In Such a Country It Has Been Sown

A country in which the news media puts more emphasis on the absence or not of a flag pin on a candidate’s lapel than they do on the veracity of his/her statements and the consistency of his/her policy votes, is one that deserves its fate.

A nation in which the most carefully-crafted, public relations and campaign-generated slogans, such as “entitlement reform” “anchor babies” "welfare queens" “debt ceiling,” “draining the swamp,” “fake news” "black-on-black crime" are mindlessly repeated by the lemmings, but who then shrink from reasoned and nuanced debate about such things as why the energy sources every single person relies on remain in the hands of private ownership or why the country administers healthcare to its citizens through “insurance companies” or why we give such massive tax breaks to oil companies, is a country that deserves its fate.

A nation in which seeds into its young people’s minds relentless American Exceptionalism propaganda in the form of some of its very first memorized school words being a pledging of “allegiance to the flag…,” popularizes capitalistic-centric board games and toys such as GI Joes and an endless array of play army soldiers and guns, and devises curriculum full of exalting hero worship and imperialism instead of teaching that mass social movements have been responsible for the entire cornerstone of a better way of life, will be a nation of citizens which will also be reluctant to criticize the current occupants of its government when they are acting for the interests of its largest companies and against the interests of the welfare of its people, and then be smeared and shamed by those blinded by the misinformation of nationalistic marketing campaigns into denouncing dissenters as unpatriotic and Un-American.

A country in which the landscape is now dominated by gleaming new banks on every corner, national corporate drug store franchises stocked with barrels full of pills of the latest Big Pharma creations and expanding their floor space to cater to our every daily whim, and hair/nail/tanning salons employing exploited undocumented labor, therefore has little to no room on its commercial strips anymore for the local small business operator, a performing arts venue or community center in which could gather citizens who may seek respite from the barrage of consumerism and wish to discuss their predicaments together in person.

A world in which the top Google searches internationally are for usually for people such as David Beckham and Kim Kardashian and social media sites’ “trends” show similar celebrity gossip topping all interests, deserves its fate.

A country with an education system that considers history the story of George Washington cutting down a cherry tree and 11th grade Honors program in political science assigning for homework the memorization of all the president’s names as a course requirement, is one that deserves its fate.

A nation in which millions continually invite into their family living rooms tawdry, deceitful and crass characters from reality tv shows such as Jersey Shore and mindless, and vapidity from shows such as Dancing With The Stars, deserves its fate. The fact that such a staggering amount of people are attracted to the sad spectacle of voyeurism and tough-talking douchebags tells us something unsavory, or how badly they've been beaten by the system to embrace such empty spectacle.

A country that has accepted as normal, supermarkets with massive aisles filled to the brim with high fructose corn syrup-added products, dozens and dozens of sugary breakfast cereals, not stopping to wonder how it is that such a deluge of brightly packaged, mass-produced boxes, cans and bags are owned by a handful of food conglomerates and appear in each of our neighborhoods without wondering how they had been grown, harvested, packaged and distributed in such readily-available, abundant quantities, deserves its fate. Staggeringly high incidents of diabetes, obesity and heart disease put a strain on healthcare services. In an American culture uniquely around the world known for restaurants which offer all-you-can-eat buffets and one in which fast food culture has even been welcomed inside our schools and hospitals, there should be no wonder there.

A country in which austerity means school art and music programs are discontinued or can no longer offer instruments or supplies, or after-school programs to its students, but our government can find billions and billions of dollars for more weapons, tax cuts for the rich and bailouts for criminal banks, is spiritually and morally bankrupt – and deserves its fate.

A society which has created commercial holidays around consumer events such as Black Friday that turn human beings into malevolent monsters and then celebrates it with the same predictable “news” coverage each year, but can’t be bothered to even have a national conversation about the alarming epidemic of suicides among homeless veterans, the inadequacy and indignity of many of our old age homes and the lack of affordable daycare programs for children of working parents, deserves its fate.

A country in which its official storytellers have made it their business to sanction and sanitize Martin Luther King’s legacy by stripping away all the radical, revolutionary aspects of economic and racial equality at his core message, in the interests of making him more palatable to fear-laden white Americans and thereby preventing a coalition of disenfranchised poor white and black from forming, deserves its fate.

A country in which a disturbing amount of its citizens confuse the ultimate enshrinement of freedom and liberty onto the ownership of guns, and not in the freedom to be found in a political system that should provide for its taxes paid universal healthcare, free college tuition and welfare programs for parents of young children, the infirm, the elderly and unemployed, deserves its fate. The true freedom of living without the specter of being foreclosed upon by debt collectors for an emergency visit to the hospital apparently doesn’t register in the minds of those so gripped by fear of the “other,” that they’d rather clutch their finger to a trigger of a gun as the embodiment of “freedom” instead of voting for “entitlements” for those they consider undeserving and who they may join the ranks of someday.

A country in which its government is beset by 35,000 lobbyists, who literally write the legislation which permits and protects corporate plunder, under the false aegis of “what’s good for business is good for America,” while workers rights are eroded, the ratio of CEO to worker pay is astronomical and the amount of people living in poverty and have no savings is at deadly levels, deserves its fate.

A country in which reality tv encourages brusque interaction and personal attacks as acceptable and even celebrated behavior, while volunteering to help the less fortunate and standing in public solidarity with the maligned are dismissed and ridiculed, deserves this fate.

A country in which its people know more about celebrity chefs and have turned eating into a sport, but don’t have the first clue about how much corporate control reigns over the select food products available and how beleaguered our farmers are as they barely scrape by not being able to compete with the big corporate agro farms, deserves its fate.

A country in which citizens tune in regularly to corporate news sources, who then feed them non-stop FEAR, manufactured controversy and celebrity gossip, but expects them to be civically engaged and informed voters, deserves its fate.

A country in which its media cowardly avoids explaining in the simplest and clearest terms how it has come to pass that the vast majority of people have been ground down under a vicious and inhumane system of unbridled capitalism, deserves its fate.

A nation in which its sports culture commands the inordinate attention of the vast majority of working men who can reel off all manner of sports stats and trivia, but can’t tell you even the most basic characteristics of legislative bills that effect their purchasing power to attend the very games they follow with such unending zeal, deserves its fate.

A country in which its citizens adopt the calloused language of imperialist murderers to refer to human beings killed by its military as “body bags,” “enemy combatants,” and “collateral damage," deserves its fate.

A society in which stadiums and public spaces are named after corporations and vainglorious, extremely rich people who can’t be persuaded to be philanthropic anonymously, deserves this fate. It’s a society that conversely does not pay homage to its artists, scientists, literary folk and musicians in its public squares.

A society in which overprocessed, mass produced fast food overwhelms our main streets, but local farmers toil endlessly yet can’t find a place at the table to bring their harvest to market and are frequently under the thumb of predatory bank debtors, deserves this fate.

A society in which priests are locked up for feeding the homeless and a school cafeteria worker is fired for giving a free meal to a hungry kid, while a typical Wall St corporate fete wastes enough food to feed entire schools full of kids, deserves this fate.

A society in which a black woman can be aggressively pulled over by a cop and spoken down to then die in custody and a grand jury sees no foul play, while a young white man from an affluent family can kill a car full of people while driving drunk can receive no jail time by an “affluenza” defense, deserves this fate.

A world in which, given the amazing platform of interconnectedness of social media, has used Facebook mostly for sheer pathetic self-aggrandizement and bolstering sad egos - instead of sensing its incredible potential as a platform to share our grievances in a worldwide conversation, coming to a better idea about why the lives of untold billions are unnecessarily difficult with respect to the basic needs of food, shelter and clothing, and then discuss how to throw off the yoke of global corporate monopoly domination which inhibits it, deserves its fate.

In a country of which at one time had aspired to the Four Freedoms of speech/worship and freedom from want/fear, has now become one that regularly punishes dissent, abides a police state and seeks to ostracize diversity because it is manipulated by a constant state of fear and material desire, now sees freedom in a divined American right to purchase as many cheap, disposable products made by slave labor in the sweatshops of the SE Asia for the lowest price possible at monopoly chains such as WalMart, CVS and Home Depot. It deserves its fate.

A country in which vapid entertainment on par with a high school talent show such as American Idol can generate as many votes as a presidential election, while 40% of the population doesn’t vote at all, deserves this fate.

Such a country can not recognize a Bernie Sanders.

Such a country deserves a Pumpking Fuher Reality Tv Show Host.

That country, our country now, has for a long time been forged in the image of its corporations, lobbyists and venal politicians – not functioning as an egalitarian system which would be at the heart of a healthy and flourishing middle class. Its' the result of a malfunctioning society diseased by consumerism, American Exceptionalism, a false idea of the American Dream and a Worship of the Rich.

The Democrats, from under Clinton and then Obama, have become a nefarious party but with benign and likeable faces to appease the masses, with bright and intelligent minds, who masterfully weave poetic compassionate rhetoric to mask the deviance of their bought-and-paid-for pro-corporate/anti-people policies. They’ve made the Faustian bargain for power that comes with being beholden to Big Money from Wall St and Corporate America.

Bernie Sanders spoke direct, honest and clear truth to power about this endemic corruption, the malfeasance of politicians working in the interests of their donors instead of voters.

For it he had runaway numbers and massive support, and would certainly have demolished the incoming president in the election, had the entire Democratic Party machine not so actively destroyed him through a deceitful web of marginalizing, defaming, tipping the scales and outright election fraud and voter suppression we’d be entering a new progressive epoch tomorrow.

This is the fate we deserve.

Garbage In, Garbage Out.

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Mark from Queens's picture

Now, there's one thing you might have noticed I don't complain about: politicians.

Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck.

Well, where do people think these politicians come from?

They don't fall out of the sky.
They don't pass through a membrane from another reality.

They come from American parents and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses and American universities, and they are elected by American citizens.

This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It's what our system produces: Garbage In, Garbage Out.

If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're going to get selfish, ignorant leaders. Term limits ain't gonna do any good; you're just going to end up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans.

So, maybe, maybe, maybe, it's not the politicians who suck.

Maybe something else sucks around here... like, the public. Yeah, the public sucks.

There's a nice campaign slogan for somebody:

“The Public Sucks.
Fuck Hope.”

Because if it's really just the fault of these politicians then where are all the other bright people of conscience? Where are all the bright, honest, intelligent Americans ready to step in and save the Nation and lead the way?

We don't have people like that in this country. Everybody's at the mall, scratching his ass, picking his nose, taking his credit card out of his fanny pack and buying a pair of sneakers with lights in them.

Yup. The public sucks, fuck hope. The government is owned lock, stock and barrel by Wall St, Big Pharma, Corporate America and the global financial elites.

Now that the mask has been truly ripped off we'll see if our countrymen can be redeemed by becoming revolutionaries. It will not ever get any easier to see the full, ugly scale of it on display as it is now.

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"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:

THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"

- Kurt Vonnegut

thanatokephaloides's picture

The government is owned lock, stock and barrel by Wall St, Big Pharma, Corporate America and the global financial elites.

Now that the mask has been truly ripped off we'll see if our countrymen can be redeemed by becoming revolutionaries. It will not ever get any easier to see the full, ugly scale of it on display as it is now.

This is the real root cause of it all. It's not that there's no young bulls ready to march into the breach and take on the evil ones. Nor is it that the public has any real predilection to "choose" these evil maldoers.

It's that those with the gold make all the rules. And those with the gold always act to keep the gold -- and its concomitant power -- in their hands and no one else's.

Moreover, this is not specific to America. All States do this. All human endeavors involving bosses do this. If you're a "sovereign nation" or a corporation, it's what you do. And it is what you always have done and always will do. If you doubt me, look at various examples from the past, ranging from the ancient Hellenic, Roman, and Mongol Empires to business ventures like The Hudson's Bay Company, the British East India Company, Monsatan, Microsoft, etc.

(It's why I consider myself an Anarchist!)

All systems using bosses do all of this.
NO ordinary people deserve this.
The only question is: exactly how will we ordinary folks put an end to it?

Diablo

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"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar

"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides

Aardvark's picture

@thanatokephaloides @thanatokephaloides We all know more or less how to put an end to it. There are the fine points, but we know that when push comes to shove, all the militarized police and the army cannot stop it from happening.

It is the fear of what happens thereafter that prevents any serious confrontation.

We have no way to have a national discussion of this topic, because the topic is censored in many ways by every channel of consumption available.

Indeed, very few are educated to consider this question. I imagine those who are work for the deep intelligence state, some corporations, some think tanks, and probably at not a few gas tanks.

This fear is a rational fear, perhaps manifested in at times laughable scales of reason.

To put it in crude terms: there is no shortage of targets to shoot at. The question is, what does one shoot for?

So what does happen afterward?

Minor edit in title and first sentence.

Peace and love be with you, reader.

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Mark from Queens's picture

@thanatokephaloides by Kropotkin. The first couple of chapters really resonated with me as a fundamental truth. It was a recognition of all the things I believed, with respect to the ingenuity of man's labors as a cooperative force to make life better for all.

This essay is critical specifically of Americans (us, and I've felt this way for many years) but it could just as well be about the consumerism, selfishness, lack of empathy, worship of the rich and nationalism being the root causes of the world's problems.

I totally agree that it's always those in control and that all empires thrive on a bread and circuses routine to achieve those ends. And sadly it makes me wonder, when given the scope of history, if we'll ever evolve out of it. Everyone's in it for himself, may be just how we're programmed; take what you can and accept it because (I can barely get it out because the phony profundity always sickens me when said), "it is what it is."

But then I stop myself and wonder: people say human beings are selfish and that's how we came into existence, through a Darwinian sheer force of self-preservation survival. I disagree. I think we came to be because of empathy and sharing. In my view, there's no way civilization could have sprung forth without people recognizing that they had to cooperate, form communities, have compassion for the needy and sick.

Just read a nice Jack London piece called "The Strength of the Strong" which is a short story about the evolution of the caveman, where in crude terms socialism is returned to after capitalism does what it always does by destroying the fabric of community and the welfare of its inhabitants.

I have to say though, I'm heartened going forward. I think a lot of folks know these things deep in their conscience are the guiding lights to society (i.e. empathy, compassion, fairness, etc), because we all thrive on them intrinsically. But they've never been given a chance to fully blossom, perhaps because our misguided acceptance of capitalism as a deity has permitted people to thus wrap themselves in the requisite defensive posture of it, to not show our hands, keep our plans to ourselves, vigilant for the next profit-seeking measure, stampeding on the weak for more, etc, because that's what we've been told makes "successful" people. Trump's ugly personification of all of that, I think, will help people to find their true selves, and react the opposite way and taking a step to recognizing their is a better way.

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"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:

THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"

- Kurt Vonnegut

thanatokephaloides's picture

@Mark from Queens

But then I stop myself and wonder: people say human beings are selfish and that's how we came into existence, through a Darwinian sheer force of self-preservation survival. I disagree. I think we came to be because of empathy and sharing. In my view, there's no way civilization could have sprung forth without people recognizing that they had to cooperate, form communities, have compassion for the needy and sick.

Even pre-civilization, our mere species would not have survived to even sustain itself without altruism. Please consider: as individual beasts, we're really not all that well set up for survival. We have inferior-grade natural weaponry to those species who would eat us; our teeth are nothing to write home about, and nails are far inferior to claws. Our senses of smell and vision are mediocre with respect to much of the rest of the animal kingdom. We have no fur. And in animal terms, it takes for-fucking-ever to crank out an adult human being -- in pre-civilization days, more than half our lifespan. In short, without mutual aid, our species would have tanked before our ability to make babies outstripped the "thousand ways to die" we each face (and faced) every day.

In other words, you didn't give yourself half your due credit for hitting that nail on the head!

Smile

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"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar

"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides

janis b's picture

@thanatokephaloides Thank you both for this wonderful exchange between you. The concept is so relevant to our survival and can be so simply achieved, that I sometimes wonder why more don't practice it. It's in this practice where strength is truly found.

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thanatokephaloides's picture

@janis b

You know, the one that says: "Ayn Rand is full of crap!"

Wink

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"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar

"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides

janis b's picture

@thanatokephaloides

in here?

If you want to get rid of the moocher, you don’t do it by excluding everyone you think could be a moocher, by building your own private jail with yourself as both warden and prisoner. No, if you want to rid yourself of the moocher, you do it by focusing on and teaching rational empathy. If you treat other people the way you want to be treated, you’ll never want someone else to live your life for you, because shackling others means you’ve chosen to shackle yourself. We’re all free, or we’re all slaves.

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Outsourcing Is Treason's picture

Well said.

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"Please clap." -- Jeb Bush

Mark from Queens's picture

@Outsourcing Is Treason Great name!

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"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:

THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"

- Kurt Vonnegut

I'm sick of corporate America ignoring MLK Day as a legitimate holiday. WTF?

...and the Capital Class hording the profits. WTF? I need a raise...

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Mark from Queens's picture

@p cook Reminds me of a few of Bill Hicks's righteous indignation pieces, everything having a dollar sign on it.

His tour de force on "marketing" is as good a place as any:

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"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:

THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"

- Kurt Vonnegut

I am not rich enough to ex pat, so will die extremely poor here. I CAN HARDLY WAIT, (she says with unusually concentration camp sort of vocal tenor.)
I didn't deserve this fate, any more than you, or anyone else not born with a fucking silver spoon in their mouths.
I know the enemy, but how to I stave them off?
I am just glad I have no children to worry about.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

Mark from Queens's picture

@on the cusp as Cornel West might say Smile

Thanks, on the cusp. Community and solidarity networks, I think, will now begin to sprout freely and thrive in bigger ways. Seems to me in the public there is more of a sense now that we're all in this together, almost as if we were at war. I don't buy all the wildly ratcheted-up fear, but some of it is legitimate.

The danger, however, is to not get sidetracked into an amorphous Trump-hate that fails to recognize the fundamental nature of problem, which is that democracy was hijacked a long time ago (if we ever had such a thing to begin with) and an economic system of unbridled capitalism has been a ruination of the world's people and resources and must be halted at once.

That to me is our biggest challenge going forward: getting people to focus on the fundamental problems, by reminding them that Trump is just the ugly face of an oligarchy that's been in place from the beginning. Concentrated wealth and monopoly ownership is the problem.

I can see people now more apt to break laws if they are unjust, especially if there is a RW fascist move to legislate that way. When moderate folks find themselves at odds with immoral laws then you know we have a good chance for some real change.

"An Open Letter to My Sister, Angela Y. Davis" by James Baldwin

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"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:

THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"

- Kurt Vonnegut

janis b's picture

@Mark from Queens

His acknowledgement of Ali being pivotal is so accurate. Just yesterday I was reading parts again of The Greatest by Robert Lipsyte. Here is a short article he wrote, covering one aspect of Ali.

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a new progressive epoch, but at least we'd have been taking a big step in the right direction... had Sanders been nominated. We did come close though. Closer than I ever thought possible. Does close only count in horseshoes? I wish I knew.

Instead and as it is, what we've got is Trump -- and whatever chaotic upheavals his reign might inspire. But Trump himself doesn't worry me half as much as the horrible state of affairs within the Democratic Party. It seems to have devolved into an impotent, directionless, and apparently thoughtless agglomeration of corporate-sponsored apparatchiks, careerist place-holders, and identity politics advocates who can't see beyond their own special needs and demands. It has become an institution devoid of any unifying vision or purpose or ideology, beyond that of seeking power for the sake of having power. One that espouses fine ideals with noble rhetoric, but has been either unwilling or unable to walk its talk.

And this is supposed to somehow effectively oppose Trump?? I don't think so. It's one thing to fight a battle when you've got reliable allies, but when your allies are working part-time for your enemies, you are in serious trouble. You may have cobbled together a "Team Blue", but you have not created an effective fighting force.

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native

Mark from Queens's picture

@native

“There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party … and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat.”

― Gore Vidal

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"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:

THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"

- Kurt Vonnegut

Christine.MI's picture

That was beautiful.

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Mark from Queens's picture

@Christine.MI and for all that you do in your own community and church.

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"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:

THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"

- Kurt Vonnegut

jwa13's picture

with horseshoes and hand grenades (as the old saying goes) --

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When Cicero had finished speaking, the people said “How well he spoke”.
When Demosthenes had finished speaking, the people said “Let us march”.

thanatokephaloides's picture

"Close" only counts with horseshoes and hand grenades (as the old saying goes)

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"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar

"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides

tesseliot's picture

As usual you hit hard and true. I sighed and knew it was back into the trenches again. On the chopping block are PBS, the Nation Endowment for the Arts, and NPR. That's on top of Medicare, Health insurance, and my Social Security. Bernie is still my leader. I hope no one hassles him and that good people help him. There is not a big crowd coming to the inauguration, but there is a very very big crowd coming Saturday to show our fury and our determination. If they actually stop the ACA and people start dying, even a military parade showing off ICBMs can be very very worried about marching through the center of town. I think Trump might not make it that far, because he's clearly a mess right now. Did you actually read what he answered regarding "Lincoln's greatest achievements" that sounded like gibberish? Times will be scary. People are fighting back, and the oppressors are jumping right in for a fight. The law professors who signed a petition against Sessions becoming AG have already started getting official requests for their university email records regarding Sessions, etc. I do not think this war is going to last two years, let alone 4, but I am proud of living in a blue state that protects it's citizens a helluva lot better than my poor family members in IN. I hope the more central members of the GOP join us in resisting. Around the world, people have to start seeing that Austerity is the great tool the enemy uses to keep us week and needy, and not the immigrants and refugees, bless them. We are stubborn, and sometimes that can be a great strength when pushed to settle for a lot lot less. Love how your writing has progressed. Thanks for sharing it with me!

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Mark from Queens's picture

@tesseliot The best outcome of all of this, to me, is that otherwise somnambulant zombies are being forced to wake up now. I've been waiting for a cataclysmic moment, and maybe this is it.

It gets lonely out on the ramparts when most of your friends just look on bemused from a safe distance. Now maybe they'll join. But if and when they do they'll get an earful of how the Dems and Hillary gave us this situation, totally. They'll also get copies of "The People's History of the United States" by Howard Zinn and begged to stop reading and watching mainstream corporate news, which is the big key to opening up new doors.

Btw, what was that bit about law professors signing a petition against Jeff Sessions getting official requests for their university email records? McCarthyism Red Scare WitchHunt 2.0?

We Are The 99%. (will the people get the clarion call this time?)

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"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:

THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"

- Kurt Vonnegut

janis b's picture

There’s truth in beauty. I hope, for the sake of the baby you rock to sleep in your arms, beauty prevails.

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Mark from Queens's picture

@janis b It's comforting and fulfilling to belong to a community with people like yourself.

Wanna know something weird? I'm just now remembering my dream. It was about New Zealand, in a general sense, though with specific scenes (for some reason many times I can remember dreams throughout the day...). I only know two people from there from my music circles, who I rarely see anymore. What's weird is I hardly ever consciously think of the place, though from what I know of it I regard it as one of the most beautiful places on earth. Maybe it was a couple of the photos from last week's photo essay thread that lodged in my mind and came forth in the dream. Anyway, I'm going on about it, under the assumption that you were/are from there, and that this be of any significance to you. Apologies if I'm wrong. It's still fresh in my mind and imbuing me with a wonderfully tranquil and restorative feeling.

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"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:

THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"

- Kurt Vonnegut

janis b's picture

@Mark from Queens
I’m an American who has been living in New Zealand for the past 20 years. I love living here for many reasons, one being its extraordinary natural beauty. I did though grow up not far from your neck of the woods, and spent many Sundays visiting grandparents and cousins in Queens.

I wonder if my dreams tonight will take me back there.

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mimi's picture

truths. There is - with a big sigh - something in it that will give us some sort of resolve to just know it's true, that it needs to be fought against and that it's in us to do so.
Thanks for such a great essay.

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Mark from Queens's picture

@mimi Facing the truth is not only cathartic but I think the only way we begin to step in the right direction.

Hope you are well and the trip to Germany was good.

I'm watching my little guy bounce around the room to the "Hey Jude" album playing on a little cheap turntable we put in his room. So much fun. Forgot the sequence of the album so when it hit "Rain" I had to stop typing altogether and listen intently. What a masterpiece, for me a companion piece to John's "I'm Only Sleeping," two of my all-time fave Fab songs. Love the story about Ringo's amazing drumming on it. When asked about it he said something like, "I don't know what got into me; I never played like that again."

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"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:

THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"

- Kurt Vonnegut

mimi's picture

@Mark from Queens
...

And anytime you feel the pain,
Hey, Jude, refrain,
Don't carry the world upon your shoulders.
For well you know that it's a fool
Who plays it cool
By making his world a little colder.

terrific lyrics and thanks to you and the bluesters here to take a sad song and make it better, day in and day out ...

Isn't it awful to realize that I had to become almost seventy years old to go back and read the lyrics of the beatles songs. One of those strange truths to face.

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it is correct on every point, and seems irrefutable to me. What is this monstrous thing that America has permitted itself to become? It seems so heedless and ugly, so brutally and pridefully ignorant. So powerful and yet so stupid and petty.

Nonetheless, many millions of people now live within America's prosperous and comfortable embrace, and many millions more wish to do so if only they could. They wish to share in the spoils that our Imperial reach has accumulated by means both fair and foul.

But now I think our empire is rotting from within. We have become the victims of our own heedless greed, and of our habitual lack of empathy for whatever stands in our way. Some lines of Dylan come to mind,

On the rising curve
Where the ways of nature will test every nerve,
You won't get anything you don't deserve
Where we were born in time.

and yes I do believe America will get exactly what she deserves, though it will not be what she thinks she deserves. America has sown the wind with her insistence on unbridled liberty.

"They sow the wind and reap the whirlwind. The stalk has no head; it will produce no flour. Were it to yield grain, foreigners would swallow it up."

Says Hosea 8:7... but we Americans don't care a rat's ass about ancient history, do we? Hell, we can barely remember what happened ten years ago. Why let a little thing like history stand in the way of what we want to do? In fact, American schools are wasting their time teaching history - there's no money in it at all. We need to focus youngsters' attention on how to build their careers.

Okaaay... I guess that's one way of "thinking ahead", American style. Except then we end up with CEOs running the country (or the world?) who never even heard of Thoreau, let alone Nietsche or Cicero or Lao Tzu. There ain't gonna be much of a solid moral foundation there, to speak of. And if you've got a great big global empire to run, and no solid moral foundation underneath the people running it, things are bound to get a little weird.

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native

thanks mark for a seriously meaningful essay

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ZimInSeattle's picture

Bernie. Great rant Mark.

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"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." - JFK | "The more I see of the moneyed peoples, the more I understand the guillotine." - G. B. Shaw Bernie/Tulsi 2020

Lookout's picture

We elected a corporation and he has selected his corporate cabinet board of directors each of which is determined to destroy their department. It is Katy bar the door...we're in for a rough ride. Glad I'm hidden away in the woods!

Thanks for the essay Mark.

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

gulfgal98's picture

It is frightening to watch how fast our nation is devolving. Your essay captures that essence so eloquently. Now I hope we the people can come together to stop the insane plunge into third world status before it is too late. Thank you for this timely and beautifully written essay.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

Steven D's picture

The oligarchs won the last election. And every election since 1980. Didn't matter whether a D or an R was in office. The "legacy" media, now consolidated into a few wealthy corporate hands, is just doing their job - catapulting the propaganda.

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"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

why are we fighting it? Or, at least, arguing with it.

Here's where you and I part ways, Mark.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

We see quite clearly that the wealthy, the owners, who control everything from the media to the prison systems to almost all the commerce, are doing terrible things to our country. Meaning, by "country," this chunk of land and the people living on it.

Then, because we're all part of the same country, we transfer the blame to the country rather than the minority of people who are quite clearly doing a job on the rest of us.

Imagine if the people living in South Africa had said that South Africa deserves its fate. While there are differences between the situation in apartheid South Africa and the situation here, there are few differences as far as the allocation of power is concerned. A tiny, rich minority that treats the rest of the country like shit has 90% of the power. The differences are that that rich minority sometimes recruits people with varying shades of dark skin to speak for it, rather than consigning all of them to ghettos and jails, and that the white part of the population, although half of them now live in poverty, still do not live in the grinding poverty that the majority of South Africans did. So we're getting a more comfortable ride to Armageddon, and the elites get to pretend to be Rainbow Good Guys while we go there.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

WaterLily's picture

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal "We" -- those of us here at C99 -- see quite clearly. But so many others who profess to be "liberal," or "left," or at the very least, (D), don't see it. Which makes them complicit. So, when they start running around with their hair on fire over Trump -- well yes, they deserve the country they have.

They will never get from here to revolution. It's up to the rest of us.

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@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal I'm glad I read down. I was going to write a much less articulate version of your comment. The country deserves its fate. Do the people who make up the country deserve their fate? The essay comes perilously close to Markos in his "Let's sit back and enjoy the suffering of the coal miners as go go bankrupt without insurance while dying of Black Lung" rant.

Does a school child deliberately addicted to opiates deserve his fate when he behaves like an opiate addict? Do children whose behavior is shaped by consumerism baked into what parents are assured is the highest quality educational TV programming available deserve their fate? Do their parents?

The problem is that the bastards who do deserve this fate are doing very well.

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janis b's picture

@FuturePassed

I felt it was a bitter-sweet reflection on what's wrong in the world, with the wish for positive change rather than more suffering. I don’t think Mark believes that anyone (except maybe for the heavy perpetrators) should suffer. It sounds to me more like a cry to people to wake up before it is completely too late.

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Mark from Queens's picture

@janis b You read me clearly.

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"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:

THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"

- Kurt Vonnegut

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Mark from Queens Our paths re-converge. Smile

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

janis b's picture

@Mark from Queens

for framing your contemplations so poignantly.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

that you can get from "this is the fate we deserve" to revolution.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

janis b's picture

for the past 20 years. I love living here for many reasons, one being its extraordinary natural beauty. I did though grow up not far from your neck of the woods, and spent many Sundays visiting grandparents and cousins in Queens.

I wonder if my dreams tonight will take me back there.

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It's not about deserving our fate IMHO. It's our history: settled by Europeans during a time of unbridled capitalism and chattel slavery. I'm talking to you Portugal (slaves and agriculture), Britain, France, and Netherlands (goods), and Spain (metals and food). That's our beginning. And then it was a given in our constitution (what is it? 4/5? a person or something?) We are the Wild West (of Europe!). Our system was barbaric by European standards. At the time, we were Europe's Wild West.

I think that the period of settlement here (1500-1750) is really not understood by the American people with regard to the economics, geography, etc. [All this stuff! LOL!] What I am trying to say is that we have been here before. We need to realize it.

Peace.

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Mark from Queens's picture

I vowed to turn on no coverage, and when I reflexively turned on the radio (tuned to the radical WBAI always), nudged by my little infant son who has gotten so used to hearing music or the radio while we're in the kitchen that he automatically gesticulates toward it upon entering the room, I had to turn it off. Had the misfortune of hearing Drumpf's stuck-in-adolescence, dopey voice and immediately shut it down, and reached for the stack of cd's and pulled out a Roger Waters live album for our lunch. Perfect.

Since it wasn't freezing and feeling cabin fever lately, we took a stroll up the street, Bernie button stuck to the side of the carriage and a 99% button onto the strap holding the boy in. Was going to slap one of the sticker I got from Interference Archive last weekend on my down jacket (has been weird to be wearing it as my winter jacker because my jackets always have a political pin on them), but after reading a comment here about someone suggesting people never read more than 3 words on a poster, and then realizing the shortest sticker I had said simply "Resist," I didn't like the association it might have with all the faux protests dominated by sore losers/fraidy cats/Dem Lemmings really just propping up $hills, and went sans protest button/sticker. What iced it for me though was thinking of the image of Keith Olbermann wrapped in the American flag, as described brilliantly by Glen Greenwald, for his new series "The Resistance" - what a farce.

When we got to the main st section I glanced and saw a table with an American flag, some literature, and two guys passing out flyers. Turns out to be the LaRouche guys. Have seen them over the years, and though not quite sure what their whole deal is, retained some negative vibe about them. Talked to a guy for a few minutes and most of that dissipated, though it's still unclear what they're about, aside from repealing Glass-Stegall and getting the truth about 9/11. All good, and especially that he had on a vintage FDR button. Will have to investigate further.

During the day I also got a text from a close old friend who I've fallen a bit out of touch with lately, and not being on FarceBook anymore don't know but definitely suspected he's been a Trump supporter (I've mentioned him before: outrageously funny and likable guy, great musician, but if he had 5 books in his house after college 3 were Trump's, ostensibly because he was a smalltime but aspiring real estate wheeler and dealer) and it's a picture of him and another good friend from college standing on the Capitol Mall, the latter with a Trump hat on, and I'm literally aghast. Repulsed. Especially as I deduce that, while it may be fine for you to have voted for the pathological liar/snake oil salesman as a reaction to HRC, to actually go to fucking DC as "supporters", boggles the mind. I start to write that I'm repulsed but ultimately take a few breaths and refrain. Think as my response I'll send him this video instead (since we're all huge fans):

Anyway, in response to CStS and Future Passed (Moody Blues reference?), I thought how the deserves-its-fate thing could possibly elicit some negative feelings of unfairness toward say, the unwitting. I can relate to that. My positions this bizarre political year have swung wildly, maybe, between outright contempt for my countrymen, to gentle pity. It's complicated. Folks have been duped (as they always have), and either don't know better or are willfully ignorant, and I have an ongoing internal battle about this.

For the record, the original title was going to be "Why This Country Doesn't Deserve Bernie Sanders." I started writing it in maybe March or Feb of last year, framing his unvarnished views and egalitarian philosophies as something people would ridicule because they couldn't recognize a genuine human being having been so conditioned by a public relations-driven/marketing-tested phony political machinery (here was a guy so modest he didn't even at first say he was the person chained to the black woman for the Chicago housing protest, and was so humble and a man of such socialist solidarity that he and Nelson Mandela were the only two who arrived, separately, without tuxes for a black tie event at the White House) that ultimately he would lose because we didn't deserve him (The Beach Boys song "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times" just came to mind). I remember just before the NY primary walking up the stairs to an office to get some materials for canvassing at the local Bernie campaign office and being struck by an epiphany that as amazing as his run was turning out to be and he was getting all this incredible adulation and support he so richly deserved for speaking truth to power, the entire establishment was so strongly and completely against him, and that aspect, though on some level he must have anticipated something of a backlash against him, the sheer weight of not one of his colleagues (practically; what, maybe four elected officials out of thousands in the country, and not one newspaper?) standing up firmly behind him had to make him feel uniquely lonely in a strange way.

When I sought to revive the part about what kind of country we live in, and the kind of willful ignorance, crass self-indulgence, false piety, gullibility, penchant for consumerism, etc coursing through the country- which lays the groundwork for the manipulation of otherwise good people to abet the puppet masters who pull the strings of dividing and conquering us while we wallow in frivolity, I was filled with contempt for my country and needed to express it on the eve of Herr Drumpf's election. Where have you been, I thought - you majority of people now outraged, filled with fear and ready to hit the barricades? We've been imploring you since Occupy to stop buying the charade, turn off the mass media, seek alternative ways of living, form solidarity groups, vote with your money, use social media to upturn the MSM, etc.

Near the end of his life MLK began to conclude what Malcom X had been saying, that white people's conscience's could not be appealed to to bring justice to blacks. What did voting and getting the right to sit at the lunch counter mean, if one couldn't afford to buy a hamburger? Similarly I say, when will we fundamentally change as a society, whereupon empathy is its cornerstone and not self-preservation and self-interest (i.e. greed, power, etc).

To take up on King's transformation relative to today, he wrote from the Birmingham Jail about his "grave disappointment" with the "white moderate" being a "greater stumbling block...than the KKK." For me it's smug Neoliberals and the Democratic Party partisan, who pays lip service to liberal ideology and iconography, but have lacked the courage to stand up against an economic system their party upholds which has plunged such vast numbers into despair, poverty and death. These same folks now are quaking in their boots. Well, they got what they deserved. We'll continue to fight, and maybe, just maybe, they'll coming looking for us, tugging our shirts, asking how it's done.

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"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:

THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"

- Kurt Vonnegut

janis b's picture

@Mark from Queens

are a pleasure to read. He’s lucky to be fed good music along with lunch.

[video:https://youtu.be/jAGwJw1l9oY]

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Wink's picture

on the backs of slave labor wages. Any threat to raising those slave wages shuts down businesses (capitalism). Conclusion: Capitalism unsustainable unless workers willing to work for slave wages. Apparently we are.

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the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.