Entropy & Empire (or A House Is Not A Hole)
There likely is an American dream,
some sort of aspiration
hidden in an old coffee can
buried somewhere beneath the grave of Thomas Paine.
But there is also an American nightmare,
an empty, cold, heartless, mundane banality
sucking the life force from all it encounters.
America is not without virtue mind you,
but its people have been, and remain dangerously hypnotized.
Long before Trumpism, and it's associated demise of decency, honesty, and intelligence in public matters turned us into a nation of cretins and morons; the decline of the empire was well under way.
A fair warning dear reader, most people who write about the dystopian nature of a society will try in the end, to offer some hope of redemption.
This is not what you'll find here.
If you're looking for a "feel good" uplifting piece that offers some pie in the sky remedy with a happy ending, you'll not find that here. I can not honestly be optimistic in this regard.
There's a fine line between pessimism and realism.
And that's a rather subjective tool we use to draw it.
How many times have we heard someone say "we need a businessman to be president...government is a business and must operate like one" ?
Too often.
(Actually even once is too often.)
Well first off government is not "a business".
It is not SUPPOSED to be making a profit for anyone.
Business, (commerce) is to be regulated by government, very clearly described in the constitution...the federal government's primary function was to regulate interstate commerce and defend the nation from foreign aggression.
Multinational corporations are foreign aggressors.
Any business conducted beyond a single state's boundary lines
is to be monitored and regulated by the federal government
via the US constitution....not vice versa.
Besides, hiring a salesman for the job of legislator, or president
is like hiring an Amish farmer to be your electrician.
Beyond the tedious contentious "campaign trail"
which plagues us all for the better part of a year with unmitigated jackassery,
the salesman has no useful skills for diplomacy or public policy making.
But this is not really the point of this article.
The focus here is on how we got to this lowly state of affairs.
We already know the USA is ruled by a distinct minority.
Most of us know this ruling minority is becoming ever more harmful and dangerous economically, politically, and militarily.
And it's all a result of crass commercialism.
An economy based on vapor.
Nothing real.
Little by little, bit by bit, lets examine the decline.
Self interest and the pursuit of wealth
were not uncommon in the American colonial perspective,
they were however restrained.
Certainly ideas regarding enlightened material restraint
and public service were in the hearts and minds of the Puritan foregoers.
Residents of the colonies were attracted to the New World
for both idealistic and materialistic reasons; generally they opposed avarice but not prosperity.
Interestingly, the Constitution refers to a republican form of government,
yet it leaves the meaning up in the air.
John Adams famously referred to “republican” as meaning
“anything, everything, or nothing… There is no more unintelligible word in the English language.”
The “ideals” of the founders had a mixed history up through the decades leading to independence, but a regard for John Locke and the whole idea of enlightenment were intellectual signposts clearly visible. Yet quickly, a few years into the fledgling new nation's history, America was on its way to becoming dominated by business aims more than noble causes.
By 1820 the USA had the most banks and insurance companies in the world.
America's devolution did not take hold without critics. There was Thorstein Bunde Veblen the witty Norwegian-American economist and sociologist. He coined the term "conspicuous consumption" in 1899. There was Lewis Mumford who, for decades after 1920 said we must “turn society from its feverish preoccupation with money-making, goods, profits, and salesmanship to the deliberate promotion of the more human functions of life.”
Critical voices were drowned out by capitalism’s triumph in the
1920s. The triumph ended with a loud bang in 1929, and paved the way for the most effective constraints in the 1930s for a while: the New Deal.
But alas, once FDR passed away, it was the citizens themselves that allowed the business world, with hired expert organizations to work through the best means to addict the public to gross consumerism And away from any political track which would strengthen themselves and weaken the business world. Their efforts along that line didn't work in a wholesale bonanza until the 1970s; it was strengthened and spread in the 1980s, and triumphed in the 1990s.
Socio-economic Hell began to heat up in the Nixon presidency (1969-1974) (He had to resign in 1974 when he was caught in some of his – minor –dirty tricks). Carter’s presidency in the 1970s was decent in its socio-economic thinking, but he was tricked by his advisor into a military mess in Iran. The next president was the clown Ronald Reagan….big business and militarists had their way with him, our postwar militarism sped up and took us right to the Gates Of Hell - our endless wars.
Today, many US citizens have lived in a fantasy created for them by ultra capitalists all of their lives, & most Americans want it to continue even if they are out of work, have had their homes foreclosed, see plainly that the government does nothing for them or anybody else (except the ultra rich and well-connected), watch helplessly as the country is bogged down in meaningless wars no one wins, understand on a gut level that their lives have no purpose, and are chronically ill without decent healthcare access, etc.
Life in the U.S. is many things, and not all of us are morally and ethically bankrupt consumers dumpster diving in the rubbish of the big oligarchs to survive. but ultimately and honestly for many it’s a life without a heart. It's not a life fit for human beings – something I suspect many or most of us feel, if only on an unconscious level judging from the plethora of psych drugs most citizens take to escape the existential abyss they can't bear to acknowledge.
The sensation is one of being haunted, and the core of this is the vapidity, the utter meaninglessness, of the way we live. A country whose purpose is to encourage its citizens to accumulate as many pointless objects as possible, or to export “democracy” (Freedom- now a code word for free enterprise...the freedom of a few to loot and rape while hiring people to wave flags) at the point of a gun, is at best a rudderless ship in a harbor of sewerage.
Meanwhile, the ship is slowly sinking out of sight.
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some sort of aspiration
hidden in an old coffee can
buried somewhere beneath the grave of Thomas Paine.
But there is also an American nightmare,
an empty, cold, heartless, mundane banality
sucking the life force from all it encounters.
America is not without virtue mind you,
but its people have been, and remain dangerously hypnotized.
Long before Trumpism, and it's associated demise of decency, honesty, and intelligence in public matters turned us into a nation of cretins and morons; the decline of the empire was well under way.
A fair warning dear reader, most people who write about the dystopian nature of a society will try in the end, to offer some hope of redemption.
This is not what you'll find here.
If you're looking for a "feel good" uplifting piece that offers some pie in the sky remedy with a happy ending, you'll not find that here. I can not honestly be optimistic in this regard.
There's a fine line between pessimism and realism.
And that's a rather subjective tool we use to draw it.
How many times have we heard someone say "we need a businessman to be president...government is a business and must operate like one" ?
Too often.
(Actually even once is too often.)
Well first off government is not "a business".
It is not SUPPOSED to be making a profit for anyone.
Business, (commerce) is to be regulated by government, very clearly described in the constitution...the federal government's primary function was to regulate interstate commerce and defend the nation from foreign aggression.
Multinational corporations are foreign aggressors.
Any business conducted beyond a single state's boundary lines
is to be monitored and regulated by the federal government
via the US constitution....not vice versa.
Besides, hiring a salesman for the job of legislator, or president
is like hiring an Amish farmer to be your electrician.
Beyond the tedious contentious "campaign trail"
which plagues us all for the better part of a year with unmitigated jackassery,
the salesman has no useful skills for diplomacy or public policy making.
But this is not really the point of this article.
The focus here is on how we got to this lowly state of affairs.
We already know the USA is ruled by a distinct minority.
Most of us know this ruling minority is becoming ever more harmful and dangerous economically, politically, and militarily.
And it's all a result of crass commercialism.
An economy based on vapor.
Nothing real.
Little by little, bit by bit, lets examine the decline.
Self interest and the pursuit of wealth
were not uncommon in the American colonial perspective,
they were however restrained.
Certainly ideas regarding enlightened material restraint
and public service were in the hearts and minds of the Puritan foregoers.
Residents of the colonies were attracted to the New World
for both idealistic and materialistic reasons; generally they opposed avarice but not prosperity.
Interestingly, the Constitution refers to a republican form of government,
yet it leaves the meaning up in the air.
John Adams famously referred to “republican” as meaning
“anything, everything, or nothing… There is no more unintelligible word in the English language.”
The “ideals” of the founders had a mixed history up through the decades leading to independence, but a regard for John Locke and the whole idea of enlightenment were intellectual signposts clearly visible. Yet quickly, a few years into the fledgling new nation's history, America was on its way to becoming dominated by business aims more than noble causes.
By 1820 the USA had the most banks and insurance companies in the world.
America's devolution did not take hold without critics. There was Thorstein Bunde Veblen the witty Norwegian-American economist and sociologist. He coined the term "conspicuous consumption" in 1899. There was Lewis Mumford who, for decades after 1920 said we must “turn society from its feverish preoccupation with money-making, goods, profits, and salesmanship to the deliberate promotion of the more human functions of life.”
But alas, once FDR passed away, it was the citizens themselves that allowed the business world, with hired expert organizations to work through the best means to addict the public to gross consumerism And away from any political track which would strengthen themselves and weaken the business world. Their efforts along that line didn't work in a wholesale bonanza until the 1970s; it was strengthened and spread in the 1980s, and triumphed in the 1990s.
Socio-economic Hell began to heat up in the Nixon presidency (1969-1974) (He had to resign in 1974 when he was caught in some of his – minor –dirty tricks). Carter’s presidency in the 1970s was decent in its socio-economic thinking, but he was tricked by his advisor into a military mess in Iran. The next president was the clown Ronald Reagan….big business and militarists had their way with him, our postwar militarism sped up and took us right to the Gates Of Hell - our endless wars.
Today, many US citizens have lived in a fantasy created for them by ultra capitalists all of their lives, & most Americans want it to continue even if they are out of work, have had their homes foreclosed, see plainly that the government does nothing for them or anybody else (except the ultra rich and well-connected), watch helplessly as the country is bogged down in meaningless wars no one wins, understand on a gut level that their lives have no purpose, and are chronically ill without decent healthcare access, etc.
Life in the U.S. is many things, and not all of us are morally and ethically bankrupt consumers dumpster diving in the rubbish of the big oligarchs to survive. but ultimately and honestly for many it’s a life without a heart. It's not a life fit for human beings – something I suspect many or most of us feel, if only on an unconscious level judging from the plethora of psych drugs most citizens take to escape the existential abyss they can't bear to acknowledge.
The sensation is one of being haunted, and the core of this is the vapidity, the utter meaninglessness, of the way we live. A country whose purpose is to encourage its citizens to accumulate as many pointless objects as possible, or to export “democracy” (Freedom- now a code word for free enterprise...the freedom of a few to loot and rape while hiring people to wave flags) at the point of a gun, is at best a rudderless ship in a harbor of sewerage.
Meanwhile, the ship is slowly sinking out of sight.
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