Loren Bliss: Dispatches from Dystopia

THE MOUNTING HORRORS of terminal climate change foster the sort of news reports I deliberately exclude from Dispatches, a practice that today I am momentarily abandoning.

As a prelude though let me explain the three reasons that prompt such exclusions:

Firstly, disasters are invariably headlined by Mainstream Media, which means all of us are constantly deluged with all such news. In contrast, the purpose of Dispatches is ferreting out relevant information to which we might not otherwise have immediate access.

Secondly, Mainstream Media typically eliminates any mechanism of empathy beyond the solicitation of contributions to Capitalism-sustaining “charities.” It thus reduces disasters to pornographic spectacles of death and destruction. Nor is this accidental. It occurs because far too many USians – especially the JesuNazis and their ilk – find it obscenely titillating to witness the suffering of others, particularly when those others have darker skins: precisely why the professional descendants of Josef Goebbels reap such grotesquely huge profits by exploiting mass tragedy.

Thirdly, the pornification of disaster exemplifies perfectly the misdirection by which Capitalism offers us the televised equivalent of lynchings or mass executions to distract us from its culpability in the tragedies and atrocities themselves.“If it bleeds, it leads” is therefore far more than editorial policy. It is also disclosure both of the sadistic nature of Capitalism and the fact that by offering vicarious fulfillment of sadism – re-creation of the opiate provided by the Roman Colosseum – the Capitalists cunningly numb rebellious impulse and thus perpetuate their omnipotence.

Nevertheless amidst the resultant effluent of disaster porn there occasionally appears, like some rare jewel borne into our field of vision on a torrent of turds, a report about climate-change that genuinely expands our knowledge of what it means, who is to blame and what – if indeed anything at all – might yet be done to prevent our extinction.

But disaster of such inconceivable magnitude also demands a telling metaphor, even if the metaphor itself is based on popular misconception, as is surely the case when I describe the horrors of climate change as “pterodactyls coming home to roost,” which honors the murdered Malcolm X (“chickens coming home to roost”)  even as it adapts his apt description of the murder of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy to the inconceivably greater murder of our species and our planet by Capitalist greed rationalized by the patriarchal contempt and hatred for all that is female, most especially our Mother Earth.

Popular imagination envisions the pterodactyl as a winged Tyrannosaurus Rex, perpetually thirsty for blood and insatiably hungry for living flesh, the most nightmarish creature ever to hunt our planetary skies. It thus gives us an appropriate symbol for the relentless airborne deadliness of terminal climate change. It also gives animated form to our belief the petroleum with which we have fatally poisoned ourselves and our environment is the liquefied putrescence of dinosaurs. And the last syllable of the name of one of pterodactyl's  cousins, pteranodon, could be taken as a reference to theocracy-enabler Donald Trump, the USian emperor whose JesuNazi-mandated surrender to the apocalypse has in all probability damned our species' to extinction and guaranteed the reduction of our beloved Earth to the ultimate bug planet.

Meanwhile there is no denying climate change has escalated from scary threat to deadly omnipresent horror  (see also my contribution to the linked report's comment thread).

As explained by Paul Fleckenstein in a recent address to a local chapter of the International Socialist Organization (ISO), only Marxism can save us from extinction. Cuba's great success in coping with hurricanes –  particularly in contrast to deadly U.S. failures – underscores the functionality of the Marxist humanitarianism Capitalism forever seeks to exterminate. (The foregoing URL also accesses a vital but probably useless petition to free Ana Belén Montes, which I nevertheless signed as an act of fuck-the-Empire defiance and hope you will sign likewise.) And as much as I distrust Amy Goodman and her Democracy Now – were it truly revolutionary, it would have been suppressed long ago – her broadcast on “why Cubans are 15 times less likely to die from hurricanes” provides further documentation of how Marxism saves lives and might thereby save our species.

Then there is Elizabeth West's poignant essay,  which tells us by implication why – if indeed we are to have any chance at all of saving ourselves – all Marxists must become Mother Earth's pagans and all Mother Earth's pagans must become Marxists, and why we cannot effectively begin our work to preserve our species and our planet until we rid ourselves of the shackles imposed by Abrahamic religion and its direct descendants Capitalism and fascism.

There is also this, which given its Mainstream Media origin you may have already seen or heard, but it is included here as, to date, the most complete BDA (bomb-damage-assessment-type) accounting of the physical destruction inflicted by Hurricane Irma.

For the record and in conclusion, here too are the scientific truths about pterodactyl, pteranodon and petroleum, a paleontological potpourri supplemented by an essay on the role of the bug planet in sustaining a “happily fascist world.”

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Now for the Rest of the Accumulated News Since 11 September:

Lest We Forget All Fascists Are Murderers and Should Be Treated Accordingly, 15 September marked the 54th anniversary of the Birmingham Church Bombing, in which the Ku Klux Klan murdered four young black girls and wounded 19 others. Two other blacks were also slain by bigots in Birmingham, Alabama that day, as if in white supremacist celebration of the original atrocity.

White New Hampshire Teens Try to Lynch Biracial Child, White Cops (Predictably) Do Nothing until the boy's outraged mother posts a photo of her son's rope-torn neck on Facebook, the post goes viral and the resultant outcry embarrasses the authorities into reluctant action. (The foregoing link is to most complete of several alternative-media reports.) As usual, the Trump/Pence Regime responds with the silence of approval.

Yet Another White Cop Beats a Murder Charge for Gunning Down Another Unarmed Black: the archetypal USian story repeated ad nauseam.  

White Supremacists Use Captive Courts to Further Their Suppression of Black Voters, the nasty tactic evident in the relentless persecution of a Georgia city official.

A Legislator Vows to Run Over Protesters, Thereby Applauding the Murder of Heather Heyer: the headline tells the whole story, yet another example of the JesuNazi predilection for violence against which we should all be prepared.

Sante Fe Cops Prove It's Not Just Blacks in White Supremacist Gunsights. Still another report on white USian police brutality, this time targeting First Nations people.

Harvard Endorses War Crimes by Embracing War Criminals, Rejecting Chelsea Manning. Of all the reports on this disheartening but predictable revelation of Harvard's replacement of educational open-mindedness with closed-minded fascist malevolence, Robert Parry's is the most complete.

How the Empire Is Ginning Up World War III: Now that the Capitalists have raped our Mother Earth to ruin, they must find someone to blame for the apocalypse – and what better way than provoking war with Russia?  Note too Vladimir Putin's determined efforts for peace,  all of which are, of course, suppressed or distorted by Mainstream Media in its Josef Goebbels function as the world's first for-profit Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, owned by the same One Percenters who own and control USian government at every level.

The Empire Fucks Itself – Again – This Time by Alienating South Korea: the breathtaking karmic irony of the Maker of Banana Republics reducing itself to the biggest banana republic yet. From the text: “Russia’s evolving political entente with both South Korea and Japan is providing support for...(reshaping)... regional populations for a generation to come: revival of plans to build a $50 billion rail-auto bridge linking Hokkaido with the Russian island of Sakhalin, thus uniting Japan with the continent and facilitating freight shipments across Russia to Europe.”

Does the United States Have Any Future beyond Bedlam and Apocalypse? Gilbert Doctorow gets right to the point.

On the “Specific Horrors to Being an American When You Become Aware of the Truth”: an especially compelling essay by Missy Comley Beattie titled, with maximum intentional sarcasm, “Why I Wish Hillary Clinton Had Won.”

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Neoliberalism Is Everywhere the Same, But the Resistance to It Is Stronger Outside USia. French President Emmanuel Macron reveals himself as another Barack Obama and the French Working Class responds accordingly  rather than cower in submission as the USian Working Class so often does. Seems the French Ruling Class ran an overt fascist to elect a closet fascist. Was this the ploy that backfired in the U.S.? Or was the Trump/Pence victory the One Percent's clandestine intent? No matter; either way our overlords win. Either way Capitalism continues its metamorphosis into fascism.

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Single-Payer Situation Report

As We All Know, There Is No “Care” in USian Healthcare – Nor Will There Ever Be. Even so, the newest campaign for socialized medicine (which I fervently support, and have fervently supported for as long as I can remember), is interesting from at least three perspectives.

One is the issue itself: will we remain fatally imprisoned in the death house of health “care” as a privilege of wealth, or will we somehow muster the courage necessary to liberate ourselves from Capitalism and finally achieve healthcare as a human right?

Two is the present campaign's deliberately deceptive optimism, so reminiscent of the optimism generated by the Democratic (sic) Party's all-time Big Lie of “change we can believe in.” Let us resolve to never, ever, be again so utterly duped by the Capitalists and their Ruling Class vassals.

Three is the campaign's psychological warfare function as the precursor to another epidemic of politically-induced alienation – the self-disenfranchisement that so effectively serves the One Percent. I would not at all be surprised if the (inescapable) failure of this newest single-payer campaign triggers another abandonment of the ballot-box at least as widespread as was provoked by the unprecedentedly malicious deception that preceded Obama the Orator's shape-shift into Barack the Betrayer.

Indeed I have no doubt intensification of the doomed campaign's vast potential for inflicting by its failure a new plague of weaponized alienation is the sole reason it is garnering support from the Democrats or any other members of the Ruling Class. Let us never forget all of its supportive politicians are mere puppets of the One Percent. They would not be allowed to hold office were it otherwise.

Think, people. To imagine our Capitalist overlords will ever give up their murderous profiteering and allow such humanitarian legislation to be enacted is to again fall prey to the Big Lie of “our democracy” and thus to invite post-defeat collapse into (often genuinely clinical) depression. Understand the Evil that confronts us, the magnitude and cunning of the Capitalists as they metamorphose into JesuNazis. If we are to achieve healthcare as a human right, we must first win the socialist revolution the vast USian majority is too cravenly subjugated to even contemplate.

(An earlier story that foretells the doom of single-payer, albeit in far less financial detail than the Common Dreams investigative report linked above, is here,  linked only to share my contributions to its comment thread.)

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Dangerously Subversive Reading and Discussion

In Eloquent Rebuttal to Neoliberal Propagandist Ta-Nahesi Coates and his latest defense of Capitalism-bolstering identity politics, Paul Street characterizes  “The First White President” as “more brilliant bourgeois bullshit” and exposes how Coates, like Obama, tries to hide his fascism behind his dark skin.

Book Excerpt from Michel Chossudovsky's always-relevant America's “War on Terrorism”: Can you say “Reichstag Fire”?

Jeffrey St. Clair Leverages a Review of Hillary's Newest Tome into a Devastating Exposure of the Real Hillary. A delicious sample of his text: “This egotistical gibberish comes from the woman who seemed eager to bring the world to the brink of nuclear holocaust over Syria and Ukraine...What Happened is a sordid book, petulant and spiteful. It made me feel queasy and dirty while reading it, like the whole 25-year-long experience of Clintonism itself. By the end, I got the sense that its sleazy torrent of invective and blame-mongering was more an attempt to console the frail psyche of the author rather than to repair her shattered image to any readership the book might find. In the years to come, What Happened will prove much more valuable as documentary evidence for psycho-historians than political scientists.”

Note Too How Amazon, Its Tongue Ever Reliably Rimming Our Rulers' Rectums, is suppressing the negative reviews with which innumerable everyday readers are rebuking Hillary's book.

Bruce Levine's Review of Jonathan Smucker's Retrospective on Occupy, Hegemony How-To: A Roadmap for Radicals (AK Press: 2017). From the book's text:  “One byproduct of focusing too much on group identity is being dismissive of potential allies because they were not radical enough...We often seemed more preoccupied with the purity of our political expression than with how to move from Point A to Point B. It felt as if having the right line about everything was more important than making measurable progress on anything” (emphasis as in the review).

As an early and long-term veteran of Occupy Tacoma, I can attest to the accuracy of Smucker's reported observations, but I wonder if he dares address the vicious anti-intellectualism that was as effective a destroyer of the movement in Tacoma as the tear gas and truncheons of the federally militarized local police were elsewhere.

Apropos which, anyone who wonders why the federal government is turning local police into armored infantry – equipping them with the combined-operations (aerial-and-waterborne assault) capabilities that enabled all the German victories in the early years of World War II – need first recognize it proves the One Percenters and their vassals believe their own intensifying fascist viciousness will eventually provoke rebellion even from the thoroughly cowed and cowardly USian 99 Percent. Obviously – and here is the sole purpose behind the federalization and militarization – our overlords are preparing to suppress us with the same murderousness the Wehrmacht and the Waffen SS employed against the Poles, Czechs and Russians.

In Another Relevant Book Review, Richard Moser of CounterPunch takes us inside Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels, and Black Power: Community Organizing in Radical Times, an invaluable history of 1960s and early 1970s activism. By Amy Sonnie and James Tracy (Melleville House: 2011), the book is said to have many lessons to teach us today. (I've no idea why it is being re-reviewed now save that its relevance is probably ever more obvious due to the resurrection of Marxism and recognition of the truth of its insistence we cannot find our way to revolution without knowing our past.)

Discussion: “The Disagreement with Black Bloc Tactics Articulated in Previous Socialist Worker articles is a disagreement over the best means of fighting the fascists, not a preference for pacifism versus violence.“

“It Is Commendable and Necessary to Go Blow-for-Blow in the Streets against Predatory Racist Gangs,” asserts Glen Ford in Black Agenda Report. “It is also clear that Donald Trump is giving political aid and comfort to today’s sons and daughters of the old Confederacy who, although not yet able to mass in large numbers, could do so in the future. But that threat pales in comparison to the three-quarters of a million sworn police officers that strut the streets of America, killing Black and brown people with impunity and dragging hundreds of thousands into the gulag every year. According to Police magazine , 84 percent of cops supported Donald Trump for president. The statistic is no surprise, but points up the real threat to Black lives and the rule of law: the state, itself.”

With Huge Thanks to People's World for Its Link to David Harvey's Wonderfully Informative, Easily Readable Teachings on Das Kapital, here, which all of us should bookmark for quick reference and continued study.

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And Now at Last Some Uplifting News and Penis-Protective Sex Education

“Happiest Place” Workers Manifestly Unhappy with Substandard Wages. Forty thousand Disneyland dissidents rise up via Unite Here to fight for $15.71 per hour.

Instructions on How Not to Fracture a Phallus, Whether Yours or Your Lover's. See “This Week in Sex” https://rewire.news/article/2017/09/15/week-sex-semen-can-carry-dozens-viruses/ (zip down).

LB/13-17 September 2017

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