Listen to a reading of this article:
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I still can't find words to describe how insane it is that all the "experts" who spent twenty years being wrong about Afghanistan remain esteemed and wealthy while those who spent that time being right about Afghanistan remain marginalized and regarded as fringe kooks.
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Nobody gets "credit" for ending the Afghanistan occupation. Everyone involved in keeping it going for twenty years gets blame. That's it. You don't get a trophy for not murdering more people.
But it's not surprising that the Afghanistan war took twenty years to end. If anything, the way the deck is stacked in favor of perpetual war, it's surprising it happened that fast.
Military members who support imperialism get promoted. Those who get to the top go on to work for war profiteers. The war profiteers fund think tanks which promote more wars. The mass media report "news" stories citing those think tanks. These stories manufacture consent for more wars.
The war industry reinforces itself. Those who get to the top of the war machine move on to the private sector and spend their time lobbying for more wars which create more eventual Pentagon officials who go on to lobby for more wars. Peace should be easy. This is why it's not.
It's horrifying when you realize how much of the behavior of the most powerful military in history is driven by the simple fact that weapons manufacturers don't make money if those weapons aren't being used. The most powerful government on earth is stuck in a self-exacerbating feedback loop where the behaviors of the war machine are dictated by the war industry, and people wonder why it's so hard to end wars. With a cycle this vicious, you can only end the wars by ending the empire.
This is what you get when mass-scale human behavior is driven by profit. As long as war is profitable, you guarantee that more wars will happen. As long as ecocide is profitable, more ecocide will happen. As long as corruption is profitable, more corruption will happen. Meanwhile, peace is not profitable. Demilitarization is not profitable. Nuclear disarmament is not profitable. Getting plastic out of the oceans is not profitable. Leaving trees standing is not profitable. Leaving oil in the ground is not profitable. Freedom is not profitable.
The religion of profit drives all human behavior. And it's a death cult that will end us all if we don't end it first.
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Some people seem to think it's only justifiable to end a military occupation if you can continue to control everything that happens in that nation after your military occupation ends. This is the same as believing it's never okay to end a military occupation under any circumstances.
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The mainstream media always cheerlead a US president's foreign policy when it involves mass murder on an unthinkable scale and always criticize a US president when he tries to stop doing this. That's all you really need to know about the trustworthiness of the mainstream media.
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Corporate media is mind control at mass scale. People who identify as smart, independent thinkers have their minds altered by it every day, and they believe they came to those opinions on their own. Until this problem is addressed, none of our other major problems are going away.
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"How are we supposed to get everyone vaccinated if we don't make it mandatory?"
Uhh, you don't? You don't begin with the assumption that the existence of a nasty coronavirus justifies forcing or coercing everyone to inject themselves with a brand new drug they don't trust?
I mean, compelling people to take an injection that they are actually afraid of is a huge deal. Can we not at least agree on that? Can we not at least agree that forcing someone to receive an injection they fear would be so serious that you'd better have an amazingly bulletproof argument for doing it? I think so. And I don't think such an argument exists at this time.
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It's important to follow and be followed by people you disagree with. You'll see a lot of crap, but you'll also keep yourself from falling into a self-validating echo chamber and eventually finding yourself saying something like unvaccinated people should be denied medical care.
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Expecting a communism-oriented country to look like a utopia in the midst of a global imperialist war against communism is like expecting a family to look like a Norman Rockwell painting while they are being chased by wolves.
Saying communism doesn't work because nations who try to espouse it don't look like thriving utopias while they're being relentlessly assaulted is like saying a new invention doesn't work because a band of armed thugs kept shooting and stomping on it during the demonstration.
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Poverty is the result of an abusive system and telling the poor to "Get a job" or "Get a better job" has always enabled that abuse. Now that small businesses are being killed by that same abusive system, many who used to enable its abuses by saying this are becoming its victims.
Blaming poverty on the poor in a system that's literally built on the premise of a permanent underclass has always been insane, but if you're making good money and lack empathy it's easy to think they're just lazy. Only when such people are screwed by the same system do they see.
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I think what keeps a lot of this going are the number of otherwise decent folks who just can't visualize an alternative to the choices they're given. For them, nothing exists outside of the democratic/republican framework except a hazy anarchy -- an easy thing to reject. What they settle upon is what even they would describe as imperfect, but it's familiar, approved, "realistic", and comfortable.
In 1962 no one sat around saying, "Where the hell are the Beatles?"
I think that was a good article. Caitlin really has a Comsky like ability to pierce.
I’m a capitalist who exploits people for my disproportionate gain. I own a security guard company in Toronto. We are an adjunct service to the real estate industry which is owned by pension funds and other large pools of capital - capitalism incarnate - real bastards.
I have much insight into how government works and I can promise you it has a twisted logic, it is massively inefficient unfocused and perpetually self reinforcing. Government mandarins and bureaucrats keep programs going because it is their job to do so. The rationale is massively distorted, the efficacy of the program is incidental at best.
I think this is the human condition - self interest and duplicity - and capitalism is the solution. Animal spirit, creative destruction, competition and annihilation are altogether essential to keep humans honest. Fear, biblical fear.
It is a very big topic and beyond me, but my 27 years in the fray, where the rubber hits the road has been instructional and that is my take on it.
Caitlin I don’t think your prescription for a solution is advisable - communism has been vilified beyond redemption.
My solution: $20 an hour minimum wage or guaranteed minimum income for all humans and no government programs supporting the poor. Make the poor not poor by creating a liveable bottom echelon of the economy. Government programs syphons to much with its inherent inefficiency and perverse logic. Just give people money. The over educated, well-meaning, program loving amongst us have had their day and it has failed.
Ask poor people what they want! They will say money. Ask them what they think of the programs I have to stand in line for. They will say humiliating. Start saving them from themselves they are not children just give them money.