Old School Road Trip of the American West

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Mq8QzPog6E

Hegemony and the Modern Condition in the United States

Human subjects are dominated by their masters. While you’re used to thinking of master/slave in terms of chattel slavery, so you appreciate the subjugation of black slaves to their white plantation owners and can understand why those slaves rarely revolt and often didn’t even think consciously about revolting, you don’t consider modern rulers to have slaves, precisely because you’re enslaved by the modern hegemonic force. Every slave begins by believing he’s free – his freedom can only begin with the realization that he’s not.

Slaves consume the product of the masters, often willfully, just like chattel slaves ate the food “given” to them by their plantation owners. And more importantly, they DON’T consume the products that their masters don’t want them to consume, just like the vast majority of chattel slaves didn’t act outside the bounds of their slavery, bounds that they as intelligent human beings fully understood.

The stronger a hegemonic force is, the more “subversive” the product they can produce. For example, a strong plantation owner could show his slaves the movie Django Unchained, which is about a former slave’s rebellion, but the purpose would not be to encourage his slaves to rebel but rather to say to them that I am so strong that I can show you this movie and you STILL won’t rebel.

Hollywood revels in it’s own power, a fundamental trait of all dominators.

The ultimate movie as far as Hollywood is concerned shows an utterly realistic method of achieving human freedom which they encourage people to see by means of a massive PR campaign, just like every big budget movie currently gets regardless of it’s quality. And then people tell each other how noble Hollywood is by means of “helping them free themselves”, and then they go to the next Hollywood movie, and the next one after that, etc., in order to experience the “feeling” of supposed freedom without the pain, terror, insecurity, loneliness, and oppression of ACTUALLY freeing themselves. It’s no fun at all to be free when the people around you are slaves. It’s this shared sense of community, this need to be intimate with other humans, which causes slaves to remain slaves, since the only other substantial community is the masters, and every human with a decent soul prefers slavery over mastery. This is why the masters terribly fear “misfits”, “antisocials”, “psychotics”, etc., not because they are “looking out for the well being of people” as they say, but because these are people in the process of freeing themselves, slaves who are cast out of slave societies for not being happy slaves.

Yet another deceptive Hollywood movie is The Matrix, where a small group of freedom fighters successfully battles the forces of oppression. This cannot occur in reality, only a mass movement with millions of people can successfully create a revolution.

There’s a modern conceit which is potentially very damaging, the idea that any mass group of people is inherently revolutionary. So the Arab Spring is called “revolutionary”, despite the fact that very little of any real positive substance has occurred there. The unfortunate reality is that hegemony is so strong, that potential revolutionaries are so desperate for any good news, that they invent good news to console themselves. So the Arab Spring is “revolutionary” despite not doing much, the mass gathering in Wisconsin around Scott Walker’s machinations was “revolutionary” despite doing effectively nothing, the anti-NATO gathering in Chicago a couple years ago was useless as I can personally attest to.

As I wandered around the anti-NATO gathering wondering what I was doing there, I noticed that I seemed to be the poorest person there, and I’m far from the poorest person in America. The typical protestor was a well-meaning middle-class person fearing for his material well-being after having gazed into his dark future. There’s nothing wrong with such people protesting of course, but if that’s what things amount to there’s not going to be any success.

Right after we dutifully marched down the streets of the wealthy I walked South, and just a few blocks away I saw a lot of poor black people, none of whom cared about the rally. Then I want back to the other world, and saw the protestors happily returning to their cars and buses, having done their “fight for justice”.

THEY DIDN’T GO SOUTH, THEY WENT HOME. This might as well be the slogan for the current state of things in the United States. Everyone knows poor people, especially poor black people, are pathetic and useless, right? Why bother inviting them? Middle class white people are so FUCKING AWESOME that of course they can do super-awesome things all by themselves. Besides, if poor black people are included then they might want some of the spoils of the “revolution”, and we can’t have that.

There’s such a thing as premature celebration. Can the Arab Spring lead to something useful? Yes. Will it? That’s a situation that is ongoing, to determine whether it will. But calling it a “spring” is itself depressing, since it’s much like the Obama slogan of “hope and change” – it gets hopes up while the elite use that manufactured hope to make things even worse.

A slave watching Django Unchained and cheering is doing nothing other than living vicariously through another’s experience, which isn’t even a real experience. Hollywood smiles in response and greenlights Elysium.

American fight for freedom only when the imperial benefits are gone

This is a reply to Tennessee-Chavizta from Dissident Voice. His words are in italics:

“But USA is just like any other country, i think that we will see a real change in USA in the near future, i think that there will be a popular uprising in this country, because american jobless citizens will not be able to conform to the misery food-stamp program”

The USA is not like any other country. It’s the heart of the global empire, and it’s people (pathetically) reflect that. There may or may not be a popular uprising in this country, but if so it will be the *last* among the Western countries.

Americans will defend their imperial benefits long before they will defend their freedom. It’s only when little hope exists for the continuation or recovery of those imperial benefits that Americans will “fight for their freedom”. This is precisely why the “shift to the left” in America only happened after 9/11, when Americans for the first time glimpsed the end of their empire.

This has always been the case in America, going back to the American Revolution when “fighting for freedom” was overheated rhetoric which translates into “fighting for power”. Once it became more profitable to overthrow British rule than live under it they did so, and Americans ever since have been brainwashed (most quite complicitly) into believing their country was founded on principles of freedom and equality. Tell that to the indigenous population, or the imported african population, or women, or various white ethnicities, or various capitalist losers, or the countless people outside the US enslaved or killed by these “freedom lovers”.

For Americans, it’s always been about power and it always will be. Now that the elite are weak and unable to provide Americans with sufficient imperial benefits sure, they may revolt. And then Dissident Voice can continue the centuries-old brainwashing by providing countless articles breathlessly extolling the “fight for freedom” of the American masses.

When will humanity move past ALL forms of propaganda and embrace truth?

Why the Zionists are committing a *slow* genocide of the Palestinians

This is a reply to David from Dissident Voice. His words are in italics:

“yet if genocide was their goal shouldn’t they have already easily entirely ethnically cleansed the defenseless Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank. After all Israel is efficient, ruthless and cunning, why are they taking so long to complete a genocide if this is their true goal?”

Precisely because they are efficient, ruthless, and cunning.

The project of Zionism is not just about the extermination and driving out of the Palestinians – it’s doing so without upsetting the global community and their own people. It’s this latter part which leads them to complex machinations and a very slow genocide.

The problem is not killing all the Palestinians. That’s easy. The problem is getting away with the crime. Zionists are building a political reality in the world so that they are successful in that world *during* and especially AFTER they’ve annihilated the Palestinians.

Any criminal can tell you that committing a crime is easy. It’s evading detection and capture that’s difficult.

An important question for Zionists has long been: “How will the world view us after the Palestinians are gone?”

Zionists examined America – examined how through American media and long-term economic domination America built a positive global image, despite the country being built on native American burial grounds and corpses with American settler weapons embedded. Zionists use the same propaganda tools and media manipulation as their father figure does.

It wants the same results, and very well might get them unless they are stopped.

This is the real reason America supports Zionism – not out of some pro-Jew or anti-Arab bias but because there is a deep recognition of the imitation by Zionists of American settlers – it’s PATRIOTISM among Americans, including much of the American left, that causes Americans to fade away with a sigh at Zionist atrocities. How can they destroy this monstrosity, when their very homes, their economic well-being, their global status, is built in the same way?

This is the fundamental success of the Zionist concept. Zionists are merely Americans, version 2. Oh brave new world…

More on imperial benefits and the imperial left

This is a reply to Tennessee-Socialist on Dissident Voice. His words are in italics.

“Brian Koontz: Americans recieve benefits if you are a conformist american. But most american workers can only eat and drive a car in America. But american workers cannot go to a university for example to study law, political science or philosophy, or cannot go to an endocrinologist doctor if they want to lose weight, because doctors are so expensive in America. So it is evident that the majority of americans are not well and *don’t* receive benefits at all.”

Education and healing should be universal rights, but there’s a massive difference between the welfare of “poor” Americans and the welfare of the global poor.

Take one huge difference – the minimum wage. Regardless of gender or race at least, most Americans can get a low-paying job. It’s not too difficult once American citizenship is attained for anyone to be a “poor” American. The federal minimum wage is currently $6.55 per hour and will be going up to $7.25 per hour next summer. The concept of a “living” wage in America* is sheer nonsense and political opportunism – it’s easy to live on the minimum wage in America.

According to even the World Bank (not exactly an unbiased organization), in 2001 1.1 billion people “lived” on less than $1 a day, and 2.7 billion “lived” on less than $2 a day. In other words, nearly half the global population makes less than a third in an entire day what a “poor” American makes in an hour. This was *before* the Bush Administration took it’s toll on the world.

The minimum wage in America is an *imperial* benefit. It resulted not (just) from “democratic movement”, as Chomsky claims, but from imperial theft and redistribution of that theft. The redistribution from Mob Boss to Mob Underling is what Chomsky calls “democracy”. Third-worlders perhaps have another name for it.

Life for a poor American is not peaches and cream. But at least a poor American knows what peaches and cream *are*.

“The only folks who are benefiting from Imperialist USA is Jennifer Lopez, Tom Cruise, the yuppie middle libertarian right wing bourgoeise elitist classes, but the majority of american employees and workers are not doing well at all. That’s why there is a need of socialism in USA so that wealth could trickle down to the masses”

The American poor are *not* the masses! The masses are the GLOBAL poor, the truly poor, those 1.1 billion “living” in sheer desperation and the 2.7 billion “living” in dire straits and the other billion+ mildly less exploited. The American poor are the Mob Underlings, exploited for sure but with a highly privileged and highly exploitive place in the global system.

A problem with Americans is that they always compare themselves to other (richer) Americans. Your examples of Tom Cruise and Jennifer Lopez are tragically typical. The American poor consume American media that shows opulence and the “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” and cry out “exploitation!” For the Mob Underling to compare himself to the Mob Boss and ignore the victims of the mob, the *true* victims, is to be blind and to not live in reality.

The American left is hardly less racist and monstrous than the right, but they have 1000 times the self-righteousness. They are the ones who “know about” Imperialism without actually knowing about it.

Don’t you think that one point of American media showing the “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” is so that poor Americans will focus on that instead of on attaining solidarity with the global poor? Don’t you think that you yourself have fallen into a capitalist trap, Mr. Socialist?

“Socialism in the USA” is nothing more than the Mob Underling trying to get more imperial benefits from the Mob Boss.

* I support a “living wage” in America as well as all other transfers from the Mob Boss to the Mob Underling only insofar as they do not distract the American left away from solutions to the world’s problems. It seems for most of the Imperial left that being distracted by those transfers is the point of their existence.

American History, Black History, and the "Right to Bear Arms"

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Truckers Hit the Brakes

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Part 2 of The Global Movement for Justice and the end of Oppression

Here is the my followup reply to Max Shields from Dissident Voice, per here. Max Shields’s words are in italics:

“Here’s where I think you move the argument too far. Yes, there is a complicity across the board with exceptions (from people of all color), but it does us no good to simply say that the machine that imposes empire is rooted in the colonies of America. New Orleans is such a colony, one of many. I cannot in all good conscience say that New Orleaners are the recipients of empire, anymore than the 700 miliary based colonies throughout the world that receive US remittances are in fact part of the oppressive machine. There is an important difference”

If there were no serfs there would be no king. We live in a neofeudal age, the age of corporatism. If there is no slave there is no master, because the slave acts as enabler for the master. The internal colonies of America are given special treatment due to actual democratic advances within a nation-state system. But with the rise of a single superpower, that superpower determined that it no longer needed to act democratically in order to woo international opinion it’s way. So the weak democratic elements that led to favoring internal American colonies over external colonies began to erode.

It’s the serfs as well as the king who keep the system going. If the serfs decide that the king will no longer receive the serfs’ bounty, he won’t. Many serfs will die of course in the aftermath of such a choice, but the king will also die and sooner than all the serfs will, since the emergence of a new king with more moderate policies will then occur in order to spare the lives of the remaining serfs (in order for the land as a whole to have more power than if the killing of serfs continue).

It’s completely true that black slaves played a large role in building the United States of America. But hardly anyone acknowledges the actual implications of that – which is that black slaves played a large role in building an empire of tyranny, terror, and mass murder. And now they want to reap the gains of such a criminal construct, instead of meting out justice.

As serfs they certainly didn’t choose for their masters to be imperialists, but they sure did keep giving the imperialist master bounties, didn’t they? And their “leaders” kept up the mantra of integration, of the desire to work their way up the criminal ladder, of the desire for wealth and to stand side-by-side with the mass murdering king himself. That’s what “equality” means within the American monster. The equal right to extort, coerce, and dominate the rest of the world.

It takes a brave serf to defy a king, and the history of black slaves in America is not a history of bravery (by and large). If it was the world would be a very different place today. Blacks mourn the death of Martin Luther King not so much because of his great leadership but because of the utter dearth of black leadership today. The serfs have lost their spine.

Serfs define kings, and black slaves (through chattel, wage, and neofeudal) have shared in the defining of the American monster.

“I do not think that New Orleaners perpetuate empire. As an American colony they are kept in receipt of remittances that reach but a few and are siphoned off by corporate elites. It is simply not fair to call a colonists racist or part of the heart of empire. They are peripherial at best.”

That’s like saying workers are “peripheral at best” within capitalist systems. It’s nonsense. Serfs are the heart and soul of every kingdom, and American serfs are no different. Even for those black Americans who have problems gaining a place as a wage slave, they serve a crucial role insofar as they hold a lower rung on the social ladder, and show those on a higher rung the suffering that waits for them if they get out of line. American progressives think they are sophisticated when they talk about poverty, never knowing or caring that it’s the different shades of poverty, “minor” differences in the social structure, that make all the difference. “Divide and conquer” is, sadly, understood far better by the masters than by those who claim to be helping the serfs.

What do you think the “American Dream” is, this thing that so many serfs care about and who are lamenting the death of? It’s about the gaining of wealth, of milk and honey. America is the “Land of Opportunity” – that is to say the opportunity for wealth. So it’s not surprising that those at or near the bottom of the American ladder would put their energies into climbing up that ladder instead of dismantling the system itself. In order to climb up a ladder there not only needs to be a ladder (the “American Dream” of upward mobility) but there also needs to be someplace to climb to, so that after all that climbing the person isn’t stranded at the destination. That “someplace to climb to” is filled with blood money extracted from American colonies.

“My point is that racism is essential to imperial empirism and it is true whether that colony resides within our outside the major empire – USA.”

No, it’s not true. Do you think the serfs of Europe were a difference race from the king? Do you really think if there was only one race on the planet there would be no imperialism? Imperialism and empire is about greed, about desire for power, not about racism. Racism is just a convenience, an easy way for divide and conquer to be maintained. End racism and all that happens is that American blacks move up that ladder.

Emotions are outcomes of social relationships, not causes of them. That is to say, if one plans to steal from and subjugate a bunch of people, it’s convenient for those people to be able to be identified by race. It’s extremely convenient – it’s a kind of skin-based uniform, so that soldiers immediately know who to shoot, for example. So that people know who to hate just by looking at them.

“All that said, racism in terms of the sanctity of life and the quality of life is what is very worrisome. When Americans, regardless of color, cannot empathize with the pain of Iraqi families who are suffering do to empire we have to acknowledge the universiality of this wretched condition.”

If the Iraqis were white there would be no increase in compassion among American whites. When a school bully extorts money he only cares about race if race plays a larger role in the school society – he really just wants the money and he seeks to get it in the easiest and cheapest way possible.

It may sound trite to say that the global division of race is based on convenience, but it’s true. White imperialists aren’t the way they are because they hate non-whites, they hate non-whites because they want a perpetual stream of wealth from them, and if this convenience wasn’t available they would extort even more from members of their own race.

Look at this another way – do you really think a capitalist machine stops and starts based on the race of the victim that sits on the assembly line in front of it? The machine just wants victims, and convenient victims makes for more efficient extraction, that’s all.

“To your issue of where change comes from, Brian, local change is the only meaningful change. It roots the change on a human scale that absolutely cannot be achieved from the top down (globally or nationally). To see such change across the globe or even just within the US landscape is a major challenge, but I think that the notion that we can have some kind of national or global transformationis nearly outside the realm of the possible. I can imagine a cataclysmic situation where human species is subverted across the planet. Within that context all bets are off.”

I don’t think we disagree here. The global democratic movement will link together many local movements. It will have to link them together otherwise it will fail. In order for people to support each other across the globe they have to be in communication, regardless of whether that communication is mediated or otherwise controlled in a “top down” or “bottom up” fashion.

Failure of Journalism in Iraq

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Let’s Build More Bombs

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Revisiting 2003 with Dennis Kucinich: "No More 16 Tons In America"

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John Cleese’s Letter to America

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Pinky Presents: Islands at Risk: Genetic Engineering in Hawaii

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How the service economy fuels white supremacy

White people (by and large) like being served by other white people, especially when that service requires frequent communication or other intimacy. White people have the money, and therefore are the ones being served. Therefore white servants are “better” than blacks or latinos or otherwise. Therefore whites get the jobs, therefore minorities are unemployed, therefore white supremacy is served.

How the wealthiest Americans make money off the poor

Part 1

Part 2

Blacks in US face greatest loss of wealth in US history

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American Political Spectrum

RevRevRevRevRev

PopPopPopPopPopPop

ProProProProProPro

demdemdemdemdemdemdemdem

reprepreprepreprep

LibLi

ConCo

DemDemD

MedMedMedMedM

RepRepRepR

CorCorCor

FasFa

Key:

Rev – Revolutionaries (Leftist)

Pop – Populists

Pro – Progressives

dem – democrats (promoters of democracy, has nothing to do with the democratic party)

rep – republicans (promoters of republics, has nothing to do with the republican party)

Lib – Liberals

Con – Conservatives

Dem – Democrats (the political party)

Med – Mainstream Media

Rep – Republicans (the political party)

Cor – Corporatists

Fas – Fascists

———————————————————————-

Note: This is the sane or semi-sane left to right scale. There are positions off the scale on both the left and right which have little impact, although the right side off the scale always threatens to break through nowadays.

Also note the lack of overlap between democrats, republicans, and Fascists. These are mutually exclusive categories.

Elite culture is reflected by the position of the Mainstream Media. While there is such a thing as the “Liberal Media” (note the overlap) Liberalism itself is on the right-side of the scale, and well to the right.

It might seem strange to see the Democratic party to the right of the Liberals, but consider that corporations control the Democratic party, and their position reflects that control.

I wasn’t sure where to put Conservatives. I don’t necessarily believe they are even to the right of the Liberals, or at least there may be some overlap.

Note that the American people (the non-elite who make up the overwhelming majority) are completely disenfranchised by the power sector of the society. This is true in most countries but rarely is it so clearly represented. It’s absolutely false whenever a Washington politician says he “represents the people”. He represents people all right – the people who run the corporations who are paying for his constant campaigning.

Part of the Fascist and Corporatist sectors are to the right of the scale.

The leftist groups have a much broader range of views. This is partially because the rightist groups place a lot of emphasis on agreement so as to push through policies and agendas, in the same way that a corporation sees all their members “on the same page”. Leftists tend to be individualists who don’t want to force others to modify their views.

It may seem illogical to only see Revolutionaries on the left side on the scale, but consider that the right holds power (as it does most everywhere at the moment). Even so, there is such a thing as the revolutionary right, it’s just off-the-scale. Countries like Venezuela have a revolutionary right.

America the Enslaved

The system is not corrupt
Corruption implies dirt that is covering an otherwise clean thing
All corruption requires is a shower
Our system is wrong to the core
It’s called a democracy when the slaves choose who uses the whip
The problem is that someone uses the whip
The problem is that citizens are gunned down by cops with no accountability
The problem is that people are jailed for smoking a joint while the president doesn’t lose his job for creating mass poverty and mass murder
Presidents always create mass poverty and mass murder – that’s why the elite pick them
Some just go too far, kill too many, impoverish too many – impoverish the wrong people, so they are deemed bad
But the presidential institution is rarely challenged, representative government is rarely challenged
Instead the “good” people try to give the system a shower
And then wonder why the same problems happen all over again

Buying Life

“I feel most alive when I am shopping”
A refrain spoken by few and felt by many
Toys ‘R Space, a Walmart superstore is the American Dream
The Good Life for the buyers, hell for the makers, power for the exploiters
Fun, fun, happiness, pleasure, always the endless smile

First for us, then for them, the American Myth
Our capitalism, our free market, our democracy, our way of life
The wage slaves see the endless smiles and wonder
What will happen to them when the myth is shown the truth?
Saw what happened to Iraq when Saudis attacked

But the truth can be ignored so long as there is a good life to lead
There are so many things in the world, and so little time to touch them
So little time to expropriate them, so little time to own them
So much need to maintain the good life at all costs

Victims, victims, the skin color really doesn’t matter
Racism is a convenience, hatred a tool
Abusing women is just good practice for the world
It feels good to ignore the poor, it feels good to ridicule them

So here America is – it’s decided Walmart is horrible
So it shops somewhere somewhat less horrible and calls it righteous
So here America is – it’s decided a war against Iraq is horrible
But a war against Iran – maybe that’s fine
So here America is – there America was – and there it will be
Deciding that vast human suffering is worth the good life

The future of America- public housing in New Orleans

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Chicago deal to pay 20 mil for police torture hits roadblock

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Quote of the day: “It’s remarkable. But… it’s Chicago”.

Chicago might be the 3rd most corrupt city in the country, after Washington D.C. of course and New Orleans.

There is no democracy – dissent is used to bend rulers into shape

Rulers will do exactly as they want unless they are forced to do otherwise by some outside force. The most convenient outside force is the American people, which is why they are the primary targets of elite propaganda. Dissent is not a matter of “expressing disapproval” – the rulers don’t care if the people disapprove. Dissent is successful if it either forces changes to the rulers, leads to new rulers more amenable to public will, or increases the number of dissenters (and thus increases the ability to force changes in rulership).

Every demonstration or direct action should be evaluated by the dissenters in terms of what it accomplished in light of the three positive outcomes of dissent.

In a hierarchical political system, the only outcome that’s in any way democratic is when the leaders are put in chains and only allowed to do what the people want done. Right now our “leaders” are roaming free and the results are inevitable.

Two Weeks That Shook Olympia

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We need a lot more than two weeks.

National Public Radio

What in the fucking hell are they talking about?
Some soft-voiced man with mush for brains
Some soulless resigned cretin passes for gentility
Some toxic sewer passes for an oasis
They are the drink of unending death

Total Exploitation – Them and You

Everyone in America is the result of exploitation
Good people in America serve an important purpose
To provide a public relations front to the world
Noam Chomsky is the ultimate false-front export
His message is that the American government is so liberal and tolerant that they allow him to speak
Dance, Chomsky, Dance

Who can estimate to what extent America is protected from attack because of the goodness of it’s people?
Who can estimate how the American people are exploited by the elite into providing a voice while the elite provide the silent abuse?
Freedom of Speech is for them to hear flowery nothings while they receive slavery and starvation
It’s for them to smile while their elite are being controlled by Washington
You can say anything you want only so long as your words have little positive impact – once they do more you are silenced
Everything is control. Noam Chomsky is encouraged as a PR mouthpiece unless things get out of the US government’s control
While the elite rules there will always be exploitation

Even if you’re poor in America you’re affluent
The American government is too confident still to allow Americans to starve, although that’s changing fast
Other people receive bomb blasts – you do not
They are raped by multinationals – you are not
They work in sweatshops – you do not
They live a life of large terror and small hopes – now you do
Welcome to the world that your elite created, Americans