One Hundred Million Waldens

There comes a time when you realize that your country is run by criminals in their own interests that and you are powerless to do anything about it; moreover, you are made to be complicit with their criminality through taxation and the threat of violent reprisals if you act.

And what if you do act? The forces arrayed against you (militarized police and the compliant media) are such that you will be exterminated, quickly and effortlessly, and then publicly defamed. The criminals with whom you must deal have seen to that in advance.

If you have committed yourself to non-violence as a principled way to disassociate yourself from the criminals, you will earn their smirking appreciation; nevertheless, the path of non-violence is the only truly honorable one and, you, wishing to be nothing less than honorable, adopt it.

What then is left? How to live? What to do?

You convert your home into Thoreau's cabin in the woods. You fly the blue flag of the Invisible Whitmanian Republic. You teach your children that no man or woman of true courage or genuine honor would ever consider joining the military. You give your surplus income to righteous causes. You do not look the other way but speak rationally and in a low voice about the unfreedom that is the American way. You live frugally, refusing to enter the consumption-mad lifestyle of bread and circuses. You talk to your friends and neighbors about strategic non-voting. You make tea and love. You surround yourself, as much as possible, with beauty.

And you wait.

TR

To atone for his sins of racism and war-mongering, Teddy Roosevelt confiscated huge tracts of land throughout the continental United States and Alaska for the benefit of the American people. The corporatocracy wants to reappropriate those lands for itself and has made gains in that direction since at least the disastrous Reagan years.

DON'T LET THEM GET AWAY WITH IT.

If I Had My Way

Just Another Day In The USA

Torture, police killings and the militarization of America

The System Isn't Broken...

It's racist by design.

Underthrow the Government!

No, I Won't Shut Up.

Cleveland police seek to justify shooting death of 12-year-old boy

"What has become the official version of events is that police responded to a call that someone was pulling a gun and threatening people in the park. Police were not told that the 911 caller thought the gun was a fake. When they arrived, Tamir supposedly reached for the gun, and police had no choice but to shoot him. The main lesson, it is claimed, is that children should not play with guns."

War, Children, Is Just A Shot Away...

I Am NOT Darren Wilson.

Rise Up Righteous Ghost of John Brown! Rise Up!

Your country calls...

No Norman Rockwell Nostalgia This Thanksgiving

None at all.

Betrayal

So Robert Reich posts on his Facebook page "Here's what I hope we've learned from the debacle in Ferguson, Missouri," and then lists several of the "lessons" he takes from the Grand Jury's decision in the case of Officer Darren Wilson. His first point, the subject of this post, runs as follows:

(1) When there’s conflicting evidence about whether an unarmed person has been murdered by a police officer, a public jury trial is the appropriate process for determining guilt or innocence, not a grand jury in which there’s no opportunity to cross examine the accused.

This lesson troubles me because it makes it appear as if no one knew that a Grand Jury investigation is not the proper forum for a suspect to appear as a witness on his own behalf. EVERY FIRST YEAR LAW STUDENT KNOWS THIS.

My response, then, to Mr. Reich, who, I assume, is sincere, is as follows:

Your first point is standard operating procedure. Why was it not followed in this case?

We have to presume that the prosecuting attorneys in this case all made it past their first year of law school and so they were well aware of standard operating procedure in a Grand Jury investigation.

This presumption, then, should lead us to infer that the prosecution in this case had no intention of bringing Darren Wilson to trial.

This was not a mistake on the prosecution's part but a deliberate attempt to thwart justice.

The federal government should take jurisdiction in this case and prosecute everybody involved for civil rights violations.

One would think that President Obama and Attorney General Holder....

Oh nevermind.

1991

Ferguson

Chris Hedges: A Voice In The Wilderness

Pure Righteousness.

Meanwhile, Back in the Police State of "Emergency"...

Missouri governor declares state of emergency, mobilizes National Guard ahead of protests

Mazzini: 1805-1872

“Ideas ripen quickly when nourished by the blood of martyrs.”

--Giuseppe Mazzini

It's funny how such statements are spun, depending upon who utters them. In the mouth of a 19th century Italian revolutionary, these words are stirring truth. In the mouth of a 21st century Iraqi revolutionary, on the other hand, these words are proof that the speaker is a blood-thirsty fanatic.

If it weren't for double-standards, most Americans would have no standards at all.

Did Einstein Really Say This?

Probably not, but it doesn't take a genius to know that it's true...

Why Read the Newspapers?

Just read chapter 5 of The Grapes of Wrath. We have all been here before...

Armistice Day

It's the hidden histories that matter, not the Master Narrative of the victors.

Something We Like To Forget...

The "Founding Fathers" who are worshiped by the religious and political right in the U.S., as well as by many who consider themselves on the "left" (a delusion, as there is no U.S. left), conveniently forget that the Founders they worship understood that a standing army is the enemy of democracy. Here is an article by someone who gets it:

You don’t protect my freedom: Our childish insistence on calling soldiers heroes deadens real democracy

The Democratic Party Sold Us Out, Plain And Simple

The Democratic Party implosion - World Socialist Web Site

Too bad we are incapable of thinking outside the two-party box. And voting for a third party in a two-party system is about as effective as bringing a slingshot to a gun fight. WE MUST DISMANTLE THE EXISTING SYSTEM. Impossible, you say? Fine. Just admit that you've given up on America.

Looks Like There's Something Happening In The Paris Of Appalachia

Conflict Kitchen.

Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid.

Tom Tomorrow may be the last sane individual in America.

Elections in America

Democrat

Republican

The Obscenity of Major League Baseball's Militarization

Born in Pittsburgh a mere six months before Maz's World Series miracle, I have been an avid baseball fan my entire life.

In recent years, however, I have become increasingly alarmed at the way that Major League Baseball panders to the military.

Frankly, it is disgusting. To link the national pastime with a professional, imperialistic military, is a betrayal of the values that make a free, civil society possible--values that one finds mirrored in the game of baseball itself.

This has happened on Bud Selig's watch and I can only hope that his successor will have more respect for the meaning of civil society--i.e., the life of a country's citizenry that is conducted beyond the bounds of governmental influence or control.

The militarization of Major League Baseball is a shameful, ignorant, propagandizing obscenity. And it needs to be stopped.

Lewis Mumford, American Critic

F.Y.I.

The Next Big Thing: Ebolisis

A virus that beheads you if you love Jesus. Yeah, really, trust me on this. I'm not making this up.

Just remember that you heard it here first...

In one-dimensional America, the thing you fear most is not having something to fear. You fear this because you are numb, and you want so desperately to feel. But you don't know what to feel or how, because everything you've ever known, or thought you knew, has played you false.

War is peace. Love is hate. Strength is weakness. Victory is defeat.

Consumerism was supposed to make you happy--and it does, for about an hour. And then you better get back out there and shop before the bad feeling returns.

There is no news, only infotainment. Politics, sports, sex, art...There's no "there" there, it's all spectacle. So kick back and have another beer. Here's the remote--have at it!

Freedom? You've been told your whole life that freedom is choice; and then when you try to choose you are offered: Republicrat or Democan. Coke or Pepsi. The best you can hope for is mediocrity: the best lack all conviction, the worst are filled with passionate intensity.

You've been told that you live in the greatest country on earth, the land of unlimited opportunity. Anybody can grow up to be President or an astronaut or anything they want.

And part of you believes that, because you want to believe it; but deep down inside you know that it just isn't true. Because you're not rich enough or good looking enough or well enough connected...

You thought the "Zombie Apocalypse" was a joke. It's no joke: it's your life.

The Marcuse Question

The question I have long asked myself about Herbert Marcuse is this: how was he able to perceive with such clarity the "kinder, gentler" form of fascism characteristic of the American way of life (and death)? After all, he was not born or raised in the U.S.--how could he possibly understand what it is like to be an American?

This question, like many others, contains its own answer. It is precisely because Marcuse was not born, raised, and therefore socialized in the United States that he was able to see it with fresh eyes. Moreover, he saw it with the eyes of one who arrived in the U.S. having fled Nazi Germany where he had witnessed hard-core, in-your-face fascism first-hand. And, then, of course, he worked for several years for U.S. intelligence agencies (the OSS in particular, precursor to the CIA); the latter experience gave him an insider perspective on the role of the U.S. government in the active manipulation of information and the production of propaganda and its dissemination.

The better question to ask about Marcuse is a purely rhetorical one: given his background and experiences, how would it have been possible for him to think in any other way?

2014 is the 50th Anniversary of the Publication of Marcuse's One Dimensional Man

As relevant today as on the day it was published.

The Fourth Estate's Betrayal of American Democracy

The One Percent's control of Public Television is documented here.

(Doubtless the same holds true for NPR).

For The Record

I have been known to quibble on occasion with Professor Chomsky's political analyses, but only on occasion.

More From The Last Great American Sage

"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."

On January 20, 2001, H. L. Mencken's prophecy was fulfilled.

A Decent Man

H. L. Mencken observed that every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under. All my life, my only ambition has been nothing more than to be a decent man.

The Entrapment Schemes Begin...

This is how the FBI gets in on the act and tries to engender fear in the American populace. It's become something of a formula since 9/11:

FBI arrests Rochester man in fabricated ISIS “terror plot”

To The Point

In Other News...

Forty five million in poverty in the US - World Socialist Web Site

Why Can't American Liberals Just Admit...

that Obama is a disaster; the Democratic Party is a disaster; the "two party system" (which is, in reality, a duopoly) is likewise a disaster?

Is it shame that keeps them from facing the truth about the condition of their political system and the Party that allegedly represents them? Indoctrination? Blind obstinateness?

Why do they deny--despite all evidence to the contrary--that cartoons like the one below ("Republican Jesus") apply with equal force to the Jesus of the Democratic Party?

A politics of mass delusion cannot possibly end well.

American Lives are just Pawns in their Government's Game

Families of journalists murdered by ISIS threatened with prosecution by US government

One of the Earliest Victims of the Gulag

Torture victim Jose Padilla sentenced to 21 years - World Socialist Web Site

A Little Historical Perspective

While I should take comfort in all of the horror expressed in Western media at the sensationalized news of ISIS beheadings, I suspect not a little hypocrisy at play.

Let us not forget that the association of beheadings with liberty has a long and distinguished history in liberal, secular culture and politics, beginning with the guillotine--which quickly became the symbol of republican France.

In addition, of course, beheadings and mutilations occur whenever our military engages "enemy combatants" (i.e., civilian populations) throughout the world.

Not to mention the unflagging support of the United States for Saudi Arabia, a country that routinely employs beheading as a form of capital punishment.

One of the reasons that I enjoy historical research is that it reminds us where the bodies are buried.

Unless you take an unqualified stand against violence, you will always, inevitably, find yourself standing with the killers.

Worth Repeating

Where Are You Now, Huckleberry Finn?

Chronicling American life under the radar...

Listen To Your Uncle!

Fool Me Once, Shame On You; Fool Me Twice, Shame On Me...

Fool me year after year...WTF?

It is September. Every September since 2001, the state security apparatuses in the United States (on the Federal, State, and local levels) and their propaganda organs in the supine media begin to take concerted steps to intensify the (already intense) sense of fear that afflicts the American populace. Air travelers mysteriously find themselves placed on lists for heightened scrutiny; police engage in over-the-top actions against ordinary citizens; events in other parts of the world that, previously, were ignored in the daily news are suddenly "elevated" to the status of immanent threats (ISIS who?).

It is part of a systematic program of sheepification.

Buy into it and you lose. It's that simple. Paint an "L" on your forehead. You're done.

An Explanation of America in Ten Books

How this small library contains an explanation of America may not be immediately obvious, but it will become obvious once the books have been read and digested.

And Now A Word From Our Sponsor

Sometimes You Get the Government You Deserve

Kcarab Amabo

Cornel West: “He posed as a progressive and turned out to be counterfeit. We ended up with a Wall Street presidency, a drone presidency”

Once Upon A Time

This was common sense:

Kareem Abdul Jabbar Steps Up

Class, race and the police killing in Ferguson, Missouri

There Is Hope

The Center for a Stateless Society is located in...drum roll, please...Tulsa, Oklahoma!

We will win, because we are right.

The Opiate of the Masses

Once Upon A Time In America

Henry Wallace, America's Forgotten Visionary

WAKE UP AMERICA!

Ferguson, Missouri: War comes home

And Now A Message From Mr. Thoreau

Simplify

The Next American Nation

Though today, in 2014, Michael Lind may wish to distance himself from these prescient remarks made in his 1995 book The Next American Nation, he is on the record about Islam:

"With its puritanism, iconoclasm, and lack of priestly hierarchy, this religion of Prophet and Book is tailor-made for America..." [TNAN, p. 273].

My fellow Americans: Get over it.

Salt of the Good American Earth

Jewish Americans Must Lead the Way

A Venerable Jewish Voice for Peace

A Sign I'd Like To See On Main St.

Good News!

Record-low US primary voting shows mass alienation from two-party system

6-8 Ounces of Soul Per Person

This explains alot.