The Growing Heap of Political Rubble

[wylde]

[stilltrucking]

don't it make you want to rock and roll

[still.trucking]

Thanks for the poetry mnaz.
please keep on keeping on.

Not that literary dissidents are helpless. As the Russian poet Osip Mandelstam, who himself died in a Soviet gulag, is said to have put it: “If they’re killing people for poetry, that means they honor and esteem it, they fear it, that means poetry is power.” The perverse logic of censorship is that in attempting to repress literature, it lures a new generation of dissidents.
The Authoritarian’s Worst Fear? —A Book

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/03/opin ... rship.html

[mnaz]

So we're all just dissidents at this point. Just more of the same outwash, except we (us, not them!) have it so much better than anyone else. I should be grateful for the Machine. Look at our Standard of Living!

Man I thought this whole America First Thing was going to change things and make them Great, and make America So Rich and Noble that it would lift the world somehow..

[stilltrucking]

Yes, they will make Amerika great again.
Yes, we are all dissidents now.
We got the eyewitness news cognitive dissonance blue-eyed blues
'We got to get back to where we were
When the founding mothers first noticed that the founding fathers had dollar signs in both their eyes


I used to love that poetry and politics board on LK
'as I remember Levi had mixed feelings about that board

Not me, I am a true believer
I need it, and thank you for writing it gives me the incentive to keep on keeping on dissing the masses

[mnaz]

This is a good article, I think. It's why I've always thought scorched-earth EITHER-OR philosophy is off the mark. However we might try to frame it. Balance is always the truer alternative/path.

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the- ... ket-newtab

[jackofnightmares]

10-4 on the good article

cut and paste:

Quote from the article mnaz posted located here:
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the- ... ket-newtab


Of course, the thought currents and little blooms of democratic workplaces are not enough to engineer a new economic system. These developments are all happening outside of the political system; in the White House and in Congress, the presence of big capitalist businesses continues as strong asever. But the fact that local governments like New York City and Austin have launched incubator programs for worker-owned cooperatives indicates that they’re not incompatible with the current political system.

Could it look something like inviting Medicare and Medicaid recipients into the legislating body that decides the future of healthcare in this country? Could it look something like involving women in the legal processes that determines what resources they can access to care for their own bodies? Something like a cooperativized Housing and Urban Development department that brings those people it aims to serve into the process of determining how best to do so?

Or what about developing a justice system that relies not on removing people from the formal economy via mass incarceration, but that emphasizes cooperative employment and job training at both points of re-entry and pre-incarceration? Kimberly Westcott, associate counsel in the New York-based Community Service Society, a 172-year-old anti-poverty organization, has begun a program through Democracy at Work to teach cooperative work within prisons. If the cooperatives that could form inside prisons could function just like those on the other side, are the walls necessary?

[wylde]

in mho - addressing a kaleidoscope of global issues extends far beyond realms the one puzzle piece of the USA alone.
Consumerism defeated the Sleeping Dragon of China without a shot being fired. To a lesser degree Russia is no longer a communist country.
Brazil is trashing the worlds lungs through burning the lungs of the planet. The ocean dies. Our biosphere chokes.
Polarisation between populations and countries escalates exponentially.

Even the MOST conservative view point is this:

As Mark Carney the ultra-conservative - stated this weekend, firms ignoring the Climate Crises will go bankrupt:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... d-governor

“There will be industries, sectors and firms that do very well during this process because they will be part of the solution,” he said. “But there will also be ones that lag behind and they will be punished.”

there is no - the current corporate buzz word - "a circular economy."
Rubbish.
There is no solution to a circular economy to a linear crises.
Less input = more. Less use of natural resources = more.

Corptocracy is slowly but more rapidly becoming aware of the growing ground-swell of resistance.

[saw]

One of the more obvious elements of the imbalances we see, in my opinion, is the growth of greed.....it's important to remember, I feel...that this insatiable march towards greater profits is man made and has become a sickness in the minds of CEO's looking to be the top dog, and it's okay with them to sit atop a mountain of trash, if in the end they are the ones looking down

We mustn't lose sight of this cultural phenomenon that ignores the well being of the planet and its people....they haven't made mistakes....this was the plan...ie...Johns Mansville knew about the dangers of asbestos in the 1920's, but hid the data.....Ford rushed the Pinto into production knowing it had design flaws that would have cost 139 million dollars to fix...in the end they paid out only 49 million to trusting consumers that died or were severely burned.....you get the idea....that was a good business deal

The mission of the tRump administration is to deregulate these corporations, so they may maximize profits, with absolutely no concern for the environmental damage....much of which is getting to the point of being irreversible ....perhaps they all believe in Armageddon ...and figure the one with the biggest bankroll can have the biggest parties....they seem to have no concern for their grandchildren....oh yeah, that's because they are going to live in the secret bunkers in West Virginia.......and others ?

https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2 ... ze-profits


there are some decent corporations of course....but the Big Boyz rule....

[mnaz]

Nothing more or less than simple evolution, no?

If I were holding Inquiries right now, I think I might try to subpoena Rampant Consumerism as well. The Enabler of all this shit. Maybe.

But that's what Capitalism is, right? Seeing as it Won The Cold War (which apparently doesn't matter anymore when you watch Trump kiss Putin's ass). But like I say, it's never cut-and-dried EITHER-OR. Right now, a few intense decades of saturation bombing have programmed us to think of EVIL TOTALITARIANISM whenever we hear the word "socialism," regardless of the actual merits of any given phenomenon being discussed; it's simply enough for the Right-Wing/Corporate Media to smear anything that stands in profit's way with that one word, and the deal is done. ANY deal at all! Even putting rich, pathologically corrupt shyster gangsters in power, and allowing them to systematically dismantle our Constitution. Sure, why not? We love that shit, apparently.

I think what tRump has most to answer for is his fucked up attitude. The basic embrace of HATRED. The river of LIES to gain and keep power. This seems antithetical to everything this country was meant to stand for. Maybe I've just been naive all these years. Probably.

[wylde]

Capitalism and consumerism defeated China without - a shot being fired.
Any critical issues. Global greed (capitalism); exploitation (the planet; people; resources and everything) without re-dressing 1.3 Billion people, all is ultimately doomed.
At best deceleration of this whimper just might be achieved.

Do you know the planet is running out of sand?
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02042-4

Where then, will human"kind" be able to bury it's collective fucking head?

Capitalism: The Nastiest of Men for the Nastiest of Motives Will Somehow Work for the Benefit of All.

How can capitalism sustain itself if it demands infinite growth in a finite system?

we don't deserve to survive.

Although. I will spend my limited time trying to throw 1 starfish back into the sea at a time.
making a difference to myself through self-examination.
And a difference to any lives whom I touch.
As best able.

[stilltrucking]

wylde wrote:

Where then, will human"kind" be able to bury it's collective fucking head?
we don't deserve to survive

Speaking for myself my friends tell me I got my head up my ass so, sand won't be a problem

wylde wrote:

...Although. I will spend my limited time trying to throw 1 starfish back into the sea at a time.
making a difference to myself through self-examination.
And a difference to any lives whom I touch.
As best able.

[wylde]

wylde wrote:

Where then, will human"kind" be able to bury it's collective fucking head?
we don't deserve to survive

Speaking for myself my friends tell me I got my head up my ass so, sand won't be a problem

dear brother in alms:
me too , me too...

[mnaz]

Capitalism: The Nastiest of Men for the Nastiest of Motives Will Somehow Work for the Benefit of All.

How can capitalism sustain itself if it demands infinite growth in a finite system?

These are the perhaps THE two most relevant/critical questions. This fabricated holy tenet that Greed is the only true "moral" way to conduct our business. And the myth of boundless expansion and escalation of resource extraction in finite system/reservoir-- which defies simple physics if nothing else. Nature abhors shooting curves, and always levels them eventually-- one way or another.

Although. I will spend my limited time trying to throw 1 starfish back into the sea at a time.

Yes...

[wylde]