A Very Bad Choice

A very bad Choice
[thoughts from   ~burning woman~  ]

Without thinking much about it, it seems that in my mind I’ve taken this time, this summer, as a time of reflection. That exercise has caused me to come face-to-face with continuing aspects of my thinking, and consequently expressing, that I often literally despise. I chose, because it is always the easiest path, to engage aspects of “this world” that I know I should have been done with long ago.

Do I really want to engage the various political, economic and even religious aspects of the so-called pandemic? No, I do not.

Do I really want to engage the many unsavory aspects of America’s president and join the choruses that chant his demise? No, I do not.

Do I want to belabour the point of those “working” Canadians who choose not to return to work because they are getting a temporary COVOD-19 relief from their government and it’s beach season? No, I do not.

Do I want to carry the heavy personal burden regarding victims of war, refugees, and the deaths by famine continuing to plague this world? No, I do not.

Do I want to live with visions of genocide and the plight of migrant workers in my mind? No, I do not. 

There are many other such questions to which I could also reply, No, I do not, and I base this on my personal inability to do anything about the things brought to my mind by the media, acquaintances, other bloggers, friends, even clients.

If you demonstrate that you are a conscientious person, those around you will want to engage you; will want to know how you respond to the questions that plague us all.

What if I have developed a real conscience? What if I hold to myself that being a compassionate person is the highest any sentient can ever hope to achieve? What if it is more than a belief; what if it is demonstrated to me in both, positive and negative ways, simply by the way I respond to a query, to a crisis; how I engage it; what I’m willing (or not) to invest of myself in these? What if they are brought to my attention but remain beyond my reach to intervene?

I haven’t had much to say lately. Some off the cuff remarks here and there about man’s ongoing, repetitive follies and their drastic consequences, but of substance? None, nothing. When I was seriously religious, these dog days of summer were called the dark night of the soul. I think they should more appropriately be thought of as the dark days of the mind.

I have not been “religious” for some decades now, and I certainly do not miss that aspect of my life… except for the teachings that came with it, that uncomfortable aspect of religion that most faith cling-ons as a general rule refuse to consider.

In Christianity there is a central teaching called “the gospel” found, not surprisingly, in the synoptic gospels purporting to tell the story of Jesus’ ministry in Galilee, in which he lays out the personal costs that will always be demanded of those who chose to walk that particular path.

Two things I know now. One, I left Christianity, not because it was difficult but because it was impossible to not be in it except as a complete hypocrite. Two: when I encountered “the Teachers” it became clear to me as they expounded on how to live a human life that much of what they presented me with I already knew because, again not surprisingly, I had, read, studied and learned much of it from the biblical gospels.

I was reminded that the foundation of a human life is to become (you must become before you can be) good, kind, humble, a peace maker without exception, patient, gentle, inclusive and of course, compassionate. These were not “extras” you had the option to practice after you were baptized, after you voluntarily and with a clear mind, literally gave your life to Jesus. The proof that  you lived thus would be stamped on your admittance ticket. If they were not, profess away, it would avail nothing. 

Something terrible has befallen man in these last days, something unthinkable. The creature has chosen to fall from grace, not the grace of discipleship to a god, but the grace that accompanies living the life of a real human. Our world is sick; our civilization is imploding; our religions are compromised and corrupt beyond any hope of redemption – all of them, no exception; our moral values have plummeted into the negative wherein vices are more often than not accounted as virtues.

Currently our world is being driven to the edge of its abyss by greed, felony, perversion of justice, lies stacked upon lies, reviling and mocking, and finally murder; mass murder. Life holds no sanctity because the morality that, even if weakly, supported our social institutions some years back, instead of being built upon, was smashed down with utter abandon, as if ridding society of all moral constraint was the guarantee that society would improve.

Well, don’t take my word for it when I say that people, as a collective, have made a very bad choice. Just look around, and do a little reading, a little studying.

I close by saying that I have never been so disappointed, dispirited and disgusted by myself, first and foremost, and by my fellow earth walkers as I am during this time of reflection.

 

Christmas 2005, a Prophecy

        (Voice from the other side ~burning woman~ )
[Yes, this was written in 2005, and every year since the truth of it has only shone brighter. The world as we of the West have enjoyed it, is passing as water through our fingers and nothing can hold back the winds that are sweeping it away]

What is it about “Christmas” that evokes such confused and contrasting feelings in people of the Western world? 

Certainly, it is not about some redemption from sin – Christmas gives rise to more “sin” than possibly any other time of year.  Certainly it is not about the story of a poor family in Judea 2000 years ago from which the Christian Savior or Christ purportedly issued.

What is so gripping about Christmas?  The hype?  The commercial lies so thick one can barely wade through them day after day?  Some distant hope for something better?  Something eternally stolen, ever hidden and ever replaced with artificial concoctions from the minds of gods, of rulers, of systems, and swallowed so eagerly by deluded, egotistic masses?

Christmas is the saddest time of the year for me.  But I know my feelings and I know what generates them.  It isn’t movies, TV, books, religious rituals, radio or garish store displays. 

It is the awareness of the monstrous lie Christmas has become and how it chokes all who try to swallow it by participating in it.  Particularly religious people.  Particularly those who claim to be followers of Jesus; of the Christ; the being, entity, person, prophet, divinity — call him what you will — whose “birth” Christmas is supposed to be all about.  (And please don’t remind me that Jesus was not likely born on Dec. 25, Gregorian calendar, if he even ever existed – I know that and that’s not the point.)

How in “Hell” I ask myself, did Christmas become such a time of debauchery?  Of gluttony?  Of revelry?  Of covetousness and cupidity in this post-Christian society? 
I was taught as a child that “Jesus” was the gift of God to the world, the gift of the richest person to the poorest.  I was taught that in turn, the rich of the earth were to share their possessions with the poorest.  I was taught that Christmas was such a reminder that such an act need take place regularly to maintain life’s balance. 
Maybe because where I originate the people celebrate this “gift” on January 6th and it did not then  entail the gross and crass commercialism so in your face here; maybe because it did not translate in piles upon piles of trashy “gifts” did I remember what I was taught.  And maybe, living here, in a pathetic carbon-copy world of “American Santaclawism” the message I got as a child resounds that much louder these days in hollow greed-swept outer malls where empty cans, plastic bottles, half-eaten Big Macs, cigarette butts, paper and plastic cups and tons of broken and torn packaging collect inside vending machines, along curbs and under cold, wet benches covered with the grimy film of diesel fumes from city buses… 

Yes, inflatable plastic figurines and fake icicle lights are out; decorated trees bleed to death in living rooms, ante rooms and dining rooms.  Yes, the jolly fat man (who reminds me of the utterly evil, utterly depraved baron Harkonnen of Dune) is out and about, promising more goodies to the rich, more junk foods to the obese, more whatever to whomever will spend their last overdraft dollar… and collecting money for “the poor” after it is laundered by the official charitable organizations…

At Christmas, a “celebration” that belongs primarily to the richest segment of earth’s people, as many as always, and perhaps more, people will die “out there” and their pain will never be felt, will never be known, will never be acknowledged, neither by the churches, the charitable organizations, the politicians  nor, heaven forbid, the Media.  They will pass away as clouds that give no rain.  Empty, hollow laughter will sound for a few moments all over this Western World, not knowing that it too is passing, just as the dying poor, the “Lazarus” types who died at the door of the rich man. (ref: Luke 16: 19-31, New Testament, the Bible)

Tonight I give a prophecy — in full realization that no people, no collective, no nation, has ever appreciated the prophet, for such a one always comes at a time of ending, not to make change – such is not the purpose – but to warn (and such warning is always so damned inconvenient!) — and this is the warning: this Christmas will not generate as much happiness as the last for merriment seekers.  Next year’s will be far less happy.  And after that?  Even for those who can afford to hoard and to lord,  there may not even be one.

Many more small businesses will fail as this year passes.  Christmas will not bring the expected and needed revenue.  The largest greed-based corporations will last a bit longer for they still have the fat of millions of slaves to eat or burn – but not as much as they’d like their greedy share-holders to believe.  All of them are bankrupt, no matter how much money or power they claim to hold.   

It is the end for this society.  The world of the rich is corrupt unto death.  The world that worships money and mindless pleasures, whatever the cost to life, is finished. 
And why?  Because compassion is scorned; because the real spirit of caring, giving and sharing is gone from most human hearts and the world is split between the billions who go about naked and hungry and the millions who wear the emperor’s new clothes. 

Those who sow nothing must ultimately reap nothing.  Those who sow the wind (resource wars today) must reap the whirlwind. 

Performative Oppression – George Monbiot

[The so exceptional, white, Christian west shows its true colours. European Nazism wasn’t defeated. It hid, morphed, recouped and here it is, rising up as surely as it did in the 1930’s and what will confront it and challenge it this time? There is nothing and hardly anyone left with a working conscience to be found. The western world has succumbed to the lowest common denominator of schadenfreud. – my comment.  Sha’Tara] 

Performative Oppression

Posted: 15 Nov 2019 10:37 AM PST

The government proposes the cultural cleansing of the Romani and Traveller life from Britain.

By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 13^th November 2019

This is how it begins: with a theatrical attack on a vulnerable minority. It’s a Conservative tradition, during election campaigns, to vilify Romani Gypsies and Travellers: it tends to play well on the doorsteps of Middle England. But what the Home Secretary, Priti Patel, proposed last week is something else. It amounts to legislative cleansing.

The consultation document she released on the last day of Parliament aims to “test the appetite to go further” than any previous laws. It suggests that the police should be able immediately to confiscate the vehicles of “anyone whom they suspect to be trespassing on land with the purpose of residing on it”. Until successive Conservative governments began working on it, trespass was a civil and trivial matter. Now it is treated as a crime so serious that on mere suspicion you can lose your home.

When I say “you”, obviously I don’t mean you, unless you are a Romani Gypsy, a traditional Traveller or a New Traveller. If you’re on holiday in your caravan, it does not affect you. It applies only if you have “intent to reside” in your vehicle “for any period”. In other words, it is specifically aimed at travelling peoples. It is clearly and deliberately discriminatory.

It’s true that some people have sometimes behaved appallingly, damaging places, leaving litter and abusing residents. But there are already plenty of laws to prosecute these crimes. The government’s proposal, criminalising the use of any place without planning permission for Romani and Travellers to stop, would exterminate the travelling life.

The consultation acknowledges that there is nowhere else for these communities to go, other than the council house waiting list, which means abandoning the key elements of their culture. During the Conservative purge in the late 1980s and early 1990s, two thirds of traditional, informal stopping sites for travellers, some of which had been in use for thousands of years, were sealed off. Then, in 1994, the Criminal Justice Act repealed the duty of local authorities to provide official sites.

Over the past few weeks in Grimsby, Lincolnshire, local people have been debating the merits of the council’s proposal for an official transit site for travelling people. According to one of the councillors, there have been threats to stone, bottle and petrol bomb anyone who uses it, if planning permission is granted. For centuries Romani and Travellers have been hounded from parish to parish, suffering prejudice and bigotry as extreme as any group faces. Now the government is stoking it.

Patel’s proposed laws belong to the most dangerous of all political categories: performative oppression. She is beating up a marginalised group in full public view, to show that she sides with the majority. I don’t know whether she really intends to introduce these laws, or whether this is empty electioneering. In either case, she is playing with fire. Already this month, three caravans in Somerset have been torched by suspected arsonists. Travelling peoples have been attacked like this for centuries, and sometimes murdered. In 2003, a 15-year-old Traveller child, Johnny Delaney, was kicked to death by a gang of teenagers. One of them is reported to have explained to a passer-by, “he was only a fucking Gypsy.”

I asked a traditional Traveller how Patel’s legislation would affect her. Briony (not her real name) told me she has ploughed her life savings into her motorhome, which she parks out of people’s way, beside roads within easy reach of her children’s school. She has good relations with local people, many of whom know her and see her as part of the community. But none of this will help.

If this proposal becomes law, “the police will have the power to kick my door in, take my home, arrest me and take the children into care. We won’t get them back because we won’t have a home. Because of my work, I can’t afford a criminal record. When I walk out of the police station, I will have no home, no assets, no children and no career.” It would also leave her without state protection. “Sometimes we’ve had to call the police when we’re on the receiving end of hate crimes. This legislation would mean we had to go under the radar.” Understandably, she is terrified.

She has nowhere else to go. “There’s one transit site half an hour away, but you can stay there only for 28 days a year. So my only option is roadside. Roadside is our cultural heritage.” Stopping by the road has already been made extremely stressful and precarious by existing laws. Patel’s proposal would stamp it out altogether. It would end a migratory tradition that’s as old as humanity.

As Briony points out, this is collective punishment. “The majority of us are minding our own business. We’re providing our own housing, not relying on the government. But everything I do that’s positive is lost in people’s minds. Most people I meet have no idea I’m a Traveller. We’re invisible until we do something wrong. Then people notice we’re Travellers.”

A week before Priti Patel launched her consultation, the Weiner Holocaust Library in London opened its exhibition on the Porajmos: the genocide of Roma and Sinti people carried out by the Nazis. It shows how ancient prejudices were mobilised to destroy entire peoples. I’m not saying that this is how the situation will unfold in this country, but the exhibition shows us the worst that can happen when the state sanctions the demonisation of an outgroup. First they came for the Travellers …

http://www.monbiot.com

The Enemy Within: Trump vs. the Deep State

A perfect time to post this message from Chris Hedges. I agree that with or without Trump, the path of imperial downfall and associated evils is unavoidable. Only a spontaneous, nation-wide violent revolution can change the course of this slice of history. Think Germany 1933, when Hitler was made chancellor. At that point, anyone could have been a Hitler. The time to prevent totalitarianism and ensuing bloodshed would have been a couple of years before and it would have required another bloody revolution. Likely Germany, then France, would have joined the Soviet Union. International banksterism and ascendant US corporate power wasn’t going to let that happen. They aided and abetted Hitler. Today they are aiding and abetting two ascendant powers: China and Russia as America is being abandoned to become the wasteland of the empire. Be that as it may, let’s look at what this article has to say.  Any highlighting is mine. (Sha’Tara) 

http://www.darkmoon.me
PUBLISHED ON TRUTHSEEKER
By Chris Hedges

Abridged by Lasha Darkmoon with brief commentary
November 11, 2019

(191111-The Enemy Within: Trump vs. the Deep State)

Is Trump an enemy of the Deep State . . . or is he secretly working for it?

“Trump committed political heresy when he dared to point out the folly of unchecked militarism. He will pay for it. The war between the deep state and Trump began the moment he was elected.” — Chris Hedges

Our democracy is not in peril. We do not live in a democracy. (It’s the image of our democracy (that) is in peril.)

Trump’s most unforgivable sin in the eyes of the deep state is his criticism of the empire’s endless wars, even though he lacks the intellectual and organizational skills to oversee a disengagement.

The deep state committed the greatest strategic blunder in American history when it invaded and occupied Afghanistan and Iraq. Such fatal military fiascos, a feature of all late empires, are called acts of “micro-militarism.” Dying empires historically squander the last capital they have, economic, political and military, on futile, intractable and unwinnable conflicts until they collapse.

They seek in these acts of micro-militarism to recapture a former dominance and lost stature. Disaster piles on disaster. The architects of our imperial death spiral, however, are untouchable.

The clueless generals and politicians who propel the empire into expanding chaos and fiscal collapse are successful at one thing—perpetuating themselves. No one is held accountable. A servile press treats these mandarins with near-religious veneration. Generals and politicians, many of whom should have been cashiered or put on trial, are upon retirement given lucrative seats on the boards of the weapons manufacturers, for whom these wars are immensely profitable. They are called upon by a fawning press to provide analysis to the public of the mess they created. They are held up as exemplars of integrity, selfless service and patriotism.

LD: The trendy phrase “deep state” appears to be the latest euphemism for international Jewry and their elite non-Jewish collaborators in the big corporations and military-industrial complex. These include the generals, bankers, corporatists, lobbyists, intelligence chiefs, government bureaucrats, technocrats, evangelical Christians, and the fawning presstitutes of the main stream media. All these gentile sycophants of Big Jewry have one thing in common: they are all passionate Zionists for whom the state of Israel is sacrosanct. They would rather see America go up in flames than suffer the loss of a single acre of stolen land in Occupied Palestine. [LD]

(I would caution getting all twisted up over the author’s use of “Jewry” and “Jewish” in this context. This is not a lesson in political correctness, this is an exposé of anti-life elitist collaboration. Substitute “Zionism” for “Jewry” and problem solved. – S’T) 

After nearly two decades, every purported objective used to justify our wars in the Middle East has been upended.

The invasion of Afghanistan was supposed to wipe out al-Qaida. Instead, al-Qaida migrated to fill the power vacuums the deep state created in the wars in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen. The war in Afghanistan morphed into a war with the Taliban, which now controls most of the country and is threatening the corrupt regime we prop up in Kabul.

The deep state orchestrated the invasion of Iraq, which had nothing to do with the attacks of 9/11. It confidently predicted it could build a Western-style democracy and weaken Iran’s power in the region. Instead, it destroyed Iraq as a unified country, setting warring ethnic and religious factions against each other. Iran, which is closely tied to the dominant Shiite government in Baghdad, emerged even stronger.

Then there is the fiasco in Syria. The deep state armed “moderate” rebels in Syria in an effort to topple President Bashar Assad, but when it realized it could not control the jihadists—to whom it had provide some $500 million in weapons and assistance—the deep state began to bomb them and arm Kurdish rebels to fight them. These Kurds would later be betrayed by Trump.

Next was Yemen. The “war on terror” spread like a plague from Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya to Yemen, which after five years of war is suffering one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters. The financial cost for this misery and death is between $5 trillion and $8 trillion. The human cost runs into hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded, shattered cities, towns and infrastructure and millions of refugees.

Trump committed political heresy when he dared to point out the folly of unchecked militarism. He will pay for it. The deep state intends to replace him with someone—perhaps Mike Pence, as morally and intellectually vacuous as Trump—who will do what he is told.

The removal of Trump from office would not threaten corporate power. It would not restore civil liberties, including our right to privacy and due process.

It would not demilitarize the police or champion the rights of the working class.

It would not impede the profits of the fossil fuel and banking industries.

It would not address the climate emergency.

It would not disrupt the warrantless surveillance of the public.

It would not end extraordinary renditions, the kidnapping of those around the globe considered to be enemies of the state.

It would not halt the assassinations by militarized drones.

It would not halt the separation of children from their parents and the warehousing of these children in filthy, overcrowded conditions.

It would not remedy the consolidation of wealth and power by the oligarchs and the further impoverishment of the citizenry.

The expansion of our prison system and of black sites throughout the world, sites where we torture, would continue, as would the gunning down of poor, unarmed citizens in urban wastelands.

Most importantly, the catastrophic foreign wars that have resulted in a series of failed states and wasted trillions of taxpayer dollars, would remain sacrosanct, enthusiastically embraced by the leaders of the two ruling parties, puppets of the deep state.

The impeachment of Trump, despite the enthusiasm of the liberal elite, is mostly cosmetic. The entire political and governmental system is corrupt. Corporate lobbyists write the laws. The courts enforce them. There is no way in the American political system to vote against the interests of Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, AT&T, Amazon, Microsoft, Walmart, Alphabet, Facebook, Apple, Exxon Mobil, Lockheed Martin, UnitedHealth Group or Northrop Grumman.

We, the American public, are spectators. An audience. Who will be seated when the game of musical chairs stops?

Will Trump be able to hold on to power?

Will Pence be the new president?

Or will the deep state elevate a political hack like Joe Biden . . . or, God forbid, Hillary Clinton?

And what if the deep state fails?

The war between the deep state and Trump began the moment he was elected. Former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper—both now paid news cable commentators—along with former FBI head James Comey soon would accuse Trump of being a tool of Moscow. Intelligence agencies leaked salacious stories about “pee tapes” and blackmail, plus reports of “repeated contacts” with Russian intelligence. Brennan, Clapper and Comey were quickly joined by other former intelligence officials. Their attacks were then amplified by former senior military leaders.

The Russia conspiracy, after the release of the Mueller report, proved to be a dud. The deep state actors, however, were re-energized by Trump’s decision to pressure the government of Ukraine to investigate Biden. Trump, this time, seems to have given his deep state enemies enough rope to hang him.

The impeachment of Trump marks a new and frightening chapter in American politics. The deep state has shown its face. It has made a public declaration that it will not tolerate dissent, although Trump’s dissent is rhetorical and ineffectual.

The effort to impeach Trump sends an ominous message to the American left. Its resources to destroy those on the left are nearly inexhaustible.

There are no internal or external checks on the deep state.

The deep state will further expand the social inequality that has thrust half of Americans into poverty or near poverty, strip us of our remaining civil liberties and feed the rapacious appetites of the military and the war industry.

The resources of the state will be squandered as the federal deficit balloons. The frustration and feelings of stagnation among a disempowered and neglected citizenry, which contributed to the election of Trump, will mount.

There will come a moment of reckoning, as there has during the last few days in Lebanon and Chile. Social unrest is inevitable. Any population can be pushed only so far.

Trump, in the end, is not the problem. We are.

And if the deep state fails to rid itself of Trump it will, however reluctantly, use him to carry out its dirty work.

Original source: Truthdig

“Trump, if he manages to survive, will get his military parades.
We will get, with or without Trump, tyranny.”
— Chris Hedges

The Age of the Dictators

[thoughts from ~burning woman~ ]

Tomorrow is the 40th anniversary of an intervention that not only saved my physical life but sent me off on a 180 degree tangent from what I had been. That can only have meaning to myself, of course, or perhaps to anyone who may have been touched by some of the thoughts and ideas on expressing life which I have spouted quite regularly and annoyingly. After all, who wants change that turns all the known and relative comfortable on its head? Better to stick with the tried and failed, follow tradition. Tomorrow is “Good Friday” as declared by the Roman Church many years ago and subsequently adhered to by all of Christendom. That the concept was stolen from the very “pagans” the Church despised and massacred is of little consequence: we have a TRADITION!

That out of my way, I want to write a bit about some recent observations of the global political processes. Lots of noise and bloody foolishness bandied about as the overcrowded numbties of Earth increasingly go for the jugular over their beliefs and traditions. Not so different than previous slices of historical drama except that now we can “participate” in the processes globally through satellite feeds and the quasi-ubiquitous Internet.

I have noticed a serious difference however, and I call it ‘The Age of the Dictators.’

Man’s civilization is of course familiar with, and his history replete with, dictators but what makes this age different is the global and successful wave of political power grabbing by psychopathic and sociopathic billionaires or military leaders able to circumvent democratic constitutions written to prevent this sort of thing from “ever happening again.” Fledgling democracies established through compromise with totalitarian powers of business, banking and the social security state in the last couple hundred years are being systematically dis-empowered and disarmed by the returning totalitarians.

Temporarily sidetracked, the forces of dictatorship slowly but systematically burrowed into the democratic forms of government, buying stooges, corrupting ideals, installing preferred leaders, developing armies of constitutional lawyers to challenge existing laws that protected the people, particularly the most vulnerable: women, children, the working poor, racial minorities and changing rules that allowed all and sundry to vote, thus in a small way making their voices heard. The stooges of totalitarian power are now overtly active in eliminating free speech and destroying all vestiges of a so-called free press. More: in the USA in particular, 50% of the nation’s income is now barrelling like a train without brakes into the military and much of the rest finds its way into the pockets of its billionaires while a flaming racist and sexual predator rules the country from the White House.

War criminals, torturers, sexual predators, perverts, corrupt billionaires, these it would appear, form the preferred choice of voters in most democracies yet we know that it is ownership of the propaganda apparatus and manipulation of polls that have made this possible. Well, some of us know this but of course those who are trained to react to a ‘score’ as if an election was nothing more than a playoff take it at face value that their team won or lost the game and they’ll have to wait another four years to attend another playoff in which their team with better management, stronger or sexier players and richer sponsors, will have a chance to win.

That’s what democracy and the “popular vote” has become: sports teams, playoffs and a final score.

The conclusion was foregone when this began happening decades ago. No one can change the course of events now all hope and talk to the contrary. Unknown to the spectators of the democratic playoff game was a much more powerful team some have labelled “the New World Order” to be politically correct, to be sprung upon the bewildered spectators. It was funded and manned to crush all opposition and usher in the Age of the Totalitarian Dictators. It’s team consisted of the most mentally weak and morally corrupt psychopaths and the owners made the rules for the final playoff.

The people never clued in that “participatory democracy” did not begin and end at the polling booth but had to be a 24/7 commitment to an ideal. Too bad and so sad: goodbye democracies. Now we lose everything. Now we go to war against one-another and against our natural environment. Now we bleed, suffer and die. Now we pay the price for our apathy and woeful ignorance of the kind of forces that have always manipulated us to kill and die for their enrichment and entertainment.

Let’s follow the leaders and go out on the streets to cheer the final winners, our Dictators.