“I never could make anything work out right and now I’m betraying my friends. I can’t make anything out of it – never could. I had great visions but never could bring them together with reality. I used it all up. It’s all gone.”
Lew Welch’s words and a sentiment I often feel, especially when overwhelmed by work, politics and life. I think I need a break. A long break, with no e-mail, Internet or phone. Just the desert. Maybe an old style small town with a cafe and bookstore. The quiet life.
Well, so much for my plans to relocate to Austin or Marfa, Texas. Both places are progressive and liberal, although virtually lost in the vast sea of conservative idiocy that permeates the rest of the state.
The final blow, the one that convinces me the state has completely fallen off the cliff of reason is a recent decision by the Texas School Board to rewrite the history books. Children in Texas will now be force fed a steady stream of whitewashed, slanted propaganda Stonewall Jackson would surely love. Religious beliefs become science. The Republican Party is presented as a champion of civil rights. The Constitution says nothing about the separation of church and state.
These people are completely koo koo. As dangerous as the Taliban. Hell, maybe they’re even worse than the Taliban, since at least the Taliban places its agenda right on the table. Fundamentalist Christians are sneaky about it. They dress it up in a nice little package and make it seem like it’s something it’s not.
When the United States government and white settlers began their program of cultural genocide against American Indians, the basic foundation of the program was Christianity and the role of the mission. Historian Elliot West states in his work The Last Indian War that “aggressive Christianity was an essential partner,” and presents clear and compelling evidence that Washington made Christian conversion a “prime goal.”
Senator James Rood Doolittle of Wisconsin was an ardent Baptist who believed the United States was the chief agent of God’s will. He considered the Declaration of Independence “the new gospel of man’s redemption.” President Grant formerly married religion and federal governance by replacing reservation agents with missionaries.
Westward expansion essentially became spiritual conquest.
And why is this history lesson important? It’s important, because this is the Christian mission. This is spiritual conquest. Yeah, the Indians were told they were free to worship as they pleased (wink, wink), but the government and churches made it very clear their primary goal was to convert the “savages” to Christianity. For those that resisted, well, the result was pretty clear.
Guess who’s next? Liberals, agnostics, atheists, gays…anyone that doesn’t follow the conservative, fundamentalist Christian mantra. The Christian world view in the United States has expanded to include politics and economics. Not only should you follow Jesus, but you should be a Republican, support militarism and military-industrial complex. Their goal is to marginalize and remove any and all opposition to their world view from power. You’re either on board or you’re politically and economically ostracized. Sorta like being “on the rez.”
A few, like Glenn Beck, most likely harbor the same sentiment as western locals in the 1870′s. Kill ‘em. Kill ‘em all. You haven’t heard this yet in the United States, except from a handful of radical extremists, but wait. It’s coming. “If you don’t like it, leave!” will soon morph into something more sinister. Liberalism will become a “terrorist philosophy” since liberals are trying to destroy America. And once that sentiment is in place, it’s open season.
Just ask the American Indians. Those that remain, that is.
Everyone has their own version of the “certain” collapse scenario. Peak Oil theorists, conspiracy theorists, Glenn Beck, even Forbes. Edward Abbey wrote about the collapse of civilization. I’ve written about it, but I’m just a nobody getting my ideas from other people. I just like to spread gossip, because it gives me something to do other than my boring as hell day job.
Seriously, it seems clear to me that industrial capitalism isn’t infinitely sustainable since it’s dependent on finite resources. Yes, our financial system is basically built on a house of cards, and yes, we have an urgent situation with energy, simply because we use too much energy in our capitalist mega-society. That, and we fuck like rabbits and produce too many hungry, ambitious little humans, every one out for their piece of the pie.
How the fuck is this possibly sustainable?
But the most vocal of the collapse theorists, like Glenn Beck, are really just out trying to make money. I suppose I shouldn’t even dignify a dumbshit like Beck by calling him a “theorist.” He’s no theorist. He’s a mindless ranter without a single decent idea on how to fix real or imaginary problems. Nothing like a good old dose of fear to send the masses scurrying for their Visa cards. Seeds, gold, ammo, canned goods. You name it, and some cammo clad bozo is there ready to sell it.
My own plan? I’m going to enjoy what I can while I can. Take care of my family, try to live in harmony with my non-human neighbors and find a decent place to ride out our descent into whatever awaits. Beer, books and music are high on the list of supplies. I’ll probably have some ammo, too, just in case anyone comes around trying to pass out Bibles.
Which brings me back to the same old question. Move west to deserts and mountains and fewer Bibles? Or stay put, tolerate the thumpers and enjoy the plentiful water supplies?
I think I can tolerate a parched mouth and dry skin better than religious fundamentalists.
A recent report about rioting in Greece mentions “black clad, mask wearing” “stone throwing anarchists.”
Well, of course. Everyone wearing black, wearing a mask and throwing shit is an anarchist.
But why should I continue to be surprised, since anarchism (decentralized, democratic governance by the people and for the people) is in fact the antithesis of the centralized, anti-democratic state. The state absolutely will portray people that are violent as “anarchists” in an effort to further demonize its greatest enemy, democracy.
Trust me, all the real anarchists are just sitting back and watching things from a comfortable perch. Real anarchists don’t throw bricks and molotov cocktails. They don’t have to, because they know the State is willingly taking its own life via its suicidal policies.
People are mad in America. Not that we haven’t been mad about various things throughout our history. We’ve had a history of anger and violence from day one, but the violence meter has shown a high degree of variance in history. Sometimes it’s at much higher levels than others, but we do seem to be on an upswing of late, eerily similar to another period in our nation’s history.
There’s the not-so-carefully disguised anger from the far right toward Obama and what he’s supposedly doing to the country. The left, a distinct group from centrist Democrats, is angry over Obama’s apparent inability to take a stand against corporate power, as evidenced by his positions on healthcare, militarism and energy. Many on the left aren’t “angry,” but are tremendously disappointed, and they should be. We wish he would do something to the country.
But the anger from the right is frightening, because it seems to be leaning more and more toward violence as a possible solution to what is ailing our nation. Hardliners are egged on by blathering idiots like Glen Beck and irrationally take bits and pieces of disjointed, unverified information and use that to justify the formation of militias and acts of violence.
I can only conclude these are pitifully ignorant, even stupid human beings. What the Teabaggers don’t seem to understand is what they want, less control and regulation and more “free markets,” is precisely what will increase their misery. They’re against “the government,” but fail to realize that at this point, a strong central government is the only thing that can protect them from pernicious corporate power.
An anarchist touting a strong, central government? It’s not the optimum situation, but in the short term, it’s our only option. We can practice anarchism in our local communities and use the central federal government to reign in Wall Street. Eventually, it will all fail, but in the short term, it’s our best tool.
Do they think it’s the government that caused so many of them to lose their homes? Do they think it’s the government that caused them to lose millions in investments? Perhaps it was the government that forced the plant closure and the resulting loss of income and health benefits. Or, was it the government that denied your claim for needed surgery and then dropped your coverage because you’d been sick too much?
No, these are the failures of capitalism we, as a nation, seem unwilling to face. And while the government is far from innocent, most of this type of anger is misplaced. Why isn’t more Tea Party anger directed at corporations? Are these people really that stupid?
I’d like to believe the irrational and ridiculous actions by Joseph Stack and John Bedell are isolated incidents, but my instincts tell they are not. Based on what I’m hearing from Teabaggers and various other miscreants, I fear we’re headed toward more violent outbursts that will do little more than perpetuate the cycle of violence.
It’s a lose-lose situation for everyone. The perpetrator is killed or imprisoned for life and the state strengthens and expands its already panoptic, hegemonic control.
“Sadly enough, there is a pattern,” said Northeastern University criminologist Jack Levin. “He (Bedell) represents a much larger force in our society today. If one individual is paranoid, we call it mental illness. If thousands of people share the same paranoia, we call it ideology. There are thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of Americans who are extremely angry with the federal government.”
If we want to be angry at the government, lets be mad about two things. One, the government not doing anything to curb corporate power and for allowing the judiciary to become the latest pawn of the power elite, and two, lying to the American people and the world about it’s use of military power. But even that all comes back full circle to corporate power and capitalism, since it’s industrial, growth capitalism that fuels the military machine.
From Truthdig: “We are going to be poorer,” David Cay Johnston told me. Johnston was the tax reporter of The New York Times for 13 years and has written on how the corporate state rigged the system against us. He is the author of “Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense and Stick You With the Bill,” a book about hidden subsidies, rigged markets and corporate socialism. “Health care is going to eat up more and more of our income. We are going to have less and less for other things. We are going to have some huge disasters sooner or later caused by our failure to invest. Dams and bridges will break. Buildings will collapse. There are water mains that are 25 to 50 feet wide. There will be huge infrastructure disasters. Our intellectual resources are in decline. We are failing to educate young people and instill in them rigor. We are going to continue to pour money into the military. I think it is possible, I do not say it is probable, that we will have a revolution, a civil war that will see the end of the United States of America.”
At the end of the day, perhaps we should simply be angry at ourselves.
Mike Ruppert recently posted the cold, startling truth about the coming revolution:
“There is a revolution brewing in this country. Some are already attempting to define it… perhaps as a means of shaping it. Perhaps as a means of preventing a no-sided melee which no one can win. — Mark my words and mark them well. A left-right labelling of this revolution will mark the failing of our species and condemn millions of Americans to death and suffering…Anybody who fights the infinite growth economic paradigm is my brother and my sister. Ron Paul is fighting it. Cynthia McKinney is fighting it. And I, for one, am not going to chop either one of them off — and hurt all of us — in the process… because of a freaking label. These are two of the bravest and most honorable people I have ever met. — I am reminded of something attributed to Albert Einstein; ‘The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.’”
Who would have thought Detroit would be the city leading America to the post-Peak oil, mega-capitalist, industrial age?
Detroit is embarking on a plan that would reduce the size of the city and restore its blighted core to a greener, more rural landscape that more closely resembles the area before the Age of Oil. Steel and concrete would be replaced with fruit trees and veggie gardens.
“Things that were unthinkable are now becoming thinkable,” said James W. Hughes, dean of the School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University, who is among the urban experts watching the experiment with interest. “There is now a realization that past glories are never going to be recaptured. Some people probably don’t accept that, but that is the reality.”
Amen
Perhaps we’d be better off with a King or a Queen. As Abbey said, we shouldn’t “…entrust the management of our lives to “kings, priests, politicians, generals, and county commissioners.” Just drop the King part.
Why?
After years of living in the The Bible Belt, where The Good Book apparently rules all, I’m convinced there are millions of people too ignorant to rule themselves. They definitely need a standing government with precise parameters, and you couldn’t possibly leave it up to them to craft their own rules.
In the South, if the natives were permitted to run things as they wished, we’d have theocracy and ecocide.
A Congress? A representative body of the people? Well, we can see how well that’s worked out in Washington, can’t we? But with a monarch, you only have one idiot to deal with, not hundreds, and if you had a good one, well, things might be real cheery.
I therefore nominate myself for King. Bow down, subjects!
When the biggest, richest, glassiest buildings in town are the banks, you know that town’s in trouble.-Edward Abbey
At a House Budget Committee meeting last Wednesday, second term Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke said that the Fed will “not print money” to pay for United States burgeoning debt. That’s the traditional way for governments to crawfish out of bad debt, just print a bunch of bogus money and present it as “legal tender for all debts public and private.” Good thing, because I don’t believe the Chinese are going to fall for some Hong Kong Phooey financial trickery.
Maybe Nixon was on to something when he took us off the gold standard.
He also mentioned the unthinkable, cutting “defense” (do we really still call it that and get away with it?) spending, and went on to say that “the economy is not just turning downward, if something is not done soon, it will completely collapse.”
Well, no shit Sherlock.
Some of my business associates that fly in the realm of high finance are expressing considerable concern about things, even to the point of suggesting China and India could soon be running things in the good old USofA. I see that as somewhat doubtful, but there’s no doubt we’re in deep poopoo. If we continue with our bailouts, which are essentially “re-capitalization” efforts using public funds, the Chinese are eventually going to call our hand.
These moves really anger the Chinese, because they come at the expense of the dollar and Treasuries. China could, in a bad, but not “worst case” scenario, renege on their commodity driven derivative contracts. This would be a slap in the face to the US Federal Reserve without “going nuclear” by selling Treasuries outright. This would, however, set off a dangerous chain reaction.
The Chinese have fired a couple of warning shots already. If it happens, the US could choose to default on its debt to China, and at that point, we’d have full-scale economic war and potentially on our way to military conflict. They can raid our natural resources, something has has actually already started. It’s ugly no matter how you look at it.
We’re in this mess for two reasons. One, growth capitalism is a non-sustainable house of cards, and two, the country is being held hostage by an a cadre of greedy, inbred, financial moguls. Washington and Wall Street successfully consummated their evil marriage many years ago, but to this day, we’re still under the thumb of its lascivious, perpetually breeding offspring.
I would have much preferred a steady descent down the mountain to something more sensible and sustainable; however, it now appears we’ll all be hurled off the summit posthaste to the rocks waiting below.
And while all this human madness is occurring, somewhere in the desert, a hawk goes about its daily business of gathering food. A rattlesnake warms itself in the sun, and the desert flora, dormant in winter, prepare to bloom and gloriously announce the coming of spring. Life continues on, unabated, despite the folly of featherless bipeds in suits and ties.
My dear wife has to go in early today to hear an announcement from her employer. A huge corporation that sells a completely unnecessary and unhealthy product that uses prodigious amounts of water in production and an equal amount of fuel to ship their shit over the globe.
It’s been a bone of contention for the past five years, but she’s now seeing the light about how corporations really work. They’re not benign, especially large, multi-nationals, and they more or less uniformly treat people extremely poorly.
I’m sure the announcement will be a lot of “rah rah” shit, where the corporate communication and marketing departments, known as propaganda to thinking people, will say something basically like this:
“Thank you for joining us today. It’s a wonderful day at Super Big Corporation That Sells a Worthless Product, as we announce the marriage of three great organizations. I know many of you have questions about how the new and improved Super Big Corporation That Sells A Worthless Product will operate, and we’re here today to answer any questions and discuss this exciting new merger.”
What they should really say is this:
“Thank you for joining us today. It’s a wonderful day at Super Big Corporation That Sells a Worthless Product, as we announce the cannibalization of two other companies. I know many of you are wondering if you’re going to get whacked, and we’re here today to dance around that question and focus more on how wonderful we are and how we plan on selling more shit to more people.”
Questions about job loss are reframed with diction like “…the purchase will obviously mean there may be some realignment of personnel as we all work together to streamline our processes and prepare the company to successfully compete in today’s challenging marketplace.”
They’ll obfuscate at great length about exciting new roles without explaining that my wife’s role, and others like her, will probably be to pack their shit and go home. They’ll be escorted out the door by a large man with a gun on his hip and have their boxes searched. Can’t have people stealing paperclips or scissors, goddamnit!
A Vice President that works with my wife once told her that their product was “critical” to people. Huh? Since when is crap food critical to people? It’s comical, because he really believes it. This is the same man that terrorized her for two hours one day during a ruthless interrogation about vacation pay that the Human Resources Department wanted to pay her. He asked her questions like “What do you do with your money anyway?” “Do you really need a job,” implying she had a successful husband and should go home and be a good housewife.
Which brings me to another point, use of the term “Human Resources.” It’s one of the creepiest things corporations have ever created. A term that basically equates human beings with some sort of replaceable item in the production line. We’re about as important as lug nuts, washers or wheels on the conveyor belt.
And at the end of the day, that’s the ugly truth about corporations. You, the worker that gave many years of your life and tried to be a loyal employee, are replaceable. Ultimately, there’s no loyalty to you. The only thing that matters is a maniacal focus on the holy grail, returning share holder value, which almost always means devaluing humans in the process.