Lumpen Prole of Suburbia - vol. 2

 There is that famous quote, attributed to Sinclair Lewis though it's never been proven that he said the exact words, that when fascism comes to America it would be wrapped in a flag and carrying a bible... and while when looking at the current state of things and what's happened over the last few decades one could easily agree with that statement i might add that when fascism comes to America most of the population will be asleep or distracted by their phones... one might also add they may not be able to read above a 6th grade level or think critically and will believe a media that has now been gobbled up by conglomerates that will use those entities to advance their own agenda under the guise of reporting the "news"... and i'm not just talking about the propaganda channel known as Faux or it's fledgling competitors with catchy names like America Rules Yeah! (though i do find it interesting in the age of apps how there are now some independent tools being developed to help people cut through the bullshit, informing the reader of who owns the news source, what bias they show, things of that ilk... of course one would have to be civically engaged to use such a thing and when the biggest portion of the voting block are the apathetic non-voters one could question how valuable a tool like this would be, mainly because you need people to pay attention and as we know if it's not broken down into easily digestible one or two minute blocks that's a stretch...) 

Over half the adult population in Dumbfuckistan reads at or below a 6th grade level, the average level for the entire country is 7-8th grade level... easily the biggest myth in America today is that of American Exceptionalism though if one went to the gym where i swim one would find many of the red hat set bleating on and on about how fucking awesome we are, of course ask them why and one will likely be met with a blank stare, then be called a "communist or a faggot" while never actually receiving an answer to the question... basically what the red hat is inferring is if one doesn't know why "we're great" said individual falls into one or both of those groups cuz like uh because... currently one of the biggest threats we face as a nation is that of the Dunning Kruger, the level and lack of self-awareness, critical thinking skills, civil discourse, is at an all-time low, precipitated by the largest and loudest of the DK crowd, the man who knows everything until a shit show (see scandal) starts then apparently knows nothing, the Orange Shitgibbon... when one thinks about a guy standing at a podium and exclaiming, i love stupid people, while the crowd cheers that statement it's not a big stretch to think that one is an extra in the movie Idiocracy... 

In Erich Fromm's book Escape from Freedom he talks about the fact that freedom is hard, it requires a level of intellectual and civic engagement, he then states the reason so many will give it up knowingly while pretending to still have it is for that very reason, the reason they'll submit to an authoritarian is because deep down they need a daddy to tell them what to do, who to hate, how to think and to reinforce their worst forms of racism, sexism, bigotry et al... the red hats have fallen hook, line and sinker for this shit and it poses a very real quandary to those of us sitting in the middle and living in it... toss in the fact that those corporate masters, the oligarchs and plutocrats who donated millions upon millions to buy the legislative branch and certain segments of the judiciary are only concerned with maximizing profit at the expense of the lumpen proles and the environment... more aptly put they can't see the forest through the trees... but what they really want and have successfully done is to create a society where the vast majority, the super-majority, are nothing more than indentured servants, strung out on the guise of capitalism that is telling them how they need to "grind" to get ahead while the masters know full well the minions will never get ahead, they use the tactics of distract and divide to keep the proles fighting with each other instead of clamoring at the gates of the castle... this vision the masters broadcast to the minions is called the American Dream and it's a ruse, a mirage, sold to the suckers who believe a large flat screen television and the newest smartphone are the signs of success...

Of course now we have a small cabal of oligarchs, most of whom inherited their wealth, working behind the scenes in hopes of envisioning their dreams of the techno-state... dividing up the country and world into kingdoms where the population would be beholden to the masters, much like the company towns of yesteryear these "visionaries" want to literally take us back to the bad old days where one worked for the company, lived in the company house, shopped at the company stores and basically was forced to accept what the company gave them in working conditions and compensation... the choice was to fall in line or see one's family and themselves ostracized and starving in the hinterlands, the game also involved inflated prices of goods and living quarters in order to keep the lumpen proles indebted to their masters... call it slavery and with today's technology once booted from one techno-state one would be proper fucked if they revolted as the name and ID number would be disseminated to all the other techo-masters to make sure the other slaves didn't get any funny ideas about doing the same thing... any organized uprising would be of course violently put down by the private security forces of the ruler... something that is not unheard of in the history of this country... (i can easily drive to the site of the Homestead Strike, one of many examples of violence in this country perpetrated upon workers when demanding better wages and working conditions...) 

The fact is we are currently living through a coup, where a would be king and his cabal of white nationalists issues edicts without worrying about that pesky legislative branch and if those edicts are challenged, the king and his minions begin issuing calls to, more or less, eliminate the judiciary... remember why the Shitgibbon loves the stupid? they clap and cheer and buy more shit merchandise as their country slides into a dictatorship... having no understanding of history, having no ability to critically think about the situation and what they are willingly giving up they fail to understand that they too at some point will be told to take a knee to the ruler and the ruling class, some who thought this would be a great thing have found out rather swiftly that losing their job, their health care, the programs for their kids isn't all it was built up to be while simultaneously whining that they didn't think it would happen to "them", it was supposed to be for those "others", you know the  ones who don't look like "them" and don't speak the language, who might not tote around a crucifix and what not... they clutch their faux Wal-mart pearls and cry into their social media posts... there is no use being in the "i told you so crowd", what needs to happen now is to get those people to understand what they need to do... if that's even possible... as Carl Sagan so aptly pointed out, those who have been bamboozled do not like to admit they've been so, they'd rather go along with the lie then admit they were suckers... 

Which then brings us to the other interesting bit about the new #1 shithole country... there is no opposition party to the current regime... at least not one with any sort of backbone or as the football coaches say, intestinal fortitude, why? as always follow the money... it wasn't that long ago that the White Grievance Party (gop) looked to be on it's way to the morgue but these days that would be the blue boys who seem to have gotten kicked so hard in their blue balls that they've decided the best course of action is to do nothing... or damn near next to nothing, they'll pretend they have a plan but except for a handful of actual voices calling out the bullshit they may as well be called the Wet Noodle Party aka limp dicks... they've basically been bullied to the side because they don't want to admit the other side doesn't give a flying fuck about the rules only ruling which renders their methods impotent... 

It has been a contention of mine, since the time i discovered the book, Lies My Teacher Told Me (way back in the early 90s), that the education system may not be as altruistic as it was once made out to be... this is not a knock on the teachers, not at all, the fact is there are a lot of great educators out there trying to teach things like critical thinking, reading, writing, to use the mind... granted they are often hamstrung by rules and regulations and a reliance on test scores and i understand that and yes it was much better than what we are facing now which is a total dismantling of public education which does nothing more than create a bigger wealth gap in our society, i was also lucky enough to be raised by a father who taught me to be a skeptic, to question the hegemony because believe it or not sometimes they lie to you... which led me to sit in the library and read books, books outside of my course work, to continue reading books even after my formal schooling was done because number one, the mind is a muscle and needs to be used and two for all those reasons mentioned above... i wanted to know what's going on and how bad i'm being fucked over... George Carlin does a great bit on that and mainly, as i've told the boyos and others in my years on the planet, all one needs for an education is a library card, i've learned far more in my own "studies" than i ever did in formal schooling but the system is set up so one has to play the game, there is great stock put in those little pieces of paper (not to mention great expense which creates debt which of course the bankers love)... 

Currently there is an all out assault on critical thinking, on learning, because it apparently makes one "woke", whatever the fuck that is... or to once again cite Orwell and Huxley, they who control the language controls the game, hence why the current regime is banning books and words and doing it's best to disseminate disinformation, a lesson learned from their Russian daddy, controlling the flow of information helps consolidate and solidify power... hence the frustration with the Blue Donkey party who don't seem to be able to message a fucking birthday party without shitting the bed... 

Which brings me to another point about this two party system we live under, yes there are some smaller, what i'd call fringe parties, but the fact is there are two parties which are beholden to the same masters, one just feels the need to completely satisfy those masters (of whom they are usually one of... masters=donors) while the other tries to throw some scraps to the citizenry while keeping the masters somewhat happy... problem is these days the masters seem to want it all, though it does seem there may be a bit of a divide on that issue... but the fact is, as pointed out by Prof. Chomsky, the new #1 shithole country is the only modern western democracy that doesn't have a labor party... and no the Blue Donkey doesn't quality, they are far more friendly to labor than the White Grievance Party but what the professor was speaking of was one by and for the workers, yes the red hats would read something like that and start screaming socialist! communist! while not grasping the concept at all... the concept being that a political party rooted in labor would look out and legislate for the working class, of whom many of us belong to and has nothing to do with the color of the collar (see white and blue), it would not work for those controlling the means of production and their trickle down theory whose main goal is to increase profits at any cost and therefore increase shareholder value and funnel the money upwards (funny how the terms funnel upwards and trickle down are complete opposites yet interchangeable in pol-speak) ... and of course the main shareholders just happen to be those sitting on the top of this pyramid scheme doing the least amount of labor while reaping the maximum benefit... 

So what's needed? well the easy answer is more choices in political parties which would mean the children (hopefully an offshoot of this would be electing adults but that's still be a big if) would have to work together to get things done, this forgotten word called compromise which was demonized by an earlier iteration of the White Grievance Party... the best way would be to have a viable and potent third party, a party rooted in labor, that would gum up the works of our current sorta two party system... of course if one wanted to see those two parties work together it would be on this issue right here, they would frame it differently, the Blue Donkey's current leadership would speak of unity, sticking together, all while sitting on their hands and doing their big donors bidding, while the WGP would scream socialists, which happens to be one of their favorite words... granted it will take the gutting of a certain Citizens United ruling which is where the decline of any semblance of democracy started in this country, when the robed ones declared corporations as people and opened the spigots of cash meaning the 1% had finally bought themselves a country... 

And so to quote David Bowie... where are we know? well we've come to the point where we must heed the words of the late John Lewis and be "good trouble", it means using words as protest, it means actually get out of the house and protesting, it means brushing up on the laws (though soon it may not matter as the WGP decides who those actually apply to which would come at their discretion- see storm guvment building, shit on floor, deface property, wave confederate flag- perfectly fine... peacefully protest under the 1st Amendment not so much)  so one knows what the authorities can and cannot get away with... it means civil disobedience... it means if this site suddenly goes dark, my dear handful of readers, that the author might be sitting in a cell... the academics who study this have stated it takes roughly 3.5% of the population to peacefully protest, the key word being peacefully, to swing the tide and topple authoritarian regimes, not that it's any comfort that people like Timothy Snyder and Jason Stanley have taken positions in Toronto because they know what's happening and yet while some of us will sound the alarms there is still a good portion of those who will sleep right through it... we need some of them to wake up, sadly many won't until the shit show shows up at their front door... by then it might be too late... but sitting on one's hand is not an option anymore...