What does this quote from the old, comic strip character, Pogo, mean? It means that our greatest enemy isn’t outside ourselves but within. Sadly, far too many Americans are intellectually lazy, apathetic, & obsessively focused on material things and wealth.
You may argue, then why do so many people from other countries want so desperately to come here? Quite simply, it’s because we have so many opportunities here that they don’t have in their home countries and/or that they are fleeing a society even more violent than here in the U.S. Unfortunately, as Noam Chomsky puts it, “Our public education system is enforced ignorance.”
The power elite in America are content with our general state of stupidity because it suits their business model of exploitation just fine. History was never a popular subject when I was in high school but I found it interesting & it took me many years and lots of reading to find out what a pack of lies & outright propaganda much of it is.
Multi-national corporations are the de facto rulers of the world & many are more wealthy & powerful than nation states
And one of the most destructive lies is the hidden history of the American Empire created mostly since the end of WWII. If you recall, America was founded upon a revolution against the British Empire & we have now come full circle and have replaced the once mighty British Empire with the American Empire though it’s mostly a taboo topic. We are indoctrinated from first grade through high school with tales of how great we are & how we come to the rescue of many poor, struggling nations. But few of us are aware of our C.I.A.’s dirty history since its formation in 1947.
Instances of the United States overthrowing, or attempting to overthrow, a foreign government since the Second World War. (* indicates successful ouster of a government)
China 1949 to early 1960s
Albania 1949-53
East Germany 1950s
Iran 1953 *
Guatemala 1954 *
Costa Rica mid-1950s
Syria 1956-7
Egypt 1957
Indonesia 1957-8
British Guiana 1953-64 *
Iraq 1963 *
North Vietnam 1945-73
Cambodia 1955-70 *
Laos 1958 *, 1959 *, 1960 *
Ecuador 1960-63 *
Congo 1960 *
France 1965
Brazil 1962-64 *
Dominican Republic 1963 *
Cuba 1959 to present
Bolivia 1964 *
Indonesia 1965 *
Ghana 1966 *
Chile 1964-73 *
Greece 1967 *
Costa Rica 1970-71
Bolivia 1971 *
Australia 1973-75 *
Angola 1975, 1980s
Zaire 1975
Portugal 1974-76 *
Jamaica 1976-80 *
Seychelles 1979-81
Chad 1981-82 *
Grenada 1983 *
South Yemen 1982-84
Suriname 1982-84
Fiji 1987 *
Libya 1980s
Nicaragua 1981-90 *
Panama 1989 *
Bulgaria 1990 *
Albania 1991 *
Iraq 1991
Afghanistan 1980s *
Somalia 1993
Yugoslavia 1999-2000 *
Ecuador 2000 *
Afghanistan 2001 *
Venezuela 2002 *
Iraq 2003 *
Haiti 2004 *
Somalia 2007 to present
Honduras 2009 *
Libya 2011 *
Syria 2012
Ukraine 2014 *
If you care to inform yourself of this dark side of America & to comprehend why so many terrorists hate America, William Blum offers a very concise history in his work; The C.I.A. A Forgotten History. Have you ever wondered why we have over 900 military bases around the world? Or do you actually believe that we are always the knights in shining armor like in the Crusades who believed it was their duty as devout Christians to rescue Jerusalem from the Muslim hordes? You see, throughout recorded history, the Church and the State (kings, queens, emperors, etc.) have sought to control their citizens so they could exploit them & enjoy lavish lifestyles. And sometimes the Church & the State have joined forces in their subjection of their citizens & the public was truly fucked i.e. Rome making Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire.
And throughout history, education has been the most empowering tool in our struggle for those mythical values & principles America supposedly is the champion of. Here are the seven principles expressed in our Constitution, the supposed bedrock of our democracy & our form of government.
Popular Sovereignty
“We the people…” the first three words of the preamble to the Constitution describes the essence of popular sovereignty. The power in the government of the United States comes directly from the people.
Limited Government
Limiting the power of government was extremely important to the founding fathers who had just overthrown a tyrannical king. The government of the United States is limited by our written laws.
Separation of Powers
The constitutional principle of separation of powers refers to the division of powers within the government. This separation of powers creates a government in which there is no concentration of power in any one branch, power is equally divided.
Checks and Balances
The principle of checks and balances is closely related to separation of powers. This principle explains the concept of each of the three branches of government having the authority to check the power of the others.
Individual Rights
Individual rights are a principle of the constitution which is dealt with primarily in the Bill of Rights. When the American Revolution ended and the new nation was developing its government many citizens were worried that their individual or unalienable rights would be trampled on by the new government; just as they were trampled on by King George the III. Ratification of the Constitution was made possible by adding the Bill of Rights which is the first ten amendments to the Constitution. Most of these amendments deal with basic human rights such as freedom of speech, the right to bear arms, and no cruel and unusual punishment.
Federalism
Federalism is the principle of the constitution which splits power between a national or federal government and the local governments. This principle is important because the Articles of Confederation failed because there was no strong central government. Without a strong central government countries are weak and vulnerable. Federalism creates a strong central government while maintaining strong state governments as well which are necessary to handle regional problems.
Other Principles
“There are some principles of the Constitution that are sometimes left out because they overlap or because writers do not want to include them. One is republicanism. This principle refers to the fact that the United States does not have a direct democratic government but a republic where people vote for representatives who then make the decisions for them. Another principle sometimes mentioned is judicial review. This principle overlaps with checks and balances because it refers to the power that the Supreme Court has to declare laws unconstitutional.”
Let’s review just a few of the many glaring examples of hypocrisy & betrayal of these Constitutional principles we supposedly honor and hold so high. Don’t forget, our military & “our” corporations are consistently doing their patriotic & humane duty by bringing the benefits of democracy to the developing nations with the help of our C.I.A. clearing a path for them.
Popular sovereignty. The power in the government comes directly from the people. Yeah, right. Anyone with half a brain knows that “our” government works for its rich, political donors & passes legislation that benefits them, certainly not the public. On just about every social, economic, & political issue, the will of the people is ignored if it doesn’t please the 1%, the “masters of mankind.” After the world-wide economic crash of 2008, the public didn’t want the government to bail out the big banks, “too big to fail,” but the government did so anyway.
Limited government. Again, common sense shows us that the power of the government to intrude into our lives & tell us what we can and can’t do is only increasing not decreasing. Try buying a piece of land and building your own home. The government tells us we must be connected to the grid i.e. the public utilities such as the electric, water, & sewer. They’ll tell you whether you can erect a windmill on your property. Many of these so-called “communities” will tell you what color you can paint your home, what size dog you’re allowed to have, and what breeds of dogs are allowed or not allowed.
Separation of powers. Trump’s reign of terror & error showed us just how absurd this Constitutional claim is. Trump and the GOP broke the law & packed the Supreme Court with three justices. The GOP got down on its hands & knees, pulled its pants down & handed Trump the Vaseline to fuck our entire government & the public in any way he pleased. Trump might as well have planted a sign on the White House lawn, step right up suckers, pardons for sale, whatever legislation you want signed, if the price is right, it’s a done deal. He was there to enrich himself & urged foreign leaders to stay at his properties. Trump was like a bull with mad cow disease & his goal was to wreak as much havoc & destruction as possible and make himself the first American dictator for life.
Checks and balances. I think I’m going to vomit. When is the last time we’ve seen Congress face up to its responsibility in deciding whether the U.S. should go to war? Like the bunch of spineless, sniveling cowards that they are, they simply pass the buck to the president time & time again.
Individual rights. Another screaming farce. With the passage of The Patriot Act right after the events of 9/11 which they had already written up years earlier, they effectively shredded The Bill of Rights. And overnight, we were no longer a democracy.
Thomas Jefferson, recognizing that the cornerstone of democracy rests on the foundation of an educated electorate, said that “whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.”
Federalism. This is a variation on the old, rope-a-dope tactic. When it comes to issues that the 1% don’t give a fuck about, they declare it a states’ rights issue. But when it’s an issue that requires an iron fist like NAFTA, it’s declared an issue of vital, national importance and the full force of the federal government is brought to bear down on its passage.
I’m sure that others have written books with hundreds of examples of just how shallow our “democracy” is, my goal was to just give a cursory overview. In a sense, this essay could serve as a basic, sort of primer for those who may have not reflected on such matters & believe in many of our government’s lies.
In present day America, many Americans are connecting the dots and some of our soldiers fighting in the endless wars initiated by the corporate elite so they can exploit the natural resources of other nations are aware of the ugly realities & fight only to protect their fellow soldiers.
Some are waking up to the realization that the way we are treating the citizens of the countries we’ve invaded is being brought home & we have become the enemy of the corporate cockroaches. The power elite know that they can never let their guard down so on the street level, young black men are shot in the back just about every week.
But in a society as large & as technologically sophisticated as the U.S., the true battlefield is the mind or the psyche of the public. And Silicon Valley via M.I.T. with its Pentagon funding for research, has given us the world-wide web with all its assets & liabilities. George Orwell is probably rolling over in his grave at how joyfully the masses have accepted their enslavement. Like lemmings following their Pied Pipers as they lead them over the cliff & into the abyss of Armageddon with their eyes glued to the screens of their Smart phones. Yep! Data has now replaced oil as the most valuable commodity on Earth.
some of these high tech companies voluntarily gave the govt. our data; Microsoft, Yahoo!, Google, Facebook, You Tube, Skype, & Apple
Summing up, I’m going to leave you with a few quotes & an illuminating video by one of humanity’s greatest friends & champions, Edward Snowden.
“In the communist and fascist political systems of the 20th century, and in 1984, the totalitarian regime maintained a tight grip of control on the populace through the use of manufactured fear. “
“Totalitarian leaders, whether of the right or of the left, know better than anyone else how to make use of…fear…They thrive on chaos and bewilderment… The strategy of fear is one of their most valuable tactics.”
Joost Meerloo, Rape of the Mind
(see Fox “news,” Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh, etc. — Rob DeLoss)
“Constant surveillance of all of the citizens was an additional tool in the arsenal of the totalitarian regime of 1984. Surveillance not only allowed for more effective overt control of the citizenry but it also induced paranoia which made it less likely that any citizen would even dare step out of line. This surveillance was achieved, firstly, through the technology of the telescreen which was installed in everyone’s home and throughout the streets, and as Orwell explained: “
“The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously…There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment…It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinised.”
George Orwell, 1984
“Many victims of totalitarianism have told me in interviews that the most upsetting experience they faced…was the feeling of loss of logic, the state of confusion into which they had been brought—the state in which nothing had any validity…they simply did not know what was what.” (Meerloo)
Joost Meerloo, Rape of the Mind
(see Trump’s “alternate reality” & the media as the enemy of the people — Rob DeLoss)
“In 1984, widespread mental disorientation was stimulated via the falsification of history, and the negation of the concept of objective truth. The Ministry of Truth was the institution which falsified history. “
“Everything faded into mist. The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth.”
George Orwell, 1984
“One of the reasons totalitarian regimes attempt to alter history is because it rids the society of any past reference points, or standards of comparison, which might remind the citizens that life in the past was so much better than it is in the sterile and oppressive present. “
“But another reason history is falsified by totalitarians is to ensure there are no historical roots to which the citizen can anchor and find truth, sustenance and strength. In totalitarianism there can be no historical information which contradicts or puts into question the reigning political ideology, nor any institution, such as a religion, which offers the individual a refuge from the influence of the State. For a totalitarian regime to condition the citizenry to accept the proverbial boot stomping on its face, it needs to control the past, and so as Orwell wrote in 1984:
Along with destroying or falsifying the past, widespread mental disorientation is further cultivated by destroying the belief in objective truth. This is done through a program of psychological warfare. Incessant and intentionally confusing propaganda, conflicting reports and blatant lies, are pumped out in “official reports” and through the mass media at all hours of the day. What is said today has no bearing on what may be said tomorrow, for as Orwell explained: “
Steve Bannon co-founded Cambridge Analytica which used military psychological warfare tools to assist Trump in his presidential campaign along with Facebook’s cooperation
“And only yesterday, [Winston] reflected, it had been announced that the ration was to be reduced to twenty grammes a week. Was it possible that [the citizens] could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they swallowed it…Was he, then, alone in the possession of a memory?”
George Orwell, 1984
“In addition, contradictions, hypocrisies and lies form the foundation of the totalitarian ideology. The totalitarian system presents the enslavement of the individual as his or her liberation; censoring information is called protecting the truth; the destruction of culture or the economy is called its development; the military occupation of other countries is labeled as the furtherance of freedom and peace. In 1984, the Ministry of Peace instigated wars, the Ministry of Truth manufactured propaganda, and the Ministry of Plenty created shortages. On the enormous pyramidal structure of the Ministry of Truth hung the words:
“WAR IS PEACE. FREEDOM IS SLAVERY. IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.”
“The purpose of this all-encompassing program of psychological warfare is to bewilder the mind of the average citizen. For when the citizen is bombarded with contradictions and lies and lives in what Orwell called “that shifting phantasmagoric world in which black may be white tomorrow and yesterday’s weather can be changed by decree”, he or she eventually ceases to know what to think, or even how to think. The distinction between up and down, fact and fiction, truth and falsity, is not only blurred, but loses significance. The belief in objective truth disappears, and the average citizen becomes completely dependent on authority figures to feed him ideas, and thus, is ready to assent to lies and to believe the most absurd things – so long as those in the political class deem it to be true.”
In an essay titled Totalitarianism and the Lie, Leszek Kolakowski, a philosopher who was exiled from Poland for his criticisms of Communism and Marxism, wrote:
“This is what totalitarian regimes keep unceasingly trying to achieve. People whose memory—personal or collective—has been nationalized, has become state-owned and perfectly malleable, totally controllable, are entirely at the mercy of their rulers; they have been deprived of their identity; they are helpless and incapable of questioning anything they are told to believe. They will never revolt, never think, never create; they have been transformed into dead objects.”
Leszek Kolakowsk, Totalitarianism and the Lie
“Some have taken this ending as sign of Orwell’s pessimism, as an indication that humanity is doomed to a totalitarian future. Yet Orwell’s motive for writing this book was not to depress nor promote a fatalistic apathy, but to warn and rouse to action as many people as possible. For Orwell understood as well as anyone that in the battle between totalitarianism and freedom, no one can afford to stand aside. The fate of each and every one of us hangs in the balance.
“I think I understand, fear is like a wilderness, stepping-stones or sinking sand.”
— Joni Mitchell
The truth behind the war on drugs is that big pharma clearly doesn’t give a fuck about our health and safety. And our political leaders, through a combination of willful ignorance, greed, & apathy, don’t either. I’ve long intuited this but after watching the brilliant & insightful documentary by Alex Gibney, The Crime of the Century, any doubts I may have had, have completely disappeared.
A little over 20 years ago, Purdue Pharma realized that if they could develop a market for their powerful opioid drugs that were restricted for use by cancer patients nearing the end of their lives, the potential for huge profits existed. So, they got busy developing a sales campaign to break through doctors’ fears of their patients dying from opioid overdoses.
They built their promotion campaign on supposed testimonials & evidence from doctors that didn’t even exist, and pain became the enemy. Patients had the right to enjoy pain-free lives not only on their death beds but from everyday chronic pain due to back problems, headaches, you name it. Arthur Sackler was the key figure in the Sackler family that owned Purdue Pharma & he micromanaged down to the smallest details, this campaign of subversion & deceit.
Sackler was successful in bribing a medical officer at the FDA, Curtis Wright, to vouch for the safety & efficacy of Purdue’s powerful new opioid, Oxycontin, which is a time-released drug. Moreover, Purdue assured doctors & patients that the likelihood of addiction was less than 1%. Armed with this fraudulent testimony and approval by the FDA, Purdue unleashed an army of sales reps to spread their pack of lies, and Purdue’s profits steadily grew to the point where they became the largest & wealthiest drug manufacturers in America.
Along with their profits, the death counts due to overdoses also grew. The Sacklers knew that if they could persuade doctors to write ever higher doses of Oxycontin prescriptions, patients would become addicted & would become steady customers for life. Purdue also knew that once people became addicted, they would pay the increasing prices for the drug & salesmen were pressured to keep on pushing doctors to not only increase the dosage levels, but to also expand the number of patients they could get hooked on Oxycontin.
The poor and often injured miners of small Appalachian mining towns were among the first targets of this heartless, greedy, & indifferent corporation. In fact, the popularity of Oxycontin in these communities grew to the point where it was dubbed, Hillbilly Heroin. Many miners become seriously injured on the job & therefore they became the lab rats so-to-speak, for Purdue. And their teenage children became curious about this wonder drug that obviously made their fathers feel so good. Appalachian teenagers began dying in ever greater numbers due to their experimentation with Oxycontin.
Of course, this alarming & drastic increase in teenage deaths couldn’t ever have reached such mindboggling levels were it not for the collusion of government officials along the way. Here is a brief overview of some of the more prominent colluders in this dark tale of death and destruction.
Senator Chris Dodd defended Purdue Pharma (it’s the addict’s fault)
Remember the Dodd-Frank Act that was supposed to protect consumers after the 2008 Crash, yeah right!
Dodd received campaign donations ten times higher than other politicians from Purdue
Enter Rudy Giuliani on Purdue’s side
Rudy Giuliani, “America’s mayor” on 9/11 & he soaked-up the celebrity for years & then became Trump’s butt-boy!
Two of the government’s top prosecutors blocked the requirement for Purdue’s top executives to testify in court
The Dept. of Justice manufactured a press release to make the deal between Purdue & the government for its crimes look tough i.e., a $600 million fine (after making tens of billions in profits)
After the settlement, Purdue doubled down on its manufacture & sales of Oxycontin
Purdue made $3 billion the first year after their settlement in 2007
The “Prosecution Memo” was buried by the Justice Dept.
2013 enter Fentanyl, 100 times more powerful than heroin
Other drug manufacturers followed Purdue’s model after they saw the relative slap on the wrist for Purdue’s crimes
DEA investigators became suspicious when they saw opioid orders jump from a few thousand to tens of thousands suddenly
The DEA had the power to file an “Immediate Suspension of Registration” which could shut down a drug manufacturer overnight for suspicious activity
DEA lawyer/enforcer, Linden Barber, used this power more than any other DEA lawyers
Linden Barber, sold the American people out for wealth
Enter Jamie Gorelick, the Deputy Attorney General (second most powerful law official in
represents Amazon, BP, is fighting against student loan reform, represented Fannie Mae in $10 billion accounting scandal, & wants govt. to be able to break encrypted communications
the U.S.) to represent Cardinal Drug Manufacturing, one of the top four manufacturers
She was appointed by Bill Clinton (look her up for some of her other infamous clients)
Purdue, Cardinal, & the other drug manufacturers didn’t like the DEA’s ability to shut them down overnight, so they joined together in a campaign of bribery targeting key politicians
A bill was written up that slightly changed the language of the law allowing the DEA to shut a company down (Immediate Suspension of Registration) & not a single congressman or President Obama uttered a peep of objection
Cardinal hired the former DEA lawyer/enforcer, Linden Barber, who had left the DEA & opened his own practice defending drug manufacturers
Barber, knowing the DEA’s weak spots from having worked for it for years, crafted the language of the new law that gutted its power in the war against the corrupt drug manufacturers
Trump’s pick for drug czar, Tom Marino, was forced to withdraw from accepting the post because of his bill that blocked federal agents from going after big pharma firms
Well as I said, that was just an overview of justice in America regarding the righteous War on Drugs. Over half a million American citizens have died from opioid overdoses in the past 20 years but nothing must impede the holy pursuit of profits by the corporate cockroaches!
I’m going to end this essay by offering several of my personal speculations on this deadly subject that has perhaps cost American taxpayers trillions of dollars not to mention the horrific personal costs in terms of lives ruined & families destroyed.
If you’re near my age, you probably remember that it was President Nixon who officially launched the War on Drugs. Well, Nixon ran on a platform of promising to withdraw U.S. troops from the Vietnam war & as soon as he won, he escalated the war. Millions of young people were outraged & many of them were student protestors & hippies who smoked pot & experimented with other drugs. I submit that Nixon launched his War on Drugs as an excuse to lock up & silence many of his young critics.
Could it be that our politicians & the power elite actually don’t want to ever end this charade of a war on drugs because at its root, it’s a useful tool for helping them control us & especially black Americans? Why black Americans? Because they have been fucked over by the ruling class from the beginning of our country & they have suffered more deeply than any other segment of our society. Why do you think they are shot & killed almost daily?
America’s original police forces were called slave patrols & I submit that they still are. This opioid crisis we’re going through illustrates just how little the poor, the people of color, etc. matter to the status quo. To them, we are superfluous (unnecessary) especially in this age of high tech that was created with our tax dollars. And our last useful function is as prisoners where they not only profit from our incarceration but also our forced labor.
Another aspect of our suppression & oppression is what Edward Snowden revealed. If you watch Laura Poitras’ film, Citizen Four, about Snowden’s meeting with her & Glenn Greenwald in Hong Kong after his escape from the NSA site in Hawaii with the treasure trove of classified material, Snowden said in passing that the illegal NSA spying on all Americans is about control.
I think it was very wise of Snowden to not belabor this point because it would’ve made him look like some conspiracy nut from Alex Jonesville. Reflect on this, the massive, data collection center the government built & is operating in Utah is supposedly for helping to protect us from terrorist attacks. This is total bullshit!
If you watch the film, The Looming Towers which is about how 9/11 happened, it’s clear that both the C.I.A. & the F.B.I. had ample evidence about the impending attacks but because of petty rivalry, they didn’t share vital information with each other. This is the tragic & often repeated scenario in many crises the U.S. has faced. We don’t need more data or information on terrorist suspects, we need to figure out how to get around the asinine, petty egos of our so-called intelligence agencies.
Snowden and others have warned us repeatedly that the massive storage facility in Utah & elsewhere true purpose is control over the U.S. public. And if any of us become a threat in their minds, they can cherry pick data from our lives to frame us & build a legal case against us so they can shut us up by locking us up in prison.
An article by Forbes estimates the storage capacity as between 3 and 12 exabytes as of 2013,
In conclusion, there are other examples of how control over us is the true or bottom-line agenda of the power elite but I’ll leave that for you to explore. My objective in this essay was to highlight just how little our supposed leaders care about us. Is it any wonder that we’re just about the only “developed nation,” that doesn’t have a national health care program, so we don’t have to fear getting sick & losing our homes?
A key factor in controlling a nation’s population is fear and the 1% who de facto own & control America are very adept at keeping us afraid of one another i.e., FOX “news,” for example. And fear of black people is a tried-and-true technique even though white collar crime is far more deadly i.e., the opioid crisis.
P.S. If you’d like to get a much more thorough explanation of all this, check out this interview with the venerable, Noam Chomsky at https://chomsky.info/199804__-2/
Addendum
I finished this piece two days ago & have been wrestling with myself as to whether I should include this. This isn’t just another political essay among the hundreds that I’ve written over the years, no, this is a subject that touched me and my family deeply. On August 31, 1975, my mom found my brother dead, lying across her bed dead with the needle he’d used to inject himself with heroin, sticking out of his arm.
I knew he had been shooting heroin for quite some time & had even told our mother that he was doing so but she was in denial & refused to face the truth. I beat him up, I hugged him and told him that I loved him & I even called the cops on him once all to no avail. A week or so before he died, I got a message from a friend that my brother wanted me to call him but I didn’t because I’d given up on him. I was 22 years old and my brother, Tim, was 18. My world was turned upside down. I still wrestle with guilt over Tim’s death and I’m now 70 years old.
This essay is about the tens if not hundreds of thousands of people who became addicted to opioids purposely by giant, pharmaceutical corporations & turned to heroin when they could no longer afford the outrageous prices for the Oxycontin pills along with the other variants. These heartless companies turned their consumers into junkies and the devastation is incalculable. And our members of Congress either couldn’t be bothered to read the bill that allowed Big Pharma to keep on manufacturing their death pills or they simply didn’t give a fuck. Tell me again about what a wonderful country we are.
I came from a working-class background & I will always be a working-class guy. The town I grew up in — my adolescence through my twenties — is Paramount. It’s an inner-city, industrially zoned town across the L.A. riverbed from the infamous Compton which for a while had the highest murder rate in America & was where the notorious street gang, the Crips, originated.
In other words, I didn’t grow-up in any Leave it to Beaver or Ozzie & Harriet idyllic community. And I have hated & fought against bullies my entire life. I see my writing as another form of continuing my fight against bullies. The rich & especially the super-rich have bullied everyone who is not as wealthy as them throughout history. If I come across as preaching in my writing, I apologize. My intention is to teach through my writing with the goal of helping others to understand how we ended up with towns like Compton & Paramount and perpetually behind the eight-ball socially, economically, & politically.
At first, reading & books were my escape from the ugly reality that was my family life. But somewhere in my twenties, light bulbs began to go on in my mind & the subjects of philosophy, political science, history, & literature showed me the interconnections, the hows, whys, & ways that the rich were fucking us all. I began to see that knowledge truly is a great, empowering tool for our liberation from slavery by the master class.
Benedict Arnold & his teacher.
In fact, you might find it hard to believe but conservatively, I’d guesstimate that in the last 30 years alone, I have spent 50,000 hours reading, writing, researching, etc. in the subjects I mentioned above. And no, I’m not saying this makes me an “expert” or a genius, but I have done my homework. So, excuse me if I sound a bit pompous or like an authority at times.
I started this essay with the quote by Adam Smith because it sums up the basic belief of the so-called 1% who de facto call all the shots behind the scenes, most notably behind the charade of Congress that is supposed to represent us but actually doesn’t give a shit whether we live or die.
Pissing on the Public!
I chose this particular quote by Adam Smith because he is often referred to as the “Father of Capitalism,” and this form of capitalism has caused so much death & destruction around the planet & continues to do so that if we don’t wake-up & organize ourselves to fight it, it may be the end of us all?
What really saddens me about this quote is that this perspective has spread to millions of working-class people around the world. Our most powerful defense against the powers that be is our numbers & if we are to be successful in this class warfare, we need to realize that solidarity is crucial.
Greenspan was considered the God of financial wisdom by both parties for decades then, oops! Sorry guys, guess I was wrong?
The status quo has been cranking-out their propaganda for decades to divide us & thereby weaken us as a force.
In the middle of his presidency, Ronald Reagan created a secret agency known as the Office of Public Diplomacy (OPD) with one nefarious purpose in mind: propaganda. This was no ordinary propaganda. It was deemed “white propaganda,” designed to be used on the American people. https://listverse.com/2015/01/15/10-reprehensible-crimes-of-ronald-reagan/
George Orwell said in his classic 1984 that the true enemy of Big Brother (the government) isn’t foreign but rather, its own citizens. This isn’t Alex Jones bullshit conspiracy, but most Americans have been so well indoctrinated that they believe it’s only the Russians & Chinese who use propaganda against their own citizens.
The Office of Public Diplomacy for Latin America and the Caribbean (S/LPD or ARA/LPD) was an intra-agency propaganda organization[1][2] established in the United States during the administration of Ronald Reagan. It was founded and managed by the Cuban-American Otto Reich, an ardent opponent of Fidel Castro.
In theory, the S/LPD operated under the auspices of the Department of State, but congressional investigations later determined it reported directly to Reagan’s National Security Council aide in the White House, Colonel Oliver North. The S/LPD collaborated with Central Intelligence Agencypropaganda experts and Army psychological operations specialists to disseminate what it called “white propaganda” with the goal of influencing public opinion and spurring Congress to continue to fund the Reagan administration’s military campaign against Nicaragua‘s Sandinista government. By covertly disseminating intelligence leaks to journalists, it sought to trump up a Nicaraguan “threat,” and to sanctify the U.S.-backed Contraguerrillas fighting Nicaragua’s government as “freedom fighters.” — Wikipedia
I could list hundreds of examples of U.S. propaganda used to brainwash us but here’s just a sampling.
We’ve all heard family members, friends, co-workers, etc. complain, why should I be forced to pay taxes for other peoples’ kids to go to school, for programs like Head Start, for food stamps, health care for lazy people who don’t want to work, etc. etc. etc.
Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum, two of the most dangerous & destructive presidents we’ve ever had.
Because they don’t teach the truth about the world, schools have to rely on beating students over the head with propaganda about democracy. If schools were, in reality, democratic, there would be no need to bombard students with platitudes about democracy. They would simply act and behave democratically, and we know this does not happen. The more there is a need to talk about the ideals of democracy, the less democratic the system usually is. (Noam Chomsky)
I’ll tell you why you should pay those taxes, because if we make sure that all kids have food in their bellies when they start their school day, they are better able to concentrate & less likely to be a behavior problem in their classrooms. In turn, this allows their teachers to be more effective because they don’t have to waste their time dealing with behavior problems & the other students aren’t cheated out of the time they need to learn & prosper.
I speak from experience here because I was an educator for over 20 years. And it’s a national disgrace that many schools in the poor areas like Paramount & Compton, often don’t even have enough textbooks for every student & many of their classrooms are little more than warehouses where we attempt to keep them contained until the end of the school day.
Kids may not be able to articulate what’s going on, but they know they’re being screwed & that kids who go to schools in places like Beverly Hills have it a thousand times better than they do. The poor students often grow up angry & turn to gangs for a sense of belonging & people who care about them. This in turn makes our communities more dangerous & it just becomes one horrific, vicious cycle that is far more costly to us all than if we’d treated them fairly from the beginning.
kids & those not blinded by the adult “realities” of life can see the Truth
And from the much bigger picture that I alluded to earlier i.e. class warfare, think how much more powerful we’d become if all our children had a top-notch education. Again, the 1% want a nation of illiterates or barely literate citizens because they’re more susceptible to the propaganda designed to keep us divided & blaming one another for our troubles rather than them who become obscenely wealthy while more & more of us become homeless.
You may think I’m saying we should become a communist country, but you’d be wrong. No, I believe we should follow the model of countries like Sweden, Norway, Denmark, etc. And I have visited Denmark & Sweden and several other European countries in my vagabonding days — I’ve been to Europe a dozen times — sometimes on a one-way ticket & landing with a couple hundred bucks in my pocket. Yeah, they pay what seems outlandish taxes, but they have the best public education through college absolutely free, the same for medical care, clean & safe modern apartments, etc. The way I look at it is, if all your basic necessities are taken care of, the rest of your money is all for luxuries or whatever you want.
I believe to the marrow of my bones that every human being has a natural right to be treated with dignity & it’s inhumane to force people to suffer humiliation, degradation, needless suffering, fear, etc. just so an elite can live like kings. Bottom-line, if you don’t care about those less fortunate than yourself & don’t want to pay taxes to help them but are silent when it comes to our throwing trillions down the bottomless pit we call the Pentagon, I don’t want to even know you or be around you. And some day, you could find yourself in a lifeboat from a ship that just sunk & with a handful of those “undesirables” who may know what kind of person you are & may not help you survive because you are clearly one of the heartless who has no compassion or empathy for his fellow man.
While Reagan was unleashing the dark, satanic forces of neoliberalism on America, Maggie Thatcher was doing likewise on Great Britain
Okay, onward to the broad & rather vague or nebulous term, “Neoliberalism.” To be honest, neoliberalism has only come to my attention in the last several years though it’s been a powerful force for at least the last 40 years. And as usual with the propaganda put out by the corporate cockroaches via the corporate media, they’ve disguised it behind their favorite trigger words like freedom, democracy, patriotism, etc. and of course it’s wrapped in the American flag.
I want to reiterate that I’m a working class stiff & as such, I write for the kind of people like my relatives & the friends I grew up with who mostly just went to high school. So, I’m not going to attempt to give you all the lofty & deceptive economic jargon. Quite simply, neoliberalism is comprised of three programs of assault they employ against us, Deregulation, Privatization, & Austerity. I want to begin by sharing a passage from my intellectual & moral hero, Noam Chomsky.
Throughout history, Adam Smith observed, we find the workings of “the vile maxim of the masters of mankind”: “All for ourselves, and nothing for other People.” He had few illusions about the consequences. The invisible hand, he wrote, will destroy the possibility of a decent human existence “unless government takes pains to prevent” this outcome, as must be assured in “every improved and civilized society.” It will destroy community, the environment and human values generally — and even the masters themselves, which is why the business classes have regularly called for state intervention to protect them from market forces.
Notes of NAFTA: “The Masters of Man”
Noam Chomsky
The Nation, March, 1993
By the way my imaginary reader, if you’re interested in gaining a truly, top-notch political education, read everything you can get your hands on by Noam Chomsky!
“Peer through the lens of neoliberalism and you see more clearly how the political thinkers most admired by Thatcher and Reagan helped shape the ideal of society as a kind of universal market (and not, for example, a polis, a civil sphere or a kind of family) and of human beings as profit-and-loss calculators (and not bearers of grace, or of inalienable rights and duties). Of course the goal was to weaken the welfare state and any commitment to full employment, and – always – to cut taxes and deregulate. But “neoliberalism” indicates something more than a standard rightwing wish list. It was a way of reordering social reality, and of rethinking our status as individuals.” https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/aug/18/neoliberalism-the-idea-that-changed-the-world
The leading student of business propaganda, Australian social scientist Alex Carey, argues persuasively that the 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy. — Noam Chomsky
You may think I’m beating a dead horse in regard to propaganda but if anything, I’m understating the seriousness of the issue. Do you recall our Pentagon war strategists during the Vietnam war & their “Winning the Hearts & Minds” of the Vietnamese people while we bombed the Hell out of them?
“The war could have never been won in terms of the employment of firepower. The solution to winning the war was to cause reform in the government, to win the hearts and minds of the people.” (David Hackworth)
If you haven’t heard of Colonel Hackworth, shame on you. He served in both Korea & Vietnam and was a living legend. He was often in trouble with his superiors because he’d ignore their stupid commands & he created an outfit that turned the guerilla tactics of Mao against the North Vietnamese & was highly effective. He was shot more than any other soldier since WWII I believe & was awarded over 90 medals & etc. But around 1971, he couldn’t remain silent any longer & started speaking out against our involvement in Vietnam & the Pentagon’s propaganda dept. went after him by trying to destroy his credibility.
Returning to the main topic, neoliberalism, here’s a long view historically speaking that came to me a few days ago. This may be an example of the cyclical view of history in that it repeats itself, and I see the precursors of neoliberalism in this perspective.
It began with the Great Depression, which was caused by the Stock Market crash of 1929, the massive number of bank failures, etc. It lasted from 1929 to 1939 and largely due to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal programs, we slowly pulled out of it. All you “MAGA” fans of Trump & Reagan should note that if it weren’t for the federal government’s assistance, which might’ve spelled the end of America.
You see, the neoliberals have been spreading their propaganda that the government is the cause of all our problems & refuse to see that in fact, it’s the corporate greed of the 1% & the Wolves of Wall St. who are the de facto culprits. And amazingly, even though the federal government bailed Wall St. out after their corruption & greed had dealt such a body-blow to America, the power elite immediately started waging their propaganda campaign against the government.
F.D.R.’s “New Deal” which by-the-way would’ve never happened were it not for the solidarity & continual pressure of the American public who had suffered so long & hard. In fact, several of our richest business tycoons were so outraged by being forced to “give” some of their wealth in the form of taxes for New Deal programs, that they planned & organized a coup against F.D.R. If it hadn’t been for the true patriot, Smedley F. Butler whom they approached to lead their coup, the United States might very well have become a fascist tyranny overnight. Butler was another amazing soldier beloved by hundreds of thousands of soldiers whom he’d led in his career.
Fast forward to January 6th & Trump’s attempted coup, another one of the supposed 1% who’s mantra is “All for ourselves and nothing for other People.” And were it not for all the government loans & subsidies that Trump has received over the years along with his fraud, corruption, & Mafia buddies, he’d probably be selling vacuum cleaners door-to-door.
The darling of Reagan, Alan Greenspan, Paul Ryan, etc. who railed against welfare or help of any kind to the poor but in her last years she was on welfare & medicare.
The key point to bear in mind in my cyclical view of history is the nearly total worldwide economic meltdown of 2008. Thanks again to deregulation, specifically Bill Clinton’s repeal of F.D.R.’s Glass Steagall Act, which the supposedly conservative republicans had been trying to do since Reagan was in power, billions of hard-working citizens around the world lost their homes, their jobs, their pensions, their savings, their health care.
Except this time, after the federal government bailed-out the Wolves of Wall St. yet again, and they didn’t put it in writing that the banks had to ease up & make loans for individuals who needed help for either starting up their small businesses or keeping their small businesses from going bankrupt.
Again, and again it’s clear, the government will do everything within its power to protect the uber rich but could give a shit less about the 99% of us who are left to sink or swim on our own & pay our taxes. This is neoliberalism!
Deregulation, Privatization, & Austerity are their weapons of choice & how they are destroying the last vestiges of Democracy & turning America into a fascist, corporate tyranny owned lock, stock, & barrel by the billionaire class that so many of our citizens idolize.
“Reagan installs neoliberalism
From the 1930s to 1981, a period of time spanning more than two full generations, the American political and economic system was run under a “well-regulated capitalism” system conceived by economist John Maynard Keynes and put into place in 1933 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
A top income tax bracket of 91% that kicked in at around $3 million a year in today’s money guaranteed that nobody became obscenely rich, while strong protections for workers and their right to unionize ensured that a good chunk of corporate profits went to the workers who created that revenue.” https://www.salon.com/2021/08/15/the-crisis-of-neoliberalism-america-arrives-at-one-of-historys-gre
“Friedman, Reagan and the wealthy funders of the Republican Party saw this inflation, which was devastating the Jerry Ford and Jimmy Carter one-term presidencies, as a political gift. To a man, they insisted it was caused by FDR’s and LBJ’s “welfare state” policies and the “big spending” associated with them, even though that was a complete lie.” (ibid.)
“America, shaken by that decade of seemingly intractable inflation, bought his sales pitch and Reaganomics — aka neoliberalism — became the operational economic and political system of America in 1981. Everything from trickle-down to busting unions to “ending welfare as we know it” and “tough on crime” policing fell under this single rubric.” (ibid.)
“Reagan’s destruction of American unions had also dried up the Democratic Party’s main revenue source, so by 1992 jumping into bed with giant corporations and the super-rich had become a political survival strategy for Democrats. ”
Embracing multinational corporations that wanted to move their expensive-labor manufacturing facilities overseas meant overflowing campaign coffers for the newly-neoliberal Democratic Party and Clinton’s political arm, the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC).” (ibid.)
The final nail in the regulatory coffin was the Bill Clinton administration (1993-2001). Clinton repealed laws and prevented government intervention in speculative markets, until they collapsed. These deregulations built upon the Nixon-Reagan era and ultimately contributed to the Crash of 2007, the Crisis of 2008 and the ongoing Recession. https://truthout.org/articles/out-of-control-a-brief-history-of-neoliberal-deregulation-in-the-usa/
“While Obama, like Clinton, had campaigned on themes that made it seem he was rejecting neoliberalism, in fact he was as deeply in its camp as were Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush.
By the time of his presidency neoliberalism was simply conventional wisdom in political circles, having been adopted in the U.K. in 1978 by Margaret Thatcher and in large part adopted by much of the rest of Europe in the 1990s and early 2000s. Onward to Davos to party with the neoliberal billionaires!
But still, as noble and soaring as Obama’s rhetoric was, and as good and decent a man as he was (in contrast to the war criminal and torturer Bush, the horny Clinton or the evil Nixon), neoliberalism still wasn’t working for anybody except America’s biggest corporations and richest individuals. And American workers knew it.
Enter Donald Trump, the political equivalent of the Little Boy Who Said the Emperor Has No Clothes. Trump attacked the neoliberal policies of both parties, although never directly using the word.” (ibid.)
Willful ignorance on full display!
I could provide a lot of financial doublespeak & jargon but that would only bore you. And if your curiosity is aroused, you can do some research on your own, but I want to make clear that our financial troubles aren’t just the fault of the GOP.
Obviously, Clinton played a major role in the destruction of the American middle class but even the beloved Jimmy Carter had a hand in the hollowing-out of our democracy. Moreover, if democrats & liberals were aware of Carter’s role in the assault on Central America, they wouldn’t continue to portray him as a saint.
Returning to deregulation, here’s a perhaps simplistic but nevertheless important fact to keep in mind.
Without rules and control from the government, businesses can commit fraud more easily, putting consumers at risk.
One way President Biden can “Build Back Better” be following the example of one of the greatest deregulators to sit in the Oval Office: Jimmy Carter. Whilst most think of Carter as a standard New Deal-Great Society liberal, deregulation was a major part of Carter’s economic agenda and one of the greatest aspects of his legacy. It’s something that Carter and Reagan had in common, not something that set them apart. https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/jimmy-carter-the-great-deregulator/
Over the past four decades or better, the more I’ve dug into the connections or interdependence of the behemoth corporations, our political system, & our economic system, the more nauseous I have become. Every now & then when a company, a corporation, or a conglomerate of corporations gets busted for wrongdoing, we hear the same old, “it was just a few bad apples,” or “they were the exception to the rule.” Well, this is simply bullshit, fraud isn’t the exception, it’s the rule & the higher up the food chain, in terms of wealth, you go, the more prevalent it is.
I wrote an essay years ago which I titled, “The Business of America is Fraud,” and as the years have passed, my convictions have only been strengthened. And “our” government has utterly failed us ad infinitum. The old adage our grandparents & great grandparents followed, “Buyer Beware,” were/are so fuckin’ true or right. I’m just sharing a few examples with you in this essay of the fraud & corruption that has permeated nearly every crevice of our society & culture. But if you don’t want to become just another victim to the unbridled greed of the 1%, the so-called “Masters of the Universe,” all I can advise is that you put away your “Smart phone,” which is actually making you dumber, and you get busy informing yourself to help protect your loved ones.
Last night I stumbled across a movie from 2019 called, “The Devil Has a Name,” and once again I couldn’t believe that our fuckin’ government didn’t step in to protect us, the consumers and citizens of this wonderful nation.
You’d think that after 40 years or better of studying the corruption in big business & our political system, not much could surprise me, but it still does. I brought up this film because it’s an excellent example of the destructive consequences of neoliberalism or the capture of our political system by what I call the corporate cockroaches.
In brief, for several decades, the oil companies who own those oil derricks pumping oil out of the ground in California’s Central Valley, have been pumping the toxic water that comes from sucking the oil out of the land, into unlined ponds which then leak into the groundwater & contaminate and poison the crops adjacent to the oil fields.
Therefore, California’s Central Valley, which produces roughly half the nuts, fruits, & vegetables which feed our nation, is selling us food that is carcinogenic. So much for all the vegan health nuts & their arrogance & sense of superiority. There’s no other way to put it other than the water companies & the oil companies’ collusion for the sake of ever greater profits clearly outweighs the public’s health & safety. https://psmag.com/environment/california-oil-field-waste-is-threatening-water-supplies
Perhaps the most important takeaway from this film & the issue raised in the film of companies getting busted for illegal & dangerous practices but, they usually just pay a relatively small fine & return to doing the same crime. You see, corporations are about one thing i.e., maximizing their profits & as long as the government just gives them a slap on the wrist, they’ll continue in their destructive behaviors because it basically always boils down to cost-benefit analysis & they even have a term for this i.e. “Net Present Value.”
Remember what I said earlier about the business of America is fraud? I’ll tell you one thing, you can be damn sure that the power elite or the 1% who de facto own America, don’t buy or eat the food produced in California’s Central Valley. They most likely have their own, private organic farms where they know the soil, water, etc. used to grow their food is 100% pure.
Getting back to deregulation, Reagan was probably the most deregulating president we’ve had since neoliberalism began to infest our country. If you recall, one of the first acts Reagan passed after he became president in his first term, was to fire the air traffic controllers who were on strike, for life.
The air traffic controllers were rightfully concerned about the dangerous overcrowding in the skies & the serious understaffing of air traffic controllers so the airlines could increase their profits. Many of the controllers were forced to work long shifts & this of course increased the likelihood of accidents because the more tired a person is, the less sharp & alert their senses are. Think about that the next time you’re on a flight!
Reagan has always been a corporate lackey or lapdog & I’m old enough to remember the television commercials made for G.E. for 20 years as he traveled around America as their official spokesman. He even dubbed it, “The Speech,” which basically boiled down to “The Commies Are Coming, The Commies Are Coming!” In short, Reagan’s job was to keep stoking the fear of the American public, you know, what FOX “News’” role has been for the past 25 years or better.
By-the-way, here’s another couple of interesting “fun facts” for you, G.E. was involved in building America’s first atomic bomb, the one used to vaporize hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians in Hiroshima. And the plutonium used came from the Hanford Nuclear Facility in Washington state. Moreover, there are countless newspaper articles from the 1950s about livestock raised along the Columbia River that were born with two heads & various other deformities. Our brilliant leaders allowed Hanford to bury the radioactive waste in cement containers which they buried & they soon began eroding into the groundwater that connected with the Columbia. Bon Appetit fellow citizens, Uncle Sam loves you! https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-05-07-vw-3730-story.html
Moving right along, here’s another fine example of good old deregulation, Enron. Do you remember our Howdy Doody president, Georgie “Dubya” Bush & his good friend, Ken Lay? Of course, as soon as Enron got busted, Dubya suddenly forgot Kenny boy as he used to call him & even though Kenny boy let Georgie use his private jet to fly around the country when he was running for the presidency, Bush dropped him like a hot potato when Enron’s grand scam was exposed.
The Enron scandal is a complex story of financial fraud & accounting and manipulation of the energy market with the help of Wall St. The key lesson is that once again, we see how fucked-up things can become when big business isn’t regulated or watched by “our” government. And for the record, when Enron was finally caught for all its illegal activities, especially its massive accounting fraud, it was the fifth largest business in America. Here is a significant snippet for your review.
After the passage of the deregulation law, California had a total of 38 Stage 3 rolling blackouts declared, until federal regulators intervened during June 2001.[60] These blackouts occurred as a result of a poorly designed market system that was manipulated by traders and marketers, as well as from poor state management and regulatory oversight. Subsequently, Enron traders were revealed as intentionally encouraging the removal of power from the market during California’s energy crisis by encouraging suppliers to shut down plants to perform unnecessary maintenance, as documented in recordings made at the time.[61][62] These acts contributed to the need for rolling blackouts, which adversely affected many businesses dependent upon a reliable supply of electricity, and inconvenienced a large number of retail customers. This scattered supply increased the price, and Enron traders were thus able to sell power at premium prices, sometimes up to a factor of 20 × its normal peak value. (Wikipedia)
By-the-way, something we should all keep in mind when these massive corporations occasionally are punished, they are allowed to file for bankruptcy & in many instances, they don’t even have to plead guilty & don’t even receive a criminal record for their crimes. And the cherry on top is that the IRS keeps cutting the number of auditors whose job it is to audit the wealthy & the major corporations while increasing their staff to audit average citizens. Yep! Another example of equality in America & our respect for Law & Order. Oh yeah, the IRS is also making it harder & harder for working class Americans to file for bankruptcy while streamlining the process for the corporate cockroaches. Aren’t you proud to be an American?
One last gem before I move on, remember my telling you that Jimmy Carter isn’t the good, little Christian he pretends to be & the overwhelming majority of democrats have portrayed him as a near saint? Well, Mr. Peanut signed the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 & he pushed Congress to deregulate the trucking industry & the railroad industry. I’ll leave you to research the deadly results of those pieces of legislation.
Onward & upward to weapon number two used in the class war by the corporate cockroaches, “Privatization.” My hero, Noam Chomsky, summed it up very simply like this (my paraphrase) when the neoliberals want to privatize a public service or program, they simply defund it & when it begins to fail, they suggest it be privatized because everyone knows that private companies/corporations due a much better job than the government does & for less money.
As I mentioned earlier, when FDR passed the New Deal, many, if not most of America’s business tycoons were outraged that the government was going to help the people who were suffering so terribly during the Great Depression. They didn’t want to be forced to help subsidize these “social welfare” programs, remember, the megalithic corporations who go belly-up because of their fraud & greed are the only ones worthy of help from the “nanny state,” the rest of us are supposed to rely only on ourselves as Reagan’s fictional favorite, Horatio Alger, & pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps.
Moreover, those faux conservatives who cry foul the loudest have a hidden agenda — as far as the average citizen is concerned — they seek to privatize the government-funded programs because they are usually made up of mostly democrats. And they have very large & enticing pots of money like public education.
This is the truth behind the G.O.P.’s war on public education. As Chomsky pointed out, they surreptitiously defund it at every opportunity & by-the-way, this serves their agenda in two respects, 1) it weakens our educational system, 2) with the introduction of charter schools, the G.O.P. gets the vote of millions of phony Christians because they can indoctrinate students with the Bible in charter schools, they can pray in school, & they can indoctrinate/brainwash the students with their hidden curricula.
“Christian” fundamentalists, evangelicals, extremists, etc. fear & hate Secular Humanism with a fierce passion because it’s basically about the principles & values of the Enlightenment or what America was founded upon & it adheres firmly to the separation of church & state. Our founding fathers were scholars of the Enlightenment & were therefore well aware of the centuries of deadly conflicts when the church was an official part of the government.
These self-professed “Christians” are obviously not true Christians because 74 million of them not only voted for Trump, but they support him wholeheartedly. And if I need to point out to you how obviously non-Christian Trump is, you have drunk his Jim Jones Kool-Aid & are part of the willfully ignorant & morally bankrupt.
The U.S. Postal Service is another powerful union & is made up of many democrats. So, the neoliberals passed one of the most outrageous acts ever.
An unprecedented congressional mandate threatens the Postal Service’s ability to continue to provide good jobs and universal service.
In 2006, Congress passed a law that imposed extraordinary costs on the U.S. Postal Service. The Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA) required the USPS to create a $72 billion fund to pay for the cost of its post-retirement health care costs, 75 years into the future. This burden applies to no other federal agency or private corporation.
If the costs of this retiree health care mandate were removed from the USPS financial statements, the Post Office would have reported operating profits in each of the last six years. This extraordinary mandate created a financial “crisis” that has been used to justify harmful service cuts and even calls for postal privatization. Additional cuts in service and privatization would be devastating for millions of postal workers and customers.
The third tool or weapon of mass destruction used by the neoliberal cabal to keep the rabble under their thumb is “Austerity.” You should take notice that whenever they bring up the importance of austerity, they’re referring to us, the 99%, not themselves.
We’re just the suckers who must pay all the bills & suffer the consequences of their financial “mistakes.” Their fraud, greed, theft, schemes tanked the entire world economy in 2008 but most of them pulled their money out just days before the crash & many of them awarded themselves lavish bonuses before their house of cards came falling down. But tens, if not hundreds of millions of people around the world lost their jobs, their pensions, their health insurance, etc. and were told, “You need to tighten your belts, suck it up, and get through it by following our recommended austerity measures.”
“However, by tracing the roots of these policies back to the rise of neoliberalism in the 1970s, Shefner and Blad show that the “medicine” of austerity actually serves as a cudgel to discipline and control countries across the world.
Since the 1970s, the aim of the neoliberal project in the Global South has been to use austerity as a hammer to destroy the region’s developmental capacity, discipline and control its labor force, and make their economies dependent on international capital. In the Global North, austerity, starting with the Reagan and Thatcher governments of the early 1980s, has slowly hammered away at worker protections, guaranteed pensions, access to health care, and access to well-funded public education. Despite the anti-state rhetoric of neoliberalism, its aim has not been to reduce the size of the state but to reduce state social services and public goods as much as possible by using austerity to privatize the costs of these services and goods, while socializing the costs of the increased public debt that governments have accumulated by providing bailouts and tax breaks to private financial institutions and multinational industries, and requiring those in the working class and middle class to foot the bill by paying higher taxes.” https://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2021/0521nawabi.html
Again, neoliberalism began to infect the U.S. economy under Jimmy Carter, but it was full steam ahead once Reagan & Maggie Thatcher were in power. Reagan announced to America & the rest of the world from day one of his presidency that America from now on would be a safe haven for corporations i.e., it was now open season on unions & anybody else who interfered with big business in the U.S. This was as crystal clear a declaration of war against the poor, the working class, & the middle class as possible for the 1% to make.
Trump rode his bandwagon of fear, hate, & racism all the way up the steps & into the White House, pretending that he too hated the government but licking his lips with anticipation at all the plundering he’d now be able to do while pretending to be a populist. And here we are in March of 2023 at the start of another banking crisis & Biden swearing that the 99% will not be stuck with the bill the deregulation of the financial sector has caused once again.
They’ll try to disguise this bailout by using new jargon & hiding the facts & details but mark my word, they’re preparing to fuck us yet again & wipe-out the remaining skeleton crew of social safety net programs. What’s worse, now that the neoliberals have significantly gutted most of our federal & state social safety net programs, they are gradually becoming bolder in their agenda to make significant cuts to Medicare & Social Security.
These used to be referred to as the “third rail” in politics because if a politician dared to suggest cuts to them, it was like stepping on an electrified railroad track & spelled the end of their political career. They still hide their true intentions in public, but the word is getting out & since any suggestion of cutting military funding is a death knell to a politician, they will continue their covert campaigns to push us into a nation of the completely destitute & the obscenely wealthy.
You may dismiss me as just another one of the crazy QAnon nuts, but have you noticed that the police in our major cities now resemble soldiers in the many wars we’re involved in? They no longer serve to protect the people & now they wear military uniforms & their duty is to protect the property of the wealthy. This is what our soldiers in all these foreign lands are fighting for? We are being occupied in our own country.
Remember my friend, they, the 1% are waging a de facto class war against all of us not a part of the power elite. And this isn’t that façade of a war they call a culture war. No, this is a matter of real life & death. Our water is poisoned if we are forced to live next to their factories & industrial plants. Why don’t they ever build these toxic plants next to cities like Beverly Hills?
I could go on & on with thousands of examples of how the corporate cockroaches are endangering & poisoning us and our loved ones, but you’re already aware of these facts. The question is, how much longer are we going to allow them to oppress us, degrade & humiliate us, and to poison us?
Upon reflection, I realize that it’s probably not wise of me to assume the general awareness of the public regarding just how consistent the poisoning has been or rather, the interconnections between the rich getting richer & the rest of us dying in ever greater numbers?
We often hear the titans of business, industry, & finance in America whining or proclaiming in self-righteous indignation that the “nanny state” is guilty of coddling the public with its social “safety net” programs which only encourage laziness & dependence. Yet every time the corporate giants & Wall St. face a crisis, the first thing they do is go begging to the “nanny state,” for help, for bailouts, for subsidies, etc. I guess they just suffer from temporary amnesia when it suits them?
America’s greediest pig ever who crawled out of the swamp & onto the farmlands of America like a snake-oil con man.
Like everything else out of the corporate cockroaches’ mouths, their claims about the marvels of America’s capitalist system are a lie & a pernicious fraud. Here is an insight from America’s greatest champion, Noam Chomsky.
Finkel: How do you assess the Bush administration, especially in terms of domestic policies? Where does it continue the Reagan era and where is it a departure?
Chomsky: It’s a continuation of the Carter-Reagan policies. Remember that the Reagan policies were proposed by Carter, who didn’t have the muscle to push them through. Carter proposed essentially the military buildup that Reagan carried through, except that Reagan escalated it more rapidly in the beginning and leveled it off later.
The Carter administration also proposed to attack welfare spending and the social support system for the poorer sectors, which the Reagan administration then carried through with bipartisan support. What these policies amounted to is turning the state, even more than before, into a welfare state for the rich: a much more interventionist state that pours public resources into high-technology industry and distributes resources away from the poor, combined with attacks on labor and civil rights. Don’t forget that it was Clinton & Biden who slashed our welfare system for the poor & the working class!
The Welfare Queen who enjoys molesting & raping beauty queens.
It’s objectively a sound policy, I believe, for the privileged and powerful in an internationally complicated environment. They’ve internationalized capital to take advantage of cheap labor abroad, and intensified the class war that business has always waged against labor and the disadvantaged. https://chomsky.info/1991____02/
Chomsky has pointed out in thoroughly footnoted & documented detail in books for decades that America is not a capitalist economy but rather, a State/Capitalist system. Our government intervenes consistently in the operation/running of our economy & overwhelmingly on the side of private corporations. In fact, the corruption has become so brazen that in effect, the corporate behemoths’ lawyers de facto write the legislative laws that “govern” business affairs in the U.S. See “A.L.E.C.” (American Legislative Exchange Council) https://www.alecexposed.org/wiki/What_is_ALEC
This is what they call the Free Market & fair competition.
Yep! The good old “free market” and “Capitalism” in all their glorious hypocrisy. And don’t forget “free trade,” another one of those pernicious myths that were created to brainwash us into believing that ours is the best economic & political system in the world. If you’d care to empower yourself, I strongly recommend “The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market” by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway. I just started reading it a couple of weeks ago & I’m sure that I’m going to learn a lot from it. Here’s a link to an interview with Naomi Oreskes on a radio show I’ve been listening to for over 40 years, Background Briefing with Ian Mastershttps://www.backgroundbriefing.org/2023/02/26/background-briefing-february-26-2023/
In a nutshell, a corporation’s top priority is to make as much profit as possible so it can continue to grow & increase the profits for its shareholders. You may think, well, of course, this is simple common sense. But have you heard of what they call “Externalities?” This is where “common sense” goes right out the window and the monstrous side of corporations is revealed.
Recently I was watching a You Tube video clip of Noam Chomsky, and he commented that the economic collapse of 2008 was one of these “externalities,” and I felt as if I had been struck by lightning or had an epiphany. I had never thought of that.
Externalities are basically any costs of doing business that corporations can pass on to the public and claim that they aren’t their responsibility. Many, if not most of these “costs” are often clearly connected/related to the corporations’ business. And the ramifications of Wall St.’s “housing bubble” that resulted in the near total collapse of the world’s economy is truly mind-numbing!
An estimated 10 million people lost their homes in the U.S. alone thanks to the fraud of Wall St. in its “housing bubble scams.” Anywhere from six to twelve million Americans lost their jobs.
“According to the report, entitled “Cost of the Crisis“, the financial and economic crisis cost Americans $12.8 trillion, including:
But $12.8 trillion is a conservative estimate, says Better Markets president & CEO Dennis Kelleher, who joined The Daily Ticker’s Henry Blodget in the accompanying interview.
The report also highlights the current impact to the U.S. economy, including:
1 million Americans, or 15% of the public, are out of work or unable to find full-time jobs using the broadest measure of unemployment, or U-6.
3 million Americans have lost their health insurance.
11 million homeowners, almost 1 in 4, are saddled with mortgages higher than the value of their homes.” DP during the period. DP during the period.
This is from an article at yahoo finance.
“ A dramatic spike in suicides between 2008 and 2010 can be linked with the economic crisis, according to a study published today in the British Journal of Psychiatry.
Researchers from the University of Oxford compared suicide data from before 2007 with the years of the crisis and found more than 10,000 “economic suicides” associated with the recession across the U.S., Canada and Europe.
‘There has been a substantial rise in suicides during the recession, considerably more than we would have expected based on previous trends,” says lead author Aaron Reeves, a postdoctoral researcher in the sociology department at Oxford University.
Remember, the greed & unregulated corruption and fraud of Wall St. bankers, hedge fund managers, the insurance behemoth A.I.G., the corruption of the three major credit rating agencies, etc. became fabulously wealthy because their criminal behavior was basically considered an “externality,” and the public was stuck with the bill and forced to bail them out because they were “too big to fail.”
As Chomsky has pointed out time and time again, “Capitalism for the 99% of us and Socialism for the 1%,” who look down upon us as peons & consider themselves the “Masters of Mankind,” because they write the laws in Congress with their bought and paid for politicians.
Oh, it gets better my friend. Here are a few more examples of “externalities” sure to warm your heart:
The toxic contamination of nearby rivers, lakes, aquifers, oceans, etc. whether willfully or innocently
The pollution of the air so terribly that it causes respiratory problems & death of the nearby residents.
The poisoning of the soil and the food supply i.e., Monsanto’s GMO foods
The death of tens, if not hundreds of thousands of animal species & plant life
What they euphemistically call “climate change” but more accurately, climate destruction & the end of life on Earth
The infrastructure necessary for companies/corporations to conduct their business i.e., roads, highways, airports, harbors, bridges, tunnels, etc.
The police who protect their businesses & property and the military who protect their companies overseas from angry citizens who they exploit and invade & occupy their countries (see Smedley F. Butler)</li>
I’m sure there are many other examples of externalities that corporations & their owners, the 1%, believe they shouldn’t have to pay for. We hear them complaining & we see them dodging paying their fair share of taxes ad nauseam i.e., Trump. But we are the leeches, the moochers, the unpatriotic bums.
A lot of Americans don’t realize that corporations are private tyrannies. And this isn’t hyperbole, Chomsky has repeatedly shown us this for most of his career. When you walk through the door of the company you work for, the Bill of Rights is de facto null & void. The owner is in effect a tyrant or a dictator. They can search your work locker whenever they choose & don’t need probable cause or a search warrant. They can surveil your phone calls & spy on you when you’re using their restrooms. Some employees are fortunate & may have a benevolent tyrant and others, like Amazon employees, aren’t so lucky.
Moreover, to really rub salt in our wounds, we, as taxpayers are forced to subsidize many of the wealthiest, corporate conglomerates on the planet like the oil industry, big pharma, high tech, big agriculture, automobiles, & health care.
Take the world-wide Web for example. The research for developing it came mostly via the Pentagon and its funding of the research through mostly M.I.T. And once they began to realize the vast money earning potential of the Web, the government turns over the research funded by our tax dollars to private corporations so they can reap all the rewards i.e., the privatization of the profits generated by publicly funded research. And we, the public, are forced to pay through the nose for the privilege of using the Internet twice over.
But hey, I could be full of shit & just spinning a web of conspiratorial lies to support my general thesis that the 99% of us are being fucked over in so many ways that we’re not even aware of. So, do your own work i.e., research if you doubt me.
The most critically important thing that I hope you’ll bring away from this lengthy essay is that this battle plan of the Haves against the Have Nots isn’t some benign goal like the Culture War meant to distract & divide us. No, we are being systematically killed off or silenced.
Reflect on the so-called War on Drugs and the “opioid crisis” which the FDA, Big Pharma, the Justice Dept., & the sell-outs in Congress gave us and has killed over half a million American citizens in the past 20 years. And consider the fact that we have over 1,877 “Superfund Sites” (toxic death concentrations) around our nation. Over 24 million Americans live within a mile of these toxic pits.
These toxic dump piles are the result of either willful or criminally negligent corporations who don’t feel it’s their responsibility to clean them up. They’re “externalities” that they can dump on the taxpayers’ shoulders. And what does our racist con artist Trump do, he slashes the EPA’s budget by 31%.
The police departments in our largest cities are gradually morphing into Robocops & this isn’t just because they thought it’d look cool. No, the police are becoming a de facto domestic, military force whose mission isn’t to protect & serve we, the citizens, but rather to protect & serve their corporate cockroach masters.
It really upsets the masters of society when their property is vandalized by angry citizens in protests. So, we are now witnessing the outlawing of protest & dissent in America and more & more protestors are being labeled terrorists so the masters can more easily dispose of them.
But hey, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” like the New Age faux hippies counsel us to be. And when the tanks in our streets start blowing up our homes, if we’re still fortunate enough to have one, oh well, at least we were entertained as we circled the toilet of history.
“A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.”
— Will Durant
“If you read the debates at the Constitutional Convention, Madison said, “The major concern of the society has to be to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority.” And he had arguments. Suppose everyone had a vote freely. He said, “Well, the majority of the poor would get together and they would organize to take away the property of the rich.” And, he said, “That would obviously be unjust, so youcan’thave that.” So, therefore the constitutional system has to be set up topreventdemocracy.”
The supreme hypocrisy and irony of the MAGA hordes is their moral outrage directed at Democrats, liberals, & Leftists for supposed grooming their children to become homosexuals, transexuals, pedophiles, etc. while their messiah, Trump, boasts on national television that he’s allowed to grab women by their pussies.
When Trump started his campaign to run for the presidency, just about everyone I spoke to would say, “I like Trump because he tells it like it is!” If this is true, his cult members would do well to remember a few inconvenient facts about their idol. Trump has also repeatedly bragged about being able to walk into beauty contestants dressing rooms while they were dressing or undressing because he owned the beauty pageant.
Can’t help but wonder if he enjoyed walking in when Ivanka was getting undressed?
I’d be interested in all the MAGA fans’ responses if a man walked into their daughter’s locker rooms while they were getting dressed for P.E. Or how about Trump’s repeated comments about his daughter Ivanka’s sexy appearance & how if she weren’t his daughter, he might date her? Is this too simply “telling it like it is?”
Trump & Jeffrey Epstein were friends for years, (birds of a feather hang out together?)
Yet these MAGA extremists & conspiracy nut-jobs sincerely believe that the Democratic party is made up of secret cabals who engage in Satanic rituals in which they sacrifice babies, drink their blood, & all sorts of other lurid details? Not so long ago, people who believed & proclaimed such things publicly, were locked up in insane asylums. Today, they are members of Congress and are entrusted to write our laws & administer the business of our government.
Note the MAGA cult’s obsession with pedophiles & Trump and Jeffrey’s fondness for underage girls
Perhaps this is a good point to explain the psychological concept of “projection?”
“Projection is the process of displacing one’s feelings onto a different person, animal, or object. The term is most commonly used to describe defensive projection—attributing one’s own unacceptable urges to another. For example, if someone continuously bullies and ridicules a peer about his insecurities, the bully might be projecting his own struggle with self-esteem onto the other person.”
The main thesis of my essay is that the supposedly righteous & patriotic MAGA cult are in reality, some very dangerous & perverse individuals because of their blind loyalty to Trump. We have seen a clear rise in the levels of hate crimes & division in America and we’d better open our eyes & organize against this social contagion before it further infects our nation.
Take a moment to reflect on this projection on the part of MAGA followers if you will. It is clearly evidence of a sick & perverse mind to not only come up with these dark conspiracies but to also physically attack other human beings because your cult leader has brainwashed you into believing his pack of lies that serve his agenda of power & profit.
I won’t cite the usual comparison of Hitler with Trump because Trump simply isn’t bright enough to have a well thought out agenda. But tragically, there have been many sad examples of dangerous & deadly cults throughout history. Not that long ago, we saw the result of the charismatic religious leader, Jim Jones’ cult in Guyana. Whether his cult members all willingly drank the lethal Kool Aid or not, is still open to question & you may think the comparison to Trump is absurd, but is it?
All cults have one thing in common, they start out seemingly benign but slowly morph into monsters as their leaders see their power over their followers grow into a state of total, blind obedience no matter how outrageous their leader’s behavior becomes.
Another aspect of this MAGA phenomenon is that it arose understandably from the years of being lied to, betrayed, & manipulated by politicians on both sides of the political aisle but once again, the gullible jump into Trump’s camp naively believing that because he wasn’t a politician, he’d be their honest champion.
Closely linked to the fact that Trump wasn’t a politician was the myth that he was a billionaire. Yeah myth because Trump has lied about every aspect of his life all his life but he perfected his con job during his “reality T.V.” role (talk about an oxymoron i.e. reality T.V.). And most likely you’ve heard of what’s popularly known as the “Cult of Personality,” in America & are aware of how passionately we revere or idolize T.V., movie, sport, & financial celebrities. As much as I hate to admit it, Trump has been very clever in that he knows that as long as he can keep the myth alive of his being fabulously wealthy & lying through his teeth no matter how obvious the fact that he is, he’ll maintain his sway over his devout believers.
Unlike Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan, I’m going to reveal one of my hypocrisies, I’m going to brag that back when I was 19 years old & started taking business courses at the local community college, it didn’t take long to become obvious to me that all you needed to “succeed,” in business was to be greedy & unethical. I guess that’s not common sense & for many, if not most, he who dies with the most money is the best and the brightest? More of those good, old “Christian” values.
Speaking of “Christian” values, as I was growing up, my family moved frequently & I attended a variety of churches because I enjoyed going to Sunday School. One of the clearest lessons I learned in Sunday School was that the core of Jesus’ teaching was contained in his “Sermon on the Mount.” Consequently, I sincerely believe that the 70 million self-professed “Christians” who not only voted for Trump but also sing his praises, have willfully turned their backs on Jesus because they conveniently ignore his simple message of helping the poor & the downtrodden.
The irony is that I left organized religion when I was about 14 or 15 years of age precisely because of the hypocrisy I witnessed in my church at the time, and I honestly feel that I’m far more Christian than those who claim to be Christian & sing Trump’s praises at the same time. And here we come to a brutally honest truth in my opinion, all those faux Christians who defend Trump against critics like myself, only care about power & authority and that’s their common bond with Trump.
You see, fundamentalist Christians are staunch believers in authoritarianism. In their families, the father is the absolute authority & wives and children better never question their fathers’ words or actions. And the preachers are the absolute authorities in their churches. These fraudulent Christians support Trump because they naively believe that he’ll keep all his promises to them & their wish list will be fulfilled by Donny who has never set foot in a church & is the poster boy for consistently violating & ignoring every one of the Ten Commandments.
Their goal is not unlike that of the Taliban in Afghanistan, women & girls should not be allowed to attend school, hold what are considered men’s jobs, definitely not have abortions, all should be allowed/required to pray in school, etc. And tin-pot, wannabe dictators like Donald Duck, want absolute authority over the entire country. He has done everything he can to destroy our Democracy & steal as much money from the Federal Treasury as he could. He’s just frustrated that he didn’t get a second term so he could continue robbing the national bank & doing even more destruction to our system of government. Why do you think Trump loves & admires dictators so much & regularly insults our allies around the world?
Again, it’s “projection,” because he knows he’s weak, corrupt, greedy, a sexual deviant, & stupid! So, keep spreading the fear & hatred with the help of FOX “News,” and he’ll keep his MAGA cult members anger & hatred alive. This too is right out of the authoritarian or dictator’s playbook. The only real accomplishment Trump made in his four year crime-spree as America’s president was to give the already obscenely wealthy Americans yet another massive “tax break.”
It’s beyond me how his MAGA mob let this major hypocrisy slide without a peep of protest? In effect, this tax break was a reward to precisely those who have fucked all of the 99% by closing down their factories here, stealing our pensions & health insurance, etc. and driving more & more of us into homelessness.
By-the-way, under Trump, there was obviously an overt conspiracy to further undermine our public education system by appointing Betsy DeVos as the Secretary of Education. She never taught a single day in a public school & did all she could to shove even more Charter Schools down our throats. Remember, students are allowed & encouraged to pray in Charter Schools, study the Bible, etc. In short, be indoctrinated into the “Christian” authoritarian mindset, again, not that different from the Taliban’s “madrassas” schools with their Islamic authoritarianism.
“Christianity and authoritarianism are commonly believed to be at opposite ends of the democratic-autocratic continuum. A commonly held belief is that Christians, guided by The Bible, are accepting and caring of each other and others, and are thus democratic. Yes, many Christians do good with-and-for others, inspired by Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount’s emphasis on mercy and forgiveness and peacemaking (Matthew 5: 1-10), his teaching that doing to others as you would have then do to you is the bottom line of religion (Matthew 7L 12), and his saying that the greatest commandments are to love God and one’s neighbor as oneself. (Matthew 22: 36-40)
…. For these Christians, it is not about The Golden Rule of empathy between people, but about using biblically-based beliefs to rule over people. It is about the overriding authority of particular biblical pronouncements and required obedience to them. Such authority and obedience are actually fundamental characteristics of anti-democratic tendencies. Claiming that biblical passages are revelations from God does not make them true, nor demanding obedience to them any less authoritarian.” https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/06/05/beware-of-authoritarian-christians/
Need I say more about putting your money where your mouth is?
Since we’re talking about schools, note that no matter how long or in how many ways the phony “Christians,” deny the facts like Trump does with his “alternate facts,” America’s founding fathers absolutely rejected us having a national religion. They were well-educated men & thus they were all too aware of the death & destruction caused when the state & church were unified in a nation.
Furthermore, it’s important to note that before Guttenberg invented the printing press, the Bible was basically only in the possession of the priests & both the Church and the State wanted it to remain that way. Why? Because when the Church & State controlled literacy & knowledge, it was far easier to control the public. But once people begin to learn on their own & educate themselves, they begin to question authorities & slowly become rebellious because of the injustices they suffer.
Let’s take a closer look at perhaps where some of those perversities that the MAGA extremists love to project onto others who disagree with them, may have come from? Anybody familiar with Christian theology is aware of perhaps the oldest conspiracy in Christianity, the belief that Satan is always tempting Christians in his efforts to destroy Christianity.
Another popular conspiracy amongst Christian fundamentalists is that Secular Humanism is a vast conspiracy against Christians because it places man above God & is therefore Christianity’s enemy. I became very interested in Secular Humanism approximately 40 years ago & have done extensive research on the subject. In fact, I have written a book about this “war” between Christian fundamentalists & Secular Humanists.
In a nutshell, most of the “Christians” I’ve met over the course of my life weren’t able to rationally defend their positions & that’s when they resort to “magical thinking.” This boils down to a matter of belief i.e. just trust me because I’m a good person & Jesus loves you. But be aware of these “good people,” because if you intellectually challenge their belief structure, some of them will kill you in the name of Christ.
And conspiracy theories demonizing others is just another tool in religious extremists’ tool bags which isn’t only used by Christians. Note that the very word “demonize” comes from Christianity. Continuing on, another reason why there is such a preponderance of conspiracy theories could be related to the increasing chaos in our society, a lot of it created by Trump & his deliberate campaign to sow division, fear, & hatred among us?
If you can spare an hour away from your “Smart phone,” ponder the revelations from this PBS Frontline expose which is a very real threat to our peace & well-being;
Furthermore, I have noticed over the years that as a general rule, the less educated a person is, the more susceptible they are to conspiratorial thinking. And no, this isn’t elitist snobbery. The higher you go up the educational ladder so-to-speak, the more experience you get in developing your critical & analytical thinking skills. Moreover, it’s common knowledge that we’re becoming more & more of a post-literate society i.e. people are reading less & less because of their preference to watch movies, play video games, & pseudo-socialize via the “social media” which is another oxymoron because it divides people far more often than it unites them & as a result, we have an alarming rate of teenagers harming themselves & especially girls who commit suicide!
P.T. Barnum was noted for his quote, “There’s a sucker born every minute,” and greedy & morally bankrupt individuals like Trump & Alex Jones have made millions manipulating suckers with their conspiracy theories. They know all too well how intellectually lazy most people are & this makes them ripe targets for fleecing. And speaking of manipulating, we mustn’t neglect the powerful effect that Hollywood has on the public psyche.
This is a rich subject that we could explore at great length but for the sake of brevity, I ask you to simply reflect on the large number of doomsday, post-apocalyptic, or dystopian movies there have been for a few decades now. Obviously these movies subject many, ill-prepared mentally viewers to absurd conspiracy theories as well. Moreover, now that “reality” & unreality have become so intertwined with the introduction of “Reality T.V.,” people have become more susceptible to cons & psychological manipulation. Isn’t it interesting to note that Trump came to national attention via reality television? By-the-way, Trump demanded that every time his name was mentioned on “The Apprentice,” they had to add, “the Billionaire.”
This made-up reality television program is what cemented in his MAGA cult members’ minds the belief that Trump was a great success as a businessman. No, he was not! How inept & incompetent does a person have to be to fail as a casino owner & not just one casino but three or four casinos? But hey, if it says he’s a smart businessman on T.V., it must be true, right? If your televangelist like Pat Robertson who is a multi-millionaire says he has the corner on the truth from God, it must be true, right? Oh yeah, in case you’ve forgotten, Pat Robertson ran for president of the United States once. Can you spell theocracy?
Speaking of conspiracy theories, one that has definitely caught my attention is the so-called Critical Race Theory. This is such a brazen attempt to push us another step closer to a Putin-like society that it truly amazes me, even in this age of utter absurdity. If you’ve ever read Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States,” you’re well aware of how whitewashed the telling of American history already is. Yet this isn’t enough for the MAGA minions who want to completely erase every last “inconvenient truth” about our history. In other words, their goal is to turn every event in our history into a “Black Hawk Down” Hollywood farce so we can all beat our chests & proclaim our superiority over every other nation on the planet.
Back in 1974 as I hitchhiked across the U.S., I read the classic, “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee,” by Dee Brown. And as I turned the pages, it was simply one revelation after another. I had taken U.S. history in the 6th, 8th, & 10th grades and it was the same story over & over i.e. whenever the Native Americans won in a battle against the white men, it was a slaughter, a massacre against the innocent whites. But whenever the whites won against the indigenous people, it was a great victory & proof of our natural superiority over the heathen savages.
Obviously, this was “projection” on a national scale & the true savages were the white settlers who slaughtered, raped, & robbed their way across the entire continent in the name of God & progress. And speaking of perversions, it was white men who originated the practice of scalping their enemies in battle & placed bounties on scalps to incentivize the practice. By-the-way, we also showed our great respect for the law by breaking just about every single treaty we offered the Native Americans out of the hundreds we’d initiated.
I mentioned the book by Dee Brown one day in an interview for a part-time Christmas job I was applying for. I sensed from our conversation that the manager was a fairly, open-minded person & he was Hispanic & president of the local school district which I had happened to have graduated from in 1971. So, I took a chance and asked him directly, why is it that we’re taught the same lies about U.S. history all the way through jr. high & high school? He answered matter-of-factly, “Most people don’t go on to higher education & the government wants you to leave school with a good feeling about your country.”
I was flabbergasted, so this was their rationale for deliberately lying to us all the way through our public education system? This was over 45 years ago & we have devolved to this point today where the MAGA morons are demanding that we lie about our true history to an even greater degree.
Heaven forbid we mention our nearly complete genocide of the original inhabitants of this land, the proud peoples who lived here thousands of years before the white invaders. Moreover, we absolutely must skip over the little, hiccup in our history known as slavery & the fact that were it not for slavery, America never would’ve developed such a powerful & wealthy manufacturing base or economy.
There were other races & peoples sacrificed to the creation of the American Empire as well. The Chinese who were casually tossed to their deaths as if they were human refuse or garbage once they’d served their purpose. In fact, a quaint little saying developed, “Going to Hell in a basket.” This was in reference to the practice of having a Chinese railroad worker sit in a basket which would be lowered down to a spot & his job was to place dynamite in a crevice in the rock, light it but instead of raising him back up to safety, the railroad owners & their minions figured, why bother, just let him be blown to bits by the dynamite.
Furthermore, we mustn’t forget about the Mexicans whom we stole most of the Southwest from & treated just about as disrespectfully and shamefully as the Native Americans, the Blacks, & the Chinese. And in 21st century America, we have devolved to the point where truth & fact are mocked thanks in large part to the popularization of stupidity by such scum as Trump. Remember, “he tells it like it is.”
A country that builds itself on ever changing & shifting sand like we have is doomed to crumble & it should come as no surprise. Our freedoms and principles are eroding daily but as long as we have our “smart phones,” video games, Hollywood blockbusters, sports, etc. to entertain us & keep us dumbed-down, the powers that be have little to worry about.
We have forgotten what it means to be men, to be proud citizens with integrity & true courage. We have sold our souls for ease, comfort, & pleasure and that’s why when the shit comes down, we’ll have a mighty rude awakening & find that our toys and our bank accounts will be worthless & useless in our last ditch struggle to save ourselves & our Mother Gaia!
“Most terrorists are people deeply concerned by what they see as social, political, or religious injustice and hypocrisy, and the immediate grounds for their terrorism is often retaliation for an action of the United States.”
― William Blum
This is a subject so vast, I could start virtually anywhere but I recently watched the Hulu mini-series, “The Looming Tower,” and Condoleeza Rice’s cavalier & dismissive attitude to Richard Clarke’s & John O’Neil’s repeated warnings about Usama bin Laden’s likely attack against the U.S. really got under my skin so I’ll start with her.
But first, a few words about the term “National Security.” I first became interested in politics when Reagan became president because although I didn’t know much about him, I knew he was a bald-faced liar & didn’t give a shit about the public. And as time passed, more & more I came across those two, magic words, “National Security.” It became clear that whenever the government had done something wrong or wanted to keep something hidden, all they had to do was utter those two words & that was that.
It was like the curtain the Wizard of Oz hid behind in “The Wizard of Oz.” It was like it was sacrosanct or something? Speaking of which, I had heard years ago that Condoleeza was a specialist on the Soviet Union so I just looked it up. Yeah, she earned her doctorate in international studies from the University of Denver & specialized in Eastern & Central Europe and the Soviet Union including military & security affairs.
Well, we all were aware of what a Mensa marvel George “Dubya” Bush is & he clearly knew how to pick a top-notch cabinet when he was president. Ms. Rice, like the C.I.A., weren’t even aware that the Soviet Union had imploded until they saw the videos on T.V. of the crowds tearing down the Berlin Wall.
Perhaps her “I didn’t have a clue kind of response” when she was grilled by one of the members on the 9/11 Commission, wasn’t an act? And who can forget her actions when she learned of the devastating damage done to New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina, she decided to go shopping for shoes & then went out to a play that night. So much for National Security & her responsibilities to the citizens of America. Of course, she was merely following her boss, Dubya’s lead as he felt it more important that he continue his vacation at his home in Crawford, Texas.
What’s more, for the month of August 2001, Dubya was vacationing in Crawford even though he received a PDB (Presidential Daily Briefing) on August 6th that terrorists might fly commercial airlines into buildings or cities. So much for “National Security” concerns by the Bush administration.
After finally coming out of hiding like a typical corporate cockroach, Bush had his photo op to prove he was the “War President”
Moreover, isn’t it interesting to note Condoleeza & Dubya’s lackadaisical attitudes towards National Security before 9/11 and their alarm when they were manufacturing their case for the invasion of Iraq? Who can forget Rice’s dire warning,
“Condi Rice discusses Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s nuclear capabilities with Wolf Blitzer on Jan 10th, 2003 and she infamously said: “there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”
Bear in mind my friend that several members of Dubya’s cabinet, most notably, Dick Cheney, were members of P.N.A.C. (Project for the New American Century) and invading & occupying Iraq was high on their wish list. Don’t take my word for it, look it up for yourself. And this is why they went to such great lengths to manufacture their case for attacking Iraq just a few months after 9/11 even though Iraq’s Saddam Hussein had absolutely nothing to do with September 11th.
Honest scholars & military experts all testified that it was absolutely absurd to claim that Saddam Hussein & bin Laden were working together. Usama bin Laden was a Muslim religious extremist & Saddam Hussein was a secularist who didn’t give a shit about the Islam religion.
The Bush cabal of crooks & liars all appeared on television at every chance to spread their fear & lies but as the years wore on & we became bogged-down in the Iraq quagmire, they changed their tunes & began claiming that they hadn’t said all those things designed to whip up fear in the U.S.
But in the big picture, the Bush criminal consortium succeeded because they had stirred-up such a hornet’s nest in the Middle East, it all became a self-fulfilling prophecy & the billions and trillions of dollars will never stop flowing into the Pentagon & the 1% who own the “Defense industries’” pockets. And this was all done in the name of “National Security.”
Furthermore, this can’t all be lain at the feet of the Republicans, nope, those champions of the working class, the darling Democrats have done their bit in defense of “National Security.” Enter our Black crusader on a white horse who got so many Americans as well as freedom loving people around the world so excited & hopeful for a more just world.
I too, fell for his lofty rhetoric, articulate speech, & intelligence and voted for him on his first go round but not his second. You may doubt me but in that brief space between winning the presidential election & his inauguration, I realized that he had conned us all because of the choices he made for his top, economic advisors & cabinet members.
Yep! Our buddy who promised us every time he gave a nationally televised speech that he was going to bring real change to America, was a fuckin’ liar. He picked Ben Bernanke, Timothy Geithner, Larry Summers, etc., the very foxes who had raided the hen house & helped drain the federal treasury. And he & his Attorney General, Eric Holder, never prosecuted a single one of the bank C.E.O.s, the hedge fund managers of Wall St., etc.
So, it shouldn’t have come as any surprise that Obama also did his bit to support & expand the National Security complex and its horrific agenda. Moreover, Uncle Tom Obama was a Constitutional scholar & professor and knew full well that he was breaking Constitutional laws left & right.
He went after whistleblowers who warned us about the National Security apparatus that was being used to oppress us & control us, with a vengeance. In fact, he prosecuted more whistleblowers than all the other presidents combined since the passage of the Espionage Act in 1917.
In short, don’t prosecute the clearly criminal fat cats of Wall St. who not only tanked America’s economy but caused the near, total economic meltdown of the entire world’s economy. But go gung-ho after courageous Americans who were true patriots trying to wake us up to the Constitutionally illegal & immoral actions being done by “our” N.S.A., C.I.A., F.B.I., etc. agencies against us. Some champion of the people, eh? And for the record, I hated all the racist slurs & garbage hurled at Obama but I to this day, hate him for his betrayal & that’s why I called him an Uncle Tom.
As for Obama’s direct, criminal culpability in terms of fanning the flames on the “War on Terror,” his Drone warfare program was the most egregious and brazen example of his total abandonment of our Constitution which he & all other politicians, police, military, & other government officials swear to uphold & defend.
Obama & his fellow club members declared themselves de facto judges, juries, & executioners of anyone, including American citizens, around the world.
“Senior officials in the administration of President Barack Obama variously described drone strikes as “precise,” “closely supervised,” “effective,” “indispensable,” and even the “only game in town” – but what they emphasized most of all is that the drone strikes they authorized were lawful.
In this context, though, “lawful” had a specialized meaning. Except at the highest level of abstraction, the law of the drone campaign had not been enacted by Congress or published in the US Code. No federal agency had issued regulations relating to drone strikes, and no federal court had adjudicated their legality. Obama administration officials insisted that drone strikes were lawful, but the “law” they invoked was their own. It was written by executive branch lawyers behind closed doors, withheld from the public and even from Congress, and shielded from judicial review.” https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/15/targeted-killing-secrecy-drone-memos-excerpt
Do you remember our so-called “Smart bombs” in the Persian Gulf War & other military “adventures,” and how supposedly accurate or precise they were in hitting targets? Yep! More Pentagon P.R. bullshit that was put out to convince the public that its tax dollars were being spent wisely. Many of these “smart bombs” were lucky if they landed within half a kilometer of their intended target.
Fast forward to Obama’s illegal & immoral Drone warfare program;
“Drone strikes conducted by the United States during a 5-month-long campaign in Afghanistan caused the deaths of unintended targets nearly nine out of ten times, leaked intelligence documents suggest.
The apparent 10 percent success rate with regards to a specific span in America’s drone war is among the most damning revelations to surface so far as the result of a series of articles published by The Intercept on Thursday this week which rely on classified and confidential intelligence documents supplied by an unknown source.
Step back for a minute and reflect on this. Probably tens of thousands of innocent civilians killed by drones, how would you feel if your family & friends were killed by bombs dropped from Drones? And no, I’m not trying to justify terrorist attacks against Americans but I am trying to open people’s minds a little to shed some light on this never-ending War on Terror that is so vague & ambiguous that there is no way to gauge its success or ending.
“Obama’s global drone assassination campaign, a remarkable innovation in global terrorism, exhibits the same patterns. By most accounts, it is generating terrorists more rapidly than it is murdering those suspected of someday intending to harm us—an impressive contribution by a constitutional lawyer on the eight hundredth anniversary of Magna Carta, which established the basis for the principle of presumption of innocence that is the foundation of civilized law.”
― Noam Chomsky, Who Rules the World?
And like our War on Drugs, it’ll go on ad infinitum wasting billions if not trillions of federal tax dollars. Moreover, the government leaders will continue to tell us, sorry, we don’t have any money for health, education, or welfare, we’re fighting terrorists & drug lords.
I’ll tell you my honest response the moment I heard of the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, I thought, the chickens have come home to roost. All the raping, pillaging, & plundering our military forces had been doing for several decades around the world had finally come back to us. Chalmers Johnson, a noted historian, wrote a trilogy about all this & his first book was titled, Blowback. Sooner or later, what we put out there comes back to haunt us.
The American embassies that were bombed in Africa prior to 9/11, the attack on the U.S.S. Cole, the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, etc. were all the fruits of our foreign policies or National Security measures committed around the globe. By-the-way, on that fateful morning of 9/11 when I heard the news, I had just arrived at work, a school where I was working with special education students, & I felt just like I did when I was in the fourth grade & heard that JFK had been assassinated, I felt numb & dumbstruck.
Moving along, we come to one of the most detestable people to ever walk upright, Donald Trump. His reign of error & terror in the White House not only made it okay in the sick minds of the American born & bred racists, pro-fascists, & pro-Nazis to commit heinous acts of terror in the U.S., he also revived these perverse feelings of hatred around the globe.
And Trump repeatedly proclaimed his love & admiration for dictators, especially Putin whom he had/has a serious man-crush on. But for the purpose of this essay, I’m going to focus on Trump’s deliberate sabotage of our medical establishment’s attempts to at least slow down the onset of the COVID pandemic in America. In my view, COVID was & still is a deadly serious threat to our National Security in a very literal way.
Exhibit number one, Trump, in his third grade childish mentality & behavior immediately set out to eliminate every last thing Obama had established no matter how beneficial it was to the American public.
“The Lancet launched the commission on Public Policy and Health in the Trump Era in April 2017, tasking the group with chronicling the administration’s actions.
The commission’s analysis found that 461,000 fewer Americans would have died in 2018 if the United States’ death rate had been equivalent to those of the other G-7 nations.
The 49-page report also concludes that Trump’s “hostility” to environmental regulations (including the rollback of at least 84 separate environmental and workplace protections) significantly worsened pollution, resulting in more than 22,000 extra deaths in 2019 alone.
PROMOTED
According to the commission, Trump’s “appalling response” to the coronavirus pandemic, which included the politicization of masks and repudiation of science, “expedited the spread of Covid-19” in the U.S.
And note that this was from Forbes magazine, not exactly a “liberal rag,” should tell you something. The key point I want to make regarding the MAGA Moron & his criminally negligent mishandling of America’s COVID response was that Obama had established an office in the White House to handle serious health crises & the bumbling little boy, Trump, immediately disbanded it when he moved into the White House because of his childish jealousy of everything Obama.
Of course, the main reason Trump kept denying there even was a deadly virus spreading across the U.S. was because he was concerned about the “negative press” while he was in charge. Yeah, his petty vanity & fragile ego allowed/caused hundreds of thousands of Americans to die needlessly.
I thought we’re supposed to be a nation that prides itself on Law & Order? Isn’t there something called “criminally negligent behavior?” And in Trump’s case, he was “willfully negligent or ignorant.” You know, the old, “See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.”
Some may try to argue that Trump’s being completely out to lunch in regard to the spread of COVID in the U.S. isn’t technically a matter of National Security, my response to that is that the physical health & well-being of a country’s citizens is clearly one of the most obvious & basic aspects of a nation’s National Security. And to argue against this is a morally bankrupt argument. National Security isn’t just measured in deaths on foreign battlefields but also on the state of national health at home.
For example, consider the deleterious health effects that so many of our First Responders, Firemen, & Police suffered who so courageously worked to rescue the survivors & the victims of 9/11. As far as I’m concerned, their health should be considered a matter of National Security as well & once again, our government was/is criminally negligent in regards to their health & many of them have died, are suffering serious health issues, & are being ignored or pushed to the side after their noble sacrifice for their fellow citizens.
Lastly, here is just a partial list of some other serious threats to our National Security committed by Trump in the past, present, & into the future;
a reign of terror against nonwhite migrants and refugees;
embracing racial authoritarianism and white supremacy as de facto national policy;
This was taken from a Salon.com article titled; “Trump regime’s amazing list of crimes keeps getting longer — but we can’t afford to look away
By, Chauncey DeVega (a friend of mine said the link didn’t work for him so I’m posting it like this)
Biden is the last & our current president that I’m going to take to task regarding the United States’ state of “National Security.” For most of my adult life, I was proud to identify myself as a liberal, then a progressive but now, on the home stretch of my lifetime, I have formally left the Democratic party & now call myself an Independent.
I have just seen far too many examples of how the Democratic party has betrayed & abandoned the working class as well as the middle class in America. Of course they deny it to this very day but Bill Clinton was the final nail in the coffin of the democratic party as far as I’m concerned. And the de facto proof of this was his signing of NAFTA.
I have covered the issues regarding the Dems abandonment of the 99% whom they swore to support, protect, & represent, in other essays so I won’t go into it here. This was just a prelude to my critique of Biden in regards to our National Security for this article. The following is from an email I sent to a friend;
Wed, Jan 11 at 11:17 AM
The Real Joe Biden
He didn’t cancel the portion of the Student Loan Debt through the Higher Education Act
Obama picked him because although he’s a democrat, he votes Republican
He has a really dirty voting record
He went after Anita Hill so Clarence Thomas could sit on the Supreme Court
He was one of the most fervent advocates of the wars in the Middle East
He was an abject supporter of the apartheid state of Israel
He fought school bussing with Strom Thurmond, an open segregationist & racist
He sponsored the comprehensive Crime Control Act which eliminated parole for federal prisoners & limited the amount of time sentences that they had for good behavior
He was behind the 1994 Omnibus Crime bill that he helped draft & massively expanded the death penalty for federal crimes from a couple to 51 doubling the nation’s prison population
He militarized the police by pushing through the 1996 Anti-Terrorism and effective Death Penalty Act that gutted the Writ of Habeas Corpus
He was one of the authors of the Patriot Act which allows the government with very little oversight to monitor all of our Communications; phone, phone, email, bank records, credit card reports & of course any activity on the Internet
He was one of the architects of the destruction of Welfare & 70% of the original recipients on Welfare were children
He has long called to cut Social Security
He fought for NAFTA
He backed the Illegal Immigration Reform & Immigrant Responsibility Act that eliminated the defenses for undocumented people & saw them far more easily deported
He helped deregulate the Banking industry with the abolition of Glass-Steagall & that was a major contributor not only in the global financial crisis but in the collapse of nearly 500 banks in the U.S.
He’s long been a tool of the Pharmaceutical Industry & the Insurance Industry which contributed heavily to his campaign
No mainstream media publication is going to lay out who Joe Biden really is
He used to be called Senator Credit Card because of all the credit card companies headquartered in Delaware
Again, like my criticisms against Trump, I don’t feel it’s too great a stretch to classify many, if not most of these actions by Biden as harmful to our National Security but there’s one issue that I didn’t mention & it represents a very “Clear & Present Danger,” to not only America’s well-being but to the very survival of our species, the War in Ukraine.
A little background is necessary here. Bear in mind that I’m in no way excusing Putin’s invasion of Ukraine but I am trying to shed some light on this deadly serious situation.
“NATO has not stopped expanding since the fall of the Soviet Union, growing from 17 countries in 1990 to 30 today, several of which were once part of the Soviet-led Warsaw pact.”
Think about this fact for a moment & try to forget briefly the propaganda we’ve been fed all our lives about Russia’s aggression. Look at a current map of the world & the location as well as the number of nations under Russia’s control & compare them to the number & locations of all the nations under America’s “Sphere of Influence.” You might also care to check out Chalmers Johnson’s credentials & his list of U.S. military bases around the globe. Now try to put yourself in Russia’s shoes for a few minutes & answer how you’d feel? Would it be mere paranoia on their part to fear being encircled by the U.S., the world’s mightiest military force with a military budget equal to the next 20 or more nations in descending order of military might, weaponry, number of troops, etc., combined.
Noam Chomsky has pointed out that we, NATO, promised we wouldn’t move a single inch eastwards toward Russia when the Soviet Union collapsed & now, we’re on their border. Reminds me of those hundreds, if not thousands of treaties we made with America’s indigenous tribes, and how we broke nearly every single one of them.
Biden is now in charge of U.S Foreign Policy & that means, our National Security. And he’s in effect, playing a game of chicken with Putin because Russia has God knows how many nuclear bombs but I’m sure they don’t have as many as we do. Instead of trying to negotiate & cool the tensions between Russia, Ukraine, & the U.S., our government keeps throwing fuel on the fire with the billions of dollars’ worth of military weaponry.
The last time the U.S. played this game with Russia was during the Cuban Missile Crisis & as Chomsky and many other scholars have pointed out, we came perilously close to WWIII and no nation wins when Armageddon is unleashed.
I began this essay by talking about the excellent series, “The Looming Tower,” and I was reviewing the series, scene by scene, looking for examples to support my main argument in this essay, “National Security” is basically one, huge farce or charade because the bastards running the show in Washington D.C. flat-out don’t give a fuck about our well-being as a nation or as individual citizens.
While taking notes on the series the other day, when commercials came on, I was reading quotes by William Blum who Chomsky as well as other scholars agree, was the greatest scholar when it came to the long & ignominious history of the C.I.A.
And all of a sudden, it felt like I’d been struck by lightning or experienced an epiphany. Here’s the specific quote by Blum that struck me but there are several more corroborating quotes if you’d like to read them for yourself. (Go to quotes by William Blum at Goodreads)
“The United States is not actually against terrorism per se, only those terrorists who are not allies of the empire. There is a lengthy and infamous history of Washington’s support for numerous anti-Castro terrorists, even when their terrorist acts were committed in the United States. At this moment, Luis Posada Carriles remains protected by the US government, though he masterminded the blowing up of a Cuban airplane that killed 73 people. He’s but one of hundreds of anti-Castro terrorists who’ve been given haven in the United States over the years. The United States has also provided close support to terrorists, or fought on the same side as Islamic jihadists, in Kosovo, Bosnia, Iran, Libya, and Syria, including those with known connections to al-Qaeda, to further foreign policy goals more important than fighting terrorism.”
― William Blum, America’s Deadliest Export
In a nutshell, as I kept being struck by the gross incompetence, the deliberate withholding of critically important information about Al Qaeda cells within the U.S. from the F.B.I. by the C.I.A. especially given all the serious warnings by John O’ Neil & Richard Clarke about the likelihood of an attack by Al Qaeda within the U.S. & the possibility of those attacks coming in the form of commercial airliners being flown into buildings, again & again I couldn’t believe their deliberate noncooperation & dismissal of so many critical facts & bits of intelligence.
I was numb & dumbstruck like on the morning of 9/11 when bin Laden unleashed his tsunami of terror against us. The C.I.A., the F.B.I., & especially the White House’s lack of concern didn’t add up or make any sense but when I read Blum’s quote, it hit me. And no, I’m not one of those Alex Jones conspiracy morons like Trump, 9/11 simply reflected the decades old willful ignorance & myopic focus on only one thing i.e. whatever evidence that pointed to Russia’s threat to America & capitalism was all they were concerned with.
Of course, 9/11 was a godsend to the Masters of the Universe because now they had carte blanche for ad infinitum to after terrorists & that’d mean the Pentagon budget would never dry up. So, after the horrific attacks on September 11th, the warmongers simply added Islamic terrorists to the ever present Russian threat & all was well. Naturally, they didn’t tell the American public that 9/11 happened because they were asleep at the wheel & basically didn’t give a fuck & already had their sights set on Iraq.
A day or two after 9/11, Condoleeza Rice said to Richard Clarke, “Rumsfeld wants the attacks linked to Iraq.” Note that Donald Rumsfeld was a member of P.N.A.C. (Project for the New American Century) Note that before we invaded Iraq, many critics were accusing the Bush administration of simply invading Iraq to take control of their oil fields. They denied this accusation of course. Note that we, America, built our largest embassy in the world in Iraq & it’s still there and so are several thousand U.S. soldiers. Gee, I wonder if they’re guarding the oil fields?
Here’s one last nugget for you in the form of another quote by Bill Blum;
“The Empire would love to rip Ukraine from Moscow’s bosom, evict the Russian Black Sea Fleet, and establish a US military and/or NATO presence on Russia’s border. Kiev’s membership of the European Union would then not be far off; after which the country could embrace the joys of neoconservatism, receiving the benefits of the standard privatization-deregulation-austerity package and join Portugal, Ireland, Greece, and Spain as an impoverished orphan of the family; but perhaps no price is too great to pay to for being part of glorious Europe and the West!”
― William Blum, America’s Deadliest Export
So, go back to your video games, zombie movies, smart phones, etc. and sleep well. As Gore Vidal so aptly put it, we live in The United States of Amnesia! And speaking of amnesia, does anyone remember that little incident called COINTELPRO?
It was an elaborate government program that was created to spy on peace & anti-war groups and organizations in the 1960s & 70s. You see, my imaginary reader, George Orwell, Noam Chomsky, Michael Parenti, Howard Zinn & many others have warned us over the years that our government fears our own citizens far more than it does terrorists. And coincidentally, right after the attacks on 9/11, our government just happened to have this 300 page, detailed “Act,” lying around & it rammed it through Congress in the middle of the night with no one even having the time to read it before signing-off on it. Conspiracy? No, fact!
Here’s another gem of wisdom from “The Master of Those Who Know,” Noam Chomsky.
“Historical amnesia is a dangerous phenomenon not only because it undermines moral and intellectual integrity but also because it lays the groundwork for crimes that still lie ahead.”
― Noam Chomsky, Who Rules the World?
In like fashion, the Bush Administration rammed through The Patriot Act to justify its destruction of our Bill of Rights & the U.S. Constitution as the Nixon administration had done with its COINTELPRO program claiming it was necessary for our National Security.
My guess is that you’re probably beginning to wonder if I haven’t fallen into that dark pool of conspiracy thinking that Trump, Alex Jones, & other charlatans have engulfed the feeble-minded in. Nonetheless, it’s critically important that we bear in mind that not all conspiracy theories are merely theories. The infamous “Red Car Conspiracy” regarding L.A.’s public transportation system, the Plot to Overthrow FDR by several business tycoons of the time (see Smedley F. Butler), etc. Unfortunately today, we have been inundated by so many absurd conspiracy theories that the real or actual conspiracies suffer because of it. So, I will try to refrain from wandering into that quagmire but keep this passage from Orwell’s classic, 1984 in mind if you will in the context of The Patriot Act and its relation to the events leading up to 9/11 & the consequences of that horrific day.
“The war, therefore if we judge it by the standards of previous wars, is merely an imposture. It is like the battles between certain ruminant animals whose horns are incapable of hurting one another. But though it is unreal it is not meaningless. It eats up the surplus of consumable goods, and it helps to preserve the special mental atmosphere that the hierarchical society needs. War, it will be seen, is now a purely internal affair. In the past, the ruling groups of all countries, although they might recognize their common interest and therefore limit the destructiveness of war, did fight against one another, and the victor always plundered the vanquished. In our own day they are not fighting against one another at all. The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact. The very word “war,” therefore, has become misleading. It would probably be accurate to say that by becoming continuous war has ceased to exist. The peculiar pressure that is exerted on human beings between the Neolithic Age and the early twentieth century has disappeared and has been replaced by something quite different. The effect would be much the same if the three superstates, instead of fighting one another, should agree to live in perpetual peace, each inviolate within its own boundaries. For in that case each would still be a self-contained universe, freed forever from the sobering influence of external danger. A peace that was truly permanent would be the same as a permanent war. This–although the vast majority of Party members understand it only in a shallower sense–is the inner meaning of the Party slogan: WAR IS PEACE.”
― George Orwell, 1984
What this passage says to me is that Chomsky, William Blum, & countless others are right, our government, like most other governments around the globe fear most is an enlightened public. Why? Because if the public truly understood the dark game being played against them, we’d rise up & take back what is rightfully ours. We wouldn’t have cocksuckers like Jeff Bezos so obscenely wealthy while his employees are forced to piss in bottles at their work stations & make barely enough to pay their basic bills.
Let’s return to The Looming Tower, as I watched it, I couldn’t get over the deliberate sabotaging & undermining of the F.B.I.’s agents by the C.I.A.’s agents especially the handful at the top of the C.I.A.’s administration. But upon reflection, I began to understand why it had happened. If you’ve ever worked in a large bureaucracy, it won’t come as that great a surprise.
For example, when I first got into the education profession, I was so naïve that I actually believed that administrators & teachers worked together for the benefit of the students. What a rude awakening I had. I soon learned that the administrators didn’t want to hear about our problems with students, they wanted us to handle all problems & leave them to their paper-pushing & higher salaries.
This relates to the subject at hand in that within each of the “intelligence agencies,” involved in this television series, the F.B.I. & the C.I.A., there are many divisions, departments, & so on. And not only do they often not cooperate with other intelligence agencies, they often don’t cooperate with other departments within their own agency. Makes you feel all warm & cozy doesn’t it when you reflect on the fact that they’re supposedly the ones protecting us in the name of “National Security,” against the terrorists?
Reminds me of a book I read decades ago called, Helter Skelter, & was about the Manson murders. Because of petty rivalry between the L.A. Police Dept. & the L.A. Sheriff’s Dept., one of them actually had Charles Manson in custody but didn’t know that he was wanted for the heinous murders & let him go.
Another deadly factor in the pathetic lack of cooperation between our “intelligence agencies” is the often petty minds & spirits of their leaders i.e. they want not only the glory of being the agency to solve the case that means fancy badges, ribbons, trophies, etc. but also results in more money or larger budgets for their agency or at least their dept. within the agency.
Here’s another piece of bitter fruit from this poison tree, look up the mind-boggling story of Sibel Edmonds, https://truthout.org/articles/classified-life-sibel-edmonds-story/ she was hired as a translator by the F.B.I. after the events of 9/11. She speaks Farsi, Turkish, & Azerbaijani. Her story also reflects just how fuckin’ absurd the bureaucracies of our “intelligence agencies” are.
Perhaps one of the most critical things to keep in mind while thinking/reflecting on this whole, colossal fuck-up is that the Bush administration used their tragic failures due to their incompetence & complete lack of concern about Al Qaeda warnings to call for not only massive budget increases but also the restrictions contained in our Constitution & Bill of Rights to be de facto nullified or voided.
Our “War time president” with the classic, deer caught in the headlights look for several minutes after being told about the attack on the World Trade Center.
I sincerely believe that 9/11 could’ve been avoided if the Bush administration wasn’t obsessed with finding excuses to invade Iraq. And for the record, we have 17 distinct “intelligence agencies,” in our government.
Why Does the United States Have 17 Different Intelligence Agencies?
We have built over thirty building complexes for top-secret intelligence work since 2001—and our security state just keeps growing.
As every schoolchild knows, there are three check-and-balance branches of the US government: the executive, Congress and the judiciary. That’s bedrock Americanism and the most basic high school civics material. Only one problem: it’s just not so.
During the Cold War years and far more strikingly in the twenty-first century, the US government has evolved. It sprouted a fourth branch: the national security state, whose main characteristic may be an unquenchable urge to expand its power and reach. Admittedly, it still lacks certain formal prerogatives of governmental power. Nonetheless, at a time when Congress and the presidency are in a check-and-balance ballet of inactivity that would have been unimaginable to Americans of earlier eras, the Fourth Branch is an ever more unchecked and unbalanced power center in Washington. Curtained off from accountability by a penumbra of secrecy, its leaders increasingly are making nitty-gritty policy decisions and largely doing what they want, a situation illuminated by a recent controversy over the possible release of a Senate report on CIA rendition and torture practices.
All of this is or should be obvious, but remains surprisingly unacknowledged in our American world. The rise of the Fourth Branch began at a moment of mobilization for a global conflict, World War II. It gained heft and staying power in the Cold War of the second half of the twentieth century, when that other superpower, the Soviet Union, provided the excuse for expansion of every sort.
Its officials bided their time in the years after the fall of the Soviet Union, when “terrorism” had yet to claim the landscape and enemies were in short supply. In the post-9/11 era, in a phony “wartime” atmosphere, fed by trillions of taxpayer dollars, and under the banner of American “safety,” it has grown to unparalleled size and power. So much so that it sparked a building boom in and around the national capital (as well as elsewhere in the country). In their 2010 Washington Post series “Top Secret America,” Dana Priest and William Arkin offered this thumbnail summary of the extent of that boom for the US Intelligence Community: “In Washington and the surrounding area,” they wrote, “33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 US Capitol buildings—about 17 million square feet of space.” And in 2014, the expansion is ongoing.
In this century, a full-scale second “Defense Department,” the Department of Homeland Security, was created. Around it has grown up a mini-version of the military-industrial complex, with the usual set of consultants, K Street lobbyists, political contributions and power relations: just the sort of edifice that President Eisenhower warned Americans about in his famed farewell address in 1961. In the meantime, the original military-industrial complex has only gained strength and influence.
Increasingly, post-9/11, under the rubric of “privatization,” though it should more accurately have been called “corporatization,” the Pentagon took a series of crony companies off to war with it. In the process, it gave “capitalist war” a more literal meaning, thanks to its wholesale financial support of, and the shrugging off of previously military tasks onto, a series of warrior corporations.
Meanwhile, the seventeen members of the US Intelligence Community—yes, there are seventeen major intelligence outfits in the national security state—have been growing, some at prodigious rates. A number of them have undergone their own versions of corporatization, outsourcing many of their operations to private contractors in staggering numbers, so that we now have “capitalist intelligence” as well. With the fears from 9/11 injected into society and the wind of terrorism at their backs, the Intelligence Community has had a remarkably free hand to develop surveillance systems that are now essentially “watching” everyone—including, it seems, other branches of the government.
Think of Edward Snowden, the former CIA employee who went over to the corporate side of the developing national security economy, as the first blowback figure from and on the world of “capitalist intelligence.” Thanks to him, we have an insider’s view of the magnitude of the ambitions and operations of the National Security Agency. The scope of that agency’s surveillance operations and the range of global and domestic communications it now collects have proven breathtaking—with more information on its reach still coming out. And keep in mind that it’s only one agency.
We know as well that the secret world has developed its own secret body of law and its own secret judiciary, largely on the principle of legalizing whatever it wanted to do. As The New York Times’s Eric Lichtblau has reported, it even has its own Supreme Court equivalent in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. And about all this, the other branches of government know only limited amounts and American citizens know next to nothing.
From the Pentagon to the Department of Homeland Security to the labyrinthine world of intelligence, the rise to power of the national security state has been a spectacle of our time. Whenever news of its secret operations begins to ooze out, threatening to unnerve the public, the White House and Congress discuss “reforms” which will, at best, modestly impede the expansive powers of that state within a state. Generally speaking, its powers and prerogatives remain beyond constraint by that third branch of government, the non-secret judiciary. It is deferred to with remarkable frequency by the executive branch and, with the rarest of exceptions, it has been supported handsomely with much obeisance and few doubts by Congress.
And also keep in mind that, of the four branches of government, only two of them—an activist Supreme Court and the national security state—seem capable of functioning in a genuine policymaking capacity at the moment.
“Misleading” Congress
In that light, let’s turn to a set of intertwined events in Washington that have largely been dealt with in the media as your typical tempest in a teapot, a catfight among the vested and powerful. I’m talking about the various charges and countercharges, anger, outrage and irritation, as well as news of acts of seeming illegality now swirling around a 6,300-page CIA “torture report” produced but not yet made public by the Senate Intelligence Committee. This ongoing controversy reveals a great deal about the nature of the checks and balances on the Fourth Branch of government in 2014.
One of the duties of Congress is to keep an eye on the functioning of the government using its powers of investigation and oversight. In the case of the CIA’s program of Bush-era rendition, black sites (offshore prisons) and “enhanced interrogation techniques” (a k a torture), the Senate Intelligence Committee launched an investigation in March 2009 into what exactly occurred when suspects in the war on terror were taken to those offshore prisons and brutally interrogated. “Millions” of CIA documents, handed over by the Agency, were analyzed by Intelligence Committee staffers at a “secure” CIA location in Northern Virginia.
Among them was a partial copy of a document known as the “Internal Panetta Review,” evidently a report for the previous CIA director on what the Senate committee might find among those documents being handed over to its investigators. It reportedly reached some fairly strong conclusions of its own about the nature of the CIA’s interrogation overreach in those years. According to Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, the committee head, this document was among the mass of documentation the CIA turned over—whether purposely, inadvertently or thanks to a whistleblower no one knows. (The CIA, on the other hand, claimed, until recently, that committee staffers had essentially stolen it from its computer system.)
The Agency or its private contractors (intelligence capitalism strikes again!) reportedly worked in various ways to obstruct the committee’s investigation, including by secretly removing previously released documents from the committee’s “secure” computer system. Nonetheless, its report was completed in December 2012 and passed on to the White House “for comment”—and then the fun began.
Though relatively few details about its specific contents have leaked out, word has it that it will prove devastating. It will supposedly show, among other things, that those “enhanced interrogation techniques” the CIA used were significantly more brutal than what was described to congressional overseers; that they went well beyond what the “torture memo” lawyers of the Bush administration had laid out (which, mind you, was brutal enough); that no plots were broken up thanks to torture; and that top figures in the Agency, assumedly under oath, “misled” Congress (a polite word for “lied to,” a potential criminal offense that goes by the name of perjury). Senators knowledgeable on the contents of the report have repeatedly insisted that when it goes public, Americans will be shocked by its contents.
Let’s keep in mind as well that committee head Feinstein was previously known as one of the most loyal and powerful supporters of the national security state and the CIA. Until recently, she has, in fact, essentially been the senator from the national security state. She and her colleagues, themselves shocked by what they had learned, understandably wanted their report declassified and released to the American people with all due speed. It naturally had to be vetted to ensure that it contained no names of active agents and the like. But two and a half years later, after endless reviews and a process of vetting by the CIA and the White House that gives the word “glacial” a bad name, it has yet to be released (though there are regular reports that this will—or will not—happen soon).
During this time, the CIA seemed to go to Def Con 2 and decided to turn its spying skills on the committee and its staffers. Claiming that those staffers had gotten the Panetta Internal Review by “hacking” the CIA’s computers, it essentially hacked the committee’s computers and searched them. In the meantime, its acting general counsel, Robert Eatinger, who had been the chief lawyer for the counterterrorism unit out of which the CIA interrogation programs were run, and who was mentioned 1,600 times in the Senate report, filed (to quote Feinstein) a “crimes report to the Department of Justice on the actions of congressional staff—the same congressional staff who researched and drafted a report that details how CIA officers—including the acting general counsel himself—provided inaccurate information to the Department of Justice about the program.” (Back in 2005, Eatinger had also been one of two lawyers responsible for not stopping the destruction of CIA videotapes of the brutal interrogations of terror suspects in its secret prisons.)
In addition, according to Feinstein, CIA Director John Brennan met with her, lied to her and essentially tried to intimidate her by telling her “that the CIA had searched a ‘walled-off committee network drive containing the committee’s own internal work product and communications’ and that he was going to ‘order further forensic evidence of the committee network to learn more about activities of the committee’s oversight staff.’” In other words, the overseen were spying upon and now out to get the overseers. And more than that, based on a single incident in which one of its greatest supporters in Congress stepped over the line, the Agency was specifically out to get the senator from the national security state.
There was a clear message here: oversight or not, don’t tread on us.
By the way, since the CIA is the injuring, not the injured, party, there is no reason to take seriously the self-interested words of its officials, past or present, on any of this, or any account they offer of events or charges they make. We’re talking, after all, about an outfit responsible for the initial brutal acts of interrogation, for false descriptions of them, for lying to Congress about them, for destroying evidence of the worst of what it had done, for spying on a Senate committee and its computer system and for somehow obtaining “legally protected email and other unspecified communications between whistleblower officials and lawmakers this spring relating to the Agency and the committee’s report.” In addition, according to a recent front-page story in The New York Times, its former director from the Bush years, George Tenet, has been actively plotting “a counterattack against the Senate committee’s voluminous report” with the present director and various past Agency officials. (And keep in mind that “roughly 200 people under [Tenet’s] leadership [who] had at some point participated in the interrogation program” are still working at the Agency.)
The Age of Impunity in Washington
In December 2012, the report began to wend its way through a “review and declassification” process, which has yet to end. Once again, the CIA stepped in. The Senate was eager to declassify the report’s findings, conclusions and its 600-page executive summary. The CIA, which had already done its damnedest to block the Senate investigation process, now ensured that the vetting would be interminable.
As a start, the White House vested the CIA as the lead agency in the review and vetting process, which meant that it was to be allowed to slow things to a crawl, stop them entirely or alternatively remove crucial and damning material from the report via redaction. If you want a gauge of just how powerful the various outfits that make up the Fourth Branch have become in Washington (and what limits on them still remain), look no further.
Fourteen years into the twenty-first century, we’re so used to this sort of thing that we seldom think about what it means to let the CIA—accused of a variety of crimes—be the agency to decide what exactly can be known by the public, in conjunction with a deferential White House. The Agency’s present director, it should be noted, has been a close confidant and friend of the president and was for years his key counterterrorism adviser. To get a sense of what all this really means, you need perhaps to imagine that, in 2004, the 9/11 Commission was forced to turn its report over to Osama bin Laden for vetting and redaction before releasing it to the public. Extreme as that may sound, the CIA is no less a self-interested party. And this interminable process has yet to end, although the White House is supposed to release something, possibly heavily redacted, as early as this coming week or perhaps in the dog days of August.
Keep in mind again that we’re still only talking about the overwhelming sense of power of one of the seventeen agencies that make up the Intelligence Community, which itself is but part of the far vaster national security state. Just one. Think of this, nonetheless, as a kind of litmus test for the shifting state of power relations in the new Washington. Or think of it this way: on the basis of a single negative Senate report about its past operations, the CIA was willing to go after one of the national security state’s most fervent congressional supporters. It attempted to intimidate her, tried to bring charges against her staffers, and so drove her “reluctantly” and in a kind of desperation to the Senate floor, where she offered a remarkable denunciation of the agency she had long supported. In its wake, last week, the CIA director dramatically backed off somewhat, perhaps sensing that there was a bridge too far even in Washington in 2014. Amid Senate calls for his resignation, he offered an “apology” for the extreme actions of lower level Agency employees. (But don’t hold your breath waiting for real reform at the CIA.)
In her Senate speech, Feinstein accused the Agency of potentially breaching both the law and the Constitution. “I have grave concerns,” she said, “that the CIA’s search [of the committee’s computer system] may well have violated the separation of powers principles embodied in the United States Constitution, including the Speech and Debate clause. It may have undermined the constitutional framework essential to effective congressional oversight of intelligence activities or any other government function.… Besides the constitutional implications, the CIA’s search may also have violated the Fourth Amendment, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, as well as Executive Order 12333, which prohibits the CIA from conducting domestic searches or surveillance.”
In the process, she anatomized an agency covering its tail and its trail, unwilling to admit to error of any sort or volunteer crucial information, while it attempted to block or even dismantle the oversight power of Congress. Her sobering speech should be read by every American, especially as it comes not from a critic but a perennial supporter of the Fourth Branch.
In retrospect, this “incident” may be seen as a critical moment in the still-unsettled evolution of governing power in America. Feinstein’s speech was covered briefly as a kind of kerfuffle in Washington and then largely dropped for other, more important stories. In the meantime, the so-called vetting process on the Senate report continued for yet more months in the White House and in Langley, Virginia, as if nothing whatsoever had occurred; the White House refused to act or commit itself on the subject; and the Justice Department refused to press charges of any sort. While a few senators threatened to invoke Senate Resolution 400—a forty-year-old unused power of that body to declassify information on its own—it was something of an idle threat. (A majority of the Senate would have to agree to vote against the CIA and the White House to put it into effect, which is unlikely indeed.)
Whatever happens with the report itself and despite the recent CIA apology, don’t expect the Senate to bring perjury charges against former CIA leaders for any lies to Congress. (It didn’t do so, after all, in the earlier case of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.) And don’t expect prosecutions of significant figures from a Justice Department that, in the Obama years, refused to prosecute even those in the CIA responsible for the deaths of prisoners.
The fact is that, for the Fourth Branch, this remains the age of impunity. Hidden in a veil of secrecy, bolstered by secret law and secret courts, surrounded by its chosen corporations and politicians, its power to define policy and act as it sees fit in the name of American safety is visibly on the rise. No matter what setbacks it experiences along the way, its urge to expand and control seems, at the moment, beyond staunching. In the context of the Senate’s torture report, the question at hand remains: Who rules Washington?
I decided to include the full article because not only is it relevant, this website is another of the many sites who allow you only a few “free” visits & then charge you. I’m on Social Security & can’t afford to pay for the information that should rightfully belong to all of us for free but those corporate cockroaches never stop trying to suck us dry.
Another thing that struck me as odd about this series was the fact that Michael Hayden, the head of the NSA was shown in a couple of scenes but never said anything? I think there may have been one, brief mention of the NSA in the entire ten episodes of the series.
But when it came to documentaries, etc. about Edward Snowden’s revelations regarding the illegal activities of the NSA, Hayden had a whole lot to say. For those of you who aren’t an old fart like me, the NSA is a very interesting subject all its own. Not that long ago, our government wouldn’t even acknowledge that it existed. In fact, it became somewhat of an insider’s joke & the NSA was dubbed, “No Such Agency,” exists. Another tidbit is that I read a book back in the 1970s, maybe the early 80s, & I believe it was by Senator Frank Church of Idaho & he said, “The NSA makes the CIA look like the Mickey Mouse Club.”
By-the-way, there’s no way to even find out what the budget of the CIA or the NSA is. They’re like black holes that the government just keeps on throwing billions & trillions of dollars into but hey, sorry American public, we just can’t afford to help you with your health care, improving our educational system, or the general welfare of our citizens. So sad, too bad! But you’d better keep paying your taxes or we’ll get you. Of course the 1% don’t have to pay any taxes because they’re the “job creators.” Except those jobs just happen to be in poor countries where the people are forced to work for maybe a dollar or two a day, just enough for a bowl of rice.
In conclusion, you may be tempted to dismiss me as just another cynical old man but that’d be a cop-out & disingenuous. Yes, I have perhaps obsessively studied politics, our society & culture for well over 40 years & have definitely become more pessimistic with time. Less idealistic & less optimistic but something keeps pushing me forward in the hope & dream of a far more equitable & just world.
I’ve also received some very encouraging feedback over the years, especially from my hero, Noam Chomsky. He has urged me to keep on fighting and so I shall. Moreover, I’ve also been working on what I call a Social/Political Fantasy for many years & I believe that it helps me keep my spirits up when the negativity of the ugly realities of American foreign & domestic policies weigh me down. I have written nearly 7,000 pages on my magnum opus of Love and Peace & it is great fun some times.
Coming full circle on this essay, I started by telling you about my epiphany & I think that’s a good place to end this piece on. If you’ll take the time to read those few pages of quotes by William Blum that I mentioned, it’ll be clear & help make sense of the chaos, incompetence, & willful ignorance that resulted in that day that shook America & much of the world.
This is what the trillions of dollars spent on “National Security” has given us.
When the U.S. emerged from WWII relatively unscathed, the self-appointed “Masters of the Universe,” in the corridors of power in Washington D.C. & on Wall St. came together & devised their grand strategy for a Pax Americana but first, they needed to bring the rest of the nations to their knees.
“We should not forget Adam Smith’s perspicuous observation that the “masters of mankind”—in his day, the merchants and manufacturers of England—never cease to pursue their “vile maxim”: “All for ourselves, and nothing for other people.”
― Noam Chomsky, Who Rules the World?
— Rob DeLoss, January 25, 2023
I wish you Peace and Perseverance!
Addendum
I often find myself wanting to add more to a piece because while my conscious mind tells me I’ve finished the piece, my subconscious is still working on it 24/7.
In a recent essay that I wrote, I pointed out that in the great, Rob Reiner film, Shock and Awe, there was a pivotal scene in which the editor of the Knight-Ridder News Agency, the only news agency in America that refused to jump on the Iraq War bandwagon, the editor met clandestinely with a source in the government.
… the snippet of information that absolutely blew my mind came from an intelligence analyst who met clandestinely with the editor of Knight-Ridder, John Walcott, and when asked about why the Bush administration had let Osama bin Laden slip away at Tora Bora, he replied, “if they kill or capture bin Laden, the support for the war goes right down the shitter.”
Now of course doubters could claim, how credible is this source but this is the conundrum that is inherent in the relationships between all reporters & their sources i.e. if a reporter reveals their sources, they will never be trusted again & may very well miss out on critical information necessary to break the big stories.
I believe that I read that John Walcott purposely avoided top level sources because they often compromise their integrity because they know that if they reveal information a little too close to the powers that be at the top of the food chain so-to-speak, it’d be career suicide. So Walcott & his reporters aimed more for mid-level sources who didn’t risk quite as much.
The critically important point to be made here is that if Walcott’s source was honest & correct, this exposed the very core of the warmongers & war profiteers true motives as to why we invaded Afghanistan. They knew the American public’s war fever was at a pitch & screamed for revenge. They couldn’t wait around while they created their fictional case as to why we should invade Iraq.
So, by invading Afghanistan & pretending to be hunting down Usama bin Laden, that would give them time to prepare for their true agenda, the oil fields of Iraq. Of course, we most likely will never know the full truth about these two deadly wars but I have tried to avoid the simplistic, conspiracy theories that immoral morons like Trump & Alex Jones throw out in order to cause divisiveness. In the end, it’s up to us individually to inform ourselves as best we can & decide for ourselves what the truth is.
I received an “Undesirable Discharge” from the U.S. Army because I trusted my gut instinct & kept going AWOL after being a “good soldier” for six months. And no, I was anything but politically aware back then. I didn’t follow the news, so I didn’t really know much about what was happening in the Vietnam war. My guess is that because rebellion & revolution was in the air in the 1960s & early 70s, I was predisposed to distrust the U.S. Army & the federal government.
Moreover, I didn’t enlist in the army because I wanted to but because I was in the lottery & knew that they’d draft me soon if I didn’t join one of the branches. I chose the army because it required the least amount of time, two years. Unfortunately, I didn’t know about the college deferment option, or I definitely would’ve taken that route.
Anyway, it didn’t take me long to develop a strong hate for the whole experience. Now I know that some guys thrive in the military experience & love the whole, structured experience. But for me, I hated the authoritarianism, the fact that our “superiors” could scream in our faces, etc. I can’t tell you how many of my “superiors” made me so angry that I had to struggle not to punch their lights out.
“Winning” the Hearts & Minds of the Vietnamese people
And the irony was that after taking a battery of tests in the first week of my “Basic Training,” me and about four or five other guys from my company kept being pulled-out & taken to these meetings with some high-ranking officers. I was confused about the rankings with the “scrambled eggs” on the bill of their hats, the stripes on their arms, the medals on their chests, etc. but I knew they were pretty high-ranking officers.
Why I was in this little group was a mystery to me. The only thing I could figure was that I had been an avid reader all my life & they told me that I was reading at the 11th grade, sixth month level when I was in the sixth grade. Well, talk about high-pressure salesmanship, they basically promised us the moon i.e., they told us that we could go into whatever M.O.S. (Military Occupational Specialty) that we wanted to & that they’d station us wherever we wanted to be stationed around the world.
but remember, “We don’t do torture.”
There’s one thing you learn very quickly in the army, don’t believe anything they promise you, especially the recruiters who will tell you anything to get you to sign that contract. While their attempts to seduce me into re-upping (extend my contract to four or six more years & go to Officer Candidate School) I kept respectfully turning down their sales pitches. I was tempted to tell them that I didn’t even want to be a squad leader (ten guys).
I was disgusted from the first week as I observed many petty, little spirits & egos who loved fucking with the brand-new guys the moment they stepped off the bus like we’d done just a week earlier. Furthermore, some guys had trouble making it through the obstacle course or dealing with the daily PT (physical training). Not to brag but I had always been active as a teenager i.e., wrestling, bike riding, swimming, climbing trees, gymnastics, etc. so the physical aspects of my basic training weren’t shit.
My greatest challenge was the psychological games they run on you. Drill sergeants screaming insults & orders in my face, just a few inches from my nose. I saw their game, break down our identities as individuals & brainwash us into good little soldiers who would walk off a cliff if they ordered us to. I also had to contend with one little G.I. Joe wannabe who frequently flipped me shit because I wasn’t gung-ho like him. I didn’t spit-shine my belt buckles or my boots. I didn’t make the super tight, hospital corners when making my bed up in the mornings. I did the bare minimum necessary to keep our platoon (about 40 guys) sergeant off my ass.
Oh but we’re so morally superior to the terrorists.
After a few weeks of this scrawny, little Mexican guy who probably weighed about 120 lbs. if that, fucking with me, I invited him to step into the head (bathroom) one night. I made sure we were alone & I didn’t raise my voice, but I looked him straight in the eye & told him, look, you play G.I. Joe all you want to, but you get off my ass or we can settle it right here & now. He didn’t fuck with me anymore after that.
That’s enough of all that so let me fast forward to the point where I took that fateful & scary first step of rebellion. After completing basic training, I was transferred to Ft. Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas. They were going to train me to be a combat field medic but on the first night we were there & filling out a bunch of paperwork, they said, “we need some clerk typists, who wants to be a clerk typist?” I raised my hand; the guy asked me if I could type & I said yes. (I had one class on how to type when I was in middle school & I think I received a D?
Well, three days later they made me a clerk typist & I found it very amusing. Remember what I said about not trusting their promises? When I first spoke with the army recruiter & he read through a long list of possible jobs, I chose clerk typist because it sounded like an easy job. The recruiter said, “sorry, if you want to be a clerk typist, you’ll need to add on another year.” I said forget it because again, the only reason I chose the army was because it had the least amount of time, two years.
And lo & behold, six months later I was a clerk typist. I didn’t have to go through the usual A.I.T. (Advanced Individual Training), I delivered paperwork between officers, filled out Article 15s, etc., I had my own room, got to go to the head of the chow line whenever I was hungry, could go into town practically whenever I wanted to, etc. In other words, I had it made.
For a while, I found myself working in the same job as that first night when we got off the bus from the airport, filled out all the paperwork, & were assigned to where we were to bunk & the guy had asked who wants to be a clerk typist. I worked with maybe three or four other guys & we sat on our asses for long periods of time waiting for the next busload of guys to arrive.
Naturally, we often talked about our hometowns & etc. and we felt homesick. And I began to think, why am I here? Is this going to be my life for the next year and a half? So, thoughts of going AWOL started percolating in my brain & one night, I went for it. Unfortunately, my face must’ve had guilty written all over it because a couple of M.P.s at the airport busted me & took me back to the base.
More “Winning of Hearts & Minds?”
My company commander thought I was just a little mixed-up, so I was supposed to be fined half a month’s pay & had to mop floors a couple of nights. Well, I met an older guy who had been trying to get out of the army for a while & he told me, “Bottom-line Rob, the army doesn’t give a shit that you’re unhappy & want out. You have to show them that you’re more trouble than you’re worth. So, keep going AWOL but turn yourself in just before 30 days is up so they can’t classify you a deserter.”
He had also told me that as long as I kept going AWOL, they couldn’t ship me out because I’d be tied-up in court martial proceedings. I figured, well, I’ve started this so I may as well follow through, but it was one of the scariest periods of my life up to that point. I was defying the U.S. Army & I didn’t know for sure what they’d do to me. Send me to military prison for five years? Were they right when they told us we’d ruin the rest of our lives, etc.? I couldn’t go to my mom’s house because she definitely wouldn’t have approved.
She was proud of me when I enlisted and now, I was no better than those “dirty hippies.” The hardest thing was swallowing my pride & having to ask “friends,” if I could crash on their couches, sleep in their garages, etc. I felt so low at one point that I briefly entertained the thought of suicide & the very thought of it scared the shit out of me.
On my second AWOL escape, I thought, well they busted me at the San Antonio airport last time, so I’ll outsmart them & I took a bus to El Paso & caught a flight to L.A. from there. It was a close one though, because while in line at the El Paso airport, I was talking to a guy who was AWOL too but just before we were to board the plane, the F.B.I. asked for his I.D. and busted him.
There were moments of humor to all this though, the army in its usual incompetence was supposed to be docking my pay but they’d screw-up & give me my full pay and I’d say to myself, okay you stupid shits, I’m outta here and I’d be off to L.A. yet again. My mom must’ve learned from my sisters or brother that I was AWOL and hanging around the neighborhood & I found myself living under her roof again.
I’d gone AWOL three or four times at this point, I believe? But the army didn’t seem to be taking me seriously, so I decided to stay gone & was AWOL for close to two & a half months I believe? Then early one morning there was a knock at the door, I saw one guy in a suit, walk down one side of our house while the other guy was knocking on the front door & I panicked & started to climb out a window but the one agent had picked a strategic location so he could watch two sides of the house simultaneously.
They were F.B.I. and they arrested me, but they were cool in that they didn’t handcuff me. They took me to some tiny, military jail in San Pedro & I was transferred back to the stockade at Ft. Ord where I’d done my basic training. I did 11 days in the stockade and the Fort’s commander was fed-up at having to deal with all of us AWOL assholes & they put a piece of paper in front of me saying that if I waived my right to the G.I. Bill, I’d be discharged with an “Undesirable.” I jumped at the opportunity & had to hitchhike all the way to L.A. flat broke, but I was free at last!
Of course, none of this had anything to do with the war itself, I only knew when I was there in Texas, that half of us were going to be shipped to Vietnam & the other half would be going to Germany. I freely admit that if I knew for sure that I’d be transferred to Germany, I would’ve stayed in, but I wasn’t about to risk my life and maybe be shipped to Vietnam.
It wasn’t until years later & after I’d become interested in politics that I learned about the totally fabricated i.e., grand lie, Gulf of Tonkin “incident.” How long were we in Vietnam? I believe it was approximately ten years & we had 56,000 Americans killed in that phony war. I don’t know how many poor souls were maimed by losing an arm, a leg, etc. to say nothing of the mental & emotional Hell that many of them still suffer from to this day. And don’t forget about Agent Orange which our government denied for years.
Moreover, we’re not supposed to mention or care about the fact that we may have killed as many as two million Vietnamese people. But for the past 45 years or better, I have been obsessed about learning the dirty secrets & lies behind our endless stream of wars. I have conservatively spent at least 50,000 hours learning about our shameful past, present, & the spooky future before us.
So, it came as no surprise to me after we’d invaded Afghanistan then Iraq, it was all a pack of lies yet again to sucker the public into going along with all the death & destruction. And what about the cost of these wars? I heard an estimate recently that we spent something like $20 trillion over the course of our twenty years in Afghanistan.
What did we accomplish in these wars? Did we gain some great geopolitically strategic advantage? How are the citizens of those countries doing after we withdrew? If memory serves, China was our greatest fear & threat and was why we had to invade Vietnam & interfere in its civil war. Remember the rationale, we had to avoid/prevent the “Domino Effect,” of all the nations in that part of the world from becoming Communist. Yet not long after we withdrew from Vietnam, Nixon & Kissinger were applauding themselves for their great breakthrough in developing “Détente” with Communist China who soon became one of our biggest trading partners.
How’s Iraq after our “liberation?” We bombed their infrastructure back to the Stone Age. But remember, we’re the creators of Democracy around the globe. Yep! The Middle East is now a hornet’s nest & a viper’s nest of terrorists. Of course, it wasn’t before we came in and “liberated” it and opened the floodgates of pent-up hostilities that go back centuries between the Sunnis & the Shiites. But that’s American foreign policy & wisdom in a nutshell i.e., establish those self-fulfilling prophecies then step back as the carnage unfolds & declare, “See, we told you.”
This is what the war planners dub, “Making the World Safe for Democracy.” What a sick, perverted sense of humor those evil bastards have! At least they used to be more honest when it was called, “The War Department.” Talk about Orwell’s “Doublespeak.”
The spark that ignited or inspired me to write this piece came from a movie I rewatched a couple of months ago, Shock and Awe directed by Rob Reiner. This movie was based on the true story of the Knight Ridder news organization & clearly showed how the mainstream media has betrayed the American public & served the interests of the 1% who own them.
Another great movie based on the truth about the totally fabricated campaign pushed by the George W. Bush White House that Saddam Hussein possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction, was Fair Game . The Bush White House deliberately revealed the identity of a top C.I.A. agent, Valerie Plame, in an effort to silence her husband, Ambassador Joe Wilson, who had a very stellar & courageous reputation for his work in the Middle East.
Getting back to Shock and Awe, the snippet of information that absolutely blew my mind came from an intelligence analyst who met clandestinely with the editor of Knight-Ridder, John Walcott, and when asked about why the Bush administration had let Osama bin Laden slip away at Tora Bora, he replied, “if they kill or capture bin Laden, the support for the war goes right down the shitter.”
Let that percolate in your mind for a few minutes. In other words, in order to keep the war fever burning in the public’s mind, they needed a bogeyman, a person who represented the evil unleashed against America on 9/11. So, even though Bush & Cheney actually had their eyes fixed on invading Iraq for control of its oil fields, bin Laden was a useful scapegoat who would guarantee the flow of the billions of our tax dollars into the Pentagon, to keep the illegal & immoral war against Iraq going. The administration put on a full-court press so-to-speak in terms of cherry-picking & outright lying about Saddam Hussein to manufacture a justification for invading & occupying Iraq.
The movie briefly mentioned an organization called P.N.A.C. (Project for the New American Century) but they didn’t tell us a whole lot about it. It wasn’t a secret organization & it basically was their blueprint for dominating the world in the coming 21st century. It was established in 1997 and three of its members were Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, & Paul Wolfowitz, the three key architects of the plan to invade Iraq in the Bush administration.
In fact, the organization called for regime change in Iraq in its statement of principles back in 1997. Many Americans probably aren’t even aware of the fact that for many years, the U.S. loved Saddam Hussein & gave him many weapons of mass destruction even as he murdered & gassed his own people, especially the poor Kurdish population of Iraq.
“[PNAC’s] ideology was summarized in a major position paper, Rebuilding America’s Defenses, in 2000. This document advocated a global Pax Americana unrestrained by international law …”[55]— Wikipedia
Some of P.N.A.C.’s members lamented before the events of 9/11 that what was needed was another Pearl Harbor, “a catastrophic and catalyzing event.” So, in effect, 9/11 was a gift from heaven as far as these warmongers were concerned. Now they could implement their plans for world domination by America. Keep in mind that they had the several hundred pages Patriot Act already written & again were just looking for an excuse to pass it into law. I’m not going to wander into an Alex Jones conspiracy land nightmare scenario but it’s worth bearing these things in mind.
Note though that the Patriot Act violated several aspects of our Bill of Rights and was a direct assault on the U.S. Constitution, you know, that document our government was founded upon & which presidents as well as police officers & military personnel must swear to defend & uphold.
Of course, Donald Trump, many politicians in the GOP as well as the MAGA morons chose to wipe their asses with our Constitution especially on January 6th when they sought to overthrow our government.
Let’s review the consequences of America’s foreign policy since the end of WWII. Twenty years in Afghanistan & some analysts say $20 trillion dollars later, and was clearly unnecessary not to mention, immoral. Several scholars said we should’ve gone after bin Laden like a criminal case with a small police-type group of people who spoke the language, knew the customs & traditions, etc. but then the American warlords wouldn’t have the excuse for wasting billions of dollars. (See the movie Zero Dark Thirty)
In hindsight, it’s now obvious that Iraq was the target even before 9/11 (see P.N.A.C.) game plan in 1997 but they needed to appear to care about 9/11 & Afghanistan at least gave them the flimsy excuse that it was used as a training ground for Al Qaeda. But much more logically, why didn’t we say or do anything about Saudi Arabia because 15 of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia & bin Laden himself is from Saudi Arabia & he was related to the royal family & derived his wealth from them?
Smedley F. Butler
“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”
― Smedley D. Butler, War is a Racket
Those in power are guilty of pure, naked aggression with only one goal, wealth & power. They let our infrastructure (roads, bridges, highways, etc.) crumble, they let/cause our citizens to become homeless, let the American public die needlessly in a pandemic (see Trump’s deliberate undermining of COVID treatment), they allow Wall St. steal our pensions, and the GOP along with help from some Democrats like Biden are open to making cuts to, even eliminating Social Security & Medicare.
“Find the Cost of Freedom” buried in the ground.
They allow scum like Trump & FOX “news,” to sow the seeds of fear, hate, & racism to keep us divided, but by all means, don’t make the 1% pay their fair share of taxes. Note that under Eisenhower, the wealthy were in the 90% tax bracket but today, it’s around 20% & most of them actually pay around 10% or less. Of course, many of the elite effectively pay zero with their tax dodges & tax havens. And many, if not most of the richest corporations pay not only nothing in taxes, but some also even get tax rebates in the millions. Yet they use our infrastructure to conduct their business, are protected by our police & military, and we, the 99% have to pay for the infrastructure, etc.
Our military rapes, pillages, & plunders most of the world for its natural resources & cheap labor and we call it “Bringing Democracy & Freedom.” (See Major General Smedley F. Butler who several business tycoons tried to enlist to lead a coup against FDR because they hated his New Deal policies) Why did the 1% allow such an obvious grifter like Trump to become president? Behind the scenes of all the presidential campaigns & the national, political spectacle that goes on ad nauseam, the 1% decide who will be elected.
With America’s long list of wars & police actions since the end of WWII, our indiscriminate Drone warfare & etc., are you still at a loss to explain/understand why so many terrorists want to kill Americans? This isn’t a defense or excuse of terrorism but is my attempt to shine a light on its causes.
Another good movie is Fair Game with Sean Penn. It shows just how far “our” government will go to silence our whistleblowers.
In conclusion, an excellent example of how corrupt & politicized our military has become over the decades & which reflects the rot at the core of our political system is the My Lai massacre in Vietnam in 1968. Colin Powell was sent by the Pentagon to “investigate,” and his report basically said that the slaughter of over 500 Vietnamese peasants was a rare event & the blame was placed squarely on Lt. William Calley.
I’m not excusing Calley’s actions, but this was a typical occurrence, not a rare event & many soldiers have backed this up including John Kerry, I believe, in his testimony before Congress shortly after his return from duty in Vietnam ended. My point is that because Powell proved dependable to the Pentagon, his rise to the top position in the military, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was all but secured.
And the Bush administration used Powell to sell the invasion of Iraq to the world at the United Nations. Powell had far more credibility than anyone else in Bush’s cabinet & even though he knew the evidence they’d cobbled together to justify attacking Iraq was bogus, Powell did his masters’ bidding.
Yeah, I’m the “undesirable” one!
— Rob DeLoss, January 16, 2023
P.S. The key point to keep in mind regarding all of this is the point that the 1% who own the Defense industry corporations will keep the wars coming until the entire planet blows up in a nuclear conflagration or the world economy completely implodes.
‘’It is nothing short of a miracle that modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry.’’ [quoted in The New York Times, March 13 1949, p. 34].
— Albert Einstein
I was a substitute teacher at the secondary level for L.A. Unified Schools in the San Fernando Valley from 1987 to 1992. And I can’t even begin to tell you how sick & tired I got of hearing students — especially middle school students — complain, “This is boring,” or “I’m bored.”
The main argument against home schooling is that it hinders the development of “social skills,” How’s that going?
Then one day, I subbed in a class that had this quote on the board, “The cure for boredom is curiosity and there is no cure for curiosity.” It was like I had discovered gold & I was elated. Now I had an answer for those complaints of boredom. If students would listen or were even interested, I’d point out, how can you be bored when there are millions of new sights, sounds, tastes, etc.? So, if you’re bored, it’s your fault and you are merely copping out or being intellectually lazy.
Today from the vantage point of an old fart of 70, I am more sympathetic to those students’ complaints. What they were really saying & feeling but didn’t know how to articulate it was, the rote method of teaching employed in the overwhelming majority of public schools was what was boring them to death. Einstein’s quote above puts it far more succinctly. Yet, to a large extent, we have raised the last couple of generations to expect to be entertained 24 hours a day & they believe it’s their birthright to a large extent.
What worries me is that the individual student & citizen is drowning in this sea of entertainment. And I have come to the conclusion that Aldous Huxley’s vision of the future was far more correct than George Orwell’s was. Dismiss me as a fear monger or an alarmist if you will but, hear me out.
In American society today, our blind trust in technology, especially in the “Social Media” gurus of Silicon Valley, we have de facto entrusted our minds & our emotional well-being to the greedy entrepreneurs who have become mega-millionaires at our destructive expense.
There is a myriad of personal costs as well as our national well-being from this blind trust & worship of all things high-tech, but the most pernicious cost is the erosion of our ability to think critically or analytically for ourselves. For example, behind all this supposed “social media,” & high-tech gadgets like “Smart phones,” the artificial connection via “platforms,” has to an alarming extent, replaced the actual, physical connections with friends.
If that fact alone doesn’t worry or scare you, perhaps you too have become so addicted that you can’t see it? Behind all this faux “social media,” & its tools of enslavement is advertising. And in Silicon Valley, advertising success is what their fortunes depend on & what it boils down to is “eyeballs” i.e., the length of time people watch/use their platforms. So, in a nutshell, what these tech titans don’t want you to know/understand is that the corporate conglomerates are in effect, controlling & manipulating all those who are addicted to their supposed benign tools & platforms.
In the fairly recent documentary, “The Great Hack,” Britney Kaiser who claims to have been unaware & now pretends to be a whistleblower after Cambridge Analytica was busted, said one thing that surprised me & made me sit up & take notice. She said that “information has replaced oil as the world’s most valuable commodity.” This is not wild, conspiratorial speculation because the fact is that the high-tech, social media firms have been collecting every scrap of our personal information, many of them willingly cooperating with the government, & it’s being stored in a massive, data storage facility in Utah.
I’m going to move on or return to the main thesis of this essay now because I don’t wish to go too far afield of my subject. My central point is that many, if not most of these modern marvels are making us mentally flabby or are enfeebling us. And I don’t believe that so many millions of us would’ve fallen for such an obvious phony like Trump were we not so dumbed-down — see John Taylor Gatto, one of America’s greatest teachers — by the Wizards of Oz in the Silicon Valley, “our” mainstream media, & our deliberately undermined public education system. (See several of my other essays on my blog if you’re interested in these subjects)
Don’t Worry, Be Happy! Right?
As this essay was taking shape in my mind, it occurred to me, how as individuals & collectively as a society, are we to progress if we continue to allow this sapping of our mental capabilities? My intellectual as well as spiritual guru, Noam Chomsky, made a very cogent point in regard to the dilemma of higher education from the standpoint of the corporate overlords. One the one hand, they want a society of obedient & subservient employees & that’s why they have undermined public education but when it comes to graduate school, they depend on students who are free thinkers, nonconformists, people who dare to question authority i.e., the traditional ways of thinking.
Why? Because those are the people who make the breakthroughs in technology, medicine, etc., the ones who dare to think “outside the box.” The students who obey & follow all the rules rarely, if ever, come up with original ideas or perspectives. It’s the rebels, the nonconformists, the dreamers, the idealists, etc. that true progress depends on.
Sadly & unfortunately, many, if not most of those free thinkers are destroyed by this society that praises conformity & playing by the rules, and punishes & ridicules those who can’t or who refuse to. What’s important for all of us to remember is that technology is a double-edged sword i.e., it can be beneficial to mankind, or it can become a dangerous weapon that harms humanity in a myriad of ways.
Again, this is why it’s so critically important that far more of us, ideally, all of us intellectually capable, acquire the skills of critical & analytical thinking. I have been urging family, friends, & strangers alike for almost four decades now, to develop these skills but my words have mostly fallen on deaf ears.
I don’t claim to be some sort of grand master or something, but I have spent tens of thousands of hours seeking answers & looking for patterns & causes behind the crisis’s humanity faces. And Chomsky has focused his laser-like attention on the two, greatest threats to human survival, climate destruction & the threat of a nuclear war, and his perseverance has in turn inspired me to persevere no matter how often I am mocked & dismissed.
So, when people disingenuously try to dismiss or ignore me as if I were simply another one of those proverbial, street-corner preachers ranting & raving about the coming Apocalypse, I know that my aim is true & pure, and I continue to pay the price socially.
My beloved wife, Jeri, who passed away over nine years ago, was one of the hardest working & most dedicated teachers I have ever known. And while she was usually swallowed-up in the asinine bureaucracy of being a special education teacher, she respected my Don Quixote crusade to inform & ideally inspire people to stand-up, speak out, & fight the powers that be. And I miss her down to the marrow of my bones & hope that I may someday be worthy of her love. In that spirit, I shall leave you with a gem from Doris Lessing who happened to be the favorite author of my first English literature professor, Roy Garrot, in the top four of the most inspiring teachers in my life!
Here’s an excerpt from “The Golden Notebook” that every teacher and parent should read:
“Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself — educating your own judgements. Those that stay must remember, always, and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society.”
Unfortunately, there isn’t a way to ensure or guarantee that all teachers will be fired-up with a passion for learning & teaching but if we were honest with ourselves as a society that claims to value equality, democracy, freedom, & truth, we would earnestly strive to create such an educational system. For now, we must individually pursue this dream.
As for me, my conscience is clear & even though I never took a single course in the teacher education curriculum, I have had ESL students cry when I had to move on. Those were the highest compliments I’ve ever receiving in my career. My training was all on the job so-to-speak & I believe those students loved me because they knew that I loved them & truly cared about their welfare and wished them healthy & happy futures.
Remember Biden’s promise to hold MBS accountable for murder of American journalist Jamal Khashoggi?
He didn’t cancel the portion of the Student Loan Debt through the Higher Education Act
Obama picked him because although he’s a democrat, he votes Republican
He has a really dirty voting record
He went after Anita Hill so Clarence Thomas could sit on the Supreme Court
He was one of the most fervent advocates of the wars in the Middle East
He was an abject supporter of the apartheid state of Israel
He fought school bussing with Strom Thurmond, an open segregationist & racist
He sponsored the comprehensive Crime Control Act which eliminated parole for federal prisoners & limited the amount of time sentences that they had for good behavior
He was behind the 1994 Omnibus Crime bill that he helped draft & massively expanded the death penalty for federal crimes from a couple to 51 doubling the nation’s prison population
He militarized the police by pushing through the 1996 Anti-Terrorism and effective Death Penalty Act that gutted the Writ of Habeas Corpus
He was one of the authors of the Patriot Act which allows the government with very little oversight to monitor all of our Communications; phone, phone, email, bank records, credit card reports & of course any activity on the Internet
He was one of the architects of the destruction of Welfare & 70% of the original recipients on Welfare were children
He has long called to cut Social Security
He fought for NAFTA
He backed the Illegal Immigration Reform & Immigrant Responsibility Act that eliminated the defenses for undocumented people & saw them far more easily deported
He helped deregulate the Banking industry with the abolition of Glass-Steagall & that was a major contributor not only in the global financial crisis but in the collapse of nearly 500 banks in the U.S.
He’s long been a tool of the Pharmaceutical Industry & the Insurance Industry which contributed heavily to his campaign
No mainstream media publication is going to lay out who Joe Biden really is
He used to be called Senator Credit Card because of all the credit card companies headquartered in Delaware
This is just a partial list but I’m guessing that you most likely weren’t aware of all the things on it?
An Irish pub in Portland that Jeri took me out to dinner to celebrate my last birthday before she passed away
An acquaintance of mine for over 50 years said to me several months ago that I was in the position I am in because I have made poor choices over the course of my life. I felt infuriated at this heartless dismissal but didn’t respond because I was so emotionally raw at his comment. And for the past several days, I was reflecting on this & I recently re-watched the film, “Too Big to Fail,” and I began to think that perhaps my story was a microcosm of the bigger story, the macrocosm of the 1% in this country?
To try to keep it from sounding like a purely personal attack against my acquaintance, I’m going to refer to him as simply “M”. I now call him an acquaintance because he’s shown me far too many times that he’s not a friend. I recently turned 70 years old & all my life I have wrestled with deep-seated feelings of insecurity & inferiority.
I believe that in the beginning of our friendship, I was amusing to M. & he enjoyed hearing my stories about hitchhiking around the country & Europe. But as the decades passed, M. didn’t find me so amusing anymore & he tired of reading my critiques about the social & political state of America. Moreover, M. is a multi-millionaire & I think he’s become more defensive over the years because of his wealth & prestige.
As far as I can tell, when the rich are confronted by the 99% of us who weren’t born with a silver spoon in our mouths, they blame us & accuse us of being too lazy, too ignorant, or of having made “poor choices.” So, yeah, this essay is obviously going to sound very defensive but how could it not be? And when the wealthy dismiss us as basically losers because of supposed character flaws, I feel like they are rubbing salt in our wounds. And those wounds are more often than not, the results of the callous indifference of the privileged elite.
We must remind ourselves that the 1% write the laws that keep the majority of us in poverty not only economically but also criminally. Everyone knows that there are two sets of law in America, one set for the 99%, especially the working poor, & another set of laws for the power elite who can literally get away with murder if they have enough money to buy the highest priced lawyers.
M didn’t have to work his way through college, it was handed to him by his daddy just as his position in daddy’s insurance agency was. He clearly didn’t have to worry about getting fired. I know that this may sound like I’m making excuses or simply being a whiner but how else am I to tell my story if I don’t tell you the facts of my life?
I started going to community college when I was 19 years old. I dreamed of becoming a forest ranger but learned that I should’ve taken physics, calculus, trigonometry, etc. in high school. But because I went to secondary school in Paramount, CA, an “industrially-zoned” city, they didn’t even offer these subjects. We were all placed on a “vocational track.” By-the-way, I was reading at the 11th grade, sixth month level when I was in the sixth grade.
Like most young men around 18 to 20 years old, I was being pressured at home to move out & make my own way in life & it seemed impractical to spend a couple of years taking these prerequisites before I could even begin the four years necessary to become a forest ranger. So, I began taking business courses because they seemed the most practical & might help me get my foot in the door with some company?
The problem with the business courses I took was that they were extremely boring & easy. I soon surmised that to succeed in business, only two things were necessary i.e., greed & a lack of ethics. Think about the millions of young men & women who had their dreams shot down because they couldn’t afford to go to the right colleges for the careers they wanted to pursue.
You see, I was born on the proverbial “wrong side of the tracks,” and was raised by a single mother with my three siblings. And it seemed that my entire childhood & adolescence was one long series of crises. Being the eldest, it fell to me to look after my brother & sisters i.e., cook dinner for them, make them do their homework & chores, and protect them from harm. I believe that a large part of the reason why I did so much wandering & hitchhiking in my 20s was because I was trying to make-up for my lost youth due to all the responsibilities I had as a child & a teenager?
I seriously doubt that M ever had such burdens & responsibilities placed on him as he was growing up. I spent my 20s switching college majors several times & I dropped-out of many courses sometimes half-way or even three-quarters of the way through a semester. Community college in those days was dirt-cheap & you basically just had to pay for your books so dropping-out was no big deal as far as I was concerned.
And if I had to guesstimate, I probably had close to a hundred different what I dubbed, “Mickey Mouse” jobs in those years. I usually quit a job for one of three reasons besides just being bored & wanting to travel. 1) the work conditions were too dangerous, 2) a supervisor treated me like I was their personal whipping-boy like I was a slave & they were my master, 3) it simply wasn’t challenging. The highest price I paid for my seemingly “irresponsible” ways was being labeled a quitter or a loser by family members as well as “friends.”
You see, I’ve been a dreamer all my life & ever since I was in the second grade, I’d dreamed of visiting Switzerland. I was impatient to live my dreams & figured that if I waited until I was retired, my health would probably be shot & I couldn’t hike those Alpine trails or swim in those glacier-fed lakes, etc. So, I’d work at some Mickey Mouse job for a few months & sometimes I’d buy a one-way ticket to Europe & land with a couple hundred bucks in my pocket & stay as long as I could stretch my money out.
Returning to those rationalizations the 1% use to blame us for our misfortunes, if I was too lazy, why have I written over 8,000 pages on one book that is “published,” and three others that are still works in progress? Why did I write over 300 essays? If I’m too dumb or ignorant, why did I persist for 14 years & finally earn my B.A. in English literature with no help from my family?
For over 40 years, I have obsessively followed i.e., read, watched documentaries, written about, collected articles, listened to political programs, etc. about America & the world’s social & political histories as well as current events. I’d guesstimate that conservatively; I have spent at least 50,000 hours in these pursuits. Why?
Because I hate injustice, inequality, the unnecessary suffering, pain, humiliation, & sometimes death of billions of the poor, the working class, & etc. around the globe. People like M haven’t got a clue & don’t give a shit! They sit in their penthouse suites, their luxury offices, their mansions, their yachts, their jets & feel so smug & superior and dismiss the rest of us as inferiors & not worthy of what they inherited or stole from the 99%.
The movie, “Too Big to Fail,” reveals these immoral & heartless bastards in all their ignominious glory. I have said for many years that as a general rule, the bigger a corporation is, the more likely they are committing fraud & it’s probably become their standard business practice because they know that if they get busted, the fines almost always are less than the profits they made breaking the law, so they have no to little incentive to stop breaking the law.
A handful of America’s largest banks, hedge fund managers, the three major credit rating agencies, the insurance behemoth A.I.G., our entire financial services industry forced the world economic system to the precipice of total collapse. Was this just a matter of “poor choices?”
The 1%’s “poor choices,” or fraud, caused tens of millions of people around the world to lose their jobs, their homes, their pensions, their health care, etc. Their hubris is breathtaking! The overwhelming majority of the American public made it very clear & said, Hell no, don’t bail the greedy crooks out but “our” government did it anyway.
And the architects of the bail-out, Hank Paulson, Timothy Geithner, & Ben Bernanke didn’t write into the legal paperwork the requirement that the banks would loosen-up credit requirements so that small businesses & individual borrowers could borrow again & help stimulate the dangerously sluggish economy. It was understood & believed that they would but guess what? They laughed all the way to the bank, didn’t make loans available to us, the suckers, & gave themselves lavish bonuses.
Three of the financial gurus who were part of the problem & Obama appointed them first thing in his administration.
Lesson learned? Yeah right! The banks are bigger than before, deregulation still reigns supreme, and the fraudsters aren’t worried because the public will be forced to pay for their “poor choices,” yet again because they’re too big to fail.
So, I sit here slowly dying from cancer that I can’t afford to fight because Medicare will only cover 80% of the necessary treatment & Social Security is my only income. My “choice” is to pay the 20% out of the inheritance my beloved wife left to me & end up homeless & still die from the incurable cancer I have or to hang on to a semblance of dignity & hope that my end isn’t too excruciatingly painful.
Another “poor choice” on my part? Or the honest reality that the poor have no choice in this rigged system. And those compassionate conservatives & corporate democrats want to slash Medicare & Social Security. Their greed knows no limits & they have no humanity!
— Rob DeLoss, January 12, 2023
P.S. Oh yeah, I almost forgot about another “poor choice,” I made. I was in the U.S. Army because I wasn’t even aware of college deferments & after six months, orders were coming down & half of us were to be sent to Germany & half of us would be sent to Vietnam. I kept going AWOL because they couldn’t ship you out while you were being court martialed. I’ve always referred to this as the most fortunate mistake of my life.
Infantilization is the process of treating someone as if they are a child. This can be done for various reasons, including to make someone feel more powerless or to make them easier to control. Infantilization can have negative consequences, however, as it can foster feelings of dependency and insecurity. It can also lead to a loss of self-respect and diminished self-esteem.
When infantilization is used as a form of control, it can be especially harmful, as it can prevent individuals from thinking for themselves and making their own decisions.
In some cases, infantilization may be used as a way to control someone through manipulation and fear. For example, an abusive partner may infantilize their victim in order to keep them from leaving the relationship.
In other cases, infantilization may be the result of systemic factors, such as sexism or racism.
First of all, don’t worry! This isn’t one of those lunatic QAnon conspiracy theories but some observations & guesses as to how we have devolved to such a childish state. The other night I was looking for something to watch on T.V. & these days it’s hard to find anything worth watching. In fact, call me a snob if you like but our choices as far as something worthwhile to watch are becoming more pathetic by the day in my opinion.
And mind you, I’m well aware that I’m a hypocrite or a walking contradiction because I often enjoy watching “action” films for example & I decided to rewatch one of Keanu Reeves’ movies, John Wick part 3 and as I was watching it, it occurred to me that it was basically like one of the countless video games that kids, young guys, & even middle aged guys enjoy playing for countless hours — though I never got into playing them.
It was basically John Wick going from room to room killing bad guys nonstop like in the video games. I asked myself, Rob, what are you doing? You’re just watching teenage action/violence crap with no redeeming value whatsoever. What also puzzles me is why for all intents and purposes, I have stopped reading?
I was an avid reader for most of my life & have collected an awesome library if I do say so myself. But it seems that nowadays, I will spend & often do spend several hours a day writing. And for the last several years or more, I still buy books, probably at least a half-dozen a year but I don’t read them?
I wonder if I’m becoming more like the culture I criticize in my writing or if it’s honestly because writing takes so much mental energy out of me? And at the risk of sounding like that nauseating braggart, Trump, I know that I’m far ahead of the average American intellectually. I bring these matters or observations up because I am truly alarmed at the state of our culture especially since Trump’s inspiring & unleashing of so much hate, violence, & racism.
Here are some of my observations, you decide for yourself whether they’re accurate or important insights into our collective psyche. Let’s start with television. Perhaps not coincidentally, television & I are about the same age, 70 years old. The 1950s were dubbed the “Golden Age of Television,” it lasted from 1947 to 1960 and was noted for its live, drama programs of serious & intelligent content. Many great authors’ work was presented to the American public & stimulated debate & serious conversation.
But in the 1960s when they began taping programs, the quality of the content began to decline especially as the producers & owners began to see the huge sums of money they could make if they dumbed-down the content to appeal to a wider audience. This is speculation on my part, but it wouldn’t be hard to substantiate it.
Now fast-forward to today’s choices on television as well as in the movies. An endless parade of totally asinine comedies, soap operas, “reality t.v.” etc. It’s clear to all but the willfully ignorant MAGA morons that the series, “The Apprentice” is the key factor that led to Trump being appointed president. And note that the Trump cult has gone so far as to actually believe in “alternate facts & realities.” But back in the real world, those are recognized for what they’ve always been known as, lies!
I remember being struck by the first “reality” television series, “Survivor,” over 20 years ago. I watched one episode with my wife & said to her afterwards, think about what this is teaching children, it’s teaching them that it’s okay to lie, cheat, steal, backstab, etc. because “winning” is everything. No wonder Trump did so well in his alternate reality role because he didn’t have to act at all, this was his life in business except that he failed many more times in business than he succeeded even with all the handouts & protection of his slumlord daddy.
I was also flabbergasted at this serious downturn in Americans’ general intelligence because television is an artificial medium to begin with but now, by claiming that they were capturing reality & presenting it to us in an artificial format or medium (see Marshall McLuhan’s “The Medium is the Message) we were being shown the actual world of people & their behavior, beliefs, etc. This was an absolute descent into Alice in Wonderland.
Moreover, the producers of “The Apprentice” have freely admitted that it was all a staged farce, but the gullible public lapped it up like hotcakes they couldn’t get enough of. What’s this say about America, the supposed greatest nation on earth? I won’t pussyfoot around the issue & believe all “reality television” is a sham! Yep, step right up suckers.
To be clear, with the overwhelmingly vast majority of television & movies like these few examples, our culture is keeping us childlike because our minds can’t mature on a diet of such fast-food crap. We need stimulating & challenging material for our mental as well as our moral growth as individuals & collectively as a society & nation. In short, the more we are handicapped intellectually, the easier it is for the unscrupulous elite like Trump & the real 1%, to manipulate & control us.
If you are concerned about the very real harms caused by these phenomena to your own families, I suggest that you read Neil Postman’s classic on the subject, “Amusing Ourselves to Death.” Okay, now I’m about to probably piss-off the majority of men in America because I’m about to cross the threshold of one of the most sacrosanct pastimes which is Sports.
Yeah, I know that by criticizing sports, I am violating an unspoken but sacred taboo in America & most of the world but so be it! My greatest hero & mentor is Noam Chomsky & years ago he confessed that when he was in high school, it dawned on him, “Why should I attend all my school’s football games & etc. and cheer them on, I don’t know any of them & they don’t mean anything to me?”
Pretty honest & succinct wouldn’t you say? Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the competition in a clean & fair game, but I’ve never understood the depth & breadth or the absolutely insane worship of football, basketball, baseball, etc. To illustrate, why is it that across America in some of our poorest, most dilapidated, crime-ridden inner cities, the city planners will use billions of the taxpayers’ money to build Roman Coliseum-type sports arenas & give them free to the mega-rich sports teams owners? The taxpayers who paid for those arenas don’t receive a portion of the earnings from the ticket sales & have to pay exorbitant prices to attend the “games.” But when those same, poor inner-city residents ask for better schools, health care, or social welfare programs, they’re told, “Sorry, we just don’t have the money.”
I’d say this illustrates clearly how upside-down our priorities are & how absurdly out of proportion our love of sports has become. When I was in my 20s & living in L.A., my friends used to crack-up at me because we’d all be partying & watching some game for hours, but I wouldn’t know what teams were playing. And it’s not like I was some armchair-sissy or something, we played very aggressive volleyball almost every Sunday for nearly 11 years & I was notorious for playing rough i.e. I was never as coordinated as my friends & would jam my fingers in the net, raise my knee up when I was going against the guy on the other side of the net, etc. But we did eventually clean our act up & it was no longer a contact sport. Ha! Ha!
I always had a backpack of books with me & never stopped trying to get my friends to read a few sentences or a paragraph of something I felt was worthwhile when they’d give me their attention for a few moments. And it saddens me to the marrow of my bones that for over 50 years whenever I try to persuade a friend to read something that may take 15 minutes & affects their lives i.e. their healthcare, their pension, whether their job will be shipped overseas, etc., their response is always the same, “Sorry, it’s been a long day at work, I just don’t have the time, etc.”
They can spend four to eight hours after getting off work to watch sports, play childish video games, watch “reality t.v.,” etc. but no, they can’t or won’t spend a few minutes to empower themselves. The older I get, the more compassion & empathy I feel for those poor souls fleeing the dictators of their home countries — many whom the U.S. put in power — and the less sympathy I feel for my fellow citizens who have it so much better off than those migrants desperately trying to provide a better life for their families.
If you get nothing else out of this essay my imaginary reader, I hope you’ll come to understand that one of the key tactics that fascist leaders, tyrants, & dictators throughout history have always used is to focus their citizens’ anger on immigrants & migrants. This is called scapegoating & is a very clever tactic for dividing the public & getting them to blame the poor souls innocently trying to survive, for their economic troubles.
And again, Trump is a prime example of a tin-pot, wanna be dictator because he is very skilled at whipping-up the emotions & anger of his followers at his rallies by blaming the Mexican migrants, the Muslims, gay people, liberals, democrats, college students, etc. all to distract his zombie fans from the fact that it is precisely people like Trump & the other corporate cockroaches who are to blame for losing their jobs, health insurance, pensions, etc. Trump has fucked-over & ripped-off thousands of people who’ve worked for him over the decades, yet he’s convinced his Duck Dynasty Klansmen that he’s their champion.
Trump & Italy’s fascist dictator, Mussolini who said “Fascism should more rightly be called Corporatism”
Yep! Again & again, we witness how the elite treat us like children & infantilize us with claims like, don’t worry my children, Daddy Trump is here to protect you & look out for you. And all the while, he’s pocketing millions from his gullible children too busy to educate & empower themselves because they’re playing video games, watching sports, or watching mind-numbing T.V. programs or movies.
Next on my list of things that are keeping us childlike & vulnerable to the powers that be are so-called “Smart phones.” I’ve been saying for several years now that whoever dubbed them smart phones had a perverse sense of humor because they’re actually making their users dumber the more they use them.
I won’t belabor this subject too much for the sake of brevity in terms of the length of this essay but if you’ll take the time to watch a few, short You Tube videos by Tristan Harris who used to design Smart Phones when he worked for Google, I believe you’ll see my point? Again, these phones help to condition us to be passive consumers distracted by our phones all day, every day. A good analogy would be those hanging mobiles over baby’s cribs to visually stimulate & occupy their attention.
As Tristan Harris points out, our smart phones purposely distract & occupy our attention with all their bells, lights, & whistles and are very much like slot machines designed to addict us to them. And excuse my bragging again but I’m proud to say that I don’t own one & I’ve never learned to “text.” These phones not only help to shorten our attention spans but also are undermining our ability to focus mentally, to write, & even to speak i.e., fewer & fewer people nowadays will even leave a voicemail.
People proudly proclaim, “look at all the things I can do with my smart phone,” ignoring the sad facts that I just listed regarding our overall mental capabilities. Of course, it’s become a humorous cliché these days to point out the funny & sometimes serious consequences of people walking down the street with their eyes glued to the tiny screen on their phones but in terms of our progress as a culture or a society, we are paying a very dear price indeed.
Lastly, I want to touch on the subject of the so-called “social media.” Again, this is another perverse twist on the facts of social media. In brief, they are actually anti-social platforms that have sown far more division in our society than unity. Where would Trump have been were it not for his Twitter account for the first several years of his presidency. Furthermore, I still don’t understand why a lot more attention hasn’t focused on Trump’s use of Cambridge Analytica’s deliberate propaganda campaign supplied by Facebook’s greedy & unconcerned, Mark Zuckerberg.
If this is of concern to you, I heartily recommend another fantastic video available on You Tube called “The Great Hack.” And because this is an area of such vast & national interest, I encourage you to watch another video that reveals the real meat & potatoes so-to-speak, about “social media,” called, “Toxic by Design.” Yes, my imaginary friend, the knowledge is available as to how, why, & etc. the power elite have kept us as children so they could become richer & richer.
We know that no matter how many mansions, yachts, private jets, etc. they own, it’s never enough for them. And no my friends, we’re not going to be saved by one of Hollywood’s comic book heroes. If we are to survive & prosper, we must do the heavy lifting ourselves like mature men & women. If you refuse to put away your playthings, you will live out your sad life like a child trapped in their crib stunted mentally, morally, & emotionally for life.
It’s a moral imperative that we become men & women of integrity. A rare quality in these days of a fast buck at whatever the cost.
“People with integrity tell the truth and act in a sincere way. They treat people equally and take responsibility for their own feelings and actions. Integrity is more than just being honest; it’s acting ethically, consistently, and in a trustworthy manner.
Integrity is sometimes summed up as “doing the right thing, even when no one is looking.” It’s an apt motto for kids in the digital age, when everything from cheating with cell phones to plagiarizing to cyberbullying anonymously can be done with no witnesses. Integrity secures the whole foundation of our interconnected relationships — both online and off.
It’s natural for kids to have setbacks as they build their character strengths. Be patient and forgiving, as integrity is strengthened over time in various challenging situations.” https://www.commonsensemedia.org/articles/what-is-integrity
As I was growing up, I heard the term “Renaissance man,” used again & again and it aroused my intellectual curiosity. Here is a thumbnail sketch of the term.
Renaissance man, also called Universal Man, Italian Uomo Universale, an ideal that developed in RenaissanceItaly from the notion expressed by one of its most-accomplished representatives, Leon Battista Alberti (1404–72), that “a man can do all things if he will.” The ideal embodied the basic tenets of Renaissance humanism, which considered man the centre of the universe, limitless in his capacities for development, and led to the notion that men should try to embrace all knowledge and develop their own capacities as fully as possible.
Thus the gifted men of the Renaissance sought to develop skills in all areas of knowledge, in physical development, in social accomplishments, and in the arts. The ideal was most brilliantly exemplified in Alberti—who was an accomplished architect, painter, classicist, poet, scientist, and mathematician and who also boasted of his skill as a horseman and in physical feats—and in Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), whose gifts were manifest in the fields of art, science, music, invention, and writing.
In today’s ass-backwards value system we are told repeatedly that we must focus our studies on a specific subject or in other words, specialize. This is the antithesis of the Renaissance ideal which was to generalize because as Leonardo da Vinci knew all too well, all knowledge is interconnected!
This is a good point at which to segue to one of today’s major crises, the continued attempts by the Christian extremists to infantilize the entire American population. If this strikes you as an exaggeration, reflect on their success in overturning Roe vs. Wade. You see, these wolves in “Christian clothing” have as their major goal, a desire to turn not just America but the entire world into their ideal of a “Christian paradise” here on earth. And that can only be accomplished by their becoming authoritarians barely discernible from the likes of Hitler or Stalin.
This is why over 74 million of the so-called American Christians not only voted for Trump, but they also sing his praises. And they have no problem with Trump bragging about being able to grab women by their pussies. I wonder how they’d feel if he did this to their wives or daughters?
In these delusional hypocrites’ theology, women are to remain barefoot, pregnant, & silent in the home. The husband/father is the authoritarian in the family & the preacher is the authoritarian i.e., absolute ruler, in their churches. And the more you study these people, the more similarities you will find between them & the Muslim extremists like the Taliban in Afghanistan & the Jewish extremists in Israel trying to exterminate the Palestinians.
I posit that America’s “Christian” extremists & White Supremacists are traitors & should be tried & sent to prison because they seek to tear down the wall of separation between Church & State that our founding fathers established. And yeah, I acknowledge that the framers of our Constitutional form of government were white, wealthy landowners, & many were slave owners. What they gave us was far from perfect, ideal, or humane but it has allowed us far more freedoms than many, if not most other nations.
It always comes back to education & I’m referring to education in the broadest sense as in the ideal of the Renaissance man & Humanism. These “Christians” who have turned their backs on Jesus’ teaching laid out so simple & clear in his Sermon on the Mount, are scared to death of Humanism because it reveals all their ugly hypocrisies & true agenda.
Our founding fathers were students of the Enlightenment, another glorious era of education & that’s why they purposely separated the Church & State in our founding document, the U.S. Constitution. A cursory look back at the history of Western Civilization shows just how powerful & destructive a force it is when the Church & State work together. The individual in such a society is little more than a peasant or a serf who is forced to slave from sun-up to sundown & even then, he often can’t feed his own family because he’s forced to give the majority of his harvest to the Church & the State i.e., kings, lords, barons, etc.
Noam Chomsky whom the New York Times said is “arguably, the most important intellectual alive.”
A few years back, I sent Noam Chomsky an email asking him for an example of the harm when the Church & the State work together & oppress the average citizen. I felt pretty dumb when Noam replied with the simple answer which was so obvious i.e., when the Roman Empire declared Christianity to be their state religion. Mull that over for a while if you will.
I’ll leave you with a little bit of not so common knowledge that will probably surprise you & gives me a bit of hope that if enough of us wake-up by informing ourselves & uniting, we may survive the mass insanity we are witnessing around us.
It’s imperative that we don’t forget that Hitler’s Nazis called themselves Christians even as they murdered six million Jews along with a couple of million gypsies, artists, homosexuals, scholars, Poles, etc. And it’s not insignificant that most of the far-right “Christian supremacists” of today & in Trump’s army of the Walking Dead deny the Holocaust even happened.
Remember the old maxim that those who don’t learn the mistakes of history are condemned to repeat the same “mistakes.” The faux “Christians” are like termites destroying a house from within but the house they’re tearing apart is our home, our country, the United States of America and United we Stand, Divided we Fall! Don’t let the haters like Trump divide & conquer us, show them that we’re not children but men & women of integrity!
First of all, this isn’t simply another one of those dumb-fuck conspiracy theories by the QAnon brain-dead. I used to be a lot more susceptible to conspiracy theories in my 20s but have long since matured. Yet, there has been a nagging question in the back of my mind for decades & that is, is there a conspiracy by the power elite to keep the public dumbed-down or is it merely the unfortunate confluence of several negative forces, a coincidence if you will?
In a very real sense, my entire life has been centered around the subject of education. From kindergarten on, I have been madly in love with education & this love has propelled me forward ever since. In fact, looking back, it’s probably also a factor in my initial attraction to the lady who was to become my wife.
From the moment Jeri & I were dancing in the nightclub where I met her, we were exchanging ideas about education & travel. She was teaching Special Education at a high school & I was a college student still trying to find myself. And with her love for me & belief in me, I finally became serious about college & began to pursue my B.A. in earnest.
Around the same time, I developed an interest in politics & Reagan who was the former governor of our state, was elected president. Ronnie was the first president who truly worried me because I could see that he was clearly on the side of the rich & the powerful. He was brazen in his war against the poor & the working class & around this same time, I had also stumbled upon the subject of philosophy.
Prior to philosophy, nothing really stirred my spirit in college but with philosophy I thought, now this is something I can really sink my teeth into. And Socrates, the “Father of Western Philosophy,” was like a lighthouse on a dark, stormy night for a ship desperately trying to find a safe harbor.
The School of Athens (Plato & Aristotle, the two pillars of Western Civilization in archway)
No disrespect intended but for those of you who may not be aware of Socrates’ story, I’m going to give a thumb-nail sketch here. Note before I get started that Athens was Socrates’ home & it was also where our form of government, Democracy, was born. Socrates loved to think & he loved to inspire others to think not just on the usual, superficial level, but on a much deeper level so ideally, they could have a true or honest discussion about serious matters.
As a matter-of-fact, I believe that Noam Chomsky, often referred to as the greatest living intellectual on the planet & I’m very proud to claim as a friend, is similar to Socrates in that his constant probing is his way of empowering ourselves. And like Socrates who was loved & respected by roughly half of Athens, Chomsky is either loved or feared & hated by a large proportion of people because he doesn’t pull his punches.
Socrates spent his days wandering the streets of Athens & followed by young men who enjoyed watching him cut the arrogant & ignorant down to size intellectually. For example, a man could become well-known & respected as a master shipbuilder but he’d think therefore he was entitled to pontificate on everything from how to properly raise a child to how to strategize for a war campaign.
Naturally, Socrates public humiliation which revealed their ignorance & pomposity created a number of enemies for Socrates though he didn’t set out to publicly ridicule them, he simply let them hang themselves or reveal their ignorance all on their own. And again, Chomsky pretty much does the same.
Noam doesn’t watch T.V. or movies, he simply reads & writes and gives talks.
One of Socrates’ central or core stratagems in his attempts to wake people up was to always come back to the definition of a word or a concept. Many, if not most people use words assuming that they’re understood universally & agreed upon. Words like freedom, truth, beauty, etc. But with a little digging & more in depth conversations, it soon becomes evident that two people in a conversation or a debate, could hold two entirely different perspective on key words/concepts they are discussing or arguing about.
Well eventually, Socrates’ detractors grew to such a large number that he was charged with; “Socrates was accused of impiety against the traditional Greek religion, of acting (as a member of the Popular Assembly) against the will of the people, of speaking against the democratic idea of elections, and of corrupting the young to his own beliefs. “
As to the charge of impiety, it’s obvious that religion still exerts a powerful control over our lives i.e. every politician must include in their speeches, “God bless America.” I don’t want to wander too far afield re: the will of the people or the democratic idea of elections but as for corrupting the young to his own beliefs, this is key.
Obviously, Socrates’ teaching was the antithesis of “belief” and what he was truly guilty of was teaching people to question authority. This of course pissed-off the leaders of Athens who like all leaders, want total obedience & no questioning of their authority.
A cursory review of history shows that the Church & the State have vied for power over the public continuously & at times, they have united in their suppression of the public & those have been the worst of times for humanity. In the U.S., the powers that be passed a law that all children of school age must attend public school. Why? It certainly isn’t because they give a damn about the education of our children though they constantly proclaim it is, no, it’s quite simply because young children are far more susceptible to indoctrination when they’re young.
Now this is most likely where you may think I’ve gone off the rails into conspiracy land but I assure you, no, I haven’t & here are just a couple of examples to support my contention.
Back around 1974, I was interviewing for a job & the guy seemed fairly openminded & I learned that he was president of the local school district. I had read, “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee,” by Dee Brown & I took a chance. I asked him directly, why do they teach us lies about the so-called “Winning of the West,” and etc. His reply was simple & direct, “Because most students don’t go on to college & the government wants students to leave public school with a good feeling about their country.”
I was surprised at his candor & the matter-of-fact tone in which he spoke about it. I thought, Jesus Christ, this is a Hispanic guy who must be aware of how fucked-over his race has been by the White men yet it doesn’t seem to matter to him?
Continuing on, years later I read John Taylor Gatto’s classic, “The Underground History of American Education.” This book totally blew my mind & was a real eye-opener. In fact, I wrote a book on the subject using Gatto’s book as the skeleton or outline upon which I created my book but I haven’t gotten around to editing it yet. Here are just a couple of things that I learned from Gatto’s monumental work.
Our illustrious president, Woodrow Wilson who ran for the presidency promising to keep America out of WWI but once in office, promptly turned around & got us involved in “the war to end all wars,” had this to say about public education;
“We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class of necessity in every society, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.”
― Woodrow Wilson
If this isn’t clear enough for you to see or understand what I’m trying to convey in this essay, then I don’t know what would be? The important thing to note in this quote from President Wilson is that he, like the other rulers of America over the years, wasn’t attempting to hide his true beliefs. Obviously this isn’t a conspiracy in the usual sense or understanding of the word. No, rather it is a conspiracy hiding in plain sight. A declaration if you will of what the power elite truly believe i.e. they are superior beings & the rest of us, the 99%, are here to serve them & make them wealthier.
As an aside, friends over the years have come to me for answers because they know how deeply I love education & my advice has often been; 1)read to your children when they’re young & let them see you reading on a regular basis 2)study the subjects you didn’t do well in when you were in school 3) and study what the rich study.
And no, I’m not talking about the obvious subjects like accounting, economics, etc. that many of the rich studied & became rich because of it because that’s just a glorified version of a trade school. Yes, study economics, finance, etc. but the true source of their wealth lies in the classics of the humanities in the academic disciplines of history, literature, philosophy, etc.
Unfortunately, far too many people dismiss the humanities as useless pursuits but they couldn’t be more wrong. Quite simply, the humanities are about humanity or people, their common dreams, fears, worries, etc. and since all business boils down to people, mostly how to manipulate & control them so you can sell them your products or services, the better you understand people, the better your chances of success in business.
Personally, I enjoy the humanities because I am a utopian or an idealist & want to see humanity become more harmonious & less at the mercy of the greedy & the merciless. But in general, the more we can arm or empower ourselves intellectually, the greater our chances of survival.
Another example of the conspiracy against us is something else I learned from Mr. Gatto, for the sake of brevity because I’m all too aware of how short people’s attention spans have become, I’m going to lay it out short & sweet. Four of America’s most notorious or famous Robber Barons depending on your perspective were Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Carnegie, & Morgan. These “titans of industry,” like the master shipbuilder in Socrates’ day, felt they were naturally the founts of wisdom in regards to the proper education of our young.
And because a lot of their wealth derived from the factory system model in terms of how to run a successful business, they believed the same system could be employed in educating American students. The covert curriculum was very basic & consisted of punctuality, obedience, & repetitive work.
This just reminded me of another personal experience. I worked as a cub reporter for the little paper in Paramount, CA where I attended school from the 6th grade to graduation & I was interviewing the principal of my old high school one day. I asked him why Paramount High School didn’t offer classes like trigonometry, calculus, physics, etc. & he replied matter-of-factly that it was because we were an industrially-zoned city. So, our students were on a vocational track.
The more I thought about his reply in the months & years that followed, the more angry I became. You see, when I first started going to college, I wanted to become a forest ranger but I soon learned that I should’ve taken those classes that I mentioned above, while in high school. Moreover, when I was in the sixth grade, I scored in the 11th grade, sixth month level in reading. But never once was I encouraged or told about other possible options to make the best use of my intelligence. In short, these bastards were playing God with not only my life but the lives of countless others.
In conclusion, the inspiration for writing this essay came from a book I recently started reading titled, “The Hidden History of Neoliberalism” by Thom Hartmann. And on page 18, Mr. Hartmann states;
“… the ‘creeds’ of the modern democracies of the 1940s that were expanding government services like free health care and education for working class people threatened to destroy ‘freedom of thought and expression’ and could only lead to totalitarianism.”
This passage struck me like a thunderbolt & I thought, here it is & as obvious as the nose on my face, the “freedom of thought & expression,” they are speaking of is only meant for the wealthy. The rest of us aren’t worthy of such noble ideals & should be content with our lots in life like the peasants & serfs of the feudal age.
The “elite” proclaim ad nauseam that the rest of us are too lazy or too stupid to know how to run our lives because if we weren’t, we’d be rich like them. Leaving out inconvenient truths like the fact that they have stood on our throats with their boots from the day we were born until the day we die.
Of course the charade or the façade of freedom, equality, justice, etc. must be maintained so when a politician is running for office, these worn-out platitudes are given lip-service. Yet underneath it all, the 1% have been waging a non-stop, underground war against public education. But Trump didn’t give a shit & didn’t even bother to hide his contempt for public education & appointed Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education.
What’s to be done? Well, it’s always been the same answer, we must take our own education as well as the education of our loved ones into our own hands. Yep! No simple remedy my friend, just plain, old fashioned work & ingenuity if we are to survive individually & collectively? Here’s a gem from Doris Lessing, a favorite author of one of my favorite professors when I was an undergrad in English literature, Roy Garrot;
“Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself — educating your own judgements. Those that stay must remember, always, and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society.”
— Rob DeLoss, Gold Beach, OR December 27, 2022
P.S. here’s a quote from Rockefeller, “I don’t want a nation of thinkers, I want a nation of workers.” By-the-way, when is the last time you heard of a new weapons system that was denied because “we just can’t afford it?” Why not? Because the military-industrial complex is owned by the 1% & every new weapons system is cash in the bank for these unholy scum & another working class student is denied a chance to make something of their life. And this isn’t some secret conspiracy, it’s perfectly legal because they are the only law that matters in this corrupt nation under God!
Perhaps appropriately, Noam Chomsky was born on Dec. 7th, 1928. I say this because as you know, America was attacked by the Japanese on Dec. 7th, 1941, in Pearl Harbor. And in my not so humble opinion, Chomsky is like a force of nature & luckily for us & the rest of the world, he is a force for good & dedicated to trying to inform & wake the U.S. in particular, about the serious threats to humanity’s survival.
I don’t recall exactly when I first came across Chomsky’s writing but when I was bumming around Europe in the summer of 1976, his books took up the majority of the space allotted for books in English in bookstores across Europe. Paris, Madrid, Rome are just a few of the cities I’d look for something in English to read, and Chomsky dominated the bookshelves.
I’m drawing an analogy between Chomsky & the impact of Pearl Harbor in an effort to emphasize the devastating affect this one man’s wisdom & insights can & often does have on the major issues of our day. I hope the tone of this essay doesn’t sound like I’m a simpering sychophant? But it’s hard not to sound like that the more I’ve learned about Chomsky over the years, especially when this world-famous genius, took the time for 16 years, to reply to my emails.
I’m probably getting carried away to some extent when I say I believe Chomsky was in the very first group of professors who began to publicly protest about America’s early intervention in the Vietnamese civil war. He’d often have a few students at his home, or theirs & they’d discuss & debate the issue. He’d give a talk to five or six people in a church, a store front, etc. including a few drunk bums off the street. Yep! This was in the very early 1960s & way before any national or huge crowds were protesting against the Vietnam War.
Noam with his friends, Howard Zinn & Daniel Ellsberg
I trailed-off in my argument about Chomsky & the Vietnam civil war, Chomsky may have well been the spark that lit the Anti-Vietnam War movement in the 60s. I lived in L.A. at the time, and a lot of the anti-war movement seemed to center around Berkeley in the San Francisco area at Berkeley University.
So, wherever the movement began or exactly when doesn’t matter, what matters is that we have the knowledge & wisdom of truly the world’s greatest living author to inform us & empower ourselves against the corporate cockroaches that have infected nearly everything. Hopefully I’ll finish this essay before his birthday because everybody should know about this fine man’s life & dedication to his work & his love for all of humanity!
It was the Spring of 2006 & I was living out of my old Ford Econoline van. I was trying to find work in Newport, my favorite town on the Oregon coast & I practically lived at the unemployment office. When I needed the Internet, I could use the computers in the unemployment office, they didn’t watch too closely. I got the idea one day to try to contact Noam Chomsky & it didn’t take long to get his email address at M.I.T.
The thing I perhaps love the most about the Internet is that if you have the nerve, you can contact an amazing number of well-respected scholars, journalists, authors, etc. and to my wonderful astonishment, I sent Noam an email & he replied either a couple hours later that same day, or the next day? And for the record, I have attempted to contact several lot less famous people & either received no reply or a rude, dismissive message. Here is Noam’s first reply to me & the rest as they say, is history.
a little “light” reading
“Quite a story. The best part is that “the bastards haven’t stopped me yet! I’m going to keep on fighting them until my dying days.” That’s the right attitude, and over time, it does make a difference.
I often wish that I was a heck of a lot more technology-savvy, especially re: computers & the Internet because I wanted to include the date & time stamp from each email to & from Noam to attest to their veracity. But several years back, I culled through a number of them & did save a few pages of the highlights of my correspondence with Noam over the years. So, if you doubt my word, I’m not going to lose sleep over it, my conscience is clear.
Again, for me the simple fact that this man who gives talks around the world, teaches, writes books, & from what I understand, spends several hours per day trying to answer his correspondence, has repeatedly honored me by replying, is a terribly generous gift. And I try to keep my emails to Noam short & succinct. His replies are rarely more than a couple of sentences, but they are precious.
Noam with Julian Assange at Ecuador’s embassy in London. Noam has always defended the victims of the powers that be.
By-the-way, I have sent “snail-mail” to Noam a few times as well & he responded with letters that had M.I.T.’s letterhead. I have also made music CDs a few times for Noam though he doesn’t seem to have much interest in music. And I remember one St. Patrick’s Day when I sent him a You Tube video clip of Van Morrison’s “Contacting My Angel” and he responded immediately saying, “I’m just sitting here mesmerized by the visuals in this song,” (or something to that effect?) and we each took a shot of whiskey.
I told Noam once how I’d love to share a couple of pints in a pub with him.
Speaking of which, I’m such a goof-ball that upon hearing that he used to get beat-up by Irish bullies in the neighborhood he grew up in Philadelphia, I sent him an email apologizing for my Irish relatives (tongue in cheek) & Noam wrote back that if for some reason he were ever forced to leave America, Ireland is where he’d like to retire.
Noam & his beloved wife of 59 years, Carol
One very special correspondence was not long after his beloved wife, Carol, had passed away. I had stumbled upon this imitation of a parchment scroll in the gift shop of Canterbury Cathedral after my mother had died, “Death is Nothing” by Henry Scott-Holland (1847-1918). It gave me more personal comfort than anything else I’d found after my mom’s passing, so I made a nice copy of it & snail-mailed it to Noam.
Noam told me that it had brought tears to his eyes & that he’d store it in a very special place. And he made a copy of it & returned the copy I sent him because he thought it was the original. The fact that I’d touched his heart warmed my heart more than I can express.
Always has been & always will be, a man of the people.
To return to our correspondence, I had a thick stack of notes I’d compiled many years ago for a book on Christian fundamentalists, but my inner critic told me, Who do you think you’re fooling? You’re not qualified to write a book. And I let the notes sit on my bookshelf for 17 years. But when I turned 50, I said to my “inner critic,” Shut the fuck up!
And I spread the notes (on 4”X 5” slips of paper) on the living room carpet & started categorizing them. They became the skeleton outline & I filled in the gaps, but I still left the project unfinished. One day I wrote to Noam about my project & he replied;
“You should think about publishing the book. Today the fundamentalists are really a dangerous force.”
So, I paid an editor $200 to professionally edit my book & it took him over a year (he works on several projects at a time) & a few years back, I discovered Amazon’s “Kindle publishing,” which claimed that it was very easy to format & publish your book using it. I spent hours & just became more & more frustrated & pissed-off. I hired a gal & she too had a hell of a lot of problems trying to format it.
I “published” it & told Noam I had. The original version was in paperback & Noam bought a copy, in fact, he received his copy before I got mine. It was so embarrassing & looked totally unprofessional, but Noam said, “Don’t worry about it, I’ve seen worse.”
I went to the local print shop & had a copy made in 8.5” X 11” & bound with that spiral plastic and sent it to Noam. And I switched it to only available in a Kindle format on Amazon. I may have sold half a dozen copies so far in about four years? Ha! Ha! But the fact that Noam Chomsky was perhaps the first to buy a copy is again such a badge of honor.
This reminds me of a humorous email I received from Noam several years back. I confessed to him that I was still insecure about my grammar even though I’d earned my B.A. in English literature. Noam chuckled so-to-speak & confided to me that the only class he’d ever failed was a class in Grammar in high school. And he often argues with editors who want to change something in the books he’s written. Isn’t that a hoot? Noam revolutionized the field of linguistics, yet editors argue with him about his grammar?
Switching gears & I hope this isn’t seen as morbid, but I want to share with you, my imaginary reader, just how real & compassionate this man is. A couple years ago, I was diagnosed with an incurable form of cancer. They don’t know which kind of cancer it is but assured me that it is manageable. I thought it over very thoroughly & decided that no, I’m not going to spend the rest of my life going through chemo & radiation as my savings gradually disappear.
You end up broke & homeless like so many other poor souls on our streets that our society has simply discarded & this isn’t me. I’d rather go out with a semblance of dignity & defiance. And like in so many other critical times in my life such as the passing of my dear wife, Jeri, in 2013, I often seek Noam’s counsel. He’s been like a surrogate father for me.
Noam took a couple of days to respond & apologized saying he wasn’t quite sure how to respond? But he told me that my letter was one of the most moving letters he’d ever received. These brief responses from Noam have meant the world to me & Jeri knew how precious my friendship with Noam was to me which also touched my heart.
The poster on the wall is of Bertrand Russell, one of Noam’s main heroes.
Well as usual with our fucked-up medical system, my medical provider i.e., P.A. (physician’s assistant) never bothered to tell me anything about what to expect from my cancer so for several months I thought that I could kick the bucket at any time. And call it ego or whatever you like but the thought of passing on with all the writing I’ve done over the years ending up in a trash-can bugs me. So, in the remote possibility of someone who gives a shit about my work, trying to publish it, I took the bold step of asking Noam if he’d write a short blurb that could possibly help someone to get my work published. This is what my friend had to say.
Rob DeLoss and I have been good friends for many years, through regular correspondence. During these years I have had the opportunity to read much of what he has written, with much appreciation. His work is penetrating, instructive, challenging, always appealing. It is very good to know that it is being edited and collected for publication. (Noam Chomsky)
I must also confess here, my imaginary reader, that if I come across as desperate & insecure, it’s because I am. Hopefully this doesn’t come across as a self-pity party but for the last forty years or better, I have practically pleaded with family & friends as well as strangers, to read my essays & tell me what they think. It’s been like pulling teeth & I’m so fed-up with it, I can scream!
In fact, I was so desperate for feedback that several years ago I joined Facebook even though my gut told me it was a fool’s errand. But the stubborn Irish mule that I am, kept on trying naively thinking I’d find some real people on Facebook. I should’ve listened to my gut instinct & I’m more pissed-off at myself than I am all those self-deluded people on “social media” platforms who believe that clicking on emojis is communicating.
Moreover, I wrote to Noam about my having written to a hundred of my former Facebook “friends,” whom I believed I actually had a friendship with, pleading with them that we morally support one another by writing to each other & reading each other’s work and not a single one of them replied.
Noam’s reply: “Confirms my commitment to keep away from Facebook and all social media.” Gee, I wonder why the Democrats & the liberals can’t get their shit together and we have so many willfully ignorant morons in Congress & the Republican party?
Noam & his wife, Valeria, who has given him a new lease on life!
I could go on & on sharing my treasured correspondence with Noam but will end with one about an email I sent to him because I wanted to show him another part of me. Noam’s moral courage in standing up to the federal government in the early days of our participation in Vietnam’s civil war, his facing a possible lengthy stay in prison, etc. inspired me to share my experience in the infamous, Santa Rita Jail (more like a prison than a jail).
Noam signed this pic of himself & I had it framed.
This “jail” is in Alameda County in California & the citizens of Oakland, make up the majority of its inmates. We were being held in a large cell about 25’ X 25’ & we were crammed together like sardines. There were about three or four Hispanics & two white guys, one of which was me & a young kid.
In the middle of the cell & face-down was a Black man & by the look of his clothes, he was probably homeless. A group of young, Black punks were standing near him & making all sorts of really ugly comments & thought they were so funny. I could see the shame in the older Black men around my age, I was 54 at the time. One young asshole was so pleased with himself & seemed to be the main instigator of all the vile shit coming out of their mouths.
I got so disgusted that I moved to the back wall of the cell & sat down. I was so tempted to tell them what I thought of them & kept telling myself, No Rob, don’t do it! But I couldn’t take any more so I stood up, walked back to the center & started to speak but was speaking in too low a voice so I raised my voice & looking at the young “leader of the pack,” I exclaimed; “There’s an old saying, People may just think you’re stupid, so why open your mouth and remove all doubt? The punk’s mouth opened but he was dumbfounded & struggled to find a response and just mumbled something.
I returned to the back wall & sat down with my back to the wall. The young, white kid came over & sat down beside me and simply offered his hand to shake mine & we didn’t speak.
Noam responded with; “That’s impressive. Took a lot of guts. No reason to keep it secret. Can’t think of much like it.”
How much more obvious does this fake president have to be?
Common sense is sound, practical judgment concerning everyday matters, or a basic ability to perceive, understand, and judge in a manner that is shared by (i.e. common to) nearly all people.[1]
My common sense tells me after four years under an absolutely bankrupt morally & mentally Trump administration that common sense can no longer be trusted. Critical & analytical thinking must become our goal, or we are truly doomed.
Common sense tells anyone who possesses it that a supposed billionaire doesn’t have anything in common with me or anyone else in the working class & doesn’t give a shit whether we live or die. How do you think people who are that obscenely wealthy made all that money? By playing fair in their business dealings or treating their customers fairly? Duh! How can so many millions of Americans who have lost their once decent paying jobs, had their homes foreclosed on, had their pensions stolen by the Super banks, you know, the ones too big to fail or jail, believe Trump is their champion?
Common sense also tells me that “Reality T.V. shows” aren’t real & the term is an oxymoron i.e., T.V. is an artificial construct & medium for entertaining people. But thanks to the long & steady decline of intelligence in America by the immoral C.E.O.s of many, if not most, of those corporations who profit from a dumbed-down workforce & citizenry, we find ourselves in this Mad Hatter state of being.
Every day of Trump’s presidency defied common sense, yet his believers chose to close their eyes, their ears, their minds, & their hearts to his daily displays of an absolutely heartless & self-centered psychopath. And like those millions of so-called Christians who have completely abandoned Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount & his principles for living the Christian faith, the rest of his cult of greed are blind to their hypocrisy.
The most destructive result of the four years we experienced under Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan is that we have devolved to a nation where truth is now whatever any moron with a megaphone says it is. Facts are ignored that are inconvenient to whatever absurdity the imbeciles claim to be truth.
Trump owes a large measure of his “success,” to Facebook & Twitter and the “mainstream media,” who gave him tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of free advertisement when he was running for the presidency. Don’t forget Fox “news,” the National Enquirer of today which also played a significant role in dumbing the U.S. public down.
And no, I’m not another Alex Jones conspiracy-nut or fan. But many of the institutions & individuals who find that an uninformed public makes their goal of robbing the U.S. Federal Treasury that much easier to accomplish. Why would Trump appoint Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education when she hasn’t spent a day of her life in a public classroom & wants Charter Schools to completely take over our public education system? And Betsy’s family fortune came from that legal Ponzi scheme known as Amway.
For as long as I can remember, lawyers, politicians, & used car salesmen have been considered the lowest of the low in American society. And most Americans know that Jeff Bezos didn’t become the wealthiest man on the planet by treating his employees anywhere near fairly. Yet when it comes to the uber-wealthy CEOs of corporations, many of which are more powerful than nations, the mountains of evidence that they screwed their employees & consumers and made their surrounding environments toxic doesn’t seem to bother people?
Trump apologists believe that because he wasn’t a politician but is supposedly a billionaire means he gets a free pass & can be trusted. Does this represent common sense to you?
I must be from some lost world because if someone or some corporation poisoned my loved ones with their toxic products, etc., not only would I not trust them or believe a word out of their mouths, I would be as Mad as Hell & seek justice. And it’s quite remarkable that Trump supporters can block so much about Trump’s past from their minds & actually believe that the liberal democrats, the mass media, etc. etc. etc. are one vast conspiracy united in an agenda of hate toward their leader.
My common sense tells me how utterly absurd a theory like that is. As most people know who have ever tried to organize even their own local PTA board, there are going to be those who aren’t in agreement & who will try to undermine the organizing. Yet we’re asked to believe that this vast, liberal conspiracy is 100% united & working together to tear down poor daddy Donald?
Reflect for a moment on how disorganized the liberals & the democrats are & have been throughout their history. Then recall that the so-called “Conservatives,” have always been far more unified in their agenda, policies, & practices. Why? It’s quite simple actually, that’s because the G.O.P. has only one constant agenda/goal & that is greed, power, & profit!
My common sense tells me that any politician who works at getting rid of food stamps, housing assistance, unemployment, public welfare, voters rights, health care for the 99%, and on & on & on is my enemy!
Why is it that so many of these common sense champions barely utter a word of criticism towards the “Defense industry” which takes over half our tax dollars for tanks the Pentagon doesn’t even want, $900 toilet seats, planes, weapons, etc. that don’t even work, etc. but go ballistic when some greedy & immoral politician claims that the liberals are the ones bankrupting America?
It couldn’t be the fact that the G.O.P. & its perverted propaganda agenda from the moment FDR passed the New Deal has been to utterly destroy every vestige of humane concern listed in the New Deal, could it? You see, anything that takes a penny of profit out of the corporate cockroaches’ pockets is seen as immoral, obscene, & theft.
Of course, the 1% aren’t worried because they know how short the average person’s attention span is i.e., eight seconds, just behind that of the goldfish. And forget about history, most students hated history in high school & thanks to all the bells & whistles and bright, shiny objects that our “social media,” distracts them with, they have nothing to worry about.
Yep, it’s pretty amazing to think that this vast, liberal conspiracy is so technologically-sophisticated that they can instantaneously alter what Trump says & does to make him look bad. We can offer video clips, sound bites, etc. of Trump’s lies & crimes until the cows come home but those commie liberals are able to create all their lies because they hate Trump and all he has done for America.
What scares me most profoundly is that this lowest of human scum, Trump, has created such a Svengali spell over his followers that millions of Americans have died from the COVID virus & many are taking the horse & cattle deworming treatment and are being rushed to emergency for self-poisoning. That’s some special kind of stupid along with Donnie’s suggestion that they drink bleach or inject it. Wouldn’t a true leader lead by example i.e., inject some bleach into his arm, take the horse/cattle dewormer, etc. to prove to his followers how safe it is & how much he believes his own counsel to his fans?
Trump is obviously an imbecile & a grifter (to engage in swindling or cheating) to all but the happily ignorant. He pretends to be a successful businessman & lest we forget it, he reminds us at every opportunity. And I seriously doubt that were it not for “reality T.V.” and the “social media,” we would’ve ever allowed such a contemptible person to become president let alone dog catcher.
“Reality T.V.” is actors pretending to not be actors & it reflects how desperately dependent we have become on entertaining ourselves. Here’s a brief introduction to a book published by Neil Postman in 1985 which we should seriously reflect on,
“Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985) is a book by educator Neil Postman. The book’s origins lay in a talk Postman gave to the Frankfurt Book Fair in 1984. He was participating in a panel on George Orwell‘s Nineteen Eighty-Four and the contemporary world. In the introduction to his book, Postman said that the contemporary world was better reflected by Aldous Huxley‘s Brave New World, whose public was oppressed by their addiction to amusement, rather than by Orwell’s work, where they were oppressed by state control.
Postman distinguishes the Orwellian vision of the future, in which totalitarian governments seize individual rights, from that offered by Aldous Huxley in Brave New World, where people medicate themselves into bliss, thereby voluntarily sacrificing their rights. Drawing an analogy with the latter scenario, Postman sees television‘s entertainment value as a present-day “soma“, the fictitious pleasure drug in Brave New World, by means of which the citizens’ rights are exchanged for consumers’ entertainment.
The essential premise of the book, which Postman extends to the rest of his argument(s), is that “form excludes the content”, that is, a particular medium can only sustain a particular level of ideas. Thus rational argument, integral to print typography, is militated against by the medium of television for this reason. Owing to this shortcoming, politics and religion are diluted, and “news of the day” becomes a packaged commodity. Television de-emphasises the quality of information in favour of satisfying the far-reaching needs of entertainment, by which information is encumbered and to which it is subordinate.”
I think the first “reality t.v.” show I ever watched & the last one I ever watched was, “Survivor.” People on an island divided up into teams with the goal of being the first to win whatever the prize was. And at the end of that first “reality” show, I said to my beloved wife who is no longer alive, this is total crap! They’re telling people that winning is everything & lying, cheating, backstabbing or whatever you need to do in order to win is okay.
Isn’t it strange or is it merely coincidental that this “win at all costs,” is also the business ethos of corporate America though few will admit to it? So, it’s not surprising that Trump should be selected to play the “Reality T.V. star” of the series, “The Apprentice.”
Unfortunately, the millions of Americans who fell in love with Trump didn’t make this connection. He didn’t have to act, he only had to be himself. And the fact that not only was he a lousy actor, he was also a lousy businessman, didn’t matter to Trump’s “Walking Dead” because many, if not most of them are probably of about the same I.Q. level as Trump i.e., about fifth grade.
You are probably aware of how great, wonderful, spectacular, etc. Trump is at just about everything he attempts in life because he never ceases to remind his loyal base at every opportunity. So, why has he threatened to sue any school or college he ever attended if they dare to release transcripts of his grades?
Our national obsession with entertainment or amusement, our intellectual laziness, our distaste for reading anything even remotely mentally challenging, & our general apathy has all contributed to the zombification of America, the supposedly most powerful nation on Earth.
We have clearly entered the new, “Post literate” world & in my not so humble opinion, we are in a death spiral! When we can no longer distinguish between truth, facts, & reality amidst this sea of amusement nor even care that we have, we’re closer than ever to the edge of that cliff overlooking the abyss.
We have become a nation of infants like babies in their cribs reaching upward to grab those bright, shiny, colorful shapes in the mobiles just out of reach. And this is the business model that Facebook & many of the other “Social media” use to seduce & distract us while they become ever more obscenely wealthy & we become homeless and die needlessly because of the corporate cockroach’s insistence on medical care as a profit-making system.
The “social media” giants like Facebook & Twitter employ “likes,” “shares,” etc. like slot machines with their bells & whistles to keep people coming back & ever more addicted. And Trump knows only too well what Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels knew i.e., the bigger the lie & the more often you repeat it, the “truer” it becomes. In other words, the more the public will believe it. So, grab your popcorn & other goodies and don’t miss a single episode of your “reality T.V.” before the Trumpsters of this land of the free & home of the brave kick you out into the overflowing gutters of America like Donny’s Secretary of the Treasury who was nicknamed the foreclosure king of California.
Have you about had your fill of all this “Common Sense?” Don’t be a fool like all those Americans who fought against fascism in WWII, instead, join the fascist army that Trump has inspired & keep patting yourselves on the back knowing that you are the true patriots, not the liberals who believe in sharing & caring about all of humanity & the environment.
Yep! Global warming is just another hoax. Don’t worry, Be Happy all you “Christian soldiers.”
Group of teenage boys and girls ignoring each other while using their cell phones at school
I confess from the start that I’ve been against “Smart phones,” from the beginning. I look out at our cultural wasteland & the armies of zombies hypnotized by their phones, and it depresses me deeply. Americans are reading less & less and they’re communicating less & less even though they believe they’re more in touch with friends than ever.
People don’t even like to leave voice mails any longer but prefer leaving text messages. Forget about critical & analytical thinking skills, that requires close reading, reflection, & exchanging thoughts with your friends. Instead, we are drowning in oceans of images & truncated messages of 144 characters or less via Twitter. Why do you think Trump used Twitter so much?
Because it’s the perfect format for morons who are like him & can barely put two coherent thoughts together. Chopped, little blurbs designed to rouse people’s emotions not to help them understand the complexities of modern life.
I look around & it’s becoming ever clearer that the visual has definitely overtaken the written word. And we can thank the public relations industry as well as the advertising industry for this general dumbing-down of the American public. The introduction & spread of television played a major role in creating our world & fertilizing the soil in which creatures like Trump could grow.
Some scholars argue that we’ve entered a “post-literate world,” and I’m more & more inclined to agree with them. How else can we explain the frightening phenomenon that a third of the American public don’t believe scientists & doctors but do believe Trump is their champion?
I have spent my life enthralled in my pursuit of knowledge, wisdom, & hopefully peace so perhaps you can get an idea of how painfully depressing modern life in America is for me? I have only met a handful of people in my life who could see beyond a purely utilitarian perspective regarding knowledge. In brief, most people only value knowledge that is going to put more money in their pocket.
Moreover, our never-ending pursuit of money & material possessions is a major factor in why we are facing global catastrophe environmentally & the ever-present possibility of some nation accidentally or purposely initiating a nuclear exchange. Donald the Dunce repeatedly asked those around him why he couldn’t use our nuclear weapons. Yep! I’m not bullshitting.
Those of you closer in age to me, may recall that Silicon Valley & the gurus of the New Age tech revolution originally sold us on these gadgets with promises that it would bring us closer together i.e., Facebook’s Zuckerberg but when the money started rolling in, he sold us out & followed a simple “business model” of using algorithms that spread false & hateful posts because people enjoy being scared & hating others whom they believe are behind their hardships & they’ll stay on a “social platform” far longer. Posts & platforms that talk of love, peace, solidarity, etc. don’t hold peoples’ attention long. And the profit is tied to the length of time people are on a page.
Furthermore, this all dovetails like a hand in a glove with Smart phones. After all, Smart phones are de facto portable computers. In my opinion, the very labeling of these phones as smart shows how stupid people are because machines can’t be smart, stupid, retarded, intellectually challenged, etc. People have forgotten the basics; it is the human mind that has created all this technology i.e., the smartest beings are human beings. And yeah, I can hear the hardcore & devout high-tech acolytes protesting that robots are already thinking independently, etc.
This perspective glosses over the myriad aspects of what it means to be human. And in their zeal & dreams of a future run completely by robots, computers, etc. they are losing sight of their humanity & the millions of little things that are part of the true joy of life. Most notably our human/social interactions. We are social creatures & we need each other to thrive not only on the physical level but the emotional or spiritual level as well.
As I was saying earlier, this technology is causing us to become more socially isolated from one another as we withdraw into our own fantasy world bubbles. We’ve all witnessed scenes where a group of young people walk in & it appears that they are a group of friends but within seconds, they are all staring at their smart phones & interacting with others on their phones but not their real or physically present friends sitting next to them.
I have long argued that these “social platforms” like Facebook, Twitter, etc. are de facto anti-social, not social tools that bring people together. We learn by interacting with others & comparing ideas, emotions, etc. In a nutshell, we are destroying ourselves from within & with a smile and confident that we are normal, healthy, & well-balanced individuals.
I could go on for many pages tackling one point after another in an attempt to persuade you to get rid of your smart phone, but I realize the almost total futility of that. Instead, I’ll just point out a few of the most egregious flaws & falsehoods.
First of all, almost all of the “wonders” of your smart phone can be reduced down to the fact that it’s basically a fancy calculator that can make computations at amazing rates or speed. Big deal! Life is about quality not quantity & we should all bear in mind G.I.G.O. (Garbage In, Garbage Out) In other words, your phone is only as good or accurate as the people who programmed it. And what our ever-dwindling powers of critical & analytical thinking skills is showing us that instead of becoming more intelligent as a result of our obsession with computers, phones, etc., we are becoming ever more dumb, vulnerable, & gullible i.e., Trump as president of the most powerful nation on Earth.
Here’s a personal anecdote to help illustrate my point. I was enjoying a conversation with a young man in a tavern & he pulled out his smart phone & he repeatedly would break eye contact with me to look something up on his phone. He never bothered to say excuse me & I became more & more pissed-off and finally just got up & walked away without saying anything to him as to why I was angry.
I was tempted to get in his face & say, I was interested in talking to you not your phone/computer. He like countless millions of other young people don’t have a clue as to why someone like me would find this behavior extremely rude & disrespectful. I can drink at home for a lot less money, but I go out to public bars to socially interact with other humans not their fuckin’ phones!
To be honest with you, I am tiring of attempting to reach others. I have spent hundreds of thousands of hours pursuing knowledge over the course of my life, but I see the love of knowledge going the way of the dinosaur. I feel more & more like a fool, like a modern-day Don Quixote chasing the windmills of my mind. And I’m tired of the laughing behind my back, the smug smiles, & casual dismissal of nearly everything I’ve believed in & treasured throughout my life.
Perhaps I’m morphing into a bitter, disillusioned old hermit and am becoming a misanthrope? At the ripe old age of 69, I now have one good friend who attempts to keep up with the things I ask him to read & gives me some feedback. And I have another friend whom I’m not that close to, but we maintain a semblance of a friendship that has stretched over a half century.
Without a doubt, the highest point or achievement of my life was meeting & falling in love with my wife, Jeri. And just below that is the joy of developing a friendship with the planet’s friendly & loving defender, Noam Chomsky.
So, when the mental midgets mock me, the reassuring words of encouragement that Noam has shared with me over the years comforts me & I know who the true fools are!
—Rob DeLoss, Gold Beach, OR Dec. 19, 2021
P.S. I’m inserting several videos & links to relevant articles because as much as I’m tempted, I can’t seem to shake the glimmer of hope that resides in my spirit. That prayer that we can save ourselves & the planet from our stupidity.
President Donald Trump hugs the American flag before his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference
Hurricanes, wildfires, floods & other natural disasters have become far more destructive and frequent thanks to what we benignly call “Climate Change.” In fact, the damage they leave behind is so cataclysmic that they are anything but natural. And like climate deniers, who deny the reality of our environment’s destruction, we also have election deniers who claim to have supernatural powers to detect conspiracies.
The reality of the Trump tornado & his reign of terror is denied vehemently even though he ran for office promising he would destroy the corrupt government in Washington D.C. The M.A.G.A. mental midgets dance with joy at all the harm Trump has caused & apparently respect Putin and his authoritarian (dictatorial) form of government even though their Twinkie-loving toadie Trump hasn’t a clue as to what to replace our government with.
I guess they imagine some new variation of the old west before law & order took over? So, everybody packs an automatic rifle & it’ll be survival of the fittest. Not exactly Disneyland or Leave it to Beaver. But hey, at least we’ll be free & not have any more rules or regulations protecting citizens from runaway corporate corruption. Yep! The M.A.G.A. morons think things were bad before their greedy buffoon came along, in the near future, we will return to the good old Dark Ages.
No, Trump didn’t swing the wrecking-ball all on his own, America was ripe for a demagogue, but Trump is like a demon on steroids in his insatiable greed & lust for power over others. This is why he goes weak in the knees whenever he shares the world stage or a room with Vlad the Impaler of Russia. The irony of our situation would be humorous if it were not so dishonorable. Trump’s walking dead & mentally and morally challenged traitors are spitting on the graves of their fathers & grandfathers who fought against communism & fascism. Yet they strut around in their fatigues waving the U.S. flag that represents the hard-won freedom & democracy that we supposedly still fight & die for around the globe?
Naturally, all the “Defense” contractors couldn’t be happier because their Weapons of Mass Destruction will not only be used against terrorists real & made up, but they can now be turned against American citizens as well.
How did we arrive at this dystopia? Well, Trump was just the final straw that broke America’s back & there are plenty of contributing factors. My goal in writing this essay is to simply highlight some of those Weapons of Mass Delusion & other destructive forces. This isn’t a comprehensive list & I’m presenting them in no particular order or rank in terms of their horrific consequences.
I believe a significant factor in America’s demise was the advent of “Reality T.V.” I think the “reality” series “Survivor” was one of the first of these absurd shows? I watched an episode with my wife & afterwards, I said, what is this teaching children & young people? It’s telling them that lying, cheating, in short, doing anything to win is okay because this is the reality of life. I never watched another episode or any of the spawns that grew out of this sad phenomenon. How appropriate that it was this kind of television that made Trump a celebrity & played such a large role in helping him to become our president. By-the-way, the producers of the show revealed that Trump demanded that every time his name was mentioned, they had to say, Trump the billionaire. In brief, the show, just like everything about Trump was a staged fraud or fake! And millions of viewers came to believe that Trump was indeed a successful businessman, never mind the facts that his casinos all failed, countless businesses he started, failed, and that his daddy gave him over $400 million dollars, not the measly $1 million he’s always claimed.
Equally significant in our slide down towards oblivion was the rise of the so-called “social media.” I really feel like a sucker when it comes to this massively harmful social phenomenon. For years, I wouldn’t join Facebook & thought it was more suited for teenage girls but a cousin of mine told me it was a way to connect with many relatives I didn’t know.
I soon learned that was a dead-end but came up with a pipedream that I could attract readers to my blog via Facebook. I wrote hundreds of posts, posted my essays, answered people’s questions or comments at great length, etc. but like an addict, I couldn’t walk away. Before emojis took over, I’d get an occasional sentence or two from “friends,” every great now & then. I’m not sure of exactly how long I wasted my time, energy, & love on this anti-social platform, probably seven or eight years in total?
You could say that it was no wonder that I fit in so well in the field of special education & worked in this area for most of my adult working career. In the context of this essay, it’s important to note that Facebook like other social media platforms is based on a business model that is “Toxic by Design.” In brief, they thrive i.e., prosper financially by sowing seeds of hate & fear and other negative emotions because this keeps people on their pages much longer. And Steve Bannon, one of Trump’s most sinister advisors before he took office, headed an organization called, “Cambridge Analytica.” Thanks to Zuckerberg’s unbridled greed, he gave Bannon access to something like 80,000 American Facebook users which also gave them access to every one of those 80,000’s friends.
And Bannon, being the Dr. Mengele that he is, created hundreds if not thousands of false stories about Hillary & false stories about how wonderful Trump is & they targeted all the Facebook users they knew were persuadable thanks to those “free & innocent looking quizzes” they plant in your Facebook feed. All the while, the DNC was obsessed with Russian trolls for over two years, but it didn’t matter whether they were Russian, Greek, French, Chinese, or whoever, the fact that Facebook allowed them in was basically ignored. So, this too was a significant nail in the coffin of American democracy.
Continuing on, consider all the self-righteous protests on the part of the White Supremacists or White Nationalists over what they laughingly call, “Critical Race Theory.” In a nutshell, this is a smokescreen the White Supremacists are hiding behind in their audacious claims that they are the victims & are being labeled as racists. And they hope to completely eliminate any mention of America’s ugly racist past in our public schools because it will soon become evident that racism is alive & well in America. There’s hardly a week that passes without some white cop shooting & killing a young, unarmed black man.
Howard Zinn and his beloved wife, Roz (Roslyn)
The venerable Howard Zinn must be rolling over in his grave because his classic, “A People’s History of the United States,” proved that American history has always been taught from the perspectives of the White elite & never from the perspective of the Black people who made the U.S. rich on their backs as slaves. The subjugation & theft from Mexico that created our great Southwest. American women’s role as second class citizens not even allowed to vote until fairly recently, etc.
I graduated high school in 1971 but it wasn’t until 1974 when I read “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee” by Dee Brown that I’d ever heard a word about the so-called “Winning of the West,” from a native American’s perspective & this book absolutely blew my mind! The Christian Fascists (see Chris Hedges) & the White Fascists & Nazis have been so emboldened by their Fuhrer Donald that they have gone on the offensive against bleeding-heart liberals, etc. who have the temerity to believe that we should be taught about our entire history, not just the selective stories that paint America as the great, benign, superpower.
Moving along our path to destruction is the erosion of what used to be a proud & honorable profession, American journalism. For those of you who’d like a crash course on some of our most illustrious newsmen, look up George Seldes, I.F. Stone, & Edward R. Murrow. There are many good books on the fall & decline of American journalism but in my opinion, the most succinct & factual book ever written on the subject is “Manufacturing Consent,” by Edward Herman & Noam Chomsky. I have to interject here that Noam Chomsky is considered the greatest living intellectual by millions of people around the globe, including myself.
The American corporate media is such a complex issue that there’s no way I could do the subject justice in this essay but to greatly oversimplify it, when the media conglomerates betrayed their Constitutional duty as our founding fathers laid down i.e. to serve as a watchdog on the government, and realized that the news departments could generate profits, they became little more than whores for the political powers that be. This is when the term, “Infotainment,” was coined & it says it all, especially under Trump’s reign of error & blatant, non-stop, self-serving lies!
Noam Chomsky, my mentor, hero, & friend and the most quoted scholar alive.
Some who read this essay may be tempted to dismiss me as simply a technophobe or Luddite, but they couldn’t be more wrong. I acknowledge that technology has brought many wonderful advances to mankind, but my criticism of certain modern, technological gadgets is an honest appraisal of the things dragging us down in a death-spiral & can’t be ignored.
In several respects, the introduction of television has played a large role in the overall “dumbing-down” of America. In the beginning, in what was called “The Golden Age of Television,” there were several excellent programs that presented serious issues that enlarged people’s minds & spirits. Classic works of literature & brilliant dramas that encouraged dialog between us as citizens in a free nation.
Of course, in today’s Trump world, this would be dismissed as elitist snobbery. But have you ever reflected on the fact that elitists in sports, business, music, etc. are revered but if they label you an intellectual or cultural elitist, their critics can be especially vicious, crude, & ugly and Trump has played this card continuously in his fake posture as a populist.
Moreover, there have been notable exceptions in terms of quality television series & “The West Wing,” was definitely such a pleasant exception. But overall & at the risk of being dismissed as an elitist snob, the overwhelming majority of choices on television today is pure, unadulterated crap! And the same goes for the movies.
One comic book hero from the past after another & sequels ad nauseam. It’s like the imagination of Hollywood movie producers & writers has gone on permanent vacation. Zombies, vampires, asinine comedies only the most immature & ignorant can appreciate. An endless stream of war movies always showing America as the great champions & protectors of the rest of humanity. Dystopian nightmares like Mad Max are extremely popular. Animated movies, so-called comedies that make one want to cry. Just one disappointment after another but again, there are exceptions. Where is the cultural uplift, the intellectual contribution that helps to make us better humans, more compassionate, more empathetic?
A great book on this subject is “Amusing Ourselves to Death,” by Neil Postman should you care to enlighten & warn yourself and your loved ones. The key point here is to reflect on just how powerful the medium of television has become especially in the context of this essay & specifically how it has propelled a braggart, grifter, fraud, & criminal like Trump to the highest position in the world. Note also that Trump is indeed a master at manipulating the media and he got something like $5 billion dollars worth of free advertising by the media during his campaign because he knows how to keep the cameras on him with his disgusting comments & behavior. So, when the corporate news media lamented their treatment by Trump, I felt absolutely no sympathy for them.
Trump’s inner-self revealed
And speaking of the slow death of our democracy, we mustn’t forget the role of the military/congressional complex. The historian, Chalmers Johnson summed it up nicely, “We can either be an empire or a democracy, but we can’t be both.” I have been consistently amazed over the years at how pissed-off people get at mythical welfare cheaters but never say a harsh word about the Pentagon’s charging $900 for a hammer & countless other examples of outright theft & corruption in the Pentagon & the numerous “Defense contractors.”
I believe it was recently revealed that since the start of the war in Afghanistan, something like $20 trillion dollars has basically been squandered. Where’s the outrage? Why are the Trumpsters silent on this issue? The politicians tell us again & again, sorry, we don’t have the money for health, education, welfare, our infrastructure, training our working class for decent paying jobs, etc. but magically, they always seem to find the millions & billions for weapons — many which don’t even work — and the PR firms spin the narrative so the public blames the victims even worse off than them, for their economic woes.
In the name of fairness & honesty, yes, the Democratic party has betrayed working class & middle-class America repeatedly & most obviously when Clinton signed NAFTA into law. But Clinton only did what the Republicans had been trying to do ever since their darling Reagan was in office. I know that two wrongs don’t make a right but at least the Democrats do a few good things along the way. Yet with the unleashing of the beast that Trump is, the G.O.P. no longer even attempts to hide its utter contempt for everyone who isn’t a part of the 1%. And it really boggles my mind to witness the Trump supporters so fiercely loyal to him as he & the G.O.P. plot & plan to cut-off their food stamps, shutdown Social Security & Medicare, etc. etc. etc. Talk about blind loyalty, this is definitely the Theatre of the Absurd.
Is it any wonder I’m so pessimistic, cynical, & despairing? If I dare to mention these contradictions & hypocrisies in a bar or tavern, guys want to beat me up & the bartenders often tell me to shut-up or get out. It’s okay to repeat the latest talking points on FOX “news,” but it’s taboo to open your mouth if you’re a liberal or a democrat. This is yet another one of those freedoms our soldiers are fighting & dying for around the world in our perpetual wars that have been going on ever since I was born in 1952.
Without a doubt, one of the things that I find so incredibly difficult to understand is the fact that Trump idolizes & fawns all over bloody dictators around the globe like Putin and he disrespects America’s allies & other members of NATO & Trump’s walking dead never utter a word of criticism against Trump? It seems these cretins would rather America become a dictatorship as long as we have a “strong leader,” like Trump in charge? Tell me this isn’t the Twilight Zone.
We mustn’t forget the important role the “Christian” fundamentalists, evangelicals, & Dominionists have played in our destruction from within. I have written a book on this subject & again for the sake of brevity, I’ll just point out a rather scary observation on my part. You may have heard the often-repeated criticism against Muslim schools like in Afghanistan run by the Taliban & called madrasah (s)?
They are usually dismissed as little more than terrorist training schools where the students are taught to hate Americans. I could counter with the sad phenomenon of “Charter schools,” in the U.S. The difference being that in our charter schools which suck money away from public education & aren’t held accountable for test results like public schools are, their students are taught to fear/hate especially secular humanists. Yet a five-minute Google search will show you that our founding fathers were secular humanists, not Christians like the lying, Christian fascists want you to believe.
Tragically for free thinking Americans, something like 74 million of these wolves in sheep’s clothing that call themselves Christians, not only voted for Trump both times, but they also sing his praises. We moved around a lot as I was growing up, sometimes two or three times a year. And I attended Sunday school in a variety of Christian denominations, I didn’t know anything about the differences, I just liked going. But when I was around 14 or so, the hypocrisy just became so blatant that I stopped going to church & calling myself a Christian. But there’s one thing I know for sure and that is that Jesus laid it out as clear as could be in regard to how Christians should believe & behave in his Sermon on the Mount. Trump is like the poster boy for exactly the kind of guy that Jesus would’ve kicked to the curb. The only thing I can figure as to how so many self-professed Christians could follow & support such a vile creature as Trump is their moral cowardice & willingness to overlook Trump’s “little flaws,” because he promises to allow prayer in school, ban abortion, etc.
Marching along in our dark parade is perhaps one of the most pernicious forces in American history that didn’t originate here but was definitely imported by the Puritans, anti-intellectualism. Throughout the long & ignoble history of Christianity, the majority of the “Church Fathers,” were anti-intellectualists because they feared their power over their followers would be weakened if the people were educated.
By-the-way, dictators have also feared intellectuals & one of the first things they do when they overthrow the government in a coup is shut down the universities & the press. Note Trump’s installment of Betsy DeVos a rabid anti-intellectual Christian who wants to replace our entire public education system with Charter Schools. The ongoing war against intelligence in American society is a very long & complex story but if you give a damn, Richard Hofstadter’s “Anti-intellectualism in American Life” is the classic & the seminal book on the subject. I’ve read it twice & have dissected it for a book I’ve written but haven’t edited yet. One last note on this subject, if I remember correctly, the Church was against the use of Guttenberg’s printing press even though the Bible was the first book that was mass published. Mull that over if you will?
Speaking of anti-intellectualism, another technological innovation, the so-called “Smart phone,” is also dumbing us down yet many who own one believe it’s the best thing since sliced bread. Whoever came up with the name & the marketing campaign for these stupid phones must be very pleased with themselves for duping the public in such a massively devious PR strategy. People think their communication skills have in effect been put on steroids with these devices. In much the same manner that people who believe the social media has made them more sociable.
When I’m in public places like restaurants or bars & I see groups of people who by outward appearances I think are friends yet they’re not socializing with one another, no, their eyes are glued to the tiny screens on their phones like junkies hooked on heroin, oblivious to their “friends,” and the life going on around them. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that these phones aren’t making people smarter & are actually making them dumber because our human interactions are one of our best and most important ways of learning from one another. Tristan Harris lays out the danger much more succinctly than I & he was an ethicist for Google when he woke up to the harm being done by these distracting toys.
This video by Harris touches on several critical areas & you’ll probably dismiss me as unrealistic, a dreamer, a utopian but hey, why don’t we just get rid of these goddamn “smart phones,” and have phones that can only receive or send a voice mail? Real life emergencies i.e., a family member gets hurt, your car breaks down, etc. are the only valid reasons for owning a portable phone in my opinion. Then we can & should get down to the really serious issues facing humanity like climate destruction, the threats of a nuclear exchange, & the loss of our freedom.
Returning to the main subject of this essay, denialism i.e., climate destruction denial, election denial, etc. it’s also very relevant that roughly a third of our population deny the Holocaust happened. And if that doesn’t scare the shit out of you, nothing will because if people can deny such a massive & horrific attempt at the total genocide of a people, it’s that much easier for it to happen again.
Moreover, this essay isn’t just about the denialism of the stupid & the willfully ignorant who have fallen under the spell of the dumbest & most immoral president we’ve ever had, no, it’s also about the denialism on the so-called “Left” in America.
The Trump tornado of terror didn’t come out of nowhere, no, it slowly built-up & steadily grew right under our noses. When Trump first announced that he was running for the office of president of the U.S., most of those on the “Left,” i.e., democrats, liberals, progressives got a real laugh out of it & said things like, are you kidding, Trump isn’t even qualified to be a dog catcher let alone president? But like those religious extremists we see standing on the streetcorners ranting & raving, we dismissed him as just another looney.
Note that 74 million self-professed Christians voted for the Golden Calf that is Trump & they also literally believe that all mankind’s problems began when Adam ate that apple from the Tree of Knowledge. In brief, they believe God wants us all to be ignorant & obedient to him, the ultimate authoritarian & the charlatans that come along like Trump, who are convincing authoritarians, should be obeyed.
The devout Christian Trump holding a Bible upside down, How appropriate!
This is very personal for me because for almost half a century, I have tried to warn family, friends, & strangers how dangerously ignorant Americans are as a whole. And I’ve been mocked & dismissed for most of my life. I don’t derive any satisfaction from having been proven right after all these years & as a matter of fact, I never thought of myself as an exceptional student until I was in my late 20s when a handful of professors from philosophy, political science, & literature each told me in their own ways that I was a bright guy. And even though I was told in the sixth grade that I was reading at the 11th grade, sixth month level, neither my mom nor any school counselors encouraged me academically.
I’ve shared this bit of my personal history in perhaps a naïve attempt to reveal how painfully alone I have been all my life. Without a doubt, the best years of my life were the first four years I lived with Jeri who was to become my wife. As human beings, we all need to be heard & to feel we have truly communicated with others, so we know we’re not alone. But with all these fancy new gadgets or toys, we are feeling more isolated & alienated from one another than ever before in human history.
I don’t think Mother Gaia is going to miss her ignorant, greedy, & destructive children so we’d better pull together my friends or it truly will be the end of humanity. I have a few more important & highly relevant points to share before I wind this essay up & I hope you will give them an honest consideration.
Again, Trump isn’t the sole reason we are perilously close to losing our democracy, but he definitely was a catalyst that hastened the end. Sort of like a snowball that grows in size as it speeds down a hillside & become more dangerous & powerful as it gains momentum. Speaking of which, if you’d care to get an in-depth understanding of how Trump built his fortune & fame, there’s a documentary called, “Where’s My Roy Cohn,” which Trump actually said in one of his frustrating moments in office. Cohn was, at the risk of sounding overly dramatic, evil incarnate & mind you, I stopped calling myself a Christian around the age of 14.
If you watch this film, most likely you’ll be struck as I was at the amazing parallels between Trump & Cohn. And if you take the time to inform yourself on Trump’s background, I recommend, “Trump, the Greatest Show on Earth,” by Wayne Barrett. Mr. Barrett followed Trump’s career for over 38 years until his death in 2017. He was the first reporter who took Trump seriously & nailed him for some of his crimes at the beginning. He is the most authoritative writer on Trump in my opinion & another excellent writer in regard to exposing his career of corruption is David Cay Johnston who wrote, “The Making of Donald Trump.” Mr. Johnston has known Trump for over 28 years & is known as America’s de facto top tax enforcer because of his exposes on tax fraud in America’s corporate elite.
If we’re very lucky, Trump’s tax fraud over the decades may be the final nail in his coffin but that won’t save us from future demagogues which are now more likely than ever to replace Trump. Just look at what the GOP has devolved to, something like 350 members of Congress now actively support & spread absurd conspiracy theories & these are the people supposedly representing us? For your edification, here is a list of the methods of demagogues & it requires little effort to see that Trump followed this playbook to the letter:
Like it or not and acknowledge it or not, Trump is a mirror of our culture and society. He showed the world our dark side. And again, all of us who sat on the side apathetically & didn’t speak out are just as culpable as those MAGA morons who voted for him.
Mussolini & Trump, twin sons of different mothers. Note their sneer of superiority, but the MAGA morons believe he’s down-to-earth?
History tells us that Mussolini, the fascist dictator of Italy, was a role model for Hitler. Here’s a quote attributed to Mussolini that some dispute but nevertheless is very relevant to America today. By-the-way, thanks to our impoverished public education system, most Americans aren’t aware of the fact that many of our corporations loved Mussolini & fascism because it demolished worker’s unions & therefore made corrupt businesses run much smoother. In fact, several of America’s largest corporations supported & did business with Mussolini’s fascist government as well as Hitler’s Nazi government. Are you beginning to catch on my friend?
“Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power”
― Benito Mussolini
This again is what boggles my mind about Trump supporters, how in the Hell can they think/believe that Trump, a member of the wealthy elite, is going to look out for their financial well-being? His kind get rich by exploiting the working class & he’s done so countless times over the years from simple laborers to contractors, etc. And he has hidden behind the laws created by the politicians & the corporate cockroaches to enrich himself. He used his term in office to enrich himself & his family at every opportunity like a cheap, used car salesman & the MAGA morons love him?
The Early Warning Signs of Fascism
The cult of tradition. This is the belief that the truth is already known once and for all. Fascists believe there is no need to advance in learning.
The rejection of modernism. Fascists reject the Enlightenment and its evidence-based rationality.
The cult of action for action’s sake. Fascist leaders act impulsively, without thinking or planning ahead.
No analytical criticism. Fascists ignore nuance and see any disagreement as treasonous.
Fear of difference. Fascists fear diversity. Thus, they are racist by definition.
Appeal to a frustrated middle class. An economically frustrated and/or politically marginalized middle class is easy to stir to anger.
Obsession with a plot. Because the followers must be made to feel besieged, an internal “enemy” is provided: Immigrants, Muslims, Hispanics, Blacks. (Historically the Jews were often made to be “the enemy.”)
Anti-elitism. The followers are made to feel humiliated by the wealth and strength of the educated “elite.” This is used to create resentment.
Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. Fascists believe that life is permanent warfare. Therefore, a desire for peace is treasonous.
Contempt for the weak. A fascist leader despises his underlings, who in turn despise those under them. They all either mock or ignore the poor, the sick, and the disabled.
The cult of heroism. The Fascist is eager to die a hero’s death. In his impatience, he frequently sends other people to their deaths.
Machismo. Fascists show disdain for women, disregard for chastity, and condemnation of homosexuality.
Selective populism. Under fascism, the “voice of the people” is not the democratic majority, but only the voices of those who support the leader.
Ur-fascism speaks Newspeak. Just as in Orwell’s 1984, Fascists use an impoverished vocabulary and an elementary syntax to limit complex and critical reasoning.
Or in a simpler way.
Powerful and continuing nationalism
Disdain for human rights
Identification of enemies as a unifying cause
Supremacy of the military
Rampant sexism
Controlled mass media
Obsession with national security
Religion and government intertwined
Corporate power protected
Labor power suppressed
Disdain for intellectuals & the arts
Obsession with crime & punishment
Rampant cronyism & corruption
Fraudulent elections
Look familiar to Trump’s agenda?
Germany’s Jewish population kept denying that Hitler would come to power and go as far as he did in trying to exterminate them right up to
Kristallnacht, (German: “Crystal Night”) , also called Night of Broken Glass or November Pogroms, the night of November 9–10, 1938, when German Nazis attacked Jewish persons and property. The name Kristallnacht refers ironically to the litter of broken glass left in the streets after these pogroms. The violence continued during the day of November 10, and in some places acts of violence continued for several more days.
The pretext for the pogroms was the shooting in Paris on November 7 of the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by a Polish-Jewish student, Herschel Grynszpan. News of Rath’s death on November 9 reached Adolf Hitler in Munich, Germany, where he was celebrating the anniversary of the abortive 1923 Beer Hall Putsch. There, Minister of PropagandaJoseph Goebbels, after conferring with Hitler, harangued a gathering of old storm troopers, urging violent reprisals staged to appear as “spontaneous demonstrations.” Telephone orders from Munich triggered pogroms throughout Germany, which then included Austria.
Just before midnight on November 9, Gestapo chief Heinrich Müller sent a telegram to all police units informing them that “in shortest order, actions against Jews and especially their synagogues will take place in all of Germany. These are not to be interfered with.” Rather, the police were to arrest the victims. Fire companies stood by synagogues in flames with explicit instructions to let the buildings burn. They were to intervene only if a fire threatened adjacent “Aryan” properties.
In two days and nights, more than 1,000 synagogues were burned or otherwise damaged. Rioters ransacked and looted about 7,500 Jewish businesses, killed at least 91 Jews, and vandalized Jewish hospitals, homes, schools, and cemeteries. The attackers were often neighbors. Some 30,000 Jewish males aged 16 to 60 were arrested. To accommodate so many new prisoners, the concentration camps at Dachau, Buchenwald, and Sachsenhausen were expanded.
Birds of a feather, America’s celebrity grifters. Robertson’s net worth is $100 million dollars.
“If fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.” (Sinclair Lewis)
Victims of the Great Depression brought to us by the bankers & corporate cockroaches the fascists love.
In the end, we only have ourselves to blame. What makes us human is our ability to feel compassion and empathy for our fellow human beings. It is what separates us from beasts. Trump clearly isn’t capable of feeling empathy or compassion for others. He’s a malignant narcissist sociopath and those that think he’s wonderful are either the same or blind. This is what pushed America into just another failed and corrupt state!
Joe McCarthy & Roy Cohn who destroyed so many lives & careers and Cohn was Trump’s mentor i.e. Dr. Frankenstein
First of all, I wish to be very clear that this essay isn’t about lamenting the end of the American Empire but it is a grieving for the unnecessary pain & suffering that has gone before & will continue for the millions of innocent victims of the corporate cockroaches.
Moreover, I focus on America because I am an American & therefore, I not only have a right but also a duty to hold my government accountable. And secondly, because America has such a powerful military force & dominates the world economy, we threaten & intimidate the other nations to bend them to our will. Therefore, as American citizens we have the heavy burden of responsibility to do all that we can in terms of harm reduction.
You might attempt to argue that therefore the attempted coup against our democratic form of government on January 6, 2021 was a good thing. And you’d be dead wrong because two wrongs have never made a right. The tens of millions who blindly trust Trump are a combination of ignorant & stupid people. Ignorance can be fixed but stupidity is hopelessly lost. What these MAGA minions don’t grasp is that Trump & all his ass-kissers don’t give a shit about them. They are serving their corporate masters by attacking their fellow citizens.
And these so-called Culture Wars are merely a smokescreen created to keep us divided & therefore weaker and easier to control. Every great now & then, a truth would slip out of the baboon’s mouth i.e. “I like the less-educated.” Of course, Trump’s walking dead interpreted this to mean that he hated the cultural elite and was one of them, an average Joe.
Obviously, Trump’s ability to convince tens of millions of Americans that he & they have far more in common than differences, is one of the most amazing feats of PR (Public Relations) scams in the past half century. Trump envied New York’s cultural elite for decades & tried to join their club repeatedly but was always rejected because of his obvious ignorance, rude, & crude behavior.
I grew up in the poor & working class of America. My mom was mostly single & tried her best to raise four children. Being the eldest, it fell to me to protect & supervise my siblings and I had to physically take on some of my mom’s drunken & cruel husbands and boyfriends. I mention this to prove that I’m not from some privileged background & definitely never received $400 million from daddy like your phony populist, Donny boy.
The working class stiffs that I grew up with & still live amongst are fond of their mantra, “All you need is common sense!” Well it’s clear as a bell to me that tens of millions of Donny’s fan club don’t have common sense or they’d see the elephant in the room. Donald Duck struts the national stage like the Emperor Who Wore No Clothes & Donny is pure, naked greed and his repeated attempts to have conferences & etc. with world leaders at his golf resorts & etc. so he’d collect huge profits, is but one example.
FOX “news” and Trump feed off each other & the same was true for George “Dubya.” And FOX wasn’t alone in beating the war drums for Iraq invasion i.e. the New York Times & MSNBC
I am getting too far afield by focusing on the creature from the black lagoon because the moral rot has clearly infected the entire GOP and a large percentage of the Democratic party as well. This is why I seriously doubt there will ever be a real stop to campaign financing. Both parties are corrupt & have long ago sold-out the public because they are addicted to all those “perks” the corporate lobbyists give them in exchange for political favors i.e. writing laws that benefit the corporations but harm Americans, especially the poor, the working class, the middle class, & people of color.
Jones became a multi-millionaire spreading his fear, hate, & conspiracy theories.
I know that this is a very dark & pessimistic picture I’m painting but if we’re ever going to change this picture, we must first see it, recognize it, & then go to work to creating a much fairer picture. You can’t appreciate beauty if you can’t face the ugly reality around us. And with that in mind, here is a picture of the utter insanity & absurdity of a up & coming power broker in the GOP’s upper echelon, Marjorie Taylor Greene:
The following is a guide to Greene’s conspiracy theories and toxic rhetoric.
Of course the most pernicious conspiracy theory that she & approximately 250 other members of Congress believe in & are espousing is that the election was stolen by Biden. If this goes on, we will be or perhaps already are on that slippery slope to becoming a fascist nation like those our fathers & grandfathers fought against in WWII. And even though I am 100% against the perpetual wars the corporate cockroaches have manipulated us into over my lifetime, it still nauseates me to see these fascists parading through our public streets with American flags & proclaiming their patriotism.
And at the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist myself & of oversimplifying the issue, I believe our public education system is largely responsible for the pathetic & tragic level of ignorance in America. But no, it’s not the result of some grand conspiracy. Rather, it is a confluence of destructive forces. Forces like the “Christian” fundamentalists who fear & hate public education and want us to be a nation of Christians ruled by their authoritarian dictates.
Trump’s idea of “Draining the Swamp”
It’s also a result of decades of political whores who only want power for themselves & fear an educated public who can block their grabs for ever more power. Note that most politicians must be millionaires to even run for office but if they win a seat in Congress, that million often grows exponentially because they have the power to write the laws.
Yep! Corporate America’s “Free Market!” Step right up Suckers!
Thirdly & clearly most significantly, our woeful state of a poorly educated public can be laid at the feet of the transnational corporations. Their short-sighted obsession with profits inclines them to run PR campaigns against funding public education & every other public program because it means that much less of the federal treasury that goes into their pockets. This illustrates why Trump’s appointment of Betsy DeVos made perfect sense for the 1% because she was clearly one of the most brazen, anti-public education people they could find.
Moreover, Trump’s entire cabinet wasn’t chosen by him because he can’t think his way out of a paper bag. No, his handlers i.e. the true power behind the throne we like to call the presidency, are actively subverting & destroying every last vestige of our democracy so they can have total control. This is the goal of every fascist or dictatorial government in history.
Again, not a vast conspiracy like the brain-dead MAGA morons love to believe the Democrats are behind like in an oldie but goodie, The Illuminati Conspiracy. But a tragic convergence of greedy forces that will never own enough penthouses, yachts, private jets, etc. like that good, old homeboy Donny whose idea of fine dining is Taco Bell with Twinkies for dessert.
I have been an avid reader and lover of knowledge since kindergarten & part of what has driven me in my 70 years is my hatred for bullies & the elite rich who are responsible for the majority of the degradation, humiliation, suffering, & death of billions of people around the globe. And unlike that detestable braggart Trump, I can back my words up with factual, not make-believe “alternate reality” like the megalomaniac moron, details, footnotes, sources, etc. And I have never been motivated by money. Love and compassion for the suffering is what drives me forward so I hope you believe me but whether you do or not doesn’t matter in the end, I know in my heart & soul it is the truth.
Here is my summation of the clear and present dangers that threaten not only America’s future but the entire planet’s future by extension. The enemies that Walt Kelly was referring to in his parody of a line by a military official with, “We have met the enemy and he is us,” were those who were polluting our environment in the 1960s & the early 1970s. It was the beginning of the Environmental Movement & was mocked & dismissed by many people back then. Of course Walt had no way of knowing just how prescient his words would prove to be & now, climate destruction threatens our very survival as a species. And this is representative of the combined destructive forces we are coexisting with today.
Part of my education over the years has been my seeking out & attending lectures, book signings, conferences, etc. and one gentlemen I met years ago is Chris Hedges. His amazing insights, courage, & experiences are captured in this ten minute video clip.
Returning to my thesis for this essay, a few of our major enemies that are destroying us from within are stupidity, fear, propaganda, & conspiracy theories. Note that in the video clip you just watched, many of those poor souls living in those “Sacrifice Zones,” in the Appalachian mining towns voted for & idolize Trump. Talk about effective propaganda on the part of the phony “conservatives.” My God! Also note that it was Joe Manchin, the Democratic Senator from West Virginia who is a coal mine owner, who practically single-handedly blocked Biden’s “Build Back Better bill.
Are you beginning to see what I mean? The GOP isn’t even bothering to hide or disguise their corruption but with Democratic leaders like Joe Manchin, we are clearly being betrayed even though they still give lip-service to their claim to care about us.
The bill is roughly half of Biden’s original $3.5 trillion plan. It includes hundreds of billions of dollars for clean energy and climate investments, child tax credits, housing and child care. Paid family leave, free community college, raised wealth taxes and lower prices for prescription drugs were among the measures left out. https://www.allsides.com/story/democrats-release-text-bidens-build-back-better-bill
The American Empire is rotting from within & the parasitic forces are feeding off the host that is the American public. If you deny that we are an empire because the powers that be haven’t publicly acknowledged it, you are one of the willfully ignorant. And how do you explain the fact that we have approximately 900 military bases circling the globe & surrounding our so-called enemies like China & Russia.
Yeah Russia, whose leader makes Trump practically cream his pants every time he’s near him. Yet Trump & another serious threat to our national security, General Michael Flynn, claim to be anti-communist? And we continue doing business with China? If not for China’s slave labor, Walmart would be out of business. Open your eyes you MAGA minions.
Perhaps one of the key factors causing the United States to circle the drain so-to-speak, is the grandiose arrogance or hubris of the powers that be. This has led to the collapse of most empires that came before us from the Roman empire to the British empire. You see, “our” leaders (I know, what a farce) think as they relax on their yachts in the south of France, they are so obscenely wealthy because of their superior intelligence. Actually they are wealthy because they lack compassion, empathy, and any sense or respect for morality or ethics like Trump, the temper tantrum toddler who lied, cheated, & stole his way to where he is.
Speaking of the deadly stupid Trump, his willful ignorance & denial of the COVID virus for months after it first struck America is clearly responsible for the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans. Yet once again, the anti-elite or the anti-intellectual Trumpsters still sing his praises? Are you beginning to understand just how deadly stupidity can be? I say that Trump’s presidency was like the bubonic plague unleashed on the United States & we may never recover from it given the spawn that it has bred.
The source that these parasites feed on is again, multi-faceted but includes the near total genocide of America’s indigenous people who lived here for thousands of years before the white pestilence invaded. The enslavement & degradation of the Black men who created the wealth of this nation with their forced labor.
In addition to the theft & murder of Black Americans & the indigenous peoples land & resources, our government & business elite have invaded, raped, pillaged, & plundered the peoples & the resources of countless other developing nations. Major General Smedley F. Butler lays it out succinctly for all to see.
Furthermore, the knowledge with little to no concern for morality that created the weapons of mass destruction due to the blind belief in technology by the status quo. As a result, we are living with & dying from who knows how many man-made chemicals? Cancer now kills one out of every two men & one out of every three women but who gives a fuck as long as the rich can buy themselves another yacht, an even bigger yacht, a fleet of personal jets, a mansion in all the playgrounds of the rich & famous, etc.
We are being poisoned by the land, the food Monsanto grows on it with their GMO seeds, the air we need to breathe, the water we drink, the sea that gives us so much of the food we need to survive, etc. And the scum-sucking parasites proclaim that what’s good for business is “Good for America!”
But hey, at least we won’t be bored as we lay dying. We are “Amusing Ourselves to Death,” a brilliant book by Neil Postman. You see, there’s a very important lesson that emperors & all rulers of empire learned centuries ago, you must distract the public from its suffering so they are less likely to unite & rise up against their oppressors.
The Roman Emperors & Senators were perhaps the masters of this fine art of the spectacle? And today’s PR industry has also done a dandy job in this regard with the greedy assistance of the corporate-owned media. Note that Trump received perhaps $5 billion dollars worth of free advertising in his snake-oil show that duped tens of millions of America’s most gullible television viewers. His rallies clearly resemble Hitler’s rallies in pre-war, Nazi Germany & Goebel’s insights such as the bigger the lie, the better and the more frequently the lie is repeated, the sooner it becomes accepted as fact by the bewildered herd.
Yep! If we somehow manage to not blow ourselves up with a nuclear exchange—note Trump asked his advisors repeatedly why he couldn’t use our nuclear weapons on countries he didn’t like— or destroy our environment & climate beyond the point of no return, I predict that many, if not most of those American citizens who come after us will be absolutely amazed at how we allowed such a craven cretin as Trump anywhere near the White House.
A rapist, a thief, a racist, a traitor who led an attempted coup against our government & trampled on our Constitution as if it were a floor mat for wiping one’s boots off. A blatant & consistent agenda to purposely neuter or eliminate every federal department established to protect & help the vulnerable among us. “Our” leaders love to pontificate & proclaim to the rest of the world consistently about how America is a nation based on Law & Order & they mock so-called “Banana Republics,” but the U.S. is the biggest banana of all & we, the people, are the ones who keep slipping, falling, & hurting from that banana peel on the floor of our Capitol as revealed on January 6, 2021.
And the alien being with the Cheshire Cat grin who has lead a life of crime too long to list here has never spent a night in jail? And over 74 million “Christians,” adore him like he’s their messiah? Just shows how senile they are & how far they have strayed from Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount,” which laid out very clearly how true Christians were to behave. Our options have never been clearer, either we get busy fighting back against these all too real evils or we get busy dying!
— Rob DeLoss, Gold Beach, Oregon October 26, 2022
P.S. By-the-way, I attended church & Sunday school regularly up until I was around 14 & I no longer consider myself a “Christian,” and I’m proud of it because I am far more Christian than those millions who believe in Trump & turn a blind-eye to all his evil.
A little over 20 years ago, Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes concocted a profitable way to tap into the white supremacist ideology still bubbling below America’s surface.
They started a “news” network that, instead of providing actual news, gave white, conservative viewers the news they wanted to hear: that they, their families, and their values were under attack by minorities, gays, women, liberals, socialists, Muslims, atheists, the media, etc. — and therefore their biases were justified.
It’s been a lucrative strategy. However, just making a buck wasn’t enough for them. They also wanted to shape the fortunes of the country they were dividing. Here, too, they had tremendous success.
And that is what is getting lost amid the outcry over Donald Trump’s latest round of racist tweets: The US president is often just parroting what he sees on Fox News.* His racism and distorted view of reality are a direct reflection of what this conservative network decides to put on the air.
While regimes throughout history have used propaganda outlets to get the word out and spread their ideology, in the US it is now very much a two-way street. Fox News is both a tool and a puppeteer, manipulating events directly and indirectly. In many cases, the network drives the conservative agenda with its programming. Then, when Trump and his allies pick up on it, Fox News gives them a platform to broadcast that agenda with no fear of criticism or being fact-checked.
Then, with the message already amplified, Trump tweets clips from the network — primarily clips of its many conservative commentators — or tweets promotions for its shows.
The president’s recent racist rants are a perfect illustration of how this works: Trump’s tweets directed at four Democratic Congresswomen in July followed an attack from Fox News host Tucker Carlson on one of them, US Rep. Ilhan Omar (MN).
This symbiotic relationship between the president and his favorite TV channel is also reflected in the revolving door between Fox News and the Trump administration.
Former White House communications director Hope Hicks now works as a senior PR executive for the network’s parent company, Fox Corp. Just last month, she was joined by former White House deputy press secretary Raj Shah. In addition, former Trump campaign and administration officials, such as deputy campaign manager David Bossie and acting ICE director Thomas Homan, appear on the network as analysts or contributors.
At the same time, lots of Fox News contributors and staff have found a home in the Trump administration. John Bolton is national security adviser, Ben Carson is secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Morgan Ortagus is the State Department spokesperson. In addition Richard Grenell (Germany), Scott Brown (New Zealand), and Georgette Mosbacher (Poland) now serve as ambassadors. And those are just some of the Fox News alumni currently serving in the US government.
The well-worn path between Fox News and the White House also includes the network’s former co-president Bill Shine, who worked as White House deputy communications director and left to take a job with Trump’s reelection campaign. Right-wing nutjob Sebastian Gorka was a Fox News contributor, then a deputy assistant to the president before going back to Fox News, and then leaving again. Mercedes Schlapp, a former Fox News contributor, first served as White House director of strategic communications and now works for Trump’s reelection campaign.
And all this only scratches the surface, because, through their programming and sometimes in person, the network’s top personalities, such as Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro, Carlson, or the Fox & Friends crew, are effectively Trump advisers. The only difference between them and official White House staffers is that they are not subject to any transparency and accountability rules — and they are paid better.
The president is not the only political figure getting cues from Fox News. Following the Mueller hearings last week, a clip made the rounds showing that the opening remarks of Rep. Devin Nunes (CA) — the ranking Republican on the Intelligence Committee — exactly mirrored the rhetoric of Hannity.
For two decades, Fox News operated under the laughably false motto of “fair & balanced” until ending that charade in 2017. That’s like McDonald’s advertising the Big Mac as “the world’s healthiest food.”
In fact, the network has been a subsidiary of — and a driving force behind — the GOP and the alt-right for some time. Its viewers are presented with an alternative reality, and it’s no surprise that they vote accordingly. They don’t live in a land of facts but rather in a country of conservative make-believe in which Trump is a messiah.
Not surprisingly, the network’s right-wing propaganda is having an impact. A 2017 study published in the peer-reviewed American Economic Review estimates that if Fox News had not existed in 2000, the overall Republican presidential vote would have been 0.46 percentage points lower. Just as a reminder, George W. Bush won Florida by 537 votes. It’s not a stretch to argue that the network put a Republican in the White House that year — for the first time.
In 2004, this “Fox effect” had jumped to 3.59 percentage points and in 2008 it was 6.34 percentage points.
Since then, the network’s misinformation campaign has reached new heights, culminating in the election of Trump.
And after his inauguration, Fox News basically became a part of the White House communications department. Its coverage now is every bit as partisan and deceptive as that of Pravda and TASS in the old Soviet Union.
While Fox News likes to cloak itself in a mantle of patriotism, it actually does Americans a great disservice. Its coverage is often blatantly racist, it hypes an anti-immigrant agenda, and it exploits other divisions in society.
For example, in 2018, when a group of asylum seekers made its way toward the border ahead of the midterm election, Fox News covered the “caravan” as though it were a harbinger of the end of days. When an immigrant commits a crime, Fox News covers it endlessly, but the threat of radical white supremacists is hardly discussed.
The ad nauseam coverage of the danger immigrants supposedly pose stands in stark contrast to the coverage of an actual threat to the US: the interference in its election by Russia. Since such interference was done on behalf of Trump, you won’t hear much about it on the network. Instead, its top host peddles conspiracy theories to deflect from what Russia did.
Here is the bottom line: People getting their information from Fox News and Trump’s Twitter account are increasingly detached from reality and facts. In turn, this is leading to their ideological radicalization, which is not only troublesome, but also potentially dangerous, for example if Trump loses the 2020 election and refuses to leave — claiming that his victory was stolen.
*Fox News, simply put, is a right-wing propaganda tool, not a serious media outlet that deserves to have the name “news” in its name. However, for reasons of clarity, we refer to it as a news organization and use the name Fox News, however misleading it may be, in this editorial. It should also be noted that a handful of people and a small share of the programming is dedicated to something that could even remotely be referred to as “objective.” And when that happens, Trump is quick to call them out over it.
This is simply, my perhaps feeble attempt, to explain the why and how we have arrived at the edge of the cliff overlooking Dante’s “Inferno.” And while I have no official expertise or credentials, I have been studying these particular factors for well over 30 years. Moreover, this isn’t a claim that these are the sole factors but I believe they are some of the most significant factors.
The Hell we are making?
In no particular order, Christian fundamentalists were among the first social phenomenon that began to worry me in the early 1980s. A little later, my close analysis of Richard Hofstadter’s classic, “Anti-intellectualism in American Life,” was a real eye-opener & helped me to see connections with other destructive forces in American society. Furthermore, when I read or basically dissected John Taylor Gatto’s brilliant, “The Underground History of American Education,” I began to realize the depth & scope of America’s decline into a state of nearly complete corporate capture & rule. Of course the corporate domination of the media market only sped-up the avalanche of destructive forces & personalities that reached its nadir when Trump became president.
It can’t happen here, right? Just what they thought in pre-war Germany.
I feel that Trump’s election is prima facie proof that Richard Hofstadter & John Taylor Gatto were absolutely correct & prescient in their analysis of American culture & society. Our primary challenge now is to wake the somnambulant members of our country & to take on the Herculean work before us necessary to do so.
Probably would’ve liked weekly book burnings.
The most difficult challenge for me in writing this essay is how to condense the thousands of pages I’ve written on these subjects into a relatively short essay. So, here goes starting with the wolves in “Christian” sheep’s clothes.
I stopped attending church around the age of 14 because of the blatant hypocrisy I witnessed of what they preached & what they practiced. And like most other rational people, I dismissed them as religious “nuts.” This was our collective oversight because while we had ignored them & written them off as harmless loonie-tunes, they began building their empires of influence on our society.
Reagan, that other Christian president dubbed the 1980s, the “Me Decade” i.e. Greed is Good! (Gordon Gecko)
The once small portion of “Christian” extremists, fundamentalists, evangelicals or whatever you want to label them, grew in number & power in terms of influence with their own media primarily in radio & cable television. Hence the term, “televangelist” was created with Pat Robertson becoming one of the richest of these hyenas feeding off the ignorance & gullibility of millions of his flock.
And when Jim Baker got out of prison, they were welcomed back on T.V. to continue their grifting.
Moreover, these soldiers of Christ established their own colleges & with their religious fervor & blindness to the greed & grifting of their star preachers like Jim & Tammy Baker, Jimmy Swaggart, etc. they just kept building their religious base of followers. And because of the intellectual laziness & unwillingness of most of the Democratic Left in our political power structure, this steady threat to our democracy grew like a deadly virus on our body politic.
Falwell’s Liberty University, earn a degree in Stupidity & Hate like at Trump University.
The fervor of the far right “Christians,” has never waned & their absolute belief in their righteousness has enabled them to become a major voting block in local, state, & national politics. In fact, it has become an absolute prerequisite for all political candidates to declare their unquestioning defense of & belief in Christianity if they wish to be elected. And talk about the theatre of the absurd, somewhere around 74 million American “Christians,” not only voted for Trump, clearly the worst example of a Christian, & they sing his praises. I see many parallels between these American “Christians,” & the Taliban in Afghanistan as well as the Iranian theocracy with its complete subjugation of Iranian women.
Onward Christian Soldiers! Die for oil & kill Muslims. God loves you.
Furthermore, it’s equally important that we don’t ignore the Jewish extremists in Israel that believe it’s righteous of them to steal the Palestinians’ land, persecute them, & to kill them in their agenda of expansion & rule. Ironically, America’s “Christian” evangelicals are in complete agreement with Israel’s fundamentalists even though the Orthodox Jews believe it’s their duty to slaughter the Christians.
America’s Christian total support for Israel’s apartheid & slow death of the Palestinians.
Marching right along in this parade of horror that claims to be about spreading peace, love, & democracy around the world, the subject of anti-intellectualism plays a major role. This is why Hofstadter’s book was a true eye-opener for me in many many ways. At first I thought, maybe this anti-intellectualism is a relatively recent phenomenon but I soon learned that it goes back throughout the history of western civilization.
Just good Christians having a little fun on Saturday night. And today’s MAGA crowd!
Copernicus and Galileo are two of the most infamous examples of anti-intellectualism & if you are familiar with these two cases, you know that it was the Church who prosecuted & persecuted these two great scientists. And if you reflect on it for a bit longer, it’s obvious that the “Church” has been rabidly anti-intellectual ever since their version of the Garden of Eden story.
That Tree of Knowledge that existed in Eden & Eve giving that apple to Adam, against God’s wishes, represented or symbolized that knowledge is Evil & women are wicked or more prone to Sin because Eve tempted Adam & was seduced by the snake aka Satan. Moral of the story? Knowledge is Evil so avoid it at all costs.
Expelled from England for their religious extremism, didn’t take long for them to start hanging witches in America. (Christian Values)
How convenient this “rationale” or religious logic is for not only setting the Church fathers up as the righteous leaders but also rulers over women & this too, parallels with the Islamic & Jewish fundamentalists’ teachings & beliefs.
A brief review of western civilization’s history reveals that the Church & the State have struggled & fought for control over their subjects or citizens for centuries. But the worst periods of human history were when the Church & State cooperated in their dominion over the people.
This brings us to the present crisis in American politics because the Church & the State have once again united to suppress us into a sort of hybrid theocracy & oligarchy. Our Founding Fathers were students of the Enlightenment and knew only too well, the destructive consequences of these two powerful forces. This is why they were very clear about the necessity of separating Church from State. Yet, like Trump, the dark forces believe that if they keep repeating their lies denying this fact, the public will eventually believe them.
Speaking of persuading the public or shaping their beliefs & opinions, the general “dumbing-down” of the American public, a term I believe John Taylor Gatto originated, is the sad state of our public education system. I have already mentioned the motivation for the Christian far-right in keeping the American public in the dark or away from that tree of knowledge, but it also benefits the corporate cockroaches’ (my phrase) agenda of keeping the American consumer dumb so they’ll continue to believe that the corporate rulers who dominate nearly every aspect of our lives, are their benefactors.
One Corporate Authoritarian World Order!
Of course, the corporate (I’m referring to the behemoth corporate conglomerates that dominate the globe) agenda is far more complex in its methods, tactics, & strategies but again, this essay is meant to serve as a sort of broad overview of our present crises in the struggle for survival of our species.
I hope I’m crystal clear here when I say that no, this isn’t one grand conspiracy but rather a confluence if you will, of several dirty or polluted tributaries flowing into one river, the river of life so-to-speak, that all of humanity drinks from. When you dive into that sea of conspiracy theories, you begin to drown in terms of reaching people & you are ready for the Qanon funny farm.
You see, corporations haven’t exactly hidden their true agenda which is to control their work forces & a big part of that control involves having employees intelligent enough to keep the business running efficiently & generating ever increasing profits for the owners. The major threat to corporate owners is a work force that is well-educated because they start organizing their fellow workers & demanding safer working conditions, a fair share in the profits they generate, etc.
Here is where my intellectual and moral hero, Noam Chomsky, fits in. I’d argue that of the hundred or more books he has written, his perhaps most significant & most influential book is, “Manufacturing Consent,” written with Edward Hermann. In Noam’s trademark objective & factual writing style and backed-up with copious footnotes, sources, & references, he lays out how the corporate-owned media distorts, misinforms, & ignores a significant amount of the hidden facts in news reporting that is broadcast on what used to be the public’s airwaves.
I believe the major turning-point for the worse in American news media came when corporations were allowed to ignore their responsibility to present one hour per day of news entirely in the public’s interest. They feigned as if they were still adhering to this rule but news programs were allowed to devolve into what is now referred to as “infotainment.”
In short, the news departments of major media conglomerates used to be accepted as not profit generating because they were honoring their obligation to inform the public in exchange for the other 23 hours per day in which they created profits. But with the advent of cable television, corporate owners began to realize they could make great profits creating news personalities like Rush Limbaugh, FOX “news,” talking heads who spewed a steady stream of fear & hate, etc. and the standards of objective, factual, & honest reporting were allowed to wither & die.
The death blow to American journalism came with the introduction of FOX “news.” And their destructive power & influence became most evident when during Bush “Dubya’s) reign of terror as president, FOX “news” would literally receive their daily list of “talking points,” that the White House wanted them to bombard the public with.
Moreover, the rest of the corporate media, even those who used to have a semblance of journalistic integrity grew envious of the profits that FOX was bringing in so they followed suit. MSNBC was supposedly the liberals or the democrats counter to FOX’s obvious “conservative” bias but soon revealed their shallow or hollow principles. Phil Donahue hosted one of MSNBC’s first & most popular talk/news programs but because he dared to have on one “liberal” or anti-war (pre-Iraq invasion) guest for every two, pro-war guests, he was fired.
Yep! So much for the so-called, “liberal media bias,” decried by the phony “conservatives,” who bear no resemblance to true political conservatives. But again, like Hitler’s minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels knew, just keep on repeating the lies or the propaganda ad nauseam & the herd will eventually accept it as a fact. Oh yeah, I can’t leave without pointing out the fact that the New York Times, the most famous newspaper in America & that sets the standard daily of emulation by the overwhelming majority of America’s newspapers, beat the war drums for our invasion of Iraq every bit as strongly as did FOX “news.” And they have supported every war the U.S. has been in from the get-go.
One last point regarding “our” national media before I conclude, the ultimate irony that Trump represents in terms of his destructive reign in Washington D.C. In the beginning of Donny’s run for the highest political office in the U.S., the corporate media dismissed him, mocked him, called him a moron which was obvious to most people. Yet, because he knew all too well how to remain in the spotlight by being & saying the most outrageous & absurd things day in, day out, they kept giving him the lion’s share of the media’s attention.
Estimates vary, but some claim that overall, Trump received something like five billion dollars worth of free media attention & this was far more than Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, & all the other presidential candidates combined. What was the corporate media’s reward? Trump denounced them as “fake news,” in his never-ending fear & hate rallies throughout his tenure in office. Sometimes he even turned his zombie-dogs on them & reporters covering his rallies left in fear for their lives.
In conclusion, Trump & the entire G.O.P. have revealed their true colors & don’t even bother to hide their fascist, democracy hating, racist, & authoritarian worshiping. It seems the label “Dictator,” has been replaced with the more benign “Authoritarian” label these days? Trump is clearly a traitor yet he is worshipped by “Christians,” and White Supremacists alike? He defends, apologizes for, & sings the praises of his fellow authoritarian thugs like Putin, M.B.S. of Saudi Arabia, Saddam Hussein, Kim Jong Un of N. Korea, Mubarak of Egypt, Xi Jinping of China, Erdowan of Turkey, Duterte of the Phillipines, Mussolini of Italy, Moammar Gadhafi of Libya, the 1980s Chinese Communist Party who massacred Chinese students in Tiananmen Square, etc.
True courage! A warrior for Humanity & Freedom.
In brief, Trump has never heard of or met a murderous dictator that he doesn’t respect. What does this behavior say to all our soldiers past or present? How in the Hell can soldiers defend & idolize Trump? I am and have been opposed to every war the U.S. has been involved in during my lifetime & I was born in 1952 but I am absolutely disgusted at Trump’s pissing on the memory, the sacrifice, & the death of all of America’s soldiers! Tell me I’m wrong about the level of ignorance & immorality in the United States today.
Every living human being alive that isn’t starving to death or dying of easily preventable diseases that are the result of the corporate cockroaches’ greed, apathy, & complete indifference, has a responsibility to fight against these tragic consequences. And if you don’t join in the struggle to save humanity & our planet, you are in the same, non-human species that aren’t even worthy of being classed as a reptile or insect that Trump is!
How many more people have to die in the name of Greed?
We are well on our way towards a one world authoritarian order, will you join in the fight or sit on the sidelines amusing yourself to death with your smart phone?
“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’”
― Isaac Asimov
I got straight A’s, believe me!
Tragically, we’ve lived through four years of a president who believes just this, yet he continues to strut the national stage as if he is Mussolini. Is this the secret to Trump’s popularity, to always pose as a superior person or elitist even though he can barely string two sentences together? Do his MAGA zombies love him because they feel inferior or stupid, but he makes them feel superior? I am bewildered as to how his lemmings are blind to his blatant elitism & simultaneously despise anyone with more than a sixth grade education & accuse them of being the elitists?
Birds of a feather i.e. Fear-mongers & Haters
He makes his cult members feel superior by putting down Mexicans, Muslims, the handicapped, women, etc. And this is racist or racial elitism but that never occurs to his “Walking Dead” fan club. It’s those damn liberals, students, professors, journalists, democrats, etc. who are responsible for your plight. Not his Wall St. buddies who wreck our economy again & again. The people like himself, who spend their lives pulling scams on the less informed & the gullible.
just one category of many types of people Trump hates in his MAGA world
To support and believe that Trump “tells it like it is,” and is a typical American you can relate to is like saying you respect the slumlord who won’t do anything about the rats & cockroaches infesting your apartment. And who jacks up the rent at every opportunity & eventually throws you & your family into the gutter so he can build another Trump tower.
Talk about licking the boots of your master, this is beyond the absurd? This is Trump’s & his father before him’s history. Moreover, Trump has been ripping-off contractors, electricians, carpenters, plumbers, & even the laborers over the years who were foolish enough to work for him. All you have to do is read a few articles about his illustrious career as a casino mogul. Of course, reading is discouraged in Trump world, just ask the graduates of Trump University.
For the past half century or better, I have heard one of the favorite mantras of the anti-intellectuals or anti-elitists, “All you need is common sense!” Yet today, common sense has become very rare indeed. No one knows for sure what Trump’s actual net worth is & just because he claims to be a billionaire ad nauseam, that doesn’t make it a fact.
The habitual liar has finally been busted for claiming his properties are at a much lower value when it comes to paying his taxes but when he applies for loans, he claims these same properties to be far more valuable by factors of ten or probably much more than that. By-the-way, do you know that Trump had it written into his contract with the producers of “The Apprentice,” that every time his name was mentioned, they had to refer to him as Donald Trump the Billionaire?
I know, just more “fake news” right? How odd that every time something positive about Trump is said, it’s a fact but every time a criticism is leveled against him, it’s “fake news?” Yep! Where’s the “common sense” people? My intelligence tells me that Trump is the premiere snake-oil salesman America has ever produced.
And I believe his cult of the angry & bewildered hate “elitists” however they define them because, they feel inferior & jealous of those more intelligent than they are & it’s much easier to focus your anger on fellow victims. Furthermore, so-called elitists are remote from the average person’s world so they are easy targets. And how convenient it is to have a focus for all your pent-up anger at having been fucked-over for most of your life. Trump cleverly manipulated his minions into targeting Washington D.C. yet Trump & his daddy built their fortunes by manipulating the mayors, city councils, bankers, etc. and without the help of the government, the Trumps would’ve been just a couple more failed real estate developers.
To proclaim your hatred of the government & especially the liberals, reveals your ignorance & I seriously doubt that you’d gladly eliminate every one of their political programs & acts. Take ten minutes to review this basic list of what liberals & democrats have done for America & then tell me again of what terrible pedophiles, blood drinkers, etc. they are.
The GI Bill
Endangered Species Act
Environmental Laws
The Space Program
The Peace Corps
Americorps
The Civil Rights Movement
Earned Income Tax Credit
Family & Medical Leave Act
Consumer Product Safety Commission
Americans With Disabilities Act
Freedom of Information Act
Women’s right to control their reproductive future
Allowing citizens to view their own credit records
The Internet
Balancing the federal budget
The Brady Bill (5-day wait on handgun purchases for background checks)
In other words, for the working class & middle class supporters of Trump who attack the government so viciously makes about as much sense as a guy from one of those ghost towns in the Appalachians with a family barely surviving & totally dependent on food stamps to cancel his family’s food stamps because it’s one of those damn elitist democrat programs.
Common sense? You might care to note that your beloved Republican party voted against every single one of those programs on the list above. And for the record, you might dismiss me as yet another apologist & dupe for the democratic party or the liberals but you couldn’t be more wrong. I am one of the harshest critics of the democratic party primarily because of their abandonment of America’s workers starting with Clinton’s passing of NAFTA.
Returning to the focus of this essay, elitism or anti-elitism, I believe most people use the term to refer specifically to “intellectuals.” Instead of using the term, intellectual elite, we should say they are people who pursue intellectual or academic excellence. Well, I don’t know about you but I sure as Hell want the smartest doctor to operate on me, not some average Joe doctor. I also prefer that the pilot who’s flying the jet I’m on was at the top of his class in aviator school. Do you get my point?
And in case it’s escaped your “common sense,” Trump is clearly an elitist. Do common folk own private jets, yachts, penthouses, etc.? Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan struts around with the same smirk as Jamie Dimon, America’s greatest bank robber & Mussolini, the fascist dictator of Italy who also thought that his shit didn’t stink.
Furthermore, the 74 million “Christian” evangelicals & fundamentalists who sing Trump’s praises and were a major factor in his being elected, aren’t morally superior or elite, are they? Trump brags about being able to grab women by their pussies because he’s a celebrity but that doesn’t trouble the spiritual elite. And he hangs out with his good pal, Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted serial rapist & pedophile but hey, boys will be boys, right?
Trump has repeatedly made inappropriate remarks about his daughter, Ivanka i.e.perhaps if she wasn’t my daughter, I’d date her?
Were Plato and Aristotle elitists? A history professor of mine once told us that you can roughly divide Western Civilization between these two men in terms of their influence on it. Or what about the list of Western Civilization’s top ten most cited authors which includes Plato & Aristotle, Freud, the Bible, & Noam Chomsky, the only one on the list who is alive? And for the record, I’m very proud to claim Noam as a friend of mine. We’ve been corresponding since 2006. Were these people elitists? Why has this term taken on such a negative connotation? Could it be that it’s a product of the propaganda that the truly evil form of elitists, like Trump & his ilk have been spreading all their lives?
And no, this isn’t more liberal propaganda because if you study a little history, you’ll find that the rich & powerful throughout history have done their best to divide & conquer the masses. To accomplish this end, they have waged a constant cultural war designed to make us fear & hate each other. Try to keep this in mind & watch as many Trump rallies as you can stomach to see for yourself if this is his consistent strategy.
The thing that most politicians & many religious leaders have in common is their love for authoritarian rule over their flocks. This is why Trump goes weak in the knees when he’s in the company of the world’s most brutal dictators. The word “dictator” seems to have fallen out of favor so now they’re called, “authoritarians,” but evil is evil no matter what name you give it.
Trump, the failed dictator!
Lest you think I’m defending intellectual snobbery, you couldn’t be more wrong. I’m saying that if a person has devoted their life to developing their intellectual or academic skills such as critical & analytical abilities, they deserve respect. Just as a person who has become a top level mechanic, carpenter, electrician, etc. deserves respect not mockery.
Many who idolize Trump have fallen for his deceitful tactics & strategies such as conflating the truism that everyone has the right to their opinion with the assumption that therefore, all opinions are equally valid. This would be like someone such as myself who consider it a great accomplishment to replace a battery in my car, arguing with a guy who can rebuild an engine about some intricate & hidden problem with my car’s engine & has been a top-rated mechanic for over 50 years. Again, who would you trust to work on your car which you entrust your family’s to, me, or a trusted mechanic you may have known for decades? On the other hand, who would you trust your children’s education with, me, who has been a lifelong lover of learning, earned a B.A. in English literature, taken enough college courses to have earned two B.A.s if I applied for it. Was reading at the 11th grade, sixth month level when I was in the sixth grade. Have collected a library of approximately 10,000 classics, etc. etc. etc.? Or, your friendly & knowledgeable mechanic?
Again, this is the centuries old tactic of dividing & conquering us so we don’t wise-up & rise-up. This is why our Founding Fathers, for all their faults, tried their best to separate the powers of the Church & State. They were intellectual elites & students of history & the Enlightenment and were only too aware of the lessons of history. Kings & the Church elites have always enjoyed the special rights & privileges they’ve given themselves i.e. the majority of the crops the peasants grew, the best food, best accommodations, etc. and so what if the peasants couldn’t survive on the crumbs of the leftovers.
The State tells us we must bow to their authority laid out in their laws but when the rich elite, the 1%, break the laws, like Trump has done all his life, they aren’t held accountable. The Church threatens us with eternal damnation while many pastors, preachers, ministers, rabbis, etc. become multi-millionaires with their own private jets, mansions, etc. & their sheep keep sending them the little money they may have leftover after paying their rent which Trump type realtors keep jacking-up.
Another factor to bear in mind is the fact that the elite cockroaches know how powerful the use of spectacle is. Roman emperors & senates kept their starving citizens distracted by holding gladiator competitions & throwing people to the lions in the Collaseum which when you think of it, is kind of like the thrill fans of “The Walking Dead,” enjoy.
Trump’s MAGA Christians who are now the Gladiators for Christ!
Today’s Circus Maximus is headed by vampires like Trump who used his time in office to suck out every dollar he could for himself & his spawn. Speaking of money, why is it that so many of us want to send our kids to one of those terrible, “elite” universities? Could it be because they believe that a degree from them practically guarantees their children a high-paying job upon graduation?
The good old days that the 74 million Christians who sing Trump’s praises seem to have forgotten?
Yet many, if not most of those parents who’d love to be able to afford to send their kids to an elite college don’t really give a shit about academic excellence, only about how much money their children might earn. Of course, because the greed of the 1% just keeps growing & they know they, the owners of those universities know they have a captive audience, the price of admission has gone through the roof.
Sadly, most students are forced to in effect, make Faustian deals with the Devil which are the Corporate Cockroach class because they leave university owing tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loans. Basically, colleges have become little more than glorified trade schools. Not that trade schools are necessarily a bad thing. I’m not one of those who believe that everyone should go to college. But I do believe that everyone who wants to, should be able to & shouldn’t have to sell their soul in order to afford it.
America is rapidly circling the drain in my opinion & I bet that when the last nail is pounded into our collective coffin, the “leaders” and the 1% will plead ignorance. Don’t you believe it. They’ve known all along & they simply don’t give a fuck! You Trump zombies may recall his exclamation during one of his hate rallies, “I love the poorly educated!” A Freudian slip if ever there was one & I’m sure the prayer of every grifter, used car salesman, lawyer, & televangelist.
Just shows that all you need to succeed in business is no conscience, morality, or ethics.
Sorry but I have more bad news for you anti-intellectuals or anti-elitists, the “Smart phones,” you carry with you all day weren’t invented by dummies with less than a sixth grade education. In fact, the Internet was invented mostly by a British citizen by the name of Sir Tim Burners-Lee who attended Oxford University & he and his colleagues at M.I.T., yep, intellectuals, gave the world perhaps the greatest tool for learning & sharing knowledge. Try imagining a world without the world-wide web today.
Moreover, I can’t think of any advances, inventions, discoveries in science or technology that weren’t the product of intellectual elites? I know you who have been indoctrinated into believing the M.A.G.A. myth can’t tell us exactly when that supposed golden age was. Perhaps you think it was in the 1950s & before Black people were allowed to vote? And if you do, that tells us that you’re one of those patriotic, good Christians of the KKK.
Chances are you are a regular viewer of FOX “News,” the fear & hate channel that drills into its viewers heads & hearts that it’s Blacks, Mexicans, gays, Muslims, etc. who are responsible for your humiliating & miserable situation. But the facts are that it was Democrats & Republicans who pushed for the passage of NAFTA. And behind them are the true puppet masters, the 1% who we are forced to subsidize & give them one tax cut after another & it was your hypocritical hero, Trump, who gave them one of the biggest tax cuts in history. So much for his “draining the swamp in Washington.”
I understand your anger at our government & many of your grievances are legitimate but to believe that we can fix things by tearing down the government physically is like burning your home down with all your possessions in it & then being forced to stay in a homeless shelter. Not very smart.
The way to make this government accountable to us, the 99%, is to inform ourselves, unite, boycott, & force the passage of a bill removing money i.e. legal bribes that corporations give to politicians to seduce them & turn them into corporate whores (high-priced call girls). There are several other critically important actions we must also make a reality but as long as we keep wrongly blaming one another, the game remains the same & we all lose!
I have observed & written about this tragic phenomenon of anti-intellectualism in America for over 30 years & it makes me very sad because there are billions of people on this planet who would be ecstatic to have the opportunity to even learn the basics of reading, writing, & arithmetic. And a third or better of our population believe education is at the root of the evil destroying America.
“Elitism is the idea that people, by belonging to a particular class, gender, culture, sex, race, or nationality, or by having certain attributes, are better than other people. It is the concept, the guiding principle, that gives the right to other people to dominate others and deny to some the privilege and rights which others are being afforded.”
Ponder this question if you will, why is it that we put the wealthy up on pedestals as elites because of their wealth. We put athletic superstars up on pedestals as well. And the same can be said for movie stars, rock stars, etc. etc. etc. yet if a person has attained a level on intellectual superiority or excellence, we dismiss them as elitist snobs who think they’re better than us?
The other elitists whom we idolize, are better than us only in that they have much more money than we do, or they’re far better athletes than we are, etc. but if someone is smarter than we are, we in effect, spit on them! Personally, I love it when I meet someone smarter than myself if they’re not an arrogant asshole like Trump, because I can then pick their brains & get tips on ways to become more intelligent than I am.
In the meantime, let’s delve a bit deeper into this word, “elitism,” and how it relates to Trump’s infamous reign of grifting on a scale that has surpassed all other presidents by light years. First of all, you must always bear in mind that he has the intelligence level of a third grader. And he’s like a spoiled-brat & boorish bully who has been used to getting his way for most of his life. When historians look back on this period & write books on it, and if we haven’t blown the world up or died from our wanton climate destruction, future generations are going to marvel at how we let such an obvious phony become our president. He has seized every opportunity during his tenure in the White House to stuff his bank accounts from his grifting & outright larceny, theft, & embezzlement.
Early in his career of real estate development, Donny longed to be part of New York City’s social elite & attend their parties where intellectual, artistic, & cultural events were held but he was simply so crass & boorish or rude, lewd, & crude that they didn’t invite him to their soirees.
This deeply offended his delicate sensibilities so he began attacking them for their snobbishness & irrelevance and he has flip-flopped back & forth over the decades between hating them & still longing to become a member of the “in-crowd.” It seems obvious that because he clearly wasn’t anywhere close to being an intellectual elite, or an athletic, musical, or a movie star, he focused on trying to become a financial elite. But don’t forget that he has reminded us more than once of his “really big brain.” And come to think of it, I guess we could say that he is in an elite class of his own when it comes to bragging?
On a very serious note though, Donny’s willful ignorance has cost the lives of several hundred thousands of American citizens that was the direct result of his calling the COVID virus a hoax & his active undermining of the CDC’s advice to wear masks, socially distance ourselves, etc. And when he advised people to drink bleach, I was totally flabbergasted at such stupidity. If only he’d have taken his own advice when he contracted the virus, we’d have been spared so much more suffering, death, & division.
Remember, M.A.G.A. morons don’t trust anyone with more than a sixth grade education so it doesn’t matter where you get your medical advice from, Alex Jones, a witch doctor, your astrologer, etc. Again because everyone is entitled to their own facts & everyone’s opinion is equally valid. So, if you or any of your loved ones comes down with a serious disease, you can simply hold a séance in your backyard & hell, you might as well have a barbecue at the same time & get drunk with the other intellectual giants who you call friends. And you don’t have to worry about losing your home because of the outrageous costs of our medical system.
Moreover, you may have noticed Donny’s fondness of calling out the “fake news?” This is definitely an area of expertise for him because he’s been deploying it for decades in his never-ending agenda of self-aggrandizement. For example, back in the 60s whenever there was a radio program on that mentioned Trump’s name, he’d call in & pretend to be an anonymous caller & he’d remind the audience what a brilliant businessman Donny was & how successful he was. If you recall, Donny has repeatedly claimed that daddy only loaned him a mere million dollars but it’s been revealed that it was more like $400,000,000 and countless political favors he had in his pocket due to his mafia connections, favors by city councils, zoning departments, etc. Yep! A self-made man if there ever was one?
One of the biggest nails in our coffin & truly scary that so many haven’t a clue as to how blatant their propaganda is.
Furthermore, because Donny wasn’t the sharpest crayon in the box, he had his own Joseph Goebbels in the form of Steve Bannon much like Georgie “Dubya” Bush had his Karl Rove. The two years the DNC wasted on trying to prove that the Russians were responsible for Donny’s win in 2016 was just that, a tremendous waste of time & energy.
In my opinion, it mattered little who was behind the trolling & bots & etc. Much more significant was the fact that Steve Bannon’s organization, Cambridge Analytica, was allowed to target & post tens of thousands of fake news stories about Hillary on Facebook. Especially when you consider the fact that something like 70% of Facebook users relie on Facebook for their news.
In other words, the mentally and morally-challenged individuals who believed that everything Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones, Glenn Beck, etc. spewed out was the gospel truth, received a tremendous boon because of the power Facebook had accrued over the years. And we mustn’t forget how much FOX “news,” has done to help Bush & Trump gain popularity & credibility. Talk about “fake news,” I have been referring to FOX “news” as the Fear and Hate channel pretty much from the introduction of it to our airwaves. (actually after about a year of its establishment)
Another very critical fact that hopefully won’t slide down our collective “memory hole,” is the complex web of lies the Bush administration wove to push into our invasion & occupation of Iraq. How many American lives were lost? How many American soldiers were maimed physically & mentally? How many innocent Iraqis? And what were the consequences? We stirred-up a hornet’s nest in the Middle East that may take several decades if ever, to calm back down? And for the record, I blame the New York Times to a considerable degree for helping to launch that immoral invasion as well as FOX “news.”
Okay, it’s time for another lesson from history, F.D.R. (Franklin Delano Roosevelt) who passed the New Deal (with a lot of pressure from below) was the greatest president America ever had. And the “New Deal” really pissed-off & scared the obscenely wealthy in America because they’ve never been fond of sharing with us, the peasants who create their wealth. Anyway, in his inaugural address in 1933 at the height of the “Great Depression,” proclaimed that “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
This is such a profound insight & a true gem of wisdom because it reminds us that in effect, the rich & powerful use fear to control & manipulate us. Most notably when it comes to stirring the public up so they’ll go along with yet another war in our never-ending parade of wars.
Additionally, President Eisenhower warned us as he was leaving office to “Be aware of the military/industrial complex.” (he wanted to add Congress but his P.R. people feared that was going too far in terms of honesty) I don’t believe Eisenhower tried to slow down the build-up of the military/industrial complex while he was in office? But I could be wrong about that?
Strolling on along our path to oblivion largely as a result of disrespect & dismissal of intelligence & intellectual excellence, we meet a honest scholar & former, cold war warrior, Chalmers Johnson. You might care to take two minutes to review his credentials & background if you give a shit about these minor issues? This video clip is well worth taking the time to watch & I hope you will.
Professor Johnson tells us in a nutshell & in detail within his trilogy before passing away in 2010 that we can be a Democracy or we can be an Empire, a tyranny but we can’t be both at the same time and our Republic is circling the drain ever faster because of the absurd amount of money we’re wasting on our military budget (an oxymoron if ever there was one).
Remember the mantra of “common sense” that those who reside in Trump land believe is their province alone? Well, please be so kind as to explain to me why there’s never enough money when it comes to our health, education, or welfare but magically, the Pentagon always manages to keep on producing bombs, missiles, etc. that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars each & we’re able to give them to nations like the Ukraine & the several little proxy wars we’ve got going around the world?
Chalmers lays it out in excellent detail but you’re probably in a hurry to get back to watching your “reality television” program to spend an hour listening to Chalmers, right? Yeah, I’m just another one of those intellectual elite snobs because I actually give a shit about our destruction unlike all the Sunshine Patriots who idolize the circus master with the girly-hands.
You might also note that it used to be a serious crime to be a “war profiteer,” of course that didn’t apply to the President of Vice, Dick Cheney, who made millions from Halliburton whom he just happened to work for & awarded the lion’s share of contracts to “rebuild” Iraq after we bombed it back into the Stone Age. And no big deal that Halliburton lost pallets of money it was supposed to use to help the Iraqis and never got around to rebuilding a majority of those projects it got paid for anyway. Yep! Good old American Crony Capitalism in action yet again.
Oh well? Moving right along, we should also bear in mind the enormous power & influence of what’s called the P.R. industry (Public Relations). In short, they’re responsible for creating & manipulating images. Not only of products but also political policies, politicians, actors, etc. Note for example that on Obama’s first run at the presidency, the P.R. firm that managed his image, won one of the highest awards in marketing for the year.
The key or the most critical point in the context of the PR industry is that they come up with the tools, tactics, & strategies of selling the public on everything from launching new wars to the corporate ideology that helps to persuade us that habitual liars & grifters par excellence like Trump the Terrible Tot is the greatest president we’ve ever had.
Here’s another little dose of “common sense” for you if you can wake your senses long enough to shake free from Trump-speak? Take a look at a world map showing U.S. military bases and N.A.T.O. countries & compare it to a map showing the countries that China & Russia own or dominate. It’s clear that we, the defenders of Freedom & Democracy are attempting to & have already done so to a large extent, surrounding Russia & China with hostile forces. And no, I’m not fucking defending Putin or making excuses for him but let’s get real!
America’s military might is superior to something like the next 25 nations below us combined. So why are we some of the most frightened & fearful people on earth? My moral & intellectual hero, Noam Chomsky, has pointed out that the rest of the world is far more afraid of America than any other country! Does that get your patriotic juices flowing? If it does, you just might want to take a look in a mirror because it means you’re a tyrant or a dictator lover like Trump, the would be tin-pot dictator who gets weak in the knees when he’s around his idols like Putin, M.B.S. of Saudi Arabia, Duterte of the Phillipines, Bolsanaro of Brazil, etc. Yep! Rally round the flag pole, boys!
As Chalmers Johnson details for us, we have close to 800 military bases around the globe in 150 different countries not to mention how many secret, black operations sites? You might argue that “Ignorance is Bliss,” well yeah, if you’re part of the Church or the State. Throughout history they have done their best to keep people stupid, it’s far easier to control them than it is those pesky, intellectual elites. Also worthy of note is the fact that over 60% of our government’s billion dollar PR “budget” goes to the Pentagon.
Here’s a little parting gift that came to me in the middle of the night, a few days back;
Conspiracy theories are the last refuge of a moron!
The fact that we have tens, if not hundreds of thousands of students in debt up to a quarter of a million dollars for pursuing college degrees is a national disgrace! Is this one of those “American values” we love to boast of? As Noam Chomsky & others have pointed out, when a student graduates with such a huge debt, they are forced to work for corporations they most likely wouldn’t like to work for but because they offer the higher salaries, many students will take jobs with them in the hope of being able to pay off those back-breaking & soul-crushing debts.
Chomsky in his earlier years in his office doing his favorite pastime, reading.
I am one of those “perpetual” or “professional” students who has pursued knowledge all my life because I have an obsession for learning. You see, I have always aspired to nobility but not the nobility of title & fortune, no, the nobility of mind & spirit. Sadly though, in this nation that worships wealth & celebrity, the very adjectives I mentioned above, “perpetual student,” & “professional student,” are usually met with derision, ridicule, & dismissal. “You’re unrealistic, irresponsible, wasting your life, etc.”
Yet these idealistic dreams & guiding principles are what has given my life purpose & made me a better person. And I confess that I too believed in the myth that a college degree guaranteed you a better or much more comfortable life, a more secure future. The lie is abundantly clear today but the culture shapers in the 1% find it useful to perpetuate this grand delusion. Why? Because college shows an employer that you can make deadlines as in assignments professors hand out. That you have the discipline to cram the information they’ve shoved down your throat, into your brain for at least long enough to regurgitate it on their tests.
In brutal honesty, college like public school is all about breaking your spirit, especially those with the more robust or rebellious spirits, & turning you into a docile & subservient employee. But this destructive practice can & often does backfire on the corporate cockroach masters because it stifles creativity, investigation, or “thinking outside the box,” in general. You see, it’s a double-edged sword!
Doris Lessing (one of my favorite professors, favorite writers & Nobel Prize winner in Literature)
“Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself — educating your own judgements. Those that stay must remember, always, and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society.” — Doris Lessing
Step right up Suckers! The less you know, the easier it is for slime-balls like this to screw you!
Don’t get me wrong, the purpose of this essay isn’t a pragmatic or utilitarian defense of college education but a humanitarian or idealistic vision of what college can & should be. You see my friend, I have worked at many shitty jobs in my life, especially in my 20s when I was floundering so-to-speak. I hadn’t found any subject in college that inspired me to sacrifice four years of my life. Many of those jobs had managers or owners who looked at me like I was some domesticated farm animal. Naturally, I seethed inside & wanted to spit in their faces & scream, you dare to look down on me, you greedy simpleton! But in a sense this was good for me because it drove me to push myself & prove all those who thought they were my superiors, wrong!
This philosopher had so much influence on the 20th century, it’d blow your mind!
“Those who commend work. – In the glorification of ‘work’, in the unwearied talk of the ‘blessing of work’, I see the same covert idea as in the praise of useful impersonal actions: that of fear of everything individual. Fundamentally, one now feels at the sight of work – one always means by work that hard industriousness from early till late – that such work is the best policeman, that it keeps everyone in bounds and can mightily hinder the development of reason, covetousness, desire for independence. For it uses up an extraordinary amount of nervous energy, which is thus denied to reflection, brooding, dreaming, worrying, loving, hating; it sets a small goal always in sight and guarantees easy and regular satisfactions. Thus a society in which there is continual hard work will have more security: and security is now worshipped as the supreme divinity. – And now! Horror! Precisely the ‘worker’ has become dangerous! The place is swarming with ‘dangerous individuals’! And behind them the danger of dangers – the individual!” — Nietzsche (essay also titled, “The Eulogists of Work”
Unfortunately, many are finding themselves in astronomical debt & their degrees aren’t “worth” much more than this in the rigged “free market.”
Luckily, I also have a quiet & reflective side and this has helped me weather the storms or tempests of my life when I feared I might lose my self-control & unload on the arrogant bastards who enjoy bullying people less fortunate than them. Ever since I was a little boy & my grandmother got me my first library card, books have been an escape, a comfort, & a refuge from the ugly childhood experiences I went through. Books never let me down when friends & family often did. I can open a book any time I feel the need for a mental or emotional pick me upper therefore, books have always been my most loyal & consistent friends.
You may be thinking I’ve gone around the bend as the saying goes but, I assure you I haven’t. When I mentioned the “nobility of mind & spirit” that I have been seeking all my life earlier, what I’m referring to can be explained in more down to earth terms. Not so long ago in England for example, when a young man or woman from the upper class, finished their Bachelor of Arts degree at University, it was customary for them to go on The Grand Tour.
The purpose or goal of going on this Grand Tour was to expose a young person of refinement & class to the great works of art, architecture, music, etc. along with the exquisite cuisines, wines, etc. of Europe. It was believed that this travel would deepen the breadth & depth of their knowledge & help to make them a well-rounded, and thus more suitable person for upper class nobility & able to converse & behave properly among the political, religious, & financial elite.
You may be curious as to why I would want to study such things, well quite simply, I set my sights on the highest goals because if I could at least familiarize myself with these areas of knowledge, I believed I could look even the wealthiest of the corporate cockroaches in the eye & hold a decent conversation & even feel intellectually superior to them. I’ve known all my life that I’d never become rich & have never had wealth as my goal. My goals have always been equality, peace, pride, self-respect, & ceaseless learning.
I forget how Bob Dylan phrased it in one of his songs but basically, I believe I’m not better than anyone & no one is better than me. Yet, I will get on my arrogant high-horse if someone tries to put me down. And it’s usually very easy to show them how intellectually, morally, & spiritually inferior they are when they try to use their wealth or material possessions to substantiate their superiority. Donald Trump is a prime example of this kind of person, need I say more?
Sign-up at your local Walmart my MAGA friends!
For many years, I have tried to inspire people to reach higher than they often think they are capable of. Why? Because only by pushing ourselves beyond what we may think our limits are, do we surpass our self-imposed limits. I have often used the analogy of a foot race to try to explain my reasoning. Let’s say you’re a pretty fast runner at your school & you’ve been challenged to a race against the student who holds first place. You know that you’re going to have to push yourself physically, mentally, & emotionally harder than you ever have in your life if you are to stand a chance of winning. Well, the same holds true for us intellectually or in any other arena we dream of excelling in.
This is why I have always pushed myself intellectually or academically and I know I won’t stop pushing myself in terms of trying to develop my mental skills/abilities to their fullest capability. The push for this excellence has made my life rich, interesting, & stimulating and never boring. I firmly believe that many more of us would be happier, more fulfilled & contributing citizens if America raised its academic standards rather than just continuing to lower those standards.
Here are a few suggestions if we wish to accomplish such goals or to actually make a lot of those professed values & principles a reality. In no particular order; Drastically raise teacher’s salaries but also the requirements to become a teacher. For example, to earn a B.A. degree requires about 120 units, 40 in your major & 80 in general education. Let’s flip that on its head & require 80 units in your major so you’re a lot more knowledgeable in your area of so-called expertise.
Eliminate the majority of the teacher education classes required to earn your teaching credential. The majority of teachers I have spoken to about these courses, over the years have told me they were a waste of time & they learned far more by actually being on the job & learning by experience. Provide every new teacher with a mentor to guide & encourage them.
Pay beginning teachers a salary of $50,000 & pay professors a beginning salary of $100,000. Today’s professors must publish as a part of their professional requirements. Fine, but let them spend half their day teaching students & the other half working on their writing/publishing of papers, articles for journals, books, etc.
Of course there’s no way of mandating excellence in teachers/professors in terms of the intellectual elite I was describing earlier but we can & we must recognize, reward, & otherwise encourage a striving for the kind of excellence as understood in the medieval ages when speaking of a person as a “Renaissance man.”
Renaissance man, also called Universal Man, Italian Uomo Universale, an ideal that developed in RenaissanceItaly from the notion expressed by one of its most-accomplished representatives, Leon Battista Alberti (1404–72), that “a man can do all things if he will.” The ideal embodied the basic tenets of Renaissance humanism, which considered man the centre of the universe, limitless in his capacities for development, and led to the notion that men should try to embrace all knowledge and develop their own capacities as fully as possible.
Thus the gifted men of the Renaissance sought to develop skills in all areas of knowledge, in physical development, in social accomplishments, and in the arts. The ideal was most brilliantly exemplified in Alberti—who was an accomplished architect, painter, classicist, poet, scientist, and mathematician and who also boasted of his skill as a horseman and in physical feats—and in Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), whose gifts were manifest in the fields of art, science, music, invention, and writing.
Undoubtedly, we have a long, uphill battle if we are to ever reach this kind of intellectual dream world I am describing. I am so saddened & ashamed that America, well, those in the MAGA universe, now openly celebrate their stupidity & wear it as a badge of honor. And we mustn’t forget to thank America’s Taliban, the “Christian” far-right for their significant role in dumbing us down along with the corporate media.
Don’t lose hope though because as we know, being aware that a problem exists is half the battle because we can then formulate our tactics to chase them back into their caves of ignorance, fear, & hate.
In conclusion, tragically for us, we have been dismissing & ignoring these destructive forces within for decades and they have now reached the very pinnacles of power, the presidency, the Congress, & the Supreme Court. Are we going to wait until one of them launches a nuclear war or the climate has been so devastated that any one of those popular dystopian movies such as “Mad Max,” becomes a horrifying reality? The responsibility falls on each & every one of us my friends. What will you do?
It can’t happen here, right?“The Father of the Atomic Bomb” at Los Alamos Lab in New Mexico “Trinity tests” in shock & horror at what he’d helped to create
P.S. Education from pre-school all the way through to earning a Ph.D. should be absolutely free or, let’s at least be honest & stop pretending that our current higher education system is anything other than a glorified trade school!
In some respects, this essay could be seen as a sort of autopsy on the death of America. And death certificates are required to state the cause of death, these are some of those causes in my opinion.
I have recently been re-watching the excellent series, “Band of Brothers,” & the episode I watched last night made me think of some parallels to the present state of affairs in the United States. The episode was the one showing the American soldiers’ shock when they came upon one of Hitler’s extermination camps.
The “concentration camp” or “death camp” was located just outside a German village or small town & the German residents claimed to have had no idea of what was going on in the camp. Yeah, the flakes of human skin from the crematorium that rained down on the village never raised their suspicions or caused them to be curious.
This is a class of ignorance that can only be referred to as willful ignorance. In other words, when people are either too afraid to face the truth or they’re simply apathetic & indifferent to mass slaughter like what was going on a few kilometers from their homes.
There’s a special place in Hell reserved for these sorts of people whether they be German or American or any other nationality or race. And this leads to my first bit of evidence in my case that supports my argument that ignorance is killing, has killed, & will continue to kill unless & until people are brave enough to speak the truth!
Back around the mid-1990s, I heard that roughly a third of Americans don’t believe the Holocaust even happened & I was dumbfounded? Could this possibly be true? So, I did a little research & found Deborah Lipstadt’s book, “Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory,” and much to my dismay, I discovered that it is indeed true.
Let this sink in for a few moments if you will because this is deadly serious. Imagine, if the white supremacists can persuade a third of America that the Holocaust never happened & several million Jews as well as five million gays, artists, intellectuals, gypsies, etc., weren’t murdered, what’s next? Will we wake from our national stupor to find that almost overnight, our Democracy has been banished & we now live under a dictatorship & are effectively back in the age of feudalism with no rights whatsoever?
Some argue & posit that Trump’s assault on our government has effectively turned back the clock considerably. But as my hero, Noam Chomsky & others have pointed out, Trump is just too damn stupid to have made it a reality though he clearly wanted to become the de facto authoritarian “leader” for life like several of the dictators around the world that he admires i.e., Putin, Bolsanaro, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong-un, Erdogan, Duterte, etc. Trump has no ideology; he only lives for his insatiable greed. But Trump’s destruction will take years, if not decades to repair & with the wholesale prostitution of the GOP’s “leadership,” it may prove impossible to ever repair the damage? Moreover, if another Trump, but someone with a brain takes over the White House, we can kiss the last vestiges of Democracy goodbye forever!
And speaking of goodbyes, we are on the Highway to Hell to borrow a song title by Chris Rea, because a handful of billionaires like the Koch brothers & oil companies have spent millions in spreading disinformation & propaganda that denies Global Warming—which should be called Climate Destruction!
Are you beginning to see the pattern illustrating Death by Ignorance? Let’s see, will the White Supremacist fascists cave our heads in or shoot us or will Mother Nature roll over & die and we live what time we have left in a wasteland not fit for humans or animals? Where all water supplies are toxic as well as what food sources are available, & we all need to wear oxygen masks because the very air we need to breathe, will kill us?
Trump’s final Make America Great Again rally
Yes, I know this is very morbid & depressing but if you can’t even contemplate my words or ideas, what’s your option? Bury your head in the sand, buy a better entertainment system & pray that I’m just a nut-job and none of these depressing ideas will ever come true or stand a chance of happening.
And since I’m on a roll, here’s another bit of cheerful news, Germany was considered one of the most enlightened, sophisticated, & cultured nations pre-Hitler. Yep! I shit you not! Don’t look to me for all the answers, I’m trying to simply inform people & hopefully spur them to thought & discussion with others in the hope that if we work together, perhaps we can find the necessary solutions to save humanity from its own self-destructive impulses?
But one thing I do know for sure is that a third of America believing that the election was stolen from Trump is a very dangerous warning sign! We could be a lot farther down the road to fascism than we realize? Bear in mind that it was fascism that we fought to destroy in WWII & the goddamn Nazis came really close to winning. Moreover, if it weren’t for Russia losing 20 million of its citizens fighting the Nazis on the Eastern Front, we definitely would’ve lost WWII!
This is a good point to insert a critically important theory of mine which no, I can’t prove it, that’s why I said “theory.” But have you ever asked yourself why it is that our government & corporate business “leaders” feed us the same pack of lies in public school about our history?
Now this is a subject that is worthy of an entire essay or book by itself, but so I don’t roam too far afield, I believe that if the truth about America’s history was taught in public schools i.e., the near total genocide of the indigenous Native Americans, the fact that slavery created much of the wealth that got the U.S. on its feet so-to-speak in terms of our economy. Cotton in those early years was like oil today in terms of the wealth it generated.
These two facts alone are just the tip of the iceberg of America’s hidden history & could turn a lot of America’s young people away from joining the military. Who would fight the never-ending wars the politicians & corporate business leaders keep coming up with? You see, bottom-line, all these wars are about profits for the transnational corporations who really don’t give a fuck about American workers i.e., NAFTA. Need I say more on this subject?
If we could take a few steps back & enlarge our worldview through a historical lens, it is clear that throughout recorded history & probably even before it began to be written down, two forces have struggled against one another & sometimes they have united, in trying to control the people, the peasants, their citizens, organized religion (the official church of each nation) & the state i.e., the government which is owned & told what it can & can’t do by the megalithic corporations!
Obviously, the better educated the people are, the more difficult it is to “control” them. By-the-way, Ed Snowden didn’t belabor the point, but I believe it was his central or key warning to us, the spying the government, military, intelligence agencies, etc. does against us is about Control! Mull that over for a while if you will?
Returning to our current state of affairs, you may have noticed Trump & his zombie cult of the walking dead have all but declared war on Science, Facts, Truth, & Reality. This is the key danger of Personality Cults, their leaders can tell their followers to not believe even what their own eyes, ears, & common sense tells them & the true believers won’t trust their own senses, but they will trust the Master’s “truths.” Note Jim Jones influence was so powerful over his flock that most of them willingly drank the Kool-Aid he had laced with poison.
“Just remember: What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.”
In his novel 1984, George Orwell wrote, “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
We’re accustomed to politicians peddling falsehoods to the public and hoping to get away with it. What we’re seeing with Trump, however, is qualitatively different. This is what Rachel described on the show last night as “deliberate trafficking in unreality.”
And who can forget Trump’s former, most trusted adviser & campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway’s world-famous knee-slapper that had the world rolling on the floor with laughter:
Most infamous was Conway’s explanation that Trump’s advisers have “alternative facts.” Conway used the phrase to explain then-White House press secretary Sean Spicer’s utterly false and easily disprovable claims about the size of Trump’s inauguration crowd — comments clearly meant to bolster Trump’s own false claims and ego.
Trump and his Happy Meal followers’ open war on science, fact, truth, & reality isn’t just a modern or recent phenomenon, and if this subject intrigues you half as much as it did me, you’re bound to be fascinated by the classic, “Anti-intellectualism in American Life,” by Richard Hofstadter. I read this book twice & with a fine-tooth comb so-to-speak because I used it as a framework for a book of mine on the subject of anti-intellectualism.
Hofstadter described anti-intellectualism as “resentment of the life of the mind, and those who are considered to represent it; and a disposition to constantly minimize the value of that life.”[6]
Also, he described the term as a view that “intellectuals…are pretentious, conceited… and snobbish; and very likely immoral, dangerous, and subversive …
Oh, the joy of finding things so appropriate when doing a bit of research on a topic I’m interested in;
Of course, I might as well be speaking Martian to those who sit on the edge of their seats in rapture when their holy man, Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan speaks because my thoughts & words are alien to their ears. To illustrate how far down the rabbit-hole we have fallen, it used to be illegal to scream “fire” in a crowded theater if it weren’t true, but not anymore.
Nope! Not in George W. Bush’s “Compassionate Conservatives” America. Donald the Dick has repeatedly gotten away with screaming “Liar!” when America’s top medical experts have tried to warn us about the deadly serious consequences of our not wearing masks, social distancing, testing, getting vaccinated, etc. and you can be sure that the numbers of Americans who have died from the COVID virus are far higher than the government or the corporate-owned media have stated. And not only is the President of Trump University not held to account for the needless deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans, he isn’t even publicly chastised for this unconscionable behavior let alone driven from office?
these “Christians” are perverse cuz they pray for this to become real!
Death by Ignorance again & again & again! I keep asking myself, what’s it going to take for the Trump cult followers to wake-up? A nuclear attack on New York & L.A.? Seriously, just how stupid can we be? It might interest you to know that again, roughly a third of the American population is illiterate. Try to put yourself in their shoes for a day, they’re not able to read street signs so their world is limited to the close by & the familiar. They can’t read menus, so they order the standard fare of a hamburger or steak probably? They can’t read the danger warning signs on medicines, toxic chemicals they may use, etc. etc. etc. To say nothing of how easily lying, con artists like Trump can manipulate them into voting against their own self-interests.
Moreover, speaking of manipulation, an area that has me especially concerned is the so-called, “social media.” And you may dismiss it as fear mongering, but I believe it’s not too far of a reach to conclude that the supposed “social media,” which has come to play such a significant role in peoples’ lives have “radicalized” some of the mentally unstable who went on to commit deadly mass shootings!
Here is a link to a video in which a professor calmly & rationally informs us about how the “social media” is de facto, “Toxic by Design.”
https://youtu.be/wpvv_ooqJik And for the record, I too was seduced into becoming a Facebook user & what a massive waste of time, energy, & emotions it turned out to be. I think my “vacation from reality” on Facebook lasted a good five years or better? Furthermore, I didn’t quit Facebook for any of the reasons I share in this essay, no, it was basically out of frustration/aggravation at “Friends” apathy & intellectual laziness.
In a nutshell, Facebook & most of the other “social media” does far more harm than good in terms of spreading fear, hatred, & violence which have one overriding common denominator, and that is ignorance!
“Racism is a symptom of psychological disorder. It is a sign of a lack of self-esteem and insecurity. People who are psychologically healthy have a stable sense of self and have no need to bolster their sense of self through group identity. They have no need to define themselves in contrast to and in conflict with others. America’s racist structure is no accident. It was deliberately created to gain power and keep power….
In the end, racism is ignorance. It is an ignorance that becomes fear, and that fear becomes hatred. It is evil. White Americans are not only ignorant of racism but are also ignorant of their own ignorance. They don’t know that they don’t know. They have no idea why ghettos still remain and are indifferent to them. They are ignorant of the tenacity of racism because this ignorance serves their psychological and material interests.”
For most of my life, this has basically been my view of racism, but I wasn’t nearly as eloquent & succinct as this author. There are those that argue that many racists are well-educated, I say Bullshit! If a person is truly “well-educated,” they understand that all humanity is connected & we all want basically the same few things. To provide for our families a decent home, quality health care, & a meaningful job in a nutshell. And we don’t need organized religion to tell us we should be good to one another; common sense tells us that.
May I remind you that many, if not most “good Germans” saw the rising tide of fascism as Hitler slowly came to power, but they dismissed it as a relatively small percentage of Germans who were nut-jobs not unlike the White supremacy groups that have steadily been growing in America over the past few decades. Go ahead, dismiss me as just another fear monger but my trying to warn Americans by showing the parallels in history isn’t meant to simply get attention. No, my goals are always the same, to inspire people to inform & empower themselves and ideally to unite & organize against the true monsters like Trump.
Pursuing this further, connections between racism & ignorance help shed light on the growing phenomenon of the rise in belief in conspiracy theories especially since the rise of Trump. Consider how popular & wealthy Alex Jones for example has become. His secret? Spread conspiracy theories. His passionate appeals to his viewers & listeners complete with tears, convinced his followers he was the real deal or genuine. And again, the less educated are far more vulnerable to manipulation than others simply because they aren’t aware of the common tactics used by the unscrupulous to suck them into their world view i.e., the Jews are coming, the liberals are coming, the homosexuals are coming etc. Here in brief is why conspiracy theories are so popular:
I’m not going to delve into this subject here because it’d only make my essay longer & people want brevity so they can get back to the more important things in life i.e., “reality t.v.,” sports, making more money, “social media,” etc. but note if you will, that behind many, if not most of the dark chapters in world history, there was a conspiracy theory. The Crusades, the Inquisition, the Salem Witch Trials, & the attempted genocide of the Jews in WWII, to name just a few.
Some of you may think that I’m just weaving my own conspiracy theory when I claim that the 1% want us ignorant & only intelligent enough to run the machines in their factories & etc.? Here’s a personal anecdote & a quote regarding this;
Many years ago, I was in an interview & the manager told me that he was president of the local school district, ABC Unified School District (Paramount, CA). He seemed like an open-minded person, so I asked him why we were continually lied to regarding the so-called “Winning of the West,” and he replied in a matter-of-fact manner, not the least apologetic; “Most students don’t go on to higher education & the government wants students to leave high school with a positive feeling about their country.”
The poster boy for anti-intellectualism“collateral damage”
Do you recall my theory that the government & our corporate rulers know or fear that if the truth were told about America’s history, it might be very difficult to find enough recruits for the military?
“We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class of necessity in every society, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.” (President Woodrow Wilson, from 1913 to 1921 who ran for office promising he’d keep us out of war but then led us into WWI)
In my defense against possible accusations of being a hypocrite, I have been a perpetual student & voracious reader all my life. I worked in the public education field for over 20 years & although it’s hard to quantify something like education & I may be accused of being one of those dreaded elitist snobs, I shall try to quantify my area of expertise. Ha! Ha!
In terms of my formal education, I went up to having earned a B.A. in English literature. Yet, it took me 14 years to earn that four-year degree because I dropped out of community college courses many times, sometimes half or even three-quarters of the way through a semester. Just because I didn’t receive the college credits for those classes I dropped out of, I still learned while I was in them.
Above all, I am most proud of my personal library which I have been collecting for over half a century. Approximately 10,000 books and no, I haven’t read them all, but I have made copious notes in several hundred of them. I use those notes often in essays I’ve written or books I am in the process of writing. Finally, if I had to guesstimate, I’d conservatively say that I’ve spent 50,000 hours or more in studying, writing, listening to & watching documentaries, etc. in the area of political science in particular. If this makes me an elitist, then yeah, I’m a goddamn elitist intellectual & I earned it, I paid my dues and I continue to pay my dues.
Why is it that people idolize & have such great respect for people who have become obscenely wealthy, but disrespect & dismiss people like myself? I’ll leave that to you to reflect upon. Consider Trump, who even knows what his true net worth is, he’s been lying about it his entire life. To all but the willfully ignorant, Trump is a moron of gargantuan proportions! This is a person to respect, trust, & believe?
We’ve all seen & heard the age-old maxim, “Ignorance is Bliss,” well if this is how you prefer to go through life, more power to you & you will continue to be shocked & wonder why each personal & national crisis happens. I’ll end by bringing it back full circle to the willful ignorance of the Holocaust deniers & what happened as a result of the “Good Germans,” who denied the rising tide of fascism in pre-WWII Germany;
“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”
— Pastor Martin Niemoller
(a public critic of Hitler who spent the last seven years of Nazi rule in a concentration camp)
The illusion that war will make us safe isn’t worth the pain this young woman is experiencing!
Notwithstanding the possibility that my thoughts here will be dismissed as yet another absurd Alex Jones conspiracy theory, I am once again going to sound the alarm bell. I believe to a large extent; complacency is behind the scary state of being America is in.
How else would you explain the fact that someone as brazenly corrupt as Donald Trump could become president of the most powerful nation on the planet? Are we condemned as George Santayana said?
“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Definition of a fool is someone who keeps repeating the same mistake & boy is America full of fools!
I’m sure that most countries are equally as guilty as the U.S. when it comes to denying their past history or the truth of their dastardly & immoral acts, they committed in acquiring, maintaining, & expanding their empires. However, I’m an American citizen & therefore responsible for the good things the U.S. has done as well as the immoral things we have done. And as my hero, Noam Chomsky points out, we can do something about what’s going on in America at a local level, a state level, & a federal level so yeah, we can pass moral/ethical judgments on foreign governments, but we can’t affect their government’s policies/actions, so we should do what we can to change our government’s policies/practices.
And yes, this is grossly oversimplifying but to a huge extent, Trump slimed his way into the presidency because far too many of us supposedly intelligent Leftists were asleep at the wheel. We laughed whenever someone suggested Trump had a real chance of winning.
Yep! We on the “progressive” side in most matters, have been the stupid ones. We have underestimated, ignored, dismissed, & forgotten just what our enemies are capable of. Again, our damn complacency & that applies to our intellectual complacency as well.
The key argument against home schooling was the sacred need to develop social skills. How’s that working for ya?
A case in point, “Smart phones.” I must tip my hat to whatever advertising agency came up with that one, it’s been a phenomenal success. I bet you that many, if not most people who own a smart phone actually believe it makes them smarter. Seems almost primitive like some indigenous peoples who have their magical beliefs in trees, animals, forces of nature that empower them just by being near them.
Unequivocally, “Smart phones” do not make us smarter, they’re a convenience, not a necessity! They are the descendants of the old, 10-key, adding machines, then the pocket calculators, and then personal computers. And basically, their primary value is the fact that they can make calculations far faster than humans can. People seem to mistake speed for quality.
You may have heard the story that when Einstein was in grammar school, his teachers often thought he was intellectually-challenged. This is the trending term for the field I & my wife worked in for most of our careers, Special Education.
Einstein’s teachers thought because he was so slow to respond when a teacher called on him because his mind was deep in reflection upon other possible answers to the teacher’s question. In other words, we respect the “quick-witted,” & dismiss those who are slow to answer i.e., those thinkers who know that quality is far more important than how quickly you can produce an answer.
I have witnessed our slow decay if you like, over the course of my life i.e., we learned the multiplication tables by 4th grade, I believe and up to 12 X 12? And over the years, they stopped teaching students how to multiply so now kids are allowed to use pocket calculators in the classroom.
I have also noted that teenagers can no longer count your change back to you when you make a purchase. McDonald’s employees for example, can’t operate the standard cash register. So, McDonald’s cash register tells them how much money to return to the customer.
Around 1992 when I was a substitute teacher in Los Angeles, I learned that the average high school graduate’s reading level was at an 8th grade level. This isn’t meant to lay all the blame on the teachers, the students, the system, but to highlight the fact that our public education standards have been declining for decades. The students, the educational bureaucracy, the parents, & society in general share in the responsibility for our decline.
The Press lies by omission & Trump is habitual liar
Yet on the other hand, we’re told that all is saved, we have “Smart phones.” How do we account for this miracle? Could it be that the Emperor has No Clothes? Yes, the naked truth is that it’s an illusion that smart phones are making us smarter. In fact, it’s a dangerous delusion because with the white supremacists, fascists, & Trump zombies amongst us, free thought along with free speech may become a thing of the past because people are so busy playing games, taking “selfies,” checking the “likes” etc. on their phones that the fascists are infiltrating our society at an alarming rate.
Noam is a humble man but is revered around the globe as perhaps the most important intellectual alive?
We need intelligent, informed, passionate & empathetic people to unify & organize, so please put away that Smart phone & read one of Chomsky’s books or books by Howard Zinn, Arundhati Roy, Chris Hedges, etc. Here’s a few more examples of how Smart phones are actually making us stupider.
You’ve probably heard the old maxim, “Use it or lose it”in terms of your muscles, well the same applies to our mental muscles. The proliferation of “Smart phones” over the past 35 years has corresponded with a decline in reading, especially the reading of the Classics & important non-fiction authors.
Professors at our top, Ivy league universities like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, etc. have been lamenting the fact that most of their incoming freshmen students are woefully unprepared i.e., they’ve either never heard of let alone can tell you anything about Plato, Aristotle, the Enlightenment, etc.
The School of Athens with Plato & Aristotle as the pillars of Western Civilization!
Today’s youth are techno-wizards when it comes to accessing platforms, apps, etc. on their phones & computers but don’t ask them to write a cogent paragraph or a well-reasoned essay on current events. Critical or analytical thinking skills have become an anachronism.
In short, people are becoming ever more vulnerable to “fake news” stories & we are morphing into a nation of functioning illiterates. Do you remember Zuckerberg’s promises when Facebook came on the scene? These tools of the New Age created in the Silicon Valley were going to bring people together & greatly enhance communication between us.
Instead, we are living in a society that hasn’t been this polarized & filled with hate, fear, & violence since the Civil War. And Facebook bears a huge amount of responsibility for this ugly reality because it purposely chose the algorithms of fake stories, blatant propaganda against Hillary Clinton & pro-Trump, etc. because they push peoples’ emotional buttons & users stay on these fake posts longer & the advertisers pay Facebook more money the longer people stay on these bile-filled, fascist propaganda pieces.
And Facebook’s selling of their user’s personal data to Cambridge Analytica played a major role in Trump’s stealing of the 2016 election. The more you dumb your users down & the 24/7 spreading of all this negativity, erodes our intellectual self-defense & something like 70% of the American public get their news from Facebook & the other “social media” platforms.
We are literally witnessing the age-old strategy of Divide & Conquer and no, this isn’t a great conspiracy, it’s simply a matter of the greedy, corporate cockroaches making as great a profit as possible and we all lose in the big picture.
Next on my list of Dangerous Illusions are our mythical “Smart bombs.” The Pentagon & our presidents from George H.W. Bush onward assured us that these “Smart bombs” would greatly reduce the number of innocents killed if we used them & that our military leaders always strove to not kill innocents in our war campaigns
Does this make you feel patriotic?
Quite frankly, they were & are liars in this regard and have consistently underreported or flat out lied about the numbers of innocents killed in our Smart bomb attacks over the past 30 years. (Note how often they lied about body counts in Vietnam) Why do you think the Pentagon required reporters to be embedded with select military units ever since the Gulf War?
“I think this is a very hard choice,” replied Albright, “but the price–we think the price is worth it.”
Furthermore, have you reflected on the Pentagon’s use of “Depleted Uranium” weapons from 1990 on?
Depleted uranium (DU) weapons were first used during the first Gulf War against Iraq in 1991. The Pentagon estimated that between 315 and 350 tons of DU were fired during the first Gulf War. During the 2003 invasion and current occupation of Iraq, U.S. and British troops have reportedly used more than five times as many DU bombs and shells as the total number used during the 1991 war….
…. Dr. Doug Rokke, on the other hand, former director of the U.S. Army’s Depleted Uranium Project, is very willing to talk about the effects of DU. Rokke was involved in the “clean up” of 34 Abrams tanks and Bradley armored vehicles hit by friendly fire during the 1991 Gulf War. Today he suffers from the ill effects of DU in his body.
Rokke told American Free Press that the Pentagon uses DU weapons because they are the most effective at killing and destroying everything they hit. The highest level of the U.S. and British governments have “totally disregarded the consequences” of the use of DU weapons, Rokke said.
The first Gulf War was the largest friendly fire incident in the history of American warfare, Rokke says. “The majority of the casualties were the result of friendly fire,” he told AFP.
DU is used in many forms of ammunition as an armor penetrator because of its extreme weight and density. The uranium used in these missiles and bombs is a by-product of the nuclear enrichment process. Experts say the Department of Energy has 100 million tons of DU and using it in weapons saves the government money on the cost of its disposal.
Rather than disposing of the radioactive waste, it is shaped into penetrator rods used in the billions of rounds being fired in Iraq and Afghanistan . The radioactive waste from the U.S. nuclear weapons industry has, in effect, been forcibly exported and spread in the environments of Iraq, Afghanistan, the former Yugoslavia, Puerto Rico, and elsewhere.
Mull this over for a few moments if you will, not only have our “smart bombs” killed hundreds of thousands of innocents in our wars over the past 30 years, more Americans were killed by “friendly fire” in the Gulf War than by our enemy. How smart is that?
The illusion that war will make us safe isn’t worth the pain this young woman is experiencing!
Moreover, using depleted uranium in our bombs & weapons exposes not only the innocents in these wars but also our own troops to the deadly, cancerous effects of the radiation. Remember Agent Orange in Vietnam & how long the Pentagon denied having used it? Gee, I wonder why one generation after another of terrorists keep on coming after us? Could you ignore the slaughter of your family & friends who were innocents & not want to seek revenge?
You see, our permanent state of war is because of the unbridled, corporate greed of our “Defense industry,” which used to be more honestly called the War Department. And as long as there are valuable natural resources anywhere in the world, we want to steal it & just because these resources happen to be in other countries, doesn’t matter.
Our Pentagon’s public relations machine just goes to work on the American public to convince them that these countries pose a threat to us & we’re invading them because we want to promote peace & democracy—talk about Orwellian.
Why do you think we have something like 900 military bases around the globe? I believe Russia has around three or four military bases & they’re on their border. China has a couple bases & likewise, they’re on their borders. The U.S. spends more on our military than the next dozen or so nations combined & below us in terms of military power i.e., France, Germany, the U.K., Russia, China, etc.
Tell me why it is that we are so paranoid & feel that we’re always vulnerable to attack when we have such an awesome & terrifying arsenal of jets, nuclear submarines, battleships, nuclear bombs, etc.? Could it be a massive PR campaign of propaganda created to keep us terrified, so we’ll keep paying our taxes which pay for the military-industrial-congressional complex?
Yep, George “Dubya,” the Coward from Crawford, Texas proved what a “compassionate conservative” he was by stirring the hornet’s nest in Iraq which lo & behold was about oil, never mind the fact that our oil just happened to belong to Iraq. We need to also ignore the fact that the terrorist response to our unprovoked “Shock & Awe” campaign in Iraq gradually spread throughout the Middle East.
In addition, Georgie aka Alfred E. Newman gave Osama bin Laden the perfect gift he was wishing for i.e., proof that the U.S. was waging a war against Muslims, so they now had a holy duty to defend their religion against the “Great Satan.” If we withdrew from every nation we’ve invaded & occupied in the Middle East today, the passionate hate we’ve instilled in millions of our victims, might take 50 years to calm down? Maybe there’s little to no hope of ever extinguishing their hatred for us? Did you notice Joe Biden’s recent act of generosity when he gave the Pentagon something like $80 billion more than they asked for in regard to the Pentagon “budget” for the coming year?
Yep! Good ol’ Joe, our Democratic savior from all things Trump. He also sold billions military planes to Saudi Arabia though he swore he wouldn’t in his presidential campaign. And we should just ignore Joe’s promise to not allow any more drilling in the Alaskan artic. If democrats would take 15 minutes to review Joe’s tenure in the Senate, it’d be clear who Joe loves—the corporate cockroaches, not the 99% of us who are living in a constant state of stress & worrying about how to make their mortgage payments, pay for their health care, not be killed by the COVID virus variations, etc.
Following this further, we now have to not only worry about the White Supremacists, but we absolutely must wake-up to the reality of the threats the “Christian” evangelists, fundamentalists, Dominionists, etc. pose to our democracy.
From practically the moment they, the Pilgrims, stepped out of their boats, they proclaimed their thanks for having come to a place of religious freedom, and immediately went to work on subjecting all of us to their “truths,” and their religion.
This subject has worried me greatly for over 40 years or better. And I basically dissected the classic, “Anti-intellectualism in American Life” by Richard Hofstadter, making copious notes in the blank pages. In brief, Mr. Hofstadter does a masterful historian’s review & explanation of this tragic phenomenon i.e., anti-intellectualism from the beginning of our history to the recent past.
Trump’s America, I’m Stupid & Proud of it!
This can not be overstated, these pseudo- “Christians” are every bit as serious about their children’s education as they are about abortion. Well, politicians, especially presidential candidates know all too well how critically important it is to woo the far right, “Christians,” because they’re very vocal & not shy about telling us how we should live & believe. And they’re extremely well organized.
Mike Pence was clearly chosen by Trump’s puppet masters to assuage the faux “Christians.” He posed no threat to the GOP or was he likely to piss-off the little tyrant who often threw tantrums. And those unholy Christians were salivating at the thought of Trump kicking the bucket & one of their own stepping into the driver’s seat.
Do you think I may be exaggerating or unnecessarily alarmist? Really? How many times over the decades have we been assured that Roe v. Wade could never be overturned? I believe it’s in serious peril like the very fabric of what we thought was our Democracy.
Check it out for yourself, I could be wrong? I know this is cliché, maybe corny, but I sincerely believe that knowledge is power, but we should seek that knowledge that empowers people, not helps to enslave them. These wolves in sheep’s clothing, calling themselves “Christians,” have very selectively forgotten somehow, the Sermon on the Mount?
these “Christians” are perverse cuz they pray for this to become real!
And if you can look in a mirror & call yourself a good Christian & believe Trump was a wonderful president, sorry my friend, you obviously need some serious counseling? This reminds me of how I never cease to be amazed as I grow older & come across these wolves. And even though I pretty much rejected the “Christian” values of a church I was attending around the age of 14 or 15, & organized Christianity in general, I often feel that I’m far more Christian than many, if not most of those I have met claimed to be.
In a nutshell, these people want to turn every school in America from pre-school to graduate school, into a “Charter school.” Not that far removed from how the Taliban run their indoctrination program i.e., teach primarily their religion & the basics of reading, writing, & arithmetic and of course a good daily dose of hate our enemies!
In brief, both are authoritarians & by definition, that’s against our key beliefs as Americans i.e., freedom of thought, speech, the press, etc. Whether we’re speaking of Islamic extremists or Christian extremists, societies that allow such hateful propaganda to go unchallenged, are turning a blind-eye to the violence that is simmering below the surface of their society.
Continuing on in terms of dangerous illusions, can you explain to me why we keep adding to our nuclear arsenals? I was in my 20s I believe when I heard that we had enough nuclear bombs/weapons to blow the world up over 25 times!
Pause for a moment if you will & let that soak in. You have to be Donald Trump crazy or certifiable to think this a good thing. I have no idea of how many times over we can now obliterate our planet & at times, I feel like what’s the point of even trying to get through to people on subjects like this.
Of course, our Smartphones, video games, obsession with sports, corporate propaganda, etc. are all contributing to our dumbing down & I often despair that it’s all just too formidable i.e., what’s the point of even trying to fight against all these destructive forces seemingly Hell bent on bringing on the wet dream of the “Christian” fundamentalists.
Nonetheless, some little flicker of hope still burns within me & I don’t really have the option of throwing in the towel. And even though I’ve never had the chance to meet Noam Chomsky in person, I have developed a friendship with him via email over the past 16 years or so & he helps remind me & the world of the progress we have made in fighting back against what I refer to as the corporate cockroaches.
Notwithstanding, Chomsky has been somewhat of a broken record for the past several years in terms of his focus on what he considers the two most pernicious threats facing humanity, a nuclear exchange between two or more nations & climate change (destruction). Yet given what I just shared regarding our attention spans, the predominance of the so-called “social media,” and several other key factors, you might be able to understand my doom & gloom worries/obsession.
Perhaps I have been living with my own dangerous illusion all these years in thinking that if we can just educate/inform enough people in time, we can at least slow down this madness & our seemingly unalterable path over the edge & into the abyss of extinction?
Noam & other great intellects point out that the Internet is a powerful tool & it can be used in positive as well as negative ways but from what I’ve seen, people mostly use the Internet & their toys derived from it i.e., smart phones, to amuse & distract themselves.
Above all else, Chomsky emphasizes that sooner or later, we’ll get through this COVID pandemic, but we won’t survive the global warming & resultant climate destruction we’re experiencing if we don’t get really serious about it & really quick!
As citizens of the wealthiest & militarily most powerful nation on the planet, we have perfected the art of denial & we enjoy an endless stream of distractions, so we don’t have to face the horrific world events that are a fact of life
whether we choose to acknowledge them or not. And if we stand a chance of surviving, like in 12 step programs & life in general, half the battle is in acknowledging there is a problem. My self-appointed job is to inform others of the problems we are beset by.
Therefore, I am going to end this essay by sharing some critical knowledge on climate denial in America & like most other serious issues that we face, money, or rather the love of wealth above health & all else is the culprit hiding in the shadows like the corporate cockroaches who have infested our highest levels of government & the business world.
And like real life cockroaches, when you flip the light switch on, they run for any dark corner or crevice they can find to hide in. I watched a PBS Frontline documentary some time back & it definitely shown a light on this dark & deadly campaign of deceit financed by gas & oil conglomerates & subsidized by us, the taxpayers.
check out Edward Bernays, founder of Advertising industry, ran an ad to persuade women to. smoke
Moreover, like the tobacco industry CEOs who testified before Congress that they had no idea that nicotine was deadly, these cock-sucking cockroaches in the oil or energy sector of our economy knew for decades how deadly the effects of oil exploration, drilling, & transportation are but denied it until it was no longer possible to do so.
Tragically, Americans in particular have a great propensity for a short attention span, laughable ignorance of history, & little desire to inform themselves about mundane subjects like the toxic pollution & death of our water sources, the air we breathe, & the land we live on. In business speak, these are examples of “externalities.” In short, corporate America refuses to take responsibility for the death & destruction they cause as they seek to maximize their profits & the cost of cleaning-up these deadly externalities falls on the taxpaying public. Think of the deadly public water system in Flint, Michigan & how long it’s been allowed to go on & it still hasn’t been resolved. Of course, it’s merely a coincidence that the majority of Flint’s residents are people of color.
Why should the “Banks Too Big to Fail,” be held responsible for tanking the world-wide economy, they were just filling their capitalist duties.
A key factor in this tale of woe is the corporate cockroaches use of academic “experts” whom they buy. And as in the lead-up to the world-wide economic crash of 2008 that nearly brought down the entire house of cards, professors of economics with no concern about the financial destruction they were sweeping under the rug for the handsome bribes offered them by Wall St. & the financial sector of America’s economy. I highly recommend the documentary, “Inside Job” should you be curious as to why you lost or came close to losing your home, your job, your life savings, your health insurance, etc.
Speaking of top-notch documentaries on subjects very near & dear to our survival, another such film is, “The Corporation.” I guarantee you that it’ll blow your mind! In fact, after more than three decades of paying attention to these matters, I have coined a phrase, the business of America is Fraud! And yeah, I know that it isn’t just us who practice these dirty & destructive habits but I’m an American & therefore, it is my duty to focus on the wrongs of my own country, not the corruption of other nations i.e., get your own house in order before chastising other states.
Returning to the specifics of climate destruction, the oil & natural gas corporations who bear a very large percentage of the responsibility for, know that they can’t outright deny scientific facts, so they have focused their attention on creating doubt about Climate change & have found a relative handful of “scientists,” who were only too willing to write “expert” papers questioning the validity of the overwhelming majority of the world-wide scientific community. Do you remember Trump’s spokesperson, Kellyanne Conway & her claim that there are “alternate facts?”
Yep! And only in a nation as dumbed-down as America could the spokesman for our president make such a farcical statement with a straight-face. Clearly, a third of our population is so willfully ignorant that Trump got away with four years of outright, blatant & brazen lying & he basically got away with it. Don’t forget to thank the tens of millions of “Christians,” who swoon at the mere sight or voice of Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan. So much for their moral righteousness!
In conclusion my friends, the corporate cockroaches know only too well & from decades of practice, if all the evidence shows you’re wrong, deny, distract, & attack. It’s worked well for Donald Trump, an absolute moron totally lacking in all the qualities that make us human & therefore the perfect “leader” for the corporate cockroach class.
I don’t know how true it is but when I was a much younger man, it used to be said that cockroaches would be the only ones to survive a nuclear war. So, as Edward R. Murrow used to end his reports, “Good Night & Good Luck!”
—Rob DeLoss, Gold Beach, OR Jan. 16, 2022
P.S. Oops! A “senior moment” I guess? The brilliant & insightful documentary I watched on PBS Frontline a few years back & that was the inspiration for this essay is, “Climate of Doubt,” and may I suggest printing a copy of the transcript of this film so you can really sink your teeth into the meat & potatoes of this deadly serious threat to our survival as a species! https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/climate-of-doubt/
Addendum
Is this how our Liberty dies?
I tried searching for the names of the foundations and/or individuals who are funding most of this propaganda campaign of Climate Denial but seems the majority of the money comes from “Dark money” sources. Why are they hiding if they believe so fiercely that global climate destruction is a hoax? So much for the “conviction of their beliefs.”
The French Revolution: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity (brotherhood)
“Ever wonder why you work all the time, but never seem to have enough money to actually do anything but… work?
Apparently, you complain too much.
That’s the opinion of many wealthy Americans, those in the top ten percent who’ve managed to “work their way” into financial security. They believe the American dream is alive and well. They believe if you’re not a millionaire, or well on your way to becoming one, then it’s your fault. They think you made poor decisions, or that you’re lazy and entitled.
They think you deserve poverty.
It’s nosurprise that empathy is on the decline, and has been since the 1980s. In fact, it fell by 48 percent between 1979 and 2009.”
“Minimum wage is an employer’s way of saying I’d pay you even less, but the government makes me pay a minimum wage.”
—famous Rap artist
“The Great Depression,” brought about by the greed of Wall St. but we’re supposed to blame the victims, not the businessmen.
I am saddened when I hear people blaming or labeling other people, often people of a different race as lazy, freeloaders just waiting on their government handouts, etc. Why? Because the overwhelming majority of us who make up the 99% in America’s class war are victims of the 1% who are obscenely wealthy. And we should feel empathy or compassion for one another because we are all being screwed to some extent. We should be in solidarity, not fighting one another.
These are personal experiences, observations, & things I have learned while “wasting my time in college and/or reading non-fiction books.” (sarcasm)
It dawned on me many years ago while checking the job board in an unemployment office that our taxes pay the salaries & operating costs of State unemployment offices, yet they serve the interests of private corporations, not me.
More & more of the jobs listed in unemployment offices are through temp agencies & every temp agency I’ve ever applied for work in asks what the minimum wage is you’ll accept. And if I dare to ask for a dollar or two above the minimum wage, they always tell me, sorry, that’s too much. So basically, it doesn’t matter how educated you are or how qualified you are, all temp agencies are out to fuck you!
This is clearly a major conflict of interest because a government agency that supposedly exists to help us, the unemployed, actually serves private industry.
A supervisor at a job I got through a temp agency once asked me how much I was being paid by the agency. The supervisor was shocked & told me, “They’re charging us nearly three times that & you’re a good employee, I tell you what needs to be done & don’t need to check up on you, you’re doing a great job.”
Have you noticed over the years how consistently Congress votes against raising the minimum wage but every time we turn around, they quietly raise their salaries & benefits?
My guess is that the overwhelming majority of corporate business owners call themselves conservatives? Why is that? Could it be that they are unified in their belief that workers or employees are basically a necessary evil & always trying to rip-off their bosses for more money, benefits, rights, etc.?
Grover Norquist, Champion of “The Pledge” i.e. no raising of taxes especially for the 1%—95% of GOP signed. Govt. is only necessary when helping the rich, the Hell with the poor!
And these “conservative” business owners are the first & the loudest in declaring workers to be lazy & asking for more but not deserving it. Common sense tells us that if we weren’t making our employers more money per hour than they’re paying us, they wouldn’t have us as their employees.
In the mid-1950s, one out of every three non-farm workers were members of a union & today, statistics vary from 5% to 10%. What does that tell you about the fate of workers in the U.S.?
Two of the major union strongholds for American workers today are teachers & postal workers and the “conservatives” have been waging a steady war against them for decades. Why is that?
In our largest cities & spreading to many rural communities today, the cost of living, most notably in rental rates has been skyrocketing for years. Please explain to me how a person making minimum wage is supposed to be able to afford to pay their bills?
I just checked the minimum wage rates for each state & California is the highest at $13 per hour while many, if not most states are still at $7.25 per hour.
I have experienced long periods i.e., six months or more of not being able to find a job in cities like Portland, Oregon & it was almost always a matter of not being qualified or of my being “over-qualified” that was given for the reason they wouldn’t give me a job.
I was born in 1952 & throughout my public schooling, we were told that if we worked hard in school & got good grades, we would get a good job & enjoy a good standard of living.
Well, I worked hard & struggled for 14 years to earn my B.A. in English literature but in the long run, it hasn’t meant shit to the overwhelming majority of employers I hoped to work for. In fact, it has been more of a negative than a positive in my search for work over the course of my life i.e., “you’re obviously qualified but how do I know that you’ll stay with us?”
It’s gotten to where I now practically conduct the interviews when HR depts. Interview me.
And I have to talk myself down i.e., break it down for the employer how my skills, knowledge, & experience is relevant to their job opening & I assure them that as long as they treat me fairly & give me opportunities to grow, I’ll be one of their most loyal employees.
I tell you about my personal experiences not to brag but because I’m sure there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions of other Americans who have experienced similar things.
My beloved wife who has passed away, once said that I hadn’t ever liked a job I had worked at. I replied, No, you’re wrong. I loved being a teacher. Teaching was the only job I ever felt respected in & where I could put to use my lifelong love of learning.
I referred to the 1% & the 99% which thankfully the Occupy Wall St. movement made us all aware of. In brief, not since just before the Great Depression has there ever been such a vast chasm of inequality in America.
The most powerful champion & defender of victims the world over!
And I’ve learned over the decades how the wealthy maintain their stranglehold over us & one of their most powerful weapons is their consistent propaganda with one goal in mind i.e., divide & conquer. The more they can keep us fighting amongst ourselves & blaming one another, the longer they have power over us & can keep us in “our place.”
Throughout our inglorious history, Blacks have been more consistently the targets of prejudice, hatred, & violence than any other race, or class of citizens except the indigenous native people whom we stole “our” nation.
I believe this cruel & ugly history is why so many Black citizens have such a bitter hatred & distrust of the White or Caucasian race.
How can I, a white person, ever truly understand their justifiable & deep-seated hatred?
The Land of the Free & Home of the Brave
I have long wondered why they call each other “nigger,” and my guess, after reflecting on this phenomenon for many years now is that they do so to weaken or take away the power of that evil label Whites used against them for centuries. Each time they use the word between themselves it’s like saying to Whites, Fuck you, we are united & you can’t break us down anymore!
All the negative shit I’ve experienced in my life can’t compare, can’t even get close to what they’ve experienced & continue to experience. Look at the facts i.e., just about every week we hear about yet another instance of a white cop shooting a young, black man in the back & not being held accountable.</li>
Let’s return to the wider picture again, it was that darling of the Democrat leadership, Bill Clinton, who fucked us all royally with not only NAFTA & the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, but his “Crime omnibus bill.”
Every politician whom I’ve listened to when they were running for office whether local, state, or federal, declares they will wage a war on crime. Note though that they very, very rarely go after the corporate criminals who steal on colossal levels. And it’s not mere coincidence that when Clinton passed his “Crime bill,” is when America’s prison population began to exponentially explode.
And unless you’re a true Klu Klux Klan member & believe Black men are natural-born criminals, how do you explain the fact that Black men make up the majority of the prisoners in our Industrial Prison Complex?
Could it be that the corporate cockroach class know that Black America is one of the most vulnerable segments of our population & yeah, I’m not forgetting the Hispanics & others? In other words, the more Blacks these politicians/whores for their corporate masters, lock up, the stronger they appear to their constituents?
Perhaps the key reason as to why/how Trump became president was his talent for stirring-up the racial prejudices that had been dormant & not okay for decades?
I believe there is even more prejudice/hatred against Blacks than there is against Hispanics because Hispanics live in constant fear of being deported. And this fear keeps them mostly silent.
Hispanic people, some of the warmest, friendliest, & hardest working people I have ever known, flee their countries of origin like Mexico because they are killed so frequently with little to no legal recourse.
Put yourself in their shoes for a minute if you will. They have no rights whatsoever because they’re not citizens & therefore, they must do the shit jobs that not even the poorest White Americans will do. And if they don’t work, they don’t eat!
But those damn Blacks know that they are citizens & therefore have at least a modicum of rights. Why do you think the GOP is so frantically trying to turn back the clock on Civil Rights, the Right to Vote, etc.?
Even a cursory look back at world history will show you that the strategy of Divide & Conquer has been around since the beginning of recorded history. Keep the slaves, the peasants, the working poor, & the middle class at each other’s throats & the powers that be will not only retain their power over us, they’ll expand their control over us. So please don’t allow yourself to be their pawns & continue to blame your fellow victims!
P.S. A few quotes to mull over on this subject; “I’d like someone to rationally explain to me how factors such as your family situation growing up, your level of education, the job opportunities you are handed, the rate of crime and drug use in your neighborhood – and so many other similar factors that shape our young lives – aren’t supposed to affect a child’s future. https://everydayfeminism.com/2013/07/how-we-ignore-poverty-and-blame-poor-people/
If you remember, when the French peoples’ rage could no longer be contained & exploded in The French Revolution, perhaps one of the final straws was when the people were begging the aristocracy for bread, Marie Antoinette showed the typical contempt the rich have for the poor with, “Let them eat cake!”
The peasants showed her & half the aristocracy of France their contempt by making sure they’d never eat cake again by chopping their heads off with public executions by guillotine.
Something for you obscenely wealthy scum like Jeff Bezos, the Waltons, etc. to “chew over!”
Liberty, Equality, Fraternity (Brotherhood)
Viva la Revolucion! Adios Corporate Cockroaches!
Big business in America has been steadily doing everything possible since FDR passed the New Deal to destroy it & they have largely succeeded in their mission. And the corporate media has helped enormously in these efforts i.e. the myth of a liberal bias in the media. Yeah, right! The 1% who own the media are purposely sabotaging themselves by allowing too many “liberals” spread their propaganda.
For example, Phil Donahue’s news show on MSNBC had one liberal guest on for every. two conservative guests it had on but that was too much. It was one of the most popular news shows in the country at the time but we were about to invade Iraq & MSNBC (the flagship of liberal bias news in America) didn’t want Fox “news’ to appear more patriotic, so they fired Phil Donahue.
In the beginning, God created all this stuff, then
put Adam and then Eve in the middle of it, and
they could dig it all right. It was paradise. Then
God, who was no dummy, said, “Look kids, I’ve got
some business to take care of, have fun and do
whatever you feel like, but whatever you do, don’t
touch that tree over there.” So of course, they did.
and God came back, threw a fit, tore up the lease
and threw them out.
So, the story goes.
And it all rings true. Adam and Eve. Mankind, ate of
The fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil
and lost their primal innocence, expanded their
awareness and they were on their way, they couldn’t
turn back, like all our actions their act was irrevocable.
Okay.
But what is this bullshit about a religion based on
REGRETTING that move?
it isn’t possible to make a mistake, is it?”
—“Das Energi” (Paul Williams)
Yes, God does make mistakes! And here’s a big one.
In other words, God isn’t capable of making a mistake because he’s omniscient (knows everything), so why would he tell Adam & Eve to ignore their natural curiosity and not eat an apple from the Tree of Knowledge? Every parent knows that children are born naturally curious about everything & to be curious is normal. So, Christianity is based on a fear of knowledge & if one wishes to be a good Christian, they should avoid knowledge like the plague. Well, I submit that this fear & distrust of knowledge has been with us throughout history & is the root cause of more death & destruction than just about any other force I can think of. Here’s a thumbnail description of anti-intellectualism to bear in mind as you read this essay;
“Anti-intellectualism is hostility to and mistrust of intellect, intellectuals, and intellectualism, commonly expressed as deprecation of education and philosophy and the dismissal of art, literature, and science as impractical, politically motivated, and even contemptible human pursuits.[1] Anti-intellectuals present themselves and are perceived as champions of common folk—populists against political and academic elitism—and tend to see educated people as a status class that dominates political discourse and higher education while being detached from the concerns of ordinary people.[1]” (Wikipedia)
*What’s happened to that holy “Common Sense’ that we so often hear praised by working class Americans? Everything about Trump defies common sense!
Have you ever heard of a billionaire who gained his wealth honestly?
Let’s take a cursory glance back at history to see if my thesis regarding the harmful effects of willful ignorance holds true? First of all, I want to point out that this story about the Garden of Eden is from Christian mythology & like Islam mythology as well as Hebrew mythology, it contains some elements of truth which are meant to serve as lessons for humanity to live by. Unfortunately, though, the unscrupulous as usual, look for opportunities to twist knowledge, myths, fables, etc. so they can profit from others ignorance.
For instance, until the invention of the Guttenberg printing press & the gradual availability of books for the masses, the ability to read was pretty much the domain of the nobility & the priests, rabbis, clerics, etc. Why do you think it was illegal in the slave owning states of America to teach black people how to read?
Could it be that the powers that be throughout history have always preferred to keep their citizens ignorant because ignorant (not knowing) citizens are a Hell of a lot easier to manipulate & control. Why did the Nazis have massive book burning bonfires? Why is it that when dictators wage a coup d’état to take over the government, one of the first things they do is shut down the universities & the press?
Melania’s song to Donny;
Moreover, the priesthood & the kings or nobility i.e., lords, earls, etc. have been at constant war with one another over the centuries in that each sought the final or absolute power over the public. And at times they have made temporary alliances when the peasants & serfs rose up in rebellion against their oppressors. You see, the powers that be throughout history soon get spoiled & rather enjoy getting the best of the crops that their subjects are forced to give them, the fine clothes & jewels, the castles, the taxes, etc. And the fact that the people were often starving because they were forced to give the majority of their harvests & the animals that people relied upon for their meat, to the nobility & the Church. Remember, God wanted things this way because this was constantly drilled into their heads by the preachers, ministers, priests, spokesmen for the king & the nobility.
And when kings became fearful that the priests may be getting a bit too powerful, they came up with a useful new concept called the Divine Rights of Kings. Yep! Once again Christianity proved useful in the power struggles between the two forces making living Hells out of most peoples’ lives.
Furthermore, the constant war against knowledge or the anti-intellectualism from the spread of the Garden of Eden myth through the Dark Ages also took the form of an anti-Science bias which resulted in the death of countless people, many being charged with Satanism, blasphemy, corruption of the young, etc. Galileo & Copernicus being just two of the most recognizable names. Galileo was forced to recant his scientific observations & theories and spent the rest of his life under house arrest for his most notable discovery that the Earth revolves around the Sun not vice versa.
Onward Christian Soldiers for Oil!
Continuing on, it’s probably impossible to calculate just how many people have been killed over the centuries thanks to the Know Nothings or the Anti-intellectuals. We had several “Christian” Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the “Missionaries” & Mercenaries i.e., the Conquistadors, the Witch trials, etc. etc. etc. But my guess would be that it had to amount to the loss of billions of innocent lives. Of course, the secular powers i.e., governments, dictators, etc. gave us God knows how many wars over the centuries and WWI & WWII and the perpetual war that my country has waged since I was born in 1952 & is still going strong in 2021.
If we are to ever stand a chance of slowing down this murder & mayhem and the unnecessary suffering, degradation, & humiliation of the overwhelming majority of mankind, it’s imperative that we study & learn the lessons of history.
“We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class of necessity in every society, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.”
― Woodrow Wilson (28th president of the U.S.)
I honestly wish I could paint a more optimistic history for you my friend but if I’m not to become the enemy which I’m railing against, burying my head in the sand is not an option. So, onward & upward. The official “Know Nothing Party” is an American phenomenon & occurred about 170 years ago.
In brief, they were anti-Catholic, anti-Irish, anti-immigration, populist and xenophobic. And to be completely honest, they had some positive aspects i.e., some factions were anti-slavery. I seized upon the name because of the Trump parallels in today’s America & I look for every opportunity to bash Trump & all those who support him! Perhaps a better title for this essay would be, “Trump & A Return to the Dark Ages.”
You decide for yourself which title is more fitting? The original Know Nothing Party believed there was a Catholic conspiracy to take over America (Trump sees a Muslim conspiracy), and it became the main alternative to the dominant Democratic Party. Irish immigrants were a central target because they were/are mostly Catholic.
They also called themselves the Native American Party or the “Order of the Star Spangled Banner.” Note Trump’s “America First” mantra & disguise for his “Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America” by Bertram Gross. “The key to Know Nothing success in 1854 was the collapse of the second party system.” I definitely see a parallel with not only the Republican party of today which has abandoned all pretense of civility, patriotism, or morality & today’s Democratic Party which betrayed the working class & the middle class and has become pretty much the lackeys of the corporate cockroaches.
Here’s a quote from a brilliant social, cultural, & political critic, Thomas Frank:
Donald Trump comes across as a kind of buffoon, the hair, the egotism. But there’s some canny political strategy here. His emphasis on trade, on NAFTA. It was Bill Clinton that did it, over the objections of organized labor, the voice of the working class. He ran a steam-roller over these people and got NAFTA done. That was the great betrayal. – Thomas Frank
Of course, we can’t nail it down to a single action but if you recall, Clinton’s “Crime bill,” effectively gut-punched millions of women on welfare, caused our prison population to explode to the point where the U.S. now leads the world in our incarceration levels, & he passed the dissolution of the Glass-Steagall Act which FDR established to separate common commercial banks where the 99% bank from the “Investment” banks the wealthy use to speculate with their money.
Surprise! The “Crash of 2008” & the government which the GOP hates so venomously, bailed the banks out but said, tough shit to the 99% who have to pay their taxes or go to prison. And our faux champion, Obama didn’t prosecute a single CEO of the dozens of Wall St. wolves who were behind the “crash” (code to hide the spooky word, “Depression.”) Clearly another corporate Democrat or what they euphemistically like to label, a “Conservative Democrat.” Sounds like an oxymoron to me?
Another parallel between the Know Nothings of 170 years ago & Trump’s base was their use of conspiracy theories to get the public riled-up & manipulate them in order to help his side or, the corporate/government backers. As for me, I still can’t wrap my head around the apparent popularity of Alex Jones for example & a good buddy of Trump’s? Jones is pure National Enquirer trash suitable only for lining your bird’s cage, yet Trump helps spread Jones’ evil shit like Jones claiming for countless shows that the massacre of all those poor, young grade schoolers in Sandy Hook was a hoax. How could any human being spit on the memories of all those parents’ children? Well as the old saying goes, birds of a feather flock together.
“The key to Know Nothing success in 1854 was the collapse of the second party system.” (Wikipedia entry)
Could the complete cowardice of the current GOP along with the spineless Democratic Party encapsulate our current economic stagnation & the possible coming civil war due to the extreme polarization? Are we going to see an even more violent form of Trumpism or a coming together of peace-loving people who believe in compassion for our neighbors?
“Nativism became a new American rage.” Ibid. We’ve all seen thousands of Trump ads declaring America First! i.e. We are the champions of the world & everyone knows it, etc. etc. etc.
“…The new party was populist and highly democratic, hostile to wealth, elites and to expertise. …the Know Nothing electorate was strongest in the poor districts.”
This is about where I start getting lost? I have been pondering throughout Trump’s reign of terror, how can so many of America’s poorest believe that this faux billionaire is their champion or even gives a shit about them? Why no hostility toward Trump, one of their declared enemies because of his supposed wealth & his garish display of wealth though he probably just spray-painted everything gold in his homes?
I think Trump made it okay for the worst among us to come out of their holes in the ground like cockroaches when the lights are turned off. Suddenly it was okay to be racist, a bigot, a male chauvinist, rude, crude, & lewd, xenophobic, stupid, conspiracy nut, bully, violent, greedy, hateful, fear mongering, etc. and even though millions of us are circling the toilet, as long as we have some scapegoats to blame all our troubles on, the game will go on.
Could it be that the more desperate one is financially, etc. the more desperate they are for some leader to make sense of it all for them & guide them/us back to the; “Make America Great Again” good ol’ days? But lest we forget, not necessarily so great for a good number of us. So, maybe this is why or partially why so many of those who Trump shits on, still love him? Because the rubes believe that as long as they’re White, they’re safe & they can prosper. The Hell with everyone else & especially with all the foreigners, Mexicans, Muslims, etc.
Ultimately, what connects the Know Nothings of 170 years ago with the willful ignoramuses of today is Authoritarianism. That is to say that in today’s America, Trump’s cult of the stupid & gullible no longer hide or are ashamed of their ignorance. In fact, they wear their stupidity proudly.
This is very perplexing because as I grew up, doing well in school, being well-read, & following current domestic & foreign affairs was the mark of a well-cultured person. In fact, I don’t believe I even heard the term, “anti-intellectual” until I was somewhere in my late 20s or early 30s? Moreover, I remember how embarrassed I felt when I first visited Europe in 1976 & met a guy two years younger than me who knew far more about American history, literature, philosophy, politics, etc. than I did and he was from Switzerland. Unlike most people though, I didn’t reject or attack him but started picking his brain i.e., asking him to recommend authors.
I basically just lamented this sad state of affairs over the years & have done what I can to try to inspire people to inform themselves but today in the year 2021, humanity is on a precipice overlooking the abyss of extinction & we’d damn well better take our education much more seriously or we can sit around our televisions & watch all that makes living & life worthwhile, disintegrate & disappear.
So long as the Trumps of this world are allowed to go on spewing hate, fear, & the glorification of the stupid, we are on the highway to Hell! Donny boy with the girly hands & his orangutang complexion has idolized authoritarians all his life & he has emulated them since his earliest days as a schoolyard bully. And Donny the Dunce first fell in love with authoritarians when his daddy would take him along to meet with his business partners in organized crime i.e., several of New York’s mafia bosses who ran the construction business & most notably controlled the cement industry which Fred Trump’s business relied upon.
Daddy Trump taught Jr. how to kiss ass with not only the Italian mob but also the city fathers who approved building permits, zoning regulations, etc. Of course, Jr., being the inveterate loser & dumb-shit, had to hone his lying skills as he failed in one business venture after another. And even with the $400,000,000 that daddy gave him which Jr. claimed was only $1,000,000 & his Italian mafia protectors & all the politicians that daddy had in his pocket, Donald the Dumb-fuck managed to lose it all.
Undeniably, you have to be pretty fuckin’ stupid to even fail when you own four casinos but once again, daddy dearest came to Jr.’s rescue & tried to save his son from his gross incompetence but the banks who gave Jr. loan after loan after loan because of dad’s co-signing for the loans, finally realized that giving Jr. any more loans was simply throwing their money down a dark hole of no return & wouldn’t loan Jr. another dime.
Enter the Russian mafia who needed someone or somewhere to launder their billions in dirty money from their drug running, human trafficking, & other businesses. And Jr. was the perfect “front man” for these sleazeballs & human excrement. Yep! The Russian mob noted for its extreme violence & their talent for intimidation & coercion, were only too happy to bribe Donald Duck, their “useful idiot,” & keep bleeding the Russian people by stealing countless billions from the Russian economy.
Maybe you can now begin to understand why Donny boy goes weak in the knees at the mere mention of his new daddy, Putin. Need I point out what an authoritarian Putin is? By-the-way, have you noticed Donny’s fondness for authoritarian “leaders” (what we used to more honesty call dictators) around the globe? Duterte in the Philippines, Erdogan in Turkey, MBS of Saudi Arabia, Bolsanaro of Brazil, President Xi of China who declared himself “president for life,” the freaky, little fat guy of North Korea, etc.
Furthermore, we mustn’t overlook what a key, critical role the “Christian” authoritarians in the fundamentalist & evangelical sects of America’s religious extremists played in bringing the plague of willful ignorance & hate crimes to America. Yeah, like the Taliban who terrorize the people of Afghanistan with their extremist interpretations of The Koran to normally peace-loving Muslims, America’s faux Christians intimidate & terrorize American women who have the audacity to believe they have the right to opt for an abortion.
Yep, America’s “Christian” Taliban have followed & preached a strict authoritarianism from the beginning of their pseudo preaching & claims to be loyal followers of Christ & his teachings. So, inciting their more radical followers to murder doctors who perform abortions, are defended as acts of devout believers. Just as the Muslims who strap bombs on themselves to kill as many non-believers as possible are praised as martyrs & devout believers of the Islam religion.
Once again, we witness the common bond or glue of these mindboggling acts of extreme violence & hatred is ignorance i.e., the Know Nothings of this world. And Trump was just the right, want to be authoritarian who came along at the right time in America’s political, economic, & cultural state of affairs.
The massive betrayal of the Democratic party & its selling out to Wall St. just like the Republican party earlier, created a vacuum into which Donald Duck swam. Trump, an aspiring authoritarian all his life who dreamed of being an Emperor for life whose personality & character commanded respect, salivated at the idea of becoming president. But Trump’s handlers i.e., PR advisers like Steve Bannon, knew that they couldn’t succeed without the “Christian” vote, so Mike Pence was the ideal vice-president for Trump’s administration.
Yep! Pence was perfect for the job, Hell, he wouldn’t even share a meal with a woman if his wife wasn’t present. He spent four years as Trump’s lapdog, kept his mouth shut, & the faux Christians prayed that something would happen to Trump so their “man,” Pence would become president of the United States. Of course, Trump had to promise the gullible, hateful, racist Christians that he would fight for prayer in school, complete ban against abortion, etc. would be his top priorities.
Obviously, these wolves in sheep’s clothing who call themselves Christians & swear that all human life is sacred, are oblivious to the hypocrisy they practice because their “love” only goes as far as the birth of a child. Then once the child is born, they support the politicians like Trump & the overwhelming majority of the GOP & the Dems who vote to slash or totally eliminate just about every single program that was established to help the poor, the working poor, & the middle class. Remember Bill Clinton’s omnibus crime bill?
The end result of this phony Christian piety is the fact that under Trump’s reign of terror & error, America, the supposedly most advanced nation on Earth suffered the greatest number of deaths due to the COVID pandemic we are experiencing because Donald Duck didn’t want the bad press to negatively affect his chance for a second term.
I’m sure Jesus & his dad are smiling down on all you “good Christians.” And oh well, so much for the sanctity of human life? You see, my imaginary reader, religions are based on superstitious fears. Imagine cavemen huddled around campfires in a cave with thunder & raging storms outside. They’re naturally scared, even terrified & they didn’t possess the scientific understanding back then to rationally explain the natural phenomenon that was scaring them, that we do today.
But in this day & age we have no such excuse. So, the authoritarians who only have two overriding goals, wealth & power, must scare us into submission with their 24/7 cable news outlets like Fox “news,” which is anything but legitimate news, fake posts on Facebook, etc.
The trouble is, two monumental realities we, as a species, are facing today & that no amount of propaganda or lies can make disappear are the destruction of our environment & climate and the ever-growing likelihood of mutually assured destruction from a nuclear exchange. And the mental midget & morally bankrupt miscreant who occupied the White House actually asked his advisors repeatedly why he couldn’t use the nuclear weapons at his command.
Do you remember the old adage, “What you don’t know can’t hurt you?” Well, in the authoritarian mindset —talk about an oxymoron—this is a truism because their fearless leader like Trump, knows all & he will protect them from evil. And just in case the people aren’t sufficiently stupid enough to fall for their propaganda, the billionaire corporate cockroaches have spent hundreds of millions, if not billions, in manipulating the public into believing that climate warming, the COVID pandemic, is all an elaborate hoax.
Do you recall the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in America & for how long Trump called it a hoax? If you’re still reading this essay at this point, my hunch is that you don’t need any further proof that the hoax is on all those who still serve in the army of Trump’s “Walking Dead.”
(John Trudell was the spokesman for A.I.M., the American Indian Movement)
The effort & love I have poured into writing this essay is in the hope that you share this with any of your family or friends who haven’t been totally lobotomized by falling for the evil charlatan who is still poisoning discourse concerning these critical threats.
Just open your eyes, mind, & heart America.
“So-called common sense is a fallacy that has been foisted on us by our culture of ideology (any ideology that wants to tell us what we should think and do) that prefers us to be stupid, ill-informed, and poor decision-makers. Common sense is even used as an ideological cudgel by conservatives in which so-called coastal elites lack sense and, as a result, are out of touch with “real Americans” who apparently have an abundance of common sense.” https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-power-prime/201107/common-sense-is-neither-common-nor-sense
Anti-Intellectualism in American Life by Richard Hofstadter
The Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto
Illiterate America by Jonathan Kozol
Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media by Edward Hermann & Noam Chomsky (my friend & the greatest living intellectual & friend of Humanity)
—Rob DeLoss, Gold Beach, OR November 2, 2021
P.S. Could it be that the “great” religion we refer to as Christianity is de facto based on anti-intellectualism or “Knowing Nothing?”
Pernicious; having a very harmful effect or influence
(dangerous, adverse, apocalyptic, detrimental, devastating, corrosive, do more harm than good, insidiousness, malicious, negatively, troublesome, unwholesome, kiss of death, murder, rogue state, unholy)
These are in no particular order & vary in terms of the degree or extent that they undermine the principles of social cohesion most of us are pursuing in the hope of survival as a species.
He was light-years ahead of most of us!
Civilization — John Trudell, whom I consider a sort of Native American Che Guevara summed this subject up concisely; “The Great Lie is that Civilization is not Civilized, it’s been the most bloodthirsty & brutalized system ever imposed on this planet. Or, if it does represent what Civilization is, then the Great Lie is Civilization is good for us.” And at the risk of greatly oversimplifying the novel, “The Lord of the Flies,” I posit that just beneath the veneer of this much abused word, “Civilization,” much, if not most of humanity can & has rapidly devolved into savagery many times over the centuries.
Democracy— America isn’t a true democracy & is actually supposed to be a Democratic Republic. Americans love to boast that we are the greatest Democracy on earth yet in the central tenet of what a democracy is i.e., a political system in which the people are represented by their elected political leaders, we fall shamefully far short. “Our” politicians represent the interests of their corporate masters & could give a shit less about the American public!
The “Business of America” is Fraud!
Free market— one of the most destructive myths we live under. “Our” government protects/shelters “American” corporations from truly open & free markets around the globe with protectionist policies & monopolies like Amazon, Walmart, etc. illegally & immorally swallow their smaller competitors.
The TRUTH from the world’s greatest living intellectual.
Work hard, and get a good education, & you have a good chance at a good career— need I point out how often those who have believed in this myth have been pushed aside & the job was given to people far less qualified but who had the right connection.</li>
Free trade— Yeah right! Again, “our” government protects its favorite corporations from free trade by placing unfair tariffs on foreign competitors & when another nation won’t let “our” corporate plunderers rape, pillage, & plunder their natural resources, we erect crippling trade sanctions against them & if that fails to deliver the desired result, we send our military forces in to force them into submission.</li>
Patriotism— this myth has killed more Americans perhaps than any other pernicious myth? We have been subjected to a relentless indoctrination over the decades & centuries designed to convince us that the corporate interests & the foreign policy aims of “our” government are one & the same as are ours i.e., the general public. Yeah right! So, all those corporations who shut down their factories in the U.S. to go overseas & pay their workers a dollar or two a day & force us into poverty or working at below subsistent wages here, are patriotic.
Corporate responsibility— Yep! Most of the largest, corporate conglomerates pay little to nothing in taxes & as they pollute our rivers, lakes, air, land, etc., they dub them “externalities” and pass the costs of the clean-ups on to us, the taxpayers.
Freedom of Speech— if you are wealthy enough & with the Supreme Court’s passage of their “Citizens United” decision, the corporate cockroaches can now legally spend as much as they want to influence the outcome of political elections. It used to be illegal & was considered a crime known as bribery.
Fairness & Equality— one of America’s most cherished myths i.e., in all matters whether legal, financial, etc., all citizens are treated fairly & equally. Yup! It doesn’t matter that a corporation which has hundreds of top-notch lawyers & we, as simple, working class citizens have only a public defender, we will be treated fairly & equally under the law.</li>
Free Press— if you actually believe that in a nation where six corporate conglomerates own 99% or better of all the media e.g., television, cable, Internet, radio, magazines, newspapers, books, etc., allows every American to voice his or her opinion, nothing I say here is going to dissuade you from believing this myth.
Health Care— the myth is that America has the greatest health care system in the world. In fact, we have the worst health care system in the so-called “advanced or developed nations.” A health care system built on a for profit model by definition is destined to fail & this is why Medical bills are the number one cause of homelessness in America.</li>
Law & Justice— the myth is that Justice in America is blind & therefore all citizens receive justice in our courts of law. Therefore, the rich criminals who hire lawyers at thousands of dollars per hour, receive the same “just” court decisions as those of us who can’t even afford the least expensive lawyers. Justice, like everything else in our corporate capitalist system, is up for sale to the highest bidder.
America is the defender & promoter of Freedom around the world— this holds true if you define freedom as being bombed back into the stone age, assassinating foreign leaders our corporate/political leaders don’t like, raping, pillaging, & plundering every nation we can convince our population is a national security threat to us, etc.
American history— unfortunately, most high school students seem to hate history & very few of us have ever even read or heard about our true history, not the corporate propaganda version of it we get in our textbooks. And as Santayana showed us, “Those who don’t know or understand/follow history, are condemned to repeat the mistakes of history.” (my paraphrasing) See Howard Zinn if you give a fuck?
War is Freedom— I’m not sure if these were George Orwell’s words but the propaganda & the outcome is the same i.e., as long as we remain at war, we are getting ever closer to true freedom (we can bomb our way to a true paradise on Earth)</li>
Whites or Caucasians are the Superior race— Yep! If you happen to have been brought up in one of our many, desperately poverty-stricken regions & there is no one to blame for your poverty other than your fellow victims who just happen to be another race. People gotta have someone else to blame for their misery so they don’t wake-up to the fact that it’s the corporate cockroaches who are behind the overwhelming majority of our misery, degradation, & suffering. And “Christian” preachers often play a major role in whipping-up racial hatred, violence, & lynchings.
America isn’t a nation of Class divisions like Great Britain for example— of course you must ignore the fact that we are under constant attack by the 1% but whenever we, the peasants, draw attention to the crimes of the rich, they cry, “The liberals & democrats are waging Class warfare against us!”
Equal Opportunity— one of my favorite myths. It doesn’t matter that your high school didn’t even offer subjects like trigonometry, physics, calculus, etc. when you apply for a position in a corporation that pays a handsome salary & the other job candidate graduated from a state of the art, top notch private academy, you both have an equal opportunity to get the job.
Law & Order are America’s foundation— the truth is that “Order,” rules supreme. Why? Because the wealthy’s homes, businesses, property, etc. must at all costs be protected from the violent masses who only want to destroy them & their property. So, if the cops have to break the law, maim & kill citizens who often don’t even see the inside of a courtroom, so be it!
Technology will save us— Yep! It doesn’t matter how much we pollute & destroy our planet; technology is the new religion & it will step-in at the right moment & save us from our colossal blunders. Therefore, Don’t Worry, Be Happy! And remember Zuckerberg’s promise when he started Facebook i.e. I just want to bring people together.</li>
Good triumphs over Evil— Of course! All one need do is take a cursory look back over human history & bear in mind minor, little exceptions to the rule like the “Christian” Crusades, the burning of witches, the Spanish Inquisition, the “Christian” missionaries spreading of the Gospel, the near total genocide of the Native American Indians or Indigenous Peoples, Hiroshima & Nagasaki, etc.
A college education should be towards a good job— if you accept this as valid/worthy goal or purpose for going to college, fine. But don’t call it college or university, it’s a glorified trade school. A true university education seeks to inspire us to take our educations into our own hands, to learn how to learn, to develop our critical/analytical thinking skills to help empower ourselves & defend others and fulfill our truly patriotic responsibility of participating in our political process, decision-making, etc. (by-the-way, if the liberal arts & the humanities are “useless escapes” from reality, why do many, if not most of the 1% kids study them?)
The School of Athens (Philosophy’s foundation)
Men are the final Authority— Clearly men have done a great job over the centuries! Yeah, No! Of course, the politicians have made frequent & steady use of this myth i.e., winning support from the Evangelical “Christians” as long as the government is backing a “Christian.” Doesn’t matter if he’s a regular violator of Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount,” which the hypocrites claim to strive to live by like Trump. As long as a candidate swears fealty to their brand of “Christianity,” they’ll send their “Christian” soldiers into battle against the Humanists, etc.</li>
There is only One God! — the most vocal “Christians” in America unfortunately get far too much attention but their absolute faith/belief in the Authority & Righteousness of their Crusade against all the atheists, non-believers, humanists, liberals, etc. makes them truly dangerous! And they are blind to the parallels between their beliefs & practices and those of the Taliban. Both the extremists in Christianity who believe it’s righteous to kill a doctor who performs abortions & a Taliban leader who believes it’s righteous of him to have a woman stoned to death for kissing, or some other infraction. Closed minds reject everything outside their spiritual training or anything that contradicts their beliefs. But the more educated a person becomes, the more they begin to realize that no one has the corner on the Truth!</li>
National Security— this is the grandaddy of pernicious myths & the pyramid of lies, manipulations, & theft that the military/industrial/Congressional complex hide behind. It was recently revealed that the U.S. has spent over $20 Trillion dollars on “Defense” since 9/11 but the “con-servatives” are fighting tooth & nail against the proposed $3.5 trillion to help fight the effects of climate disaster caused by the corporate cockroaches & war profiteers. The American public’s health, education, & welfare to say nothing of our nation’s crumbling infrastructure that the corporate cockroaches rely on to conduct what businesses that are left in the U.S. You could fill a set of encyclopedias with the history of this tragic myth & its deadly harvest!</li>
Fear & Hate are Normal— they are a part of us & they are the easiest of human emotions to manipulate & Facebook has become a trillion-dollar corporation by preying on this. We are indoctrinated with countless messages of fear & hate in the history we are taught in school, televangelists like Pat Robertson, the nightly news, the “social media,” throughout our lives & Trump has fanned the flames of hatred & prejudice to such an extent that we may be on the verge of a Civil War in America?</li>
Greed is natural, normal, & okay— No! It is not! People are social beings & we need one another and what’s natural & normal is for us to care about one another, our neighbors, our countrymen, & all of humanity. And this is what Jesus preached in his “Sermon on the Mount,” but the weak “Christians,” who easily fall under the sway of their preachers of fear & hate have somehow selectively forgotten these few admonitions of the “Son of God” whom they pray to?</li>
We are Powerless— we have been brainwashed into believing & accepting this deadly perspective from childhood on i.e., that’s just the way it is & there’s no use trying to change things. If we truly believed in this, all progress would come to a complete standstill. All the positive things humanity has created i.e., elimination of deadly diseases, right to vote, technology, flight to the moon, etc. would have never come about so don’t fall for this sucker’s game the powers that be try to control us with, stand-up on your own hind legs & scream, Fuck You!
The Earth’s resources are infinite— Yeah right! That is until they aren’t. So, the mighty Petroleum conglomerates will keep on sucking every last ounce of oil out of the ground until they’re forced to turn to a renewable source of energy to fuel our cars, our ships, our planes, etc. & Mother Gaia where we go for aesthetic sustenance will have become one global wasteland so bleak & hideous that we will only venture out of our cubicle habitats when absolutely necessary.
Progress must be allowed to march on— another subterfuge in that it’s the centuries old maxim of laissez-faire capitalism i.e., government should leave business decisions to businessmen & not regulate business except in terms of the absolutely bare-minimum requirements such as using the police to protect the property of the wealthy.
Fate & Destiny— these are two of the most abused & hence cynical or pessimistic terms used against us by the rich & powerful. I thought this would be a good place to share a quote by humanity’s greatest living champion, Noam Chomsky.
“The Master of Those Who Know” (Dante in reference to Aristotle)
Truth is an Illusion— given Trump’s reign of terror, fear, & hatred, this would seem to be a truism (one too obvious for mention), but Trump actually did us a favor to some extent because he reminded us of how critically important “Truth” is. The world has witnessed one of the most ignorant world “leaders” of the past century or better in Trump, but the Power Elite found Trump a “useful idiot” because he did such a great job dividing us & distracting us while Trump delivered a massive tax giveaway to his masters & pretended to be “Draining the Swamp.” I argue that “Truth” is perhaps the most elusive concept mankind has wrestled with from the beginning of recorded history, but it is obtainable if one is strong enough & sincere in his/her struggle to discover it? “A free-thinker – someone who’s mind is not bound by any chain, free to explore the great abyss unhindered by fear, emotion, or ideology.
In reality, it is outside the box free-thinkers, who are the engines of social change and ingenuity, often leading society into new directions not yet seen before. They represent a voice of authenticity and uniqueness in a world that is all too filled with conformity and linear thinking. While the achievements are applauded by future generations, in the present they are often looked down upon, feared, laughed at, and even seen as crazy for their unique perspectives on life. It is often a lonely road for the truly unleashed free-thinker.” https://wakeup-world.com/2016/09/28/the-lonely-road-of-the-free-thinker/
Philanthropy & Charity will save the poor— as the brilliant author, Anand Giridharadas, detailed in his book, “Winners Take All,” the super wealthy like to pretend that they can fix our broken, economic system by donating huge sums to charities & if the government will just leave them alone i.e., not regulate or tax them unfairly, everything will be fine. These are little more than PR ploys/deceptions to make the wealthy look sympathetic & compassionate and they are tax write-offs, but the wealthy won’t stop screwing their employees, polluting the environment, or stop their illegal & immoral business practices because they want those millions & billions to keep on flowing into their bank accounts.</li>
We can win the “War Against Drugs” — I have no idea of how much money the government has wasted on this absurd idea ever since Nixon got it going but it has to be up there in the trillions like in their “War Against Terrorism.” And the hypocrisy is breathtaking given its scope. First of all, the govt has to stop protecting Big Pharma at all costs i.e., we subsidize their research & development on drugs but when the drugs that were developed using our tax dollars start to become profitable, all the profits go to Big Pharma & they’re allowed to gouge the public all they want. Secondly, the Justice Dept has to stop prosecuting the poor, the working class, & the minorities so harshly but allowing middle class whites to get off with a relative slap on the wrist. And the C.I.A. & any other agencies involved in the smuggling of cocaine into L.A. in the 1980s by the tons should be prosecuted to the full letter of the law like their victims in South Central L.A. and be sent to prisons like Pelican Bay for life for all the families they destroyed. We should educate not incarcerate the victims!</li>
Our military will protect us— Hands down, this is the biggest scam “our govt.” has been running ever since WWII. As I mentioned earlier, we spent over $20 trillion just since 9/11 so who knows how much went down the drain from the intervening half century? Chuck Spinney who was a financial analyst in the Pentagon for decades has testified again & again before Congress about the staggering waste & fraud in the military budget, but nothing changes. Meanwhile, the generals who leave the service & become consultants for “Defense Contractors,” T.V. journalists, etc. & become very wealthy. And these endless & unjustified wars that never end just keep creating more terrorists because our “Smart” bombs, etc. keep killing thousands & thousands of innocents. So, we spend more on our military than the next dozen, maybe all the countries who have a military combined. Yet we are the most fearful citizens on the planet? Talk about getting ripped-off! And the “Fair and Balanced,” cable “news” network, Fox, keeps raking in millions because they are the de facto Fear & Hate channel & don’t get anywhere close to deserving to be called a News organization! They keep stoking fear & hate like their sociopathic spokesman, Trump of the Duck Dynasty Klan.</li>
Capitalism is the only economic system that works— this is obviously a very broad scope/subject of which I am not qualified to speak authoritatively about but I will note that there is a corporation/company in Spain which is owned completely by the employees of the company. They all have an equal voice they share at all business meetings. Or what about economic systems like in Scandinavia which are a sort of Socialist/Capitalist blending? Yeah, the citizens pay much higher taxes than we in the U.S., but they have universal health care, top notch education, housing, etc. One thing is abundantly clear, our economic system is monstrously unfair!
America is always on the side of the poor, the oppressed—this was perhaps the greatest shock as I began to read books by Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, listen to KPFK radio station in L.A., & had a great history professor at CSULB in the early 1980s who told us that the U.S. has & continues to support butcherous dictators around the globe. (if you’re curious, I have quite a lot of resources to point you towards?)
Indigenous Peoples are savages— What do you call dropping two Atomic bombs, Hiroshima & Nagasaki, & obliterating a couple hundred thousand people & causing the slow, painful death that takes years to kill hundreds of thousands more?
Love & Peace will save us— I refer to this as New Age Nonsense. I feel that New Agers are basically carryovers from the 60s Hippies of which I’m proud to claim to be. But they have gone too far towards the Buddhist & other ideas about peace. The dangerous ones have pressed us & Mother Gaia about as far as they could. Climate Ecoside & the Perpetual War mentality of the so-called Master class is a Clear & Present Danger not only to us, the “chosen ones,” but to humanity itself! This means that sometimes when things become so dire & you’re forced to either take action or sit silently by & watch the man-made apocalypse come true.
Peace is a Pipe-Dream— this may seem to contradict what I just said about the “New Age” philosophy but not really. We must be at least able to imagine a truly peaceful world if we are to ever attain it. Of course, it’s an almost totally uphill battle but I, for one, refuse to sit by silently as the racists, the ignorant, the vicious, etc. threaten & terrorize any of those groups who Trump turned his fascist & feebleminded lynch mobs on. So yes, I believe in Peace, I dream of Peace, & I try to practice Peace as much as possible but if a serious crime like rape or physical assault or a serious verbal assault, I try to step-up to home base & declare, You’re Out! (and kick their ass!)
Women are Inferior— I know this is absolute rubbish! My beloved wife, Jeri, disliked it from the beginning of our relationship when I’d refer to her as my Rock of Gibraltar. But the 32 years we spent together, separated, divorced, only proved me right. She was far stronger than me psychologically, handling finances, etc.
Ignorance is Bliss— this myth has always puzzled me deeply? Isn’t this a way of saying, I’m too lazy to make the effort to enlighten myself? A grand cop-out on life! I’m not responsible for any or all of the terrible things going on in America. I pay my bills & mind my own business. I’m a loyal & patriotic American citizen. All I need to know is how to do my job to the best of my abilities, follow Jesus’ teaching, & raise my family. Sorry! These people get no sympathy from me when calamity hits them. Ignorance makes you vulnerable & unable to defend your family!
Do these “Christians” who ignore Trump’s transgressions use “selective memory?”
I could go on & on with absurd & nonsensical myths, but I have to end this essay somewhere so here is as good a place as any. A gentleman, Charles Morgan, who used to deliver a daily, 15-minute essay on KPFK in L.A. always signed-off with one word i.e., “Persevere!” And that is what I hope humanity does in general & all compassionate people do specifically.
The con in conservatism is hidden in plain sight. They are con artists.
a person adept at lying, cajolery, or glib self-serving talk.
a person adept at swindling by means of confidence games; swindler.
“There are few genuine conservatives within the U.S. political system, and it is a sign of the intellectual corruption of the age that the honorable term ‘conservatism’ can be appropriated to disguise the advocacy of a powerful, lawless, aggressive and violent state, a welfare state for the rich dedicated to a lunatic form of Keynesian economic intervention that enhances state and private power while mortgaging the country’s future.”
a: the principles and policies of a Conservative party
b: the Conservative party
2a: disposition in politics to preserve what is established
b: a political philosophy based on tradition and social stability, stressing established institutions, and preferring gradual development to abrupt changespecifically:such a philosophy calling for lower taxes, limited government regulation of business and investing, a strong national defense, and individual financial responsibility for personal needs (such as retirement income or health-care coverage)
3: the tendency to prefer an existing or traditional situation to change
The only constant in the American con job called “Conservatism,” is their continual search for ever more ways to cut the taxes of the 1% & to rob the 99% who must pay whatever tax the con artists set for the rest of us or face prison. Here is my overview of the bleak present & the nightmarish future if we continue to allow these thieves to thrive.
Let’s begin with “The Great Depression,” which caused unemployment to rise to 25% of the work force & forced millions of fathers & husbands to leave their families in search of work & a run on banks. We can thank the elite of Wall St. for it as well as the 2008 Crash that brought the entire planet’s economic system to the brink of the abyss. Isn’t deregulation grand?
For a moment at the height of the 2008 Crash, Wall St. was really scared & thought they were going to prison, but Obama quickly reassured them that once again, Uncle Sam would protect his greedy & self-destructive children from the consequences of their insatiable greed.
Yep! America’s captive citizens i.e., the 99% would be forced to bail-out their masters & overlords again & the Wolves of Wall St. could go right back to deregulating every law that slowed-down or got in the way of their raping of the American public & their theft of the U.S. Treasury.
Well, as you can imagine, the public finally had enough of the raping, pillaging, & plundering done to them by the rich & raised so much Hell that F.D.R. woke-up & passed the “New Deal.” Of course, the rich were very upset about this dividing up of the national economic pie that helped the poor. As far as the con-artists are concerned, the government exists to protect the rich, not the poor. And the con party i.e., the Republicans have been very busy little cockroaches ever since the New Deal was struck in their efforts to turn back the clock to the good old days of little to no regulations.
The Powell Memo (AKA the Powell Manifesto)
The Powell Memo was first published August 23, 1971
Introduction
“In 1971, Lewis Powell, then a corporate lawyer and member of the boards of 11 corporations, wrote a memo to his friend Eugene Sydnor, Jr., the Director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The memorandum was dated August 23, 1971, two months prior to Powell’s nomination by President Nixon to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Powell Memo did not become available to the public until long after his confirmation to the Court. It was leaked to Jack Anderson, a liberal syndicated columnist, who stirred interest in the document when he cited it as reason to doubt Powell’s legal objectivity. Anderson cautioned that Powell, “Might use his position on the Supreme Court to put his ideas into practice… in behalf of business interests.”
Though Powell’s memo was not the sole influence, the Chamber and corporate activists took his advice to heart and began building a powerful array of institutions designed to shift public attitudes and beliefs over the course of years and decades. The memo influenced the creation of the Heritage Foundation, the Manhattan Institute, the Cato Institute, Citizens for a Sound Economy, Accuracy in Academe, and other powerful organizations. Their long-term focus began paying off handsomely in the 1980s, in coordination with the Reagan Administration’s “hands-off business” philosophy.” ”
Talk about understatement? Reagan went far beyond a “hands-off business” philosophy & basically opened the vault door to the Federal Treasury declaring to the corporate cockroaches, Step right up friends, gorge yourselves to your heart’s delight! And he signaled this change with his first act as president, the firing of the air-traffic controllers for life for daring to go on strike against the extremely dangerous conditions of our overcrowded skies.
Reagan went even further in his grand con dubbed, “Trickle-down.” A “theory,” that if the government lowered the tax rate of the corporations & their obscenely wealthy owners & CEOs, they would expand their businesses & either hire more workers or rehire the ones they’d laid off.
Pissing on the Public!
Naturally, the con artist class didn’t do this but instead just increased their closing down of factories in America & moving overseas where they could pay workers a couple of bucks per day & not be bothered with environmental regulations, employee rights, etc.
But like that T.V. ad for the “Energizer bunny,” they never stop in proclaiming the success & genius of their Trickle-down rationale. And 40 years later, they cling to their pack of lies (trickle-down economics) as fervently as those televangelist preachers on T.V. who fleece their sheep so they can live the jet-set lifestyles they’ve grown accustomed to.
Furthermore, ever since I can remember, the Democratic party has been dubbed, “The tax & spend party.” Once again, it’d be funny were it not for its deadly effects on all of us not born with the proverbial “silver spoon in our mouths.” You see, what the cons fail to disclose is that they too are the tax & spend political party except they continually shift the tax burdens to the poor, the working class, & the middle class. By cutting taxes on the uber rich & spending trillions on the perpetual wars initiated by themselves via the Pentagon “budget.”
And because the vulture class owns the “Defense industry,” they de facto are legally stealing from the 99% & moving the money from their bank accounts, in the form of taxes, into the off-shore accounts of the filthy rich.
Admittedly, I can’t point to a smoking gun that proves my accusations so this may come across as “conspiracy thinking,” but if you step back & look at the big picture, it sure is strange how things just seem to fall into place for the status quo or the power elite—see C. Wright Mills 1956 book.
Undeniably, the introduction of “Fox news,” to our national airwaves was/is a tremendous boon to the insane ideology of the con artists. Personally, I could not believe that Fox was even allowed to pretend to be a news program?
Demonstratively, Fox “news,” has served as a stenographer to the con artist ideology since its inception in 1996. And it became so obvious that when the Coward from Crawford became president, his president of Vice, Dickhead Cheney, would call the sexual predator, Roger Ailes, the chairman & CEO of Fox with his daily “talking points,” which Ailes would disguise as “news.”
Consequently, America invaded Iraq (along with help from The New York Times & its star reporter, Judith Miller) and I don’t feel it’s necessary to point out the tragic consequences of that little mishap, or do I?
Moving along memory lane, another noble endeavor in the agenda of the con artists is to privatize absolutely every resource in the world. Yep! And that goes for the very water we need to live. Too far-fetched you say? Case in point, the sweet corporation, Nestle.
“Last week, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality did the unthinkable; they ruled in favor of Nestle in their controversial bid to double the amount of water they pump for next to nothing and sell back to us. Make no mistake, the amount of water that Nestle will now be taking qualifies as a harmful water withdrawal according to MDEQ’s own flawed water withdrawal assessment tool. For years, Clean Water Action and our members and allies have been fighting against water privatization, and this is a giant step back in that fight as well.
The arguments around this are simple, and a resounding 99% of the comments that MDEQ received on Nestle’s permit application agree: the waters of the Great Lakes are public trust waters. That means they are there for the use and enjoyment of the people of Michigan. Not for the greedy hands of corporate profiteers and their multi-billion dollar foreign companies like Nestle. It is frustrating to see the agency that has been entrusted to protect our most precious resource neglect their duty and become a doormat for private corporations. Frustrating, but not entirely surprising. One of the biggest problems here is the fact that in a rational world, DEQ allowing this would be surprising. Instead, we have a DEQ headed up by someone whose career was in public relations for the oil and gas industry, who made a name for herself spinning news for BP after they destroyed the Gulf of Mexico, and someone who has zero interest in, or understanding of the importance of, protecting 20% of the world’s fresh water.” https://cleanwateraction.org/2018/04/09/nestle-wins-and-our-great-lakes-lose
Oh, by-the-way, you may recall the trivial story about Flint, Michigan & how the con artists cut-off the once healthy water supply from Lake Huron via the Detroit water supply. So, the people of Flint were forced to drink water from the toxic dump known as the Flint river. The powers that be reasoned that because the majority of Flint’s residents are Black, they could get away with their crimes against humanity. And fortunately, Obama, the darling of the Democratic party helped out in the charade/façade by holding a press conference in Michigan & pretending to take a drink of water supposedly from the Flint water supply.
Yep! Sorry if I burst your ideological bubble, but the democrats are in many respects, just slightly less guilty than the con artist party in their naked exploitation & screwing of the American public.
Another example in the never-ending sea of corruption, death, dread, & despair caused by the bottomless pit of human greed under the heading of “privatization,” is the Internet.
Yep! Step right up suckers! Witness yet another one of the wonders of the free market. The research that spanned decades in the development of the Internet was funded by us, the coerced taxpayers, via the Pentagon’s “budget” (there’s an oxymoron for you). And a good chunk of that research was done at M.I.T. but when they discovered that they could make a fortune by selling advertising on the Internet, sorry citizens, it’s time to privatize the Internet & nope, you, the public, don’t get a share of the profits & in fact, we’re going to double-fuck you by charging you ever greater rates to connect to the Internet you already paid for.
Pursuing this further, the propagandists, better known as the P.R. industry (Public Relations) realized that they needed to come up with a new, catchy con-phrase & chose, “Neo liberalism,” as their new camouflage. Moreover, this had the added benefit of confusing the public by using the word, “liberal,” which would undoubtedly help dupe the yokels into thinking it would benefit them.
I should also add another prime example of how “privatization” is sounding the death knell of unions in America. The U.S. Postal Service is one of only a handful of unions left & the evil geniuses of the con artist class warfare assault, claimed that the postal service is going bankrupt because they don’t have enough funding to pay their employees for 75 years into the future.
You see, it’s fine that the banks, hedge fund companies, giant insurance corporations like A.I.G. were leveraged to such extremes that one downturn in their financial cycles could not only bankrupt the corporations involved, it could cause the collapse of our entire financial system.
But being the concerned & conscientious class they are, they were determined to save our federal system of delivering mail for the public. Could it be that their true agenda is to force the public to pay whatever UPS & other corporations want for the delivery of their mail?
However, every now & then there are glitches in the otherwise sound ideology of the “Conservative” worldview. But we’re asked to overlook these minor setbacks. My intellectual & moral hero, guide, and friend, Noam Chomsky points out that these are the times the bankrupt ideology of these moral midgets begs the “Nanny State,” i.e., the federal government, to rescue them.
Remember, whenever the federal government helps the poor, the working & the middle class, it’s Socialism or even Communism but not when it helps the Con-servatives. Noam succinctly calls it, Socialism for the Wealthy & Capitalism for the rest of us.
Speaking of Socialism, the con artists hope you never read about & definitely not visit the Scandinavian countries like Norway, Finland, Sweden, & Denmark because in just about every standard of living or quality of life measure, life in these countries is head & shoulders above & beyond that of life in America.
By-the-way, I have visited Denmark & Sweden and I was blown away by their standard of living. Their citizens, no matter what their economic status, enjoy clean, well maintained apts. & houses, nutritious food, free education up through & including a doctorate from university, best health care systems in the world, low crime rates, etc. etc. etc.
And as I have been arguing ever since my first trip to Europe in 1976, I wouldn’t mind paying what appears to be an outrageous percentage of their wages in taxes because all their needs are well taken care of so what money you have left is like pocket money you can spend on whatever luxury items you want.
Of course, the con artists can only repeat their mantra of, their citizens are taxed to death. Just ignore the facts like if you or a loved one gets a serious disease in the U.S., Americans often end-up losing their homes, their pensions, their savings, & find themselves kicked to the curb i.e., homeless.
Another example of the contradictions & hypocrisies of the heartless reptilians that they hope you never reflect on is the fact that no, they aren’t self-made millionaires. As usual, we, the taxpayer slaves pay for America’s infrastructure, not those cowardly corporate cockroaches who act like their shit doesn’t stink.
Highways, streets, bridges, ports, airports, etc. are all paid for by the 99% while the wealthiest pay little to none in taxes & many of them actually receive tax rebates in the millions, if not billions. Answer this, how would these crime lords deliver their products, receive the raw materials or parts necessary for their businesses, protect their businesses from violent criminals, etc. if it weren’t for the “Nanny State,” paying for the very infrastructure necessary for them to stay in business?
I know, just another one of those annoying facts that the con artists dismiss so glibly whenever it suits their line of “reasoning.” Remember Kellyanne Conway’s “alternate facts?”
Speaking of Kellyanne, Trump’s spokeswoman, when you get right down to it, Trump is really little more than a used car salesman with even less scruples, morals, or ethics than the average used car salesman, politician, or lawyer.
A Con who should spend life in Pelican Bay with a big, black guy named Bubba!
Do you know that before Trump would sign the contract to play the big cheese on “The Apprentice,” he demanded that it be written into his contract that every time his name was mentioned/spoken on the series, they had to say, Trump, the Billionaire? What does that tell you about his self-confidence? Note the term, “confidence man,” when talking about the myriad cons that con artists pull on their victims.
Conversely, I feel it’d be constructive to point out some of the things that those Satanic Socialists have infested our holy land of the free with at this stage of my essay;
(this is only a partial list)
The military & defense establishment
Public libraries
The police
The fire dept
Student loans & grants
Garbage collection
War
Farm subsidies
The C.I.A.
The F.B.I.
Congressional Health Care
Polio vaccine
EPA
Social Security
Museums
Public Schools
Jail & Prison system
Corporate & Business SUBSIDIES!
Veteran’s (VA) Health Care
Public parks
All elected government officials
Food stamps
Sewer system
Medicare
Court system
G.I. bill
Hoover dam
State & City Zoos
IRS
Free lunch program
The Pentagon
Medicaid
FDA
Health Care for 9/11 Rescue Workers
Swine Flu vaccine
Disability Insurance (SSDI)
Town/State run beaches
Corporate bailouts/welfare
State construction (fixing potholes, erecting buildings, etc.)
Unemployment Insurance
City/Metro buses
WIC (assistance for women & children—food, health, education
State Snow Removal
PBS
CDC (Center for Disease Control)
Welfare
Public Street Lighting
FEMA
Public Defenders
Amtrak
NPR
The Dept. of Homeland Security
OSHA
State & National Monuments
U.S. Dept of Agriculture (USDA)
Government Scholarships
Dept of Health & Human services
Census Bureau
Dept of Energy
Customs & Border Protection
Dept of Education
Secret Service
Peace Corps
Dept of Justice
National Weather Service
The White House
Government
Law
All of these institutions, programs, policies, etc. have one thing in common & that is Socialism. They are paid for collectively by those of us who pay our taxes. In brief, if you use, like, or rely on any of these, you aren’t totally opposed to socialism & perhaps you’d care to discuss the ideas a bit before dismissing it without even reading a simple list like this one?
You see, the con artists want us to believe that they i.e., the rich, the successful, the celebrities, etc. did it all on their own & never had any help from anyone.
This is clearly one of the most significant “Big Lies,” & Trump was overqualified in this area. So was his Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos. Now, I have to admit that it’s sometimes fun to follow a conspiracy thread for a bit but as my mentor, Noam Chomsky reminds us, the powers that be are happy when we’re chasing our tails with these conspiracy theories because, it distracts us from the serious shit they’re doing in the present tense. (my colorful choice of a few adjectives)
I’ve been an avid reader & learner since kindergarten, and I’ve been a student & educator of one kind or another for most of my life, so I take education very seriously.
I can’t prove it, but I’ve been looking long & hard and have to rely on my gut & intuition. Whether the 1% have devised an amazingly successful method & program to purposely “dumb us down,” is true or not, the critical lesson we all need to learn is to trust ourselves more & become more suspicious of “authorities.”
Betsy de Vos was the appropriate Stepford Wife to play the role of Secretary of Education. Her family’s wealth came from the legal pyramid scheme known as Amway & some other “business.” And she was good at pretending to be a devout Christian.
This, in my opinion, is why De Vos pushed Charter Schools. In Charter Schools Christianity—or their interpretation of it—is the core of their “curriculum.” And what is at the core of the conservative Christian community?
Authoritarianism!
God is the top boss, then the preacher, priest, minister, rabbi, etc. who tell “their” people what God said, wants, believes, feels, etc. So, girls & women are here to serve men, shut-up, stay barefoot & pregnant in the kitchen!
You may notice a similarity here between authoritarians & dictators? Does that sound like Democracy, Freedom, Equality to you? If you review history briefly, I believe that ever since Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, the Church & the State have fought over “control” of the people.
Whether the authoritarians claim God as their foundation or “to serve the public,” we must be on guard against their “common sense,” or “everybody knows,” pearls of wisdom. If you dig beneath the surface a little, you’ll usually find the corporate cockroach’s slime-trails in short order.
No, I don’t search for an idyllic utopia where everything & everyone is perfect. That’d be boring anyway. I simply dream of what Bucky Fuller proclaimed was reasonable & within reach. And that rascal, that traitor to his class, F.D.R. had the audacity to read out loud to the American public:
All in all, the so-called Conservatives have nearly destroyed our economy twice & caused so much physical, mental, & emotional pain that many Americans have resorted to suicide. Are humiliation, degradation, & despair to be our constant companions in this life we are told is the highest standard of living in the world?
Of course, it’d be wonderful if I could sum it all up for you in a nice & neat little package with a bow on it, but you know how little people value things that are free & they didn’t have to work for them.
We all have to pay our dues in terms of educating ourselves. Nobody else can do it for us. Many argue that experience is the best teacher. Unfortunately, we don’t have that luxury when it comes to global warming or nuclear annihilation.
The con artist corporate cockroaches can only look forward as far as the next accounting cycle & that myopic perspective poses a very real threat to our survival as a species. So, my friend, you can bury your head in the sand but just because you deny the facts, they don’t cease to exist.
Trump has perfected the art of denial & lives in his bubble of Big Macs & big breasted blondes who speak only when spoken to. And the fact that a third of the American public is so stupid that many of them are now drinking horse & cattle deworming chemicals shows us how far we’ve fallen down that rabbit hole of absolute lunacy.
The pandemic we are living through or existing in has shown me that we, especially in the U.S., had better dam well become Socialists at least in the sense of caring about one another’s welfare. Because if we don’t, this mutation of the COVID virus, nuclear conflagration, or global warming could very well be humanity’s last hurrah!
Persevere!
P.S. And fuck you who call yourselves Christians & love Trump. Jesus was a Socialist!
The Spirit of the 1960s we so desperately need to recapture.
In our “social environment,” here in the U.S., it seems that being “social” or “interactive” with one another no longer requires reading & most definitely not writing. And when I check on the “readability level” of the essays I post on my blog, I usually get critiques of my writing as too difficult, too many big words, not being a trending subject, etc.
So, I’m destined to never be socially acceptable or popular in this society of the shallow & superficial. Therefore, I have resigned myself to writing for myself. And if a writer craves celebrity & wealth in such a milieu, he or she must abandon any pretense of seriousness or quality in their work.
You must also devote as much time, if not more, to jumping through all the hoops the “authorities” tell us we must do i.e., write to the level of a Bart Simpson or a Donald Trump. Quantity is worshipped & Quality is dismissed as “elitist.” And as much as I detest the Cro-Magnon world we live in; I still persist in my efforts to communicate.
“The last patriot
Given all the invisible chains that are choking those of us who truly care about the state of the world, we have little choice, and we must forge ahead or simply roll over & play dead. And I posit that our steady lowering of standards in nearly all areas of cultural significance, has brought us to this cultural wasteland.
So, let me attempt to explain what I mean by fascism, a subject that has many interpretations. In a nutshell, fascism is about control & authority. And this is why millions of self-professed “Christians,” are de facto fascists & love Trump. They completely ignore their idol, Jesus Christ’s “Sermon on the Mount,” with its clear principles as to how Christians should live their lives because they desire above all else, power over all of us. Not unlike the Islamic fundamentalists like the Taliban, who silence their intellectual critics.
Onward Christian Soldiers!
It absolutely blows my mind that the 40 million or so of America’s Trump cult don’t or can’t see or perhaps aren’t even aware that we fought WWII because we were opposed to the tenets or practices of the fascists. And as some scholars argue, we, the Western world, would’ve lost WWII if it weren’t for the Communists of Russia who bore the brunt on the Nazis aggression. I believe Russia lost something like 20 million citizens.
Not in America, right?
Another inconvenient truth is the fact that many, if not most of America’s corporate elite, were enamored of the fascists because they showed their citizens/employees how to behave in the workplace i.e., keep your mouth shut & do as your told. Do a Google search of Major General Smedley F. Butler of the USMC if you doubt my words?
A True Patriot!
Several of our largest corporate owners tried to persuade General Butler to lead a coup against our government because he commanded such respect from our armed forces.
“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”
― Smedley D. Butler, War is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America’s Most Decorated Soldier
“Fascism should rightly be called corporatism, as it is the merger of corporate and government power.”
― Benito Mussolini
Trump’s spiritual guide
I have been writing about what I’ve dubbed, The Corporate Cockroaches for over 30 years & would be more than happy to point anyone interested in the subject to dozens of writers who have given us a wealth of insights into how these vile creatures have infested the social fabric of not only America but the entire world.
We, as Americans who love to boast of our freedoms, democracy, etc. should note how many of our domestic terrorists like The Proud Boys, etc. who participated in the attempted coup of our government on January 6th, are cops & soldiers. And talk about the Theatre of the Absurd, the propaganda masters are labeling dissenters against the authoritarians’ assault on our democracy, as terrorists or as Trump calls them, “the enemy of the people.”
The parallels between George Orwell’s dystopian nightmare world of “1984,” and what Trump has done to sow the seeds of hatred & violence in America are numerous & truly frightening. And Trump knew that by waging his war against the press & intelligence, he was strengthening his “base of the willfully ignorant.”
He resorts to bullying tactics when he can’t defend his position i.e. yelling, name calling, threatening, etc.
And no, Trump wasn’t an aberration, he merely capitalized on the sad state of public education in the U.S. & his war on Science or intellect in general, empowered his Duck Dynasty lemmings & emboldened them to the scary point that millions of them refuse to wear a mask, social distance, or get vaccinated. I submit that public enemy number one in America is willful ignorance i.e., people who choose to remain ignorant & are actually proud of their stupidity.
Ignorance is bliss?
Tragically, there are kernels of truth in some of Trump’s assault on Reason, but they are cherry picked for their ability to confuse & distract the public from the machinations of the 1% who are the de facto rulers of America. I may be veering off course a bit so let me return to the early warning signs of fascism by offering a few examples of how they are rapidly turning our fledgling democracy into a totalitarian state. You might note Trump’s fondness for authoritarians—what we used to call Dictators. Putin, Duterte, Bolsanaro, Erdowan, etc.
Nationalism—display the U.S. flag everywhere & at every public event i.e., pic of Trump hugging the flag. Obviously to distract people from his blatant disrespect for law & order.
He’d rather be humping a teenage, Miss America
Disdain for human rights—so what if all the authoritarians Trump admires have slaughtered & continue to slaughter their own citizens by the tens of thousands.
Identification of enemies as a unifying cause—Muslims are all terrorists & want to destroy America. Mexicans are drug smugglers, rapists, etc.
Supremacy of the military—except when the generals won’t let you do whatever you want i.e., drive tanks down our major boulevards to intimidate & silence citizens who dare to protest
Rampant sexism—an area Trump excels in i.e., raping girls/women, bragging about “grabbing them by their pussies,” his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, his life-long habit of extremely crude comments about women, his belief that he can grope women whenever he feels like it, walk into the dressing rooms of girls in “his beauty pageants,” etc.
Would you allow your daughter to be around either of these scum?
Controlled mass media—and here we can lay a lot of blame on the mass media itself for their shameless behavior in giving Trump billions in the form of free advertising as he ran for the presidency. Moreover, Trump admitted in a 60 Minutes interview that he attacks the media so their credibility is weakened whenever they have the temerity to publicly criticize him. Of course, when they say something flattering about him, they’re the champions of liberty, freedom, & democracy.</li>
Obsession with National Security—of course in fascists’ minds, anything that strengthens their power & control over the public is great but anything that questions their power or integrity is an enemy of the state & must be stamped-out. These two words (National Security) have been employed ad nauseam to hide the crimes of the 1%
Religion & Government intertwined—we should simply ignore our Founding Fathers concern because they were students of world history & knew only too well the genocide, torture, etc. that occurs so frequently when these two powerful institutions unite against the citizens. Recall George W. Bush’s “Faith-based initiative” in which he illegally installed an office in every major department of our government.
Corporate Power Protected—this is so obvious that it’s almost not even necessary to discuss but then again, we are living in a country that celebrates the stupid & dismisses the intelligent. Law school is a place you go to learn how to protect the 1% from going to prison.
Labor Power Suppressed—fascists have been waging a war against workers from the beginning of the rise of corporate power. Tens, if not hundreds of thousands of workers in America have been silenced one way or another i.e., fired, beaten-up, killed, etc. Reflect on the fact that two of the largest corporations in America, Walmart & Amazon are rampant anti-union. And dear old Ronnie Reagan opened season on unions from the moment he took office & fired the Air Traffic Controllers for life.
Obsession with Crime & Punishment—when it comes to blue-collar “criminals” but a slap on the wrist of the megalithic corporate conglomerates every now & then who are destroying our environment & killing us all.
Rampant Cronyism & Corruption—this is an area that Trump excels in & he’ll probably go down in U.S. history as the poster boy for all time most corrupt U.S. president. He stopped just short of placing a cash register on his desk in the oval office.
Fraudulent Elections—and Trump did everything he could in his stealing of the presidency just short of having soldiers at every polling station with machine guns to intimidate voters.
This is obviously a light review of the vast conspiracy of the fascists amongst us & I could go on for thousands of pages but if you’re still in denial, what’s the point of going on, you probably haven’t even read this far anyway?
Now, the other ideology, “Socialism,” has as many definitions or examples as fascism does & I’m not going to attempt to provide you with its long history. I am also far from an expert on Socialism, but I will attempt to give you a brief sketch of what I interpret it to mean or stand for. By-the-way, to be clear, I believe that Socialism & Democracy are very compatible or should be in my idealized view.
Moreover, true socialism, like true democracy, true communism, or true capitalism doesn’t really exist but is a noble ideal for those of us who believe greed is destroying us & pushing the world to the cliff’s edge overlooking the abyss of human extinction.
Perhaps the simplest or the easiest way for me to describe what socialism is would be to cite the Scandinavian countries as examples? Everyone is entitled to & receives a well-maintained apartment or house, healthy food, a top-notch education & universal health care, along with meaningful work suited for one’s skill set, talents, & interests.
Homelessness is non-existent, if you or a loved one gets a serious disease, you don’t pay a dime in medical expenses, you receive a comfortable pension from the state when you retire. Basically, everyone pays a high percentage of their income in taxes, but it doesn’t matter because all your needs are met & whatever money you have left each month is pocket money for you to spend on whatever luxury items you care to.
There is little, if any, class distinctions and people don’t go through life feeling ashamed or less than others. As a result, you have a far more compatible society & far less crime, especially violent crimes.
That should suffice for now & again, there’s no such thing as the perfect nation but Social Democracies come far closer than any so-called Capitalist democracy. Unfortunately, the status quo’s propagandists gave us the pack of lies they call “Neo liberalism,” which has managed to significantly undermine even those Scandinavian societies that represent hope for the world’s starving masses.
And hope is what billions of people around the planet cling to especially in this time of pandemic. Will humanity survive? It’s not looking likely but it’s our duty to not give up or give in to the greedy psychopaths who threaten our very existence.
Complacency & apathy will be the end of us if we don’t wake up in time & recognize our common humanity.
Life under fascist rule
Persevere my brothers & sisters.
Viva la Revolucion!
P.S. I’ve spent my life ringing the alarm & I’ve been mocked & dismissed by family & “friends” alike, but my conscience is clear & I know to the marrow of my bones that I’ve at least tried to make this a fairer & more equitable society to the best of my ability.
B. Russell, Nobel Prize winner & worked with Einstein to stop development of Nuclear bombs.
I attended Church up until I was approximately 14 or 15 years old. My family moved sometimes two or three times per year & I went to a variety of Christian denominations’ churches not knowing or caring about what denomination they were. I enjoyed Sunday School for the same reason I enjoyed school i.e., because I have loved learning all my life.
I’m guessing, Easter Sunday? But my sister & me went to Sunday School religiously. Ha! ha!
But I stopped attending Church as I matured & began to see the glaring contradictions between what they preached & what they practiced. I am now 68 years old & my distrust and disrespect for nearly every self-professed Christian I have met in my life has only confirmed my suspicions all those years ago.
Jimmy Bakker & Tammy Faye, Jimmy Swaggart, Jerry Falwell, Robert Schuller, & the King of the Self-Righteous Hypocrites, Pat Robertson. Need I say more?
And the fact that somewhere around 90% of America’s evangelicals support & believe in Donald Trump to this very day, is the elephant in the room & proves how intolerable, sinful, & wicked these faux “Christians,” actually are. Note: this matches the percentage of Americans who voted for Trump.
For those of you who may not be aware of the supposed values & principles of those who profess to be Christians are, here is a brief primer.
Do these “Christians” who ignore Trump’s transgressions use “selective memory?”
Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount,” encapsulated these principles in a simple, clear, & concise manner and are the bedrock of what Christianity is supposed to represent. I feel you can break it down even further into two words: Compassion & Empathy!
Moreover, he was speaking about the poor, the starving, the homeless, the sick, the lepers, the prostitutes, etc.
3Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. 4Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted. 5Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the Earth. 6Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be satisfied. 7Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy. 8Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they will see God. 9Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called children of God. 10Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.
In the Book of Luke, it was laid-out even clearer;
“Blessed are you who are poor,
for yours is the kingdom of God. 21Blessed are you who hunger now,
for you will be satisfied.
Blessed are you who weep now,
for you will laugh. 22Blessed are you when people hate you,
when they exclude you and insult you
and reject your name as evil,
because of the Son of Man.
Contrast these traits with Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount.”
And here is what Jesus’ thought of the rich, the Donald Trumps of his day;
24“But woe to you who are rich,
for you have already received your comfort. 25Woe to you who are well fed now,
for you will go hungry.
Woe to you who laugh now,
for you will mourn and weep. 26Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you,
for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.
The “Golden Calf,” well, more Orange than Gold?
So, your phony “Christians,” who claim to be so righteous & superior to the rest of us are in effect worshipping that “golden calf” that God warned you about, a golden orangutan with a sprayed-on orangish tan by the name of Donald Trump.
Here’s an off the top of my head list of Trump’s immoral beliefs & practices, well, those that I can think of right now.
He directed his administration to cruelly separate families at the Mexico/U.S. border, lock the children up in separate caged cells, & losing track of parents for hundreds, if not thousands of scared to death children.
What would Jesus say?
He bragged on national television that he was free to grab women by their genitals whenever he felt like it.
He believed because he was the “owner” of a few beauty pageants, he could walk into their dressing-rooms whenever he wanted to, knowing that many, if not most of them would be nude or semi-nude.
As president, he had the most powerful “bully pulpit,” in the world & throughout his life, he has preached hate, fear, prejudice, & racial divide. And to a much lesser degree now that he’s no longer president, he continues to rip-apart the fragile, social fabric we once had. We are now a divided nation close to what we had just before the Civil War broke out.</li>
He absolutely fawned over the cruelest, the most vicious authoritarian leaders/dictators in power today.
He gave the 1%, America’s richest citizens a massive tax break—yeah, even those who in effect paid no taxes.
His vicious & deranged destruction of every program that had Obama’s signature on it, has seriously hurt the poorest amongst us i.e., shutting-down the White House program for dealing with a pandemic.</li>
Perhaps as many as 900,000 Americans have died from COVID-19, & the majority of those poor souls died needlessly because Trump personally mocked & dismissed the CDS’s repeated warnings & called for the wearing of masks, social distancing, etc.
Trump’s vitriolic rhetoric has inspired mass killings like in El Paso, Texas where a psychotic, Trump fan massacred something like 20 or so, poor Mexicans in a Walmart. Lately we’re witnessing vicious, physical assaults on elderly Asian women, some Anti-Jewish attacks, etc. not to mention Trump’s obsession/desire to deport every Arab or Muslim in America. Strange though how he loves to suck up to the Oil sheiks?
“There are a great many people who have a vested interest in maintaining the stupidity of the American public.” (Gore Vidal)
No, this isn’t another conspiracy theory & the elite haven’t exactly been discrete about their agenda of “dumbing us down,” i.e.
“We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class of necessity in every society, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.” (President Woodrow Wilson)
Yep, another White Supremacist who has been labeled a liberal but is clearly quite another thing. Think about it, who or what institutions would have a vested interest in keeping the majority of the public ignorant & what would they gain from our being ignorant?
this is only a basic overview, it’s much more insidious
The first institution that comes to mind is the most obvious in my opinion & it is the corporate sector.
“In fact, quite generally, commercial advertising is fundamentally an effort to undermine markets. We should recognize that. If you’ve taken an economics course, you know that markets are supposed to be based on informed consumers making rational choices. You take a look at the first ad you see on television and ask yourself … is that it’s purpose? No, it’s not. It’s to create uninformed consumers making irrational choices. And these same institutions run political campaigns. It’s pretty much the same: you have to undermine democracy by trying to get uninformed people to make irrational choices.” —Noam Chomsky
“The Master of Those Who Know” (Dante in reference to Aristotle)
If Chomsky was wrong about the goals of the corporate sector in their advertising, why would the overwhelming majority of corporations spend billions on seducing & distracting their potential customers? It’s crystal clear that corporate America doesn’t give a shit about all the toxic pollution they’ve poisoned our air, food, water, etc. with. And they have absolutely no loyalty to their employees or to America.
They have no moral qualms about closing their factories here in the U.S. & moving to countries where they can pay their workers a couple dollars a day, have no environmental restrictions, & can poison their new, host country’s land, air, water, etc. Yet Trump’s supporters blame it all on liberals & democrats conveniently ignoring the fact that it’s both democrats & republicans who pushed NAFTA through.
I think of all the functions Trump fulfilled as president; none was as important as his role of circus master for the powers that be. While he kept his Duck Dynasty Klan fans amused & distracted, his donors siphoned billions from the U.S. Treasury into their pockets. Once again, Noam is right on the mark;
some say it wasn’t PT Barnum who said there’s a sucker born every minute but tricksters & confidence men used the saying
“Everyone knows that when you look at a television ad, you do not expect to get information. You expect to see delusion and imagery.”
And this is exactly what Trump’s whole life has been i.e. a third-rate actor selling delusion & imagery. He came to power because of a tragic confluence of forces like the Democratic party’s utter spinelessness & the continuous disintegration of tens of millions of Americans’ lives due to the insatiable greed of the corporate elite.
Moreover, because of Trump’s virulent racism, xenophobia, misogyny, moral bankruptcy, & his rhetorical skills, he duped a third of the American public into actually believing that he was going to be their savior.
Of course, if we were a truly enlightened or well-educated public, a Trump would’ve never made it to first base in our political system. Here are a few relevant quotes on the subject of American intelligence:
Furthermore, what’s even more depressing is the fact that Trump supporters are the first & most vocal in their support of stupidity & every asinine & moronic statement that Trump utters only endears him to their hearts even more so i.e. Oh isn’t he cute, he speaks just as stupidly as I do so I know he’s one of us.
Trump’s army of the mentally walking dead are so uninformed & ignorant that they are blind to the fact that it is Trump’s handlers, the corporate elite, who have their boots on their throats & have discarded hundreds of millions of Americans into the gutter homeless, stolen their pensions & their health plans, & could give a shit less about them or their loved ones getting COVID-19 & dying from it.
this is what willful ignorance can unleash
In my opinion, the overriding & most critically important thing that all true progressives must focus on is how to communicate to the public how the corporate elite are pulling the strings of nearly every politician. Until & unless we succeed in doing this, we may as well be spitting in the wind!
If you want to arm yourself intellectually to fight back against the corporate cockroaches
Yes, I’m well aware of what a gargantuan task this is but our lives & our species survival, damn well depend on it. Trump appealed to the extremely ignorant among us because he told people there was nothing wrong with them & they didn’t need to inform themselves, they only needed to follow him. And when I heard Trump telling his people not to believe anything they saw, read, or heard because it was all “fake news,” I was flabbergasted at the gullibility of his followers? Whatever happened to that much touted; All you need is “Common sense.”
Well anybody who had an ounce of common sense would’ve abandoned Trump from day one of his reign of destruction & theft. So clearly, people had better get serious about informing & arming themselves intellectually or else it’s all over & the U.S. will have gone the way of many other “Banana Republics,” like our C.I.A. has helped to create around the globe.
I believe it was Russell who also said that Common Sense isn’t actually common at all?
Yet tragically, tens of millions of Americans cling to the belief that a smooth-talking used car salesman, a political outsider, can magically make the corporate elite bring back those fairly decent paying jobs they once had. Yeah right!
Corporations like all businesses or I should say, the overwhelming majority of them are in business for one thing & one thing only i.e. to make as much profit as is possible & ethics rarely concerns them. So, no way in Hell are the corporate cockroaches going to move their companies back to the U.S. where they’ll be forced to pay more than starvation wages, adhere to environmental regulations, pay their fair share of taxes, etc.
Our dreams of economic justice, fairness, equality, etc. will only come about through our united & continuous push back against the corporate behemoths & getting the money out of politics should be our primary focus for the foreseeable future.
Tragically, because we’ve become so dumbed-down generally speaking & corporate propaganda has been so steady in its decades long efforts to keep the public distracted & uninformed, and due to the never ending war of the “Christian” authoritarians against our government, many, if not most of the public have forgotten that no, our founding fathers were not pious, religious believers & warned of the dangers of allowing the religious to dictate our personal beliefs i.e. tell us how to live our lives down to the smallest details.
Unfortunately, due to the never-ending war of the elite against the poor, they have largely succeeded in brainwashing a very large segment of our population into hating everything & everyone with the slightest whiff of being a liberal.
Liberalism was one of the key concepts of The Enlightenment but in Trump land, liberal has been turned into a dirty word & a key reason why so many Americans are either destitute or damn close to it is the fact that the divide & conquer strategy of the power elite has been so successful.
Here’s a brief reminder of what true liberalism is & I’ll be the first to acknowledge that many who claim to be liberal or progressive, are the farthest from it.
Liberalism was another idea of American Enlightenment thinking. It is the belief in human rights and freedom. Liberalism was rooted in practical unity and embraced by dealers in Northern Europe. They were completely public to the free exchange of ideas and therefore causing them anti-authoritarian. They have consistently supported a part of the government that allowed them freedom of expression and movement.
During the enlightenment age, liberalism became a distinct movement which made it popular among western scholars. The main idea of this concept was to completely vanish absolute kingship, traditional conservatism, representative democracy, and hereditary privilege norms. https://thriveglobal.com/stories/6-main-ideas-of-the-enlightenment/
You see, my imaginary reader, a major wake-up call hit the supposed “conservatives” in America when the New Deal programs were passed after the “conservatives” i.e. the bankers, Wall St. crowd, the titans of business, etc. had caused the crash of the U.S. economy. And ever since, they have sworn to dismantle every single program that F.D.R. established & guess what, they have come very close to succeeding in their heartless agenda.
I sometimes wish that I had a photographic memory so every time I hear the same old bullshit propaganda about how liberals have destroyed America, I could rattle off lists like the one I’m about to share to remind people of many of the wonderful things liberalism has given us:
The GI Bill
Endangered Species Act
Environmental Laws
The Space Program
The Peace Corps
Americorps
The Civil Rights Movement
Earned Income Tax Credit
Family & Medical Leave Act
Consumer Product Safety Commission
Americans With Disabilities Act
Freedom of Information Act
Women’s right to control their reproductive future
Allowing citizens to view their own credit records
The Internet
Balancing the federal budget
The Brady Bill (5-day wait on handgun purchases for background checks)
Sadly, because propagandists know that it doesn’t matter how big a lie is or how absurd their claims, all they need do is just keep repeating the lies ad nauseam & the general public will eventually accept it as truth or fact. They’ve been waging their propaganda war in this context as I said, at least since the New Deal & in some respects, for even longer than that. And they learned the importance of repetition from none other than Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s right-hand man & the Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany.
Furthermore, every time I hear a Trump fan call themselves conservative, I want to yell in their face, you don’t have a fuckin’ clue! To explain what Conservatism is, it’s perhaps easier if I highlight what it isn’t?
Powerful and continuing nationalism
Disdain for human rights
Identification of enemies as a unifying cause
Supremacy of the military
Rampant sexism
Controlled mass media
Obsession with national security
Religion and government intertwined
Corporate power protected
Labor [sic] power suppressed
Disdain for intellectuals & the arts
Obsession with crime & punishment
Rampant cronyism & corruption
Fraudulent elections
No, my friend, these are not conservative principles but are in fact, the early warning signs that a society is approaching fascism, you know, Italy, Germany, & Japan in pre-WWII and which America joined the rest of the world in fighting against.
And I’m sure that any of our veterans still alive from WWII must be so disillusioned & ashamed of what America has become under this tin-pot, wannabe dictator, Trump. For those Trump supporters who have spit on the memory of their fathers & grandfathers by supporting a pseudo-fascist like Trump, you should be deeply ashamed of yourself & spend the rest of your life trying to atone for your crimes.
Again & again we must bring it back to our flagrant anti-intellectualism which again, the powers that be have been promoting from the beginning of our nation’s history. I could go on & on & on in my analysis of our political, social, environmental, & economic crisis but this brief overview will have to do for now.
In conclusion, the corporate media also plays a very significant role in keeping the public ignorant by manipulating public opinion, repeating the corporate/political lies, & most glaringly, the billions in free advertising they gave Trump before he was elected & all through the last four years of chaos & insanity.
But without a doubt, the overarching forces of the corporate multi-nationals are the key factor in our march like lemmings blindly following the Trumps of this world over the edge into the abyss or the death of life itself!
Here are a few more quotes that I hope may inspire you to take back your rights as a free citizen of this world or simply a human being. But first, I have a challenge for you, the next time your family member or friend starts with their litany of how evil “liberals” are, demand that they reject, not use or accept any of the protections, etc. that liberals have brought us that I listed earlier.
The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western world. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity – much less dissent.
“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum – even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.”
—Noam Chomsky
“The more you can increase fear of drugs, crime, welfare mothers, immigrants and aliens, the more you control all of the people.”
—Noam Chomsky
Does this last quote remind you of anyone you know?
P.S. My next essay will be an “Intellectual Self-Defense Course,” inspired by my friend, mentor, & intellectual hero, Noam Chomsky.
—Rob DeLoss, Gold Beach, Oregon Jan. 14, 2021
*one week before that happy day when we see Trump’s fat ass wandering off into the weeds of his golf course, cheating as he usually does because he’s a colossal narcissist & spoiled rich brat.
Addendum
I started this essay claiming that no, this isn’t simply another conspiracy yet here is a truly troubling but revealing snippet of how the wealthiest men of their time directly interfered & played a huge role in the shaping of public education policy & practice in America. Think about it, do you believe this was because of their altruism? Do the super wealthy become so rich by genuinely caring about their employees? Or could they have interfered because they wanted a hand in preparing their ideal workers i.e. docile & domesticated? This is from John Taylor Gatto & his books on our public education system are an education in themselves.
“Between 1906 and 1920, a handful of world famous industrialists and financiers, together with their private foundations, hand picked University administrators and house politicians, and spent more attention and more money toward forced schooling than the national government did. Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller alone spent more money than the government did between 1900 and 1920. In this fashion, the system of modern schooling was constructed outside the public eye and outside the public’s representatives. Now I want you to listen to a direct quote, I have not altered a word of this, it’s certainly traceable through your local librarians. From the very first report issued by John D. Rockefeller’s General Education Board — this is their first mission statement:“In our dreams, people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present education conventions of intellectual and character education fade from their minds and unhampered by tradition we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into men of learning or philosophers, or men of science. We have not to raise up from them authors, educators, poets or men of letters, great artists, painters, musicians, nor lawyers, doctors, (he’s really covering the whole gamut of employment isn’t he?) statesmen, politicians, creatures of whom we have ample supply (whoever the pronoun we is meant to stand for there). The task is simple. We will organize children and teach them in an perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way”.
I can understand why so many people voted for Trump & fell for his cheap, con man snow job but I can’t forgive them! What’s the old saying; Fool me once, shame on you but fool me twice & it’s shame on me?
This repulsive & repugnant cretin got away with duping his zombie fan club for four years & counting. Now that’s some really special kind or degree of stupid. And to purposely turn a blind eye to all the destructive & violent things Trump said & did means in my book that you should be right there in a jail cell rotting away for the rest of your life.
for the intellectually & morally bankruptedHappiness is a Warm Gun
When he claimed during his campaign for office that he didn’t accept money from donors because he was financing his own campaign because; “I’m really rich,” I remembered Arnold Schwarzenegger & Ross Perot making the same basic argument & knew it was total bullshit immediately. No matter how rich a person is, it’s never or it’s rarely ever enough. There are an extremely few individuals who have managed to curb their appetites for the things the Rich & Famous covet.
America’s Corporate Cockroach Masters
Because we have become such a materialistic society—you can thank our advertising corporate overlords for a significant role in this—and because we are such an insecure nation, people believe they can get social approval if they drive fancy cars, wear expensive suits, etc.
Yes, for all our strutting around on the world stage proclaiming that we’re the badest & toughest mother fuckers on earth, we are far more fearful than most other nations. Just mention gun control & watch the scared little boys react.
And speaking of fear, this is a subject that I am sadly all too familiar with. My brother, sisters, & I all lived in a constant state of fear of being punished by the several husbands or boyfriends our mother let live with us. Additionally, I have what’s called a “lazy eye,” & if I played baseball, etc. for too long & strained my eyes, one eye turned inward like I was cross-eyed & I was teased horribly by the other kids.
Moreover, I worked at many different factory-type jobs in my late teens through my 20s & beyond and I absolutely hated it when an owner of the factory I was working in, would take a group of possible investors for a tour & they’d stop and observe me operating the machine I was assigned but wouldn’t bother to say hello or introduce me. I felt like a barnyard animal not even worthy of a modicum of courtesy.
My saving grace my whole life has been the world of books. And from the day my grandmother helped me get my first library card at the Salem Public Library across the street from Oregon’s capital, books became my closest friends & my security blanket. Whether I was hiding out from one of my mom’s abusive boyfriends or kids who were mocking me for being cross-eyed, books were always there for me like a dear friend.
I sensed we were poor as I grew up, but it didn’t really start to hit home until I was in high school & started going to parties. When I began to see how much nicer some people lived than we did, my class consciousness began to develop. And my awareness of my intelligence level didn’t really sink in until I was in my late 20s.
I believe that meeting my future wife & our living together was a major turning point in my life. I had also just met the wonderful subject of philosophy & it rocked my world. At last here was a subject that I could really sink my teeth into & I started moving to the front row of the classes I was taking.
For most of my life I had sat in the backrow hoping the teacher wouldn’t call on me for fear that I’d be wrong in my answer to whatever questioned I was asked. I loved learning but always wanted to be a silent partner. But when I found the confidence/courage to sit up front & participate in the class discussion, sometimes it was almost as if it were just me & the professor having a discussion and the other students were like furniture. And a handful of my teachers/professors in college were so inspiring that I’d go to their offices just to talk about the big picture i.e. college education, politics, philosophy, life, etc.
And this is when it dawned on me that I was/am an exceptional student or smarter than the average bear because I saw how few, if any, of my fellow students cared about the discussions. As one of my most inspiring teachers put it; “They just want to know what’s going to be on the test, memorize the answers, & forget about it.”
This teacher’s name was Mr. Garrot & he said to me; “Rob, don’t you think there comes a time to stop reading & to start writing?” I’ve shared my personal background with you because I want you to understand that when I fiercely criticize those Americans who were/are so stupid to believe in Trump, it’s not because I’m one of those elitists they hate but because I came from the same background as most of them & have many of the same feelings of inferiority, shame, guilt, etc.
I think this subject is even more personally enraging than it is for most people precisely because of where I came from? I have struggled for the past 40 years or more to awaken or spark an interest in learning in my relatives, friends, & strangers because the injustice, misery, suffering, violence, etc. that is a part of these millions of Americans’ lives gets my blood boiling & the very people who are so desperately in need of an intellectual enlightenment are often the ones most passionately against education.
My guess is that the majority of the blame for this hatred of education stems from their experiences in public school? Tragically for millions of Americans, they had harmful teachers who made their students’ lives a living Hell & therefore turned them off to learning for the rest of their lives.
So, when a flamboyant, confident sounding, & apparent billionaire takes their side & champions them, it’s mighty hard to resist the intoxication of his words & the emotions they bring up in people. Moreover, all the racist, misogynist, xenophobic, etc. trash that Trump talks only endears him even more in his Duck Dynasty crowd. They feel; “He tells it like it is,” “He’s one of us,” “He’s shaking up Washington & he’s gonna make real changes to help us.”
These people are like a drowning man clinging to a life preserver so no matter how little evidence there is of Trump fulfilling his promises to them, they will cling to him like they’d cling to a life preserver if drowning. And now that Trump’s reign of error & terror is coming to a close, we are left to try & clean up his wreckage.
In the field of psychology, they say that the most important first step in trying to overcome your problem is to acknowledge that it exists. I don’t believe we’re ever going to truly heal our seriously divided nation until we honestly grapple with the myriad issues that made such a human piece of scum like Trump appealing to those who voted for him.
I know that in this country where we have become accustomed to instant gratification i.e. short, simple answers to complex issues, this will probably go in one ear & out the other but again, teaching is my vocation & my love and is the other side of the coin of learning/knowledge. So, I will continue trying to heal the divide.
Trump’s hero, Mussolini who said fascism should more correctly be called Corporatism
Speaking of healing, it just dawned on me that there is another parallel between Trump & Hitler i.e. after the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust & the heinous murder of millions of Jews, intellectuals, gypsies, homosexuals, etc., many have asked; How could the Good Germans have stood by why this was happening? I ask myself; how can the millions of Trump loyalists stand by as Trump purposely sabotaged our health care system, ignored the medical science regarding COVID-19, & watched as hundreds of thousands of Americans died needlessly from the virus?
whether by perpetual war, pathetic medical system, or poverty, the 1% are committing de facto genocide of humanity
By-the-way, roughly a third of the American public deny the Holocaust even happened! What percentage of these people do you think are Trump supporters? The key point here is that the cult of personality which is so strong in America gave us this shameless grifter & proves just how dangerous blind obedience to any one individual or personality can be. If the American public were better educated, they’d have learned this lesson from not only world history but American history as well.
Another critical lesson that history can teach us is that the “Church” has been trying & sometimes succeeding from the beginning of its existence to have absolute rule over the nations in which it had a foothold. And America’s “Christian” evangelicals/fundamentalists—not all of them of course but a sizable majority—backed Trump because his advisors knew how powerful a voting block they are & had him choose Pence as his running mate.
Just try asking a friend to write you a letter or to discuss politics
The stupid & the weak always seek a strong leader because they don’t want to think for themselves & because they aren’t able to. So, if a charlatan puts on a good enough show, they’ll jump faithfully in line & follow the leader like lemmings right off a cliff. And America has now lived & proved how wrong that old maxim; “What you don’t know can’t hurt you,” truly is.
In conclusion, the next Trump who comes along won’t be so stupid or crude and then we & the world will truly be fucked! So, the choice is ours, Enlightenment or Apocalypse, which side are you on?
—Rob DeLoss, Gold Beach, OR January 2, 2021
Addendum
It occurred to me that maybe I wasn’t clear enough in explaining what Trump said/did that made his believers proud? Trump has been carefully sculpting his public image & persona his whole life. He has lied about his “self-made” fortune, called in to radio shows in New York posing as someone else & asserting that Trump was far richer than he actually was.
If you’ll spend a short amount of time reading about his background, you’ll soon see that his “empire” was built on sand from the grains of tens, if not hundreds of thousands of lies. But to his willfully blind & ignorant herd, he’s a rich guy who thinks & speaks like they do i.e. hates & fears everyone who isn’t white & racist like they are. And most importantly, his Duck Dynasty Klan members love his constant bashing of anyone with more than a sixth grade education because many, if not most of his tribe, have felt stupid & inferior for most of their lives & here was the president of the United States telling them they were wronged & they should “beat the hell out of the fake news journalists & all his other critics.” They feel his words viscerally & are only too happy to physically beat the shit out of all Trump’s “enemies.”
The bitter truth & sad irony of this dark chapter in U.S. politics is the fact that Trump has tried his best for decades to become accepted by New York City’s elite but because of his rude, crude, lewd behavior & unbelievable stupidity, he has been rejected consistently. So, what we’ve witnessed is Trump’s revenge on the cultural & intellectual elite, but it has cost America & the world, a very great price!
What we truly need if we are to survive the wanna be dictators like Trump or the real ones like Putin, Bolsanaro, Duterte, etc.
…is what allowed the Twitter-toddler Trump to become president of the most powerful nation on earth. And not speaking about politics doesn’t make our problems disappear much the same way that not talking about your problems in a troubled marriage, only allows the marriage to slowly disintegrate.
A healthy nation requires hard work & open communication. And “not talking about politics,” only allows the same destructive habits i.e. the Trumps of America to go on wreaking damage & causing havoc.
I have been commanded to shut-up or leave many taverns over the years & it’s always the same old excuse i.e. no talking about politics but I’ve seen it time & time again, what they really mean is; Liberals keep your fucking mouths shut!
This tragic state of affairs is more common here in small towns made up of mostly hunters & fishermen where there are often only two radio stations, one for the Bible-thumpers & the other that broadcasts Rush Limbaugh & FOX “News.”
The Russian people know Pravda is propaganda, the American public doesn’t know that FOX “News,” is propaganda
To begin with, FOX “News,” shouldn’t have ever been allowed to call itself a news organization. It’s America’s version of Russia’s largest newspaper, Pravda. But I’m sure that the overwhelming majority of FOX viewers & listeners don’t realize that it’s almost entirely propaganda for the Right-wing corporate owners & the 1% who own America. FOX is mostly loud-mouthed, fear & hate spewing opinion & that’s not news my friends!
“The Most Trusted Man in America,” Walter Cronkite (journalist when I was growing-up)
Actual news is supposed to be facts, not editorializing but our journalistic standards have been slowly deteriorating ever since they began turning it into infotainment. But the King of the Liars Club, Trump hides his duplicity by labeling anyone & everyone who dares to point out his hypocrisy, inconsistency, & manipulations as “fake news.” He’s admitted that he does this, so his critics lose credibility & he’s allowed to go on lying & very rarely is held accountable.
Don’t fall for Trump’s doublespeak on “fake news”
Trump, the scum-bucket used to pose as someone else & call in to news programs & other shows to plant lies about him being much richer than he actually was in his early days. So, he truly has some nerve calling reporters “fake news” every other time he opens his mouth.
A long time back, I dubbed FOX “News,” the Fear & Hate channel because if you watch or listen to it for even an hour, it’s as obvious as the nose on your face that these are the two emotional buttons they push around the clock. Like Hitler & countless other dictators whom Trump admires, they know that by keeping the public worked-up, you can distract them while you rob the national treasury.
Moreover, as long as people are emotionally reacting, they’re not thinking, writing, or talking about the serious issues that affect their lives. It has deeply saddened me to watch this process go on & on & on for most of my adult life. I am not only silenced in public bars but even in friends & relatives’ homes because I disturb the otherwise happy environment.
And it would be almost humorous if it weren’t so destructive, but most people don’t even realize that they are being hypocritical when they command me to not talk about politics because whenever the subject of gun ownership comes up, they’re immediately fired-up.
“They want to take away your guns!” The corporate cockroaches have been using this chestnut for decades because it works every time & closes peoples’ minds instantly on whatever subject they may be discussing. It’s a tried & true part of the three Gs i.e. God, Guns, & Gays!
Keep the bewildered herd distracted by invoking these three “issues,” and nothing else matters. For the past 20 years or better, I try to tactfully point out to those who seem somewhat reasonable, so, you’re not interested in politics?
That’s in effect saying that you don’t care if they shutdown your company & move overseas where they can pay their workers as little as $2 a day. Or you don’t care if the Wall St. wolves steal your company’s pension plan. And so, if they overnight cancel your health insurance, no big deal! The fact that the rich are purposely destroying our public education system doesn’t mean shit, right? And the fact that without a top-notch education, your children have a snowball’s chance in Hell of finding a decent paying career. Take a look at Betsy DeVos’s track record if you think I’m full of it.
I could go on with hundreds of examples of how politics does matter to each & every one of us, but I’ve given you enough to chew on already. Try putting yourself in my shoes for a minute if you will, my imaginary reader. I have conservatively invested at least 50,000 hours of my time & energy over the past 40 years or better in reading, researching, writing, listening, & watching documentaries, attending lectures, etc. and I am silenced by either threats of being 86ed out of a bar, physical intimidation, social exclusion, etc.
I have only one outlet & that is my writing which hardly anyone will take the time to read. It may take 15 minutes to read one of my essays, but people say they don’t have the time. Yet they will watch T.V., movies, etc. for several hours a day.
I contend that if a lot more of us would’ve had lively discussions, fair debates without attacking the other person’s character, etc., we never would’ve ended-up with such a dangerous moron as Trump in the oval office.
What do we try to teach our children as they grow? Responsibility is a major lesson we hope to teach them, right? Well, as our founding fathers tried to teach us, it’s our responsibility to inform ourselves & to hold our government accountable to we, the people. How are we doing in that department my friends?
I accuse Trump of being the most dangerous president who ever was because there are two major threats to humanity’s survival; 1) the rapid destruction of our environment which is caused by our climate’s inability to keep up with technological waste due to the insatiable greed of the corporate cockroaches; 2) the threat of nuclear war. The mind-boggling stupidity of Trump in this area in particular is nightmarish. He actually asked those who were trying to inform him about our nuclear arsenal, “I don’t get it, why can’t we use our nuclear weapons i.e. since we have them, why don’t we use them?
Trump’s legacy of Death & Destruction!
In conclusion, without a doubt, the most heinous crime of this con artist, woman hater, etc. was his not only blocking but also undermining the Center for Disease Control, the World Health Organization, etc. in their efforts to prepare us for the COVID 19 pandemic which led directly to the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans’ lives!
And to continue to refuse to discuss politics i.e. liberals’ points of views, speaks volumes about what we have allowed ourselves to become!
—Rob DeLoss, Gold Beach, OR December 21, 2020
Addendum
I may not have been quite as clear as I want to be regarding talking about politics in bars? The regulars or locals are free to complain about the actions or inactions of their local government, planning commission, etc. & they can get as loud as they like in condemning liberals or progressives on abortion, protests, homosexual rights, etc. and you can bash the federal government to your heart’s content.
Here are a few things those dirty Liberals gave us:
The GI Bill
Endangered Species Act
Environmental Laws
The Space Program
The Peace Corps
Americorps
The Civil Rights Movement
Earned Income Tax Credit
Family & Medical Leave Act
Consumer Product Safety Commission
Americans With Disabilities Act
Freedom of Information Act
Women’s right to control their reproductive future
Allowing citizens to view their own credit records
The Internet
Balancing the federal budget
The Brady Bill (5-day wait on handgun purchases for background checks)
Lobbying Disclosure Act
“Motor-Voter” Act
The Voting Rights Act
Unemployment Insurance
Medicare/Medicaid
Food Stamps/WIC
Social Security
Peace between Israel and Egypt
Peace between Israel and Jordan
The Department of Education
The Department of Energy
The Department of Transportation
The Department of Housing and Urban Development
Labor Laws
The Marshall Plan
Winning World War II
Food Safety Laws
Workplace Safety Laws
The Tennessee Valley Project
The Civilian Conservation Corps
The Securites and Exchange Commission
Women’s Right to Vote
Universal Public Education
National Weather Service
Product Labeling Laws
Truth in Advertising Laws
Morrill Land Grant Act
Rural Electrification
Public Universities
Bank Deposit Insurance (FDIC)
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Public Broadcasting
Supporting the establishment of Israel
The United Nations
NATO
But if you dare to defend some aspects of our federal government or criticize our foreign policy, watch out! In brief, as long as you tow the party line i.e. Limbaugh, FOX “News,” & Alex Jones’ insane conspiracy theories since his buddy, the spoiled, rich brat & bully, Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan was illegally installed in the White House, you are free to speak your “mind.”
Herein is the evil of ignorance, that he who is neither good nor wise is nevertheless satisfied with himself: he had no desire for that of which he feels no want.
This picture as the old saying goes, says a thousand words & poignantly expresses what the humans among us feel. Yes, I am inferring that Trump believers are sub-human because they have no compassion for anyone outside their insane asylum.
Many of us senior citizens, myself included, fear a horrific end of our lives like this picture suggests i.e. to not be able to touch, kiss, or hug our loved ones as we lay dying in intensive care. And we now have the additional worry of perhaps not even having a bed available in the I.C.U.
And even sadder is the fact that this is a very rare doctor because his holding a fellow human being even with all this protective equipment on is the exception, not the rule. Can you imagine how terrified & depressed this poor soul must feel? For quite some time now it has been known how critically important the human touch is i.e. babies deprived of the warmth & nurturing touch of their mothers, if they survive, grow up emotionally damaged & maybe even mentally handicapped though I’m not sure about the mental aspect?
Speaking of emotionally & mentally handicapped, Trump obviously is one of those but this in no way excuses him for all the damage he has done & unleashed on America and the rest of the world.
Until Death Do Them Part!
This poor man’s suffering hit home to me on a very personal level as well because it made me realize that as my wife lay dying in the I.C.U. back in 2013 & we had disconnected the machine that was keeping her alive, she could no longer speak or see but she could feel.
Jeri was disconnected from the machine around six p.m. on the evening of August 17th & she clung to life until about six a.m. the next morning. I was blessed to be able to hold her hand, our fingers interlaced for nearly the entire night i.e. I took a couple of maybe, ten-minute breaks, and finally succumbed to sleep & had just laid my head on her bed when maybe five minutes later, my son’s wife nudged me & said, “she’s stopped breathing.”
It was as if she couldn’t let go literally until I had let go by falling asleep? I am glad that at least she had the comfort of my touch & knew how deeply I loved her as she slipped away into that final transition.
The Love of my Life, Jeri Ellen DeLoss & me.
I stopped going to church & calling myself a Christian back when I was in middle school but over the past 50 years or better of my life, this personal decision has only been confirmed as the right choice.
How so many self-professed “Christians” can so fervently worship at the altar of the golden calf, Trump, truly blows my mind? And it’s so glaringly obvious to even non-believers like myself that Trump spits on every admonition that Jesus laid out for his disciples in his Sermon on the Mount i.e. a sort of Cliff Notes version of what Christianity is about.
Many religious scholars have boiled down this sermon to what they call the Beatitudes. I prefer this term & can’t help but wonder if perhaps this is where The Beats, or Beatniks, the forerunners of the hippies took their name? And if so, how ironic because the beats & the hippies were so despised by mainstream America for rejecting their righteous hypocrisy but practiced a true Christianity in their love of nature, belief in peace, anti-war stance, rejection of materialism, etc. that de facto was an embrace of the beatitudes.
the writers/poets of the Beat generation who inspired Dylan & many others in the 1960s
Obviously, millions in Trump’s cult of personality who call themselves Christians, need to reread Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount,” so here it is;
³Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.
⁴Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
⁵Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the Earth.
⁶Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be filled.
⁷Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy.
⁸Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they will see God.
⁹Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called children of God.
¹⁰Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.
¹¹Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.
¹²Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
I was going to illustrate how Trump has defiled each & every one of the beatitudes but have decided that’s not necessary & instead, I’ll just offer a few observations on the wolves in sheep’s clothing who are so willfully blind & ignorant!
Intellectual & Moral hero of my hero, Noam Chomsky!
By-the-way, I have long pointed out that this simple sermon supposedly given by Jesus, really boils down to the crux of the Ten Commandments & is coincidentally the one commandment common to nearly all the world’s major religions i.e. Do unto others as you’d have them do unto you!
for the intellectually & morally bankrupt
But our buffoon in chief by his actions & words has unleashed a wave of barbarity in America not unlike the barbarian hordes that attacked & overthrew the seat of Christian power at the time, Rome.
Fake president imitating second-rate actor
Because Trump is supposedly a billionaire —but who knows for sure because he’s been lying about his fortune for decades — and has his hands on the reins of power of the most destructive force on earth, the U.S., his cult believe they are righteous Christians & therefore their vile, vicious, hatred, & even murder of all others is justified.
It’s critically important to bear in mind that the proud members of that illustrious organization known as the KKK have always considered themselves “Christians” as well. Yep, their idea of a good ‘ol time’ on a Saturday night is to get a belly full of beer, then go out & lynch some poor black man or boy. And they get up the next morning & go to church and sing their gospel songs about love & peace.
Proud tradition of American South’s “Good Christians”
One of Trump’s beliefs that I was sure would sink any chances of his winning the presidency in 2016 was the “Access Hollywood” video clip in which he bragged about being able to “grab them by the pussy” (women” and no one would do or say anything against him for it.
And depressingly, he was right because among his millions of “Christian” evangelicals & fundamentalists, men are the masters & women are subservient slaves. In short, their view is that of the authoritarian father figure who can do no wrong & his word is law. It is clear to those of us who refused to drink Trump’s Kool-Aid, he looks up to authoritarian aka dictators & wishes he could be one here.
If any of these “Christians,” had half a brain, they’d follow this “logic” of Trump’s through & realize that he’s de facto saying that rape is okay. Therefore, if you idolize Trump & believe everything he says & does is good, right, & righteous, you wouldn’t mind if a strange man raped your daughter, your wife, or your mother.
Gee, I wonder if Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan would be upset if someone were to rape his daughter, Ivanka? But then again, maybe he’d like to rape her, given some of the amazingly crude things he’s said about her over the years?
Yet ironically, back in 1989, Trump took out a full-page ad in New York City newspapers calling for the death of the five, black teenagers accused of the brutal rape of a white woman. And these poor guys served years in prison only to be proven innocent. Connect these facts with Trump’s obsession/hate of Obama & you’ll see that he’s built his political career on stirring the race-baiting cauldron simmering just beneath the veneer of our “society.”
Or note the fact of Trump being sued for rape dozens of times over the years & his bragging about his freedom to walk in on the girls in the beauty pageants he owns while they’re getting dressed. Yep! Onward “Christian” soldiers as you go proudly marching on against every semblance of decency.
birds of prey flock together!
Underneath this despicable swamp creature’s words & actions is a philosophy of sorts i.e. mankind is basically like those apes in the beginning of Stanley Kubrick’s famous film; “2001: A Space Odyssey.” In brief, ever since our primate ancestors learned how to wield a club & kill their competitors, this is the way it is & shall always be. He who is stronger & more aggressive is the rightful leader of his pack, community, city, nation, & in the final analysis, the rightful master of the universe.
Trump’s final Make America Great Again rally
Moreover, and I’m sure this has never occurred to Donny’s pea-brain, I believe Kubrick was showing us in this film that our so-called evolution as illustrated in our technological advances i.e. the creation of nuclear bombs, of which we, the U.S. just happen to possess the largest & deadliest stockpiles of, may very well reduce humanity to its origins like those apes huddled in fear in dark caves desperately searching for water & food to sustain ourselves?
Therefore, it should come as no surprise to us who are capable of independent thought, that those anti-human, reptilian brains who walk amongst us, view all of Western cultures discoveries & accomplishments in the humanities as well as the hard sciences is but a façade.
The “School of Athens” (Greek philosophy, the foundation of all knowledge)
And they cling to their automatic weapons like a baby clings to his security blanket because they are scared to death & will lash out and maim or kill anyone they perceive as a threat!
America’s domestic terrorists are greatest threat to our National Security!
Given these observations that I’ve laid out, is it any wonder that we have a humanoid replica of an orangutan behind the desk in the oval office who reportedly asked a national security expert three times if we could use our nuclear weapons. It’s not been established whether this is accurate or not but given Trump’s mind-boggling ignorance, I don’t find it hard to believe at all.
You may think that not even someone as cold-blooded & heartless as Trump could possibly have asked such a question but bear in mind the fact that the death of over a quarter of a million Americans due to the COVID-19 pandemic we are cowering in fear of, doesn’t trouble Trump. No, his only concern the whole time we’ve been living with & dying from this pandemic, Trump has only been concerned about how it would affect his chances of winning the 2020 election. So, to all you “Christians,” who still love this piece of excrement I say, shame on you!
If
it weren’t so deadly serious in terms of the harms already done & yet to
come from this fake & shameless blowhard or as I prefer to call him, Donald
of the Duck Dynasty Klan, it’d be hilarious. And the fact that he has the
audacity to act as if he’s some paragon of an honest & honorable person is
mind-boggling to all of us who haven’t drank the FOX “News” Kool Aid regarding
the dunce president.
Admittedly,
there is a kernel of truth to the girly-man’s accusations regarding the news
& this is true in all forms of effective propaganda. And that’s the only
fact that I’ll concede when it comes to this national embarrassment I.e. we
have a world class moron as our president. So, for those of you who haven’t
entirely shut down the higher functioning areas of your brains, ponder these
facts if you will?
Do
you remember when John Kerry was running for president? If so, do you recall a
tag he was labeled with called “flip-flopper?” Well the Trumpster has the
unique ability to flip-flop sometimes within the same sentence, usually not
more than two or three sentences later. In other words, Donny contradicts
himself or outright lies consistently & frequently. How in the Hell can
people think this is “telling it like it is?” Which of course is the mantra
just about everybody who supports the Duck repeats within the first few minutes
you start a conversation about him.
Could
it be that what people mean when they say they admire him for “telling it like
it is,” are saying is they like his racism, fear mongering, & hate
generating speech? Yeah, he is consistent in that but not in anything else. If
one spends even a modicum of time researching authoritarians & dictators,
it soon becomes evident that the above characteristics which the Klansman who
would be king exhibits, is the common thread.
Clearly,
the Donald or his P.R. team realized that because so many millions of Americans
are out of work or working two or three minimum wage jobs, have lost their
homes to illegal foreclosures, had their pensions stolen, etc. they could tap
into the fear & anger of all these people. And by distracting the public by
scapegoating immigrants, Mexicans, Muslims, homosexuals, etc., thereby giving
the public a focus for their anger, he could ride that wave of rage into the
White House.
You
see, my friend, the rich have long known that as long as they can divide &
distract the public with various scapegoats, the public won’t wake-up to the
fact that it’s the rich who should be the focus of our anger. They are the ones
who write the laws that coincidentally benefit them but screw the rest of us.
For example, the recent tax break for the rich, the biggest in history, is
overwhelmingly going to benefit the super-rich & hurt the rest of us, the
99% who have to pay the taxes that go to the true elite, while that same class,
pay a minuscule, if any taxes.
Why
do you think your buddy won’t release his tax records? Could it be that it’d
show that he’s one of them, not the defender of the working class as you’ve
been suckered into believing? And here’s a bit of common sense for you, you may
have noticed—-if your blinders aren’t totally in place—-that Donny boy loves to
brag about himself, he usually can’t go more than a few sentences without
pointing out how wonderful he is. And he’s been telling us for years of how
fabulously wealthy he is, right? Well, I would think that he’d jump at the
chance to prove to the world how stinking rich he is by showing us his tax
records. Doesn’t that make sense?
Might
it also be that by revealing his tax records, it’d be clear to all that he’s
not the brilliant businessman he’s always claimed to be? He’s filed for
bankruptcy four times due to his poor management of the casinos he had his name
on. After his last bankruptcy, none of the major banks would loan him money so
he went to foreign banks, and got a life-line in terms of financial help from
his Russian mafia friends. (Doesn’t it strike you as odd that he’s so enamored
of Putin?) By-the-way, I’ll share another little secret hiding in plain sight,
the overwhelming majority of properties with the Trump name on them, aren’t
owned by Donny, the true owners pay him for his “brand” or logo which he has
been obsessively protecting as if it were his daughter’s virginity, for decades.
The
spinmeister knows only too well how important image is & he can’t stop
promoting his image for more than two minutes at a time. And this connects with
his pseudo war on the media. The Duck has been a media whore his entire life
& his mentor in this regard was Roy Cohn, the cold-blooded lawyer for the
East coast mafia & right-hand man for Joseph McCarthy in the true
witch-hunt that Joe waged in the 50s that ruined so many good peoples’ lives
& was thoroughly anti-democratic & anti-American.
Roy
drilled home to his young, Richie Rich protege the fact that any media
attention, whether good or bad, was beneficial in terms of keeping your name in
the public mind. Moreover, we can thank the so-called “fake media” for being a
major factor in the girly-man’s becoming president because they gave him
billions of dollars of free advertising during his campaign.
Perhaps
you prefer to cling to your conspiratorial belief that the press is the enemy
of the people? By-the-way, common sense again tells us that when anybody, and especially
someone as powerful as the president of the most powerful nation on earth,
tells us that we shouldn’t believe anyone who criticizes us, you should be
afraid, VERY AFRAID!
So,
Daddy Donald will protect us against all the evil doers in the world yet he
clearly flunked junior high school history. Just about every time he opens his
mouth, he reveals how mind-bogglingly ignorant he is. Don’t believe me, do a
little fact checking on your own if that isn’t against your religion?
Obviously,
the Duck Dynasty Dunce isn’t living in the common reality that most of us are.
I mean, when his haggard & homely witch spokeswoman, Kellyanne Conway told
us straight-faced, “Well, there are alternate facts,” that should’ve been a
major wake-up call to all of us. And this is a key point my friends, what
Donald & his handlers are hoping is that they can convince the third of
Americans who loyally support him, that facts and opinions are one & the
same. Sorry to break it to you but no, they’re not. Facts are established by
Science & the scientific method I.e. hypothesis, test your hypothesis
repeatedly, and the more it yields the same observable results, it eventually
becomes a theory, & after quite a long time of consistent findings, it
eventually is referred to as a law I.e. the law of gravity, etc.
And
yes, everybody has a right to their own opinion but not to their own facts. And
some opinions are far worthier than others I.e. if a guy is a great mechanic,
his opinions about mechanical matters are more worthy or valuable than someone
like me, whose close to being a moron regarding mechanical knowledge. The
closest we can come to “truth” on any subject requires two things; 1) check out
their credentials, 2) check out what other experts in the field they’re
claiming expertise in, have to say about their opinion, theory, etc.
Socrates
taught us this more than 2,500 years ago in Athens, the birthplace of Western
democracy. And he pissed off a lot of people because he proved that just
because a guy was say, a master shipbuilder, he got a swelled head & then
thought he was a master on many matters totally unrelated I.e. how to raise a
child, etc. Unfortunately, in this rapid-fire world of ours with technology
jumping ahead with leaps & bounds, people have become so intellectually
lazy & dependent on their “smart phones,” etc. that they won’t take the
time to do a little research on the serious issues facing us i.e. Donald’s
dangerous ignorance & alienating of our former allies & cozying up to
one dictator after another. His launching of trade wars because of his
perceived insults from other nation’s leaders. And most frightening, his
wholesale deregulation of every federal agency established to protect us from
greedy corporate cockroaches & the protection of our environment. If this
goes on unabated, who’s going to want to go on vacation anywhere? The forests
will all be chopped down, the ocean will be one huge toilet bowl, & we’ll
all need to wear gas masks. Note how bad the air is in a lot of China due to
its reckless plundering of its natural resources with no environmental protections.
I
almost forgot another minor detail of Donald’s giving free rein to corporate
America I.e. the continued & expanding deregulation of Wall St., the too
big to fail handful of super banks, the hedge fund managers, etc. Did you enjoy
the world-wide economic crash of 2008? Wasn’t that fun watching tens of
millions of people around the globe lose their jobs, pensions, homes, health
insurance, etc. Well, you’ll love the crash that’s coming because Donald Duck
loves Wall St. —-he’s been kissing their asses for decades —-and he & the
1% are busy hiding their wealth in so-called safe havens where they think
they’ll be safe from all the ravages that all the rest of us will experience.
And for the record, I voted for Obama the first time around but within a few
weeks when he appointed Summers, Geithner, Bernanke, etc. I knew he’d sold us
out and it was all a lie I.e. “Change,” (his mantra as he was campaigning for
the presidency.
In
conclusion, I’m again going to try to insert some “common sense” you know, that
quality that us eggheads aren’t supposed to have any of. How can the free
press, Donny’s “enemy of the American people,” be accurate whenever they repeat
things about King Donald that stroke his ego but the second they say something
“critical” I.e. negative, they’re “fake news?” Fake to me is pretty much the
same as Fraud & Donald the Dick-head has been committing fraud for decades,
that’s why he’s fought hundreds, if not thousands of lawsuits & continues
to be in legal jeopardy. He defrauded many people who worked for him over the
decades from Polish, illegal immigrants, he hired to do the demolition on a
building he wanted to turn into Trump Towers, to bankers, etc. etc. etc. Don’t
forget Trump University, which he quietly paid something like $25 million for
in the judgment against him. Yep! He’s like a modern-day Wizard of Oz but not
the kindly, old guy from the movie. And as P.T. Barnum warned us decades ago,
“There’s a sucker born every minute.” If it sounds too good to be true, you can
bet it is! You’ve been warned and my conscience is clear.
Addendum
George
Orwell in his prescient novel “1984,” laid out a nightmare vision of a
dystopian future & the older I get, the more that fictional nightmare seems
to be our present “reality.”
“War is peace.
Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”
“Doublethink means the power of holding two
contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”
“Until they became conscious they will never
rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.”
“The choice for mankind lies between freedom
and happiness and for the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better.”
“The Party seeks power entirely for its own
sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in
power, pure power.”
“Orthodoxy means not thinking–not needing to
think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.”
“For, after all, how do we know that two and
two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is
unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind,
and if the mind itself is controllable – what then?”
“Power is not a means; it is an end. One does
not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the
revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is
persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power”
“In Oceania at the present day, Science,
in the old sense, has almost ceased to exist. In Newspeak there is no word for ‘Science’.
The empirical method of thought, on which all the scientific achievements of
the past were founded, is opposed to the most fundamental principles of Ingsoc.
And even technological progress only happens when its products can in some way
be used for the diminution of human liberty. In all the useful arts the world
is either standing still or going backwards. The fields are cultivated with
horse-ploughs while books are written by machinery. But in matters of vital
importance—meaning, in effect, war and police espionage—the empirical approach
is still encouraged, or at least tolerated. The two aims of the Party are to
conquer the whole surface of the earth and to extinguish once and for all the
possibility of independent thought.”
And for the record,
your darling duck conservatively received over $2 billion in free media time.
Bernie received a tiny fraction of media time. Why? Because the Klansman has
been manipulating the media for decades and knows how to shock people so he’ll get
attention. But don’t forget, the media is the enemy of the people!
—-Rob DeLoss,
Trinidad, CA August 19, 2018
P.S.
It just dawned on me that I’ve forgotten the most glaring piece of
evidence—-probably because I’ve known it for so long—that I’ve internalized
& I forget that unfortunately, far too many Americans still haven’t caught
on i.e. FOX “News” is “The” most fake news corporation in America! And as
Joseph Goebbels knew only too well, the longer the lie has been repeated, the
more people begin to accept it as a truth. And appropriately, FOX is de facto,
America’s answer (copy) to Russia’s Pravda —their main newspaper & “Pravda”
means truth in Russian. It’s common knowledge that Trump watches hours of FOX “News”
every day so, this is where he gets his “knowledge” of current affairs from.
And while I’m not a gambling man, I bet you that Trump’s “base” is
overwhelmingly made up of FOX “News” viewers. Do a little research on your own
as to what journalism is & you, like me, will be amazed that FOX has gotten
away with posing as a news organization for these past 20 years. And I hold our
mainstream as well as our alternative news sites partially responsible because,
they have been reinforcing this delusion every time they repeat the phrase “FOX
News.” I’ve been putting it in quotation marks for several years.
is a movie based on the reality of what caused the collapse of the world economy in 2007. In the financial “services” sector of the U.S. economy, a “short” is to bet against something.
The financial “elite” bet that they could get away with defrauding the American public indefinitely by purposely selling mortgages they knew were shit to one another & the audacity to then bet that they could bundle them together in vast quantities & hide their worthlessness. And the “credit rating” agencies upon which everything is valued & holds god-like power over us, stamped them with triple A ratings i.e. the best rating you can get. And these wealthy whores knew full well what they were doing & didn’t give a fuck because they knew the federal government would bail them out & that they wouldn’t see a single day in prison.
They were right & they duped the gullible public by shifting the blame to the poor & the immigrants as they have done throughout history. How? By labeling them greedy for thinking they could buy a home they obviously couldn’t afford. Of course they hid the true facts regarding their predatory lending practices i.e. if you were breathing, you qualified for their deceitful mortgages with the hidden balloon payments, etc.
“Masters of the Universe” (world-class thieves)
The cold, hard facts are that the economic meltdown was the fault of the insatiable greed of the “Super Banks” & many of their Wall St. cronies like hedge fund managers, the mortgage lending giants, the credit rating agencies that sanctioned the tens of millions of shitty loans, the real estate industry, the world’s largest insurance corporation—A.I.G., & all the corrupt politicians who looked the other way because of the campaign donations, etc. they received from the corporate cockroaches.
Hitler rose to power by blaming the Jews primarily for Germany’s economic depression between WWI & WWII. And once he became Germany’s most powerful man, he shored-up his power by first accusing, then beating up & jailing anyone who dared to challenge his authority. And when that didn’t work, he had them killed i.e. intellectuals, artists, writers, teachers, professors, homosexuals, immigrants, etc.
Does this sound at all familiar? Trump rose to the highest position in America, the presidency, by attacking & blaming Muslims, Mexicans, Blacks, gays, the Obama administration, Wall St., and the media. I fear that we may come to a new form of fascism, an American fascism & we may very well begin the mass incarceration then the extermination of all the Muslims living in America that the “intelligence” agencies, the military, & the police that are resembling military occupation forces more & more.
However, it will be much easier for the tin-pot would be dictator Trump than it was for Hitler because today, “our” government—what a farce—and the corporate cockroaches, especially the “social media” platforms like Microsoft, Yahoo!, Google, Facebook, Paltalk, You Tube, AOL, Skype, & Apple to name just the major culprits. Consider the fact that tens of millions if not billions of people—mostly young people—around the globe are addicted to their “Smart” phones to the point that they interact less & less with their friends in the old fashioned sense i.e. talking face to face, going out together, offering true human sympathy/empathy when their friends are troubled, etc. instead, they have developed insatiable appetites for collecting fake friends they’ve never met & the more “likes,” etc. they collect, the more popular they feel.
So, these so-called “Smart phones,” are de facto making us a much more atomized or isolated people, helping to “dumb us down,” and freely providing the government & the corporate cockroaches all our personal data by illegally & immorally all our e-mails, phone calls, physical locations which they can monitor & track, text messages, web searches, websites you visit, our purchases, what we read & write, etc. all with the friendly help of the “social media” platforms or websites & “services.”
Will we sleepwalk our way to our death & a horrific future more terrifying than any of the zombie or vampire cult movies & television programs the public is enthralled with? A large percentage of Germany’s Jewish population stood by in disbelief as Hitler’s gestapo & SS escalated their violence against them as well. And the so-called, “Good Germans” stood silently by as the evil spread like a virus among their countrymen.
Reflect if you will on the illiteracy of the American public i.e. just scan through your T.V. guide & yeah, we have hundreds of choices but it’s clearly not much of a choice if you’re at all concerned or value true intellectual stimulation. Movies are a steady stream of comic book heroes, monsters, ridiculous “Romance stories,” absurd science fiction (Heinlein, Bradbury, Asimov, Clarke are the rare exceptions), gratuitous violence, or pure pablum. The reading habits of Americans are the laughing stock of the world, and when is the last time you enjoyed a serious political discussion with your friends or even strangers? And lastly but certainly not least, the fact that we have the most illiterate & proudly anti-intellectual president in U.S. history, Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan is gutting every government agency established to protect the environment and us from the corporate predators & threatening a nuclear war with N. Korea, etc., should scare the Hell out of you! But hey, Hell may not be such a shock when it comes because we’re already acclimated thanks to Trump & the corporate cockroaches who are speeding-up Global Warming?
In conclusion, we’re all being shorted or bet against. The corporate cockroach conspiracy is that we’ll be too preoccupied with our smart phones & other distracting toys to notice that they’re fucking us yet again. Yep! They—the financial “wizards” which should rightfully be called the war profiteers & whores who rob us blind—were supposedly bailed-out to save our economy & offer loans to people to start new businesses, prevent bankruptcy, etc. but Paulson, Geitner, Bernanke, Summers, etc. were afraid to put it in writing for fear they might not accept the billions from our Treasury. And lo & behold, they refused to help us, the peasants who just pay all the taxes they used to bail out the Wall St. wolves & millions of Americans had their homes illegally foreclosed on.
And surprise! They’re at it again & Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan just gave the super-rich yet another giant, tax break (give away) which they’ll pocket & proclaim they must now cut more social welfare programs. P.T. Barnum is famous for having said, “There’s a Sucker born every minute.” How right he was, perhaps we should change our nation’s name to the United States of Suckers?
As the saying goes in Vegas, you drive into town in a cadillac & you leave on a Greyhound bus. You’ve been warned!
P.S. I almost forgot to mention that those billions that were handed to the “Super Bankers” (Super Predators) helped the big boys to reward themselves with bonuses in the millions for having tanked our economy & sparked a world-wide, economic collapse. Pretty good work if you can get it, eh?
“No experiment can be more interesting than that we are now trying, and which we trust will end in establishing the fact, that man may be governed by reason and truth. Our first object should therefore be, to leave open to him all the avenues to truth. The most effectual hitherto found, is the freedom of the press. It is, therefore, the first shut up by those who fear the investigation of their actions.”
—Thomas Jefferson to John Tyler, 1804
For those who may not be familiar with the term, “the fourth estate,” let me define it for you & believe me, it gives me no joy in feeling it most likely necessary to do so. I have worked in the education profession for over 20 years so I’ve seen first hand how woefully lacking we are when it comes to educating our citizens.
The founding fathers were students or children of the Enlightenment if you will. Therefore, they knew full well how vital it is for a citizenry to be well-informed because they knew the history of the Dark Ages in Europe where the educated were mostly either the priests or the “nobility.” This was done deliberately so as to more easily control the citizens i.e. peasants.
In contrast, several, not all, of our founding fathers believed that without an educated citizenry, we too could slip back into a Dark Ages and be taken over by a corrupt aristocracy or oligarchy. Therefore, they included the free press in the Bill of Rights because it’s vital as a force to keep the three branches of government in check. And the last sentence in the quote I started this essay with should jump out at anyone not willfully ignorant i.e. the majority of Trump supporters.
You see, Donald the Dick knows only too well what all the other authoritarians & tyrants present & past know i.e. keep the people ignorant by constantly denigrating the free press or journalists, and you can remain in power. But, let the citizenry hear the valid criticisms of journalists, professors, writers, etc., and your power is eroded.
Admittedly, the press has been a dismal failure as a general rule but this doesn’t excuse the brazen attempts on Trump’s part to totally discredit any & every reporter who says anything critical about him. For the sake of brevity—I’m often guilty of being long-winded—I will simply refer any of you who care to understand this present dilemma, to the classic by Noam Chomsky & Edward Hermann, “The Manufacture of Consent.” And in a word, our “free press” has by and large failed abysmally due to the cannibalization of its principles by Capitalism’s insatiable appetite for ever greater profits.
Moreover, another major factor in why our press has prostituted itself to such a significant degree is the fact that, we, the citizens, haven’t done our duty as citizens of a democratic republic by keeping the pressure on the owners of the media. For example, I bet the majority of Americans aren’t even aware of the fact that the airwaves i.e. means by which television, radio, etc. are broadcast to us are owned by us. No, we blithely go through life silent & happy as long as they provide our daily distractions i.e. “entertainment” in the form of sports, soap operas, “reality” T.V., sit-coms, etc. and as a result, even the news has morphed into what is now referred to as “infotainment.”
America has become the laughing stock of the rest of the world. Why? Because we live in our bubble believing we are the greatest nation on earth but if you’ve done any traveling at all outside the U.S., and you meet other citizens of other nations & have a serious conversation, you’ll soon see that no, we’re not so wonderful. That’s all part of the constant propaganda we’ve been inundated with from the cradle to the grave.
Continuing on, another factor for our pitiful state of affairs is the fact that we have also allowed the corporate media to monopolize the ownership of the media & I’ve seen it go from 50 corporations in 1983 to just five corporations today. Think about it, five individuals determining what will and what won’t be published or aired on radio, television, cable news, magazines, newspapers, etc. And one of the most depressing aspects of all of this is that Rupert Murdoch’s “News Corporation” has been allowed to masquerade as “news” via “FOX News” for over 20 years.
Here are a few, carefully chosen paragraphs from an article that breaks down just how significant it is that these five or six media conglomerates have such an influence on the American public as well as the public of most of the world’s citizens;
“These five conglomerates are Time Warner, Disney, Murdochs’ News Corporation, Bertelsmann of Germany, and Viacom (formerly CBS). Their control spans most of the newspapers, magazines, books, radio and TV stations, movie studios, and much of the web news content of the United States. These conglomerates are in large measure responsible for inculcating the social, political, economic, and moral values of both adults and children in the United States….
….It was not always like this. Immediately after World War II three out of four US newspapers were independently owned. But the media-control numbers have been shrinking ever since then due to mergers, acquisitions, and other processes. By 1983, 50 corporations controlled 90 percent of US media. But today just five giant conglomerates control 90 percent of what most Americans read, watch, and listen to.
It is notable and should be emphasized that all the five major media conglomerates are corporate members of the Council on Foreign relations. This organization is a US think-tank whose members have been instrumental in formulating US government policies resulting in sanctions, destabilization efforts, and outright military attacks on nations which have never attacked the US.
The Council’s members’ activities helped to promote the Iraq war, the bombings of Serbia and Libya, and the recent overthrow of the elected government of the Ukraine. The promotion of these policies by the media conglomerates which belong to the Council has been key to preparing the American public to accept these policies….
….It should also be noted that the conglomerates themselves are giant corporations. They are among the largest companies in the world. They contribute to both of America’s big parties, the Republicans and Democrats, while supporting their policies. US media companies have also received from the Reagan, Clinton, and Bush administrations progressively greater media deregulation, which permitted ever greater media ownership concentration, culminating for the first time in allowing all the media in a community or city to be owned by one company….. “https://www.rt.com/op-ed/158920-us-ukraine-media-control/
FOX is America’s version of what the Russian newspaper, “Pravda,” except the Russians knew it was propaganda i.e. bullshit. And you wonder why we have a president like Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan, who gets his news daily from watching FOX, and who is again obliviously the most anti-intellectual president we’ve ever had? Trump isn’t an anomaly, no, he’s the symptom of an illiterate society and he’s clearly not capable mentally, emotionally, or morally of governing our nation. He could only get away with his racist remarks & scapegoating of Muslims, immigrants, gays, reporters, intellectuals, etc. etc. etc., in a country where being educated is considered being an elitist snob & anti-American.
In conclusion, my hero, Edward Snowden, the friend of the 99.9% of the world’s population summed it up nicely and humbly in the film, “Citizen Four” by Laura Poitras and also stars, Glenn Greenwald, one of the world’s greatest journalists in terms of integrity, when Snowden said something like; “It’s about Control.”
He’s referring to the mass surveillance of every human being on earth that uses a phone, computer, etc. and especially uses the “social media” platforms like Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, etc. In brief, they i.e. the governments of the world & the corporate cockroaches who are the de facto rulers of the world pulling the strings in the background, are storing our personal info so they can control us i.e. threaten us with jail, etc. if we become a threat to their power or control over us.
So, if we don’t inform ourselves & all who will listen, we are ensuring our own enslavement & possible death. This essay is dedicated to all my brothers & sisters in the Flower Power Revolution around the globe. As the famous maxim says, “The only thing we have to lose is our chains.”
Peace & Perseverance!
—Rob
P.S. A good place to start is by destroying your “Smart” phone.
