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.

• 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!

  

• 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.

  

• 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?)

  

• 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.

  

“As long as the general population is passive, apathetic, diverted to consumerism or hatred of the vulnerable, then the powerful can do as they please, and those who survive will be left to contemplate the outcome.”

 

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/

Overpopulation is a Threat— I’m with Bucky Fuller on this & he says basically that there are more than enough resources to properly feed, house, & take care of all of humanity were it not for the greed of the “great pirates.” (see Jeff Bezos, et al) “It is now highly feasible to take care of everybody on Earth at a ‘higher standard of living than any have ever known.’ It no longer has to be you or me. Selfishness is unnecessary and henceforth unrationalizable as mandated by survival.”

• 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!

  

 

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.