Sunday, April 19, 2015

The "hypocritical pretense" of the American man.

Image result for wealthy americans imageChris Christie (he of the one percent) says that he is "not wealthy".

Go figure.

Although now that the rest of us are starting to catch on, politicians from the left and the right are trying their best to shed that rich guy label.

But is it necessary? 

Americans still look up to the wealthy because we believe that with just a little hard work we too will be in their position one day.

Articles like the one below, however, says otherwise.

"The American way of life—more simply, the American way—is charged with affirming our American ideals of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” In that trio of nouns—life, liberty, happiness—the last, happiness, activated by the verb pursuit, makes itself curiously conspicuous, like a zany uncle at a bris.
 
Who in his right mind on this fraught planet would claim that the Creator endowed us with the unalienable right to be happy? You can imagine the assertion coming on the floor of the House, made by the congressmouse of the 9th District of Florida, representing the Disney-engineered town of Celebration.
 
We must remind ourselves that the official testament to American independence doesn’t declare that our happiness is an inalienable right, merely the pursuit of it. And we all know that pursuit—while often engaging—runs counter to happiness.

If we’re in pursuit, we are unsatisfied. If we pursue happiness, we want or need it. If we possessed happiness, we wouldn’t chase it. This is the nature of desire: We don’t want what we have. Even when we do achieve happiness, sadly, we want more, and off we go again.

By this reckoning, dissatisfaction defines the American way. Life we cherish. Give us liberty or give us death. Happiness we’re ever after, and not happily.

In a letter dated Dec. 24, on the eve of the American Revolution, 1774, Lord Dunmore, a Scotsman and the Royal Governor of Virginia, wrote that his subjects, these American colonists, “for ever imagine the Lands further off are still better than those upon which they are already settled.” This nation of ours was colonized by Europeans who felt ill-at-ease in their homelands, castoffs and trailblazers who went a long way—sea to shining sea—toward slaughtering a nomadic native population while importing indentured servants and slaves unwillingly sold off of ancestral lands. It is no wonder that we, the collective offspring of this migrant mishmash, feel compelled to chase the dog’s tail of happiness.
* * *
The state of happiness operates according to what physicists call the observer effect. Measuring happiness alters it. Happiness is like tire pressure. In order to gauge it, we’re forced to let out air. Once we’re aware we’ve attained a measure of happiness, our happiness is changed by that awareness.
 
Even unchanged, happiness never lasts. If it did, it wouldn’t be happiness. Think how Laurie Colwin, upbeat author of the earnestly titled “Happy All the Time,” died at age 48 of a heart attack. Or hear John Lennon’s tragically prescient baritone, the acerbic voice of the happy-go-lucky Beatles, crooning, “Happiness is a warm gun. Bang bang, shoot shoot.” Lennon, who wrote the song after seeing the phrase in an article published by the American Rifleman, intended the lyrics to be understood ironically. Mark David Chapman—who shot Lennon four times in the back outside the Dakota overlooking Central Park West, and then sat over a dying Lennon reading “The Catcher in the Rye” until taken into police custody—took Lennon’s words literally. Chapman’s mother, Diane, in an interview with People magazine, said: “My first thought when this happened was, ‘My God, I’ll never be happy again.’”
* * *
The essence of the American way—our endless road that gets us more perfectly there—is the American dream. We arrive at life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness by the once-revolutionary notion that upward mobility is achievable for every honest individual dedicated to hard work. Plain if not simple, that’s the dream.

The American dream, it should be noted, is dependent on the notion of American exceptionalism: the American way is possible in the U.S.—as it is nowhere else—because of the singular nature of this nation.

America is exceptional, but not for the reasons we’ve come to imagine. We now know that the United States is not only among the most unequal societies in the rich world but also among the least mobile. This is not some pinko prattle reprised time and again in the liberal media. These days, you can read regular reports (dangling modifiers and all) in the Wall Street Journal or Business Insider, where it was recently proclaimed:
Because their rising status comes at a time when upward mobility in the U.S. ranks lowest among wealthy industrialized counties, the spending attitudes of the new rich have implications for politics and policy. It’s now become even harder for people at the bottom to move up.
* * *
See Pa Joad in “The Grapes of Wrath” finding the handbill promoting plentiful work out West. Hear Ma saying to her son Tom, “They need folks to work. They wouldn’t go to that trouble if they wasn’t plenty work. Costs em good money to get them han’bills out. What’d they want to lie for, an’ costin’ em money to lie?”

John Steinbeck understood, and tried to tell us some 75 years ago, that the American dream is not a product of American democracy. The American dream is borne out of our all-too-human hypocrisy. A false advertisement, the American dream is a motivational tool employed to increase worker productivity. The dividends reaped by the increased output go to further fill the coffers of the aptly called job creators.

This is not to say that Americans can’t, like the sitcom Jeffersons, move on up to the top. They do, but the chances are minuscule. Upwardly mobile Americans are not the rule; they’re the exception to the rule. The rule is that most Americans will never move up, no matter how hard we work, no matter how we’re told otherwise.

Income mobility, the goal of the American dream, is greater in Canada, and if there was ever something rotten in the state of Denmark, the ruling parties there have freshened those fortunes. These days, something’s rotten in the United States......

* * *
......Eighty percent of Americans possess 7 percent of our nation’s wealth. Anyone still championing the reality of the American dream is either delusional, dishonest or criminally uninformed. Dream or no dream, the American way of life isn’t simply dying a slow death. It’s being strangled. The killers are people like Professor Mankiw, who is not uniformed. The killers are millionaires and billionaires who abide by the mantra: no new taxes. The killers are political organizations like Americans for Prosperity, a special interest group that hosts the annual Defending the American Dream Summit.
The American dream is a lie, and those who attend DADS, and politicians backed by Americans for Prosperity, are actively working to foment it. These pols and lobbyists intimate that the rich are—to put it plainly—in possession of a greater value system. A better work ethic. A life-affirming set of beliefs. A more productive appreciation of the family. Americans who don’t abide by these values are discovering—lo and behold—that they suffer accordingly.

This argument—declining American values—isn’t conservative. It’s not an attempt to hold fast to the good old days of tradition and morality. The declining-values argument is supremacist. It’s that simple. Those who espouse it skew toward older, richer, whiter and, make no mistake, in this argument, at heart, is one clear declaration: Our values did, do and should reign supreme.
* * *
The genius of “pursuit of happiness” is that each person defines it intimately. We argue about life, when it starts—at conception or after—and ends—with brain death or the cessation of the heart—but the basic parameters we can agree on. Liberty, at its core—the power or scope to act as one pleases—is somehow both more abstract and more essential. But happiness?

Originalists, those linguistic fundamentalists, argue that happiness, as it was originally intended by the founding fathers, has changed markedly since the days when an ink-stained Thomas Jefferson scratched out his “original Rough draught.” The etymology of “happy,” as defined by that most Loyalist of sources, the Oxford English Dictionary, comes from the root “hap”: “Chance or fortune (good or bad) that falls to anyone; luck, lot.” It wasn’t until a century after the first published appearance of “hap” that “happy,” in written form, came to side with good “hap.” The word “happen” shares the same origin, hap: “to come to pass (originally by ‘hap’ or chance).”
 
“Happenstance,” as we use it today, is nearest to the original “hap.” An originalist would argue that a more accurate translation of the clause in question should read: “life, liberty and the pursuit of good fortune.”
* * *
Every word is only ever an approximation. Language is a liquid, flowing as long as it is spoken or written or thought, even. This is one reason why originalism, and its application to contemporary Constitutional law, is not simply absurd. It’s stupid.
 
The hubris of originalism—and I mean “hubris” in its original sense: “a crime that casts shame on both criminal and victim”—is that it runs against the very nature of language. Language is a measure of change. To put forth a principle of interpretation that tries to discover the original meaning of a written document is one thing, but to then use that principle in an interpretation of present-day law is so moronic as to constitute intellectual dishonesty. That, or flagrant hypocrisy.
 
Originalism is a pedant’s con game. It’s the sort of justification that can only be made by those so supremely mired in rhetoric that they’ve lost all sense of the everyday world and how it works for folks unfortunate enough to make their livings by means other than moving words around.
Trying to freeze a word in its original intent is like isolating a droplet in a river. It can be accomplished. Doing so will give you a better sense of water and its properties. If examined closely enough, the droplet may yield its origins. But the droplet will never help you navigate the river. The droplet can’t tell you where the river meets the sea......


....Seven recent studies reveal how the wealthy and the powerful morph into hypocrites, here defined as “people who pretend to have admirable principles, beliefs, or feelings but behave otherwise.” Before we attain success, we often do possess admirable principles, beliefs, or feelings. Once successful, our self-possession is warped into pretension by success. Anecdotally, we see this time and again. A politician starts out, like New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez, fighting graft and corruption, and winds up indicted for graft and corruption. Today, we have the damning data to support the anecdotal evidence. An academic roundup of the recent findings reveals:
In studies 1 and 2, upper-class individuals were more likely to break the law while driving, relative to lower-class individuals. In follow-up laboratory studies, upper-class individuals were more likely to exhibit unethical decision-making tendencies (study 3), take valued goods from others (study 4), lie in a negotiation (study 5), cheat to increase their chances of winning a prize (study 6), and endorse unethical behavior at work (study 7) than were lower-class individuals.
Senators, CEOs, the dynastic Kochs and Waltons, the multimillionaires who dominate talk radio, these Americans should not be instructing us on the importance of American values.
The values of the wealthy and the powerful are the least trustworthy. This doesn’t mean we need smaller government and lower taxes, the platform championed by a Republican Party—and its Teetotaler fundamentalist wing—bankrolled by Americans for Prosperity. The Koch brothers are acting in their interests. They know full well that the conservative agenda further privileges the already privileged. Any Republican who disagrees is targeted for disposal.

What we need—desperately—is increased government regulation in the private sector and the overturning of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United verdict. Reduced regulation only increases our freedom to lie, cheat and steal as we gain wealth and influence. Lower taxes on the highest earners keep wealth hoarded in the hands of Americans most inclined to undermine American values. Increased election spending makes it more likely that those who control the most capital will institute the worst devils of our nature.

Ironically, tragically and, yes, hypocritically, Americans with the most money and influence—and in possession of our worst values—lobby hardest for the importance of American values. Poor church attendance, welfare dependence and gay marriage are not leading to decreased American values. Our declining values are the direct result of the rich and powerful succumbing to human nature. It’s not solely their fault—the fault is hard-wired in all of us—and they are in sore need of our help to overcome their inherent vice.
* * *
Because we cannot trust the rich and the powerful to act in our best interests or in the best interests of America, they must be hamstrung. They will not help reinvigorate a healthy middle class, crucial to reestablishing the American way. Not only does the middle class make for a broad distribution of resources, the middle class, more so than rich or poor, more so than our leadership or our left-behinds, provides the moral compass for the America that can and should be. But if 80 percent of Americans control 7 percent of American wealth, the middle class is, statistically speaking, nearly nonexistent. How do we breathe new life into the subgroup of the American population predisposed to do the greatest good for America?
* * *
Along the way, we Americans have gotten lost. We’ve allowed ourselves to become convinced that the redistribution of wealth is an anti-American evil, and that free markets innately aid the common good. A growing number of us have come to the painful conclusion that free markets consolidate wealth at the top, and that those at the top can’t be trusted for long. In 1890, with the passing of the Sherman Antitrust Act and its subsequent amendments in 1914 and 1936, we institutionalized monopoly busting. We’re long overdue for a new set of antitrust acts. It’s high time Congress legislated billionaire busting.

Government mandated income redistribution must not shift wealth from one extreme to the other, rich to poor, but toward the middle. There’s only one surefire way: tax the fancy pants off the ever-tightening asses of the rich. How about that? The rich and their leadership won’t willingly give up their means—they’re constitutionally incapable: charitable giving declines as wealth increases—and because they won’t, we have to take it from them. Congress must levy heavy taxes on billionaires, or we must oust the current Congress.
* * *
Image result for wealthy americans imageA fiction, Jay Gatsby is an effigy for the American way of life. A poor boy born to a poor father, he was forced to make good the only way he could, outside the bounds  of decency, law and order. He bootlegged during Prohibition to build his fortune. That, in the face of the evidence, is how real working-class Americans can hope to break the shackles of class. Thanks to the current policies put in place by the sons and fathers of privilege, we must lie and cheat to get ahead. Once ahead, we’re more inclined to lie and cheat, a predisposition that helps us stay there. Welcome to the new American way, which, come to find, was the old American way.

If the prosperous Americans for Prosperity don’t recognize this reality, civil unrest is sure to follow. If American billionaires don’t come to terms, there’s bound to be an American Spring in the offing. The Occupy movement was the first salvo. The demonstrations, rioting, the cop shootings and looting in Ferguson, seemingly unrelated, are part and parcel of a growing American class divide further divisible by race. We’re overdue for a reckoning.
* * *
At the close of “The Great Gatsby”—the great American novel not the tragic American chart—the narrator thinks how Gatsby’s
dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.
The futility of Gatsby’s pursuit, as F. Scott Fitzgerald rendered it, and the hypocrisy of influence he came to represent, makes Gatsby’s pursuit, and ultimate downfall, all the more poignant. Gatsby’s is an American futility, the beautiful futility of forming a more perfect union, the glorious striving for the ultimate, unattainable truth.

Sometimes, it seems, that hypocrisy, more so than happiness, is our unalienable right. We reach for happiness (and for good fortune) knowing the likelihood that these things have already passed us by, or were never within reach to begin with. But on we pursue nonetheless. Most of us are incapable of acknowledging our own hypocrisy; we are what Aristotle called “consistently inconsistent.”

Scientists, philosophers, novelists and psychologists have long been aware that a prerequisite of the human condition is self-deception, what Carl Jung dubbed the “hypocritical pretenses of man.” Such pretenses mature with power and privilege. The greater our personal gain, the greater grows the gulf not only between us and our fellow Americans, but between us and ourselves. Increased success decreases self-awareness. Like we do with happiness, we must pursue hypocrisy—our own, that of others—and especially the hypocrisy of our leaders and of our prosperous.

They are, more and more in this country, one and the same.

If there’s any hope for America, it is this: Hypocrisy, like happiness, operates according to the observer effect. By observing it, we change it." [Read entire article]

 

32 comments:

Limpbaugh said...

I tell young people that it isn't supposed to be like this. There used to be jobs. If you got in the right business at the right time, you might get rich. Gerald Ford had an economic stimulus tax break that gave the same amount to every one who filed taxes. Before Reagan, companies gave bonuses that were the same for every employee. We still suffer from Reaganomics, just as we prospered from the new deal until then. And Ross Perot was right about NAFTA. Clinton letting the media consolidate helped ensure an uninformed public. And thanks to the Citizen's United decision politicians either represent their rich donors or they don't get elected.

Anonymous said...

Are rich people taking poor peoples $ by gunpoint? From what I see, poor people gave the "hottest"gear and newest tech. Steve jobs wore new balances and died a billionaire. Pootie wears Jordan's and lives in the projects. So sometimes it's all about priorities, not being held back. Unless you doing it to yourself as some are. And don't say they aren't. If your already poor with one kid, how is having another or 2 or 3 going to make things better for you? People just need to think. And personal responsibility needs to be brought back. Because these days, no one is responsible for anything they do

Whitey's Conspiracy said...

I've always liked HL Gates because he DOESNT pull punches. He revealed and publicly admitted his disappointment that he is far more white descended than black descended and that both his patrilineal (ultimate great grandfather) and matrilineal (ultimate great grandmother) DNA come from white English people. That took courage for someone as publicly invested in blackness as him. To allow Afflek to keep this shady family history secret taints all of his work -something that he recognized immediately according to the same leaked emails. I don't get it. None of us chose our ancestors; we're not responsible for them; he's told these stories before, and left it up to their descendants to explain for renounce. Why the backpedal for this actor?

Anonymous said...

I agree with both
Limbaugh and Anon 10:40

Whitey's Conspiracy said...

Wealth concentration is entirely a public policy driven phenomenon. We used to have an actual progressive tax system that took more the more that you made, and had both more rich and more middle-class people as a share of population as a result. Now, we've got a regressive tax system (remember, income tax is a minor component of all taxes paid) that actually takes more the less that you make, and it's getting more so all the time.

Anonymous said...

"Ironically, tragically and, yes, hypocritically, Americans with the most money and influence—and in possession of our worst values—lobby hardest for the importance of American values. Poor church attendance, welfare dependence and gay marriage are not leading to decreased American values.

Our declining values are the direct result of the rich and powerful succumbing to human nature. It’s not solely their fault—the fault is hard-wired in all of us—and they are in sore need of our help to overcome their inherent vice."

Being human is to be sinful. Greed, pride, lust and anger are the hallmarks of being human. Declining values? when did we have 'increasing' values? Never.

Being human is a messy ordeal. And I disagree with the author that:

"Poor church attendance, welfare dependence and gay marriage are not leading to decreased American values."

They are in fact leading to more sin where there is no such thing as virtue or doing the right thing. It's now what the human ego declares is right and desirable that is the direct opposite of divine laws.

Yep. True to form, humans are self-destructing by ignoring and shutting out spiritual principles that are perfect and life-saving.

Yīshēng said...

IMHO, the majority of Black Americans "sellout" to survive. It's part of the reason I find the pharmaceutical industry despicable, you have to "cheat" to get new products to market.

But I digress, Dr. Gates did what he had to do in light of the last "racial" debacle he was involved in. Facts are that if he had put the slave owner info in the report on Ben Affleck, what do you think ol' Ben would have done? Dr. Gates probably would have lost his job and for what?

The fact is that American Blacks wouldn't have come to the "rescue" of Dr. Gates if he had left the info in there and been fired. So as far as I'm concerned, ALL the Black folks calling him a sell out can kiss his ass for ME. Until American Blacks start sticking together like other Blacks do (which is NEVER going to happen), Black Americans better keep looking out for self.

Now if Dr. Gates was African or Caribbean, he may not been been afraid to published the info KNOWING "his poeple" would have had his back"!

Yīshēng said...

And greed will continue to "kill" this country until it's DEAD!!!!

PilotX said...

The decine of unions also hastened the demise of the middle class. This was the big argument from conservatives about Citizens United, union contributions will balance out contributions from corporations. This was a very disinginuous argument because conservatives are trying to break unions and neutralize their influence.

Anonymous said...

Yisheng, "Now if Dr. Gates was African or Caribbean, he may not been been afraid to published the info KNOWING "his poeple" would have had his back"!"

11:50 PM
-----------
You are exactly right. African Americans are not worth a damn and among them it's everybody for himself. African Americans are a sorry lot.

Obama knows this and that's why he refuses to stick his neck out for any of them.

Good observation Yisheng. It's clear you don't think much of African Negroes either. You must be from the Caribbean like Field and Lilac. I can tell because you are much smarter than the Negroes on FN.

Glad you are here. You make a good case for the disparities of Blacks in America. You help some of the Whites on here make a case of the unworthiness of American Negroes...thanks.

VIVA PR! VIVA JAMAICA! VIVA ST. THOMAS!

Yīshēng said...

Let's be clear Anon, Black Americans are exactly as White slave owners and the descendants of White slave owners want them to be. Culturally disorganized, disenchanted with life in America, and disenfranchised from any real, long term success in a racist nation.

I just call it like I've seen it ALL my life, I'm too damn old to have rose colored glasses on about life in America anymore!

Anonymous said...

Everyone hates Black Americans, they hate America but still come here iin droves, giving nothing of value to this country or their homeland. Stop blaming us for your failure. We fought our civil war...why not you?

Anonymous said...

PS

No such thing as a Super race, people are people everywhere, some good, some bad, some in between,...
My life lesson.

Mike Stopper said...

Shit is crazy

Thank you for Truth said...

Thank you FN (Mr. Bennett). This piece is one of your best, perhaps number 1 of all times. Keep up the great work.

Have you given thought to running for POTUS?

The Purple Cow said...

"Are rich people taking poor peoples $ by gunpoint? "

Actually, yes.

McFred said...

Yisheng, I would absolutely hate to work with or under a complete loser like yourself.

Yisheng said...

@10:47, you'll never have to worry about that McF**k Off because you're a camel urine smelling, uneducated piece of stalking lizard $hit.

Yisheng

Josh said...

It's necessary to shed that label to the extent that politician B wants to use it against politician A.

One of the big reasons folks stuck with Bush in '04 was that he was one of those I'd-have-a-beer-with-him politicians. He didn't come across like someone from old money with a haughty education and disposable income to throw around. A lot people were also endeared to Obama early on because he was able to present himself as a man of the people, not a rich fat-cat living high off the hog on lavish taxpayer-funded vacations. And then once those melting pot street sit-ins started, fuggedaboutit. Being wealthy was suddenly taboo.

The eat-the-rich mentality is something that has been coming from the top down for about four years.

It's my guess that Christie just wants to position himself as the working-class average Joe juxtaposed against the Clintonian bank vault that could literally buy an entire country.

It's probably not a main necessity, but it's necessary to the extent that the idea of "wealth" and "fairness" has been a hot-button topic for a long time now.

There is a very healthy streak in America of younger people who literally beat their drums and call for a Marxist system. Luckily for everyone, these folks are by and large too fucking lazy to do anything but complain in public about it, wanting someone else to institute the system they demand so that they may reap the benefits. But some of them do vote; and more than that, they take to social media.

Just like the war on women and Sandra Fluke, these things were not politician creations; they started via social media and were adopted by politicians. The whining of the public holds sway, and nobody wants to be the rich abuser if they can help it.

I'm still looking for that poor person who provides jobs for other people, or that actually builds anything, but that's another topic...

Anonymous said...

Thank you for Truth said...
"Thank you FN (Mr. Bennett). This piece is one of your best, perhaps number 1 of all times. Keep up the great work."

this is my first time to this blog. it's really something.

Mr. Bennett, i know you from politics and fox news, but i did not know that you had a blog too. your post sounds so much like you. thanks.

PoopAvenger said...

Question for whiny white people like Josh and many anonymous assholes:

Why do you always wallow in your own pathetic, non-existent victimhood?

Anonymous said...

mr josh: "There is a very healthy streak in America of younger people who literally beat their drums and call for a Marxist system."

mr josh, please forgive me for asking but i really would like to know....what do you mean by "Marxist system"? thanks.


mr josh: "Just like the war on women and Sandra Fluke, these things were not politician creations; they started via social media and were adopted by politicians. The whining of the public holds sway, and nobody wants to be the rich abuser if they can help it."

this is what has been in our faces for some time but no one seems to have worded it directly and clearly like you. thanks for this important nugget of truth.


mr josh: "I'm still looking for that poor person who provides jobs for other people, or that actually builds anything, but that's another topic..."

me too. i bet there are a lot of people waiting and hoping for that "one". it could change everything for the country and for the poor.

it would take a rare human being, a kind of Gandhi who is willing to lay his/her life on the line for a much bigger life for all. that person will need to have undying 'love' for the poor like Mother Teresa.

do you really think there is such a human being that would have to be more than human? should we dare to dream such hopes? miss yisheng put it like this:

"Let's be clear Anon, Black Americans are exactly as White slave owners and the descendants of White slave owners want them to be. Culturally disorganized, disenchanted with life in America, and disenfranchised from any real, long term success in a racist nation."

this seems to be the mental attitude by some in America. mental attitude = mental reality = no faith in the poor.

is this the reality for the majority of Americans, in particular the poor?

if so, there won't be a person like King, or Gandhi, or Mother Teresa...but maybe someone of a different sort operating through social media?

or maybe we will wait, watch and hope for the Second Coming? but it may not be what we hope for. who is to know what's in the mind of God?

Bill said...


Facts are that if he had put the slave owner info in the report on Ben Affleck, what do you think ol' Ben would have done? Dr. Gates probably would have lost his job and for what?

So a very rich white Obama supporting dumbocrat would have gotten a Black man fired for speaking the truth?

Typical rich white dumbocrat.

Thank you for Truth said...

RE Anonymous @11:13 AM

I don’t know what point you are trying to make, but I have posted on this blog for several years, see for example my post from July, 2013, made under my real name, Neil Gillespie, where I took issue with FN in his post "Voters Remorse". See, Respectfully, MLK was a Dreamer too.

http://field-negro.blogspot.com/2013/07/voters-remorse.html?showComment=1373470622613#c3166886110443290252

FYI, if you click ‘Thank you for Truth’, it takes you to my blog and a message you will never hear on fox news: Mississippi Goddam (Florida Goddam)

Any other questions, Anonymous @11:13 AM?

Neil Gillespie, A.K.A. Thank you for Truth

Bill said...


On April 20, I wonder what FieldNegro will write about.

Anonymous said...

Thank you for Truth, please accept my apology. when you called field mr bennett, i thought you were talking about the white bennett often seen on fox news. again i am sorry.

this is my first day on fn.

The Purple Cow said...

"The eat-the-rich mentality is something that has been coming from the top down for about four years."

Y'know, every time I think I have an angle on how stupid Josh is, he says something like this and I realise with a jolt that he's massively stupider than I had thought.

AIJB's Great Granddaughter said...

Damn, Field! Thank you for sharing this. So much! I love the bangin' descriptions of what language really is and "Because we cannot trust the rich and the powerful to act in our best interests or in the best interests of America, they must be hamstrung." Daring, yet so buried in the language, I hope it's safe to say no one will be going after him... Thanks AGAIN!

field negro said...

AGG, you follow Black Girl In Maine, so you are good people as far as I am concerned.

That's my girl. :)

Josh said...

And every single day I literally find myself laughing harder and harder, to the point I can barely fucking breathe, at just how much time and energy you morons put into my shit. Me. Little old me. A random fucking stranger on the Internet, on one of a billion fucking blogs. You asshats put more focus on me than you do on Field.

A stranger whom none of you know whatsoever; a stranger whom the lot of you proclaim is stupid and swear that you don't give fuck-one about. Yet without fucking fail, you cunts dig and dig and dig through all the comments here until which time you can find something of mine to pull out and bitch about.

Life must be fucking good in your guys' neck of the woods, seeing as the biggest problem you idiots seem to have going is that there's some stranger on the Internet who posts opinions that you simply cannot leave alone. It's not enough to disagree; you habitually need to try to run me down as a person, like you're out to score points for an audience in 7th grade, and you cannot fucking resist the temptation to do so.

Next, I reckon, you'll join with the other anon, telling me how little I matter as you continue to live and die on this blog based on what I say.

This obsession with me is fucking laughable. I don't have another way to describe it. I picture you idiots literally thinking about me in the morning as you log onto Field's. "Let's see what Josh said about this..."

Get a fucking handle on your life, mate. Whatever weird obsession you have with me on a personal level, you've had it since the first day I started posting here.

It's reaching levels of creepy that couldn't be expressed properly by a Steve Buscemi character. Holy shit, man. Check yourself!

AIJB's Great Granddaughter said...

I've been gratefully following you for awhile now and learned of BGIM through your blog. She IS gifted. Her blog led me to a number of African American women bloggers, including the Crunk Feminist Collective. I guess I've been attempting to round out my awareness of what African Americans are thinking since (as someone combating "able-ism") I kept feeling like my degree of (warily) identification was unusual and cool but not something to take for granted. I can humbly say I've been learning ever since! And now hold a whole group of amazing writers in very high esteem, yourself included.

Thank you for Truth said...

re Anonymous 7:01 PM

Thank you. I appreciate your response.

Thank you for Truth