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OpEdNews Op Eds    H3'ed 11/8/11

Dehumanizing Late-Stage Capitalism

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Message Phil Rockstroh
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In my opinion, when people opine that the OWS movement is about -- or should be about -- the airing of this particular grievance or that it must bandy this or that particular demand -- they have missed the point.

Of course, collectively, OWS evinces a force of resistance against corporate greed and a critique of the failings of the present political system. " Yet, as is the case with any living thing, to reduce its essential nature to facile descriptions diminishes it.

As with human perception of life itself, experiencing freedom carries an ineffable quality, a wordless grandeur.

"Human language is like a cracked kettle drum on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, when what we long to do is make music that will move the stars to pity." Gustave Flaubert

Through it all, the immanent quality of and inchoate longing for freedom remains within us: Although present, it is not always in plain view. Its presence in our lives is, perhaps, best summed up by this Irish aphorism:   "Mrs. O'Kelly, do you believe in fairies?" "No, I don't -- but they're there."

Over and over again, too many well-intentioned sorts continue to insist that it is imperative that we inform the nice people of the middle-class (nice people who, given the nature of imperium, willingly feed off the blood of empire like the charges of a vampire) that there are well-mannered working people on site at OWS encampments -- not only spittle-launching, leftist radicals.

Excuse me, but, for many years now, so-called "crazy" leftist radicals have been damn near the only ones who have had the clarity of mind to give a cogent critique of empire " have been willing to point out the exploitive, soul-demeaning mode of existence inherent to the militarist/national security/corporate/consumer/ duopolistic state--and, as a result, we have been marginalized, entirely excluded from mainstream debate and discussion.

Let us have a little rendezvous with reality; otherwise, the operatives of the status quo will frame the narrative, once again, and will claim victory by co-option.

This is the method by which the capitalist status quo has maintained its inverted totalitarian set-up since the popular uprisings of the 1960s, by means of generous economic rewards (the perks and privileges of the corporate state) for its de facto propagandists and exclusion from the official narrative for dissenters. Don't buy into the false narrative.

Personally, I refuse to eschew the designation of anti-capitalist radical. You cannot shame me for knowing where the bodies of empire are buried and who laid them in their graves. To the landfill of history with capitalism -- the wasteful, cracked-brained economic system that created said landfill.

The preening liars at Fox News and other well-rewarded propagandists of state capitalism will disseminate lies, big and small, regardless of our actions " that is what they do. Be cautioned: Never tap dance for the approval of a lying, manipulative, power-mad fascist. Once, you begin to do so you co-sign his narrative -- thus he owns your hapless ass.

"I've been absolutely terrified every moment of my life -- ?and I've never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do." -Georgia O'Keefe

Accordingly, the lessons of the 1960s e.g., COINTELPRO operations " reveal that when street and riot police are ordered to pull back, as in Oakland, agent provocateurs will infiltrate mass political gatherings. Withal: You can bet those masked bastards shouting hate-speak and breaking windows are cops. "

He is there to draw the cameras of the corporate media towards the scenes of chaos and strife that he seeds in order to turn bourgeois sentiment against reform movements that might change their lives for the better " to create the false narrative that the police are the only bulwark the middle-class has against destruction-sowing crazies, who, if given free reign, will leave in rubble and ashes everything the middle-class holds dear.

To avoid being falsely labeled: First, endeavor, by inward searching and outward (even failed) endeavor, to know who you are. Then lay claim to your own identity. Otherwise, garnering the clarity required to apprehend what you're up against becomes difficult.

Or surrender your essential self
Or surrender your essential self
(Image by Angie Tyler-Rockstroh)
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Phil Rockstroh is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City. He may be contacted at Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/phil.rockstroh

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