The business of journalists is to destroy the truth.... We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes.
--writer John Swinton, New York Times, 1880
We can shatter our complicity with the mediocrity around us and open ourselves up to a much wider range of possibilities.
--Alberto Villoldo
A harsh reality of American life: the richest 400 people have more accumulated wealth than the bottom half of the country--150 million people--combined. This week's $700 billion looting of the people's treasury will make those numbers tens of times starker: for it was a handout meant specifically for those 400, to reward their near-infinite greed, incompetence, and mendacity--and, of course, as a payoff from the worst president in the history of the republic to those who most benefited by having him steal the office--twice.
Bush promised; he delivered.
****
For those of you who believe this is a government of, by, and for the people, the bailout should serve to show you the harsh truth. The fact is, this is a government of, by, and for the corporations.
****
Isn't it interesting that for the bottom 90 percent of this country it's "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps" free-market capitalism; but for the Pigs rolling in dough at the top, it's in fact socialism? Isn't it also very interesting how absolutely silent the corporate media is on this point?
Swinton was right. But how much more potent is the truth he spoke over a hundred years ago today? A thousand times? A million? More?
Swinton was right. But how much more potent is the truth he spoke over a hundred years ago today? A thousand times? A million? More?
****
Of course, this handout only forestalls, not prevents, the inevitable: the downfall of the American empire. It also presages an end to the piggish overconsumption--24 percent of the world's resources--of its citizens, who are, as it turns out, wholly complicit in both the politics of greed that saw as its ultimate gesture this handout, and also, by way of their own somnolence and apathy, its brutal consequences for a way of life that they demand to this very day but which is utterly unsustainable: suburbia.
I heartily applaud the end of the American empire. I also applaud--even more heartily--the inevitable end of suburbia and the rank worldview that makes it possible. At root, it was suburbanism that brought the American empire to its knees: for the endless greed we see at the top is mirrored perfectly below, in the botoxed faces of the shrewish soccer moms and the bulging temple veins of the corporate-cog fathers, in their neverending push for status, wealth, and keeping up with the Joneses. They demanded the "American Dream": that bigger suburban house, the one that, in reality, they couldn't afford; they demanded that flat-screen TV bought on credit; they demanded that gas-guzzling SUV; they demanded broadband and endless sweatshop-produced crap; they demanded lower prices--and so didn't complain when virtually the entire manufacturing sector of this nation was shipped overseas overnight. They demanded nonstop info- and entertainment to obviate the dull pain of selling their souls; they demanded inch-and-three-quarter-long toxically fertilized, genetically modified Kentucky bluegrass lawns; they demanded increasing credit lines and online banking; and you know what?--they got all this, all of it, and they took it all greedily, and they allowed Bush to steal the presidency twice, and they allowed--and still allow today--the illegal plundering of an oil-rich, sovereign nation to continue, and they didn't blink even once when its cost--over four thousand American dead (and rising), and over a million Iraqi dead (and rising), as well as a $2 trillion price tag (and still rising) came to the fore.
Well, guess what, folks: the party is over. The Universal Cash Register hit TOTAL, and now the bill is due. Now. The bubble has burst--and rightfully, thankfully so. You can go right ahead and send your cash to the Pigs--the same Pigs you so desperately want to be--the same Pigs you think, naively, are going to save you--but it's now too late: your mortgage has defaulted, your credit has dried up, your boys are coming home in body bags, your toxic lawn has killed your sperm, and the Chinese-made crap you refuse to stop buying is poisoning little Dakota and Kip. The food you buy is poisoned because you were too apathetic to stop it from being poisoned; your water is full of pharmaceuticals; the oil you dearly rely on for everything is running out; the planet is dying from your insistence on using it anyway; and the Constitution and the protections it provides you have been shredded to the point of unrecognizability because you got scared that the ter'rists were infiltrating the Pizza Hut and planning the downfall of your eighty-hour workweek and your wife's yoga classes.
Interesting that absolutely no mainstream media sources--or any other source that I know of, for that matter--writes from this, the much more accurate, perspective.
The reason why isn't difficult to discover. I already mentioned it. The vast majority of Americans want to be the Pigs they claim to despise, so much so they're giving them nearly a thousand billion dollars. The Pigs of course know this. It's the same great, vanilla-gray multitude of mediocrity who refuses to wake to the fact that the media information flow is, for all intents and purposes, one way, and that they are wholly manipulated, utterly disposable commodities in the collapsing machinery of this culture, and that dissent in this country is increasingly suppressed (the fourth estate now a wholly-owned subsidiary of America, Inc.). And so honest, valid, and true perspectives are lost, as lost as a genuine, unsullied, authentic soul in Suburbia, USA.
I heartily applaud the end of the American empire. I also applaud--even more heartily--the inevitable end of suburbia and the rank worldview that makes it possible. At root, it was suburbanism that brought the American empire to its knees: for the endless greed we see at the top is mirrored perfectly below, in the botoxed faces of the shrewish soccer moms and the bulging temple veins of the corporate-cog fathers, in their neverending push for status, wealth, and keeping up with the Joneses. They demanded the "American Dream": that bigger suburban house, the one that, in reality, they couldn't afford; they demanded that flat-screen TV bought on credit; they demanded that gas-guzzling SUV; they demanded broadband and endless sweatshop-produced crap; they demanded lower prices--and so didn't complain when virtually the entire manufacturing sector of this nation was shipped overseas overnight. They demanded nonstop info- and entertainment to obviate the dull pain of selling their souls; they demanded inch-and-three-quarter-long toxically fertilized, genetically modified Kentucky bluegrass lawns; they demanded increasing credit lines and online banking; and you know what?--they got all this, all of it, and they took it all greedily, and they allowed Bush to steal the presidency twice, and they allowed--and still allow today--the illegal plundering of an oil-rich, sovereign nation to continue, and they didn't blink even once when its cost--over four thousand American dead (and rising), and over a million Iraqi dead (and rising), as well as a $2 trillion price tag (and still rising) came to the fore.
Well, guess what, folks: the party is over. The Universal Cash Register hit TOTAL, and now the bill is due. Now. The bubble has burst--and rightfully, thankfully so. You can go right ahead and send your cash to the Pigs--the same Pigs you so desperately want to be--the same Pigs you think, naively, are going to save you--but it's now too late: your mortgage has defaulted, your credit has dried up, your boys are coming home in body bags, your toxic lawn has killed your sperm, and the Chinese-made crap you refuse to stop buying is poisoning little Dakota and Kip. The food you buy is poisoned because you were too apathetic to stop it from being poisoned; your water is full of pharmaceuticals; the oil you dearly rely on for everything is running out; the planet is dying from your insistence on using it anyway; and the Constitution and the protections it provides you have been shredded to the point of unrecognizability because you got scared that the ter'rists were infiltrating the Pizza Hut and planning the downfall of your eighty-hour workweek and your wife's yoga classes.
****
Interesting that absolutely no mainstream media sources--or any other source that I know of, for that matter--writes from this, the much more accurate, perspective.
The reason why isn't difficult to discover. I already mentioned it. The vast majority of Americans want to be the Pigs they claim to despise, so much so they're giving them nearly a thousand billion dollars. The Pigs of course know this. It's the same great, vanilla-gray multitude of mediocrity who refuses to wake to the fact that the media information flow is, for all intents and purposes, one way, and that they are wholly manipulated, utterly disposable commodities in the collapsing machinery of this culture, and that dissent in this country is increasingly suppressed (the fourth estate now a wholly-owned subsidiary of America, Inc.). And so honest, valid, and true perspectives are lost, as lost as a genuine, unsullied, authentic soul in Suburbia, USA.
****
The problem, at root, isn't a physical one, as I've mentioned countless times in the past, but a spiritual one. Wanting to be a Pig is as much a spiritual disease as actually being one. Both are ultimately terminal. But not just for the infected soul so afflicted (a disease self-chosen), but for everything and everyone around them.
~~*~~
(Fractal Image: It Was Her World, After All by SM Montaigne)
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