Just Say No To Another "Roaring Twenties"

As we grope our way towards the Covid pandemic exit, there are increasing suggestions that pent-up economic demand may usher in another "roaring twenties." This should not be construed as good news, however, as the 1920s was the decade that established limitless consumption as the solution to the frustrations of being an abused order-taker the whole of one's productive life, while setting the country on course for ecological catastrophe. A century later, with average real wages in stagnation or decline for a large majority of workers going back more than four decades, the lure of a perpetually rising standard of living administered by corporate America can be seen for what it always was: a capitalist mirage.

So how did this mirage come to be?

After years of strikes, plots, raids, bombings, deportations, war and (Russian) revolution, brazen plutocracy seized the helm, progressive idealism sank from view, the K.K.K. revived, and Republican Warren Harding was nominated for president by a handful of machine politicians in a smoke-filled Chicago back room. Seen besotted and disheveled on a hotel elevator with bloodshot eyes and two days growth of beard, the "densely ignorant" Harding (William Allen White) was devoid of ethical aspiration but popular as a compromise candidate for lacking enemies. Calling for "less government in business and more business in government," he promised all-too-believably that capital would "exploit the world market." Employers celebrated with a drive to "Americanize" immigrants (turn them into consumers), ban unions, and get "back to normalcy." 

Progressive reform didn't even rate token mention anymore. The National Association of Manufacturers walked arm in arm with Wall Street and every state delegation attending the 1920 Republican Convention was loaded with fat cats from major industries - oil, railroads, telephones, steel, coal, and textiles. Founding editor of the New Masses Joseph Freeman sounded an intelligent dissenting note, pointing out that the Harding ascension was more nightmarish than reassuring:

"America was back to 'normalcy' under the small-town smile of a chief executive in golf knickers signing bills which Wall Street ghosted. The elderly playboy in the White House, with his entourage of poker players, topers, Casanovas and oil thiefs, posed benignly for the rotogravures as the Republic relaxed from the war through a long Roman holiday on bootleg gin. Million-dollar prizefights, baseball games and horse races indicated a bigger and better Gilded Age. The public avidly followed a press which, concealing the truth about Mooney and Billings [militant labor leaders falsely convicted of a 1915 Preparedness Day bombing in San Francisco], Sacco and Vanzetti, devoted pages to beauty contests and lust murders; and the bourgeois journalists were telling the truth about the war. But as usual after the event and under compulsion; for it was the proletarian revolutions in Russia, Germany and Hungary that brought to light the secret robber treaties of the imperialist governments. The fraud, the deadly hypocrisy of the prevailing social system, which had duped millions into slaughter (WWI), stood out in all its naked horror."

Organized diversion soon returned American attention to fads, fashions, mah jong, bathtub gin, radio, bathing beauties, crime, women, smoking, Babe Ruth, sex and Freud. The allegedly value-free theories of the father of psychoanalysis proved particularly useful in undermining discontent before it could become popular rebellion, as psychoanalysis blossomed into one of the major preoccupations of the decade. 

According to the Viennese physician, unconscious personal habits needed to be inspected, phobias overcome, and ego strengthened. Catharsis, not class struggle, was the way to liberate oneself from the tyranny of primal fears and societal taboos, an apolitical approach that tacitly reinforced the status quo. Reformer Frederic Howe, despairing over the collapsed dreams of a new society, consulted a psychiatrist, who told him he had to rid himself of guilt and tend to his private life. In short order Howe had forsaken social change in preference for seeking "harmony within," trying to fix "gaps in [his] personality," and pursuing a "comradeship with myself such as I have never known before."

In the name of healthy adaptation psychoanalysts helped the socially troubled take advantage of expensive medical treatment denied to all but a few, in order to ease them out of ethical upheaval into complacent lives of private acquisition that made excessive self-preoccupation possible in the first place. Purporting to explain and understand vulnerable conscience, they ushered in moral surrender disguised as the wisdom of an integrated personality. The incongruous result was a contentment-oriented inner quest flourishing alongside an increasingly abysmal outer reality of night-riding Klansmen, bloody Mafia wars, crushed unions, lynch mobs, and brutal subjugations in the Caribbean and Central America. 

Far from revolutionary, psychoanalysis settled for merely adjusting patients to an unjust social order's demand for self-perpetuation. Those burdened with guilt that led them to revolt against conventional morality ended up treated by psychoanalysts who diagnosed rebellion as pathology. Honest social conscience, straightforward guilt, direct self-accusation concerning exploitation, all were neutralized for a fee. To quote Freeman again:

"Psychoanalysis was not, as the romantic rebels imagined, amoral. It was highly moral, conventional and bourgeois. Himself thoroughly steeped in middle-class attitudes, the average psychoanalyst looked upon the radical's hatred of capitalist society as a mental derangement . . . In many cases, the psychoanalysis of bohemian writers and artists opened for them a back door through which they re-entered the bourgeois society which they had repudiated in their period of romantic rebellion. It turned out in twentieth century America, as in nineteenth century Europe, that adolescent revolt against paternal authority, clothing itself in literary and political symbols, was but the repudiation of conventional mores under the pressure of a normal sensuality in conflict with an abnormal conscience. Once that conflict was resolved, once sensuality and conscience were reconciled, the road was open for the return of the prodigal to the bourgeois fold. The neurotic bohemian sought in love pleasure without responsibility. When psychoanalysis gave him a sense of responsibility, by leading him out of the realm of fantasy into the realm of reality, he could conceive of responsibility only as the complete acceptance of bourgeois society."

The problem, of course, was that psychoanalysis reduced the sphere of legitimate interest to personal relations alone. Thus, those who protested the organized robbery of private monopoly and its attendant imperialist wars were branded paranoid, on the grounds that they had never met any of the people who carried out the plunder and murder they abhorred. Of course, during WWI it had been considered evidence of sound mind to shriek for the Kaiser's head and yearn for the slaughter of sixty million Germans one could not possibly have met. But that was sincere patriotism, admirable love of country, righteous and healthy desire to shoot, shell, bomb, starve, maim, and kill all those your leaders (whom you had also never met) insisted made the world unsafe for democracy. Thus it came to pass that those pronounced psychologically fit evidenced their mental health by adoring segregationist Woodrow Wilson and Mexican "bandit" killer General Pershing, while those who bitterly resented industrialist leaders for killing workers in Ludlow, Lawrence, Youngstown, and Pittsburgh were found to be delusional. Ditto for those who objected to sending millions of young men charging headlong into withering machine-gun fire in a war President Wilson conceded was the fruit of "commercial rivalry" - after the fact. Those who stood against U.S. participation in the war when it could do some good - like Eugene Debs - were railroaded into prison for obstructing the draft and never forgiven. In the closing days of his presidency Woodrow Wilson granted a customary departing pardon to others, but not Debs, who had violated a prime commandment of Empire: "Thou Shalt Not Refuse To Kill!"

 "If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it."

        --------Edward Bernays, often called "The Father of Public Relations"

Obama, JFK, and Che Guevara: The Real Meaning of Capitalist Development

(Originally published March 27, 2011)

U.S. President Barack Obama recently announced in Santiago, Chile that he is interested in "working together to promote development in the Americas." This is a recycling of JFK's "Alliance For Progress," which sought to bribe Latin American nations into isolating the Cuban revolution, at the price of their national independence. In return for its client states' continued subservience, Washington offered a torrent of loans, donations, and investments, on the pretext that they would usher in prosperity for all. A half century later we know that the vast majority of Latin America has had as much chance to reach First World standards of development as a dwarf has to star in the N.B.A. 

And this was clearly foreseen. Arriving to the Pan American Conference in Punta del Este, Uruguay, in the summer of 1961, Che Guevara quickly exposed the insincerity behind Washington's dangled financial aid. "Cuba is the hen that laid your golden eggs," he announced, pointing out that U.S. "generosity" was only forthcoming because of Washington's recent humiliation at the Bay of Pigs.

 Propaganda worked overtime to achieve what force had failed to gain. So that nothing would change, the Kennedy administration constantly invoked the rhetoric of change. The conference's official reports ran to 500,000 pages, all of which gave prominent place to the need for "revolution," "agrarian reform," or "development." Little of it ever came to pass outside of Cuba. And when popular movements attempted to make change happen without the approval of Washington, the U.S. bloodily intervened, overthrowing the democratically elected government of Brazil in 1964, crushing a democratic revival in the Dominican Republic in 1965, and replacing the democratic government of Chile with General Pinochet in 1973. 

Incidentally, on his recent trip to Chile, Obama was directly asked whether he would cooperate with legal efforts to bring to justice those who committed crimes under the Pinochet regime. Obama promised nothing, answering only that "we would like to cooperate,"and that he would "consider" releasing requested information. He avoided answering whether the U.S. would consider asking "forgiveness" for what it did in Chile in the Allende years. Apparently, the Chilean press has yet to realize that imperialism means never having to say you're sorry.

 Like JFK before him, Obama is offering a "partnership for prosperity" (i.e., development) to Latin America. Perhaps a look back at the Alliance For Progress from Che Guevara's point of view can help us understand the nature of "prosperity" and "development" U.S. leaders like to deliver to Third World peoples. In "Punta del Este: An Alternative Development Program for Latin America," Guevara offered the following analysis of the Alliance For Progress: 

"It was a typical plan to domesticate all Latin American public opinion, in direct service to the United States." "Our countries were not represented at Punta del Este, except in the case of Cuba and a few others; in general, there were governments that represented oligarchies from each one of the countries, but each one with profound problems facing it." 

On why the Alliance For Progress should be seen as an effort to rescue imperialism, not the Third World, Guevara said this: 

"The United States, naturally, has changed its system, formally, because the imperialist system can't change; what has changed is its system of relations with Latin American countries. They have realized something fundamental, and that is that the colonial system, even when it may just be an economic colonialism that the peoples of the Americas suffer, is in a process of such disintegration that it can't last. The remains of feudalism have to disintegrate rapidly. So the United States has foreseen the need to liquidate feudal relations of production, above all in the countryside, where the majority of Latin American countries have fundamental problems, and carry out a kind of Agrarian Reform. As they say, a kind that liquidates the large estates, the small estates, which is to say that there will be medium size estates, mechanized, with agricultural workers instead of peasants, with a high rate of productivity that permits a large volume of products to be thrown into the market; they will liquidate that parasitic feudal class, and create a new class, probably, . . . not a new class, but rather a variation of the bourgeoisie, the bourgeoisie attached to importing in each country in Latin America, that comes in contact in each country with the North American monopolies, which creates mixed corporations." 

"These mixed corporations function inside the political system of each country with the sole exception that their profits in the system of free exchange can be exported to the United States. In such a way everything that might otherwise be violent, like the direct interference of foreign capital in the economy of a country, isn't seen. As used to happen here in Cuba, they are called "Cuban Electric Company," "Colombian Telephone Company," "Peruvian Iron Company," etc. etc. They will have an administrator from each host country, let's say, from the country where the raw materials are, and the capital and financial direction will be North American." 

"In this way they intended to develop the production of the country, as I already said, liquidate feudalism, create that new class, and then initiate a stage of capitalist development in all of those countries. Development that is, however, crippled, because of the fact that the capital they are going to use isn't independent capital, national bourgeosies that enter into conflict with the monopolies, but rather capital imprinted on monopoly capital and that works by mutual consent, in such a way that it still contributes to the colonization of the country, but momentarily relieves pressure, and naturally produces a certain boom, along with short term investment in the economies of the most undeveloped countries, where the danger of a social explosion is more obvious." 

 "The final result of the (Punta del Este) conference was a voluminous report, where the aspirations of the countries of Latin America over the succeeding ten years are spelled out, in the decade of 'rich, accelerated, democratic progress'. . . 

"From a political point of view, as far as aspirations to have Cuba condemned, the conference can be categorized as a resounding failure for the United States. Now, from the point of view of its unique political economy we doubt that it has been such a complete failure, because of the fact that they have made people believe - their governments - and through the governments of America, the peoples, that they are disposed to give aid, when in fact they aren't disposed to give. And even if they were disposed to give, they can't give. And even if they could give, they would have to give to governing circles of Latin American countries, and not exactly to governing circles, but to the alliance that governing circles form with the monopoly interests in each country, in such a way as to make investments that translate into new business for monopolies or for the same oligarchies that have an interest in depositing their money in the United States." 

The Alliance promised to "develop programs of health and hygiene, with a view towards preventing diseases, fighting epidemics, and protecting, in short, human potential." Guevara, complaining of the complete lack of concrete figures in the report, responded harshly: "That is to say, nothing. In any case, what 'human potential' means is that it's necessary to preserve a sufficient labor force so that monopolists have people to work for them." Speaking of the Alliance's projected growth rate of 2.5% for Latin America, Guevara said: "The per capita growth rate of 2.5% is extremely low for us .. . We made a little calculation . . and it was that if we had a growth rate of 2.5% for all the countries of Latin America, and with that we tried to reach the prevailing standard of living of the United States, it would take us 100 years. And if we attempted to reach the standard of living the United States was going to have, because they also were growing at a slow rate, we would need 500 years . . . what our peoples want is a growth rate that will liberate them from misery now . . ." 

Guevara complained of the public health provisions of the plan as well . . . "They talk of having 70% of the houses have water within ten years. That is to say they explicitly condemn 30% of the houses of Latin America to having no running water, no sewer service, etc. - in urban areas, in the countryside it's 50%." While the U.S. used its vast power to force down the price of Latin American raw materials and cash crops, it promised the poor not equipment or machinery, but latrines! Said Guevara at Punta del Este: "For the technical gentlemen, planning amounts to the planning of latrines. If we took them seriously, Cuba could be . . . . a paradise of the latrine!" 

In terms that could just as easily be applied to Obama's rhetoric today, Guevara aptly summed up the Alliance for Progress as follows: "That is to say, a very broad plan, with many pretty words, but which obligates no one and explains nothing. This is what the peoples of America will come to know as the result of 15 days of deliberations in Punta del Este." 

Anyone care to wager that Obama's plans for co-prosperity by sending aid to Latin American security forces will deliver better results for today's suffering Latin American populations? 

 -----Michael K. Smith is the author of "Portraits of Empire" from Common Courage Press. He can be reached at proheresy@yahoo.com 

 

Sources: Eduardo Galeano, "Memory of Fire - Century of the Wind," (Pantheon, 1988) 

Che Guevara, "Punta del Este - Alternative Development Project for Latin America," (Ocean Sur, 2006) 

 CNN News, "U.S. President Barack Obama and Chilean President Sebastian Piñera Address From Santiago, Chile," March 21, 2011

Fernando Alvarez, "Obama's Trip to Latin America: The Recycling of the Alliance Without Progress?" Latin Daily Financial News," March 21, 2011

Fantastic New Legalienate App - "MindClear" - Instantly Decodes Democrats' Doublespeak!

DIANE FEINSTEIN

UNITED STATES SENATOR

One year ago, on March 11, 2020 the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak a global pandemic. Over the past year, I have received almost one million emails and letters from Californians like you about the effects the coronavirus has had on individuals, families, and businesses. On this anniversary, I wanted to send an update to my last letter.

 

This past week, I was pleased to join my colleagues in passing a $1.9 trillion COVID relief package to speed our recovery from the health and economic effects of the pandemic. This is the sixth relief bill Congress has passed over the last year. 

 

Nearly 530,000 Americans - including almost 55,000 Californians - have died from COVID-19. Many who have survived are facing months of lingering complications after they were infected. We are just beginning to understand the long-term effects of the disease, and I have supported efforts to ensure more research is conducted in the hope that we can prevent and treat these prolonged symptoms.

 

Further, the coronavirus has significantly damaged our economy and exacerbated health and economic inequities. At the height of the pandemic, more than 22 million Americans became unemployed through no fault of their own. Thousands of small businesses have been forced to permanently close. Schools across the country were forced to close; many remain closed. Workers of color experienced the highest rates of job loss while facing inequities in health care access, resulting in disproportionate rates of infection, hospitalizations, and deaths. Social injustices that existed long before the pandemic have been exacerbated by it. I will continue supporting programs that every American has a fair opportunity to thrive, especially as our economy recovers.

 

Throughout the pandemic, our frontline health workers have been selflessly supporting medical care at great personal risk and sacrifice. Other 'essential workers' - nursing home aides, grocery clerks, agricultural workers, educators, delivery personnel, and many others - have also put themselves at risk to provide necessary resources for the public. I offer my heart-felt thanks to these essential workers for their efforts and continue to work with Governor Gavin Newsom and local leaders to ensure they have access to COVID-19  vaccines and other much-needed resources, like personal protective equipment. 

 

While vaccinations and reopenings across the country are providing hope, we must continue to take measures to stop the virus, including wearing masks, staying away from large gatherings, and avoiding unnecessary travel. Everyone who can get a vaccine should get one. If we are careful, we can work together to safely recover from this pandemic and minimize the further loss of life.   

"I always appreciate hearing from Californians! Please continue to send me your thoughts and concerns."

Sincerely Yours, 

Dianne Feinstein,

United States Senator

 

Legalienate's revolutionary new "MindClear" app, developed in our forensic pathology labs researching the death of democracy, has proven itself invaluable in translating political propaganda into standard English. As a demonstration of its awesome powers, we offer the following decoding of California Senator Dianne Feinstein's latest voter update message (reprinted above):

Feinstein: “One year ago, on March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak a global pandemic."

 

Feinstein decoded: “Since then, while the rest of the developed world nationalized entire payrolls, the U.S. awarded stimulus funds totaling $3200 for the luckier individuals - $267 a month.”

 

Feinstein: “Over the past year, I have received almost one million emails and letters from Californians like you about the effects the coronavirus has had on individuals, families, and businesses.  On this anniversary, I wanted to send an update to my past letter.”

 

Feinstein decoded: “I’m inundated in emergency text-messages from the cabin urging the pilot do something about our crashing aircraft. Here’s a cockpit update explaining the benefits of having built the plane without radar.”

Feinstein: “This past week, I was pleased to join my colleagues in passing a $1.9 trillion COVID relief package to speed our recovery from the health and economic effects of the pandemic. This is the sixth relief bill Congress has passed over the last year.”

 

Feinstein decoded: “This is our sixth try to get emergency funding right. We know you don't want to be part of our experiment, but you've got no choice!”

 

Feinstein: "Nearly 530,000 Americans—including almost 55,000 Californians—have died from COVID-19.  Many who have survived are facing months of lingering complications after they were infected.  We are just beginning to understand the long-term effects of the disease, and I have supported efforts to ensure more research is conducted in the hope that we can prevent and treat these prolonged symptoms.”

 

Feinstein decoded: “In spite of repeated warnings, we were caught flat-footed by the virus, having long since cut frills and extras like pandemic response out of the public health budget. Your deaths, while tragic to you, are profitable to us. We may be able to help with long term symptoms, as long as we can make money off them. If not, no hard feelings.”

Feinstein: “Further, the coronavirus has significantly damaged our economy and exacerbated health and economic inequities.”

 

Feinstein decoded: “We’ve taken the opportunity to throw more of you to the ‘free market’ wolves, especially you people of color, who we can shaft without paying a political price.”

 

Feinstein: “At the height of the pandemic, more than 22 million Americans became unemployed through no fault of their own.”

 

Feinstein decoded: “We haven’t been able to successfully blame the unemployed for being out of a job the way we usually do, but we’re working on it.”

 

Feinstein: “Thousands of small businesses have been forced to permanently close.”

 

Feinstein decoded: “Unlike the rest of the developed world, which rescued its businesses, we let ours go under. I wish I knew someone in high places who could have prevented this, but I'm just a powerless U.S. Senator who regularly votes on how to spend public money.” 

 

Feinstein: “Schools across the country were forced to close; many remain closed.” 

 

Feinstein decoded: “A year on, and we still have no control over the situation.”

 

Feinstein: “Workers of color experienced the highest rates of job loss while facing inequities in health care access, resulting in disproportionate rates of infection, hospitalizations, and deaths.”

 

Feinstein decoded: “Black lives don’t and won’t matter to us. Next topic.”

 

Feinstein: “Social injustices that existed long before the pandemic have been exacerbated by it.” ---

 

Feinstein decoded: “We’ve been remiss in our duties for some time, but we don’t really care because injustice is your problem. ” 

 

Feinstein: “I will continue supporting programs that ensure every American has a fair opportunity to thrive, especially as our economy recovers.”

 

Feinstein decoded: “Tokenistic affirmative action is all you’re ever going to get, so affirm the system and you’ll get some action. But don’t expect much.”

 

Feinstein: “Throughout the pandemic, our frontline health workers have been selflessly supporting medical care at great personal risk and sacrifice.”

 

Feinstein decoded: “We’ve forced highly skilled doctors and nurses to work Covid wards in plastic bags; just think what we could do to you.”

 

Feinstein: “Other 'essential workers'—nursing home aides, grocery clerks, agricultural workers, educators, delivery personnel, and many others—have also put themselves at risk to provide necessary resources for the public.”

 

Feinstein decoded: “Because most workers have no choice but to work or starve, we can use them as guinea pigs while we stay in protected environments. Offering cheap praise is literally the least I can do, and I'm happy to do it."

 

 

Feinstein: “I offer my heart-felt thanks to these essential workers for their efforts and continue to work with Governor Gavin Newsom and local leaders to ensure they have access to COVID-19 vaccines and other much-need resources, like personal protective equipment.”

 

Feinstein decoded: “With more infectious and lethal virus strains multiplying, we’re way late and a dollar short on Covid response, but we hope you'll let us get away with it.”

Feinstein: “While vaccinations and reopenings across the country are providing hope, we must continue to take measures to stop the spread of the virus, including wearing masks, staying away from large gatherings, and avoiding unnecessary travel.  Everyone who can get a vaccine should get one.  If we are careful, we can work together to safely recover from this pandemic and minimize the further loss of life."

 

Feinstein decoded: “There’s no point in crying over the mountain of corpses we’ve created so far, and the burden is on you to prevent the stench from getting worse. We know we need to dangle hope to prevent you from disrupting our massive money-making operations, so here goes.”

Feinstein: “I always appreciate hearing from Californians! Please continue to send me your thoughts and concerns.”

 

Feinstein decoded:   “I need to know what you’re thinking so I can use it against you when I huddle with my wealthy donors and plan your future.”

 

BULLETIN! Free Market On Verge of Utopia!

 "The entertainment industry thrives on the loneliness market. The consoling industry thrives on the anguish market. The security industry thrives on the fear market. The lying industry thrives on the stupidity market. How do they gauge their success? On the stock market. The arms industry too. Their stock prices are the best news in every war."

-------Eduardo Galeano, Voices of Time, p. 327

Predicting O'Bummer Far Ahead of the Pack

"In Chicago, for instance, we've gotten a foretaste of the new breed of foundation-hatched black communitarian voices, one of them a smooth Harvard lawyer with impeccable do-good credentials and vacuous to repressive neo-liberal politics, has won a state senate seat on a base mainly in the liberal foundation and developmental worlds. His fundamentally bootstrap line was softened by a patina of the rhetoric of authentic community talking about meetings in kitchens, small scale solutions to social problems, and the predictable elevation of process over program, the point where identity politics converges with old-fashioned middle class reform. In favoring form over substance, I suspect that his ilk is the wave of the future in U.S. black politics, as in Haiti and wherever else the IMF has sway. So far the black activist response hasn't been up to the challenge. We have to do better."

 ----- Adolph Reed, December 1995

 

Source: Useful Idiots, July 3, 2020

 

Ring Out The Old: Ring In The Old

 

 

While our sacred democracy was allegedly being served by a stupid attempt to unsuccessfully impeach an ex-president for the second time and essentially tell more than 70 million Americans that they might as well vote for Pavlov, FDR, Hitler or Oprah Winfrey since any alleged exercise of supposed freedom on their part would be meaningless in the rape of language we call a democracy. You know, the one with a billionaire class getting richer by the second and Americans across the board sinking lower by the minute. But enough good news, let’s move on to the even better signs of our political economic progress against logic, morality and majority rule, something that vanished in practice the moment our euro ancestors arrived and the people who’d lived here for millennia were brutally forced out of their homelands.

 

 

The world’s most expensive medical wealth-care system has killed more than 500,000 Americans while we’re being told that China has only created protection for its people that makes us look like bloodthirsty private profit fanatics because it is run by authoritarians and isn’t a sacred democracy like ours. You know, the one where your vote and mine are equal to the vote of any billionaire, if you believe nose picking is a way to perform a self lobotomy or you are a venture capitalist interested in a start-up called Butt Coin which operates on a revolutionary AI system (Amoral Intelligence) called Blockhead. Its stock just went up 23 billion points ten minutes ago so  college graduates should start investing and show just how good your education was and how strong your belief is in capitalist democracy. After all, how can any formally indoctrinated American not appreciate the incredible logic of our free market in which milk is more expensive than gasoline. What could make more economic sense? Milk comes from a cow, which produces more of it on a daily basis while petroleum takes millions of years to reproduce its supply. Even without consideration of either ones affect on the environment, that makes at least as much sense as nose picking self-lobotomies.

 

 

Or are you one of those deplorables concerned about our environment and the market green profit ventures said to be our only hope  and therefore useless for long-term change to save humanity and not just its upper classes? Who is most responsible for creating the destruction of nature reduced to a branding title of Climate Change? A menacing American socialist gang has pointed out that the wealthiest billion people on earth produce 60% of greenhouse gases while the poorest billion produce only 5%. But who can trust a murderous institution like The National Academy of Sciences? Worse, another unholy representative of global communism reports that the tens of trillions of dollars in debt carried by earth residents collectively – whether we like it or not – represent a threat to the entire human race while the 2,000 richest people on earth have amassed more wealth than 4.5 billon human beings combined. But who can believe a communist conglomeration of the richest institutions on earth and calling itself The World Bank?

 

Both institutions were talking about something much larger than the egocentric American chosen people mythology since we play a major role in creating that inequality but also suffering it, with a public debt of 19 trillion and private debt of 27 trillion. And if we believe, as too many of us still do, in what consciousness control and its professional staff of mind managers tell us, it’s all due to greedy union labor getting far too much in wages, salaries and pensions while a struggling investor class has to wait anxious moments for their deliveries of pet food, cosmetics, weapons, bitcoins, jewelry, and leisure wear. And this with union membership which has been dwindling for the past forty years under assault by minority capital while the affluent top ten percent has seen its wealth skyrocket with the support of that same minority. Isn’t the free market a marvel of democracy? Yes, if you are among those who find rape a cost effective form of dating that avoids dinner and a movie and gets right to the sex.

 

 

 

While pondering this, be sure to participate in a round of democratic marketing called the 2022 elections with requests for money – the real stuff of our financially sacred democracy – coming along with any and all messages about how we need to elect progressives or regressives to maintain the system of two party politics that makes sure the capitalist market continues setting us against one another to prevent us from ever uniting as a people and not a collection of reduced-to-less-than human minorities who compete with one another across identity groups with common interest hidden by the tiniest minority in the country: the incredibly richest of the rich and their wealthy - and diverse - servant class.

 

The warfare state continues without the fiery if intellectually empty rhetoric of the last president replaced by the most recent who quietly, if he had any idea what the hell was going on, presided over another bombing of a foreign country - Syria- to protect American lives. Those not yet reduced to total brain death under the abuse of consciousness by anti-social corporate and personal media might well ask: what the hell are Americans doing in Syria? And if there are Syrians in America does Syria now have the right to bomb America in their defense? But logic has no place in our government market where laws of political supply and demand assure continued profits for the tiny ruling minority and its well-paid servants in corporate business. The real menace, we are warned by the triumphant sector of the ruling class representing the best educated bigots in America, are terrifying groups with names that make them sound like gay dance troupes. Of course the horrible fears we are taught to react in when told of blood thirsty white supremacist* groups like the “Proud Boys” ( pirouette anyone?)are nothing compared to the corporate investor class which would never dream of attacking our revered national capital: they already own it.

 

Make no mistake, the new team at the helm of our titanic ship of state isn’t nearly as dumb, domestically, as the last egotist led cabal with a leader who at least spoke like a populist while acting like a rich pampered brat who's only work experience was making withdrawals from his father's bank. But the warfare state in which Israel exercises far more power in our sacred democracy than the average American citizen, will continue and hundreds of billions of our tax dollars will be rubber stamped by a hired staff of corporadoes in order to fend off alleged menaces like China, which has ended urban poverty in a population of more than 850 million, three times greater than our total, while we suffer rising poverty among millions of families in a population of less than 330 million. Quick, more bombs, death rays, drones, and especially propaganda from our free press which is available for a price, like the bombs, pet food, health care, entertainment, sports and democracy like no other in the world.

 

We have a new board of directors which still serves the same corporation with an experienced if nearly addle pated leader replacing the most dangerous one ever in that he bluntly acted as the boorish at best murderous at worst executive of an imperial danger to humanity masked as a democracy by psycho-neurotic therapists and other professionals. Every few years we are indulged in moving from fundamentalist theologians of the market-church to fundamentalist economists of the church-market and we call that belief system our democracy. Who else can perform self-lobotomies and pay more for milk than gasoline? Just wait until the pandemic is overcome, more likely if we asked China to help us organize a more cooperative than individualistic gang of identity groups, each with beliefs that it transcends humanity and will best be served by accepting slavery as long as it works in the house and not in the fields. No wonder China is such a menace to the gods of capital when it ought to be a lesson to the people of earth. Especially Americans who are propagandized by their mind managers to mind too many other people’s business in imperial fashion while being told it’s all about democracy. You know, like cheap gas, self-lobotomies and all that other good stuff. The real thing and the demand for it is growing, worldwide, and the sooner we end our alienated domination and begin working together as members of the one and only human race, the better for the future.

 And that future cannot be run, as it still is, for the benefit of private profit but for the public good.

 

 

*White supremacist and white privilege are among the favorite all-encompassing labels attached to lesser beings by people of higher intellectual and moral awareness made obvious by the fact that they are all members of the more privileged bigot class.