"The brutal way in which America's hardest-working folks were historically forced to internalize the values of a gangster capitalist class continues to elude the left, which, with few exceptions, understands not a thing about how this political and economic system has hammered the humanity of ordinary working people."
-----Joe Bageant, Deer Hunting With Jesus
The voters are speaking, and the urge-to-change is more evident on the political right than the so-called left. The Democrats are divided between the DLC and the Sandernistas over the issue of whether or not to revive and expand the New Deal, aka the "nanny state." The right is increasingly unified behind a USA-First agenda, which has no necessary conflict with a social democratic form of governance, though one wouldn't know this from the deep hostility that divides the Sanders and Trump campaigns.
The Democratic primaries are a contest between "socialist" Sanders and Wall Street's Clinton, while on the Republican side voters are united in contempt for all establishment candidates. In short, the GOP base has escaped the control of party elites - hallelujah! - whereas the Democrats continued to be a house divided against itself. So what do these independent-minded Republicans want? If we count the Cruz and Trump voters together based on their similar stances on immigration, it is clear that a large GOP majority wants (1) a border wall, (2) deportation for those here illegally, and (3) less immigration in the future.
This is a message the Republican establishment, the Clintonistas, and those feeling the Bern can't bear to even hear, much less intelligently do something about. In their minds, the immigration-phobes can only be motivated by racism, an ignorant and hateful unwillingness to welcome the great unwashed to America's shores, which is supposedly what our "nation of immigrants" should always be prepared to do. Never mind that real wages have been in stagnation or decline for a large majority of American workers for decades, and that white working class males are dying younger than their parents did due to the accumulated effects of outsourcing and mass immigration: "Diversity" is self-evidently wonderful, and the more poor uneducated people there are here, the better.
It is deeply unfortunate that immigration is discussed as a racial rather than a class issue. For the plain fact is that the growth imperative behind capitalism is uprooting hundreds of millions of people all over the world and depositing them in alien surroundings, occasioning fear and resentment in communities that experience their presence as a loss of local control. As the world heads for a human population of ten or twelve billion, even a low growth rate - two or three percent - promises to deliver a forced diversification of human communities in the next few decades that will be simply unendurable, no matter what people's personal attitudes about ethnicity and race may be. In short, the owners of the system need perpetual mass immigration on an ever expanding scale, but the workers who sustain the system cannot indefinitely endure falling wages, rising underemployment, and endemic ethnic conflict stemming from capitalism's permanently rootless existence. Something has to give.
At the moment Donald Trump is the prime beneficiary of voter anger at Washington's acquiescence in the cheap labor economy, as his criticism of job-destroying free trade treaties is hitting home with laid-off blue collar workers. Apparently lost on anti-Trump protesters is the fact that Bernie Sanders and Trump have a very similar message for these workers: Washington elites don't care about you and have let you down. Unfortunately, however, there is no chance at all of the two candidates' constituencies finding common ground, as identity politics trumps class consciousness at every turn. Recently, the most militant Trump opponents have somehow convinced themselves that insulting Trump supporters and invading their rallies is the best way to get political traction for their cause. The predictable consequence is that they get their lights punched out, while Trump the shameless remains unshamed (He just recently assured the world on national TV that he has a big penis. How likely was a shaming strategy going to work with him?)How this is supposed to expand the ranks for progressive reform is anybody's guess.
Meanwhile, the liberal ideology of victimhood becomes ever more absurd. A New Jersey Board of Education recently punished a child for criticizing vegetarianism to a vegetarian classmate because overtly disapproving of vegetarianism is bullying! Beware of "microaggressions," which lead directly to genocide.
Or how about the brave social justice warriors at UC Davis, who days ago accused the campus student government of "fat shaming" and "culturally appropriating the traditions of the Japanese people" for renting out two sumo suits for an annual campus block party.
“My overall impression is that this conversation is in itself an
expression of white-supremacist anti-Asian structural racism,” student
Scott Tsuchitani told The California Aggie. “Asian Americans are treated
as mute, hapless victims, devoid of agency, a.k.a. the ‘model minority’
stereotype. That is what is being re-inscribed by this conversation.”
Student Phil Jones, shocked at the student government's insensitivity
towards overweight students on campus, demanded financial
reimbursement for the emotional distress.
Such is "protest" in our degraded era. Right now, Trump, the demagogic master of reality TV, is more than up to the challenge posed by the perpetually aggrieved.
Sunday, March 20, 2016
Saturday, March 19, 2016
Market Forces - Class Conflicts = Democracy’s Defeat
Market Forces - Class Conflicts = Democracy’s Defeat
America’s history of subjugation, slaughter and enslavement
of “red skin” Indians and “black
skin” Africans by more economically powerful and better armed “white skin”
Europeans may be the root of a most malevolent superstition that still has
believers in the mythology of racially superior and inferior peoples. It may be
in the tradition of older biblical tales of special people favored over all others,
these brought about by suffering which could only be rationalized by myths about
a god offering reward in the hereafter to whoever suffered most in the here and
now. But such gross reductionism in the American tradition brought up to date would
have a hateful slack jawed moron with a gun being racially superior to a loving
brilliant person without one, or a brutal, drooling sex fiend rapist racially
superior to a kind and innocent victim.
Simple gradations in human skin tones have everything to do
with our different geographic and genetic origins but absolutely nothing to do
with the social, political and economic construct we’ve been taught to believe makes
us different races.
The most profound and meaningful difference among members of
the human race is that of sex, without which there would be no human race. But
African, European or Asian men are not only the same sex but also the same
race, as are Nigerian, Italian or Vietnamese women. Still, you’d have a tough
time convincing most of us, especially in the U.S.A., since we’ve been divided &
and conquered by our rulers for so long that we all but have to identify as one
or another minority in order to band together to achieve some alleged equality,
often only in our minds. But we have reached a point at which continued belief
in racial and other socio-ethnic division only plays into the hands of the most
powerful economic minority of all, which becomes more falsely multi-racial,
multi-ethnic and multi –cultural in its employment policies as wealth skews up
to it more unequally than ever.
While identity politics play greater roles in the divisions
that prevent democracy, some members of supposed minorities become stock
holders in corporate capital’s upper professional and leadership classes while
those lower on the economic spectrum continue suffering the slings, arrows,
bullets and bombs that come from the same power sources always rewarding some
at the expense of others. Our system of private profit for some only at public
loss for the many has maintained for generations, most recently with the added
fiction that there is strength in accepting the role of a minority within the
minority, accepting affirmative success by acting as such, and thereby making a
better living and sometimes idealistically thinking others will be helped by
such individually allowed affirmation once it is wrapped in the social
packaging of equality-for-all rhetoric.
Unequal wages paid to men and women is one of the glaring
economic injustices that draws attention and should, but without forgetting
that women who are unemployed or not professional bear burdens worse than
making less money than men. The skin tone racial wage disparities in the
marketplace are even more unjust, but again, increasing-equalizing the paycheck
size of a female or “person-of-color” in the professional class does little or
nothing for those reduced to working class lives with no hopes of achieving
professionalism and worse, those who suffer the injustice and deprivation of
poverty, an absolute necessity in an economy of profit for only some, with
increasing loss for most.
A higher
minimum wage for all workers is far more socially beneficial than improved
rewards for a minority of better paid people in some cases already somewhat
privileged if only in lesser evil terms. Affirming some supposed minority
members of society with college educations while continuing to negate, deny and
treat with bigotry all those with no chance of such professional achievement
is, unfortunately, not only the rule but accepted and passionately protected as
a socially liberal concept. This anti-social political economic arrangement is
strengthened by recruiting a leadership class from relatively privileged
sectors of the out-groups who then convince their less privileged members to
maintain the system since someday they too may rise to a higher economic level
simply by mastering minority market forces and forgetting about majority rule
democracy.
This helps maintain the glaring inequities of a system which
threatens all of humanity, in a truly global sense, while most of that humanity
is controlled and manipulated into accepting social organization which works
against the best interests of the human race, and not just one or another
supposed minority of it, however blatantly discriminatory things may be or seem
in a selective, personal way. From that standpoint, people are manipulated into
believing privilege is enjoyed only by those slightly above their own economic
level, while blatant inequality allows incredible wealth to pile up for a real
and tiny minority while great majorities are kept in needless, often violent
competition among themselves.
For example:
400 U.S. billionaires have more wealth than 197 million
Americans combined. Twenty of them - 20! - have more than 150 million people.
Rest assured that there is ample “minority” representation among the 197 and
150 million but they – we – represent a majority if we ever demand and exercise
democracy, which is why we are mind managed and consciousness controlled into
acting like minorities.
In a nation in which so few have amassed such fantastic
wealth – and most innumerate citizens cannot fathom a billion, let alone
billions – at the latest count there are 46 million of us who are poor. What
might a judgmental, righteous and vengeful god, favored by many biblical
believers, do to such a people and society?
We Americans owe more than $940 million in credit card debt,
$1.3 billion in student loans and $13.8 billion in mortgages. Who do we owe it
to? Mostly to those 400 billionaires and their professional servant class. If
that is democracy, then cancer is good health. And according to the rules of
capital and private profit, much about cancer is a sign of financial health; it
is a multi billion-dollar industry.
Last year cancer pharmaceuticals crossed the billion-dollar mark
in sales and in economic truth, a cure for cancer would represent staggering
loss for the industry. Not only oncologists but also thousands of workers in
the drug, therapy, medical, therapeutic, home care, wheel chair, and countless
other businesses related to such severe illness would be unemployed. That
crippling diseases exist and need to be fought and controlled is one thing, but
that they are profit creators in a market place without morals, where weapons,
housing, pet food, clothing, autos, bombs, cosmetics and everything and
anything else are sent to the market to create profit by being sold only to
those who can afford them is great for the minority that profits, but deadly
for the majority that carries the financial, political and moral burden of loss.
The social disease of capitalism has created a financial,
environmental, moral, intellectual and philosophic form of cancer that can only
be cured by democratic restructuring of the political economic system. That cannot
come about in a divided population, which is why rulers work to keep it that
way. We are forced into fictional combat over allegedly shrinking resources
while a small group consumes incredible amounts of the earth’s wealth as that
consumption pattern brings about a dangerous ecological condition that threatens
all and not just some of humanity.
And humanity, we need to learn or remember before it’s too
late, is neither hyphenated, color-coded nor a marketplace product available
for sale. At least it shouldn’t be. Our class needs to come to attention, focus
on our problem and work to solve it before the divisions we have been
physically and mentally forced into help to destroy not just the school or the
educational system but the entire society in which they function. The majority
democratic forces of the people must control the market before minority control
brings the global mall of weapons, war and needless consumer waste provoked by
psycho-neurotic controlled needs crashing down on all our heads.
Sunday, March 13, 2016
U.S. Elections May End All Life on Earth; Details Below
Rubio, Cruz, denounce Trump as "racist, misogynist, genocidal xenophobe" who is leading the GOP to "total disaster;" pledge to "support him 100%" if he's nominated.
Sanders slams "my friend" Hillary Clinton for "drowning the Middle East in ocean of blood" and "empowering Wall Street financiers to destroy U.S.;" promises "unconditional support" if she succeeds in buying the Democratic nomination.
All mental hospitals in Israel to close; Jewish Institute of Mental Health claims concept is "meaningless" in nation that talks only of "who to incinerate next."
Hillary Clinton proposes Medicare For All who invade Russia to topple Putin regime. Trump sticks by his "something terrific" plan to replace Obama Care.
GOP presidential candidates found to be infected by Zika; virus shrunk Republican brains while leaving normal-sized skulls intact. Trump insists there is "no problem" with size of his thinking organ.
President of International Congress of War Refugees calls for Hillary Clinton to win U.S. presidency. "The destruction of all we know and love" would be handled more humanely by a woman, Ima Dunce tells the New York Times.
Sanders slams "my friend" Hillary Clinton for "drowning the Middle East in ocean of blood" and "empowering Wall Street financiers to destroy U.S.;" promises "unconditional support" if she succeeds in buying the Democratic nomination.
All mental hospitals in Israel to close; Jewish Institute of Mental Health claims concept is "meaningless" in nation that talks only of "who to incinerate next."
Hillary Clinton proposes Medicare For All who invade Russia to topple Putin regime. Trump sticks by his "something terrific" plan to replace Obama Care.
GOP presidential candidates found to be infected by Zika; virus shrunk Republican brains while leaving normal-sized skulls intact. Trump insists there is "no problem" with size of his thinking organ.
President of International Congress of War Refugees calls for Hillary Clinton to win U.S. presidency. "The destruction of all we know and love" would be handled more humanely by a woman, Ima Dunce tells the New York Times.
Friday, March 4, 2016
Brave, Bold, Courageous, Angry American Speaks Out
What is happening to
this great and wonderful and exceptional nation? How can the greatest country
in the history of map making allow this fiendish monster to not only dominate
our Tv screens and newspaper headlines but threaten to become president of this
greatest country ever in history not counting ancient Rome, Greece, Egypt or
other empires too old to really matter compared to this one?
This rhetorical nazi,
racist, sexist language spouting rich ego maniac may be the darling of nazi,
racist, sexist language spouting working class and poorly educated unwashed
stupid dopey moronic people who actually run this country and secretly own it,
but we americans who stand for truth, justice, common decency and loving our
pets while thousands live in the streets will not stand for this madness! And I
for one declare here and now that if is this vile filthy pig is elected I will
take my family and move to Russia or China or Mexico, where the free market
will afford us the opportunities that were our heritage in the old America. The
one we cherish and love and honor and get tears in our eyes when we think about
it, or something.
You know, the one before
this beastly monster and his rhetoric made us all ashamed. The one that drove
the Indians off their homelands, slaughtered them if they resisted, and put
them in concentration camps called reservations so it sounded like they were
going to dinner. That great originator of freedom and justice that brought
Africans over in chains so that their labor could be used to build a mighty
fortress of agricultural capital in the south that we had to destroy in a civil
war to relocate as industrial capital up north. That great nation that saved
the world from evil fascism or communism or some other really bad thing by
blowing up much of europe and Asia, especially Germany, Japan, Korea and Viet
Nam, and did it unselfishly, with little or no concern for the young men and
women who had to die in order to perform the slaughter of millions. How can we
let this filthy demonic Trump creature destroy that with his nasty rhetoric?
Even as we continue doing it in the Middle East, as always, saving the lives of
thousands by murdering millions?
I’m asking all Americans
of good conscience, all decent people who employ cheap immigrant labor to pick
our crops, bus our tables, clean our houses, take care of our kids, do our gardening,
and work cheaper than ungrateful americans who used to do that stuff, to come together
and buy tickets to other countries if this monster somehow gets the slack-jawed
dumbo majority – you know, the ones that elected Reagan, Clinton, Bush, Obama
and them - to make an even dumber
choice.
We can create a newer,
greater America in some foreign country that will be like the old one, only
better. It will be much easier for us to get rid of lower forms of humans than
it was in the past, and if we’re careful we can rid ourselves of all stupidity,
venality, immorality and other stuff that will help us rise to an even higher
form of the master race of self chosen people we were, before this vicious
creator of filth, hate, racism and sexism came along.
It’s not too late. Check
out our fundraising site online, send all the money you’ve got, and join this
effort to save our nation from the deepest, darkest threat ever in the history
of consciousness controlled creation of demonic individuals to take people’s
minds off the need to change corrupt and murderous social systems. Join the
real conspiracy for humanity, give us your money, stick a false flag up your
ass and join the parade for freedom!