{"id":1055,"date":"2021-02-21T04:18:51","date_gmt":"2021-02-21T04:18:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zeppscommentaries.online\/?p=1055"},"modified":"2021-02-21T04:18:51","modified_gmt":"2021-02-21T04:18:51","slug":"cold-comfort-texas-shivers-ayn-rand-quivers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zeppscommentaries.online\/?p=1055","title":{"rendered":"Cold Comfort &#8212;  Texas Shivers; Ayn Rand Quivers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Cold Comfort<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Texas Shivers; Ayn Rand Quivers<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\"><em>February 20th, 2021<\/em><\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s been a truism in American politics ever since the anti-government absurdities of the John Birch Society in the 1950\u2019s: if you elect people who want government to fail to office, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. It\u2019s a heavily underwritten idiocy that spread from the Kochs to the JBS, and then to the Libertarian party and from there to the right wing noise machine, where millions of man hours and billions of dollars were spent creating amiable puppet monsters like Reagan, and persuading Americans that if they only threw government off their backs, the aristocrats and churches would take good care of them.<\/p>\n<p>It took over the Republican party entire in the 1990s, and Republican approach to governance ever since has been a blend of disdain for societal needs and general incompetence. Republican governors routinely blew up the budget. Vast sums of money were transferred from the public weal to big multinationals and the super rich. Infrastructure languished. Workers lost power and options, and wages stagnated, and then dropped. Consumers started hearing it was none of their damn business what was in their food and water. As part of a devil\u2019s pact with fundamentalist churches, religion was permitted to intrude more and more deeply into our personal lives. Health care and education were weakened, and turned into lucrative scams.<\/p>\n<p>Jefferson, Madison, et al set government up to serve the people and forestall the depredations of corporations, aristocrats, and the churches. They used to teach that in school before the current fable that individuals could stare down trillion-dollar companies and the Church.<\/p>\n<p>GOP governance saw a steady procession of massive screwups from the war on drugs to 9\/11 to the war on terror. Katrina. The 2008 financial melt down. And most recently, COVID.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s no wonder the GOP finally coughed up the morally bankrupt and criminally corrupt Donald Trump as their avatar.<\/p>\n<p>Texas, of course, has its own particular ethos that lends itself readily to libertarian propaganda. Individualist, go-it-alone, free brave and independent. A cross between John Wayne and the Marlboro Man. Government help, sissy stuff like medical care, roads, schools and infrastructures were for weinies and darkies. Bubba don\u2019t need no government telling him he\u2019s gotta buckle up and wear a mask. Fuck the Feds! Anything government is socialist.<\/p>\n<p>Which brings me to another truism. Socialism sees to the needs of society, and capitalism sees to the needs of capitalists. Having a lawnmowing business makes you a business owner, but you\u2019re no more a capitalist than owning a computer makes you Bill Gates. (And in something symbolic of how the game is rigged for capitalists, read your various EULAs for your software\u2014despite paying for it, you don\u2019t own any of that shit). The only reason Americans put up with the crap and don\u2019t stage the French Revolution redux is they all believe they can become capitalists. They\u2019re all just temporarily embarrassed millionaires, as the joke goes.<\/p>\n<p>We had plenty of warning before last week\u2019s cold snap paralyzed the entire state of Texas and caused minor inconvenience everywhere else.<\/p>\n<p>Texas broke from the federal power grid specifically to avoid federal regulation. Ken Lay and ERCOT would see to all their needs. Billionaires are selfless heroes, here only to serve the people, you know.<\/p>\n<p>Republicans aren\u2019t just incompetent in times of crisis; they philosophically cannot make a response to a crisis because that would make government look effective.<\/p>\n<p>They started dealing with the crisis by lying. It was the fault of windmills freezing (some did, but the agency overseeing this fiasco admitted that generation from wind power was actually UP during the blackout crisis). Tucker Carlson, the poor man\u2019s William F. Buckley, said \u201cSo it was all working great until the day it got cold outside. The windmills failed like the silly fashion accessories they are, and people in Texas died,\u201d Some other lies were ludicrous on the face of it. Blaming Biden for canceling Keystone XL or rejoining the Paris accord were flat-out ridiculous accusations. Rick Perry, who outside of the GOP would be the dumbest man in the room, declared proudly that Texans would rather endure blackouts rather than suffer under federal regulation. (I\u2019ll bet Perry\u2019s lights were on). Donald Trump Jr., who somehow manages to be even more stupid than his father, blamed the crisis on Texas\u2019 \u201cDemocrat governor.\u201d That would be Greg Abbott, who is&#8230;wait for it&#8230;a Republican. Texas has been Republican since the days of Ann Richards, and somehow, inexplicably, in decline over those 30 years.<\/p>\n<p>Ted Cruz fled to Cancun, leaving his little doggie alone in his freezing house and when caught out, blamed his young daughters for the trip, lying about when the trip was planned and his expectations of an early return. (Newsmax sprung to Cruz\u2019s defense, noting that Joe Biden\u2019s German Shepherd was looking kinda raggedy-ass, which isn\u2019t too unusual for that breed in February in a cold climate.)<\/p>\n<p>While Cruz was indelibly disgracing himself and his office, Beto O\u2019Rourke organized volunteers to make more than 784,000 wellness calls to senior citizens around Texas. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC to the dimwitted dittoheads) used her office pulpit to raise more than two million dollars for Texas. Biden and FEMA sent 60 massive power generators and over 200,000 meals, along with a million gallons of fresh water and 30,000 blankets. Unfortunately, most are still sitting at airports around the state because state and local authorities can\u2019t figure out how to move them to people that need them. Fortunately for Texas, Biden is sending in federal guard to take over distribution. Someone\u2019s gotta go it, and it sure isn\u2019t the government haters that infest Texas government.<\/p>\n<p>The cold snap should have been nothing more than an inconvenience. It stretched from northern Mexico to Newfoundland, and except for Texas, that\u2019s all it was\u2014an inconvenience. But not Texas. Because freedumb.<\/p>\n<p>This should be a massive wakeup call to Texas and the country, and hopefully, people will remember in 2022 that billionaires won\u2019t save them from their own stupidity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cold Comfort Texas Shivers; Ayn Rand Quivers February 20th, 2021 It\u2019s been a truism in American politics ever since the anti-government absurdities of the John Birch Society in the 1950\u2019s: if you elect people who want government to fail to office, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. It\u2019s a heavily underwritten idiocy that spread from the &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/zeppscommentaries.online\/?p=1055\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Cold Comfort &#8212;  Texas Shivers; Ayn Rand Quivers&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,577],"tags":[14,1153,1152,1151,1150],"class_list":["post-1055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-american-psyche","category-climate-change","tag-climate-change","tag-electrical-grid-failure","tag-government-failure","tag-texas","tag-weather-catastrophe"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Cold Comfort -- Texas Shivers; Ayn Rand Quivers &#183; Zepp&#039;s Commentaries<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/zeppscommentaries.online\/?p=1055\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Cold Comfort -- Texas Shivers; Ayn Rand Quivers &#183; Zepp&#039;s Commentaries\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Cold Comfort Texas Shivers; Ayn Rand Quivers February 20th, 2021 It\u2019s been a truism in American politics ever since the anti-government absurdities of the John Birch Society in the 1950\u2019s: if you elect people who want government to fail to office, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. 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