Ten Things That Are Probably Worse Than Being Racist

Being a bigoted jerkwad is certainly bad, but is it really the worst thing a person can be?

Let me start off by saying the most obvious thing ever in the history of obvious things: yes children, racism is indeed a very, very bad thing. It’s immoral, irrational, illogical, impractical and ignorant, and those who port about deep racial prejudices, almost without exception, also tend to be among the most ingratiating, infuriating and ironically intolerable people walking God’s green earth.

That said, I have just a few issues with the contemporary, multinational, multicultural debate regarding “racism.” Primarily, the little problem of nobody really knowing what the hell “racism” is, exactly.

Yes, there is indeed a long-winded, legalese-sounding definition of racial discrimination issued by the United Nations, but to the best of my knowledge, there is no solidified governmental explanation of what “racism” is anywhere in the western world. Is it a centralized, far-reaching hatred of all those different from you? What if you only dislike one racial group but are totally cool with all others? Does it instinctively require some sense of racial superiority, or can you still be a racist while admitting the comparative shortcomings of one’s own ethnic group?

Historically, racism is an antiquated pseudo-science practiced by the heaviest hitters of continental philosophy; sure, the aberrant David Dukes and Carol Barneses are still out there claiming their race is the genetic bee’s knees, but it hardly seems like any modern day bigot dislikes other ethnic groups based solely on some perceived DNA supremacy. If we’re being technical and all, you can flat out hate every person outside your specific ethnic group for any number of reasons, but as long as you don’t think yours is innately better than them, you’re not a classical racist.

Personally, I think the issue of racism is a bit more complicated than your rank and file social justice warrior paints it. Clearly, the international problem of race extends far, FAR beyond the mere black vs. white dichotomy -- lest we forget, despite looking virtually identical, the Chinese and Japanese, the Hutus and the Tutsis, the Pakistanis and the Indians and the Jews and the Palestinians have been killing each other for eons. Obviously, there’s something much deeper going on with these conflicts than skin color superficiality.

Alas, here in the States, racism almost seems to be the catchall for all of our cultural ills. No matter what social malady is going on, that darned old “racism” can be blamed for it. You see, that “black/white divide” is SO ENTRENCHED in our collective experience that it serves as antecedent, catalyst, explanation and the occasional exoneration of literally EVERYTHING that happens within our borders. To even think about viewing the issue as nothing more than a subset of a greater problem (which every society in human history has had), surely, is the chatter of racists.

Without hyperbole, the eerily totalitarian leftist quest to exterminate “racism” is the closest thing to McCarthyism our nation has experienced in more than half a century. Those deemed “racist” by the faceless, nameless throngs are subject to complete social and economic death, as the fates of Mel Gibson, Donald Sterling, Bruce Levenson and Anthony Cuomo have demonstrated. We may not be able to put you in jail for believing things different from the status quo, but we can make sure you can’t feed your family -- nothing fascistic about that, no?

The same way I OBJECTIVELY examined rape within the greater pantheon of human miseries, I decided to task myself with placing “racism” along a similar, all-encompassing continuum of negative traits, characteristics and general descriptors. Being an unabashed, hate-filled, prejudicial and bigoted racist is certainly bad … but you know folks, I reckon there might just be ten things worse than that in this delightful little world of ours.

BEING A MURDERER

Pretty much every society in human history has considered murder -- the intentional act of taking the life of another human being -- to be the absolute worst thing one person can do to another. Clearly, a non-violent racist who ports about despicable and disgusting ideologies is nowhere close to being as contemptible as a violent, non-racist individual who consciously makes the decision to murder another person, regardless of his or her ideological underpinnings. Alas, it’s not exactly a premise we here in America take to heart; while Jimmy the Greek and John Rocker were forced into exile after making  their racial blunders, Snoop Dogg and Ray Lewis actually became bigger celebrities after their respective murder trials. While the hyper-P.C. zeitgeist will never forgive Paula Deen and Riley Cooper for their comments, that same cultural milieu, for some reason, has totally forgotten about the homicidal exploits of folks like Robert Rozier, Terry Underwood and Gucci Mane -- the latter of whom recorded the heartfelt memorial ,“Truth (Not a Jeezy Diss,)” to commemorate the slaying he was personally responsible for.

BEING A RAPIST

I feel quite comfortable calling a sexual criminal a much worse human being than a racist who never physically harms anyone. Sorry, but even a high-powered official or businessman who carries a veiled distrust or dislike of certain categories of people cannot be considered as wrong as anybody who decides to use violence to get his or sexual jollies. Malicious thoughts, as insensitive and mean and wrongheaded as they may be, are still nothing more than disembodied reflections and opinions. Meanwhile, raping and sodomizing is raping and sodomizing -- physical actions that are incontestably more heinous than simply holding ill-founded mass generalizations. Of course, it’s easy to view fellas like Tom Metzger as cultural pariahs for their insensitive, prejudicial beliefs, but by that same moralistic standard, you kind of have to wonder why folks like Tupac, Mystikal, South Park Mexican, Darren Sharper, Tom Payne and Ruben Patterson aren‘t similarly vilified, seeing as how every last one of them were CONVICTED of sexual assault crimes.

BEING A SPOUSE ABUSER

Moralistically, this one makes a great deal of sense. What’s worse, someone with an intangible, widespread contempt of the cultural other, or someone who beats the living dog shit out of his wife? We kind of saw this paralleled in the sports world last year, when the owners of the Los Angeles Clippers and Atlanta Hawks were literally forced out of the NBA, at the same time video emerged of Ray Rice cold cocking his girlfriend. To be fair, Rice was indeed suspended for his actions, but he wasn’t banished from the sports world the same way the disgraced NBA owners were. Considering the indelible crossover in the “white privilege” and “patriarchy rape culture” ideologies, you really have to wonder why the domestic abuse arrests of Quinn Johnson, Junior Galette, Devyln Cousin, Tyreek Hill, Isaiah Goldman and Jeff Taylor weren’t bigger stories. But, uh, don’t think too hard, though, because that probably means you’re a racist and whatnot.

BEING A NEGLIGENT PARENT

In Dante’s Inferno, the absolute deepest ring of hell was reserved for those who betrayed their own flesh and blood. Using a moral Likert scale, it’s quite reasonable to assume that as individuals, we are going to have a greater amount of compassion and concern for our own families than we are those who live on continents far, far away, who speak a different language than us and whom we will almost certainly never meet, nor really know to have existed in the first place. So, what’s worse -- an individual with great love and respect for those closest to him who may just so happen to have a general mistrust or dislike of those different, or a more multiculturally-minded individual who fails to pay child support or completely abandons his kids altogether? Yeah, the hate and filth and venom spewed on the Stormfront forums isn’t doing much for the black advancement movement, but it is indeed deadbeat exemplars such as Allen Iverson, Chief Keef, DMX, Nas, Chad “Ochicinco” Johnson, Terrell Owens, Deion Sanders and Evander Holyfield who demonstrate the greatest cultural setback for African Americans in the modern era. Bicker about microaggressions and dopey fraternity songs all you want -- if you want to talk about REAL barriers to success, let’s start with father absenteeism, why don’t we?

BEING A CHILD PREDATOR

Well, this one seems pretty straightforward. Seeing as how there is no greater cultural boogeyman than the paedo, even the most hardcore social justice warrior would have to consider kid-diddlers a far more insidious cultural menace than even the most grotesque white supremacists, no? Strange, seeing how the rants of Kramer and Dog the Bounty Hunter cost them their respective livelihoods, while Lawrence Taylor getting busted for soliciting a 16-year-old streetwalker hardly gets any news coverage whatsoever. The same can be said of the shameful, shameful misdeeds committed by the likes of Nate Webster, Eddie Johnson and Aswad Ayinde...but hey, at least we got an apology out of Sherrod Brown when he used the term "niggardly," though.

BEING A FRAUDSTER

Earlier, we were discussing barriers to black success -- which, fundamentally, means their ability to obtain financial independence and stability. Of course, we COULD talk about growing up in a two-parent home as being the single most important factor in whether one becomes an economically sustainable adult (after all, that’s what the eggheads at Harvard think, anyway), but why not blame that conveniently omnipresent yet wholly indefinable "structural racism" instead? While we can rightly blame any number of social factors for why so many African American youths falter -- crummy schools, terrible local job markets, etc. -- I think it’s wise to also examine the primary reason why so many black people fall into crippling debt. You can drone on and on about particular industries and companies being inherently racist, but from an economic standpoint, the big money woe for blacks isn’t unemployment, but predatory lending and payday loans. The rubes out in the countryside cracking racist jokes, comparatively, aren’t doing a fraction of a percentage of an iota of the harm nefarious title loan businesses are doing to the African American community, and have been doing for more than half a century now.

BEING A DRUG ADDICT

My, how the times have changed. Not only is substance abuse NOT seen as being at least on par with being prejudicial on the moral turpitude scale anymore, our culture seems to be turning away from viewing drug addiction as a contemptible trait altogether. Sure, I could give you the basic rundown of reasons why even legalized drugs like alcohol create so much cultural havoc, but why bother? We’ve already reached the group consensus that closeted hatemongers are much worse human beings than crack heads, meth junkies and pill poppers, even though on-the-down-low bigots are much more socially responsible than your dime-a-dozen dope fiend. And hey, as despicable as they may be, at least racist folks tend to pay their taxes, which in turn, go to support social service programs … something I am not really sure you can say about the astonishingly large volume of legally-disabled-at-23-methadone-huffers out there.

BEING A CAREER CRIMINAL

For a moment, let’s give up the holier than thou shtick. Instead of viewing things as being moral or immoral, let’s just try to view things from the simple lens of true or false. Regardless of one‘s ideologies, not liking races different from one’s own is NOT illegal. In these United States, you can hate anybody and anything you want for any reason you want, and can’t nobody say shit about it because we have this thing called the First Amendment (whose big faulty point, of course, is that it only applies to GOVERNMENTAL restrictions on free expression and not those imposed by the general public.) Conversely, things like drug-running, racketeering, burglaries and mugging are all indeed quite illegal, and result in a lot of economic, psychological and bodily harm. If given the option of living among civil racists and bigots who refrain from criminal activity or living in a pancultural utopia chockfull of hoodlums, dealers and stick-up men, which ZIP code would you prefer?

BEING JOYOUSLY IGNORANT

Of course, hardcore racial ideologies can cause a lot of death and destruction. Just ask the Indians of the Americas, or the African natives during colonization. Or anybody who lived in Asia or Europe in the years between 1931 to 1945. That said, flat out ethnocentric fury alone can’t create genocide … more than anything, it takes a large populace that’s easily fooled, cajoled and manipulated into believing whatever their superiors tell them to. Thinking prejudicial things, surely is not a positive in any regard; not thinking about ANYTHING critically, however, is a much, much more dangerous state of mind.

BEING HYPOCRITICAL ABOUT RACE

Simply put, those who lie about racism or overlook the hard evidence that refutes their ideological leanings about race relations are every bit as bad as those who actually are racist. Lest we forget the hordes of folks ready to oh-so-ironically lynch the Duke lacrosse team and Steve Pagones when word got out about the “rapings” of Crystal Mangum and Tawana Brawley. So hungry and single-minded some P.C. warriors are in their quest to personify a narrative of victimization and disempowerment that they are willing to disregard reality itself to fit THEIR “ideals.” The hardcore “anti-racist” platoons out there, ironically, are becoming more and more like the unabashedly racist organizations of yore -- shameless identity-politicking opportunists who feign moral indignation to further their own self-interests. Even in the balls-out racial apocalypse that was Ferguson, Mo. last summer, you could see the in-group dynamics at play; so much outrage over the death of this one sweet little angel, at the hands of those no-good, child-killin’ police officers. The fact that a dozen black kids were killed by other black kids that same weekend in Chicago, or the fact that a middle-aged white man was similarly blown away by cops in a no-knock warrant in Georgia, means Jack Shit to them -- they don’t want real justice or policy changes, they just want to keep the racial embers a burning. As long as you have that narrative, you have a universal excuse for literally every ill in society -- and without that “original sin” to endlessly trot out, fine, outstanding individuals like Al Sharpton would be out of a job.

You know, there’s a term out there for people who ONLY care about people of the same color … although for the life of me, I just can’t seem to recollect what that word is, precisely.

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Propaganda Review: “Trickle Up Poverty” by Michael Savage (2010)

In which a gay-bashing Mexican-hater suggests the only way to defeat make-believe despotism is to counter it with ACTUAL fascist policies

I didn’t really know all that much about Michael Savage until I read “Trickle Up Poverty: Stopping Obama’s Attack on Our Borders, Economy and Security.” After completing Savage’s gargantuan, hate-filled manifesto, I took it upon myself to learn as much about this “Savage” character as I could.

After all, I’d hate to write about one of the worst pieces of shit I’ve ever read without knowing as much as I could about the even bigger piece of shit that wrote it. (And throughout this review, I’ll drop some periodic facts about the book’s author. They’re all 100 percent true, even though you’ll be praying to whatever deity you elect to follow that I was making them up.)

The big problem with “Trickle Up Poverty” -- an already dated, Tea Party-flavored piece of 2010 agitprop that I picked up for approximately one/twenty-fourth its original MSRP -- is that it’s loud. As in, voluble, ear-splitting and shrieking. You may not think that its physically possible for a book to give one a cochlea-ache, but trust me, after churning through all 316 pages of Savage’s spite-spewing opus, you’ll feel like you just returned home from a Slayer show, too. “Trickle Up Poverty” is an apoplectic, vein-stretching, spit-scattering, insane diatribe the likes of which is rarely seen outside of mental wards; once you finish off the tome, you’ll feel less like you just read something than you had your ear canal raped by a coked-up Glenn Beck.

My, where to begin on this one? Before I begin analyzing Savage’s wildebeest-on-angel-dust-like tirade about how everything even remotely associated with Obama is part of a Satanic communist ploy to overthrow America, I guess I should start off by stating my opinion on this Barack fellow. (Side note: just how long do we have to wait before Spell Checker accepts “Barack” as an official pronoun, anyway?)

On Obama, I’m fairly neutral. I can’t say that I’m a big fan of all of his practices, and pretty much all of that stuff he said he was going to do back in 2008 never came to fruition, but on the whole, I admire the guy for being able to put up with so much bullshit from the radical right contingency (and also, I kinda like the cut of his jib when it comes to healthcare, military and telling Wayne LaPierre to shut his face hole policies, but those are merely asides, I suppose.)

While it is true that W. caught a lot of flak during his presidency, at least the things people accused him of doing were, you know, based on actual things, like Iraq, Katrina and all of that suspicious market deregulation nobody on the right ever seems to bring up when discussing today’s contemporary economic unpleasantness. What Obama deals with, however, is something completely different -- as in, large throngs of people thinking he’s an impossible Marxist Communist Muslim Socialist Black Panther from Kenya that may or may not have killed his gay lover in a cocaine-fueled rage and/or teleported to Mars before. When tens of millions of people genuinely believe the logic-defying, lunatic rancor that neo-conservative blowhards like Savage puke over the airwaves, I think it’s next to impossible to NOT feel a little bit of sympathy towards this Barry chap.

MICHAEL SAVAGE FUN FACT:

A Russian Jew that grew up in New York, Michael Savage (born Michael Weiner…seriously) frequently criticizes leftist academics, despite the fact that he holds a Ph.D. (in ethnomedicine, of all things) from one of the nation’s foremost leftist academic hotbeds.

In the introduction to the tome, Savage wastes no time at all before mercilessly deriding Obama, slandering him as “The Destroyer” of American exceptionalism, the “traitor-in-chief” and a “reverse Robin Hood” that steals from the middle class and redistributes to the wealthy. Of course, Savage never really makes an effort to explain what constitutes “middle class” in America, but hey, who needs to elaborate on what class divisions are in order to refute the existence of class divisions, anyway?

As Savage continues to barf out his fingertips -- spreading the vitriolic upchuck through his keypad and into an electronic document, no doubt through some sort of nutritional science black magic he picked up at Berkeley -- he accuses Obama of attempting to forge a two-class society (the “U.S.S.A.,” as he nicknames it), which is part of some greater Pan-Leninist movement that the author never really elaborates upon. Which is probably for the best: the last thing this already backbreaking literary cinder block needs is a couple of  more irate pages on the European welfare state. He writes that the American “sheeple” (a term which he uses more frequently in the book than punctuation marks) are tired of Obama’s (at-the-time) one year reign, and cheers the then-emerging (and now practically mummified) Tea Party Movement as a citizens revolt against communist tyranny or some other buck wild bull shit that don’t make any sense.

MICHAEL SAVAGE FUN FACT:

Savage is the author of more than 35 books (some of which, it is worth noting, aren’t even written in crayon.) Among his illustrious literary forays? Books with such affable monikers as “The Death of the White Male,” “Liberalism is a Mental Disorder,” a book where he spends 200 pages comparing political figures to various zoo animals and no less than TWENTY tracts about homeopathic medicine (including 1984’s superb “Getting Off Cocaine,” which considering the palpable author slobber all over this book, is probably something Savage never actually did)

Chapter one begins with Savage referring to Obama as a “red diaper doper baby,” which must really sting if you’re in the first grade. His tendency to constantly use rhyming patterns as sentence glue becomes apparent quite early on in the manifesto -- at one point, equating “science” with the utterly nonsensical “lie-ence,” because that really gets the message across. For all you communication majors out there, you might note Savage’s logorrhea, tachylogia and cluttered speech as symptoms of “flight of ideas” syndrome -- a brain-to-mouth disorder that’s generally indicative of ADHD, schizophrenia or abuse of psycho stimulants. Not that this dude is a self-professed expert on cocaine, or anything.

More nerve-popping, schizoid rage follows, as he accuses Obama of appointing Maoist land grabbers to cabinet positions. He drones on some more about the redistribution of middle class wealth (once again, without giving us a number to demarcate WHO is middle class) and praises the proven to be Astroturf tea-party movement as a genuine grassroots phenomenon. He brings up Dale Robertson’s 15 Tea Party demands (a not at all fascist laundry list that defines gun ownership as a divine right and that once and for all, this here country belongs to Jesus and nobody else) and considers them a good start to mass reform. He then said that Obamacare is actually a thinly veiled reparations program, and that America’s entitlement programs are being exploited by “parasites from a different country of origin.” Citing a Tax Foundation study, he said that 60 percent of U.S. citizens take more from the government than they pay in taxes. You know, because all of those disabled people, senior citizens and children? Just eff them, man, just eff them. Taking a detour into some magical fantasy land where Reagan’s supply side policies created “trickle up affluence” (historical note: it did the exact opposite), he then segues into chapter two, which is more or less a putrid character assassination attempt that starts off with the author referring to Medicaid as nothing more than “socialized medicine for welfare recipients.”

Cue that old chestnut about Obama being trained by commies like Frank M. Davis and Bill Ayers, and some utterly imaginary chatter about the president going on a global “apology tour” to various world leaders. Then, Savage describes Obama as both a communist AND an anarchist, because shit, it’s apparently possible to be two completely antithetical things at the same time now. He calls Van Jones a thug (remember: to all right wingers, any black dude taller than Webster and more muscular than Urkel HAS to be a street criminal) and says Obama will do whatever he can to censor negative portrayals of him in the media, which fully explains how Savage has been able to successfully mass market half a dozen books accusing the President of being a Moslem Marxist that wants to destroy America without any difficulties.

Direct quote time: “Without question, Obama and his minions are out to do nothing less than imprison us in a totalitarian socialist system in which the federal government usurps our God-given right to make decisions for ourselves. That’s what his socialist redistribution of our earning through confiscatory tax policies and legislative initiatives is all about. He’s assuring that trickle up poverty becomes institutionalized in America.” Anyway, imagine that blowhard, grandiose bullshit being reshuffled over and over for 300 pages, and you pretty much have the entire book right in front of you.

Savage asks why Obama hasn’t released his college records yet. Apparently, despite having a PhD and spending all those years in post-secondary education, nobody told the author what FERPA was. He says that the primary reason liberals exist is to bring about the downfall of Western capitalist democracies (yep) and then rounds out the chapter by illustrating the fact that he has no idea what the differences are between Trotskyism, socialism and Leninism.

MICHAEL SAVAGE FUN FACT:

Savage, an ardent critic of homosexuality, was fired from MSNBC in 2006 after telling a gay listener to “only get AIDS and die.” Interestingly, Savage’s only “non-fiction” work, a 1984 book titled “Vital Signs,” was about a secretly homosexual, middle aged Jewish herbalist with a father complex that liked to hook up with ethnic prostitutes and say things like “Inner voice screaming at me for years, first rational, then crazy, telling me to do mad things. Every form of relief tried, painting, psychotherapy, running, diet, vitamins, etc., etc. Almost uncontrollable now. Impulses to stab children, strangers, wife, self with scissors.”

Chapter three is all about Savage’s anti-communist upbringing in New York, which includes a passage on how Marx was a deadbeat hippie (probably one of the few statements in the book that has any historical merit to it whatsoever.) He goes on a couple of more tirades against Lenin, Stalin and Saul Alinksy (as in, that guy that all neo-cons perpetually demonize, even though the entire Tea Party organizational structure and outreach model were patterned after “Reveille” and “Rules for Radicals”) and he says some shit about how Boeing is so much better than Airbus because Boeing wasn’t receiving government subsidies (even though they were - in the form of about $5 billion in illegal state aid.) Also, the irony meter almost breaks when Savage quotes J. Edgar Hoover -- the liberty-torching mastermind behind the Gestapo-esque COINTELPRO program of the 1950s -- on the subject of how precious freedom is.

With chapter four, things start getting REALLY kooky, with Savage stating that the Great Recession was actually engineered by George Soros through manipulation of his hedge fund management firm. Of course, Savage never explains WHY multi-billionaires would want a socialist-regime in place, before halfway (and by halfway, I mean not even remotely) explaining it by way of the BILDERBERG/NEW WORLD ORDER conspiracy. And how exactly bitter market/ideological rivals like Eric Schmidt and Bill Gates and Rupert Murdoch and Diane Feinstein can furtively work together to bring about Armageddon is thoroughly explained by…not being explained, in any way, shape or form, by Savage.

He said that auto union and SEIU employees were Nazis, and says that government employees, by way of benefits, make more money than private sector employees (or do they?) And of course, during Savage’s phlegm spraying spiel about the market meltdown, not once does the word “deregulation” appear as a potential (read: the actual) culprit behind the economic downturn.

The healthcare chapter begins with Savage telling a story about how he was an unlicensed pharmacist in his youth, and how he felt there was nothing at all wrong about  middle schoolers chopping up and distributing prescription drugs to members of the community. After making a reference to the “Jerk-it Court in San Fran-sicko,” Savage goes on a warpath about the Ready Reserve Corps and the Independent Medicare Advisory Board, stating that such ACA components are PROOF that death panels are real. He then starts referring to liberal adversaries as “demoncats” (which sounds like the name of an awesome 1980s cartoon, by the way), calls Dennis Kucinich a “whore,” and says Nancy Pelosi “desecrated” God by holding an ACA vote on Sunday. He rounds out the chapter by saying that everybody should just claim a religious exemption from Obamacare, citing Schechter Poultry Corps v. United States as a basis for “defeating” the Affordable Care Act.

Chapters six, seven and eight can be summarized as such: climate change is a pseudoscience (unlike herbal medicine) that will lead to $7 a gallon gas and the government forcing us to own electric cars, illegal immigrants cost us $4.3 billion a year in health costs (while pumping in about $1.4 trillion in total economic expenditures, but shh!) and are spreading DENGUE FEVER all over the place and that the ACORN scandal that wasn’t really a scandal at all is proof that Obama hates Israel because he’s a “Marxist Islamist.” And as to how someone can be a radical adherent of Allah while simultaneously being a radical adherent of a necessarily godless socioeconomic policy…well, uh….

MICHAEL SAVAGE FUN FACT:

A few health tips from Savage’s ethnomedicine bibliography: to kick a coke habit, try doing Sudafed and giving yourself black coffee enemas instead; you can cure AIDS by taking lots of Vitamin C; and southeast Asian migrants are KNOWINGLY bringing tuberculosis into America. By the way, did you know that notorious gay-hater Savage once posed nude with hyper-homosexual Allen Ginsberg?

Right after saying that the Obama regime is trying to create a “permanently disadvantaged underclass” of uneducated and uncultured Americans (which, last time I checked, is already a plurality in the nation), Savage said that the House Un-Americans Committee ought to be brought back to root out “Marxists” like Thomas Friedman from media occupations. He talks about how leftists gutlessly compared Bush to Hitler, yet sees not a shred of hypocrisy in the fact that he just spent the last 200 pages of his book comparing Obama to everybody from Stalin to Pol Pot. He said that the NEA had been infiltrated by communists (calling Rod Paige a “terrorist” in the process) and accuses D.C. of having the world’s worst public school system -- yes, even worse than those schools down south that teach kids dinosaurs and humans once coexisted. After attacking Air America, “Avatar,” Wolf Blitzer and Keith Olbermann, he said that Canada is the most restrictive non-Arab nation on the planet -- even though our neighbors to the north posted identical scores to the U.S. in the four leading freedom indices in 2013.)

The book’s penultimate chapter starts off with Savage recounting his childhood love of the local freak show, which segues into a passage about how AWFUL it is that the U.S. ratified a new START agreement in 2010. Being anti-nuclear war, you see, is actually being a “radical Marxist,” he explains. While the privatization of virtually everything else in America doesn’t draw a peep from Savage and his neocon kin, the fact that NASA outsourced some of its bids to private contractors draws the full ire of the author, who goes on to champion the racial profiling of Muslims and claiming to be “a pacifist,” even though he routinely promotes the idea of executing liberal opponents and gunning down civil rights proponents on his syndicated radio program.

The final chapter of “Trickle Up Poverty” is basically Savage parroting the “Contract from America” demands, alongside a few more suggestions to “improve” American life. Among the executive orders President Savage would issue, if he could: militarize the U.S/Mexico border (which is clearly something a self-proclaimed “pacifist” would lobby for), cut government spending across the board (except for the military: we need to increase that shit), INCREASE tensions with Iran, place Japan-like tariffs on China, give government subsidies to heterosexual couples to combat gay marriage, outlaw abortions, force welfare recipients into mandatory community service and MAKE women on welfare take birth control (nothing freedom-squelching about government-endorsed druggings and indentured servitude!) and establish a “contract with the Judeo-Christian god.” His final advice for the reader is that leaders should operate America like a business instead of an empire: because as we all know, tyrannical, centrally-planned businesses, with clear class divides and open exploitation of cheap labor, are, never, EVER successful. Ever.

I only spent one dollar on Savage’s potboiler, and I already find it a much worse waste of 100 pennies than that time I bought a supposed spider prop for Halloween that was just a garbage bag and a couple of twist-ties. The Internet is prone to hyperbole, but I am 100 percent sincere when I say that successfully completing Michael Savage’s 2010 tome is one of the worst experiences of my life. I’m not sure how many hours I put into that hardback turd, but it’s probably enough to make me question the decency of my soul. Why would I invest so much time and energy and effort into such a black hole of ideological hatred? All in all, I think I had more fun reading my mother’s obituary than I did “Trickle Up Poverty.”

There’s absolutely nothing here of intellectual nutrition. Unless your idea of “enlightenment” is having some narcissistic, self-loathing wannabe-shaman yell permutations of “commie” at you and blame America’s poorest citizens for the downfall of the nation for 300 pages, I’d highly suggest you steer clear of this mental toxic waste. A rebuttal to its contents and claims isn’t even necessary: the greatest criticism you can lob at the book -- and Savage’s outlook as a whole -- is to simply restate what he says, take a step back, and marvel at the insanity of his comments. The fact that there are people out there that legitimately share this dude’s perspective (which I believe is, mostly, played up for the hayseeds and mega-nationalists) is not only depressing, but pretty damn frightening, too.

Only to bulimics would I consider “Trickle Up Poverty” a worthy investment. For if you’re in
in the mood to feel the core of your humanity vomit, this stuff acts as the literary equivalent of syrup of ipecac.

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Five Things You Need To Know About White Trash

Why America's Rednecks and Hillbillies are a Lot More Knowledgeable than You'd Think

A few years ago, I was eating at a restaurant when a gaggle of impoverished, rural Caucasians came into the building. There were about twenty of them, with probably that many teeth between them all. They looked dirty, and they smelled even worse. Their odor was so horrendous that one of the servers had to start opening windows to let the rank stench out so other patrons could enjoy their meals. They had mullets, and holey shirts, and kids with bare feet. At one point, one of the females whipped her boobies out right there in front of god and everybody so she could breastfeed one of her apparently dozen children. It was like watching feeding time at the zoo, and just about everybody - the staff included - looked on at their ass-backwards ways in sort of a reverse-awe, wondering just how in the hell anybody could look, act and be like that in the 21^st century.

Of course, it’s OK to observe rednecks, hillbillies and trailer trash through such a perspective. Now, if I had said the exact same thing about a family of blacks or Hispanics, I would automatically get labeled as “bigoted,” “racist,” “ignorant,” or “a propagator of intolerance and misunderstanding.” Poor, agrarian white folk, however, seem to be the last sort of peoples in the country we can hee-haw and piss at, the last bastion of cultural enmity for this proud, noble nation of immigrants. We can all hate, belittle and caricaturize the lower-class honkies, and nobody will shame us for it. In fact, not only is mockery and derision of white trash tolerated, it’s practically encouraged by media and our social norms.

That reason alone - the fact that NOBODY else is standing up for them - should give me reason enough to serve as an apologist for the sundry crackers, chalkies and hayseeds across America. However, I feel the need to be defensive about them, first and foremost, because guess what? I am the product of white trash culture myself.

I know what it’s like to grow up in lower-class conditions. I know what it’s like to live in a trailer, and go to snake-handler churches and live amongst meth-heads, moonshiners and political wackos. I’ve been in the fishbowl looking out, and I think I know a thing or five about white trash culture that those snooty, erudite champagne sippers in San Fran and New England don’t.

The reality is, not only are lower-class, uneducated, rural white people more well-versed in philosophical thinking than most people would assume, they may very well have a firmer grasp on certain subjects than all of us highfalutin, college-educated elitists. Don’t believe me? Well, how about we take a look at five very important philosophical notions, and uncover why white trash are the only true experts on the subjects that we have in modern American culture.

SOCIAL DARWINISM

White trash have the absolute keenest take on social Darwinism of any population subset in the United States. Forget all of those Ivy League professors that study eugenics and natural selection, the hoi polli of the hills not only grasp the concept of social Darwinism more than any so-called expert, they’re actually the staunchest defenders of the idea this side of Joey Mengele.

One of the absolute biggest misconceptions about white trash culture is that the white trash themselves are oblivious to their own plight. In reality, the super-impoverished white folk of America know very well how they are perceived by the rest of culture, and not only do most of them recognize their statuses as cultural pariahs, a lot of them even believe that they deserve such castigation. . .based on, hold onto your copies of “The Origin of the Species,” immutable biological traits.

A lot of researchers (past and surprisingly present) view “white trash” as genetic undesirables, a subspecies of peoples biologically dulled over the centuries, from which no amount of external education can completely remedy. The really shocking thing here is that, well, a lot of “white trash” think the exact same thing: not only do they view themselves as genetically deficient, many of them believe that they SHOULD be separated from the general population, based on those biological differences.

You may find it hard to believe, but a lot of hillbillies and crackers choose to live on the fringes of society and refuse to partake of modern culture not because they’re Luddite fundamentalists, but because they don’t want to taint general society with their presence. That restaurant anecdote I wrote about earlier was a real anomaly, the sociological equivalent of a bruin marching out of the wilderness to rummage through our garbage cans, as most white trash feel so disconnected from the rest of modernity that they voluntarily take themselves out of the cultural gene pool altogether. They know they’re the virtual bottom of the food chain, and as such, they take extra precautions to avoid commingling with the so-called higher forms of the species, perhaps the same way gazelles make damn sure they don’t waltz around the stomping grounds of a pride of lions.

Long story short, White Trash America most likely has no idea who Galton or Ehrlich are, but they not only have a strong understanding of the fundamentals of modern social Darwinism, they actually appear to be the greatest proponents of it in the 21^st century.

EASTERN SPIRITUALISM

You would think that in modern American society, the people with the best understanding of Eastern spiritualism would be the highly educated upper crust - you know, all of those academics that sip herbal tea, do yoga, and listen to Yanni, unironically. Well, as it turns out, the absolute deepest Eastern thinker out there just so happen to be the people within the country with the least familiarity with Asian geography - poor, Caucasian rubes.

All in all, poor white trash have more in common with east-Asian Buddhists than they do their like-skinned Anglo-Saxon-Protestants. Proportionally, the socioeconomic standards for hicks and Asian practitioners of Buddhism are quite similar (as in, they’re both extremely, absurdly impoverished), but their social belief systems are what’s really interesting. Ultimately, despite living about as far apart as any two kinds of people can, American hillbillies and contemporary Buddhists have practically the SAME ideologies concerning materialism and earthly existence - although, as far as religious caveats go, for pretty different reasons, obviously.

Real Buddhists - as in, guys that live in Sri Lanka and NOT Richard Gere - tend to eschew material things, because as the noble Buddha once said, “want leads to suffering.” Curiously, the modern hayseed in the U.S. fosters a very, very similar mentality, with the belief that material possession is ultimately “immoral” because material things - i.e., the world around them - is wholly illusory. And as you will soon see, this belief actually has a lot more rooting in Buddhism than Christianity.

For the Buddhist, this world is just one aspect of the universe, this thing that you’re supposed to overcome as a step towards enlightenment. This process, surely, isn’t a very easy one, which is why the first truth of Buddhism - as in, the VERY first goddamn tenet of the religion - is “life is suffering.” Now, the aggregate white trash in the U.S. ALSO believes that this reality is just an interim phase of existence, with our actions in this plane of existence dictating our stature in the next phase of being. Likewise, the spiritual beliefs of the redneck pretty much imply that in order to achieve that enlightenment, one has to withdraw themselves from all worldly things, which is basically a euphemism for “being really, really poor.” As with the Buddhists, the want of bettering your circumstances is a direct slap into the face of the divine order - all that is is as it should be, and rocking the boat in ANY way, shape or form is certain to hinder you in your quest for spiritual advancement in the next round of existence.

And Buddhism isn’t the only form of Eastern spiritualism that shares a LOT of commonalities with the ideology of hillbilly America. Taoism is a spiritual doctrine that implies that there’s NO such thing as free will, that everything that happens was planned out and supposed to occur as part of the fulfillment of some long-in-the-tooth celestial plan that’s so far beyond the comprehension of human understanding that we can’t even fathom imagining such. This perspective is echoed in the idea of God’s Divine Plan, a popular Christian precept that decrees that everything that unfurls is part of a designated system as crafted by the Man Up Stairs - an idea which compels a lot of rednecks to simply accept whatever misfortunes that come their way as the fulfillment of a cosmological schema they have no ability to alter.

NIHILISM

When we talk about “nihilism,” we usually confuse it with existentialism; although there are a lot of similarities between the two ideologies, there’s one BIG discrepancy between the two - existentialism is the subjective belief that everything is functionally purposeless and meaningless, while nihilism is the ABSOLUTE belief that everything is functionally purposeless and meaningless.

Although there are a lot of definitions of what constitutes “nihilism,” it’s quite apparent that ALL of them could be applied as qualifiers for the modern white trash experience, beginning with the rejection of social mores.

Remember that redneck family from the introduction? Well, that’s a clear cut example of a group of people embracing the philosophical ideal of nihilism. Forget all of your erudite professors that claim to be experts on Sartre and Nietzsche, the only kinds of people in the U.S. that are even remotely living out what the elder statesmen of nihilism spake of are the kind of people that have no qualms about making livings off yanking copper out of buildings and trying to engineer cough syrup into crank - your TRUE nihilists don’t sip cognac and listen to industrial music, they sport rat tails and breed roosters for cock fighting tournaments.

Earlier, we talked about how the aggregate white trash views existence as a parade of meaningless distractions - essentially, that the world is nothing more than an obstacle course in order to get to the next phase of being. As a peoples, that means that rednecks and hillbillies have no vested worth in the norms and structures that prop up modern civilization. This leads the aggregate white trash to not only devalue a lot of the social constructs the “normal people” within society held dear - or at least respect/tolerate - they view them as constructs that NEED to be eliminated in order to establish a truly just system. This is where your stereotypes aboutmilitant tax-protestors and paranoid, anti-government rednecks come from - with the surprising notion being that it’s a sentiment born not out of political ideology, but the clear cut refutation of all political ideologies.

A lot of “normies” wonder just how in the hell anyone could live in the squalid conditions that most impoverished hill folk seem to thrive in. Well, it’s pretty apparent that the rednecks of America find little worth in things like the socioeconomic system, nor do they seem to have an ingrained concern about the culture’s judicial framework. Winning five bucks on a lottery scratch-off is really no different to them if they were arrested for stealing hubcaps, the same way robbing a liquor store to make ends meet is no different to them if they received their income from SSI. They have completely rejected the values system that most normal folk consider instrumental to day-to-day life; in other words, they’re the only peoples in the country that have elevated themselves to a point where linguistic meaning no longer carries any sort of tangible, physical weight on their own existences. And yes, such an uncovering probably would make Wittgenstein eat his own shit, in case you were wondering. 

MARXISM

The country’s “experts” on Marxist philosophy may be a bunch of snooty college professors, but there’s no denying that the most knowledgeable people - and adherents - to Marxist doctrine in the U.S. are people that rarely, if ever, get an education outside of high school.

Contemporary white trash culture in America has pretty much eschewed the “Superstructure” Marx spoke of altogether, as they are a peoples sans the influence of government, religion or economy. The Appalachian hoi polli are a segment of the population so distanced from the rest of society that they truly do seem to live outside the margins of our culture. They rarely pay full income tax (and those that do are extremely opposed to the system), and only in extreme circumstances do they rely on government assistance for anything - there were several reports, even, of pissed of whities and chalkies threatening to “blow away” FEMA officials that visited the Mississippi and Alabama Gulf Coast following Hurricane Katrina. Clearly, this is a peoples that is dedicated to them and their own before any sort of federal or state ideology.

While Marx and Engels were writing “The Communist Manifesto,” they were really irked by the whole institutional religion concept, stating that organized religion is a means of controlling the populace and maintaining the social hegemony. While the two were specifically talking about the Catholic Church and nationalized institutions like the Church of England, I think it’s pretty safe to say that they wouldn’t be fans of the Protestant/Baptist/Evangelical institutions established these days, which while accepted by a majority of Americans, are oddly, rejected by a majority of 21^st century white trash.

A lot of people view rednecks and hillbillies as hopelessly religious rubes, a bunch of simple-minded buffoons with beliefs and convictions so ass-backwards and superstitious that you wonder if they even know why lunar eclipses happen. While it is true that most hayseeds and bumpkins are quite religious, the religion they practice really isn’t a religion ordained or institutionalized by anybody else on the planet. “Hillbilly Christianity,” for a lack of a better-term, is really a syncretic religion pasting together something that looks like the New Testament with a ton of paganistic, old-timey folktales and practices, a goulash of Old World, Native American and even South American, Caribbean and African spiritualism. There’s not really a name for what rednecks actually practice, and there is certainly no national organization set up as an ambassadorial or regulatory commission for their practices. While they haven’t completely moved on to a post-institutionalized religious ideology (and most likely, never will), they seem to have moved further away from such than, ironically, the majority of middle class America.

Where things get really interesting, however, is when you compare the economic ideology of white trash with the economic ideology of Marxism. Ultimately, Marx believes that one day, we will achieve such a heightened state of social-welfare that we won’t need the capitalistic system - you know, all that shit about money and possessions and all that jazz - because we’re all so in tuned as a society that we can just share our personal wealth as something of a community chest for everybody around us. Per Marx, this will take some time - hey, breaking down the entire social structure isn’t an over-night task, you know - but the end dividend is supposedly the complete abolition of private wealth and property for the greater good of civilization.

The crazy thing is, the contemporary hillbillies of America have already advanced to Marx’s highest phase of economic being. If you’re wondering how the rubes and hicks of the US are able to survive in the economic downturn - with absolute minimal dependency upon government subsidies - it’s because they’ve, effectively, formed communes with their relatives, kinfolk and neighbors as a means of providing for everyone around them. They share food, and money, and give each other clothing and housing. They work for each other, and do errands for each other, and pretty much exist as a singular state, outside of the economic reality we’re all accustomed to. 

AMERICAN HISTORY

Rednecks, white trash and country bumpkins don’t really have that much vested worth in a lot of social constructs - paying taxes, soap, not being racist, etc. However, one of the few things they do profess a reverence for is their own sense of national history - and as surprising as it may seem, a lot of them not only have a pretty firm grasp of U.S. history, some of them have amongst the most comprehensive knowledge of the nation’s past than any so-called historian you’ve encountered.

White trash, if nothing else, keep insanely detailed accounts of their family history. Granted, most of it is probably unreliable, but the sheer scope of their accounts is mighty damned impressive, whether the information therein is accurate or not.

Most Americans have no clue where they came from. For most of us, our national identities really didn’t start until the middle of the 19^th century, when most of our forerunners migrated to the country - either by choice, or not. For most families in the USA, you’re probably not going to have tangible records of anything prior to World War II - apparently, there was this thing called a “Depression” that happened, and a lot of people just started burning shit (i.e., the scant records laying around detailing their family origins) to stay warm.

While most U.S. citizens have a family heritage of only about 80 or so years, the aggregate white trash can usually trace his or her ancestry back centuries, not only giving you solid accounts of who their first generation migrant progenitors were, but in many cases, detailed accounts of what they did while they were here.

If you’re looking for information on the U.S. Civil War, or the Whiskey Rebellion, or if you’re just wondering what happened to all those Indians, just about any white trash family worth its salt can give you a first-hand account of what went down via oral history. While only a few can provide you with material relics of much sustenance, just about every white trash clan in the country at least has something that they can show off to you from the 19^th century or prior. Granted, a rusty ass canteen from the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain may not be the most exciting thing in the world, but they’ve got a sliver or American history in their possession - and in many ways, within their consciousness - that most of us simply do not have. While most Americans spend their entire lives trying to grapple with their identity, the white trash denizens of the U.S. have no such problems - because they already know their history, and what part they played in the story of our country’s development.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

Alike all people that are different from us, it’s oh so easy to look at modern white trash as alien beings, these things that are surely less than human because of their unabashed disregard for social norms. The thing is, unlike other oppressed peoples, there really aren’t any organizations or prominent speakers standing up for their rights, attempting to better them socially as human beings.

As a kid that grew up encircled by white trash, I can tell you that these people are nowhere near as stupid, thoughtless and brain dead as the media makes them out to be. Nor are they anywhere near as violent, aggressive, racist, xenophobic or misogynistic as the myriad cultural depictions you’ve seen on TV or in the movies. That’s not to say that all white trash are relatively harmless folk - if you ever run into a guy that refers to his double wide as a “compound,” it’s probably for the best if you contact the local authorities before another Ruby Ridge breaks out - but all in all, I think they’re people that get pissed on way more than ANY minority in modern America should.

After all, white trash America knows a whole lot more about what’s going down than you think they do. In fact, they might just know a little bit more about the world than you do, for that matter…

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