Excavating the Future

¡Hola! Everybody...
The alternative online magazine, Subversify, has published my reflections on Wisconsin (click here). Feel free to go there and comment. The following is somewhat of a follow-up to that article...

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-=[ The Future is Now ]=-

A public union employee, a tea party activist, and a CEO are sitting at a table with a plate of a dozen cookies in the middle of it.

The CEO takes 11 cookies, turns to the tea partier and says, 'Watch out for that union guy. He wants a piece of your cookie.'

I was raised to believe in the American Dream. I believed that if I worked hard enough, if I was smart enough, if I got good grades in school, went to a decent college, played by the rules, and worked really really hard, that I could grab at least a measure of that American dream. When I was a child, I was assured that the depth of American ingenuity and expertise would save us all and that we would become an enlightened society pursuing the further reaches of human nature with the increase of leisure time, as technology and human evolution converged to create a more noble model of society. A great society preoccupied with eradicating poverty, hunger, and disease.

I believed in an American future in which we would conquer space, where solutions for previously untreatable diseases were right around the corner. I was assured that the tension between technological innovation and the environmental havoc it sometimes caused would be resolved.

I believed in this dream because so many people were actually out there on the frontlines fighting to ensure such a society. Everywhere people were engaged in critically questioning the status quo. People of color, women, and people of different sexual orientation were fighting and challenging the oppressive institutionalized systems that kept us from becoming a greater whole. And in spite of all the conflict, there was the real sense of hope in that people were doing more than talking about it -- we were all somehow engaged in ensuring the American Dream for all people.

When I was a child, I was assured that we would develop viable alternative energy sources. Lies. A cure for cancer. Lies. I was told of a future wherein people -- for the first time in human history -- could commit the bulk of their lives for their intellectual, spiritual, and material benefit. Lies.

Welcome to the future, my friends. I live in a city where it is illegal to be black or brown. Here the color of your skin, not your grades, determination, or educational attainment, matters most. Today, being smart is considered elitist. Worst of all, today you work longer hours for less money -- if you’re fortunate enough to be working at all. You’re less likely to be able to have access to decent health care, if you have any health care options.

Welcome to the future, it is now -- a future of disappointment. And the only reason you haven’t noticed is because you’re too busy jerking off to the latest online celebrity sex tape or watching “reality” shows of “celebrities” whose talents apparently have more to do with sucking NBA cock than being able to actually sing or dance. Or perhaps you’re too busy watching American Idol or Snowdrift Snookie’s latest idiotic political pronouncements. Either way, we’re amusing ourselves to death.

For the past few weeks, regular, working-class people in Wisconsin have been staging mass protests in numbers that dwarf anything the Pee Farters -- with their access to billionaire dollars -- could only dream of. Sustained, mass protests fighting for the right to bargain collectively, arguably one of the main reasons we ever had a middle class of any worth in this country.

Sadly, the “libruhl” media (inexplicably owned by a handful of multinational corporations) has effectively ignored, misinterpreted, or downplayed this moment in history. God forbid some dimwit neocon Medicare recipient farts at a town hall meeting and the same quiescent media will stampede over itself to cover it, dissect its fragrance ad nauseum, and pontificate endlessly on its meaning.

The major economic theory of the past 30 years, the trickle down theory, is not just a cruel hoax, but most of the good industrial jobs have left the country, and the middle class has been disemboweled. There is no free time. You’re fortunate if you can get a job whose major requirement is knowing how to ask, “Want fries with that?”

Still, while you and I struggle to make ends meet, living lives of quiet desperation, the wealthiest Americans have quintupled their net worth, even in the midst of an economic disaster that only a fool would label a recession.

Here is the American Dream of the future today: no jobs, no prospects, no leverage, no short-term solutions, no long-term plans, no big ideas to save us. While the bottom four-fifths struggle to stay afloat, and the upper one-fifth cautiously tread water, the top 1 percent continue to accumulate wealth at a rate not seen since the Gilded Age.

In the future of today, CEOs earn monster salaries, corporations receive taxpayer welfare, and we have half the U.S. Congress boasting of being millionaires. Meanwhile, medical liabilities bankrupt the rest of us at record levels, one person in ten is out of work, and food stamp usage sets new records every month.

Even with near-record unemployment, the Department of Commerce reported in November 2010 that U.S. companies just had their best quarter... ever. Businesses recorded profits at an annual rate of $1.66 trillion in the third quarter of 2010, which is the highest rate (in non-inflation-adjusted figures) since the government began keeping records more than 60 years ago.

Shrinking incomes, fewer jobs... but bigger corporate profits. Not a good sign. Somehow, many of you have been convinced that the answer is doing more of the same: give more to the rich and we’ll all benefit from the resultant odiferous trickle down. What’s obvious is that the rich are not only dedicated to hanging on to what they have (duh!) but also committed to accumulating more, gets maybe a yawn from the dumb-down, apathetic American voter. In fact, our country's concentration of wealth is worse than Egypt.

This is nothing but class warfare and when you try to show, whether through charts and graphs or real-life examples, that the system is rigged in favor of the wealthy and powerful, you’re labeled as unpatriotic, a socialist and/ or communist. What often happens is that, instead of yelling back, “Hell, yes, we’re talking fucking class warfare!” liberals usually fell over themselves in apology, vehemently denying the accusation. They react as if talking about class warfare is tantamount to treason. Center-right politicians like Obama get spooked and fall in line, saying “Look, Eddie, we can’t do social engineering through the tax code. And there’s no reason to declare class warfare.” It’s pathetic.

The wealth gap has become so alarming that even billionaires like Warren Buffett acknowledge that the Bush-era tax cuts should be allowed to expire. In fact, Buffett contends, the wealthiest Americans should pay even more in taxes. The people in Wisconsin, representative of the majority of Americans, that bottom 4/5 who are barely keeping afloat, are now fighting this fight and it barely registers a yawn from many of you.

Someone suckered us along the way. The future we bought into was great until we fell asleep and woke up to find that at some points the future becomes the present, and the fact that it was once the future doesn’t mean it’s all fucked up once it arrives.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization...

Definitions for a Neo-Liberal Planet Gone Mad

¡Hola! Everybody...
Past few days, I’ve run across the following several times on the’net. Considering everything that’s happening, I thought I’d share...

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-=[ New World Order Terms Glossary ]=-

by James Hannum

The economy = the corporate global economy.

Industrialization = corporate usurpation of production and destruction of the independent craftsman.

Economic development = replacement of small businesses and self-sufficient local economies with the corporate system.

Economic freedom = working for the corporations and buying from the corporations.

Growth = increased corporate profits.

Job creation =

1. (Global South) sweatshops, plantations, child labor.

2. (Global North) paper-shufflers.

Mobility of capital and ideas = rootlessness, unaccountability.

Competitive production costs = elimination of environmental, worker safety, & child labor laws.

Free trade = massive oil-burning transportation system that centralizes economic power in the corporations.

Privatization = corporate appropriation of public lands and resources.

The poor = people who live sustainably in true communities and diverse cultures, crafting their own homes, clothing, and utensils, and growing their own organic food, thus requiring little or no cash income. These millions are termed “poor” because industrial capitalism places no value on communities, culture, and the goods and services people provide for themselves.

Globalization = destruction of all cultures.

Stabilization = subjugation.

Shift to export economy = corporate agribusiness theft of peasants' land forcing migration into big city slums, sweatshops, and massive corporate mono-crop plantations.

Business-friendly environment = corporate puppet regime installed by U.S. military, CIA, Mossad, MI6, etc., and controlled by detailed and conditional World Bank loans.

European Union = elimination of local democracy and homogenization of Europe's diverse cultures.

Costs outsourcing = subsidies, bailouts, and tax breaks given to corporations in exchange for campaign contributions and cash payments.

Media = propaganda machine owned by corporations and funded by corporate advertising.

Industry consultant = corporate lobbyist.

Market creation = advertising and selling increasingly complex, costly, and unnecessary consumer products.

Automobile = an expensive, dangerous, stressful, and environmentally destructive personal isolation chamber which disrupts, disperses, and destroys compact pedestrian communities.

Infrastructure = subsidized freeway sprawl forcing reliance on the automobile.

Television = an addictive corporate advertising and “news” propaganda device, which wastes time formerly used for family, friends, community, and the reading of books.

Peace-keeping forces = occupying army.

Insurgent = local citizen resisting occupation.

Military/ industrial complex = $Trillions/year in obscene upper class profits made from thousands/year senseless lower class deaths.

American Dream = Corporate Dream.

“Fascism is the merger of state and corporation.” --Benito Mussolini

“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction.” -- Albert Einstein

My name is Eddie and I'm in recovery from civilization...

Sunday Sermon [The Argument, pt. I]

¡Hola! Everybody...
A good friend and I have been having an ongoing discussion that has lasted for years. We call it “The Argument.” What follows here isn’t the gist of The Argument. Parts of The Argument would piss you off, make you very uncomfortable, or otherwise challenge your basic assumptions about the meaning of reality, freedom , or free will. I will try to present The Argument next Sunday. For now, I’ll leave you with insights glommed from The Argument. LOL

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-=[ Setting the Table ]=-

When people stop and withdraw from the everyday busy-ness of making a living, they realize they’ve been caught up in something that they not only don’t believe in but deem reprehensible.

Today’s world is no longer controlled by emperors, dictators, or even democratically elected governments. We live in a world controlled by multinational corporations. Most of us work for them, we certainly eat and drink what they produce, are exposed to their scientifically crafted and persuasive marketing strategies, and we live on a planet that provides the raw materials for their products and is the toilet bowl for their endless refuse.

Corporations have become much more powerful than the governments we depend on to regulate them. In fact, they pay for the mechanisms by which a government can afford to be elected. Most troubling, at least here in United States of Amnesia, corporations are legal fictions -- a warped superhuman with the same rights as the rest of us.

These corporate demi-gods -- whether Big Media, Big Finance, Big Corporations, or Big Armies -- are sociopathic entities. Even totalitarian governments start out with some measure of intention to serve the well-being of a population, but corporations have an essentially anti-human worldview. Corporations are primarily responsible to their shareholders. The margin of profit possesses a higher value than environmental integrity or social empowerment. Creating and satisfying short-term desire eclipses long-term sustainability and sanity. And they are so pervasive they colonize most of our culture.

The fruits of the earth, plants, animals, water, and even the human genome are all being patented and made into commercial products, including even drugs to create new feelings. This trend has increased to the point that some municipal drinking water systems contain alarming traces of anti-depressants. Nevertheless, there is a limit to how much one can possess and we are running out of anything new to patent and own.

Oppressive political regimes that exploit their people can be and have been rejected by social movements and revolutions, or by the intervention outside forces. The power of commercial interests presents a more insidious problem -- it is something entirely different. Corporate rule is more like the relationship between a drug dealer and an addict. The power of the corporations run on the immediate addictions of a population, without necessarily serving their basic, essentially human, well-being. This collective conditioning, what I see as a psychological enslavement, and the global economy it creates, works in large part because it thrives on our sense that something is missing, that something is wrong with your life and with you: It’s quite simple, you need to buy our product. Drink this soda to quench your thirst, take this pill to give you an erection, or stop your leg from shaking, this house, this car, fly to this great place for a vacation and you’ll feel better. Look at this happy couple smiling. They feel better. See?

The global economy as it is being sold to us would not work with an inherently contented people. You would have a hard time selling the latest gadget to people who feel connected to themselves and to one another; who feel whole, generous, grateful, and compassionate, and who know they have enough. This collective conditioning or psychological enslavement recreates itself; it will never make you content. It is meant to keep you stuck in the Wheel of Suffering -- the insanity of committing the same acts and expecting different results.

Next Sunday... The Argument

Love,

Eddie

Defining Freedom

¡Hola! Everybody...
When I got my life back, school was a huge part of that process. I always associate the beginning of the school year with new beginnings, change, fresh-faced children trooping back to schools. I commend our president in wanting to inspire young children to educate themselves, to stay in schools, and achieve. I associate education with freedom, which brings me to my post today.

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-=[ Freedom & its Discontents ]=-

Whose freedom?

-- George Lakoff

The history of the last 1000 years, indeed the history of humankind, has been, in a very real way, the history of the struggle to define the word “freedom.”

Throughout much of history, in civilizations across the world, people have been ruled by the strong and lorded over by those simply born into power and privilege. Up until relatively recently few even questioned the divine right of rulers. Fewer still, challenged the idea that it was the place of the people to obey. Yet throughout history, the great thinkers had contemplated humankind’s ugly tendency to give in to its worst impulses of greed, fear, violence, and lust for power, and by the 1800s, this intellectual tradition had left its mark on the Western world.

Furthermore, advances in science and mathematics were changing the way educated people looked at the universe and were bringing a new understanding and respect for the laws of nature and the power of human reason. Centuries of political and religious turmoil in Europe inspired new ideas about the best ways for human beings to live together in peace, in the process rejecting the now antiquated notion that an invisible old and angry white dude with a beard preordained civilization and its structures.

I’ve just described about 600 years of the evolution of the definition of freedom in two paragraphs (not really, but close! LOL!). Missing from this all too brief description are some important points and nuances. One point in particular needs a little more treatment. in the 1200s, some powerful gang leaders (actually, “feudal lords” but same shit) confronted King John of England. They owned much of the economic wealth and basically told the king that if he wanted to continue to acting like a king he would have to sign a document they had drawn up called the Magna Carta. It guaranteed that before the king could imprison one of them he would have to show probable cause, attested to by witnesses, and sworn testimony, that the person had committed a crime (we’ve all watched Law & Order, right?). This is a right known as habeas corpus.

For four hundred years, the right of habeas corpus extended only to the British nobility, but shit started hitting the fan in the 1600s and it was then extended to gang members such as the more “commoner” knights and to a few others. Otherwise, you were shit out of luck -- no habeas corpus for the rabble.

However, the Enlightenment era of the 17^th and 18^th centuries brought about a new concept of freedom that took root. John Locke, for example, held that all men are created equal, with natural born rights to life, liberty, and property, and that these rights are always in jeopardy unless people compromise their absolute freedom and form law-abiding governments under which to live. Government, it follows, then, is legitimate only if it is by the consent of the majority of the people, and its power must not be absolute. Government must be limited to powers that the people have given it and that serve the public good.

We take these concepts for granted these days but at that time, Locke’s ideas were considered so radical that Locke, fearing for his life, never admitted he was their author until shortly before his death. In the American colonies, those ideas helped start a revolution...

With its opening phrase, We the people, our Constitution boldly proclaimed that the source of all government is from the people, and only the people. Well, some people, but that’s another discussion altogether, and I’m nearing the end of my 1-1/2 page Word document limit. The definition of “freedom” evolved between the 13^th and 20^th centuries, but it was mostly grounded in the notion that much of freedom had to do with individuals being free from harassment or imprisonment by government, or by exploitation by powerful groups or individuals. With the large-scale industrialization of the 19^th century, another form of freedom took hold. Historically, a minority held wealth and one dimension of freedom was at least the ideal of protection of the average person from exploitation by those of great wealth.

However, with the 20^th century came the development of some rather weird concepts of freedom. One such aberration -- fascism -- arose in Spain, Germany, and Italy in the early 1930s. In a fascist state, the right of property was absolute. While fascism was active in providing for the needs of the people, the reins of government was controlled by economic elites. Fascism has been defined as “A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism.” Fascism promised freedom through a strong control of the average person, with a core governing concept that the business elite of a nation was far more qualified to run the country than were mere “people.”

Benito Mussolini, for example, spelled all this out in his treatise titled, “The Doctrine of Fascism.” He plotted out a government, not by and of the people, but a government for the most powerful corporate interests in the nation.

In 1938, Mussolini manifested his vision of fascism when he dissolved Parliament and replaced it with the Camera dei Fasci e delle Corporazoni -- the chamber of Fascist Corporations. Corporations were still privately owned, but now instead of having to sneak their money to politicians on the sly, they were openly in charge of government and could write their own legislation.

Next: I’ll answer the question, “What the Hell does All this have to do with Kansas, Eddie?”

Love,

Eddie