Atrios on our rip-off nation

[edhopper]

A quote from his blog (which everyone should read daily)

A problem with corruption at the top is that eventually we all get the signal and become grifters, too. Can't make it any other way. I have no expert opinion on what combination of cultural norms, criminal laws, tort system, etc... maintain an equilibrium in which we aren't all trying to con each other all the time, but I think that equilibrium is not necessarily a permanent one. And I don't really want to live in a society where everything is a hustle. Not every interaction should be a nightmare used care salesman scenario.

http://www.eschatonblog.com/

The feeling that we have to be wary of every financial interaction because everyone wants to rip us off has become more and more pronounced in recent decades. it is there in every store, restaurant and venue. And it increases the bigger the institution you deal with.

[onehandle]

1. Stay angry, stay sick, stay distrustful, stay paranoid, vote Republican. nt

[frazzled]

2. I hadn't been there for years ...

So I just clicked to discover:

1. Your quote was the entire (cryptic, contextless) post. I was expecting to find some full-length, explanatory essay on the nature of government or commercial corruption, but all I got was these few sentences.
2. Most all of the posts are just few-sentence blurbs with a link to somewhere else. Click vehicles, I calls 'em. I click, you get paid.
3. The page is littered with ads for things I've googled over the past month or so. I mean really, I wanted to buy my daughter-in-law some Rooibos tea, and I googled Kusmi Tea three weeks ago, and I'm still getting ads on obscure blogs to "remind" me about something I didn't (and probably won't) buy anyway?

So if we're talking about grifts and cons ... fill in the rest. The reason I stopped reading Eschaton was because I got tired of blogs like this that were throwing up random and often repetitive brief commentary, filling the coffers with ad money from it, while directing people into a back room to chatter with each other, commenting on something that would never be read or responded to by the original author of the blog post. I began to feel it was a waste of my time. I don't need to read one person's opinion on news I read elsewhere anyway. Ain't nobody got time for that.

Morning rant completed. Fire away.

[catrose]

4. Pretty much why I stopped going there

Link salad, often with no indication of whether I really wanted to click the link.

[gvstn]

3. It is not just financial dealings.

I've been saying for years there are no role models in modern day America. "Greed is good" really has become the cultural motto.

George W. starting wars under false pretenses and never looking back or admitting he made mistakes is the ultimate example. Cheney and his love of torture and pretending that the law doesn't apply to his righteous ass is a second. Vitter and all the other adulterers that have no shame and seem to get their colleagues to rally around their hypocrisy loving selves are more examples. Vitter was visiting prostitutes and yet no legal repercussions. The various "driving while on Ambien" scandals that get brushed under the rug while regular people are going to jail for multiple years because they got addicted to pain killers. The whole too big to fail thing where we are told prosecuting the banks would do more damage than good which is crap--more damage to whom?

Where are kids or anyone else supposed to see the type of behavior that we would like them to mirror? Not in popular culture and not in politics. That leaves the family but with both parents working there isn't really much time to reinforce important values especially when outside influences are saying the exact opposite. It is disheartening.