Taking your last paragraph to heart, I realized last evening why I enjoy watering the tiny patch of lawn behind my house. No less than five species of birds drank, bathed, and frolicked in the bounty of clean water, and that tiny connection to their lives filled me with a tangible intangible oneness of being, from which we humans are usually isolated in our techno-bubbles of linguistic chatter. It's definitely not natural avian twitter that depletes my enthusiasm.
France 1787 : the summer was windless. The windmills could not grind the wheat to make flour.
USSR 1989 : the food distribution system (and pretty much everything except organized crime and the church) broke down
--
More generally revolutions are sparked by many being impoverished due to the government.
Germany 1932 : Hyperinflation wipes out savings. Retirees flocked to the NSDAP.
China 1940 : The peasants got fed up with gvt. corruption plus all their money going to landlords.
Iran 1979 : Introduction of mortgages caused bankruptcy of numerous farmers. The first thing the revolutionaries did was burn down the banks.
Sri Lanka 2022 : Severe inflation, shortages.
--
Other.
Germany 1848 : Invention of the power loom caused bankruptcy of the numerous weavers. It wasn't the fault of the government though and there was reform so the revolution did not go through. Organizers escaped to places like Wisconsin.
Exactly, and by that point things have gotten really bad and people are so hungry and consumed with getting food they will have even less energy to spend pushing back against the system that did it. I think Caitlin's hope here is that we ("the hive") might come up with a way to save us from that degree of pain and suffering. Is it possible? I actually think it is. And it will involve some nonlinear thinking.
Humnakind - the 99+% - are held in an abusive relationship with a <1% Ruling Psychopathy that has completely destroyed the things that connect us to each other with their mastery of gaslighting/brainwashing. It used to be religious or royal edicts that were deployed as control measures, but those mechanisms have been replaced by an ever-tightening techno-totalitarianism that is especially prominent in the West. I remain hopeful that Universe will not suffer such overt evil forever, but we shall see.
Socialism has been purged from the system in favor of sociopathy and this must change. Socialism is an essential part of any reformation . We are after all tribal social beings.
It is worth looking at what Carl Jung has to say about mass psychosis.
Socialism can only succeed as a philosophy, as soon as it consolidates the immunity of governmental authority it becomes destructive and repressive to the individual. The same could be said of Capitalism, it works fine for me and my tribe. The influence of industrialist and globalist interests paired with the anonymity of government protection allow it to exist in a toxic and unsustainable state.
Our times require the attention of those who have read Jung, but are dictated instead by The Family Guy watchers.
Dale says: "as soon as it consolidates the immunity of governmental authority it becomes destructive and repressive to the individual. " There is no necessity in this. Granted, there have been some false starts and cul-de-sacs, so it means humanity has not yet found just the right balance between individual freedom and public well-being. We need to work on that.
EVERYONE thinking that there is any material difference - apart from the colour - is surely brainwashed to the core by THE SYNAGOGUE OF SATAN and closer to insanity than he/she could even imagine in its wildest dreams.... one only needs to know the etymology of the word NAZI - if one does not want to go further back into Roman times - but education surely NEVER was on the menu in the catacombs of THE SYNAGOGUE OF SATAN.... INDOCTRINATION has been fed wholesale instead....
I just read a piece on "Redacted" about the FBI having gone into NATO members (and others) computers to eliminate a "Russian" malware program "Snake" and how they are now going to go all out to eliminate all "Russian Disinformation" throughout the world! Of course this means placing their own disinformation on peoples computers and they get to decide who is considered a dissident or is putting out this Russian Disinformation!
Whether you know it or not, your work has an uncanny affinity with the great French thinker, Jacques Ellul, starting with The Political Illusion, and ending with Hope in a Time of Abandonment (l'espérance oubiliée).
In the years I have been following Johnstone, her raw power as a writer has matured into a unique gift for expressing the ineffable in a way that limns both the ghastliness and awestriking beauty of life, without the clutter of cursing and rant that used to mar her work (and still mars mine, ha ha). This post in particular exemplifies both the strength and gentleness she now brings to explaining our moment, and I could not be happier for all of us readers. Absolutely wonderful reading, all my blessing in the bond of peace.
Economic activity gravitates toward the easy payoff, toward the highest return on investment.
We love to get maximal returns on minimal investment. We get involved in ventures designed to enhance us and our group—those we love “more”. We tend to exploit all else. For example, when people are chronically ill we profit from the medicine, the health insurance, the clinics, the surgeries, as well as from the processed food, sugar, tobacco and alcohol that make them sick. Teachers may teach about peace and climate change in school while their retirement fund is invested in oil and war. Company executives may deny climate change at work, but worry about it for their own investments or their own children. All are looking for the greatest return on their investment.
Over time mechanisms of law, conventions and culture develop that acquire resources human and not human. For example: if oil, uranium, zirconium, workers, human ingenuity, people with chronic illness, clean air or clean water lead to return on investment, then they will be acquired, controlled, commoditized, traded and used.
These mechanisms, to acquire and use all resources, human and not human, displace human individuals from necessities and then charge a price for them back. As time progresses individuals find systems in place that default toward loss of land and instead landlords, toward loss of health and instead healthcare, toward loss of community and instead insurance, toward loss of gardens and instead grocers, toward loss of knowledge and instead job training, toward loss of locality and instead transportation, toward loss of wisdom and instead entertainment, toward loss of friends and instead counselors, toward loss of education and instead mechanization, toward loss of love and instead hungry ghosts.
Making the central objection to a Ministry of truth the singing witch cartoon character tapped to lead it was too easy, not enough emphasis was made highlighting how repulsive the endeavor was as a result. It was too easy, too personalized. Which allowed for repackaging without as much pushback by opponents.
As to capitalism, it is as others in history have described, the worst economic system ever devised - except for all the others.
It's true. All the warts of it you describe are real. But the warts on the others are really worse. And absent a provably workable alternative all we can try to do is improve it.
But many of those attempts at improvement have arguably exacerbated the warts. Government cannot improve the condition of the human soul. Attempts to do so, social reengineering is doomed to fail. It represses the human experience, attempts to compel others to obey the will of others are always done at the tip of a spear. That's what government disinfo campaigns an expression of. Words as weapons, sharper than knives, with brute police force to back them up if the human mind rejects them. And human minds always do. Earthly fear-based compliance isn't how the human soul is reformed, reengineered.
I'd be closer to the right-libertarian you describe. Understanding that life is always about tradeoffs. And ties must go to freedom, not control. The human soul is reformed best by heavenly appeals. Capitalism without faith in a higher power than man is the crux of the problems of our time.
The world only knows crony capitalism today, a variant of socialism. The results of trying to improve the warts that have made more of them even worse. The current model bears no resemblance to Adam Smith's vision; it's closer to Karl Marx's. And leaning into Marx's model more isn't an improvement.
Less government interference in free economic activity. More spiritual connection to improve the human soul that will manifest the caring for the rest of God's creation in the natural world we live in and our caring for out fellow man that we seek is how we improve the condition of man. The invisible hand controls better than the hands of man. It's a terrible system. Only the others are worse.
"Making the central objection to a Ministry of truth the singing witch cartoon character tapped to lead it was too easy, not enough emphasis was made highlighting how repulsive the endeavor was as a result. It was too easy, too personalized. Which allowed for repackaging without as much pushback by opponents."
Far smarter to outsource the job to Big Tech, which has the added bonus of being a private business, and therefore insulated from pesky FOIA suits and unwanted election results.
If we want to be honest about it, they've been doing it the whole time. Internally as standard operating government procedure. And externally through public-private partnerships, since long before Twitter Files evidence was revealed, long before Covid, long before 9-11. Movies like "Enemy of the State' weren't fictional sci-fi predictions, they were revelations of current practices at the time.
There was actually a bit of truth in the government telling what their rationale was in creating its Ministry of Truth - they said they were trying to increase transparency in the programs. Not that they were beginning them. Our collective voice rejecting the Ministry just told them we don't want to explicitly know what they're doing; we'd rather not know. They didn't stop what they already had been doing for decades as a result of us saying we didn't want the Ministry to be formally recognized. Just repackaged it.
The weak link in your essay takes your whole point of view down like a house of cards. The invisible hand is not timely enough to prevent ecological and health hazards. Try left-libertarianism, because it doesn't require control any more than right-. Authoritarianism isn't part of that. You forget that being right-leaning (meaning wealth extraction for wealth's sake) instead of left-, (saving wealth for emergencies and the future) contributes to all of society's ills. It is literally the love of money.
Your believe in government, some centralized authority acts more timely doing anything than the invisible hand of people acting rationally to hazards?!?! Wow. Takes your whole point of view down like a house of cards.
Your definition of right-leaning. Your paradigm. Your belief. Not shared. Not accepted. Easily taken down.
Money is not responsible for society's ills. *Love* of money is. Right-leaning has nothing to do with *love* of money. It is a unit of exchange for value. Your wealth extraction for wealth's sake definition of right-leaning is flawed beyond repair. False or debatable definitions = False pronouncements of a "truth."
Capitalism serves the interest of the capitalists. Those are the minority. The United States was founded on the rich, you know who owned slaves. My point is that there was never equality. Not when you committed genocide against the indigenous people as well. So history proves capitalism is a lie.
That said, elections are scams because as you pointed out there are no meaningful choices in the United States. Why is it that each year, no matter what happens, we end up with the same problems? Elections are rigged no matter who you vote for. Why are there so many wealthy people supporting Democrats if getting them elected would threaten their power? Likewise with conservatives.
We shouldn't think it is cold to dismiss human suffering, yet all our suffering is self inflicted by creating systems that benefit from human suffering. We have one planet to live on and capitalism is destroying it for short term profit. It has finite resources and we are using them faster than they are replenishing.
The Dems' betrayal of labor and abandonment of the New Deal coalition began under LBJ -
Civil rights and Vietnam were exploited by Nixon's Southern strategy and attacks on the hippies. That was the origin of both the culture wars and the beginning of Neoliberal political economy. Those cultural and political moments were consolidated and organized into a Strategy by the 1971 Powell Memo.
Nixon's "Southern Strategy" for Republicans was actually a failure in 1968, even though he won. George Wallace, a Democrat, won five of the Southern states. Republican Nixon won the Midwest and California in an electoral landslide.
In 1972 Nixon won 49 states.
In 1976 Democrat Jimmy Carter won fewer states than Republican Gerald Ford, but did win all Southern states.
So the mythical Republican Southern Strategy was done.
The world is not mentally ill. The Euro-colonial powers, led by the U.S., are. They’re leaders most sick. And their population brainwashed.
Outside of that circle though, the leaders and masses of vast majority of the world is awake and does not share the same mindset.
For example look in the Financial Times today, they have an article there describing diamond trade in India as “blood diamonds” because they are bough from Russia.. The article tries to peddle the usual navel gazing Eurocentric narrative of mindless endless war and Russian hatred for the sake of it, but in the article some of the Indians interviewed ask flat out why a dispute between two countries MUST be blown up into a global affair. And if you look at the comments in it many indians there pointing out the same - how ridiculous this is.
So the rest of the world is NOT insane. And not brainwashed. They know this is gaslighting and lies and war for the sake of it.
However look at how much the neo-colonial invest in weapons. The rest of the world is held hostage and cannot combat them.
Very smart. I agree that saying “the world” when lamenting the collapse of the Empire is in fact imperial thinking. Look beyond your nose, Westerner, there are plenty of solutions. For one thing, greed. So many westerners think that lose of privilege is lose of everything and run around like Chicken Little saying the sky is falling, the sky is falling. It’s greed that is killing us, and our inability to see that we have way too much for way too little is our major crime. There are plenty of solutions around if we get a little humility. It’s our failure of imagination that is falling.
Kudjoe: Considering that 1/3 of Americans are on anti-depressants and even more on other pharmaceuticals, I'm not so sure that most of the world isn't mentally ill. Look around.
Americans are indeed mentally ill and on antidepressants. They are 300 million of them. The world has 7-8 billion….most of whom not in America or Europe or Anglo colonial world.
In fact the realisation of the colonials that they are minority rulers is what’s creating illness paranoia and the growing violence of NATO, which is their thug crew.
Kudjoe: "Thug crew"? That's a new one. Aren't all rulers in the minority? I don't believe in rulers (except for the ones that measure inches and feet).
After reading through the comments, I think it's important to remember that the systemic forces causing us to squeeze the life from each other and our world have not changed an iota since wealth and power first started keeping slaves in pens, thousands of years ago.
What has changed in America since I was a child is the total abdication of the liberal class and its institutions. The purpose of a privileged liberal class is to prevent capitalism from fulfilling its goal of consuming everyone and everything it depends on for life. Destroying the consumer class is not exactly a smart feature of the consumerism system, yet reviewing the past forty years shows that happening quite clearly, from the bottom up. This is because liberals and their institutions have been bought and co-opted into the Commodify Everything creed that is currently hurtling toward train wreck with the throttle wide open and no brake.
I mention this only to point out that there is no good reason to mock or curse pigs for being pigs. Appreciate them for what they are, understand their behaviors, and you may corral them in time. Neither is there any good reason to complain that the pig-keepers have turned the pigs loose to destroy the farm, and now defend their depredations, or at best wring their hands over the inevitability of it all. Pity them for being such slaves to their own short-sighted self interest, no better in effect than the pigs themselves, and maybe you will see how best to change a mind and heart or two.
Alan H: What created slaves is money. Slavery is the most profitable enterprise on Earth. Look at the child sex slave trade today. Drugs are a pitiful second on profits to slavery.
As long as people pay for slaves, or drugs, you will have slaves and drugs.
I love this. The only part that hurts is equating pigs to man. Poor pigs. They are smart and abused by our factory farms yet still get used as examples of the most wretched creatures on Earth, the Americans and our minions.
You are right about pigs being basically fine critters. I met and was acquainted with several individual animals in my boyhood and youth, and have worked around them in large groups on farms as well. They are smart and endearing and can be terribly dangerous. They will eat until it kills them if allowed, and trample their own offspring in the rush to the trough. If the mood strikes, they will savage a keeper who has raised them from piglets. You will rightly suggest these traits are bred into them, and that their living conditions contribute greatly to such behaviors: those true things also make of pigs an excellent metaphor for domesticated humans like us.
I know. Moreover, we will always find a way to excuse our cruelty. The pigs behavior in captivity or out has absolutely no bearing on how we treat them, tho men like to say so. We can choose to do differently, we just don’t. Therefore no animal is a good metaphor for men.
"Socialism for the rich, rugged free market Capitalism for the poor." Was said by Martin Luther King. May have first been coined in a 1962 book, The Other America, by Michael Harrington.
If I said that I thought the profusion and threats of nuclear weapon were bad, people wouldn't look at me as if I were crazy, they'd agree with me. Then they would say, "Yeah, but what are we gonna do about it?" That's the problem.
Nevertheless I find Dr. Chomsky's advice obscure, perhaps through not being a properly uneducated impoverished Haitian. Can you stand in for Dr. Chomsky and enlighten me as to some of the specific details?
Whenever I make specific proposals the response is always "I can't do that because of such and such" and/or "that never works." I say forget about such and such and just do whatever you feel like doing (within the law) towards that goal. You are the world expert on your situation and abilities. I would not presume to advise you on their usage.
I've pretty much come to that conclusion myself, but I'm open to any new ideas (or disused old ones) any one may have. We need to subvert the global war-work machine, and subversion can come in many forms.
Taking your last paragraph to heart, I realized last evening why I enjoy watering the tiny patch of lawn behind my house. No less than five species of birds drank, bathed, and frolicked in the bounty of clean water, and that tiny connection to their lives filled me with a tangible intangible oneness of being, from which we humans are usually isolated in our techno-bubbles of linguistic chatter. It's definitely not natural avian twitter that depletes my enthusiasm.
Let’s build a decentralized 4th branch of government that really isn’t part of government at all. It is 100% built and run by the people.
https://open.substack.com/pub/joshketry/p/lets-build-a-4th-branch-of-government?r=7oa9d&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
"in our current mind-controlled dystopia the average person is compliant and innocuous."
Just wait until they go hungry. That's when the shit hits the fan.
Food revolutions:
France 1787 : the summer was windless. The windmills could not grind the wheat to make flour.
USSR 1989 : the food distribution system (and pretty much everything except organized crime and the church) broke down
--
More generally revolutions are sparked by many being impoverished due to the government.
Germany 1932 : Hyperinflation wipes out savings. Retirees flocked to the NSDAP.
China 1940 : The peasants got fed up with gvt. corruption plus all their money going to landlords.
Iran 1979 : Introduction of mortgages caused bankruptcy of numerous farmers. The first thing the revolutionaries did was burn down the banks.
Sri Lanka 2022 : Severe inflation, shortages.
--
Other.
Germany 1848 : Invention of the power loom caused bankruptcy of the numerous weavers. It wasn't the fault of the government though and there was reform so the revolution did not go through. Organizers escaped to places like Wisconsin.
Exactly, and by that point things have gotten really bad and people are so hungry and consumed with getting food they will have even less energy to spend pushing back against the system that did it. I think Caitlin's hope here is that we ("the hive") might come up with a way to save us from that degree of pain and suffering. Is it possible? I actually think it is. And it will involve some nonlinear thinking.
Patrick Powers: Exactly!
Humnakind - the 99+% - are held in an abusive relationship with a <1% Ruling Psychopathy that has completely destroyed the things that connect us to each other with their mastery of gaslighting/brainwashing. It used to be religious or royal edicts that were deployed as control measures, but those mechanisms have been replaced by an ever-tightening techno-totalitarianism that is especially prominent in the West. I remain hopeful that Universe will not suffer such overt evil forever, but we shall see.
Thanks for your voice CJ.
Well said there! Used to be imperialism was the highest stage of capitalism but now it's progaganda we're fighting, a robot revolution.
Important points well made!
Socialism has been purged from the system in favor of sociopathy and this must change. Socialism is an essential part of any reformation . We are after all tribal social beings.
It is worth looking at what Carl Jung has to say about mass psychosis.
Socialism can only succeed as a philosophy, as soon as it consolidates the immunity of governmental authority it becomes destructive and repressive to the individual. The same could be said of Capitalism, it works fine for me and my tribe. The influence of industrialist and globalist interests paired with the anonymity of government protection allow it to exist in a toxic and unsustainable state.
Our times require the attention of those who have read Jung, but are dictated instead by The Family Guy watchers.
Dale says: "as soon as it consolidates the immunity of governmental authority it becomes destructive and repressive to the individual. " There is no necessity in this. Granted, there have been some false starts and cul-de-sacs, so it means humanity has not yet found just the right balance between individual freedom and public well-being. We need to work on that.
THE WRITING IS ON THE WALL - like during Nebuchadnezzar's feast - THE COMMUNISTS ARE COMING FOR THE WHOLE WORLD. FASTEN YOUR SEATBELT!
I think you mean the fascists.
EVERYONE thinking that there is any material difference - apart from the colour - is surely brainwashed to the core by THE SYNAGOGUE OF SATAN and closer to insanity than he/she could even imagine in its wildest dreams.... one only needs to know the etymology of the word NAZI - if one does not want to go further back into Roman times - but education surely NEVER was on the menu in the catacombs of THE SYNAGOGUE OF SATAN.... INDOCTRINATION has been fed wholesale instead....
I just read a piece on "Redacted" about the FBI having gone into NATO members (and others) computers to eliminate a "Russian" malware program "Snake" and how they are now going to go all out to eliminate all "Russian Disinformation" throughout the world! Of course this means placing their own disinformation on peoples computers and they get to decide who is considered a dissident or is putting out this Russian Disinformation!
Whether you know it or not, your work has an uncanny affinity with the great French thinker, Jacques Ellul, starting with The Political Illusion, and ending with Hope in a Time of Abandonment (l'espérance oubiliée).
Technique.
Henry Adams went there earlier, in his "Education"
In the years I have been following Johnstone, her raw power as a writer has matured into a unique gift for expressing the ineffable in a way that limns both the ghastliness and awestriking beauty of life, without the clutter of cursing and rant that used to mar her work (and still mars mine, ha ha). This post in particular exemplifies both the strength and gentleness she now brings to explaining our moment, and I could not be happier for all of us readers. Absolutely wonderful reading, all my blessing in the bond of peace.
Return on Investment
Economic activity gravitates toward the easy payoff, toward the highest return on investment.
We love to get maximal returns on minimal investment. We get involved in ventures designed to enhance us and our group—those we love “more”. We tend to exploit all else. For example, when people are chronically ill we profit from the medicine, the health insurance, the clinics, the surgeries, as well as from the processed food, sugar, tobacco and alcohol that make them sick. Teachers may teach about peace and climate change in school while their retirement fund is invested in oil and war. Company executives may deny climate change at work, but worry about it for their own investments or their own children. All are looking for the greatest return on their investment.
Over time mechanisms of law, conventions and culture develop that acquire resources human and not human. For example: if oil, uranium, zirconium, workers, human ingenuity, people with chronic illness, clean air or clean water lead to return on investment, then they will be acquired, controlled, commoditized, traded and used.
These mechanisms, to acquire and use all resources, human and not human, displace human individuals from necessities and then charge a price for them back. As time progresses individuals find systems in place that default toward loss of land and instead landlords, toward loss of health and instead healthcare, toward loss of community and instead insurance, toward loss of gardens and instead grocers, toward loss of knowledge and instead job training, toward loss of locality and instead transportation, toward loss of wisdom and instead entertainment, toward loss of friends and instead counselors, toward loss of education and instead mechanization, toward loss of love and instead hungry ghosts.
Making the central objection to a Ministry of truth the singing witch cartoon character tapped to lead it was too easy, not enough emphasis was made highlighting how repulsive the endeavor was as a result. It was too easy, too personalized. Which allowed for repackaging without as much pushback by opponents.
As to capitalism, it is as others in history have described, the worst economic system ever devised - except for all the others.
It's true. All the warts of it you describe are real. But the warts on the others are really worse. And absent a provably workable alternative all we can try to do is improve it.
But many of those attempts at improvement have arguably exacerbated the warts. Government cannot improve the condition of the human soul. Attempts to do so, social reengineering is doomed to fail. It represses the human experience, attempts to compel others to obey the will of others are always done at the tip of a spear. That's what government disinfo campaigns an expression of. Words as weapons, sharper than knives, with brute police force to back them up if the human mind rejects them. And human minds always do. Earthly fear-based compliance isn't how the human soul is reformed, reengineered.
I'd be closer to the right-libertarian you describe. Understanding that life is always about tradeoffs. And ties must go to freedom, not control. The human soul is reformed best by heavenly appeals. Capitalism without faith in a higher power than man is the crux of the problems of our time.
The world only knows crony capitalism today, a variant of socialism. The results of trying to improve the warts that have made more of them even worse. The current model bears no resemblance to Adam Smith's vision; it's closer to Karl Marx's. And leaning into Marx's model more isn't an improvement.
Less government interference in free economic activity. More spiritual connection to improve the human soul that will manifest the caring for the rest of God's creation in the natural world we live in and our caring for out fellow man that we seek is how we improve the condition of man. The invisible hand controls better than the hands of man. It's a terrible system. Only the others are worse.
"Making the central objection to a Ministry of truth the singing witch cartoon character tapped to lead it was too easy, not enough emphasis was made highlighting how repulsive the endeavor was as a result. It was too easy, too personalized. Which allowed for repackaging without as much pushback by opponents."
Far smarter to outsource the job to Big Tech, which has the added bonus of being a private business, and therefore insulated from pesky FOIA suits and unwanted election results.
Private-public partnerships seem inevitably to become fascism.
Interesting thought.
If we want to be honest about it, they've been doing it the whole time. Internally as standard operating government procedure. And externally through public-private partnerships, since long before Twitter Files evidence was revealed, long before Covid, long before 9-11. Movies like "Enemy of the State' weren't fictional sci-fi predictions, they were revelations of current practices at the time.
There was actually a bit of truth in the government telling what their rationale was in creating its Ministry of Truth - they said they were trying to increase transparency in the programs. Not that they were beginning them. Our collective voice rejecting the Ministry just told them we don't want to explicitly know what they're doing; we'd rather not know. They didn't stop what they already had been doing for decades as a result of us saying we didn't want the Ministry to be formally recognized. Just repackaged it.
Seriously, an open Ministry of Truth would be better than the secret one they pretend doesn't exist, over which we have no control at all.
The weak link in your essay takes your whole point of view down like a house of cards. The invisible hand is not timely enough to prevent ecological and health hazards. Try left-libertarianism, because it doesn't require control any more than right-. Authoritarianism isn't part of that. You forget that being right-leaning (meaning wealth extraction for wealth's sake) instead of left-, (saving wealth for emergencies and the future) contributes to all of society's ills. It is literally the love of money.
Your believe in government, some centralized authority acts more timely doing anything than the invisible hand of people acting rationally to hazards?!?! Wow. Takes your whole point of view down like a house of cards.
Your definition of right-leaning. Your paradigm. Your belief. Not shared. Not accepted. Easily taken down.
Money is not responsible for society's ills. *Love* of money is. Right-leaning has nothing to do with *love* of money. It is a unit of exchange for value. Your wealth extraction for wealth's sake definition of right-leaning is flawed beyond repair. False or debatable definitions = False pronouncements of a "truth."
Capitalism serves the interest of the capitalists. Those are the minority. The United States was founded on the rich, you know who owned slaves. My point is that there was never equality. Not when you committed genocide against the indigenous people as well. So history proves capitalism is a lie.
That said, elections are scams because as you pointed out there are no meaningful choices in the United States. Why is it that each year, no matter what happens, we end up with the same problems? Elections are rigged no matter who you vote for. Why are there so many wealthy people supporting Democrats if getting them elected would threaten their power? Likewise with conservatives.
We shouldn't think it is cold to dismiss human suffering, yet all our suffering is self inflicted by creating systems that benefit from human suffering. We have one planet to live on and capitalism is destroying it for short term profit. It has finite resources and we are using them faster than they are replenishing.
A hundred years ago the Ds would get a tenth of the money of the Rs.
Labor and the Ds parted ways in 1994. Some say 1976.
The Dems' betrayal of labor and abandonment of the New Deal coalition began under LBJ -
Civil rights and Vietnam were exploited by Nixon's Southern strategy and attacks on the hippies. That was the origin of both the culture wars and the beginning of Neoliberal political economy. Those cultural and political moments were consolidated and organized into a Strategy by the 1971 Powell Memo.
And, as Caitlin says, here we are.
Nixon's "Southern Strategy" for Republicans was actually a failure in 1968, even though he won. George Wallace, a Democrat, won five of the Southern states. Republican Nixon won the Midwest and California in an electoral landslide.
In 1972 Nixon won 49 states.
In 1976 Democrat Jimmy Carter won fewer states than Republican Gerald Ford, but did win all Southern states.
So the mythical Republican Southern Strategy was done.
Seems to be working pretty well these days.
Marquis: If you have savings earning interest in the bank, you are a capitalist.
The world is not mentally ill. The Euro-colonial powers, led by the U.S., are. They’re leaders most sick. And their population brainwashed.
Outside of that circle though, the leaders and masses of vast majority of the world is awake and does not share the same mindset.
For example look in the Financial Times today, they have an article there describing diamond trade in India as “blood diamonds” because they are bough from Russia.. The article tries to peddle the usual navel gazing Eurocentric narrative of mindless endless war and Russian hatred for the sake of it, but in the article some of the Indians interviewed ask flat out why a dispute between two countries MUST be blown up into a global affair. And if you look at the comments in it many indians there pointing out the same - how ridiculous this is.
So the rest of the world is NOT insane. And not brainwashed. They know this is gaslighting and lies and war for the sake of it.
However look at how much the neo-colonial invest in weapons. The rest of the world is held hostage and cannot combat them.
Very smart. I agree that saying “the world” when lamenting the collapse of the Empire is in fact imperial thinking. Look beyond your nose, Westerner, there are plenty of solutions. For one thing, greed. So many westerners think that lose of privilege is lose of everything and run around like Chicken Little saying the sky is falling, the sky is falling. It’s greed that is killing us, and our inability to see that we have way too much for way too little is our major crime. There are plenty of solutions around if we get a little humility. It’s our failure of imagination that is falling.
Thank you!!!! Spot on!!!
Did you just call me a 🐣 🐥 🐔🍗
Ah, no?
https://youtu.be/FdYVSrERkIA
I was laughing as a joke but forgot to put "lol" Im just giving you a hard time
Just what I need.
That's the cycle of life, kill or be killed
Kudjoe: Considering that 1/3 of Americans are on anti-depressants and even more on other pharmaceuticals, I'm not so sure that most of the world isn't mentally ill. Look around.
Americans are indeed mentally ill and on antidepressants. They are 300 million of them. The world has 7-8 billion….most of whom not in America or Europe or Anglo colonial world.
In fact the realisation of the colonials that they are minority rulers is what’s creating illness paranoia and the growing violence of NATO, which is their thug crew.
Kudjoe: "Thug crew"? That's a new one. Aren't all rulers in the minority? I don't believe in rulers (except for the ones that measure inches and feet).
After reading through the comments, I think it's important to remember that the systemic forces causing us to squeeze the life from each other and our world have not changed an iota since wealth and power first started keeping slaves in pens, thousands of years ago.
What has changed in America since I was a child is the total abdication of the liberal class and its institutions. The purpose of a privileged liberal class is to prevent capitalism from fulfilling its goal of consuming everyone and everything it depends on for life. Destroying the consumer class is not exactly a smart feature of the consumerism system, yet reviewing the past forty years shows that happening quite clearly, from the bottom up. This is because liberals and their institutions have been bought and co-opted into the Commodify Everything creed that is currently hurtling toward train wreck with the throttle wide open and no brake.
I mention this only to point out that there is no good reason to mock or curse pigs for being pigs. Appreciate them for what they are, understand their behaviors, and you may corral them in time. Neither is there any good reason to complain that the pig-keepers have turned the pigs loose to destroy the farm, and now defend their depredations, or at best wring their hands over the inevitability of it all. Pity them for being such slaves to their own short-sighted self interest, no better in effect than the pigs themselves, and maybe you will see how best to change a mind and heart or two.
Alan H: What created slaves is money. Slavery is the most profitable enterprise on Earth. Look at the child sex slave trade today. Drugs are a pitiful second on profits to slavery.
As long as people pay for slaves, or drugs, you will have slaves and drugs.
Thanks for the reply. I don't quite see how your points relate to my comment, but they are fine points.
I love this. The only part that hurts is equating pigs to man. Poor pigs. They are smart and abused by our factory farms yet still get used as examples of the most wretched creatures on Earth, the Americans and our minions.
You are right about pigs being basically fine critters. I met and was acquainted with several individual animals in my boyhood and youth, and have worked around them in large groups on farms as well. They are smart and endearing and can be terribly dangerous. They will eat until it kills them if allowed, and trample their own offspring in the rush to the trough. If the mood strikes, they will savage a keeper who has raised them from piglets. You will rightly suggest these traits are bred into them, and that their living conditions contribute greatly to such behaviors: those true things also make of pigs an excellent metaphor for domesticated humans like us.
I know. Moreover, we will always find a way to excuse our cruelty. The pigs behavior in captivity or out has absolutely no bearing on how we treat them, tho men like to say so. We can choose to do differently, we just don’t. Therefore no animal is a good metaphor for men.
Jean Wyman: There are people here in town with pet pigs. The pigs look almost human in a baby carriage. (Our town has its share of strange people.)
Wild boars are downright dangerous and live in the woods outside of town.
There ya go mans’plaining again.
Jean Wyman: Really? You are going there? LOL!
When the shoe fits…
Jean Wyman: Are you an AI creating cliches?
Who was it that said socialism is
for the wealthy elites and capitalism for the rest.
Mental illness the rabid kind that Westerners are afflicted by is a result of their departure from all things good and wholesome, fair and just.
As stated previously:
Spiritual collapse always precedes an empires’s collapse.
The further a civilization drifts from God the dumber and degenerate it becomes.
In the 1960’s that spineless Supreme Court ruled that God’s name should be removed from public schools.
And this void was promptly filled with great delight with...
well just take a good for yourself and see today what replaced God.
50 plus years and we have generations of people who have no knowledge of God.
We have become for all practical purposes a heathen nation as oppose to having been a predominantly Christian one.
Buckle up and find you a safe place all you who know God and fear His displeasure for American is now finding out what it means to “reap what you sow”
"Socialism for the rich, rugged free market Capitalism for the poor." Was said by Martin Luther King. May have first been coined in a 1962 book, The Other America, by Michael Harrington.
If I said that I thought the profusion and threats of nuclear weapon were bad, people wouldn't look at me as if I were crazy, they'd agree with me. Then they would say, "Yeah, but what are we gonna do about it?" That's the problem.
Cut military spending.
Reinstate the five arms control agreements that the USA pulled out of.
These seems like worthy goals. What methods would you recommend to achieve them?
Noam Chomsky said, "Uneducated impoverished Haitians know what to do about their political situation and are effective. You too know what to do."
Nevertheless I find Dr. Chomsky's advice obscure, perhaps through not being a properly uneducated impoverished Haitian. Can you stand in for Dr. Chomsky and enlighten me as to some of the specific details?
Whenever I make specific proposals the response is always "I can't do that because of such and such" and/or "that never works." I say forget about such and such and just do whatever you feel like doing (within the law) towards that goal. You are the world expert on your situation and abilities. I would not presume to advise you on their usage.
I've pretty much come to that conclusion myself, but I'm open to any new ideas (or disused old ones) any one may have. We need to subvert the global war-work machine, and subversion can come in many forms.
Let’s build a decentralized 4th branch of government that really isn’t part of government at all. It is 100% built and run by the people.
https://open.substack.com/pub/joshketry/p/lets-build-a-4th-branch-of-government?r=7oa9d&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
Carter was a Southern White Boy! He reinforced, not threatened, the Southern cultural thang.
Wallace was Nixon's Southern Strategy and Nixon ran with it in 1972 and the Dwems responded accordingly.
Lame attempt on your part to reinvent history. Suggested reading "Richard Perlstein's book: "Nixonland".