance Drifty! Actually tomorrow is my birthday and I plan on getting very..very drunk.

Kathy said...

Imagine the TPartiers as big fat parrots, squawking talking points and waving sloppy signs stating "Keep gov't out of my Medicare & Social Security!
and: "we Demand Smaller and Less Government- except Government should absolutely control ALL Women's sexual behavior & make Abortion a Federal Crime! Yay!"


And,inserting herself at the front of them, Sarah P the biggest,loudest parrot of them all, squawking sheer inanities at the flapping flocks ... but wait! Look at her feathers closely ... look at the sharp curving BEAK: why- why- she's a Vulture!

Now closely examine the TPartiers: chubby, google eyed ... and just look at those wattles! why- they're chickens! Fat, juicy Chickens being fattened for THE POT.

Matt said...

Anon,

being just a few years younger, I remember that same sense of the inevitability of progress, watched the Berlin Wall come down and the U.S. gov't get caught with its pants around its ankles in Iran-Contra. Then I woke up one day, found I was in my forties and living in a Soviet state, one with NASCAR and action figures of the president.

How the satirists have made it this far is beyond me.

Anonymous said...

Yep. You just cant make this shit up.
There is an actual, primary elected candidate for the United States Senate, who proudly believes that scientists are engineering mice with human brains...and hell she may one day walk the halls of the most powerful body on the planet!
I wonder if Mike Judge knew he was making a documentary when he did "Idiocracy"?

StringonaStick said...

52 here, and I hear ya, all the way. I too assumed continued progress was natural, inevitable, desired, and most of all best for the entire country, rich or poor. My first whack on the head was being in graduate school and how shocked I was when Reagan was re-elected.

All that has transpired since makes me glad I never had any kids, and sad for the ones I see now since their future is quite obviously going to involve a return to feudalism, but with corporations in the role of royalty.

jurassicpork said...

Did you ever read the diary of Pepys? I did, starting in high school. The man was a major league asshole, who brutalized his wife, servants, small children and was obsessed with his personal worth when he was working for the royal navy. Total, major league asshole.