BS: Ratfinks

Subject: BS: Ratfinks
From: josepp
Date: 06 Nov 10 - 06:07 PM

I may not have learned a whole lot in my years on this planet but I did learn one thing and I learned it the hard way: Never trust a crook. Sounds like common sense but, as they say, common sense is pretty uncommon. In my wild youth, I once started hanging out with the bad boys. I thought I was a bad boy too. And they accepted me so readily, what else could I think except that I was one of them. We were a secret brotherhood, a cabal, a tribe. "We hang together," they told me, "and we never rat one another out. Not ever." But it didn't take long for the truth to dawn on me. They stole some stuff from a store and got caught trying to fence it off. And they fingered me as the thief. They told the cops I stole the stuff and gave it to them and they accepted it from me in good faith, you understand. So I could not help but acknowledge to myself the truth of why they accepted me so readily—I was their stoolie, their insurance policy, their get-out-of-jail-free card. I served no other purpose. They weren't very smart but they knew one thing with perfect clarity: sooner or later, they were going to get caught and when that happened, they would feed me to the lions to save themselves from their own actions.

Didn't matter. The cops weren't having it. They questioned me and I told the simple truth—I had nothing to do with their theft and knew nothing about it, that they—the cops themselves—actually knew more than me. I didn't cry or beg or vehemently deny, I just sat there and answered their questions as best I could. I had nothing to hide. The only thing on my mind: What a bunch of chickenshit rats my "good buddies" were. Never rat your buddy out, eh? Unless you're fingering him for a crime you yourself committed, then I suppose that it's okay. About six months later, one of them calls me out of the blue. They stole their girlfriends' bikes but the fence wouldn't buy them without a receipt. Would I, he wondered, be kind enough to contact their girlfriends (because I was the quiet one and they all liked me) and charm and cajole them into giving me the receipts for their bikes so their loving, caring boyfriends could fence them off? One would have thought that my having no contact with them whatsoever for six months might have tipped them off that I was through with them for the rest of time but, as I said, they weren't too smart. "Sure," I said, "Leave it to me." I promptly called each girl and told them who had stolen their bikes and where they could find them. One of them later told me that even as she was angrily demanding her bike back, her boyfriend kept trying to persuade her to give him the receipt for it instead. I learned then and there, if I hadn't already, the true meaning of a "ratfink."

As I got older, I saw all the shades and flavors of ratfink that existed. All ratfinks start off similar to the turds I described above but few of them ever straighten themselves out. They just find new ways to continue being a ratfink and a total shit. But these new ways are just sublimations of their old ways. I will give an outline of how they work. This outline applies to all crooks be they burglar, dealer, pimp, fence, thug, rapist, murderer, gang-banger, child-molester, confidence man, politician, etc.

1.        The ratfink makes you feel special. That he/she has watched you for some time and you have that special something that they are looking for.
2.        The ratfink never has a casual conversation. All small talk is of intense interest to the ratfink for it tells him everything he needs to know about you. For example, his question, "So any plans for the weekend?" is only asked so that he knows if you're going to be home or not and what time you will be gone and when you will be returning.
3.        The ratfink always has something to sell. But he will only outright offer it to you for a price if he knows that you will probably buy it. But most of the time, he is aware that you won't buy it that way and so is going to get you to buy it without your being aware that you were had until it's too late to matter.
4.        The ratfink talks a lot about his principles. He is full of them, you see. He never rats on anyone, never goes back on his word, is totally loyal and trustworthy. You know this because of his utter loathing and contempt of those who do not share these principles.
5.        He inspires loyalty in you. You'll do anything for your buddy—lie to cover for him, lie to yourself that he's worth it—once he has accomplished this, he has you where he wants you.
6.        He never does anything where there isn't something in it for him. He does not have an altruistic bone in his body.
7.        The ratfink is an inherent if not a pathological liar. Nothing he tells you should ever be believed. If, by chance, he is telling you the truth, you'll find out soon enough. But he lies so much, and so very convincingly, that he usually believes his own bullshit so thoroughly that he could pass a polygraph with flying colors. He never admits the truth even to himself unless there's something in it for him. NEVER believe the ratfink because he deceives himself more than he does others and why should you believe someone who deceives himself and lacks the courage to call himself a liar?
8.        The ratfink excuses his own thefts with euphemisms as "I make the system work for me." That means he takes shameless advantage of the system and doesn't care who he hurts—least of all you (e.g. One guy got himself a beautiful, new coffee table from a store that had a return policy of a week—bring it back within seven days and they'll refund your money. He took the coffee table home in the shipping box, removed it without damaging the box, put his old beatup coffee table in the box, took it back and said he decided to return it. The store refunded his money without ever looking in the box which appeared to be unopened). Another is "He's a no good punk-ass little shit!" That means the person of whom he speaks sees right through him and lets him know it or, even more likely, that person is an even bigger ratfink than he is and has out-bullshitted the master bullshitter.
9.        The ratfink is always telling a story usually to cover his own tracks. The story is generally an alibi or a tale designed to make him seem like a sympathetic figure, somebody who is on your side (e.g. Before you say anything to him, he'll say, "Somebody ripped off some money from my wallet this morning" to cover the fact that he stole money from your wallet that morning but it couldn't be him, you understand, because it happened to him too). The ratfink may also tell a story to stall for time. The same guy in the coffee table incident also had delinquent bills in the thousands of dollars. He would haggle and haggle and haggle with creditors knowing down to the very day when the statue of limitations would run out and then on that day would tell the creditor, "Fuck you! The statute of limitations ran out today and if you try anything, I'll sue the shit out of you!" and hang up knowing there was nothing the creditor could do about it. As low and scavenger-like as a bill collector is in our society, he wants his money and so is willing to haggle with you figuring you have no idea about any statute of limitations. But he soon learns the truth about the ratfink same as everyone else: the hard way.
10.        The ratfink hates all people. A rapist may harbor a deep hatred of women but he hates everybody. A racist extremist may claim to have a burning hatred for people of a certain race but he really hates everyone on the planet. His stated hatred of a certain class of people is a mask that covers a complete hatred of all humanity. People are just marks and targets to be used. If they serve no further purpose, they are then discarded. He only remains friends with you because you are of use to him in some way.

A salesman is just a confidence man. He wants to sell you something and doesn't care what he has to say or do to make it happen. The only thing he likes about you is your money or the fat commission you're going to earn him. All politicians are salesmen, all con men. The similarities are striking. A car salesman wants you to buy his make of cars—GM, Ford, Chrysler, Toyota, Honda, Volkswagen, etc. They want you loyal to the brand.

In this way, they don't have to offer you anything of quality because they know you buy on name alone. Politicians do precisely the same thing by getting you to vote party. Never mind if the candidate is an idiot and a kook, he's a democrat or a republican so he gets your vote because you never vote for the other party. He can tell you that democrats only want to raise your taxes while he votes for the biggest tax increase in history and you'll accept this two-faced perfidy because he's a republican. Or he can tell you that all people deserve a chance to have a better life while voting to ship refugees back to a country where they will most certainly be tortured and executed by the regime they fled from and you'll overlook it because he's democrat.

Like any other salesman/con man, a politician will never tell you anything other than what you want to hear even if their actions belie every word they spoke. But here's the truth about con men: they own you. You might deny it, most people do, and that is how they get owned. If that wasn't true, there wouldn't be con men because it wouldn't be profitable and the con men is only interested in profit. When you believe you can't be owned, then you refuse to believe it when the con man is owning you. It's only after he sold you a false bill of goods and skipped town that you have to face up to having been owned.

In politics, we continuously allow ourselves to be owned. We know the politicians are crooks, cheats and liars—total ratfinks—but we continue to support the one who is of the party we believe has the nation's interests at heart. Somehow we convince ourselves that other politicians are bastards but not the one we support—he's different. If you do this, you are a self-deceiver. There is no difference between them. There couldn't be. If you know the amount of lying, conniving, backstabbing and bribing that goes on in politics, if you know that is what makes the political machine roll, if you know that the only politicians who can make it are those who have mastered those illustrious traits and force the rest to accept that they are but rank amateurs, then you should know better than to put your faith in a single one of them. But you do and you will continue to do so.

Lawyers are also ratfinks. Lawyers are the slimiest of con men. A divorced couple who hate each other and want to kill each other often get that way because of their lawyers. I knew a couple who divorced. The man wanted custody of their son because his wife had no job and no real stability—always moving from place to place. But her lawyer filed for total custody and it dragged on and on until he and his soon-to-be ex were ready to kill each other. At the custody hearing, the wife never showed. She knew she couldn't take care of her son by herself. But her lawyer had insisted demanding total custody was the way to go and so it got dragged out. Fortunately, the husband extended the olive branch to his wife because he didn't want his son growing up watching them fight all the time. She can come over and see him as much as she wants and take him places if she wants. They reached a perfectly amicable split in spite of their lawyers not because of them. Lawyers are slime like Johnny Cockroach, Anne Coulter and Fred Phelps. Ratfinks.

Yet, what are most politicians? Lawyers. They are people we might hire because we need a shark to win us a fat settlement because he's good at that and wants a big cut if it but as friends and community leaders? Not on your life. Unless…unless he wants to be your senator, your representative, your governor, your president and then suddenly we're plastering his name everywhere and vilifying his opposition and the supporters of each are at each other's throats like the husband and wife I mentioned—people who really want the same thing but have let their lawyers turn them so against one another that they cannot tolerate each other's presence. Yet, it's the ratfink lawyer walking away with the swag, shaking each other's hand and saying, "Til we face off again!" And they will because they own us.

Subject: RE: BS: Ratfinks
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 06 Nov 10 - 06:18 PM

Well I used to go out with a lovely lass called Susan Warren, way way back, and she used to call me a ratfink. I thought it was an affectionate appelation, now I ain't so sure

Subject: RE: BS: Ratfinks
From: GUEST,999
Date: 06 Nov 10 - 06:22 PM

Huh.

Subject: RE: BS: Ratfinks
From: bobad
Date: 06 Nov 10 - 06:36 PM

The original Rat Fink as drawn by Ed "Big Daddy" Roth.

Subject: RE: BS: Ratfinks
From: Slag
Date: 06 Nov 10 - 07:00 PM

Yes! Big Daddy! So josepp, like most things posted here on the muddy kitty, that one feels passionately about, it will get light treatment, puns, sardonicism, diversion and ignored completely. Get used to it. It doesn't mean that you have not made an impact. There are a lot more readers than posters. Most just silently nod ascent or perhaps disagree but you can know that directly. Then some are always ready with a comment. I tend to be the latter. I have talkative periods and then I will dry up for a while.

As to your post. It is an all too common experience. Most learn this through similar situations. It's a part of growing up. Select your friends wisely, don't count to heavily on anyone but yourself. If you should find a true friend, value them above diamonds but DO NOT try to own them. I could go on but I know, it sounds rather cliche'. The one thing I would caution about is to not generalize too much or you will wind up hating everyone and become the thing you seem to hate the most. That would be a tragic irony.

Subject: RE: BS: Ratfinks
From: Slag
Date: 06 Nov 10 - 07:02 PM

"can't", darn spellcheck!

Subject: RE: BS: Ratfinks
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 06 Nov 10 - 07:04 PM

Hay-sues, that's a golden oldie from my college years. We used to shorten it to "RF". We also used the acronym as a synonym for a prank, usually quasi-malicious.

Subject: RE: BS: Ratfinks
From: Slag
Date: 06 Nov 10 - 07:09 PM

Yep! RF I even built the model!

Subject: RE: BS: Ratfinks
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 06 Nov 10 - 07:55 PM

Normally a long post like that turns out to be a cut and paste from someone other than the poster. That can be irritating.

I appreciate the fact that this one from evidently wasn't one of those. (It wasn't was it?)

Subject: RE: BS: Ratfinks
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 06 Nov 10 - 07:59 PM

Normally a long post like that turns out to be a cut and paste from someone other than the poster. That can be irritating.

I appreciate the fact that this one from josepp evidently wasn't one of those. (It wasn't was it?)

Subject: RE: BS: Ratfinks
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 06 Nov 10 - 08:58 PM

Thank You - a sincere THANK YOU...

For the start of this thread ....

The term to me...is early 1960's and "Big Daddy Roth," "Moon Hub Caps" and a culture out of Lynwood, CA connected to the "cruisin' car culture" of Tweedy/Whittier Blvd....the surf scene,,, cut between ,,,,and the beats licked the marrow of their forefather's bones.

(Lighter could have two pages - if Random House ... did not screw-the-pouch.)

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

There is a world of difference between being "R-F d" and a simple "FU" to be RF'd holds a much closer connection . (It ain't joe-mamma ... (who you can snitch 25 cents from her purse) it is ..... being bigger than your peers ... and selling the "club,clan,friends" OUT.

Subject: RE: BS: Ratfinks
From: josepp
Date: 06 Nov 10 - 09:41 PM

////I appreciate the fact that this one from josepp evidently wasn't one of those. (It wasn't was it?)////

No.