My ultimate nightmare

Let me confess to you this, my ultimate nightmare of future events. What do you think?

The world population, crowded up against its overburden and penalized by it beyond endurance, will seek a Leader to provide them with his Ultimate Solution. It is obvious that American Republicans are already in the process of doing so, willing to listen to any insanity, provided it fully fulfills their apocalyptic fantasies.

There will be no lies, just Peace on Earth in realtime (since all government functions will have collapsed into military anarchy in the meantime, à la Perestroika), and the future promise of a quick, clean death and relief from their nightmare world; or miraculous survival into a new Utopia of relieved of population pressure, endowed by the Leader's genius with an appealing political architecture and a miraculously restored natural environment.

And/or he will simply say: “I am the Anti-Christ foretold; obey/worship me and fulfill the prophecy to come.”

Using real-time, "Industrial Sound and Light" techniques, this Leader will orchestrate waves of high-tech genocide identical with those described in the Bible's Book of Revelation. Meteor/comet retrieval and bombardment, massive nuke strikes, biohazard dissemination and worldscan photoshop facsimiles (in the absence of survivors) where those prior are beyond technological capability. As far as he will be concerned, the closer to that mass-casualty narrative, the better.

The world population, rendered miserable by decreasing resources, wars over them and tyranny to support those wars, will practice a mass version of suicide-by-cop at the hands of a world government ruled by their beloved Leader. Individually, they will hope to survive this massive cull, (the way proletarian republicans hoped to become slave-holders or millionaires, despite the odds), and support it and its Leader fanatically. Only fanatical Christians will oppose them, non-violently, and be massacred for their pains. And we few, I hope, will resist this miserable travesty, goddamn it.

The World Leader will become insane (if not already so) by reason of the deaths and suffering he has caused beyond counting. He will seek to become God. Every genocide of the past will seem like child’s play, compared to his.

What will follow is beyond imagining. This Leader may summon all his SS troops (recruited, trained and uniformed from the billions of orphans he has caused) to Megiddo, and we shall see what transpires, assuming we are unlucky enough to survive to that point.

I am afraid this won't happen much later than the tail-end of our own lifespans. God help us.

From profit to profiteering

Why I’m against capitalism as an unchallenged social template -- and socialism, and any other “ism” for that matter.

The fact is that any (ANY) organization goes from supporting its declared mandate (whatever it may be) to supporting that organization’s leadership by boosting its profit margin, regardless of and at the cost of its original mandate.

The MTV cable television channel went from supporting popular music to seeking pure profit for its leadership; it now broadcasts idiotic babble almost nonstop and very little (very bad) music. Television primetime News went from supporting public information to seeking pure profit for its leadership; it now shamelessly broadcasts worthless infotainment and almost no international news. The cable television History Channel went from supporting history education to seeking pure profit for its leadership; it now broadcasts reality shows having little or nothing to do with history, many reruns of old shows, and more and more rare original history-based programming. American politics went from supporting popular democracy to seeking pure profit for its leadership; it now conducts a criminal race to the bottom to acquire the most campaign finance, and can no longer legislate constructively.

Corruption is the inevitable end of capitalism (or any other social template) as freely expressed.

In socialist systems, “social power” replaces “pure profit.” Otherwise, the equation remains the same. In any other “ism,” its original story, justification and mandate are eventually replaced by its leadership’s promotion through the acquisition of pure profit (or consolidation of social power).

This would not be so bad if it stopped there. But an organization that ceased to fulfill its mandate though its leadership’s acquisitiveness would provide less and less valuable service, would cease to extract profit/power from that disappointed client base, and would eventually be replaced by a new organization that honored the original mandate more closely and thus collected more dependable profit/power from that client base.

However, once the original mandate is abandoned and profit margins begin to slide, the organization resorts to disinformation and dirty tricks; and eventually to outright lies, violence and criminality (or propaganda bombast, secret police terrorism and political corruption) to increase its profit/power margin. This is the ultimate death-spiral of dominant social organizations: devolution into a Mafia. The greatest short-term profits are achieved by criminal activity, so the leadership eventually defaults to criminals. The best criminals are guilt-free psychopaths and sociopaths and their slaves. They eventually replace everyone else in positions of leadership.

It is thus that the government of humanity, the oldest and most evolved of social organization, is based on lies, terror and corruption carefully regulated.

The only (temporary) solution to this problem would be the regular replacement of an organization’s leadership by independent outsiders more interested in the its original mandate than in mere profit accumulation. This is the advantage presented by democracy. Only a temporary solution, as these specialists will be replaced over time by more profit-oriented generalists, and these generalists will sooner or later by dominance-oriented sociopaths.

The only solution to this problem would be the built-in, mandated self-destruction of the organization and its substitution by another of independent origin and separate manpower. This solution induces additional problems: the waste of valuable talent during the original organization’s destruction, and the infiltration of sociopaths among recruits to the new organization, more and more of them over time until they achieve total dominance.

There is no obvious solution to this problem on a permanent basis, except perhaps the universal acceptance of the idea of sociopath takeover over time, permanent watchfulness against it, and systematic efforts to suppress its effects. It might be interesting to revert from capitalism-dominance to socialism-dominance every few generations or so, society-wide, so as to eliminate one set of sociopathic profiteers (along with their source of profit/power), eventually replace them with another set devoted to a different source of profit/power, and so on.

Eventually, any form of social turbulence or replacement will be overrun by sociopaths who appear programmed to dominate any long-term social organization to the harm of everyone except themselves. Even then, most sociopaths eventually sabotage their own lives and often die friendless and broke. Everyone loses.

Obama! Review your priorities before the next election.

You're there on the spot when some rich schmuck call into question your obvious American citizenship. You're AWOL in Wisconsin, when your Labor supporters need your help.

Kindly review your upside-down priorities. If you're never there for us, why should we be there for you?

It Takes Forever (as wished for)

In response to General Stanley L. McCrystal’s article in Foreign Policy, “It Takes a Network.” http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/02/22/it_takes_a_network

It Takes Forever (as wished for)

Let’s assume your half Crusader/half Plains Indian politico-military-organized crime network remained up and running despite the best efforts of the West Point/Ivy League Protective Association and its Media/Congressional/Supreme Court/Presidential (oh hell, everybody with money) puppets. Public magical thinking from on high is the in-thing, these days – to replace rational thought which is out of TV fascion (Get it? Fascist and fashion?... Never mind).

You, like everyone from President Obama, Gates and etc. on down, have chosen not to declare your victory conditions. You know, those conditions which, if they ever occurred in nonmagical space-time, would allow you to fold up your very, very expensive tentage and wend you quasi-interplanetary way home? “Next war: Mars! Then we’ll start talking REAL money!”

What might those victory conditions be? Here are a few humble suggestions. Mix and match as you see fit -- the more implausible the victory, the better as far as the powers that be are concerned.

Every potential Af-Pak and neighborhood rebel accepts unilateral, unconditional surrender, simultaneously and forever.

You can statistically prove that every leadership element of the opposition network has either been killed or suborned by your own, including all elements as yet unborn.

750,000 Afghan Army, Police and self-defense Militia have their uniformed hands out for American military aid, indefinitely. They even have a stealth jet Air Force, and landlocked though they be, a four-carrier Navy and, of course, a Marine Corps. How do you say Semper Fi in Pashto?

A dependable flow of minerals, natural gas and opium guild Western bottom lines into the indefinite future (already hard at work on that one).

All Afghans convert into pacifist anarchist Jains. No exceptions unless they become card-carrying Republicans.

Afghanistan declares its national sport is badminton instead of mountain/desert/urban warfare against any and all comers, and themselves during brief interims when no outsider is stupid enough to try.

Afghans discover American TV, stop thinking from now on, and thus adopt the American Way of Life. With international support, Afghanistan invades Madagascar in anticipation of destroying enemy sanctuaries during its eternal “War on Grief.”

The country of Pachtunistan is ripped from Afghan and Pakistani sovereignty, and all the Taliban go home to run for public office and murder each other in the street (à la Republic of Ireland, circa 1920s).

All the Pachtuns become organized, Ghandian non-violent protestors (no, that’s already been accomplished around 1912, and sabotaged quite handily by the Brits and the Muslim Brotherhood, for the one and only time in total cooperation with one another). Besides, the Western media wouldn’t consider this a “victory.” Not Republican (bloody-minded and staggeringly costly) enough.

Pakistan and India have a nuclear war, and Afghanistan is sterilized by the resulting nuclear cloud blowing in the wrong direction (the natural one being onto the American Mid-West).

Russia, Iran, China and India offer to garrison Afghanistan with a million men each, thus placing a rifle platoon on every water point and mountain top in-country. NATO pumps up its determination to offer an additional million troops as a “rapid reaction force.” They sit there, doing nothing much but terrorizing the countryside and eating up domestic improvement investments for the next century; then they are sent home to “manage” their respective civil wars induced by that lack of funding. Presumably, using the “network” strategy you perfected, against their own people, including in the USA and Europe.

Ok, those are some suggestions off the top of my head. Got any of your own, in this war deliberately set up to go on forever, smart guy? A war profiteer’s wet dream and a tactician’s nightmare. Please append the date of projected end-of-conflict and final evacuation of neocolonial forces, from among the four that follow: 2111, 2211, 3111, the next Ice Age.

Or are you merely paid to refine the killing, and not put a stop to it?

Bush-Hitler or Obama-Hitler?

There is no resemblance between honest progressives who compare Bush to Hitler and dishonest reactionaries who smear Obama as one; no “shared incivility or inappropriateness” between those progressive and reactionary critiques. That argument could only be made by brazenly double-dealing Republicans and Democrats scared of their philosophical shadow.

Every time a Republican is caught lying for-the-record for the fifteenth time, cheating on his taxes and stealing someone else’s, the first thing out of his mouth will be the first line of defense of every five-year-old caught red-handed: “But he did it first!”

The most excruciating example of this false similarity is the one whereby any Republican Yahoo may accuse Obama of being a Nazi Communist Socialist Kenyan-born Muslim, because some progressive dared to compare Bush to Hitler previously. Like me. Enthusiastically. Besides, for anyone with a basic education in history, those Obama insults cancel each other out. You cannot be a (God fearing) Muslim and an (atheist) Marxist at the same time; but never you mind… as Republicans, imbecility suits you.

The match the Tea Party and Republicans have made, between Obama and Hitler, is ridiculous; it confirms their ignorance and stupidity, unless it’s their passion for lies and cons. However, no Democrat or progressive can dismiss parallels between Hitler and Bush with mere expressions of good will and good wishes, and retain a pretense at honest historical analysis. Such a dismissal is nothing more than moral cowardice.

As for Bush and Hitler:

Both were elected to the Presidency using questionable methods, with disputed electoral returns not subject to impartial audit, without an electoral plurality, and in violation of their respective Constitutions.

Both were upheld by Supreme Courts packed with Party Loyalists.

Both initiated wars based on publicly broadcast lies.

Both ran their wars (and the rest of their Administration) with inexcusable incompetence and no improvement over time.

Both made use of public disasters (the Reichstag Fire and 9/11) to further their belligerent agendas.

Both placed Party Loyalists in positions of judicial responsibility, when those jobs should have been entrusted to apolitical professional bureaucrats.

Both created new, anti-Constitutional prison systems independent of judicial review.

Both created anti-Constitutional police states based on illegal intelligence gathering.

Both instituted sadistic systems of deliberate torture and mistreatment beyond the law that were eventually applied to the citizens of their country, supposedly under Constitutional protection.

Both used the Nation’s judicial system to persecute their political opponents.

Both had browbeaten media critics and gotten them fired, thus encouraging the rest to cringe respectfully and submit to a long series of Administration swindles and lies without a whimper.

Both appealed to the ignorance, stupidity, fear and greed of the most bigoted minority of the population (their ‘political base’) to justify their immoral policies. Both used the sense of self-entitlement, the paranoia, xenophobia and persecution complexes of ignorant masses to mold their opinions to favor evil.

Both violated the Constitution they were sworn to uphold (our Constitution’s definition of High Crimes and Misdemeanors – so far unpunished in Bush’s case).

Both Presidents surrounded themselves with criminal advisors (later condemned).

Both sneered at global diplomacy and other world leaders, pronouncing themselves superior to them and independent of their requirements, even though they obviously were not.

Both ruined the country placed in their care: Bush economically, Hitler militarily.

No German Right-Winger apologized for German Nazis ruination of the German State, even though they supported them with all their might. No American Right-Winger apologized for Bush and his serial corruption and incompetence ruining America, even though they voted for him through two fraudulent elections. Apparently, right-wingers never feel the need to admit their errors: the giveaway sign of a sociopath.

The U.S. government & media’s concerted effort to sweep this diabolical likeness under the rug has created a lethal precedent for the next set of wannabe Republi-fascists not too distant on the political horizon. “After all, Bush got away with a pseudo-Nazi Administration, and was never punished for it; why not do it Right, next time, and go all the way?”

I can’t tell what is scarier: Bush’s fascistic high crimes and misdemeanors, or the cowardly refusal of his replacements, from Obama on down, to inflict an exemplary punishment on him and his co-conspirators, and thus head off their fascistic successors’ rotten misdeeds. Instead, the sharp wedge of fascism was spiked into the heart our Constitution. We have established a legal precedent behind which every future American tyrant and tyrant lover may find refuge.

The similarities listed above, between Bush and Hitler, are clear and straightforward; no such one can be listed between Obama and Hitler. However, a much more subtle and shifting resemblance does exist, between the Obama Administration and Hitler’s immediate predecessors: the liberal democrats of the German Weimar Republic (1919-1933, from just after the end of World War I until Hitler took over).

As for Obama and Weimar democrats:

Both groups were in the Opposition, until they took over from a Far-Right that had wrecked the Nation.

Both groups paid lip service to liberal democratic principles while betraying them at every opportunity. “Liberal”: formerly a term of respect denoting grace and charity; now corrupted into its corporate opposite.

Both groups honored elite-countersigned treaties that bankrupted the Nation and destroyed many of its jobs to pay off international corporate interests.

Both groups oversaw massive transfers of wealth (a large chunk of GNP) upwards to corporate elites, and oversaw the pauperization of the middle class and the bankruptcy of the Nation.

Both groups supported Capital over Labor, and corporate elites over the People.

Both groups were infamous for shielding criminal banking and financial activities, and hiring the perpetrators to dictate financial policy for the Nation.

Both groups aggravated the militarization of civilian police functions.

Both groups disempowered and trivialized their progressive base in favor of corporate, right-wing policies.

Both groups introduced job-creation programs with the utmost reluctance and at the last possible moment – thus surrendering propaganda credit for those new jobs to the fascistic government that wound up taking their place.

Both groups wasted away their initial popular support through ceaseless cooperation with right-wing elites and cooptation by them.

Both groups were criticized and parodied by increasingly popular and politically ineffectual comedic troupes (the only media announcers anyone could have trusted, eventually, who wound up cracking their last jokes behind barbed wire).

Eventually, the Weimar democrats were left flat-footed and powerless by their fascist replacements. The most popular, powerful and honest Weimar politicians wound up serving time in concentration camps, without a clue what had happened to their famous and classical Western representative democracy, and how they could have prevented its dissolution into Nazi tyranny. After all, they had slavishly done everything their corporate masters had told them to do. What could possibly have gone wrong?

Here in America, that is more or less everything we have to look forward to, quite likely.

Please note: Obama could have taken an entirely different path than that of Weimar Germans after World War One. He could have adopted the progressive policies that Franklin Roosevelt adopted after he took over from the Right-Wing (as usual) ruination of the Great Depression, and garnered all the popular support that Obama has lost, since he has chosen to embrace the same corporate corruption that has always landed us in this mess, before and since. Obama has failed his mandate and wasted his electoral advantage; there is nothing more to expect from him, than his Weimar-style surrender to the fascists.

So, if I anyone accuses you of calling Bush a fascist and tells you that designation is just as inappropriate as calling Obama a Nazi Communist Socialist Kenyan-born Muslim, please refer this Republican Yahoo to my written rebuttal – assuming he can read. And, if that accusation comes from a so-called progressive or liberal, ask that invertebrate where he mislaid his backbone.

It’s time to replace all those corporate puppets, Clinton, Gore, Kerry, Obama, ad nauseum: the best Republican money can buy and that Democrats will hold their nose and vote for. Let’s start looking for the first of a long line of Franklin Roosevelts and their Administrations of unrivaled honesty for the 21st Century, why don’t we?

Corporatism is mere reheated Monarchism -- resist it the same way!

The political mess we face here in the United States, is a rehash of the worldwide anti-monarchial revolution that has taken place, on and off, for the last three centuries.

On one side, the People, composed, by definition, of equal human beings who share certain rights and obligations, but most especially, their mortality and, I guess, hope and goodwill for the children and their future. On the other, some self-aggrandizing social network with much stronger guns and propaganda, virtually immortal and indifferent to the future of the People, compared to its raw voracity for cash money in the short term.

The quarrel between People Power and Organized (Crime) Tyranny is merely being re-rehashed under a different guise. Stupid Greed versus humanity. The reptilian mind versus the mammalian. The Nazis versus the rest of us (regardless of your qualms with the use of that term).

And if you don’t think this is a Left/Right thing, it is because you, as a typical American, have never seen, read or heard from a real American Leftist in all your life. Thanks to Gestapo-like tactics and systematic media strangulation extending through the last century, America can boast of a large, bilateral Party of Constitutional Conservative Centrists (whining hand-wringers and corporate lackeys all, while they sell the family farm away to) a Right, a far Right and a nut-job element panting for the Apocalypse and/or a Thousand Year Reich swathed in Red, White and Blue – but no organized Left whatsoever.

What the U.S. really needs is a well disciplined and popular (you will be surprised, how popular) political Party. Call it Progressive, Communist, what you will. It will demand the hostile government takeover of the banksters, selling off their profitable appendages and casting adrift the rest; the nationalization of the petroleum/coal/nuke cartel and allocation of its profit to greener alternatives; and the mobilization of the entire workforce into a strike machine that would paralyze the country if its demands were not met. We would be free to make this Party’s demands as extravagant as we wished; there would be no need to limit them to suit “moderates” and compromise with right-wing gangsters.

If the U.S. had a self-disciplined Left organized along the same lines every other industrialized country but this one has, then American Centrist sheep bleats for universal health care, consumer protection, clean elections, infrastructure reconstruction and job creation would suddenly become quite sensible, middle-of-the-road compromises. They would stop being dismissed by the collective fascists as ravings of the “Loony Left” and quashed at every turn.

Martin Luther King succeeded in transforming American racism (until its fanatics murdered him) because much angrier, more violent blacks stood in the background, ready to take over if his demands were not met. Essentially, King’s message was: “Accept my message of peaceful co-existence and equity, or embrace theirs of violent revolution.” American Progressives have failed to heed this example. Rather than promoting a Party that would make the most extreme demands, then settling the compromises; they have started out by humbly begging for the compromise solutions, and finished by watching them be brushed aside in favor of maintaining status quo abuses.

I suspect that most Americans, even those that dare call themselves Progressives despite their total failure for generations, are much more comfortable being ruled by a pack of lying, thieving reactionaries, than by any alternative group from the Left. They would rather all their fondest hopes failed forever, than risk being ruled by anyone but corporate crooks. They therefore deserve whatever fascist abuse they refuse to scour clean, once and for all.

Fusion reactors? It wouldn’t be the first or last time that the powers-that-be were 100% misleading and misled.