It is despair that is killing us. It fosters what Roger Lancaster calls “poisoned solidarity,” the intoxication forged from the negative energies of fear, envy, hatred and a lust for violence.
"There are none so blind as those who will not see." At the age of 77, having served in a war a long time ago, and having the opportunity to travel around the world, I am not very optimistic about the future of America. Most Americans, I am afraid to say, would not only not take the time to read your great commentary, but wouldn't have a clue as to what you're trying to convey. American society has become so fractured and self-serving, that we are well past the time of trying to put it all back together, not only for the betterment of most Americans, but for the rest of humanity as well. Like 'American exceptionalism,' American 'rugged individualism' has shredded the fabric of community, and I believe we have already crossed the Rubicon.
I spoke out against the myth of individualism in an ecology class at the University of Minnesota in the 1980s. Not one of the students, including the teaching assistant, understood one word I said. In fact, they laughed.
I so admire your intellect and writing skills, also your compassion and engagement in important often neglected issues such as the terrible predicament of people who are wrongfully incarcerated. But you do have a tendency to paint things in the bleakest terms - and in this case I feel you’re mistaken.
I’ve never been a Trump supporter and in his first go at being president he really blew it - but I really feel he has evolved and I’m quite impressed by the diverse and creative entourage of team members he has gathered this time around - and the statements he has already made in specific terms about his intentions to get rid of the entrenched corrupt DC bureaucrats, etc.
I think we have a rare opportunity to overturn the system - not as you have envisioned it happening, but authentic nonetheless:.
I don't know what kind of presidency Trump would have had, hard to judge, since the democrats tried to delegitimize his presidency from it's onset with the lie of Russia-gate, and all manner of demeaning accusations. They even claimed that Trump once had prostitutes in Moscow pee on a bed where Obama once slept. The mainstream media as well as too many on the left were complicit in the democrat's agenda. The democrats also demeaned his base and referenced them as a bunch of deplorables, and even at the end of his reign Biden referred to them as garbage. Hard to bring about constructive change that will benefit the people of a country when you adopt such a divisive attitude, as well as pit them against each other. The January 6th riot called an insurrection was used to exacerbate that division. During those four years the democrats also glorified themselves, and presented themselves as our saviors. I supported Bernie Sanders in 2016 only to have to listen to him acknowledge his loss by glorifying war-monger Clinton who couldn't refrain from laughing on hearing of Gaffadi's death, since the Obama administration followed in the footsteps of Bush/Cheney implementing wars based on lies, neocon driven wars which continue to this day.
Thank you for sharing...absolutely heart-breaking, and countless more experience similar grief...inexcusable pain caused by our Governments, complicit in orchestrating this unspeakable horror
They report the number of dead, and sometimes how they died is unbearable enough, but to see the sense of their loss to others who loved them, especially children, is unbearable.
It is truly, and yet we must resist and stand together on this. Thank you South Africa, and those countries who stand with them for your actions. And thank you Prof. Norm Finkelstein and so many other courageous activists, and the millions of individuals who refuse to be gaslighted into silence, submission and acceptance. This barbarity must be stopped.
Certainly, you cannot be talking about Donald Trump. If his intention is to rid us of the entrenched, corrupted bureaucracy, it's to replace it with his own corrupt bureaucracy. If anything should impress us about Trump, it's his chronic venality in everything he does. Along with a now corrupted Supreme Court and Congress, we can expect to lose our democratic institutions for at least the next four years, and maybe forever. I have given up on the Democratic Party. I am changing my party affiliation to Independent. Or should I make it, Socialist? Or, Marxist?
Trump and his "diverse and creative entourage" are the new and soon to be the entrenched corrupt DC bureaucrats for the next four years, just like they were during the first go-around of chaos. The self-serving Trump has always been of the elite class, and his entourage are drooling at the opportunity to join him there, just like the first time around.
With that being said, painting things as "bleak" seems so spot on and for the next four years there will be an extra coat of that paint, labeled bleak, and remember custom colors are not returnable, so your stuck with it if the color isn't what you expected.
An evolved Trump? It is to laugh, and the American theater of the absurd curtain Republican style soon rises.
Well, he has already started filling his cabinet with swamp creatures so I guess my optimism was misplaced. I wonder what has happened to Tulsi Gabbard and RFK, Jr. in this process. It was largely their presence on his ‘team’ that gave me some hope that perhaps he was aiming to put together a more progressive forward-thinking coalition this time.
Trump, like Biden, Obama, Bush, and Clinton, will fail. All these assholes left the country in worse shape at the end their failed administrations. While the People worked their asses off trying to keep their piece of the country together. The corporate media went to great lengths to hide, obscure, and shape, our government’s many failures. The US and its failing empire resemble the USSR when it failed and collapsed. Funny how massive corruption, violence, and greed, can break a country. It look to me that we’re approaching the end of the failure phase. Trump may just finish it off. He’s good at bankruptcy.
yES....THAT IS WHAT WE NEED TO DO...But in order to do that, we have to acknowledge that it is not a strong social democracy that is the problem but a deregulated, low tax privatized capitalism. From each according to her ability, to each according to her needs is a good place to start.......changing the pronoun to acknowledge that men have claimed the lion's share of the fruits of labour for far too long.......
We must embrace, and recreate a form of socialism that puts inclusion, care and the needs of all at the forefront........and capitalist accumulation somewhere near the bottom of our list of values.
And that will be very difficult....because America has spent at least a century demonizing the collective will of the people and elevating the desires of the most venal...........as the ultimate source of all our wealth.
Imagining that the prosperity of all might replace the profit of a few is a hard imagining.....since much of prosperity likely doesn't involve as much money as it does community and the love of our elders and our children. I can imagine it. But then, I have six grandchildren, a strong work ethic, a safe home.......and not much need for any of the commodity fetishes capitalism spreads among its converts.
America has spent the last 75 years suffering from the effects of McCarthyism. The mere word "socialism" blinds their minds to any good that it can do.
Fearing the Communists and Mother Russia was a necessary part of your Empire. Now Americans will gin up hope that someone who thought Harris was a Marxist might end America's military bungles. I don't see any good in your immediate future (I'm Canadian)....and most likely Israel will be defeated at the expense of the Holy Land...
Ecocide is an accompaniment of genocide going forward....perhaps we could coin a new word: PETROCIDE???
They must be delusional if they think that Kamala Harris is a Marxist!
Just goes to show how little the average American knows about any economic system, because of they don't know about others, they probably don't know much about their own.
From what I'm hearing, Americans are going to be on some kind of rollercoaster with Donald Trump appointing the richest boy man in the world to be in charge of government cuts.
Truly obscene to think someone who has more than many countries...will get to decide what programs to take the ax to. But that's right wing neoliberalism for you.
I know of his work...I think read excerpts as a young student....but remind me. I'm of Norwegian/English background and was always told our family name came from a farm we'd owned in Norway...back when Veblen was writing.
Recently, looking up our name on the web, I discovered that farm has existed for centuries...and is likely something far more communal/collective than anything our family might have owned exclusively.
Since I live in Minnesota, I am somewhat familiar with Norwegian culture, and I know that Norwegian families take their names from their farm.
Thorstein Veblen was the son of two Norwegian immigrants who did pretty well on a farm in Minnesota. He was a real genius.
In The Theory of the Leisure Class, he goes into anthropology and brings up his hypothesis about the origins of class structure. He traced the background of the leisure class from that point, and says that modern culture still has traces of the original one.
From there he goes on to analyze the love of money and the worship of the rich in modern society.
I don't know how much you could get from excerpts, since his is a very structured argument and relies on the acceptance of his premises to support his conclusions. I always have to read it from the beginning to follow his ideas.
I think that, if you like to read, you would be interested in his ideas.
I do read a lot.......and must confess that I think I read a critique of his work, completely agreed with what I read, and likely assumed that our Norwegian background meant we saw the same things. I often go on about the worship of Mammon as our real religion.....and the accompaniment of 'snot' that goes with 'having money' has always made me want to puke.
Needless to say, folks who think they're someone because of what they have steer pretty clear of me.........but perhaps I should give his work a closer look....where I live, you're pretty lonely if you aren't in the swim of eating out, vacate oning, and high end consumption .
There were many critiques of Veblen's work in his time, mostly because he was an iconoclast and he offended the classical economists who taught in the universities. However, one biographer I came across said that it wasn't so much his theories as his love life. Apparently he ran off with more than one woman and "lived in sin" with her (the latest one). The Edwardian academics certainly wouldn't put up with that! I think that's hilarious.
I've long suspected that people who think outside the box, have open minds and aren't afraid of difference have better/more love lives than conventional thinkers. I don't know what the correlation is.......but embracing life leads places.
Certainly was far more difficult in Veblan's day though.......particularly for women. And it has come to my attention that the more right wing the politics, the more willing they are to legislate for others. I sometimes wonder, if the west hadn't been so sexually up tight and purient about human desire, would we have cobbled together a more inclusive world??
I know of people who are alone now....one single mom just diagnosed with cancer...and it seems barbarous to me that she's as alone as she is...and that's in Canada........where at least she will have health care regardless of her financial situation.
Many times I find myself saying, "History will record this as a huge mistake, if there is a history."
If there is a history. Never in history have people had the thought that there might not be a history. We may lose everything.....soon. Human greed is destroying the Garden of Eden. When it dies, we will cease to exist. What bothers me the most is the loss of the great music and art we created. It does not have to be this way.
Life on this planet will restore itself as it has several times. It just will not include us.
What bothers me most is all the little people, who die in terror, never having had the chance to read, listen or participate in anything resembling artistry or joy.
I've begun wondering how much of the literature I studied as a girl was written on the unpaid labour of my people. So much of European art was created by the wealthy....detached most likely from the common lot of the majority, that I've come to believe, as I re-read some of it, that I wasted my life listening to old white men like Thomas Carlyle.
What exactly is it you get to know........or create......if the impoverishment/exploitation of the many is what gave you the opportunity to develop your precious intellectual/creative powers???
What kind of literature/music/art is coming out of Israel...has come out of Israel in the last 80 years? Is it an expression of the actual culture, or a cover up of that culture.
Depressing questions I know, but looking back near the end of my life, I'm asking them, trying to imagine an art that rises out of a peaceful world, where everyone is housed and has enough to eat.......It might well be wonderful, but I can't quite imagine it.
Thomas Carlyle’s “Sartor Resartus” is a great work of literary art, despite the poor choices Carlyle made of being born white and male, then becoming old, and now even older as the years have passed since he died. He does deserve credit, however, for not being wealthy. I do wonder how much of the work in other fields, science for example, we should suppress or abandon because it was created by old white men, many of them wealthy. Does the fact that people live in societies that are based on exploitation mean that they should take the barren fig tree as their model? Does the fact that society makes so many people unhappy mean that no one should ever smile?
My eyes were opened a couple of years ago when I read Edward Said's CULTURE AND IMPERIALISM. I loved the Victorian writers...mostly male of course...but no one showed me the bits where they extolled the superior virtues of the white race...or made claims as to what the colonies and the colonized were good for.
Said was very open minded in continuing to extol the very real virtues of English literature, but I'm afraid I'm not so kindly.......a large part of the right wing resurgence these last few years is precisely about their refusal to take responsibility for much of the cruelty with which our culture suppressed (committed cultural genocide) on the children of the native population.
I've always loved children more than literature....what we did was unforgiveable....one of our Canadian poets, whom I loved as a girl.....Duncan Campbell Scott.......was among the authors of our residential schools. He practised cultural appropriation.....writing as if he were a native, while designing the government schools that killed so many.......
It's a shame time can't erase....self satisfied little pri...ks, creating literature with one hand while they designed prison schools run by religious orders with the other.
There is no cultural objects or works of art that can make up for it.
Some classes of people who created works you once admired held beliefs you find repugnant. One individual who created works you once admired engaged in acts you find repugnant. Their works cannot “make up” for their repugnant beliefs and acts; and it is impossible to say what “you get to know” or “create” if your opportunity to learn or create is based on privileges provided by an exploitative society. Also, current right-wingers refuse to take responsibility for acts from the past that you find repugnant.
I could understand it if you had concluded that your repugnance makes it impossible for you to appreciate certain works. Fair enough. Probably most of us have that experience.
But that is not the conclusion you draw. You seem to draw two conclusions. One, works cannot “make up” for the repugnant beliefs or acts of their makers. Two, a person has not really gotten to “know” or “create” something if he learned or created it in an exploitative society.
With respect to your first conclusion, granted that the theory of relativity doesn’t “make up” for Einstein’s poor treatment of his wife, why would it ever occur to anyone that it might or should? What does Einstein’s poor treatment of his wife have to do with the theory of relativity in the first place? What does “make up” even mean in such a context?
With respect to your second conclusion, if taking advantage of one’s opportunity to learn or create in an exploitative society means that one has not really gotten to “know” or “create” anything, then few people in the history of the human race have ever learned or created anything.
And where does this moral censorship stop? If you learned your house was designed by someone who held repugnant views, or was an embezzler, would you burn your house down? Do you refuse to own a cell phone because virtually all cell phones contain rare metals obtained under repugnant labor conditions? Have you done a background check on every item you own or use to make sure it has a virtuous lineage? Do you believe that every sinner should be shunned and never forgiven, since they can never make up for all their sins—which would be very hard on all us us, since we are all sinners and need forgiveness?
(As for right-wingers refusing to take responsibility for the evils of the past, I have no idea what that has to do with this train of thought.)
Where is the logic in these views of yours? Or are you merely venting?
You're making something complex that is actually quite simple. Like most western people who did well academically.......I had no idea as a girl that I was reading mainly white men of privilege.....and while that might not have changed the fact that they became eminent men of letters.........they were also apologists of an Empire I was born into..........without any consciousness of the price others paid for our good fortune...........and good opinion of ourselves.
I was educated by a culture a bit deluded about itself.......a lot ignorant of the crimes it had committed to become so wealthy. The United States struggles with the same amnesia.........currently, many in your country fear and hate the waves of immigrants coming into your country.........and I bet most of them know nothing of the imperial regime changes your goverrnment tax dollars were invested in. In Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Iran, Chile.....CIA operatives fought the people under the guise of fighting communism.....to make those countries safe for American corporative theft quite often.
Had western imperialism not existed, we'd have a very different world now. Can't change the past....but when we acknowledge it.........it changes our feelings about things. I have that disenchantment for what I read in English literature....now that I know more the full extent of how England became so wealthy.....of course if effected the arts...the culture.....in ways we often can't be sure of...
I find that sad....I find the apolitical nature of so much of what I learned a bit of a cheat. Trying to argue my feelings aren't logical doesn't change the fact....what white men did to their colonies, makes their literature/art a bit of a cover up. It is what it is...........but for me, I'd have preferred a bit more truth and consequence in my early learning. Truth is what I've always been after......you don't get as much of that as you thought you were getting, once you know the whole story.
At one point, you seem to be criticizing Ingamarie for separating the works of a creator from his beliefs.
Towards the end of your argument, you seem to be asking her about her relationship with modern culture: "would you stop using a cell phone?" Essentially, you are asking her if she is separating the works from the creator's actions and beliefs.
The struggle of many academics and people of culture, to rescue said culture from the accusation of imperialistic cover up, can be interesting. What it cannot do, is justify a high culture that could ignore the real conditions of many, not only in the colonies that many of those privileged had stock in, but in the slums of their own cities.
European culture is inevitably, cut off from its roots. Once you leave the land and the people of the land out of the picture....develop an amnesia for actual social conditions, perhap by blaming those conditions on the poor, or just by training your mind to dwell on 'higher things'.........you aren't a real intellectual.
The intellect perceives, conceives, conjectures..........and always, in a completely developed intellect, I believe there is a conscience...truth somehow demands justice. When you can't get that....turning away from the conditions of your fellow country women and men retards your intellect to some extent.
That is a truth many intellectuals don't want to consider. Because to stand be truth and justice, in a capitalist privatized world of obscene weath.....is to risk your privileged position as an intellect.
Look at the great thinkers of this era. Most of them, like Chomsky, Hedges.....have been de platformed.
In Imperial England, it would have been no different. SO MY OBJECTIONS TO ENGLISH LITERATURE IS IT DOESN'T MOSTLY TELL THE WHOLE STORY....written as it was by compromised intellects.
There are a few exceptions: Thomas Hardy, Laurence Stern, author of that exquisite anti-novel Tristram Shandy among them.....
Susan Mercurio wrote: “you seem to be criticizing Ingamarie for separating the works of a creator from his beliefs.”
First, I thought I was not criticizing Ingamarie, but rather suggesting that the substance of what she wrote requires further examination. I believe it is essential, both morally and intellectually, to distinguish between any individual and what she says or does. It would be inappropriate for me to criticize Ingamarie, whom I know only through her words here; I wish to address only what she wrote.
Second, with respect to what I took to be the first point in her last post but one, what I thought I was criticizing was her apparent identification—not separation—of a creator and his beliefs or works. In her view, a deplorable creator can create only deplorable works. I exemplified my point by asking what the connection is between Einstein’s treatment of his wife and the theory of relativity. The fact that Carlyle was a virulent racist does not mean that “Sartor Resartus” is not a great and indispensable work of literary art, whose absence from the canon would make our culture poorer. His personal failings mean that he was a great literary artist who also happened to be in certain respects a deplorable man. The division between the frail and often culpable creature that every one of us is, and the pathetically small portion of our lives in which we succeed in being or doing something valuable, is an inescapable fact of human existence.
Susan Mercurio suggests I am being illogical because on the one hand I “seem to be criticizing Ingamarie for separating the works of a creator from his beliefs,” while on the other hand I am “asking her if she is separating the works from the creator’s actions and beliefs.” Setting aside the fact what I actually wrote was the opposite, there is no logical contradiction between these two positions. Why must one logically choose between “criticizing Ingamarie for separating the works of a creator from his beliefs” and “asking her if that is what she is doing?” These statements have nothing to do with what I wrote, but even if they did, why couldn’t one logically do both? And even if the two were considered to be mutually contradictory, the contradiction would be trivial.
With regard to the formal aspect of what Ingamarie wrote, she claims that asking for meaningful rational propositions to be logically coherent is “making something complex that is actually quite simple.” Ingamarie has not written poetry or a memoir here; what she has offered us is a set of rational propositions; and rational propositions are obviously not rational if they are not logical. I am unable to agree that the propositions of Ingamarie’s that I addressed are “quite simple." I can’t understand them as being logically coherent or even meaningful (despite their containing genuine observations and feelings), and I like to think I’m not the dullest knife in the drawer-so how can I think they are simple? Accusing your interlocutor of looking for unnecessary complexity is not an effective defense of your own illogicality.
In her latest post, Ingamarie movingly expresses her grief over the devastation that European imperialism has inflicted on the world. I share her grief. She states that when she was young she was deceived by our culture’s “amnesia” about its dreadful behavior, past and present. Weren’t we all? She also blames white male writers for propagandizing European imperialism. Let us agree that the rationalization of evil is in a real sense more evil than actually perpetrating it, since its perpetration could not endure unless it were rationalized. Let us also agree that white males are guiltier than anyone else, since it is they who were principally the writers doing the rationalizing.
But this is hardly, to use Ingamarie’s phrase, “the whole story.” Gender is only one kind of division in society. Social class is more salient than gender in respect to exploitation. Half the members of the privileged classes who perpetrate and benefit from exploitation are female. The fact that they have been less powerful than men does not relieve them of culpability. Is there any reason to believe that aristocratic or privileged women were not, and are not, just as determined to do what is necessary to maintain their privilege as men are? There has been no shortage in history of predatory female members of the aristocracy. Men have held the kinetic power to act, but the desire to act grows out of the family. (Actually, this is not an issue of particular concern of mine, though I do get a little tired of reading the incessant, rote denunciation in our time of men that makes it sound as if men were solely responsible for society’s ills. How does this childish approach help dismantle the patriarchy, or rather, help reorganize society into an egalitarian one? For one thing, as we can infer from what happened on November 5, it certainly alienates a lot of men.)
Chris - Thank you for this. Yet there is another approach to pull us out of the downward spiral. This is to fully understand and address the Land Problem and solutions. This understanding is deeply rooted in Judeo-Christian economic justice and the firm foundation that the Creator made all things of the earth for the self-sufficiency of all. "Thou shalt not buy and sell the land forever, for the land is Mine, ye are but strangers and sojourners." Henry George was the most recent prophet of this tradition. They wrote him out of the economic texts when they - elites - created neoliberal economics, making the term Land (all of Earth) a mere subset of Capitol. Thus only two factors - Capitol and Labor - and thus your call for working people taking to the streets. There is a powerful way forward, and a simple basic one. Remove taxes from labor (will increase purchasing capacity) and shift the tax base onto the unearned income, the socially created value of land and natural resources. This is practical, powerfi and has been done, we know the details of how to implement this policy. People with access to land can "take this job and shove it" and self-employ. We need more people in regenerative agriculture but the tax incentives need to be correctly harnessed. All that is needed is for more people, and especially influences like yourself, to understand its importance. How can we have this conversation? - alannahartzok@gmail.com 717-357-7617 in Pennsylvania.
It is discouraging to read so many bizarre comments on it that seem to be lost in magical thinking or other mental vapors. Perhaps they are a symptom of psychological contagion--that is, of a despair following Trump’s victory that is secondary to, and a distorted reflection of, the despair of Trump followers. Thus the downward spiral accelerates.
In regard to the cultural despair of dispossessed Americans, one might compare adolescents who grow up in dysfunctional circumstances and, in despair at obtaining caring and effective help from adults, turn to companions with psychopathologies complementary to the psychological problems these adolescents have to deal with. This is a common and easily observable pattern (and not just among adolescents). In the extreme case, one thinks of the multitudes of youths in Central America who see no alternative except to join the murderous drug gangs that control large areas of entire countries—perhaps because objectively their society presents them with no good alternative.
The disgust and despair that so many are feeling at the terrible choices we've been faced with in our official 'elections', including this one on Nov. 5, point to one thing for me: building real, local grass-roots organizations where we can think together and plan non-violent acts of resistance is all that we have - probably all that we've ever had. So...after the mourning, it is time to ACT!!
Hold Trump's feet to the fire along with his administration.
Return manufacturing to the United States.
Healthcare - Demand Medicare for all.
For all the Trump supporters ask them the question, are you better off?
The Trump supporters have voted for their time of revenge for the betrayal of the Democratic party.
Manufacturing needs to return to the US. The only true wealth is material wealth. Adam Smith recognized this 250 years ago. The Democrats aligned with the Reagan revolution and that betrayal resulted in the ascendancy of Trump.
Truth is we all aligned with neoliberalism. Having just finished reading George Monbiot's book INVISIBLE DOCTRINE...THE SECRET HISTORY OF NEOLIBERALISM...I think Trump is a symptom not a cause. Yes: the west betrayed her workers and off shored manufacturing. They also betrayed the workers where the factories were set up in the third world. What reparations can those folks expect??
Finally, I think you are wrong in your assertion that 'THE ONLY TRUE WEALTH IS MATERIAL WEALTH'........but that is a common capitalist mistake. Everything has to be commodified, fetishized......so that people with income spend all of it on junk they don't need.
Perhaps the contrary is true: THE DEEPEST POVERTY IS THE BELIEF THAT STUFF MAKES US WEALTHY. Take just one example, fast fashion, and follow how it has destroyed water, used up land that should be growing food, increased plastic pollution (polyesteer) and at the end ofg that supply chain, dumped still useable garments that no one wants on third world land.
Was all that excess a wealth creation scheme.....or just another way of funneling the world's limited resources to the scum that rises...if we read DARK MONEY we can even name that scum. Given that we did much of this 'wealth creation' using petroleum....we can perhaps raise a memorial to the Koch brothers when the last one dies......acknowledging what the American Empire owes to those two petro fascists.
True Wealth???? All the American Empire has come up with is Oligarchs and Military bases. We've yet to craft a theory or practise of real wealth....but I think a few things are becoming clear: Real Wealth wouldn't: 1. waste resources, 2. impoverish the majority 3. produce lethal drugs to kill the children of the poor/middle class 4. invest most heavily in the death machine of war 5. deny most people health, education or liveable homes. 6. create sacrifice zones like the Niger Delta, 7. stand powerless in front of in internet that proliferates lies and hate, 8.imagine AI will solve human problems while eating up the electricity we need to get off fossil fuel production and finally, though not inclusively....9. It wouldn't continue to explore, dig and burn the fuel that is killing the biosphere.
I suggest to you that We of the American Empire mostly haven't a clue what REAL WEALTH would look like. We've been the passive beneficiaries of a Death Culture for far to long to have the imagination left to figure out what real wealth might look like. Though likely there are a few outliers here and there who have achieved it, and dream of it becoming universal....it may be too late to find them and act on their advice.
"A man grows rich by employing a multitude of manufacturers; he grows poor by maintaining a multitude or menial servants."
Smith, Adam. Wealth of Nations
Smith had a very good sense of history and recognized that all wealth comes from labor. With the advent of agriculture people were able to have diverse ways of earning a living. This was entirely because of the surplus material wealth (food and eventually carpentry, masonry, metal working, etc.) which then sustained unproductive labor: doctors, lawyers, the aristocracy, the military, opera singers, etc.. Even these exulted professions would have nothing (they would not even exist) without surplus material wealth.
You should not conflate a market economy with avarice. Greed is a human failing and has been with us from the very beginning.
What you are objecting to is bad governance. Bad governance occurs entirely independent of what economic "ism" is employed. As far as creating drugs to kill the poor/middle class children, that is pure foolishness. Have you ever seen an iron lung up close? I doubt it. That last one I saw was gathering dust in the basement of the Old Main hospital at the University of Michigan. There used to be wards full of them.
The other points you mention have nothing to do with market economies but everything to do with the machinations between government and powerful people that Smith warned about. The so-called crony capitalism. The "Royalists" within our civilization are supremely disingenuous. They will preach like the Koch Brothers about "freedom", let the market decide, and nonsense of that nature only to scheme and steal (legally of course) as much as possible. Good governance thwarts that excessive Royalist behavior.
Unfortunately the US has had a prolonged period of bad governance. Reagan was the camel's nose under the tent. Clinton was Reagan wearing a Malwart Smiley Face, and what came after was more of the same. Trump is the apotheosis of the Reagan era. Regrettably, the Democratic Leadership got precisely what they deserved. Bernie Sanders was very clear where the blame rests. It was our failing as citizens.
What I am objecting to is right wing idiotology...which has worked hard over the last 40 years or more to convince many of us the problem is with government and the solutions lie with the free market, privatization of every damn thing, and low taxes.
But there is more, and George Monbiot begins with the Portuguese and the island of Madera, to argue that capitalisms avarice far exceeds human greed. I might as soon naturalize human compassion as you try to naturalize greed, and blame the current ills of society on that aspect of human nature.
On the island of Madeira the Portuguese maximized sugar production until all the trees were gone..than they left and did the same on another island...and that was in the 1470's.
Capitalism, especially the free wheeling type promulgated by neoliberals always does that Monbiot claims. He makes a chant out of it: BOOM BUST QUIT....
For sure, that is what Shell Oil did to the Niger Delta, once teeming with life including prosperous villages......a dead zone now.
The creation of such sacrifice zones is how the obscenely wealthy today have often made their riches...Boom, Bust, Quit.....and move on to the next lucky suckers waiting to have their land base strip mined....or their affordable public electricity grid privatized.
So no: I'm objecting to neoliberal free market capitalism and the damage it has done, is doing to an earth already in overshoot from capitalisms depredations. I don't think you can have good governance when the economy is controlled by private interests...........many of whom pay very little in taxes.
Elon Musk turns a democratic election into a BS lottery, and there's not a judge on your captured courts with the courage to do anything about it..........what system of governance lets a few people, mostly white men, acquire so much loot......while there is still no universal medicare in the richest country on earth???
But you aren't the richest.......you're the most capitalistic.....still sanctioning Cuba, but comfy with what's going on in Gaza.......while many in your country are unhoused, uneducated, and under or unemployed. The bad governance I can agree with you on.........but its the bad governance of right wing free marketeers..CAPITALISM UNFETERED...is your god. Socialism.......or anything that resembles it by trying to take care of all your children.........your Devil.
I think both Dems and Repugs are okay with Israel because Israel is some kind of pure template for the dreams and desires of your oligarchs. Could be wrong, but the smell of dirty money follows Amerika like a bad trip....and the toxic aftermath created by your weapons of mass destruction? Ditto.
Beautifully written as usual. Wondering however... if they suffer more anger and frustration than despair. Perhaps it's us that has despair - for one, seeing so many thousands of the most beautiful, innocent souls slaughtered before our very eyes with our government's sanction. May we continue to recoup, regroup, grow stronger every day knowing that good always wins out - 51% to 49%. Good is inexorable, unstoppable. And may I say, YOU are good.🙏🏻✨
I have to comment on Chris' inclusion of a quote from Pope John Paul VI. This is a man who turned a deaf ear to the sexual atrocities committed by his priests worldwide on millions of innocent children. He's hardly anyone worth listening to about anything.
You may be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. One of the things I think we need to change about our own minds, is the 1-2, white-black simple think that has led to this global polarization.
I'm not Catholic, and know something of the church's evil doings. But ALL CHRISTIAN SECTS..became the spiritual arm of Empire as we whites colonized the entire globe....
So all Christians denominations are tainted by our colonial past. Still....what Chris quotes the Pope arguing for still makes sense. It also has things in common with Marxist theory...
I'm not a Marxist either, but I've read some Marx..........and he too has truths to share with the future, if the American ideology could get off its scary high horse and listen for a change.
There likely is no salvation...here or anywhere, for folks who put Money ahead of the stewardship of the earth. That America still doesn't have universal health care is a travesty That it sanctions a little island that does is a crime.
I think you guys need to listen seriously to every voice suggesting a better way. Seriously...what other jurisdiction has a clown like Musk running million dollar lotteries during a national election campaign...what other country has judges too afraid to shut that down???
Even a Catholic Pope might have pearls of wisdom you need to consider..
"There are none so blind as those who will not see." At the age of 77, having served in a war a long time ago, and having the opportunity to travel around the world, I am not very optimistic about the future of America. Most Americans, I am afraid to say, would not only not take the time to read your great commentary, but wouldn't have a clue as to what you're trying to convey. American society has become so fractured and self-serving, that we are well past the time of trying to put it all back together, not only for the betterment of most Americans, but for the rest of humanity as well. Like 'American exceptionalism,' American 'rugged individualism' has shredded the fabric of community, and I believe we have already crossed the Rubicon.
I spoke out against the myth of individualism in an ecology class at the University of Minnesota in the 1980s. Not one of the students, including the teaching assistant, understood one word I said. In fact, they laughed.
I so admire your intellect and writing skills, also your compassion and engagement in important often neglected issues such as the terrible predicament of people who are wrongfully incarcerated. But you do have a tendency to paint things in the bleakest terms - and in this case I feel you’re mistaken.
I’ve never been a Trump supporter and in his first go at being president he really blew it - but I really feel he has evolved and I’m quite impressed by the diverse and creative entourage of team members he has gathered this time around - and the statements he has already made in specific terms about his intentions to get rid of the entrenched corrupt DC bureaucrats, etc.
I think we have a rare opportunity to overturn the system - not as you have envisioned it happening, but authentic nonetheless:.
I don't know what kind of presidency Trump would have had, hard to judge, since the democrats tried to delegitimize his presidency from it's onset with the lie of Russia-gate, and all manner of demeaning accusations. They even claimed that Trump once had prostitutes in Moscow pee on a bed where Obama once slept. The mainstream media as well as too many on the left were complicit in the democrat's agenda. The democrats also demeaned his base and referenced them as a bunch of deplorables, and even at the end of his reign Biden referred to them as garbage. Hard to bring about constructive change that will benefit the people of a country when you adopt such a divisive attitude, as well as pit them against each other. The January 6th riot called an insurrection was used to exacerbate that division. During those four years the democrats also glorified themselves, and presented themselves as our saviors. I supported Bernie Sanders in 2016 only to have to listen to him acknowledge his loss by glorifying war-monger Clinton who couldn't refrain from laughing on hearing of Gaffadi's death, since the Obama administration followed in the footsteps of Bush/Cheney implementing wars based on lies, neocon driven wars which continue to this day.
I thought this was so incredibly sad. A little Palestinian boy who misses his dead mother, killed by Israel, that he finds comfort in visiting her grave, where he feels close to her, embraced by her. https://www.aljazeera.com/program/newsfeed/2024/11/9/boy-who-sleeps-on-his-mothers-grave-in-gaza
Thank you for sharing...absolutely heart-breaking, and countless more experience similar grief...inexcusable pain caused by our Governments, complicit in orchestrating this unspeakable horror
They report the number of dead, and sometimes how they died is unbearable enough, but to see the sense of their loss to others who loved them, especially children, is unbearable.
It is truly, and yet we must resist and stand together on this. Thank you South Africa, and those countries who stand with them for your actions. And thank you Prof. Norm Finkelstein and so many other courageous activists, and the millions of individuals who refuse to be gaslighted into silence, submission and acceptance. This barbarity must be stopped.
Certainly, you cannot be talking about Donald Trump. If his intention is to rid us of the entrenched, corrupted bureaucracy, it's to replace it with his own corrupt bureaucracy. If anything should impress us about Trump, it's his chronic venality in everything he does. Along with a now corrupted Supreme Court and Congress, we can expect to lose our democratic institutions for at least the next four years, and maybe forever. I have given up on the Democratic Party. I am changing my party affiliation to Independent. Or should I make it, Socialist? Or, Marxist?
Let’s go for Egalitarianism. It doesn’t have any connotations yet.
Labour Party
Trump and his "diverse and creative entourage" are the new and soon to be the entrenched corrupt DC bureaucrats for the next four years, just like they were during the first go-around of chaos. The self-serving Trump has always been of the elite class, and his entourage are drooling at the opportunity to join him there, just like the first time around.
With that being said, painting things as "bleak" seems so spot on and for the next four years there will be an extra coat of that paint, labeled bleak, and remember custom colors are not returnable, so your stuck with it if the color isn't what you expected.
An evolved Trump? It is to laugh, and the American theater of the absurd curtain Republican style soon rises.
Best of luck to all.
Well, he has already started filling his cabinet with swamp creatures so I guess my optimism was misplaced. I wonder what has happened to Tulsi Gabbard and RFK, Jr. in this process. It was largely their presence on his ‘team’ that gave me some hope that perhaps he was aiming to put together a more progressive forward-thinking coalition this time.
But Gabbard & RFK Jr totally support the genocide in Gaza. That over rides any “good” they could provide.
Trump, like Biden, Obama, Bush, and Clinton, will fail. All these assholes left the country in worse shape at the end their failed administrations. While the People worked their asses off trying to keep their piece of the country together. The corporate media went to great lengths to hide, obscure, and shape, our government’s many failures. The US and its failing empire resemble the USSR when it failed and collapsed. Funny how massive corruption, violence, and greed, can break a country. It look to me that we’re approaching the end of the failure phase. Trump may just finish it off. He’s good at bankruptcy.
Biden, Obama, Bush, and Clinton didn't fail. They did exactly what the donor class wanted them to do.
They failed to represent the needs of the American People and the Constitution. Which they swore to do. That is their failure.
Please don't leave out Bush and Obama when it comes to our debt.
yES....THAT IS WHAT WE NEED TO DO...But in order to do that, we have to acknowledge that it is not a strong social democracy that is the problem but a deregulated, low tax privatized capitalism. From each according to her ability, to each according to her needs is a good place to start.......changing the pronoun to acknowledge that men have claimed the lion's share of the fruits of labour for far too long.......
We must embrace, and recreate a form of socialism that puts inclusion, care and the needs of all at the forefront........and capitalist accumulation somewhere near the bottom of our list of values.
And that will be very difficult....because America has spent at least a century demonizing the collective will of the people and elevating the desires of the most venal...........as the ultimate source of all our wealth.
Imagining that the prosperity of all might replace the profit of a few is a hard imagining.....since much of prosperity likely doesn't involve as much money as it does community and the love of our elders and our children. I can imagine it. But then, I have six grandchildren, a strong work ethic, a safe home.......and not much need for any of the commodity fetishes capitalism spreads among its converts.
Plus: I know how to garden, cook and forage.
America has spent the last 75 years suffering from the effects of McCarthyism. The mere word "socialism" blinds their minds to any good that it can do.
Fearing the Communists and Mother Russia was a necessary part of your Empire. Now Americans will gin up hope that someone who thought Harris was a Marxist might end America's military bungles. I don't see any good in your immediate future (I'm Canadian)....and most likely Israel will be defeated at the expense of the Holy Land...
Ecocide is an accompaniment of genocide going forward....perhaps we could coin a new word: PETROCIDE???
They must be delusional if they think that Kamala Harris is a Marxist!
Just goes to show how little the average American knows about any economic system, because of they don't know about others, they probably don't know much about their own.
From what I'm hearing, Americans are going to be on some kind of rollercoaster with Donald Trump appointing the richest boy man in the world to be in charge of government cuts.
Truly obscene to think someone who has more than many countries...will get to decide what programs to take the ax to. But that's right wing neoliberalism for you.
I’d prefer Gecocide. Petrocide is too associated (wrongly) with Haitians.
P.S. You might like reading The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen.
I know of his work...I think read excerpts as a young student....but remind me. I'm of Norwegian/English background and was always told our family name came from a farm we'd owned in Norway...back when Veblen was writing.
Recently, looking up our name on the web, I discovered that farm has existed for centuries...and is likely something far more communal/collective than anything our family might have owned exclusively.
Since I live in Minnesota, I am somewhat familiar with Norwegian culture, and I know that Norwegian families take their names from their farm.
Thorstein Veblen was the son of two Norwegian immigrants who did pretty well on a farm in Minnesota. He was a real genius.
In The Theory of the Leisure Class, he goes into anthropology and brings up his hypothesis about the origins of class structure. He traced the background of the leisure class from that point, and says that modern culture still has traces of the original one.
From there he goes on to analyze the love of money and the worship of the rich in modern society.
I don't know how much you could get from excerpts, since his is a very structured argument and relies on the acceptance of his premises to support his conclusions. I always have to read it from the beginning to follow his ideas.
I think that, if you like to read, you would be interested in his ideas.
I do read a lot.......and must confess that I think I read a critique of his work, completely agreed with what I read, and likely assumed that our Norwegian background meant we saw the same things. I often go on about the worship of Mammon as our real religion.....and the accompaniment of 'snot' that goes with 'having money' has always made me want to puke.
Needless to say, folks who think they're someone because of what they have steer pretty clear of me.........but perhaps I should give his work a closer look....where I live, you're pretty lonely if you aren't in the swim of eating out, vacate oning, and high end consumption .
There were many critiques of Veblen's work in his time, mostly because he was an iconoclast and he offended the classical economists who taught in the universities. However, one biographer I came across said that it wasn't so much his theories as his love life. Apparently he ran off with more than one woman and "lived in sin" with her (the latest one). The Edwardian academics certainly wouldn't put up with that! I think that's hilarious.
I've long suspected that people who think outside the box, have open minds and aren't afraid of difference have better/more love lives than conventional thinkers. I don't know what the correlation is.......but embracing life leads places.
Certainly was far more difficult in Veblan's day though.......particularly for women. And it has come to my attention that the more right wing the politics, the more willing they are to legislate for others. I sometimes wonder, if the west hadn't been so sexually up tight and purient about human desire, would we have cobbled together a more inclusive world??
I know of people who are alone now....one single mom just diagnosed with cancer...and it seems barbarous to me that she's as alone as she is...and that's in Canada........where at least she will have health care regardless of her financial situation.
Many times I find myself saying, "History will record this as a huge mistake, if there is a history."
If there is a history. Never in history have people had the thought that there might not be a history. We may lose everything.....soon. Human greed is destroying the Garden of Eden. When it dies, we will cease to exist. What bothers me the most is the loss of the great music and art we created. It does not have to be this way.
Life on this planet will restore itself as it has several times. It just will not include us.
What bothers me most is all the little people, who die in terror, never having had the chance to read, listen or participate in anything resembling artistry or joy.
I've begun wondering how much of the literature I studied as a girl was written on the unpaid labour of my people. So much of European art was created by the wealthy....detached most likely from the common lot of the majority, that I've come to believe, as I re-read some of it, that I wasted my life listening to old white men like Thomas Carlyle.
What exactly is it you get to know........or create......if the impoverishment/exploitation of the many is what gave you the opportunity to develop your precious intellectual/creative powers???
What kind of literature/music/art is coming out of Israel...has come out of Israel in the last 80 years? Is it an expression of the actual culture, or a cover up of that culture.
Depressing questions I know, but looking back near the end of my life, I'm asking them, trying to imagine an art that rises out of a peaceful world, where everyone is housed and has enough to eat.......It might well be wonderful, but I can't quite imagine it.
Thomas Carlyle’s “Sartor Resartus” is a great work of literary art, despite the poor choices Carlyle made of being born white and male, then becoming old, and now even older as the years have passed since he died. He does deserve credit, however, for not being wealthy. I do wonder how much of the work in other fields, science for example, we should suppress or abandon because it was created by old white men, many of them wealthy. Does the fact that people live in societies that are based on exploitation mean that they should take the barren fig tree as their model? Does the fact that society makes so many people unhappy mean that no one should ever smile?
My eyes were opened a couple of years ago when I read Edward Said's CULTURE AND IMPERIALISM. I loved the Victorian writers...mostly male of course...but no one showed me the bits where they extolled the superior virtues of the white race...or made claims as to what the colonies and the colonized were good for.
Said was very open minded in continuing to extol the very real virtues of English literature, but I'm afraid I'm not so kindly.......a large part of the right wing resurgence these last few years is precisely about their refusal to take responsibility for much of the cruelty with which our culture suppressed (committed cultural genocide) on the children of the native population.
I've always loved children more than literature....what we did was unforgiveable....one of our Canadian poets, whom I loved as a girl.....Duncan Campbell Scott.......was among the authors of our residential schools. He practised cultural appropriation.....writing as if he were a native, while designing the government schools that killed so many.......
It's a shame time can't erase....self satisfied little pri...ks, creating literature with one hand while they designed prison schools run by religious orders with the other.
There is no cultural objects or works of art that can make up for it.
I’m struggling to find your logic, Ingamarie.
Some classes of people who created works you once admired held beliefs you find repugnant. One individual who created works you once admired engaged in acts you find repugnant. Their works cannot “make up” for their repugnant beliefs and acts; and it is impossible to say what “you get to know” or “create” if your opportunity to learn or create is based on privileges provided by an exploitative society. Also, current right-wingers refuse to take responsibility for acts from the past that you find repugnant.
I could understand it if you had concluded that your repugnance makes it impossible for you to appreciate certain works. Fair enough. Probably most of us have that experience.
But that is not the conclusion you draw. You seem to draw two conclusions. One, works cannot “make up” for the repugnant beliefs or acts of their makers. Two, a person has not really gotten to “know” or “create” something if he learned or created it in an exploitative society.
With respect to your first conclusion, granted that the theory of relativity doesn’t “make up” for Einstein’s poor treatment of his wife, why would it ever occur to anyone that it might or should? What does Einstein’s poor treatment of his wife have to do with the theory of relativity in the first place? What does “make up” even mean in such a context?
With respect to your second conclusion, if taking advantage of one’s opportunity to learn or create in an exploitative society means that one has not really gotten to “know” or “create” anything, then few people in the history of the human race have ever learned or created anything.
And where does this moral censorship stop? If you learned your house was designed by someone who held repugnant views, or was an embezzler, would you burn your house down? Do you refuse to own a cell phone because virtually all cell phones contain rare metals obtained under repugnant labor conditions? Have you done a background check on every item you own or use to make sure it has a virtuous lineage? Do you believe that every sinner should be shunned and never forgiven, since they can never make up for all their sins—which would be very hard on all us us, since we are all sinners and need forgiveness?
(As for right-wingers refusing to take responsibility for the evils of the past, I have no idea what that has to do with this train of thought.)
Where is the logic in these views of yours? Or are you merely venting?
You're making something complex that is actually quite simple. Like most western people who did well academically.......I had no idea as a girl that I was reading mainly white men of privilege.....and while that might not have changed the fact that they became eminent men of letters.........they were also apologists of an Empire I was born into..........without any consciousness of the price others paid for our good fortune...........and good opinion of ourselves.
I was educated by a culture a bit deluded about itself.......a lot ignorant of the crimes it had committed to become so wealthy. The United States struggles with the same amnesia.........currently, many in your country fear and hate the waves of immigrants coming into your country.........and I bet most of them know nothing of the imperial regime changes your goverrnment tax dollars were invested in. In Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Iran, Chile.....CIA operatives fought the people under the guise of fighting communism.....to make those countries safe for American corporative theft quite often.
Had western imperialism not existed, we'd have a very different world now. Can't change the past....but when we acknowledge it.........it changes our feelings about things. I have that disenchantment for what I read in English literature....now that I know more the full extent of how England became so wealthy.....of course if effected the arts...the culture.....in ways we often can't be sure of...
I find that sad....I find the apolitical nature of so much of what I learned a bit of a cheat. Trying to argue my feelings aren't logical doesn't change the fact....what white men did to their colonies, makes their literature/art a bit of a cover up. It is what it is...........but for me, I'd have preferred a bit more truth and consequence in my early learning. Truth is what I've always been after......you don't get as much of that as you thought you were getting, once you know the whole story.
I can't follow your logic, either.
At one point, you seem to be criticizing Ingamarie for separating the works of a creator from his beliefs.
Towards the end of your argument, you seem to be asking her about her relationship with modern culture: "would you stop using a cell phone?" Essentially, you are asking her if she is separating the works from the creator's actions and beliefs.
So which is it?
The struggle of many academics and people of culture, to rescue said culture from the accusation of imperialistic cover up, can be interesting. What it cannot do, is justify a high culture that could ignore the real conditions of many, not only in the colonies that many of those privileged had stock in, but in the slums of their own cities.
European culture is inevitably, cut off from its roots. Once you leave the land and the people of the land out of the picture....develop an amnesia for actual social conditions, perhap by blaming those conditions on the poor, or just by training your mind to dwell on 'higher things'.........you aren't a real intellectual.
The intellect perceives, conceives, conjectures..........and always, in a completely developed intellect, I believe there is a conscience...truth somehow demands justice. When you can't get that....turning away from the conditions of your fellow country women and men retards your intellect to some extent.
That is a truth many intellectuals don't want to consider. Because to stand be truth and justice, in a capitalist privatized world of obscene weath.....is to risk your privileged position as an intellect.
Look at the great thinkers of this era. Most of them, like Chomsky, Hedges.....have been de platformed.
In Imperial England, it would have been no different. SO MY OBJECTIONS TO ENGLISH LITERATURE IS IT DOESN'T MOSTLY TELL THE WHOLE STORY....written as it was by compromised intellects.
There are a few exceptions: Thomas Hardy, Laurence Stern, author of that exquisite anti-novel Tristram Shandy among them.....
PART ONE
Susan Mercurio wrote: “you seem to be criticizing Ingamarie for separating the works of a creator from his beliefs.”
First, I thought I was not criticizing Ingamarie, but rather suggesting that the substance of what she wrote requires further examination. I believe it is essential, both morally and intellectually, to distinguish between any individual and what she says or does. It would be inappropriate for me to criticize Ingamarie, whom I know only through her words here; I wish to address only what she wrote.
Second, with respect to what I took to be the first point in her last post but one, what I thought I was criticizing was her apparent identification—not separation—of a creator and his beliefs or works. In her view, a deplorable creator can create only deplorable works. I exemplified my point by asking what the connection is between Einstein’s treatment of his wife and the theory of relativity. The fact that Carlyle was a virulent racist does not mean that “Sartor Resartus” is not a great and indispensable work of literary art, whose absence from the canon would make our culture poorer. His personal failings mean that he was a great literary artist who also happened to be in certain respects a deplorable man. The division between the frail and often culpable creature that every one of us is, and the pathetically small portion of our lives in which we succeed in being or doing something valuable, is an inescapable fact of human existence.
Susan Mercurio suggests I am being illogical because on the one hand I “seem to be criticizing Ingamarie for separating the works of a creator from his beliefs,” while on the other hand I am “asking her if she is separating the works from the creator’s actions and beliefs.” Setting aside the fact what I actually wrote was the opposite, there is no logical contradiction between these two positions. Why must one logically choose between “criticizing Ingamarie for separating the works of a creator from his beliefs” and “asking her if that is what she is doing?” These statements have nothing to do with what I wrote, but even if they did, why couldn’t one logically do both? And even if the two were considered to be mutually contradictory, the contradiction would be trivial.
With regard to the formal aspect of what Ingamarie wrote, she claims that asking for meaningful rational propositions to be logically coherent is “making something complex that is actually quite simple.” Ingamarie has not written poetry or a memoir here; what she has offered us is a set of rational propositions; and rational propositions are obviously not rational if they are not logical. I am unable to agree that the propositions of Ingamarie’s that I addressed are “quite simple." I can’t understand them as being logically coherent or even meaningful (despite their containing genuine observations and feelings), and I like to think I’m not the dullest knife in the drawer-so how can I think they are simple? Accusing your interlocutor of looking for unnecessary complexity is not an effective defense of your own illogicality.
In her latest post, Ingamarie movingly expresses her grief over the devastation that European imperialism has inflicted on the world. I share her grief. She states that when she was young she was deceived by our culture’s “amnesia” about its dreadful behavior, past and present. Weren’t we all? She also blames white male writers for propagandizing European imperialism. Let us agree that the rationalization of evil is in a real sense more evil than actually perpetrating it, since its perpetration could not endure unless it were rationalized. Let us also agree that white males are guiltier than anyone else, since it is they who were principally the writers doing the rationalizing.
But this is hardly, to use Ingamarie’s phrase, “the whole story.” Gender is only one kind of division in society. Social class is more salient than gender in respect to exploitation. Half the members of the privileged classes who perpetrate and benefit from exploitation are female. The fact that they have been less powerful than men does not relieve them of culpability. Is there any reason to believe that aristocratic or privileged women were not, and are not, just as determined to do what is necessary to maintain their privilege as men are? There has been no shortage in history of predatory female members of the aristocracy. Men have held the kinetic power to act, but the desire to act grows out of the family. (Actually, this is not an issue of particular concern of mine, though I do get a little tired of reading the incessant, rote denunciation in our time of men that makes it sound as if men were solely responsible for society’s ills. How does this childish approach help dismantle the patriarchy, or rather, help reorganize society into an egalitarian one? For one thing, as we can infer from what happened on November 5, it certainly alienates a lot of men.)
Chris - Thank you for this. Yet there is another approach to pull us out of the downward spiral. This is to fully understand and address the Land Problem and solutions. This understanding is deeply rooted in Judeo-Christian economic justice and the firm foundation that the Creator made all things of the earth for the self-sufficiency of all. "Thou shalt not buy and sell the land forever, for the land is Mine, ye are but strangers and sojourners." Henry George was the most recent prophet of this tradition. They wrote him out of the economic texts when they - elites - created neoliberal economics, making the term Land (all of Earth) a mere subset of Capitol. Thus only two factors - Capitol and Labor - and thus your call for working people taking to the streets. There is a powerful way forward, and a simple basic one. Remove taxes from labor (will increase purchasing capacity) and shift the tax base onto the unearned income, the socially created value of land and natural resources. This is practical, powerfi and has been done, we know the details of how to implement this policy. People with access to land can "take this job and shove it" and self-employ. We need more people in regenerative agriculture but the tax incentives need to be correctly harnessed. All that is needed is for more people, and especially influences like yourself, to understand its importance. How can we have this conversation? - alannahartzok@gmail.com 717-357-7617 in Pennsylvania.
Every word of CH’s analysis rings true.
It is discouraging to read so many bizarre comments on it that seem to be lost in magical thinking or other mental vapors. Perhaps they are a symptom of psychological contagion--that is, of a despair following Trump’s victory that is secondary to, and a distorted reflection of, the despair of Trump followers. Thus the downward spiral accelerates.
In regard to the cultural despair of dispossessed Americans, one might compare adolescents who grow up in dysfunctional circumstances and, in despair at obtaining caring and effective help from adults, turn to companions with psychopathologies complementary to the psychological problems these adolescents have to deal with. This is a common and easily observable pattern (and not just among adolescents). In the extreme case, one thinks of the multitudes of youths in Central America who see no alternative except to join the murderous drug gangs that control large areas of entire countries—perhaps because objectively their society presents them with no good alternative.
Thank you CIA!!!
Thank you for this essay. Unfortunately, I don't think Evilgelicals care a fig about what a pope says.
The disgust and despair that so many are feeling at the terrible choices we've been faced with in our official 'elections', including this one on Nov. 5, point to one thing for me: building real, local grass-roots organizations where we can think together and plan non-violent acts of resistance is all that we have - probably all that we've ever had. So...after the mourning, it is time to ACT!!
Hold Trump's feet to the fire along with his administration.
Return manufacturing to the United States.
Healthcare - Demand Medicare for all.
For all the Trump supporters ask them the question, are you better off?
The Trump supporters have voted for their time of revenge for the betrayal of the Democratic party.
Manufacturing needs to return to the US. The only true wealth is material wealth. Adam Smith recognized this 250 years ago. The Democrats aligned with the Reagan revolution and that betrayal resulted in the ascendancy of Trump.
Truth is we all aligned with neoliberalism. Having just finished reading George Monbiot's book INVISIBLE DOCTRINE...THE SECRET HISTORY OF NEOLIBERALISM...I think Trump is a symptom not a cause. Yes: the west betrayed her workers and off shored manufacturing. They also betrayed the workers where the factories were set up in the third world. What reparations can those folks expect??
Finally, I think you are wrong in your assertion that 'THE ONLY TRUE WEALTH IS MATERIAL WEALTH'........but that is a common capitalist mistake. Everything has to be commodified, fetishized......so that people with income spend all of it on junk they don't need.
Perhaps the contrary is true: THE DEEPEST POVERTY IS THE BELIEF THAT STUFF MAKES US WEALTHY. Take just one example, fast fashion, and follow how it has destroyed water, used up land that should be growing food, increased plastic pollution (polyesteer) and at the end ofg that supply chain, dumped still useable garments that no one wants on third world land.
Was all that excess a wealth creation scheme.....or just another way of funneling the world's limited resources to the scum that rises...if we read DARK MONEY we can even name that scum. Given that we did much of this 'wealth creation' using petroleum....we can perhaps raise a memorial to the Koch brothers when the last one dies......acknowledging what the American Empire owes to those two petro fascists.
True Wealth???? All the American Empire has come up with is Oligarchs and Military bases. We've yet to craft a theory or practise of real wealth....but I think a few things are becoming clear: Real Wealth wouldn't: 1. waste resources, 2. impoverish the majority 3. produce lethal drugs to kill the children of the poor/middle class 4. invest most heavily in the death machine of war 5. deny most people health, education or liveable homes. 6. create sacrifice zones like the Niger Delta, 7. stand powerless in front of in internet that proliferates lies and hate, 8.imagine AI will solve human problems while eating up the electricity we need to get off fossil fuel production and finally, though not inclusively....9. It wouldn't continue to explore, dig and burn the fuel that is killing the biosphere.
I suggest to you that We of the American Empire mostly haven't a clue what REAL WEALTH would look like. We've been the passive beneficiaries of a Death Culture for far to long to have the imagination left to figure out what real wealth might look like. Though likely there are a few outliers here and there who have achieved it, and dream of it becoming universal....it may be too late to find them and act on their advice.
"A man grows rich by employing a multitude of manufacturers; he grows poor by maintaining a multitude or menial servants."
Smith, Adam. Wealth of Nations
Smith had a very good sense of history and recognized that all wealth comes from labor. With the advent of agriculture people were able to have diverse ways of earning a living. This was entirely because of the surplus material wealth (food and eventually carpentry, masonry, metal working, etc.) which then sustained unproductive labor: doctors, lawyers, the aristocracy, the military, opera singers, etc.. Even these exulted professions would have nothing (they would not even exist) without surplus material wealth.
You should not conflate a market economy with avarice. Greed is a human failing and has been with us from the very beginning.
What you are objecting to is bad governance. Bad governance occurs entirely independent of what economic "ism" is employed. As far as creating drugs to kill the poor/middle class children, that is pure foolishness. Have you ever seen an iron lung up close? I doubt it. That last one I saw was gathering dust in the basement of the Old Main hospital at the University of Michigan. There used to be wards full of them.
The other points you mention have nothing to do with market economies but everything to do with the machinations between government and powerful people that Smith warned about. The so-called crony capitalism. The "Royalists" within our civilization are supremely disingenuous. They will preach like the Koch Brothers about "freedom", let the market decide, and nonsense of that nature only to scheme and steal (legally of course) as much as possible. Good governance thwarts that excessive Royalist behavior.
Unfortunately the US has had a prolonged period of bad governance. Reagan was the camel's nose under the tent. Clinton was Reagan wearing a Malwart Smiley Face, and what came after was more of the same. Trump is the apotheosis of the Reagan era. Regrettably, the Democratic Leadership got precisely what they deserved. Bernie Sanders was very clear where the blame rests. It was our failing as citizens.
What I am objecting to is right wing idiotology...which has worked hard over the last 40 years or more to convince many of us the problem is with government and the solutions lie with the free market, privatization of every damn thing, and low taxes.
But there is more, and George Monbiot begins with the Portuguese and the island of Madera, to argue that capitalisms avarice far exceeds human greed. I might as soon naturalize human compassion as you try to naturalize greed, and blame the current ills of society on that aspect of human nature.
On the island of Madeira the Portuguese maximized sugar production until all the trees were gone..than they left and did the same on another island...and that was in the 1470's.
Capitalism, especially the free wheeling type promulgated by neoliberals always does that Monbiot claims. He makes a chant out of it: BOOM BUST QUIT....
For sure, that is what Shell Oil did to the Niger Delta, once teeming with life including prosperous villages......a dead zone now.
The creation of such sacrifice zones is how the obscenely wealthy today have often made their riches...Boom, Bust, Quit.....and move on to the next lucky suckers waiting to have their land base strip mined....or their affordable public electricity grid privatized.
So no: I'm objecting to neoliberal free market capitalism and the damage it has done, is doing to an earth already in overshoot from capitalisms depredations. I don't think you can have good governance when the economy is controlled by private interests...........many of whom pay very little in taxes.
Elon Musk turns a democratic election into a BS lottery, and there's not a judge on your captured courts with the courage to do anything about it..........what system of governance lets a few people, mostly white men, acquire so much loot......while there is still no universal medicare in the richest country on earth???
But you aren't the richest.......you're the most capitalistic.....still sanctioning Cuba, but comfy with what's going on in Gaza.......while many in your country are unhoused, uneducated, and under or unemployed. The bad governance I can agree with you on.........but its the bad governance of right wing free marketeers..CAPITALISM UNFETERED...is your god. Socialism.......or anything that resembles it by trying to take care of all your children.........your Devil.
I think both Dems and Repugs are okay with Israel because Israel is some kind of pure template for the dreams and desires of your oligarchs. Could be wrong, but the smell of dirty money follows Amerika like a bad trip....and the toxic aftermath created by your weapons of mass destruction? Ditto.
Thanking you for giving words to my disparate thoughts and feelings of despair. God bless you Chris.
Beautifully written as usual. Wondering however... if they suffer more anger and frustration than despair. Perhaps it's us that has despair - for one, seeing so many thousands of the most beautiful, innocent souls slaughtered before our very eyes with our government's sanction. May we continue to recoup, regroup, grow stronger every day knowing that good always wins out - 51% to 49%. Good is inexorable, unstoppable. And may I say, YOU are good.🙏🏻✨
Finally a positive message .Thanks.
I have to comment on Chris' inclusion of a quote from Pope John Paul VI. This is a man who turned a deaf ear to the sexual atrocities committed by his priests worldwide on millions of innocent children. He's hardly anyone worth listening to about anything.
You may be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. One of the things I think we need to change about our own minds, is the 1-2, white-black simple think that has led to this global polarization.
I'm not Catholic, and know something of the church's evil doings. But ALL CHRISTIAN SECTS..became the spiritual arm of Empire as we whites colonized the entire globe....
So all Christians denominations are tainted by our colonial past. Still....what Chris quotes the Pope arguing for still makes sense. It also has things in common with Marxist theory...
I'm not a Marxist either, but I've read some Marx..........and he too has truths to share with the future, if the American ideology could get off its scary high horse and listen for a change.
There likely is no salvation...here or anywhere, for folks who put Money ahead of the stewardship of the earth. That America still doesn't have universal health care is a travesty That it sanctions a little island that does is a crime.
I think you guys need to listen seriously to every voice suggesting a better way. Seriously...what other jurisdiction has a clown like Musk running million dollar lotteries during a national election campaign...what other country has judges too afraid to shut that down???
Even a Catholic Pope might have pearls of wisdom you need to consider..
Please read From Dictatorship to Democracy, by Dr Gene Sharp
Christianized fascism? LMAO! Most people don't even go to church anymore, let alone support a return to 1930's Romania.
True: but they aren't organized. The Christian fascists, perhaps making their last stand, ARE.
well, I feel better now... "DAMMITT BOBBY"!!!
Yikes! What to do?
Please look up the definition of fascism.
Like the name calling gang of desperate Democratic Party bosses, you misuse the word as to render it meaningless.