You Want Us to Live Like Cavemen?

February 12, 2007

by Monolycus
lifted from a comment

Remember the good old days when you could get state and federal
level kickbacks under the table or through the quiet anonymity of your
own shell company? A few tiny little Enrons and Savings & Loans
later, and people want to put American entrepreneurs under a microscope as if they were common… well… commoners.

Yes, there have been a few bad apples, but is that really grounds to
do away with the entire system of entitlement? John McCain still
believes in American Exceptionalism, and that should be good enough for all of us! Do we really want to live in a world in which Karl Rove’s children have to do menial work like… well… like common potential terrorists?
It seems to me that we’ve turned the spirit of the domestic
surveillance program on its ear when the aristocracy is forced to
sacrifice their civil liberties alongside the riff raff. This is
madness! MADNESS!

Sustainability? Equality? What, do you want us to live like cavemen
or something? Are we committed to progress and worshipping the forces
of Mammon or aren’t we here? Honestly, I can get behind thinking outside the box and everything, but I think people are starting to take their eyes off the prize. The War on Terror™ is supposed to entrench the Privileged… not break down boundaries.

I’m sorry. I’m very, very disappointed that some folk have allowed
themselves to get carried away with things and want to apply the New
Rules with such a broad brush. The temerity of treating American
nobility like this staggers the imagination!

And speaking of that, is it my imagination or are there more zetas in my sky these days?

Posted by b on February 12, 2007 at 08:23 UTC | Permalink

Comments

Some of the servants doubt the divinity of the decider.
They must join the church and learn how their county is best ruled by faith.

Posted by: b | Feb 12 2007 11:08 utc | 1

”The War on Terror™ is supposed to entrench the Privileged… not break down boundaries.”
I am reminded here of so much homeland security money passed down to even the local levels for “distribution”. Trickle down to whom? Would progressive socialism be that different from this corporatism we now have? Just thinking out loud here.

Posted by: Rick | Feb 12 2007 11:14 utc | 2

There is another interesting aspect to this: the immense mass of stock that is owned by the wealthiest 10 percent of families in this country — by some measures as much as 80 percent of all stock. And a very, very large portion of it is owned by the wealthiest 1 percent of families. In fact, the upper 1 percent owned about 44 percent of financial assets in 2001, the most recent year for which I could get data.
If you said that the $2.6 trillion of cash owned by American corporations was yet another asset of the very rich, you would not be terribly far off. This makes it a bit sad — no, heartbreaking — for the roughly 80 percent of Americans who have no or virtually no savings.

It’s a Great Country, Especially if You’re Rich

Posted by: b | Feb 12 2007 13:08 utc | 3

b,
Considering the current Iraq fiasco, the lies, the torture, the patriot act, and especially your last post, one wonders who could ever vote for a Republican again. And the Democratic Party doesn’t look so great either. The all eat at the same table. I agree with Uncle $cam, America can’t just keep waiting time and time again for the ‘next’ election. America has never looked worse in my lifetime, that is a fact. Every aspect of American life has gotten worse, especially in the last few years, and that includes prejudices, specifically the basic prejudices of race and woman’s equality. The divide between rich and poor is no longer a correct comparison. America now has so many poor compared to the elite – yeah, elite is now a much better term for description than rich. I have nothing against rich people; I wish everyone in the whole world were rich. But we are not talking about rich here. The rich are so less in number (and so more ahead materially in comparison) to the average American, and the rich are so much more powerful, that it is becoming misleading to even categorize them as a population segment. They must now be called the elite. They have more power in government on a per person basis than the average American. That is more than rich, that is elite.

Posted by: Rick | Feb 12 2007 14:38 utc | 4

In America, you can….Havidol. Of course, this is a spoof, the chemical name is avafynetime HCl . A well-done spoof of’ lifestyle pharmaceuticals’. However, we live in a time when it is hard to tell the difference between art and life, between real and hologram.
I was at a friends yesterday, and watched several commercials in between the lady griz basketball game and part of CBS’s sixty minutes airing of yet another atrocity, it was terrifying. I bet we watched 25 commerical’s in the short time I was there. Just what the fuck is, “restless leg syndrome’? I guess the old saying is true, ‘there’s a pill for every ill’, even manufactured ones.
I guess my point is that the ‘cave men’, that would be us serf’s. i.e. the general population, has been squeezed to the point where more and more people are turning to televison as a means of escape entertainment, whom can’t afford season tickets, meals out, except for the S.A.D. (Standard American Diet), standard American, fast food carcenagenic trash. So know your place….
Here, There and Everywhere

“I am an American consumer, and the battle to catch the corner of my eye is growing more desperate by the hour . Desperate and counterproductive, it now seems clear. We all know what happened in Boston the other week, when the guerrilla marketing of a cartoon series triggered a grand mal metro seizure, but only I know what happened in Los Angeles several days earlier. I was standing in an airport security line when I spotted an advertisement for Rolodexes printed across the bottom of the tub into which I was about to set my shoes. The ad bewildered me for a couple of reasons. First, I didn’t expect to see it there (even though, by now, I should have, since researchers estimate that the average city dweller is exposed to 5,000 ads per day, up from 2,000 per day three decades ago). The second and greater mystery, however, was why a major company would want me to associate its product with the experience of being searched. Rolodex — the official corporate sponsor of airport paranoia. It didn’t make sense.”

” — Walter Kirn (New York Times)
Know your place…
Escape from America?
Gin meditations on outlaw roosters, tin cup martinis and my bust-out from Mammon’s guilded cage
Joe Bageant

Tomorrow I will not worry about losing my ass in the declining real estate market. I will not commute three nerve grinding hours a day, or nervously engorge myself in front of my laptop for hours on end. Nor will I or wake up with the crimes of the empire running like adding machine tape in my head, annotated with all the ways I contributed to those crimes by participating in the American lifestyle. After more than two years of effort, I’m outta the gilded gulag, by damned, and tell myself that I have at last quit being part of the problem — or at least as much as much as anyone can without living stark naked in a Himalayan cave and toasting insects over a dung fire….

Know your place…
Damn you Monolycus, for reminding us…
x-cellent comments/post as always…

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Feb 12 2007 17:19 utc | 5

”The War on Terror™ is supposed to entrench the Privileged… not break down boundaries.”
The war on terror is not performing well.
a) it is bad for many businesses (besides arms, military, security, war economy type stuff), it is against an open borders, wheeling and dealing, free communication ethic – it is somehow anti-growth.
b) it is failing; its unstated aim, to control resources, is not being fulfilled; again failed states are absolutely the pits for anyone who wants to earn money, with some exceptions, such as selling cell phones in Somalia!
c) it is eroding soft American power so fast it makes one dizzy; practically all allies (besides paid stooges) have been lost (and see Putin at the Munich conference coming out against the US, for ex.)
d) it is creating danger at home; controlling Americans with no fly lists and so on is very iffy…; poverty and freedom can be acceptable; poverty and jackboots has a different, ugly flavor, not a meme Hollywood can hype
The privileged are squirming, it is obvious. See the quarrels about attacking Iran. They don’t know which way to go, what to support, what to do. One of the developments is that criticism of Israel has become possible, if not yet respectable; Walt and cos. article, Jimmy Carter’s book, have opened up discourse, are, as they say ‘timely’…
Xymphora today links to a USA Today article:
it begins:
John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, was nobody’s fool. Born before Darwin and the age of modern science, Wesley was prescient enough to temper church tradition and the teachings of Scripture with reason and experience. Twenty-first century Christians would be wise to do the same.
I say that because some of our religious doctrines may be getting us into trouble. Evangelical Christian Jimmy Carter reminds us of one such doctrine with the publication of his controversial new book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. It is the persistent notion (particularly among evangelicals) that because Israel was God’s chosen nation in the Old Testament, America should turn a blind eye to her shortcomings today.
link

Posted by: Noirette | Feb 12 2007 17:32 utc | 6

Noirette,
As usual, you make excellent points, even from the quick read of your post that I did. I like your point in item d:it is creating danger at home; controlling Americans with no fly lists and so on is very iffy…; poverty and freedom can be acceptable; poverty and jackboots has a different, ugly flavor, not a meme Hollywood can hype
Not sure though about your point a). Are not the elite (Bush’s real Base) doing well under this “post 911 era”?

Posted by: Rick | Feb 12 2007 18:18 utc | 7

on al jazeera international today – there was an intervention by a scholar of indian origin(?) from the u s- who has written a book on war profiteering in iraq & has a new one called ‘iraq bonanza’ (?) – extremely lucid & for an interview extremely detailed – just the kind of precision that we demand
will email aj to find out the details to see if the books are available

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Feb 12 2007 19:05 utc | 8

If those incinerated, dismembered, calcinated, beheaded, tortured, raped in Iraq had been beheaded, raped, incinerated, calcinated,dismembered by some one that did not believe in God would they have perceived any difference? The fact that Bush believes in God is irrelevant. If he had been moved by the dialectic or the market or manifest destiny or zionist activities the victims would have felt no difference. However I feel and this is personal that if I attribute the evils to the belief in God and I claim that I do not believe in God somehow I exclude myself from the evil that is done. But if I really didn’t want to participate in the acts that I reprove I would not pay taxes and pay the price of my moral purity with jail. But if I continue to pay taxes that is to enable materially the doers then I am as much part ot the dismemberment and deaths as if I performed them personally. There is no exit from the quandary of being social.

Posted by: jlcg | Feb 12 2007 19:22 utc | 9

restless leg syndrome – ever sit and have a chat with someone and they were continuously bouncing their knee or perhaps constantly wiggling their feet whilst watching the somatube – now they have a pill for it
I used to do it all the time, either one. It annoyed my wife and she annoyed me until I stopped.

Posted by: jcairo | Feb 12 2007 20:09 utc | 10

”But if I continue to pay taxes that is to enable materially the doers then I am as much part of the dismemberment and deaths as if I performed them personally.”
Just for argument’s sake only, here is another perspective:
The average American does not dismember or kill people in Iraq, Afghanistan, or any other place. People paying taxes are not culpable as “the decider” is. Most of us pay taxes for schools, roads, and military defense – not for illegal torture, illegal preemptive wars, etc. Moreover, what President George Bush did, with the help of Congress (and maybe even some help from our ‘Free Press’), was to actually steal our taxes for these illegal purposes.. Just because Alberto Gonzales, or whoever else, said it’s all legal/moral doesn’t make it so.
And, looking at my own personal situation, this out of control government would take a lot more of my money (that is if I had more and they knew about it) – if I didn’t pay my taxes.

Posted by: Rick | Feb 12 2007 23:19 utc | 11

the author is pratap chaterjee – the book is iraq, inc – a profitable occupation
the forthcoming book is baghdad bonanza
i think he is the director of corpwatch

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Feb 13 2007 0:18 utc | 12

This will be the third time that I’ve tried to respond to this thread only to be told by Typepad that Moon of Alabama doesn’t exist. This is a test.

Posted by: Monolycus | Feb 13 2007 15:05 utc | 13

Damn you to hell, Typepad. There’s a real irony involved when I am running late to work because Typepad ate my comments… only to spend the next 8 hours listening to stories about how dogs ate my student’s homework.
The next level of irony involved is the knowledge that, where I am at, homework is actually eaten much less often than dogs are.
Damn you, Typepad.

Posted by: Monolycus | Feb 13 2007 15:09 utc | 14

Hmmm… apparently Typepad thinks that Moon of Alabama only exists when I’m not including links in my comments.
Typepad delende est.

Posted by: Monolycus | Feb 13 2007 15:13 utc | 15

Mono,
sometimes you can use your back arrow to go back and recover text that didn’t go like it was supposed to. simply highlight and copy it all, then start fresh and paste it all back into the box.
or you can write your comments in a text editor to start with so that you can use spell check (should you need it)
you are probably already aware of this, but in case you weren’t….

Posted by: dan of steele | Feb 13 2007 15:15 utc | 16

Tried it Dano’. Multiple times.

Posted by: Monolycus | Feb 13 2007 15:16 utc | 17

Tenth try is a charm… Let me parse my comment a bit and see if it goes through.
Anyway. I’m not sure why this was promoted to its own thread. I’d recently read a Ted Rall article in which he was apparently channelling his inner, warmongering asshat (I lost the link along with my lunch) and I whimsically decided to see how difficult it would be to write in the style of an entitlement whore. Turns out to be a lot easier than it looks. Maybe I’ll start posting copy on FreeRepublic now.
I might as well start learning to pander to that crowd earlier than later since the Church of the Burning Bush (thanks, b) seems to make converts as fast as it loses them. Not so terribly difficult a feat, since the largely imaginary enemies of the Church have similar regenerative powers. (You need three countries for an “Axis of Evil”, right? No problem, we’ve got you covered.)
Let me do the math… three enemies of all-that-is-holy, four wars in Iraq, a partridge in a pear tree… carry the zero… yeah, this should keep the profiteers afloat into the foreseeable future. After all, giants stacks of cash don’t wallow in themselves.

Posted by: Monolycus | Feb 13 2007 15:22 utc | 18

And the second part…
Oh… seems those zetas I was noticing worked like a charm. North Korea has, for the time being, suddenly agreed to dump it’s nuclear ambitions and kowtow to US demands. It’s about time that Pyongyang internalised the awful fact that the US will never turn a blind eye when militant states that don’t happen to be Israel engage in the testing of offensive weapons.

Posted by: Monolycus | Feb 13 2007 15:23 utc | 19

my experience is that typepad will not allow you to post a comment w/ more than five hyperlinks in it. previously, the redirect is either malformed or missing, which results in the user getting a meaningless error screen. no idea if this is still the case, as my comment behavior has already been modified accordingly. typepad also complains if the content that your are trying to submit exceeds a certain number of words, though i do not know what that magic number is. i find it very strange that typepad flags every comment that contains a hyperlink as possible spam & forces you to use the captcha. either their algorithm really needs to be revisited or it is intentional functionality. (always a good idea to select all your text & copy it before clicking the post button, but that’s obvious, right…)

Posted by: b real | Feb 13 2007 15:54 utc | 20

Part I:
Monolycus, while your #19 (x (times) ten, and counting, due to our typepad frustrations) comments on ‘zetas’ may have been half in jest, “Fully loaded satellites will target nothing but our minds.” The following surely is not…
A Method for Encoding & Transmitting Speech by Means of the Radio Frequency Hearing Phenomena and with b whom followed with the use of the gaijinsamurai
. It is becoming clearer to me, that they really are making their own reality, only perhaps, not the one they sought. As has been noted by many, many smarter than myself, ‘technology is merely a tool, which can be used for good or ill”, hence the Rummy/Cheney ride with the dark side thus, Sept 16th, 2001 on the witchbox, the magick silver screen, began the peek into the black magick opening grimoire and spoken and earliest incantations the ambition to use overwhelming black op technology to solve all problems on the ground, well we see how that turned out.
Never forget:

The [undisclosed senior advisor to Bush] said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism.
He cut me off. “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

I went to see, Pan’s Labyrinth last week, with and after much meditation of your last few post’s in other threads, with regards to hope v hopelessness, action/inaction, and what it is we can do besides, freq our little bar here, of cooperative enquiry.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Feb 13 2007 19:46 utc | 21

Part II:
As the Madman In The Marketplace, wrote from another board, I too, hate hope. “Real hope requires that we confront REALITY. Real hope is something we create through action and engagement,…” Fight or flight is where we will soon be. If not already there and just no knowing it yet.
I too was very much struck by the scene in that movie, much better described here:

In Pan’s Labyrinth, a fairy tale that is all about hope, both false and real (as any good fairy tale is), there is a scene where Captain Vidal holds a dinner party for the leading lights of the village hosting his military outpost. He assures them that in the “new” Spain gifted to them by Franco’s Falangists, the pesky idea that people are all equal has been put to rest, and the proper order of things will be restored. Cheney might very well give that same speech at his dinner parties.

These calvinists and classicists pray at the feet of high-technology fourth generation warfare. And we are merely the subjects and pawns of the predator class. Well, welcome to “Deep Politics”, werever there are means to power there will be attempts made by the already powerful to restrict access, reclassify knowledge and extend their own authority by secrecy and disinformation and technology. When they say, Full Spectral Dominance, I believe they mean it. By any means necessary.
They want us like cavemen, indeed.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Feb 13 2007 19:48 utc | 22

Pt I
@Unca (#21)
I wasn’t jesting as much as you might think in my reference to “zetas”, although it is, on occasion, hilarious to me when certain learned folk accuse me of having poor reading comprehension skills at the same time they are busy getting their panties bunched over something I’ve posted semi-satirically.
Wasn’t the case this time; I was just presuming that a quick Google search would have brought up the reference and its associated nuances. I discovered too late that the only pages it will bring up involve the CIA front “Los Zetas” or testimonies from people who claim to talk to little, grey aliens, so I felt obligated to link to a more-or-less accurate source myself in #19. I have been accused by certain pedants who frequent these parts of using vocabulary which very unacceptably does not dovetail with their own cryptic jargon, and there’s little more frustrating to deal with than a confounded obscurist.

Posted by: Monolycus | Feb 14 2007 14:07 utc | 23

Pt II
I have never forgotten the remarks by the “undisclosed senior advisor to Bush” (quite a title you have there, Mr. Rove). I agree with your observations, and with B’s post today about the nature of Osama bin Laden. This is very literally an administration who wish to change “reality”, and they just aren’t as precise with their techniques as they’d like to be (which is fine… MK ULTRA has been a work in progress for decades and they have nothing if they do not have time to tinker). Leo Strauss seems to be less an inspiration here than Orwell proper… and every rebuke to me seems like another charming little tête-à-tête with O’Brien himself.
Yes, I’m fucking angry. I’m filled to my core with the only inheritance bestowed upon the likes of cavemen such as myself by the elite… and that is absolute rage. Rage, and the gift of the latest artificial reality to “judiciously study”.

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