War Corporatism: The New Fascism

Propaganda is a two way street in the 21st century...

Born in the USA

"Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt."

If only that line had been inserted into the national anthem, so that blind obedience and monoculture chauvinism couldn't be called American traits. Alas, such was not the way the cookie crumbled. The fact that Americans have become the Alpha humans says more about the nature of mankind than most are willing to admit. Freedom, liberty and justice are words that mean absolutely nothing nowadays. They are vague concepts that we are programmed to believe in, but not to grasp. The real tripod on which the might American Empire rests upon is Greed, Fear and Ignorance. These three factors are the backbone of our power. The greed makes the war machine useful, the fear makes it necessary and the ignorance makes it just. Say what you will, this is a very solid foundation for global dominance. The US learned a lot from the 20th Century. Primarily that in the game of geopolitics you are either dominated or dominate, rule or ruled, kill or are killed. Failing to accept these facts as the basis for our behavior on the world stage is a perfect example of the other great strength of the American people- collective amnesia. Every generation has virtually no grasp of what came before it, nor any desire to even remember what happened when they were young. Whatever becomes of this wild odyssey we call a nation, it will teach humanity a thing or two about itself. Lessons that probably need to be learned if we are ever going to make our presence in the Galaxy anything but coincidental and brief. A very wise American named HL Mencken had this to say about how things work politically in this country- " Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule—and both commonly succeed, and are right... The United States has never developed an aristocracy really disinterested or an intelligentsia really intelligent. Its history is simply a record of vacillations between two gangs of frauds."

Urbanization Part III (alienation)

"The amount of noise which anyone can bear undisturbed stands in inverse proportion to his mental capacity." -Arthur Schopenhauer
Approximately 80% of US citizens live in what has been defined as an urban area. Furthermore, 95,707,078 Americans live in one of fourteen metropolitan centers. Before I delve into my own perspective, let us accept that all that is nature ends at the entrance to any city. Humans had lived in nature for more time than we can easily quantify, suffice it to say it was many thousands of years. If you take a creature out its natural habitat it will be confused and disoriented. If you take a elephant from India and put it in the Andes, things just aren't going to work out. People are a slightly different animals in this respect. Before the headlong sprint to urbanization had begun, we had spread to just about everywhere on this entire planet (excepting the two poles). We can adapt better than the rest, in no small part because we are capable of eating a very wide variety of things. There is one very important difference between this ability to adapt and the new environments we have built in the cities however, and that is that urbanites have no interaction with where their food comes from. To them food comes from stores which you access through an imaginary device called money. This may seem to be a trivial fact, but I contend it is not. People learn two things from procuring their own food- One is you reap what you sow, and the other is you are utterly dependent on the earth for your survival. Sure, on an intellectual level they will all admit these facts, this doesn't mean that they fully grasp it though. The tragic truth is that people who live in urban areas are by virtue of their environment alienated, confused and vulnerable. One thing that has been proven time and time again is that when people are in such a state of mind as this they are easily manipulated. No matter how much they may be opposed to the power structure they live under, their complete dependency on it for food and electricity means any criticism is hypocritical. The old saying 'all roads lead to Rome' is an excellent description of how cities operate. They suck all nourishment from the surrounding countryside to satiate the demand for food, building materials and entertainment. The bigger the city, the more land needed to support it. Warfare, Bubonic Plague, Cholera and Influenza had for centuries been the only check on urban growth. These hindrances have been largely removed lately, thus are we seeing the population of cities skyrocketing with careless abandon. The primary premise of Marx's observation was that the urban worker, or proletariat, was alienated from his work, he didn't grasp himself as an integral part of the larger social machine. Which as a result made him easily exploited by the moneyed classes. What he apparently failed to grasp was that as long as people are forced to live in the fundamentally chaotic and inexplicable city they will never be able to fully justify or enjoy their existence. Thus is the foundation for any urbanized utopia completely untenable. Communism tried very hard to create a classless society, but that is just not how any city has ever functioned for any length of time. Hierarchy and urbanization have a symbiotic relationship that for very logical reasons will never be severed. The result of this is that class conflict is little more than a dog chasing it's own tail, then marveling at the pain when it finally catches and bites it. I've seen many people in my life denounce all the other people in their area, as if they were the lone sane person in a huge mental asylum. Someone once commented that "No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible", such indeed seems to be the mindset of the urbanized homo sapien. It is a perfect simile because people, like snowflakes, are individually appealing, but collectively become a cascading chaos that consumes all in its path. Because they are living in a limbo which no one can comprehend or excuse, they turn with one body and mind to the demagogues and politicians, in the desperate hope that someone has an answer to the question they are all afraid to ask- why are we living like this? Such is my perspective and I make no apologies for it. I have met many a fine individual that lives behind the concrete curtain, and do not have anything but compassion for all of them, individually. Collectively though, they are nothing more than a bacteria growing on the face of an otherwise sanitary globe. I can't believe that they are in essence bad for what they are doing, merely lost in the wilderness of man made edifices that force them to accept lies that make it possible for them to survive. Many of the things that people cling most passionately to (patriotism, religion etc.) are at their core idiotic notions made to placate the masses and fill the hole created by removing them from the land. Cheap substitutes for the one thing that can never be imported to a city, a meaningful and worthwhile life of harmony. Once more I refer to one of the greats, Voltaire, to make my point- "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities". I make these points not to criticize anyone or to be some arrogant misanthrope, but to take a stab at the cause of the malady that is making our whole planet sick. If you doubt the disease I suggest you take a visit to the Favelas of Sao Paolo, the shantytowns of Lagos or the endless slums of Mumbai. You will find there millions who every day come face to face with the brutality and injustice of this system.

The Swan Song

A unique soliloquy in the vastness of space
that is how I'd describe the human race

singing our song with passion unparalleled

even though we really aren't so compelled

some strange instinct makes us perform

the world is the rose, and we're the thorn

we earth people are capable of quite a lot

but comprehending it all we are not

Guilty as sin

"Both capitalism and Marxism promised to point out the path for the creation of just structures, and they declared that these, once established, would function by themselves. And this ideological promise has proven false.” This is what the Pope said this past weekend in Brazil. He went on to say that the result of these failed systems is- “giving rise to a worrying degradation of personal dignity through drugs, alcohol and deceptive illusions of happiness.” I'm no Papist, but I got to hand it to the Pope for deciding to discuss the proverbial 800 pound gorilla in the room. Takes some guts to stand in front of a throng of thousands of people, tell them that all governments are fundamentally flawed and are consequently hurting God's children. The truly fantastic thing about him saying this is that with his Papal Infallibility some billion people on earth are obligated to believe his words. My first reaction to this speech was- 'Holy shit! 1,114,966,000 people now know for a fact that the whole world is going to Hell in a handbag!' After several seconds of euphoria/plotting/scheming I regrettably remembered that ever since 107 AD, when St. Ignatius of Antioch first coined the term Catholic, they have been training people to feel guilty. So much so that the revelation that the entire world order is nothing but a demonic dystopian disaster is just another thing to feel guilty about. "So full of artless jealousy is guilt, It spills itself in fearing to be spilt." Thus was the 265th Pontiff of Rome just spouting more pointless rhetoric to a world that soaks it up like a sponge. I can't fathom the logic of letting evil persist while you content yourself by pouring out libations to God of self-reproach and penitence for all of mankind. I do not mean to demean any faith, for it all comes down to perspective. So if someone sees the Virgin Mary in a tortilla in Mexico, well then by God they see it. But I must say this- The Catholic Church may very well be the longest running tragedy in human history. Imagine a very organized group that encompasses 1/6 of the worlds people, has the stated goal of saving all humanity, and is filthy rich. Now try and imagine anything that they couldn't accomplish if they tried. I tend to go East for my wisdom, and here is what one of the wisest had to say about guilt-

There is no calamity greater than lavish desires.

There is no greater guilt than discontentment.

And there is no greater disaster than greed.
Lao-tzu

One must wonder what it would be like if their were 1,114,966,000 Taoists insted

Satellites Delight the Not So Bright

"Power without perception is spiritually useless, and thus of no true value."
-Fist of the Northstar

As I was gazing at the evening sky tonight no less than a half dozen satellites caught my eye. Graceful and swift they follow their predetermined orbits, sending and receiving massive amounts of human gibberish for the benefit of those here on earth that can afford to enjoy such luxuries. I wonder what Konstantin Tsiolkovsky would think if he could see where his brilliance has led us. One positive thing is that it sort of makes earth look like the nucleus of an atom, instead of just being a lonely marble in space, which on some level is sort of cool. I for one tend to side with Thoreau's observation that having something worthwhile to say is a natural prerequisite to having the means to say it. This amazing technology is used primarily for entertainment and military purposes, not to communicate messages of any intrinsic value. It also enables people the world over to have strange devices stuck in their ears all day so they can talk to what I presume are other people, but could just as easily be soliloquies of how insane human behavior has really gotten. Why do people love technology that makes what is far seem near and what is near seem insignificant? All the technology that I've seen developed and utilized in my time here seems to have the end result of just making people more detached from reality, more ready to believe absurdities, and in all ways measurable, just plain stupid. Just to be fair I freely acknowledge that this could very well be a necessary step that will end in us reaching critical mass in terms of communication and that humanity will become utterly harmonious when we get several billion people all speaking the same language who are empowered to text message and send out e-mails affordability, but the opposite seems far more likely to me. The opposite being that we are just engaging in another full fledged effort to somehow insulate ourselves from the dubiousness of our whole enterprise- Pyramids of Giza right down to the present. I still can't help but think that satellites are rather aesthetically pleasing from down here on earth. They seem to personify that desire for order, form and function that mankind seems to yearn for beneath the armor of our clumsy civilization. Perhaps having the ability to say anything will lead towards something significant being said and heard. Sort of a cart before the horse scenario, I know, but I'd rather see it that way than think of us as some criminally insane species hell bent on petulance and power.