Baby Boom Gone Bust

[Daveparts]

Being a baby boomer raised in post World War Two America we were raised with certain fixed realities. And of course moving into a new century it has become necessary that we must take stock of changes and accept adjustments. Growing up in the fifties and sixties the cold war was the preeminent issue and it’s adjutant threat of nuclear war, which made us the first human generation of children that lived with the possibility that every day on earth could be our society’s last.

Like George Orwell’s 1984 we lived with clear messages from big brother even if our big brother was kindly old Uncle Sam. Capitalism Good! Communism Bad! Socialism Bad! Only not as bad, but not as good as capitalism. If you asked questions about socialism in Great Britain or Scandinavia it was explained that it was indeed socialism only that it was different but it was inferior to our unbridled capitalism.

Take a look around they would explain at our ever expanding economy our rising wages our ever increasing standard of living and then look at those poor miserable wretches in the Soviet block and it was true. But communism was the ultimate wedge to the capitalist system the Capitalist had to always bear in mind that if conditions became so poor to the average person a communist movement could sprout up and they could count on support from Moscow. The outright hysteria over Cuba puts a fine point on that. Not the missiles in Cuba but the communism in Cuba that terrified American corporate elites. For communism in Cuba could only succeed where capitalism fails.

We live in our world with fantasies of a democratic free press while the numbers of jobs for writers decline and the supply of writers remain constant or expanding. If you are considering employment it’s best to consider what sort of reporting the boss likes to see. You’ll gain little traction with investigative reporting on the newspapers advertisers or politicians that have it in their power to do them harm. I once heard a local mayor upset over his portrayal by a local TV station comment “Maybe next time we hold a press conference we’ll just forget to call them.”

The growth of the Internet has acted as a buffer in some ways but at the same time it dilutes the audience. When a website becomes popular they immediately erect rules and barriers of what can be posted. I in advertently posted on the Daily Kos an article about the lunacy of government’s statements about air traffic controllers after 9-11. I was lambasted not by the truth or lack of truth in my post but that I had violated the rules of the site by speaking about 9-11. No one argued my points only that I had violated the rules and no meeting of right wing evangelicals could have been any more severe.

The Nazis had their brown shirted thugs at the doors of their meetings too if you heckled or questioned the Fuehrer you would be removed. The Internet has given rise to the E thug if you question status quo left or right the E thugs will come after you. I was on a website and the issue was illegal immigration when I pointed out that the issue was more about illegal than immigration the E thugs were set upon me. I was called a troll and a plant a racist a bigot so apparently you’re free to think only inside the box. If your views are not black or white or liberal or conservative keep them to yourself.

Never mind that my beliefs mirrored those of Jack Kennedy and Martin Luther King or Hubert Humphrey because the boundaries are all changed now. Jimmy Carter was a conservative Democrat and Gerald Ford was a liberal Republican; Bill Clinton was a centrist yet Richard Nixon would have vetoed Clinton’s welfare reform bill as too punitive. The actual Liberals in Congress can be counted on one hand or as the press refers to them as extremists or fringe. Yet they advocate nothing that wasn’t considered mainstream only twenty years before.

Why is that? Could it be that when Communism fell in Eastern Europe the need to support Capitalism fell in North America? Wages, and standard of living have all eroded from that high water mark Unionism is on the decline and has been under constant attack by right wing administrations, labor statistics subverted to the point where hamburger stands are now considered manufacturing outlets. The Chinese government recently announced they supported the workers in forming labor unions to which the American Association of Manufacturers announced well we don’t! Ask yourself, what’s wrong with this picture, the communist support unionism and the Americans don’t.

If you’re my age you remember the plethora of Science Fiction pictures where heartless soulless robots would take over the world and make slaves out of humanity. From the cheesy to the high budget 2001 A Space Odyssey the fear of mankind losing its soul to technology was an ever-present concern. Well guess what? It has, and the robots name is the global corporation and it is every bit as heartless and soulless as any villain Hollywood could dream up Darth Vader has nothing on these boys, a corporation is a legal entity with all the rights of a living breathing person but unlike a person it will never die. The good or evil of a person will follow them to the grave and the fear of judgment may influence their behavior while on earth.

But the corporation never dies a Frankenstein monster loosed on mankind; it has no feelings or emotions. It cares not about the here after for it is eternal, it has no sense of right or wrong of good or evil it has only one motivation, profit. All human beings have a desire to be accepted and thought well of even if it is a blatantly untrue. We are ego driven while the corporation is only profit driven; it cares only how it is viewed in regards to that which might affect its profits. Nike shoes received bad publicity about operating sweatshops in Central Asia so how did they respond? By moving their operations to Central America. Did the bad publicity change their minds or their business model or just their address?

You say the gold miners are getting a little uppity in the Congo, well then kill a few of them. The oil workers in Nigeria want higher wages? Call in the Army let them work at gunpoint a few days that will straighten them out. You say the workers at Coca Cola in Panama want to unionize then have the police shoot the union leader in front of the workers that will get them back into line. Want something a little closer to home? The miners that died in West Virginia didn’t have a back up phone line or oxygen safe room, miners in Europe wouldn’t enter a mine without either of those in place.

The corporations frame the issues “We must stay competitive” is its mantra and it’s hard to go a day without hearing it. But no one questions a muti million dollar salary package for a CEO no one says that’s three or four times a European CEO’s salary. They claim the mantle of environmentalist for everyone’s green in corporate America, the oil companies the chemical industry will all tout their efforts for green policies yet avidly support political candidates that will loosen environmental standards.

Occidental Petroleum was using open pit wastewater disposal in Columbia outlawed in the US for almost a hundred years yet they continued in Columbia until ordered by the government to stop. Just dumping oil saturated water into a pit to leach into the ground water. They couldn’t pretend not to know better but soulless corporate robot thinks only of profit and does what ever it takes to accomplish its goal. It’s is far better to spend a hundred thousand dollars on a public relations campaign than two hundred thousand to actually do the right thing. It’s cheaper to buy judges and congressman than to follow the law.

An acquaintance of mine had a family place were his ancestors had lived for over a hundred years in south Alabama. A chemical plant that made ammonium nitrate fertilizer moved in up the road and after a few months of operation the families well was contaminated with ammonia. They explained to plant officials about their well and were told politely to buzz off. They hired an attorney and had soil tests done that showed the closer you got to the plant’s boundary the higher the levels of Ammonia in the soil.

When their day in court finally arrived the judge looked at the test results and without asking the corporation’s attorney any questions asked, “Can you prove the Ammonia is coming from their tank?” and dismissed the case. 007 license to kill, what’s the difference gun or chemical? To place the standard that high is to say buzz off. The state courts of Mississippi and Louisiana will be backed up for the next twenty-five years over insurance companies refusal to fairly pay claims from Katrina. Meanwhile the homeless mortgage holder continues to make his monthly payment dreaming of the day seventeen years or so into the future when he finally gets his day in court.

In our literature describing future apocalyptic societies controlled by soulless robots or faceless fascist societies drug use had been overlooked or even encouraged by the society as a way of making the subjects easier to manipulate. But that was a misconception; here it became obvious that this is a right wing reactionary coup. The war on drugs was but the opening salvo in the war on our freedom its true cause is not to diminish the amount of drugs on the street but to expand the numbers and powers of the police. The power to wiretap and to confiscate assets before conviction leaves the suspect naked before the law.

In the sixties General Richard Seccord ran an operation in Vietnam with intelligence agencies to help move Thai heroin to market and by the late sixties American cities were awash with cheap Asian heroin and Richard Nixon declares a war on drugs. In the eighties the Reagan administrations foreign policy emphasis was on Central America and what drug floods American streets? And whose name was connected with it? Why cocaine and Richard Seccord of course, tougher penalties longer jail terms more prisons.

It’s actually genius in its evil simplicity, you import the drugs profit from the drugs expand your police powers to fight the drugs and as the price goes up and you make even more profit then you run for reelection on your record of being tough on drugs. And why were we in Central America in the first place? To fight socialism in Nicaragua and who would have been hurt by that? Who stood to lose? That’s right American Corporations.

We invaded and captured Manuel Noriega in Panama but knowing now what we know about Saddam do you think Noriega’s real crime was selling drugs? Or might it perhaps be to whom he was selling them to or for? The meth epidemic has hit almost every community in America the active ingredient ephedrine is manufactured by a small handful of pharmaceutical plants worldwide but does your government move to regulate the source at that level? No, no, no, it’s better to regulate every drug store in the country to make them keep records of who is buying what. The US occupies Afghanistan and US morgues begin to fill with heroin overdoses. Those dumb afghan’s don’t know how to step on their product so it reaches the market too pure they’re not very good yet at being capitalist’s.

I recently watched a program on C span with the director of NORMAL and the assistant director of policy for the DEA discussing decriminalizing marijuana. For one hour the two participants took phone calls and in that hour not one call not one was against the decriminalizing marijuana laws. Republicans Democrats Independents Libertarians not one agreed with the government’s position. Medical Marijuana? No such thing says the DEA the FDA studies conclude there are no benefits from Marijuana. That ridicules on its face Chinese medical books that predated Christ advocated medical uses of marijuana. But the DEA insists the FDA says there is no benefit. For who? Who funds drug studies at the FDA? Either the government or the drug companies and of all the people in prison for drugs convictions how many are for marijuana arrests 50%

The FDA is correct there is no benefit in medical marijuana, for the drug companies or the prison industries that is. In his book The Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr Solzhenitson points out in describing the Russian prison system what he called the sewage system the prisons had to keep finding people guilty or not or number of convicts would decline and the police would be accused of not doing their jobs properly and advancement was based solely on confessions. If the government were to allow decriminalized marijuana they would have to shut down whole prisons and many of America prisons are run by… corporations for profit. And even the dying aren’t exempted, Medical marijuana clubs are shut down despite the goal of alleviating the suffering of the dying. The drug companies came up with a pharmaceutical substitute for medical marijuana, you know the same drug they said that didn’t have any benefits in the first place. It’s a suppository, and that in it’s self should give you a pretty good idea of what they think about you.

So just how maniacal and evil are these corporations? The skies the limit there are no limits. Enron is a good case in point not because they looted the pension fund but because not one Enron executive thought enough about the thousands of workers to say, “If this doesn’t work what will become of our workers” anymore than the guards at Dachau wondered if they had enough warm blankets. Who are the most profitable corporations in the world? We are fighting wars in which two countries? The reasons for both of these wars were faulty and defective to the point of nonsensical. Yet a pipeline will be built in Afghanistan and favorable oil legislation is rammed through a Quisling Iraqi Parliament.

Do I paint too black a picture or is our future perhaps not that bleak? I do not like to use the word fascism to describe our current situation for fascism is nationalistic. The Nazis and the Italians wanted to use fascism to improve conditions in their homelands. This is blind raging corporatism a blend of fascism and feudalism its only purpose is to feed it’s robot masters. In October of 1943 Heinrich Himmler said, “What happens to a Russian, to a Czech does not interest me in the slightest. Whether nations live in prosperity or starve to deaths like cattle interests me only so far as we need them as slaves to our Kulture: otherwise it is of no interest to me. Whether 10,000 Russian females fall down from exhaustion while digging and anti tank ditch it interests me only in so far as the anti tank ditch for Germany is finished.”

Now substitute employees for Russian and Czech, substitute corporation for Kulture now Substitute Corporation for Germany. You’ve just converted a Nazi mass murderer and convicted war criminal into a corporate executive, unashamed that they have left US communities in rubble like Yugoslavia what did GM tell city officials in Flint Michigan? We owe you nothing! Like a rock all right, right upside your head but before you cry tears for Ford and GM’s demise remember they are opening news plants in India and China. How is their behavior and different than that of Heinrich Himmler? “What happens to Flint Michigander or a Kansan does not interest me in the slightest. Whether communities live in prosperity or starve to death like cattle interests me only so far as we need them as slaves to GM or Ford.

So fellow slaves on this great global plantation what is our future? Will we do something about global warming besides lip service? Not hardly, corporations are slow to learn, the example of the space program in the sixties, which fueled the computer industry and the telecommunications industry, are lost on the American corporation. They live by the principle of profit today is better than profit tomorrow. You see there are no guarantees that way. Now a hundred and fifty thousand troops and billions of tax dollars that works. Besides that doesn’t come off the corporations bottom line, and they were going to buy those politicians anyway.

Like Dorothy in Oz looking behind the curtain all of a sudden it all makes sense why Hillary Clinton supports George Bushes war. Why American politicians won’t speak out about Iraq realistically the folly the foolishness and bald-faced lie of it. Now’s not the time to play the blame game they say. Well then when is the time? If you do something stupid at your job what’s the first thing your boss is going to say? And aren’t we supposed to the boss in this country?

It’s the corporate double standard, if you’re Dick Cheney and shoot someone you tell the police to come back tomorrow. If your Rush Limbaugh and get caught with drugs at the border while on probation its woopsy for Joe six-pack it’s slammer time. If you start a war with bad intelligence and get thousands killed it’s wrong to point fingers but if you’re in a traffic accident that gets people killed and give your defense as bad intelligence it’s slammer time. If your employer discovers that your hooked on drugs and even though you’ve tried to kick them you keep going back your fired unless you’re a Supreme Court Justice you don’t suppose that knowledge at the FBI made him susceptible to blackmail do you? The credit card corporations even have a special category for politicians and public figures. They always ask for their money back nice, they wouldn’t want some rider to appear on a bill or some football player to score a touchdown and say don’t use X credit card they suck!

So the necessary changes and adjustments? Democracy means any government that supports our goals regardless of how it came to power. Tyrant or madman is anyone who opposes our goals. Conservative is anyone supportive of the status quo Liberal anyone non-supportive of the status quo, Patriot anyone who kills or dies for our corporate beliefs, Terrorist is anyone who kills or dies opposed to our corporate beliefs. A religious extremist means Islamic a fanatical evangelical means a conservative Christian. Globalism means corporate rape, free trade means free for the corporations. American dream means fantasyland. Belief that our government truly cares for the interests of its people means idiot.

[SharonRB]

1. Did you write this?

If not, you should cite the source and not post the entire article!

Welcome to DU!

[Daveparts]

3. Yeah Boss

I wrotes dis piece

[jaysunb]

2. Welcome to DU

You're pretty smart....