Wealth and Poverty, Guilt and Rationalization

"I remember one young woman whom I knew in college years. She had inherited ten million dollars at the age of twenty-one. Now, at twenty-two, she worked in Roxbury with some of the most badly battered children in the city. It struck her often as remarkably unfair that she, her brothers and two sisters, through the accident of birth, should have, each one, ten million dollars to protect their lives and to assure the safety of their children, and their children's children, too. It seemed unfair because she saw before her, every day, so many kids who were in every way the equals of her brothers and her sisters and herself; yet she knew very well these kids would, only by infrequent miracle, be able to break out of the entrapment of slum schools, parent despair, poor health, poor nutrition, crumbling plaster and the rest. The only way she might in later years know any of these kids would be if they were to become her servants, butlers, elevator boys or other kinds of menial laborers. The year in Roxbury hit her so hard that it grew into an ideal for her to go back home to her own family "place," almost a private village really, with two hundred acres of uninterrupted forest, fields and pastures for the horses, even cottages for "help." At home, as would not be unusual in cases of that kind, the servants all were black.

"Each time, then, that she went home, - for instance, at Thanksgiving, Christmas or some other holiday - she found it agonizing to sit at the dinner table and digest her food. She began to vomit secretly upstairs, or spit out food into her handkerchief or napkin, hoping in this manner that her father would not see. Her father did see, of course, and spoke about it with his wife, then with his daughter too. Being concerned about the danger to her health, he made arrangements for her to begin to see a psychoanalyst in Boston. She did so, and in fact spent several years in therapy. Out of this treatment, which had been provoked directly by her devastation at the sight of so much poverty and pain, she gained at length a more relaxed and reasoned skill to reconcile the differences between her own life and the lives of those poor children whom she had begun to know. Simultaneously she learned, as well, to reconcile the differences between her own intense convictions and that style of life which, as she knew, lay waiting for her. Her hesitation and her gnawing sense of guilt at last abated somewhat: never entirely, but enough so that she could go home from time to time, accept the luxury of horses, servants and the rest, and summon up a kind of 'realistic' will to smooth away the inconsistencies. At length she married an appropriate young man and traveled, little by little, out of the orbit of her ethical upheaval. She settled down at last into a normal, quiet and unturbulent routine, learned how to keep that residue of guilt within control, and did not need to vomit after supper.

"It would not make sense, from any 'normal' point of view, to say that she had just been cheated out of something decent and profound when she learned how to live in luxury without a sense of nausea, and to eat well and accept the services of family servants without guilt. I would not try to say that she was 'better off' when she was throwing up her food. Yet I would wonder if there was not something wrong, in toto, looking back, in all that had just taken place. Expensive medical treatment, denied to all but very few, enabled her at last to share without a sense of guilt in use of just such wealth as made that treatment possible. Ironically, it also helped ease her back into a style of life in which she would be less and less exposed to the conditions that inspired her original upheaval. A vulnerable conscience, having been explained and 'understood' at last into a kind of quiet and serene capitulation, no longer trouble her now at twenty-eight as it had done at twenty-two. She became, in terms of the society, a 'better adjusted person,' able to live at peace with the idea of an imbalance of advantage that once, in an earlier time, had seemed to her to be intolerable. . . . psychiatric exculpation on this scale would have been of great assistance to large numbers of those troubled and uneasy bureaucrats who were so necessary to the German leaders in the Second World War. . . ."

-----Jonathan Kozol, The Night Is Dark And I Am Far From Home, pps. 132-4

Trumpophobia: A Problem, Not A Solution

America’s ruling powers are practicing the trees vs. forest mind game as never before, with constant reminders given information consumers about how important a particular capitalist tree menace is, thereby avoiding awareness of how critical the capitalist forest menace has become. Now that the corporate circus of political lesser evilism has produced a genuine clown as its CEO the danger that his bumbling arrogance will reveal the sham and hypocrisy of the entire show is driving the owners of the big top to mass manipulations that drive their captive audience to desired distraction. But that could lead to a near - if not real - civil war if they succeed in destroying the clown while the circus continues on its death cycle, and that won’t be a laughing matter.

Since Trump took office the move to restrain him if possible and destroy him if not has become more frantic as systemic breakdowns become more numerous. Blaming Putin, Russia, Trump, Lady GaGa, the tooth fairy or any outside source for what ails America is a ploy that has worked before, but the current hysterical performance reflects the stressed state of the nation’s political economic structure, which is collapsing from its rotted foundation while attention is focused on the tenant in its penthouse. This search for individual villains on which to heap responsibility for things much larger than personal egos is also business as usual, but the commercial endeavor nears a frantic pace of irrationality as things show danger of getting completely out of control.

The Trump-ophobia promoted by a ruling class  - which is now referred to as a “deep state” even by anti-conspiracy types - has reduced a privileged sector of the population which needs a therapy session before ordering lunch into a near hysterical mob fearing personal demise as it desperately shops at a mental health mall and incurs ever more crippling physical debt in the process. A political paparazzi from what passes for a left helps induce mental coma while materially goading the lynch motivation that presents the latest capitalist monster in supposed bold light while still keeping capitalism in shadows. That political economic system is responsible for most of what drives an affluent minority to debt, drugs, drink and therapy, and a fast growing majority of strugglers to unemployment, poverty, environmental degradation and war.

Trump claimed his rule would create jobs and boost the economy and make America great again, while his allegedly liberal opponents claimed it was already great. This two party battle of the master race of self chosen people vs. the self chosen people of the master race was bound to lead to nothing more than continuity, however different it might seem to those programmed to think pimps are selling love and lies represent honesty. But a cottage industry of new fund raising for the political left-of-fascism has indeed created jobs and dollars, while popular entertainment feasts on both Trump’s idiocy and the mindless reaction to it that often makes him seem almost thoughtful by comparison. His war belching bravado about how our military is doing a much better job murdering people in Iraq brings reptilian tears to the eyes of the brunch brigades previously silent or barely conscious of the hundreds of thousands murdered by the other branch of the war cabal that – allegedly - ruled before Trump. Even greater military spending than indulged in by the Obama killers does mean more profits and more jobs, along with more death and more destruction. Which, in turn creates jobs for rebuilding the wreckage and repopulating the devastated nations. Isn’t free market capitalism wonderful? Yes, if the blissed-out-by-propaganda sector is kept from seeing the results of job creation and job loss by its own job and financial security that enables belief in material depictions of reality that only highlight the benign and give short shrift to the ugliness of private profit creation that reduces most of the public to market rabble frantically consuming at a fire sale of garbage, waste and murder.

Contrary to major media analysts, Trump is not responsible for the fact that an economy in which treatment of a disease is more profitable than curing the disease means the disease will prosper and remain uncured. Cancer is not a growth industry because of evil oncologists or mean delivery drivers or even a hateful CEO here and there, though all such are possible. But despite the billions spent on cancer, the number of people stricken by the disease increases, as do the profits of the cancer industry. In 2015, cancer pharmaceuticals crossed the one billion dollar mark, and while that means profit and jobs and investments for that disease, it also means that more than a million “new” cases of cancer will occur this year. Hooray? Yes, if you’re invested in the fight against cancer, which means, in this economic system, its continued profit potential. And again, that has nothing to do with an evil individual or abusive personality or wretched behavior pattern of someone who couldn’t afford therapy. It is systemic, not personal, and the most wonderful people, humanitarians, lovers of families, friends and neighbors, who wouldn’t hurt a soul, are buying homes, paying rents, eating, shopping, feeding their pets and living good lives based on that industry.

Looking for evil individuals and remaining unaware of a morally debased system is even worse than the identity politics that looks for blonde hair, brown skin, tall agnostics or short religionists as the source of the evils causing such pain and suffering to so many. The incredible wealth of a relative handful of people in the face of so much of humanity suffering poverty is well worth our attention, but not if we just settle for taxing them at a higher rate, which is the usual social democratic solution that helps maintain rather than transform our political economics. Nobody should have that much wealth – ever! – when there is so much that needs to be done to make life better for everybody. But simply raising the tax rate on the filthy rich and still leaving them with hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars for private profit making that must create injustice for a public no matter how clouded mass consciousness can be kept isn’t nearly enough.

Ultimately, someone driven over the edge by that inequality that is absolutely necessary to sustain the system will bring about an act of madness, terror and murder that can only be avoided by an economy that does not create inequality but promotes the well being of all, and not just some. Trump merely promotes the system more blatantly, and honestly, than the apologists who call him a liar every time he truthfully speaks to the horror of what makes him rich and keeps them in professional class comfort. That failure of anti-democratic capitalism becomes clearer as a result of this egotistical pinhead, but it isn’t very smart to villainize him while the wretched excess of the crime against nature political economic system of capitalism remains invisible. Those who keep it that way are the problem and as things stand, his blatant, open, egotistic honesty may be part of the solution in revealing that fact. But not if good people continue to be herded into the political identity of individualist grad school that makes most high school dropouts wiser about the economy, since they suffer it materially and not just while visiting therapists. Trump is indeed a boob, but he is the logical culmination of a system that is falling apart while its unmindful supporters feverishly work to chop down a tree while the forest is in more danger than ever of becoming an inferno that consumes not just some, but all of us.

American Gourmet Politics Haiku+

pan seared dog shit

sun dried cat shit

identity horse shit

mass consumed bull shit

Bulletins From Fake and Real News

BREAKING NEWS
The F.B.I. is investigating Russia’s meddling in the U.S. election and its links with the Trump campaign, the agency’s director confirmed
Monday, March 20, 2017 10:42 AM EDT

Trump Ties to Russia?

How About U.S. Ties to Israel?

We need an investigation of the entire American government for its ties to a foreign nation, Israel, which have cost the middle east and Islamic world, beginning with Palestine, hundreds of thousands of lives and the U.S. hundreds of billions of dollars. And they have brought bloody war home via terrorist attacks which would never have happened if the government hadn’t done the bidding of the Israeli Lobby and its supporters in politics and media. These employees of the lobby put the interest of a foreign power ahead of those of the American people. Are they, and their supporters, traitors?

Are you?

Minority Un-Consciousness

Which Minority Warrants More Concern?

The total population of the countries affected by the "hate" inspired Trump immigration policy is 225 million.  

Roughly .004% of that number have been part of the traveling, business, tourist, refugee or immigrating population coming to America.

The death toll directly connected to American military attacks and American arms, training and finance supplied to local killers in those countries is well over 1 million.

It continues while Americans remain unconscious of it or helpless to stop it if they are conscious, and are moved to scream about hate when people escaping American murder are given a difficult time at coming into the country most responsible for the degradation of their homelands and the mass murders of their people.

Which minority should Americans be most concerned about, and which active majority of concerned American humanitarians – if such exist – should be most responsible to take action on their behalf?

1.4 million Americans are estimated to identify as trans sexual. That represents .6% of the adult population of the U.S.A.

It is also estimated that half a million Americans are homeless. Among that number there are many children. Together, homeless adults and children  are less than 3% of the trans sexual population.

Much of the nation is concerned over the right of people who are biologically one sex but mentally and/or spiritually of the other to use the public toilets assigned to the biological opposite sex.

Homeless people do not have any toilets at all.

Which minority’s toilet needs and humanity should be of the most concern for the active, involved, humanitarian segments organized to fight against “Trump’s hate”?

There are more than 45 million Americans living in poverty. That represents 14.5% of the population. In addition, 97 million Americans are “low income”, defined as having income below twice the poverty income level. Together they add up to more than 140 million people who are poor or low income, nearly half the population.

21.8% of American children, more than one in five, live in poverty. This, in a nation that spent 600 billion on warfare in Obama’s last year, and 60 billion on the pet industry in Obama’s last year.

Both of those years came before Trump’s first year, for those who think the CEO is more important than the business the CEO works for.

War and pets are more profitable to that business than those poor people and those poor kids.

Which minority-identity group should “love” people be organized to fight against the “hate” of such political economics?

The top 1% of the U.S. population owns 43% of wealth ($24.4 trillion); the top 5% of the population owns 72% of wealth ($40.8 trillion); the bottom 80% of the population owns 7%of wealth ($3.9 trillion).Many "love" fighters against "hate" think the U.S. is a great democracy, ruled by a loving majority which shows great concern for all minorities. Which minority, using which toilets, escaping which wars, buying which products and confiscating which wealth, should that population be most concerned about?

A minority owned corporation that manufactures yarn is planning to make caps with small penises at their peaks and organizing a massive March of the Dickheads on Washington D.C. to protest minority abuse.

Which minority should purchase the caps, wear them, join the march, and continue preaching the politics of love while practicing the economics of hate?

All figures are from the U.S. Census Bureau and Kairos Center

George Carlin, Comedic Nihilist, 1937-2008

 Always a comic genius, George Carlin improved over time, achieving a philosophical depth rare in the comedy world. Where once he playfully wondered why there were no perfectly round frozen peas, by the end of his amazing comic career he had retained a mass audience while commenting critically on war and peace, wealth and poverty, and how the owners of the private economy "do what they want" with the rest of us. There was no other comedian with similar range and courage.
In other words, Carlin evolved. In the later part of his career he realized he didn't need to measure success by quantity of laughs, but could be successful by linking his riffs with extended philosophical observations that kept his audience highly engaged while waiting for the next explosion of laugh material, which was never long in coming. In other words, he wasn't even going for laughs much of the time. But when he was, he ranked as one of the funniest comedians ever. Deep cynicism sometimes dragged him down, however. A bit he did on how much he enjoyed seeing mass destruction of humans was never released because 911 happened the day after he performed it.
Where he ended in life, he was both funnier and more profound than the Danny Kaye type character he modeled himself after at the beginning of his career. As an analyst of dishonest language he had few peers and no superiors. One must turn to literature to find anything like Carlin's penetrating gaze. Perhaps only James Baldwin achieved anything like a Carlinesque appreciation for American euphemism. Both men believed affluent white people instinctively turned to dishonest speech to conceal their sins. Where Baldwin was the more brilliant, Carlin was funnier.

Carlin's political radicalization emerged from the Vietnam War, one of the most destructive and criminal invasions of a blood-soaked 20th century. As U.S. political culture turned increasingly reactionary in the decades following the end of that war, Carlin became deeply cynical, though still explosively hilarious. He conceded that he was a "wounded idealist," but insisted that the human race had squandered its unique evolutionary gifts (the ability to think in time, discern cause from effect, coupled with an opposable thumb) and was headed for extinction sooner rather than later, a prospect he encouraged one and all to be entertained by and "enjoy." As for politics, he considered the people as culpable as their leaders, and characterized Americans in particular as greedy, dumb, and bereft of constructive idealism.  U.S. culture was nothing but a "freak show" that tried but couldn't hide the "circling of the drain" of a dying species.  Politicians were a reflection of the "garbage in, garbage out" relation with the citizenry, and the decent people who might lead the country in a more hopeful direction were all "down at the mall pulling their wallets out of a fanny pack to buy a pair of sneakers with lights in them." He suggested that instead of "politicians suck," we adopt the slogan "the public sucks."

Unfortunately, even Hitler had more sense of reality than that. Keenly though he realized that immense concentrations of private wealth were the key political problem, Carlin never thought of the slogan "capital sucks." He criticized greed, corruption, corporations, and "owners," but never capital, whose concentration has now reached levels that threaten the survival of the species. For Carlin this was nothing more than grist for his comedic mill. He urged one and all to simply give up, "become spectators," and be entertained at mass suffering unto human extinction. Hopefully he didn't act on that, especially towards his daughter, but if he did, he was a moral monster ideologically worse than Hillary and Trump and GW and Obama put together.

Carlin rhetorically asked, where are all the decent people ready to lead the U.S. in a different direction? His "wounded idealism" kept him from seeing that they're all over the place, like on Legalienate blog, but also in many other places. Obviously, there are decent people all over the world struggling to put profit in its place and have a broader and humane set of values infuse our institutions. They may not succeed, but if they fail it will be anything but a laughing matter.

Trump Ties to Russia? U.S. Ties to Israel?

Trump Ties to Russia? U.S. Ties to Israel?

We need an investigation of the entire American government for its ties to a foreign nation, Israel, which have cost  the middle east and Islamic world, beginning with Palestine, hundreds of thousands of lives and the U.S. hundreds of billions of dollars. And they have brought bloody war home via terrorist attacks which would never have happened if the government hadn’t done the bidding of the Israeli Lobby and its supporters in politics and media. These employees of the lobby put the interest of a foreign power ahead of those of the American people. Are they, and their supporters, traitors?

Hmmmm?