No analysis, no actions, just 9 minutes of extraordinary video on the morally debase Covid relief bill just past by Congress. I didn’t include anything more, because I want everyone to watch this video and share it and comment on it and remember it.
After viewing, please offer your reaction and comment. Thank you. Paul & Roxanne
Categories: Economic justice
Unfortunately the failed campaign of Bernie Sanders shows that the vast majority of the American sheeple do not want Marxist theory.
I know he is right. It would be good if he finished the argument by adding that the rich have a reason (before they reach greed as their goal) to screw the poor: they want cheap labor that won’t complain about poor working and living conditions (fetid air, polluted water). If Adam Smith didn’t say this, then Marx did. Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.
Hi Paul
The political class, most of them lawyers, were created and designed to minister to the needs of the white supremacist majority of landowners. Then industrialists and merchants were added. Then bankers were needed to pocket the vast load of individual resources the rich few and the poor many were afraid to lose via thefts due to the pathetic examples set by the same supremacists against the landless, the Black slaves, the First Nations obstacles and the new immigrant class.
Called a democracy, the real result was a warped version of feudalism that had largely failed in the Old World. To do this, these lawyers were handsomely bribed via quid pro quo, and then schooled in extortion, using newly written laws to manipulate every type of enterprise/person to ante up for protection and favors.
Mob rule, in a nutshell.
To capitalize something is to throw resources behind it, or into it or at it, in order to make it more powerful. The raw ambition of the lawyer class made them willing sycophants to the oligarchs, who had not/have not changed one iota in 10k years. These resources, or in many ways, original sources that cannot be regenerated, came from the Earth itself, and those who were forced to work it over while eking out a miserable living from its remains.
In simple biological terms, this is the world of the parasite. The enemy of the parasite is community, one that internally cooperates in order to find and kill the parasites so the community can become whole and healthy.
There are at least three types of parasites. One hides silently, eating slowly and methodically until the host is too weak to live. The second is the kamikaze, tearing into the host with fury, overwhelming it and killing it while using its corpse to lay the eggs of the next generation. The third is the most sinister, the one that takes up permanent residence within its host, handing out a few perks here and there in exchange for the right to make the host a chattel slave, like the company and its company store and its company housing and its company mercenaries keeping the slaves in and the enemies out. This is the long-haul, capitalist parasitism of ‘murka.
It fears and loathes progress. It relishes punishment and one-upsmanship. It seduces the brain chemistry into the addictions of cruelty, vengeance and arrogance. It encourages violence over cooperation, bribery above independent action, extortion over honesty.
As long as there are fresh hosts to invade, the value of the current host depends upon its willingness and ability to give more and more while accepting less and less. If it weakens, or complains, it is a threat and its usefulness is gone, so it is killed off, its parts recycled for fertilizer, and a new host is herded into the slaughterhouse of the grifting murderer.
The third type of parasite is what Wolff describes. For its entire life, ‘murka has been a constant lie, using every type of parasitic behavior to ensure that the Marat de Saude is freshly staffed with inmates, while the Marquis’ continue to revel in pornographic debauchery of every sort, throwing worthless coins to its whores and slaves.
We all live this lie, and participate in it, to one extent or another. As Daniel Quinn famously noted, we are either takers or givers in this kabuki theatre of the absurd.
To do otherwise is to become an enemy of the state. Many in ‘murka attempt to do this, without morphing into a criminal class that is indistinguishable from that state. Others just live outside the box, blend in, say little or nothing, or foster mini uprisings that slowly weaken and infect the state with its own toxic slime.
There is plenty of slime lying around, and it is the only weapon left for the 90 percent that is available.
Take a long, hard look at the ‘state’ that is ‘murka. Right now, this week, today.
What do you see?
Mick Nickel
Howard Zinn calls the poor and the vulnerable “the prisoners” of the system, but he interestingly calls the middle class aka the professional class “the guards” of the system. He continuously points out how the capitalist system uses the middle class to create a buffer between the poor and the rich by giving just enough to the ones in between – the middle class is comfortable enough to defend the system. Now that Trump has been defeated, will we return to defending the system and finding all imaginable justifications for it just because the lesser of the two evils has prevailed? Will we allow our hunger for hope to color our vision?
Hi retake,
I will pass on the video. Thanks,
Justin
The more one learns about the political system of the US and other so-called “developed nations”, the more we are confronted with the truth of a republic with a capitalist colonialist rule. The only way to defeat this is to op-out. Become an entreprener, leave the US to work for justice elsewhere, or organize with those who understand the level of corruption and work your entire life to defeat this evil. Ultimately, our nation will be defeated from within, by the collapse of the systems created solely to reward wealth, maleness and whiteness. This is a tough lesson; especially when we confront personally how much we have privilege we never earned at the expense of those we dismiss as lazy, stupid, or less-than. We have been carefully fed a mythology of equality and justice for all. Unless you are actively working to confront the inequities, you are part of the problem. merry christmas.
A few days ago I volunteered with Mutual Aid 4 Santa Fe to pick up food boxes at the Food Depot for 5 families who could not drive themselves to get there own. I arrived at Agua Fria and Siler Road at 7 AM and was stunned to see hundreds of cars idling in line, waiting for food. The line stretched from Food Depot all the way down Siler to Agua Fria, then wrapped around West on Agua Fria all the way to the elementary school. From there it split in two, one line extending further west on Agua Fria and another extending South towards Home Depot. I’m told they were serving at least 1000 people and that the lines are getting longer. This is commodity food, not even organic. Problems with supply chain and ever increasing demand is leading to some shortages already. This is America today. I heard that Jeff Bezos could pay every single one of his employees $102,000 and still have as much money as he did when the pandemic started. And he’s asking for donations??? The top 500 plus billionaires made $1 trillion dollars during the pandemic and the government insults the rest of us with $600?? $600 is what rich people think poor people consider a lot of money. I met a guy yesterday at Bien Venidos with no home, no phone, no computer, and everything he owned he was wearing. He was asking staff for socks and sharing a box of food with someone else. This is America today, in Santa Fe.
I got to this late, but thank you for sharing Professor Wolff’s overview. I find this right on, understandable to the lay person, and just truth telling. It just seems like the youngster finally stating the obvious truth that “the Emperor has no clothes.”