I invented a tire that would never go flat, in the 3rd grade. I came up with the idea during study hall and within a few minutes I had drawn a rough picture of it and showed it to my teacher. The picture showed, instead of one big area of air, many little “cells” (think of a honeycomb) so that should one or two get punctured, the overall integrity of the tire would not be compromised.

The teacher scoffed at my little drawing and expued, “Why would we want that? If tires never went flat then no one would ever buy tires again and the tire makers would all go out of business.”

That was my introduction to the principle of planned obsolescence.  It was also the moment I realized that capitalism was largely a barbaric and stupid economic system. For though he was incorrect with respect to my cellular tires (they still wear out), he was generally correct as to the principle: benefiting society, really solving problems, making real quality products, and even saving lives, is more often than not, bad for business. Sure, there are exceptions to the rule. There always are with anything as complex as human society. But the principle is almost always applicable: if you’re in the business of making things, then making them too well will put you out of business. This is why our landfills are so huge.

Third grade was also the year I became a socialist. To my 10 year old mind, it was inconceivable to view any system that almost demands one to make a lesser product, to do poorly instead of well, or to even risk people’s safety in the name of profit, as anything other than insanity. And while I eventually moved beyond socialism, at least as it’s usually conceived, my disdain for capitalism has not waned. In fact, over the years, I have accumulated much more evidence of its inherent evil than Michael Moore could present in 10 movies.

I may present some of this evidence below, but at this point I just want to summarize my view: Capitalism is a savage, predatory economic system. It is the economy of savages because that is what most people are. It’s a wonder they don’t eat each other. Even the language of capitalism is predatory and sets things up as a conflict instead of people working together. This is clear not just with the more obvious terms like “vulture fund” or “hostile takeover”, but with one of the most fundamental terms: competition.

Yes, competition is one of the axioms of capitalism. And we all love a good fight. But let’s think about that word for a minute.

Compete

intr.v.

To strive against another or others to attain a goal, such as an advantage or a victory.

Now, we humans usually think of competition as a good thing. That is because we like our games so we can role play our savagery. And we like to think that a good competition makes us stronger, even when we lose.

But capitalism isn’t a game. It is chillingly real. And the losers are usually ordinary people who weren’t even aware that there was a game.

These are lives we’re talking about here. When “competition” closes down entire local economies, in thousands of small towns and neighborhoods across the country, it’s not a game at all. One day you’re a happy, well adjusted teenager and your biggest problem is that you hate your math class. Then, suddenly, the factory in your town closes and within three months, your family is homeless, your dad has moved to another state to find work, and your entire world has collapsed around you.

This is a true story. And it has been repeated millions of times over and over again for the last 20 years as “competition” has gutted the entire manufacturing sector of the economy and wiped out most of the middle class.

It is true that often enough, the losers in business competition are people who make an inferior product. But far more often they are families with kids.

I harp on the kid theme not because I think people who don’t have kids are any less important. But I see the health of our youth and our schools as the ultimate bellwether. For one, a society can be judged on how we treat the weakest among us. And the weakest among us are always our children. And secondly, kids in school represent our posterity in the most vivid way. And right now, across the country, our children and our schools are sick. Police are stationed on campuses that more resemble prison camps than places of higher learning.

But of course, this should be no surprise. Our country is sick. And it is so because our economy is sick.

Now, I’m sorry, but it is absurd to blame “Republicanism” or, more accurately, conservatism for the nature of capitalism. First of all, that would grotesquely let Democrats off the hook. But more importantly, it is just plain false. All conservatism is is code for “get your hands off my capitalism.” And that’s what we’ve seen over the last forty years. Not the replacement of true capitalism with some impure, Republicanized form. But the slow and steady de-shackling of capitalism in its true form.

It is a fact that we have seen a more benign expression of capitalism in the past. But that was not because capitalism was different then. It is because people weren’t as capitalistic then. Jonas Salk, who Michael Moore used in his film as an example of excellence without a profit motive, gave away the polio vaccine for free. Can you imagine anyone doing that now?

The fact is, up until a few decades ago, people’s behavior was still governed more by a sense of common decency than any market fundamentalism. All this free market, ‘self interests rises all boats’ nonsense was concocted in think tanks and spread with a multi-billion dollar PR campaign to recreate society in the image of Friedrich Hayek’s and Milton Friedman’s psychopathic conception of the rational, selfish man. Then they kind of gave up on rational and stuck with selfish.

Now, you can see the fruits of their labor in television ads depicting a father stealing the last Leggo from his son at breakfast. ‘So good you’ll steal food from your babies.’ Turns out they don’t really have to be that good at all because it was relatively easy to program people to be selfish. It’s in our nature. I started noticing the “selfishness” ads about 20 years ago. Are they part of the campaign to make us all like Ayn “The Virtues of Selfishness” Rand? Or do they just work?

In summation, what we are seeing now is total capitalism, where the moral codes of conduct (some of which were, granted, appalling) that guided most of society for centuries, and especially after the New Deal, have been replaced by capitalism’s purest state: market fundamentalism.

Haven’t you heard? There’s even talk of replacing government and the institutions of democracy with Market Democracy. Why have elections when you can vote every day with your credit card? Seriously, the smart people from the Ivy Leagues love this idea.

The predatory nature of capitalism, the way it turns people against people, and sets up almost all economic relationships as adversarial, is only one of many reasons why capitalism is evil. I could write ten essays on how capitalism and the environment are natural born enemies. But I won’t. In a nutshell, it is a system that brings out, encourages, and sometimes even requires the absolute worst in human beings. We need laws to both inspire and compel us to be better people. And the laws of capitalism do the exact opposite. It is a reversion to humans’ most primitive instincts. The laws of the jungle. Cannibalism bars where people go to eat pieces of human flesh are not out of the question if we continue down this trajectory.

No, the capitalist system has only survived this long, without devouring itself, because it was tempered by another system – social democracy.

As for the USA, it is the most powerful and influential force for capitalism in the world. And for decades, it has been destroying millions of lives, betraying the principles of democracy it was founded on, and murdering poor and indigenous peoples around the world to force the capitalistic model down the throat of mankind.

It is absolutely evil. Americans are shielded from it because they are sedated by drugs, alcohol and television. But in our names, powerful forces have been wreaking terror on the world for many years, all in the name of freedom and liberty. But what they were really doing was raping and pillaging.

Did the Nazis know that their country was evil? Did the Romans?

And don’t give me any crap about exporting democracy or any of the other propaganda that has been used to rob the rest of the planet for the last two centuries. The only thing we’ve exported is the opportunity to become lifelong consumers of cheap crap and poisonous, corporate grown foods.

Now don’t get me wrong. No one loves the promise of America, and the principles it was founded on more than me. But the US has been an evil, savage pillager of the world almost from its inception. Between Slavery, the Native American holocaust, and the wholesale devastation of the natural world, your great country will rank up there with the worst monstrosities of history. And from where I sit, it looks like it’s just getting warmed up.

Now, I know it’s not politically expedient to say the US is evil. I don’t care. It’s the truth. Period.

Meanwhile, I’m still waiting for a tire that won’t go flat. I gave my idea to the three tire manufacturers back in the early 70s. Still no reply.

When I was 10, in the 3rd grade, I invented a tire that would never go flat. I came up with the idea during study hall and within a few minutes I had drawn a rough picture of it and showed it to my teacher. The picture showed, instead of one big area of air, many little “cells” (think of a honeycomb) so that should one or two get punctured, the overall integrity of the tire would not be compromised.

The teacher scoffed at my little drawing and expued, “Why would we want that? If tires never went flat then no one would ever buy tires again and the tire makers would all go out of business.”

That was my introduction to the principle of planned obsolescence. It was also the moment I realized that capitalism was a moronic economic system. And though he was incorrect with respect to my cellular tires (they still wear out), he was generally correct as to the principle: really solving problems, making real quality products, and even saving lives is more often than not, bad for business. Sure, there are exceptions to the rule. There always are with anything as complex as human society. But the principle is almost always applicable: if you’re in the business of making things, then making them too well will put you out of business. This is why our landfills are so huge.

Third grade was also the year I became a socialist. To my 10 year old mind, it was inconceivable to view any system that almost demands one to make a lesser product, to do poorly instead of good, or to even risk people’s safety in the name of profit, as anything other than barbaric. And while I eventually moved beyond socialism, at least as it’s usually conceived, as a suitable replacement, my disdain for capitalism has not wained. In fact, over the years, I have accumulated much more evidence of its inherent evil than Michael Moore could present in 10 movies.

I may present some of this evidence below, but at this point I just want to express my current view: Capitalism is a predatory economic system. It is the economy of savages because that is what most people are. It’s a wonder they don’t eat each other. Even the language of capitalism is predatory. And not just the more obvious terms like vulture fund or hostile takeover, but one of the most fundamental terms: competition.

Compete

intr.v.

To strive against another or others to attain a goal, such as an advantage or a victory.

Now, we humans usually think of competition as a good thing. That is because we like our games. And we like to think that a good competition makes us stronger, even when we lose.

But capitalism isn’t a game. It is chillingly real. And the losers are usually ordinary people who weren’t even aware that there was a game.

These are lives we’re talking about here. When “competition” closes down entire local economies, in thousands of small towns and neighborhoods across the country, it’s not a game at all. One day you’re a happy, well adjusted teenager and your biggest problem is that you hate your math class. Then, suddenly, the factory in your town closes and within three months, your family is homeless, your dad has moved to another state to find work, and your entire world has collapsed around you.

This is a true story. And it has been repeated millions of times over and over again for the last 20 years as “competition” has gutted the entire manufacturing sector of the economy and wiped out most of the middle class.

It is true that often enough, the losers in business competition are people who make an inferior product. But far more often they are families with kids.

I harp on the kid theme not because I think people who don’t have kids are any less important. But I see the health of our youth and our schools as the ultimate bellwether. For one, a society can be judged on how we treat the weakest among us are always our children. And secondly, kids in school represent our posterity in the most vivid way. And right now, across the country, our children and our schools are sick. Police are stationed on campuses that more resemble prison camps than places of higher learning.

But of course, this should be no surprise. Our country is sick. And it is so because our economy is sick.

Now, I’m sorry, but it is absurd to blame “Republicanism” or, more accurately, conservatism for the nature of capitalism. First of all, that would grotesquely let Democrats off the hook. But more importantly, it is just plain false. All conservatism is is code for “get your hands off my capitalism.” And that’s what we’ve seen over the last forty years. Not the replacement of true capitalism with some impure, Republicanized form. But the slow and steady de-shackling of capitalism in its true form.

It is a fact that we have seen a more benign expression of capitalism in the past. But that was not because capitalism was different then. It is because people weren’t as capitalistic then. Jonas Salk, who Michael Moore used in his film as an example of excellence without a profit motive, gave away the polio vaccine for free. Can you imagine anyone doing that now?

The fact is, up until a few decades ago, people’s behavior was still governed more by a sense of common decency than any market fundamentalism. All this free market, self interests rises all boats nonsense was concocted in think tanks and spread with a multi-billion dollar PR campaign to recreate society in the image of Friedrich Hayek’s and Milton Friedman’s psychopathic conception of the rational, selfish man. Then they kind of gave up on ration and stuck with selfish.

Now, you can see the fruits of their labor in television ads depicting a father stealing the last Leggo from his son at breakfast. ‘So good you’ll steal food from your babies.’ Turns out they don’t really have to be that good at all because it was relatively easy to program people to be selfish. It’s in our nature. I started noticing the “selfishness” ads about 20 years ago. Are they part of the campaign to make us all like Ayn “The Virtues of Selfishness” Rand? Or do they just work?

In summation, what we are seeing now is total capitalism, where the moral codes of conduct (some of which were, granted, appalling) that guided most of society for centuries, and especially after the New Deal, have been replaced by capitalism’s purest state: market fundamentalism.

Haven’t you heard? There’s even talk of replacing government and the institutions of democracy with Market Democracy. Why have elections when you can vote every day with your credit card? Seriously, the smart people from the Ivy Leagues love this idea.

The predatory nature of capitalism, the way it turns people against people, and sets up almost all economic relationships as adversarial, is only one of many reasons why capitalism is evil. I could write ten essays on how capitalism and the environment are natural born enemies. But I won’t. In a nutshell, it is a system that brings out, encourages, and sometimes even requires the absolute worst in human beings. We need laws to both inspire and compel us to be better people. And the laws of capitalism do the exact opposite. It is a reversion to humans’ most primitive instincts. The laws of the jungle. Cannibalism bars where people go to eat pieces of human flesh are not out of the question if we continue down this trajectory.

No, the capitalist system has only survived this long, without devouring itself, because it was tempered by another system – social democracy.

As for the USA, it is the most powerful and influential force for capitalism in the world. And for decades, it has been destroying millions of lives, betraying the principles of democracy it was founded on, and murdering poor and indigenous peoples around the world to force the capitalistic model down the throat of mankind.

It is absolutely evil. Americans are shielded from it because they are sedated by drugs, alcohol and television. But in our names, powerful forces have been wreaking terror on the world for many years, all in the name of freedom and liberty. But what they were really doing was raping and pillaging.

Did the Nazis know that their country was evil? Did the Romans?

And don’t give me any crap about exporting democracy or any of the other propaganda that has been used to rob the rest of the planet for the last two centuries. The only thing we’ve exported is an American dream that is nothing more than the opportunity to become lifelong consumers of cheap crap and poisonous, corporate grown foods.

Now don’t get me wrong. No one loves the promise of America, and the principles it was founded on more than me. But the US has been an evil, savage pillager of the world almost from its inception. Between Slavery, the Native American holocaust, and the wholesale devastation of the natural world, your great country will rank up there with the worst monstrosities of history. And from where I sit, it looks like it’s just getting warmed up.

Meanwhile, I’m still waiting for a tire that won’t go flat. I gave my idea to the three tire manufacturers back in the early 70s. Still no reply.

Bankers testify…

I’ve spent the last 10 years doing almost nothing but studying politics and the super-rich. I’m very fortunate in that I don’t have to work. I make my money as a writer and am able to devote my time to whatever I want. What I wanted, and had wanted for years, was to figure out who pulls the fucking strings around here.

I wish I had remained ignorant. I began to use the mafia model to understand American and, indeed, global politics about 4 years ago. It best describes the situation in a way average people can relate to. Turns out, there’s a reason for this. Humans just like to organize into clans. It’s a sociological phenomenon. You can even see it in play in the leftosphere with little crowds and their various email lists.

This phenomenon goes all the way to the top. Globally you have hundreds of “crowds”, some of which intersect, acting like so many crime families. These “interests” assert power in various ways, sometime legally (it’s easy to remain legal when you write the laws – ask Bernie Madoff), and sometimes as illegally as any mobster operation.

It’s hard to visualize the organizational structure of such an array of interests. In many ways, it’s not very organized at all. This is what I always try to convey to people who want to see everything in a conspiratorial framework – it is far more complex, dynamic, and evolving.

Maybe there is some superpowerful Illuminatti out there. But I haven’t seen it. But there are big fish. And that crowd is the most dangerous. They are the bankers, arms manufacturers, oil barons. These are the untouchables. They control (not as one) corporations, private armies and intelligence agencies. They form the revolving door community of the big think tanks, government positions in Treasury, State, and the Senate, and they rarely ever get taken down.

The story of geopolitics is really the story of these big fish, working together on occasion, at war with each other on other occasions. It’s all very nasty business, but that’s the game if you want to be a billionaire.

These different interests rarely ever completely align but for a couple of exceptions: they almost all want to globalize the planet so they can conduct inter.., no, transnational commerce unimpeded, and they don’t give a shit about democracy or any other people empowerment ideas that can ruin their good thing.

Some really do want to form a world government of sorts, but it’s not the one the conspiracy theorists are always babbling about. Others prefer a wild west type of world and they try to sow instability so they can exploit it. These two groups, loosely defined, have been battling it out for decades. Guess who’s winning?

The stable world crowd once dominated and saw themselves as stewards of the meek. They didn’t mind socialism much and saw keeping the masses happy and complacent as the way to secure their dominance – soft power. Then in the 60s, the wild westers started to make a stand. Armed with shitloads of Texas oil money, they went after the Eastern establishment and helped shape the latter half of the 20th Century into something far more monstrous than the Rockefeller brother even conceived. And that’s saying something.

Then there was also just an element of unpredictability. Poachers and financial wizards moved on Wall Street and helped wild westify it without any ideological motive. They just seized the opportunity. And by the 80s it was pretty much anything goes.

As for how all this speaks for our democracy, people power, and the prospects of a young, wet behind the ears president, I don’t have a lot of hope. Just google “business roundtable”. Scroll down the list of thousands of hits, scanning quickly all the different chapters, front organizations, groups and subgroups in different states, cities and countries. This is just a fraction of the “Interests” network. Then think of ours.

The Business Roundtable is a lobby set up in the late 60s to take on the so-called liberal agenda. It’s main organization comprises the CEOs of the biggest corporations in the world. It’s sub-chapters, for lack of a better word, are in the thousands. They coordinate with the Chamber of Commerce and all their thousands of organization, the National Association of Manufacturers, and countless other business lobbies and thinktanks. It is a multi-billion dollar army with and army of PR firms to manipulate public perceptions.

Of course, they need to spend all that money because their agenda is wholly unpopular with the public.

There is really only one organization on the planet that can even remotely take on such an omnipresent organization as the corporate lobby – the US federal government with the support of the American people.

And that will inevitably fail too unless a critical mass obtains and we remove the central instrument of control these interests have over our government – money.

We can try all we want to “elect better Dems” or any otgher strategy we can think of, but none will work until we remove completely the influence of money over our political system. It’s that simple.

All this bullshit about netroots donors and small contributions are that – bullshit.

We can’t afford our government and we don’t have the organizational structure to do it even if we could. It’s a pipe dream. A constitutional amendment banning ever giving a politician or a candidate a single penny is the only way – followed by the construction of a public financing regime and serious media reform that forces media corporations to allow us to conduct our democracy for free on OUR airwaves.

And as long as those media corporations are the primary source of information among the American people, there will never be a critical mass. If religion is the opiate of the masses, television is a coma.

This is it. Our only chance. I give us about 3 in 100 odds of success.

I was moved by Buhdy’s anniversary essay, 2 Fucking Years that was posted last weekend.  One of the themes of that essay that stood out to me was an affirmation of love in the cause. That was actually a bit shocking to me. In my real life, I make a living as a writer, poet, wordsmith etc. I take words pretty seriously. And I also take honesty most seriously of all. And I have to confess, I am not sure what love even means in the context of my political activism. Is it the love you might find on a postcard? Or on a t-shirt with a peace sign? Is it Jesus love, of the all mankind variety? Or was it just the love of a blog owner towards the people who put their hearts and souls into the community?

I can’t really answer any of those questions, though I feel where Buhdy was coming from. But to be clear, it is not just love that drives me. In fact, I would say there is an equal part of pure hatred.

When I was 15, I had an epiphany. I had been studying the origins of anger for a psychology class. And in a moment of illumination, it dawned on me – all anger, frustration, aggravation etc. pretty much result from one thing: expectations not met. Eliminate expectations and you will eliminate anger and frustration. So I spent the next 4 or 5 years dedicated to eliminating expectations. Or more accurately, I slowly learned to expect frustrating things. Traffic pissing you off? Learn to anticipate it, make time for it, even turn it into valuable time with audio tapes or whatever. Expect people to be bad drivers. Expect people to lie, cheat and steal. Expect the weather to suck. Eventually I became a pretty docile creature (the fact that I was high most of the time didn’t hurt). In fact, I became a fucking pushover. People saw my docility as weakness, and seized on it. I was robbed, wronged, and left out in the cold until I finally realized, some expectations are necessary. And so is some anger.

I expect my friends not to stab me in the back. I expect my daughter not to run out into the street and will react angrily if she does so. And I expect my government, my democratic government of, by, and for the people, not to systematically work to undermine the well being of the people to whom it represents.

I also expect my government to be corruptible and flawed. A utopianist I am not. But I do not expect, nor can I tolerate my government as an enemy of its own people. And that is certainly what it has become. It has been overthrown. Conquered as surely as if tanks were parked on the mall in Washington. But this enemy is far more clever than the sword. It is a silent, subversive enemy. It has taken us by induction. And we have walked into its grip unknowing, without hesitation.

My anger, my rage can only be measured against the atrocities occurring around us and the lack of will to do anything about it. Or most commonly, the lack of will to even notice. This is a picture of a woman I met a couple of months ago at a McDonalds (don’t ask me why I was at a McDonalds). She was 79 years old. You can clearly see scoliosis has set in with the the curvature of her back. I had heard about McDonalds hiring seniors as some sort of good will gesture ;). So in the most tactful way I could, I tried to get out of her why she was working there without embarrassing her. The best I got was a sardonic quip that confirmed her employment was not by choice (she was fully in charge of her faculties and quite a character). I didn’t need to ask her though. It was obvious that this work, which would have been fairly easy for most people, was too much for her. She couldn’t keep up. She knew she couldn’t keep up, and that appeared to scare her. It was one of the saddest things I’ve ever seen in my life.  I asked her if I could take her picture and she obliged.

When I got back to the table, my three year old daughter asked me if I was crying. I lied to her and told her I wasn’t. Then she asked me if I was angry. I lied again. I was enraged. And I’m still enraged – about her and countless other injustices and atrocities I see ever single day.

I refuse to lower my expectations of a society that has so much and allows so many to suffer. It is simply unacceptable.

Is that love? Absolutely. I absolutely love that old woman. But I despise whoever and whatever made it so she, at her age, in this fucking country, found herself needing to get a job. And I would happily see their heads on sticks if I thought it would remedy the situation.

This is war. Our country is under attack as surely as if bombs were dropping on our heads. But it’s not a combat war. The weapon of choice for our enemy is a box with electrons flickering across the screen. But it is war none the less. And I am not Jesus. I do not love my enemy.

But I sure was happy to read Buhdy’s essay.  That is because I don’t believe putting people’s heads on sticks could ever remedy anything (although it just dawned on me that Photoshopping people’s heads on sticks might be amusing). And I need all the reminder I can get that this war must be won with ideas. Ideas of justice, peace, and yes, love.

I was moved by Buhdy’s anniversary essay, 2 Fucking Years where he reinjected a dose of spirituality into the conversation.

The theme of that essay that stood out to me was an affirmation of love in the cause. That was actually a bit shocking to me. In my real life, I make a living as a writer, poet, wordsmith etc. I take words pretty seriously. And I also take honesty most serious of all. And I have to confess, I am not sure what love even means in the context of my political activism. Is it the love you might find on a postcard? Or on a t-shirt with a peace sign? Is it Jesus love, of the all mankind variety? Or was it just the love of a blog owner towards the people who put their hearts and souls into this community?

I can’t really answer any of those questions, though I feel where Buhdy was coming from. But to be clear, it is not just love that drives me. In fact, I would say there is an equal part of pure hatred.

When I was 15, I had an epiphany. I had been studying the origins of anger for a psychology class. And in a moment of light, it dawned on me – all anger, frustration, aggravation etc. result primarily from one thing: expectations not met. Eliminate expectations and you will eliminate anger and frustration. So I spent the next 4 or 5 years dedicated to eliminating expectations. It’s pretty hard, but I eventually became a most docile creature (the fact that I was high most of the time didn’t hurt). In fact, I became a fucking pushover. People saw my docility as weakness, and seized on it. I was robbed, wronged, and left out in the cold until I finally realized, some expectations are necessary. And so is some anger.

I have refined over the last 25 years or so the concept. I now try to limit it to unrealistic expectations. I expect my wife not to have an affair. I expect my friends not to stab me in the back. And I expect my government, my democratic government of, by, and for the people, not to systematically work to undermine the well being of the people to whom the government represents.

I expect my government to be corruptible and flawed. A utopianist I am not. But I do not expect, nor can I tolerate my government as an enemy of its own people. And that is certainly what it has become. It has been over thrown. Conquered as surely as if tanks were parked on the mall in Washington. But this enemy is far more clever than the sword. It is a silent, subversive enemy. It has taken us by induction. And we have walked into its grip unknowing, without hesitation.

My anger, my rage can only be measured against the atrocities occurring around us and the lack of will to do anything about it. Or most commonly, the lack of will to even notice. This is a picture of a woman I met a couple of months ago at a McDonalds (don’t ask me why I was at a McDonalds). She was 79 years old. You can clearly see scoliosis has set in with her curved spine. I had heard about McDonalds hiring seniors as some sort of good will gesture ;). So in the most tactful way I could, I tried to get out of her why she was working there without embarrassing her. The best I got was a sardonic quip that confirmed her employment was not by choice (she was fully in charge of her faculties and quite a character). I asked her if I could take her picture and she obliged.

When I got back to the table, my three year old daughter asked me why I was crying. I lied to her and told her I wasn’t. Then she asked me if I was mad. No sweetie, not at you. Is that love? Absolutely. I absolutely love that woman. And I despise whoever and whatever made it so she, at her age, in this fucking country, found herself needing to get a job. To be certain I hold no ill will against the manager of that McDonalds. The people who put that woman there live far, far away.

This is war. Our country is under attack as surely as if bombs were dropping on our heads. But it’s not a combat war. The weapon of choice for our enemy is a box with electrons flickering across the screen. But it is war none the less. And I am not Jesus. I do not love my enemy.

Nor do I love the sycophantic droves of the netroots who worship at the alter of their own self importance. I can understand people believing that the Democratic party is the best instrument to push a progressive agenda. But I have little patience for people who rake in big bucks selling that idea like snake oil when they are merely securing their own positions among the Democratic establishment that has clearly been bought and is clearly not on our side.

There was a time when the goal of the broader progressive movement was in alignment with the broader Democratic party electorate. That was when Howard Dean was still a viable candidate. After that, however, the very real and very important People Power movement that had arisen around the Dean candidacy became dissolved in the solvent of John Kerry’s scotch and soda and a party machine that had no purpose for people power other than a means to raise cash.

Since then a cottage industry has emerged as various netroots entities all vie for the top slot as the best bundlers of netroots loot. While securing their own positions in this new hierarchy of the Democratic money game, they betray the most fundamental principle of reform: removing the corrupting influence of money.

It is a lie. We are never going to be able to buy our party back, especially with small contributions from the internet. Obama did not break records for small contributions. The Beatles are not getting back together, and we the people, even if there were a means to organize such contributions, don’t have the fucking money.

We are never going to elect better Democrats because there is no applicable methodology within our campaign framework to determine if a candidate is good or a candidate is bad. You think you know your candidate? You don’t. It’s a TV show.

Even if we could see into people’s souls, it’s not the people anyway. I would bet that at least half of the most uselessly corrupt Democrats in Congress started out wanting to change the world for the better. It’s the system. It always has been.

So this leaves only one remedy, and unfortunately for some celebrity bloggers, it doesn’t include them riding in limos. Leverage.

And that means that the central hub of progressive activism-via-Democratic party, Daily Kos, is wasted enterprise – except in terms of profit to the Daily Kos Corporation.

The two primary objectives espoused on that site, get Democrats elected, and advance the progressive agenda, are mutually exclusive.

This means that, unless my strategic calculation is incorrect, and it is not which is why ALL of our real political opponents from Big Insurance to the Banking Cartels utilize it, then the progressive movement has some soul searching to do. And I don’t know if love is going to assist in that.  

The conspiracy theorist label is the cleverest tool the conspirators have come up with to deter the people from investigating and questioning their (the people’s) own government.

The truth is, the greatest threat to our national security is not an external foe, but the secrecy of our own government. Secrecy mis-justified by the claim that it is in the interest of national security. How convenient for the profiteers of the national security state.

The threat obtains in two fundamental ways: direct subversion of our constitution and the will of the people, and blowback.

Subversion is on clear display not just with Bushco, but the entire congress’s passage of the Patriot Act and their failure to retaliate against the tapping of our phones by the Bush NSA and ATT.

Blowback is also on clear display throughout the world, not just with terrorism, but severe geopolitical realignments as a result of the neocon pax Americana agenda.

The American people have been brainwashed into thinking that secrecy is required to keep us safe. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The 50th anniversary of the 1947 National Security Act just passed us (July 26, 1947). These last fifty years have seen this establishment of what Bill Moyers called the “Secret Government” bring, not expanded peace and security in the world, but the exploitation of this secrecy to effectively subvert the institutions of democracy and the rule of law.

The release of a few of the CIA’s “family jewels” is testimony to a mere glimpse of this secret government in action.

And so concerned Americans attempt to investigate.  With scant information they attempt to connect the dots. They dig out documents with FOIA requests, datamine MSM reports, and catalog whistleblower accounts to try to get an accurate image to emerge.

And for this they get mocked and ridiculed, venomously attacked, lied about and even their rights violated. Some, indeed, go to prison. Sadly, these attacks come from the left as the cowards who don’t have the courage to fight, bow to the “conventional wisdom” of the corporate controlled media – the big infomercial for the status quo – that citizens investigating their own government are “conspiracy theorists” who are somehow not credible.

Indeed, there is a certain segment of the population that will believe almost anything, from bigfoot to alien abductions. Serious evidence is an obstacle for these folks because they want to believe in the extraordinary, the supernatural, a myth.

But the use of these people to discredit serious, objective citizen researchers is nothing but a propaganda technique. And the cowards on the left who cry “tinfoil” and mock legitimate research are accomplices. They, through their weakness of mind, are enemies of the people’s right to question their government.

They would have you believe that powerful people never conspire and that trying to piece together the speckled evidence of these conspiracies is only  for the realm of nuttery.

But they are fools. We know for a fact that powerful people conspire constantly and in secret. US Attorney-gate was a conspiracy. Iran Contra was a conspiracy. Watergate was a conspiracy. The plan to take our country to war in Iraq was a conspiracy. The program to illegally spy tap America’s phones was a conspiracy.

Hell, the entire Bush administration agenda was a conspiracy.

But we are somehow supposed to believe that these are aberrations. That when Dick Cheney and his pals in the oil cartel get together, they talk about the Yankees.

But secrecy creates a vacuum of hard evidence. And whenever there’s a vacuum, people tend to fill it in with imagination. This is not the X-Files. There is no freakin Illuminati pulling all the strings. The best way for us plebes to visualize the networking structure of conspirators of the national security state, the corporatist class, and the wealthy and powerful in general is the the mafia. Complete with crime families and godfathers. Feudal lords works too but most people don’t know what the hell that means. We know a lot more about the mafia because, at various times, our government has chosen not to protect them.

Of course, you can take the analogy only so far. But one analog is persistent – they’re all a bunch of murdering, thieving criminals. And they all conspire. In fact, one of the most successful prosecutions for mobsters is conspiracy.

Personally, I somewhat support the ban on CTs at this site. But only because I have no interest in anyone’s theory about anything. I want facts.

But the greatest failure of Democrats and the progressive left in the last 8 years has been to allow the delusional ravings of a few to inoculate the Bush junta on 911. Just because some think that space beams destroyed the Twin Towers is no reason to believe the depiction of 911 presented by Bush/Cheney or the fraud that is the 911 Commission. There’s nothing realistic about believing the Bush administration has lied about everything except 911.

One doesn’t need to to theorize about 911 to prove that the story we’ve been told doesn’t ad up. And if we can invest 1000 man-hours investigating Jeff Gannon, don’t you think the sole source of Bush’s power to destroy our nation deserves a little attention?

Watch ‘9/11 Press for Truth’. This fact based, high quality documentary doesn’t propose a conspiracy. But it raises some serious freakin questions. And it’s all the result of data mining MSM reports.

Watch the BBC’s ‘Power of Nightmares.’ It shows how the neocons needed a new devil after the fall of the USSR. It has nothing to do with 911 conspiracy theories. But it will probably completely change your view of al Qaeda and all these terror hypes the Big Infomercial is always selling.

Over 40% of the public doesn’t believe Bushco on 911. That doesn’t mean they all think it was an inside job. But if you think that doesn’t help Democrats politically then you should keep your day job. If those numbers got up to 65%, I’m not sure a Republican could ever be elected again.

I just want people to understand they let it happen. Because that is the proven truth, so far. Whether they let it happen on purpose is a legitimate line of investigation. But because of the left’s phobia with 911, we can’t even get the message out that Bushco let 911 happen through incompetence. And that pisses me off.

I don’t believe in the biblical definition of evil – devils and demons and all that. So I’m not sure what is required in Barack Obama’s mind to qualify.

But in my mind, there is no better definition of evil than systematically allowing thousands of sick men, women and children to suffer and die each year by suddenly denying them the health care treatment they HAD BEEN COUNTING ON, that they had been PAYING FOR.

Out of all the things Obama said in that speech last night, that is the one that offends me most. To defend these monsters, yet again, is disgusting.

I made the mistake of following Buhdy over to DKos for his excellent diary, “Obama: There Is No 11th Dimension” and what a spectacle.

Right now, they are all gushing over Obama’s speech. This was predictable. Charismatic speakers have the ability to make people lose themselves and their rationality. And it was also sort of striking too to see the limits on that gushingness. Clearly, Obama has lost credibility to many.

But what I haven’t seen is an honest assessment of what just happened. Obama, after an almost 2 week buildup, finally made his big speech and, unless I missed something, delivered the same confusing, ambiguous, weaselly, mealy mouthed bullshit message he and his staff have been bungling for months.

So weak and undefined was his position on the public option, that people are trying to figure out what it means as we speak. Trying to figure out the position of the White House has been a fun game for the establishment pundit class for weeks. Like children, they are more easily amused. For me, at this point, it is just sad and pathetic.

Of course, the loyalist sense Obama’s lameness, on some level, so there’s an insane feeding frenzy on this clown who yelled “lie” when Obama said illegals won’t be covered. They would rather break out the torches for this guy’s head than deal with the fact that dear leader just threw them under the bus.

It’s really a bit scary to witness. I only mention all this is because this is how Obama conquered and neutralized the left. All of those people who would be marching in the streets if this were a Bush or McCain night, suddenly become masters of spin for Obama. I mean we’re talking 10,000 Terry McAuliffs here, all just as conniving, disingenuous, and full of shit.

Meanwhile, though I haven’t read it, I heard that Team Obama just sent out an email to all their Organize for America members announcing Obama’s new plan that included the public option. That sounds like a bold announcement. Wonder why such a bold announcment wasn’t part of the speech.

Jane Hamshire summed up what was in Obama’s speech quite concisely:

No commitment to a public plan, just open to one.

Obama is open to triggers.

Obama is open to co-ops.

I can’t wait to find out which presentation is the truth, the one before Congress and the nation tonight, or the one sent out in an email to Obama’s loyal supporters.

I first saw such a maneuver a few months back, over Iraq I think, where the president did a Saturday address and was, as usual, very cautious and useless in his rhetoric. Then, he released this fiery speech that captured some of the fight that got him elected,… on Youtube.

I wish I had written about it then. Tale of Two Obamas was my title. Now, it seems more relevant than ever. Is the White House political machine playing us like we’re idiots. This is what Bushco did. Say anything to rile their base and release it only on Fox, sort of just for that audience. It was a way to keep their base duped without having to pass the smell test to the rest of the press corp.