Notes to a Young Progressive

Hola mi Gente,
I plan to rest this weekend.

Nationalism

I call him a patriot who rebukes his country for its sins and does not excuse them.
 -- Frederick Douglas

Many years ago, George Orwell wrote a prescient essay on the differences between nationalism and patriotism Orwell’s Notes onNationalism, has as much relevance today as it did when it was written right before the lead up to WWII as nationalistic fervor fed the flames of Nazism and fascism.

Too many people confuse nationalism for patriotism. When I listen to the nationalistic fervor stoked by the likes of Trump and Hillary, for example, it is concerning because theirs is an appeal to fear to a white demographic feeling betrayed -- a population looking for any excuse to explode. The successful Trump/ GOP’s campaign strategy is to create “the other” as different and unpatriotic. It’s been a one-note effort mostly because U.S. conservatives apparently do not know any other strategy.

Another reason political elites use this tactic because it works: tar and feather a candidate by coming up with the scary face of a black killer. At one time that face was the face of Willie Horton. Today, it is any black kid with a hood. Dismiss people who dare question the wisdom of our current foreign policies as “unpatriotic.” Paint the opposition as effeminate and ineffectual and deride them for having the courage to speak out against wars that kill tens of thousands of innocent women and children. And this is just the Democrats.

And it continues to work. It is working partly because the failures of decades of lunatic neoliberal economic policies have created global financial meltdowns and eroded the middle class.

Orwell defined patriotism as “devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force upon other people.” I have no argument with this definition

According to Orwell, nationalism is the tendency of identifying oneself with a single nation or an idea, and “placing it beyond good and evil and recognizing no other duty than that of advancing its interests.” In other words, nationalism doesn’t have to be based on an allegiance to a particular nation. This same fanaticism can be applied to any “ism”: neo-conservatism and fundamentalism of any kind (religious or otherwise), for example. Whether it’s based on a country or an “ism,” nationalism always contains that dangerous combination of blind fanaticism and a lack of concern for reality.

In nationalism, thoughts “always turn on victories, defeats, triumphs and humiliations… Nationalism is power-hunger tempered by self-deception.” Moreover, its self-deception leads to catastrophic miscalculations based on delusions rather than facts. Orwell stated, foretelling the mental state of democrats today:

“Political and military commentators, like astrologers, can survive almost any mistake, because their more devoted followers do not look to them for an appraisal of the facts but for the stimulation of nationalistic loyalties.”

But to really appreciate Orwell and understand how he had our current foreign policy down pat, you only need to read this:

“All nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts. Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage -- torture, the use of hostages, forced labor, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians -- which does not change its moral color when committed by ‘our’ side.… The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.”

It was Georges Santayana who said “… those who refuse to remember the past, are condemned to relive it.”

Any of this sounds familiar?

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

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Victory at Standing Rock

Hola Everybody,
Whew! Yesterday’s victory over the Dakota Access pipeline was a breath of fresh air. And yeah, people, we know that this is a temporary setback to corporates and that the struggle continues -- we don’t need you to remind us, sparky.

Fascism and Resistance

Fascism should be more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.
 -- Giovanni Gentile

Let me just state at the beginning that … No! The struggle that got the U.S. federal government to decide not issue the permit necessary for continuing construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, is not an example of working within the system to create change. Our First Nation brothers and sister sacrificed and were ignored and beaten, tortured, and arrested for their stance. STFU with that bullshit.

It amazes me to no end to continue to hear (without challenge from all forms of media) the ridiculous assumption that we should continue to be subservient to and provide mind-boggling tax breaks for corporate elites (welfare for the rich). Even more confounding is the fact that a significant (mostly white) section of the United States electorate will vote against their economic interests. The Dakota Access Pipeline is a prime example of corporate welfare.

However, it shouldn’t be so confounding. We are there -- we are a quasi-fascist state. You might say I am being dramatic, or that I have lost my bearings and I would respond that you’ve had your head stuck in the sand too long. Take the blinders off for a moment and let’s look at the state of our affairs for a moment. Pretend this isn’t “America” and you tell me if I’m off… 

First, let me establish, and I think most sane people will agree, that corporations today wield an enormous amount of influence over our government. It’s evident in the way elections are run and how our economic and social policies are framed and created. During the election, outside of Bernie Sanders, who was completely blacked out of the mainstream media, no one was talking about a rigged economy or inequality. Poverty and the crisis of man-made catastrophic climate change, was not mentioned at all during the presidential debates. In fact, a climate change denier is now the president -elect. Bankruptcy laws were written by credit card companies, signed into law as is. 

Corporations influence our environmental policies for the most part as evidenced by resistance movements against fracking and oil pipelines. The US spends more on its military than the next seven largest military budgets around the world, combined. This is a social welfare policy that results in billions of profits for corporations. The list goes on. Everywhere we look today, we see the handiwork of corporations, of the mindset of profits before people.

That is not democracy. We are not a democracy. We are not what we have been conditioned to believe all these years.

Franklin Delano’s Roosevelt’s administration came to power in the 1930s in the wake of the Great Depression. While he couldn’t know he was going to fight a war in Europe, he did know and planned to fight a war in the US -- a war on what he called the “economic royalists.” FDR, a member of the economic elite, was also fearful of the rise of socialism as people who could not afford to eat were turning to other forms of governance for answers to their hunger. In his acceptance speech at the Democratic convention in Philadelphia in 1936, Roosevelt uttered the following words:

Philadelphia is a good city in which to write American history. This is fitting ground on which to reaffirm the faith of our fathers; to pledge ourselves to restore to the people a wider freedom; to give to 1936 as the founders gave to 1776 - an American way of life.

That very word freedom, in itself and of necessity, suggests freedom from some restraining power. In 1776, we sought freedom from the tyranny of a political autocracy - from the eighteenth-century royalists who held special privileges from the crown… 

And so it was to win freedom from the tyranny of political autocracy that the American Revolution was fought. That victory gave the business of governing into the hands of the average man, who won the right with his neighbors to make and order his own destiny through his own government. Political tyranny was wiped out at Philadelphia on July 4, 1776.

Of course, when FDR yelled “freedom,” he meant freedom for white men. And when he spoke of the power of the people to decide their own destinies, he wasn’t really thinking about people of color. And when he stated the death of tyranny, he did so while ignoring centuries of state-sponsored tyranny against blacks and First Nation people. Still, he had his finger on the pulse of the intellectual revolt that was occurring throughout the land. More… 

Since that struggle, however, man’s inventive genius released new forces in our land which reordered the lives of our people. The age of machinery, of railroads; of steam and electricity; the telegraph and the radio; mass production, mass distribution -- all of these combined to bring forward a new civilization and with it a new problem for those who sought to remain free.

For out of this modern civilization economic royalists carved new dynasties. New kingdoms were built upon concentration of control over material things. Through new uses of corporations, banks and securities, new machinery of industry and agriculture, of labor and capital -- all undreamed of by the Fathers -- the whole structure of modern life was impressed into this royal service.

There was no place among this royalty for our many thousands of small-businessmen and merchants who sought to make a worthy use of the American system of initiative and profit. They were no more free than the worker or the farmer. Even honest and progressive-minded men of wealth, aware of their obligation to their generation, could never know just where they fitted into this dynastic scheme of things.

I encourage you to read the speech in full (here) because FDR’s speech is as relevant today as it was then. We have come full circle where the power of the corporations -- of FDR’s “economic royalists” -- has eclipsed the power of government “by and for the people.”

So when you hear ridiculous talk about giving tax breaks to the wealthy and how it is in our best interests to cede our hard-earned money and our power to those interests, raise your head from the sand and dare to speak truth to power.

If you don’t, who will? That’s why today, I hail our First Nation brothers and sisters for their bravery, foresight, and sacrifice in the face of the brutality and the power of the moneyed elite. Theirs is the example we must follow. Shit, if the election of Trump won’t get the masses of their asses, I don’t think anything will.

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

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Guide to a Neoliberal Planet Gone Mad

Hola Everybody,
I came across the following several years ago on the innertz. Considering everything that’s happening this election cycle, I thought I’d share the it as a voter guide. ::sarcasm intended::

New World Order Terms Glossary

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

Neoliberalism: Socialism for the rich.

The Economy: The corporate global economy.

Austerity Measures: Cutting Public funding for social services such as education, health care, social safety nets, and even maintenance of roads, bridges, water supply in the name of reducing government’s role (branded as “freedom”). Of course, austerity does not apply to government subsidies and tax breaks for corporations.

Industrialization: Corporate takeover 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: The elimination of environmental, worker safety, and child labor laws.

Free Trade: A massive oil-burning transportation system that centralizes economic power in the corporations.

Privatization: Corporate theft of the commons (public lands and resources).

The Poor: People who live sustainability 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: The destruction of all cultures.

Stabilization: Subjugation, oppression.

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: A corporate puppet regime installed by U.S. military, CIA, Mossad, MI6, etc., and controlled by detailed and conditional World Bank loans.

European Union: The 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: A 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 citizens resisting occupation.

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

American Dream: Corporate Dream.

* * * 

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...