Yep; call me SquareEnix because I’m at Part 16 now. These are ideas that have nested inside of my brain for a while though I haven’t been able to wring out into full-length articles. With that said, I had to release my special sauce out into the world. After all, if I don’t say the quiet parts out loud-sharpened pitchforks be damned-who will?
Political Dictionary Pt.IV: Trafficking and Conspiracies
Alright students, time for another session of Political Discourse 101, That’s right, I, your ever-observant professor, have been paying attention to the specific word choice of pundits so you thankfully won’t have to. What someone says isn’t always what they really mean. Luckily, I’m more than happy to provide actual definitions. Now sit up straight with your shoulders back and take notes; you might just learn something…
Victim of Human Trafficking: “Criminal That I Won’t Prosecute”. I can hear the pitchforks grinding now. “Dan, you can’t be serious! What evidence do you have to support that?”. While this should be obvious allow me to clarify for the 75-IQ community; actual human trafficking is awful and I do not condone it whatsoever (even if the AI does).
However, when this phrase gets thrown around by prosecutors, police chiefs, sheriffs, and politicians in left-leaning zip-codes nowadays, they aren’t actually talking about people arriving via shipping containers or U-Haul trucks with suspiciously missing passports. No, they are often discussing native-born US citizens that chose to break the law; city officials are just choosing not to prosecute. One such example is from John Oliver’s episode on prostitution. In it, he cites the talking point of how prostitution stings are often portrayed as necessary in order to save…(wait for it)…victims of human trafficking. However, the failed British comic shines a light on a common truth; in many cases this simply isn’t true. These are just capitalistic women willing to bear-it-all for some Benjamins.
Another example is when the City of San Francisco for a brief period refused to prosecute drug dealers. Why? Because the drug dealers were, in the view of New Detroit, victims of human trafficking. Thus, prosecuting drug dealers is toxic/racist/whatever. Little does San Francisco realize is that drug dealers aren’t moved in from abroad; they’re born here and still live with their mothers.
Needless to say, criminals adore when there’s absolutely zero consequences for their actions. Refusing to punish socially unpalatable behavior only leads to more of it; just ask Oregon.
False Flag Operation: “Conspiracy Theory That I Believe In”. Admittedly, this one took a little while for me to piece together, but there is some smoke to this fire. After all, actual false flag operations-that is, an event that’s meant to cast blame on someone else-do happen. However, most modern-day speakers misuse this term; accidentally or otherwise…
Invariably when this phrase is used, what follows is a long-winded explanation of the speaker’s crack-pot hypothesis of what’s really going on, maaaaaaan. Noticeably absent from the ensuing diatribe is any semblance of evidence to back up their claims. What’s also missing is the follow-through from the speaker. When their pet-hypothesis doesn’t pan out or is proven to not be true, they are quick to distance themselves from the claim-or better yet, change it entirely.
The reason this definition works so well is that the term false flag operation inherently links to conspiracies. After all, in order to intentionally cast blame onto another party, one must…(wait for it)..conspire to do so. Rarely do these types of operations succeed by accident, and even if they did, the conspiracy theorists would never accept that explanation.
Tuition is now due; no refunds, motherfucker.
How To Get People Off of Welfare.
Allow me to clarify my stance for those new to the blog. I want a society with few regulations in exchange for few guardrails. However, I’m aware enough to know that Libertarian views generally tend to be minority ones. Hence, it’s not likely that I’ll fully get what I want. With that said, complaining about a problem without offering solutions is of little value. So, for the sake of this article, I’m going to assume that the concept of a social safety net is going to continue to exist.
A popular idea is to require Work For Welfare or some other volunteer service requirement. I’m generally sympathetic to this. Along with being physically fit, able-bodied recipients of welfare will have the obligation to positively contribute to their community for a mandatory minimum number of hours per week. Admittedly, I don’t have a perfect number of hours inside my head. We need to allow the social-leeches enough time to adequately job search, but we need them to spend enough time in an unpleasant task to motivate them to do so.
I’m going to make a few assumptions for the sake of easy math before I get Um, Actually’d to death. First, I’m going to assume that all of the 44 million disabled Americans are on SNAP. I’m going to assume zero fraud in this and hence render these people ineligible for the program. With that said, there’s roughly a 2 million person gap of SNAP recipients who aren’t disabled who can be put to work.
Yes, you read that correctly; the jobs we as a society dole out to welfare recipients need to be ones that nobody would voluntarily take on. One such task is being a farm hand. After all, one critique to my article But, Who’ll Work the Fields? is that there won’t be enough inmates (like that is somehow a bad thing?). Thus, Welfare Queens can, and certainly should, be sent out to pick produce off of plantations for a minimum of 20 hours per week.
The klopping of wedge-heels gets ever closer as our favorite obese bowl-cut approaches. “Dan!” Karen shrieks “You can’t have them work plantations! This is too much like slavery!” While I disagree with Karen on the basis of the whole agency aspect of this, I’ll humor her; there’s plenty of unpleasant tasks that can be assigned. Duties such as sewer maintenance, garbage collection, roofing in July, and other such unpleasant jobs can be assigned. The immediate employers win by having free labor, and the taxpayers win when mooches decide to finally get a job like the rest of us.
“Dan!” Karen bellows “You’re intentionally picking some of the most dangerous jobs for welfare recipients to take on. Have you no care for their safety?” Well honey, there is some morbid zero-sum thinking at play when this topic comes up. But fine, let’s stop giving them tasks to do altogether. I’m willing to ditch Work For Welfare in exchange for some elements of defensive design baked into the benefits.
Let’s change food distribution entirely. Rather than letting SNAP recipients go to normal grocery stores like everyone else, they are to be given alternative food. What do I mean by that? Simple; we start doling out prison food to the food-stamp masses. After all, the food is meant to be affordable and require minimal prep work. Minimal prep time is a key component; it leaves plenty of time for a job search. It’s sheer unpalatability by design doesn’t hurt the taxpayers either.
“Dan, there’s more than one type of welfare!” And you’re right. Clearly, we need more Section 8 units built due to the housing affordability crisis, and NIMBY’s don’t want them too close to their neighborhoods. Thus, I’d like to propose an alternate; build Section 8 housing near city landfills, power plants, prisons, water treatment plants, and other such places of infrastructure. Naturally, these’ll be far away from the city center. Thus, I’m willing to have my tax dollars build public transit; the hours will only be operational during typical commuter windows (6am-10am and 4pm-7pm) on business days. The only service will go to and from the city center (read, where the jobs are). Of course, these projects will have zero parking, and the only food store within walking distance will not be a typical grocery store; it’ll be a prison-food ration distribution center (see above).
I’m not opposed to having welfare recipients have a smartphone funded by taxpayers either. In fact, this’ll be a feature, not a bug. The phones given out through the ObamaPhone program can be altered. Expect poor call quality with frequent drops, thus forcing their users to put their intent into writing. Any taxpayer will be able to remotely login to a phone and have view-only access to everything the mooch is texting, saying, and searching for. Internet speeds will be throttled, except for job searching platforms such as Linkedin, Indeed, and other such sites.
Make it unpleasant and people will leave….
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