Couverture de JohnHenry.US [BETA]

JohnHenry.US [BETA]

JohnHenry.US [BETA]

De : JohnHenry.US [BETA]
Écouter gratuitement

À propos de ce contenu audio

 An American Legend
Les membres Amazon Prime bénéficient automatiquement de 2 livres audio offerts chez Audible.

Vous êtes membre Amazon Prime ?

Bénéficiez automatiquement de 2 livres audio offerts.
Bonne écoute !
    Épisodes
    • TLDR – Jason Aldean: Small Town, Big Deal

      TLDR – Jason Aldean: Small Town, Big Deal
      Aug 11 2023
      So the internet noise machine has been trending this last week or so due to an execrably antagonistic and jingoist track called “Try That In A Small Town,” recorded by country “singer” Jason Aldean. First, let’s be 100% clear: this song is just…junk. Musically it’s as cookie-cutter and formulaic as they come in every possible way. The video immediately validated my suspicion that country music in 2023 is just hair metal with steel guitars and flags. I swear they lifted part of this directly from Bo Burnham’s Country Song. Pictured: A rube propagating propaganda This all started because I heard the beginnings of the big controversy and just for grins I read the lyrics. Here’s the thing, man – to even take this song on without burning the lyric sheet and hoping it doesn’t summon a demon, either you’re the rube who falls for this junk, or you’re a carefully constructed façade masking a steel-trap mind engaged in the deliberate subversion of American cohesion and community by fearmongering and playing on racist and “othering” tropes while clearly holding the intelligence and culture of your audience in contempt (and not without some reasonable basis given that you do in fact have an audience, which is definitely contemptible). I’m gonna go with “rube,” and assign responsibility for the rest of it to the committee of faceless hacks who take responsibility for actually writing this dreck. First, let’s start with the dystopian fearmongering nightmare of the first verse: Sucker punch somebody on a sidewalkCarjack an old lady at a red lightPull a gun on the owner of a liquor storeYa think it’s cool, well, act a fool if ya like Cuss out a cop, spit in his faceStomp on the flag and light it upYeah, ya think you’re tough? “Try That In A Small Town” This is a master class in “agitprop,” agitating propaganda. Propaganda subverts critical thinking by appealing directly to emotion; agitprop specifically targets emotions like anger, outrage, and frustration, and can reasonably be seen as one means of engaging in stochastic terrorism. So in the first verse you’ve got the setup – “those people” are comin’ to “our town” to sucker punch meemaw while they’re jacking her 93 Tercel so they can go rob Jimmy’s beer store! Be afraid! All Is Chaos!” Let’s be clear: crime happens and that sucks. But these are cherry-picked, isolated incidents far less common than, say, unarmed young black men being murdered by police. The purpose is to make you mad and get your blood pumping, because ol’ Jason here is gonna tell you just how to solve that problem in a minute. Let’s take a look at the chorus: Well, try that in a small townSee how far ya make it down the roadAround here, we take care of our ownYou cross that line, it won’t take longFor you to find out, I recommend you don’tTry that in a small town “Try That In A Small Town” It gets really creepy in the second verse, all about grampa and some firearms put to good use against those others who aren’t “our own,” with vague references of what’s gonna happen when “they” come to take our guns. I can’t help but think of how many “small-town” folks I know – I lived in Oxford, NC for many years, and I’m currently sitting where I was born and raised in Kalamazoo, Michigan, which isn’t exactly Midtown Manhattan – who aren’t drawling, drooling, bigoted, ignorant, stereotypes. The contempt these “songwriters” have for the intellect of their audience is palpable, and that audience should be insulted to know someone believes this kind of bigoted dogwhistle – and it is one, those details have already been more than adequately covered by others at this point – will appeal to them. Listen: If a ratty old “NO FEAR” t-shirt covered in layers of Doritus and beer stains that are almost invisible because the beer that was spilled on ’em is some crappy, watery thing in a plastic bottle suddenly became a song lyric, this would be them. If you need to know exactly how many pounds of copper wire it takes to get a box of cold medicine, this song’s got you covered. This song’s gonna get that back door fixed one of these days but who CARES, Bobbie Sue, it’s the BACK door ain’t nobody can SEE it! This song spent thirteen thousand dollars on new suspension parts trying to get their ’78 Nova to stop dog-tracking…and six thousand of that was because the struts had rebel flags painted on ’em. This song used to have long hair until it got tired of cleaning the remains of last night’s alcohol overdose out of it. This song’s gonna chest-thump and in-group and passive-aggressive all OVER you, and what are you gonna do about it, SITTY BOAH? Ain’t been doin these twelve-ounce curls all m’life for FUN, son. *belch* It’s just dumb and gross and needs to stop. All of it, including the mediocrity of the music itself. Spare me the arguments about whether or not it’s a ...
      Afficher plus Afficher moins
      5 min
    • “Just Ignore It…”

      “Just Ignore It…”
      Jul 19 2023

      “Just ignore them and they’ll go away” is a long-standing stock response to behavior that is abusive, harmful, dangerous, and intolerable. In this edition of “TLDR” we break down this gaslighting behavior and call it out for what it is. It’s time to end this harmful and destructive narrative.

      In a departure from the norm for this edition of “TLDR,” this page is just a summary with the media files embedded. The canonical transcript is published at this link on Medium.Com. (Disclosure; I get paid for writing at Medium. This is a “friends link” that will ignore your free article limit if you’re not an existing Medium subscriber, or bypass the paywall if you’ve already read your five free Medium articles for the month.)
      Afficher plus Afficher moins
      4 min
    • In Capitalist America, Bank Robs YOU

      In Capitalist America, Bank Robs YOU
      Jul 18 2023
      In spite of all the disinformation you’ll find around the subject of capitalist economics, it is very true today in the US that banks have rigged the system to rob everyone else. And it just sort of…happened, while we weren’t looking. The result of it happening is this massive inequity of wealth and power that we’re living in now. In the US (and most other places) we have this thing called fractional reserve banking. In this system, commercial banks are allowed to loan money in excess of their actual cash and assets on hand. If the fractional reserve is 10% and I have a thousand dollars, I can write loans for ten times that. Perfect conditions for this to actually work are first, all the loans have to be paid back, completely, on time. Second, the banks aren’t leveraging regulatory and tax code features to lower their tax liability through artificial or less than honorable – even if legal – means. In that perfect world, the payment of the loan cancels the money created by the loan. This is the same mechanism as federal tax; they “print” the money by appropriation, and then they “destroy” it by taxation. We don’t live in a perfect world. If you default on a loan, that’s money in the economy which has lost its way to get back out. If you pay it off early that’s (usually) a loss of some amount of profit for the bank. That and innumerable other variables all have to be accounted for in tax policy. It also means that even though that money cancels itself out as its returned to the lender, you still have to adjust tax policy to account for the money that’s in the economy right now, including the rates “we the people” must pay in to keep things running smoothly. The people who manage the whole thing aim to balance between maintaining currency value and ensuring there’s sufficient currency stock in the economy to keep it stable. That balance must be calculated to fit as closely as possible what’s really in the economy, rather than only the aspirational projections of what commercial banks expect to be in the economy. It’s that first calculation which has the greatest impact on tax policy. You and I pay taxes now to balance the money creation that banks are profiting on now (by charging interest on those loans). Then banks hire attorneys and accountants and lobbyists to take advantage of regulatory and tax code features to reduce their own tax bill – and also to have a strong hand in creating those features. That includes increasing the amount of money they can “print” via loans versus the amount they actually hold. Eventually other capitalists realized they have attorneys and accountants and lobbyists too and joined the party, further shifting the burden of taxation onto the backs of the people they were refusing to pay and overcharging to live – us. End result: they are never paying the taxes needed to offset the money they’re printing and putting in their pockets, and thus that money, the taxes, has to come out of our pockets. Then our pockets become too shallow to meet our needs and we get a credit card. Or take out a loan. Next verse, same as the first. They get paid on the money, then they don’t pay taxes on what they get paid. The taxes must be paid to keep things running smooth and stable (but not to pay for federal spending! It’s so important people internalize that fact!) so we, the rest of people who aren’t major executives in banks and multinational corporations and such, pay them instead. Over time this puts an ever-larger portion of the “real” wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer people, while leaving an ever-smaller portion for everyone else. Executive compensation is a tax-deductible business expense. This isn’t all the result of some “invisible hand” or magic. It’s the result of individual human beings making decisions for their own material benefit, knowing that they’re doing so by harming others. As the old meme goes, those people have names and addresses – not to encourage anyone, mind you – but that’s why we don’t talk about these things. If there has ever been a valid way to say “taxation is theft,” this is the true way. Problem is you say that and everyone thinks the thief is “the government.” The government is just the bookkeeper. The thieves are the people who are taking the money – capitalists, oligarchs, plutocrats. The more control they have over every aspect of our lives, the less likely it is that we’ll start looking for those names and addresses, or even know there’s a problem at all. Means, motive, opportunity. Capitalism is a dead-end street for the species, and none of the other things we’ve tried are perfect either, so it’s time to move forward into what’s next. I’d hold on tight, because these folks aren’t going to let go easily.
      Afficher plus Afficher moins
      5 min
    Aucun commentaire pour le moment