I found this piece interesting reading all the way through. I found it within comments somewhere, a link to a post at taxicabdepressions. The writer brags his piece was picked up by Western Rifle Shooters, at first scan that appears to be exceedingly far right prep group.
The piece begins with a photo a a militarized vehicle with soldiers hanging off it within an urban street scene and the reader reasonably assumes the term pig refers to them, but the photo is a bit superfluous, perhaps descriptive of intent, the term refers to an actual pig trap.
The taxi driver describes meeting two people. The first is a fare with an alarming response to simple discussion. The rider said something incredibly provocative, while demonstrating and maintaining clear thought and astute response to query, and with decisive uncompromising conclusions, the whole thing disquieting. The driver dismissed the rider and his thoughts as conspiracy in nature but over time the man's saying continued to nag. And nag. And nag. The description of posture caught my attention. The driver describes noticing what I would have noticed.
The second person the driver describes he sought out for endorsement and for photos to include in a website, previous to driving a cab. This is the pig trap person, a Ted Nugent type minus the flash, hype and ego. The author describes his live-off the land lifestyle, his non-hunting approach to animal husbandry that the man developed for himself on his own land.
In the cab driver's synthesis, the pig trap is metaphor for what government is doing to the country in stages. He nicely correlates present day political activities with his endorser's method of herding intelligent creatures to slaughter by using their their need, their greed, and their complacency in overriding their intelligence.
45 comments:
Why don't you guys join the tax protest movement?
Link doesn't work, Chip.
Why? Who said anything about not wanting to pay taxes?
What an odd suggestion to make to someone incapable of joining any group.
Link fixed. Thank you.
Looks like your pig trap caught a weasel Chip.
With a tax system that everybody agrees is a mess of corruption and waste, and which is robbing us of our future, why would someone poo poo critics of such a system?
"robbing us of our future" sound existential. That's why I'm surprised to only hear a lot of grousing and grumbling on this blog but apparently no action.
If more people joined the tax protest movement, putting at risk their lives, fortunes and sacred honor, perhaps there would be real change.
Otherwise it's just bitch bitch bitch.
It's silly to bitch about bitching, and call for action instead. It's not even logical. Voting is the way to fix it, not martyrdom. The government will chew all the martyrs you send at it, as it already has over the years.
No. Peaceful democratic change is what I endorse. That starts with bitching. Calling for sacrifices that you have no intention of making or supporting yourself is the real posing here.
"The problem is there is no way to fix it. It must be wiped out in huge chunks, and that is just beyond the power of any party that struggles to get 50% of the vote, which they both constantly do. Someone needs to have the balls to sacrifice themselves, and our politics is run by fear and cowardice."
Personally, I have made some progress in turning around a couple of liberal friends on the tax issue lately, by bitching alone. I simply showed them how much I, as a single person, pay in taxes, and how my top marginal rate in CA is now 62% not even counting things like sales taxes which are another 9%. They were appalled, and in knowing first hand what I do with my money, they truly absorbed how bad an idea it is to send all that money to government instead. That is how change will come - by changing what people know, their perspective, and in the case of liberals, their feelings about it.
Meade, I was clearly talking about sacrificing political capital. Was that really above your comprehension, or do you have some other objective here?
The democrat party does an excellent job brain-washing people into thinking and assuming that people like you, Bagoh, DON'T pay taxes. That's why assholes like Harry Reid get away with lying thru their media mega-phones that Romney doesn't pay taxes.
That's how we get to an incredibly unfair tax code.
The top 20% of earners pay 90% of all taxes.
@AprilApple.
It's just not the taxes people like bags pay, it's the incredibly long hours waaaay above the 40hr work-week they put in, or the often HUGE financial risks they take that their workers don't (mortgaging one's house, risking one's childrens' college funds, etc.) Also factor in the psychic risks to mental health, the marriage, etc. created by operating under extreme financial stress of daily operations; NOT TO MENTION the regulatory stress laid on by all levels of government. TRUST ME, you haven't lived until you have a $40,000 payroll to meet on Friday and Thurs evening have only $20, 000 in the bank hoping the rest of the vendors payments will come in by Fri in time to meet late deposit or at least by Monday to cover those who don't immediately cash the checks for spending cash for the weekend.
Running a small business is NOT for the faint of heart or conducive to one's health--at least at the beginning..
PS, April, case in point.
One sunny perfectly glorious Sunday day in May in Louisville (not a cloud in the sky, 75 degrees and almost zero % humidity) the second week in May after Derby weekend I found it necessary to hie myself down to the office on Sunday to do some paper-work. It was roughly noon, and as I sat down at my desk, on a hunch I called one of my best friends, an Architect who owned his own firm at his office number. Guess who ans the phone? After a bfief conversation (he was very busy) I hung up and called another small-business owner, my CPA (who was also my Architect's CPA) at his ofc also. Guess who ans the phone? So there we were, all three of us, in our offices on a glorious day when most were out enjoying themselves, trapped by the demands of running our businesses.
Is it any wonder that charges about the "immorality" of the 1% fall on my deaf ears. I earned EVERY bit of it, and, like the Little Red Hen, took the proceeds of my efforts and retired at 50--as did my CPA--and never looked back. We provided a needed and ethical service and worked like dogs, Now we live a bi-coastal existence in comfortable if not opulent luxury. And I'm supposed to apologize for my existence? All this on top of completing a combat tour in Vietnam (<1% of my countryman participated) and garnering my PhD to boot?
No, no scenes like the one from the movie Dr Zhivago where he is forced to let the mobs live in his home and then loot the place. To this little Indian "gun control" means having a steady aim..
Chip - why do you care about tax rates now? You have been a democrat all your life and many of us have been paying a rate over 50% for years. What happened, did communism finally take something of yours?
@ Virgil
Making payroll is indeed stressful. And while the political class pay lip service to "small business owners", the very same political class stab businesses in the back with higher taxes, strangling bureaucracy and fascist regulations. Also known as - graft.
Again, it's not that people aren't willing to pay their fair share, it's that so much of our hard earned tax revenue is being wasted. And the fair share part is way over the top and getting worse with the use of lies and propaganda.
That's why you're awesome, Virgil.
Certainly it's true. Wealthy business owners are often spit upon and degraded by the media and the political class. There's this bogus notion that y'all are out on the golf course.
Instead, as you say - legions of small business owners are behind the desk on a sunny Sunday afternoon stressing about how to make payroll and keep the doors open. Often, said business owners will take the first pay cut.
Meanwhile, our political class are out on the golf course.
Chip here is a direct link to the article:
The Pig Trap
The link you have goes to the Western Rifle site where it's currently about the fourth article down, and called 'Sharpen Your Tusks.'
That's why I'm surprised to only hear a lot of grousing and grumbling on this blog but apparently no action.
Does anyone seriously think that IF we were really evading taxes we would tell everyone all about it? That would be really stupid, wouldn't it?
Evading taxes is not the same thing as minimizing taxes. One is illegal. The other is legal strategy using the rules as written to pay a lower rate than if you didn't use the rules, loopholes and structure of the tax code.
Oops, wrong room. Sorry. Bye.
WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE? HOW COME YOU'RE NOT OUT IN FRONT OF YOUR HOUSE PROTESTING? WHAT DID YOU DO ALL DAY, WORK?
Judge Smails demands answers:
DontYouPeopleHave Homes?
Bitching on blogs. Whodathunkit? That's never happened before.
Personal freedom, political liberty, and free speech.
Defended by force of arms, if necessary.
Meade said...
Why don't you guys join the tax protest movement?
I guess you ran out of cup of shut the fuck up.
Sixty-Grit, I've never been affiliated.
Once I answered I'm not affiliated and the person asking marked "independent" as if that is the party I belong to, and they're worse than the others.
Deb, thanks for noticing the link I thought I fixed. (multiple windows open, tiny laptop, my error. I was checking out that rifle site )
I'm fine with my taxes presently but not fine with corruption and not fine with being herded, collected, and snuck up on like we're unsuspecting pigs unable to see traps.
Sorry about that - I misunderstood "voting democrat" with being democrat.
Will Rogers put it best.
Looks like vile hapless Trooper Dork signed in with his sock puppet name again -- "Jim Dolan".
What a doofus.
Maybe he can email Lem and get it erased. How annoying.
I've thought about your comment to me, Meade. I am not the "Mary" of this blog -- you are.
Most definitely.
Most definitely not. Mary makes insightful remarks. Meade is more like that faux schizophrenic guy who used to threaten people, which Althouse interpreted as artistic expression. Meade appears completely directionless and lacking in pride. He'd rather be part of, like a pebble in one's shoe, the hippo shit his wife flushed than find something constructive to do. Meade, you are not defending your lady's honor when you play the boob here, and you should hope she doesn't begin to notice.
WHY ARE SOME OF YOU USING YOUR REAL NAMES?!
Dust Bunny Queen said...
"That's why I'm surprised to only hear a lot of grousing and grumbling on this blog but apparently no action."
Does anyone seriously think that IF we were really evading taxes we would tell everyone all about it? That would be really stupid, wouldn't it?
Evading taxes is not the same thing as minimizing taxes. One is illegal. The other is legal strategy using the rules as written to pay a lower rate than if you didn't use the rules, loopholes and structure of the tax code.
Bitching. Avoiding. Evading. Resisting.
I'd draw an analogy to being "anti war" in 1967.
There were those who only bitched about Vietnam and the draft — analogous to bitching about federal income taxes being immoral or unconstitutional, etc., but making no personal sacrifice and taking no risk or action.
There were those who bitched and thought U.S. policy was wrong but avoided the draft... by going to college (deferment), claiming C.O. status, or by enlisting in a branch of the military where they would predictably not be sent to Vietnam.
Some bitched and evaded the draft... by seeking asylum in Canada and elsewhere.
And then there were those who didn't bitch, avoid, or evade. They either resisted the draft by facing prison for civil disobedience, joined the Communists and fought against the U.S., or believed the U.S. policy was in fact moral, constitutional, and correct and enlisted to help defeat the Viet Minh.
Personally, I have no respect for the first groups and all respect for the last.
A review of the real facts, all the facts, should not leave one proud of the Vietnam protestors, draft dodgers, or lying reporters who turned a victory for the Vietnamese people into a disaster. The people who we gave hope and promises to only to shame ourselves by abandoning them at the very moment of greatest opportunity, in the end letting them and their freedoms die, while we pat ourselves on the back, with some using the whole disgrace for political advantage.
I lucked out by being just young enough to avoid serving, but I remember being determined to run to Canada. I'm ashamed of that plan to this day.
Meade wrote" So educate me -- what is incorrect about using the term "Viet Minh".
I'd always heard the term "Viet Cong." Are the two terms synonymous?
Educate US, Meade.
We have long tradition of naming foreign wars after their place names. That tradition yields at times to more generic terms like WW I or WW II for global conflicts.
If the real enemy was the "Viet Mihn," then that sort lets the "Viet Cong" off the hook. Not sure I buy that deal.
bagoh20 said...
"A review of the real facts, all the facts, should not leave one proud of the Vietnam protestors, draft dodgers, or lying reporters who turned a victory for the Vietnamese people into a disaster."
Reviews of the "real facts" may vary. My own review - admittedly incomplete - is that the responsibility for the disaster in Southeast Asia ultimately lies not with the protesters, draft dodgers, and lying reporters but with one evil man -- our democratically elected commander-in-chief, the "peace candidate" of 1964, President Lyndon Baines Johnson.
"Are the two terms synonymous?"
No. Would you like me to google them for you?
The biggest crime and greatest shame was committed by elected Democrats after Johnson was gone. He may have been incompetent, but at least Johnson's objective was decent. The Congress was motivated by nothing but political fortune, unencumbered by character, or a sense of duty or decency, and they abandoned millions who trusted them, based on a clear promise. They voted to make this country a shell of what it was before.
The dick licking Hobbit from TOP said...
... and enlisted to help defeat the Viet Minh.
Look, fuck face...Google your own shit. You posed the absurd comment above, out of sheer ignorance. You weren't there and know squat. Frankly, you were barely a pornographic gleam in your daddy's eye when the term Viet Minh went out of use.
Viet Minh referred to the movement against the French, then the Japanese (when the Viet Minh were our allies), and subsequently again against the French...whom they defeated in 1954. In 1950 the PAVN was constituted from the Viet Minh as a regular army aka ... Quan Doi Nhan Dan Viet Nam, who sponsored the NLF aka Viet Cong in the south. The term Viet Minh ceased to be used by the North Vietnamese, or anyone else, after 1954....however it was retained as Khmer Minh by Cambodian opposition to Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge. The Khmer Minh eventually joined the PAVN in invading Cambodia and defeating Pol Pot's regime.
Why don't you talk about the thread topic and something you know about, instead of your jive ass off track chicken-shit nonsense...with all that bravado about risk, and danger and yada yada...until even a rock would weep.
Pardon me -- the Viet Minh and its successors.
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