America's 30-year journey into the Homeland of Darkness

As recently as 1970, America was self-sufficient and politically self-aware. In the 1980s, the United States passed through the phase of being a once-productive and prosperous nation fallen on hard times (like China during and after the Opium Wars). Today, America more resembles a primitive rabble of warring tribes squatting ignorantly on some assets they haven't a clue how to use or how to defend (like Africa during the colonial Scramble). The path from 1970 to today is sadly reminiscent of the trip up The River in Conrad's "Heart of Darkness". The farther America goes, the more backward, bankrupt, and barbaric it becomes.

America's journey is no joy-ride or accident; nor is it the result of the thirty-years-extinct hippies, nor of communists in our schools. It is the result of the same game of blank treaty forms, unrealistic expectations, reneged-upon deals, and out-of-sight, out-of-mind economic slavery that was inflicted upon Africa in the 19th century by a similar gang of financier-led, expatriate mercenary-enforced imperialists. Let's refer to our imperialists as the Neo-plantationists.

1. The Duh-opium Wars

The first phase of our trip into servitude was the dumbing down of America. The de-cerebration proceeded simultaneously via the two main providers of intellectual content in our society: the schools and the media.

1.1 Bovine University

First of all, the Neo-plantationists had to prevent people from getting a real education. So, universities were slowly turned into increasingly-expensive party schools. Money was spent on physical-education plant, a plethora of sports teams, and fancy dormitories. Then, student loans for these gold-plated degrees were privatized, and college activism became a mark against you in getting the corporate job needed to repay the loans. Finally, universities were simply bought out by corporate money - grants with strings attached, product placements on campus (pepsi-only schools), joint for-profit research. Corporately-incorrect faculty need not apply. At the secondary level, a thousand cuts were inflicted: fights about prayer in school, home schooling, charter schools, etc. Then the NCLB "teach-to-the-test" nuclear weapon leveled what was left.

1.2 Mediated Reality

Meanwhile, in the society at large, the media ridiculed intellectual pursuits, and lately, has demonized them as "elitist". History, geography, and politics in the mass media were at first dumbed down, and eventually reduced to a wax museum, consisting of a handful of patriotically-correct snapshots and soundbites. These have been re-hashed in countless books, movies, and TV shows, until production values, celebrity stars, and the ability to pay clever homage to earlier movies were more important than the minimal intellectual content remaining. Needless to say, this repetition made these subjects really boring, even compared to the bottom-feeding trash of reality TV.

Media entertainment has become the new opiate of the masses. TV has been called "the plug-in drug". Scientific studies of brain waves show that it literally stupefies people. But, by subsidizing the industry with $70 billion worth of free airwaves for HDTV, the powers that be have made TV one of the few cheap entertainments left in an increasingly brutal and impoverished society. TV constantly pushes the sexual titillation and graphic violence to higher and higher levels. Loutish behavior is modeled - as if people need to be taught that.

What little honest education TV provided has long since been banished. Under Reagan, we had the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine; and under Clinton's telecom deregulation, we got the hyper-concentration of the media down to six owners for 95% of all content. And you know how much of that content was of intellectual merit: as little as they could get away with.

Beyond the TV wasteland, pagers, cell phones, video games, iPods, YouTube, and FaceBook have colonized what little independent thinking and behavior remains among children and adolescents. Video games retard childhood development and reduce the ability to repress violence. Totally cut off, in their virtual reality bubble, children learn little more than the corporate version of history and politics - unless they risk everything to be a geek, an "elitist", an atheist, or some other stance that spells instant ostracization.

Already, ten years ago, a childhood that began with Sesame Street had conditioned college students to want to be entertained, not educated. So, its hardly surprising that difficult subjects are shunned; and professors are rated on their ability to perform rather than educate. De-cerebration accomplished.

2. Treaty Time



With Americans blind drunk on mindless entertainment and celebrity, it was time for the blank treaty forms. Fantastic promises were made about how free trade was, for example, going to raise Mexico's standard of living while simultaneously providing new jobs for Americans. We were evangelized by the Neo-plantationists to save the world with their version of the three "C's": globalization, Christianity, and "democracy". America's tribal chiefs in the Congress were plied with favors until they signed NAFTA, GATT, WTO, CAFTA, and MFN for China. The world was carved up by financiers and multi-nationals, just as Africa was a century earlier.

American politicians sold our rights and our property for "beads and cloth" (i.e., cheap, shoddy, Chinese crap). Ten years after NAFTA, the US is both poorer and more polluted. The Neo-plantationists have destroyed our manufacturing base and made us dependent on their foreign manufactures, just as the British capitalists destroyed the Indian cloth industry to gain markets for their sweated labor.

3. The Fourth "C"

While Americans have been busy entertaining themselves to death, computer technology has been delivering unprecedented financial and political firepower to the Neo-plantationists. Today's American middle class is as defenseless as African natives against the latest computer armaments of the internationalized overclass.

Computer networks have made financial looting trivial. Hi-tech has been a force multiplier for offshore banking and money-laundering (originally pioneered by the CIA, of course), and created whole new categories of financial heavy artillery: derivatives, credit swaps, collateralized debt. After thirty years of screwing working Americans with fiscal restraint, the Federal Reserve has dropped the mask and become the bailer-out-of-last-resort for bank and stock fraud artists - irregardless of the inflationary cost to the American dollar.

Meanwhile, credit cards and sub-prime mortgages were passed out like free tastes of crack; then later, draconian bankruptcy laws were enacted, along with interest rates and fees that would make loan sharks green with envy. America has become one big, computerized company store.

On the political front, we have had our right to vote stolen by a traitorous Supreme Court decision, and a bunch of corrupt, privatized black-box voting machines - crammed down our throats by the GOP and the Dominionist corporations that own the made-to-be-hacked machines. Meanwhile, just in case "We The People" might get our act together via the Internet, the military is busy practicing total "domination" assaults on the network and spying on us through the phone companies.

4. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss



As with the imperialist Scramble for Africa, the Neo-plantationist partition of America is led by adventurers and buccaneers: predatory media assholes, such as John Malone and Rupert Murdoch; financial pirates, such as Ken Lay and a raft of billionaire hedge fund managers. Like Cecil Rhodes and the Rand gold-bugs before them, these people produce nothing of value. They are not entreprenuers; they are con-men and thieves. Their methods are legalized bribery (via Campaign Finance) and legalized intimidation (via the Corporate Media created by the Fairness Doctrine and ownership cap repeals).

America is now colonized by the Neo-plantationist/Chinese West Hemisphere Company. Bush is "the Resident". Our foreign policy is the old "Open Door Policy" imposed on China and the Congo: extra-territoriality for businessmen and soldiers, backed up by gunboat diplomacy; carte blanche for pillage and murder. Sovereign wealth funds are busy grabbing any worthwhile asset left in the wreckage of the American Dream.



Yes, the natives are restless; and the Neo-plantationists are thin on the ground. But their commercial firepower is immense. They can simply pull the plug on America's supply of manufactured goods and oil. The rebellion is coming soon; but I fear it is too late and too out-gunned, like Africans with spears against Maxim guns. Unfortunately, dictatorship is history that repeats, not rhymes. The parallels to African powerlessness are, to me, overwhelming. We will all be picking bananas for our new masters for generations; right up to the point where environmental collapse (which the Neo-platationists are busy denying) pulls the rug out from under humanity.

I hated it when they made me read Joseph Conrad in high school. Now I know why.

I have this ongoing struggle with pessimism vs. live-in-the-moment-and-find-joy-in-itism. Actually, sometimes it's a threesome, with Aw-fuck-it-why-give-a-shitism joining in.

Our dear Mother planet IS going to kick our collective asses at some time or another, that's obvious.

What we're left with is the question of how many of our fellow sentient beings are going to be suffering in the meantime, and whether or not there is something constructive we could be doing to prepare for the massive die-off that's coming.

You know, something more useful than denial.

:loveya:
sw

I am. I never could get into "don't give a shit" mode. Its just not who I am, although alcohol helps.

Thanks for your compliments. (I think I missed a "props" thread for you a while back; so, thanks for all your work on this board.)

This country's institutions and finances are totally screwed, and BO is not going to stop us from going down big time. The pirates don't care. They've shipped the real money (as opposed to this green toilet paper) to offshore banks and the factories to third world hellholes that they own. They will live like kings. We will live like slaves.

As for doing something constructive, I think that staying civilized (educated, progressive, etc.) is the biggest contribution people can make to the younger generation. They need to see something other than sneering, bullying, greed, and narcissism modeled for them.

I'm sorry to be such a pessimist; but its heartfelt. They have turned this beautiful country into Lord of the Flies.

arendt

make to the younger generation.

That's really where I'm at, too. We need to be scrupulous keepers of history, at the very least, and then do our best to pass it on.



True, that. But Lord-of-the-Flies-ism is inherent in every human being, imho. It's ego over compassion -- the mechanism is the same, only the degrees of implementation differ.

sw

thanks for the well-written thoughts

http://youtube.com/user/dervaes


K and R

I have an honest question, though.

While those of us not already in hock up to our eyeballs might be able to become self-sufficient, what about the tens of millions of impoverished people? Would they politely let us grow our own food while they starved?

I really think that social collapse will result in both individual and state violence and coercion - especially against scapegoats, like intellectuals, people perceived to be counter-cultural in any way. I think any attempt at self-sufficiency is going to require self-defense. (And I have never even shot a gun, much less owned one.)

arendt

I hope to be able to hand baskets full of produce to those people I see begging on the corners in the city.


We have 9/10 of an acre. If they can do that on 1/0 of an acre, we can grow LOTS of food. So far a cherry tree, an apple tree a pear tree producing. Five raised beds ready for planting veggies, a great black berry patch. The seedlings are 2 inches tall. We have been saving seeds for years.

No guns for me, I am happy to share! Our friend across the street puts a sign out that says please take my zucchinis. Down the street is a sign by an apple tree that says please pick.

I am planning a chicken coop for eggs and pets.

We have enough!
We all have enough.
....We are just not quite doing it all the RIGHT way. I think if we aim that way, we will get there.


I know what you mean about debt.
......We just keep whittling away at it.


Kick

We have made our living in our basement studio making flutes and ocarinas for 25 years. www.clayz.com So we have always been NON conformists.

Maybe rather than the horror of collapse, we can all build something MUCH MORE BEAUTIFUL.

Our motto:

Make Something!

Play Something!

Save Something!

Grow Something!

And speak out for world peace!~

Not until we regain control over our food are we going to regain control over our liberty (and our "country").


Full article: http://counterpunch.org/goff04242008.html

An Alternative Agriculture is Possible
The Politics of Food is Politics

By DE CLARKE and STAN GOFF



We metropolitan Americans panic when we contemplate the possibility of becoming unable to afford our private automobiles. This is not just because of our legendary ego-attachment to the car. The primary reason we panic is because we need our cars to get to our jobs (at least one study has suggested that Americans spend 20 percent of their take-home pay on their cars, so we are working one day out of five to pay for the car so we can drive to the job). And we need our jobs.

It's a given: people need their jobs. But why? Because without the income from those jobs, we and our children don't eat. Our access to food is permitted only when it's mediated by money -- which we can only obtain by working (for the ruling class) or by becoming wards of the state (which, increasingly involves coerced labour).
<...>

Past revolutions began not with ideas in isolation; they began with facts-on-the-ground. By the time the French overthrew their aristocracy, that aristocracy was already moribund except for its political power. In every other realm, the businessmen who led the revolution were already dominant. The revolution evolved through the Kairos of history -- through slowly maturing metatrends -- which then interjected itself into the here-and-now Chronos of politics. The Kairos of history, in our time, is the long arc of fossil fuel depletion and the inevitable collapse of intricate profit-taking systems and hyper-extraction strategies predicated on unlimited cheap energy. "Just throw petroleum at it" is not going to work any more, This means that deep contradictions and crises papered over by desperate energy-intensive bandaids will become visible and painful (and they are, already).

The industrial food system is riddled with such crises and contradictions, barely papered over by throwing ever-more petroleum at it. It has reached a breaking point, and popular discourse is not unaware of this (as we may infer from the groundswell of popular nonfiction books highly critical of the system). The exposure of these fault lines -- and the intimate nature of food, for us social primates -- can be highly politicizing for large numbers of people; and whatever the ideological effects, the praxis of food autarky and community-through-food can only enhance our chances of survival and resistance during a period of (potentially) extreme dislocation.

The kitchen garden -- the "victory garden" -- represents not only the ability to sustain resistance (or aggression) against a foreign enemy, but the ability to resist domestic authority and to withdraw, at least partially, from the money economy and the wage-slavery and debt on which it is based.

Capitalism began by kicking people off their land and forbidding them to grow their own food; the end of capitalism may come when people who grow their own food and share it with neighbors are able to say a resounding No to capitalism's end-phase exterminism.

We need not start from scratch in order to "return to a perennial politics of resistance: the defense of "peasant" (smallholder, local) agriculture against imperial profit-takers."

EVER

Thanks. Saving this one for sure

I sometimes say I feel like Cassandra. Been saying this all since my daughter was a very young child. She turned 35 this year and most of America still isn't aware.

Lots of people are simply not brave enough to face reality. And too many who are, simply won't. Truth tellers are written off as cranks or medicated until they lose their voice and fit in.

The society IS sick and sane people are thought insane by it.

What's most scary are the twenty-somethings with Ph.D.s (whom I work with) - their non-work lives are nothing but music, sports, TV, and parties. Politics is something they laugh about on FARC. They just don't get it that the real world is about to make their lives very, very uncomfortable.

And these are the best and brightest - also the most narcissistic and nasty bunch I have seen in science. Science has become just another branch of business. And truth, has become what makes a profit.

arendt

Don't often see all of that in one post on DU.
The info is there, but sometimes it is challenging to put it all together in one place, AND make it comprehensible.
Thank you!

:wow:

Addressing one point here is the new labeling of knowledge as "elitist".

I've been saying for awhile that one of the Neocons rarely recognized goals is to eliminate the difference between legitimate information and that which has no legitimacy. That's how Intelligent Design comes to call itself a scientific theory, even tho it has no scientific basis. Intelligent Design proponents want to define science without spending all those years in school and hours doing experiments in labs. They demand an authority they haven't earned. And the Right-wing talking heads encourage listeners to think legitimate authorities have stolen the right to, for instance, define what is science, rather than earned it.

While there is plenty to criticize about academia, defining college educated people as necessarily elitist is scary.

With the RW, its always "attack". In science, which is pretty competitive already, it was "teach the controversy". After being exposed and debunked on that tactic (evolution is not controversial; it is the foundation of modern biology) , they have moved on to simply "declaring" that they are right and everyone else is not only wrong, but evil (Ben Stein and his libel about Darwin leading to the Holocaust).

This simply wouldn't work in an educated society with a minimally honest press. The fact that these Lysenkoist charlatans can still show their face in public is one datapoint in my thesis that our society has been de-cerebrated to the point of a primitive African tribe.

What to do about it? I don't know. The AAAS runs "Science Cafes", where they try to interest the general public in scientific topics. But, that is a long-range solution.

arendt

this essay goes incredibly well with Naomi Klein's Rolling Stone piece on "the new" Chinese Capitalist reality (All-Seeing Eye):

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/20797485/chinas_allseeing_eye

You can't read Klein's article and not feel a pinch of envy: those jobs used to be ours! And a bit of relief that that isn't our reality... yet. Maybe there's still time for us -- if only in small "colonies" (enclaves?) of sanity where education, work and private life are still practiced and respected.

Meanwhile, they can't even get a good network of traffic cameras for the rush hour report. Priorities, priorities.

I figure that there simply isn't time or money to implement these ideas before economic and environmental disruption sends us all back to local economies and local politics - where the sane folks in sane communities will survive, while the other idiots kill each other over the last TV dinner. I sure hope I'm right.

arendt

and thinking the at least the US is poised to "go backwards" from there, all-seeing eyes notwithstanding.

And this is exactly where we will be if McCain is elected. Of course, should we do the right thing and actually hold our leaders accountable for the shit they've been able to get away with, this cycle would be way different.

or is it that, just like with HRC, the media will keep McCain on life support long after he is politically dead?

How can 80% of America say we are on the wrong track and then 40% of them want to vote for this opportunistic weasel?

arendt