Covid-19 has taken away bread and circuses, laying bare the true American empire

This is a simple text copy. If interested and you want to see the original with picture and everything, go here:
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/483675-coronavirus-america-bread-circuses-illusions/

by Michael McCaffrey

Michael McCaffrey lives in Los Angeles where he works as an acting coach, screenwriter and consultant. He is also a freelance film and cultural critic whose work can be read at RT, Counterpunch and at his website mpmacting.com/blog.

21 Mar, 2020 14:28

Regular Americans can no longer numb themselves with sports and gluttony, freeing them to clearly see the malignantly craven ruling class that exploits and despises them. If only they would open their eyes to reality.

Anyone who has eyes to see can clearly make out that America is an addled empire in steep decline that is firmly entrenched in its bread-and-circuses stage. This has been brought into clear focus due to Covid-19. Since there is now a shortage of bread, as supermarket shelves are bare, and the distraction of the circus of sports has been indefinitely removed from the culture, Americans are left with little to distract them from cold, hard reality.

Coronavirus calls US’ ‘world’s richest country’ bluff: Will it cling to busted myths or evolve under pressure?

With no brawls or ballgames to watch, and the fear of potential hunger gnawing at their bloated bellies and brains, and with social distancing leaving them isolated with little but their thoughts as company, Americans will now find it harder and harder to ignore the truth about their country and its deplorably corrupt media, financial, government, education and health care systems, that is staring them in the face.

As the old adage goes, crisis reveals character, and the coronavirus contagion is a crisis of epic proportions that is revealing America to be utterly devoid of any redeeming character whatsoever.

If America were a sane, healthy, and rational country this would be a great opportunity for change to occur…alas, it is not. America is an insane, unhealthy and irrational nation, and so any genuine change is inconceivable.

For example, this crisis has once again revealed the house of cards that is the smoke and mirrors American economy. The American economy has long been rigged through financialization, where stock buybacks and accounting shenanigans inflate the stock market but create nothing of substance for the masses except the illusion of prosperity. Here in America the economy long ago stopped working for regular folks, as evidenced by the fact that despite productivity soaring, for the last forty years wages have remained stagnant, while the cost of living has escalated.

The American Way has devolved into a bizarre reverse-Robin Hood world, where the rich steal from the poor and keep it for themselves. Proof of this is that this Covid-19 crisis will undoubtedly be used, just as the 2008 collapse, as a way for the malicious narcissists in Washington, Wall Street and in corporate boardrooms to come together to assure that all their losses are socialized and their profits privatized. Casinos, cruise lines, airlines, hotels and others are already lining up — including of course the scoundrels on Wall Street — for their taxpayer-funded handout.

Bailing out working- and middle-class Americans, though, is an absolute non-starter for the ruling elite. The upper crust will throw around vacuous catch phrases, like the deliciously ironic “moral hazard,” to make their argument, which is pretty rich considering the vermin on Wall Street and their cronies on Capitol Hill are so morally bereft, it is a hazard to all humanity.

Coronavirus is not nearly as deadly as the cancerous corruption that is endemic in our oligarchic corporatocracy. For proof of that look no further than Nancy Pelosi’s emergency “sick pay” bill, that exempts companies of over 500 employees from paying sick pay — and has a boatload of special exemptions for businesses below that threshold — which leaves all but 20% of workers eligible for benefits. The holes in Pelosi’s bill are bigger than the gaping void where her brain and soul should be.

This corruption of the elites is bipartisan, as evidenced by two Republican Senators, Richard Burr and Kelly Loeffler (who is married to Jeffrey Sprechter, chairman of the New York Stock Exchange), who allegedly took advantage of classified briefings on the impending severity of coronavirus in late January and early February to pull off some slick insider trading maneuvers so they could cash in before the public had any clue what was coming. Both, of course, deny any impropriety.

The egregious economic divide in America is further highlighted by the Covid-19 debate over whether to close schools amidst the crisis. The reason this debate raged on well past the rational time to act is that our education system is not a system of learning but rather a glorified daycare and food delivery service.

Proletarian parents are unable to stay home and raise their kids anymore because it now takes two parents — usually working multiple jobs — to make less equivalently than what one working parent did forty years ago.

In the Los Angeles Unified School District, 70% of all students are below the poverty line and rely on the school system for the majority of their meals. In the wealthiest country on the planet, that is absolutely disgraceful. The virus of structural economic inequality isa much more long-term and deadly problem than coronavirus, and the ruling class and their shameless lackeys in the press, have no interest in ever honestly addressing or acknowledging it.

The corporate whores in Congress and the White House (of both parties) also gleefully inform Americans that universal, single-payer health care, which every other industrialized nation in the world already has, is a pipe dream and impossibility.

How about help PEOPLE first? Boeing shredded for seeking ‘tens of billions’ in ANOTHER bailout amid coronavirus pandemic

They tell us they could never ever pay for something so decadent and luxurious as health care, but then they magically pull $1.5 trillion out of their gold-plated assholes in order to stave off a collapse of their own making. It is amazing how the Lords of Finance can make money miraculously appear in order to get things done when it is their exorbitant wealth on the line, and not ordinary Americans’ health and wellbeing.

Coronavirus is a crisis that is revealing the ugly truth about America and the malignant character of its ruling class. The crisis is going to get worse before it gets better, but it eventually will get better. America, on the other hand, will only get much worse, with no hope that it is ever going to get better.

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https://www.rt.com/op-ed/483675-coronavirus-america-bread-circuses-illusions/

Everybody Knows…

[some timely thoughts by  ~burning woman~ ]

Yesterday I had to go out “in the public” – sort of – on a job, and today I found some time to slip away and do some shopping. What I saw these last two days staggered my imagination, enough to make me “righteously” angry. I saw the programmed sheeple at their best, lining up at banks and stores, waiting patiently or walking silently between half-empty or blocked off shelves tossing frightened or angry looks when another violated the “6 foot rule” and got too close. Some had masks and gloves. Few smiles, just confused expressions as they contemplated the manufactured shortages and forced themselves to believe and trust. Surely, this is all legitimate. Surely there is a virus out there devastating the planet and killing thousands, soon to be millions, then billions. Surely one must obey the masters for do they not always know best? And who’s to question them? If we do not obey, will they not shut down even more, and will we not all die, if not of “the virus” then of starvation?

The story was being told in strange encounters. My particular clients yesterday are elderly (I’m 73 but I guess I don’t qualify since I am not playing the game by the new rules) and they have “compromised immune systems.” They couldn’t pay me in cash, so they had to place a cheque (yes, that is the proper spelling) on a chair outside for me to pick up, but only after they properly retreated back into their house, with their masks and gloves.

Signs everywhere announcing shut downs of various businesses. Restaurants only doing deliveries. Most government offices shut down, people working “from home”. Schools closed apparently until next Fall. I wondered if they’d shut down the wars?

So I listened to my anger and it told me things I am really not supposed to think. Why? That is always the first question and if followed through it explains much. What are the elites hoping to accomplish with this manufactured pandemic? I could immediately think of a few things. Take China, why not, we’re told it started there… their bubble economy was in shambles and ready to blow sky high bringing the rest of the global market place down with it. It needed stopping without exposing the lie and the massive corruption that is the viral capitalist system. Hide one man-made virus, predatory capitalism, with another! Another test: can the money system finally eliminate all cash transactions? Use the virus to scare the sheeple into going on-line or e-transfer; get them trained, then tell them cash is no longer available: too dangerous to health. Of course this means greater control by the banking mafia. Want another? Why not use the virus to begin the serious elimination of all no longer wanted nor needed older folk? Get rid of pensioners for one. Then kill off other undesirables, those that require health care but can’t pay for it and want “the government” to seriously go into the health care business and control Big Pharma and the entire medical malpractice world – get rid of the sick before serious profits are lost and keep the pressure on to hide the massive corruption threatening to destroy civilization in one fell swoop.

Meanwhile to sheeple are, as usual, returning to their blind faith. Believe those in charge, maybe even go back to believing in god. Believe the virus is deadly and can only be controlled by following mandated guidelines. Invest a maximum amount of emotion and fear in the process. Worry, worry, worry, about grandma and grandpa (or great grandma and great grandpa) and although they are already “compromised” and “sick” – if they die, believe it is because of the virus. Blame the virus, and blame whatever animal is supposed to suddenly, for no reason, have spewed it out upon innocent unsuspecting humans. Blaming always accompanies blind faith.

There are other thoughts going around in my mind about this massive scam job but I’m letting it go. It’s “your” story, not mine and I’ve decided not to spoil your fun and faith in a fabulous fantasy. If you cannot, or will not, realize that only a tiny minority of deaths are not caused by pre-existing conditions; if you do not or will not realize that “they” are blaming generic deaths from chronic conditions accompanying old age, heart conditions, over-drugging, collapsing lungs or whatever else (car crashes maybe next?) on this “virus” then go ahead, enjoy the emotional ride. While you’re at it, remember there’s a comet out there too  and comets have been known to be harbingers of “terrible” things. So let’s add that to the list while we’re at it. Maybe the comet caused the virus. More blame.

Yesterday I kind of blew up at my “boss” as she went on about the virus and I said, “There isn’t any f*****g virus! It’s a scam of such mega proportion that it’s impossible for the sheeple to even try to think. Exercise faith, obey, fear, take expensive precautions, and hope. Meanwhile this game is giving billions of quietly desperate lives something to “do” giving those lives a semblance of meaning. Suddenly the commuting, assembly line working, shopping, playing and praying system-slave discovers excitement outside the bland ordinary. A new game, and the rules aren’t all set yet: does it get better?

Remember this song?

Everybody Knows – Leonard Cohen

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows
Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died

That’s the gist of it, but of course that is not how it goes: how it goes is, nobody knows because nobody wants to know.  What everybody does know however is that if the virus “grows” it will be my fault for not playing by the establishment rules. For not being “vaxxed”; for not getting medicated; for not doing the doctor check up; for not BELIEVING. That’s my crime: I’m an unbeliever. The proof is undeniable: I don’t get sick and I don’t carry around or feed a compromised immune system. So watch for the comet then put up the stake in the public square. Burn some unbelievers and the virus will die off.  It’s always worked in the past. 

 

Extremophiles – from George Monbiot

The “establishment” is fighting hard to maintain its exceptionalism, and it’s playing hardball against environmentalists.  This is one of the best Monbiot articles I’ve ever read.

Extremophiles

Posted: 24 Jan 2020 02:04 AM PST

Anyone seeking to defend life on Earth is now labelled an extremist. Yet the real extremists are those in power.

By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 22^nd January 2020

It’s not an “error” or an “accident”, as the police now claim. It’s a pattern. First, the Guardian revealed that counterterrorism police in south-east England have listed Extinction Rebellion (XR) and the youth climate strikes as forms of “ideological extremism”. Then teachers and officials around the country reported that they had been told, in briefings by the anti-radicalisation Prevent programme, to look out for people expressing support for XR and Greenpeace.

Then the Guardian found a guide by Counter Terrorism Policing to the signs and symbols used by various groups. Alongside terrorists and violent extremist organisations, the guide listed Greenpeace, XR, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, CND, the Socialist Party, Stop the War and other peaceful green and left organisations. Then the newspaper discovered that City of London Police had listed XR as a “key threat” in its counterterrorism assessment.

There’s a long history in the UK of attempts to associate peaceful protest with extremism or terrorism. In 2008, for example, the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) produced a list of “domestic extremists”. Among them was Dr Peter Harbour, a retired physicist and university lecturer, who had committed the cardinal sin of marching and petitioning against an attempt by the energy company RWE npower to drain a beautiful local lake and fill it with pulverised fly ash. ACPO sought to smear peace campaigners, Greenpeace and Climate Camp with the same charge.

The police have always protected established power against those who challenge it, regardless of the nature of that challenge. And they have long sought to criminalise peaceful dissent. Part of the reason is ideological: illiberal and undemocratic attitudes infest policing in this country. Part of it is empire building: if police units can convince the government and the media of imminent threats that only they can contain, they can argue for more funding.

But there’s another reason, which is arguably even more dangerous: the nexus of state and corporate power. All over the world, corporate lobbyists seek to brand opponents of their industries as extremists and terrorists, and some governments and police forces are prepared to listen. A recent article in The Intercept sought to discover why the US Justice Department and the FBI had put much more effort into chasing mythical “ecoterrorists” than pursuing real, far-right terrorism. A former official explained, “you don’t have a bunch of companies coming forward saying ‘I wish you’d do something about these right-wing extremists’.” By contrast, there is constant corporate pressure to “do something” about environmental campaigners and animal rights activists.

We feel this pressure in the UK. In July last year, the lobby group Policy Exchange published a report  claiming that XR is led by dangerous extremists. Policy Exchange is an opaque organisation that refuses to disclose its donors. But an investigation by Vice magazine revealed it has received funding from the power company Drax, the trade association Energy UK and the gas companies E.On and Cadent.

One of the two authors of the Policy Exchange report, Richard Walton, is a former police commander. A report by the Independent Police Complaints Commission said he would have had a misconduct case to answer, had he not retired. The case concerned allegations about his role in the spying by undercover police on the family of the murdered black teenager Stephen Lawrence. The purpose of the spying operation, according to one of the police officers involved, was to seek “disinformation” and “dirt” on the family, and stop their campaign for justice “in its tracks.”

The Home Secretary, Priti Patel, has defended the inclusion of XR on the police list of extremist ideologies. But it seems to me that people like Patel and Richard Walton pose much greater threats to the nation, the state and our welfare than any green campaigners. Before she became an MP, she worked for the company Weber Shandwick, as a lobbyist for British American Tobacco. Among her tasks was to campaign against the European tobacco control directive, whose purpose was to protect public health. A BAT memo complained that the Weber Shandwick team as a whole “does not actually feel comfortable or happy working for BAT.” But it was pleased to note that two of its members “seem quite relaxed working with us”. One of them was Priti Patel.

In her previous government role, as secretary of state for international development, Patel held unauthorised and undisclosed meetings with Israeli officials, after which she broached the possibility of her department channelling British aid money through the Israeli army, in the occupied Golan Heights. After she was less than candid with the prime minister, Theresa May, about further undisclosed meetings, she was forced to resign. But she was reinstated, in a far more powerful role, by Boris Johnson.

Our government is helping propel us towards a catastrophe on a scale humankind has never encountered before: the collapse of our life support systems. It does so in support of certain ideologies – consumerism, neoliberalism, capitalism – and on behalf of powerful industries. This, apparently, meets the definition of moderation. Seeking to prevent this catastrophe is extremism. If you care about other people, you go on the list. If you couldn’t give a damn about humankind and the rest of life on Earth, the police and the government will leave you alone. You might even get appointed to high office.

It is hard to think of any successful campaign for democracy, justice, or human rights that would not now be classed by police forces and the government as an extremist ideology. Without extremists such as Emmeline Pankhurst, who maintained that “the argument of the broken window pane is the most valuable argument in modern politics”, Priti Patel would not be an MP. Only men with a certain amount of property would be permitted to vote. There would be no access to justice, no rights for workers, no defence against hunger and destitution, no weekends.

In his Letter from Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King, subjected to smears very similar to those now directed against XR and other environmental groups, noted “the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice?”

Good citizens cannot meekly accept the death of the living planet, as corporations rip it apart for profit. The moderation demanded of us is, in reality, extremism: acceptance of an economic and political model driving us towards unprecedented disaster. If seeking to defend life on Earth defines us as extremists, we have no choice but to own the label. We are extremists for the extension of justice and the perpetuation of life.

http://www.monbiot.com

What Price the Life of One Earthian Baby?

“If you do not specify and confront real issues, what you say will surely obscure them. If you do not alarm anyone morally, you yourself remain morally asleep. If you do not embody controversy, what you say will be an acceptance of the drift of the coming human hell.” – C. WRIGHT MILLS (1916-1962) American sociologist

In real dollars, how much is an Earthian baby’s life worth?

I was going to post just that question and see what sort of response, if any, it generated.

But I need to fill in some blanks.  The question has haunted me for long and tiresome decades. I know that the killing of an Earthian child is worth a lot of money. I also know, based on the several million deaths of children and their supporters in this century’s endless wars alone, that “the world” or let’s call it “civilization” is totally OK with that particular aspect of the slaughterhouse business of war.

Not convinced? Where are the peace activists? Where are the anti-war protesters? Where is the kind of in-your-face war news as finally helped expose the blatant, pointless, genocidal war in Vietnam? Better yet, where are you?

Has war become such a normal venture that it no longer raises any questions of morality or justice? Has it become just another video game?

So let me, once again, use this post as a vehicle to ask, why isn’t every Earthian changing their murderous patriarchal belief systems in favour of compassion? What’s wrong with choosing to be a compassionate person? What’s wrong with turning against a social system that promotes the murder of even ONE INNOCENT AND HELPLESS CHILD FOR MONETARY PROFIT?

I’m personally disgusted with this Earthian race. It doesn’t have to engage any of the social evils it currently accepts as the price of doing business. If it comes to knowing right from wrong, well, excuse me, but what are all those books for? Why have an official education system if it can’ teach the most basic requirements for admittance to the human race? Why have a written history if it’s to be endlessly mocked and misused?

The “Teachers” warned me against this people’s ways. They explained, in detail, that Earthians were pseudo-humans and most likely to fail as an experiment in higher consciousness. I had difficulty with their insistence at first but no longer. I see it now. I see how people, ordinary people who probably think of themselves as normal, mostly right, mostly OK people, are comfortably in bed with the System and quite willing to aid, abet, protect and even fight for it, and comfortable with the death of that baby as de facto necessary so the numbers can keep on rising; so the rich lords and masters keep getting richer; so the war mongers can keep on winning their election bids.

I see the fall of man in all of this. I see nothing being done that can change the disastrous course that the vast silent, ignorant and irresponsible global majority has WILLINGLY CHOSEN to take.

Sure, you can vote ‘til the cows come home and I guarantee this: you will only see things get worse.

Why? Because you condone the sacrificial killing of one innocent baby.

That is an unforgivable crime.

You would not forgive a pedophile for doing it. You would not forgive a drunk driver for doing it. You would not forgive a mass murderer for doing it. You would not forgive any one individual for doing it, even if he, or she, was given a state permit for doing it

So why should “you” who constantly and knowingly participate in the premeditated murder of one innocent child; you who is willing to pour trillions of tax dollars into weapons of mass murder of innocent children, expect forgiveness?

There will be none.

How does that saying go? “The axe is already at the root of the tree.”

Crazy post, yeah, but however it is shaken, I’m not the one who is insane for writing it. I would post it even if I knew every “follower” was going to unsubscribe. I’m tired of Earth.

 

Guilt! Oh woe is me I can feel it!

[a bit of flossophy, by   ~burning woman~  ]

Is there a point to ever allowing ourselves to feel guilt about anything? Modern trends is to not just downplay feeling guilty for anything we may have thought, said or done, but to declare guilt a very bad thing. Hey come on kids, we’re here for a good time, not necessarily a long time and how can we enjoy ourselves fully and freely if we have to be bothered by guilt feelings?

If we want to take those modern “thinklings” further we could parrot New Age concepts drugged out of ancient philosophies that after all, nothing is real. If I harm or hurt someone, no big deal, none of it is real. I’m not really real, neither are you so if you feel pain when I beat up on you for my own enjoyment, it’s your problem for wrong thinking. Your pain is a figment of your undisciplined, unspiritual mind. It doesn’t exist, see?

The interesting part though, is that while my victim’s pain is a figment of his imagination, my pleasure from inflicting the pain is very real and I should treasure it. I’m expressing myself in ways my self appreciates and reciprocates by making me feel good. Contradiction here? Why should there be if I choose not to see it? I make my own reality.

Obviously if I create my own reality feeling guilty isn’t going to be high priority on the list of things to do. Primarily because it is an unpleasant thing to experience and in new-think, unpleasantness is politically incorrect. There are now mantras to counter all aspects of life that could give rise to unpleasantness. Some examples, feel free to expound.

“I am a positive thinking individual. I only engage positive thoughts about myself.” “I feel good and nothing can ever make me not feel good.” “If I start feeling bad it’s a negative thing I must get rid of.” “I am the best that I can be.” “I am the best of the best.” “My life is good, great, wonderful and nothing can change that.” “I am important, special and everybody who knows me likes me.” “I am exceptional. If anyone doesn’t think so they haven’t bothered getting to know me and they are jealous.” “If something bad happens and I’m blamed for it, it’s not my fault, well, of course it’s not. If you let me tell the facts of the case as I know them to be you’ll see it wasn’t my fault.” “If you blame me it only shows your prejudiced against me.” 

We could call that the Millennial gospel. Like any gospel, it looks good in words and it doesn’t follow in real life, whatever that is.

So getting back to that nasty feeling of guilt when something inside of you says you did a bad thing and you should be at least sorry, or maybe even ask forgiveness or try to remedy the situation if possible, what does that say? Is your system turning against you? Did your karma run over your dogma? (OK, old joke and my apologies to Swami Beyondanonda) No, it’s much simpler than that. It’s your conscience reminding you that it hasn’t totally atrophied.

Conscience? What in hell is that?

OK, if you’re a millennial, or if you think like one, you could not possibly know what a conscience is so let’s describe it in terms that were once common enough.

According to Merriam-Webster dictionary (we’re still OK on what a dictionary is? If not ask Siri) Conscience definition is – the sense or consciousness of the moral goodness or blameworthiness of one’s own conduct, intentions, or character together with a feeling of obligation to do right or be good. (Can you get past the politically incorrect verbiage there?)

That’s why we used to have a conscience. It’s how we used to tell when we did something right as opposed to something wrong. It used to be a good idea to know the difference between right and wrong. Then came political correctness. Right became, well, not… and wrong became, well, not also. It’s only confusing if you insist on thinking in terms of right and wrong but if that’s a problem, you can get prescription drugs to solve it for you. (Ask Cortana)

And please remember, you’re special, just like everyone else.