Some Additional Thoughts To Throw In The Mix

America's Favorite

Some additional matters of interest have been swirling around this end game the political class seems to be playing. While they and their owners and sponsors continue to wrangle over how quickly and thoroughly the tattered remnants of the Republic (we have been unable to keep) shall be unraveled, we the People wrestle with a whole other set of circumstances Our Betters have neither the time nor the patience for:

• Joblessness


• Debt


• Hunger


• Homelessness


• Stolen Future


• Endless Sacrifice

And that's just for starters, to get the ball rolling as it were. The situation for many households in America is dire. A report just came out (can't find the link at the moment, but will add it once I do) that points out that California's median household income fell by 11% between 2007 and 2010, a spectacular drop compared to the oft reported increases in median (or sometimes "average") income during this Endless Recession.

I've long been suspicious of any statistical report that claims rising income for Americans in general because it just isn't so. I've witnessed too many cases of household incomes remaining perfectly flat at best during the course of the Endless Recession, and too many cases, way too many cases, of household employment income falling by anywhere from 10% to 50% (and sometimes more) in the course of a few years.

The statistics have clearly been skewed by the fact that those at the top continue to amass gigantic fortunes from which they derive enormous income, though statisticians deny it.

Millions have been forced out of their jobs, and millions have been forced out of the job market altogether; labor force participation is at the lowest point in generations and it continues to shrink. Poverty is at the highest level in generations and it continues to grow. The two are related it seems to me, factors, you might say of one another. Duh.

But in his acceptance speech -- which I have still not seen any of -- the Would-be King Emperor, Shahanshah, declared that when $21.00 an hour jobs with benefits "went away," Americans rolled up their sleeves and took two jobs that paid $9.00 an hour without benefits and they forged onward, uncomplaining, happy indeed to be able to continue the March of Progress -- at least that's a paraphrase of a report I saw. "Only in America," right?

Americans are falling backwards rapidly, and this is due, as I have repeatedly pointed out, to the deliberate policie at the top of the Government which in turn are determined -- if not dictated outright -- by the desires of the Masters of the Universe who crashed the economy to begin with. Those few people still control the United States and they largely control the rest of humanity as well.

Should the RomneyBot and His Familiar succeed in their Pinky and the Brain plan to take over the world -- their plan after all is directly out of the Reaganite-Gingrichite playbook. I've long assumed that the models for the cartoon characters were Ronnie and Newty -- things for the average sod will only get worse, far worse, far more pervasively and far faster than anyone thought possible.

The so-called political "opposition" isn't even playing a rearguard action any more, it's now a rout. The Future -- at least anything resembling a Future as we once understood it -- is gone.

"There's nothing left."

Well, not exactly "nothing." What Our Rulers are attempting to engineer, and the ACA is a perfect example of it, is the subjugation of the American People, through a form of taxation, to corporate interests in perpetuity; it's a form of debt slavery. Whether it is precedented or not I can't say, but in the end it hardly matters whether it's been done before, what matters is that it proceed with as few impediments to those on the top who will benefit from these extractions as possible.

So far, so good.

The New Future of Universal Debt Slavery -- through what amounts to automatic extractions from the 99% on behalf of corporate interests via innovative forms of taxation -- will shortly become the New Normal in part because there is almost no conscious opposition to it. There is opposition but not so much at the root of the problem, the real issue as it were.

Somewhat tangentially, there is a remarkable review by Mike Beggs of David Graeber's "Debt" over at Jacobin that is quite a wonder in its own right, for it does seem to go on forever. These are the kinds of exercises I have long had a love-hate relationship with, for they often add to the consideration, even though ultimately they are as light as froth floating in the air. It's appreciable in its own evanescent right, though what it actually has to say about "Debt" -- apart from the nostrum that "anecdotes aren't enough" -- is lacking... clarity. In fact, Beggs seems to be quite taken with Graeber's anthropological and indeed anarchist approach to his topic, one that makes mincemeat out of economists (who deserve it of course), and provides a comprehensive and comprehensible framework for the woefully uninformed public to understand what is really going on.

But it's not enough for him, he wants something both grander and more granular, and cites a number of works that provide what he is looking for. Ergo, what? Yes, there are other works out there, and isn't it great? Anyway, I didn't mean this to devolve into another criticism of the critic -- one of my favorite pastimes when time was -- but Beggs' contribution to the discussion is something else again. Check it out if you have a few hours to spend on... froth.

Meanwhile, Mark Ames has put out a piece dealing with the nature of the shoot-to-kill kultur that pervades American Authoritarian Society these days and how it relates to both the propaganda culture and the "twerps" who so often are placed in positions to defend the indefensible. It's a rollicking ride than can make for substantial dot-connection. Ames is very good at that.

As is his former colleague at the Moscow headquarters of the late-lamented Exile, Matt Taibbi, who works his gonzo mangler into a perfect storm of revelations regarding RomneyBot and his devotion to loading companies with debt from which many never recover, while he collects fabulous amounts of free money. Automatically. That's what it's all about in our financialized supposed capitalist casino, getting to the point where "I win, you lose" is institutionalized and made permanent.

There's your trouble -- and there's your Future.

Let the Dixie Chicks make it all better:


Finally, from May, a piece from the Occupied Chicago Tribune regarding the Dreaded Black Bloc. Much virtual ink has been spilled on the topic (lord knows, I've done my share), but this is one of the better examinations of the phenom of the Black Bloc and just what it does and doesn't do. Recommended.

"Dance for that Anarchy" -- Po-Po Troopers getting out of the rain in Tampa on August 27 prior to the RNC, while the folks dance for that anarchy in the downpour.



Another Po-Po Troopers in Tampa video. This is actually pretty sad... it's from Indybay.org:

Long Time Gone

Several posts got started during this summer hiatus, but they still languish unfinished like so much else in our lives and our land. Like the houses that stand forlorn and half-complete up and down California, the spanking new neighborhoods blasted by foreclosure, bankruptcy and fraud.

Or like the career of the Dixie Chicks, their rise never really complete because it was blasted by the ignorant and the fools and the go-alongs, the get-alongs, the fearful and the frantic. I have seen them a couple of times and have felt they would never want for any work at all, way too much talent to be shunted to the sidelines, and yet... Too often in Modern America the best and the brightest are pushed away, pushed out, forgotten, forlorn.

I've been very impressed with Obama's Progress -- almost a Royal Progress -- through the lands benighted and enlightened this last week or so. He certainly makes a brilliant appearance, and the contrast between his openness, good humor and energy (they called it "vigor" or "vigah" back in JFK's day) and the crabbed snottiness and utter lonliness of Bush's ventures abroad could not be more acute. And yet, as he made his way from one stop to the next, it seemed like he was turning in to a Bushevik, right before our eyes, offering very little in the end that wasn't already part of the Beltway Palace Program. Actually, the Palace and the Camp Obama have been assimilating one another for some time. So much so, it's hard to find points of major difference any more. His nemisis and rival, Princess "Scarlett" McCain, even adopted his "16 Month Withdrawal" timetable, but it's a "withdrawal" so frought with caveats and leave-behinds and force protections and so forth, it quite obviously is intended to perpetuate the occupation of Restive Mesopotamia into the very long-term future.

No, the primary difference between Bushevisim and Obamism at this point is that crucial matter of Personality.




Nothing wrong with that. And yet obviously we're now dealing with a status quo candidate, not a "Change" candidate at all. Status quo at least in the context of our Imperial adventures and conquests, the irrelevance of the Constitution and so on. The Important and Serious Matters that maintain American hegemony. You see.

Obama is running for King-Emperor. Republic? Presidency? Hah. Old Fashioned. Get with the New Modern Program! Forward!

Once under way, it's very hard to stop this sort of "change". It may wear itself out in time, in fact, it probably will, sooner rather than later, as the economic situation in this country deteriorates further and the security situation of our overseas empire fails to improve. Just as the Soviet Union was undermined and brought down by this sort of internal and external bleeding, so might America's latter day experiment in Empire. The World would just as soon have it so. Our hegemony, at least under the lash of Bush and Cheney, has been a global nightmare and horror.

But there is so much left unfinished, so much still to do. We have so far to go. Still.

Don't we?

Listen to Glenn Greenwald's interview with Daniel Ellsberg on Salon Radio. If you were around back in the day when Ellsberg did something very brave, lots of memories will be jogged. If you weren't around back then, his story should curl your hair. His question: Why isn't there anyone in government now -- ANYONE -- who will do the equivalent today of what he did then? What has happened?