Stephen King wrote an article that has the entire progressive movement cheering his name. In the article King expresses his desire to have the state tax him more. While I give a great deal of credit for the comedic value in this article (seriously, I never knew King was such a vicious writer, kudos to him) I have to take that credit away from him due to his total lack of understanding of the nature of the state. His closing paragraph says it all:
What charitable 1 percenters can’t do is assume responsibility—America’s national responsibilities: the care of its sick and its poor, the education of its young, the repair of its failing infrastructure, the repayment of its staggering war debts. Charity from the rich can’t fix global warming or lower the price of gasoline by one single red penny. That kind of salvation does not come from Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Ballmer saying, “OK, I’ll write a $2 million bonus check to the IRS.” That annoying responsibility stuff comes from three words that are anathema to the Tea Partiers: United American citizenry.
King wants the government to tax him more so they can pay for maintaining roads, education, repairing the faltering infrastructure, and caring for the sick and poor. Unfortunately that’s not what the state will do with the extra money. What will the state do? Buy more bombs.
This is something I don’t get, a vast majority of my friends who demand the rich be taxed more also claim oppose the police state and war. They’ve been duped into holding hypocritical beliefs. On one hand they decry any expansion of the police state and military intervention but on the other hand they advocate people give more money to fund the same beast that’s implementing the police state and killing innocent people overseas. Giving the state more money enables it to buy more military hardware such as drones, tanks, bombs, and bullets. The more money they have at their disposal the more they can spy on you here and the more people they can kill overseas. During the Vietnam War people actually advocated tax protests in an attempt to starve the beast that was sending American men and women to die needlessly in a foreign country that never attacked us. What does it take to get these people to wake the fuck up? Do we have to kidnap their children and send them off to war? Do we have to install spy cameras in their homes?
Let’s address King’s next claim of “American responsibility.” He claims that charity and private investment cannot fix environmental issues (he specifically states global warming but I would like to give him a little more credit than just using a random talking point). What’s the solution than? Give the state more money? The very same state who causes most of our environmental problems in the United States by granting legal protection to polluters? Yeah, that’s worked out well so far. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is an organization that exists solely to protect wealthy polluters. Terry Anderson wrong an excellent book titled Political Environmentalism that goes over some of more egregious instances of environmental cronyism. Instead of protecting the environment the EPA protects its cronies by ensuring the business environment is hostile to competition while allowing the emission of as much pollutants as their cronies demand. Does King really want to give the primary instigators of our environmental problems the power to further intervene on environmental matters? That would be akin to handing a serial killer a chainsaw and telling him has full immunity from legal prosecution for any murders he commits with that chainsaw.
The state has mastered duping people. They can get the same people who demand the banks be allowed to fail support a bank bailout. How the fuck did they get so good at fooling people? Is the average person so lacking in the department of critical thinking that they’re unwilling to stop and consider issues more deeply than the talking points they’re fed by the 10 o’clock news? Do these people not actually read bills before stating their support of them? These aren’t even clever scams, anybody who spends 15 minutes looking into them can see what is really going on.
It’s amazing how the state gets so many suckers to back mutually exclusive demands. Are you against war? Demand more taxes to fund the war machine! Do you want the banks to fail? Support a bank bailout! Want the environment cleaned up? Fund the political machinery that allows polluters to dump toxic waster into the water and air from lawsuits! Do you believe two plus two equals four? Believe it equals five instead!