By Siv O’Neall
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
axisoflogic.com
August 16, 2009
Never has the world been subjected to as pure and destructive lunacy as at this time in history. Never have the anti-civilization voices been heard as stridently as in the so-called debate that is going on today. The insane and desperate noise of the single-party political scene in the United States, the deafening roar of the Mafia, is threatening, and seemingly managing quite well, to out-thunder the few reasonable and civilized voices that are attempting to be heard over the din.
The civilized debate that might be expected to be going on about health care, tax reforms, regulation of financial speculation, the criminality of imperial wars, improving education and much more, is poisoned while still in the womb, by the formidable power of the one political party that is spelled M O N E Y. Their power tools are the mass media, the ceaseless propaganda machines, the formidable use of hypnotic slogans and, added to that, the severe lack of insight and intellectual curiosity of the U.S. citizens. All this is made possible through the obscene lowering of educational standards and the carefully programmed lack of information that is the normal state of things today in Middle America.
One of the most obvious and insidious weapons of the Money Party is the use of the word socialism. U.S citizens have been thoroughly brainwashed to a state of visceral fear of socialism as the great demon that is out to destroy everything that is decent in life, keep us from having any form of an individual choice as to how to live out lives. It is a decadent form of government that Europeans are victims of, where the spirit of free enterprise is deadened by too much welfare protection, where the rich have to take care of the poor who can thus go on idling their lives away in apathy and shameless dependence on the government.
While U.S citizens are either working themselves to death or being spiritually stifled by joblessness and the lack of hope for a better future, they still seem to believe that the U.S. is the greatest democracy in the world, the only really free country where everybody has the right of vote, has the possibility of climbing up the rungs on the social ladder, has the right to an excellent education, the right to free speech, ‘the good life’ in a country with a strictly limited role of the government.
The United States is supposedly in the political, military and cultural forefront all over the world and has the right to interfere wherever its authority is questioned or threatened. The terrifying lack of insight of U.S. citizens into the various passions and ambitions that make up the foundation for a meaningful life for all people in all nations and civilizations completely derails any potential of understanding how the world is made up. What drives us human beings to productiveness and to a feeling of comfort and satisfaction in our own capacity of leaving a positive imprint on the world around us? ‘Go out and buy’ say the American Money men. Give everybody a realistic chance to try his own motors, say I, and help him pull himself out of the quicksand if he fails in his efforts, due to lack of encouragement and lack of initial means of support.
The Money Party has led a centuries-long effort at deadening any humane impulse, stifling any creative and imaginative attempt to use leisure time in a constructive way, replacing all that would be of true value by inventing phony needs of accumulating wealth and symbols of status. With the effect that people are now generally convinced that money is value in itself, an end rather than a means.
The world is becoming an amoral and totally disjointed arena where insanity and unlimited greed rule and no humane principles can survive the attacks of the all powerful Money Party.
The poor are not supposed to survive, the old and sick have no more rights to a decent life. The words in the ongoing and stumbling efforts to create healthcare for all are being so completely distorted that the average American is made to believe propaganda phrases that no decent human being could possible have intended. But the average person does believe it. The hate-mongers on television have a credulous audience. It is really so simple. Socialism is the clue. Just tell people again and again, ever since McCarthyism held sway over fears and sanity, that socialism is the Devil. Make all those fundamentalists believe that anything that resembles a welfare net is a product of the anti-Christ and reason matters no more. Reason is burned at the stake. Mass hysteria takes over, leading to generalized insanity.
The men and women with a callousness that makes your blood run cold take the lead in inventing slogans – they are out to kill your grandparents, government bureaucracy will squash healthcare efficiency, you will die before your turn comes to get medical treatment. Public healthcare will cause national bankruptcy and taxes will go through the ceiling. Blatant lies are repeated again and again until a hypnotic phenomenon has converted them into truths to ignorant ‘Americans’. Government-run healthcare equals socialism – the Devil himself.
And the insane healthcare debate, if that is what it can be called, is far from being the only issue where reason has gone astray and nationalistic hubris and blindness have taken over.
‘America’ is the foremost, ‘America’ is the moral guardian of the world, ‘America’ is the only civilized nation, the only true democracy, are slogans that are so widely believed that no realistic arguments, no criminal wars, no senseless killing of innocent people, no perfectly visible crimes against citizens’ rights and screaming social injustice can possibly change the stern belief of U.S. citizens that they are at the top of the world and that nothing can limit their rights to let loose their cluster bombs and their mad destruction wherever and whenever they are told that there is a reason for U.S. intervention.
U.S. citizens are never taught to reason, to disagree, to doubt. The average American wears blinders so impenetrable that he can’t possibly see the world the way it is. ‘Truth’ is a malleable piece of clay that is made up for him and he swallows it hook, line and sinker.
Civilization is dying. The very notion of civilization is dead. Money has taken over. Money has been the heir apparent for centuries and in the Empire’s frantic reaching out of its tentacles over the rest of the world, it has already managed to convert a majority of the Western world, and more, to the belief that the Free Market is the solution to global well-being. As all people with open eyes know and see, the Free Market was set up in order to get rid of the poor and to enable the Money wizards to rule with virtually no opposition. The fact that the planet is destroyed in the process seems to be of no importance to these lunatics. Maximizing profit is the only real goal and people and the planet be damned. The Free Market juggernaut crushes everything in its way. That’s what it was invented for and fascism is the name of the game. It is worse than any previous fascist regime since it has more power and practically no opposition, since the lawlessness is mostly hidden behind a screen of secrecy and lies.
The only hope for humanity today is in the form of socialism that is growing in Latin America, in spite of the violent resistance and frequent sabotage from the U.S. governments. This enormously important phenomenon is what sends chills along the spines of U.S. politicians and the Money men all over the Western world.
© Copyright 2009 by AxisofLogic.com
Siv O’Neall is an Axis of Logic columnist, based in France. Her insightful essays are republished and read worldwide. She can be reached at siv@axisoflogic.com. Read her Biography and more of her articles on Axis of Logic.
see
The Ascent of Money (2008) (must-see)
Michael Burawoy’s Manufacturing Consent
Why Aren’t Progressives Disrupting ObamaCare Town Halls? by Dave Lindorff
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Pingback: Capitalism is Incompatible with Human Nature « Dandelion Salad
Human Nature will change when the conditions that make it necessary to be competitive so as to survive and thrive and have status within a group environment are no longer present. The desire to cooperate so as to win the approval of friends and neighbors and to be giving rather than be taking will become the social norm in a society that has enough material needs to go around. The insanity of conspicuous consumption will disappear from the face of the earth, it’s scarce resources will be saved for future generations. When social scientific beings are able to look objectively at the world around them and the world is integrated into one family village having the same human nature of an objective intelligent social scientific nature, you will not need leaders to lead or followers to follow. Everyone will automatically become their own leader and their own follower.
http://despicable.wordpress.com/
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Modern Western civilization, primarily America, has recreated God, and its name is money. Values, morals, ethics and all the right and wrong, are influenced, redefined and manipulated by the new World God, the omnipotent irresistible force and allure of money.
I’m not saying that the love of money is a new thing to mankind, but the extent to which does the power of money rule and control now is unprecedented in its scope.
Mix the power of money with a good portion of good old fashioned politicized religion, phony nationalism and sprinkle it with fear, greed and outright ignorance, demonize reason, intellect, critical thinking and compassion for the less fortunate, and you have your new world order, the capital of which, sorry to say, is the US and its newly-founded values.
What this overpopulated and highly schizophrenic world has ended up with now is a volatile, combustible situation where humanity is sitting on top of a time bomb, that if not checked and its ingredients aren’t realigned and corrected, its going off is only a matter of time.
The real scary part is I don’t see a happy ending to this disaster in the making, or any glimpse of hope of any solution forthcoming.
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Thanks for your commentary, Walid.
There is hope for the future. We must make our own economies, locally. Check out this video: http://vodpod.com/watch/2065020-living-in-the-future-episode-01?pod=dandelionsalad
And this one is a must-see, imo: https://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2009/08/14/farming-with-nature/
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For any thinking person, it seems impossible to disagree with anything presented here.
What can be hoped is happening, aside from the movement is Latin America, is that the elites who have set this jugernaut of disaster in motion will lose control of it and it will roll over them before it rolls over all the peoples of the world.
What a wonderful, insightful piece of writing. In the jargon of the 1960s- “Tell it like it is.”
And yet it seems as if the majority of Americans and even the rest of the world are not aware of what’s going on. Obama kindled a light for so many people that was, sadly, blind hope in change that is not going to come. Even worse than Obama’s being part of the political machine led by the big lobbies, the corporations, is an interpretation of what’s going on that I only read last night in Counterpunch: Red-Baiting and Racism, By TIM WISE
http://www.counterpunch.org/wise08112009.html
Really scary. How can we possibly fight against a demon such as white supremacy?