Category: Politcs
Cunts, on International Women’s Day
I am proud to be a bitch and a cunt and a pussy and a witch – I earned and I won my scars and my pride and I claimed back my power – I wrenched my symbols, my womanhood and my female magic away from the disciples of gynophobia and the evil preachers of misogyny and sin; you can’t shame me for who I am, you can’t make me guilty of my humanity and my sex; I reclaimed and re-appropriated the words you hurled at me and my kin to hurt and terrorize us, I forged my own divine weapons of strength out of love for myself and for each other. I’m guided and I’m shielded by the beauty from within, by the power of compassion and care, bestowed upon us to give and protect life.
We are goddesses and a Sheila na gigs, mothers, sisters, daughters, nurturers, seekers of knowledge, sources of wisdom, spiritual guides; they tried to drown us in our own tears but we are she-dolphins, ocean-made; we are women, wild ones, powerful animals, she-wolves, lionesses, ravens; I am not scared anymore – I don’t self-hate any more, I’m not a victim, I defy the cult of death, I am Life. I am a fire-flower blessed by the power of Eros, I am Love, I am a fountain of love. I am Peace. I cleansed myself from fear and hatred in the waters of empathy that flow inside us and I fly on the wings of change. I howl and I roar I laugh in triumph and I ride my broomstick in the full moon.
I am not free in this worldwide asylum we built and put insanity in charge – nobody is: but we can break out of the cage and fight for the freedom of our mind and spirit and of our thoughts and dreams.
A(be), B(ernie) & C
Instead of trying to convince his detractors that Bernie Sanders isn’t a socialist, or isn’t a communist, or a social democrat or a democratic socialist, thus perpetuating the myths (social democracy good, socialism fine, but perhaps only a utopian theory, communism bad), his supporters, as well as everyone else who actually does have an idea about these things, should come clean:
Socialism hasn’t failed anywhere. Socialism is a precursor to Communism. Communism is a pretty cool idea and in fact, every human being is naturally born a Communist, but it Communism has not yet actually been realized, at least in contemporary, state form, anywhere. And it’s not likely to happen, in the foreseeable future, so they’ve nothing to worry about.
Communism, comrades, is an ideal. It’s very much in the future, if we ever get to see it and not self-destruct beforehand. Communism is the utopia of all socioeconomic systems – or rather a eutopia: a good place where we would arrive if we evolved; or, more appropriately, return to. It’s heaven, paradise lost, what we left behind us when our species became settled, male-dominated and proto-capitalist. I went through all this, briefly, before.
—
John Locke (the “philosophical founder of America”) proposed that genuine liberty requires cognitive self-discipline and self-government, that man’s capacity for this is the source of all freedom and that rationality is the key to liberty and true agency. (1)
If the goals of organized society are truly to guarantee people’s agency, autonomy, liberty, self-determination & collective sovereignty, and the way to achieve these goals is a “Government of the people, by the people, for the people” (self-rule or self-governance) then the conservative (and so-called “libertarian”) notion of “small government” is irrational and in fact profoundly immoral and undemocratic: in such free & fair States, The People ARE the government.
Doing away with, diminishing, or restricting a Government of the people, by the people, for the people (democracy) leads inadvertently not to Anarchy and chaos, as some might assume (see below why that is so) but to various forms of totalitarian Tyranny: Absolute Monarchy (hereditary or not), Dictatorship, Feudalism or Oligarchy (Aristocracy / Elitism, pseudo-meritocracy or kakistocracy, Plutocracy, Corporatocracy, etc).
If a) Government is to be “of the people, by the people, for the people”,
and if b) “all men are created* equal” (or all “humans born” equal, as we’d phrase it today in secular societies),
and if c) all persons are supposed to be guaranteed “the equal protection of the laws”, and their rights to “Life, Liberty & the pursuit of happiness“,
and if d) rationality is the key to liberty and true agency,
then it logically follows that the only form of State that fulfills all these criteria is a Communist one:
“A system of social organization in which all property is owned by the community and each person contributes and receives according to their ability and needs”. (Yes, that is the definition of “communism”: it stems from the terms “common” and communal. A system in which goods are owned in common and are available to all in the community as needed). What could be more fair and just than the proposition that each member should contribute no more and no less and receive no more and no less but “according to their ability and needs”?
The only possible way to fulfill these criteria above (the human rights of liberty & equality) while simultaneously doing away with a central government and the State, is Anarchy (which is the rejection of higher authority):
Anarchism advocates for the replacement of the state with stateless societies or other forms of free associations. (Anarchism definition: belief in the abolition of all government and the organization of society on a voluntary, cooperative basis without recourse to force or compulsion.
So you see, dear anti-government conservatives & libertarians, what you really advocating for, is either Oligarchy or Anarchism. Choose wisely, but choose you must, otherwise, you’re just being unreasonable, which is another way of saying, irrational, therefore stupid).
Anarchism is for self-governing, voluntary & free Unions of people who are autonomous, equal, independent yet cooperative, interacting, inter-dependent, and self-determinant. Something like a chain of communes, without a higher power (authority) of State (central government) ruling over them. Such communities or societies are automatically also socialistic or communistic, because, ahem, they are: any ethical & well-functioning social group of people would be a group where “all property is owned by the community and each person contributes and receives according to their ability and needs”.
It is, if you think about it, profoundly immoral, unethical and anti-democratic to allow the few (individuals or corporations) to privately own, exploit and/or destroy what “belongs” to the whole: the air, the land, the oceans, the rivers, the natural resources. (They don’t “belong” to us or anybody: they exist and we share them in order to exist ourselves. If we destroy or exhaust them, we cease to exist. This is where the Aristotelian concept of Oikonomia – “good housekeeping” comes from; oikonomia is moderation, the art of living well, and virtuously, by applying the rule of good measure, best practice and effectiveness to all our interactions with what is necessary for sustaining this good life of the individual and the community).
If we were to take the declaration of “unassailable rights” to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” literally and seriously, then it automatically follows that these finite natural resources that sustain all life on Earth are not there just for humans but for all the life forms that humans – and every other inhabitant of the planet- very much rely on for survival, so they absolutely and necessarily have to be protected: they cannot and must not and should not be allowed to fall exclusively into the hands of, and become expendable & exploitable entities at the whim of, private individuals or companies motivated by greed and profit.
Equality means, among many other things, that an oligarch does not have a right to own & exploit or worse, exhaust and destroy, two million hectares of land, trees, lakes, rivers, and springs, for example, while other people are homeless, poor, sick and hungry or dying from poisoned water.
That’s not how democracy is supposed to works: that is like locking a group of living beings in an air-tight room and allowing an individual or corporation to privately own and sell the finite amount of air available to those in the room for profit. You can imagine what would immediately ensue: the rich & powerful would buy all the available air reserves and hire killers to exterminate all other oxygen-breathing individuals for it.
And that is precisely what capitalism has allowed to happen to people and to the entire biosphere.
Socialism is “a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole”. And they must be regulated for catastrophic abuses not to occur.
Socialism and Communism are therefore de facto Democratic: if totalitarian regimes call themselves “socialist” or communist”, don’t take them on their word – why should you? they are tyrannies. If capitalist systems claim they are fair & free, don’t take them on their word – examine if the claim is true and you will find that it isn’t, because they have allowed the inequality and catastrophic abuse that has brought us to the point of an existential crisis.
I have seen recently some – frankly unhistorical, uneducated & sinister – posts equating Nazism with socialism, just because Nazis called themselves the National Socialism Party. That nonsense is easy to disprove:
“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out –
Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out –
Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out –
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me.”
(These are the – famous – words of Martin Niemöller, a German Lutheran pastor and theologian. Niemöller was an anti-Communist and supported Adolf Hitler’s rise to power at first. But when Hitler insisted on the supremacy of the state over religion, Niemöller became disillusioned. He became the leader of a group of German clergymen opposed to Hitler. In 1937 he was arrested and eventually confined in Sachsenhausen and Dachau. He was released in 1945 by the Allies). The first that the Nazis attacked were the socialists, the communists and the workers’ Unions. Do your research.
“Democratic socialism” is, therefore, a tautology just like “Social Democracy” is: any true democracy is by its very nature socialistic, because it is de facto egalitarian, sharing and synergistic. Our species is by its very nature a social species that relies on cooperation, mutual care, fair sharing of what sustains life & social mindfulness for survival: “all for one and one for all”.
Socialism, my dear fellow human brothers and sisters, is just another name for Communism: living as a community, where cooperation, fairness & sharing ensure that everyone has the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, instead of just a few authoritarian parasites above our heads…
So, American comrades, in reality, you were promised a Communistic Utopia by your Founders, but you were essentially and utterly betrayed…
1: Locke’s philosophy formed the basis of the American Declaration of independence & constitution, as expressed in the principles of “unalienable rights” (“Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”), equality & a government “of the people, by the people, for the people”.
2. A Republic is an attempt to restrict and diminish the principles of equality and governance “of the people, by the people, for the people”: it limits the expression of the will of The People by overtaking and undermining the Majority Rule and replacing it by an Elite body of regulators (the Electoral College), a “winner-takes-all” system, indirect elections and other undemocratic structures (voter suppression, gerrymandering, unelected officials, life-time appointees, etc). A Republic is a de-facto Oligarchy and as such it leads to Tyranny.
By the same token, the only possible form of true Democracy and self-governance that adheres to the principle “of the people, by the people, for the people” is Direct Democracy, not a representational system that violates the agency & autonomy of The People (because free will and free choice – decision making – are individual to each person and non-transferable).
That’s where the American Republic went wrong.
Descent to a state of Oligarchy (Tyranny) was predictable and inevitable, under these fundamental flaws. It was just a matter of time.
But it’s never too late for The People to reclaim their unassailable rights, even within a representational system.
So that, seems to me, a far more pragmatic approach for the Bernie Sanders supporters to take, when explaining to his critics why, in fact, Bernie’s proposals are not radical but rather, moderate, reasonable and essential: they represent a renewal and a rebirth of their foundation goals, an absolutely necessary restoration of their Republic, a democratization of their institutions, a remedy for the corruption and a renovation of their freedoms that have deteriorated over time.
Ever since that red commie Abe, and despite the honest efforts of comrades FDR, LBJ, MLK, JFK, Harry Truman, and all those other American socialists…
Euro-pean Theocracy
“The Polish interior minister, Joachim Brudziński, announced on Twitter on [6th of May 2019] that a person had been arrested for “carrying out a profanation of the Virgin Mary of Częstochowa”.
The “Black Madonna of Częstochowa” is a revered Byzantine icon that resides in the monastery of Jasna Góra, a UN world heritage site and Poland’s holiest Catholic shrine.
Brudziński, who described the posters as “cultural barbarism” when they appeared overnight in April, said: “Telling stories about freedom and ‘tolerance’ doesn’t give anyone the right to offend the feelings of believers.”
Poland’s ruling rightwing Law and Justice party (PiS) has sought to mobilize its core electorate in the run-up to the European elections by raising the specter of the country being overwhelmed by western liberal social values.
“We are dealing with a direct attack on the family and children – the sexualization of children, that entire LBGT movement, gender,” said the PiS leader, Jarosław Kaczyński, speaking to supporters last month. “This is imported, but they today actually threaten our identity, our nation, its continuation and therefore the Polish state.”
(Yeah, I know where you heard that before…)
PiS (Law and Justice) is a nationalist, conservative, Christian democratic and right-wing populist political party; currently, it’s the largest political party in the Polish parliament and its leader, Jarosław Kaczyński, is the country’s prime minister.
yummy!
A similar story played out in Greece in December last year, when a night club announced a Christmas eve party, to presumably celebrate the recent abolition of the blasphemy law in the country. The event was advertised with a poster depicting a masterpiece of Eastern religious iconography which has been digitally altered, adding lipstick, eye shadow, rouge on the cheeks and earrings on the portrait of Jesus.
Shock! Horror! The idea that God could be (gasp) gay or female! Heaven forbid!
Orthodox masculinity was triggered.
I read the same claims about “cultural barbarism”, “insulting the religious feeling”, “desecration of an artistic masterpiece”, “cheap/safe manipulation” etc.
The religious were “offended”. Their faith was “insulted”. Their precious, oh so insecure imaginary friend’s symbol got a booboo…The party was canceled after the organizers received death, arson and lynch threats. They had to delete their page from social media. They were targeted like people who dare “desecrate” flags in protest. Wait – what? Surely that’s happening in some backward theocracy – not in secular, progressive Europe?
No surprise, as far as Greece is concerned, at least. Women are still not allowed on The Monastic Republic of Mount Athos, the Holy Mountain of Men, a remnant of theocratic Byzantium in Northern Greece. Although women contribute via taxation to the upkeep and restoration of these monasteries, via EU subsidies. So much for equal rights…
Let’s step back a bit.
Countless images of universally acclaimed works of art, many far more famous worldwide than these two artifacts, both religious and secular (like national flags or their images), are used in public dialogue and protest; and for that very purpose – democratic, free speech & expression – they have been and are being continuously, critically, humoristically, even hubristically, iconoclastically, ironically, intentionally copied, altered, digitally or otherwise manipulated – to make a point, to satirically draw attention to a social issue, to raise awareness, to shock, to make people think, to provoke discussion, to speak truth to power, to challenge, make fun of, or parody academic, established, authoritarian, social norms, national symbols, icons or sacred cows.
Isn’t religion and religious beliefs one of those sacred cows that freedom of expression should be free to criticize, question, debate, denounce, refute, even insult and ridicule? Isn’t that precisely the reason secular democracies get rid of blasphemy laws? Isn’t that why Je Suis Charlie?
How can we justify censorship of art (or even anti-art, like the anti-capitalist Dada art movement) in order to exempt the religious sensibilities from the legitimate assaults by intellectual freedom and critical thought?
I personally welcome these artistic interventions – they are not just legitimate, they are necessary – we need them in order to evolve beyond the religious slavery: they protest and expose Patriarchy, its self-assumed, established sanctity and its authoritarian, dogmatic, homophobic, scare-mongering tyranny. It is the Abrahamic religions and their carte blanche free rein to abuse, indoctrinate, proselytize, exploit and brainwash people from childhood and subject them to their poisonous bigotry, to irrational fears and hatred of everyone who is “different” (women, gays, trans, infidels, atheists) causing immeasurable mental, physical and psychological harm through the malicious concepts of guilt, sin, eternal damnation and all the other putrid misanthropic Death Cult dogmas they preach – and to do so tax-free.
No idea and no belief should be exempt from criticism and ridicule. And least of all the religious, ergo irrational ones: they are the most powerful, the most toxic and the most harmful form of authoritarianism and organized, institutionalized abuse. What can be destroyed by the truth must be destroyed by the truth.
” According to the European Court of Human Rights it must be possible, in a democratic society, to criticize religious ideas, even if such criticism may be perceived by some as hurtful to their religious feelings. Freedom of expression as guaranteed by Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights covers not only information or ideas that are favorably received or regarded as inoffensive or as a matter of indifference, but also those that shock, offend or disturb. “
– Woman arrested in Poland over posters of Virgin Mary with rainbow halo.
ps:
It’s obvious that the monks on Mt Athos are a rather special kind: much more weak and vulnerable to the temptation of female flesh than all the other monks in all the other monasteries in the world, that manage to retain their monastic integrity while allowing female visitors.
Instead of misogyny, this “holy” aversion to women sounds – or reeks – rather like fear: extreme pathological gynophobia, a dread of woman…
I wonder, are they equally vulnerable to the temptation of male flesh?
Elections are a Circus, but…*
*American Elections are a Circus, totally corrupted by money and thoroughly rigged:
there can be no Democracy without Equality. There can be no Democracy in a system plagued by the Electoral College, Gerrymandering, Voter suppression, mass incarceration & stripping the poor, minorities and people of color off their civil rights and off their human rights, above all, their right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness. There can be no Democracy in a system where Freedom from Religion, as enshrined in the Constitution, is not upheld. There can be no Democracy when the Constitution, in its entirety, is not upheld (and regularly updated, By The People). Finally, Democracy by proxy is not a Democracy. And in such an environment, the Government is not “of the people, by the people and for the people”.
Yet, there are Human Beings of humanity, integrity, principle and vision who enter the arena of this anachronistic, undemocratic, anti-egalitarian, Imperialist, Plutocratic, Death-worshiping, Theocratic Colosseum (not just in the USA, but everywhere around the world) knowingly and courageously, NOT to serve the system but to serve the people: to fight the system from within and change it for the better; human beings “willing to fight for people they don’t know”.
Bernard Sanders, age 22, chained to black women protesters, getting arrested in anti-segregation protest, Chicago, 1963.
They know that if Elections could change anything, they’d be illegal. And the system is working on making it not just extremely difficult, but literally “illegal” for most people to exercise their right to vote. In the meantime, they have achieved a high degree of their sinister agenda, by persuading people simply not to vote (more of that, below). But there are Human Beings who are not hardened cynics, who are not quitters; and they are not willing to give up Hope and the Right to Dream without a fight. So they enter the arena believing that it is possible to defeat the Imperium from within, if a critical mass of The People form unstoppable movements. I am not sure I share their optimism. But I surely admire their bravery and their vision and I hope they are right. Because if they aren’t, there is no hope.
So far, I found three phrases that survive the onslaught of the System, in that Arena, and encapsulate all that is worth living for and fighting for; and I found them all in the one place. In the largest political rally, in fact, by far. These are my top three takeaways from the entire Circus, so far:
1. ” We the People … in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice … promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity”
If some folk think that is in any way radical, socialist or even communist… then I think they are the ones who are Un-American (not in the nationalist sense, but in the sense that they would be un-citizens, un-free and un-human, if they did not espouse these basic principles).
2. “I’m willing to fight for someone I don’t know“.
3. “behind closed doors your arm is twisted, the vice of political pressure gets put on you and every trick in the book, psychological and otherwise, is used to get us to abandon the working class“.
Powerful indictment from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez about her experience as an elected public representative. I found it here, on Twitter. I didn’t not find it highlighted in many places, as it totally destroys the corporate narrative about the two mainstream political parties in the United States of America. Neither party establishment represents The People: they represent the interests of their donors. The establishment Parties are part of the charade and an integral strategy of the Fascist State: their job is to put forward candidates that serve the System. And they do that job very well, election after election.
Alexandria perfectly explained, with this courageous and clear condemnation of the corrupt political system that dominates the corridors of power in Washington, why she chose to endorse the only candidate who has been steadfast and unwavering in his duty of service to the people:
“and it has been in that experience, over the last nine months, that I have grown to appreciate the enormous, consistent and non-stop advocacy of Senator Bernie Sanders“.
This crystal clear statement (from a young idealist who perfectly embodies the famous Ghandi quote: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win”), also explains something else that is also very important: it explains why so many have lost faith in politics; why so many have lost their moral compass and their true north; why so many, convinced by the System that politics do not, ever, work for us, The People, indoctrinated to become apolitical and apathetic, have played Russian roulette with their votes; why so many placed their hopes on snake-oil salesmen, pseudo-Messianic saviors, faux anti-establishment heroes, cheap and vulgar demagogues, evil clowns, reality tv stars and strongmen type far-right populists, from Trump to Bolsonaro and from Orban to Boris, Farage, Salvini, Le Pen, Morrison, et al.
AOC’s experience in Washington explains the rise of fascism: the War on Terror caused massive waves of refugees and the worldwide recession left working people in desperation, easy pray for the likes of Steve Bannon and the Murdoch propaganda networks; the fascists, the talking heads and the strategists of the Oligarchy were there to pat the disenfranchised on the back and convince them that the enemy wasn’t the very system which caused immigration, recession, austerity, unemployment, insecurity, misery, poverty, despair, death, destruction, the Climate Crisis and mass extinction that is hurting their livelihoods and threatens all life on the planet, present and future, but people even poorer, even more desperate, even worse off than themselves: people who lost their homes and their livelihoods from the wars and the plundering of Earth perpetrated by the exact same worldwide feudal capitalism system that divides, conquers and lines its pockets from the utter misery, impoverishment and serfdom of its victims – the ordinary folk, us, The People.
People played Russian roulette with their votes in the USA, in Brazil, in Britain, in Hungary, in Italy, in Australia and elsewhere; these desperate choices are backfiring. What has been causing the austerity and the desperation and the poverty is the same neoliberal brutality that the fascists and corporate puppets now in power are ramping up with increasing intensity.
Have we learned our lessons yet?
I know that the indoctrinated Trumpistan cultists will not admit their mistake because they can’t: they need to be de-programmed and recover their faculties with some expert help. I know that many who voted for Trump to say “Fuck You” to the Establishment are suffering from cognitive dissonance and buyer’s remorse and it’s very difficult to admit they made a yooge error. I know that some of them voted for him because they are fascist, racist, bigoted, xenophobic and misogynistic, and those perhaps could be also be rehabilitated, if they were provided with some much-needed mental health assistance. And I know many are turning to other copycats, opportunists, narcissists, power-hungry, hypocritical faux-progressives and establishment puppets for help. They are deluded.
For me, there’s only one candidate in the race: only one that a rational human being could ever vote for, the original one, the people’s champion. And the reason is quite simple, really: if we had time to slowly evolve over hundreds of years, we might be alright with small, baby steps and centrist don’t-rock-the-boat types. But we haven’t. We are facing an existential threat to all life on Earth and there is only ONE candidate who understands the cause of the problem and how to fix it. There’s only ONE candidate who understands that to survive the Climate Emergency humanity needs to come together in an unprecedented scale of mobilization and consensus, which cannot happen without World Peace.
World Peace cannot be achieved with nods and winks to the Military-Industrial-Corporate pact; it cannot be achieved by “a strong military presence abroad” and “green military bases” and dressing up the Axis of Evil (the neoliberal capitalist patriarchy) with band-aid half-measures. Every other candidate in the Democratic primary is ignorant about international politics and naive in their policies or a downright tool of the predatory capitalism that has caused and is causing the Crisis. I see only one candidate who is clear-headed and astute about the problem; only one candidate has inspired the grass-roots people’s movement capable to defeat Trump and, more importantly, dismantle Trumpism. All the others are wishy-washy lightweights and if the Democrats put one of them against Trump, they are going to lose like they lost in 2016.
The fact that there are people like Sanders, with a spine and a brain, who combine wisdom with enthusiasm and do not know how to bow to the pressures and who do not betray their integrity, their empathy, their compassion, their honesty, their principles and their public duty, despite the vicious assault from the establishment of both parties, the corporate media ridicule, blackouts and character assassination attempts against him and the grass roots movement; that fact alone signals clearly who the Establishment is afraid of and whom The People should be supporting; and the fact that there are people like Alexandria and many others who are “willing to fight for someone they don’t know”, who are inspired by Sanders’ paradigm and his moral authority, to run for office and become a beacon of honesty, equality, justice, liberty, human rights and the principles enshrined in the constitution, and in particular, the right to Life on a healthy, hospitable planet, offers a glimmer of hope for the United States of America, and a substantial reason to dream, in these very critical times for humanity.
I dream, still, that humanity will not disappear into the night…
Life, monetized.
We treat animals – even the nearest and dearest: companion animals – like commodities, because that’s exactly how we treat each other.
Everything other than, perhaps, our own precious self, sometimes, is a “thing” – an object. We don’t recognize the same precious quality – life, and everything that comes with it: sentience, emotions, uniqueness of each individual person – in others.
Our interactions with others (marriages, partnerships, friendships, family and professional relationships) are, more often than not, in the “civilized” world, conducted as forms of commercial transactions; people (and other sentient beings), individually and collectively, their emotions, their images, their identities, their ideas, their bodies, their genes, their lives and actions, abilities, activities, creativity, talents and personalities, their companionship, their friendship, their love, their devotion, their courage, their choices, their honesty, their loyalty, their intelligence, their service, their work, their labor, their dreams, their hopes, their fears, even their sacrifice and death, are bought, kept, retained, coerced, used, exchanged, calculated, monetized, exploited, sold and disposed of, often taken for granted and subjected to all kinds of cruelty, and their “value” weighed exactly as if they were commodities: property.
People use and abuse others and are abused by others and consider that a norm. That’s how our society raises children. That’s the subliminal message we are all subjected to from cradle to grave. That’s how we are taught to think. All our values have been replaced by money, property, wealth and “what’s in it for me”. Society has been replaced by the Market. Those who reject that model are considered congenital failures and “losers”: they are treated with contempt, blamed and shamed and made to feel guilty.
That’s NOT human nature: that’s corruption of human values, of humanity. That’s betrayal of Life, All Life. But hey, that’s how the System operates, that’s how we are conditioned, like Pavlovian subjects, to get our rewards…
“Everybody’s looking for something.
Some of them want to use you
Some of them want to get used by you
Some of them want to abuse you
Some of them want to be abused.”
[Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) – Eurythmics]
We’re all objects in the Market. Programmed. Indoctrinated. We – and everyone, everything else – are Monetized Currency.
That’s how we are trained to play the Game.
No wonder, then…
artwork: Fatima Ronquillo
https://fatimaronquillo.com/
(thoughts prompted by a comment on facebook).
Even a broken clock can be right once.
Regulate churches, not wombs
It’s Eros versus Death, always
Carl Sagan in his day spoke of “testosterone poisoning” – today’s we call it “toxic masculinity” and “it has left a generation of straight men stranded on an emotionally-stunted island, unable to forge intimate relationships with other men. It’s women who are paying the price”, sums up a recent article attempting to explain how men became emotional gold-diggers and how that, in turn, leaves women drained and frustrated.
Men still are “traditionally” raised to view emotions as a feminine trait and a weakness. Heterosexual guys are not supposed to be touchy-feely and sentimental with their buddies – that would be “gay”. So they transfer their need for emotional nurturing from their mothers to their girlfriends and wives, who are expected to become exclusive (and unpaid) male-life-support systems: surrogate mommies, lovers, sex workers, psychoanalysts, domestic doctors and man-flu treatment specialists, as well as gourmet cooks, expert gardeners, tireless housekeepers, house cleaners and decorators, incubators, educators, nannies, wet nurses and main carers of children and household pets, school-run drivers, shoppers, dog groomers, walkers and trainers, and a zillion other things; moms also have the demands of a job or two to keep up with: capitalism has worked out so great since the seventies that stagnating wages force ordinary folk to juggle two jobs just to struggle from paycheck to paycheck and protect the rich from paying their fair share of taxes.
No wonder heterosexual women with a partner and kids are prone to anxiety, stress, depression and sexual frustration – as, allegedly, many men suck in the sack: apparently, heterosexual men want their partners to orgasm not because they truly care for the woman’s satisfaction but because it boosts their own self-esteem and makes them feel more manly, (no prize for guessing that many overworked and emotionally drained women are simply faking it). Guys, we love you, and you like to hear us say that “size doesn’t matter” and “it’s not the size, it’s how you use it”. Well, learn how to use it, dammit! You can dismantle an engine and put it back together, you can write code to land spacecraft on Mars, yet so many of you still can’t find a clitoris even if we draw you a map and give you more instructions than the average guy needs for learning to drive a car…and despite this, some of you think they know our bodies, our health and our reproductive systems better than us – and what’s more, that they are entitled to dictate our choices…
Angry, Male, Christian and White.
Because of such male over-reliance and toxicity, the whole marital bliss charade turns into a vicious cycle: the more fed-up and unsatisfied women are, the less likely to orgasm and feed their men’s egos, the more insecure the uber-male man-child type gets and his deep-rooted fear and hatred of women intensifies; he develops an addiction to pornography which further feeds objectification, stereotyping and unrealistic expectations; his relationships predictably fail to fill the emotional void and satisfy him; he repeats the same scenario over and over, becoming more and more convinced after each failure that it’s the women’s fault. He turns to the internet to connect and vent, finding plenty of fellow haters among the “angry white men” of the men’s rights movement.
And yes, all men have a deep fear of, and are keen to blame women: for the majority (those that were raised by mothers), the boy’s childhood was entirely dependent on the mother-carer-and-provider-figure (the archetype he subsequently will tend to seek in every woman he gets attached to as an adult); this powerful comforting, soothing archetype is deeply imprinted in the boy’s psyche and grown men tend to expect and demand an almost maternal caring, self-sacrifice, singular devotion and unconditional love in their relationships with women; they feel entitled to this man-worship; if the woman does comply with such standards for exceptional adoration and saintly tolerance, she is a failure and this type of men feel utterly betrayed and let down in their expectations from us. “But-but-but…Mommy used to provide” (and no woman can ever measure up): the basis of misogyny.
After the traumatic realization (in psychoanalytic terms) that he does not own the mother (the Oedipus complex), when the heterosexual boy becomes sexualized, further anxiety is caused by his dependence on women for sexual release. Men who have not processed and overcome these issues tend to see women as controlling because they have the power to sexually arouse them, even to the point of embarrassment, resulting in a love-hate syndrome.
Adult women can’t possibly satisfy these extremely unrealistic expectations and of course, they also have needs and demands of their own, which many men feel inadequate to fulfill. Men who didn’t have mothers, on the other hand, may be prone to even more problematic if not pathological attitudes towards women. It’s no wonder toxic patriarchy seeks to claim ownership over women, vilifies them for “sin”, and is, in essence, a cynical plot to accuse, shame, devalue and dominate them. A strategy to deny women autonomy and independence, disempower them from the power they hold over heterosexual male sexual attraction – and for that reason, patriarchal religion had to anathematize and criminalize sex, desire, Eros. To invent sin and the asexual Virgin Mother. To portray women as disgusting, lecherous, treacherous, hysterical, satanic demons and witches. To subjugate Female sexuality and make the woman commercial property and her virginity a commodity, to be exclusively owned by the father and the husband, her body, her womb and her reproductive potential bartered, marketed, sold, transferred between overseers, consumers and users, always under the control of Church and State.
Women, especially mothers, tend to be forgiving, supportive and people-pleasing: patriarchal mothers, in particular, may spoil their sons feeding their syndromes and not helping them to heal, grow, mature psychologically and become independent. Often male sex offenders are men who are pathologically attached to their overbearing or mollycoddling mothers, or mothers whom they feel have “abandoned” them at a very young, formative age (through death, separation or adoption); often, conversely, such men may nurture a psychotic kind of misogyny which is extremely sadistic and motivated by revenge.
Susan Collins both complicit and a sucker – yes, she has proven that is a thing. One can be both criminally complicit and monumentally ignorant.
These women-hating phenomena, like Incels, are rife in the core of “Alt-right” (white nationalist and white supremacist, neo-Nazi, Christian fundamentalist, racist, homophobic) ideology, and quite prevalent among the less educated men, favoring typically “macho” male – sexist rituals, aggressive male-dominated professions and pursuits; the gun-worshiping / hunting & trophy hunting lobby and the online gaming community are awash with groups where rape is not just trivialized but also normalized and praised as a natural male superiority trait. And on many occasions, misogyny is espoused by some women who either have been duped to adopt such behaviors as empowering, liberating and advancing equality, or are cynically on the side of patriarchy, their complicity to be used in exchange for white privilege.
Trump is a very typical such example of an insecure, spoiled, emotionally stunted, thin-skinned, tantrum-throwing man-child brat: his white-privileged childhood did not provide him with self-respect and compassion, but armed him instead with contempt and false bravado; an illiterate proto-fascist, crude, vulgar, spiteful and arrogant, a conman who relishes mocking and belittling with impunity those who can’t fight back (exemplified by his TV persona as the “Boss” in The Apprentice and the numerous times he attempted to ridicule people, especially women, for their appearance, disabilities and presumed inferiority to him and his “billions and billions of dollars”).
He is overcompensating for his inadequacies with aggression, deception, fraud, fake qualifications, fake tan, phallic buildings, pursuit of power and wealth, shady dealing, trophy wives, judgemental objectification and “pussy-grabbing”, hyperbolic language (with emphasis on “winning” and “yooge”), exaggerating the size of his fortune, obsession with “greatness” and “ultimate” weaponry (nuclear bomb mushroom, space wars and “his” / America’s military prowess), all elements that serve the alt-right, NRA and evangelical agenda perfectly.
A text-book misogynist harboring a deep need to control, overpower and possess what money can buy, the Don is attracted to the man in the mirror, therefore to women who look like him and espouse the same anti-values: a narcissist and wannabe tyrant who admires not those who are better human beings, but those who he would love to be able to emulate – the strongman type dictators – and befriends pedophiles; entertaining sexual innuendos about his own daughter is partly auto-erotic narcissism and quite revealing, as pedophilia and rape are not about sex but power and control. The type of psychopath who fears and hates strong, independent women, he masquerades his lack of confidence by being a bully.
I have argued before – here – that feminism, the #MeToo movement, women in general, cannot hope to defeat misogyny on their own, despite our numbers because we have always been the target of the twin enemies that all humans regardless of gender, identity and political views are facing: Capitalism and Religion. No matter how many we are, without overthrowing the dual magisterium system, the dice are loaded against us. Rogue, neoliberal, unregulated corporate capitalism is a direct byproduct of toxic masculinity, while Religion is the tool and the strategy that allowed the male domination of human society, through monogamy, marriage and the concept of sin. Patriarchs cannot control women, women’s reproductive choices and children without these strategies. And they know it.
Sexual liberation, atheism / agnosticism, gender fluidity, homosexuality, same sex-unions and parenthood, relaxation of divorce laws and the increase in the number of couples who choose not to marry, non-conventional / non-religious intimate relationships / partnerships and family models (polyamory, open marriages), education, employment and equal pay of women, single motherhood, abortion rights, birth control, in other words, the emancipation and independence of women and social progress towards true equality at home and in the workplace for all citizens (which leads to reduced birth rates and therefore reduced numbers of unemployed, poorly educated, frustrated young people – primarily male – for military recruitment) is what threatens the establishment.
The agents of greed and patriarchy are triggered and marching, motivated by hatred and fear: against abortions, autonomy, choice, equality, freedom, independence. They feel their grip on humanity loosening with the liberal, “loose morals” and the demand for inclusive genders’ rights that threaten “western values”. The War on Women is the war of the Elites against the common human being and the working class, women and men. Abortion rights are human rights and denying that choice to women affects men’s lives, too.
Human society can never be truly free, without freedom from religion
The establishment’s goal is to put women and the other “inferior humans” back in their place. Overlords and their mouthpieces are emboldened and call for banning contraception next. And how else could they successfully poison the minds of the young and convince them sex is sinful and even masturbation is a crime, if not through the teachings of the church? That is the role of patriarchal religion – career politicians in modern, supposedly secular societies are not keen to openly be seen interfering with the individual’s faith or infringing on personal liberties – simply because that would have a political cost and could potentially backfire. The orders have to come from much higher – the “Heavenly Father” himself: lawmakers and court judges must be seen as merely obeying God’s will and constitutions interpreted accordingly. It’s all very neat and simple, therefore easy to sell and enforce, particularly in disadvantaged, conservative communities.
Church and the Corporation
Societies, therefore, are not really allowed to become truly secular – ironically, under the guise of religious “freedom” – the most deceptively named form of intellectual slavery and mass-poisoning of human conscience. The Elite have made sure Churches are given protection and unregulated reign to proselytize, indoctrinate, coerce, abuse, blackmail, brainwash, exploit the faithful and corrupt public life with reverence and impunity; the stoking of bigotry, jingoism, fear, frustration, prejudice and hatred in the public mind serves their agenda. By division and conquer, by religion infiltrating the classroom and hijacking education, church and state can control public opinion, effectively groom future voters (and consumers) since childhood and herd the adult electorate. It’s a two-way street and a self-serving strategy, as public representatives who relied on those strategies to get into office are guaranteed to maintain the electoral laws and voter suppression that secure the corrupt system in perpetuity.
That is why churches are tax-free and subsidized, why cults and preachers allowed to defraud, control and manipulate the sheeple: why the agents of patriarchy are free to employ hate speech and propaganda and the establishment media outlets promote intolerance, racism, homophobia, misogyny, persecution and dehumanization of women, of the LGBT+ community, minorities, refugees and everyone else – including objective journalism – that the status quo labels as “Enemy of the People”; that is why they are pro- genital mutilation (circumcision*), abstinence, “purity“-pledging (to daddy) and virginity, sanctity & personhood of the fetus, forced pregnancy and birth, child abuse by religious indoctrination that preserves male superiority, but against social justice and duty of care; churches deliver justification of rape, domestic abuse and incest, genocide, state terrorism, police brutality, preventable disease, social neglect and inequality as “God’s will”, criminalizing the victims and those who dare protest. (One wonders, if God allows rape to happen, as he allows innocent children to get cancer, why can’t it be argued that he also allows abortions, as millions of miscarriages and legal abortions take place daily around the globe? But of course, neither reason nor irony are effective arguments against irrational beliefs).
Patriarchal churches and especially white Christianity and the “Judeo-Christian” values are protected because they enable and provide excuses for a host of other crimes and injustices: by the hijacking or replacing secular education, pushing creationism, superstition and hostility towards science and fact-checking of information, by support of deregulation and biased media spreading misinformation, the public is blindfolded and sleepwalked to apathy towards totalitarianism, famine, poverty, energy wars, the Zionist state genocide and land-grabbing, destabilization and interventionism, child brides, child rape, child prostitution and arranged marriages, trafficking, slavery & sexual slavery cults, corruption, murder, violence, environmental catastrophe, blatant disregard of international treaties and law; above all, the invaluable services they offer to the establishment in return for their preferential status, these “Good Shepherds” have a unique license to interfere with democracy, legislation, justice, independent thought and the free will of the citizens, by dictating to the congregation whom they should vote for. It’s an ideal symbiotic and synergistic relationship of two parasitic bloodsuckers feeding off humanity and the rest of the natural world, which they are destroying for profit.
This is de facto Theocracy, serving and profiteering from Plutocracy, for the mutual gain of both.
Of course, if we look at statistics and facts, the numbers of unplanned pregnancies and abortions are much lower in the least religious, liberal and sexually liberated societies, where children are not raised with the concepts of sin, shame or guilt about sex: where good education and sex education in particular, contraception and abortion are freely available, where young people of all genders and identities are raised as equals and encouraged to discuss, at home and in the classroom, and adequately prepare themselves for safe sex .
But the religious far right is not really looking for ways to protect the unborn: Equality, sexual liberation, fairness, knowledge, facts, science, healthcare, a tax system that serves the common good, are their puppetmasters’ worst nightmare. So the in Christian Caliphate, the religious Taliban have crawled out from under their Dark Ages rocks to overturn Roe v. Wade, with the help of Chief Justice Kavanaugh, re-elect Trump and complete the wall that separates them from sanity.
Religious rape
The American public is expected to bleed financing and fighting wars around the world to protect the very “freedoms” and “democracy” they are increasingly denied at home; refugees and Muslims are blamed for threatening the “western values” while more than two hundred thousand little girls and boys have been legally raped and married against their will in the USA just in the last fifteen years, all in the name of “religious customs“. These customs and traditions, like male genital mutilation, have been allowed to become public policy, law and medical practice. It’s interesting to note here that male circumcision, one of the innumerable ways religions interfere with health and sexuality, may reduce penis sensitivity and sexual pleasure; if so, it could be argued that, among other consequences, it could be a motive in the reluctance of circumcised men to use condoms and instead rely on women for birth control. (Read more about the issue here).
So much for the sacred life of the fetus: the fetuses in the lab (fertilized eggs on Petri dishes, whose lives according to the Republicans “have begun at conception”) don’t count. The religious right does not want to protect the unborn – it’s the womb they want to control. They are not Pro-life but Anti-Women.
It should be obvious to all, regardless of their sex and gender, what rogue capitalism (Corporate Plutocracy) and patriarchy want. It should be clear that the War on Women is just one of the items on the agenda of Theocratic Tyranny that includes Perpetual War, War on the Environment, Human Rights, Equality, Justice, Freedoms, Peace, War on Life on Earth as we know it, in effect.
It should be evident that to deny regression back to the Dark Ages, it is Capitalism and Religion that must be regulated, the way they are regulated and not allowed to become rogue and destructive, in the happiest societies on Earth. Personal faith is a right. Religious indoctrination, proselytizing and dictating public policy is not.
It’s Eros versus Death, again
We are all in this struggle for sanity and survival: the Establishment threatens all of humanity and planetary life with Climate Apocalypse and Annihilation. The Orange Fürher and his Reichswehrminister, John Bolton, are doing their damnest to provoke Iran into War. Trump is motivated by fear about his reelection, Bolton by the fear he will never have another opportunity to satisfy his lust for Death (of others).
Of course, all this could have been avoided: a Democrat could have been POTUS if the DNC hadn’t royally screwed Sanders in 2016, if the progressives had turned up at the ballot boxes, if the Electoral College hadn’t overturned the popular vote. And there’s a lesson to be learned from that, but I doubt the American electorate has learned it. The lesson is simple – you can’t have equal rights without a progressive agenda: any attempt to fight back against this assault on women is bound to fail, if the underlying conspiracy of plutocrats and Christian zealots to strangulate progress and suffocate resistance is not addressed head-on. Without holding news outlets accountable when they broadcast bigotry and propaganda instead of facts, without taking Faith out of the classroom and Corporate money out of politics, everyone, women, men, and our children’s future are under threat.
In the meantime, and until the 2020 election in America, rational men and women have to once more take to the streets, lobby, protest, legally challenge and overturn these Handmaid’s Tale nightmares from becoming reality and spreading further. With Trump not impeached, he has a good chance to return to the White House for a second turn, as good a chance as the Brexiteers have in destroying the UK. These two evils combined, with the help of Bolsonaro and the other Dystopian forces on the rise, it would take a massive effort worldwide to avert the worse case scenarios. To put it bluntly, the Planet can’t afford a second term of Trump – or any other establishment puppet – driving the bus.
I would like to hope that with young radicals like Greta Thunberg and her young revolutionaries, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her Green New Deal and all the progressive movements around the globe, we might be able to keep our dreams alive long enough to buy some precious time for the future generations.
I have more faith that pigs might fly, however.
the first pig to officially fly
A Brief History of Man*
1. Like all social species, the Great Ape known since, perhaps erroneously, as “wise” (Homo Sapiens) originally lives a communal life.
At the era of nomadic hunter-gatherer-scavenger humans, the females of the species rule the nest – they are respected, revered and even feared**: they give birth to new life and they manage to bleed every month without dying from that mysterious affliction as if possessing “superhuman” qualities. That “magic” elevated women to almost a divine status as we observe in the multitude of early artefacts venerating the Mother Goddess. At the time, men had no knowledge of their own role in conception. Women were in control of their own womb and reproductive capacity.
2. With animal domestication, plant cultivation, climatic pressure, the taming of the ancestral wolves and the emergence of the dog (hunter, protector, livestock guardian) permanent settlement and agriculture gradually and largely replace the nomadic scavenger model; private individual ownership of beast and land (the Neolithic Revolution) give rise to fundamental changes in human society:
a. A man can own herds and use them to obtain a wife or two. The woman becomes property and marriage emerges. Removed from her communal family and support system, she is effectively reduced to being a slave, a sexual object and a uterus owned and controlled by man*.
b. Patriarchal religion (exploiting and promoting bigotry, ignorance, superstition, suspicion, misogyny, fear, hatred, hostility) rapidly forms an authoritarian system to reinforce this newly established male dominance. Given ownership and control of the family, an assured way to establish authority over his children and their labour and the means to proliferate his “bloodline” via patrilinear descent of male heirs, using the family’s labour and collective force to prosper and rise to power over other men, male aggression is reinforced and rewarded in a continuous loop. The strategy becomes successful.
Effectively, human society is beginning to break down already at this early point, when the egalitarian social structure model (best suited to aid survival of social species that rely on cooperation, unity and sustainability) was replaced by the exploitative rogue selfish male-dominant model.
c. Rudimentary capitalism, arising from private property ownership and city settlement (necessitating a new form of “open market trade” between private owners of goods/services and the public), and the invention of money, lead to amassing of private wealth on a scale previously impossible during the nomadic phase. Kings and Tyrannies emerge and they become powerful role models. As a result, the communal, egalitarian, sharing, synergistic societal strategy is superseded by extreme antagonism and individualism.
To fully control independent child-bearing capacity in this new reality the male needs to further exclude the female from any substantial property of her own and from the means to obtain it: to effectively succeed in this exclusive possession and passing of wealth to his male descendants he needs god on his side, so he employs religion to excommunicate the woman through the invention of sin. She is blamed for the Fall from the State of Grace. The divinity of the Mother Goddess is usurped and replaced by the male father-god. The Shrew has been beaten into submission.
(In my grandfather’s time, the “right of the first night” of big landowners over their serfs still survived; and to this day, brides are still expected to pay dowries…)
3. Cities develop and spread civilisation and the new norms, giving rise to large armies, Empires, colonialism, imperialism and slavery. Patriarchy having hijacked birth control, the industrial revolution and the advance of science reducing human mortality, strife, war and the struggle for world domination are intensified. Harmonious living within a natural model of organic relationship with the environment (sufficiency) is replaced by coerced, forced and hired labour. People are stripped of freedoms and choices and brainwashed or beaten into serfhood. Rogue Capitalism and patriarchal religion create, perpetuate and promote parasitic Elitist oligarchies and corporate superpowers that drive the exhaustion of natural resources and wealth inequality on a global scale.
This temporarily rewarding but essentially flawed, unnatural (non-sustainable) model leads to inevitable and irreversible collapse time after time after time in the history of human civilisations.
It remains the most likely answer to the Fermi Paradox: by the time civilisations reach this point, they predictably self-destruct.
We are allowed very little hope, given these harsh lessons of History: our presence on the planet has been hugely destructive. Failed species die out, like cancer killing its host.
And yet, humanism and scientific thought have arrived at these conclusions since antiquity: they have been advocating for upholding the basic human values and principles, in other words, the evolutionary mechanisms for survival ingrained in all social species. United we stand, divided we fall.
We find ourselves at crossroads: either the best or the worst of human nature will win.
I can only dream that all Earth’s children can have a future, that sanity can and will prevail.
I don’t have much hope left – but I believe we should insist on our Right to Dream.
watch: Fall and Winter – A Survival Guide for the 21st century
The Rape of the Sabine women
Notes, sources & further reading:
“Anthropological, archaeological and evolutionary psychological evidence suggests that most prehistoric societies were relatively egalitarian and that patriarchal social structures did not develop until many years after the end of the Pleistocene era, following social and technological developments such as agriculture and domestication“ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriarchy
How Bonobo females discourage and control male aggression https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bonobo-sex-and-society-2006-06/
Frederick Engels: Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/ch02.htm
“the expansions of the Kurgan culture were a series of essentially hostile military incursions where a new warrior culture imposed itself on the peaceful, matrilinear, and matrifocal (but not matriarchal) cultures of “Old Europe“, replacing it with a patriarchal warrior society”
“Gimbutas increasingly emphasized the authoritarian nature of this transition from the egalitarian process of the nature/earth mother goddess (Gaia) to a patriarchal society and the worship of the father/sun/weather god (Zeus, Dyaus).”
(Gimbutas, Marija (1982), “Old Europe in the Fifth Millenium B.C.: The European Situation on the Arrival of Indo-Europeans”)
“…everyone but an idiot knows that the lower classes must be kept poor, or they will never be industrious.” —Arthur Young; 1771 (How coerced labour lured peasants away from self-sufficiency and into industrial wage slavery) https://www.filmsforaction.org/news/recovered-economic-history-everyone-but-an-idiot-knows-that-the-lower-classes-must-be-kept-poor-or-they-will-never-be-industrious/
Industrialisation and Global Capitalism http://apworldipedia.com/index.php?title=Key_Concept_5.1_Industrialization_and_Global_Capitalism
The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today – a prescient Mark Twain satire of greed and political corruption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gilded_Age:_A_Tale_of_Today
** “Men do fear women, at the extreme called gynophobia. They are angry because of their early dependence on women for sustenance and their later dependence on them for sexual release. Many cultures have also seen women as polluting, especially because of menstrual blood, and the justification for restricting and covering women always also involves men’s fear that they will become sexually aroused in inappropriate ways. Since men can’t control their libidos, women have to cover up, shut up, and hide.” https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-tangled-wing/201210/misogyny-chauvinism-sexism-or-what
Faux Republics
image source: The dangerous zombie identities of global capitalism
Tucker Carlson is a rabid racist zombie.
If he wasn’t rabid racist he would still be a zombie and if he wasn’t a zombie he would still be rabid-racist: he would still be brain-dead either way from a disease that kills brain cells starting with those linked to empathy, morality and rational thought.
It’s a nasty mutated double-virus genetically engineered in the Propaganda Labs that create RZ humanoid mouthpieces. It manifests with a particularly virulent form of racism and nationalism that masquerades as protecting the rights, freedoms and what is vaguely implied as “values of the western civilization”.
People wonder how come the USA ended up with the Orange Sicko: the obvious answer is Murdoch‘s Faux News and brain-dead propaganda mouthpieces like Tucker.
It is, as a former News Corp insider described it: “an aggressive, masculine culture: “Alpha males are selected as editors. It’s a real big swinging dicks culture”*…
The United States was founded, relatively recently in historical terms, upon the pseudo-values of Western colonialism, genocide and slavery; these still permeate large parts of the population: the racism that was pushed under after the Human Rights movement has now again come to the fore. Add to this factor the effect of a two-party, no-choice capitalist system and the asphyxiation of free thought becomes even more inevitable, even inescapable as a consequence.
Tucker Carlson is a suit with a bowtie and an implant that generates racist propaganda incessantly. The facial expression is permanently set to anal-retentive constipation and the voice is set to rapid high pitch indignant interruptive irritation mode volume 12.
It is impossible to have a rational, temperate debate and intelligent analysis with Tucker – or any of the same models generated by Faux News Corp. android factory: they are not capable of listening or responding – their speech is an automated constant repetition of racist anger, white arrogance and hatred, on a loop.
Europeans, dealing with monopolies and state propaganda that corrode democracy leading to dictatorship have long since evolved: they adopted measures to protect public discourse, hold media to a high level of standards of truth and objectivity, protect plurality against monopolies, safeguard freedom of information and Net neutrality from both State and special interests’ attempts of distortion, misrepresentation, discrimination bias or silencing: news outlets in those countries are supposed to report facts instead of fabrications. When they fail to do so they are held accountable by independent bodies of scrutiny. Although imperfect, such safety valves to protect democracy are better than nothing at all.
These protections don’t apply to the US: people are brainwashed to abhor regulations and standards so that corporations can screw them any way they wish and get away with it. In the USA, propaganda, incitement to violence, the racist agenda, homophobia, misogyny, xenophobia, bullying and similar hatemongering are much less regulated than in most liberal democracies: it is protected as “free speech”.
There is reluctance to promote public scrutiny by the press and scrutiny of the media themselves, that would inform citizens and enable them to intelligently discern between free speech and propaganda, true and false, factual and fabricated, in the public discourse (the no harm principle): when, for example, rational criticism fact-checks and exposes the lies of Faux News and the other megaphones of corporate propaganda, at best the criticism is dismissed as mere “opinion” and at worst as “fake news” and the critics branded “Enemies of the People”. On the other hand, criticism of National policies is labeled “unpatriotic” and often officially oppressed (examples here, here and here).
So we see that free expression, far from being protected, is further and further restricted from criticizing inequality or discrimination, when it takes on the establishment, nationalism, state terrorism or “popular” opinion. Free expression is further and further squeezed down to a shrinking personal, private space – and even that is threatened by online bullies, “thought crime” policing, surveillance, peer pressure, societal norms and indoctrination by state and religious institutions – they are protected and officially given permission to constantly harass and poison the public.
The fascist morality of “might makes right” forms the basis of the American exceptionalism, imperialism and superiority/superpower complex, its assumption that it has the god-given right to interfere into other sovereign states around the world in order to protect and promote American interests, but the reverse is denied: the rest of the world does not have the right to criticize the USA, its policies and transgressions – that is “a threat”, “an attack” on America and “western values”, worse, it’s “communism”; even its own citizens are restricted from criticizing the “National interests” doctrine – that would be “unpatriotic”, or “treason”. This protection is extended at will to states that USA policy excludes from scrutiny (Israel – see below – or Saudi Arabia, for a recent example).
It’s what Huxley, Orwell et al have warned us about, the Dystopian worship of nationalist totalitarianism, the Religion of the State (in a country that, ironically, has brainwashed its citizens to believe that a small government and low taxation are part of the “American Dream” – while in fact what they’ve been manipulated to hate is the socially caring, fair, egalitarian state, which would benefit them; they are directed to support, instead, massive tax expenditure on extravagant programs that benefit corporate interests – such as the various military projects). This State Religion is based upon exploiting the adulation of authority. Quite predictable to happen in societies where greed and religiosity (belief in dogma and a Divine Father) are unchecked and unleashed to corrupt minds, poison and neutralize free thought and feed upon the public without restraint.
As a result, over many decades, an ever-growing part of the population has been addicted to the poison, conditioned to adore the corporate propaganda and mistrust the independent rational voices. The ruling class maintains control over the masses restricting education and feeding them misinformation: effective methods as old as tea. So there are millions of people in the USA today that believe Earth is flat, evolution is a myth and everything in the Bible is true. They have no idea where Iraq or Israel is, for example, they couldn’t point at them on a world map, and they don’t care to know – but they blindly support USA intervention abroad (even against fictional Wakanda) at the Commander In Chief’s discretion: blind faith and ignorance are comfortable, learning is a nuisance, the rat race allows very little free time for independent research and being part of a group that is as uninformed as they are themselves makes them feel better about themselves and intensify their sense of belonging, giving them the sense of power they crave – a self-reinforcing and self-rewarding, vicious cycle.
Power, of course, requires an outlet: it needs enemies so it feeds the tribal hatred against all those who do not belong to their own cult. “They are different”, ergo they are adversaries. It is a bit like the intense pride some people share about their traditional custom of consuming beer in groups with the single purpose of getting sick with alcohol poisoning: it’s part of their “identity” and “culture”. If you don’t partake you’re a “weirdo” – worse, you are met with hostility and suspicion. If you attempt to raise the health and social issues related to alcoholism and binge-drinking they ignore and dismiss the attempts as “political correctness”. They view binge-drinking as an integral part of who they are, what defines their nationality – just as symbols like flags, national anthems, the state forces (military, police), sports teams – and of course, the majority rules: skin color, gender, faith, “values” and sexuality; the same conformist groupthink applies to white male nationalism, aggression, pride, privilege and superiority myths. And all these are of course exploited by industries and corporations to sell their products and control the consumers. Control the consumer and you control the voter…
The fascist mythology is quite simplistic: we are great, we are better, richer, stronger than the rest; we were here first (the implication behind the “discovery” myth of the American continent by the Europeans) and everybody else wants to take what’s ours but they are very, very bad people: they want to rape our white women (that we own), they want to take away our land, our property and our privileges, they are criminal, dirty, lazy savages, atheists and communists; they carry diseases and threaten to contaminate our racial identity, our National [(North) American, Western), “Christian”] values and our superior purity with their inferior blood. We used to be able to control these subhuman pests, exterminate and/or keep them as slaves but this right has been taken away from us and next they will be coming for our guns.
Play this message 24/7 on a loop, broadcast it loud, simple and clear, even disguised or subtle, to millions that have been conditioned for generations to be gullible and servile worshippers of higher power and its symbols (the Holy Book, the Gun etc), poorly educated and mistrustful of “others”, reliant on corporations for their panem et circenses consumerism, accustomed to systematic discrimination against “minorities” and see what you get: fanatics, zealots and Trump followers.
Tucker Carlson and the other, rather crude models like him, generated and hired by that particular factory production line of primitive humanoids (lacking the sophistication of more evolved androids like “The Manchurian Candidate” for example), and the slightly differentiated models who are tweaked to target specific demographics (Ben Shapiro – a model fit to operate among religious, Jewish “intellectual” conservative Trump-pseudo critics, Milo Yiannopoulos, useful among amoral, flippant, trendy gay men, alternative-right guru Richard Spencer, icon for the eloquent neo-Nazi brand of white supremacy) form an endless list; it includes mouthpieces in every skin color, gender and sexual identity so that they cover all target groups and is eternally upgraded and updated; many experimental variants, produced by more modernized and sophisticated factories, are undergoing public trials for efficiency in the constant, relentless race of the corporate totalitarian propaganda machine to be one step ahead, evolve, adopt progressive personas, take over public platforms, hijack legitimate concerns, messages, needs and demands of the public, and spew them back out at them twisted to suit the puppet masters and translated in Newspeak.
You might wonder why the controllers don’t ever bother with the controls to give Tucker or Shapiro a more humane, sympathetic outlook and pitch – the answer is simple: those tried and tested extremes work because they are impressive and command attention. To make them sound compassionate would be counterproductive – they need to emit raw power. Empathy, compassion, emotion, synergy is the enemy of the Elite – the message is intentionally, unapologetically egotistical: “I don’t care how you feel” – that is what we are supposed to accept and emulate because the flock must become selfish and divided, transformed from a social cooperative communal species to a mass of demoralized powerless units bickering between themselves, that’s the whole point: divide, conquer, control.
These dehumanizing fascistoid zombies might sound irritating to a functioning brain but tannoys are not designed for engaging in “talking” with rational people as equals; they are broadcasting constant brainwashing sounds at and to sheeple reared on a staple diet of brute force and ignorance, their empathy centers traumatized and neutralized since before birth: the brutalized folk need to hear the angry drone of these monotonous machine-gun voices spewing inanities while they are munching and suckling in their pens; its mother’s milk substitute gruel. It’s soothing. The faithful need to feel they are in safe hands, that the Great Leader, The Father of the Nation, male, white, Almighty, when he is not talking to them directly (something stressful to the flock) is represented by his disciples (superhuman androids), and together they are strong and tough, able to defeat the “very, very bad people” enemy.
Of course, Tucker & Co do not possess any ability to think for themselves and they don’t work for real News programs, so we can’t expect or demand they fact-check and report factual truths – there is no provision for that in the Faux Republic: they are objects, mask-wearing loudspeaker orifices of the propaganda machine. They do what they are programmed to do. Readers and listeners have to do their own cross-checking. So when Mouthpiece Tucker says “immigrants make America poorer and dirtier and more divided” it is actually extremely easy to find out that these are in fact lies and the exact opposite is true. The resources are at anyone’s fingertips, there are endless statistics and studies providing ample evidence that demonstrates the falsehood of such statements – but the Flock is instructed to never doubt the Gospel of the Great Father of the Nation as given to the folk by the trusted mouthpiece.
Of course, such mouthpieces wouldn’t be as effective in a just, pluralistic, multicultural, social democratic society; that is precisely why Americans have been inoculated against integration, social democracy and pluralism. The main reason for the emergence of extreme right-wing populism (the Trumpist brand of Fascism) is that the two-party system does not represent choice – the Republicans and the Democrats are GOP & COP-light. The GOP proper has moved to the far right while Clinton moved the Democrats to the right of center; failing to embrace the genuine Bernie Sanders grassroots movement the party establishment is directly responsible for Trump. (Recommended reading: Noam Chomsky on Fascism, Showmanship and Democrats’ Hypocrisy in the Trump Era).
And the “Democratic” party is about to make the same mistake again: frontrunners for the Democratic nomination are the Obama VP Joe Biden, Bernie and Beto, Beto-Biden-Bernie, or Bernie-Biden-Beto, depending on which of the polls you look at. (We seem to be in a B era of the Democratic party…)
Bernie is the only option if the Democratic Party genuinely wants to win in 2020: he has emphatically demonstrated in the 2016 primaries that, unlike Hilary, he would have easily defeated Trump. Biden, respectable and well-known surely, but represents the establishment – the Washington Democrats and the Obama era, of a POTUS charismatic, intelligent, eloquent and well-liked, but not really the ground-breaking people’s champion and the reformer he promised to be; it can be argued that many of his efforts were blocked and that he was intensely hated by the racist electorate, but still his foreign policy does not speak for peace. Beto, nice guy, charismatic, likable, BobbyKennedyesque and all that, but not clearly or really progressive based on record. Style over substance? Read the excellent analysis: Beto O’Rourke Should Not Run for President.
Will the Democratic Party persist on its stale logic of “name recognition” and middle-ground conservativism that robbed American voters of real choice in 2016? I am willing to make a wager on that: even if Trump is still in the picture in 2020, the Dems will likely go with another self-defeating choice. It might be Biden, it might be Beto, but it probably won’t be Bernie. The party establishment does not feel the love for Sanders. He is not one of theirs. And that ineptitude, if not plain hypocrisy and betrayal of the people, I hope I’m wrong, could cost them another election, an election very critical, not just for the Democrats and the US but for the world’s chances on Climate Action.
Why does the establishment hate Bernie Sanders? Have a guess…
Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, in the country where the “American value” system was born, informed by the same inherent vices (colonialism, authoritarian rule, imperialism, exploitation, racism, slavery) the racist, xenophobic terror-mongering trolls emerged from the anus of history to incite fear and hatred, dragging the UK back under its “Little Britain” rock…These are the “western values” that the far right really represents: the pseudo-values of the WASP ruling class to prey upon everyone else it looks down upon and protect the interests of plutocracy over democracy…
it couldn’t have happened at a worse possible time for humanity…
Recommended reading: Connecting Trump, Brexit and racial grievance
Interesting: The Racist History of Zombies
*Just so that you know who’s running the show:…related reading: Manosphere must sit down and shut up – men’s problems are caused by men]
The Eros Principle 