Strange Cargo

[When life becomes a burden – as if it normally is not – we need to step aside and let things take their course.  We don’t often like the result, just ask the folks in Oklahoma. Yet, we still need to keep questioning the direction we have embarked upon.  No one is better suited to this endeavor than our own Heretik!! – kC]

by the Heretik – Fred

When a man lies, he murders some part of the world. These are the pale deaths which men miscall their lives. [Cliff Burton- member of the band Metallica]

Any relationship between sentient beings relies upon a common understanding  It can rest upon verbal signals, body language, grunts, snarls, most anything, or in the case of human beings, a highly developed complex culture. Whenever this culture breaks down, when understanding is lost, we wind up where we are today in the USA, a highly fragmented society, with competing groups fighting over the last scraps of the resource pie.

Ideals are proclaimed, pronouncements are made, but when they ring hollow we wind up with a sort of split-personality disorder on a massive scale.

We speak of the Capitalist system, how it is a win/win situation, how it fosters incentive and encourages individuals to make the most of their talents, the down side however is glossed over, which is a polite word for a downright lie. Of course there is a veritable cottage industry of Institutes and Organizations dedicated to reforming Society, but the funny thing is they never seem to get around to challenging the basic assumptions upon which this highly unequal and predatory society is based upon.

When this psychological disorder attains mass acceptance we wind up with leaders honoring our troops for “defending our country” when the plain fact is that for the last 100 years they have done nothing of the sort. We have witnessed incursions into sovereign nations on a worldwide basis, the Philippines, Cuba, China, Russia, Mexico, many countries in Africa, most countries in South America, and last but not least, the Greater Middle East and South Asia. Now of course there are the two Great Wars, one to make the world safe for Democracy, and the other to defeat Fascism, and these may have been noble endeavors (especially the second), but that is not the point to be debated here; the point to be made here is that the last country to ever put troops on the ground in the continental United States is our number one ally Great Britain.

Maintaining the fiction of our brave troops “defending our country” requires the omission of real history, of events that actually happened, such as Operation Ajax where the American CIA fomented a coup overthrowing a foreign head of state of a sovereign country. When the very real history of actual interference in other country’s affairs is omitted from our public discourse it allows the introduction of a false narrative, most notably our current open-ended War on Terror. The depredations of our country are amply noted in books such as “The Shock Doctrine”, the information is in the public sphere, there is no excuse for ignorance.

Pointing out the distortion of history is one thing, but it serves no purpose if it does not illuminate the very real effects this sort of nefarious activity has upon the body politic and it’s individual members. When this sort of legerdemain is practiced on a grand scale it fosters and breeds an irreality which goes quite beyond the surreal. A person is tempted to make up snappy Madison Avenue tags for what is observable in people surrounding ones-self, Synthetic Schizophrenia, Induced Infantilism, Mass Maladjustment, or my personal favorite, Malice in Wonderland.

The fallout from all of this is misdirected effort, misdirected people, and a failing social arrangement. Our leaders prescribe solutions which solve nothing but only perpetuate the problems. The populace is bought off by satisfying all sorts of demands, which while they may be legitimate in and of themselves, do nothing to mitigate the underlying realities concerning resource allocation, social justice, and economic equity. It is important to note that while these social reforms do serve to mitigate injustice for select groups, they may in an oddly counter-intuitive fashion serve to solidify the status-quo by providing a false facade of progress where there is none.

Here again, this is but a diversion from the main topic, which is the denial of reality, the big lie if you will, and how it impedes progress involving the very real problems facing our planet.

Let us start with just one, global warming and climate change; when you have a populace that lives in an air of irreality, and is basically fed dis-information on a mass scale, what other result can be expected besides denial? or a faith in a false cornucopia of goodies coming down the pike, just right around the next corner?

Since we are considering things on a grand global scale, let’s talk about Globalization, Agenda 21, and the Worldwide Socialist Conspiracy, as it is portrayed by one side in this misguided debate. Here we have the Establishment personified by our latest elected leaders assuring a not so gullible public that the latest “free trade” treaty will certainly improve their lives, create jobs, and be good for the environment; all while the jobs being created are all overseas, and fuel must be expended to move the raw materials around the globe. We have an expression hereabouts, it’s called “pissing on your head, and telling you it’s raining”. So, we have one side saying how it’s Big Business turning the globe into one giant slave plantation (my personal view), but then we have the other side, the Conspiracy Theorists, who say it’s all Agenda 21, the Governments of the World in thrall to their Socialist Ideology turning the planet into their personal Gulag and killing off 9/10ths of the population because everybody knows Commies hate kids and Satan has them under his power.

This is the kind of Clusterfuck you get when you tell lies to people.

There is issue after issue where the facts of the situation belie the reality, but issues are decided on a fact free basis. Let’s just try a hot button issue, one to get the juices flowing, so-called “immigration reform”. We are told here in the good old USA that it’s the “right thing to do”, it’s “only fair”, an appeal once again to high minded ideals and fuzzy models of social justice, but what is the reality? The reality is that we have tens of millions of unemployed and under-employed Americans, and we need additional workers like a hole in the head, but this fact is hardly ever alluded to, it is only addressed in the context of “Americans won’t do these jobs”, because Americans are just lazy and unmotivated, oddly enough the very same racist charge that used to be laid at the feet of the poor Mexicans. My, my, how the worm has turned. Of course left out of the discussion is that Americans might very well be willing to do these jobs (and I have), if they were paid enough to motivate them to get off their lazy duffs and go to work, the implication here, besides the group-think caricature, is that it’s just fine paying those poor dumb Mexicans what those smart Americans are unwilling to work for.

This is the kind of Clusterfuck you get when you tell lies to people.

Please believe me, I did not use the example of Immigration Reform to get anyone riled up, to take one side or the other, just to illustrate a point. The reality of the situation is that NAFTA opened up Mexican agricultural markets to subsidized corn grown in the US, and that corn farmers South of the Border have been dropping like flies, and the only beneficiaries have been, once again, Trans-National corporations. The reality is that Americans have been wising up to the fact that they are pretty much being raped by the ruling class and have been getting just that bit obstreperous, so it’s time for some fresh victims for the machine. My question her is what are TPTB going to do when our latest imports start to wise up? Martians? Venusians? or Machines?

Yes, dear reader, nothing like a bit of controversy, nothing like stirring people up, get’s their mind off the Big Lie, and it’s so easy, like home made pie. Yup, just fill people full of bullshit, do things that make absolutely not one lick of sense, and you can get that pot of seething resentment about ready to flip it’s lid. Before you know it, why, those poor dumb schmucks, they’ll be at each others throats for some reason or another, racism, sexism, this or that, it hardly matters; just so they never see the actual struggle is class based, and that it’s just as profitable to screw one group of people as another.

And here’s the beauty of it, the longer the merry-go-round can be kept operational? the friggin’ crazier the inmates become, until their heads are filled with so much insanity they don’t know which way is up, but be careful, when it stops they may just discharge every last little bit of that Strange Cargo.