So I was going to write a column about a recent column Chris Hedges wrote about Delaney Hall, a private prison in New Jersey, operated by The GEO Group, Inc.
It's a curious thing ... in a world of AI and post-truth, nobody seems to care for either literature or a different perspective. It feels to me as though an era is passing, that era where we were comfortable living inside of someone else's opinions, never threatened, often amused or delighted by the simple audacity of the freedom it gave. Now it seems to be "well, if you don't believe exactly what I believe then you must be my most absolute, diabolical enemy". Society has become so boring and constrained. Books and people are either banned or censored for the very things that were once venerated - a different opinion. However, this will change. Mr. Hopkins, your record is very important for future generations, you know, the ones who have abandoned AI and just want a good read.
I support you, Mr. Hopkins, and not just because I largely agree with you. Your voice is important, to me and so many others, not that I purport to speak for them. Your writing and thought have inspired me in so many ways, put into words things I recognized from an early age. My oppositional defiance, born out of a Irish/Scotch working class heritage, and expressed through sarcasm, punk rock and fanzine screeds, is how I approach your work. And mine. The dogmatic thought among the audience for the latest and greatest of new thought, or old thought, or whatever the political arm of the entertainment industry calls it, repels me. It's all performative, my identity depends on it. We have always been at war with East Asia.
Having had many myself I am personally beyond weary of these type of exchanges CJ, but seeing your apparent exasperation somehow lessens a bit of my own chronic dread and distaste for them.. I’ve yet to hear those making this “crony” capitalism “point” follow it up with a clear articulation (rather than the inferred sentiment) that capitalism is just fine “if only..”
Nothing in reality is nor ever will be “just fine”. What sets capitalism above the rest is that it is at least honest - every living organism on earth is “a capitalist”.
If you really wanna know what it is structurally and architecturally and don't need a name read the work or @esc (escapekey). I'm here for the wit and pathos not the analysis of system function, dynamics or operational procedure. Cj for the art. ESC for source docs.
“Look, it may not be the kind of capitalism you want, but it’s the kind of capitalism we have.”
It's unfortunate that the book won't be out until next spring. The perfect counter point to the UFC fight at the White House for the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution would be a book stand selling your book across the street.
I'm always happy to see your latest post in my mailbox. The book is gonna be great, EPIC. I like to randomly open one of your books every day or so for an extra "something to think about." Stay well,I command it! ;->
The GEO Group is just the latest iteration of what I've written about at length. I.e. the prison industrial complex as capitalism's most naked manifestation. Before the 1980s, private prisons didn't exist in the US. Now they generate over $8 billion a year. The logic is simple. It's difficult to extract value from an underclass until you lock them up and bill the taxpayer. Mussolini rightly identified fascism as the merger of state and corporate power. Nowhere is that merger more blatantly obvious than in a detention facility run by the artist formerly known as Wackenhut.
Re: "It is a difficult thing to get one’s head around, the fact that the entire planet is occupied by a single ideological power system that has no outside adversaries." Exactly so. A system with no outside has no need for external enemies. It only needs internal ones as cover for attacks on the working class. Which is why the category keeps expanding. Terrorists, anti-vaxxers, populists, climate deniers, January Sixers. The label is irrelevant. The aim is to mark opposition as illegitimate before neutralizing it. In that way, every act of dissent is structurally an act of insurrection. The man at your reading who wanted you to say "crony capitalism" was doing the system's work for it... keeping the frame safe.
The GEO Group is significant, as the corporation symbolizes the height of predation given that the owners profit from human misery and tragedy.
The head corporate office is located in affluent Boca Raton, Fl
where the GEO Group is advertised as being a "global leader" in privatized corrections and detention. The company manages and operates correctional and residential treatment facilities worldwide, providing services like secure transportation and electronic monitoring.
The GEO Group secured more than a billion dollars in US government contracts, primarily from the Department of Homeland Security (ICE).
A dubious organization, reminiscent of the black-shirted Nazi Secret State Police.
You gotta wonder, where the next detention, or data center is being built. You never know, it could suddenly appear next door. 🤔
I believe the people that are here Illegally in “ migrant detention facilities “ can get out and go back from where they came from .Last year the administration was offer $1200 plus a ticket back . The hundreds that DID go really got the $1200 via western Union .
Oh God, please stfu. “The Border” is little more than the mob’s reddest of meat, few of which profess to know much less care the first thing about the upstream causes of working-class migration, legal and otherwise.
Here’s the Migration for Dummies version:
The U.S. creates economic and social instability in a country through ruling-class trade deals that pillage national resources OR by straight up bombing and murdering the country’s inhabitants into poverty and desperation.
And then - surprise! - its fucking people leave you moronic piece of shit. Got that?
Yeah, right. Just like the proposed Sheep Creek Mine southwest of Darby, Montana, in the Bitterrroot wilderness at the headwaters of the Bitterroot River, which the entire local populace is against. Because the mine is (potentially) a very rich source of certain REE (rare earth elements), when the powers-that-be decide it needs to be exploited regardless of the damage done to the local environment, it will be opened.
All I am focused on, and concerned with, is ending the global cartels, and restoring true and transparent elections in America. This is happening. The deep state criminals who stole trillions of dollars from us in recent years and used much of it to fund human trafficking, drug smuggling and supporting communist/socialist regimes in South America, Ukraine, Africa, while simultaneously doing everything they could to destroy our Republic, are not only being exposed, but are being prosecuted. The traitors who stole the 2020 election will be prosecuted. The unconstitutional Federal Reserve is being dismantled and the people will be out from under its slavery.
Europe may be lost, their freedoms taken, their culture removed, but America is entering a Golden Age. Rule of Law is being returned to our Justice system.
Please help out in Commifornia…our election fraud has risen to a level of insanity out here. The Scamdemic plan of mailing registered voters a “mail in ballot” still lingers 6 years later. And they keep on coming in by the truckload full, days after the election.
I hope so . I was born in Brooklyn in 1947 . This is NOT the country I was born into and you see it . In 1965 when LBJ passed the immigration act that reversed 1924 act , we were 85% white European , 10-12% black . Today that is 57% white (2020 census ) . In California [ where I live ) Whites are only 36% ..a clear minority.Se Habla Espanol
“Look, it may not be the kind of capitalism you want, but it’s the kind of capitalism we have.” I think this is my favorite sentence that gave me a chuckle.
I re-stacked the opening part of your piece onto my Substack page. Ironically I seem to have a few “followers” of my Substack page, though I haven’t written anything as far as “original content” on it! I just like to re-stack all the wise and thoughtful Substack writers I follow.
Cool! Another great chapter in the saga of the modern-day Alexis de Toqueville!
Carry on, my friend, as I'm looking forward to the day when I can plunk my money down for the book. Just to offset the subscription losses at your Substack, you know. Philanthropy, you know.
It's a curious thing ... in a world of AI and post-truth, nobody seems to care for either literature or a different perspective. It feels to me as though an era is passing, that era where we were comfortable living inside of someone else's opinions, never threatened, often amused or delighted by the simple audacity of the freedom it gave. Now it seems to be "well, if you don't believe exactly what I believe then you must be my most absolute, diabolical enemy". Society has become so boring and constrained. Books and people are either banned or censored for the very things that were once venerated - a different opinion. However, this will change. Mr. Hopkins, your record is very important for future generations, you know, the ones who have abandoned AI and just want a good read.
I support you, Mr. Hopkins, and not just because I largely agree with you. Your voice is important, to me and so many others, not that I purport to speak for them. Your writing and thought have inspired me in so many ways, put into words things I recognized from an early age. My oppositional defiance, born out of a Irish/Scotch working class heritage, and expressed through sarcasm, punk rock and fanzine screeds, is how I approach your work. And mine. The dogmatic thought among the audience for the latest and greatest of new thought, or old thought, or whatever the political arm of the entertainment industry calls it, repels me. It's all performative, my identity depends on it. We have always been at war with East Asia.
“It isn’t capitalism.”
“I was just on my way to ...”
“It’s crony capitalism.”
“OK. Sure.”
If I had a nickel…
Having had many myself I am personally beyond weary of these type of exchanges CJ, but seeing your apparent exasperation somehow lessens a bit of my own chronic dread and distaste for them.. I’ve yet to hear those making this “crony” capitalism “point” follow it up with a clear articulation (rather than the inferred sentiment) that capitalism is just fine “if only..”
Nothing in reality is nor ever will be “just fine”. What sets capitalism above the rest is that it is at least honest - every living organism on earth is “a capitalist”.
Americans fear truth and silence. Very nice post, and continue on... be well!
If you really wanna know what it is structurally and architecturally and don't need a name read the work or @esc (escapekey). I'm here for the wit and pathos not the analysis of system function, dynamics or operational procedure. Cj for the art. ESC for source docs.
This:
“Look, it may not be the kind of capitalism you want, but it’s the kind of capitalism we have.”
It's unfortunate that the book won't be out until next spring. The perfect counter point to the UFC fight at the White House for the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution would be a book stand selling your book across the street.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UFC_Freedom_250
Also, I think that somewhere the spirit of Hunter S. Thompson is smiling down upon you. Very much looking forward to the book.
I'm always happy to see your latest post in my mailbox. The book is gonna be great, EPIC. I like to randomly open one of your books every day or so for an extra "something to think about." Stay well,I command it! ;->
The GEO Group is just the latest iteration of what I've written about at length. I.e. the prison industrial complex as capitalism's most naked manifestation. Before the 1980s, private prisons didn't exist in the US. Now they generate over $8 billion a year. The logic is simple. It's difficult to extract value from an underclass until you lock them up and bill the taxpayer. Mussolini rightly identified fascism as the merger of state and corporate power. Nowhere is that merger more blatantly obvious than in a detention facility run by the artist formerly known as Wackenhut.
Re: "It is a difficult thing to get one’s head around, the fact that the entire planet is occupied by a single ideological power system that has no outside adversaries." Exactly so. A system with no outside has no need for external enemies. It only needs internal ones as cover for attacks on the working class. Which is why the category keeps expanding. Terrorists, anti-vaxxers, populists, climate deniers, January Sixers. The label is irrelevant. The aim is to mark opposition as illegitimate before neutralizing it. In that way, every act of dissent is structurally an act of insurrection. The man at your reading who wanted you to say "crony capitalism" was doing the system's work for it... keeping the frame safe.
The GEO Group is significant, as the corporation symbolizes the height of predation given that the owners profit from human misery and tragedy.
The head corporate office is located in affluent Boca Raton, Fl
where the GEO Group is advertised as being a "global leader" in privatized corrections and detention. The company manages and operates correctional and residential treatment facilities worldwide, providing services like secure transportation and electronic monitoring.
The GEO Group secured more than a billion dollars in US government contracts, primarily from the Department of Homeland Security (ICE).
A dubious organization, reminiscent of the black-shirted Nazi Secret State Police.
You gotta wonder, where the next detention, or data center is being built. You never know, it could suddenly appear next door. 🤔
I believe the people that are here Illegally in “ migrant detention facilities “ can get out and go back from where they came from .Last year the administration was offer $1200 plus a ticket back . The hundreds that DID go really got the $1200 via western Union .
Unlike actual criminals , they have a choice .
Thosewho were deported are not “the worst of the worst.” The big-time drug dealers, murderers, and gangsters are still reaping a profit in the US. 🤑
Oh God, please stfu. “The Border” is little more than the mob’s reddest of meat, few of which profess to know much less care the first thing about the upstream causes of working-class migration, legal and otherwise.
Here’s the Migration for Dummies version:
The U.S. creates economic and social instability in a country through ruling-class trade deals that pillage national resources OR by straight up bombing and murdering the country’s inhabitants into poverty and desperation.
And then - surprise! - its fucking people leave you moronic piece of shit. Got that?
Not in my back yard!
Yeah, right. Just like the proposed Sheep Creek Mine southwest of Darby, Montana, in the Bitterrroot wilderness at the headwaters of the Bitterroot River, which the entire local populace is against. Because the mine is (potentially) a very rich source of certain REE (rare earth elements), when the powers-that-be decide it needs to be exploited regardless of the damage done to the local environment, it will be opened.
In our back yard, no less.
https://www.fs.usda.gov/r01/bitterroot/newsroom/releases/notice-intent-conduct-mineral-exploration-1
https://bitterrootwater.org/get-involved/tracking-sheep-creek-mine/
It's called Eminent domain. Not that much different than China, where they seize property and offer a pittance of its worth.
All I am focused on, and concerned with, is ending the global cartels, and restoring true and transparent elections in America. This is happening. The deep state criminals who stole trillions of dollars from us in recent years and used much of it to fund human trafficking, drug smuggling and supporting communist/socialist regimes in South America, Ukraine, Africa, while simultaneously doing everything they could to destroy our Republic, are not only being exposed, but are being prosecuted. The traitors who stole the 2020 election will be prosecuted. The unconstitutional Federal Reserve is being dismantled and the people will be out from under its slavery.
Europe may be lost, their freedoms taken, their culture removed, but America is entering a Golden Age. Rule of Law is being returned to our Justice system.
Please help out in Commifornia…our election fraud has risen to a level of insanity out here. The Scamdemic plan of mailing registered voters a “mail in ballot” still lingers 6 years later. And they keep on coming in by the truckload full, days after the election.
I hope so . I was born in Brooklyn in 1947 . This is NOT the country I was born into and you see it . In 1965 when LBJ passed the immigration act that reversed 1924 act , we were 85% white European , 10-12% black . Today that is 57% white (2020 census ) . In California [ where I live ) Whites are only 36% ..a clear minority.Se Habla Espanol
As a native Californian of 73 years, yo hablo español!
I can’t wait to read the rest of the chapter!!
“slept like a German marmot” 😆 (took a little research, but I got an extra guffaw from the effort: https://howtosayguide.com/how-to-say-sleep-like-a-log-in-german)
• P.S. For those who missed our JPR interview, here it is along with a transcript: https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/our-jefferson-exchange-interview
Glad to see you back!
“Look, it may not be the kind of capitalism you want, but it’s the kind of capitalism we have.” I think this is my favorite sentence that gave me a chuckle.
I re-stacked the opening part of your piece onto my Substack page. Ironically I seem to have a few “followers” of my Substack page, though I haven’t written anything as far as “original content” on it! I just like to re-stack all the wise and thoughtful Substack writers I follow.
Cool! Another great chapter in the saga of the modern-day Alexis de Toqueville!
Carry on, my friend, as I'm looking forward to the day when I can plunk my money down for the book. Just to offset the subscription losses at your Substack, you know. Philanthropy, you know.
Thank you for the excerpt, CJ. Sending continued good wishes for not just your health, but your well-being too.
the book is going to be great!
Barnes & Noble is executing a massive nationwide expansion-60 new stores!
Happy writing