Last Post

This is the last post.

I realize most of the time that I just re-post Chris Hedges columns or incoherently bitch about the coming collapse, either of this country or this planet. So I am going to quit writing in this.

It is not that I stopped caring, it is that there seem to be no clear answers. It is not that I am resigning myself to determinism, it is that the world needs less blogs and more protests. And it is not that I am undermining the importance of political self expression, it is that I want to lead a more ethical and more passionate life. Spending time in front of a screen does not seem like the best idea.

 Besides, one of the points of starting this blog was to give myself a release valve so I could give my beautiful fiancee less migraines. I haven't found myself talking about politics lately, probably because I have come to the conclusion that the political process is beyond salvation. I have been thinking a lot about Martin Luther King Jr. - how once Civil Rights was achieved he realized that political rights without economic justice is impotent. He died campaigning for economic equality. We should follow this above all else.

Capitalism is destroying itself. The future of our species depends upon a reaction to this fact and one of the great questions of my life relies upon my response to the coming disaster. Philosophy majors should recognize this - the search for the Good Life. I thought that maybe as I got older these things would sort themselves out, but it seems that those anxieties have only become more entrenched and pertinent. So let us ask ourselves how we can react to the end of oil, to the totalitarianism of the corporate state and to the twilight of social democracy.

I'm looking forward to the adventure.

BookTV + Chris Hedges = Brilliant

I could talk at length about corporate influence and the destruction of the Democratic Party. Or I could talk about the destruction of America via the hands of deregulated markets.

Or I could just post this link:

Watch It.

If You Are My Friend Then You Will Watch This Film

It's a documentary on the paradigm shift that we need to save the world:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z9WVZddH9w

Block out three hours of your time to watch this.

It talks about peak oil toward the end. Very interesting stuff.

After you watch it leave a comment.

From his latest column

"Either we begin to militantly stand against the coal, oil and natural gas industry or we do not. Either we defy pre-emptive war and occupation or we do not. Either we demand that the criminal class on Wall Street be held accountable for the theft of billions of dollars from small shareholders whose savings for retirement or college were wiped out or we do not. Either we defend basic civil liberties, including habeas corpus and the prosecution of torturers or we do not. Either we turn on liberal institutions, including the Democratic Party, which collaborate with these corporations or we do not. Either we accept that the age of political compromise is dead, that the corporate systems of power are instruments of death that can be fought only by physical acts of resistance or we do not. If the liberal class remains gullible and weak, if it continues to speak to itself and others in meaningless platitudes, it will remain as responsible for our enslavement as those it pompously denounces. " - Chris Hedges

Listen Close: It's Over

Game Over.

For decades we have been ignoring Peak Oil. Within our lifetime there will be no more left. It is not science fiction. This is not an opinion. This is going to happen. The aftermath is, more or less, anybody's guess. An apparent conclusion, though, is that modern industry is going to be over. The world will probably become decentralized and we will return to local communities. Really though: think of all the technology behind the 20th century and imagine that it never happen. Oil is the basis for most of it. Without it, what will happen to us?

A Prophet, Ignored

“Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.”
- Martin Luther King Jr.

Collapse

Despite some very recent happiness in my personal life, I am finding it more and more difficult to replicate that same emotion in regards to the outside world. The reason: Peak Oil. The possibility of running out of the substance that the entirety of modern civilization relies upon has been creeping around my brain for the past couple of months. My then girlfriend, now my fiancee, and I watched a documentary called "Collapse." The whole movie was, more or less, footage of this guy talking about the End of Oil and what the implications would be for the rest of us. It was haunting.

Bullshit

Thanks Congress, for passing the Bush tax cuts.

This is all that should be said on the matter:

“We can have concentrated wealth in the hands of a few or we can have democracy, but we can’t have both.”- Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis

Perspective

1. Almost 3 million people were evicted from their homes in 2009.

2. Congress and the bastard Obama are extending a tax cut for the richest of the very rich.

Things to keep in mind as Chrismas comes closer.

I am not being facetious or cute right now:

Seriously ask yourself, what would Jesus do?

Would Jesus try to help those 2.8 million? Or would he extend the most irresponsible, un-democratic and useless tax cut in American history?

Of course moderates are tripping over themselves to defend our elitist President. Apparently it is a 'reasonable' deal for Americans. We will see how that will pan out.

These tax cuts have not created jobs, do not promote investment, and they do not boost the economy. If they did we would have had a net job gain during the Bush II administration instead of a net job losses. Instead, what we will get is more of the same. More inequality and more suffering for those of us who aren't millionaires.

How Obama sleeps at night is anybody's guess.

E-mail with a Conservative

(Hopefully he doesn't mind, but I am posting this e-mail response that I wrote to my good friend's Dad. I am a very big fan of him because we can talk about politics without him yelling at me.)

Mr. S------,

I don't know if you knew this, but I am not a reasonable person. There is probably an idea that you have of how 'left-wing' I am, but I think it might be mistaken. I am not a Democrat and most days I question if I am a liberal or not. The both of us, I am assuming, will probably agree on over half of possible policy issues.

To respond to your e-mail:

This article and this article will explain better than I can why the "left" (in quotes because I believe there is no Left in America, but a Phantom Left) is upset with that bastard Obama.

I agree with you about:

1. Health care reform was a disaster because it does nothing to lower costs and forces people to pay into a private industry that makes money off of denying people care. Buying across state lines would have been a better idea than Obamacare, although I think conservatives should take another look at single-payer, which, for whatever reason, has not been included in the debate at all. It is more cost effective, especially when we look at long-term healthcare cost projections.

2. The auto industry did not deserve to be bailed out. It has been making terrible cars for years and those companies should have been allowed to fail.

3. The stimulus was a disaster. Like government contracts in Iraq, no one has been tracking where all of this money has been going and to what effect it is being used. In essence, it was a robbery of public funds funneled to private hands. Obama was continuing another failed policy of Bush.

4. Offshore drilling accounts for something like 1% of all oil drilling on the planet. Banning it, or not banning it, means essentially nothing in terms of where the world is getting energy.

5. The EPA is a sham, barely funded with no real political power. I am surprised it still exists.

6. Farm subsidies are not on the Tea Party agenda because it affects them too much.

7. Half of the discretionary budget goes to the Defense Department. With over 800 military bases we have overreached. It is the biggest contributor on the deficit and is such a golden cow to politicians that no one is talking about it - with the exception of the two most honest men in the House: Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul. If you haven't had a chance to read Andrew Bacevich, he is a great historian, a veteran and a wonderful writer who does research on military overreach.

I don't agree about drilling 'everywhere' for coal, oil and gas because it doesn't seem like a good long term solution to the energy crisis. We reached peak oil in this country decades ago and drilling for gas and coal can affect water and air quality. I think we should rely on nuclear power plants until we can find a sustainable energy solution with wind and especially solar power. Engineers have been making great strides in how they harness solar energy and I think we should invest in that.

(The following quotes were from the e-mail he sent).


"I would deregulate almost all industries and allow only for oversite to ensure a reasonable degree of safety."

What are your thoughts about the financial sector ruining the economy? Obama's tepid financial reform essentially does nothing to prevent us from another crisis and it is because of Regan and Clinton's irresponsible deregulation of the industry that allowed something like 2009 to happen in the first place.

 "I would make government as small as possible to get out of the way for American citizens to pursue life, liberty and happiness."

Then Republicans should both be supporting a Ron Paul instead of a Sarah Palin or a Mitt Romney or a Mike Huckabee. But they aren't. Why?

The elephant in the room of this e-mail is corporate money, yet another aspect of modern political life that I never hear about from conservative thinkers. The greatest threat to liberty and happiness on this planet comes from companies that put profits before people. I can go into detail more, if you want; I think it's a fair statement to say that ExxonMobil and GE have more power than the US government. They certainly influence Washington more than the voter can.

Truthfully, I believe that political persuasions are a circle and not a line. People on the "left" and people on the "right" agree about issues in the country (jobs, education and public health) far more than they recognize. You and I just come from different views in political philosophies, perhaps.

Let me know if there is anything I said that I could clarify on in more detail, or statements that you made that I did not sufficiently cover.

Believe me, please, when I say that I distrust, even perhaps despise, the government. Even though I am interested in the ins-and-outs of political power and politicians, I firmly believe that there are systemic problems with how Washington functions that neither political party addresses.

I hope this finds you well sir.

-(my name)

On the Extension of the Bush Tax Cuts.

ARGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Political as the Personal

I have been thinking a lot lately about my  self-identity. There is a shift, I am trying to force, from being a selfish person to a more social, political one. This means a reorganization of ethics.

I had a chance to talk to a Democrat a couple of weeks ago. He was the friend of a friend and we ended up talking for a while about politics and society. When I mentioned my disappointment with the Obama administration's escalation of the war in Afghanistan there was this... scoff. It's hard to describe the sound he made, but it was something between condescension and pity. As if I didn't really understand the Very Serious Matter of butchering innocent civilians for some vague, shifting geopolitical goal. He proceeded not to take me seriously for the rest of the conversation.

Of all of the people that I have respected, admired and have tried to emulate in my life I think I gravitate towards the men and women who have the capacity for empathy. Not power. Not money. Not even talent - but the ability to teach others to open up their emotional landscape to include the six billion other human beings around them.

So when I talk about single payer, I am not thinking about policy; I am thinking about other people's suffering. When I talk about Afghanistan, I am trying my best to imagine what it is like for my neighborhood to be bombed by American planes. When I talk about the financial crisis, I think about evictions and livelihood's being ruined. And so on and so forth.

This is the crux of what I am trying to get at:

It drives me fucking insane when people openly talk about not caring about politics. Not even openly, but proudly, as if it is a positive thing that they are ignoring the power structures and economic forces that affect billions of other human beings.

It may be from a point of privilege that I have the leisure to spend hours of my week reading political articles in addition to living a daily life. But it is also arrogant and, I think, ethically deformed to assign yourself to willful ignorance over the suffering and pain of the people around you. Financial regulation, health-care reform and stopping the war in Afghanistan matter because people's lives matter. It matters when a family gets evicted from their home. It matters when people become bankrupt over hospital bills. It matters when a marine gets their body blown apart from an IED. And it also matters when a mother in Afghanistan, a country that I have never been and will probably never go to, dies because of what my country decides to do.

Per Usual

Chris Hedges talks to a doctor about universal health care.

That is all.

Attack of the Hedges

Yes, that's right:

Another Hedges link.

Going to go watch it... NOW.

EDIT: Just finished watching it and... wow... best video about his new book yet!

Here are some great quotes:

"Let's remember that Fox is a non-reality based belief system; it is about catering to emotional consistency, not to truth."

"We have a choice, you can either be complicit in your own enslavement or you can lead a life that has some kind of integrity and meaning." (on the question of why someone should be a radical)

"...the capacity to rebel, the capacity to stand up and have the moral autonomy to say no ...  let's not be naive, you're not rewarded in this kind of a system for virtue, probably in any kind of a system... that is the price for having a life worth living."

"...if you don't have anger and courage then hope is not a possibility."

Article of the Day

Where is the liberal/progressive/Democratic/decent-person/common-sense outrage over how completely idiotic this nation is for still being in Afghanistan?

Read this.

I have been trying my best not to be too disillusioned lately. I can feel that old familiar sting of cynicism more or less wash over me when I think about these things too much. Because, really, it is a question of efficacy. How can I affect the world so that it is a place of more general well-being?

Frustrating, yes?

Last Post Redundant

Because of Noam Chomsky not fucking around.

Where's the Class Warfare?

I just finished the first chapter of Chris Hedge's new book. Before I talk about it, here are some links from the past couple of days.

Joan Walsh writes here about the failure of the Democrats to fight for the rights of the people who elect them. Also great in that article (about midway down, read the bullet points) is that she addresses rising inequality in this country.

Since, alas, Russ Feingold is gone, the search for another senator who doesn't bend over for special interests continues. Even though Bernie Sanders will always have my heart (also Patrick Leahy is awesome - really wish I lived in Vermont), Jim Webb looks like a Democrat who actually has balls. I posted recently about Sirota's wonderful exclamation to the Blue Dog Democrats who betrayed the public option and voted against extending unemployment insurance. Maybe there should be a purging of these 'liberals' from the party? The Left has to take back the anger that historically belongs to them. What happened?

Democrats, like their Republican counterparts (if you can even call them that, doesn't it feel like they don't have any real differences?), have betrayed the working class. And now, the middle class as well. They are subservient and will only pay attention to the banking class. Well? Where is the revolt? The blood and the guns? The Revolution?

Where are these so-called Progressives? Environmental groups have still struggled to condemn the Obama administration for the Gulf disaster. Liberal legal groups are not talking about habeas corpus not being reinstated. We still have extraordinary rendition. We still have two illegal occupations. We still have lobbyists with this insane amount of influence. Capitalism has failed yet we still go day-to-day pretending that it hasn't. People are losing their homes. No one is finding decent work. What the hell?

Hedge's dissects these questions and proclaims that the Liberal Class is Dead. Those old institutions (the universities, labor unions, the media, the arts, the Democrats) that used to promote civil rights, woman's rights, economic rights are gone. They have all sold out to corporate money and now, well, now we have no one who is fighting for us. That is how the Tea Party got to co-opt the rage over the bailouts. An extremists right-wing group got to take all of the political capital from the past two years because we have no liberal voice in this country who could articulate the underclass's frustrations.

Instead, in the saddest irony imaginable, we elected candidates who are fighting this phantom 'Socialism' that Obama has been supporting. The anger of the unemployed has been stolen from the Left by Republicans, from the same fucking billionaires who ruined the country.

I can't articulate my frustration and rage. It seems like most of the Tea Party cannot either, which is why they have voted for their own destruction. We, America the Sinking Ship, are about to enter another era of tax-cuts for the Masters and starvation for the Serfs.

Social Security will be attacked. Obama, the corporate bitch that he is, will vote for the Bush Tax Cuts in exchange for something small and negligible. In the same way that financial reform, health-care reform and the stimulus failed by not going far enough, he will sell us out the same way the Democrats have sold us out for the past thirty years.

(Caveat: right now I wish I lived in France because they seem to actually have a fucking class consciousness. I would rather be rioting in the streets that sitting in my apartment impotently writing in some stupid blog no one reads. But what are my options? How do I protest? How do I affect real change? How do I fight for real democracy? Real justice? Real ethics?)

As always, I have no answers.

To end on a lighter note, our friend Tom Tomorrow has another dissection of modern politics.

Article of the Day

Chris Hedges, once again,writes about things that I am not seeing anywhere else. It mentions two things.

First, why is no one in the supposedly libertarian Tea Party talking about the biggest source of waste in the budget: the military. Last time I checked it was around 600 billion, right?

Second, why are we still talking about capitalism as if it is a viable model for how the world should run? How many times does it have to fail before we realize that it should be abandoned?

Socialism is not a dirty word. Socialism's main goals is economic equality. Why are so many Americans against this? Is it because they cannot distinguish between Communism and Socialism?

Article of the Day

David Sirota writes a fantastic article about the Democratic Party betraying their purpose and their never-ending desire to be a watered down version of the Republicans.

I agree Mr. Sirota! To all of the conservative Democrats and corporate pawns: Go Fuck Yourself.

Articles of the Day and a Lament

Robert Scheer has a lovely short article about the main failure of the Obama administration and Amy Goodman writes about the corrupt media.

My sister sent me a great cartoon about historical perspectives and tax rates. It might be a re-blog.

But hey, let us have a moment of silence for America. While we do so we can think about the unemployed and we can think about those in severe poverty. We can think of people in their twenties, like myself, who are college educated and can find nothing. Or the uninsured who will go bankrupt because of health care or bad mortgages. Maybe the elderly who might see their social security gutted or privatized. Austerity is a good euphemism - but what it is really saying when we use this word is, essentially, pain. Pain for those that didn't have the privilege of being rich. Pain for those with the wrong upbringing or the wrong skin tone. Pain for the sick. Pain for the weak. Pain for those that this country has turned its back to. Everyone that voted for the Republicans to take control, yet again, of Congress have the blood of the underclass on their hands. The underclass even voted for them, thinking that, for some reason, they will listen to them.

They won't.

If the Democrats, traditionally the party of the middle and working class, don't listen to the poor masses then why do they think the Republicans will? Obama, in his moderate neo-Clinton capacity, will probably vote for whatever Congress gives him. I, for one, can't wait for the Bush tax cuts to be permanent; it'll be nice to have clear class divisions so that when the poor revolt from frustration and destitute then maybe they will take down the right people. Most likely not. Chances are we will keep voting for the Grand Ole' Party of Freedom and Capitalism until the last house is foreclosed and the last industrial job is lost. There are no liberals in this country. There is only fear and corruption and greed and ignorance.

I am a man without a Party. I am a man without a Country. I am lost in this un-Reality where the paupers vote for princes and where the rich will continue to consume and consume until everything is spent.

Fuck you America.