This is exactly why I believe almost every lurid detail in the Epstein files is true. These people can buy anything they want, court anyone they want, go anywhere they want, live anywhere they want. The only things off limits are that which has been deemed morally reprehensible and repugnant, and they just have to have it. They have to destroy the pillars that make us most human, because they’ve been told not to.
In the late 19th century, there was a scandal bc an upper class gentleman of the British persuasion paid some merchants to kill, cook, and eat a teenaged girl slave in front of him. He of course claimed to not have partook. (Partooken?) But Im pretty sure he had a taste
Just what I was thinking, raping young girls/boys still isn't enough, beating, for some, isn't enough. I'd say even murder isn't enough, or torturing to death in the society that Epstein was working for - and what a great job he did of it that it killed him in the end.
I you are too idealistic. Perhaps to be driving down the road in your hyper sports car, with a nose full of coke, and an underage sex toy in the passenger seat,
Invited by a friend to visit a rich and vast market in Athens, Diogenes was asked after the visit what he thought of the experience. Diogenes replied that he was truly surprised by... the number of things he didn't need!
Stroll through a big box store or a charity shop where people have off-loaded their excess junk and reflect everything came from the earth, even if it’s synthetic, it took energy to make it. Consumption is drowning us.
I worked in retail for a few years, became a manager and 'had the scales drop from my eyes'. We sold as much cheap disposable stuff as we could and threw out what came back. No matter how much we sold in a month they demanded we sell more in the next month, ad infinitum.
Felicidades Marga, nos has traido a colaciíon descubrimientos de la antigua Grecia, que descubre mi mujer el año 2026 en el supermercado, "no necesita el 99,99% de lo que encuentra en el supermercado."
As I recall he said that he wanted to oversee the distribution of the money- or that which it purchases- so as to make sure it gets to the people and is not stolen by the PLUTOGARCHS at the UN. The U.N.PUKORATS balked. He walked.
Because a racist and impulsive CEO with a ketamine habbit knows how to distribute food to all the undernourished people on the planet, better then the worlds biggest humanitarian agency does.
Yes, psychopaths are rewarded by the current system of haves and have nots. Solution: revolution to create basic equality, none rich, none poor. Needless to say, the have's do not agree. We don't need their agreement, but they, all helpless as a limp dick in a whorehouse, absolutely need us. So we can defeat them simply by doing nothing. A general strike can take down the most powerful dictatorship without violence if the people are united. So basic step: seek ways to overcome disagreements and wedge issues and unite for the greater good of taking down the plutocrats and creating a society based on human needs and our evolutionary legacy as discovered by both archeologists and neuroscientist of inherited trust, sharing, altruism, and cooperation. In other words, the world we must replace the plutocracy of haves and have nots with is a world that liberate us from our alienation and realigns us with our evolutioanry inheritance as sharing and peaceful people, thriving on sharing. It begins by deconstructing the concept of property which creates a world of haves and have nots. The end vision is a world of haves, sharing the bounty of our labors in equality, the taking back of the long stolen commons that belongs to all, or rather, to none.
It’s likely why we’re seeing faster erosion of civil rights, more mass and connected surveillance, more militarism, more divide & conquer psyops, etc. They can hide in bunkers while the peasants kill each other over bad jobs
They can’t just hide in bunkers and they know that. Bunkers are for if they feel like they’re going to have to pay for the consequences of their actions and they go nuclear. But yeah, they hope they can make us bend the knee. It’s unclear how many people actually will, but, we’re gonna find out.
Maximilien Robespierre, in the end he too went to the Guillotine. I wrote a story about the 13th Great Grandson of Maximilien Robespierre and his night of the cold knives. Max invented a CryoGuillotine, created a society of four person groups, one of the group not known to the others. The event for the 1% happened while being WebCast. The severed head still moving changed minds as the guillotine in Paris soaking the pants with blood did in 1789.
One thing worth noting: even the French Revolution was spearheaded by the petite bourgeois. And if Robespierre hadn’t went full paranoid personality (an inevitability given the situation he was in) and kept beheading Allie’s, there never would have been a Napoleon
Im aware, and the point stands: absent an organized petite bourgeoisie, one standing on the principles of liberté, egalité, fraternité- its game over. We’re all just farm animals on the vampires farm.
Capitalism is kind of like a car that has an oil collection tank on the roof.
In the ladder tournament of capitalism, or a pyramid of money and power, money escapes the "losers" and goes up to the victors above them, until most of the competitors are gone or going...
Money is the lubricant that facilitates trade. That's OK, but when certain people learn how to pocket the leftover cash from unbalanced trades, the predators go up the ladder, and build the pyramid.
What happens to the car when the oil collection tank has sucked up 90% of the engines oil?
I'm reminded of the cube-square rule from science fiction. In monster movies, you often see some small creature metamorphose into a dangerous giant. The cube-square rule tells us as its size is squared, its mass is cubed and eventually it must be crushed under its own weight.
I think this is the inevitable way with capitalist empires.
And that is the dialectical process! Not the simple minded "problem-reaction-solution" bandied about. it is the INTERNAL CONTRADICTIONS that come to critical mass, whether volcanoes, earthquakes, atomic fusion, or political oppression.
Scopes the losers and goes to the victors? That’s laundering pathological extraction and making it sound almost virtuous. These devils need to be exercised.
If we unite, they will be helpless: who will run the machines? who will design them. And answer this: who will consume the products their robots produce to sustain their wealth? Here is the alternative to the AI/human labor no longer needed/ consumption only required (turn to recycling, no new, just reused)..............................
Abundance economy
AI makes goods near-free
Wealth less zero-sum
Mass leisure society
Humans valued for creativity, relationships, exploration."
I would suggest that when the revolution seizes the means of production (AI driven), we will have what Marx 180 yrs ago envisioned as communism in a world where everyone is rich, no one is compelled to spend most of their time doing labor.
My formula is Marx (who saw this happening in the most advanced technological nations with the most concentrated wealth) plus AI = neo-communism.
AI, robots, etc., are most likely inevitable, but private control of it (rather than for the common good) is not. AI does not negate revolution, and revolution can use AI to create a society of high wealth and low labor.
This is a post capitalist society we’re moving into. It’ll be feudalism, but with tech. They’ll simply trade with each other. And the people have demonstrated near zero will to act collectively against them. The entire nation should have came to a standstill decades ago, but the bastards are good at keeping the machine rolling, even when it’s rolling over the people operating it. I have no hope for a revolution of any meaning in my lifetime. I’ve fought the bastards in my own. Didn’t go so well for me, but I knew that it wasn’t going in. Now, I advise and educate. That’s the extent of my revolutionary activity anymore. If the day should come the bastards come for me or remove any ability for me to humane exist, as it seems they’re hell bent on, then I’ll fight again. And that’s where I reside. But hope for some nationwide general strike or anything like that? It’s a pipe dream. The people will sleep walk into their prison cells. And I know that because that’s what they’re actively doing.
This battle was already lost before I ever arrived on the field. Despair wasn’t even an afterthought. You saying that is like that meme with the cows in line to the slaughterhouse. “They’re about to kill us, yall realize that right?” The other cows, “ despair has never won any battles.” Lolz
Well good. Seems like maybe we haven’t condemned generations of our children to live under the pathetic edicts of pathological totalitarians. Slavery is a far, far worse fate than death.
Swinging the pendulum so far left from where it is would be destructive. We may need a revolution just to get to some moderate mix of capitalistic and socialistic economics
It wasn’t our choice. It was imposed upon us from on high. But it’s true, our lack of resolute action from the outset, our rank and pervasive passivity has allowed it to mature to full pathocracy. It won’t be pretty undoing it.
Let us not waste time arguing about hypotheticals and whether revolution will be moderate or.....let's unite and replace the oligarchy with a democratic republic in which the people will decide about changes. Moderate is such a vague word that unless it is defined in terms of concrete policies and programs, it is all but meaningless.
Revolutions aren’t moderate. There’s no such thing as a moderate revolution. Those do not exist. Arguing that such a thing exists is just narrative manipulation- spin to convince the peasants that their moderated enslavement is, in fact, liberation. That’s a horrendously bad faith argument on its face, and likely why you’d not like to “waste time” examining it; such examination, of course, endangering your deceptiveness.
“Let us unite..”
We’re not Thundercats rallying to your substack post, Lion-O. Calm down, and back away from the Sword of Omens.
The rising leaders are moderate democratic socialists (AOC, Mamdami, et al) and so the swing will not be to the authoritarian left, as you fear. Universal healthcare, access to college, green energy, and a foreign policy based on promoting real democracy are hardly destructive.
I’m unclear what you’re referring to. You think politics is going to liberate people? If so, you’re just another totalitarian masquerading as a normal.
What you are describing is the state of addiction. But they do not know they are addicts. Nothing will ever fill the bottomless pit of emptiness and lovelessness that drives them. It's past time for an Intervention.
I just wish these parasitical plutocrats would just STOP and admit that money and power aren't the end-all they think these things are. I wish they'd get psychological help and give all their excess material goods to those who need it desperately.
You know, we can help these "poor" sad billionaires... We can help them by taxing their incomes (wealth) at 99% and redistributing their excess homes, vehicles, yachts... Who's with me? #EatTheRichTheyTasteLikeTurkey
When I tell people the Oligarchs do not pay income tax. People argue for a min. I tell them the Oligarchs do not take their money for living expenses from income, they take it from Capital Gains at 14.5% , slack jawed huhhhh. Their wealth builds wealth, they don't take their all of their distributions, using differed sales trusts etc. The Duopoly gets the kick back from the tax loop holes. Once Warren Buffet admitted his secretary paid more in taxes than he did. Where is Max it's 1789 all over again : (
TRC, taxing incomes for billionaires is pointless (as there are too many tax loopholes for income). Hence, we need to tax WEALTH (and world-wide wealth - including in off-shore accounts and tax havens). We should also apply a 99% inheritance tax for all wealth over $1 million for billionaires. (Just some suggestions, haven't really given it much thought...😃)
20 Million!! 2M invested at 4% (reasonable) would net 80K per year. No one needs more than 5M max. Redistribute the worlds oligarch's wealth and we'd all be set for life.
I know someone who can't spend money because they are OCD and practically lives like a hobo while they have millions. He definitely isn't happy at all.
Fear having gone without may be the root cause? Never wanting to experience that again. I felt that way after a divorce, my Son and I lived on 7$ and what the ex didn't take...................... I couldn't even write what happened and how we recovered.
“I do understand that young men are bound and determined to prove themselves in life and receive accolades from posers (this includes men and women). Unfortunately, when it comes to the military and war they are guided by adults that represent the worst of humanity, Non-Combat Pretenders who, though NEVER having faced this type of violence, spew tired old lies and propaganda about glory and “getting the job done, like a man!” This is the case in the Palestine occupation, and for over 100 years back. This was the case in WW1, Korea, Vietnam, Central and South America, Philippines, Ukraine, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Libya, and so much more. This was the case in Afghanistan which John Pilger so ably documented – as US and NATO servicemen loaded Afghans into shipping containers, locked them in, and began firing non-stop into those containers until everyone was dead.”
"As discussed below, branches of the military utilize specifically developed audio “meditations” designed to condition soldiers for automated response and follow-through. You’re 18. You want to live. “You want to do the right thing - for your country”… You want to live. We received specific operant conditioning.
"This is called “Psychological Kill Training”. It’s not just about skill; it’s about eroding inhibition."
Caitlin, I watched a podcast where the podcaster introduced the idea of a "pathocracy," rule by the mentally ill, psycho / socio paths. And now you are talking about the same theme; the idea, or concern about this group, is in the air. I know this is controversial to say, but I accept the proposition that we the people, in a mass movement for a better / just / social / cooperative / ecological/ society, need to agree to remove the rich from power as the means to get the better society, an authentically democratic one. Without setting an intention we can't get to what we want, to not be dominated by "them," the plutocrats advancing technocracy, which is all about control. We need to imagine society where there is no rich and no poor, everyone works to the best of their ability to contribute to society / community / family / self, and receives according to need and availability of resources. I wrote this appeal for a common call: https://greenlibertycaucus.org/ditch-the-rich-campaign/
Unless the SYSTEMS of political economy are changed, future plutocrats will simply replace the present ones. Hence getting rid of them is not enough, the systems that produced such pathologies in the first place MUST be eliminated and replaced by ones that serve ALL the people.
Yes, the partriarchy is one of those systems that need to be eliminated as I mentioned above (amongst many others - including predominantly Capitalism).
Was that meant to buttress the idea of socialism being a good idea or a satirical comment and prompt us to wonder who gets to make sure we're ouputing at our max ability? Sometimes nuance is lost on me, I apologize.
I can never hear or read that enough. Thank you for that. 25 pages of gold
written 150 yrs ago or so. The tipping point from Capitalism to Socialism is long over due and I fear no longer possible without Schumpeter's Creative Destruction coming full nuclear. : ( You give me hope though : )
We continue to tolerate predatory capitalism as a way of life when it is slowly destroying the fabric of our society. But 80 years of drinking from the Kool Aid Fountain have made us into unthinking zombies even when the oligarchs take us to the brink of the abyss......
"A people cannot be free if it oppresses another people," wrote Karl Marx. Paraphrasing this statement, Enrico Berlinguer said that "a man cannot be free if he oppresses a woman," and one could say, in general, that a person who impoverishes others cannot be free.
Thank you for those sparkling observations, Caitlin. It's interesting that about 20 minutes before running into your article I was contemplating that we are being ruled by plutocrats and that the US is a plutocracy. What makes me happy is to love my God with all my heart, mind, soul and strength and to love my neighbor as myself. I can't imagine being a billionaire while an ethnic cleansing is happening.
More money up to a point increases happiness by erasing scarcity, but here's the catch, once your basic needs are met, each gain in money reduces the satisfaction it brings so that at a certain point, it is negligible. It's like sex with the same person: what was hot hot hot after 20 yrs is not.
I just read a psychiatric paper on Dopamine addiction relating to Genocide Don. His Dopamine high from violence, generates a violent act to stimulate more Dopamine. Each violent act requires a higher level of violence to attain the higher high. Scary thought being nuclear war, the ultimate violence.
So violence breeds violence...kind of a parallel to gaining wealth....instead of satisfaction or satiation, we require higher and higher doses to avoid losing our happy infusion. The first million made you feel like a million, the 1000th hardly felt at all and so the dosage has to be increased to a billion....less bang for the buck means more bucks needed for the bang.
And likewise with violence; the law of diminishing returns means that to sustain the high, the violence must increase. Scarey indeed!
This is exactly why I believe almost every lurid detail in the Epstein files is true. These people can buy anything they want, court anyone they want, go anywhere they want, live anywhere they want. The only things off limits are that which has been deemed morally reprehensible and repugnant, and they just have to have it. They have to destroy the pillars that make us most human, because they’ve been told not to.
Hard to know. Seems like they are becoming more emboldened in depravity or acting the part to…shock us?
Didn't begin with Epstein.
Here is an article from today detailing the Brits version of Epstein.
https://thegrayzone.com/2026/02/06/kincora-british-intelligence-run-sex-abuse-brothel/
In the late 19th century, there was a scandal bc an upper class gentleman of the British persuasion paid some merchants to kill, cook, and eat a teenaged girl slave in front of him. He of course claimed to not have partook. (Partooken?) But Im pretty sure he had a taste
One of the reasons many of them are canniBAALs.
Just what I was thinking, raping young girls/boys still isn't enough, beating, for some, isn't enough. I'd say even murder isn't enough, or torturing to death in the society that Epstein was working for - and what a great job he did of it that it killed him in the end.
It didn't " kill him in the end". https://vtforeignpolicy.com/2026/02/israeli-investigators-release-proof-epstein-is-alive-and-blackmailing-politicians-pizzagate-is-real/
I you are too idealistic. Perhaps to be driving down the road in your hyper sports car, with a nose full of coke, and an underage sex toy in the passenger seat,
Invited by a friend to visit a rich and vast market in Athens, Diogenes was asked after the visit what he thought of the experience. Diogenes replied that he was truly surprised by... the number of things he didn't need!
Stroll through a big box store or a charity shop where people have off-loaded their excess junk and reflect everything came from the earth, even if it’s synthetic, it took energy to make it. Consumption is drowning us.
I worked in retail for a few years, became a manager and 'had the scales drop from my eyes'. We sold as much cheap disposable stuff as we could and threw out what came back. No matter how much we sold in a month they demanded we sell more in the next month, ad infinitum.
I resigned within a few months.
I heard it was Socrates...but the point stands!
Felicidades Marga, nos has traido a colaciíon descubrimientos de la antigua Grecia, que descubre mi mujer el año 2026 en el supermercado, "no necesita el 99,99% de lo que encuentra en el supermercado."
You know what might ease poor little musky’s’ sorrows?
Helping people.
He could help millions
That would never occur to him though.
He once asked the UN how much it would cost to end world hunger
They commissioned a study
Got back to him with a number he could well afford
He did nothing.
I know when I help I feel better
But I’m not a psychopath
Unfortunately I can’t help as many as that hoarder could
As I recall he said that he wanted to oversee the distribution of the money- or that which it purchases- so as to make sure it gets to the people and is not stolen by the PLUTOGARCHS at the UN. The U.N.PUKORATS balked. He walked.
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 sure thing Mikey I like your hasbara for your lil psychopath fantasy
Not
Get back in your basement
Maybe he said that, Mike, but what really happened??
Because a racist and impulsive CEO with a ketamine habbit knows how to distribute food to all the undernourished people on the planet, better then the worlds biggest humanitarian agency does.
Sure thing mate.
Yes, psychopaths are rewarded by the current system of haves and have nots. Solution: revolution to create basic equality, none rich, none poor. Needless to say, the have's do not agree. We don't need their agreement, but they, all helpless as a limp dick in a whorehouse, absolutely need us. So we can defeat them simply by doing nothing. A general strike can take down the most powerful dictatorship without violence if the people are united. So basic step: seek ways to overcome disagreements and wedge issues and unite for the greater good of taking down the plutocrats and creating a society based on human needs and our evolutionary legacy as discovered by both archeologists and neuroscientist of inherited trust, sharing, altruism, and cooperation. In other words, the world we must replace the plutocracy of haves and have nots with is a world that liberate us from our alienation and realigns us with our evolutioanry inheritance as sharing and peaceful people, thriving on sharing. It begins by deconstructing the concept of property which creates a world of haves and have nots. The end vision is a world of haves, sharing the bounty of our labors in equality, the taking back of the long stolen commons that belongs to all, or rather, to none.
This “need us” thing? That’s not long for this world. They’ll only need a handful of techs once they automate everything
It’s likely why we’re seeing faster erosion of civil rights, more mass and connected surveillance, more militarism, more divide & conquer psyops, etc. They can hide in bunkers while the peasants kill each other over bad jobs
They can’t just hide in bunkers and they know that. Bunkers are for if they feel like they’re going to have to pay for the consequences of their actions and they go nuclear. But yeah, they hope they can make us bend the knee. It’s unclear how many people actually will, but, we’re gonna find out.
Yes, where is Max?
Who? Mad Max? Lol
Maximilien Robespierre, in the end he too went to the Guillotine. I wrote a story about the 13th Great Grandson of Maximilien Robespierre and his night of the cold knives. Max invented a CryoGuillotine, created a society of four person groups, one of the group not known to the others. The event for the 1% happened while being WebCast. The severed head still moving changed minds as the guillotine in Paris soaking the pants with blood did in 1789.
More likely they are hiding in their bunkers from us. 1789 was only effective once the guillotines began running 24 hrs a day. Where are you Max?
One thing worth noting: even the French Revolution was spearheaded by the petite bourgeois. And if Robespierre hadn’t went full paranoid personality (an inevitability given the situation he was in) and kept beheading Allie’s, there never would have been a Napoleon
The revolution wasn’t led only by shopkeepers and minor professionals.
Haute bourgeoisie (finance, large commerce, industrial capital) wanted:
End of feudal dues
Free markets
Property protections
Petite bourgeoisie (lawyers, teachers, small proprietors) pushed:
Civic equality
Political participation
Anti-aristocratic reforms" chatgpt with primary sources
Im aware, and the point stands: absent an organized petite bourgeoisie, one standing on the principles of liberté, egalité, fraternité- its game over. We’re all just farm animals on the vampires farm.
Capitalism is kind of like a car that has an oil collection tank on the roof.
In the ladder tournament of capitalism, or a pyramid of money and power, money escapes the "losers" and goes up to the victors above them, until most of the competitors are gone or going...
Money is the lubricant that facilitates trade. That's OK, but when certain people learn how to pocket the leftover cash from unbalanced trades, the predators go up the ladder, and build the pyramid.
What happens to the car when the oil collection tank has sucked up 90% of the engines oil?
I'm reminded of the cube-square rule from science fiction. In monster movies, you often see some small creature metamorphose into a dangerous giant. The cube-square rule tells us as its size is squared, its mass is cubed and eventually it must be crushed under its own weight.
I think this is the inevitable way with capitalist empires.
And that is the dialectical process! Not the simple minded "problem-reaction-solution" bandied about. it is the INTERNAL CONTRADICTIONS that come to critical mass, whether volcanoes, earthquakes, atomic fusion, or political oppression.
Scopes the losers and goes to the victors? That’s laundering pathological extraction and making it sound almost virtuous. These devils need to be exercised.
If we unite, they will be helpless: who will run the machines? who will design them. And answer this: who will consume the products their robots produce to sustain their wealth? Here is the alternative to the AI/human labor no longer needed/ consumption only required (turn to recycling, no new, just reused)..............................
Abundance economy
AI makes goods near-free
Wealth less zero-sum
Mass leisure society
Humans valued for creativity, relationships, exploration."
I would suggest that when the revolution seizes the means of production (AI driven), we will have what Marx 180 yrs ago envisioned as communism in a world where everyone is rich, no one is compelled to spend most of their time doing labor.
My formula is Marx (who saw this happening in the most advanced technological nations with the most concentrated wealth) plus AI = neo-communism.
AI, robots, etc., are most likely inevitable, but private control of it (rather than for the common good) is not. AI does not negate revolution, and revolution can use AI to create a society of high wealth and low labor.
This is a post capitalist society we’re moving into. It’ll be feudalism, but with tech. They’ll simply trade with each other. And the people have demonstrated near zero will to act collectively against them. The entire nation should have came to a standstill decades ago, but the bastards are good at keeping the machine rolling, even when it’s rolling over the people operating it. I have no hope for a revolution of any meaning in my lifetime. I’ve fought the bastards in my own. Didn’t go so well for me, but I knew that it wasn’t going in. Now, I advise and educate. That’s the extent of my revolutionary activity anymore. If the day should come the bastards come for me or remove any ability for me to humane exist, as it seems they’re hell bent on, then I’ll fight again. And that’s where I reside. But hope for some nationwide general strike or anything like that? It’s a pipe dream. The people will sleep walk into their prison cells. And I know that because that’s what they’re actively doing.
Understood, but despair never has won any battles.
This battle was already lost before I ever arrived on the field. Despair wasn’t even an afterthought. You saying that is like that meme with the cows in line to the slaughterhouse. “They’re about to kill us, yall realize that right?” The other cows, “ despair has never won any battles.” Lolz
The world will be too hot and broke. To sustain technology the way you're thinking in less than a hundred years.
Ok: Marx plus AI plus green energy.
Well good. Seems like maybe we haven’t condemned generations of our children to live under the pathetic edicts of pathological totalitarians. Slavery is a far, far worse fate than death.
I'm not looking to feed your doomerist mindset, just counter your nonsense.
Go drink water and take a nap.
That sounds just as doomerist to me.
that depends on the quality of the water and the quality of the nap.
Swinging the pendulum so far left from where it is would be destructive. We may need a revolution just to get to some moderate mix of capitalistic and socialistic economics
It will require that now. It mayk be too late ..... it was a choice to funnel money to the rich, and here we are......
It wasn’t our choice. It was imposed upon us from on high. But it’s true, our lack of resolute action from the outset, our rank and pervasive passivity has allowed it to mature to full pathocracy. It won’t be pretty undoing it.
If your revolution only results in moderate changes, your revolution either failed or was co opted
Let us not waste time arguing about hypotheticals and whether revolution will be moderate or.....let's unite and replace the oligarchy with a democratic republic in which the people will decide about changes. Moderate is such a vague word that unless it is defined in terms of concrete policies and programs, it is all but meaningless.
Revolutions aren’t moderate. There’s no such thing as a moderate revolution. Those do not exist. Arguing that such a thing exists is just narrative manipulation- spin to convince the peasants that their moderated enslavement is, in fact, liberation. That’s a horrendously bad faith argument on its face, and likely why you’d not like to “waste time” examining it; such examination, of course, endangering your deceptiveness.
“Let us unite..”
We’re not Thundercats rallying to your substack post, Lion-O. Calm down, and back away from the Sword of Omens.
The rising leaders are moderate democratic socialists (AOC, Mamdami, et al) and so the swing will not be to the authoritarian left, as you fear. Universal healthcare, access to college, green energy, and a foreign policy based on promoting real democracy are hardly destructive.
If you think there is anything remotely democratic or socialist about these people, you just earned a “fell for it again” award lol
' helpless as a limp dick in a whorehouse" LOL
I’m unclear what you’re referring to. You think politics is going to liberate people? If so, you’re just another totalitarian masquerading as a normal.
I was referring to a phrase from another commenter above.
Apologies, then, for the sleight. Taking your self declared profile at face value, you certainly aren’t the hierarchy type
What you are describing is the state of addiction. But they do not know they are addicts. Nothing will ever fill the bottomless pit of emptiness and lovelessness that drives them. It's past time for an Intervention.
A good way to look at it. They suffer from the "God-shaped hole in their heart" as psychologist Carl Jung once called it.
I just wish these parasitical plutocrats would just STOP and admit that money and power aren't the end-all they think these things are. I wish they'd get psychological help and give all their excess material goods to those who need it desperately.
You know, we can help these "poor" sad billionaires... We can help them by taxing their incomes (wealth) at 99% and redistributing their excess homes, vehicles, yachts... Who's with me? #EatTheRichTheyTasteLikeTurkey
When I tell people the Oligarchs do not pay income tax. People argue for a min. I tell them the Oligarchs do not take their money for living expenses from income, they take it from Capital Gains at 14.5% , slack jawed huhhhh. Their wealth builds wealth, they don't take their all of their distributions, using differed sales trusts etc. The Duopoly gets the kick back from the tax loop holes. Once Warren Buffet admitted his secretary paid more in taxes than he did. Where is Max it's 1789 all over again : (
I just asked AI how much more money would go into Social Security if the cap was lifted and it came up with $3.2 trillion over the next 10 years.
TRC, taxing incomes for billionaires is pointless (as there are too many tax loopholes for income). Hence, we need to tax WEALTH (and world-wide wealth - including in off-shore accounts and tax havens). We should also apply a 99% inheritance tax for all wealth over $1 million for billionaires. (Just some suggestions, haven't really given it much thought...😃)
“Knowing enough is enough is enough to know”
Lao Tzu,
Tao Te Ching
Ursula Le Guin rendition
20 Million!! 2M invested at 4% (reasonable) would net 80K per year. No one needs more than 5M max. Redistribute the worlds oligarch's wealth and we'd all be set for life.
I know someone who can't spend money because they are OCD and practically lives like a hobo while they have millions. He definitely isn't happy at all.
Fear having gone without may be the root cause? Never wanting to experience that again. I felt that way after a divorce, my Son and I lived on 7$ and what the ex didn't take...................... I couldn't even write what happened and how we recovered.
Yea I think it is a mental illness for him. Spending a dollar for coffee hurts him.
“I do understand that young men are bound and determined to prove themselves in life and receive accolades from posers (this includes men and women). Unfortunately, when it comes to the military and war they are guided by adults that represent the worst of humanity, Non-Combat Pretenders who, though NEVER having faced this type of violence, spew tired old lies and propaganda about glory and “getting the job done, like a man!” This is the case in the Palestine occupation, and for over 100 years back. This was the case in WW1, Korea, Vietnam, Central and South America, Philippines, Ukraine, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Libya, and so much more. This was the case in Afghanistan which John Pilger so ably documented – as US and NATO servicemen loaded Afghans into shipping containers, locked them in, and began firing non-stop into those containers until everyone was dead.”
"As discussed below, branches of the military utilize specifically developed audio “meditations” designed to condition soldiers for automated response and follow-through. You’re 18. You want to live. “You want to do the right thing - for your country”… You want to live. We received specific operant conditioning.
"This is called “Psychological Kill Training”. It’s not just about skill; it’s about eroding inhibition."
https://griobhtha1.substack.com/p/psychological-kill-training-its-not
Caitlin, I watched a podcast where the podcaster introduced the idea of a "pathocracy," rule by the mentally ill, psycho / socio paths. And now you are talking about the same theme; the idea, or concern about this group, is in the air. I know this is controversial to say, but I accept the proposition that we the people, in a mass movement for a better / just / social / cooperative / ecological/ society, need to agree to remove the rich from power as the means to get the better society, an authentically democratic one. Without setting an intention we can't get to what we want, to not be dominated by "them," the plutocrats advancing technocracy, which is all about control. We need to imagine society where there is no rich and no poor, everyone works to the best of their ability to contribute to society / community / family / self, and receives according to need and availability of resources. I wrote this appeal for a common call: https://greenlibertycaucus.org/ditch-the-rich-campaign/
Unless the SYSTEMS of political economy are changed, future plutocrats will simply replace the present ones. Hence getting rid of them is not enough, the systems that produced such pathologies in the first place MUST be eliminated and replaced by ones that serve ALL the people.
D'ah! We must dismantle the patriarchy that rewards exploitation and domination. https://jowaller.substack.com/p/its-not-individual-evil-men-who-are?utm_source=publication-search
Yes, the partriarchy is one of those systems that need to be eliminated as I mentioned above (amongst many others - including predominantly Capitalism).
Bingo Chuck. You've nailed it well. Important to highlight this point you cited:
"This lack of accountability set the stage for future crimes by the plutocracy". No more letting these predators off the hook.
" From each according to his ability, to each according to his need".
Karl Marx.
Do YOU get to determine need and ability? If not you, who? And I don't mean I want a name, I mean does she/he/xe have a title?
You know, like President? Or Premiere? His Honor? You know, a king, maybe?
Like that. And will that person be receiving something according to his/her/xes need or giving something according to his/her/xes ability?
You have to know these things if you're going to implement socialism properly, you know.
https://youtube.com/shorts/K4U1XW6dmHU?si=V2d7IrSuM5Y6IjP_
Was that meant to buttress the idea of socialism being a good idea or a satirical comment and prompt us to wonder who gets to make sure we're ouputing at our max ability? Sometimes nuance is lost on me, I apologize.
I can never hear or read that enough. Thank you for that. 25 pages of gold
written 150 yrs ago or so. The tipping point from Capitalism to Socialism is long over due and I fear no longer possible without Schumpeter's Creative Destruction coming full nuclear. : ( You give me hope though : )
What else have we got Landru, if not hope?
"Authentically Democratic." I don't think so.
We continue to tolerate predatory capitalism as a way of life when it is slowly destroying the fabric of our society. But 80 years of drinking from the Kool Aid Fountain have made us into unthinking zombies even when the oligarchs take us to the brink of the abyss......
Or, as Mary L. Trump put it in her expose "Too Much and Never Enough!"
"A people cannot be free if it oppresses another people," wrote Karl Marx. Paraphrasing this statement, Enrico Berlinguer said that "a man cannot be free if he oppresses a woman," and one could say, in general, that a person who impoverishes others cannot be free.
So, Israelis can never be free? What a lovely thought about a people who do much more than just oppress a other people.
We are all Palestinian now.
No, they are not free. We are all trapped by the patriarchy. https://jowaller.substack.com/p/its-not-individual-evil-men-who-are?utm_source=publication-search
Thank you for those sparkling observations, Caitlin. It's interesting that about 20 minutes before running into your article I was contemplating that we are being ruled by plutocrats and that the US is a plutocracy. What makes me happy is to love my God with all my heart, mind, soul and strength and to love my neighbor as myself. I can't imagine being a billionaire while an ethnic cleansing is happening.
Could be he has a conscience. Maybe. I wouldn’t think psychopaths could feel such emotions, outside anger. Could be phony posturing, too. Who knows
More money up to a point increases happiness by erasing scarcity, but here's the catch, once your basic needs are met, each gain in money reduces the satisfaction it brings so that at a certain point, it is negligible. It's like sex with the same person: what was hot hot hot after 20 yrs is not.
I just read a psychiatric paper on Dopamine addiction relating to Genocide Don. His Dopamine high from violence, generates a violent act to stimulate more Dopamine. Each violent act requires a higher level of violence to attain the higher high. Scary thought being nuclear war, the ultimate violence.
So violence breeds violence...kind of a parallel to gaining wealth....instead of satisfaction or satiation, we require higher and higher doses to avoid losing our happy infusion. The first million made you feel like a million, the 1000th hardly felt at all and so the dosage has to be increased to a billion....less bang for the buck means more bucks needed for the bang.
And likewise with violence; the law of diminishing returns means that to sustain the high, the violence must increase. Scarey indeed!
Worthy of another paper : )