212 Comments
User's avatar
Patrick Powers's avatar

I heard a man say "this is the best possible system." I asked him, "why do you believe that?" For the remainder of the evening he acted as though I didn't exist.

John Turcot's avatar

A few weeks ago an acquaintance asked: “how did the government get to own the Earth, and why do I have to pay to live here?

MMMmmm ! ! ! ?

Elusive1's avatar

COMMENT OF THE MONTH!!!!!

It's actually the "elites" who are the puppet masters (of governments) but yes!!!!

SO ANNOYING!!

David Avenell's avatar

The Govt. doesn't own the Earth, the oligarchs do.

Anti-Hip's avatar

The oligarchs own the government to act as cover, by calling it democracy. And if you think Marxism eliminates oligarchs, there is a band of goons with truncheons who work for the vanguards standing by to re-educate you. Power abhors a vacuum.

John Turcot's avatar

I once called a government agent and asked

If there was a piece of land in b.C. where I could build a

Home, without charge for the land?

He replied: “ You don’t think WE are going to give you land for free do you?”.

Do you think HE was an oligarch?

John Turcot's avatar

David,

I’ve been told that the Royal Family officially owns 6 billion acres of the Earth…. Is that not a government?

See my other comment…

Theobalt's avatar

Obviously it was your fault

martin's avatar

algorithm wants me to reread voltaire's candide.

Landru's avatar

Seems we have spoken to the same person : )

Vin LoPresti's avatar

"People consent to this nonsense because we’ve been indoctrinated into it our entire lives"

Yes, but that indoctrination builds upon the fundamental dis-integration of our species from the rest of the Biosphere.

We are disjoined from our birth into this species, then propagandized to believe it to be reality.

David Baird's avatar

Spot on, Vin. And I've always worked on the premise that, generally, the bastards in life win, and the bigger the bastard, the worse the result. Very few of these fuckers ever end up, metaphorically speaking of course, hanging by the heels in the town square or with their nuts in a legal vice.

Anti-Hip's avatar

Human nature includes all the ugly stuff, too, because the ugly stuff serves evolutionary needs. They won't disappear just because modern pampered sensibilities and sensitivities guide a new system. We've now got hundreds of years of history demonstrating that humans cannot escape or wish away biology.

Vin LoPresti's avatar

"humans cannot escape or wish away biology" -- indeed not. The ugly stuff serves something, perhaps an equally ugly social order. But serving evolution, I'm not so sure?

Feral Finster's avatar

Evolution has no plan and does not consider second order consequences.

Anti-Hip's avatar

By "serving evolution", I mean simply that evolution (nature) produced it, and that Mother Nature nearly always wins out. So, anyone thinking they can alter human nature into anything they like will be disappointed.

The idea that human nature is created solely by cultural environments (nurture) and not evolutionary nature is not to me coherent, because every cultural environment, going back far enough, and all along the way, must have itself emerged from nature. For example, if there is an endemic "evil" "patriarchy" that has been infesting most modern and ancient civilizations, we have to look at how this could have emerged so robustly from the human biology created over hundreds of thousands of years by evolution. I'm no fan of actually abusive patriarchy, but the issue of human conflict, of all varieties, is far from simple. Sexual selection itself is a form of "conflict" that has existed for hundreds of millions of years among most forms of life.

So I don't see how we can simply surmise that it was, say, some random destructive mutation (that can now be cleanly excised), or even a number of mutations, or it would not have persisted so widely and for so long. Some biological fact(s) must be confronted, and to successfully move forward merging with modern sensibilities, *eventually in a quiesced state*, they must first now be debated with engagement *in open public discourse, and showing its roots*. Not grown in an effectively-secret intellectually-incestuous Petri dish stew of mysteriously-motivated academics publishing inscrutable jargon-laden rabbit-holes + cultivated armies of intelligent but naive youth, sprung by surprise against the public at large to bowl us over like deer in the headlights. As for the latter, we've seen that movie for over a century. It's getting more than tiresome, it's now getting enraging to the wider public.

I don't have access to the academy; long ago I was expelled. But if there is some watered-down version of the award-winning super-genius understanding 'for dummies'(TM) to be had here, please help me. I've looked for but not yet found it. I'm still pining to emerge from the unwashed.

As Al Gore used to say, there exist "inconvenient truths". Doubtless, the woke sophists have been hard at work, and I'm eager to hear what they have concocted on this.

Vin LoPresti's avatar

There's no arguing with the idea that evolution proceeds based upon the backdrop of how genetic (and epigenetic) variation drives survivability / reproductive success. Certainly, one cannot write any of that off because it's demonstrable. That a cadre of so-called experts would prefer to debate new findings and ideas in their academic coveys rather than in the public eye — in a manner inviting public discourse — is quite obvious from the COVID experience if nothing else. You know they (perhaps I should include my former self) don't want you to understand enough to even form an opinion, and you SHOULD find it "tiresome" and frankly bloody irritating as hell.

motherofchucky's avatar

Always so spot on- thank you.

Explains perfectly why I can no longer watch TV shows or Hollywood films. The propaganda is so obvious now. 😐

The Revolution Continues's avatar

I'm glad I'm not the only one who can't stomach the propaganda anymore.

JennyStokes's avatar

A lot of people don't understand when it's propaganda.

I watched that miserable scum: Joe Kent telling The Judge, that Trump is just getting wrong information! (Nothing to do with Trump at all)

ChatterX's avatar

"A lie told once remains a lie but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth"

"Accuse the other side of that which you are guilty."

"Propaganda works best when those who are being manipulated are confident they are acting on their own free will."

-Joseph Goebbels

***

"They follow the Hitler line - no matter how big the lie - repeat it often enough and the masses will regard it as the truth."

-John F. Kennedy

Ned B.'s avatar

It's time to take a proper gander at the propaganda.

https://nedb.substack.com/p/proper-gander

Davina's avatar

And, of course, tells us exactly why the extremely wealthy zionist jews are so desperate to buy up as many movie companies as possible - to keep, and increase the lies.

John Turcot's avatar

Yep! Hard to separate the wheat from the shaft….. or the story from the teller…

Just Sayn's avatar

Hasbara to the end!

Dave NZ's avatar

Have you heard the story about the American and Soviet diplomats that met on a plane? The American said to the Soviet 'You know I've got to hand it to you, your propaganda organs turn out some very good stuff'. The Soviet replied 'Thank you, you are very kind. But it is me that should be complimenting you. Your people are on another level'. The American retorted indignantly 'What do you mean, we don't do propaganda!'

Sally Langford's avatar

And the Soviet replied: ‘exactly’. It’s so effective that people don’t even see it

martin's avatar

very good. cutting yourself off of their narrative control is a good step. nevertheless you still need to know what's going on and what they're doing. compose a monitoring /translation team on substack.

Perry's avatar

thank you for persistent moral & intellectual clarity

Patrick Powers's avatar

In Japan all candidates for political office are publicly funded. All get the same amount of advertising.

Caitlin Johnstone's avatar

That way all they've had to worry about is aggressive political interference from the CIA!

JennyStokes's avatar

....and look how Japan is doing having tied itself to the USA!

Just Sayn's avatar

Yes. Because like the US they all are in the system. Just keep the masses amused and they can continue to prosper. "It's a big club and you aren't in it."-George Carlin

George I's avatar

Right on Caitlin! It makes me think of the apologists for the kidnapping and rape of children on Epsrein's Island while they turn a blind eye to the murder of children in Gaza. The people have to get together to stop the madness. Thanks for your writing and art work.

Susan T's avatar

"At no time are we ever offered the suggestion that things could be better than they are." But we do hear suggestions that things could be better: we could buy a new car, more clothes, more stuff. Take more airplanes, build more pipelines, enrich the already rich even more. What we are not told is that constant consumption is destroying the earth. If we come up with suggestions about how to save the earth, we are not listened to or we are ridiculed by the ruling/consuming class but also by regular people who have bought into the capitalism good, communism bad lie.

Elusive1's avatar

Consumerism harms us in that we become lab rats looking for the next

high that acquiring offers, instead of becoming satisfied by enjoying relationships, nature, hobbies. I was one of those rats. It is NEVER enough until you stop.

Susan T's avatar

mostly, I think, consumerism harms us because all that stuff is getting thrown out and it is polluting the earth with chemicals, plastics and more.

Davina's avatar

Yet so many of the small shops are forced to close because there's not enough money with the less than wealthy to spend in those family shops to give them a living. In some places even some of the large conglomerates are closing down in the small shopping centres.

It's not so surprising when we take one personal example: my son-in-law got a $500.00 a week raise, at the same time my age pension went up by $8.00 per fortnight. Forgetting that time we got $0.19 because the government said there had been no inflation that period. They wouldn't even give us a measly $1.00 I case we became to rich on it in the period.

Elusive1's avatar

It is sad abt the smaller businesses. The fact is they're shutting it all down.

Guess if our social credit scores allow, we'll be shopping online fm amazon or walmart. 🤮🤢

Just Sayn's avatar

Eliminate all competition and alternative sources of supply total monopoly equates total control.. total surveillance, financial control via fake currency.

Steve Haddon's avatar

I'm still on LinkedIn, (not sure why!), and it's like being in a zombie movie. The place is "infested" with brain-washed capitalist/consumption cult members. So... time for a quote from The Terminator:

“It can't be bargained with, it can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity! Or remorse or fear and it absolutely will not stop!... ever... until you are dead!”

Chuck Nasmith's avatar

I don't even know what Linkedin is. A Zionist Co.?

Steve Haddon's avatar

It was founded by Reid Hoffman - who is not a Zionist, or Jew. But who knows!

John Turcot's avatar

Greta Thunberg had it just about right ….. hopefully she can avoid the grown- up syndromes..…..

Elusive1's avatar

Time will tell ......

John Turcot's avatar

Considering that the world is on fire, and that the humans are at war everywhere, with 12,000 nuclear warheads ready to send us into oblivion, I’m not so sure Greta will ever be given “time” to grow up.

Just Sayn's avatar

Albert Einstein stated human proclivity for carnage well- " I don't know what weapons will be used in WW3, But WW4 will be fought with sticks and stones"

Bradley Lacke's avatar

Well given that this past year she was intercepted on a Palestinian Aid flotilla by the IDF and along with the other activists was imprisoned, humiliated, and tortured by Israeli soldiers (although most accounts claim that she got it especially bad), I'd say she appears to be doing a pretty damn good job

Just Sayn's avatar

Sometimes I think that the height of Human evolution was 5000 years ago..

Feral Finster's avatar

Cats see Egypt as being about as good as human civilization gets.

Warm, dry, well stocked with rodents, and a proper attitude towards Cats!

Frankie's avatar

The items you listed are ads and propaganda, not suggestions on how things could be better.

We quite literally do not ever hear about how things could be better. Those solutions absolutely already exist. But a person has to intentionally research them.

The Revolution Continues's avatar

"The blame always lands on the individual, not the system, and you can recognize this as the cynical manipulation that it is because the blame only ever goes one way..."

'Well, if you would only a) stop sleeping 8 hours and b) work 100+ hours a week, you'd be on top of the heap by now. If you're not getting ahead it's because you're plain lazy.'

I can't tell you how many times I've heard that sort of drivel! Capitalism is a rigged system and those that rig it make you think YOU are the problem when the truth is THEY are the problem. It's time to start building the guillotines, folks! #EatTheRich

Elusive1's avatar

Kinda depends on when they slam the surveillance bars down on us. But yes, CHANGE, big change is absolutely imperative!

Davina's avatar

So true. Ever since some bloody smart arse decided that pay rises should go from flat rise for everyone from management down, be changed to percentage rises. It works just as he desired it to, the bottom ranks get less every time as the top tier gets bigger and bigger ones which widen the gap every year until now, not even the actual top are now getting a raise equal to what the lower guys get as a "living" wage each week, or with some equal to a month of the lower wage.

Feral Finster's avatar

If hard work and devotion to duty were correlated with success Adrican market women would be rich beyond avarice.

Stupid people work. Smart people grift.

Diana van Eyk's avatar

And this mindset they're promoting cripples attempts at solidarity.

I can't help but wonder why people still pay attention to this demeaning crap.

Patrick Powers's avatar

If demeaning crap is all that there is to eat then eat it you will.

Elusive1's avatar

Yes, if you get used to eating junk you will. But there's always better out there. You just need to wake up to know what's good for you and what's not!

Diana van Eyk's avatar

There's so much good stuff that I can barely keep up. But it's not on mainstream media.

TomR's avatar

George Carlin made the observation in "Why education sucks" (2008 HBO) the owners want a workforce just smart enough to do the work and dumb enough to accept the economic system that robs them of their own futures.

For example, that anyone in TV land can still use 'communism' in reference to the very mild forms of 'socialism' being promoted and not be laughed off the air, shows the dumbing down was (begun long before 2008), and is successful.

It is difficult to fight back against this system when many, many people are distracted by their own dim futures or drugged by the entertainment 'soma' that keeps them content in their class while the Alphas plan their elimination with AI.

Chuck Nasmith's avatar

Chinese AI is cheaper and better. The U.S. Zionist AI Bubble will burst soon.

Christopher Rixman's avatar

The interesting part isn’t that individual responsibility is fake. Sometimes people make bad decisions and those decisions matter. It’s that “personal responsibility” gets applied with almost religious intensity to people with the least power, then suddenly becomes very complicated once the person making the decisions owns the company, runs the police department, writes the law or finances the war.

Poor person steals $500: criminal.

Corporation steals millions in wages: regulatory matter, civil litigation, very complicated.

Civilian mouths off to a cop: should have behaved better.

Cop violates someone’s rights: difficult job, split-second decision, let the process play out.

Individual responsibility isn’t the problem. Applying it almost exclusively downward is.

Elusive1's avatar

THIS is what I've been reading about.

They've got us in this system that's totally unnatural, working us to the bone, crappy food, poisoned water, chemtrailed skies, as they seek to extricate every dollar out of us, and then cull us. WOWWWWW.

Do we REALLY consent to this????

jamenta's avatar

We're born into it much like the serfs were during Feudalism. Except the serfs were not blamed for being serfs, it was expected that would be their fate. Today's serfs are blamed for being serfs - because we live in a "meritocracy".

Elusive1's avatar

Yes! We're blamed for every thing that is bad. Yet as Caitlin wrote, look at HOW MUCH "they" get away with!

I hear news stories of this guy gets this many yrs prison for dealing drugs, that one for raping a 10 yr old, and I'm like do we SEE the injustice happening??!! You can't make this stuff up

Dennis DiTullio's avatar

Your truths humble me; make me want to scream, pull my hair out. My complacency of not acting on the truths you express to make this world....livable...is unacceptable. Your words have not lead us/me into action but into a labotimized zombie state of inaction.

How sad.

Eat me's avatar

The stock market's doing great 🤣🤣. Only if you are part of the 1%, or top 10% who own 90% of shares. 🤣. Yet the orange freak' is always blabbing on and on about this and how the middle class! Is doing so well. What shit. Another of the orange freak' in your face lies. Cunts

Chuck Nasmith's avatar

The U.S. & Zio's are manipulating it, and will unload before the little guys. Beware.

Dennis DiTullio's avatar

Comrade "EAT ME" would you care to tell us other fellow comrades WHERE you put your accumulated wealth from you labor, job and or inherited wealth. Do we play 'the system' while also abhoring it. Thanks if you or others care to comment

Eat me's avatar

Comrade? You moron. The USA stock market has always benefitted/been mainly composed of, the wealthy. Idiot. If you didn't seem so stupid I'd give you a lecture on Macro. Ecom. and Finance. But can't be fucking bothered. Meantime, fuck off, fascist freak.

Dennis DiTullio's avatar

Could you answer my question. Please EAT ME.

Ahmad's avatar

It is so disheartening to see a good man like Mayor Mamdani attacked repeatedly for refusing to genuflect to rogue settler-colonial Israel. The Democratic Socialists are being vilified coast-to-coast and the public's morbid fear of an economic alternative has left them having to acquiesce to this blood thirsty system that must expand in order to survive.

wilrodx's avatar

FOR THE MANY NOT THE FEW

How It Is And What Should It Be

A capitalist society is one where nothing matters more than money. That’s why when you go to a hospital or doctor your health is not the priority. All services rendered are based on how much and who pays. When a doctor runs his/her practice like a business the goal is max profit. This is not true for all doctors but still true in general. Finding a “Good Doctor” is almost impossible. Most are just trying to sell you something. The same is true for all interactions between the “justice” “education” “electoral” and all other so called democratic systems and the public. A democratic republic is NOT a business. Whether “for profit” or not. Business practices are not suited to governance of a people. The public has been brain washed to think it is, disguised as “public-private” collaborations. Think about the “military industrial complex”. Eisenhower warned us about this. We now have for profit wars.

READ MORE:

https://substack.com/home/post/p-192656055

Davina's avatar

Looks like Drumpf stuffed that bit up as well. He's not winning his and satanyahu' war, he's running out of weapons, America is trillions in debt, not counting the interest on the billions, or more, in loans. Let's not forget the biilions he and his family are draining to their accounts, also their crypto they now want turned into a bank so they can cross state lines - talk about conflicts of interest? They should all be in prison, stuff that rubbish about a US president not being sent to prison, with people like the Drumps and Kushners who should already be in prison with keys thrown away, all but for the paid supreme court duds, who should be in there with them.

America needs a revolution, French style, and fast.