The Capitalist Follies (David Glenn Cox)
David Glenn Cox -- World News Trust
Mar. 28, 2011 -- There are days in this world when the events overwhelm us.
Forces of nature batter us and remind us of how frail our lives and our societies truly are. Political events and political upheaval appear and vanish before our eyes. The United Nations authorizes a no-fly zone in support of anti-government rebels in Libya. Saudi Arabia invades neighboring Bahrain without legal cover from the UN to put down an anti-royalists pro-democracy movement.
All chapters in the Capitalist Road show, the human follies Bergere, the Capitalist follies. In the daze and confusion of tumbling events these fabricated stories become frail and disjointed. Saudi Arabia is ruled by an all-powerful monarchy with a Consultative Council in which the king is under no mandate to pay any attention to their opinions. The Saudi King is an Elizabethan monarch and is all-powerful. Anti government demonstrations in his kingdom are strictly forbidden and violators will find themselves in dark, deep, dang dungeons of the King or worse.
Bahrain is ruled by a similar potentate only this one lacks the finances for a large army. So when his population asks for a new constitution under a constitutional monarchy system the Bahraini King sends in his police to quell the crowds while at the same time offering to deal with them through other members of his government. As the Pro-democracy movement in Bahrain begins to spill across the Saudi border the Saudi King sends his army to Bahrain while the Bahraini king feigns impotence at a foreign army doing his bidding and murdering his subjects while the UN says nothing.
In the Capitalist road show brutal dictators and brutal invasions or the smashing of Democracy movements is perfectly acceptable provided that the Capitalists are allowed to profit it from it. Libya’s Gaddafi is obviously a brutal dictator but so is the Saudi King who hosts summary public be-headings in his streets for the people's amusement. This is a twilight chess game, one more move to control the vital assets of the world. The Saudi king is a player while Gaddaffi is a non-player. Saddam was a player before he became a brutal dictator that offered a free college education and free health care to his people.
Hugo Chavez is demonized as a power hungry dictator who takes private property away from the innocent Capitalists who are just trying to help him. Chavez nationalized oil interests after more than a year of negotiations with American oil companies where Chavez was trying to get from them the same deal for his oil that the Saudi King gets for his. His banking reform raises taxes on banking profits and requires the banks to make low interest loans to help the poor. What a bastard, huh?
These world-shaking events make it difficult for these Capitalists to disguise their true agenda. During the California budget crisis, should they cut funding for the sick and the poor? Yes. Should they raise taxes on oil companies? No. Should they cut funding for education? Yes. Should they raise taxes on yacht owners? No, of course not, and these events are all perfectly understandable when you pull back the curtain of the Capitalist follies. To the Capitalist every event is an opportunity to make money and take more away from you. If you live near water they’ll sell you flood insurance. If there is no flood they will profit by it and if there is a flood they will claim that it was the storm and not the flood which caused your damage. Then they will raise the insurance rates because of the recent flood.
If it is a cold winter they will raise the cost of heating oil and if it is a warm winter they will raise the price of gasoline because they had converted so much oil to heating oil. The Enron scandal clearly illustrates to us that it is all about plunder as the privatizing of public utilities has been a disaster nationwide, yet only Enron made the Capitalist newspapers. Bernie Madoff made the newspapers too, a Capitalist fall guy, a sacrificial lamb sent to the slaughter so that others might live to steal again.
When the scales fall from your eyes you begin to see American freedom as corporate serfdom. The other day I was in a store that was advertising new giant ice cream bars. As I walked the aisles I saw a weight-loss pills for sale. The pills came with a program book that asked you the question, “Are you really hungry?”
On the aisle directly across from the weight-loss pills were glucose monitors to handle the epidemic of diabetes. When they sell you cheap non-nutritious food the Capitalist profit from your illness. When they sell you cheap clothes that fall apart after a few wearings, the Capitalists profit. The landfills fill with junk that you bought on a promise, paid for on credit and then paid again to dispose of it.
They have developed the ultimate dope machine that serves up eye candy and brain opiates 24 hours a day. Every few months they peddle some new electronic doo-dad that everyone just has to have. Manufactured by near-slave labor and marketed to children guaranteed to break or become obsolete in three years. A video game is cheaper than a season of little league or soccer. Besides Mom and Dad don't have the time to take you to practice because of their job.
Ride down the streets of your town past fast food joints that advertise heavily on TV. What do they add to your community? Wal-Mart crushes mom and pop and yet most don't yet realize yet that it isn't a coming, it is an invasion. Corporate politicians working hand in hand with the electronic dope peddler to sell you tax cuts and pharmaceuticals for illnesses you didn't know that you had. They sell the big lie and reinforce the big lie, the myth of the free market. Yet when the mega capitalists get in trouble they create from whole cloth the myth of "too big to fail" and rather than being punished by the free market for their crimes they are rewarded with the keys to the treasury.
They take and you pay, they take your home and are made whole by the Federal Reserve. You lose your home and become the vassal of the Landlord. The lord of the land, a potentate who through personal wealth becomes liege lord over you. He decides what you'll pay and when, he decides what you can do in his house. You are less free than a home owner and you are less likely to vote than a home owner.
Who gave you this society? Who created a society with more persons in jail than any other society? Who decided that tax cuts for the rich were good for the economy? Who decided that pitting American workers against Third World peasants was a good thing? Who decided that private health care was better for Americans than single-payer health care? Where do the Scott Walker's and Barack Obama’s and George Bush’s come from in this world? Do they fall from the sky? Are they landed from alien UFOs? Or are they cultured and created? A new product to be sold to an unsuspecting public by Madison Avenue, and no matter how much they shout that they are new and improved, they peddle more of the same and worse.
After the nuclear disaster at Fukushima, corporate invertebrate Obama declared in the Wall Street Journal that the United States would learn from Japan's mistakes to build even better nuclear reactors. The rest of the world is backing up and saying “wait a minute" to nuclear power but our corporate invertebrate says, full speed ahead.
This isn't the first nuclear accident or even the second, as the capitalists explain it all away. Three Mile Island was an operator malfunction that has been corrected. Chernobyl was a poor Communist design without a containment building. Yet Fukushima had a containment domes that blew off like a weather vane in a Kansas wind storm. The common thread is that it is not the expected that cause the problems but the unexpected. Since you can't plan for the unexpected, nuclear power then becomes inherently and catastrophically dangerous, or does it?
The United States Navy has safely operated nuclear vessels for decades so why then our problem on land? It is the system under which they operate, military vessels worry about being combat ready while civilian nuclear plants worry only about earning a profit. Would the captain of nuclear vessel head to sea with 20 years of spent fuel rods stored in the hold? Would he sail his ship into dangerous waters needlessly and anchor it there?
The arrogance of Capitalism created the crisis at Fukushima, the panacea of nuclear power. The myth of clean, cheap and profitable, which for the electric provider might still be true because under the Capitalist system the profits go to shareholders and bills for damage or environmental clean up go to the tax payers. GE has all ready assured its shareholders that they are indemnified from damage claims under Japanese law. Imagine such a statement from a BP executive after the blow out on the oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico.
GM’s bankruptcy as approved by the corporate invertebrate's administration pushed $3 billion of environmental clean up liabilities from corporate ledgers to public ledgers. But it was to save jobs they cried, as the thousands lost their pensions and GM moved more production to Mexico. Ford retools one plant in the United States and two plants in Mexico. Fiat bought Chrysler for the express purpose of selling Fiats in the United States manufactured in Mexico. GM and Ford plan to double auto production in Mexico by the end of the decade.
Capitalism isn't the cure, it is the disease. It is the capitalist system that exports your jobs, defunds your schools and offers you payday loans on your checking account. It was capitalists who fought against higher fuel standards just as they fought against seat belts and airbags laws. It was the raging Capitalists who called for banking deregulation and it was the same capitalists making a fortune betting against you in credit default swaps.
They fight against food safety standards and against tighter regulation of every thieving industry under the sun. You are a cow being fattened for slaughter, a unit of economic material to be exploited like a mound of coal or a barrel of oil. They push you under the water and then blame you for getting wet.
It is a disease that has so contaminated our government that it no longer works in the people s interest. A major television network merged with a major cable provider? Sure, why not? No conflict of interest there. The financial reform bill was compromised before the ink was dry, signed into law approved by a Treasury Department full of employees on loan from Goldman Sachs. The work of consumer protection for the people of the United States will be done in the basement of the Federal Reserve and will be handled along the lines of the King's council in Saudi Arabia. No different than putting the Nevada gaming commission in the basement of Caesar's Palace.
The ultimate insult, the rubbing of salt into the wound, is that after all their crimes, their waste, their murders and mayhem, the Capitalist blames you for the troubles in this country. You, who have but a few dollars while they have trillions are accused of causing the mortgage crisis. You, who have no power or influence at the bank made all of those bad loans. You, who have had your jobs exported and your incomes cut are held responsible for the federal deficit.
The issue before us is no longer whether Capitalism is preferable, the question before us is Capitalism still survivable?
- CreatedMonday, March 28, 2011
- Last modifiedWednesday, November 06, 2013
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