Greenwald on the Election

Hola Everybody,
Just got home...  but here's a very good analysis of the past few days (courtesy of Glenn Greenwald):

That message was heard loud and clear. The institutions and elite factions that have spent years mocking, maligning, and pillaging large portions of the population — all while compiling their own long record of failure and corruption and destruction — are now shocked that their dictates and decrees go unheeded. But human beings are not going to follow and obey the exact people they most blame for their suffering. They’re going to do exactly the opposite: purposely defy them and try to impose punishment in retaliation. Their instruments for retaliation are Brexit and Trump. Those are their agents, dispatched on a mission of destruction: aimed at a system and culture they regard — not without reason — as rife with corruption and, above all else, contempt for them and their welfare.

Read more here

Winter has Come

Hola mi gente,
I had to write this quickly. Welcome to Trumpland, welcome to twilight of the Empire.

(Note: As always, all links open up in a new tab/ browser)

Winter

Clinton, along with other white, neoliberal feminists, attempted to manipulate the illusion of herself as a trailblazer for all women in her grab for power. This despite the fact that every policy she has advocated has disproportionately caused immeasurable harm to women the world over -- especially marginalized Black, Brown, and Indigenous women.

And she lost... And the fault is hers and hers alone.

For over a year I have been warning that so-called “pragmatic progressives” had this election all wrong from the get. This election was about a legitimate and profound disappointment with a status quo that is crushing the working class. Trump manipulated that disappointment by playing to the crowd and offering a bait-and-switch scheme.

The out of touch, spectacularly ineffective Democratic Party thought they could offer someone who could manage this dysfunctional state of affairs and the people, rightfully so, rejected it. The tragedy is that if the Democrats had the cojones and foresight, they could have tapped into the same middle class and working poor angst by getting behind a wildly popular, ground-up movement. 

Imagine what today would’ve looked like had the vast sums of lucre and resources had been poured into a genuine people’s movement? Imagine if the DNC had gotten behind those enormous rallies happening across the nation -- tens of thousands of people from all walks of life clamoring to get behind a people’s power political platform. Imagine a platform that addressed concerns about a rigged economy, crushing student debt, a bloated and cancerous military budget, and corrected an insurance (not health) reform law that came straight out of an extreme right-wing think tank.

What the DNC did instead was to rig the primaries and then spit on that burgeoning movement. What the Democrats did was try to use fear of Trump to win an election. In the meantime, they stood for  nothing and got nothing. This demonstrates that the DNC cannot be reformed or counted upon. This demonstrates the need for a movement that creates its own party that is responsive to the needs of the people.

But that will never happen with the DNC because Trump is right: the DNC (and RNC) are totally beholden to their corporate masters. Shit, cockroaches poll higher than these congress critters.

So what’s next? 

I plan to tackle that tomorrow. 

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

Make it Personal

Hola Everybody,
By tomorrow this time, we will know who will hold the most powerful political office in the known universe -- may your God, Higher Power, or whatever you fuckin' pray to, protect you. Regardless of who seize power, we will be fucked if we don't wake up. I repost the following in order to rail against the dying of the light. It gets lonely out here.

Politics

It’s personal.

The personal, as some are so fuckin’ fond of saying, is political. Therefore, if some idiot politician, some power player, tries to execute policies that harm you or those you love, take it personally.

Get Angry. 

The Machinery of Justice will not serve you here: it is slow and unfeeling, and it is theirs -- all of it. Only those without access to power suffer at the hand of Justice; the creatures of the power elite slide out from under with a wink and a grin.

If you want Justice, or even fairness, you will have to snatch it from them.

Make it personal.

Do as much damage as you can. Get your message across. That way you stand a far better chance of being taken seriously next time -- of being considered dangerous. And make no mistake about this: being taken seriously, being considered dangerous, marks the difference -- the only difference in their eyes -- between players and the little people. They don't give a damn about respect -- respect has no value for them. You have to make them fear and loathe you.

Players they will make their deals with. Little people they liquidate. And time and again, they justify your liquidation, your displacement, your suffering, and the brutality of it all with the ultimate insult that it’s the way of the world, it’s politics, it’s a tough life, it’s “just business,” and that it’s nothing personal. Well, fuck that...

Make it personal.

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

Sunday Sermon [Disobedience]

Hola mi gente,
Disaffected whites and their black and brown co-dependents who constantly mewl about respect for the flag (a symbol of oppression for many) and those that died for it, ironically fail to recognize and respect the lives of those who fought for freedom here in this country. 

Those were/ are freedom fighters, sparky.

Yay 'Murca.

Disobedience

If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.
 -- West Indian Grandmother to me

Every election cycle I am reminded of the political naiveté and apathy of Americans. Nowhere else is cynicism so deeply ingrained. I am a skeptic, I question everything, but I am no cynic. Cynicism is the disease of defeatism. And much of the United States electorate suffers from it.

We all like to point fingers. We love to talk about the stupidity of the American electorate, how we are like so much sheep. The finger pointers are the worst cynics because they’re the first to advocate voting for the “lesser of two evils,” a political strategy with catastrophic consequences. 

For me this is indicative child-like thinking. Welcome to the real world where things don’t exactly fall in place as you would like to, and where unsavory forces co-opt power! Duh! It’s also thinking that contradicts itself. Why? Because it’s the very same thinking that creates the apathy and cynicism contributing to the current political mess.

I think it’s more important to talk about how people experience the times we live in -- times of unchecked free market ideology as the fundamental principle guiding our values. The problem with free-market idolatry is that we forget that it dehumanizes people. Because increasingly radical models of efficiency propel free-market ideology in order to maximize profit, it becomes easier to consider human beings as commodities rather than individuals striving for dignity. All other human attributes, certainly the spiritual and the creative, become unimportant.

This is the underlying moral principle that parents and school boards apply when they decide that music, art, and teaching critical thinking are inessential to public education. Capitalism rationalizes the thinking that it’s a luxury to consider your own children as living, thinking beings and more efficient to see their education solely in terms of future “workforce development.”

This is a brutal cannibalization of what is most precious and most fragile about our humanity -- our children. In case you didn’t get it the first time: through education, we the protectors of children, subject our young to the brutal conditioning that makes them commodities for the market.

Then we complain that our children don’t think (in actuality, our youth are better behaved than the adults).

I knew of a barely literate woman who fought and won against her own school board so that this wouldn’t happen. She knew that teaching to a pen and paper test wasn’t education. This is where you come in. You don’t have to wait for the perfect candidate promising “hope and change,” or to “make America great again” and changing the current rigged system in one fell swoop. I have news for you: this will most likely not happen. In addition, even if such a candidate would appear, most of you would not vote for him or her. Yeah, and there’s no Santa Claus, or tooth Fairy, and your soulmate was hijacked on his/ her way to meet you. I know that’s messed up breaking this news like this to you, but somebody needs to tell you what you need to hear.

However, you can make a difference in your life. Don’t just vote, get involved. See something you don’t like? Work to change it. It doesn’t have to be a big thing. It could be something as simple as making sure the traffic light on the corner works, that the books in your library are up to date, or that the computers work. Or, it could be as big as something like causing your community to shift their thinking about education.

And when you do vote, get involved, talk to people, argue, disagree, agree, whatever, just stop bullshitting yourself and pointing fingers because all I want to know is: what the fuck are you doing to make difference in your life and community?

Some of you put more value and care in your car than you do in the protection and cultivation of your freedom and that’s the real tragedy because, while you were washing your car, they’ve co-opted your world.

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

Definitions for a Neoliberal Planet Gone Mad

Hola mi Gente,

Several years ago, I came across the following several times on the ‘net. Considering the current election cycle, I thought I’d share as a public service. LOL

* * *

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...