Assholes

Bear with me on this, the off-color language does have a point.  I used to like Charlie Sheen, but his recent misbehavior is off the chart.

 Private Assholes.  I’ve had the misfortune to deal with assholes in my life; unfortunately it’s impossible to completely isolate yourself from them.  Basically we’re talking about people who assert the right to get their own way and don’t care how they do it.  Their take on non-assholes is two-fold.  First, they look down on non-assholes as being too weak, lazy or incompetent to assert their will on others the way they do.  To the asshole, a non-asshole is simply hiding behind vague and irrelevant assertions of “morality” and “honesty” to justify their lack of nerve.  Second, assholes would have us believe that everyone behaves the way they do, so what they’re doing is nothing special; but the existence of non-assholes refutes that assertion, embarrassing them.  So they go on the offensive and accuse non-assholes of being pussies.

 I can’t say I agree with the Parker-Stone Dick-Asshole-Pussy Theory (Team America).  It sounds funny but doesn’t explain the difference between dicks and assholes beyond biological terms.

 Good Faith and Fair Dealing.  This is a legal concept usually brought up with respect to implied warranties and commercial dealings.  It’s hardly a novel idea or difficult to grasp.  We can recognize that some dishonesty is inevitable.  Car buyers pretend not to care about the car, so the dealer won’t jack up the price, and dealers fudge on the invoice numbers, but outright fraud (dealer doesn’t have title, or tries to sell a completely different car, or the buyer makes a credit purchase expecting to file bankruptcy soon thereafter and yet still retain the collateral) is unacceptable. 

 The Jungle.  This was Upton Sinclair’s 1905-06 critique of capitalism in Chicago in the early 20^th century.  Although it’s usually described as an expose of the meat packing industry, Sinclair’s overall goal was to discredit the system itself; he only narrowed the focus to the meat packing industry to satisfy the publisher, as he could not find a socialist publisher.  Michael Moore takes a similar approach: instead of attacking the system head on, he simply hits individual targets on consistent points, leaving the viewer to make up his or her mind, having been guided along a rosy garden path by Mr. Moore.

 Anyhow.  Most of the problems which the Lithuanian immigrant family have in Chicago stem from dishonest, abusive behavior by various capitalist villains.  Here are some examples:

1.         The family is “sold” a “new” house for $1500 with a mortgage.  What they actually find is that the house was used, simply repainted, and originally cost the builder only $500.  Their “mortgage” is actually a lease with an option to buy, meaning that if they miss a single payment, the lessor can evict them and they lose their entire investment; on a mortgage default, the borrower can cure the default by paying the arrearage and his/her investment is much better protected.  The lessor actually expects that at some point in the lease, the “owner” will default.  Their neighbors beat the system by paying off the mortgage.  Thus the real problem is fraud and dishonesty by the lender – an “asshole” problem.

2.         The wife’s employer takes a fancy to her, and wants to sleep with her.  He threatens that if she doesn’t agree to this, not only will he fire her, but he will get her husband fired and both of them blacklisted in the entire city.  Naturally she agrees, having been economically coerced into cheating on her husband.  And of course, he eventually finds out.  He beats the crap out of her boss and gets thrown into jail for a month.  Of course in the meantime, he’s lost his job and his position has been filled by the time he gets out of jail.  Another “asshole” problem.

3.         The meat packers pay off the Federal meat inspectors, so diseased or rotten meat is allowed to be mixed in with the wholesome meat, and no one is the wiser.  If a worker loses a finger, limb, or falls into the vat altogether…”shhh!”.  When the book was published in 1906, Theodore Roosevelt went ballistic, accusing Sinclair of slandering the meat packers.  When Sinclair produced proof of the payoffs, Roosevelt then took aim at the packers, the end result being the FDA.  Again, what we have are asshole meat packers (or meat asshole packers).

We’ve seen ENRON, BP, and other more modern examples of corporate bullshit.  So clearly, there are problems.   But what the socialists – whether they call themselves socialists or Democrats or whatever – don’t seem to acknowledge is that under other systems, assholes still persist and cause problems.  Instead of asshole corporate types we end up with asshole bureaucrats, as determined to abuse their positions of power as anyone in a corporate power structure.  We The Living, Ayn Rand’s first novel, showed how the idealists of the Russian Revolution are pushed aside and marginalized by the schemers and opportunists, and the revolution is very quickly corrupted and abused by these assholes.

 Finally, we’re seeing asshole behavior in Libya today, by their dictator.  And the assholes are still in power in Iran and North Korea.  Really, it should have been called the Axis of Assholes.