Reality

At times, I can barely contain my amazement that the average person doesn’t understand the need for socialist tendencies in American government. Yes, of course, most of them are undereducated and unwilling to think, but even such obstacles seem unlikely to hide the sheer obviousness of the growing problem. Yet of course they do, and the sheeple blunder on in blind support of anything anyone can convince them is “good ol’ fashioned American.”

Halliburton, Exxon Mobil, Enron. What more needs to be said. Eisenhower, the last Republicn president who wasn’t an actual danger to the nation, though he had his drawbacks, warned us. Of course, given that the Republicans are even more thoroughly owned and driven by the Corporate Machine than the Democrats, we should all be amazed and thankful that a Republican was the last to sound the warning about the military-corporate complex that was taking over. But now they have, and while their control is immense, we theoretically have at least a small chance of reversing some of the damage, but it simply won’t happen.

If you haven’t already done so, go to a bookstore, buy some Bruce Sterling novels, and read. I can’t imagine anyone having a more accurate vision of our likely future than he does. Specifically, read Heavy Weather, Holy Fire, or most to the point, Distraction. In it, America is a third word nation rapidly losing it’s strength and world position, yet still fighting to maintain the delusion that it controls the world. Sound familiar? Distraction’s America is a nation in the midst of depression, where the rich still continue to play their games, enjoy their luxuries, and sway politics to their advantage with money and corruption, as if the two are really all that separate. A nation in which most people live on subsistence welfare rations, manufactured food, produced paste, not organic food but chemical food that can be mass produced. Most people have no job, no hope, no room for advancement or improvement. If you haven’t realized that America is already well on its way to that point, you haven’t been paying attention.

I have to say, the corporate strategists, the profit pirates, (some of who may not even have been evil, but simply blind to the obvious conclusion of a tendency which says that profit is always the only goal, regardless of the long term effect on workers, consumers, the economy, or the nation) did a remarkably good job of “winning” the twentieth century. The socialist movement early in the century scared them shitless, and they saw equity, fairness, responsibility as likely to harm their ability to increase profits and line their pockets, and so they spent the century, with great assistant from totalitarian quasi-socialist regimes, convincing Americans that any limit on their ability to profit was evil and Anti-American. And now here we are.

America, and for the most part the world, is the proverbial dead man walking, the creature whose systems continue functioning despite the terminal disease already, interminably, inexorably killing the creature that nurtures it.

So Carpe Diem, kids, it’s only gonna get worse.

spinning

My head is spinning. Politics, work, life, Duke Lacrosse, Rove, . . . too much to say, too little time. I'll try to write something soon . . . Need some Zen? Listen to Gov't Mule.

Are they mental?!

This is just too good. Thanks to Thesaurus Rex at Shakes Sis. I've long been of the opinion that anyone who got a college degree without becoming a liberal was drunk the whole time and cheated to pass, brainwashed to the point of mindlessness in childhood (Yay Sunday School), or completely certifiable going in and never had a chance for reality to sink in. Who can take macroeconomics, sociology, psychology, literature, and history courses, or any reasonable combination thereof without a light bulb moment? Now we have at least part of the answer.

Trickle down sewage economics

John McKay speaks putrescence to capitalist evil at Archy.

Some Perspective

. . . on this illegal immigration distraction (did ya'll notice that's what it is?) is absolutely necessary. And leave it to Shakespeare's Sister, a recently announced Koufax Award Winner, to point it out.

When will people grasp enough of the economic realities in this nation to pay attention to things like this. I know, I know, when the Republicans stop ruining education, when our country actually starts valuing real education. (Which, of course, means never.)

I know rule by the elite is seen as problematic, but as long as the general populus are morons, where the fuck is democracy headed? Should the right to vote go hand in hand with the right to be stupid and uneducated? I'm not in a kind mood, I know, but the capitalist shitheads are running off with all the money and leaving the rest of us to pick up the the third-world America they will leave behind (or hide within, using their fleeced billions).

I live with lemming-like sheeple, and I'm being pushed along with the crowd. It sucks.

Religious freedom? Not in America

With a Hat tip to God is for Suckers, here is a frightening example of the extent to which Christians have legislated their beliefs into the society, forcing others to live by their superstition.

Hail George Carlin

Can't paraphrase the whole thing, but I heard on my Sirius radio the other day the bit about religion being the biggest bullshit story of all time. Something like . . .

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They have everyone convinced there's a little man up in the sky who watches everything, sees everything, has ten special rules for how to act, and if you break any of them, has a place for you full of fire and torture where you'll be in torment forever, . . . .

. . . and always needs money. All powerful, but can't handle money.
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Carlin may be the greatest mind of our time.

Gotta Love Jon Stewart

Discussing the promotion of Josh Bolton , the man he says is in charge of our nine trillion dollar debt, Stewart said on the Daily Show, (this is a close paraphrase), I think if you walked into a Cabinet meeting and started throwing your feces against the wall, Bush would name a state after you.

Ok, perhaps a bit partisan, but less so than the corporate Right Wing media, and hilarious to boot.

Media Observations

I used to worry about politics. I have stopped paying as much attention there, as a far clearer indication that all that was great in America is in heart-gripping danger. That the media is clearly run by corporate agenda and cowed by the government isn't the most disheartening thing. What is? That so many people accept what is spewed at them. Of course, I am never too proud of my own acknowledgement that most people are idiots, especially when, in so many cases, this is a result of a calculated campaign on the part of the Right to ruin education over the past fifty years. But the truth is so obvious that sometimes I can't help but feel that even the low-functioning should understand. C'mon, who can't see that claims of 'Fair and Balanced' aren't ridiculous.

And now we have two further indicators: the media, instead of reporting on all the grim realities of Iraq, combined with any good that has gotten done, and giving the full picture, is reporting on Bush's claims that the media is against the war, and chastising itself. I can't believe this. I almost never hear on mainstream news how many service personnel have been permanently disfigured, how many are there, how many are there beyond their original term of service, nor do we get accurate numbers of Iraqis hurt or killed. We hear each day how many bombs exploded, or how many service personnel are killed. That's not coverage. And yet Bush distracts with claims that the media "is being mean to him."

And the other item. Some media outlets still give credence, even if only covering the complaints, to this silly notion that Christianity is under attack. All because some of us have the temerity to assert that Christians shouldn't get to legislate their beliefs onto the rest of us. And the media fails to point out the lunacy.

We deserve what's coming. Well, I don't, but most Americans do. As Ron White says, "You can't fix stupid." And stupid gets punished naturally, no action required.