JR'S Free Thought Pages
No Gods ~ No Masters
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JR'S Free Thought Pages |
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Spectacles of Power and its Corruptions By JR, March 2025 Power attracts the corruptible. Suspect any who seek it - Frank Herbert Power is no blessing in itself, except when it is used to protect the innocent - Jonathan Swift
The capitalist state, one of the most authoritarian institutions in history, represents the moneyed interests of the “Masters of Mankind (Adam Smith’s term for ruling capitalist oligarchs, elites and ownership classes) rarely miss an opportunity flaunt power, even the decadent dimwitted members of the anachronistic British Royal Family. Professional sporting events is one popular venue for this as the military is regularly represented by one or more members of the armed forces who stand at attention with their automatic weapons while saluting the nauseating national anthem. Sport commentators and others refer to these members if the military as “heroes” for fighting the countless imperialist rich man’s war. This pathetic propaganda obviously works on the docile unthinking masses but not yours truly. I even despised the authoritarianism and regimentation of the boy scouts, now a disgraced institution due to sexual predation of adult scout leaders.[1] When we were about 15 or 16 years old my best friend and I even tried the Air Head Cadets, as we called The “Air Cadets”, and it was far worse than the Boy Scouts. We knew it would be a disgrace as we lasted a couple of hours “marching up and down the square” Monty Python style while some asshole clownish staff sergeant with a room temperature IQ screamed at us. It was all over when I told him to “Fuck Off”. Authoritarian social relations are displays of hierarchy and power, whether in the traditional patriarchal family, Christian churches, the highly regimented workplace, in our phoney so-called “democracies” in the corrupt capitalist controlled governments, the manufacture of consent and the regimentation and mind control bureaucratization and militarization of society. In our anything goes deeply immoral capitalist dystopia, lotteries and gambling on pro sports have been legalized to provide more trivial mind numbing anti-intellectual distractions, what educational philosopher Neil Postman called “Amusing Ourselves to Death”, the title of his revealing book. But Westerners have become automatons desensitized by cell phone addiction, endless mundane marketing depicting humans as unthinking out of control morons, violence from endless imperialist wars, exploitation and humiliation in the workplace and the winner take all wasteland culture as a whole. In his classic Escape from Freedom, psychoanalyst Erich Fromm described the features of authoritarian mass psychology that entailed hierarchical relations invariably including indoctrination, dominance, submission, mindless patriotism, militarized nationalism and the worship of brute force. To the authoritarian personality, Fromm wrote, “the world is composed of people with power and those without it.” “The very sight of a powerless person,” Fromm noted, incites the authoritarian urge “to attack, dominate and humiliate him.” For certain indoctrinated members of the military consigned to a demeaning low-status torturer and killer for the capitalist state, to cite just one example being the Iraqis interned and humiliated at Abu Ghraib. It provided “a vast opportunity for sadistic satisfaction”: total control and abusive dominance over helpless victims, the depraved enjoyment of which was sadistically recorded in the smirking faces of the perpetrators. For anyone who has not figured out how this global scam of gangster capitalism works, the prime objective of corporate capitalism and its more recent derangement of neo-liberalism for which finance and movement of money and assets is primary, are and always have been synonymous with the goals of the state. The political and economic systems are subservient to corporate profit at any cost, even the planets natural world and ecosystems on which our lives depend. An overpopulated unsustainable 8 billion humans and the contradiction of infinite growth on a finite planet does not deter the capitalist but out to disturb anyone with a rudimentary high school mathematical understanding. Debate between conventional liberals (traditional liberalism has been a rotting corpse for several decades now) and conservatives (one half step to the left of fascism) has been replaced by vacuous political rhetoric and spectacle. Corporations and especially the mafia banks and other criminal financial entities , no matter which politicians are in government, loot the Treasury, escape taxation, push down wages, break unions, dismantle civil society, dismantle regulation and legal oversight, control information, prosecute endless wars and dismantle public institutions and programs that include schools, welfare and Social Security. And when these parasites bring down the global economy, the thieves are bailed out by the taxpayers as trillions of dollars appear as out of a vacuum. In the US for example government is merely a protection racket for Wall Street; in Canada it’s Bay Street. Moreover, bought and paid for government elected officials (elections – the best money can buy - are also a farce, dominated by money), enriched through our form of legalized corporate bribery (referred to as lobbyists) have no intention of halting the entire sordid process. Everything under capitalism is a commodity, including people and the phoney “democracy” and elections every four or five years. As the outstanding female anarchist Emma Goldman rightly declared. “If elections changed anything, they would be declared illegal”. Notes: [1] Chris Hedges, who was an investigative journalist for the New York Times for 20 years until he was fired for telling the truth. He writes about it here in a piece called “The Menace of the Militarized Mind”: https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-menace-of-the-military-mind/ The reader may also want to read Hedge’s “The Rhetoric of Violence”: https://truthout.org/articles/the-rhetoric-of-violence/ Addendum: Fascism is back with us... Foreword My father and his older brother were fighter pilots in World War II, informed they were fighting a war against fascism. This war was essentially won by the Russians, but at a cost of 27 million of its citizens. My dad’s brother never return, killed at the Battle of El Alamein in North Africa in 1942. Not uncommon with war vets, my dad returned to a life of PTSD, alcoholism and emotional trauma for our family. Our strong willed intelligent mother who died at 94 in 2019 managed to keep our lives from unravelling. I wrote this after Donald Trump’s first disgusting disaster as POTUS. Fascism is Back It very likely has never left... By JR, June 2020 Fascistic sentiments have always existed beneath the veneer of political and cultural conservatism. In fact without the support of various conservative elements in their respective countries, Hitler, Mussolini and Franco would not have been able to gain political power in the 1930s. The disturbing rise of fascism throughout our chaotic beleaguered deteriorating 21st century world is drawing increasing attention, particularly as it assumes a stronger presence within national state societies long considered to have been immune from it. Some recent studies remind us of the characteristics of fascist movements and their leading proponents, particularly as they manifest themselves within conservative and other reactionary constituents within state societies. For example, in his recent book How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us And Them Professor Jason Stanley has identified ten characteristics shared by fascists which have been simply presented in the article ‘Prof Sees Fascism Creeping In U.S.’ A decade ago social critic and journalist Chris Hedges (an ordained minister whose father was a liberal minded Presbyterian pastor) wrote a book called American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. But the right wing of Christian society has always sided with political power provided it is located on the far right wing of the political continuum, having willingly supported fascism in the period between the two world wars.. Fascistic traits, readily evident in the United States, Canada, Europe, India, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Myanmar and elsewhere today, include belief in a mythic (often non-existent) past, anti-democratic propaganda to divert attention and responsibility from the true source and root causes of corruption, anti-intellectualism and belief in the enigmatic “common man”. These features are coterminous with the denigration of women in addition to political, racial and sexual minorities who seek basic equal rights and opportunity. Fascists seek political and cultural domination, promotion of authoritarian elitist hierarchies and ideology at the expense of any competing ideas such as those in relation to grass roots democracy, socialism, economic and political freedom and egalitarianism while portraying the elite and its agents as victims by relying on fabrication rather than fact to justify their pursuit of power. They use law and order not to punish actual criminals (such as the bailed out financial crooks and banking bandits who were exempt from prosecution in the global financial debacle in 2008), but to criminalize “out groups” like racial, ethnic, religious and sexual minorities which is why we are now ‘seeing criminality being written into immigration status and identification of those out groups as free riders and parasites as they attack the homeless, welfare systems and labour organizers while promoting the idea that elites and their agents (like silver spoon inheritors of wealth like George W Bush, Donald Trump and the Nazi saluting moral degenerate Elon Musk) are hard working self-made men. In an article ‘Fascism Anyone?’, published in the Spring 2003 issue of Free Inquiry Magazine, Professor Laurence W. Britt identified fourteen shared characteristics of fascism. These include powerful and continuing expressions of patriotism and nationalism, disdain for human rights, identification of enemies and scapegoats (such as atheists, humanists, communists, socialists, anarchists, liberals and libertarians, trade unionists, ethnic and racial minorities, traditional national enemies, members of non-Christian religions, secularists, homosexuals and terrorists) as a unifying cause, obsession with national security and avid identification with the military and police (those hired guns created to serve and protect wealth, power and privilege), law and order (for the masses), sexism, a controlled/compliant mass media propaganda system that promotes the elite agenda, a manufactured perception that opposing the power elite is tantamount to an attack on religion, corporate power [1] protected by the political elite while the power of labour is suppressed or eliminated, disdain for intellectuals and the arts, expanded military, police power and prison populations in response to an obsession with the crime and punishment of ordinary citizens (while massive crimes by power elites are protected by a compliant hand-picked judiciary), rampant cronyism and corruption and fraudulent elections defended by a judiciary beholden to the corporate oligarchy and financial manipulators. Offering a more straightforward characterization of fascism in the US context, which also highlights its violence more explicitly than the above characterizations, the eminent Norwegian peace research scholar Professor Johan Galtung explains it thus: “American Fascism? Yes, indeed; if by fascism we mean use of massive violence for political goals. US fascism takes on three forms: global bombing, droning and sniping all over; domestic with military weapons used across race and class fault lines; and then NSA-National Security Agency spying on everybody.’ See ‘The Fall of the US Empire – And Then What?” Among other recent commentaries, one may draw attention to a recent fascist gathering in the USA (see ‘Davos For Fascists’) another of the ways in which fascism, under various names, is being effectively disseminated (see ‘How the new wave of far-right populists are using football to further their power’) and another warns of focusing too narrowly on one issue and missing the wider threat that fascism poses (see ‘Fascism IS Here in USA’.) Twenty years ago Bertram Gross wrote a book called Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America, a book that needs to be re-read. The most important intellectual of the past 60 years, Noam Chomsky recently spoke about the emergence of fascism in the USA in an article and attached video. In any case, for those sufficiently alert to what is unfolding especially in places like the United States, India and parts of Europe, it is plain to see that the desperate scramble to fascism is accelerating. This ugly phenomenon is no more evident than the emergence of demagogic narcissist psychopath strong man Donald Trump, a man who would have made a fine fit in Hitler’s Third Reich. But why is this happening? Surely, in this scientific enlightened age, notions such as free thought, rational inquiry, human rights and economic equality are deeply embedded in our collective psyche, particularly in the West. We believe that elections should be, and are, free and fair and not determined by the market or corporate donations. We at least tacitly believe that the unelected judiciary (although more akin to a priesthood than an impartial or democratic entity) is independent of wealth, power and corporate influence. Simply witness the spectacle of the recent appointment to SCOTUS of a homophobic misogynist Christian fundamentalist who, along with other conservative appointments, have been instrumental in recently overturning Roe v Wade, sending women’s rights back to the 19th century. But the reality is far from this. In fact, the evidence offered to any thinking casual observer of recent events in the places mentioned above, as well as elsewhere around the world, informs us that, assuming we have ever had real democracy at all, none of what we have been inculcated to believe is true any longer. Notes: [1] It is no accident that Benito Mussolini, who made the world “fascism” a household word in the 1920s and 30s, defined it as “corporatism”, an apt expression to describe the oligarchy that owns us and the rubber stamp compliant political apparatus we deceivingly refer to as “democracy”. Has America Become a Fascist Dictatorship Disguised as a Democracy? By John W. Whitehead, October 26, 2018
Still from John Carpenter movie “They Live.” “The poor and the underclass are growing. Racial justice and human rights are nonexistent. They have created a repressive society and we are their unwitting accomplices. Their intention to rule rests with the annihilation of consciousness. We have been lulled into a trance. They have made us indifferent to ourselves, to others. We are focused only on our own gain.” —They Live, John Carpenter We’re living in two worlds, you and I. There’s the world we see (or are made to see) and then there’s the one we sense (and occasionally catch a glimpse of), the latter of which is a far cry from the propaganda-driven reality manufactured by the government and its corporate sponsors, including the media. Indeed, what most Americans perceive as life in America—privileged, progressive and free—is a far cry from reality, where economic inequality is growing, real agendas and real power are buried beneath layers of Orwellian doublespeak and corporate obfuscation, and “freedom,” such that it is, is meted out in small, legalistic doses by militarized police armed to the teeth. All is not as it seems. “You see them on the street. You watch them on TV. You might even vote for one this fall. You think they’re people just like you. You’re wrong; dead wrong.” This is the premise of John Carpenter’s film They Live, which was released 30 years ago in November 1988 and remains unnervingly, chillingly appropriate for our modern age. Best known for his horror film Halloween, which assumes that there is a form of evil so dark that it can’t be killed, Carpenter’s larger body of work is infused with a strong anti-authoritarian, anti-establishment, laconic bent that speaks to the filmmaker’s concerns about the unravelling of our society, particularly our government. Time and again, Carpenter portrays the government working against its own citizens, a populace out of touch with reality, technology run amok, and a future more horrific than any horror film. In Escape from New York, Carpenter presents fascism as the future of America. In The Thing, a remake of the 1951 sci-fi classic of the same name, Carpenter presupposes that increasingly we are all becoming dehumanized. In Christine, the film adaptation of Stephen King’s novel about a demon-possessed car, technology exhibits a will and consciousness of its own and goes on a murderous rampage. In In the Mouth of Madness, Carpenter notes that evil grows when people lose “the ability to know the difference between reality and fantasy.” And then there is Carpenter’s They Live, in which two migrant workers discover that the world is not as it seems. In fact, the population is actually being controlled and exploited by aliens working in partnership with an oligarchic elite. All the while, the populace—blissfully unaware of the real agenda at work in their lives—has been lulled into complacency, indoctrinated into compliance, bombarded with media distractions, and hypnotized by subliminal messages beamed out of television and various electronic devices, billboards and the like. It is only when homeless drifter John Nada (played to the hilt by the late Roddy Piper) discovers a pair of doctored sunglasses—Hoffman lenses—that Nada sees what lies beneath the elite’s fabricated reality: control and bondage. When viewed through the lens of truth, the elite, who appear human until stripped of their disguises, are shown to be monsters who have enslaved the citizenry in order to prey on them. Likewise, billboards blare out hidden, authoritative messages: a bikini-clad woman in one ad is actually ordering viewers to “MARRY AND REPRODUCE.” Magazine racks scream “CONSUME” and “OBEY.” A wad of dollar bills in a vendor’s hand proclaims, “THIS IS YOUR GOD.” When viewed through Nada’s Hoffman lenses, some of the other hidden messages being drummed into the people’s subconscious include: NO INDEPENDENT THOUGHT, CONFORM, SUBMIT, STAY ASLEEP, BUY, WATCH TV, NO IMAGINATION, and DO NOT QUESTION AUTHORITY. This indoctrination campaign engineered by the elite in They Live is painfully familiar to anyone who has studied the decline of American culture. A citizenry that does not think for themselves, obeys without question, is submissive, does not challenge authority, does not think outside the box, and is content to sit back and be entertained is a citizenry that can be easily controlled. In this way, the subtle message of They Live provides an apt analogy of our own distorted vision of life in the American police state, what philosopher Slavoj Žižek refers to as dictatorship in democracy, “the invisible order which sustains your apparent freedom.” We’re being fed a series of carefully contrived fictions that bear no resemblance to reality. The powers-that-be want us to feel threatened by forces beyond our control (terrorists, shooters, bombers). They want us afraid and dependent on the government and its militarized armies for our safety and well-being. They want us distrustful of each other, divided by our prejudices, and at each other’s throats. Most of all, they want us to continue to march in lockstep with their dictates. Tune out the government’s attempts to distract, divert and befuddle us and tune into what’s really going on in this country, and you’ll run headlong into an unmistakable, unpalatable truth: the moneyed elite who rule us view us as expendable resources to be used, abused and discarded. In fact, a study conducted by Princeton and Northwestern University concluded that the U.S. government does not represent the majority of American citizens. Instead, the study found that the government is ruled by the rich and powerful, or the so-called “economic elite.” Moreover, the researchers concluded that policies enacted by this governmental elite nearly always favour special interests and lobbying groups. In other words, we are being ruled by an oligarchy disguised as a democracy, and arguably on our way towards full throttle fascism—a form of government where private corporate interests rule, money calls the shots, and the people are seen as mere subjects to be controlled. Not only do you have to be rich—or beholden to the rich—to get elected these days, but getting elected is also a surefire way to get rich. As CBS News reports, “Once in office, members of Congress enjoy access to connections and information they can use to increase their wealth, in ways that are unparalleled in the private sector. And once politicians leave office, their connections allow them to profit even further.” In denouncing this blatant corruption of America’s political system, former president Jimmy Carter blasted the process of getting elected—to the White House, governor’s mansion, Congress or state legislatures—as “unlimited political bribery… a subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect, and sometimes get, favors for themselves after the election is over.” Rest assured that when and if fascism finally takes hold in America, the basic forms of government will remain: Fascism will appear to be friendly. The legislators will be in session. There will be elections, and the news media will continue to cover the entertainment and political trivia. Consent of the governed, however, will no longer apply. Actual control will have finally passed to the oligarchic elite controlling the government behind the scenes. Sound familiar? Clearly, we are now ruled by an oligarchic elite of governmental and corporate interests. We have moved into “corporatism” (invented by Benito Mussolini), which is a halfway point on the road to full-blown fascism. Corporatism is where the few moneyed interests—not elected by the citizenry—rule over the many. In this way, it is not a democracy or a republican form of government, which is what the American government was alleged to be. It is a top-down form of government and one which has a terrifying history typified by the developments that occurred in totalitarian regimes of the past: police states where everyone is watched and spied on, rounded up for minor infractions by government agents, placed under police control, and placed in detention (a.k.a. concentration) camps. For the final hammer of fascism to fall, it will require the most crucial ingredient: the majority of the people will have to agree that it’s not only expedient but necessary. But why would a people agree to such an oppressive regime? The answer is the same in every age: primarily fear of freedom and moral responsibility. Moreover, Fear makes people stupid – and dangerous. Fear is the method most often used by both religious leaders and politicians to increase the power of churches (which pay no property or income taxes – where do I sign up?) and government respectively. And, as most social commentators recognize, an atmosphere of fear permeates modern America: fear of terrorism, fear of the police, fear of our neighbours, and so on. The propaganda of fear has been used quite effectively by those who want to gain control, and it is working on the American populace. Despite the fact that we are 17,600 times more likely to die from heart disease than from a terrorist attack; 11,000 times more likely to die from an airplane accident than from a terrorist plot involving an airplane; 1,048 times more likely to die from a car accident than a terrorist attack, and 8 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than by a terrorist , we have handed over control of our lives to government officials who treat us as a means to an end—the source of money and power. As the Bearded Man in They Live warns, “They are dismantling the sleeping middle class. More and more people are becoming poor. We are their cattle. We are being bred for slavery.” In this regard, we’re not so different from the oppressed citizens in They Live. From the moment we are born until we die, we are indoctrinated into believing that those who rule us do it for our own good. The truth is far different. Despite the truth staring us in the face, we have allowed ourselves to become fearful, controlled, anaesthetized distracted zombies with eyes perpetually glued to our cell phones and other lobotomizing technology. We live in a perpetual state of denial, insulated from the painful reality of the American police state by wall-to-wall entertainment news and screen devices, what 30 years ago the educational philosopher Neil Postman referred to as “Amusing Ourselves to Death”. If only he were alive today to witness the cognitive damage. Most everyone keeps their heads down these days while staring zombie-like into an electronic screen, even when they’re pushing their baby carriages, walking their dogs or merely crossing the street. Families sit in restaurants with their heads down glued to a 7 inch screen, separated by their screen devices and unaware of what’s going on around them. Young people especially seem dominated by the devices they hold in their hands, oblivious to the fact that they can simply push a button, turn the thing off and walk away. Indeed, there is no larger group activity than that connected with those who watch screens—that is, television, lap tops, personal computers, cell phones and so on. In fact, a Nielsen study reports that American screen viewing is at an all-time high. For example, the average American watches approximately 151 hours of television per month. The question, of course, is what effect does such screen consumption have on one’s mind? Psychologically it is similar to drug addiction. Researchers found that “almost immediately after turning on the TV, subjects reported feeling more relaxed, and because this occurs so quickly and the tension returns so rapidly after the TV is turned off, people are conditioned to associate TV viewing with a lack of tension.” Research also shows that regardless of the programming, viewers’ brain waves slow down, thus transforming them into a more passive, non-resistant state. Historically, television has been used by those in authority to quiet discontent and pacify disruptive people. “Faced with severe overcrowding and limited budgets for rehabilitation and counseling, more and more prison officials are using TV to keep inmates quiet,” according to Newsweek. Given that the majority of what Americans watch on television is provided through channels controlled by six mega corporations, what we watch is now controlled by a corporate elite and, if that elite needs to foster a particular viewpoint or pacify its viewers, it can do so on a large scale. If we’re watching, we’re not doing. The powers-that-be understand this. As television journalist Edward R. Murrow warned in a 1958 speech: We are currently wealthy, grossly obese, comfortable, complacent and lacking in self control and self-discipline. We have currently a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information. Our mass media reflect this. But unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse, and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it, and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture too late. This brings me back to They Live, in which the real zombies are not the aliens calling the shots but the populace who are content to remain controlled. When all is said and done, the world of They Live is not so different from our own. We, too, are focused only on our own pleasures, prejudices, obsessions, addictions and monetary gains. Our poor and under-classes are also growing. Racial injustice is growing. Homelessness is an epidemic and human rights are nearly nonexistent. We too have been lulled into a trance, indifferent to others. Oblivious to what lies ahead, we’ve been manipulated into believing that if we continue to consume, obey, and have faith, things will work out. But that’s never been true of emerging regimes. And by the time we feel the hammer coming down upon us, it will be too late. So where does that leave us? The characters who populate Carpenter’s films provide some insight. Underneath their machismo, they still believe in the ideals of liberty and equal opportunity. Their beliefs place them in constant opposition with the law and the establishment, but they are nonetheless freedom fighters. When, for example, John Nada destroys the alien hyno-transmitter in They Live, he restores hope by delivering America a wake-up call for freedom. That’s the key right there: we need to wake up. Stop allowing you to be easily distracted by pointless political spectacles and pay attention to what’s really going on in the country. The real battle for control of this nation is not being waged between Republicans and Democrats in the ballot box. As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the real battle for control of this nation is taking place on roadsides, in police cars, on witness stands, over phone lines, in government offices, in corporate offices, in public school hallways and classrooms, in parks and city council meetings, and in towns and cities across this country. The real battle between freedom and tyranny is taking place right in front of our eyes, if we would only open them. All the trappings of the American police state are now in plain sight. Wake up, America. If they live (the tyrants, the oppressors, the invaders, the overlords), it is only because “we the people” sleep.
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