But you don’t have to scan or slice open your brain to figure out what your political leanings are. In an era of politics shaped by the “values vote” political messaging masterminded by Karl Rove and Frank Luntz, a lot of us are not quite as liberal or conservative as we think. Strong sentiments about issues like abortion, war, and gay marriage can manipulate your thinking into a very polarized position, when in fact you may in every other way espouse values of the party you think you detest. But don’t worry, there’s a test to help you sort things out. Actually a bunch of them. With just twenty a/b questions, the Pew Research Political Typology Quiz informed me that I – along with 10% of the population – am a “New Coalition Democrat”. I of course bristle slightly at this; if I have to put myself in one of the current boxes available, I think I’d be a weird hybrid of Green Party and Libertarian. The common red vs blue framework doesn’t really capture the values of someone like me who thinks money itself is an obsolete concept, which renders a lot of other dialog pointless. Anyway, adding a little more nuance, we have the Political Philosophy Quiz, which identified me (with relative accuracy) as a “socially progressive, moderately capitalist, libertarian pacifist”. The On the Issues PartyMatch Quiz assessed me as 55% Democrat, 53% Green Party, and 37% Republican. A little more accurate in some ways, but all of these quizzes highlight one thing, which is that we’re stuck in a gridlocked bipartisan system that doesn’t really represent anyone’s values, except those who are inside the game, or happy to take their marching orders from those who are.

Probably the most useful of these online quizzes for someone like me was the About.com Political Loyalty Quiz, which asked questions like “Which bumper sticker would you be most likely to put on your car?” and offered choices like “At Least In Vietnam, Bush Had An Exit Strategy” or “Nice Hummer. Sorry About Your Penis”. What about you? Do you know where you really stand? Or or are your party convictions really based on single issues?

Yup. That’s a football field. Details below.

You’ve probably heard about the “Trillion Dollar Coin” by now, and maybe even taken the time to take in the experts’ predictably confident and just as polarized positions on the topic. The fact that the idea is even being discussed seriously is rather telling. Can you imagine the same conversation occurring before the bailouts of 2008? It seems unlikely. And that’s ONE angle on this whole thing that especially intrigues me. As much anger as some of us may have experienced as a result of the bailouts and their aftermath, I for one am thankful for them. Partly because it was probably the only way to avoid a replay of the great depression, but more importantly, because it was probably the first crack in a centuries-old paradigm that has far outlived its usefulness. Talk to someone who has studied economics, and the conversation will rapidly fill up with elaborate terminology that tries to express the incredible complexity of global markets and speculative investment. But as much pride as economists or financial experts may take as they display their head-spinning depth of knowledge on the topic, they are usually overlooking one stark, annoyingly simple fact. At the foundation of it all, their elaborate constructs are all based on a rather simple social contract, i.e.: the tacit agreement on the part of large numbers of people that a piece of paper is worth what someone says it is. It’s tragic that millions of people suffered through a decade of poverty and that perfectly functional factories sat idle after the crash of 1929. And the tragedy was compounded by the fact that it was primarily because pieces of paper had lost their perceived value. That was the magical thing that occurred in 2008; Paulson & Bernanke’s Bailout Bankster Brigade basically “broke capitalism”. That has only peripherally sunk in for people, but every passing day, more people get hip to concepts like fictitious capital, and we live in an era of some of the most innovative thought in human history. About the only thing the archaic entity called a “bank” is good for these days is laundering drug  or war money, and centralizing power. That paradigm is not long for this world, in my opinion.

That’s why I don’t find the blogsplosion about the Trillion Dollar Coin  particularly interesting. As Matt Taibbi, the pop media journalist the Goldman Bankster Gang loves to hate most points out in his most recent piece: “The federal rescue of Wall Street didn’t fix the economy – it created a permanent bailout state based on a Ponzi-like confidence scheme”. A paper version of the Trillion Dollar Coin was created in 2008, and we’ve been gleefully spending imaginary money since long before that, it’s just that the average person doesn’t understand why THEY don’t have any. They’ll eventually figure this out, and that’s when the feces will really hit the fan. So what really intrigued me was this silly question:

What if we still had to back currency with a real-world asset, and we were only allowed to mint this trillion dollar coin out of GOLD?

Here’s the rough result. I explain my admittedly sketchy methods below.

I’m no genius when it comes to volumetric geometry and 3D imaging, so this graphic may be a little off. Feel free to correct me in the comments! I used yesterday’s price of gold, which was $1661 an ounce. Dividing a trillion with that figure, I determined it would take about 181.23 tons of gold, and according to Wolfram Alpha, that would require a cube that’s 65 meters on each side. I tried to approximate the dimensions of a quarter (24.26mm x 1.75mm) to create the cylinder/disc dimensions. That ended up being a disc about 418 meters in diameter and 2 meters thick. The football field isn’t perfectly to scale, but you could obviously fit four football fields end-to-end on a 420 meter disc, so I roughed it in.

Cadillac Escalade

As a metaphor for America, this is probably the most symbolically accurate. Although the typical owner couldn’t afford it when they financed it, they use it to express their wealth and power while partying like there’s no tomorrow. Plus, it’s big and fairly solid, so in spite of all the recklessness it represents, there’s a decent chance that the driver and passengers may actually survive, although they may require life support to do so after the crash.

Popemobile

In the God-forsaken wasteland that is the global economy, having God on your side may be the only thing to save you. Approximately $375,000, Pope not included.

Bugatti Veyron

The Veyron is a great choice, because – much like investment banking – it was designed to do one simple thing, but does it in a way that is inaccessible to 99% of the world’s population, and does it with an utter disregard for fossil fuel consumption, safety, or practicality, serving only to stroke the ego of whoever is at the wheel. It also does what it does at incredible speed, but with a long and spectacular arc.

1966 Thunderbird Convertible

Hey, if it’s good enough for Thelma and Louise, it’s good enough for me.

Aston Martin DBS V12

Look. It’s one of the cars that James Bond drove. I’m sure there’s some gizmo for Fiscal Cliff situations. If not, it’s priced exorbitantly high enough to be a good metaphor for global finance.

Maybach Landaulet

At a half million dollars, this little baby has all the same things going for it as the Veyron in terms of being a symbol for the vulgarity that can come with stratospheric wealth, but it has the added benefit that you’ll have a great view of the canyon as you plummet to your death.

MRAP

The road to the Fiscal Cliff is bound to be a political minefield, so what better choice than a “Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected” vehicle? Plus, it looks so badass that you’ll hardly care what anyone thinks about where you’re headed, and when you get there, who knows – maybe all its badassness will actually protect you when you crash into the valley below, or – as they say in the military – you “achieve maximum surface contact”.

Stretch Limo

In spite of having a lot metaphorically in common with the Escalade, this is a far superior choice in terms of survivability. Aside from the accordion effect of such a long vehicle hitting nose-first, as long as you choose the most rearward seat, your fall would additionally be cushioned by the bevy of hookers you brought a long.

Volvo V40

Only choose the Volvo V40 if you actually want to survive. It set records on international safety tests last year, and as you can see, it is racing toward a cliff RIGHT NOW, as if to prove how ready it is. Parts and service will be costlier than with a domestic vehicle, but you won’t care, because as with all these scenarios, you’ll probably be on life support of some kind anyway.

Ford Fiesta

Nothing says “austerity” like a Ford Fiesta. It’s even built in Spain! Just don’t go over the Fiscal Cliff at speeds faster than 45 miles an hour, or you’ll end up like this.

Moller M400 Skycar

Yeah, Right. If it existed! Much like the eternal financial bliss that Alan Greenspan told us was in our future, this thing suffered from a lot of irrational exuberance, and never became a reality.

What better symbol for America
than a pilot-less war machine?

This has been a depressing election year. No, not because my side is losing. I’m not on one. It’s too hard to tell which side of any line these clowns are standing on. Mr. Rope-a-Hope sold out to the insurance industry to force health care on all of us, and his presidency is ironically well-represented by one of the things he gets the most flak about from his own base. What better symbol for our country right now than a pilot-less machine of war? And in the end – if he wins – Moderate Mitt will probably be more like that moniker than you think. Clearly, they scraped cells off Reagan’s body back in the 80′s, and have grafted them onto Romney to create the next meat puppet president. The transmogrification was nearly complete by the first debate. If you closed your eyes whenever Mitt spoke during that debate, you would SWEAR it was Ronny up there on the podium. Romney has even perfected that weird, breathy, Reagan vocal mannerism; if he just adds that odd head bobble of Reagan’s, the effect will be complete.

But that will only endear him SLIGHTLY to a “real” Republican, and Obama has the same problem. Democrats have one of the worst collective cases of buyer remorse since Carter first donned a cardigan for a fireside chat while his redneck brother crawled from the woodwork to market Billy Beer. And that creates a problem for people like me; it’s hard to work up some decent antagonistic campaign parodies when both sides hate their OWN candidate. The most positive responses I’ve gotten when lambasting Obama have come from bleeding heart liberals, and any protest from my conservative friends when I poke fun at Romney have been like the final punches of a fighter that knows that even if there’s no way they’ll take the title, there’s NO WAY they’ll stop punching ’til they actually go down, even if their punches ARE more like the open-handed sissy slaps I got when fighting my sister in third grade. In this cannibalistic environment, where partisans are eating their own, the best we could come up with in the last couple of years were things like the Donner Party  and the Punk Party.

But you know what makes matters even worse? YOU. In case you haven’t noticed, your political posts on Facebook are the REAL joke. The level of nuance in your understanding of politics – which used to be perfectly summed up in a bumper sticker – now has an interactive publishing platform that can connect you with ONE BILLION people. In Ye Olden Days of personal political expression, the worst that was likely to happen was that you’d get flipped off in traffic for your “END OF AN ERROR” or “NOPE” bumper sticker. But now, you LOSE ACTUAL FRIENDS. But it’s okay, they were ignorant twits (i.e.: their simplistic worldview didn’t jibe with yours) anyway, right?

Early on, we thought this was going to be an easy year to cash in on parody imprinted novelty items like bumper stickers and buttons. We were excited about the idea of the Newt Swingrich campaign, and if Sarah Palin  or Wide-Eyes had run, wow. What fun we would have had. But alas, things have turned out differently, and we’re still regurgitating the Hope & Change jokes from four years ago. And Romney changes his stance so much based on marketing research that by the time you whip up a parody, no-one gets it, because he has completely reversed his position! So below, we sadly present this election cycle’s feeble stab at campaign humor. We still miss you, Sarah.

We’re actually kind of proud of this one, for being so muddled in its message. It evolved out of the “You gotta hand it to Romney. Obama sure did” joke.

The Hackneyed Hope & Change Obama “O” Theme

Romney/Ryan: Rich, White, and Dumb Themes

We’ve caught some flack for implying that Romney is racist. We’re not. It’s just that he’s so absurdly WHITE. And it’s almost the very definition of “average American” to hate rich people, right?

Here’s the basis of that theme, for those who always walk straight to the Colgate Classic or ignore graphic design entirely:

And if Romney wins, you can bet we’ll be back with some Eddie Munster and Dumbo jokes. Believe it or not, Ryan’s ears weren’t photoshopped for this:

We have a strict policy of not criticizing
Anonymous around here, so if you’re with
Anonymous, wear what you like. But for
the rest of you, this is not recommended
attire. It’s licensed property, so every
mask you buy puts money in media
conglomerate Time Warner’s pockets.

As the Occupy Wall Street movement enters its sixth week, I find it remarkable that the most basic facts about it remain a mystery to many. And perhaps more remarkable that so many who complain daily about the issues that the Occupy movement seeks to address sit on the sidelines, still bellyaching. I personally have been bellyaching about the banksters since 2008. After writing a few dozen articles about bailouts, corporate capture of government , and pork-bellied politicians and having even my best friends shrug nonchalantly, I sort of gave up. But my interest in social justice was revived in early September of this year, when I first read of plans for protesters to assemble in NYC. I wasn’t surprised when the media ignored them the first week, but before the end of the second week, I told like-minded friends that if they made it past the second weekend, I might have to go join them. When 700 protestors were arrested on October 1, I knew it was “on”, and also knew there was no way I’d get to New York within the next several weeks. So that day, I set up simple site at OccupyAnnArbor.org, and started looking locally for other people who were interested. Don’t believe everything you read about social networking enabling civil protest. It may work in some situations, but in many areas, the multitude of conflicting Facebook and Meetup.com postings actually caused as much confusion as solidarity. And in my opinion, Facebook discussions tend to do more damage than good – intellectual liberals engage in wheel-spinning debate that makes them feel like they’re actually DOING something, things get factionalized, and as I’ve felt compelled to point out – clicking “Like” won’t change the world. So, in spite of the fact that this hardly qualifies as a revolution yet,  Alexis de Tocqueville’s statement that “In a revolution, as in a novel, the most difficult part to invent is the end” is relevant all the same. We’re mostly going to stick to history and a little opinion here. As this clip about the 1946 Oakland strikes makes clear, things can change on an epic scale in a single day when people who just want a decent living for a day’s work are deprived of that simple luxury.

How Did It All Start?

Well, aside from the fact that we’ve gone from a country that enjoyed a middle class utopia for almost half a century to a nearly Dickensian dystopia in just a decade or so, the more recent Occupy movement has an interesting and rather ironic origin. Part of the impetus to assemble in New York was provided by a poster circulated online by the anti-consumer “AdBusters” magazine, urging people to “#OCCUPY WALLSTREET. SEPTEMBER 17. BRING TENT”.  The irony of course being that an anti-consumer magazine is sold in the consumer market in the first place, and in this case, it’s a CANADIAN magazine urging people to protest in AMERICA. Around the same time, a “Tumblr” was created called We Are The 99 Percent. End of story, right? It was an internet phenomena like Howard Dean’s meteoric rise in 2004, right? Wrong. While this is the spin that it gets via today’s inept and sound-bite-driven media, it was much more planned than this. This piece by Avery Morrow explains the original occupation’s socialist roots in the summer of 2011, and does a good job of explaining why the “assembly” method is crucial to the movement’s survival.

So The Occupiers Are A Bunch Of Socialists?

Hardly. That’s the next irony, and probably a great source of frustration to the small group of socialists that were astroturfing in the beginning. While socialists will probably remain an important (if small) component of the American populace – I mean, without them, who else would warn us of the evils of capitalism as they sip a soy latte at Starbucks – they endanger their own presence at a well-organized occupy assembly as soon as they start to push an agenda. The same is true if one starts spouting a specific democratic, republican, libertarian, or any other platform. That’s a key component of the whole movement if it’s going to be successful – NON ALIGNMENT. Most occupiers with half a brain are extremely leery of becoming the next Tea Party, no matter WHO is doing the co-opting.

So Who The Heck ARE These People Then?

Well, this Fast Company piece is one of the few attempts I’ve run across that attempts to figure that out with any specifics, and in spite of the media’s seeming glee in always talking to hipsters, gutter punks, and radical students, the movement is at least a third over-thirty five, of  broadly represented income, and about 70% choose to identify as independent, not democrat or liberal as the media would like you to believe. In fact, one of the founders of the original Tea Party movement has come out in support, and the biggest direct donor so far is a former Wall Streeter who also donated to the Romney campaign. At the assemblies I’ve attended here in Ann Arbor, I’d say the usual turnout is about half students, a third of the group is over 30, and overall the non-students are a healthy mix of professionals, academics, and “regular working people”. At the first assembly here in Ann Arbor, I was briefly booed off the “podium” when I asked people if they would self-identify their ideology with a show of hands. I was quickly un-booed, and when allowed to ask if people were socialist, communist, capitalist, or “other”, the dominant voice by far was “other”, comprised of a few phrases that would best be lumped together as “independent”. The first three options inspired a very reluctant show of hands that represented about 25%, 10%, and 70%, respectively. And interestingly, some of the most committed of the very small number of full time occupiers are Europeans, not Americans.

So Why “Occupy”, And What’s With This Hippy Dippy “Assembly” Method, Anyway?

The answer to these two questions is intertwined. But first of all, the tens of thousands who protested the invasion of Iraq with virtually ZERO media coverage proved that marches are pointless unless Glenn Beck or Comedy Central are backing things. A full time occupation of a public place, testing the mettle of a municipality’s willingness to shut down free speech in a place that’s probably already “occupied” – by the unemployed and homeless – is a winning strategy. And although many of the organizers around the country who model their assemblies after the NYGA method don’t even realize it, the original purpose of this approach was two-fold, and quite intentional. First of all, simply inviting people to a public place to listen to your soapboxing will get you nowhere. But tell everyone they can have a voice, and – much like the internet – they’ll show up in the hope of spouting their two cent’s worth. The second angle is that in places where there’s a significant number of occupiers, there’s frankly a hell of a lot of time to kill, and an assembly structured in a directly democratic fashion like this will – trust me – kill some time. I jest a bit, but the method is brilliant. When an assembly is properly facilitated, collective concerns are well addressed, consensus is reached, and the human microphone serves three purposes: 1.) It mitigates rambling, polysyllabic speechmaking, which is impossible when you can only use at most five syllables in succession. This keeps things focused on immediacy; the crowd will give you a silent beatdown or verbally shut you down if you’re just opinionating.  2.) It makes the group much more visible and interesting to passersby, often pulling them in. And 3.) It actually has a powerful unifying effect on the group.

What Should I Wear?

Well, if you’re in the northern climes, something warm, obviously. It’s going to be a long winter. But if you’ve been thinking of wearing one of those fashionable Guy Fawkes masks, think again. If you’re anti-corporate, every time you buy one of those things, you’re supporting one of the biggest media conglomerates on the planet. They’re licensed property of Time Warner. They must be fairly popular with occupiers though; when I looked them up on Amazon, the “customers who bought this item also bought” suggestion was telling:

So When Do We Get A Platform?

The reason to avoid a rigidly defined platform has been covered thoroughly elsewhere;  if poorly conceived and easily “partisanized”,  it would bring things to a screeching halt. But here’s my two cents worth about what kinds of things should and shouldn’t be part of the message:

1.) Stop talking about “the rich” and taxing them more. Do the math, and you’ll realize that this won’t fix much. More importantly, plenty of affluent moderates who might very well be supportive of “fixing” Washington and corporate influence immediately put themselves on the other side of the fence when you use the word “rich”. Wealth itself isn’t the problem.

2.) Start getting a LITTLE BIT specific. Some unifying themes are government policy paralysis, corporate personhood, and sane banking regulation. Don’t talk specifically about reviving Glass Steagal, instead point up the blatantly obvious connection between de-regulation and the collapse of the banking sytem that was prevented only by taxing our unborn grandchildren. And how heinously irresponsible that is. Talk about how if corporations have the same rights as people, we should have the same tax shelters, and how corporations should be subject to the death penalty if they take human lives. Which many of them do.

3.) Don’t try to roll ending war, health care for all, promoting gay rights, and saving the whales into the “demands”. A lot of today’s current problems are symptoms of the core problems, not causes in themselves. If you want to get specific about health care, demand that congressmen have the same plan we do. If you want to address issues related to war, talk about returning soldiers that can’t get a job.

4.) Don’t give up. We deserve a decent life for a decent day’s work, and we will take back what we deserve.

Perhaps Most Importantly, Know What Kind Of Assholes You’re Up Against

Don’t be reasonable.  The Overton Window works both ways. It’s INSANE to expect someone who has made it their life’s purpose to simply amass wealth to ever give a shit about your petty human concerns. Just read this leaflet that some asswipe on the Chicago Merc dropped on the occupiers in Chicago. It actually makes some cogent points, but mostly highlights the sociopathic mindset of a typical trade floor grunt that thinks he’s the next Gordon Gekko:

We are Wall Street, It’s our job to make money. Whether it’s a commodity, stock, bond, or some hypothetical piece of fake paper, it doesn’t matter. We would trade baseball cards if it were profitable. I didn’t hear America complaining when the market was roaring to 14,000 and everyone’s 401k doubled every 3 years Just like gambling, its not a problem until you lose. I’ve never heard of anyone going to Gamblers Anonymous because they won too much in Vegas.
Well now the market crapped out, & even though it has come back somewhat, the government and the average Joes are still looking for a scapegoat. God knows there has to be one for everything. Well, here we are.
Go ahead and continue to take us down, but you’re only going to hurt yourselves. What’s going to happen when we can’t find jobs on the Street anymore? Guess what: We’re going to take yours. We get up at 5am & work till 10pm or later. We’re used to not getting up to pee when we have a position. We don’t take an hour or more for a lunch break. We don’t demand a union. We don’t retire at 50 with a pension. We eat what we kill, and when the only thing left to eat is on your dinner plates, we’ll eat that.
For years teachers and other unionized labor have had us fooled. We were too busy working to notice. Do you really think that we are incapable of teaching 3rd graders and doing landscaping? We’re going to take your cushy jobs with tenure and 4 months off a year and whine just like you that we are so-o-o-o underpaid for building the youth of America. Say goodbye to your overtime and double time and a half. I’ll be hitting grounders to the high school baseball team for $5k extra a summer, thank you very much. So now that we’re going to be making $85k a year without upside, Joe Mainstreet is going to have his revenge, right? Wrong! Guess what: we’re going to stop buying the new 80k car, we aren’t going to leave the 35 percent tip at our business dinners anymore. No more free rides on our backs. We’re going to landscape our own back yards, wash our cars with a garden hose in our driveways. Our money was your money.  You spent it. When our money dries up, so does yours.
The difference is, you lived off of it, we rejoiced in it. The Obama administration and the Democratic National Committee might get their way and knock us off the top of the pyramid, but it’s really going to hurt like hell for them when our fat asses land directly on the middle class of America and knock them to the bottom
We aren’t dinosaurs. We are smarter and more vicious than that, and we are going to survive. The question is, now that Obama & his administration are making Joe Mainstreet our food supply…will he? and will they?