I have been reading so much on here and elsewhere expressing shock and surprise that the blatant untruths we see pass for gospel in the mass media and in our culture in general can somehow be so believable to ostensibly intelligent, discerning people. About how we can tolerate what amounts to an oligarchy (or more accurately, a plutocracy) that disguises itself cleverly as a Democracy, even though it's patently obvious to even the most casual observer that only the wealthy and connected are allowed to play in the sandbox of power. About how the worldview choices on offer have essentially devolved down into which Italian Western you prefer, the Republican version (Prega Il Morto e Ammazza Il Vivo, aka Kill the Living and Pray for the Dead) or the Democrat version (Il Grande Silenzio, aka The Great Silence).
So now I am going to tell you why, not that it hasn't been obvious for centuries anyway.
Warning: auto-apologists for the commodity system that rules every corner of our lives, stop reading now, please.
Everyone else may continue below the fold.
Yes, the lies. I will put it briefly and bluntly.
These lies we have been fed since birth, they are only believable because the wretched system requires that ideas, the very basis of human intellectual identity, become subjugated to their own ability to sell themselves in the ridiculous circus of the "free marketplace". This inevitably requires that these ideas inflate themselves with falsehood and exaggeration, because the marketplace demands the spectacular and the ne'er-before-seen, even if the innovation on offer is limited to just how horrifying and shock-n-awful the spectacle can be. It isn't really that far from Barry Bonds to Ann Coulter, if you think about it.
No, no, no. The problem is the system of Quantity that seems to have as its mantra the complete eradication of Qualitative judgement. The problem is the system... the phony system that has as its basis pure, unadulterated mythological lies like fiat currency (paper money with no standard of backing other than the affinity of the population to confer believability and efficacy upon it where none existed prior).
No, there will be no progress as long as ideas are for sale like cheap (slave-made) Wal-Mart keychains, because there will be no ideas allowed through that proclaim anything but the supremacy of the system which, through its technological means, allows ideas to break through to a wider reception, or not.
As long as this wretched system exists in its present form, we will be stuck pathetically trying to lie our way to the truth. But don't hold your breath, because a LOT of people think that Jesus broke into the moneychangers' temple to tell 'em all just what a great job they were doing.
Of course its easy to get people to believe that pollution isn't harmful, or that they have to burn the village to save it, or that there's no class system in America so let's have a "middle class tax cut," or we're fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here, or that Congressmen who ride all day in limos and live in vast mansions can know what poor people need, or just about whatever you need them to believe... it's easy when you know they've been lied to about a billion different important things since they were born, and really since this country was born, and that the whole process has made them as laughably and mush-mindedly manipulable as a newborn kitten is when you dangle a ball of string over them.
No. You can't grow pearls from a turd no matter how many infomercials with how many celebrities tell you you can because they are getting fat pay to say so, you just can't no matter how much you want to believe that the wretched system of guaranteed apocalypse called Capital is going to do anything but make your fellow humans need to fuck you over and kill you to survive, just like it was millenia ago in the jungles and the caves of primordial Earth.
No. Any system, no matter how necessary and enriching it appears to be on the surface, that demands you apologize for it with your words and deeds is going to bring out anything but the most base, animal instinct in people, period.
Until that Rubycon is crossed and legitimate critique of Capital is allowed, we will not have the power to change ourselves as a society or as a species.
Until I/you/we stop predicating what we think is credible and necessary on the needs of the system, no change.
Until the apparatus of the corporate mass media is ground to a halt by the power of people to shut down business which they have deemed harmful to the common good, no progress.
Until the destructive power of the phony dollar is removed from all political campaigns, never to return, have a nice slavery and have a good old time pretending it's freedom.
Until I/you/we are prepared to rescind our surrender of our volition to the "experts" who get paid to tell us why we should just go along with whatever they say because they are paid to know and we aren't, no real movement.
Until we're ready to stop apologizing for the institutionalized murder the system has as its lifeblood, we are next on the chopping block.
Until we can figure out that a system that demands infinite growth and expansion of profit cannot do anything but completely destroy the finite resources of our Earth, we are stuck.
Until we can understand that the system of commodity only has efficacy until it runs out of legitimate things to commodify, we will be ever faster approaching the day where some rapacious corporation will be charging us to breathe the air.
Until we take some sort of responsibility for painful, balls-out honest critical thinking and assessment again, it wouldn't matter if Barack Obama, John Edwards or Jesus Christ himself were "President," we will still be subjugants, serfs being torn along in the undertow of the delusions that this sick, sick system demands.
And more than anything, until we as a species get it through our quicksand heads that the only legitimate action of real self-interest comes through ego-less service to others, we are d-o-o-m-e-d.
All just thoughts for a cold Monday morning in January.
I thank you for your time.