In a front-paged diary on My Left Wing by Hari Seldon called Class Struggle,Mr. Seldon quoted Gore Vidal as having said in answer to a question about what it was like to return to the United States after having spent years in Europe:
And it struck me that there it is, in a nutshell.
We have let it go so far that if you DO care about America, you CANNOT make any money.
Not really.
And…I will take it one step further.
Anyone who is steadily making money…is not in the midst of at the very least a severe regression of their wealth/fame/power/fortune, including those who have inherited their wealth…does NOT care about America.
Not really.
Because in a criminal system only the criminals (And their collaborators…collaboration being a crime in and of itself.) make money.
Look in the mirror here, folks. Those of you who are “making money”. And prepare to recognize…and hopefully to some degree extirpate…your OWN guilt.
I went through it. Going on 6 years ago. I was married to a collaborator and just barely free of the system myself. It took a cataclysmic change to see the light.
Good luck with it.
Drop the fuck out and refuse to collaborate any more than it takes for you and those who depend upon you to survive. You will be glad that you did. Believe it.
And beware your leaders as well.
Read on for more.
What is the present Kos KaKaphony on the blogs REALLY about?
It is about Armstrong and Armando…and Kos himself, bet on it…making money. The old fashioned/new fashioned way. By involving themselves in the corporate, lies and usury-driven system. And it is ALSO about the Las Vagueness choice for the convention, and the waste society memetics of Warner’s over the top sushi and martini party as well.
And what MOST appeals to me about the only two Dem politicians that I would currently be willing to support in ’08…Howard Dean and Russ Feingold?
The relative simplicity of how they live and dress. Not a “dressing-down” simplicity like Butch’s Hud character/regressive gay bar western outfits. The real thing.
I was watching the only sports talk show on TV that has an ounce of integrity (“”Quite Frankly with Stephen A. Smith”) recently, and Mr. Smith had Howard Dean on. Dean made his entrance wearing his trademark penguin-cut suit…off the rack, guaranteed…and a red tie that he had tied just a little too long (He carries no “dresser”. Also guaranteed. And I’ll bet he hates having the makeup people fuss on him, too.) so that it kind of protruded down below the button of the suit, which button itself was substantially…stressed getting across his workingman-looking squatty frame. He is not fat, exactly. Just a real mesomorph dealing as well as he can with middle age. (I can relate.) Dean has always reminded me a little of the 70’s Dodger power hitting third baseman Ron Cey. Nicknamed of course, “The Penguin”. Dean waddled on in, relievedly (quite obviously) unbuttoned his suit jacket, settled down tapping his feet in a slow but aware rhythm (Like any good batter, he was putting himself in good time. Watch them.), and hit every pitch right out of the park.
I LOVED it!!!
He is SO real.
Feingold, too.
They have continued to live fairly simply, given the exigencies of public life, and they are not (as far as I can see, anyway) just putting on an act.
Contrast that to an appearance I saw of Al Gore recently on the Letterman show…yes, I look for things of interest in an analytical sense on TV, and no I do NOT watch ANY of the commercials, so go away and go away now, any boobirds who are gearing up for their “J’accuse!!!” moment about how I am a media hypocrite…where he was TOTALLY (AND IT WAS QUITE EASILY PERCEIVED, AS WELL) FALSE from his $300 haircut to his every gesture, word and facial expression.
He may be quite sincere in his actions…I hope so, anyway, and I believe so as well…but he is, was and always will be a child of privilege, and it just STINKS off of him. He is a TERRIBLE candidate.
He is, very simply, a bad, bad actor. And his natural persona sucks.
Gore Vidal…a member of the Gore family, by the way (Gore’s father was a Senator and Vidal is, I believe, a fairly close cousin of Al’s.)…had it right.
He just didn’t go far enough.
His response should have been
I repeat what I have said often here…..in a criminal society, only criminal acts are rewarded.
And we are now officially a criminal society.
Ruled by criminals.
Propagandized by criminals.
Owned by criminals.
The United States is a powerful, rogue criminal state that is terrorizing its neighborhood…the earth, in this case…and burning down the system in its greed and corruption.
Burning it down in the William S. Burroughs sense.
Like junkies will “burn down” a doctor who will write junk scrips for money. Eventually that doctor is burned down. The cops get wise, and he is no longer useful to them. But of course…there’s always another crooked doctor. Burroughs extended this idea to his Nova Gang, a group of interplanetary criminals who use up the resources of a given planet and then move on to the next solar system to do the same thing all over again.
And there we jolly well are, aren’t we.
Check yourselves out.
Let he who is (relatively speaking, anyway) without sin cast the first ballot.
And…
Have fun…
Time’s a’wastin’.
Quite literally.
Later…
AG
Tips, recs…the usual.
And please…do not be angry at me if your bank account is fairly fat. We all do what we must to care for our loved ones.
But…PLEASE do not do more than is absolutely necessary to help these Nova criminals get over.
Take your creative support OUT of this society.
We need to quite literally starve them out.
Before the posse shows up and BURNS ’em out.
And us along with them.
Later…
AG
It’s hard for most people to make the distinction between “bad” acts and “bad” people. And, therefore in an attempt to feel good about ourselves we often cannot, or will not, see the harm done by things we partisipate in.
We live in a society that is rank with heirachial stratifications, which are imposed and maintained by violence and the treat of violence. Most of us are just trying to navigate that system with our skins intact – which require that we participate in it to a greater of lessor degree.
Admitting that we are trapped, but nonetheless actors, in a corrupt culture is the first step to changing it. Trying to maintain the fiction that because we are “good” people, the choices we make to sustain ourselves can’t really be “bad,” for ourselves and others, keeps us from postentially making better choices.
Money has become the main impliment of almost everything that is wrong in the world. The constant churing and circulation of money is what allows the powerfull to skim-off a portion of every transaction, in amounts too small for us to notice or care about – but which become enormous amounts in the aggregate. And with their aggregate wealth, tip the scales grossly in their favor.
Some ways to opt out of money churning:
pay cash;
buy directly from the producer (like the market gardener, or the small-business internet company);
buy less;
make things yourself (home-brewed beer is much better than store bought);
You get the picture.
It’s not about being a good person or a bad person, its about doing the best you can in a very bad system.
Yes.
AG
I have to disagree re this because I know some rich liberals who care, and are making money through their own efforts (doctors, lawyers, actors, writers). So I think this is painted with too broad a brush.
I think we need the wealthy to help us, and the way to get their help is not to globally impugn their integrity. While there are a lot of rich people who don’t give a second thought to the others they could help with their money,there are those who do care, who give large percentages, etc.
RHL, I think you are missing the underlying point of this dicussion about money. It’s not about “impuning” people who have it, it’s about questioning money overall impact on humanity.
Money as it represent power: in the hands of the poor it provides the power to purchase life’s necessities, and in the hands or the rich it is the power to control other people’s behavior, if they want to have access to life’s necessities, or if they want to distance themselves from the plight of the poor. Because money is rootless, i.e. not bound by proximity, or any other physical relationship, it can go anywhere and do anything, regardless of the damage that it does. It owes nothing to no one, and depends largley upon a sucession of desperate people to generate it. Money inherently corrupts humanity’s relationship with ourself, and with our earth.
Can “good” people have money? I’d give that a qualified “yes.” Can money pay for things that are needed? Of course. But the larger argument is that in the absence of money, many things wouldn’t have to be paid for – or the price that we pay would be a fair one. Without a global money system, our material necessities would have to come from the earth around us, not some far-flung banana republic whose ecconomy we repress in order to have cheap goods (as consumers) or to make money off of (as investors [if you’ve got a company pension, you can bet it has stock in overseas manufacturing]).
“Good” (with repect to ecconomic justice) doctors and lawyers don’t make much money. They tend to work for people who need, but can’t otherwise afford their serives. They certainly don’t live in gated-community houses looking down on the rabble below. That level of affluence cannot be justified – in a just society.
Pragmatism forces us all to operate in a monied enviroment. But we must never forget that money is anything but natural, or neutral. It’s very existence rewards selfishness and every other anti-social behavior. It skews everything it touches. And it frequently causes even our best intentions (such as charity) to get undermined by the “profit motive” or simple human concupidy (remember United Way, and how it’s founder was making $350,000 a year and flying the SST?).
Natural systems are cooperative and fragile. And we need to return to that land and people based ecconomy as much as possible. Not tackling the “money” problem is like ignoring global warming. That which cannot continue – like the fiction of concentrated power that money represents – will not continue. It’s best to deal with that reality as much as we can, as soon as we can. Or be caught out when the financial house of cards collapses.
Sorry, upon re-reading the above, it seems that today is an exceptionally dyslexic day for me.
You may be dyslexic…but you make great sense.
AG
Dyslexics are often multi-dimentional thinkers (who struggle with 2-D linearity). Leonardo da Vinci is a fine example of someone who struggled with writing, but could imaginatively grasp whole concepts. 😉
Rihgt.
AG
The other day I listened to a famous poet from Australia. He grew up a bum without formal education. He said he is dyslectic. Yet he is a Poet!
Do we really need the wealthy to help us? I can’t get beyond that idea. It would be better to severy tax the wealthy and build a democracy that spends it’s tax money well.
Thank you.
AG