I have been in a state of shock pretty much since the coronavirus pandemic struck. I mean, Jesus Christ! Just how much more brazen or in our faces does the 1% have to be? Have Americans become so dumbed-down that they need a giant poster of Wall St. & Congress flipping off the public & a caption that reads; Too Bad, Too Sad!

People are dying by the tens of thousands & we’re told that the government doesn’t have the masks, ventilators, tests, etc. we need to stop this pandemic because the casino & crony capitalists want only the bare minimum of these critical supplies in their warehouses —gotta be cost effective don’t you know?  and “our” government, “led” by the class dunce, Donald Duck, give trillions to bail out the airlines, the tourist industry, hedge fund companies, etc. etc. etc.? and it’s only a coincidence that the Chief Thief in the oval office personally gets richer because his golf resorts & etc. rely on these industries.

 

Yeah, I’m sure those millions of Americans who have been laid-off or fired, are planning their next cruise to the Caribbean or a month on the French Riviera if they’re able to pay their rent or buy groceries this month. Several of those who can still read & think critically warned us before Trump even became president that if a crisis happened when Trump was in the White House we’d be fucked & they were clearly right about that!

 

Yet even as they circle the drain, many, if not most of the Trump zombie crowd still sing his praises? Absolutely mind-boggling that living, breathing people can still believe in such a narcissistic cretin who clearly doesn’t give a shit about his followers or the rest of us?

 

Ready for some more good news? Epidemiologists tell us that there are millions of other viruses out there but it won’t mean a thing to the 1% who are so blinded by their greed. What’s that saying? A fool is someone who keeps doing the same thing but expects a different result. And mark my word, once we get through this coronavirus crisis, our political & corporate bosses will go right back to business as usual. So, when the next pandemic strikes, we’ll be short on masks, protective equipment, hospital beds, etc. all over again & tens of thousands of people will die needlessly.

 

It’s abundantly clear or obvious that the powers that be could give a shit less about us. If you recall in 2008 when the world economy was on the brink of total collapse & the Bush Cabal rammed the TARP funding through Congress, to the “Banks Too Big to Fail,” they assumed the banks would free up loans to individuals & small businesses.

 

As Gomer Pyle used to exclaim; “Surprise, Surprise, Surprise!,” the Big Banks didn’t free up loans but just kept on doing what they’d been doing before the crash & giving themselves obscene bonuses, etc. Guess what? Yep, they’re doing it again but this time it’s several trillion dollars that’s being given away with no strings attached i.e. no regulations. And the real fuck you to us is they put Mnuchin in charge of overseeing this mind-boggling giveaway. Talk about the fox guarding the hen house, but the real fox we have to be wary of is FOX “News” which provides Trump with his daily “ideas” of what to lie & rant about.

Furthermore, why is it that the “military budget” is never questioned? It’s like the Pentagon is America’s sacred temple & the generals are the priests. Eisenhower warned us of the military/industrial complex & wanted to include Congress in that complex but that was a bit too revealing. Anyway, he knew about this complex because during his tenure in office, our military budget skyrocketed i.e. he presided over it.

So, they—the federal government—always have the funds to bail-out the mythical free market capitalists & they always have the funds for more wars & weapons (some of which the Pentagon doesn’t even ask for) yet they never can find the funds for Health, Education, & Welfare?

 

How interesting? One might believe they i.e. the corporate cockroaches who de facto own & give the politicians their marching orders, don’t actually care about us, the peasants, who make up the other 99% of America? In fact, one is tempted to think that our only value to the power elite is our consumer spending, taxes, our lives as cannon fodder in the military, & if nothing else, as prisoners in the rapidly growing & profitable prison industry?

 

Furthermore, if we were to consider the hidden costs of our military complex we’d find that the amount we spend on the military is far greater than what we’re led to believe. Here’s a brief video of Chalmers Johnson, obviously a liberal radical (I’m being facetious or sarcastic)

Yep, Chalmers Johnson R.I.P. ; Chalmers Ashby Johnson (August 6, 1931 – November 20, 2010)^[1] was an American political scientist and professor emeritus of the University of California, San Diego. He served in the Korean War, was a consultant for the CIA from 1967 to 1973, and chaired the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of California, Berkeley from 1967 to 1972.^[2] He was also president and co-founder with Steven Clemons of the Japan Policy Research Institute (now based at the University of San Francisco), an organization promoting public education about Japan and Asia.^[3]

 

Perhaps the liars & thieves like Trump & McConnel don’t want the public to know the facts about how much they waste of our national budget on the military?

 

2015 total discretionary spending was $1.1 trillion, so including nuke spending and veterans spending, spending on the military represented 63% of the total. In other words, two-thirds of your tax bill!

https://www.nationofchange.org/2017/03/27/real-figure-military-spending-us-66-3-discretionary-federal-budg

 

On the other hand, even though “we” spend two-thirds of our “budget” (note that for regular people, a budget means keeping close watch on how much you’re spending) The United States public is more frightened than just about any other nation & we are the most feared nation on Earth because of our perpetual wars/police actions, etc. I believe it was my intellectual hero, Noam Chomsky, who has pointed out this interesting irony? Moreover, I bet the majority of the American public doesn’t have a clue as to how many actual military bases we have around the world, let alone “black sites” (where they’re free to torture prisoners)?

 

It’s not easy to assess the size or exact value of our empire of bases. Official records on these subjects are misleading, although instructive. According to the Defense Department’s annual “Base Structure Report” for fiscal year 2003, which itemizes foreign and domestic U.S. military real estate, the Pentagon currently owns or rents 702 overseas bases in about 130 countries and HAS another 6,000 bases in the United States and its territories.

https://www.tomdispatch.com/post/1181/chalmers_johnson_on_garrisoning_the_planet

 

Pursuing this further, I wager that not very many patriotic Americans would acknowledge that we are an empire? Why? Because it’s drilled into our heads from elementary school through high school & to a large extent even in our so-called institutions of higher learning that the U.S. is always on the side of democracy & freedom. So how could we possibly be an empire? Well here’s another “commie lover” doing the “unthinkable,” i.e. speaking truth at power:

 

At the time of his death, Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, also known as “The Fighting Quaker”, was the most decorated Marine in US history; he was the only person to be awarded a Marine Corps Brevet Medal and a Medal of Honor for two separate military actions. He had also become an unrelenting voice against the business of war.

 

“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.”

I’ve been trying to tell people for approximately 40 years that the U.S. military is basically used in foreign countries to protect the corporate cockroaches who rape, pillage, & plunder them so these corporations can become ever more powerful & rich. But, I’m usually mocked & dismissed. This is why it’s of such critical importance that the corporate media doesn’t report these inconvenient facts, because the public might become aroused & do something about it.

 

The greed & ignorance of those at the top of the financial services sector of our economy & those at the top in politics i.e. Trump & Mitch McConnel is so insanely unfettered that the coming crash could very well make the Great Depression look like a picnic in the park by comparison?

 

Moreover, this endless cycle of greed, graft, & waste won’t stop until we’ve taken back our rightful power. But we might not get that chance because the corporate cockroaches are destroying our environment, the environment that gives us life, faster than we can protect it. And equally threatening to humanity’s survival is the ever present, 24/7 threat of nuclear war hence, nuclear annihilation which our vice-president & the lunatic “Christian” right extremists & fundamentalists pray for.

I know, very depressing. So, people go back to their smart phones & sports on T.V. while we steadily march like lemmings off that cliff to oblivion. Well at least some of us did try to stop the madness.

As for me, I’ve only begun to fight back against the Wall of Ignorance that Trump exemplifies & is building. Yeah, let’s waste trillions on this symbol of ignorance, fear & hatred while tens of thousands of Americans are dying, many in their homes alone. That’s your “successful” fake billionaire’s business strategy. Gee? I wonder why his casinos went bankrupt?

 

So, if you were hoping this essay would be a fairy tale with a happy ending, don’t waste your time reading further because my aim is to expose as much of the dirty truth or facts as I can in the hope of breaking through that wall of ignorance that a third or better of the U.S. public lean against.

 

When I first started attending community colleges after I got out of the U.S. Army on an “Undesirable Discharge,” — undesirable because I refused to let them send me to Vietnam & believe me, the army was far worse than undesirable in my book — I was 19 years old. I didn’t have a clue as to what I wanted to major in so I took several business courses (accounting, salesmanship, intro to retailing, intro to small business management, business law, etc.) and it didn’t take long for me to realize that all one needed to “succeed” in business is be extremely greedy & not have a conscience.

Well being the “loser” who couldn’t complete the two years I had signed-up for in the U.S. Army (not really my “choice” to sign-up i.e. I was in the lottery & my number was so low that I knew they’d draft me soon, and I “joined” the army because it had the least amount of a time commitment i.e. two years, versus the other branches of the military, I began a “career” (sarcasm) of changing majors, dropping-out —many times half-way or even three-quarters of the way through a semester—in my search for some meaning in my life.

 

I’ve had several ideas over the years of how I could’ve probably been very “successful” & made a lot of money using the cheap labor that so many poor Mexicans would do in trying to provide for their families. But the loser in me just couldn’t do it. By-the-way, this was all way before I became interested in politics. That happened when Reagan became president because he scared me & he was the governor of the state I grew up in, California.

Here’s a brief review of an excellent book I read back in the 1980s; “Greed is Not Enough,”  by Robert Lekachman & it gives an excellent overview of just how harmful Reagan was to America; https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1982/4/20/dismantling-reaganomics-pbdburing-the-last-week/  

What COVID-19 has shown more conspicuously than anything else is how morally bankrupt the Capitalist system we are living under is. Congress’ first concern, especially the GOP, was the welfare of the corporate cockroach class i.e. the CEOs of the major industries like the oil industry that has been subsidized by us, the 99%, for decades. Yep, we gotta protect it even as they gouge us at the gas pump & push humanity into a horrific environmental nightmare. Gotta keep the greediest amongst us happy.And that was why Reagan was so beloved by the “Defense Industry” because he gave the same speech for 20 years for G.E. i.e. the Commies are Coming, the Commies are Coming!

 

Equally terrifying is the constant threat of a nuclear exchange & with a spoiled brat like Trump in the oval office & his penchant for throwing tantrums, humanity is overlooking that abyss the lunatic “Christians” are praying for. Here’s a relevant quote from Bertrand Russell, a true humanist who devoted his life to the pursuit of peace;

 

“Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth — more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, careless of the well-tried wisdom of the ages. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid … Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.”

 

What humanity is desperately in need of right now is far more calm, rational minds not unthinking, emotional nut-jobs easily manipulated into committing acts of violence by demagogues like Trump of the Duck Dynasty Klan. Do you seriously feel okay with someone as crude & callous as Trump who clearly only cares about his wealth & fame, arguing with the president, king, or prime minister of a nation that possesses nuclear weapons over some trade or territorial dispute? This is akin to two, little boys playing chicken on their bicycles.

 

The priests in the Temple of Capitalism never change their sermon, it’s the same old song for every crisis that comes along or when they simply feel the need for more gifts & tribute from the peasantry i.e. we must get this tax break or the economy will crash & put everybody out of work, etc. and if you’ll help us out just one more time, we’ll put Americans back to work. But oddly, they never seem to follow through on this “promise?”

 

Continuing on with this sad history of greed & corruption that has grown to such monstrous heights, we are also witnessing the rise of wars over water rights. And as usual, it’s the already suffering & dying masses of people in Africa who are among the first to feel the effects of the greed pandemic. Moreover, for those of you who claim to only care about America, why has Michigan allowed the mind-boggling callous indifference towards the people of Flint? Worse yet, this has been going on for years now & the clean water that used to flow from the Flint river into its citizens homes is now given away, practically free to the Nestle corporation? And Americans have the gall to call themselves the defenders of freedom & democracy?

 

Of course, the fact that the majority of the residents of Flint happen to be Black doesn’t have anything to do with this state of affairs, right? And let’s not forget Obama, the Black Knight on the White steed who brought change to America. He participated in a public charade to convince the people of Flint their water was safe. Bottom-line, Trump rose to power on a platform of fear & hate and racism was the most powerful tool in his bag of dirty tricks.

 

And Trump’s virulent & disgusting racism has also been effective in convincing his Walking Dead-heads that it’s the “hordes” of illegal immigrants who are behind the disappearance of all those jobs that paid enough for a simple, country boy to live comfortably. Yeah, just ignore the fact that it was the corporate pigs who closed down their plants here & moved overseas where they could pay their slaves as little as $2 a day, & primordial creatures like Trump got richer by screwing America’s workers & the “illegals.”

 

Yep! All these free-loaders are just making-up their stories of fleeing brutal dictators, vicious drug lords & the gangs that roam their streets, or the simple fact that they can’t find any work. They’re actually a part of a vast conspiracy to destroy America from within & therefore, feel free to spit on them, beat them up, even kill them if you feel like it & Make America Great Again!

 

Meanwhile, as all this domestic terrorism against starving & fearful people simply trying to provide for their families goes on, the Know-Nothing Movement inspired by Trump’s proud ignorance, is distracted from the fact that humanity has reached or is damn close to the “tipping point” i.e. the point of no return in terms of the world environment’s total collapse or destruction & no longer being able to sustain human, animal, or plant life. Just more scare tactics by those Satan worshipping Secular Humanists who don’t even believe in God!

 

Conversely, I find it interesting to note that with all these morons supposedly in charge, when people like myself argue for universal health care or single-payer health care, we’re dismissed as not being “realistic” because “we” (the federal government) can’t afford it. Yet once again, it’s obvious what a pack of lies this is because they magically produce trillions to save the stock market? All these greedy corporate thieves who get one tax break after another like the one Trump the Terrible just gave them, just use the handouts they receive to do stock buy backs & become even richer. Hell, they’d be fools not to in their value system because they know the fed will always come to their rescue while the hundreds of thousands of small, mom & pop businesses are denied financial help & told to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, the Horatio Alger myth that Reagan was so fond of.

 

Well we can’t help but see where their version of “reality” has gotten us; critically short of vital, life-saving medical equipment, hospital beds, medical professionals, etc. even though the Center for Disease Control has been telling them for years that more pandemics were coming. How’s that for planning ahead in those “realistic” masters of the universe’s pointed little heads? And worse yet, we have Captain Dumb-fuck giving daily press briefings advising people to do the most dangerous & absurd things imaginable? (like inject disinfectants) Donny is a public menace & a clear & present danger to the American public yet he’s allowed to go on spewing his ignorance & hate?

 

America & the rest of the world is in dire need of a Humanist Crusade for Humanity! The greed of the petty spirited has gone beyond ad absurdum but to even point out such things as this is dismissed as being alarmist? It’s the mass & pervasive ignorance that is scarier than anything else in my book.

 

Tragically, we have lived under this insane system which allows unbridled greed & corruption to spread like a virus for so long that most people don’t believe there’s any other system possible. It’s an extremely sick, depraved, & psychopathic mentality that allows a Jeff Bezos to become the richest man in the world as humanity is dying all around us.

 

Relatively speaking, a handful of men like Bezos are allowed to de facto own or control the very air, water, & land we need to exist as living beings on this planet. We, through our willful ignorance & apathy have given these modern day Genghis Khan’s the power of Life & Death over billions of loving parents, children, brothers, sisters, etc. who simply wish to live & thrive and be able to provide a decent roof over their loved ones’ heads, food in their bellies, clean water to drink, air that isn’t so polluted that it’s unhealthy to breathe it, & their greatest dreams are to be able to give their children a quality education so they may have the same things for their families when they mature.

 

But we’re told by the Trumps of this world that this is asking too much. What the obscenely wealthy are in effect telling us is that everyone not filthy rich like they are, are insects that you should be about as concerned about as you would a pesky fly.

 

I know it’s politically incorrect of me as well as spiritually incorrect of me according to the New Age Nonsense movement but, I would love to see all these inhumane “leaders” & men of power & wealth have to watch as their loved ones suffered the fate of the poor & watch their children suffer & die needlessly. But then again, it seems that most of those on top, aren’t even capable of normal human sympathy or compassion i.e. Trump being Public Exhibit Number One.

 

My guess is that many, if not most, of the people who’ve known me at least somewhat over the course of my life, probably think of me as a doomsayer who revels in depressing news & facts. And it saddens me that they can’t see that I have spent my life learning about these matters in an effort to awaken people & hopefully stir them to action because I love & care about people.

 

And I sometimes worry that I may be “losing it,” because I can break into tears, several times a day. I feel the suffering & pain of others in my being and I can’t just sit idly by as so much evil is allowed to go on basically unchecked. This is why I am more worried & stressed-out than I’ve ever been under any other president in my lifetime, with this vile, despicable megalomaniac in the most powerful office in the world. As I mentioned earlier, I didn’t start paying attention until Reagan became president because I thought, no one could be as self-serving & obedient to the corrupt wealthy as him but Trump makes Reagan look like a Boy Scout in comparison. Be forewarned, here’s another truly frightening & depressing fact, anywhere from a third to half of the American public think Trump is the greatest thing since sliced-bread. This is truly stupefying?

This kind of willful ignorance is simply beyond comprehension? I mean, Jesus H. Christ! Trump shows his ignorance, his indifference to our health, his disengagement from the COVID-19 pandemic, & his pathetic attempts to shift the blame for his criminal neglect when it comes to leading in this terrifying time. I don’t care how much you’ve fallen for this cult of personality cardboard figure, you must be an alien from some other planet to be able to overlook the hundreds of examples of obvious failures on Trump’s part. You know what this malignant narcissist’s concern is during this dark time? It’s that he can’t go golfing. His handlers must’ve persuaded him that that would be just too far even for his die-hard Walking Dead constituency.

 

On the other hand, one of the most effective strategies the rich & powerful have used throughout history is to Divide & Conquer so we must give credit where credit is due, Trump may be the greatest divider this country has ever seen?

Trump is like some old rock & roll band that never stops touring in their pathetic attempt to keep their name out there in the public’s consciousness. And this is why he never stops holding his fear & hate rallies, well, up till now, but it’s driving him crazy & he’s been using what are supposed to be public health information about the virus daily press briefings, to keep the focus on him, blaming others, & fanning the flames of racism, xenophobia, & insurrection against the federal government’s warnings & steps to at least slow down the spread of the virus.

 

Moreover, it’s getting scarier on our public streets because not only are we fearful of catching the virus so we’re attempting to maintain “social distancing” guidelines, we have to worry about the Trump goon squads who are having protests & carrying their automatic rifles in public. These “people” are salivating at the thought of being able to play out their fantasy roles like zombie killers, preventing foreign powers from taking over America, etc.

 

I think they played their video games way too long i.e. from childhood to middle age & beyond for some of them. They feel so powerless in their real world lives that they can’t wait to dish out some fear & hatred on whatever group is Trump’s latest target to blame for America’s problems.

 

Furthermore, once again, how they cannot see that it’s exactly Trump’s kind of buddies on Wall St. and in the boardrooms of the behemoth corporations who have fucked them, sent their jobs overseas, & stolen their pensions, and every single safety net program. Yep! As Sam Elliot says in those funny cartoons; You must be some special kind of stupid!

 

Moving along on this trail of tears, yet another consequence of the unbridled greed in this country, is the cauldron of anger in many of our inner cities & especially those that are made up of primarily Black Americans. Why? If you have to ask, you must’ve been living under a rock for the past half century or better.

 

Blacks have been on the bottom of the totem pole in America from the beginning of our history to the present & sometimes these communities erupt like after the verdict in the Rodney King trial. If one were truly cynical, you’d be tempted to believe that it’s an overt conspiracy to kill off as many Black Americans as possible. It seems almost daily or at least weekly that white cops shoot down young black men & rarely are they held accountable for what is literally murder!

 

The greed aspect behind this tragic phenomenon is the rich who suck every penny they can from the ghettos in exorbant rents, keeping their wages barely subsistent, etc. and turning this section of our population into redundant i.e. not needed, workers. They steal a man’s pride because many of these men can no longer feed their families. Is it any wonder that many of these poor souls turn to drugs & alcohol to escape their daily misery?

 

On another note, I find it very interesting & worrisome that we’re not allowed to talk about politics in bars. Could it be a conspiracy of silence (no pun intended) or is it merely a coincidence? I believe that bars are the best place to discuss politics because they are the most common meeting place for average workers across America. And again, I can’t help but be suspicious of this absurd social taboo against speaking about politics in bars because it might be that the rich don’t want us comparing notes & possibly uniting against that 1% who are responsible for just about every social, financial, & political problem in our lives.

 

The same questions could be asked about our public education system. I know that I’m treading on thin-ice when I mention the possibility of conspiracies by the power elite because Alex Jones & charlatans like him have gone off the deep-end for far too many years. And I, like many others, roll my eyes & tune-out and look for an exit when someone starts going off on conspiracies by the Illuminati, the Trilateral Commission, etc. But I’ve been an educator for over 20 years & have attended school for almost half my life (I’m 67). I firmly believe they (the 1%) want us to only have enough education to be able to run their machines in their factories—the few that are still left—& perform the “service sector” jobs of our economy i.e. pump gas, wait on tables, house maids, gardeners, etc. I’ll end this paragraph with an anecdote from my life, I interviewed for a part-time job many years ago & discovered that the guy who was interviewing me was president of the local school district. He seemed open-minded so I asked him directly, why do they lie to us about American history all the way through high school? And he replied matter of factly; Well, most people don’t go on to higher education & the government wants you to leave high school with a good feeling about your country. In brief, not many people would be willing to join the military & put their lives on the line if they knew the true, ugly history of America.

 

In case I wasn’t clear as to how the greed factor relates to public schooling, the dumber they can keep us, the easier it is for them to exploit us through our jobs, our banking, mortgages, everything. I have long advised people to study what the rich have their kids study if you want to truly empower yourself!

 

And a key part of an elitist’ education is the humanities & the classics in the humanities always includes Charles Dickens. Perhaps the most powerful event in the young Dickens life was when his father was locked up in Debtors Prison. Not only did it put a tremendous strain on his family financially but the emotional scars due to the humiliation, etc. haunted him his entire life. And I believe that because of his background, Dickens was a master storyteller when it came to describing the poverty of those on the lowest rung in English life in his time.

 

Supposedly, debtors’ prisons were done away with but if they ever did?  They have clearly come back now. Many, if not the overwhelming majority of people in our prisons today, come from impoverished childhoods & our disgraceful public education system. Moreover, since there are hardly any jobs left other than the minimum wage, dead-end jobs, or taking the “option” of joining the military in the perpetual war system that is American foreign policy & dying or coming home maimed & then denied proper medical care. So again, it’s that vicious cycle of poverty, ignorance, & violence and the majority of these broken spirits end up in prison. Guess what’s one of the most profitable industries in America today? Yep! The prison industry. So, if the wealthy can’t profit off you as a consumer or a worker, they can profit off your incarceration because the government pays a hefty salary for locking us up like animals. And it’s our tax dollars that are used to pay for it. Of course, the rich pay little to nothing in taxes though.

 

I have long felt the tragic irony of the fact that these criminals in the boardrooms & fancy office suites are free to defraud us of billions of dollars & only once in a while is one of them offered up as a scapegoat to appease the ignorant hordes briefly. Of course, they’re sent to a federal country club “prison” while the rest of us are sent to living Hell-holes not fit for man or beast!

 

Moreover, the very police & military forces who are used when riots erupt, are from the same background as the rest of us & regularly get screwed by the wealthy as well. If they only knew just how much more they have in common with us than those corporate cockroaches who give them their orders.

 

Returning to the subject of the “Classics,” I’m not sure if H.G. Wells is included but I believe he was one of the first science fiction writers along with Jules Verne? Anyway, this quote from H.G. Wells struck me like a lightning bolt when I first came across it;

 

“Civilization is in a race between education and catastrophe. Let us learn the truth and spread it as far and wide as our circumstances allow. For the truth is the greatest weapon we have.”

         And this quote has never been more pertinent than it is today. The ignorance & arrogance of Trump has already caused the unnecessary deaths of perhaps tens of thousands of Americans & this pandemic is only getting started. My goal isn’t to frighten you, we, myself included, are already sufficiently scared but I’m doing what I can to help inform people & thereby empower them.

         You see, my imaginary reader, fear is dangerous because it often blocks reason & we are in desperate need for a cool, rational, & intelligent leader to take charge in this dangerous time. And fear is one of Trump’s greatest tools in his manipulation of his cult members. Keep people fearful & give them someone to blame for their misfortunes by constantly fanning the flames of hatred is how a despot or a demagogue remains in power.

         Speaking of power, I’m fairly sure that it was H.G. Wells who imagined a nuclear bomb in his book; “The Shape of Things to Come.” And as our resident genius & a scholar’s scholar, Noam Chomsky, has written & spoken about in great detail, the ever-present threat of a nuclear exchange which would immediately escalate into a nuclear war & the entire planet would be blown up, is a very real threat to our survival.

         Furthermore, it’s not absurd or completely off the mark to fear that someone as childish, ignorant, self-centered as Trump could start a war, maybe even launch a nuclear weapon if he felt backed into a corner by possibly being removed from office & then being open to criminal charges & being sent to prison? Trump clearly only cares about himself & we witness almost daily his tantrums, and his ranting & ravings. I worry because it probably wouldn’t take very much to send him off the deep-end & in his sick mind along with his inability to feel any sympathy or empathy with others, he might just figure; Fuck it! Why not start a nuclear war because I’ll go out in style and people will remember my name?

         And as if this weren’t already more than enough to be concerned about, we have the “Christian” crazies i.e. the fundamentalists or the evangelical extremists who are praying for the end of the world. Like the toddler in the White House, they have held a deep grudge for many years. They feel persecuted for their beliefs & are becoming ever more paranoid in their warped & perverted views on life.

         Once again, we find the billionaires who manage to find a way to profit off every natural disaster as well as man-made disaster—usually attributed to their machinations behind the scenes. Witness a recent discovery i.e. our Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, a billionaire, whose agenda is to destroy public education & replace it with Charter Schools, is behind these armed protestors in Michigan who believe the “Shelter in Place” guidelines are a secret plan to take their guns.

         Yep! old Betsy is one of those “Christians,” who love charter schools because they can proselytize their extremist “Christian” views in them. History has shown that from the beginning of recorded history, the Church & the State have fought one another for the control over the public and at times, they have united in their mutual interests of keeping the public subservient to them so they can horde all the profits from the peasants’ labors.

         Furthermore, I spent several years researching the “Christian” fundamentalists & they’re really scary because many of them actually believe they’re doing us a great favor by killing us if we disagree with them a bit too strongly. And at a time so dangerous as this, we need cool heads to prevail, not the lunatic fringe.

         We desperately are in need of leaders who respect the simple philosophy of Secular Humanism. Guess who hates & fears Humanists? Yep! Religious fundamentalists around the world whether Christian, Muslim, or Jewish. In fact, I wrote a book on the subject & if you’d like to check it out, simply type in “Truth Against the World,” by Rob DeLoss on Amazon. You can read the first several pages I believe, for free?

         If you’ve made it this far in this lengthy essay, congratulations, you must have a very high pain threshold? Ha! Ha! Since we’re on the subject of the end of the world, here’s another cheerful tidbit for ya; turns out that the phrase; Masters of the Universe, isn’t so ridiculous as it first sounds. These powerful overlords clearly don’t give a shit about their near total destruction of our environment & are planning ahead. Yep! Look up; Full Spectrum Dominance, a program with the goal of dominating the galaxy & who knows, maybe the universe after that?

         Think I’ve gone around the bend as the saying goes? Well, this “program” is a literal program of our Air Force & their goal is simple i.e. have strategic satellites above the earth that can target whoever or whatever they want to on earth & threaten them with total annihilation with military laser weapons stationed in Space.  Note fairly recent announcements by Mike Pence, a ‘Christian” evangelical, of what is to become the 6^th branch of U.S. Military Forces; Space Command.

         If you’re as old as me, you may remember Reagan’s infamous “Star Wars” program with the aim of developing laser weapons in space & creating a magical shield to protect America? It was thoroughly discredited by the majority of scientists & experts on such matters and supposedly was permanently shelved. I’ve long suspected that they were secretly continuing with their research into such a possibility, I’d say that my hunch was most likely correct? Here’s a link to our government’s very own Defense dept. and a story on this comforting news https://www.defense.gov/Explore/News/Article/Article/1717200/pence-space-command-will-integrate-military-

         Once again let me remind you that “we” never have the money for trivial matters like our health care, our public education system, or our general welfare which used to be known as our “Social Safety Net.” And in this pandemic, we see how successful Trump’s destruction of every program established to help us in hard times, has been.

         Very few & far from enough tests to determine just how far this virus has gone, massive shortages of even the most basic protective equipment even for the doctors & nurses on the front lines, a tiny fraction of the ventilators that can extend people’s lives as the doctors frantically search for ways to help us, etc. What do you bet that every single person in that infamous 1% have the best & as many of these life-saving things as they could ever need? Personally, I think the thing that would help America the most would be for Trump to contract the virus because then he just might possibly curtail his greed long enough to give us what we so desperately need? I know, pie-in-the-sky thinking?

         Hand-in-glove with this frightening state of affairs is the fact that many, if not most, of our younger generation have been raised on these dystopian movies & violent video games & heavy metal music to some extent. Why do I bring this up? Because I believe many of those young people have reconciled themselves to what they believe is a fact i.e. they have no future, all is bleak & futile so they may as well party-hearty while they can? Note those Spring Break kids who defied the “social distancing” guidelines, etc. and now some of them have contracted the virus & I believe some have even died?

         Consider the popularity of the series; “The Walking Dead,” and the fondness for vampires. They even have vampire love stories like soap operas. I kid you not! I believe that a lot of these depressing phenomena is a result of families struggling so hard to survive forces fathers & mothers to work absurd hours and they can’t be at home to supervise & guide their children’s viewing habits, etc. Again, we have to thank the greedy elite who are destroying the social fabric of America all in the name of the Almighty Buck!

         Personally speaking, and yeah, I know this isn’t politically correct to say but, I can’t stand being around many of these young people because of their crass & vulgar disrespect to anyone not of their generation, their violence towards others, their disregard of litter laws, etc. etc. etc. Also note their glee in bullying & shaming their more timid classmates on the “social media.” Yeah, real social, eh? I feel that this could serve as a sort of barometer of our barbarity as a society?

         Okay, follow the Yellow Brick Road. How appropriate! Get it? Yellow bricks representing Gold & our obsession with getting it is so powerful that we follow this empty road to desolation & destruction both physically & spiritually? A key factor or component in this society run amok is the de facto reality that we are not a nation founded on law & the Constitution means nothing to the mega rich.</h1>

         Laws are only enforced when the elite want to keep us in our places i.e. out of their sight so as to not disturb their delicate sensibilities or aesthetic senses. This is why the homeless in almost every city across this great land, are pushed to the outer city limits and industrial areas, etc.

         Think I’m exaggerating? Okay, then how in the Hell is it that we have a cheap con-man in the White House who has broken the law consistently throughout his entire business career yet he’s never been sent to jail, let alone prison? And why is it that for many of the largest corporations, they break the laws against dumping toxic waste into the waterways, the air, the ground, etc. on a daily basis or as a standard business practice because they know that if they do get fined for breaking these laws, the fine will be far less than the profits they made by ignoring the laws? And what’s worse, if they do have to appear before a judge & even if they’re found guilty, it doesn’t go on their record & they don’t even have to acknowledge that they committed a crime.

         Are you beginning to see the pattern here? These inhuman creatures who disregard the rest of us like we were piss-ants, care only about their profits & they will do everything & anything to ensure those profits never stop coming in & continually expand. Their insatiable greed is literally killing the planet & poisoning humanity in the process. But hey, we’ve been indoctrinated our entire lives to believe that he who dies with the most toys, wins. And it doesn’t matter how many yachts they own, or how big they are, or how many private jets they own, or mansions around the world, etc.

         How do “people” like Trump & his corporate cockroach cronies continue to get away with their endless crimes against humanity? Well in regards to Donald of the Duck Dynasty, it’s largely because of his skillful manipulation of the media which he has been perfecting from the beginning of his life of crime.

         Donnie learned a few simple strategies from his evil mentor, Roy Cohn, who was Joseph McCarthy’s adviser in his witch-hunt campaign of terror in the 1950s. Cohn stressed the importance of always being in the public’s eye i.e. it doesn’t matter whether the public loves you or hates you, only that they’re always talking about you or focused on you. And whenever you are criticized or charged with a crime, Deny, Divert, & Detract!

1.   Deny everything you’re accused of or criticized for. 2. Divert the attention of your critics from their charges against you by blaming others, etc. to take the focus off you. And 3. Detract or attack the character of anyone who criticizes you or attacks you in any shape or form. More importantly, every time someone dares to criticize you or even says something even slightly negative about you, attack & attack viciously & mercilessly. This is why Trump has been in court with law suits either as plaintiff or as defendant throughout his “career.”

And the easiest way to get media attention is to say or do such outrageous, crude, ignorant, hateful, twisted things that you’re sure to get the media’s attention & the more attention you get, the more you control the media and aren’t controlled by it.

Without a doubt, the single most important factor in Trump’s rise to power was his skillful manipulation of his fake image on The Apprentice. He even required that every time they mentioned his name of the show, they had to add, “the billionaire.” He most likely isn’t actually a billionaire but he’s been claiming that he is for so long, hardly anyone ever questions it now. Of course, this is probably why he’ll never release his tax records because they’d reveal that he’s just a paper tiger i.e. a fake billionaire.

     As much as I hate to admit it, this human scum has balls of steel in terms of his hubris & arrogance because his whole life is based on fake news yet he uses those two words to dismiss every reporter who dares to ask him a question he either doesn’t like or can’t answer. And in this upside down, insane world of celebrities who are listened to & believed in far more than the scientists who have spent their lives pursuing knowledge. We celebrate stupidity in America & we mock and dismiss many, if not most, of the experts in most fields of study.

     For example, the oil & gas industry has been waging a steady propaganda war for decades to cause people to doubt the world’s climatologists’ dire warnings. It’s gone to such an extreme that many people who may have not even graduated high school or read a single book in their lives, feels qualified or entitled to dismiss & mock the overwhelming majority of the world’s scientists, something like 95% or more of them, with the belief that their opinion is just as valid as these “experts.”

     Therefore, whatever Daddy Donald says is equally valid to anything his detractors say about him. There’s no reasoning with this kind of mentality & this allows the oil & gas industry to carry on destroying our planet & enriching themselves at all our expenses. And when people like myself attempt to open these people’s minds even a little, I am dismissed & accused as just another elitist snob. I think a lot of Trump’s supporters were embarrassed in their public schools & were dismissed as ignorant losers so they have a lot of pent-up hostility in them. And I can’t blame them for those sorts of feelings, that was wrong of any teachers who practiced shaming or allowed it to happen without it being stopped. This doesn’t excuse the ignorance & the assault on reason that we’re undergoing today though!

     What would be humorous were it not so dangerous is Trump’s typical performance right out of the Wizard of Oz i.e. I am the great & powerful & all-knowing Trump, the billionaire in his bellowing voice that he thinks makes him more convincing. But as in the book, when the little dog pulled back the curtain, it revealed, a small, frightened old man using tricks & devices to persuade the citizens that he was the great & powerful Wizard of Oz.

     This is why Trump has threatened to sue any of the schools he attended if they reveal his grades. He needs desperately to hide his incompetence & his whole fake charade or façade that he’s hid behind his entire business career. If his image was seriously damaged, he’d lose everything because he uses that fake image to sell his name to the corporations who want to use that false image of success to sell their products or services.

     If people really wanted to empower themselves & not continue to be at the mercy of the Trumps of this world & not simply whine about it, the first & most important thing they need to do is develop their Critical & Analytical thinking skills. And here’s a good place to start; Problem Solving & Comprehension by Arthur Whimbey. I just looked it up on Amazon & oh my God! They want $52 for a paperback copy of it. I guess it has become very popular & maybe the public is catching-on to how valuable it is? I paid something like $10 for it 40 years ago. If you hunt around, you can probably find it for a lower price or perhaps your local library has a copy of it? Anyway, it was recommended to me by a Jesuit scholar at the university I was attending & if you’re not aware of it, the Jesuits are some of the best educated scholars in the world.

     If we are to stand a chance in our battle for survival against the death & destruction caused by the insatiable greed of the behemoth corporations, we need to ignore this so-called “post-literate” society of ours; we need to get rid of our “smart phones,” because they are de facto making you stupider; & we need to stop texting & start talking far more to one another in person or on the phone if that’s your only option? By talking to one another, we help to inspire each other & encourage people to fight back against the ominous forces arrayed against us.

     Greed allows the corporate cockroaches to justify their manufacture of genetically modified food which we aren’t even certain of nor do we have substantial data & test results for & the possible physical, intellectual, & emotional harm it might cause humans. Furthermore, if it’s so supposedly safe as they claim, then why are they preventing us from requiring that every food that has been genetically modified be clearly labeled? Do you trust these greedy slime-balls with your children’s lives & futures? I sure as hell don’t!

     A major health as well as aesthetic consequence of human greed is the fact that our oceans have become massive toilet bowls in the way they are treated. I guess those brilliant billionaires aren’t concerned about the fact that the more they keep up their absolute negligence & willful polluting of our oceans & lakes, rivers, ponds, etc. pretty soon, they’ll be sailing in giant cesspools?

     Here’s another anecdote from my experience; Several years ago, I was helping a guy remodel a beach house in Ventura, just north of L.A. maybe 20 miles or so. One day he suggested that we take a break and go for a swim in the ocean. And when we got down to the beach, there was a sign warning of “high fecal content in the water.” He went for a swim anyway but I declined. Later on, I said to my co-worker, so people pay a million dollars or more for these beach houses that overlook a giant turd-bowl, kind of fitting when you think about it?

     Here’s another little gem for you; I’m sure you’ve seen the signs along our highways & freeways warning us that if we get caught littering, it is a $1,000 fine, right? Well a couple of years ago, a neighbor of mine told me that his son is in the U.S. Navy & his son told him that every time one of our massive naval ships puts out to sea, they go out maybe a few miles & then they dump all their garbage into the ocean.

     Think about it? Some of those ships have a couple thousand men & women on them so there must be a huge amount of trash when they dump it in the ocean? Have you heard of those giant, floating islands of trash in the oceans? Again & again we witness the utter contempt the greedy rich have for not only our lives but the lives of all the creatures in the oceans. By-the-way, I took a few courses in Oceanography back in 1974 when I was thinking about becoming an oceanographer because I enjoyed watching the shows created by Jacques Cousteau. I learned that something like 80% of the oxygen we need to breathe, comes from the seaweed or kelp in our oceans. So, we’re literally strangling ourselves to death with our blind obedience to the God Greed, the ruler of Capitalism!</h1>

     Or consider the plight of the poor people of Flint, Michigan, who just happen to be predominantly Black people. Nope, no racial discrimination there, right? The whole world knows that the citizens of Flint are forced to live with a toxic, heavily lead-laden water supply for several years now but “our” government won’t do a goddamn thing about it! It gets better folks, the Nestle corporation is allowed to pump 1.1 million gallons of water per day for $200 a year from Lake Michigan!

     I shit you not! And another bit of depressing news is that our glorified president Obama (don’t misunderstand me, this isn’t a racist rant & I voted for Obama the first time, I hated all the ugly racist remarks made about him but I do judge him harshly on a lot of things he did while in office) who was such a Champion of Change—remember his mantra when he was running for the presidency—stooped to participating in a sham public gathering P.R. event set up to reassure the citizens of Flint that their water was safe. Yep, he took a sip from a glass of water that was supposedly from the Flint river to prove that their water was okay. How’s that for standing up for America’s poor & working class and his own people, the Black citizens of Flint? Believe it or not, within a matter of a few weeks after he took office in his first term, I woke-up & realized that I too had been suckered by his advertising/public relations propaganda bonanza when he appointed Summers, Geithner, & Bernanke, three of the most responsible financial elite who helped bring us the World-wide Economic Crash of 2008 from which we still haven’t fully recovered. That’s when my eyes were opened regarding that liar in chief!

     Like the never-ending lust for wealth & power by these craven cretins, the list of their dastardly deeds is also never-ending but I am getting close to a point at which I am going to stop detailing their criminal records because it all gets to be just too much & too depressing.

     I am only human & as such, I, believe it or not, reach a point in my telling of the ugly realities going on all around us where I need to stop writing for a while & take a mental health day. Pursuing this ever more unraveling investigation of how greed is like a deadly pandemic that threatens all of humanity is another major factor which dwarfs all the other streams of greedy individuals & institutions destroying life as we know it, is what’s laughingly referred to as the U.S. Military Budget which is larger than all the other nations military budgets combined.

     I’m not going to go into much detail here because I just did in a recent essay. But suffice it to say that President Eisenhower knew of what he spoke when he gave his warning about the military/industrial complex. Because he presided over it when he was our president & was obviously afraid to speak up while in office so he waited until he was on his way out the door. He also left off the third leg of that complex i.e. Congress.</h1>

Moreover, here’s a tidbit perhaps, but I feel it’s a very significant fact that is very revealing of our military & political elite’s hidden agenda i.e. to create a permanent military force that our founders had warned against because it would become too tempting to keep getting involved in wars in other countries that posed no threat to America’s borders & peoples. If you recall, our Dept. of Defense used to be called the War Dept. which was at least more honest. There’s one author I strongly recommend for people to check out & that’s Gore Vidal.

Many of our more honest historians have said that Vidal was perhaps our greatest historian in terms of honesty, scholarship, & fearless & ceaseless criticism when & where it was warranted. Near the end of his life, Gore Vidal wrote several short books which were wonderfully simple in their presentation of the facts & his analysis of many of American history’s shortcomings as well as some positive notes.

     Here is a brief blurb about this insightful little book titled; Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace which highlights & provides a list of every war, police action, operation, etc. the branches of our military forces engaged in since the end of WWII;

The United States has been engaged in what the great historian Charles A. Beard called “perpetual war for perpetual peace.” The Federation of American Scientists has cataloged nearly 200 military incursions since 1945 in which the United States has been the aggressor. In a series of penetrating and alarming essays, whose centerpiece is a commentary on the events of September 11, 2001

Do you understand now why I said that when it was called the War Dept., it was at least more honest? I bet the overwhelming majority of Americans have no idea of just how busy our military/industrial leaders have been over the past half century? And because of the never-ending war propaganda campaign that we’ve been exposed to our entire lives, very few even question the motivations or the premises of why we need to go to war again & again & again. The military “budget” is the cash-cow that never stops giving & is the top priority in every administration whether Democrat or Republican. To dare to stand up & challenge the truisms & justifications for the war or police action of the month would be to commit political suicide or corporate suicide if you’re on that side of the receiving end of the largesse.

     If we were even the faintest example of a true democracy & believed in those principles the politicians love to trot out whenever it suits their need to rouse the public’s support, we wouldn’t be the laughing stock of the world for our hypocrisy in how we treat our citizens i.e. keep them in a constant state of fear that they were going to lose their homes, their pensions, their health care, etc. Instead, we are told ad nauseam & ad absurdum the commies are coming, the terrorists are coming, the Mexicans are coming, etc. etc. etc.

     The true terrorists are the corporate cockroaches who have enslaved us & impoverished us to the point that we have the largest prison population in the world. Greater than even the evil Russian Empire or the Chinese Empire.

     Once again, it’s imperative that we remember at all times just how significant a role the public education system plays in this grand scheme of the Masters of the Universe. And two of the clearest examples of just how deeply & extensively the greedy rich have succeeded in dismantling our public education system are the election of Dumbo Donald & Betsy DeVos, the faux “Christian,” who married into the pyramid scheme known as Amway & is sister to one of our most infamous mercenary corporation’s CEO, Eric Prince.

     To reiterate, the “Christian” cult of fascists & White Supremacists has been steadily building its base for the past three or four decades at least & now they have a guy in the White House posing as vice-president. And what used to be contained within the crazies camps i.e. Anti-Science, Anti-Intellectual, Chauvinist, Xenophobic, Racist, now have a national platform from which to spew their bile & venom in the form of one of the greediest & most ignorant pigs to walk upright in America.

     Not only has Trump destroyed decades of progress in Science, Diplomacy, Health & Safety, etc. he has stirred an extremely dangerous Neo-Nazi underground which seeks America’s complete destruction & the collapse of civilization as we know it!

     Of course, we do need to do some serious house-cleaning of several institutions in our society but to follow the game plan of these perverted & vicious people invites the very real possibility of unleashing a nuclear confrontation which is already capable of blowing the world to smithereens at least 25 times over. Talk about “overkill?” And yes, pun intended!

     You may be tempted to dismiss this next part of what I have to say as just another Alex Jones dark fantasy conspiracy but I believe it’s pretty straight forward? I think it’s obvious that the main reason the powers that be hate Edward Snowden with such vehemence is because he revealed their dirty house of cards?

     In brief, we know why the “social media” or platforms have mined our private data & used it to make themselves filthy rich and this was just too tempting a dish for the government & military elite to pass up. Snowden is a very cautious person when he speaks about these matters because he too knows just how easily the powerful can destroy people’s reputations, frame dissidents, torture, & lock them up for the rest of their lives. And he doesn’t want to be dismissed as just another Alex Jones Cult of Ignorance fan club.

     In the excellent documentary which detailed how he (Snowden) came to his decision to reveal what he’d learned about the NSA & some of our other “intelligence” agencies, he only gave a glimpse of the key truth behind all the illegal spying on Americans i.e. it’s about control. And he didn’t harp on the point or belabor it or anything. I wish he had but I understand why he didn’t.

     You see, as societies & nations decline, the social disruptions increase in intensity & frequency. So, the more sophisticated and extensive a government’s spying on its citizens, the greater control they have over their public & the easier it is for them to nip any serious rebellions in the bud.

     A somewhat relevant & familiar practice to some extent in many, if not most revolutions is the fact that one of the first steps a new dictator takes after taking over the government is to shut down the universities & the media because they reveal the illegal & immoral behavior of the dictator. I feel that was what Snowden did for America i.e. he spilled the beans!

     I am writing this essay in the last week of April 2020. I tell you this because we are experiencing the first wave of the deadly coronavirus pandemic or what they’ve now abbreviated to COVID-19. And tragically for America & the rest of the world, Trump, one of the slimiest & greediest reptilians to ever crawl out of a swamp, is president.

     Each day that passes, this cretin spouts some new absurdity but some of his absurdities have deadly consequences. And when he suggested that people inject bleach or other disinfectants, I was absolutely floored. Electing this creature from the dark ages to become president shows just how harmful greed can be. The GOP has backed this Neanderthal all the way through his first three years because he is doing their dirty work & they’ve undid decades of progress in just about every dept. of our federal government all in the name of profit & greed!

     And just when we thought things couldn’t get much worse i.e. having this moronic pig in the oval office, we are hit with this world-wide pandemic. Trump’s avarice knows no bounds or limits & he put his concern about looking bad in the polls because he’s hoping for another four years to continue fucking us, ahead of the American public’s health & safety.

     This petty tyrant’s denial of the virus even existing though he’d been warned of its dangerous & deadly consequences two months before he ever lifted a finger, has caused the death of tens of thousands of Americans already & who knows how many more yet to come?

     I don’t think he’s ever accepted responsibility for anything in his entire life? And he’s in full denial mode now. And he’s clearly incapable of leadership. The only thing he’s good at is passing the buck & taking credit for what others do. But what has shocked & saddened me even more than Trump’s dangerousness is just how blatant the GOP & the 1% have shown us their greed is.

     The most brazen example of their insatiable greed & absolute disregard for the American public was revealed when they passed the first of their “stimulus bills.” Yeah it stimulated their cold hearts & beady eyes as they gave themselves trillions of dollars & told the public, sorry, there’s nothing left!

     And the motherfuckers think we’re so goddamned stupid that they could toss us a one-time check for $1,200 claiming that would tide us over for the months, if not years we may be suffering & dying from this pandemic. Moreover, they placed all kinds of rules on this largesse & also told their bankers that if any of the peasants owe the banks late fees, overdraft fees, etc., the banks could deduct it from the $1,200.

     We don’t have nearly enough of the test kits to help determine who has the virus, not anywhere close to enough protective gear for the doctors & nurses and others on the front lines helping people, and forget about masks for the peasants who only pay the taxes that the obscenely wealthy don’t have to pay & from which they get a large portion of their wealth.

     Furthermore, if it’s even possible, I am even more angry at all the American citizens who sit passively by & let this private looting of the Federal Treasury & exponential increase of the national debt go on and on and on ad absurdum. Just how stupid & apathetic can people be? Especially all the imbeciles who still believe every lying word out of Trump’s pie-hole. If they’re that brain-dead, perhaps injecting the disinfectants may be a step up for them?

     If this absolute insanity & greed is allowed to go on, we’re going to soon be a nation of homeless scarecrows wandering a vast dustbowl & haunting the streets like the broken souls in those countless cities & towns of what they call the “rust-belt,” or what Chris Hedges refers to as “sacrifice zones.”</h1>

     Have you ever noticed that throughout history, it’s always those on the bottom who must sacrifice? In the eyes of the 1%, nothing else matters except their wealth & the growing of it. This pandemic caused a drastic drop in the stock market & the obscenely wealthy immediately went into panic mode. So, the true reason for the “stimulus bill” was to save the holy stock market.

     It’d be amusing were it not so enraging. The stock market doesn’t mean shit to the average American because he or she doesn’t own any stocks. The robber barons try to tell us that the health of the stock market is important to the health of the economy which in turn determines the job market. Yeah! A pack of lies!

     Here’s an example for you; when corporations shut down their manufacturing plants here in America & go overseas where they can pay workers 22 cents per hour, their stock values go up & we lose those jobs which used to allow the workers in those factories to live a respectable life i.e. pay their mortgages, own a reliable car, have health care for their families, & send their kids to colleges which would enable their children to move a step up on that ladder. The overwhelming majority of corporations don’t give a shit about whether you are thrown out of your home—our current Secretary of the Treasury, Steve Mnuchin, got rich by illegally kicking people out of their homes in the 2008 Crash that his kind caused—lose health insurance for your family, have your pension stolen by some hedge fund manager, and are reduced to living out of your car. And if you believe a single word out of their mouths, you’re a goddamned fool!

     These so-called Wizards of Wall St. tell us that they trade in futures & commodities. Yeah, this is true but those “futures” should more rightly be called, workers’ futures or whether they will barely manage to pay their bills or be kicked to the curb. And as for those “commodities,” that’s basically what we are to them just like cattle, pigs, chickens, etc. We’re not humans in their eyes, or more specifically, we’re about as worthy of attention as a piss-ant crawling along on their sidewalks.

     The end-all & be-all of these “Masters of the Universe,” is profit! And anyone or anything that gets in the way of their obsessive or incessant pursuit of that profit will be crushed like one of those piss-ants.

     Continuing on in this depressing but honest appraisal of things, it’s important to realize that the corporate media is a powerful tool wielded by the mighty rich to control the masses & hence, allow the rich to keep on raping, pillaging, & plundering all the people & natural resources of this planet. This is why it’s so amusing every time I hear some high-school dropout proclaim the enemy is the liberal media.

     I lived in Orange County, CA for several years from when I was about 19 years old to 26 years old. My mom & her drinking buddies often gathered at her house and invariably, we’d get on the subject of politics (Reagan was president) and by-the-way, it was said back then that Orange County was one of the most “conservative” i.e. Republican counties in the U.S.

     Well, it was the same story each time I participated in their meeting of the minds i.e. All you need is common sense! And they all laughed & enjoyed dismissing me as hopelessly liberal & not realistic as I tried to tell them how corrupt Reagan was for example. I brought this up because if you value “common sense,” does it make sense for that handful of corporate conglomerates who own the media in the U.S. to allow a liberal bias?

     “Common sense,” tells this liberal idiot that to allow a liberal bias in their media empires would be absolutely insane because true liberals would & do assault the corrupt structures of corporations. So, if they ran the newsrooms, etc. the rich would in effect be allowing liberal termites to eat away at the foundations of their empires. Duh!

     Therefore, Orwell was right on the mark when he said;

““Those who control the present, control the past and those who control the past control the future.”

I’ll leave it to you to figure this out. And once again, it’d be funny were it not so deadly serious in regards to Trump’s perpetual war on the press. You see, he’s actually partly right but what he leaves out is the fact that yes, he knows all about fake media because he’s been using it all his business career. What I mean by this is that yes, the mainstream media doesn’t always tell us the full story because of the inherent filters the news must go through before being published or aired on T.V.

     The classic & definitive study of this was written by Noam Chomsky & Edward Hermann. In short, yeah, the media is censored in some respects & to some extent but nonetheless, a lot of accurate facts & information manages to come out after going through those filters.

     What that charlatan & con man Trump has done & continues to do is dismiss every reporter who asks him a difficult question i.e. one that he doesn’t have one of his pat lies for, as “fake news.” Yet every news story that says anything positive about him is factual even if both the pro & con stories are from the same news outlet. This requires a very selective memory & Donald the Duplicitous Demagogue of the Duck Dynasty Dunces has trained his zombies well. Oh yeah, one other interesting contradiction is the fact that Donnie sure didn’t complain when he received several billions of dollars’ worth of free publicity while he was running for president. Far more than Bernie Sanders did. Donald the Dick-head has been honing his skills of how to manipulate the mass media since he was a yuppie in New York in his twenties making sure that his face & his name was in every major celebrity function or party for the photo shots used in the papers & television.

     Believe it or not, I am beginning to wind-down in my lengthy perspective on Greed. Those who wield the most power in any society are not only the richest but the most intelligent. And when a rich person doesn’t personally possess the intellectual capabilities, they hire the people who are the sharpest in the room as they say.

     Trump, for example, would’ve been sent to prison long ago were it not for the fact that he at least knows who the smartest lawyers are & he either retains them or has them on speed-dial because Trump’s business & personal life has been one long trail of lawsuits.

     Remember what I said a few pages back? My mom & her friends proclaimed ad nauseam; All you need is Common Sense! Well, as some wit observed, they call it common sense because it’s common i.e. most people have it. Well, “common sense” won’t save your ass in the complicated legal & financial matters of a master con artist like Trump who has screwed thousands of people in his illustrious career.

     Moreover, “common sense” won’t protect or save you from the countless scam artists, grifters, & thieves who spend their lives devising ways to steal other people’s fortunes. Nope, you need people around you—ideally you should devote a lot of your time & energy to developing your own intellectual skills—who have far more than just common sense.

     Following this further, the sad phenomenon of anti-intellectualism has a long & inglorious history in America. And the totally unscrupulous rip-off artists are adept at convincing their groupies that intellectuals are their enemies.

     Yep! This is why Trump deliberately chose to play the role of a simple, down-to-earth “businessman” who doesn’t put on any airs or act superior like those East Coast Elite. Many, if not most of Trump supporters have been screwed over by banks, corporate CEOs, insurance giants, etc. etc. etc. and by pretending to be on the side of those victims, Trump has gained their trust. One of this perverse president’s most popular sales slogans while running for office was; “I’m going to drain the swamp.”

     In a sense, he did. Except he replaced the former bottom-feeders with craven & insatiable crocodiles. And they’ve been systematically looting every program they can get their bloody talons on. Moreover, all those country bumpkins who fell for Trump’s Aw Shucks Routine, have either already hit rock-bottom or they soon will thanks to their god Trump, that is if they don’t die from the coronavirus first?

     Yes people, what you don’t know can hurt you & sometimes kill you! And sorry, but stupidity, honesty, & hard work won’t save you from the likes of the Trumps of this world. We all must inform & empower ourselves and unite against the powers that be because they have sure as Hell united against us a long time ago.

     Okay, one more example of how inhumane the greedy are & then I’ll wrap it all up. We’ve been indoctrinated throughout our public education system here in America & it’s probably the same for citizens of other countries to some extent? But this indoctrination seriously blinds us to the realities of what the greedy, power elite have done to us & the poor of other nations for decades. Before I delve into this matter more deeply, I want to share a powerful insight into public education by Doris Lessing.

     One of my favorite professors when I was in college was an absolutely brilliant man named Mr. Garrot. I used to go to his office hours not for help with homework or anything but simply because I enjoyed talking to him about serious matters. I bring this up because he turned me onto Doris Lessing & he said; “She’s the greatest author alive!”

“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, The Golden Notebook

Perhaps the most powerful proof of how greed rules the world & specifically here in America, is our long & ignoble history of supporting murderous dictators in our press, our training of their secret police & etc., the assistance of our military in logistics to help their overthrowing of democratically-elected presidents, our financial funding of such heinous groups as the Contras in Central America, etc. And every one of these illegal & immoral involvements, some as barbaric as any Nazi atrocities in WWII, was done under the proclamation of our supporting democracy & freedom in these countries. This is the dark, ugly, & embarrassing history of America’s support of bloody butchers that we don’t hear about in our public education system or our mainstream media.

     Don’t just accept my word for it. Do a little research for yourself if you’re not just another shallow hypocrite who pretends to be a true American patriot?

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/US_ThirdWorld/dictators.html

In conclusion, here is the quintessential demonstration of how greed rules our lives & our very existence in America. I believe the case of Edward Snowden is the best exemplar of what I’m trying to communicate here.

     Those who feel that Snowden was a traitor for releasing all those classified files may be tempted to dismiss what I’m about to say as just another paranoid conspiracy theory, hopefully you’ll try to remain open-minded long enough to reflect on my argument?

     Snowden, like the majority of whistleblowers, tried to go through the normal or proper channels to report his misgivings & what he felt to be clear examples of felonies being committed on a regular basis & on a vast scale. But unfortunately, he ran into that wall of bureaucracy that seeks to silence all dissent. Every bureaucracy, especially those in such vast programs as the NSA, seeks to maintain their power & budget above all other concerns.

     And the primary mission for the NSA is what’s known as Total Information Awareness, now referred to as Terrorism Information Awareness:

 

Total Information Awareness (TIA) is the name of a massive U.S. data mining project focused on scanning travel, financial and other data from public and private sources with the goal of detecting and preventing transnational threats to national security. TIA has also been called Terrorism Information Awareness. The program was part of the Homeland Security Act and, after its creation in January 2003, was managed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). In September 2003, U.S. Congressional negotiators agreed to terminate the program and ceased funding. in 2006, however, news agencies reported that software developed for it had been shifted to other agencies, specifically the National Security Agency (NSA). https://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/definition/Total-Information-Awareness

 

Snowden’s unforgivable  sin was his turning the spotlight of the American public’s attention on this sacred cow program of the NSA which guaranteed a never-ending flow of funding. And what really blows my mind is the fact that so many Americans are outraged over Snowden’s leaking of the details of this illegal program but don’t seem to be troubled at the fact that the NSA was violating our Constitution which every member of our military forces, politicians, & employees of our intelligence agencies takes an oath to protect against foreign & domestic enemies.

 

Snowden obviously took his oath to uphold the Constitution seriously unlike all those who participated in this & other illegal programs which committed hundreds of thousands of felonies in a standard operating practice laissez-faire manner. You see, every single act of illegal spying on American citizens without a warrant, is a felony.

 

The day the Patriot Act was rammed through Congress & passed will go down in history as the day we went from a democracy to a totalitarian state. Hardly a single congressman even bothered to read the Patriot Act before signing it. And coincidentally, the powers that be in D.C. had it written & ready to go way before the events of 9/11.

 

And again, no, this isn’t merely conspiratorial conjecture, look it up. Cheney, the president of vice & his cabal of crooks had been praying for just such a national tragedy so they could implement their game plan known as P.N.A.C. (Project for the New American Century). In fact, I believe it was Cheney who commented a few years before 9/11; “What we need is a Pearl Harbor,” i.e. a massive assault against America that would give them the justification to wage war against terrorism ad infinitum & they’d get all the funding they’d ever wanted & be able to launch every nefarious operation they’d dreamed of. I forget who it was that pointed out that with the passage of the Patriot Act, they effectively gutted the Bill of Rights. You know, that other insignificant document we’re so proud of.

 

John Whitehead explains: “The Patriot Act drove a stake through the heart of the Bill of Rights, violating at least six of the ten original amendments–the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Amendments–and possibly the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, as well. The Patriot Act also redefined terrorism so broadly that many non-terrorist political activities such as protest marches, demonstrations and civil disobedience were considered potential terrorist acts, thereby rendering anyone desiring to engage in protected First Amendment expressive activities as suspects of the surveillance state.”

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2011/06/20/patriot-act-and-quiet-death-us-bill-rights

 

You see, my imaginary reader, the NSA & our government assure us that they’re just collecting metadata on us i.e. not the detailed content of our communications. If you believe this, you’re in for a rude awakening. They didn’t build that massive data collecting facility in Utah for the hell of it. Its capacity is so astronomical that they don’t even have numbers to adequately represent its capacities for storage.

 

The American Masters of the Universe are steadily creating a totalitarian society & the Silicon Valley tech elite are selling our personal data to the corporate cockroaches for billions of dollars i.e. Zuckerberg. And the government is intimidating the “social media” giants into allowing them to “piggy-back” on their platforms because that collected data on individuals can be used against us anytime we get a little too big for our britches i.e. our protests begin to hamper their illegal activities, etc.

Snowden was cautious about what he said in the film; Citizen Four regarding this. I believe he knew that if he elaborated on the subject, he could very well be dismissed as just another conspiracy theorist. He made one comment on the subject and simply said; “It’s about Control.”

Moreover, speaking of control, I had to insert here a bit about Surveillance Capitalism, a book written by Shoshana Zuboff. She is a Harvard professor & she spent several years writing this detailed account of what it is & how it’s basically gone unchallenged for the 20 years it’s been undermining democracy & much more.

“Surveillance Capitalism is the manifestation of George Orwell’s prophesied Memory Hole combined with the constant surveillance, storage and analysis of our thoughts and actions, with such minute precision, and artificial intelligence algorithmic analysis, that our future thoughts and actions can be predicted, and manipulated, for the concentration of power and wealth of the very few. These 32 citations barely scratch the surface of Surveillance Capitalism and yet provide a terrifying display of the powerful forces arrayed against democracy. Surveillance Capitalism desensitizes us to their destruction of individual autonomy, rights, freedom of thought and action, privacy, sovereignty, thoughtful analysis and memory while demanding and ensuring corporations, and the 1%, have absolute rights, privacy and impunity.” https://www.surveillancecapitalism.com/

Moreover, if you check out the documentary; The Great Hack, you’ll learn that data has replaced oil as the world’s most valuable commodity. We can thank Zuckerberg to a very large extent for helping Trump steal the presidency because of Zuckerberg’s supposed oversight regarding the data he gave Cambridge Analytica access to.

 

Furthermore, if you’ve been paying attention for the past 50 years roughly, every time “our” government gets caught doing something illegal or immoral or both, they proclaim; “It’s a matter of National Security.” If you buy this tired, old dog of “National Security” that they trot out ad nauseam, you’re either very gullible or naïve or maybe simply willfully ignorant?

 

It’s the giant umbrella under which they (the National Security State) hide under to justify every war, police action, operation, etc. throughout the history of the NSA, CIA, etc. And we’ve been very busy indeed over the past half century. If you’d care to get an overview of our Perpetual State of War, check out;

 

Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace

by

Gore Vidal

 

“The United States has been engaged in what the great historian Charles A. Beard called perpetual war for perpetual peace. The Federation of American Scientists has cataloged nearly 200 military incursions since 1945 in which the United States has been the aggressor.”

Personally speaking, I believe Snowden when he says that he’d gladly return to the U.S. if he was guaranteed a public trial & could present his reasons for releasing all the classified files that he did. He knows just as Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange, etc. that when the government tells the judges that it’s a matter of National Security so the trial needs to be in private & the defendant can’t use any of the classified material he’s charged with revealing, in his defense, it’s a slam-dunk for the federal prosecutors to convict him & sentence him to life in prison.

 

In a nutshell, the government assures the Court & the public that we can trust them because they care about us & want to protect us. Yeah, right! Like they protected us from the Pentagon Papers & how many Americans died in the Vietnam War or how about the completely falsified reasons for the Iraq War, etc. etc. etc. Of course, we can trust them!

 

You see, “National Security” is actually doublespeak for the powers that be & their security. They are salivating at the thought of getting their hands-on Snowden because he really spoiled their fun by revealing their dirty secrets & swamp of lies. Now they’ve had to slink back into the shadows once again but you can be sure, they’ll soon be right back at their dirty tricks.

 

The government keeps the data flowing by threatening the tech giants & the social media monopolies by reminding them that their subsidies, tax breaks, even their licenses to do business can all be taken away in a heartbeat if they don’t play ball.

 

This is a look inside as to how the destructive duo; the government & the corporate cockroach cabal keep the overwhelming majority of our tax dollars flowing into their pockets.

 

And once more my dear friend, I don’t throw accusations like these around casually. I have spent approximately 50,000 hours over the past 40 years or more reading, writing, researching, watching documentaries, listening to social, political, economic, etc. programs on the alternative media, collecting or archiving thousands of articles, etc. And no, this doesn’t mean that I have the corner on the Truth but it does mean that I’ve done far more of my homework regarding these issues than the majority of working-class Americans & therefore deserve respect & a fair listening to.

 

I learned a few decades ago that you need to tread very lightly when it comes to conspiracy theories because most people will simply tune you out when you start to speak about them. I am personally very offended if someone tries to dismiss me as just another Alex Jones nut-job. I feel nauseous if I even listen to him for ten minutes. Note that our Dumb-shit in the oval office is fond of Alex Jones & gets a lot of his material from him which he then passes along in his press briefings & his fear & hate rallies.

 

My intellectual & moral hero, Noam Chomsky, pointed out years ago, even before all the crazies with their 9/11 conspiracy theories, that indulging in this pastime is just what the power elite want us to do because it distracts us from doing the real work of serious research & in depth reading, which will reveal the facts behind the tsunami of lies (my phrase)! Oh yeah, again in case you think me out in Left field,{Yeah, I know I’ve already mentioned this, sorry.} check out “Surveillance Capitalism,” by Shoshana Zuboff & I guarantee you she will blow your mind with the depth & breadth of her knowledge & her insights. And although she points out a lot of the negative aspects, several of which I’ve touched on in this essay. She does offer us some hope but it boils down to what each of us is willing to do to fight back? I’ll include links to a couple of her videos which I feel are good introductions to her overview of this precarious position we find ourselves in.

Afterword: If you are concerned about this relatively new phenomenon, here’s an excellent interview with Ms. Zuboff: https://theintercept.com/2019/02/02/shoshana-zuboff-age-of-surveillance-capitalism/

Persevere!

—Rob DeLoss, Gold Beach, OR 4/28/20

Addendum

I just came across this video the other day that is a perfect cap to this essay because if you reflect on what the various commentators say, you’ll begin to see just how vast this pandemic of greed is & how it has permeated every aspect of our lives & it is every bit as insidious as the coronavirus my friends. As H.G. Wells said over a hundred & twenty years ago; It’s becoming more & more of a race between education & catastrophe. And I don’t mean to bum you out but when you add in to the mix, the fact that we have already passed the 350 parts per million I believe Mr. McKibben warned us about, what future we may have left, looks very dismal. So, do we just throw in the towel & say Fuck it!

As for me, I will not go gently into that dark night.

We all need to remember & remind ourselves & others that No! Greed isn’t inevitable! And we should take serious stock of our lives, are we just going to sit by apathetic & watch our children & loved ones die as our environment implodes & can no longer sustain human, animal, or plant life? Yeah, I know it’s like Sisyphus pushing that boulder up to the top of the hill only to watch it fall back down again, but we have no other choice my friends. We either keep on fighting the good fight or just roll over to the likes of swamp-scum like Trump & his kind!

Just in case I haven’t been clear enough, it’s the insatiable greed of the “social networks” & their CEOs that is weakening people’s mental abilities & helping drive us to oblivion because we too focus on ourselves & isolate ourselves from our fellow human beings. United we Stand, & Divided we Fall!

This is the biggest lie i.e. this isn’t social media, it’s anti-social media.

“Greed is an uncontrolled longing for increase in the acquisition or use: of material gain; or social value, such as status, or power. Greed has been identified an as undesirable behavior throughout known human history.”

Here’s the piece de resistance for any of you who may still be a doubting thomas?

     Yeah, I know, what an overwhelmingly dark picture of our world. Nonetheless, I have been honest in presenting my case. So, you can bury your head in the sand like Trump’s Walking Dead fan club or you can invest some of your time & energy in reflecting on these matters? Better yet, in discussing these ideas with your friends because no matter how ugly it all is, just as no matter how dangerously stupid Trump is, he’s a reality we have to deal with & the sooner we get to it, the better for us and all of humanity!