It's a Sad, Sad, Sad, Sad World
All I want is a say. That's all I can ask for. That's all we can all ask for, isn't it? An equal say in the matter. How can I ask for more than anyone else? How can anyone else ask for more than me? Or you?
Socialism, capitalism, imperialism, neoliberalism, neoconservatism, libertarianism, whatever floats your boat, but let's do this on the level without the stacked deck. I won't force shit on you, you don't force shit on me. We talk about democracy, but let's really talk about democracy. You know what I mean.
Why not think our way out of this? We think we're so fucking smart, why not do it that way, with our brains? Albert Einstein himself said "we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used to create them". What are we scared of?
I think about the theory of evolution and try to apply it to where we are today and it causes me to wonder. If Aristotle and Plato said what they said about democracy, capitalism, greed, and war around 3000 years ago, why are we struggling with the same damn problems now? Where's the evolution? Heh. Ya, we're evolving alrighty.
I've been asking at some blogs that promote an independent working class (I prefer working/lower class) movement outside the ruling class duopoly dominated political system, where can I sign up? Haven't got an answer yet but I'll forward it when I get it. I really want to start the sign up page myself, I can't believe it should come to that. Is that what everybody else is thinking? Is everyone just waiting for someone to start a signup page?
Iran. "Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran". Remember that? Remember Wesley Clark's seven countries in five years thing, "ending with Iran"?
I mean you know, boil it down. It's about war, and all war is a lie. Any politician that doesn't say so is a liar.
One thing that really comes through when reading the transcript of Trump's statement on the Iran "deal" is how U.S. foreign policy matches exactly with Orwell's 1984. Everything the U.S. accuses Iran of doing is what the U.S. is doing and Iran is not. It is completely upside down and filled with so many lies and misrepresentations it's hard to stomach. At the blog I read the transcript at, in the comments below, most commented how they could not get past the first few paragraphs, the lies and false narratives were so intensely blatant and inverse to reality.
It was like Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer standing together in front of a judge and elaborately explaining how all of their crimes were actually done by the judge himself.
And the fucking jury believed them.
True patriots would have been opposed to the original Iran deal until the same deal was made with the United States Land of Five Thousand Nukes and Israel. That alone shows the so called deal was not a good deal in the first place, it was a show.
On second thought, Einstein also said, "only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former".
Comments
You're wrong.
It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World.
Nice play on words BA.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYuPKObKicY]
Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.
Thanks,
good clip, the entire movie in four minutes. Love it.
One of my favorite movies
I watch it several times a year. It may not be the best movie comedy of all time, but any film where the Three Stooges get a laugh by literally doing nothing is doing something right.
Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.
"It is completely upside down" ... that is Trump's specialty
I happened to listen to a video at Book TV C-SPAN2 about a representation of the book "The Making of Donald Trump" by David Cay Boyle Johnston in Washington DC's last independent book store "Politics and Prose" (my favorite hang-out back in the days). There was one sentence in this representation that is close to yours.
You said:
In the video I mentioned above (it has been released on you tube just yesterday)
Secret History of Donald Trump: An Indictment of His Business Practices and Creative Accounting
it says the following:
[video:https://youtu.be/mbA5FdiRdFk]
Listen carefully as of TC 4:02 ...TC 7:20 ... TC 9:20 .... TC 10:15
I find it interesting. You take a falsehood and make it as if it is the truth in your answer, apparently a Trump specialty. A signature reaction apparently. He did it consistently, several times in the row. Truly upside down.
If you have time to listen to the video, you might find it telling. I don't know if it has been covered elsewhere. The book came out already 2016. The video was pulled out of the archives and posted yesterday on you tube.
Let us know when you have the sign-up page ready ...
I think about the theory of
I'll cite the Law of Entropy -- everything moving from a state of higher order to a state of lower order. It's always fascinated me as a natural law, especially how it relates to life. Life seems to run afoul of this natural law, going from 2 cells to trillions, but life gets away with this apparent violation by contributing to the entropy of everything around it.
Turn the Law of Entropy loose on Big Corporate and the Oligarchs, or whatever sociopathic authority that assumed power over the millennia, and it makes sense.
Big Corporate & the Oligarchs have gotten to a state of higher organization by contributing to the entropy of everything around it -- the People and the Planet.
Ain't that some shit?
“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu
You're right
These issues are timeless, they keeps coming around on the guitar. And... this is the basic flaw in the US dominated world, that the US has made great progress in civilization. In fact, it is one of the worst of greed and war of any previous dominating empire. Technology provided a facade of progress along with an amplification of greed and military dominance. The rest of the world is beginning to wake up. The arrogance of the US referring to its "coalition" will soon come to a halt. To my international friends I tried on the idea that Western Europe has been the enabler of the empire of chaos. They agreed completely and explained it, in part, with the words Angela Merkel. When her power fades, as is happening, Europe will create some distance between the US and it's own actions. Watch for France to lead.
Capitalism has always been the rule of the people by the oligarchs. You only have two choices, eliminate them or restrict their power.
Great piece, Big Al
Unlike you, I watched the presser live.
It was even more staggering. His stupid hand gestures drove me up the wall.
And like you said, the first few minutes were filled with such blatant lies, distortions, falsehoods, and plain old shit that I kept slapping the arm of my chair so hard and often that my whole arm hurts now. He kept screwing up reading the teleprompter so much that I yearned for Max Headroom.
Appalled does not even begin to describe what I felt.
Extreme shame. Shame at what the rest of planet earth must think of this collection of human beings we call America.
We have evolved alright.
Into something much less than human. We have become like a colony of mindless insects that patriotically do the work and give the product to the higher ups and when prompted, attack any enemy, real or perceived, to always protect the leaders, not the colony.
I feel sick. Sick at what this country has become since the day I born in 1949.
Truly happy times.
Dad went to work. Mom made breakfast and played in the yard with us children. We had a car, a home, food on the table, and enough money to go on vacation every summer.
Sick at what we have left our grandchildren.
And shame. Extreme shame.
Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.
Me too.
I was born in the same year, in the Willamette Valley. Dad went to work. Mom stayed home, raised 4 kids, cooked from scratch, canned, gardened and sewed. No TV. We had 5 acres out of town, 13 apple trees, a huge garden space and a pond with ducks. I kept bantam chickens. And space for kids to play and climb trees.
Mary Bennett
The impulse to dominate and control
has long been a part of America's psyche. The relatively "free range" nature of US capitalism has allowed, and even encouraged, the nation's greediest most rapacious entrepreneurs to ride roughshod over the interests of weaker competitors. This pattern, this "survival of the fittest" mindset, has served as a kind of template for the nation's growth, and is widely perceived to be an essential element of American "freedom".
It's a distorted idea of freedom, but one that has so thoroughly permeated US foreign policy, many Americans now feel entitled, or even obligated, to extend it world-wide. Even at gunpoint wherever that might be advantageous. Our ruling class particularly (almost all of it) seems to have developed an aggressive hostility toward anything it cannot control.
Vis-a-vis the world at large, this propensity has devolved into a pathological need, a kind of irrational, subconscious desire to continually expand and augment the nation's global power and reach. The citizenry has tended to assume that the greater the US Empire becomes, the greater they themselves will be. Though this is now proving to perhaps not be the case.
But what this essentially boils down to, is the freedom of capital to do whatever capital chooses to do, regardless of the consequences. It puts "The People" entirely at the mercy of the largest concentrations of Capital, so that overall policy is determined not for the public's benefit, but solely for the benefit of those who have accumulated the most wealth.
native
They teach us to hate
the godless communists.
Yet their surreal allegiance to Darwinian "survival of the fittest" in business screams Godless Capitalism.
What frauds.
Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.
Very true.
It's also worth noting that "survival of the fittest" was a phrase coined by Herbert Spencer, not Darwin.
native
back before the days of cookie-cutter pop megahits
"crafted" by teams of technicians led, curiously, by scandinavian hit-floggers, Alvin Lee (and whomever else contributed to the construction of that song) showed how to put art in the craft. I used this song as an example for my kids of how to create a musical story, starting with the slow acoustic arpeggios, then the driving acoustic chords trading back and forth with the arpeggios, then the echoing vocals with the first teasing strains of the electric lead (Bonnie Raitt, early in a concert, responding to calls from the audience for some slide: "Don't worry, we're just greasing the pan ..."), back to the arpeggios and the vocals, but now overlaying understated electric, and then ... and then the electric jumps up and grabs you out of your seat, a few bars repeating a simple riff, then switching gears to another, punchier-but-still-simple repeated riff that is just the setup for the guitar to go airborne, flying wildly but somehow in control, like a dragonfly; and now joined by the shouted, almost desperate vocals, for 15 seconds of the purist possible rock and roll ... and then suddenly stopping on a dime, sticking the landing -- except now, the sweet electric sets a separate pace, running in phenomenal ripples below the surface of the acoustic arpeggios and the resigned vocal.
and sadly, this song -- a masterpiece of rock-and-roll craftsmanship -- probably earned for Alvin Lee et al about one percent (if that) of what the Scandinavian schlockmeisters get for "composing" yet another musically undistinguished vocal exercise for Beyonce or Mariah, songs that could probably be written by computer algorithms (and i don't mean that as hyperbole).
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Thanks for that description.
I'll listen to that song a little closer now.
Enjoyed the essay. Quote didn't sound to me like Einstein, tho'.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Stupidity
Just fyi.
The wisdom
is Einstein level though.
Here's one that is his.
"The economic anarchy of capitalist society is the real source of evil".
Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.
Edited: I did find that one. Thanks!
Google was not a big help and neither was Einstein's wikiquote. However I found it in the wikiquote of capitalism.
Albert Einstein, Why Socialism? (1949)
Margaret Atwood: Rise of Trump Brings Echoes of 1930s Europe
Margaret Atwood: Rise of Trump Brings Echoes of 1930s Europe Author made remarks ahead of receiving award for "political intuition and clairvoyance when it comes to dangerous underlying trends and currents.