Loren Bliss: Dispatches from Dystopia

So Is Our Species. And Neither Santa Nor Jesus Nor All the Wise Men
Can Glue Humpty's Fragments Together Again

THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA Propaganda Machine dares not acknowledge the symptomatic meaning of the ongoing series of governmental shutdowns that began during the Clinton/Gingrich feud.

To do otherwise -- to acknowledge the federal government is now turned off and on and off again with exactly the same fuck-you moral imbecility its Capitalist owners demonstrate in wage cuts and factory closures -- the Josef-Goebbels wanna-bees who disseminate our daily doses of disinformation would have to at least hint that such events are symptomatic not of minor "adjustments"  (as alleged by the Banksters), but rather of the crumbling foundation that precedes total structural failure.  

In Marxian retrospect, the Clinton/Gingrich shutdown was an early disclosure of the bitter fight within the ruling cabal -- actually the One Capitalist Party of Two Names (OCPOTN) -- over how rapidly and forcefully the United States Working Class was to be reduced to ChristoNazi theocracy and the modern equivalents of serfdom and slavery, the current euphemism for which is of course Neoliberalism.

A far better term would be "Neroloberalism," an economic system in which the slavemasters fiddle and fondle and set the forests alight and we the people die accordingly. 

Here too -- if I may be forgiven the McLuhanism that became a prime cliche of the 1960s -- "the medium is the message." The "medium" is the shut-down itself; the "message" is the

====================================================

Important note: news reports formerly published weekly in Dispatches are now published daily on the Facebook page of the Tacoma (Harry Bridges) Chapter of the Communist Labor Party. Most are stories suppressed or downplayed by the Mainstream Media Propaganda Machine (MMPM), the world's first private, for-profit version of Nazi Germany's Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. Therefore please check this page at least once per day for vital information. Thank you.

====================================================

aforementioned fuck-you,  not just to the 800,000 federal employees who won't get their holiday paychecks, but to each and every one of us who have ever been dependent on a paycheck to survive.

In other words, what our overlords are saying is "now that we are the sole (and soul) owners of the government,  we can treat it like any other Capitalist venture...and you workers can't do a damn thing."

Or won't, since in a realm in which the Working Class had even an ounce of courage, such a shut-down -- actually a lock-out (with most of the workers viewed as slaves and thus required to work without pay) -- would trigger a general strike.

But not in the good old United States of America, where far too many of us workers merely bow our heads and submit to whatever outrages and atrocities our sadistic bosses choose to inflict upon us in imitation of their sadistic Prosperity Gospel god.  

Yes it is true some of us  are rediscovering militance. But until We the People of the entire 99 percent learn to transcend our differences and close ranks in solidarity, our Capitalist overlords will continue fucking us however and whenever and to whatever extent they please.  

***

CONFESSION: I contemplated writing "Trumpty-Dumpty" or maybe "Humpty Trumpty," but concluded that would unfairly affix the blame for our ChristoNazification on the present occupant of the White House, when in fact the blame links politicians and plutocrats and extends back in time at least to the 1930s and ultimately to the Empire's beginnings as a slave-owner protection-gang that soon learned to camouflage itself in revolutionary rhetoric. Thus I concluded the image of Uncle Sam as Humpty irreparably shattered at the foot of his great wall was sufficiently metaphoric to serve as a "Bah, Humbug" to misplaced holiday exceptionalism or any other expressions of Manifest Destiny (i.e., like the German Nazis' lebensraum, a god-given license for genocide). 

***

That said, let us assess some of the more damning evidence of Humpty's irremediable fragmentation:   

"Dumb Ways to Die: Welcome to Our Mass Suicide"

So…here we are, only a year away from 2020 and contemplating another year in the struggle for survival. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says we’ve got about 12 years to turn this climate change thing around and that’s just to avoid catastrophe, never mind guaranteeing a healthy planet in the future. Such a catastrophe could well involve the extinction of human beings, which would reveal just how dumb we are. Is there anything more stupid that the most intelligently-evolved species on the planet could do than commit mass suicide?

*****        

Late Capitalism: One Foot in the Grave, the Other on the ChristoNazi Oilslick

The Dow lost 1655 points for the week, a decline of 6.8 percent, its worst percentage drop since the onset of the financial crisis a decade ago, the NASDAQ lost 8.3 percent for the week and is now 22 percent below its high last August and the S&P fell by 7 percent and is now down 17.8 percent from its high.

Both the S&P and the Dow are on track for their worst December performance since December 1931, amid the Great Depression.

*****

White Ruling Class Chants "Diversity" as It Methodically Intensifies Racism

Like fashion house Prada’s recent so-called apologyfor selling racist trinkets, universities and other institutions often only pay lip service to the intent of dismantling harmful structures and tropes that feed racial inequality while their actions reveal their true priorities.

Take Northwestern University, where astute students writing for the student newspaper, The Daily Northwestern, revealed  Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics, is working and thriving on Northwestern’s campus as a visiting researcher in the psychology department. He is widely known as the author of the 2011 Psychology Today piece  (now removed and replaced with an editor’s apology), “Why Are Black Women Less Physically Attractive Than Other Women?” — an article that has since been roundly rejected by both the scientific and broader educational communities.

The piece was crafted on poor methodology, and one must also wonder what scientific ideal was being pursued that would justify what amounts to well-worn racist beliefs that linger on without context?

Comment: lest we forget, racism (and identity politics in general) is the primary Ruling Class weapon against Working Class solidarity. (Yes, I also posted this report on the Tacoma Communist Labor Party Facebook page.)

*****    

And the Public Schools Are Being (Methodically) Re-Segregated Too

When it was reported that Mississippi Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R) attended and sent her daughter to segregated schools,  an issue was back in the news that many Americans believe had been addressed in the civil rights era.  

But Hyde-Smith’s experience is far from uncommon. Nearly 65 years after the landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling, schools across the US are quietly being resegregated — and many were never fully desegregated to start with.

According to a report from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), much higher percentages of students of color attend high-poverty schools compared to white students — and experts agree that it is only getting worse.

***** 

Hence, Predictably,  Most U.S. Public Schools Also Teach Sexism and Homophobia

According to the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, the country is presently a patchwork, with only the District of Columbia and four states — California, Colorado, Iowa and Washington — mandating that sex ed be LGBTQI-inclusive and affirming of different sexual orientations and gender identities.

Thirty-one states continue to stress abstinence before (hetero) marriage and seven — Alabama, Arizona, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas — ban the teaching of anything that might be construed as queer acceptance or inclusivity.

In Alabama, for instance, teachers are mandated to be overt in their condemnation, telling students that “homosexuality is not a lifestyle acceptable to the general public.” They are also required to inform their classes that “homosexual conduct is a criminal offense under the laws of the state.”

These homophobic provisions, called “No Promo Homo laws” by opponents, have for nearly 40 years been pushed by a coalition of right-wing evangelical groups...

(This report too I posted previously on the Tacoma CLP Facebook page.)

*****                 

Meanwhile, Anticipation of a New Holocaust Looms Amidst the Fragments

The touchy-feely phrase “What you believe becomes your reality” is making the rounds of pop psychology. People who claim uncommon wisdom promote this insight as the road to everything — from financial well-being to a fulfilling and pleasurable sex life.

Here’s an ominous thought: What if you believe, as many folks now do, that with anti-Semitism on the rise, something akin to the Holocaust could happen in the United States?

Simply reading the newspaper can compel us to think the unthinkable. A recent survey by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany showed that 58 percent of Americans believe the Holocaust could happen again. The recent massacre of 11 Jewish worshippers in Pittsburgh is the worst anti-Semitic attack in American history. Play that back: the worst anti-Semitic attack in American history.

In 2018, the Anti-Defamation League reports the increase in anti-Semitic incidents from 2016 to 2017 was the largest in a single year since the ADL began tracking in 1979.

*****   

Trump-Mattis Breakup Exemplifies How the Government Is Falling Apart

Thursday’s resignation of US Defense Secretary James Mattis has provoked... panic and near hysteria from leading members of both major political parties...

Trump had campaigned in 2016...for an end to the protracted US wars...This rhetoric played a substantial role in (defeating)...Democrat Hillary Clinton, the favored candidate of Wall Street and the CIA, (who favored) past US wars and... escalation of the Syria intervention as well as a direct confrontation with Russia.

Trump’s decision to act on these campaign pledges now are bound up with the deepening crisis of his presidency, which is besieged by multiple scandals and investigations that are themselves driven by the bitter conflicts within the American ruling class, particularly over foreign policy...
(H)e knows that bringing troops home from the Middle East and Central Asia will enjoy broad support, well beyond (his) far-right base...

Within the US working population there is deep hostility to the never-ending wars waged by US imperialism... wars (that) have killed well over one million people, demolished entire societies and cost trillions of dollars...

Democratic Party leaders virtually wept over Mattis’ resignation and voiced virulent opposition to any end to the US wars in the Middle East and Central Asia.

See also: "Send the Mad Dog to the Corporate Kennel."

Comment: again and as always, the "bitter conflicts" can be summed up in a single question: how overtly Nazi is the de facto Fourth Reich to be?  The recent news does not inspire optimism.

*****      

Clash of Populisms Mirrors Our Species' Ultimate, Probably Terminal Division 

Two very different “populisms”...have arisen in response to neoliberal capitalism in the West.

A left-leaning social-democratic "progressive populism” targets the capitalist concentration of wealth and power and the unbridled pursuit of private profit as enemies of the people and the common good.  This populism is egalitarian and radically democratic.  It tends towards socialism.  Its attractive policy agenda, supported by working-class majorities, includes the downward distribution of wealth, the expansion of the social safety net, university quality health care, increased minimum wages and union power, public jobs programs, and the protection of livable ecology (a Green New Deal)...

Then there’s the reactionary anti-cosmopolitan nationalist “populism” of the right. This unattractive and backwards-looking populism shares some of left populism’s disdain for giant globalist corporations and financial institutions.  Still, its ire is aimed primarily at immigrants and racial and ethnic minorities and their perceived liberal and multi-cultural champions in the globalist “elite.”  This white-nationalist “populism” (some would say faux-populism) carries no small whiff of fascism...

So which of these two populisms – the progressive populism of the left and the reactionary “populism” of the right – does the corporate and financial ruling class prefer? The right-wing one, of course.

Supposition: the fight-to-the-death triggered by the paralytic fragmentation of our species into two eternally incompatible subspecies -- eco-humanitarians and moral imbeciles -- is merely the macrocosm of the process that is destroying the United States, where the moral imbeciles now control governance at every level. 

*****

Merry Christmas from the Ruling Class: More Cuts to Food Stamps 

The Trump Administration announced Thursday that it will impose tougher work requirements on adults seeking food assistance. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) unveiled the proposed rule, which will strip food stamp benefits from hundreds of thousands of poor workers...

Nutrition advocacy groups say work requirements increase food insecurity. They argue that food, health insurance and housing are all keys to helping people get a job and stay employed. One Ohio survey found that many SNAP recipients have unidentified injuries, such as chronic pain, that prevent them from working. Factors such as language barriers, education and lack of transportation also prevent people from working.

Furthermore, a significant proportion of available jobs are volatile part-time minimum-wage jobs. Approximately 95 percent of jobs created since the 2008 financial crisis fall into this category. The notion that the 3.7 unemployment rate is indicative of a recovery for working people is false. But this idea is being used to strip workers of necessary assistance.

***** 

Lastly, Here Are Some Midwinter Meditations

Let us never forget -- and when the time comes,  let us instruct our children accordingly -- that Santa is but the nursery-rhyme version of the sadistic, zero-tolerance patriarchal god:

He sees you when you're sleeping
He knows when you're awake
He knows if you've been bad or good
So be good for goodness sake...

And whether labeled Santa or god, that which is invoked by most of the white Christian U.S. population is the quintessence both of Capitalism and subjugation.

In which context too many children still awaken on Christmas morning to the heartbreak horror of stockings filled with coal (a symbol of burning in hell), or fresh-cut switches with which they know they'll soon be beaten. 

There is also -- for those whose seasonal slogan truly is "Bah, Humbug" -- my late father's anti-Capitalist revision of a traditional Christmas carol:

Deck his balls with poison ivy,
Fa la la la la-ah hah hah hah...

But let us also take heart in the fact that according to lore far older than Santa or god or even patriarchy itself, the Full Moon atop the Winter Solstice "bodes well for embracing change and letting go of the past."

Hence may we all have the finest midwinter holidays our circumstances allow.

LB/23 December 2018

-30-