Behind the curtain

I’ve been neglectful of this blog the last several months; my entries have been few and far between.

There are two reasons for this. The first is that I have been trying to follow my new policy, do only what you have to do (i.e., I’m a lazy sod). Second, I’ve just been too pissed off about too many things.

I would like to try to encapsulate that second reason.

Since the Great Bust of 2008, I have been astonished by the exhibition of corporate greed in the face of social turmoil. However, I have come to realize that my incredulity is hardly appropriate.

What I finally figured out is that things are exactly as they ought to be—in a capitalist society.

Capitalism is about profit, and American Big Business has been in a profit-taking heyday for nearly 40 years. In that time, we have morphed from citizens into consumers and from wage-earners into borrowers while at the same time “spreading democracy,” with the blood of America’s young adults, into heretofore unavailable markets.

As a result, the American market has been sucked nearly dry while other markets around the world, particularly in Asia and the Indian sub-continent, have become the focus of American manufacturing, marketing and capitalist profit-taking.

That the U.S. government is wholly supportive of these conditions is likewise not remarkable. It is, after all, bought and paid for by corporate campaign contributions.

Vote Republican. Or Democrat—it really doesn’t matter. That’s the benefit of a system designed for only two political parties. Any choice you make is the right one.

So, relax. Everything is at it should be.

What, too sarcastic?

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Faith of our fodder

For many years, I was of the opinion that religions—Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Hindi, traditional, etc. and their various and sundry sects—were responsible for a great deal of the bloodshed throughout humankind's history. A few years ago, I realized that was not the case.

God doesn't kill people—people kill people.

People have simply developed the belief systems (some call them faiths) that provide the rationalization for the slaughter of their fellow human beings and the appropriation of their land and goods.

Let's kill those godless heathens!

See ya' in church (temple, mosque, synagogue, whatever)!

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Something to think about

For most of my life, I took human intelligence for granted. It never occurred to me that our intelligence, extraordinary as it may seem to us, might not be all that remarkable in the grand scheme of things.

This “discovery” came about as I made inquiry, in recent decades, into certain areas of metaphysics, cosmology and anthropology: specifically, the nature of God, the nature of time, and the nature of man’s much-too-common inhumanity to man.

Encountering several, shall we call them, unsolved mysteries in these fields, I finally realized I had simply assumed that we humans were about as smart as it was possible to be. In fact, I came to understand, it wasn’t necessarily that these mysteries or problems were unsolvable, but more that it was likely our minds were not capable of the types of formulaic thought required to deal with them. In other words, I concluded that our brains were simply not adequate to the task.

“How can this be?” one might ask. To which I would answer: what conceit of human beings would expect it to be otherwise? Do we actually think our minds are of infinite capability? Actually, that type of expectation would tend to point up our limitations.

I do not mean to suggest that we humans have reached the limits of our abilities to determine the answers to any specific questions, but rather that our minds were not expressly designed to deal with all such issues, nor is it realistic to expect our mental processes to be without limit.

I’m just saying: something to think about.

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No class?

CNN June 27, 2011 Washington DC  The Supreme Court has tossed out an Arizona law that provides extra taxpayer-funded support for office seekers who have been outspent by privately funded opponents or by independent political groups.

A conservative 5-4 majority of justices on Monday said the law violated free speech, concluding the state was impermissibly trying to "level the playing field" through a public finance system.

Arizona lawmakers had argued there was a compelling state interest in equalizing resources among competing candidates and interest groups.

Once more, and again by a narrow majority, the United States Supreme Court has decided that money trumps fairness in the question of free speech.

As I’ve made mention before, I can’t really disagree with this interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. Nonetheless, I know this: until such time as money is separated from elections, we will not have a genuinely democratic republic. At the present time, and for the foreseeable future, this country is and will be an oligarchy, with a government controlled by a relatively few wealthy individuals and corporations.

Whether you are conservative or liberal, Democrat or Republican, male or female, Red State or Blue State, gay or straight, blue collar or white, unless you are among the very rich, your influence among our elected leaders is far less than those wealthy few who make the large contributions to campaign funds.

We are not a classless society. There are the wealthy and then there are the rest of us, deluding ourselves that voting rights equal freedom. Have you ever wondered why politicians make campaign promises but never live up to them? It's because they can't afford to. They are bought off by campaign contributions, the official bribery system of the United States of America.

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Don’t get me started: Is everybody stupid?

End of hiatus. Need to rant.

The GOP-controlled House is baying about Medicare and Medicaid spending.

Duh!

The problem isn't healthcare spending, the problem is HEALTHCARE COSTS!

Since the greed-deregulating days of the Reagan administration, healthcare costs have been on a rocket ride to the stars. It’s the free-enterprise system at it’s absolute, money-grubbing, pay-or-you-die worst!

The GOP solution? More "free enterprise!"

When the Dems were in charge in the first years of the Obama administration, what was their solution? Why, to try to put together a system the GOP would like. Hence, the nearly useless Obama-Care. (Wouldn’t it be funny if that Republican derogation stuck—and 150 years from now the federal universal healthcare system—and there will be one—is still known as Obama Care?)

Meanwhile, our so-called Fourth Estate is as useless as teats on a tractor tire. Rather than analyzing the issues, they analyze the issuance and, just for a change of pace, they go after each other. Of course, there’s always NPR—but listen to them for a week, and you start drafting suicide notes.

Finally, let’s not forget who fawns upon every eructation of the GOP fear-mongers, who sucks up the drivel spewed by FOX, who elects these brainless zombies to high office, and who keeps begging to be led to the sacrificial altars of Reaganonomics election after election—it’s you, baby, it’s you!

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