I wrote a recent article on the profile of a bugman. Because this included many traits that have been recently associated with “the left” (for lack of a better term), a few people have wondered whether there are bugmen on the “right,” or as part of the republican party.
There absolutely are.
Not only are there Republican bugmen, they are a very large and vocal part of the Republican apparatus, which explains to a large degree why we are where we are. The real divide is between the corporate and the local, not right/left. That’s why we have the modern monoparty.
The Republican bugman is like his Democrat counterpart, but expresses his bug qualities through attachments to different objects and modes of consumption. Let’s review the three big qualities that create the bugman:
- Low personal mastery
- Obsession with Consumption
- Love of the State and megacorporations.
Consider that a republican bugman will still be overweight and have harmful personal habits – he just drinks bud light every day, not some IPA. He may even smoke and have a Starbucks addiction to boot. He might hit the gym, but not that often, and his diet is just as garbage as the “other” bugman.
He doesn’t care about Star Wars, but he really cares about some sports team owned by a billionaire who views him as a worthless pay pig. He’ll even use the term we when he talks to his co-workers about the upcoming big game, which will be very different from all the other games played this year. He has team stickers on the truck (which is new, and shiny, like pickups ought to be, and with a big, powerful engine – good for launching the jetskis) and wears a team jersey when he watches them on his new 60-inch flatscreen TV (freshly acquired from Costco – with built-in “football mode”!).
He’s very patriotic, and his truck has an American flag sticker (recently with only a blue stripe) next to his team decals. He’s always sure to thank men in military uniform for their service and is proud of the military hegemony of the USA. He might even be a vet himself, but is still hawkish on foreign military intervention.
He still listens to experts and trusts that they know what is good for the economy.
He’s also very offended that football players knelt during the national anthem – very disrespectful – but he still tunes in every Sunday. And he’s still waiting for Donald Trump to fix everything.
If you feel like I’m describing you, please don’t shoot the messenger. I just apply my standards rather liberally, that’s all, and I’m realistic about what I see in my culture.
I am an independent author and musician. You can check out some of my work below, including my book on creativity, which help you develop and master your creative process:
This is the type of person who backed Parler but never considered, and still won’t consider, any other social media alternatives (and cannot even comprehend the notion of simply not using social media).
Yeah Parler was an eye-opener. We had Gab the whole time, and Torba has suffered real harm from his attempt to create a competitor to twitter. He’s basically banned from banking, personally. It just wasn’t even considered, and Parler folded like a wet paper towel.
You’re welcome to your own opinion, and I find your criticism of corporations particularly odd considering that just above this comment box you are selling your books through the largest corporation in the world, Amazon, but listing appreciation for veterans as a character fault is a pretty low blow, mostly because veterans are the only reason you’re allowed to express that opinion in the first place.
Respectfully, Where else can a indie author survive within this world. Trust me it’s not like Mr. Steward has a choice these days with the Megacorp of Amazon accessibility and it’s reach to customers. Can you name me another source where his voice even has a chance of being heard?
There’s nothing wrong with appreciating soldiers who fight to defend a nation which is under assault from a foreign power or enemy. However I question when a people simply turn their military into a “Democracy Maker” that goes out and forces our systems of government on a people who honestly couldn’t give a damn and cast it off as soon as we load up the soldiers to democratize the next nation on the warhawk’s list.
Simple, if you don’t sell through Amazon, you aren’t in the book business. That’s like objecting to a contractor who specializes in roads working for the government. I guess I have the “freedom” to do something else with my talents.
Except I don’t have freedom. If I express the wrong thing, the megacorporations will cut my tongue out, and I won’t be able to talk to anyone in any meaningful way – certainly not in the same way as everyone else who doesn’t engage in thoughtcrime. My access to the modern economy will be revoked. But I guess I always have the freedom to dig ditches or be a prostitute, right?
As for wars-
What exactly did we spend our blood and treasure on? Were the opium growers of Afganistan going to come over here and stop me from going to church? NO, it was the American state that did that.
This is a HUGE blind spot of the right – the inability to evaluate properly the war machine and what it actually does, or to view the enforcers of the state as just that. They still worship the state and are obsessed with state solutions – those state solutions just happen to be different than the “other” state solutions.