Uh, how is a "thing" murdered? The first of many questions that come to mind after left-wing radio host Mike Malloy's latest rant about the evils of capitalism.
Malloy has carved out quite a niche for himself among "progressives" -- too toxic for Air America Radio back before it went belly-up and actually to the left of Ed Schultz. But the man deserves credit for his candor when it comes to capitalism -- he loathes it, as all committed socialists do -- and Malloy is not ashamed to say so, unlike many other socialists who are curiously reluctant to acknowledge their ideology. Instead, they call themselves Democrats. (Audio clips after the jump)
If you were tuned into MSNBC like I suggested this past Sunday, you saw Melissa Harris-Perry's program. She had an abundance of guests (the better to reach her strict racial and gender quotas), I mean just, I felt like I was watching, I don't know, it was like an Olympic event there were so many people on her show. But there was only one person on that program I was really interested in and that was our good friend, Bob Kincaid who was on talking about, with Melissa Harris-Perry and the other guests on his segment about the horror of West Virginia, the poisoning of West Virginia, the poisoning of West Virginia is damn near complete at this point, well, the poisoning of America is almost complete. There's still a little bit, a little bit more to go, there's still more fracking that has to be done, more mountaintops have to be blown off, more holes punched in the earth, more train wrecks, more earthquakes, but we're getting very close to what the capitalists want, which is a total destruction of the United States.
Another question comes to mind -- would not the "total destruction of the United States" be really, really bad for business? Just a hunch, but widespread impoverishment just might put quite the damper on consumer demand. Don't hear much ka-ching in that equation.
A brief primer on energy policy as dictated by enviro-czar Malloy -- no more coal mining, no extraction of natural gas or oil, a ban on offshore drilling, shutdown of all nuclear power plants, dismantling of pipelines, an end to rail transport of fuel, and immediate phase-out of the internal combustion engine. Not to worry, though -- after the inevitable dislocations such policies would engender, America's tens of millions of commuters would eventually ride bikes to work and return home at night to their solar-heated caves.
As for his claim that "the poisoning of America is almost complete," one has to wonder if Malloy just awakened from a decades-long coma that begin shortly after the Santa Barbara oil spill in the late '60s. Most reasonable people would agree that air and water pollution have been on the decline in the US for decades. Listening to Malloy, you'd think America was one of those former Soviet bloc environmental hellholes.
Malloy then speculated about how left-wing activists should respond to American-style capitalism and suggested "open insurrection" might be necessary (audio) --
If there is no outlet for redress of grievances, if even the simple constitutional guarantees now have either been reduced to a joke like, uhm, these freedom of expressions, the First Amendment zones, oh Jesus, God! (Malloy among those who believe freedom of speech extends to sit-in protests on freeways during rush hour). If the right of peaceful assembly has now been labeled as some kind of potential terror act, if three or four or five people protesting at once become co-conspirators, then what's left? So when I, you know, when I, I find myself, unconsciously I think, slipping into that mindset of, there's not really that much I can do, and then I'll have a conversation with Bob Kincaid or something someone who is as energized as he is about these issues, you know, you always know when you're talking to someone who is really dedicated to their particular cause, you can hear in their voice and when I hear that kind of fervor in a person's voice I'm going to shut up and listen (as should everyone else in the stadium) because I know, well, here's a kindred spirit, here's somebody else who has had enough, but we don't know yet what to do, short of open insurrection. I mean, what (laughs), seriously?
Hey, if you can't laugh about "open insurrection," you are clearly humorless while lacking in absolutist "fervor."
If a tea party activist somewhere, anywhere in America speculated aloud along the same lines, it would be considered breaking news at MSNBC.
Having blithely suggested that "open insurrection" might be the way to go (!) , Malloy's inevitable anger surfaced after talking about AOL chief Tim Armstrong reversing his decision to cut employees' 401(k) plans in response to rising health costs (not to worry, Arianna Huffington wasn't going to be affected either way) (audio) --
How much more is the American worker going to take? I am serious. How much more? At what point do we say enough?! I mean, I can't go down the list of all the bad things, we've done that so many times, that's the central nature of this program -- look at all the bad things. When are we going to do something? There's no solution on this program. I said years ago when I started this program when we, about every five years I'll say, look, if you're just coming to this program, don't send me any email after you've been around for a couple of weeks and say, all you do is bitch and complain! You don't have any solutions! Of course I don't! I have one solution, only one! And that's, change the system. Because capitalism as it is currently applied, globally and here, is destroying everything. It's literally murdering everything and everybody. Which is not, that's not because all of a sudden capitalism got bad. That's the nature of capitalism! That's - what - it - does!
Agreed, a terrible system. Arguably the worst of all -- except for all the others, to borrow from Churchill's observation about democracy. Did I mention how Malloy helps keep his radio show going? By selling podcasts and ads on his website. Last I checked, he charges $7.95 a month for podcasts and a $79.40 annual charge for video podcasts (Call now, operators are standing by!). The nerve of this guy, actually expecting people to pay for the service he provides, one that Malloy has decided he won't give away. In other words, the free market at work. The same free market this avowed socialist so bitterly hates.
His apologists would argue that Malloy is hardly wealthy. True enough -- when compared to Warren Buffett or Bill Gates. But not true at all when compared to a beggar in Mumbai (seeing how Malloy is so concerned with "global" capitalism). To that poor man in India, Malloy is wealthy beyond measure. And Malloy's revulsion toward the system that helped him achieve this smacks of ingratitude.
