We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Saturday, July 14, 2018

America

Click here to access article by Caitlin Johnstone from her website. (Edited for greater clarity at 10:12 PM CT.)
Americans are in their nature as compassionate and generous a people as you will ever meet anywhere else on earth; they’ve just got manipulative sociopaths elbows-deep in their minds conducting psyops all the time, and it makes them a bit weird. But their good-naturedness is evident in the fact that even the propaganda used to manipulate them into consenting to depraved war agendas is always meant to exploit their caring and compassion: it’s always about saving children from a monstrous dictator, or spreading freedom and democracy. Americans are blasted in the face with so many hero narratives from Hollywood and television that this makes perfect sense to them, and of course they want their military to do something heroic and save those poor kids. Even the sick things they consent to are rooted in basic good intentions. America is a country full of decent people with propaganda boxes around their brains.
 

Propaganda is what makes America America.
It is my conviction that ordinary people of the world are "full of decent people"; but when there are self-serving, sociopathic ruling classes, the latter will always find ways to control ordinary people who are under-educated, indoctrinated, and propagandized to serve their masters. The only solution is to rid the world of systems that give advantages to some humans at the expense of others. All people must be empowered.

While reading this article, I was sad to see this brilliant woman use the feudal term "aristocrats" to refer to our ruling masters. She has succumbed to the influence of people like Eric Zuesse who, like her, has not rid himself of capitalist indoctrination. Using the term detracts from the insight that our masters are capitalists--not aristocrats ruling over medieval fiefdoms. Using the term "aristocrats" is a type of circumlocution that our slave-holding, "Founding Fathers" engaged in to avoid talking about slavery, indentured servants, etc, that existed during their time while they were celebrating the liberties of liberalism, the ideology of capitalism.

The feudal ruling classes were hereditary and their rule was based on the use of weapons to maintain control of land and its inhabitants during a time when humans engaged in rather primitive agriculture. During the current era it is necessary to distinguish a new ruling class from the old ruling class. They are called capitalists. This new class essentially sanctified the ownership of private property under the rules of capitalism. Their rule is based on the ownership of the much more elaborate means of production produced with advanced technology that humans first developed using scientific methods during the Age of Enlightenment. Now we see the result: gross inequality, the concentration of ownership of the means of production among a relatively few powerful people, never-ending wars, and a destabilization of our planets ecosystem that portends catastrophic consequences for the existence of human life.