When a man is called a bitch, the meaning is quite different, almost opposite. It means to be forced to take second place to another, to serve as directed, to be used... as the female in misogynistic traditions is. In prison, the expression to become someone's bitch is not distinguishable in meaning to the notion of "to be punked" by someone: to be reduced to the submissive "female" role, socially or sexually and used as such.
Yesterday, Hillary Clinton denounced the element among Donald Trump's supporters, "a basket of deplorables," whom she would not touch with a ten-foot pole. David Duke would be the poster child for this ilk. The Skin Crawl Squad, they are. Hillary later offered a partial apology for having included half of Trump's supporters in this odious group. She recognized that the accurate figure is probably much smaller, say 10-15%.
The real point is that those people, a disparate coterie often subsumed under the label "Alt-Right", have a national major party candidate courting them for their votes, a candidate whom they can enthusiastically support for the first time in living memory, if ever. Historically, a politician running for office has been after almost any legal vote, but there are almost certainly some votes with whom one wouldn't want to be associated in any way, secret ballot or no. No longer. Trump has changed the game.
It's not real, but don't you wish it WERE? |
Donald Trump pretends to feel quite differently. He claims support from blacks and Muslims and Mexicans, and there are outliers in those groups, lunatics, self-haters or opportunists who seek his goodwill by shilling for him. But no one is fooled by this menagerie. Donald Trump is a prick. He might be a "dick" if his hands were larger and had ever seen a callous, but Donald is the worst kind of pampered prick. A prick is an abuser of others, one who lacks all charity and looks for opportunity in the weakness and tragedy of others, a bottom-feeder. Trump is proud of this, and why shouldn't he be? But for his ability to strip failing businesses of their value, rape their employees dreams and lie his way through the ensuing debacles, he would already have been exposed for what he will eventually be: a failure even as a con man.
But to continue, a prick is not the opposite of a bitch. The opposite of a bitch is a strong, assertive, self-confident and independent MAN admired by other men and women and feared and disliked by some...but respected... because...he's not a woman. Trumpolini imagines himself one. But there's no particular name for an admirable man. Turn that wholly admirable guy into a woman and...Surprise!--you have a bitch. We should all be bitches.
Hillary, this guy is your bitch all the way...
I'm sure I could think up some really clever and apt analogies to encompass the bizarre duplicity of Stein's language, but why should I? I've got Stein's language and the facts of life to rebut them with.
The income tax is (almost) the ONLY tax that some people don't pay. They don't pay income tax (if they get their payroll tax refunded) because in our wonderful economic system where wages have been flat for 43 years, they can't earn enough income to pay income tax--paying income tax is a sign of success, it's a symbol of the power of and honor to be an American citizen...unless one is a Republican. So why does a bright man make such an asinine and utterly false statement? A statement that defies reality? Because Ben Stein lives in a different reality.
In his alternate reality, the income tax is the only tax that causes the well-off, with their huge incomes, enough pain to lie and complain about, because the other taxes don't affect their quality of life AT ALL. Well, the inheritance tax does, but that's a separate story... Poor people pay all of the taxes rich people pay at the same rates--except the income tax. For the income tax, however, the poor pay payroll taxes which range between 7.3 and 10%, money they receive back when and if they file income tax returns. The undocumented, lacking SS numbers, can't get their federal or state income tax refunds and thus pay ALL taxes the rich pay. They also pay Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance taxes which they can never claim the benefit of. These payments they make benefit only us citizens. THINK ABOUT THAT. The undocumented, unless they work completely off the books (in which case they still pay all the other taxes other poor Americans do) pay the highest taxes relative to personal wealth of anyone in the country.
What could those other taxes amount to? Sales tax. Here in CA it is pushing 10%. Property tax is huge for people on a fixed income or just poor. 1% of the value of a tear-down in the SF Bay Area is many thousands. Due to the grossly inequitable property tax structure resulting from Proposition 13, the new purchasers of property pay tax at many times the actual value of long-term owners whose 1% rate may be based on an assessed rate as old as 1975. Liberals who own some of this old property are not calling for a fairer system. This measure was sold to the voter to benefit elderly people being pinched by the tax. How about the elderly super rich? Every year millions of poor people lose their homes either to foreclosure or unpaid property taxes. Car tax, gas tax, alcohol and tobacco tax. Highway tolls. Court costs and fines which push the poorest into debtor's prison or destitution. Building and other types of permit and fee costs, the list is much longer than this. Am I boring you, yet?
As a matter of fact, I left out payroll taxes. All those 47% pay payroll taxes at a much higher rate that their richer, better fellow citizens. A look at the table below will show that taxpayers in the top 10% pay at a rate half that of the majority. Taxpayers in the top .01% pay at only 10% of the rate of those in the middle. Incomes over $118,000 pay nothing additional at all. Between the time the payroll taxes of the lower income people are taken out of their paychecks and the same money is returned to them (if it is), a wealthy person's money which is not taken out is used to make more money. Does that make sense? The bottom 50% could be using their money for up to a year before they get it back in a refund--if they actually file properly and do so. It is difficult to explain something so unequal and unfair. Ben Stein, in the words of Al Franken, is a lying liar. He is just a Republican on message.
Republicans on this issue are simply LIARS. I can't stop myself from saying this. The truth feels so good, so right. I'm not calling names--I'm describing the truth value of their endlessly repeated libel on the 47/50%. This is not a pejorative opinion but a fact. The real question is, Why be liars? Why not give the less affluent their due for the combination of kinds of taxes and vastly higher percentage of individual wealth that they pay? Well, obviously because it's the truth! If the American people ever understand how they are actually being raped by the top 1%, bad things could happen, and nobody wants that, right? As for lying, it is dishonorable to knowingly attempt to deceive people, unless you do it for a living--like a CIA agent or a salesman.
The most savage of truths on taxes, is that poor people (in the US, millions of poor people are offended at being called "poor") provide with the ultimate tax: the "donation" of their children to serve as the cannon fodder for our military adventures since we decided after Vietnam to spare the better sort of people the need to sacrifice their precious sons to our idiotic wars by having a 100% volunteer force. These patriotic families have just spent 15 years with their father, mothers, sons and daughters fighting the wars for the other 98% of us at the cost of their death, dismemberment and mental destruction. Since US states have cut our higher education budgets to the bone, the only way most children of the poor can go to college is through tuition payments earned via military service--call that a "voluntary tax" Mr. Stein, if you are so heartless.
My point is just that it is shameful for Republicans like Stein and Romney and all the rest to continually deny the tax contribution and impactful tax burden of absurdly regressive taxes that people living near or below the poverty line make to our government operations year in and year out. There is a mental defect among Republicans and it is a form of ingratitude. Why deny that the poor make a tax contribution which is proportionately far in excess of your own when it is manifestly true? Everyone who lives here pays taxes. Illegal aliens pay taxes. Repeat after me: Everyone who lives in the USA pays taxes because we have taxes for everyone. Stop the LIE, Ben Stein.
And yet to think that the white portion of that ill-educated, brain-washed group will vote for Trump, who despises them, as Stein recommends! You gotta love this fucked-up country!