Where we preach about “god”, “freedom” and “democracy”, but we’re the complete opposite. We strip away people’s freedom, charge absurdly high tax rates on your property and income, strip people of their homes, and push people into unemployment, and start persecuting people for not being Christians. Oh yea…
Well, a lot to unpack there…
I think there is entirely too much private ownership to qualify as Communist just yet. Technically, it’s still a Democratic Republic. There is certainly some backsliding going on towards authoritarianism…
IMHO, America was founded by a bunch of rich white guys that didn’t want to pay taxes…249 years later it seems damned little has changed.
There are two distinctly different camps here. One believes in screwing everyone but the privileged while the other wants to be everyone’s keeper. The logical balance is somewhere in the middle, but neither camps wants to move their tents.
I don’t think this country will resemble anything I grew up with in another 10-15 years. Not all of that is bad, but there is little concern to sift the wheat from the chaff…it’s just a game of one-upsmanship. It’s like the old saying, “Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to have for lunch”…
The genius of the American system was always compromise. When that fails the end result can be catastrophic.
Until Americans get their collective heads out of their ass this path will just accelerate. Integrity, respect and bi-partisanship is not dead yet…but it seems to be coughing up blood…
You aren’t describing communism, but unbridled capitalism / oligarchy / pluotcracy. There are several alternatives to that, not all of them bad and some of them quite good. Most notably, democratic socialism.
The way I see it, the basic problem is that the fruits of the massive gains in productivity since the 1970s have gone almost entirely to rich fucks and virtually none of it to workers. There is no reason the average person shouldn’t be making twice the money (inflation-adjusted) we were 50 years ago, while working half time. That would actually be a modest goal. As it is, the top 1% got all those benefits and now the middle class is imploding. Economic inequality on an industrial scale is not sustainable.
Well, as Marx said, this is the core mechanism of capitalism. Private owners reap the majority of the profits while paying workers significantly less than the value of their labor.
Why do you think the Republicans have demonized the word “Socialist” for so many years? Where do you think Joe McCarthy’s funding and support came from? Just the shadow corporatocracy pulling strings…
It’s the system that has always flourished in this country. Robber Barons was not a laudatory moniker 100 years ago. Since the early 20th century they have gotten shrewder and will continue in this strategy until the workers wise up and push for representation and collective bargaining. Reagan dug the first grave, Clinton built the casket by normalizing trade with China and pushed for their entry into the WTO, Bush II laid the sod and Trump is pissing all over it. Politicians continue to diminish the power of the workers to ensure their re-election war chests while convincing working stiffs that capitalism is doing them the favor. No rewards, just lies, misdirection and exploitation.
No small wonder Evangelicals find it so appealing…
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As I see it, this is kind of funny. Maybe simplistic. Maybe stupid. Who knows? Maybe you do.
But let’s just say I’m printing the money. And let’s just say, you respect me or are afraid of me or you know that if I print money for YOU then we both benefit from the deal.
So, I print the money. Not that hard of a job. You need paper. Printing presses and ink. Actually, these days, everything is digital, so it’s even easier. I just tick off the boxes. Key point. I charge interest on the money I “lend” out.
And you, as a government, habitually pay me back. And it comes out of the tax payers dollars. So, I tax the common folk to pay for interest on my “services” (I print the paper dollars you use).
This is an exceptionally profitable game I’m playing. I do absolutely nothing and in return I receive the “units” of currency which allow me to live a completely care free life. Whilst (all the while) that same paper currency is what keeps impoverished people from actually even remotely entering into a realm where theyre not worried about getting kicked out of their house or having heat during the winter.
So, what? What’s my point. You shouldn’t trust me. I’m running a scam. The system is outdated. Charging interest on loans is as outdated a system as the laws in the Bible. Also, the method of exchanging goods and services is outdated. We live in a complex world. We need a better system.
The people opposing change to financial systems are those benefiting from the outdated system. We, as a people - NEED change. This hyper-tier system of wealth by way of numbers (that we all accept) is unacceptable.
We need a better system. I’m not espousing communism. I think everyone deserves possessions and a will to generate wealth. But … the system is DESIGNED to make you poor and make others rich JUST BECAUSE they happen to own the printing presses.
just saying
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It’s a system that’s been around since around 2400 BCE…those cunning guys in Mesopotamia were the first to figure out how to make money with money. Granted it took them around 800 years after the first written form of language emerged to bend this into a primitive loan contract…but they figured out how to use this advancement to line their pockets with for-profit contracts.
Money lending was allowed historically only under permissible usury within religious law. Essentially, money lending for profit was not allowed within your faith, but you had no such prohibition outside of your faith. Judaism, Islam and Christianity were all pretty clear on that clause.
Judaism was the first to figure out how to exploit this loophole. Business is business. It took Christianity a while to get over themselves, but in the 14th century the Medici’s figured out how to dodge the Christian “usury” laws through a little device known as bills of exchange which allowed for a percentage above the principal to be tacked on. Islam still frowns on riba, or interest charged on loans between Muslims…gotta give them a thumbs up on that shit…
From the Medici’s forward it’s just been a shit show of exploitation and usury. As far as a new system, well, you can wish in one hand and crap in the other…see which one fills up first…
America, itself, bears a strong resemblance to a Ponzi scheme, in that it relies completely on a continual flow of new money to support the weight of what it did with the old money it had… We borrow money like it’s a right. America’s debt is around 120% of GDP. Some models put that debt at around 200% within 20 years. The common shared belief among econimists is that this is the tipping point where the debt can no longer be serviced and default is inevitable.
Politicians need this system. Their common habit of over-promising to constituents and pandering to financial elites is too entrenched to reform. A brief review of their deregulation actions since 1929 clearly detail that. Neither party gets a pass…but Americans still go to the polls and vote…like it’s going to make a difference. Let’s be completely honest with ourselves on this…if voting really did make a difference, they wouldn’t let us do it.
As I see it, if you really want a fundamental change in this system, you need end your participation within it. If 50% of all American tax payers refused to pay Federal income tax and stopped paying their home mortgage simultaneously the current system collapsed on itself in less than a year…likely in less than 6 months.
Pretty extreme, I agree. It would certainly be a “come to Jesus” moment for Congress and the Administration… They would have to produce something quick to counter such a move by its citizens…something they are not historically known for.
But Americans are largely self-centered and will suffer no pain to change a system that openly exploits them, as they all endorse it through their participation. Occupy Wallstreet was just free public camping with an agenda. As long as Americans view the accumulation of unbridled wealth as something to be lauded or striven for, the systemic exclusion will continue to thrive.
One of the best things ever said about the 2008 Financial Crash was from David Suzuki. “We’re in a giant car heading towards a brick wall and everyone’s arguing over where they’re going to sit”
Nothing changes. George Carlin pointed out that dehumanizing suffering and obscuring truth merely takes a bit of soft language when he said, “the more syllables, the less truth”.
We should, then, not anticipate change…just more syllables…
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Lots of food for thought in your post, @cynical1. I’ll spend a good deal of time pondering what you’ve written.
At first blush, I find the bulk of it hard to dispute with the exception that I think voting has and can make a difference, in both local and general elections. It got folks in the U.S. some civil rights, for instance, and now it’s getting them taken away.
Often, it does seem as though the voting citizenry is running really fast with one foot nailed to the floor. However, the voting citizenry in the U.S.-style representative government gets exactly what they pay for (so to speak). It’s working as designed.
A lot of people wanted and voted for the current regime. Their foresight sucked and their hindsight is becoming clearer only because those votes are now creeping up to slap the shit out of a lot of them personally.
Now we can discuss endlessly what brought us to the point where so many of citizenry thought it would be a good idea to vote for this regime, and there are many, but that will result in bupkus for the time being.
Perhaps the U.S. needs that tipping point. Perhaps all the institutions need to completely crumble. Perhaps from that dust, enough sensible folks will emerge and collectively design less damaging societal systems.
As one of my favorite rich, white guys said, “ I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical."
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Stupidity, as Boenhoffer said, is not about intellectual ability, it’s about a moral or social failing. A relinquishing of critical independent thinking over groupthink. We can still tie our shoes, we’re just walking them in the wrong direction…
Anyone remember the events in Charlottesville, Virginia around 8 years ago? Remember the images of people with torches chanting “You will not replace us”? Don’t think for a minute that the Great Replacement theory hasn’t ignited most of the moral and social failings in America. It certainly showed you who they are.
As this band or merry pranksters doesn’t buy into the theory of evolution, it’s no small wonder that they resort to bullying, cruelty and just paranoia…they actually believe they can stem the inevitable social evolutionary path America is on. People that get paid to study this shit have predicted whites will lose their statistical majority in around 20 years. It scares the Hell out of them.
To these deluded few, I can only say that when that time comes, they better hope the statistical majority is only looking for parity…not revenge…
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T’would be beautiful. Let’s do it. Everyone on board?
Yes, unfortunately, Terrorgram wreaks havoc world-wide.
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Lol. Particularly now that I approve of so little of what the federal government does, I’d love to, but the problem is that they have the Big Stick. Most ‘Muricans aren’t self employed anyway so it’s hard to refuse to pay taxes that are mandated to be deducted from your wages in the first place. So a refusenik movement would have to be spearheaded by employers and, yeah, THAT’S not going to happen.
But no worries, Trump says he’ll just eliminate the income tax anyway, lol.
Ahhh…but how long can they wield it?
During the 2008 Financial Crisis there were approximately 3.8 million foreclosures processed in the USA. To clear every one took approximately 7 years. There are currently around 21.1 million active mortgages in the USA. 10.5 million would take around 20 years to clear. The system collapses under its own weight long before then.
Granted, the influx of payroll taxes will slow the funding crisis to a degree. Of the 2 trillion plus collected in taxes about 1.5 trillion comes from payroll withholding.
However, with the immediate revenue hits banks will take from a mortgage moratorium it should dry up most commercial lending within weeks. That should trigger layoffs and business closures, thereby reducing withholding revenue as collateral damage.
Any bailouts become problematic, as the Fed is the lender of last resort…it won’t take long for an echo to develop in their coffers. You can kiss the Chinese and Sovereign Wealth Fund investors good bye at this point
The inevitable personal and corporate bankruptcies with further stall clearing all the bad debt. Want to stall it further? Just begin some civil action…like an ambulance chaser lawsuit…and the bankruptcy process is stayed until the civil action is adjudicated or dismissed.
Granted, this is a suicide mission. It begs a critical decision by the participants as to whether they want to die on their feet or on their knees.
Another aside…more akin to a suspense novel, is for some cyber wealth redistribution. Currently, most records of home mortgages are cataloged through LMRS ( Land Records Management Systems) software at your local recorder’s office. This makes it very difficult to target a specific system due to the decentralization.
Currently, there are three major vendors for LMRS software: Granicus, Accela and TriMin. A simple exploit to lock or purge records from this software would make accessing many of these records difficult or impossible.
Why do this? In order for a foreclosure to process there needs to be viable proof of ownership on the property in question. If the banks lose their ability to prove their ownership claim the foreclosure is dismissed.
Yeah, that would give millions of our fellow Americans a free house at the expense of banks and financial institutions…
One can only dream…
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It’s also true to some unknown extent that the IRS is just another government bureaucracy that has been compromised and bungled up by the regime, by for example putting a clown in charge. Last I knew the first clown quit very shortly into his tenure, probably because he wasn’t clownish enough. Trump is pro-business and therefore anti-tax and as I understand he has defunded or at least not adequately funded collection efforts – although one side effect of that is that they concentrate on low-hanging fruit which is to say, not on the wealthy, in their collection efforts. So the situation there is mixed but we could imagine that the IRS is not equipped to handle a major crisis like most taxpayers “forgetting” to file or at least to pay their income tax.
As to the mortgage side of things, not paying a mortage isn’t open to people who don’t have one, and that’s not necessarily the relatively wealthy, but increasingly those in possession of generational wealth in the form of real estate. In high cost areas like, say, the San Francisco Bay area, that is the only way a young couple can afford even a modest home. Mom & Dad might have held on to a brownstone in SF even though they aren’t otherwise wealthy, and pass it on to the kids.
Maybe for people like that, protest would look like not paying property taxes, although, the impacts there (and the enforcement) are far more local.
True. One wonders if (1) it will unambiguously get that bad and (2) enough people will realize it while there’s still a window to act.
People have a tendency to rationalize based on past experience / expectations and what they need / want to be true. And in real life you seldom wake up one morning to find an unambiguous headline like WE ARE ALL SCREWED AND ABOUT TO DIE. It is death by a thousand cuts normally, and human brains are biased heavily toward the status quo, even when it’s a painful one, as opposed to acting or taking risks. Already the graft, corruption and bigotry is both overwhelming and normalized with the full cooperation of whatever is left of mainstream journalism. Already you have centrists / incrementalists learning nothing from all this and fantasizing about getting rid of Trump meaning that they can just “return to brunch” as if nothing happened. Hell the other day Hillary said Israel isn’t committing genocide, it just suffers from bad PR and a generation of young people who don’t understand the context of their genocidal actions, lol. With all this going on, I’m thinking if I decided hypothetically to “forget” to pay my income taxes this April, I wouldn’t have a lot of company.
Where I MIGHT have more company is more in the streets protests, boycotts, pressure campaigns like that. That’s already had some effect; increasingly the biggest assholes like Noem and Miller are living on military bases because they don’t feel safe among the general public (Miller had neighbors leaving pointed messages and veiled threats in chalk on their house’s sidewalk, and so put it up for sale).
One thing’s for sure, 2026 is going to be a VERY interesting year, and mostly not in a good way, methinks.
It will never come to that. Americans need therapy for a paper cut, so they will never submit to that great a sacrifice. They seem to prefer the death by a thousand cuts.
As far as protests… Let me share an anecdote.
Back in 2007 We Energies of Wisconsin bought the rights to a wind farm development site in central Wisconsin. It was part of a deal with Florida Power to buy nuclear power stations. They paid $1.00.
Florida Power had test turbines to determine the feasibility of the site for a few years.. They had determined the project would not produce enough energy to justify development, so they just folded it up and forgot about it.
In 2007, the Democratic governor had an agenda to develop renewable sources of energy. It didn’t have to work, it just had to look good politically to his constituents.
I had a horse farm right in the middle of the proposed 17000+ acre project which would contain 90 turbines upon completion. I knew next to nothing about wind farms at that point, but I learned…
There are several issues with building a wind farm around people. Subsonic noise, shadow flicker, stray voltage and just the noise in general. I visited people living within other WE Energies project and the commentary was all the same. No one wanted to live there, but they couldn’t sell their homes and move…no one was buying homes in the middle of a wind farm.
Being the closet anarchist that I am I worked hard to organize an opposition. We protested, drove community resistance…we even had 3000 people testify at a State House hearing on allowing the project to continue. It all looked very “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”…the people had spoken.
Well, long and short of it is they approved the project, gave it their blessing and told us to go fuck ourselves. The industry wrote the legislation and the state representatives all took their campaign contributions and voted with a smile.
Just as the people had warned me before the project started, I couldn’t sell the farm. No realtor would take a listing. The horses were anxious for months after it went online. The alpaca never came out of the barn and I never got a chicken to lay another egg. I developed an arrhythmia after a few months…that oddly went away once I moved. Eventually the place foreclosed and went to the Sheriff’s sale.
You would think all these facts and information would sway the powers that be. You would think it to be self evident that there’s a reason why mom isn’t tending roses, dad cutting the grass and the kids playing Frisbee in the parking lot of a power plant…because humans don’t fucking live in power plants… Nope.
My point in all of this is you can protest all day every day. Go to Portland, they actually do every week. But do not expect anything to come of it. Unless you have the money to buy politicians, or can put enough fear and paranoia in people it’s just an exercise in public speaking.
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I think there are forms of protest that put actual pressure on the right people and effect change.
There are also forms of non-resistance that enable things like we’re starting to see now, like the account I read about today where they have started using torture devices on detained immigrants, such as putting people in a small 2 by 2 foot box for hours. They predict, accurately I think, that this kind of thing will expand if everyone just yawns and accepts it.
I mentioned Noem and Miller moving themselves and their families onto military bases. I could mention Carolyn Leavitt whining to her social media followers that she is having trouble with all the “pressure”. Dan Bongino over at the FBI looking for an exit because he sees the handwriting on the wall. Some portion of this come from public pressure and public opinion and, yes, public protest.
I grant you that a lot of protest is ineffective at changing opinions, particularly if, as with your efforts to keep windmills off your property, you’re playing the relatively short game (although some of it is effective at keeping up people’s spirits). I do not think it is totally worthless though. It’s pretty clear that the regime was very threatened, even panicked, by the last No Kings rally. They fear mass protests and what it implies. There’s a rule of thumb that once you have 3.5% or more of the people in the streets, authoritarian regimes reliably crumble. With the last protest we were at a little over half that, and that in turn was about twice the size of the prior one.
That said, standing for hours in a crowd waving a sign is not my idea of the best use of my time at my age, it IS more of a young person’s game, especially if thugs show up to cause trouble.
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Now. You explain the way out with precision and clarity. Does your expertise on dissident procedures in the face of corrupt overlords extend to the organization capacity needed to bring said dissident activity about?
It seems you are as eager as you are informed. Of course, it is all a pipe dream. Who could ever imagine such mass disobedience? Of course, we all know this much. We bleakly go along like lemurs heading toward the end of the embankment.
for the sake of sentiment I leave this here. Since a dissident is here.
Funny, I was working at a radio station in '93 when Vs. came out. Always was a grunge fan… I had hair back then…I remember because I used to own a comb…
Do I think America will ever rise up? No. Too many distractions for the masses. Too much self-interest. Too strong a desire for external validation.
My father was a Roosevelt Democrat. He believed in questioning everything. For a man who only saw a college if there was a football game, he had a book for any occasion. It always applied because he had read it first and absorbed it. It was the best gift he ever gave me.
I don’t know if I qualify a dissident…I know I’m an argumentative prick, though…
To preface, in the early 70’s I was in high school. You couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting something related to Watergate. I had already spent my childhood watching the events of the 60’s play out…Vietnam, Selma, the riots in the aftermath of King’s assassination and the general unrest. I even remember walking past the '68 Convention demonstrations in Chicago on the way to my mom’s dentist appointment.
It was probably around '73 when I asked my father when were people going to realize who the real enemy was and rise up. I can still see the half smile on his face as he wrote down a name and title on a piece of paper. “Here, take this to the library and ask them if they have it.”
It said Max Weber, Politics on Vacation. Turns out this was a lecture Weber gave shortly after WWI. It took a while for my 14 year old brain to figure it out…years, to be exact, but the message, once I got it, resonated with me.
“A state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.” It’s that monopoly on violence that determines the true power in any society or group. Whoever holds that monopoly is the one holding power.
The State or entity holding this monopoly will use it wherever it feels it can increase it’s advantage or status. Smedly Butler (one of the few Americans I genuinely respect) put it best in War is a Racket:
“War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many.”
“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.”
To elaborate further, and I had to look this up, in the 1920’s two ecologists devised the Lotka–Volterra equations to study the relationships between prey and predator in animal populations. The pertinent finding here was the typical ratio between predator and prey. They determined that for every 100 prey animals there is 1 predator.
Does that sound at all familiar to human societal and financial evolution in the 20th and 21st centuries?
IMHO, all of this together is why protest is merely an exercise in recreating the sound of one hand clapping. Until you are willing to challenge that monopoly with an equal level of violence you are still in a subordinate position. You will change nothing.
Your points are well reasoned and something to think about.
But it would argue that “violence” has a somewhat … flexible meaning in this context. That “3.5% in the streets” rule of thumb, the beginning of rats jumping ship in the current regime (which admittedly may or may not turn into a mad dash for the exits, or might yet be temporarily contained for awhile longer) are all examples of people in power understanding and fearing the potential for retribution. Retribution doesn’t have to involve guns and pitchforks and tar, it can also involve Nuremburg-style tribunals and the loss of personal freedom and status and wealth. These fuckers know on some level that authoritarianism isn’t sustainable and that some form of comeuppance is at least a concern for them. The richest of them think they can go to their bunkers and/or hide behind their money to ride it out, but even they fear what I’m speaking of or they wouldn’t bother with all their lying, cheating and hiding.
So I would argue that it is not so much a monopoly on violence per se, as a monopoly on power, authority and control. The only honest thread in the GOP is that they understand it’s about control, and are laser-focused on that. Whereas the Dems still think it’s about moral high ground, brunch, and the wise elites (not so) beneficently “helping” the poors. Enough to keep them docile. That, to me, is why the Democrats seem constitutionally incapable of fighting fire with fire – the fire is too honest, and ultimately, they are no more interested in sharing the wealth than are their opponents.
One can argue that state violence isn’t just the standing army, it is also what will happen to me if I don’t pay my taxes or what should happen to me if I hold public office and am not an honest broker. I am fine with those forms of implied and real violence. Civilized violence, if you will. I don’t think it has to be a question of kill or be killed. The will to power can be directed in constructive ways that benefit everyone without unduly burdening any one person or group.
The fundamental point is that power comes from that very monopoly on violence. Without it you have no authority. You are just another voice lost in the storm.
Please don’t interpret any of this as a direct commentary on current events. While it applies in many regards, it is universal throughout history.
in 1905 George Santayana wrote, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, "
Humans have a notoriously short memory…
Sure. Democratic republics, and Democratic Socialism, are attempts (rational attempts IMO) to direct and channel the monopoly on power so that it is better directed for the general highest good. You seem to be arguing (and perhaps I am misinterpreting) that because this is a universal historical principle that we might as well say “might makes right” and be done with it.