So… what ever happened to shame? The worst douchebags in politics and industry no longer bother trying to conceal their blatant lies and misbehavior, convinced Joe Public can’t pay attention to their self-serving antics while distracted by the mind-numbing idiot-fest currently masquerading as our commercial media. Maybe they’re right. Last weekend, 1500 college students at U Mass/Amherst gleefully seized an opportunity to “get their riot on” in response to Madonna‘s crushing defeat of the Black Eyed Peas in the annual Superbowl halftime junkfood orgy karaoke dance-off. When questioned, several students admitted they didn’t know WHY they had rioted; it just seemed like something exciting to do. I guess we can chalk that up to the Occupy: Boredom movement.
Camouflaged by wave after wave of similar media-fed antics, it’s gotten hard to keep track of who’s screwing who over and why. Everything seems like some sort of cover-up. The “process” of politics— meaning, the combination of skills and strategic actions required to get a candidate elected and keep that candidate in office—has almost completely eclipsed the whole reason for having a government in the first place. And why not? Let’s face it… once you get yourself elected to a cushy government post, you can pretty much ride that money train all the way to Government Pension Station, provided you don’t molest too many underage interns in the process. And government pensions, like diamonds, are forever. So naturally competition would be fierce.
It doesn’t help that (largely due to our own collective lack of civic vigilance) our assorted branches of government harbor crowds of useless parasites desperate to stay hidden in the shadows, dreading a day when they might be dragged out into the scalding sunlight and lynched by an angry citizenry. That’s mostly our own fault. Politics has always been like that… we elect the best liars because we WANT to believe what they say, and eject any candidate with the balls to tell us the truth. In 1984, Walter Mondale admitted he would raise taxes and got laughed off the ballot. Reagan, meanwhile, adamantly denied he would raise taxes. Of course we reelected him, and of course— in the “stealthy” guise of the tax reform act of 1986— he gave us an assload of new taxes in recognition of our support.
The hot-button issues may change with the times, but the b.s. quotient remains the same. Now we have corporations claiming to “go green,” without, apparently, taking the time to find out what that term actually means. General Motors—the automaker behind the 10 mpg gas-guzzling Hummer H1 and maker of the recently introduced, disastrously-recalled Chevy Volt— ridiculously wants to convince consumers they are now a “green company” by— get this— CHANGING THE COLOR OF THEIR LOGO FROM BLUE TO GREEN. Meanwhile, British weapons manufacturer BAE has also joined the crusade to save the environment by offering new eco-friendly “lead-free bullets.” And no, that is not a joke.
It’s reminiscent of the old “diamonds are rare” scam. They aren’t. They used to be, a few hundred years ago, when they could only be found in a few places on Earth. Until 19th century explorers discovered massive deposits of them in Africa… deposits so huge they made diamonds a fairly common gemstone. The De Beers company stepped in by severely limiting the amount of diamond mining that took place at these new deposits and buying up diamonds in bulk as fast as they could get their hands on them. Raw diamonds aren’t rare; De Beers has tons and tons of them, stored away in massive vaults built just for that purpose. In fact De Beers owns almost all of them, a blatantly-illegal monopoly that has officially gotten them banned from selling diamonds in the U.S. (they get around the ban by going through proxy sellers in other countries).
By the way… you know that famous “rule” insisting that every fiancé should “spend two months salary on a diamond engagement ring”? Guess who invented that “rule”? DE BEERS, the very same assholes who knowingly sell people tiny bits of common stone for a 10,000 percent mark-up. Not satisfied with lying about how much the stones are actually worth, De Beers also wants to tell you how much of your own money you should spend on them. If it hadn’t worked, that would be the lamest line of crap ever spouted by an ad agency.
But since it DID work, guess what? It transcends b.s. and soars into eternal glory in the sparkling realm of marketing genius. Bling bling!