Nickelsville, and the Ugly Underbelly Of Seattle
Seattle was always a pretty good town, but it’s got a mean streak. Just ask the Wobblies, they’ll tell you. Or anybody who was here during the WTO. Or anybody these days in Nickelsville.
Seattle was a little salt water town when I got here, small and friendly. You could talk to almost anybody. I always sat down at the front of the bus and talked with the driver. You could spend an hour buying a tube of toothpaste in the drug store, telling stories, where you’re from, about the weather, anything. I once walked into KING TV and told them that I had a song they should put on the news and they did. It was human back then.
But there was always a group of people who wanted more. They wanted to be like New York, or Los Angeles. They wanted to be “something,” to have penthouses and limousines. They wanted Seattle to be on the map. Well, they got their wish. And they got all the arrogance and stupidity, the swagger and pomp that comes with it. New money is real full of itself. New money sticks out its chest and pushes people out of the way to get there first. New money thinks it deserves it.
Balzac once said, “behind every great fortune is a crime.” I think he was right. I’m not saying that everyone who is well off is a criminal, but I am saying that this is a criminal system and behind the boardroom doors are some real shady characters doing some real shady deals. Massive accumulations of money have to come from somewhere; somebody has to get along with less so that someone else can have more. It’s just common sense: There are four people in a life boat with four gallons of fresh water. The successful capitalist will gather up most of it, say three of those gallons. On TV and the game shows it looks like a winner, but in that life boat it just looks like greed.
So, on to Nickelsville…. We all know that poverty is an issue mostly of irritation as far as the media is concerned. In the depths of the system it serves a useful purpose, keeping wages down with a surplus labor pool willing to work for almost anything, and sending a fear through the private lives of those who might want to be socially inventive. “Better finish school or you could wind up like that!” But for the most part it’s just a nuisance. Who are these people and how dare they take up space in my clean city! I paid for it goddamnit! Get ‘em the hell out of here.
The Times ran a story a few days ago about Nickelsville being forced yet again to relocate, this time to a park. Same old same old. But the reader comments were really scary. And I can’t be the only one who finds it this way. Here’s an example: Some guy who calls himself “The Truncheon” said: “Time for the cops to unsheath their truncheons and get these bums ‘moved on’... to involuntary institutionalisation at De-Tox facilities, work-camps, or insane-asylums.” Someone called “tsgt” said: “Time for ICE and the SWAT teams to get THEIR truncheons out to clean up and DEPORT the illegals and their so-called ‘gangs’ (barbarian invaders).” I’m not making any of this up. “Vitamin G” said: “tsgt.. yeah, suppose your right on this one... maybe we can figure out how to make biodiesel with them... gotta have plenty of booze running through their pipes..” “Magog”says: “They should be sent to work camps and forced to earn their keep. All them jobs we give illegals can be theirs. they can shift though garbage all day sorting class items form plastic items and paper items. Minimum stay five years to make sure they sober up and learn to work for a living and stop asking people to pay their way.”
Now, aside from the obvious lack of viable mentalities in these folks there seems to be a truly nasty mean streak. I mean, these posters are actually suggesting things that would have been normal in the early days of the Reich. So I jumped in with my own two cents. I called myself “SongTool.” I don’t have my posting anymore – it was deleted by the moderator – but I can tell you generally that I referenced the postings above – especially the one from The Truncheon and I made a direct comparison to the early Nazi rantings. I was pretty clear. Now, above each posting is a link that says “log in to report abuse.” I assume that Mister The Truncheon reported me. Here’s his follow up after I was deleted:
“I see ‘song fool's’ pandering comments have been removed. Personally, even 'tho I was attacked, I don't see exactly why, other than being compared to a NAZI.
”That term and comparison get thrown around A LOT these days. The NAZI's were SO BAD that there is really no comparison at all. There is a BIG difference between stating a desire for, and solutions to, basic law and order requirements for society, and a genocidally brutal and sadistic police state.
”Read your history... also read some history about how civilizations rot and fall in part because of the breakdown of the rule of law, and the cancerous growth of anarchy in all it's guises.”
(Pandering? How did he come up with that…) The Truncheon makes the usual right winger’s leap – ignoring the fact that the regime started out small, with grotesque calls for the systematic bothering and eventual eradication of undesirables. First they talked about it, then they did it. In fact, an international precedent was set after the fall of Germany that to propagate genocide, in all of its forms and stages, was to be considered a crime against humanity. It was part of the Nuremburg Principles.
I wish I knew who these people were – The Truncheon, tsgt, Magog. But they remain nameless and hidden. And I would like to ask the moderator, or whoever it was who deleted my post, how it is that pointing out the historical similarities of somebody’s publicly expressed ideas to the ideas of fascism is somehow worse than calling for “the cops to unsheath their truncheons and get these bums ‘moved on’... to involuntary institutionalization…” I am not calling for the beating of homeless people – The Truncheon is!
The Truncheon – come out, come out wherever you are. You and your friends – come out and say these things in public. Let’s have a public conversation. Let’s have a round table discussion in front of an audience. I think that would be good. Not a debate, just a talk. How about it?
Seattle was a little salt water town when I got here, small and friendly. You could talk to almost anybody. I always sat down at the front of the bus and talked with the driver. You could spend an hour buying a tube of toothpaste in the drug store, telling stories, where you’re from, about the weather, anything. I once walked into KING TV and told them that I had a song they should put on the news and they did. It was human back then.
But there was always a group of people who wanted more. They wanted to be like New York, or Los Angeles. They wanted to be “something,” to have penthouses and limousines. They wanted Seattle to be on the map. Well, they got their wish. And they got all the arrogance and stupidity, the swagger and pomp that comes with it. New money is real full of itself. New money sticks out its chest and pushes people out of the way to get there first. New money thinks it deserves it.
Balzac once said, “behind every great fortune is a crime.” I think he was right. I’m not saying that everyone who is well off is a criminal, but I am saying that this is a criminal system and behind the boardroom doors are some real shady characters doing some real shady deals. Massive accumulations of money have to come from somewhere; somebody has to get along with less so that someone else can have more. It’s just common sense: There are four people in a life boat with four gallons of fresh water. The successful capitalist will gather up most of it, say three of those gallons. On TV and the game shows it looks like a winner, but in that life boat it just looks like greed.
So, on to Nickelsville…. We all know that poverty is an issue mostly of irritation as far as the media is concerned. In the depths of the system it serves a useful purpose, keeping wages down with a surplus labor pool willing to work for almost anything, and sending a fear through the private lives of those who might want to be socially inventive. “Better finish school or you could wind up like that!” But for the most part it’s just a nuisance. Who are these people and how dare they take up space in my clean city! I paid for it goddamnit! Get ‘em the hell out of here.
The Times ran a story a few days ago about Nickelsville being forced yet again to relocate, this time to a park. Same old same old. But the reader comments were really scary. And I can’t be the only one who finds it this way. Here’s an example: Some guy who calls himself “The Truncheon” said: “Time for the cops to unsheath their truncheons and get these bums ‘moved on’... to involuntary institutionalisation at De-Tox facilities, work-camps, or insane-asylums.” Someone called “tsgt” said: “Time for ICE and the SWAT teams to get THEIR truncheons out to clean up and DEPORT the illegals and their so-called ‘gangs’ (barbarian invaders).” I’m not making any of this up. “Vitamin G” said: “tsgt.. yeah, suppose your right on this one... maybe we can figure out how to make biodiesel with them... gotta have plenty of booze running through their pipes..” “Magog”says: “They should be sent to work camps and forced to earn their keep. All them jobs we give illegals can be theirs. they can shift though garbage all day sorting class items form plastic items and paper items. Minimum stay five years to make sure they sober up and learn to work for a living and stop asking people to pay their way.”
Now, aside from the obvious lack of viable mentalities in these folks there seems to be a truly nasty mean streak. I mean, these posters are actually suggesting things that would have been normal in the early days of the Reich. So I jumped in with my own two cents. I called myself “SongTool.” I don’t have my posting anymore – it was deleted by the moderator – but I can tell you generally that I referenced the postings above – especially the one from The Truncheon and I made a direct comparison to the early Nazi rantings. I was pretty clear. Now, above each posting is a link that says “log in to report abuse.” I assume that Mister The Truncheon reported me. Here’s his follow up after I was deleted:
“I see ‘song fool's’ pandering comments have been removed. Personally, even 'tho I was attacked, I don't see exactly why, other than being compared to a NAZI.
”That term and comparison get thrown around A LOT these days. The NAZI's were SO BAD that there is really no comparison at all. There is a BIG difference between stating a desire for, and solutions to, basic law and order requirements for society, and a genocidally brutal and sadistic police state.
”Read your history... also read some history about how civilizations rot and fall in part because of the breakdown of the rule of law, and the cancerous growth of anarchy in all it's guises.”
(Pandering? How did he come up with that…) The Truncheon makes the usual right winger’s leap – ignoring the fact that the regime started out small, with grotesque calls for the systematic bothering and eventual eradication of undesirables. First they talked about it, then they did it. In fact, an international precedent was set after the fall of Germany that to propagate genocide, in all of its forms and stages, was to be considered a crime against humanity. It was part of the Nuremburg Principles.
I wish I knew who these people were – The Truncheon, tsgt, Magog. But they remain nameless and hidden. And I would like to ask the moderator, or whoever it was who deleted my post, how it is that pointing out the historical similarities of somebody’s publicly expressed ideas to the ideas of fascism is somehow worse than calling for “the cops to unsheath their truncheons and get these bums ‘moved on’... to involuntary institutionalization…” I am not calling for the beating of homeless people – The Truncheon is!
The Truncheon – come out, come out wherever you are. You and your friends – come out and say these things in public. Let’s have a public conversation. Let’s have a round table discussion in front of an audience. I think that would be good. Not a debate, just a talk. How about it?
Labels: homelessness, Nickelsville, right wing, Seattle
posted by Jim Page at 11:18 PM
1 Comments:
i remember back in the early 90s, or maybe mid 90s, someone told me they had read that seattle was "going to be the philadelphia of the future", something along those lines.
now, i like philadelphia, it's where i live, where i was born, but i hope that seattle turns out better and different than my own city.
i go to work and these people complain about illegals, or how horrible it is that people have so many rights, and i really wonder what kind of a world these people inhabit, or think they want to inhabit, where people have different rights because of where or when they happened to be born, as if it's a choice you make somewhere along the line.
it seriously boggles me that there are people who think other people should die without medical care because of where they were born - and yet there they are.
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