So, I went to London to speak to the Left … no, not “the Left” you’re probably thinking of. Not the mask-wearing, Ukrainian-flag-flying Left. Not the pronoun-using, segregationist Left. Not the WEF, WHO, FBI, CIA, DHS, and MI6-loving Left. Not the global-capitalist New Normal Left. The other Left. The old-school Left. The “Covid-denying, conspiracy-theorizing, Putin-loving, far-right-extremist” Left.
I disagree. Capitalism is what you call it, but you are not using the term correctly. This is corporate fascism. The State works in partnership with private actors. It's what makes Nazi Germany. And what makes the modern French state, and to a lesser degree the US state. If it was capitalism you would have free markets and free trade. But you have nothing like that. The opposite of that. It is run on behalf of the elites who own shares in large corporations, or who are benefiting by being vastly overpaid by the State. Capitalism isn't anything like this.
If you are in the US, compare the somewhat capitalist veterinarian. You bring your cat to the vet and the vet tells you the cat is sick. "How much" you ask, and you make a financial agreement. That is capitalism.
Instead, if you are a person and you go to the doctor, vast organizations are involved. They pay the doctor who is working for a large medical corporation. You never know what it costs, and neither does the doctor. You have choices only to the degree the insurance companies and government allows. Payment is according to government order.
If the vet or the doctor were diagnosing and treating the same thing, say a broken leg, the vet would cost $1000 and the doctor would cost $10,000 but you wouldn't know it's $10,000.
Corporate fascism is the scourge. Don't say this is capitalism. Capitalism is the only thing that due to its extraordinary productivity is responsible for our rising above the animals and the primitive peoples and having amazing wealth and material success. Capitalism enriches everyone.
Corporate fascism makes us poorer and poorer because it is nothing but parasites leaching off of us and there are fewer and fewer productive people and more and more leaches. They pay people to become leaches in return for their political support. One reason Singapore has a much better economy and system than the USA.
As an old lefty who is used to hearing Marxists go on and on about how USSR communism wasn't "real communism," I have to confess that I find replies like these kind of funny. I understand and appreciate that this is not the form of capitalism you want, but it's the form of capitalism we have.
From my perspective (which is of course partial and therefore limited, as all perspectives are) it seems quite clear to me that the great reset, 4th industrial revolotion, "green" new deal, digital transformation, smart cities, metaverse, CBDC etc that the corporate-capitalists in the WEF, the Gates Foundation, Rockefeller foundatiob, BIS (bank of international settlements), IMF and World Bank are currently pushing, are guided by the exact same principles that have guided capitalists since the 1600's, of pursuit their self-interest as the highest value, of enclosure and restriction of humanity's access to the commons and privatization of all that is necessary for survival so that humanity will have no choice but to work for them and submit to them in order to live.
It is clear to see this if one understands how capitalism originated. To say it very quickly and crudely, before the development of capitalistic private property "rights" in the 1600s, everyone had access to the land and resources necessary to produce enough food for subsistence - this was done through individually owned but communally farmed tracts plus common land used for grazing and subsistence by landless peasants. From the 1600s through the 1900s, the British parliament passed hundreds of acts of legislation which enclosed/stole common land from rural communities (where the vast majority of people lived) and sold/gave it to capitalists (this was first done in the UK, and was later enforced throughout the west and the colonies).
This process was necessary for the development of capitalism because people who have access to enough land to subsist on would never willingly submit to performing wage work - historically the only way for the capitalist class to get the labor they needed is either through enslavement or through a process of enclosure/dispossession, by which people lose our ancestral subsistence lands, followed by being forced into low wages.
This process was brilliantly described in detail by Marx in the 1800s, but it was very actively protested already when it first started in the 1600s. Everywhere it was introduced it was fiercely resisted, sometimes for hundreds of years, until finally the cruel inhumane ruthless capitalists were able to completely break humanity's resistence in the 20th century and normalize this process as if it is a normal part of life (this submission was so deeply imprinted by the billionaire capitalists into the minds of those they dospossed & exploit to the point that today propagandized right-wingers hate you if you don't willingly join the capitalist plantation and work for the man "like all normal people do")
But all the way up to the early 20th century working for the capitalists was known as 'wage slavery'. Only decades into of the 20th century was this resistence finally eliminated and wage slavery for the capitalists came to be considered as a "normall" part of life..
Right wingers are often propagandized into screaming that the WEF (the one thousand biggest corporations on the planet) are "communists" becasue they said "you will own nothing and be happy", but becasue most don't know the history of how capitalism developed they fail to see that the global capitalists in the WEF do exactly what capitalists have always been doing.. The WEF billionaires want to take away everything from you in order to enrich themselves, the world's biggest capitalists, and make us dependent on them, having to pay them if we want to access to things needed for living. This is EXACT project that the capitalists have been up to since the 1600's with their enclosure and disposesion of humanity out of the basic survival necessities in order to enrich themselves and force us into wage slavery for them (the capitalist mind is all about hierarchy, selfishness, climbing over others and doing anything necessary to secure one's self interest)
To say it differently:
People often assume that capitalism is defined by markets and trade. But markets and trade existed for thousands of years before capitalism. Capitalism is only about 400 years old. So what is distinctive about this economic system? Mainly two things (there are more, of course, but two main things for now) :
1. First, and most importantly, it is defined by enclosure and artificial scarcity. Capitalism originated from systemic efforts by the elites to restrict humanity's access to the commons and to independent subsistance in order to render us reliant on wage labor for survival.
Over the past 400 years some of the forms this has taken are privatization of the commons, forced dispossesion out of ancestral lands, deliberate destructuon of subsistance economies (everywhere but particularly brutally in the colonies) and in general privatizing the most basic necessities of life into the private hands of capitalists and then having us pay them to have accesss to survival...
This continues today with attempts to ensure artificial scarcity to essentials like housing, healthcare, quality food, clean water, education, transit and so on. Things that could very easily be provided at high quality to everyone, but are deliberately prevented by right-wing capitalists from being widely available as it hurts their profit agenda (the highest value in the hearts of psychologically-undeveloped capitalists) and in addition, the removal of artificial scarcity also removes the capitalists' ability to force us to desperately work for them (to seek wages to survive). This is a huge threat to their narrow self-interests and that is why they do everything possible to insure that these essentials will not be widely available to humanity (including billions spent on propaganda to ensure their followers hate and attack anyone who dares to suggest bringing back into public ownership the essentials of life after the capitalists stole and/or restricted access to them through privatization and enclosure) .
Where universal public goods do exist, and where basic human rights and worker/health protections do exist, they have been won by intense and longstanding battles by left-wing labor movements and other progressive forces, and are constantly under attack by right wing capitalist billionaires who attempt to take them away and put behind a paywall to access, as they have always done, to enrich themselves and create artificial scarcity that forces us into low wage labor for them.
2. Second, capitalism is organized around - and dependent upon - perpetual expansion. Meaning, ever increasing production of commodified goods. It is the only intrinsically expansionary economic system in human history (meaning, it intrinsically has to have a crisis if it doesn't continually expand)
Crucially - under capitalism, the purpose of the ever increasing production is NOT primarily to meet human needs, but rather to extract and accumulate profit. This is the overriding objective of this system.
To sustain the process of perpetually increasing surplus accumulation, Capital requires an ever increasing quantity of inputs (labor and nature), and requires that these inputs be obtained as cheaply as possible.
This introduces constant pressure by the right-wing to depress real wages and attack environmental and worker protections whenever they possibly can (in the absence of countering political forces). The result is a system that, left to itself (to its own logic), AUTOMATICALLY generates exploitation of human beings and breakdown of eco-systems.
In sum, the tendency to equate capitalism with "markets and trade" naturalizes a system that is overwhelmingly not natural and profoundly harmful for the vast majority of humans and for all life, and prevents us from having a clear-eyed view of how this destructive system actually operates.
You have useful and interesting viewpoint. Your stance about "propagandized right-wingers hate you if you don't willingly join the capitalist plantation and work for the man "like all normal people do"... truly obliterates your wisdom. The old terms aren't functional anymore.
It would be nice to have "functioning" capitalism as opposed to "over-consolidated oligopolies" and "anti-competitive monopolies" capitalism. Functioning capitalism doesn't allow these. Rather, it regulates and preserves a competitive field.
What's different this time is the complicity of big-tech and big media. Nobody is looking out for us. Our culture has morphed into one that prioritizes "me and mine" over "service and joy."
It all depends on how you choose to see your fellow man.
One quibble (only): You write "right wing capitalist"
As I see it, adding "right wing" to capitalist is either redundant or unnecessary. As capitalists act in their own interests, does it really matter if they identify or are identified as right or left? As I see it, once you get to the billionaire status, "right" or "left" become ideological masks that obscures rather than reveals anything. The Right love to hate George Soros as a liberal, yet Soros from the early 1980's has been involved with regime change activities (starting in Poland) working closely with the CIA ("capitalism's secret army"). Is he really that different from Charles Koch?
Ah. THAT I can work with. Yes; This is what these people here http://allaregreen.us/ enforce. I'm 100% aware of this.
But being intimidated by mere authority FIGURES in not part of my make-up. & if someone imposes that anyone I care about Must Die Painfully just to line their pockets https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c83P58t0c7w I for one am not content to sit by & allow them to do so.
& by the way, this itself raises a question: what is the POINT of these newsletters or you coming TO them if, when all is said & done you are going to do nothing against what anyone in authority says? Is everyone here screaming like children waiting for its parents to respond like chicks in a nest, hoping Daddy will feed you better Rights & Freedoms?
There is no such thing as capitalism: or 'Government.' & politicians are not your Caring Parents.
Grow tf up & make an effing CHOICE, people: either choose to act to save Your Own Children OR to support Mitch McConnell's illegal retirement fund.
I think you bring an important point to understanding the situation in which we’ve found ourselves, namely; It’s a machine. Yes, it’s a decoding machine as one of its programmed mandates. But, there are other elements that are programmed into this machine. What we have now essentially is advanced autonomous A.I. released into the wild. It already has enormous data sets from which to continuously draw in real time while offering limited options from which humans are allowed to choose. It increasingly controls a growing number of power nodes within political, economic, technical, religious and bureaucratic power structures. Why does it seem there’s no off-switch? The answer is because, there is no off switch. This ‘invisible hand’ is now self-sustaining and self-powered by human consciousness with graphene oxide via nano technologies designed to capture more and more unwitting humans into its web. Now that it’s gaining ‘sentience’ it’s being guided by powers at war with The Divine Creator. In your heart you will know this is happening. It’s inhuman, it’s inhumane, it’s ruthless and advancing exponentially. And yes, we are seen as commodities of diminishing value.
We are spiritual beings of love and light, not commodities. Bill Gates et al want us to be commodities, and biopharma industrial complex people with their patents want that, but we are not. We embrace nature, enjoy friendship, love, family and friends. Commodification is the trend. Resist. Live life fully. Use technology less. Love more. Have more joy. They can only commodify us it we allow it.
Bravo. And I, for one, am going to die laughing, or at least accept the inevitable with a big embrace. When it comes, it comes. While we're here, let's love and be happy. The so-called elite don't just despise our happiness and joy, they are terrified of it.
"commodities of diminishing value" to who? See, in reading social psychology, I figured out that yes, the majority of people anywhere in the world regard 'politicians' as if they were the person 'Government' that they wish was a caring parent. I never developed this.
But it takes SECONDS of effort to remind yourself what you already know & that is that politicians are NOT 'Government.' So standing up to them should cause no one any emotional trauma.
There are laws on the books that can be used to reverse the mandates. It would take mass public support to form something large enough that the politicians could not block & the only people who can organize getting this are people not emotionally paralyzed by the thought of standing up to Mitch f****ing McConnell.
It's really not hard to remind oneself of what one knows is true. Politicians are criminals. Let's act like adults & stop getting stressed out by the notion of throwing them in jail, hmm?
There is an “off switch”. Withdraw, in small ways at first, then as the momentum increases a growing alternative structure will begin to offer options to ‘withdraw’ in bigger ways.
As a start stop watching You Tube, to thwart the algorithm showing you (choosing) more of what you are clicking on. Or if that’s too cold turkey use the search function more.
Also, use cash as much as possible as it’s not trackable and slows the system down. Small victories which help us stay in control.
This lady goes super deep into people as commodities. The first time you hear it or read her blogs, it’s like trying to understand a foreign language but then you start to make sense of it as much as we can. It’s very weird. http://wrenchinthegears.com
I'm not even sure what you mean by that. Look: we're here because the mandates are causing harm. After that, everyone here starts to get emotionally messed up due to Doxastic Anxiety: briefly, children aren't actually invested in believing in Santa. It's just that if he isn't real, then our parents have been lying to us.
THAT Train Of Thought causes D.A. Well? If the mandates are harmful, then our Surrogate Parents, politicians are acting to harm us.
If more people simply took the ninety seconds or less required to separate the notion of 'politicians' from what they're only really supposed to represent in the first place, then they'd lose their fear of standing up to Ted Cruz. THEN someone might engage in reducing or removing his power to make $ from harming children instead of all these personal attacks.
He's right though, CJ. The point that Matt and many of your supporters are trying to make is the term "Global Capitalism" that you are using to define the system. Yes, we are all very unhappy with whatever label you want to give this machine, but it's not capitalism. Not even close. Corporate fascism is a much better label.
One point CJ is trying to get across, is how did we get here? 20th Century communism died in 1991. China has had a capitalist economy since the mid 1970's. The West essentially outsourced most of its manufacturing to a more competitive market - low wage China. The CCP is populated by a bunch of billionaires. China's economy is effectively state capitalism (which is also totalitarian), not communism . If you are defining what's running the world now as something other than capitalism, fine, use the terms you like. But what led us to this point, was capitalism., not something else.
CJ, you are actually one of those Marxists, if you insist that your definition of capitalism is the correct one. The guy above is basically agreeing to everything you said, except terminology. He is calling it corporate fascism, you call it global capitalism. It is depressing to see this....brilliant people like you and him draw out the knifes for terminology, when actually both of you are fundamentally aligned.
Exactly how many times do I have to repeat that "I do not care what people call it"? If you believe it's "corporate fascism", how about explaining how "corporate fascism" came into existence, what exactly it is, what its ideology is, how it works, and why it is doing what it is doing now, at this specific historical moment? Then place the events of the last 7 or 30 years in that theoretical context and test your theory. Or ... you know, don't do that, and, instead, just flip out and call me a "Marxist" if that makes you feel better.
My puzzle is... whether the people you call New Normal Left are still the Left. I mean... they are against free speech and for the silencing of dissent, rigidly pro-establishment (and given privileged status in consequence), pro-scientism (it's settled!), and totalitarian (only one truth allowed). And there is the abandonment of (and contempt for) the working class. Psychologically speaking, they are also different -- hypocritical in the extreme (mouth full of tolerance while practicing brutal intolerance), and unwilling to learn from past mistakes (eg ongoing commitment to wind turbines despite all the evidence against, in most situations, or in feminism, cleaving to "men and women are practically indistinguishable" dogma despite the famous twin study blowing up in the face of this nonsense, long ago). What's left of the Left in this New Normal Left?
A couple of additions. The Left used to be so into non-violent communication. Everybody was taking workshops in it. Now, it's all about bullying and verbal abuse. Huh? And what's with all the war mongering? Boggles the mind.
People formerly of the Left (in Hopkins's parlance, people who somehow moved from the Old to the New Normal Left; people who blamed the Opoid Crisis on Pharma but were happy with, nay grateful for, the experimental jab; people who once opposed the Vietnam war and now chant in unison with war-mongers; people who 'follow' what they think of as 'the' science, in so far as doing so won't burden their brain-cells) never cease to amaze me.
Even CJ's excellent explanation of the dynamics of Globocap's digital plantation system doesn't lift this mystery, let alone solve it.
What is left of the left?
Not much, except for some good people.
To those who feel at home in the New Normal left, their Left - so it appears - is now THE Left; indeed they didn't move to any other position (for such an exercise would actually require thought & effort). To them it's circumstances that changed, or the virus, or the unheard-of malignancy of daring to question the narrative(s ); in brief they believe it is we who havie strayed and ended up at the Far Right.
Not that they, in their unfathomable complacency, reflect on it much...
In terms of ..."how about explaining how "corporate fascism" came into existence, what exactly it is, what its ideology is, how it works, and why it is doing what it is doing now, at this specific historical moment?"...
I don't want to necessarily speak on Matt's behalf, but I think his thesis (ie all those things you're asking him to flesh out) is the same as your thesis (therefore you've already done it, and you both agree).
He's only quibbling with the naming. As you've said, you don't personally care what people call it, but Matt proposes that the name ideally should reflect the fascist nature of the 'machine's' behaviour [in that the nature of the current GloboCap machine is not solely a market / profit-promoting system, but one that undertaken a merger with all forms of State and institutional power ...and the merger of the power bases of State and Private Capital / Enterprise is pretty much the dictionary definition of fascism].
I don't think his suggestion, re adding fascism to the name somehow, necessarily contradicts your thesis in any way? — The machine that ravages the globe for profit simply figured out that capturing markets at source (government) is more profitable. So at that point it mindlessly gobbled that up too... which triggered a 'next phase' whereby the relentless pursuit of profit > led to the shortcut of centralising power > which led to this new thing which is pretty close to what we define fascism to be — so kinda not capitalism on steroids anymore, but a new beast that has merged with the State.
The vaccine drive was a good example of that behaviour ... the machine, and it's ruthless ability to sniff out opportunities for an end run *around* competition that would reduce profitability or throw up profit risk. GloboCap and it's promoters swiftly lobbied governments directly to give them contracts for vaccine supply, and used all kinds of shady methods to get into closed rooms to make those deals. Because why market to customers individually? ...you'd have to make a good product, pay to market it, convince consumers to keep using it, accept some liability for arising harms, etc. Much easier and cheaper to deploy targeted resources solely at the power centre, and bribe that power centre to let you attach your greedy face to the firehose of public money directly. Then you can guzzle it all up by the billions, in an unrelenting flow. And you can remove any downside risk by bribing State to *also* accept any liability, on your behalf. The government does the work of collecting the payments for you, by forcibly removing the money as tax, and handing it to you in bulk. Bloody genius business model really, but this model is not capitalism in that almost no recognisable aspects of a 'free market' or of 'competition' remain.
Matt is right to note that what I just outlined is not capitalism, by any commonly used definition. But it certainly is a tight fit for fascism, which retains some features of the market, but allied to / merged with the State. It's an interesting point.
On a separate note, I like your analogy of the mindless machine. It reminds me of Aladdin programme, which is gobbling up everything, mindlessly and ruthlessly eating. It will gobble until it destroys the world, and itself, but it cannot stop — it's just a programme. Aladdin behaves exactly as you describe in your thesis. Super interesting ideas, so thanks for laying them out.
Excellent clarification of terms. It does seem, based on your analysis, that if capitalism is taken to its ultimate degree, its zenith, fascism will be that result. Those who are serious about playing the capitalist game, and do it well, will end up playing the fascist game. I think that is CJ's point. In today's world, fascism is becoming the global reality. Since fascism is the partnership between industry/corporation and government we can see all the various iterations of that partnership around the world. Here in the US, the corporations hold the upper hand. They have essentially bought their way into controlling our legislative, judicial and executive branches of government. In China, for example, it seems (from an outsider's perspective anyway) that the State holds the upper hand, though I can't pretend to know how that system operates. In both cases, the whole thing runs mechanically with no values, as CJ notes; it's all about power, wealth and greed for more and more of both. Those are its only purpose.
Still, it's legit to wonder when a particular system stops being that system and becomes something else (often by capture). Like the old Greek puzzle -- as you replace the planks of a ship one by one, when does it stop being that ship and become... some other ship?
My friends in central Europe think that the Left has been captured by forces that once were called the Right (privatization, upholding the establishment, less focus on social issues, more focus on control vs freedom). Whereas in America we think more of the Left going mad and leaving us behind, so we ended up on the Right, where people may be in some ways less congenial, but they are more honest and haven't gone mad.
If only we could just move it over to that spiritually awakened, love for everyone, look after each other and share the wealth capitalism strain..... said he with a roll of the eyes.
Why are you trying to conquer the real & physical with wish-fulfillment fantasy? The People In Decision-Making Power CAN be held accountable. I keep trying to guide the discussion that way, & ONLY this belief/desire that mere politicians are somehow Beyond Accountability keeps us from doing this.
& that is a choice you all make. If accountability for politicians who make decisions that kill our loved ones didn't already exist, you'd all work to MAKE those laws. So you're all 100% aware that such laws DO exist. & what do you do with that knowledge?
Wish that someone else would come along & remove the responsibility of using that ability from you. Well, who will do that exactly While U Wait? Gandalf? Kim Jong-un? Who is it you came to this newsletter thinking "when 'HE' reads this, 'HE' shall Rescue Us from our fears?"
The laws to stop the harmful mandates already exist, the only people who can prosecute our Corrupt |politicians with them are us.
What's it gonna take to get One Other Person to merely DISCUSS how we can organize to get mass public support behind such an effort? & can anyone here tell me why they came here to such a newsletter, then WON'T even merely discuss this?
Dude, here’s a quarter, buy a sense of humour. The point being that to survive and and flourish, we need to ditch the whole fucking idea of capitalism. there is no such strain of look after one another capitalism. It was a necessary stepping stone. But the time has come to move on. And i know it’s down to us - and that yes we can do it. And i look forward to all of us, even seemingly humourless souls, doing it together. Love ya anyways!! But don’t pontificate from on high about “what do you do” - it’s not the way to talk dirty or influence people.
So you're going to allow child-murder to continue unless the false premise that "we" need to ditch capitalism is fulfilled first. Well, everyone needs to have priorities, eh? "I won't save a Single Child's Life or discuss doing so unless & until Reality Conforms to MY dictates."
I get a lot of that. "Let's discuss acting responsibly" always gets some 100% made-up 'reason' why we can't simply do that.
& if I HAVE to influence people to act to save children, well I didn't lose anyone willing to DO that, did I?
People who "keep trying to guide the discussion" make me wonder which alphabet provides their incomes. People who "try to guide the discussion" have that slight glowiness about them.
Free people discuss what the hell they want to discuss. No "guidance" required, thank-you-very-much.
Oh, okay. Sorry my ego prevents you from entering into a discussion about saving children's lives. I won't make you read my comments ever again.
The resistance here is immense. Remind me what you all were going to do once "enough people" had come to the conclusion that the jabs were harmful again?
Right: make excuses to continue allowing it to continue.
Michael, you seem to know a lot about me, what i do or don’t do, what i believe/don’t believe and we’ve never even chatted. I make a humorous remark at CJ’s comment about “not real capitalism” and hey presto i’m a lazy, non committal shitbag who cheers on child murdering. Good job your surname isn’t holmes mate. Still love ya like, but you’re making it more difficult with every finger in the air guesswork supposition you make about me, so i’ll just say good night and good luck....
I’ve always wondered about this label that CJ always uses “Globo-Cap. If this is a form of capitalism, i.e. it’s the one we have, then, what does CJ prefer as a way of organizing our affairs, either political or economic. Meanwhile, with respect to the thing itself, is there no distinction between GC and the market, entrepreneurship and free trade, all of those ideas as opposed to the Mad Bull that’s rampaging around the entire world unfettered? No distinctions can be drawn anywhere, right? It’s all one big GloboCap and there are no meaningful lines that can be drawn?
I am certain such lines can be drawn, Steven; but to me Globocap is just an extension (due to monopolizing and centralizing tendencies) of once free markets. Need it be so? Perhaps not, but - it so happened (which is a far cry from any sort of explanation).
I find the left gets confused whenever there's money or big corporations involved. What we have is an ever-larger State integrated into corporations, which is the definition of Fascism.
The problems that you lay at the feet of GloboCap are the result of non-capitalist actions by state actors. The state getting involved and picking winners, forcing behaviours, or trying to make things "fair" by manipulating markets.
This is Fascism with a sprinkling of capitalism/market mechanics when it suits its purposes, much like the CCP is Communist with a sprinkling of capitalism when it suits.
"The problems that you lay at the feet of GloboCap are the result of non-capitalist actions by state actors. The state getting involved and picking winners, forcing behaviours, or trying to make things "fair" by manipulating markets."
So now, CJ...how do we turn the capitlism (Sp) we have into the capitalism we want? And you might not have any ideas now, but I will be dollars to donuts you will.
Er....... whilst i totally agree that what we have doesn’t bear much resemblance to capitalism as it was proposed by Adam Smith - he believed in workers unions and regulating banks heavily - key ideas of his proposal in fact. But this nonsense of capitalism enriching everyone...... only if you leave out virtually everyone outside of the big economies. Try telling some 11 year old kid in the formerly Unilever owned Nigeria delta who is wading through mud to deconstruct our detritus so he can maybe buy some food later that capitalism enriches everyone and he’d quite rightly laugh. What information and facts are you basing that claim on??
You and Matt both have valid points. But it's good to remember the hardship, abuse, child labor, misery and murder that goes into maintaining our Western capitalist lifestyle. Capitalism as an ideal, OK, but it's not and has never functioned in that way, imo. Could it? I don't think so. And communism isn't the answer either!! I personally don't have an answer. I feel we're having to make one up between us, which is what all this discussion is about.
That’s what i’m saying. That exploitation piece is really hard to cut out of capitalism - because it values profit and commodity above all else.... so the temptation and justification for all those horrors is kind of baked into the core of the capitalist idea.
That said, i agree Communism is a stupid idea too - marx wrote a pretty amazing critique of the industrial capitalist system, almost clairvoyant in some of his predictions. Shame his proposed solution wasn’t as good.
I think we could all agree some basic principles that new structures and organisational methods could aim for and take steps towards that. You know, universal access to clean, healthy food, water, air. Shelter, preventative and palliative healthcare and an education system that is actually about educating, experimentation, observation and exploration of inner and outer worlds, and the like. And the freedom to express yourself, be wrong and cause offence. And transparency of all governance, both private and governmental. And our steps towards that will be tentative, error strewn toddler steps, but with patience and persistence and our greater numbers we could get somewhere close.... wouldn’t that be beautiful? And when i say all, i mean all. Fuck these idiotic, tribal, divisions of nations etc. well, ok, fine - but no rich cunt should have a fucking yacht if there are starving etc people anywhere in the world......
Ha, good old Jarvis. That one had escaped me, ta! Here’s my own small contribution to the musical protest thing. Feel free to laugh, cry or tear out your hair and turn it off...... or just not listen to it at all. ;) https://on.soundcloud.com/snJfBnAaEarEPkcJ8
Call it what you want, but capitalism is what brought us here. The oligarchs and their hangers-on running this all became fabulously wealthy (giving them the concentrated wealth and power to take over the world) via CAPITALIST economies.
And the members of the Chinese Communist Party are no more "communist" (in name only) than the members of the Democratic Party are democratic! During the Cold War era, the most difficult argument for the proponents of socialism/communism to counter or to be judged by, was not what socialism/communism "should be" by its theorists, but by the conditions of "actually existing socialism" on the ground. It is fair to judge capitalism in the same way. We should criticize and judge capitalism by its on-the-ground reality, that is "actually existing capitalism" not some abstract, theoretical version of it. If you do that, honestly, it's grim; it's what led us to where we are now.
I'd argue that Democracy, Fascism, and Communism all played a major part in bringing us to the present moment and that each leveraged aspects of capitalism when it suited them. Each will be undone by the inherent contradictions between their ideologies and base reality, which is where capitalism resides.
Yeah, I am very familiar with the position, redefining terms to suit your interests. Libertarians do it all the time. You can have your own theoretical definition of capitalism, however, you are still stuck (like the advocates of socialism) with the overwhelming reality/problem of "actually existing capitalism."
It's not a redefinition, it's pointing out a category error. Regardless there is plenty of real world evidence that the closer an ideology hews to capitalism, however fleetingly, the better and more free life is in that society and the more successful it is vs others.
It's an old truism but a good one- the love of money is the root of all evil. Bill Gates in plain sight. If the Scamdemic showed us anything, it showed the entire social, political and especially medical and legal structure of the west can be bought off. Follow the money. Question is, who or what is behind it all?? Has the human species (in western societies at least) evolved down the post-modern path far enough to have its soul stolen by the AI event horizon? Will aliens arrive here soon to ensure we re-bottle the genie? Any technology in the wrong hands can be weaponised. At the end of the day there is no left or right only right and wrong.
So again: I talk holding the people responsible accountable, people reply with "$ & other inanimate objects are truly responsible/we the people aren't."
So: dollar bills are pointing guns to Your Heads making you inject children with what you know are potentially lethal blood-clotting products now? Is THAT what you're saying here?
Or is it the usual "they" that are DOING THIS for $ ergo we can do nothing because YOU don't have the balls to hold any corrupt politicians accountable, so you make up this false premise that We Can't Do That so we have to wait for them all to voluntarily decide to stop pursuing $?
Constitutional Law makes politicians Private Citizens like you & me with No Exemptions to Any Laws. If it's illegal for YOU to murder, it's illegal for them.
Is it legal for YOU to mandate parents to inject their children with lethal or untested products? No? Then it's illegal for Joe Biden to.
Cripes, even AFTER I point out that people are using words to shift focus away from the fact that if WE do nothing, we are complicit, people still try to shift blame away from having to act responsibly. Well, if you're all okay with sitting back & watching them kill children, just Say So.
I feel sure there are 'armies' of isolated people all over the world who feel angry all day every day and would gladly do anything that would make a difference but just don't know how, don't feel clever enough, and are isolated and alone. Until very recently, I was the only person in my life that was unjabbed, unmasked and not conforming to any of the diktats. For two years I was the village outcast crazy person. You're asking for people to discuss this with you, but what are you hoping to hear?
I'm not 'hoping' to hear anything. I EXPECTED to hear exactly what I'm hearing, everyone making excuses to not engage in the discussion. See I KNEW everyone would RATHER sacrifice their Own Children to their beliefs that 1) 'Government' cares for them & that 2) mere corrupt politicians = 'Government' & that therefore, everyone would rather keep waiting for Mummy & Daddy-Government to voluntarily decide to govern you all better because people are too cowardly to stand up to Mitch McConnell for people as worthless as their own children.
Here you are speaking about how alone it felt to be the Only One Around to have your opinion, being invited to enter into a discussion with others who have the same opinion, now using that lonely feeling as if it's somehow a reason to NOT enter into such a discussion.
You're actually denouncing practically everyone on here but not offering any solutions yourself. I don't have any children to sacrifice but my beliefs are as far from your 2 available options as they could possibly be. So you don't need to assume that I'm waiting for a saviour or am too cowardly, etc.
Your second paragraph makes no sense at all; I entered the bloomin' discussion. You're just not answering the question. What do you want to discuss?! Do it! Instead of just opining about other people not doing it. Apart from repeating that one point over and over, you haven't actually said anything.
And you're painting everyone black or white. I didn't personally feel too alone for the most part - I'm happy in my own company - but I know plently of people did. I was offering that thought to you.
It's why all the online communities grew. I'm suggesting that thousands upon thousands of people do not fall into your 'categories' but just don't know what to do, don't have connections, don't know where to start. Many follow organisations that try to curb laws being quietly changed, many attended the Freedom Marches in London, many have set up organisations to take action against the govts, and such like. Many people have been fighting, but still the agenda continues. What ideas do you have?
You really just come across as someone consumed by the stuff someone's put in your head in a classroom and you're not budging from your supercilious stance and want to use the terminology you've learnt to sound cleverer than the rest of us. Well, okay. Live and let live.
But, what points do you have to start the discussion with? What information and ideas for action do you have to offer yourself? Stop criticising everyone else and do something yourself.
Yeah, and if we could all just agree that it's wrong to kill, steel, and medically harm immoral people our future would look bright. The road of immorality is such a slippery slope.
its very funny to hear these capitalist apologetics. Its crony capitalism or corporate fascism or something. Well, what it is, is CAPITALISM. Which is, as CJ points out, stunningly adaptive. And its also adroit at marketing itself and manufacturing illusory distinctions. The interesting discussion might be to trace back the origins of capitalism, and ellen meiskins wood did a good job of that, and examine the impact of the Enlightenment, as adorno and horkheimer did. But the broad stroke reality is that this is capitalism. And it cannot be reformed.
We're on a newsletter talking about how people are being killed merely by decisions made by those in power & you wanna discuss going back in time to study something we can no longer see from here & now instead?
Right. & we can't charge, arrest or prosecute murderers here & now. We have to go back & understand them, leaving them to continue killing while we embark on a project that could take years.
michael.....calm down. The discussion was about capitalism. Trying to understand the forces that shape the new authoritarianism. What is it you think should be discussed if not capitalism? I believe that was what CJ's post was about; the evolution of the left. Or devolution. But please.....explain how you think the conversation should proceed-
Thanks, John, yes, this essay, and my talk in London, was another one of my attempts to paint a broad-strokes picture of the ideological/political battlefield, the forces engaged in the conflict upon it, and who is aligned with whom, currently. I wish more people could focus on what GloboCap (or whatever one needs to call it) does, and is doing now, and why it is doing that, now, at this moment in history, and less on what it's called.
Right. I've already pointed out how faced with the FACT that their political leaders are responsible for harming us & our children, people will shift the discussion onto Other Things like the importance of understanding philosophy & accusing anyone who threatens their belief of 'Government' as 'Caring Parent' of being angry/not addressing the fact that children are dying for Nancy Pelosi's illegal retirement fund.
& you came here & still did that.
No one's angry. I came into this KNOWING that everyone here is a complete hypocrite who would KNOWINGLY sacrifice children to their beliefs in what they want politicians to be. Not one person has come CLOSE to proving me wrong.
You're conflating "capitalism" with the ideology you like, "liberalism". You still under the ideological illusion that the ideology that's been sold to you, "liberalism", is the same thin g as "capitalism". It is not. Capitalism is simply "private property of means of production". It doesn't require free markets and fair competition.
The official ideology taught in economics 101 is that the magical free markets tend towards equilibrium, that fair competition provide magical optimum distribution of resources, etc. These are fairy tales that nobody in their right mind should believe. The normal result of a normally functioning market is an oligopoly where a couple of corporate titans enslaves everyone.
Marx was right. Every passing minutes, more proof is piled upon the already humongous pile of evidence. Liberalism is a fairy tale. Capitalism as it is is just the normal, expected evolution of Capitalism. And when menaced, the corporate overlords will use fascism to compel us into obedience without batting an eye. "Free markets" have absolutely not the slightest relationship with "free society" (remember the wonderful, free Chile under General Pinochet? Yeah).
First, forget fairy tales. Second, work on abolishing capitalism.
Capitalism "does" what exactly? The rules funnelling interest $ to the investors work on laws of physics? Of nature? Are there capitalist assembly lines producing capitalism or capitalist policies? Does it jump out of the bushes & force those who volunteer their time & effort to receive $? How "does" a concept that literally has no effect on the physical world affect the physical world?
We keep doing this to ourselves: we treat decisions made by corrupt politicians as Unquestionable Edicts from the Lord On high & we can change NOTHING while they have all that impunity, funnelling the profits we work to earn to their cronies.
Once you brought up the laws of physics... Temperature doesn't 'jump out of the bushes' either, nor has a conveyor line churning it out—yet it's a useful measure of how stuff operates irl ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I think you bring an important point to understanding the situation in which we’ve found ourselves, namely; It’s a machine. Yes, it’s a decoding machine as one of its programmed mandates. But, there are other elements that are programmed into this machine. What we have now essentially is advanced autonomous A.I. released into the wild. It already has enormous data sets from which to continuously draw in real time while offering limited options from which humans are allowed to choose. It increasingly controls a growing number of power nodes within political, economic, technical, religious and bureaucratic power structures. Why does it seem there’s no off-switch? The answer is because, there is no off switch. This ‘invisible hand’ is now self-sustaining and self-powered by human consciousness with graphene oxide via nano technologies designed to capture more and more unwitting humans into its web. Now that it’s gaining ‘sentience’ it’s being guided by powers at war with The Divine Creator. In your heart you will know this is happening. It’s inhuman, it’s inhumane, it’s ruthless and advancing exponentially. And yes, we are seen by this A.I. as commodities of diminishing value.
On the contrary, this is the inevitable end result — at least in the United States — of "unfettered" "free market" capitalism, which, over time, allows the few to consolidate massive amounts of wealth and power. Corporations, billionaires, etc hijack government, capture regulatory agencies, buy up the media, and use these mediums to further increase their control and wealth. It's kind of fascism, in that there is a merging of state with corporations, but it's really a hijacking of the state because "capitalism" has been allowed to run amok, unchecked...
If liberals find a fact unappetizing or morally repugnant, then anyone who draws attention to that fact is deemed evil and malignant: they do it out of devilment.
Absolutely right. Thank you. That's what I was thinking throughout the article as I read. The US has degenerated into fascism: nominal private ownership of property with de facto government control. Capitalism is the complete separation of economics and state in which all property is privately owned. When you have to pay ransom money to a cartel that will take your stuff and cage you if you don't cough it up; when you act by permission and the government acts by right; you're not living in a free, capitalist society. The US and most of the globe are mixed economies: mixtures of free elements and statist elements, and they all have the same end: rule by pressure groups, lobbies, and special interests. The mixed economy's alternatives are either to repeal the controls or disintegrate into dictatorship. The world has so far chosen the latter.
My main point is that we view whatever all authority FIGURES do as if they are done by Higher Beings. Sorry, I studied social psychology JUST to understand the Underlying Mindsets involved, & while it's easy for me to grasp, it takes long to explain in writing. But saying "it's the banks" is more of the same mindset.
You're not wrong: but again, what does "a bank" "do?" Without human intervention, you ARE ascribing agency to what? Entries into ledgers, the ledgers themselves, the vaults, the buildings they're housed in...
We have a tendency in our culture to try & assign blame onto anything but the people making decisions. This is childish. The rules of banking are as 100% man-made as those of all isms. We slap labels onto things, but then regard the label as if it's describing laws of nature or physics, then mentally flee in panic from what I'm suggesting, acting responsibly & changing things for the better as if doing so would upset "Daddy" when it would only upset the authority figures we're childishly afraid of confronting.
It's a tiresome pattern of circular non-thinking. The "banks" do nothing. The people running them & enforcing the man-made rules governing us only because we regard them as Unquestionable Things that HAVE to work the way we're told they do is what allows them to function.
"We slap labels onto things, but then regard the label as if it's describing laws of nature or physics, then mentally flee in panic from what I'm suggesting, acting responsibly & changing things for the better as if doing so would upset "Daddy" when it would only upset the authority figures we're childishly afraid of confronting."
Problem: "Daddy" has lots of big guns and other enforcement methods and tends to use them on anyone who upsets "him". We are being ruled by an oligarchical class that is fully prepared to use violence to maintain their rule, and most sane people know that. THAT is why most people go along to get along. The consequences of not going along can be severe.
The violence of the oligarchical state is a real thing, that most people understand quite well. It is part of the social equation, whether we like it or not, and any attempt to remake society will have to deal with that reality.
As an example, Gandhi and the other leaders of the non-violent protest movement in India understood that some people in their movement would be injured or even killed by the British state, as indeed happened. It takes courage to confront this sort of thing and keep going. Acknowledging this reality is not an excuse.
We HAVE several perfectly legal, non-violent means to end the harmful mandates. & if gathering together to whine AT the problem then waiting for someone else to actually do anything can work "with enough people (whining? How does that cause... never mind)" then "enough people" joining IN a legal effort should DEFINITELY force changes through.
Why is anyone even HERE if there is no plan to do anything after we all agree something needs to be done? So again, why can't anyone join in discussing what to do now that we have millions of people with all the anti-vaxx media out there.
What or who is everyone waiting FOR? A Great Force to descend from the Heavens to deliver us? If we start organizing effective resistance what does everyone think will happen? An alarm will go off in Nancy Pelosi's head turning her into a killer cyborg?
I didn't say "let's tell government we're upset & draw their attention TO us." In fact, trying to amass enough of the public onto something effective ANONYMOUSLY is to be part of the discussion.
But everyone KEEPS using that they would act to stop any such effort (listen carefully now) If They Knew About It as an excuse to not discuss creating one they WOULDN'T know about. That's what discussion is for, ideas of how to go about this.
If there was a clearly recognizable front battle, I think most of us recognize the severity of threat to freedom enough to race to that battle. But, there’s no kinetic front line battle to join. You’re probably right that the legal battle is the most effective way to wage against this behemoth…..except for repentance and prayer. Unfortunately, Constitutional law has gotten watered down and mostly forgotten as an old document that no longer applies. Perhaps channeling donations to the most effective legal strategies in conjunction with lobbying our Congressmen to break free of their chains and soberly recognize the enemy.
Under the current structure, These People http://allaregreen.us/ are making all decisions with complete impunity & will not voluntarily change the status quo because they benefit from it. Ergo, someone needs to find some way to reduce or remove Their Power to enforce the harmful mandates.
Pause: is there ANY other way to end the mandates?
The mandates are neither caused nor enforced by the jabs themselves nor their manufacturers. ONLY that the majority of people follow http://allaregreen.us/ & their structures of government blindly allows this to continue. Only getting enough of that mass of people to change that they view politicians as Unquestionable Authorities can cause them to stop blindly following them.
Again: don't take 2 billion tangents about how you think this is impossible. CAN anyone EXCEPT We The People do this? If not, then all other thoughts can be abandoned. They're useless.
The fear YOU are likely feeling at contemplating this stems not from a fear of what politicians will want to do should we try anything, it's a fear of standing up to the only protectors we feel we have, despite the fact that they never protect us. Heck, they're killing us now. But it's the same fear everyone in Western society has because who would confront what they feel is their only protector?
So, one would have to CREATE Something New that the public could also see as protecting them: a movement perhaps. Something that can be presented as being Large Enough to challenge the power of the corporations at first as the same people who fear standing up to 'Government' still hate corporations.
If I need Mass Support for A then I need to appeal to those masses. A movement to reduce Daddy-Government's ability to protect them is not something the masses will support. But they still support ones against corporate power & influence so long as they see that as separate from 'Government.' & they do because they choose to.
So, how to create a movement that will eventually convert into reducing the power http://allaregreen.us/ but not seem like it's going that way now, is only targeting corporate power & influence?
It's amazing how clear this all comes to one when they don't squirm in discomfort of fear. If this is done under the radar & doesn't look threatening, No One will Do Anything to halt the movement. I'm not naïve. We'd need relative anonymity to build such a thing until it became too big to stop, ignore or take out BEFORE converting it into something that can succeed.
But I can't do this alone. So I come here to places where people are at least discussing that the mandates are bad, but the Doxastic Anxiety (Immense Discomfort) they feel at merely CONTEMPLATING standing up to mere authority FIGURES is annoying.
Maybe not a movement exactly...but using technology to 1) decentralize everyting and 2) see what all are doing, where every penny is going, and for people to be able to say stop/no....
"Using technology to..." okay. Parse that out for us. WHO is to use WHAT technology in WHAT WAY to accomplish WHAT & why aren't you already doing it if it is such a great plan? Why are YOU telling ME this instead of enacting it?
Have you given a single thought to anything?
Everyo0ne here is trying to wish into reality some 'plan' where we just decide to do something & then it gets done, somehow, by we don't know who. While you cowards are all sitting here wishing, children are dying & you are all long past the point where avoiding the responsibility of ACTING not 'wishing' for the problems to be taken away = complicity.
What are you going to say to the parents at the funeral of a niece or nephew of yours? "I wished for Someone to Do Something HARD. But no Great Force looking out for us came to make my wishes reality?" Then leave & go home to wait some more for some system to create & enact itself into being?
I've made the point several times that WE need to discuss effective plans. & not one person here has ever NOT tried their best to AVOID discussing saving the lives of children.
It doesn't matter how I phrase it: discussing acting against your dear surrogate Mommies & Daddies in government always causes you to choose to continue sacrificing All Children, & possibly only wish that you had had more yourselves so you could have more to sacrifice to your Gods In Office http://allaregreen.us/.
If Kim Jong-un had been responsible for the death of One American Child the bombs would have flown the Next Day. Your authority figures DECREE for YOU to voluntarily do it yourselves & you just line up, hang your heads & wish for them to stop making you do it.
Children are dying. & everyone here is hanging on to their hypocrisy for dear life. Now watch: you're going to reply with something that contains "I didn't SAY any of that."
It's not about you or what you say. The constitution in EVERY Western nation gives us explicit instructions on what to do when politicians exceed their mandates & you cowards ALL KNOW this.
Whoa. This is genius. And it gives me hope (that someone could see it and name it so clearly).
Isn't our response then to re-encode values in every way possible -- through critical thinking, in the family, in the church, in the community. Local, local, local, eschew brands, turn off the TV, meet in person, fight to defend non-corporate values wherever they flourish?
Thanks, Toby, and, yes, values, decided by people, not the market, the more local and community-based the better. And that means respecting other communities' values, even if you disagree with them. I don't know how to get there from here but it probably starts with rebuilding communities.
Technology can help with decentralization...we already have local markets (on line yard sales, online donate your stuff you no longer need etc)....where markets and human values can come together?
Yes. That's the idea in practice in a small way. It needs to be much more comprehensive and part of a daily life and new way of building back community. Foster Gamble and Dr. David Martin have been encouraging this for the past 2 years. They have encouraged people to get to know their farmers in their areas, get to know trades people, get to know those that fix things and make things etc.--all local. "The Market" is up the street on set days; it isn't on the internet nor Amazon nor made in China. I believe this is how we rebuild and start over and passively resist the othe "great reset" as described by WEF etc.
So GlobalCap is creating a reality, that's largely unopposed, (except by reactionary groups that do not understand what they are up against) though within that reality - with superficials differences - they have no ideology or values. A meaningless reality then, requiring compliance to exist in. That sounds right and inline with the larger transhuman plan to cyborg us.
Still, it won't work because at the end of the day - and whether people understand this framing or not - humans are meaning-making beings. The pressure of having meaning gutted will act a catalyst and push people into action even if that is messy and ineffective and uncoordinated. Over time, they will simply not comply and will do something else - create something else. Nature doesn't do meaninglessness either, so this will fall apart, because, of its own lack of substance.
I agree. However, what CJ misses in his excellent and valuable critique is the innate love within human beings which is sidelined, ignored or even understood, and that that love is inherent in any spiritual belief, or for that matter living without spiritual belief. It's our common denominator and I feel it will get us through all of this. The rest of it - what CJ outlines, really - is just performative, utilitarian accounting which has no depth of meaning whatsoever.
Deep topic!! The lives of individuals are infinitely rich in unending vistas and terrains, victories and defeats, growths and declines, progress and sidetracks, wisdom and temptations and so forth. So much more so are societies.
When Putin says that he has received the civilization of Russia from his ancestors and intends to ensure that his people can pass it on to future generations of Russians, and also that he won't allow others to destroy it without putting up a fight that makes sense to me. For such civilization takes generations, indeed centuries to develop. It is a very real thing if impossible to describe except via artistic, not scientific, expression. And nobody would care about such a thing unless it did not have a beating heart at the core, something precious and special, alive, sensitive, passionate, feeling, human - very human. These skeins are expressed culturally in language, dress, cuisine, customs and institutions such as Royalty, Government, Church, Festival, music, art, political discourse, literature and so on. The 'high' part of it - when working well - suffused through all elements high and low. Even the yakuza and Tongs are fiercely patriotic, after all, even if they are also cutthroats and pirates in practice. Honour systems are always present in high cultures too. Ultimately the high aspects have to do with goodness, discipline, honour. And ultimately they all come together in the mutual creation of sacred spaces, sacred perception. Such was the inspiration behind the great cathedrals of Christianity, an inspiration that transcended the power politics of prelates in Rome which gradually spread its corruption throughout the nascent civilization. For there is always corruption in any complex organism or institution. The challenge is how to recover from it.
The Chinese Hexagram #18, sometimes translated as 'Work on What has been Spoiled' could also be called 'disease,' 'corruption' or 'recovery.' It depicts five of the most poisonous animals locked together in a jar. The one who survives has the most potent toxin. This toxin is then used as medicine. For disease and corruption show the path forward. Such imbalances arise from mistakes - sins, crimes, laxities and so on. Correcting those mistakes makes society better but the institutions must have sufficient wisdom, integrity and mandates to do so. In this way the society maintains its high culture and indeed improves it over time. Of course only if it is truly high manifesting bedrock virtues which do not fall into the traps of empire-building, totalitarian control, egomaniacal tyranny and so forth.
The problem with the revolutionaries confronting corruption that has been allowed by a lax civilization to fester for far too long is that they know only how to destroy the old. They have no notion of how to rebuild afterwards. And again: good cultures, aka civilizations, take centuries to create, warts and all, so destroying them should never be an option, rather pruning and trimming to promote this aspect over here whilst reducing that aspect over there rather than simply chopping everything down and bringing out the builldozer. If that does happen, then perhaps it is best to follow the old ways: kill all the defeated, rape all their women so their offspring are the victor's and the previous civilization - like so many before - simply vanishes forever rather than limping along as some sort of ghastly deformity.
In any case, it seems we have destroyed Western civilization at this point. Maybe it can be rescued, but I suspect that having bulldozed away both Royalty, the Church and the traditional location-based Aristocracies that we have simply failed to replace them with other elements which organically and authentically manifest the same deep cultural wisdoms and functions which spawned them over time. Yes, they may well have been corrupted (though history is told by the victors so hard to tell, frankly - reports about Tzar Nicholass II, for example, vary wildly depending on source) but destroying them wholesale was incorrect for sure, and we are all paying the price for that today, arguing about various -isms without being able to understand a single one.
Great minds think alike!! I did already. My first piece on current affairs - something I do read about but rarely write about in conventional prose piece, rather insufferably pompous and formal I Ching style stuff!
Is meaning being gutted? Arent trans surgeries being understood as acts of freedom and this freedom is of the highest value or meaning, above all others? Isnt transhumanism filling the god-shaped hole? I mean it appears people are experiencing an intense sense of meaning from it. Even if it is false and self-destructive to me, I think it must be appreciated that it is meaningful to them and collapse wont necessarily follow due to meaninglessness. I hope you are right tho.
I say this as an old school Leftist who thinks "class" is considerably more important than whatever "designer, uber aggrieved, micro-identity" anyone might have dreamed up today - no matter how righteous and special said "identity" might make them feel.
If they can change the definition of what a "woman is" to include the guy standing in front of you waving his penis around - it's pretty small potatoes to simply alter any and all language and concepts to fit the PSYOP of the moment - as in changing the definition of "a pandemic," or of what a "vaccine is," or of what constitutes "herd immunity," what constitutes "a coup," what a "Nazis" is, what an "unprovoked invasion" is, what "government censorship is," etc. etc.
As someone who paid far too little attention for far too long - to the "Woke" controlled demolition of language and our collective reality - I finally started paying attention when all those death threats and rape threats against J.K.Rowling piqued my curiosity. I mean what outlandish transphobic hate speech could Ms. Rowling have uttered to incite such a violent response? Imagine my surprise when after I had read every word she had spoken on the topic I found that I completely agreed with her - thus being forced to face the fact that I too am now clearly yet another shameless "hateful transphobic bigot" - yeah, a TERF. I mean sure, I totally support the basic equal "rights" of trans-people - but at the end of the day I do put my trust in science based biological reality rather than anyone's gender delusions - and I really don't think penis's belong in women's rape shelters, domestic violence shelters or women's prisons - no matter what "identity" is attached to that penis. Call me "old school."
So between the assault on language, free speech and basic civil liberties at play in the "Woke" culture wars, AND the clearly parallel assault as part of the covid propaganda operation and Ukraine - I've come to develop a deep an abiding appreciation for ANYONE who can still think for themselves and who can summon the courage to openly question the continuous stream of propaganda being pumped out like raw sewage by virtually all Western MSM 24/7. Strange bedfellows are now clearly the order of the day. I sincerely appreciate my Libertarian and Conservative sisters and brothers much more today than I did only a few years back.
Labels such as "left" vs "right" - "liberal vs conservative" have been turned inside out and on their heads by the massive propaganda assault involved in first "Russiagate," then "Trump Degrangement Syndrome," then the "Covid Operation," and now "Ukraine." So if you still have two functioning neural synapse left to rub together - and you're willing to think for yourself rather than needing Fox News or NPR to "tell you" - "what to think" - I'm more than happy to call you "comrade."
Very well said! I think the fact that I've been a TERF ever since Bruce Jenner's famous magazine cover is a part of the reason I didn't buy the Covid narrative either. Indeed, the people I know who don't care for males in women's restrooms are also those who don't give a shit about Covid, and anyone can observe that those most militant for gender woo woo are also the most militant for Covid restrictions. These people are ready to believe any absurdity, they've been throughouly programmed to believe anything as long as some authority tells them it's "the consensus" and "progressive".
I find it rather telling how much overlap there is from Eisenhower Paleoconservatives and old Left liberals. Looking back it is easy to see that the Neoliberals and the Neoconservatives were the true extremists all along. Now they are lashing out like spoiled children because they have no positive record to defend and their leadership is being threatened by the plebs. One day we woke up and realized the world we liked to argue about did not exist anymore and had not for a long time.
I can find many common ideals and values between the old left liberals and the conservatives(paleo)...
I am grateful CJ is one of them...and watching Naomi Wolf and listening to her read the old protestant Bible has also made me hope we can build a new coalition...and realize that we cannot go back to the world we thought we had, but must wrestle with the actual one we have...well laid out by CJ.
“The old-school Left. The ‘Covid-denying, conspiracy-theorizing, Putin-loving, far-right-extremist’ Left.”
Now that’s my kind of Left 😁 The free-thinking, liberty-loving, anti-tyranny, tolerant-of-differing-viewpoints, truth-seeking, anti-GloboCap, peace-defending Left ✌️
Thanks for writing clearly. At 14 I was told I knew nothing and I thought she might be right (a different girl from the one who when she had nothing left to say said she loved me and I stood there grateful for the lie) and between 100 and 1000 hours I realized language is all weaponized, and created to divide. For example, good cop versus bad cop; left versus right, the ism's which are all designed to compartmentalize and create silos. For the sake of greedy reductionism I forsake labels because they serve the purpose of confusion instead of clarity. Freedom of speech was and is alway my "governor" and one feature of it is the heckler's veto. Too many of us want to join causes that are and never were sincere. And because understanding deception and hypocrisy and agitprop and debt-slavery and morality and spirituality require thinking, and thinking about our thinking, most people defer and say I want someone else to tell me what to think, know and believe, and we accept their labels. The Jesuits created the Tavistock and other institutions. For a more comprehensive understand please give yourself five or six or 10 to 20 hours and read what's in this link: https://handbeholdnail.wordpress.com/2018/05/05/the-jesuits-order-of-the-alumbrados-unveiled/
The system you aptly describe as "GloboCap" is far closer to Fascism than capitalism (in my opinion it *is* outright Fascism). A truly free market is does not include oligarchical elites and "too big to fail" corporations so heavily integrated into the state apparatus you can't tell where one ends and the other begins.
As someone else mentioned here, this has everything to do with the final stages of "Democracy" and very little to do with capitalism which no person alive has but a passing experience with.
What stops someone in a free market from owning so much that they have a monopoly on a resource?
I could buy the land of the river upstream from you and dam it and create a lake, then charge people for water. Good for markets, bad for the rest of us.
What stops that today? Men with guns certainly don’t. Such situations are rampant and more men with more power and bigger guns (which is what The State is, really) oddly never seems to solve the problem, but rather exacerbates it.
I posit that rational actors in a free market would not engage in transactions where such a one-sided outcome is the result. There are two sides to every trade. But it’s hard to be specific with such a vague hypothetical.
Yes, but I think what CJ is saying is that capitalism when left unabated will inevitably morph into this fascistic form. Merging with the government by paying the burocrats off is as profitable as heck for any capitalist and is too good to forego. Every capitalist is striving to sell more of their product by outdoing their competitors. But if they see an opportunity to eliminate competition altogether and become a monopoly they will go for it. And you can eliminate competition by using the muscle of the government. So, I guess, capitslism has a natural cycle with stages of development. And although some stages are healthy and beautiful in a free market environment when everyone brings their talent and skill to the table and allow the best man win the dollar of the customer, the later stage is unfortunately very ugly. They bribe the authorities to force their product unto the customer and that's the stage we're in.
Eh. Left, right, whatever. Like Greenwald has said over and over, "my ideology hasn't changed, my principles are still my principles." I was always a big progressive, hated both Bushes, loved Dennis Kucinich. I have no issues allying with the populist right. Go Rand Paul and Matt Gaetz and anyone else standing in the way of this garbage.
For rationality and vision, Congress is an anemic body. It's hard to accomplish anything beyond drawing attention issues. Gaetz himself was a target of the hive-mind liberal media. He has put forth bills to end funding for Ukraine (granted, while being hawkish toward China), and Paul recently stood to force a vote on the censorious "Tik Tok" bill. Their voices lean into possoble coalition of conservatives and disaffected Sanders progressives. It's a weak tea at present, but a positive force.
A big part of the problem is the role captured governments play, having monopolies on violence as they do. Without government capture, the globalists would not have nearly the power that they do. Allow people to self govern and the worst problems go away.
I think that is what the left will eventually come to see...same as conservatives. Rights are inherent and for that you need to beleive in a Creator...something most conservatives believe (not the country club ones)....so let's start there.
Very true. They try out the overpriced garbage b/c they're bored with their meaningless life, and then tell us that we need it to. Global walk out is needed. Prayer and meditation is eminent.
May i ask what "left" exactly are you referring to when you exclaim so assertively and with such venom and hate "all this left crap"? In the essay he accurately made a very clear distinction between two so-called lefts - one is the fake left DNC liberals (which in my view are actually right-wing DNC and liberals as they seem to be thoroughly in alignment the humanity-destroying capitalists' executioners force, a.k.a the american military and national security apparatus) and two is what he called the real left, which is diametrically opposite to the right-wing capitalist DNC and right-wing pro-war liberals and diametrically opposite to the great reset and the green new deal of the climate capitalists. The real left which the DNC (and its billionaire capitalist-owned media) does everything in its power to destroy.
This profoundly wise essay gives one example of the real left https://oneworldrenaissance.com/2021/01/23/holism-fragmentation-and-our-endangered-future-a-new-vision-and-a-new-hope/ as well as the work of in-depth researchers on the great reset like the amazing leftist Alison McDowell, leftist Cory Morningstar, leftist Winter Oak publication and Raul Diego (from Silicon Icarus) all of whom did some of the most in-depth and amazing research (much more in-depth than anything I've seen coming from conservatives) exposing the entire capitalist billionaire machine behind the great reset, green new deal, smart cities etc. Here are a couple of other examples of the work of the real left on the great reset, smart cities, cbdc, green new deal, metaverse, climate capitalists etc - https://youtu.be/7ui7W-WELd8
So which left are you actually referring to in your hateful comment? The right-wing DNC or the real left? Or are you lumping them both together (even though the DNC tries to destroy the real left) lumping them together in one big hate fest of anything that isn't conservative, religiously sectarian and nationalist?
In addition to that, I'd also like to say that the reason i consider myself part of the real left is precisely becasue it is the closest attitude and approach that i've come across to creating on earth the love of God (I hate to use that word since it has been so profoundly corrupted and distorted by sectarian religion) that i personally experienced. What i mean by that is that i had what is known as a near death experience (NDE), in which i experienced first hand the unconditionally loving energy and unity that is our essence and that is the ground of all that exists (what religious people call God, although they erronously tend to personify/anthropomorphize this unconditionally loving ground of existence as if it is a distinct person/entity, entity that is separate from us, which is untrue, in my experience).
That NDE completely transformed my understanding of reality and the beliefs i grew up with. I was raised as a Catholic and conservative, my NDE made it clear to me beyond doubt that there is nothing on this planet more divorced from the unconditional love and unity of Reality/Being/God (which is what we are) than divisive sectarian religion and sectarian nationalism, that divide and pit humanity against each other (in the name of a so-called "god", no less).
(There are many other thing that i saw during the NDE that sectarian religious ideology gets very wrong and does not correspond to actual Reality/God/our true nature, as I experienced it, amd which causes tremendous harm and profoundly misleads people, but i won't go into all that here).
As a result of my NDE and seeing what God is/what we are/what reality is I left the church and stopped subscribing to humanity-desteoying God-forgetting right-wing conservative ideology. Some years later i started feeling more and more closer to left wing ideals as they are the closest i've seen on earth that resembles what God/Reality actually is, what our essence actually is, the closest to the unconditional love and unity and non-sectarianism that God actually is and the we actually are.
So i would humbly say that i strongly disagree with your venom-filled statement above becasue in my own direct first hand experience the exact opposite is the actual fact - there is nothing on this planet that destroys life more and that opposes the reality of God more than conservative right-wing religious nationalist sectatianism and division. I don't know how to say it any clearer but religious sectarianism and nationalism seems, from the perspective of the absolute, like psychologically-undeveloped four year old children who believe in all sorts of childish fairytales and invest billions in killing machines to fight among themselves (to death) to create and protect these imagined divisions. It is insanity beyond what words can truly convey and it is the polar opposite of what we actually came here for, which is to live together on this paradise planet that we were given as the brothers and sisters that we are, helping each other and caring for each other, enjoying our unity and uniquness, and bringing our essence as unconditional love into expression in the physical realm. Yet what have we actually done? We have turned this paradise planet into a divided warring nationalist right-wing hell, where we fight and kill each other based on childish religious-national labels and indoctrination, and where we mercylessly exploit each other for the capitalist god of profit..
All of this complete maddness is induced through our forgetfulness of what we actually are..
from my own direct experience, of what i personally experienced first hand during my NDE - to me it is absolutely clear that the sectarian nationalist-religious conservative ideology is a PROFOUND DISTORTION of what we actually are and what God actually is. We are absolutely NOT any of the immature labels we were taught to identify with and find solace in. We are absolutely NOT Christian-Muslim-Jewish-Hindu etc, we are absolutely NOT American-Russian-German-Chinese etc. These childish, divisive and God-denying sectarian labels are the POLAR OPPOSITE of what we actually are. We are eternal beings of God's light (which is our light), eternal souls, who only temporarily and very briefly came to this physical realm and inhabit these human bodies.
In my first hand experience, the three pillars of right wing ideology (nationalist/religious sectarianism with eternal division of humanity and hostility to the 'other tribe' and caring only for the security of 'my group'; Ruthless and heart-divorced capitalist mentality of profit-above-all-else and wealth accumulation as the highest value; Intolerant coercive judgemental cruel conservative psychology) these right-wing pillars are precisely the POLAR OPPOSITE of the nature of God/Being/our essence, and precisely what distances humanity away from God/our essential nature, and what destroys and turns the paradise planet we were given into a sectarian/capitalist/conservative/nationalist warring hell
I don't care about left and right. My comments also apply to the "right" crap, and they are made from personal life experience and from a view of the valley. You are still wandering through the forest. Best wishes and safe travels to you. The bottom line is that money talks, bs walks and through various mechanisms, a very large number of humans, sadly, have been deprived of their soul and individuality.
As for your hints to religion, I have unpacked, on my own, the words of Jesus Christ as quoted in John 14:12. They apply to ALL humans (no exceptions). Hint: the real meaning is not what the clergy "teaches" to their congregations.
Thank you foe the reply. I understand, however that (not caring about left or right) is absolutely NOT the impresaion that comes off from your origianl comment. In that comment it sounds very much like you DO care about right and left.
If your comment applies also to the right "crap" then i thing that the decent thing to do is to state that, because as it is, that is not at all the impression that comes off from your comment. Quite to the contrary.
Thank you again for replying. Wishing you all the best 🙏
You seem to be defining any value that you disagree with as "right wing". Any democrat who disagrees with you isn't a true Democrat, or not a "true Scotsman". However, there's no getting away from the fact that it's the democrats pushing the hardest for war in Ukraine, and it's the left supporting war and demonising Russians everywhere and saying hateful and even bloodthirsty things online about Russians, the unvaxxed, "transphobes" etc. Perhaps, aside from the old left (which are similar to normal conservatives) there are no inherent values on the left any more, and they just believe whatever their overlords tell them is virtuous this year. It's a team sport rather than a belief system at this point aside from the traditional versions of left and right who are more similar than different.
Thank you. I hear you and understand. Yes, the Democratic party is absolutely and thoroughly a right-wing corporate-capitalist party. Not only is it the polar opposite of true left wing, but in fact it does everything in its power to destroy the real left. By any normal political science measure the DNC would be obviously classified in the upper right corner (right-wing authoritarian) of the political typology square, right next to its ugly twin brother, the GOP. But in an un-sane political system which is 100% right-wing and billionaire-owned and where the real left has been completely erased from existence (such as in american politics), then in such a distorted system, anyone who isn't 100% right-wing, but only 99% right wing (like the democratic party) is deceptively branded (by tbe billionaire capitalists' media, both conservative and liberal) as 'the Left'..
As a side note, i remember reading an article from a Danish newspaper a few years ago where they compared Sanders' positions to those of parties in Denmark. He came out more to the right of the most right-wing party there!! But in the 100% right-wing political system of america (where both parties are in the upper right corner of the political typology square) this right-wing politician is labelled 'far left'. That's how crazy and tilted to the far right american politics are..
But despite what the right-wing propagandists in cnn or fox or nbc hammer into people's head over and over again, the fact remains that in america the tyrannical system is set up in such a way that your only choice is between right-wing capitalist nationalist conservatives or right-wing capitalist nationalist liberals. The Left does not exist in america!! And so, to create tje appearance of some choice, they call the side that is only 99% right-wing they call it 'the left', even though each and every thing the DNC do is exactly the opposite of what a real left wing party would do..
The two parties are IDENTICAL to each other when it comes to what really matters to them - securing the narrow interests of the murderous greedy american right-wing corporate-capitalist empire (which spans the entire globe).
As for the insignificant stuff (that doesn't affect the empire's interests) they keep the partisan game going and the people divided and busy hating each other by pushing idiotic culture wars and identity politics (which the empire couldn't care less about. The corporate-capitalits don't give a sh*t if the slave in uniform that drops the bombs from their warplanes is black or white, man or woman, gay or straight etc). The only "difference" between the two parties (or two wings of the one big corporate war party that runs america) is identity politics, which is the tool they use to create the appearance as if there are two distinct options (so that uneducated americans continue believing that they live in a democracy and not in a one-party system, and that it makes a difference which wing of the one empire is in power), but no matter which of the two puppets you choose - the liberal wing or the conservative wing of the empire - you get the exact same corporate-capitalist war machine running the show, murdering millions for its profits and hegemony over the planet, and surrounding the entire globe with nearly a thousand gigantic military bases (as well as dozens and dozens of warships colonizing every ocean on the face of the planet, as well as at least eleven extra-judicial torture facilities where kidnapped human beings are tortured and held in captivity for years and decades without trial). This entire monstrous military machine of rbe capitalists exists solely in order to threaten, bully, intimidate, bomb, attack, murder, invade, occupy, steal, torture, brutalize, kill, plunder, traumatize, inflict pain on anyone who dares to disobey the orders of american capitalists to privatize their country's resources, industry and services from tne public domain into the private hands of american capitalists..
The actions of the right-wing empire stay the same no matter which right-wing puppet, conservative or liberal, happens to be in the white house. Biden continues Trump's right-wing imperialist pro-billilnaire policies which continued Obama's right-wing imperialist pro-billionaire policies which continued Bush jr.'s right-wing imperialist pro-billionaire policies which continued clinton's right-wing imperialist pro-billionaire policies which continued bush sr.'s right-wing imperialist pro-billionaire policies which continued reagen right-wing imperialist pro-billionaire policies... Both parties (or both wings of the one party) are working to brutally secure the narrow greedy interests the exact same murderous corporate-capitalist right-wing empire.
If the real left would happen to come into power then the empire's wars and attacks on humanity for the domination of right-wing corporate-capitalists over the planet's resources would stop within a second!! The demonic corporate-banking right-wing empire would be dissolved within a second, if the real left came to power. That is why the left has been completely erased from existence by the corporate-capitalists and replaced by the abysmal right-wing democratic party which is just as pro-empire as repubs are, and then they tell you in their manipulative media that this right-wing pro-capitalist abomination is 'the left'.. It's hard to know if to laugh or cry!!
And while it's very true, as you said, that many right-wing liberals have been deeply brainwashed by the capitalists' professional propagamdists on cnn/nbc/nytimes etc to cheer for the american empire's war on russia, i think one would have to be profoundly blinded and propagandized to not see that this is EXACTLY what the empire is selling conservatives with regard to their coming planned attack on china (as to why the american right-wing empire is going to attack china soon, see here https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-ip4LKz9d6U). All the propagandized conservatives i've spoken to are already salivating at the thought of the empire's comimg attack on china (and iran), just like they blindly and gullibly cheered for hundreds of other attacks of the empire (as long as the attacks are on non-christians, of course)
The ONLY reason brainwashed conservatives are not cheering for the attack on russia (like they cheer for the hundreds of other attacks by the empire) is becasue russia is christian. The vast majoroty of anti-God conservative chriatians don't give a sh*t when the empire murders millions of non-christians. They care only when it's someone carrying the "correct" religious label.
And even worse, not only do Godless conservative christians not give a sh*t when the capitalists murder millions of non-christians (to secure their profits and global domination), but the sectarian and demonic ideology they subscribe to makes them actually cheer for the empire when it attacks non-christians.
God-denying conservative christians actually urge their sectarian nationalist fake "god" (that they invented for themselves) to 'bless our troops' as the capitalists send them out to murder and plunder in yet another country that they wish to control (one of 469 attacks and invasions that the american right-wing capitalist empire has launched in the past 200 years. See here https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=h4Pr9g_7Nhc&t=17s&pp=ygUiNDY5IGludmFzaW9ucyBnZW9wb2xpdGljYWwgZWNvbm9teQ%3D%3D).
I don't know in which manipulative conservative echo-chambers you're hamging out at, but i find it amazing that you think that only right-wing liberals are deceived. Who do you think the bloodthirsty greedy right-wing empire always rely on for support for their hundreds of attacks across the globe, if not on gullible Godless conservatives?!? Conservatives who actually believe the capitalist billionaires when they hold up a bible and tell the gullible conservative christians that it's their "patriotic duty' to go and kill for the empire (or at least cheer for the brainwashed troops who do the killing)..
Yes, i agree with you that right-wing liberas have now ALSO fallen for the same war propaganda tricks of the empire (like conservatives have for decades now), but that's nothing compared to the decades and decades that hate-filled Godless conservative christians have been cheering for the capitalists' executioners force (a.k.a 'the american military') and for the hundreds of the american global empire's attacks and invasions across the entire planet, and hating who the capitalist billilnaores teach them to hate (theough professional deceivers on fox and breirbart etc), screaming with blood in their eyes 'kill the evil commies, or muslims, or whichever non-christian "enemy" they've been brainwashed by the empire to hate..
And the gullible brainwashed conservative christians will continue to cheer for the empire's attacks & murders (as long as it's non-christians being murdered, of course) also in the empire's coming attack on china, which the american capitalists' will undoubtedly launch once anti-God DeSantis enters office in 2025. I guarantee you that he will tell his brainwashed gullible christian conservative followers that this is what "jesus" and "god" wants them to do, to go kill the 'evil commies' for "freedom and liberty" becasue this is the 'patriotic' thing to do. And the dumbed-down Godless conservative christians will undoubtedly listen to this demonic millioaire manipulator and his life-destroying sectarian ideology and will once again cheer for the american capitalists' satanic empire, being fooled once again into beliving that the capitalists' executioners force (a.k.a 'the american military') is attacking china for "freedom and democracy" (see video above for the real reason why the american empire is going to attack china soon while telling you they are 'defending taiwan', in the exact same way that they now use ukraine to attack russia)..
PS. And as for the question you asked earlier, about what i suggest instead, here's a suggestion that I currently find to be the most wise, pro-human, genius and closest to reflecting our sacred nature (or to say it more accuretely, a suggestion that creates the structural conditions that would allow us to develop to our highest potential and express our divine nature) https://oneworldrenaissance.com/2021/01/23/holism-fragmentation-and-our-endangered-future-a-new-vision-and-a-new-hope/
"Global capitalism has no ideology … There is no ideological territory outside global capitalism. There is no “outside.” There are no external adversaries."
Global capitalism is bent on privatizing the commons, which consists of the genes we are made from, the air we breathe, and whatever else they haven't privatized yet for whatever reason.
They are doing this in order to reset the monopoly board, or as they would put it, to "save capitalism".
This isn't an ideology? Of course its an ideology. A very sharp dividing line I would say.
Oh, and they're also trying to reduce the population by 95%. Malthusianism isn't an ideology? Transhumanism?
Well put. The next thing they want to privatize is our bodies...our gene codes..our ability to perform necessary labour....and the right to get rid of us who are useless eaters.
Those are ideologies, but why do you associate them with capitalism?
The power of capitalism is how it forces us to make a living. Ideologies can be rejected, dependence on a socioeconomic system requires specific changes to one's lifestyle.
I don’t understand this left and right thing. I am an American and an individual. You seem to think there are opposite teams in different countries that have shared beliefs and values. I think there might be, but there is a vast majority of individuals with families that just want to live freely without any of the other two opposing groups bugging them.
Call us the anti-politics group. We judge everything on an individual case by case basis.
By the way, all the “isms” are intellectual creations to attack or gain advantage in a debate. The “isms” can’t exist if you evaluate everything on a specific case by case basis.
I've been saying for years that labeling our enemies as "leftists" or "communists" is a serious mistake that complicates and thwarts our efforts to deal with society's real problems. There are very few principled leftists remaining in this country -- about the same number as real white supremacists. The only principles you need to assess an ideology are: adherence to the rule of law, freedom of expression, and reliance on common sense. Whether those against those ideas are on "the left" or "the right" is irrelevant. They are all enemies of free people.
You nailed it. Totalitarianism, tyranny, evil are not left or right they are monstrous phenomenon that repeats under different names and too many of the peeps have too often accepted their "baseless" assertions about what something is or is not by using their words. The Jesuits call it "learning against learning." https://handbeholdnail.wordpress.com/2018/05/05/the-jesuits-order-of-the-alumbrados-unveiled/
I think what you wrote here is helpful. Where to go from here though? I don't think people are ever going to agree on the definitions of words that derive most of their meaning from a dualistic way of thinking. "I'm definitely not X, therefore I'm Y. Don't tell me Y is distorted/wrong/delusional/changed from when I first understood it. That's X-talk." The underlying ideologies behind some of these words are just so entrenched in our psyches that invoking the word is almost sure to launch people into righteous arguments, which beautifully keeps us squabbling under the divide+conquer rubric that is working so well right now.
Agreeing on our language may just have to come last. I suppose conversations like this have to continue as the collective works out on a mental level that we're stuck here and no one is going to argue their way out of it no matter how logical they their they're being. In the mean time we can also be focusing on tangible micro-steps to regain and strengthen whatever common ground we can find at the human-to-human level. Do I have 3 other friends who want to garden and collab on food preservation? Great. 10k of those 3-people collabs = greater food sovereignty. I don't need to agree with them on everything in order to share food prep duties during harvest season. We CAN do this. Not sure how long it'll take or how rough the road but the human to human spirit of collaboration is something we have on our side, should we choose to activate it. And we don't have to like each other to collaborate on one or two small things which achieve SOMETHING we can identify as a shared value.
As long as you don't bring up Covid, jabs, lockdowns/masking.
Here in my area, I got people still outside wearing masks...in their cars, on their bikes.
Just waiting to see them gardening with a mask on...I am sure I will soon.
And for some reason, I cannot abide these people, because they have no inteest in or critical thinking skills...they prefer to outsource their thinking.
"When the people shall have nothing more to eat, they will eat the rich".
--Jean Jacques Rousseau.
Looks like the opposite happened: the rich ate the left.
I disagree that they have no ideology. The WEF certainly has an ideology, and it is probably indicative of the hidden hands behind them. James Lindsay of New Discourses has made a convincing case that they have embraced an unholy mix of Hermeticism and Gnosticism. They shall become as gods, while those of us they (in their infinite mercy) permit to live can eat ze boogs and be sequestered into reservations! These are luxury belief systems, once embraced by debauched aristocrats, to be indulged in between bloody wars and bloodier orgies. They still are. They are just riding the transformative powers of capital. It didn't have to be evil, but it is.
I think you come close to the Marquis de Sade with this comment on the WEF and the billionnaires......he was the one who first articulated that why can a King murder people (by sending them to war) , yet you are telling me I can murder one single person just for my own amusement? And de Sade was a debauched aristocrat.
Thank you. This is a very useful insight and pragmatic framing. I have a few suggestions of what can we do to push back:
I believe that awareness, calm resistance to the directions our institutions are pushing us in, and (self)-knowledge are key.
By becoming trauma aware, we can learn to spot the signs of defensive nervous systems at play. We can learn to recognize the Survival Styles in people, and stop electing, rewarding and idolizing the folks who clearly display them.
We can refuse to live in fear, and become aware of the fear mongering for what it is. We can read up on the “science” of Nudging, and learn how the magic is trick done. This makes it much harder for us to be fooled or tricked into fear.
Most of all, we can stop consuming the news media. Indeed, this is the number one recommendation I give to people with chronic illnesses who want to reduce their symptoms. I guarantee this will not only make us less fearful, but will also improve our quality of life.
We can also resist the divide and conquer tactics emanating from out institutions, which seek to get us to dehumanize, other and blame each other.
We can identify and attend to our addictions.*
We can avoid the junk, and prevent the need for pharmaceuticals.
We can help other people who are still stuck in chronic defensive nervous system states to wake up, and come back to a calm place. This cannot be achieved simply by argumentation with facts and logic, because this just feeds the defensiveness, so must be done by appealing to the right brain hemisphere via re-connection to love and common humanity, through metaphor, comedy, poetry, music, awe and beauty.
It's not capitalism, it's democracy. As for Leftists, they are just people manipulated into doing what the government and corporations already want. Most "Conservatives" too, only slower. Someone said that the real purpose of democracy is to hide the real leaders, and I think it's true. You know only the puppets, not those who are behind them. That said, I think despotism is growing, so I really see little advantages or real freedom: https://contrarium.substack.com/p/western-samizdat
I disagree. Capitalism is what you call it, but you are not using the term correctly. This is corporate fascism. The State works in partnership with private actors. It's what makes Nazi Germany. And what makes the modern French state, and to a lesser degree the US state. If it was capitalism you would have free markets and free trade. But you have nothing like that. The opposite of that. It is run on behalf of the elites who own shares in large corporations, or who are benefiting by being vastly overpaid by the State. Capitalism isn't anything like this.
If you are in the US, compare the somewhat capitalist veterinarian. You bring your cat to the vet and the vet tells you the cat is sick. "How much" you ask, and you make a financial agreement. That is capitalism.
Instead, if you are a person and you go to the doctor, vast organizations are involved. They pay the doctor who is working for a large medical corporation. You never know what it costs, and neither does the doctor. You have choices only to the degree the insurance companies and government allows. Payment is according to government order.
If the vet or the doctor were diagnosing and treating the same thing, say a broken leg, the vet would cost $1000 and the doctor would cost $10,000 but you wouldn't know it's $10,000.
Corporate fascism is the scourge. Don't say this is capitalism. Capitalism is the only thing that due to its extraordinary productivity is responsible for our rising above the animals and the primitive peoples and having amazing wealth and material success. Capitalism enriches everyone.
Corporate fascism makes us poorer and poorer because it is nothing but parasites leaching off of us and there are fewer and fewer productive people and more and more leaches. They pay people to become leaches in return for their political support. One reason Singapore has a much better economy and system than the USA.
As an old lefty who is used to hearing Marxists go on and on about how USSR communism wasn't "real communism," I have to confess that I find replies like these kind of funny. I understand and appreciate that this is not the form of capitalism you want, but it's the form of capitalism we have.
From my perspective (which is of course partial and therefore limited, as all perspectives are) it seems quite clear to me that the great reset, 4th industrial revolotion, "green" new deal, digital transformation, smart cities, metaverse, CBDC etc that the corporate-capitalists in the WEF, the Gates Foundation, Rockefeller foundatiob, BIS (bank of international settlements), IMF and World Bank are currently pushing, are guided by the exact same principles that have guided capitalists since the 1600's, of pursuit their self-interest as the highest value, of enclosure and restriction of humanity's access to the commons and privatization of all that is necessary for survival so that humanity will have no choice but to work for them and submit to them in order to live.
It is clear to see this if one understands how capitalism originated. To say it very quickly and crudely, before the development of capitalistic private property "rights" in the 1600s, everyone had access to the land and resources necessary to produce enough food for subsistence - this was done through individually owned but communally farmed tracts plus common land used for grazing and subsistence by landless peasants. From the 1600s through the 1900s, the British parliament passed hundreds of acts of legislation which enclosed/stole common land from rural communities (where the vast majority of people lived) and sold/gave it to capitalists (this was first done in the UK, and was later enforced throughout the west and the colonies).
This process was necessary for the development of capitalism because people who have access to enough land to subsist on would never willingly submit to performing wage work - historically the only way for the capitalist class to get the labor they needed is either through enslavement or through a process of enclosure/dispossession, by which people lose our ancestral subsistence lands, followed by being forced into low wages.
This process was brilliantly described in detail by Marx in the 1800s, but it was very actively protested already when it first started in the 1600s. Everywhere it was introduced it was fiercely resisted, sometimes for hundreds of years, until finally the cruel inhumane ruthless capitalists were able to completely break humanity's resistence in the 20th century and normalize this process as if it is a normal part of life (this submission was so deeply imprinted by the billionaire capitalists into the minds of those they dospossed & exploit to the point that today propagandized right-wingers hate you if you don't willingly join the capitalist plantation and work for the man "like all normal people do")
But all the way up to the early 20th century working for the capitalists was known as 'wage slavery'. Only decades into of the 20th century was this resistence finally eliminated and wage slavery for the capitalists came to be considered as a "normall" part of life..
Right wingers are often propagandized into screaming that the WEF (the one thousand biggest corporations on the planet) are "communists" becasue they said "you will own nothing and be happy", but becasue most don't know the history of how capitalism developed they fail to see that the global capitalists in the WEF do exactly what capitalists have always been doing.. The WEF billionaires want to take away everything from you in order to enrich themselves, the world's biggest capitalists, and make us dependent on them, having to pay them if we want to access to things needed for living. This is EXACT project that the capitalists have been up to since the 1600's with their enclosure and disposesion of humanity out of the basic survival necessities in order to enrich themselves and force us into wage slavery for them (the capitalist mind is all about hierarchy, selfishness, climbing over others and doing anything necessary to secure one's self interest)
To say it differently:
People often assume that capitalism is defined by markets and trade. But markets and trade existed for thousands of years before capitalism. Capitalism is only about 400 years old. So what is distinctive about this economic system? Mainly two things (there are more, of course, but two main things for now) :
1. First, and most importantly, it is defined by enclosure and artificial scarcity. Capitalism originated from systemic efforts by the elites to restrict humanity's access to the commons and to independent subsistance in order to render us reliant on wage labor for survival.
Over the past 400 years some of the forms this has taken are privatization of the commons, forced dispossesion out of ancestral lands, deliberate destructuon of subsistance economies (everywhere but particularly brutally in the colonies) and in general privatizing the most basic necessities of life into the private hands of capitalists and then having us pay them to have accesss to survival...
This continues today with attempts to ensure artificial scarcity to essentials like housing, healthcare, quality food, clean water, education, transit and so on. Things that could very easily be provided at high quality to everyone, but are deliberately prevented by right-wing capitalists from being widely available as it hurts their profit agenda (the highest value in the hearts of psychologically-undeveloped capitalists) and in addition, the removal of artificial scarcity also removes the capitalists' ability to force us to desperately work for them (to seek wages to survive). This is a huge threat to their narrow self-interests and that is why they do everything possible to insure that these essentials will not be widely available to humanity (including billions spent on propaganda to ensure their followers hate and attack anyone who dares to suggest bringing back into public ownership the essentials of life after the capitalists stole and/or restricted access to them through privatization and enclosure) .
Where universal public goods do exist, and where basic human rights and worker/health protections do exist, they have been won by intense and longstanding battles by left-wing labor movements and other progressive forces, and are constantly under attack by right wing capitalist billionaires who attempt to take them away and put behind a paywall to access, as they have always done, to enrich themselves and create artificial scarcity that forces us into low wage labor for them.
2. Second, capitalism is organized around - and dependent upon - perpetual expansion. Meaning, ever increasing production of commodified goods. It is the only intrinsically expansionary economic system in human history (meaning, it intrinsically has to have a crisis if it doesn't continually expand)
Crucially - under capitalism, the purpose of the ever increasing production is NOT primarily to meet human needs, but rather to extract and accumulate profit. This is the overriding objective of this system.
To sustain the process of perpetually increasing surplus accumulation, Capital requires an ever increasing quantity of inputs (labor and nature), and requires that these inputs be obtained as cheaply as possible.
This introduces constant pressure by the right-wing to depress real wages and attack environmental and worker protections whenever they possibly can (in the absence of countering political forces). The result is a system that, left to itself (to its own logic), AUTOMATICALLY generates exploitation of human beings and breakdown of eco-systems.
In sum, the tendency to equate capitalism with "markets and trade" naturalizes a system that is overwhelmingly not natural and profoundly harmful for the vast majority of humans and for all life, and prevents us from having a clear-eyed view of how this destructive system actually operates.
You have useful and interesting viewpoint. Your stance about "propagandized right-wingers hate you if you don't willingly join the capitalist plantation and work for the man "like all normal people do"... truly obliterates your wisdom. The old terms aren't functional anymore.
What system do you want, if not capitalism? I genuinely don't know.
It would be nice to have "functioning" capitalism as opposed to "over-consolidated oligopolies" and "anti-competitive monopolies" capitalism. Functioning capitalism doesn't allow these. Rather, it regulates and preserves a competitive field.
What's different this time is the complicity of big-tech and big media. Nobody is looking out for us. Our culture has morphed into one that prioritizes "me and mine" over "service and joy."
It all depends on how you choose to see your fellow man.
Thank you for a really good education.
Artificial scarcity? Today? Of course: food, energy.
Excellent post!
One quibble (only): You write "right wing capitalist"
As I see it, adding "right wing" to capitalist is either redundant or unnecessary. As capitalists act in their own interests, does it really matter if they identify or are identified as right or left? As I see it, once you get to the billionaire status, "right" or "left" become ideological masks that obscures rather than reveals anything. The Right love to hate George Soros as a liberal, yet Soros from the early 1980's has been involved with regime change activities (starting in Poland) working closely with the CIA ("capitalism's secret army"). Is he really that different from Charles Koch?
Ah. THAT I can work with. Yes; This is what these people here http://allaregreen.us/ enforce. I'm 100% aware of this.
But being intimidated by mere authority FIGURES in not part of my make-up. & if someone imposes that anyone I care about Must Die Painfully just to line their pockets https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c83P58t0c7w I for one am not content to sit by & allow them to do so.
& by the way, this itself raises a question: what is the POINT of these newsletters or you coming TO them if, when all is said & done you are going to do nothing against what anyone in authority says? Is everyone here screaming like children waiting for its parents to respond like chicks in a nest, hoping Daddy will feed you better Rights & Freedoms?
There is no such thing as capitalism: or 'Government.' & politicians are not your Caring Parents.
Grow tf up & make an effing CHOICE, people: either choose to act to save Your Own Children OR to support Mitch McConnell's illegal retirement fund.
You Can't Have Both https://duckduckgo.com/?q=canada+recalls+vaccines+for+causing+blood+clots&t=newext&atb=v363-1&ia=web. Stop dicking around with your cowardly excuses & worthless details.
Either WE act to stop this, or we're complicit. CHOOSE already.
I think you bring an important point to understanding the situation in which we’ve found ourselves, namely; It’s a machine. Yes, it’s a decoding machine as one of its programmed mandates. But, there are other elements that are programmed into this machine. What we have now essentially is advanced autonomous A.I. released into the wild. It already has enormous data sets from which to continuously draw in real time while offering limited options from which humans are allowed to choose. It increasingly controls a growing number of power nodes within political, economic, technical, religious and bureaucratic power structures. Why does it seem there’s no off-switch? The answer is because, there is no off switch. This ‘invisible hand’ is now self-sustaining and self-powered by human consciousness with graphene oxide via nano technologies designed to capture more and more unwitting humans into its web. Now that it’s gaining ‘sentience’ it’s being guided by powers at war with The Divine Creator. In your heart you will know this is happening. It’s inhuman, it’s inhumane, it’s ruthless and advancing exponentially. And yes, we are seen as commodities of diminishing value.
We are spiritual beings of love and light, not commodities. Bill Gates et al want us to be commodities, and biopharma industrial complex people with their patents want that, but we are not. We embrace nature, enjoy friendship, love, family and friends. Commodification is the trend. Resist. Live life fully. Use technology less. Love more. Have more joy. They can only commodify us it we allow it.
Bravo. And I, for one, am going to die laughing, or at least accept the inevitable with a big embrace. When it comes, it comes. While we're here, let's love and be happy. The so-called elite don't just despise our happiness and joy, they are terrified of it.
Right on. I am with you, Navyo.
"commodities of diminishing value" to who? See, in reading social psychology, I figured out that yes, the majority of people anywhere in the world regard 'politicians' as if they were the person 'Government' that they wish was a caring parent. I never developed this.
But it takes SECONDS of effort to remind yourself what you already know & that is that politicians are NOT 'Government.' So standing up to them should cause no one any emotional trauma.
There are laws on the books that can be used to reverse the mandates. It would take mass public support to form something large enough that the politicians could not block & the only people who can organize getting this are people not emotionally paralyzed by the thought of standing up to Mitch f****ing McConnell.
It's really not hard to remind oneself of what one knows is true. Politicians are criminals. Let's act like adults & stop getting stressed out by the notion of throwing them in jail, hmm?
There is an “off switch”. Withdraw, in small ways at first, then as the momentum increases a growing alternative structure will begin to offer options to ‘withdraw’ in bigger ways.
As a start stop watching You Tube, to thwart the algorithm showing you (choosing) more of what you are clicking on. Or if that’s too cold turkey use the search function more.
Also, use cash as much as possible as it’s not trackable and slows the system down. Small victories which help us stay in control.
I gotta agree...BlackRock et al are are controlled by Aladdin...the AI program. And god knows what else.
And we are commodities, and soon our genes will replace gold as a store of value.
This lady goes super deep into people as commodities. The first time you hear it or read her blogs, it’s like trying to understand a foreign language but then you start to make sense of it as much as we can. It’s very weird. http://wrenchinthegears.com
I see what you mean, but thanks...will try!
I’m with you. I’m coming and hanging with you if this gets ugly and personal
I'm not even sure what you mean by that. Look: we're here because the mandates are causing harm. After that, everyone here starts to get emotionally messed up due to Doxastic Anxiety: briefly, children aren't actually invested in believing in Santa. It's just that if he isn't real, then our parents have been lying to us.
THAT Train Of Thought causes D.A. Well? If the mandates are harmful, then our Surrogate Parents, politicians are acting to harm us.
If more people simply took the ninety seconds or less required to separate the notion of 'politicians' from what they're only really supposed to represent in the first place, then they'd lose their fear of standing up to Ted Cruz. THEN someone might engage in reducing or removing his power to make $ from harming children instead of all these personal attacks.
He's right though, CJ. The point that Matt and many of your supporters are trying to make is the term "Global Capitalism" that you are using to define the system. Yes, we are all very unhappy with whatever label you want to give this machine, but it's not capitalism. Not even close. Corporate fascism is a much better label.
One point CJ is trying to get across, is how did we get here? 20th Century communism died in 1991. China has had a capitalist economy since the mid 1970's. The West essentially outsourced most of its manufacturing to a more competitive market - low wage China. The CCP is populated by a bunch of billionaires. China's economy is effectively state capitalism (which is also totalitarian), not communism . If you are defining what's running the world now as something other than capitalism, fine, use the terms you like. But what led us to this point, was capitalism., not something else.
Perhaps we should call it: Globo-Fascap? Or Globo-Capfas? ;)
CJ, you are actually one of those Marxists, if you insist that your definition of capitalism is the correct one. The guy above is basically agreeing to everything you said, except terminology. He is calling it corporate fascism, you call it global capitalism. It is depressing to see this....brilliant people like you and him draw out the knifes for terminology, when actually both of you are fundamentally aligned.
Exactly how many times do I have to repeat that "I do not care what people call it"? If you believe it's "corporate fascism", how about explaining how "corporate fascism" came into existence, what exactly it is, what its ideology is, how it works, and why it is doing what it is doing now, at this specific historical moment? Then place the events of the last 7 or 30 years in that theoretical context and test your theory. Or ... you know, don't do that, and, instead, just flip out and call me a "Marxist" if that makes you feel better.
My puzzle is... whether the people you call New Normal Left are still the Left. I mean... they are against free speech and for the silencing of dissent, rigidly pro-establishment (and given privileged status in consequence), pro-scientism (it's settled!), and totalitarian (only one truth allowed). And there is the abandonment of (and contempt for) the working class. Psychologically speaking, they are also different -- hypocritical in the extreme (mouth full of tolerance while practicing brutal intolerance), and unwilling to learn from past mistakes (eg ongoing commitment to wind turbines despite all the evidence against, in most situations, or in feminism, cleaving to "men and women are practically indistinguishable" dogma despite the famous twin study blowing up in the face of this nonsense, long ago). What's left of the Left in this New Normal Left?
A couple of additions. The Left used to be so into non-violent communication. Everybody was taking workshops in it. Now, it's all about bullying and verbal abuse. Huh? And what's with all the war mongering? Boggles the mind.
I agree, Erin. Basically, I am (like so many) having trouble with ditching the Left, primarily while it seems a betrayal to my intellectual forebears.
People formerly of the Left (in Hopkins's parlance, people who somehow moved from the Old to the New Normal Left; people who blamed the Opoid Crisis on Pharma but were happy with, nay grateful for, the experimental jab; people who once opposed the Vietnam war and now chant in unison with war-mongers; people who 'follow' what they think of as 'the' science, in so far as doing so won't burden their brain-cells) never cease to amaze me.
Even CJ's excellent explanation of the dynamics of Globocap's digital plantation system doesn't lift this mystery, let alone solve it.
What is left of the left?
Not much, except for some good people.
To those who feel at home in the New Normal left, their Left - so it appears - is now THE Left; indeed they didn't move to any other position (for such an exercise would actually require thought & effort). To them it's circumstances that changed, or the virus, or the unheard-of malignancy of daring to question the narrative(s ); in brief they believe it is we who havie strayed and ended up at the Far Right.
Not that they, in their unfathomable complacency, reflect on it much...
In terms of ..."how about explaining how "corporate fascism" came into existence, what exactly it is, what its ideology is, how it works, and why it is doing what it is doing now, at this specific historical moment?"...
I don't want to necessarily speak on Matt's behalf, but I think his thesis (ie all those things you're asking him to flesh out) is the same as your thesis (therefore you've already done it, and you both agree).
He's only quibbling with the naming. As you've said, you don't personally care what people call it, but Matt proposes that the name ideally should reflect the fascist nature of the 'machine's' behaviour [in that the nature of the current GloboCap machine is not solely a market / profit-promoting system, but one that undertaken a merger with all forms of State and institutional power ...and the merger of the power bases of State and Private Capital / Enterprise is pretty much the dictionary definition of fascism].
I don't think his suggestion, re adding fascism to the name somehow, necessarily contradicts your thesis in any way? — The machine that ravages the globe for profit simply figured out that capturing markets at source (government) is more profitable. So at that point it mindlessly gobbled that up too... which triggered a 'next phase' whereby the relentless pursuit of profit > led to the shortcut of centralising power > which led to this new thing which is pretty close to what we define fascism to be — so kinda not capitalism on steroids anymore, but a new beast that has merged with the State.
The vaccine drive was a good example of that behaviour ... the machine, and it's ruthless ability to sniff out opportunities for an end run *around* competition that would reduce profitability or throw up profit risk. GloboCap and it's promoters swiftly lobbied governments directly to give them contracts for vaccine supply, and used all kinds of shady methods to get into closed rooms to make those deals. Because why market to customers individually? ...you'd have to make a good product, pay to market it, convince consumers to keep using it, accept some liability for arising harms, etc. Much easier and cheaper to deploy targeted resources solely at the power centre, and bribe that power centre to let you attach your greedy face to the firehose of public money directly. Then you can guzzle it all up by the billions, in an unrelenting flow. And you can remove any downside risk by bribing State to *also* accept any liability, on your behalf. The government does the work of collecting the payments for you, by forcibly removing the money as tax, and handing it to you in bulk. Bloody genius business model really, but this model is not capitalism in that almost no recognisable aspects of a 'free market' or of 'competition' remain.
Matt is right to note that what I just outlined is not capitalism, by any commonly used definition. But it certainly is a tight fit for fascism, which retains some features of the market, but allied to / merged with the State. It's an interesting point.
On a separate note, I like your analogy of the mindless machine. It reminds me of Aladdin programme, which is gobbling up everything, mindlessly and ruthlessly eating. It will gobble until it destroys the world, and itself, but it cannot stop — it's just a programme. Aladdin behaves exactly as you describe in your thesis. Super interesting ideas, so thanks for laying them out.
Aside: great short vid on Aladdin here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWBRldjVzuM
Excellent clarification of terms. It does seem, based on your analysis, that if capitalism is taken to its ultimate degree, its zenith, fascism will be that result. Those who are serious about playing the capitalist game, and do it well, will end up playing the fascist game. I think that is CJ's point. In today's world, fascism is becoming the global reality. Since fascism is the partnership between industry/corporation and government we can see all the various iterations of that partnership around the world. Here in the US, the corporations hold the upper hand. They have essentially bought their way into controlling our legislative, judicial and executive branches of government. In China, for example, it seems (from an outsider's perspective anyway) that the State holds the upper hand, though I can't pretend to know how that system operates. In both cases, the whole thing runs mechanically with no values, as CJ notes; it's all about power, wealth and greed for more and more of both. Those are its only purpose.
People! CJ said "just don't call it communism...because that makes you look silly!" READ
Still, it's legit to wonder when a particular system stops being that system and becomes something else (often by capture). Like the old Greek puzzle -- as you replace the planks of a ship one by one, when does it stop being that ship and become... some other ship?
My friends in central Europe think that the Left has been captured by forces that once were called the Right (privatization, upholding the establishment, less focus on social issues, more focus on control vs freedom). Whereas in America we think more of the Left going mad and leaving us behind, so we ended up on the Right, where people may be in some ways less congenial, but they are more honest and haven't gone mad.
If only we could just move it over to that spiritually awakened, love for everyone, look after each other and share the wealth capitalism strain..... said he with a roll of the eyes.
Why are you trying to conquer the real & physical with wish-fulfillment fantasy? The People In Decision-Making Power CAN be held accountable. I keep trying to guide the discussion that way, & ONLY this belief/desire that mere politicians are somehow Beyond Accountability keeps us from doing this.
& that is a choice you all make. If accountability for politicians who make decisions that kill our loved ones didn't already exist, you'd all work to MAKE those laws. So you're all 100% aware that such laws DO exist. & what do you do with that knowledge?
Wish that someone else would come along & remove the responsibility of using that ability from you. Well, who will do that exactly While U Wait? Gandalf? Kim Jong-un? Who is it you came to this newsletter thinking "when 'HE' reads this, 'HE' shall Rescue Us from our fears?"
The laws to stop the harmful mandates already exist, the only people who can prosecute our Corrupt |politicians with them are us.
What's it gonna take to get One Other Person to merely DISCUSS how we can organize to get mass public support behind such an effort? & can anyone here tell me why they came here to such a newsletter, then WON'T even merely discuss this?
Dude, here’s a quarter, buy a sense of humour. The point being that to survive and and flourish, we need to ditch the whole fucking idea of capitalism. there is no such strain of look after one another capitalism. It was a necessary stepping stone. But the time has come to move on. And i know it’s down to us - and that yes we can do it. And i look forward to all of us, even seemingly humourless souls, doing it together. Love ya anyways!! But don’t pontificate from on high about “what do you do” - it’s not the way to talk dirty or influence people.
So you're going to allow child-murder to continue unless the false premise that "we" need to ditch capitalism is fulfilled first. Well, everyone needs to have priorities, eh? "I won't save a Single Child's Life or discuss doing so unless & until Reality Conforms to MY dictates."
I get a lot of that. "Let's discuss acting responsibly" always gets some 100% made-up 'reason' why we can't simply do that.
& if I HAVE to influence people to act to save children, well I didn't lose anyone willing to DO that, did I?
People who "keep trying to guide the discussion" make me wonder which alphabet provides their incomes. People who "try to guide the discussion" have that slight glowiness about them.
Free people discuss what the hell they want to discuss. No "guidance" required, thank-you-very-much.
Oh, okay. Sorry my ego prevents you from entering into a discussion about saving children's lives. I won't make you read my comments ever again.
The resistance here is immense. Remind me what you all were going to do once "enough people" had come to the conclusion that the jabs were harmful again?
Right: make excuses to continue allowing it to continue.
Michael, you seem to know a lot about me, what i do or don’t do, what i believe/don’t believe and we’ve never even chatted. I make a humorous remark at CJ’s comment about “not real capitalism” and hey presto i’m a lazy, non committal shitbag who cheers on child murdering. Good job your surname isn’t holmes mate. Still love ya like, but you’re making it more difficult with every finger in the air guesswork supposition you make about me, so i’ll just say good night and good luck....
I’ve always wondered about this label that CJ always uses “Globo-Cap. If this is a form of capitalism, i.e. it’s the one we have, then, what does CJ prefer as a way of organizing our affairs, either political or economic. Meanwhile, with respect to the thing itself, is there no distinction between GC and the market, entrepreneurship and free trade, all of those ideas as opposed to the Mad Bull that’s rampaging around the entire world unfettered? No distinctions can be drawn anywhere, right? It’s all one big GloboCap and there are no meaningful lines that can be drawn?
I am certain such lines can be drawn, Steven; but to me Globocap is just an extension (due to monopolizing and centralizing tendencies) of once free markets. Need it be so? Perhaps not, but - it so happened (which is a far cry from any sort of explanation).
I find the left gets confused whenever there's money or big corporations involved. What we have is an ever-larger State integrated into corporations, which is the definition of Fascism.
The problems that you lay at the feet of GloboCap are the result of non-capitalist actions by state actors. The state getting involved and picking winners, forcing behaviours, or trying to make things "fair" by manipulating markets.
This is Fascism with a sprinkling of capitalism/market mechanics when it suits its purposes, much like the CCP is Communist with a sprinkling of capitalism when it suits.
"The problems that you lay at the feet of GloboCap are the result of non-capitalist actions by state actors. The state getting involved and picking winners, forcing behaviours, or trying to make things "fair" by manipulating markets."
Bingo.
So now, CJ...how do we turn the capitlism (Sp) we have into the capitalism we want? And you might not have any ideas now, but I will be dollars to donuts you will.
CJ, you will, if anyone can.
So what is a bank bailout?
Er....... whilst i totally agree that what we have doesn’t bear much resemblance to capitalism as it was proposed by Adam Smith - he believed in workers unions and regulating banks heavily - key ideas of his proposal in fact. But this nonsense of capitalism enriching everyone...... only if you leave out virtually everyone outside of the big economies. Try telling some 11 year old kid in the formerly Unilever owned Nigeria delta who is wading through mud to deconstruct our detritus so he can maybe buy some food later that capitalism enriches everyone and he’d quite rightly laugh. What information and facts are you basing that claim on??
You and Matt both have valid points. But it's good to remember the hardship, abuse, child labor, misery and murder that goes into maintaining our Western capitalist lifestyle. Capitalism as an ideal, OK, but it's not and has never functioned in that way, imo. Could it? I don't think so. And communism isn't the answer either!! I personally don't have an answer. I feel we're having to make one up between us, which is what all this discussion is about.
That’s what i’m saying. That exploitation piece is really hard to cut out of capitalism - because it values profit and commodity above all else.... so the temptation and justification for all those horrors is kind of baked into the core of the capitalist idea.
That said, i agree Communism is a stupid idea too - marx wrote a pretty amazing critique of the industrial capitalist system, almost clairvoyant in some of his predictions. Shame his proposed solution wasn’t as good.
I think we could all agree some basic principles that new structures and organisational methods could aim for and take steps towards that. You know, universal access to clean, healthy food, water, air. Shelter, preventative and palliative healthcare and an education system that is actually about educating, experimentation, observation and exploration of inner and outer worlds, and the like. And the freedom to express yourself, be wrong and cause offence. And transparency of all governance, both private and governmental. And our steps towards that will be tentative, error strewn toddler steps, but with patience and persistence and our greater numbers we could get somewhere close.... wouldn’t that be beautiful? And when i say all, i mean all. Fuck these idiotic, tribal, divisions of nations etc. well, ok, fine - but no rich cunt should have a fucking yacht if there are starving etc people anywhere in the world......
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35MoPqF_mNw
Ha, good old Jarvis. That one had escaped me, ta! Here’s my own small contribution to the musical protest thing. Feel free to laugh, cry or tear out your hair and turn it off...... or just not listen to it at all. ;) https://on.soundcloud.com/snJfBnAaEarEPkcJ8
Got a nice Casio/Gary Numan feel to it. Great title. Rock on!
Call it what you want, but capitalism is what brought us here. The oligarchs and their hangers-on running this all became fabulously wealthy (giving them the concentrated wealth and power to take over the world) via CAPITALIST economies.
They are (and were) Capitalist in name only.
And the members of the Chinese Communist Party are no more "communist" (in name only) than the members of the Democratic Party are democratic! During the Cold War era, the most difficult argument for the proponents of socialism/communism to counter or to be judged by, was not what socialism/communism "should be" by its theorists, but by the conditions of "actually existing socialism" on the ground. It is fair to judge capitalism in the same way. We should criticize and judge capitalism by its on-the-ground reality, that is "actually existing capitalism" not some abstract, theoretical version of it. If you do that, honestly, it's grim; it's what led us to where we are now.
We likely have a difference in definitions.
I'd argue that Democracy, Fascism, and Communism all played a major part in bringing us to the present moment and that each leveraged aspects of capitalism when it suited them. Each will be undone by the inherent contradictions between their ideologies and base reality, which is where capitalism resides.
Yeah, I am very familiar with the position, redefining terms to suit your interests. Libertarians do it all the time. You can have your own theoretical definition of capitalism, however, you are still stuck (like the advocates of socialism) with the overwhelming reality/problem of "actually existing capitalism."
It's not a redefinition, it's pointing out a category error. Regardless there is plenty of real world evidence that the closer an ideology hews to capitalism, however fleetingly, the better and more free life is in that society and the more successful it is vs others.
It's an old truism but a good one- the love of money is the root of all evil. Bill Gates in plain sight. If the Scamdemic showed us anything, it showed the entire social, political and especially medical and legal structure of the west can be bought off. Follow the money. Question is, who or what is behind it all?? Has the human species (in western societies at least) evolved down the post-modern path far enough to have its soul stolen by the AI event horizon? Will aliens arrive here soon to ensure we re-bottle the genie? Any technology in the wrong hands can be weaponised. At the end of the day there is no left or right only right and wrong.
So again: I talk holding the people responsible accountable, people reply with "$ & other inanimate objects are truly responsible/we the people aren't."
So: dollar bills are pointing guns to Your Heads making you inject children with what you know are potentially lethal blood-clotting products now? Is THAT what you're saying here?
Or is it the usual "they" that are DOING THIS for $ ergo we can do nothing because YOU don't have the balls to hold any corrupt politicians accountable, so you make up this false premise that We Can't Do That so we have to wait for them all to voluntarily decide to stop pursuing $?
Constitutional Law makes politicians Private Citizens like you & me with No Exemptions to Any Laws. If it's illegal for YOU to murder, it's illegal for them.
Is it legal for YOU to mandate parents to inject their children with lethal or untested products? No? Then it's illegal for Joe Biden to.
Cripes, even AFTER I point out that people are using words to shift focus away from the fact that if WE do nothing, we are complicit, people still try to shift blame away from having to act responsibly. Well, if you're all okay with sitting back & watching them kill children, just Say So.
You'd save yourselves a lot of time.
I feel sure there are 'armies' of isolated people all over the world who feel angry all day every day and would gladly do anything that would make a difference but just don't know how, don't feel clever enough, and are isolated and alone. Until very recently, I was the only person in my life that was unjabbed, unmasked and not conforming to any of the diktats. For two years I was the village outcast crazy person. You're asking for people to discuss this with you, but what are you hoping to hear?
I'm not 'hoping' to hear anything. I EXPECTED to hear exactly what I'm hearing, everyone making excuses to not engage in the discussion. See I KNEW everyone would RATHER sacrifice their Own Children to their beliefs that 1) 'Government' cares for them & that 2) mere corrupt politicians = 'Government' & that therefore, everyone would rather keep waiting for Mummy & Daddy-Government to voluntarily decide to govern you all better because people are too cowardly to stand up to Mitch McConnell for people as worthless as their own children.
Here you are speaking about how alone it felt to be the Only One Around to have your opinion, being invited to enter into a discussion with others who have the same opinion, now using that lonely feeling as if it's somehow a reason to NOT enter into such a discussion.
The Doxastic Anxiety levels here are immense.
You're actually denouncing practically everyone on here but not offering any solutions yourself. I don't have any children to sacrifice but my beliefs are as far from your 2 available options as they could possibly be. So you don't need to assume that I'm waiting for a saviour or am too cowardly, etc.
Your second paragraph makes no sense at all; I entered the bloomin' discussion. You're just not answering the question. What do you want to discuss?! Do it! Instead of just opining about other people not doing it. Apart from repeating that one point over and over, you haven't actually said anything.
And you're painting everyone black or white. I didn't personally feel too alone for the most part - I'm happy in my own company - but I know plently of people did. I was offering that thought to you.
It's why all the online communities grew. I'm suggesting that thousands upon thousands of people do not fall into your 'categories' but just don't know what to do, don't have connections, don't know where to start. Many follow organisations that try to curb laws being quietly changed, many attended the Freedom Marches in London, many have set up organisations to take action against the govts, and such like. Many people have been fighting, but still the agenda continues. What ideas do you have?
You really just come across as someone consumed by the stuff someone's put in your head in a classroom and you're not budging from your supercilious stance and want to use the terminology you've learnt to sound cleverer than the rest of us. Well, okay. Live and let live.
But, what points do you have to start the discussion with? What information and ideas for action do you have to offer yourself? Stop criticising everyone else and do something yourself.
Yeah, and if we could all just agree that it's wrong to kill, steel, and medically harm immoral people our future would look bright. The road of immorality is such a slippery slope.
its very funny to hear these capitalist apologetics. Its crony capitalism or corporate fascism or something. Well, what it is, is CAPITALISM. Which is, as CJ points out, stunningly adaptive. And its also adroit at marketing itself and manufacturing illusory distinctions. The interesting discussion might be to trace back the origins of capitalism, and ellen meiskins wood did a good job of that, and examine the impact of the Enlightenment, as adorno and horkheimer did. But the broad stroke reality is that this is capitalism. And it cannot be reformed.
We're on a newsletter talking about how people are being killed merely by decisions made by those in power & you wanna discuss going back in time to study something we can no longer see from here & now instead?
You go right ahead.
you cannot understand that murder without learning from history. But you go ahead and ignore it.
Right. & we can't charge, arrest or prosecute murderers here & now. We have to go back & understand them, leaving them to continue killing while we embark on a project that could take years.
You make total sense.
michael.....calm down. The discussion was about capitalism. Trying to understand the forces that shape the new authoritarianism. What is it you think should be discussed if not capitalism? I believe that was what CJ's post was about; the evolution of the left. Or devolution. But please.....explain how you think the conversation should proceed-
Thanks, John, yes, this essay, and my talk in London, was another one of my attempts to paint a broad-strokes picture of the ideological/political battlefield, the forces engaged in the conflict upon it, and who is aligned with whom, currently. I wish more people could focus on what GloboCap (or whatever one needs to call it) does, and is doing now, and why it is doing that, now, at this moment in history, and less on what it's called.
Right. I've already pointed out how faced with the FACT that their political leaders are responsible for harming us & our children, people will shift the discussion onto Other Things like the importance of understanding philosophy & accusing anyone who threatens their belief of 'Government' as 'Caring Parent' of being angry/not addressing the fact that children are dying for Nancy Pelosi's illegal retirement fund.
& you came here & still did that.
No one's angry. I came into this KNOWING that everyone here is a complete hypocrite who would KNOWINGLY sacrifice children to their beliefs in what they want politicians to be. Not one person has come CLOSE to proving me wrong.
You're conflating "capitalism" with the ideology you like, "liberalism". You still under the ideological illusion that the ideology that's been sold to you, "liberalism", is the same thin g as "capitalism". It is not. Capitalism is simply "private property of means of production". It doesn't require free markets and fair competition.
The official ideology taught in economics 101 is that the magical free markets tend towards equilibrium, that fair competition provide magical optimum distribution of resources, etc. These are fairy tales that nobody in their right mind should believe. The normal result of a normally functioning market is an oligopoly where a couple of corporate titans enslaves everyone.
Marx was right. Every passing minutes, more proof is piled upon the already humongous pile of evidence. Liberalism is a fairy tale. Capitalism as it is is just the normal, expected evolution of Capitalism. And when menaced, the corporate overlords will use fascism to compel us into obedience without batting an eye. "Free markets" have absolutely not the slightest relationship with "free society" (remember the wonderful, free Chile under General Pinochet? Yeah).
First, forget fairy tales. Second, work on abolishing capitalism.
Capitalism "does" what exactly? The rules funnelling interest $ to the investors work on laws of physics? Of nature? Are there capitalist assembly lines producing capitalism or capitalist policies? Does it jump out of the bushes & force those who volunteer their time & effort to receive $? How "does" a concept that literally has no effect on the physical world affect the physical world?
We keep doing this to ourselves: we treat decisions made by corrupt politicians as Unquestionable Edicts from the Lord On high & we can change NOTHING while they have all that impunity, funnelling the profits we work to earn to their cronies.
Once you brought up the laws of physics... Temperature doesn't 'jump out of the bushes' either, nor has a conveyor line churning it out—yet it's a useful measure of how stuff operates irl ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I think you bring an important point to understanding the situation in which we’ve found ourselves, namely; It’s a machine. Yes, it’s a decoding machine as one of its programmed mandates. But, there are other elements that are programmed into this machine. What we have now essentially is advanced autonomous A.I. released into the wild. It already has enormous data sets from which to continuously draw in real time while offering limited options from which humans are allowed to choose. It increasingly controls a growing number of power nodes within political, economic, technical, religious and bureaucratic power structures. Why does it seem there’s no off-switch? The answer is because, there is no off switch. This ‘invisible hand’ is now self-sustaining and self-powered by human consciousness with graphene oxide via nano technologies designed to capture more and more unwitting humans into its web. Now that it’s gaining ‘sentience’ it’s being guided by powers at war with The Divine Creator. In your heart you will know this is happening. It’s inhuman, it’s inhumane, it’s ruthless and advancing exponentially. And yes, we are seen by this A.I. as commodities of diminishing value.
On the contrary, this is the inevitable end result — at least in the United States — of "unfettered" "free market" capitalism, which, over time, allows the few to consolidate massive amounts of wealth and power. Corporations, billionaires, etc hijack government, capture regulatory agencies, buy up the media, and use these mediums to further increase their control and wealth. It's kind of fascism, in that there is a merging of state with corporations, but it's really a hijacking of the state because "capitalism" has been allowed to run amok, unchecked...
Fundamental aspects of capitalism's emotional economy
- taking more than you need (usury): Unequal emotional exchange
- enough is never enough (insatiable emotional "greed"): ("the world owes me a living")
The Right To Be Greedy (1974), by For Ourselves , is not The Capitalist Manifesto...
The State exists to enforce The Right to Property / Property ownership...
The State is Property's enforcement mechanism...
What is really at the top of this is an ideology that has replaced God with money
Man, never, ever, under any circumstances bring logic to discuss with a letfty. :)
If liberals find a fact unappetizing or morally repugnant, then anyone who draws attention to that fact is deemed evil and malignant: they do it out of devilment.
I actually think that they do it out of really being unable to follow basic logic… they are severely limited from a cognitive perspective.
The can’t think, so they “feel” the arguments…
Dumb?
That’s one way to put it… haha
regarding the emotionality of your logic - very rational !
Matt Koch you sound like Norm Chomsky, which is good.
Absolutely right. Thank you. That's what I was thinking throughout the article as I read. The US has degenerated into fascism: nominal private ownership of property with de facto government control. Capitalism is the complete separation of economics and state in which all property is privately owned. When you have to pay ransom money to a cartel that will take your stuff and cage you if you don't cough it up; when you act by permission and the government acts by right; you're not living in a free, capitalist society. The US and most of the globe are mixed economies: mixtures of free elements and statist elements, and they all have the same end: rule by pressure groups, lobbies, and special interests. The mixed economy's alternatives are either to repeal the controls or disintegrate into dictatorship. The world has so far chosen the latter.
My main point is that we view whatever all authority FIGURES do as if they are done by Higher Beings. Sorry, I studied social psychology JUST to understand the Underlying Mindsets involved, & while it's easy for me to grasp, it takes long to explain in writing. But saying "it's the banks" is more of the same mindset.
You're not wrong: but again, what does "a bank" "do?" Without human intervention, you ARE ascribing agency to what? Entries into ledgers, the ledgers themselves, the vaults, the buildings they're housed in...
We have a tendency in our culture to try & assign blame onto anything but the people making decisions. This is childish. The rules of banking are as 100% man-made as those of all isms. We slap labels onto things, but then regard the label as if it's describing laws of nature or physics, then mentally flee in panic from what I'm suggesting, acting responsibly & changing things for the better as if doing so would upset "Daddy" when it would only upset the authority figures we're childishly afraid of confronting.
It's a tiresome pattern of circular non-thinking. The "banks" do nothing. The people running them & enforcing the man-made rules governing us only because we regard them as Unquestionable Things that HAVE to work the way we're told they do is what allows them to function.
"We slap labels onto things, but then regard the label as if it's describing laws of nature or physics, then mentally flee in panic from what I'm suggesting, acting responsibly & changing things for the better as if doing so would upset "Daddy" when it would only upset the authority figures we're childishly afraid of confronting."
Problem: "Daddy" has lots of big guns and other enforcement methods and tends to use them on anyone who upsets "him". We are being ruled by an oligarchical class that is fully prepared to use violence to maintain their rule, and most sane people know that. THAT is why most people go along to get along. The consequences of not going along can be severe.
Well, whatever excuses you need. As I pointed out, people truly concerned don't need to be convinced to discuss saving lives so...
The violence of the oligarchical state is a real thing, that most people understand quite well. It is part of the social equation, whether we like it or not, and any attempt to remake society will have to deal with that reality.
As an example, Gandhi and the other leaders of the non-violent protest movement in India understood that some people in their movement would be injured or even killed by the British state, as indeed happened. It takes courage to confront this sort of thing and keep going. Acknowledging this reality is not an excuse.
We HAVE several perfectly legal, non-violent means to end the harmful mandates. & if gathering together to whine AT the problem then waiting for someone else to actually do anything can work "with enough people (whining? How does that cause... never mind)" then "enough people" joining IN a legal effort should DEFINITELY force changes through.
Why is anyone even HERE if there is no plan to do anything after we all agree something needs to be done? So again, why can't anyone join in discussing what to do now that we have millions of people with all the anti-vaxx media out there.
What or who is everyone waiting FOR? A Great Force to descend from the Heavens to deliver us? If we start organizing effective resistance what does everyone think will happen? An alarm will go off in Nancy Pelosi's head turning her into a killer cyborg?
I didn't say "let's tell government we're upset & draw their attention TO us." In fact, trying to amass enough of the public onto something effective ANONYMOUSLY is to be part of the discussion.
But everyone KEEPS using that they would act to stop any such effort (listen carefully now) If They Knew About It as an excuse to not discuss creating one they WOULDN'T know about. That's what discussion is for, ideas of how to go about this.
If there was a clearly recognizable front battle, I think most of us recognize the severity of threat to freedom enough to race to that battle. But, there’s no kinetic front line battle to join. You’re probably right that the legal battle is the most effective way to wage against this behemoth…..except for repentance and prayer. Unfortunately, Constitutional law has gotten watered down and mostly forgotten as an old document that no longer applies. Perhaps channeling donations to the most effective legal strategies in conjunction with lobbying our Congressmen to break free of their chains and soberly recognize the enemy.
Under the current structure, These People http://allaregreen.us/ are making all decisions with complete impunity & will not voluntarily change the status quo because they benefit from it. Ergo, someone needs to find some way to reduce or remove Their Power to enforce the harmful mandates.
Pause: is there ANY other way to end the mandates?
The mandates are neither caused nor enforced by the jabs themselves nor their manufacturers. ONLY that the majority of people follow http://allaregreen.us/ & their structures of government blindly allows this to continue. Only getting enough of that mass of people to change that they view politicians as Unquestionable Authorities can cause them to stop blindly following them.
Again: don't take 2 billion tangents about how you think this is impossible. CAN anyone EXCEPT We The People do this? If not, then all other thoughts can be abandoned. They're useless.
The fear YOU are likely feeling at contemplating this stems not from a fear of what politicians will want to do should we try anything, it's a fear of standing up to the only protectors we feel we have, despite the fact that they never protect us. Heck, they're killing us now. But it's the same fear everyone in Western society has because who would confront what they feel is their only protector?
So, one would have to CREATE Something New that the public could also see as protecting them: a movement perhaps. Something that can be presented as being Large Enough to challenge the power of the corporations at first as the same people who fear standing up to 'Government' still hate corporations.
If I need Mass Support for A then I need to appeal to those masses. A movement to reduce Daddy-Government's ability to protect them is not something the masses will support. But they still support ones against corporate power & influence so long as they see that as separate from 'Government.' & they do because they choose to.
So, how to create a movement that will eventually convert into reducing the power http://allaregreen.us/ but not seem like it's going that way now, is only targeting corporate power & influence?
It's amazing how clear this all comes to one when they don't squirm in discomfort of fear. If this is done under the radar & doesn't look threatening, No One will Do Anything to halt the movement. I'm not naïve. We'd need relative anonymity to build such a thing until it became too big to stop, ignore or take out BEFORE converting it into something that can succeed.
But I can't do this alone. So I come here to places where people are at least discussing that the mandates are bad, but the Doxastic Anxiety (Immense Discomfort) they feel at merely CONTEMPLATING standing up to mere authority FIGURES is annoying.
Michael Freed I appreciate your efforts to strategize how to effectively push back against the tyrants
It's gonna take more strongly-worded support than THAT to get others to join in on organizing it.
Maybe not a movement exactly...but using technology to 1) decentralize everyting and 2) see what all are doing, where every penny is going, and for people to be able to say stop/no....
"Using technology to..." okay. Parse that out for us. WHO is to use WHAT technology in WHAT WAY to accomplish WHAT & why aren't you already doing it if it is such a great plan? Why are YOU telling ME this instead of enacting it?
Have you given a single thought to anything?
Everyo0ne here is trying to wish into reality some 'plan' where we just decide to do something & then it gets done, somehow, by we don't know who. While you cowards are all sitting here wishing, children are dying & you are all long past the point where avoiding the responsibility of ACTING not 'wishing' for the problems to be taken away = complicity.
What are you going to say to the parents at the funeral of a niece or nephew of yours? "I wished for Someone to Do Something HARD. But no Great Force looking out for us came to make my wishes reality?" Then leave & go home to wait some more for some system to create & enact itself into being?
I've made the point several times that WE need to discuss effective plans. & not one person here has ever NOT tried their best to AVOID discussing saving the lives of children.
It doesn't matter how I phrase it: discussing acting against your dear surrogate Mommies & Daddies in government always causes you to choose to continue sacrificing All Children, & possibly only wish that you had had more yourselves so you could have more to sacrifice to your Gods In Office http://allaregreen.us/.
If Kim Jong-un had been responsible for the death of One American Child the bombs would have flown the Next Day. Your authority figures DECREE for YOU to voluntarily do it yourselves & you just line up, hang your heads & wish for them to stop making you do it.
Children are dying. & everyone here is hanging on to their hypocrisy for dear life. Now watch: you're going to reply with something that contains "I didn't SAY any of that."
It's not about you or what you say. The constitution in EVERY Western nation gives us explicit instructions on what to do when politicians exceed their mandates & you cowards ALL KNOW this.
The End.
Whoa. This is genius. And it gives me hope (that someone could see it and name it so clearly).
Isn't our response then to re-encode values in every way possible -- through critical thinking, in the family, in the church, in the community. Local, local, local, eschew brands, turn off the TV, meet in person, fight to defend non-corporate values wherever they flourish?
Thanks, Toby, and, yes, values, decided by people, not the market, the more local and community-based the better. And that means respecting other communities' values, even if you disagree with them. I don't know how to get there from here but it probably starts with rebuilding communities.
Technology can help with decentralization...we already have local markets (on line yard sales, online donate your stuff you no longer need etc)....where markets and human values can come together?
Yes. That's the idea in practice in a small way. It needs to be much more comprehensive and part of a daily life and new way of building back community. Foster Gamble and Dr. David Martin have been encouraging this for the past 2 years. They have encouraged people to get to know their farmers in their areas, get to know trades people, get to know those that fix things and make things etc.--all local. "The Market" is up the street on set days; it isn't on the internet nor Amazon nor made in China. I believe this is how we rebuild and start over and passively resist the othe "great reset" as described by WEF etc.
So GlobalCap is creating a reality, that's largely unopposed, (except by reactionary groups that do not understand what they are up against) though within that reality - with superficials differences - they have no ideology or values. A meaningless reality then, requiring compliance to exist in. That sounds right and inline with the larger transhuman plan to cyborg us.
Still, it won't work because at the end of the day - and whether people understand this framing or not - humans are meaning-making beings. The pressure of having meaning gutted will act a catalyst and push people into action even if that is messy and ineffective and uncoordinated. Over time, they will simply not comply and will do something else - create something else. Nature doesn't do meaninglessness either, so this will fall apart, because, of its own lack of substance.
How long, how many left? No idea.
Thanks.
I agree. However, what CJ misses in his excellent and valuable critique is the innate love within human beings which is sidelined, ignored or even understood, and that that love is inherent in any spiritual belief, or for that matter living without spiritual belief. It's our common denominator and I feel it will get us through all of this. The rest of it - what CJ outlines, really - is just performative, utilitarian accounting which has no depth of meaning whatsoever.
That is the essential 'high' aspect in 'higher culture. Which has been excised from our cultures these days. So here we are...
So let's get it back.
Deep topic!! The lives of individuals are infinitely rich in unending vistas and terrains, victories and defeats, growths and declines, progress and sidetracks, wisdom and temptations and so forth. So much more so are societies.
When Putin says that he has received the civilization of Russia from his ancestors and intends to ensure that his people can pass it on to future generations of Russians, and also that he won't allow others to destroy it without putting up a fight that makes sense to me. For such civilization takes generations, indeed centuries to develop. It is a very real thing if impossible to describe except via artistic, not scientific, expression. And nobody would care about such a thing unless it did not have a beating heart at the core, something precious and special, alive, sensitive, passionate, feeling, human - very human. These skeins are expressed culturally in language, dress, cuisine, customs and institutions such as Royalty, Government, Church, Festival, music, art, political discourse, literature and so on. The 'high' part of it - when working well - suffused through all elements high and low. Even the yakuza and Tongs are fiercely patriotic, after all, even if they are also cutthroats and pirates in practice. Honour systems are always present in high cultures too. Ultimately the high aspects have to do with goodness, discipline, honour. And ultimately they all come together in the mutual creation of sacred spaces, sacred perception. Such was the inspiration behind the great cathedrals of Christianity, an inspiration that transcended the power politics of prelates in Rome which gradually spread its corruption throughout the nascent civilization. For there is always corruption in any complex organism or institution. The challenge is how to recover from it.
The Chinese Hexagram #18, sometimes translated as 'Work on What has been Spoiled' could also be called 'disease,' 'corruption' or 'recovery.' It depicts five of the most poisonous animals locked together in a jar. The one who survives has the most potent toxin. This toxin is then used as medicine. For disease and corruption show the path forward. Such imbalances arise from mistakes - sins, crimes, laxities and so on. Correcting those mistakes makes society better but the institutions must have sufficient wisdom, integrity and mandates to do so. In this way the society maintains its high culture and indeed improves it over time. Of course only if it is truly high manifesting bedrock virtues which do not fall into the traps of empire-building, totalitarian control, egomaniacal tyranny and so forth.
The problem with the revolutionaries confronting corruption that has been allowed by a lax civilization to fester for far too long is that they know only how to destroy the old. They have no notion of how to rebuild afterwards. And again: good cultures, aka civilizations, take centuries to create, warts and all, so destroying them should never be an option, rather pruning and trimming to promote this aspect over here whilst reducing that aspect over there rather than simply chopping everything down and bringing out the builldozer. If that does happen, then perhaps it is best to follow the old ways: kill all the defeated, rape all their women so their offspring are the victor's and the previous civilization - like so many before - simply vanishes forever rather than limping along as some sort of ghastly deformity.
In any case, it seems we have destroyed Western civilization at this point. Maybe it can be rescued, but I suspect that having bulldozed away both Royalty, the Church and the traditional location-based Aristocracies that we have simply failed to replace them with other elements which organically and authentically manifest the same deep cultural wisdoms and functions which spawned them over time. Yes, they may well have been corrupted (though history is told by the victors so hard to tell, frankly - reports about Tzar Nicholass II, for example, vary wildly depending on source) but destroying them wholesale was incorrect for sure, and we are all paying the price for that today, arguing about various -isms without being able to understand a single one.
Well, that was much too long a reply.
And not nearly long enough!!
Wow. Now that was worth the read!! Please publish this as its own Substack article! (and any further embellishments).
On the same topic... https://thegoodcitizen.substack.com/p/the-novorossiya-play
Great minds think alike!! I did already. My first piece on current affairs - something I do read about but rarely write about in conventional prose piece, rather insufferably pompous and formal I Ching style stuff!
Thanks for kind words...
Thanks for the link.
Not complying seems like one of the most potent "political strategies" at this time.
I hope you're right.
Is meaning being gutted? Arent trans surgeries being understood as acts of freedom and this freedom is of the highest value or meaning, above all others? Isnt transhumanism filling the god-shaped hole? I mean it appears people are experiencing an intense sense of meaning from it. Even if it is false and self-destructive to me, I think it must be appreciated that it is meaningful to them and collapse wont necessarily follow due to meaninglessness. I hope you are right tho.
I say this as an old school Leftist who thinks "class" is considerably more important than whatever "designer, uber aggrieved, micro-identity" anyone might have dreamed up today - no matter how righteous and special said "identity" might make them feel.
If they can change the definition of what a "woman is" to include the guy standing in front of you waving his penis around - it's pretty small potatoes to simply alter any and all language and concepts to fit the PSYOP of the moment - as in changing the definition of "a pandemic," or of what a "vaccine is," or of what constitutes "herd immunity," what constitutes "a coup," what a "Nazis" is, what an "unprovoked invasion" is, what "government censorship is," etc. etc.
As someone who paid far too little attention for far too long - to the "Woke" controlled demolition of language and our collective reality - I finally started paying attention when all those death threats and rape threats against J.K.Rowling piqued my curiosity. I mean what outlandish transphobic hate speech could Ms. Rowling have uttered to incite such a violent response? Imagine my surprise when after I had read every word she had spoken on the topic I found that I completely agreed with her - thus being forced to face the fact that I too am now clearly yet another shameless "hateful transphobic bigot" - yeah, a TERF. I mean sure, I totally support the basic equal "rights" of trans-people - but at the end of the day I do put my trust in science based biological reality rather than anyone's gender delusions - and I really don't think penis's belong in women's rape shelters, domestic violence shelters or women's prisons - no matter what "identity" is attached to that penis. Call me "old school."
So between the assault on language, free speech and basic civil liberties at play in the "Woke" culture wars, AND the clearly parallel assault as part of the covid propaganda operation and Ukraine - I've come to develop a deep an abiding appreciation for ANYONE who can still think for themselves and who can summon the courage to openly question the continuous stream of propaganda being pumped out like raw sewage by virtually all Western MSM 24/7. Strange bedfellows are now clearly the order of the day. I sincerely appreciate my Libertarian and Conservative sisters and brothers much more today than I did only a few years back.
Labels such as "left" vs "right" - "liberal vs conservative" have been turned inside out and on their heads by the massive propaganda assault involved in first "Russiagate," then "Trump Degrangement Syndrome," then the "Covid Operation," and now "Ukraine." So if you still have two functioning neural synapse left to rub together - and you're willing to think for yourself rather than needing Fox News or NPR to "tell you" - "what to think" - I'm more than happy to call you "comrade."
Very well said! I think the fact that I've been a TERF ever since Bruce Jenner's famous magazine cover is a part of the reason I didn't buy the Covid narrative either. Indeed, the people I know who don't care for males in women's restrooms are also those who don't give a shit about Covid, and anyone can observe that those most militant for gender woo woo are also the most militant for Covid restrictions. These people are ready to believe any absurdity, they've been throughouly programmed to believe anything as long as some authority tells them it's "the consensus" and "progressive".
I find it rather telling how much overlap there is from Eisenhower Paleoconservatives and old Left liberals. Looking back it is easy to see that the Neoliberals and the Neoconservatives were the true extremists all along. Now they are lashing out like spoiled children because they have no positive record to defend and their leadership is being threatened by the plebs. One day we woke up and realized the world we liked to argue about did not exist anymore and had not for a long time.
And THAT needs to be the new coalition.
I can find many common ideals and values between the old left liberals and the conservatives(paleo)...
I am grateful CJ is one of them...and watching Naomi Wolf and listening to her read the old protestant Bible has also made me hope we can build a new coalition...and realize that we cannot go back to the world we thought we had, but must wrestle with the actual one we have...well laid out by CJ.
Thanks! Well-said Komrade ((:-)
Sing it, Brother! I like your tune. 🎯
“The old-school Left. The ‘Covid-denying, conspiracy-theorizing, Putin-loving, far-right-extremist’ Left.”
Now that’s my kind of Left 😁 The free-thinking, liberty-loving, anti-tyranny, tolerant-of-differing-viewpoints, truth-seeking, anti-GloboCap, peace-defending Left ✌️
Thanks for writing clearly. At 14 I was told I knew nothing and I thought she might be right (a different girl from the one who when she had nothing left to say said she loved me and I stood there grateful for the lie) and between 100 and 1000 hours I realized language is all weaponized, and created to divide. For example, good cop versus bad cop; left versus right, the ism's which are all designed to compartmentalize and create silos. For the sake of greedy reductionism I forsake labels because they serve the purpose of confusion instead of clarity. Freedom of speech was and is alway my "governor" and one feature of it is the heckler's veto. Too many of us want to join causes that are and never were sincere. And because understanding deception and hypocrisy and agitprop and debt-slavery and morality and spirituality require thinking, and thinking about our thinking, most people defer and say I want someone else to tell me what to think, know and believe, and we accept their labels. The Jesuits created the Tavistock and other institutions. For a more comprehensive understand please give yourself five or six or 10 to 20 hours and read what's in this link: https://handbeholdnail.wordpress.com/2018/05/05/the-jesuits-order-of-the-alumbrados-unveiled/
And guess what...you are also describing a good many conservatives...like the working people.
Yep, conservatives, classical liberals, moderates—reasonable ordinary folks, in other words.
The system you aptly describe as "GloboCap" is far closer to Fascism than capitalism (in my opinion it *is* outright Fascism). A truly free market is does not include oligarchical elites and "too big to fail" corporations so heavily integrated into the state apparatus you can't tell where one ends and the other begins.
As someone else mentioned here, this has everything to do with the final stages of "Democracy" and very little to do with capitalism which no person alive has but a passing experience with.
What stops someone in a free market from owning so much that they have a monopoly on a resource?
I could buy the land of the river upstream from you and dam it and create a lake, then charge people for water. Good for markets, bad for the rest of us.
What stops that today? Men with guns certainly don’t. Such situations are rampant and more men with more power and bigger guns (which is what The State is, really) oddly never seems to solve the problem, but rather exacerbates it.
I posit that rational actors in a free market would not engage in transactions where such a one-sided outcome is the result. There are two sides to every trade. But it’s hard to be specific with such a vague hypothetical.
What stops it? A government that is not corrupt and regulates the market. What stops abuses under communism?
Yes, but I think what CJ is saying is that capitalism when left unabated will inevitably morph into this fascistic form. Merging with the government by paying the burocrats off is as profitable as heck for any capitalist and is too good to forego. Every capitalist is striving to sell more of their product by outdoing their competitors. But if they see an opportunity to eliminate competition altogether and become a monopoly they will go for it. And you can eliminate competition by using the muscle of the government. So, I guess, capitslism has a natural cycle with stages of development. And although some stages are healthy and beautiful in a free market environment when everyone brings their talent and skill to the table and allow the best man win the dollar of the customer, the later stage is unfortunately very ugly. They bribe the authorities to force their product unto the customer and that's the stage we're in.
I agree...I've been screaming about the monopolies (and our uselss anti trust dept) for years...
But if it's too disruptive, it may have to go.
Eh. Left, right, whatever. Like Greenwald has said over and over, "my ideology hasn't changed, my principles are still my principles." I was always a big progressive, hated both Bushes, loved Dennis Kucinich. I have no issues allying with the populist right. Go Rand Paul and Matt Gaetz and anyone else standing in the way of this garbage.
For rationality and vision, Congress is an anemic body. It's hard to accomplish anything beyond drawing attention issues. Gaetz himself was a target of the hive-mind liberal media. He has put forth bills to end funding for Ukraine (granted, while being hawkish toward China), and Paul recently stood to force a vote on the censorious "Tik Tok" bill. Their voices lean into possoble coalition of conservatives and disaffected Sanders progressives. It's a weak tea at present, but a positive force.
Anemic in acting rationally or with vision. The corruption preempts positive action.
A big part of the problem is the role captured governments play, having monopolies on violence as they do. Without government capture, the globalists would not have nearly the power that they do. Allow people to self govern and the worst problems go away.
we don't need them to 'allow' us to do anything. we are given our rights from God.
I thought about this a lot during “covid” -- our God-given *duties*, too, to visit and care for the sick.
yes, great points. we do have God-given duties/responsibilities. most churches abandoned God and their congregation too during the scamdemic.
It was so dismaying...I will never get over it.
and we should not get over it. many appear to have forgotten and moved on.
I think that is what the left will eventually come to see...same as conservatives. Rights are inherent and for that you need to beleive in a Creator...something most conservatives believe (not the country club ones)....so let's start there.
All this left crap has ALWAYS originated from the huber rich to destroy societies and humanity through puppets like Marx, Engels, Schwab et al.....
Very true. They try out the overpriced garbage b/c they're bored with their meaningless life, and then tell us that we need it to. Global walk out is needed. Prayer and meditation is eminent.
May i ask what "left" exactly are you referring to when you exclaim so assertively and with such venom and hate "all this left crap"? In the essay he accurately made a very clear distinction between two so-called lefts - one is the fake left DNC liberals (which in my view are actually right-wing DNC and liberals as they seem to be thoroughly in alignment the humanity-destroying capitalists' executioners force, a.k.a the american military and national security apparatus) and two is what he called the real left, which is diametrically opposite to the right-wing capitalist DNC and right-wing pro-war liberals and diametrically opposite to the great reset and the green new deal of the climate capitalists. The real left which the DNC (and its billionaire capitalist-owned media) does everything in its power to destroy.
This profoundly wise essay gives one example of the real left https://oneworldrenaissance.com/2021/01/23/holism-fragmentation-and-our-endangered-future-a-new-vision-and-a-new-hope/ as well as the work of in-depth researchers on the great reset like the amazing leftist Alison McDowell, leftist Cory Morningstar, leftist Winter Oak publication and Raul Diego (from Silicon Icarus) all of whom did some of the most in-depth and amazing research (much more in-depth than anything I've seen coming from conservatives) exposing the entire capitalist billionaire machine behind the great reset, green new deal, smart cities etc. Here are a couple of other examples of the work of the real left on the great reset, smart cities, cbdc, green new deal, metaverse, climate capitalists etc - https://youtu.be/7ui7W-WELd8
And here https://winteroak.org.uk/the-great-reset/
And here https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Jf4QC1tFPCQ&feature=youtu.be
And here https://winteroak.org.uk/climate-capitalists/
And here https://m.soundcloud.com/unlimited-hangout/demystifying-the-4th-industrial-revolution-with-cory-morningstar
And here https://www.mintpressnews.com/the-bits-and-bytes-of-the-great-reset-covid-19-and-the-scaling-up-of-data-capitalism/275831/
And here https://unlimitedhangout.com/2022/09/investigative-reports/sustainable-debt-slavery/
So which left are you actually referring to in your hateful comment? The right-wing DNC or the real left? Or are you lumping them both together (even though the DNC tries to destroy the real left) lumping them together in one big hate fest of anything that isn't conservative, religiously sectarian and nationalist?
In addition to that, I'd also like to say that the reason i consider myself part of the real left is precisely becasue it is the closest attitude and approach that i've come across to creating on earth the love of God (I hate to use that word since it has been so profoundly corrupted and distorted by sectarian religion) that i personally experienced. What i mean by that is that i had what is known as a near death experience (NDE), in which i experienced first hand the unconditionally loving energy and unity that is our essence and that is the ground of all that exists (what religious people call God, although they erronously tend to personify/anthropomorphize this unconditionally loving ground of existence as if it is a distinct person/entity, entity that is separate from us, which is untrue, in my experience).
That NDE completely transformed my understanding of reality and the beliefs i grew up with. I was raised as a Catholic and conservative, my NDE made it clear to me beyond doubt that there is nothing on this planet more divorced from the unconditional love and unity of Reality/Being/God (which is what we are) than divisive sectarian religion and sectarian nationalism, that divide and pit humanity against each other (in the name of a so-called "god", no less).
(There are many other thing that i saw during the NDE that sectarian religious ideology gets very wrong and does not correspond to actual Reality/God/our true nature, as I experienced it, amd which causes tremendous harm and profoundly misleads people, but i won't go into all that here).
As a result of my NDE and seeing what God is/what we are/what reality is I left the church and stopped subscribing to humanity-desteoying God-forgetting right-wing conservative ideology. Some years later i started feeling more and more closer to left wing ideals as they are the closest i've seen on earth that resembles what God/Reality actually is, what our essence actually is, the closest to the unconditional love and unity and non-sectarianism that God actually is and the we actually are.
So i would humbly say that i strongly disagree with your venom-filled statement above becasue in my own direct first hand experience the exact opposite is the actual fact - there is nothing on this planet that destroys life more and that opposes the reality of God more than conservative right-wing religious nationalist sectatianism and division. I don't know how to say it any clearer but religious sectarianism and nationalism seems, from the perspective of the absolute, like psychologically-undeveloped four year old children who believe in all sorts of childish fairytales and invest billions in killing machines to fight among themselves (to death) to create and protect these imagined divisions. It is insanity beyond what words can truly convey and it is the polar opposite of what we actually came here for, which is to live together on this paradise planet that we were given as the brothers and sisters that we are, helping each other and caring for each other, enjoying our unity and uniquness, and bringing our essence as unconditional love into expression in the physical realm. Yet what have we actually done? We have turned this paradise planet into a divided warring nationalist right-wing hell, where we fight and kill each other based on childish religious-national labels and indoctrination, and where we mercylessly exploit each other for the capitalist god of profit..
All of this complete maddness is induced through our forgetfulness of what we actually are..
from my own direct experience, of what i personally experienced first hand during my NDE - to me it is absolutely clear that the sectarian nationalist-religious conservative ideology is a PROFOUND DISTORTION of what we actually are and what God actually is. We are absolutely NOT any of the immature labels we were taught to identify with and find solace in. We are absolutely NOT Christian-Muslim-Jewish-Hindu etc, we are absolutely NOT American-Russian-German-Chinese etc. These childish, divisive and God-denying sectarian labels are the POLAR OPPOSITE of what we actually are. We are eternal beings of God's light (which is our light), eternal souls, who only temporarily and very briefly came to this physical realm and inhabit these human bodies.
In my first hand experience, the three pillars of right wing ideology (nationalist/religious sectarianism with eternal division of humanity and hostility to the 'other tribe' and caring only for the security of 'my group'; Ruthless and heart-divorced capitalist mentality of profit-above-all-else and wealth accumulation as the highest value; Intolerant coercive judgemental cruel conservative psychology) these right-wing pillars are precisely the POLAR OPPOSITE of the nature of God/Being/our essence, and precisely what distances humanity away from God/our essential nature, and what destroys and turns the paradise planet we were given into a sectarian/capitalist/conservative/nationalist warring hell
I don't care about left and right. My comments also apply to the "right" crap, and they are made from personal life experience and from a view of the valley. You are still wandering through the forest. Best wishes and safe travels to you. The bottom line is that money talks, bs walks and through various mechanisms, a very large number of humans, sadly, have been deprived of their soul and individuality.
As for your hints to religion, I have unpacked, on my own, the words of Jesus Christ as quoted in John 14:12. They apply to ALL humans (no exceptions). Hint: the real meaning is not what the clergy "teaches" to their congregations.
Thank you foe the reply. I understand, however that (not caring about left or right) is absolutely NOT the impresaion that comes off from your origianl comment. In that comment it sounds very much like you DO care about right and left.
If your comment applies also to the right "crap" then i thing that the decent thing to do is to state that, because as it is, that is not at all the impression that comes off from your comment. Quite to the contrary.
Thank you again for replying. Wishing you all the best 🙏
https://oneworldrenaissance.com/2021/01/23/holism-fragmentation-and-our-endangered-future-a-new-vision-and-a-new-hope/
You seem to be defining any value that you disagree with as "right wing". Any democrat who disagrees with you isn't a true Democrat, or not a "true Scotsman". However, there's no getting away from the fact that it's the democrats pushing the hardest for war in Ukraine, and it's the left supporting war and demonising Russians everywhere and saying hateful and even bloodthirsty things online about Russians, the unvaxxed, "transphobes" etc. Perhaps, aside from the old left (which are similar to normal conservatives) there are no inherent values on the left any more, and they just believe whatever their overlords tell them is virtuous this year. It's a team sport rather than a belief system at this point aside from the traditional versions of left and right who are more similar than different.
Thank you. I hear you and understand. Yes, the Democratic party is absolutely and thoroughly a right-wing corporate-capitalist party. Not only is it the polar opposite of true left wing, but in fact it does everything in its power to destroy the real left. By any normal political science measure the DNC would be obviously classified in the upper right corner (right-wing authoritarian) of the political typology square, right next to its ugly twin brother, the GOP. But in an un-sane political system which is 100% right-wing and billionaire-owned and where the real left has been completely erased from existence (such as in american politics), then in such a distorted system, anyone who isn't 100% right-wing, but only 99% right wing (like the democratic party) is deceptively branded (by tbe billionaire capitalists' media, both conservative and liberal) as 'the Left'..
As a side note, i remember reading an article from a Danish newspaper a few years ago where they compared Sanders' positions to those of parties in Denmark. He came out more to the right of the most right-wing party there!! But in the 100% right-wing political system of america (where both parties are in the upper right corner of the political typology square) this right-wing politician is labelled 'far left'. That's how crazy and tilted to the far right american politics are..
But despite what the right-wing propagandists in cnn or fox or nbc hammer into people's head over and over again, the fact remains that in america the tyrannical system is set up in such a way that your only choice is between right-wing capitalist nationalist conservatives or right-wing capitalist nationalist liberals. The Left does not exist in america!! And so, to create tje appearance of some choice, they call the side that is only 99% right-wing they call it 'the left', even though each and every thing the DNC do is exactly the opposite of what a real left wing party would do..
The two parties are IDENTICAL to each other when it comes to what really matters to them - securing the narrow interests of the murderous greedy american right-wing corporate-capitalist empire (which spans the entire globe).
As for the insignificant stuff (that doesn't affect the empire's interests) they keep the partisan game going and the people divided and busy hating each other by pushing idiotic culture wars and identity politics (which the empire couldn't care less about. The corporate-capitalits don't give a sh*t if the slave in uniform that drops the bombs from their warplanes is black or white, man or woman, gay or straight etc). The only "difference" between the two parties (or two wings of the one big corporate war party that runs america) is identity politics, which is the tool they use to create the appearance as if there are two distinct options (so that uneducated americans continue believing that they live in a democracy and not in a one-party system, and that it makes a difference which wing of the one empire is in power), but no matter which of the two puppets you choose - the liberal wing or the conservative wing of the empire - you get the exact same corporate-capitalist war machine running the show, murdering millions for its profits and hegemony over the planet, and surrounding the entire globe with nearly a thousand gigantic military bases (as well as dozens and dozens of warships colonizing every ocean on the face of the planet, as well as at least eleven extra-judicial torture facilities where kidnapped human beings are tortured and held in captivity for years and decades without trial). This entire monstrous military machine of rbe capitalists exists solely in order to threaten, bully, intimidate, bomb, attack, murder, invade, occupy, steal, torture, brutalize, kill, plunder, traumatize, inflict pain on anyone who dares to disobey the orders of american capitalists to privatize their country's resources, industry and services from tne public domain into the private hands of american capitalists..
The actions of the right-wing empire stay the same no matter which right-wing puppet, conservative or liberal, happens to be in the white house. Biden continues Trump's right-wing imperialist pro-billilnaire policies which continued Obama's right-wing imperialist pro-billionaire policies which continued Bush jr.'s right-wing imperialist pro-billionaire policies which continued clinton's right-wing imperialist pro-billionaire policies which continued bush sr.'s right-wing imperialist pro-billionaire policies which continued reagen right-wing imperialist pro-billionaire policies... Both parties (or both wings of the one party) are working to brutally secure the narrow greedy interests the exact same murderous corporate-capitalist right-wing empire.
If the real left would happen to come into power then the empire's wars and attacks on humanity for the domination of right-wing corporate-capitalists over the planet's resources would stop within a second!! The demonic corporate-banking right-wing empire would be dissolved within a second, if the real left came to power. That is why the left has been completely erased from existence by the corporate-capitalists and replaced by the abysmal right-wing democratic party which is just as pro-empire as repubs are, and then they tell you in their manipulative media that this right-wing pro-capitalist abomination is 'the left'.. It's hard to know if to laugh or cry!!
And while it's very true, as you said, that many right-wing liberals have been deeply brainwashed by the capitalists' professional propagamdists on cnn/nbc/nytimes etc to cheer for the american empire's war on russia, i think one would have to be profoundly blinded and propagandized to not see that this is EXACTLY what the empire is selling conservatives with regard to their coming planned attack on china (as to why the american right-wing empire is going to attack china soon, see here https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-ip4LKz9d6U). All the propagandized conservatives i've spoken to are already salivating at the thought of the empire's comimg attack on china (and iran), just like they blindly and gullibly cheered for hundreds of other attacks of the empire (as long as the attacks are on non-christians, of course)
The ONLY reason brainwashed conservatives are not cheering for the attack on russia (like they cheer for the hundreds of other attacks by the empire) is becasue russia is christian. The vast majoroty of anti-God conservative chriatians don't give a sh*t when the empire murders millions of non-christians. They care only when it's someone carrying the "correct" religious label.
And even worse, not only do Godless conservative christians not give a sh*t when the capitalists murder millions of non-christians (to secure their profits and global domination), but the sectarian and demonic ideology they subscribe to makes them actually cheer for the empire when it attacks non-christians.
God-denying conservative christians actually urge their sectarian nationalist fake "god" (that they invented for themselves) to 'bless our troops' as the capitalists send them out to murder and plunder in yet another country that they wish to control (one of 469 attacks and invasions that the american right-wing capitalist empire has launched in the past 200 years. See here https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=h4Pr9g_7Nhc&t=17s&pp=ygUiNDY5IGludmFzaW9ucyBnZW9wb2xpdGljYWwgZWNvbm9teQ%3D%3D).
I don't know in which manipulative conservative echo-chambers you're hamging out at, but i find it amazing that you think that only right-wing liberals are deceived. Who do you think the bloodthirsty greedy right-wing empire always rely on for support for their hundreds of attacks across the globe, if not on gullible Godless conservatives?!? Conservatives who actually believe the capitalist billionaires when they hold up a bible and tell the gullible conservative christians that it's their "patriotic duty' to go and kill for the empire (or at least cheer for the brainwashed troops who do the killing)..
Yes, i agree with you that right-wing liberas have now ALSO fallen for the same war propaganda tricks of the empire (like conservatives have for decades now), but that's nothing compared to the decades and decades that hate-filled Godless conservative christians have been cheering for the capitalists' executioners force (a.k.a 'the american military') and for the hundreds of the american global empire's attacks and invasions across the entire planet, and hating who the capitalist billilnaores teach them to hate (theough professional deceivers on fox and breirbart etc), screaming with blood in their eyes 'kill the evil commies, or muslims, or whichever non-christian "enemy" they've been brainwashed by the empire to hate..
And the gullible brainwashed conservative christians will continue to cheer for the empire's attacks & murders (as long as it's non-christians being murdered, of course) also in the empire's coming attack on china, which the american capitalists' will undoubtedly launch once anti-God DeSantis enters office in 2025. I guarantee you that he will tell his brainwashed gullible christian conservative followers that this is what "jesus" and "god" wants them to do, to go kill the 'evil commies' for "freedom and liberty" becasue this is the 'patriotic' thing to do. And the dumbed-down Godless conservative christians will undoubtedly listen to this demonic millioaire manipulator and his life-destroying sectarian ideology and will once again cheer for the american capitalists' satanic empire, being fooled once again into beliving that the capitalists' executioners force (a.k.a 'the american military') is attacking china for "freedom and democracy" (see video above for the real reason why the american empire is going to attack china soon while telling you they are 'defending taiwan', in the exact same way that they now use ukraine to attack russia)..
PS. And as for the question you asked earlier, about what i suggest instead, here's a suggestion that I currently find to be the most wise, pro-human, genius and closest to reflecting our sacred nature (or to say it more accuretely, a suggestion that creates the structural conditions that would allow us to develop to our highest potential and express our divine nature) https://oneworldrenaissance.com/2021/01/23/holism-fragmentation-and-our-endangered-future-a-new-vision-and-a-new-hope/
"Global capitalism has no ideology … There is no ideological territory outside global capitalism. There is no “outside.” There are no external adversaries."
Global capitalism is bent on privatizing the commons, which consists of the genes we are made from, the air we breathe, and whatever else they haven't privatized yet for whatever reason.
They are doing this in order to reset the monopoly board, or as they would put it, to "save capitalism".
This isn't an ideology? Of course its an ideology. A very sharp dividing line I would say.
Oh, and they're also trying to reduce the population by 95%. Malthusianism isn't an ideology? Transhumanism?
I want to collect $200 as I pass GO and collect my Get Out Of Jail Free card.
They own everything from Baltic Avenue to Boardwalk, so we have nothing to pay rent with.
Now they want us to put our shoes, and everything else we have, even our bodies, on the board as money that they can then take from us.
Your GO money will be in CBDC and you will get out of jail only if you spend it on bugs.
Well put. The next thing they want to privatize is our bodies...our gene codes..our ability to perform necessary labour....and the right to get rid of us who are useless eaters.
Its pretty simple really. Hereditary monarchy on steroids.
The way in which the vast majority of people have to make a living is no ideology. It's a socioeconomic system.
plans, goals, intentions for the commons = ideology
malthusianism = ideology
transhumanism = ideology
technocracy vs. democracy = ideology
Those are ideologies, but why do you associate them with capitalism?
The power of capitalism is how it forces us to make a living. Ideologies can be rejected, dependence on a socioeconomic system requires specific changes to one's lifestyle.
Are deep state trolls prostitutes just trying to make a living, or are they criminals assisting in Nuremberg crimes?
They're being paid to advance the agenda of those few individuals who have made billions and own billions.
I don’t understand this left and right thing. I am an American and an individual. You seem to think there are opposite teams in different countries that have shared beliefs and values. I think there might be, but there is a vast majority of individuals with families that just want to live freely without any of the other two opposing groups bugging them.
Call us the anti-politics group. We judge everything on an individual case by case basis.
By the way, all the “isms” are intellectual creations to attack or gain advantage in a debate. The “isms” can’t exist if you evaluate everything on a specific case by case basis.
I've been saying for years that labeling our enemies as "leftists" or "communists" is a serious mistake that complicates and thwarts our efforts to deal with society's real problems. There are very few principled leftists remaining in this country -- about the same number as real white supremacists. The only principles you need to assess an ideology are: adherence to the rule of law, freedom of expression, and reliance on common sense. Whether those against those ideas are on "the left" or "the right" is irrelevant. They are all enemies of free people.
You nailed it. Totalitarianism, tyranny, evil are not left or right they are monstrous phenomenon that repeats under different names and too many of the peeps have too often accepted their "baseless" assertions about what something is or is not by using their words. The Jesuits call it "learning against learning." https://handbeholdnail.wordpress.com/2018/05/05/the-jesuits-order-of-the-alumbrados-unveiled/
Haha I attended Xavier H.S. in NY City. Guess who runs that school?
I think what you wrote here is helpful. Where to go from here though? I don't think people are ever going to agree on the definitions of words that derive most of their meaning from a dualistic way of thinking. "I'm definitely not X, therefore I'm Y. Don't tell me Y is distorted/wrong/delusional/changed from when I first understood it. That's X-talk." The underlying ideologies behind some of these words are just so entrenched in our psyches that invoking the word is almost sure to launch people into righteous arguments, which beautifully keeps us squabbling under the divide+conquer rubric that is working so well right now.
Agreeing on our language may just have to come last. I suppose conversations like this have to continue as the collective works out on a mental level that we're stuck here and no one is going to argue their way out of it no matter how logical they their they're being. In the mean time we can also be focusing on tangible micro-steps to regain and strengthen whatever common ground we can find at the human-to-human level. Do I have 3 other friends who want to garden and collab on food preservation? Great. 10k of those 3-people collabs = greater food sovereignty. I don't need to agree with them on everything in order to share food prep duties during harvest season. We CAN do this. Not sure how long it'll take or how rough the road but the human to human spirit of collaboration is something we have on our side, should we choose to activate it. And we don't have to like each other to collaborate on one or two small things which achieve SOMETHING we can identify as a shared value.
As long as you don't bring up Covid, jabs, lockdowns/masking.
Here in my area, I got people still outside wearing masks...in their cars, on their bikes.
Just waiting to see them gardening with a mask on...I am sure I will soon.
And for some reason, I cannot abide these people, because they have no inteest in or critical thinking skills...they prefer to outsource their thinking.
"When the people shall have nothing more to eat, they will eat the rich".
--Jean Jacques Rousseau.
Looks like the opposite happened: the rich ate the left.
I disagree that they have no ideology. The WEF certainly has an ideology, and it is probably indicative of the hidden hands behind them. James Lindsay of New Discourses has made a convincing case that they have embraced an unholy mix of Hermeticism and Gnosticism. They shall become as gods, while those of us they (in their infinite mercy) permit to live can eat ze boogs and be sequestered into reservations! These are luxury belief systems, once embraced by debauched aristocrats, to be indulged in between bloody wars and bloodier orgies. They still are. They are just riding the transformative powers of capital. It didn't have to be evil, but it is.
I think you come close to the Marquis de Sade with this comment on the WEF and the billionnaires......he was the one who first articulated that why can a King murder people (by sending them to war) , yet you are telling me I can murder one single person just for my own amusement? And de Sade was a debauched aristocrat.
Thank you. This is a very useful insight and pragmatic framing. I have a few suggestions of what can we do to push back:
I believe that awareness, calm resistance to the directions our institutions are pushing us in, and (self)-knowledge are key.
By becoming trauma aware, we can learn to spot the signs of defensive nervous systems at play. We can learn to recognize the Survival Styles in people, and stop electing, rewarding and idolizing the folks who clearly display them.
We can refuse to live in fear, and become aware of the fear mongering for what it is. We can read up on the “science” of Nudging, and learn how the magic is trick done. This makes it much harder for us to be fooled or tricked into fear.
Most of all, we can stop consuming the news media. Indeed, this is the number one recommendation I give to people with chronic illnesses who want to reduce their symptoms. I guarantee this will not only make us less fearful, but will also improve our quality of life.
We can also resist the divide and conquer tactics emanating from out institutions, which seek to get us to dehumanize, other and blame each other.
We can identify and attend to our addictions.*
We can avoid the junk, and prevent the need for pharmaceuticals.
We can help other people who are still stuck in chronic defensive nervous system states to wake up, and come back to a calm place. This cannot be achieved simply by argumentation with facts and logic, because this just feeds the defensiveness, so must be done by appealing to the right brain hemisphere via re-connection to love and common humanity, through metaphor, comedy, poetry, music, awe and beauty.
Excellent and thoughtful. Thank you for sharing.
Thank you. This was taken from my article https://garysharpe.substack.com/p/how-to-avoid-a-hybrid-orwellian-huxleyian
Will check it out - thanks for the link!
It's not capitalism, it's democracy. As for Leftists, they are just people manipulated into doing what the government and corporations already want. Most "Conservatives" too, only slower. Someone said that the real purpose of democracy is to hide the real leaders, and I think it's true. You know only the puppets, not those who are behind them. That said, I think despotism is growing, so I really see little advantages or real freedom: https://contrarium.substack.com/p/western-samizdat