Capitalizing on their paranoid belief that they are somehow facing persecution by evil secular humanists, the wealthy elites are steering Dominionists and other Christian extremists down a path to the tyranny each group craves. Removing prayer from public schools was not about abolishing Christianity. Eliminating mandatory prayer was to prevent our government from endorsing and potentially mandating a specific religion. State-imposed religion is a powerful element of virtually any despotic regime worth its salt.
In blaming Hispanic immigrants for "stealing" benefits from tax-supported social programs while providing "nothing" in return; perpetuating Black American poverty, under-education, and crime by isolating many of them in inner-city ghettos or warehousing them in the prison industrial complex; and vilifying Gays for "destroying the moral fabric" of the United States, our de facto oligarchs abuse vulnerable populations already despised by many other Americans and scapegoat them for the ills plaguing our nation. Another block in the foundation of a "successful" fascist state.
[Note: Fascist states are generally characterized by authoritarian rule, extreme nationalism, corporate domination, anti-liberalism, and militarism. Starting to look and sound awfully familiar, eh USA?]
In granting federal money to tax-exempt religious entities for "faith based initiatives" to aid the growing numbers of impoverished in the Twenty First Century Gilded Age, the plutocracy gains the dual advantage of currying the favor of its Fundamentalist Christian base amongst the "commoners" and creating a subterfuge for eliminating "wasteful" federal spending on public social programs to benefit the poor. Many of those resting comfortably atop the financial summit, whose wealth exists thanks to a deeply corrupt system which impoverishes billions of human beings, despise the elements of "liberalism" which serve to limit their boundless greed and visions of unrestrained, Dickensonian Capitalism.
Reducing taxes and privatizing have become the mantras of the Bush Regime's economic policy. At the end of the day, who doesn't want to pay less in taxes and see a reduction in poorly managed government bureaucracies? The problem is that the tax cuts are providing massive benefit to the super-rich (like the Walton and Mars families) while putting very little money back into the pockets of the working class. Meanwhile, military expenditures continue to rise to more insane levels as programs to benefit children, the elderly, the sick, and the impoverished are reduced or slashed rather than redesigned or improved.
What was that definition of fascism again?
Not even public education escapes the rapacious attacks of the ruthless wolves at the top of the food chain. The No Child Left Behind Act furthers their goal of strengthening the Fourth Purpose. John Taylor Gatto defined the Fourth Purpose in an interview about his book, Dumbing us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling:
Throughout the 19th century, a new Fourth Purpose began to emerge, tested thoroughly in the military state of Prussia in northern Europe. The Fourth Purpose made the point of mass schooling to serve big business and big government by extending childhood, replacing thinking with drill and memorization while fashioning incomplete people unable to protect themselves from exhortation, advertising and other forms of indirect command. In this fashion, poor Prussia with a small population became one of the great powers of the earth. Its new schooling method was imitated far and wide, from Japan to the United States.
Some conjecture that the ultimate goal of social conservatives is to eliminate public education. I disagree. The ruling class realizes what a sacred cow they would be slaughtering. Besides, as Gatto's insight indicates, the most effective way to control human beings is through their psyches. And what better time to capture human minds than when they are young and malleable?
Profits, property, and power trump humanity in the sociopathic value systems of the vicious malefactors at the helm of the United States. Witness the willful neglect leading to the tragic death and diaspora of tens of thousands of Black Americans in New Orleans. Consider the slaughter of over 100,000 Iraqi civilians, the liberal distribution of depleted uranium throughout Iraq's countryside, the wanton destruction of much of Iraqi infrastructure, the death of over 2600 American military personnel in Iraq, the sacrifice of almost 3,000 American civilians in the Neocon's Pearl Harbor on 9/11, the torture of human beings, and the suspension of basic justice for those suspected of "terrorism".
Their willful refusal to employ the power the United States clearly has to enforce an immediate cease-fire in Lebanon provides yet another overt example of Neocon moral bankruptcy. The United States has deliberately stymied UN intervention efforts to give Israel time to finish destroying Lebanon with funding and equipment we furnished. Israel has displaced a million people, killed over 600 innocent civilians, and destroyed over $2 billion worth of infrastructure through its invasion of a sovereign nation. This in retaliation for the capture of two of its soldiers by Hezbollah, a powerful group of militants over which Lebanon has virtually no control. In contrast, Israel has suffered the loss of 26 of its civilians. While tragic, these losses pale in comparison to the devastating horror the Israeli war machine has inflicted upon Lebanon
A sane government concerned with human welfare and justice would have put a stop to these blatant crimes against humanity long before the situation escalated to this point. But the Bush Regime has justified and encouraged the Israeli atrocities. They obfuscate well, but it does not take much critical thinking to see the true agenda of our malevolent leaders.
Virtually all citizens of the United States have been deceived by their government to some extent. While I remain a tenacious dissident against many of the United States' political and social institutions because of my passion for social justice and human rights, my choice to manifest my dissent through writing and publishing burdens me with a degree of complicity in the schemes of the Bush Regime. As I research, analyze, write, and publish, I serve humanity as writers have throughout history. I educate, inspire both support and opposition, amuse, comfort, provoke thought, agitate, anger, and in some cases, win hearts and minds. Yet at the same time, by asserting intellectual arguments which are mostly opposed to the American Empire because of my personal beliefs, I participate in the intellectual civil war the ruling elites love to perpetuate to keep those of us in the "lower classes" from achieving solidarity against them.
Contrary to our patriotic programming, dissidents in the United States are not free to exercise their First Amendment rights because millions of poor wretches fought and died in wars of imperial conquest under the pretext of "protecting" or "spreading freedom." For now, our leaders allow domestic dissent because they want to keep their populace at odds with one another, they know that their strangle-hold on the psyches of many of their citizens is virtually unbreakable (if people start to see through the Reagans and Bushes, the ruling elite come up with a "liberal" Democrat like Bill Clinton to pacify the "Soccer Moms" yet still maintain the status quo of de facto plutocratic rule), and they are not ready to shed the thinning veneer that they govern according to the Constitution.
Yet despite my unintended contribution to the intellectual wars our overlords use to distract us, if I stop writing and publishing, I will surrender a significant means to contribute to the struggle for social justice and human rights and to counter the lies of the corporate media, government propagandists and history revisionists.
The answer is not to stop thinking, debating, or writing. Regardless of how we contribute to the struggle or how much we differ in opinion, we of the poor and working classes need to "agree to disagree" and unite against those who prey upon us.
In blaming Hispanic immigrants for "stealing" benefits from tax-supported social programs while providing "nothing" in return; perpetuating Black American poverty, under-education, and crime by isolating many of them in inner-city ghettos or warehousing them in the prison industrial complex; and vilifying Gays for "destroying the moral fabric" of the United States, our de facto oligarchs abuse vulnerable populations already despised by many other Americans and scapegoat them for the ills plaguing our nation. Another block in the foundation of a "successful" fascist state.
[Note: Fascist states are generally characterized by authoritarian rule, extreme nationalism, corporate domination, anti-liberalism, and militarism. Starting to look and sound awfully familiar, eh USA?]
In granting federal money to tax-exempt religious entities for "faith based initiatives" to aid the growing numbers of impoverished in the Twenty First Century Gilded Age, the plutocracy gains the dual advantage of currying the favor of its Fundamentalist Christian base amongst the "commoners" and creating a subterfuge for eliminating "wasteful" federal spending on public social programs to benefit the poor. Many of those resting comfortably atop the financial summit, whose wealth exists thanks to a deeply corrupt system which impoverishes billions of human beings, despise the elements of "liberalism" which serve to limit their boundless greed and visions of unrestrained, Dickensonian Capitalism.
What was that definition of fascism again?
Not even public education escapes the rapacious attacks of the ruthless wolves at the top of the food chain. The No Child Left Behind Act furthers their goal of strengthening the Fourth Purpose. John Taylor Gatto defined the Fourth Purpose in an interview about his book, Dumbing us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling:
Throughout the 19th century, a new Fourth Purpose began to emerge, tested thoroughly in the military state of Prussia in northern Europe. The Fourth Purpose made the point of mass schooling to serve big business and big government by extending childhood, replacing thinking with drill and memorization while fashioning incomplete people unable to protect themselves from exhortation, advertising and other forms of indirect command. In this fashion, poor Prussia with a small population became one of the great powers of the earth. Its new schooling method was imitated far and wide, from Japan to the United States.
Some conjecture that the ultimate goal of social conservatives is to eliminate public education. I disagree. The ruling class realizes what a sacred cow they would be slaughtering. Besides, as Gatto's insight indicates, the most effective way to control human beings is through their psyches. And what better time to capture human minds than when they are young and malleable?
Profits, property, and power trump humanity in the sociopathic value systems of the vicious malefactors at the helm of the United States. Witness the willful neglect leading to the tragic death and diaspora of tens of thousands of Black Americans in New Orleans. Consider the slaughter of over 100,000 Iraqi civilians, the liberal distribution of depleted uranium throughout Iraq's countryside, the wanton destruction of much of Iraqi infrastructure, the death of over 2600 American military personnel in Iraq, the sacrifice of almost 3,000 American civilians in the Neocon's Pearl Harbor on 9/11, the torture of human beings, and the suspension of basic justice for those suspected of "terrorism".
Their willful refusal to employ the power the United States clearly has to enforce an immediate cease-fire in Lebanon provides yet another overt example of Neocon moral bankruptcy. The United States has deliberately stymied UN intervention efforts to give Israel time to finish destroying Lebanon with funding and equipment we furnished. Israel has displaced a million people, killed over 600 innocent civilians, and destroyed over $2 billion worth of infrastructure through its invasion of a sovereign nation. This in retaliation for the capture of two of its soldiers by Hezbollah, a powerful group of militants over which Lebanon has virtually no control. In contrast, Israel has suffered the loss of 26 of its civilians. While tragic, these losses pale in comparison to the devastating horror the Israeli war machine has inflicted upon Lebanon
A sane government concerned with human welfare and justice would have put a stop to these blatant crimes against humanity long before the situation escalated to this point. But the Bush Regime has justified and encouraged the Israeli atrocities. They obfuscate well, but it does not take much critical thinking to see the true agenda of our malevolent leaders.
Virtually all citizens of the United States have been deceived by their government to some extent. While I remain a tenacious dissident against many of the United States' political and social institutions because of my passion for social justice and human rights, my choice to manifest my dissent through writing and publishing burdens me with a degree of complicity in the schemes of the Bush Regime. As I research, analyze, write, and publish, I serve humanity as writers have throughout history. I educate, inspire both support and opposition, amuse, comfort, provoke thought, agitate, anger, and in some cases, win hearts and minds. Yet at the same time, by asserting intellectual arguments which are mostly opposed to the American Empire because of my personal beliefs, I participate in the intellectual civil war the ruling elites love to perpetuate to keep those of us in the "lower classes" from achieving solidarity against them.
Contrary to our patriotic programming, dissidents in the United States are not free to exercise their First Amendment rights because millions of poor wretches fought and died in wars of imperial conquest under the pretext of "protecting" or "spreading freedom." For now, our leaders allow domestic dissent because they want to keep their populace at odds with one another, they know that their strangle-hold on the psyches of many of their citizens is virtually unbreakable (if people start to see through the Reagans and Bushes, the ruling elite come up with a "liberal" Democrat like Bill Clinton to pacify the "Soccer Moms" yet still maintain the status quo of de facto plutocratic rule), and they are not ready to shed the thinning veneer that they govern according to the Constitution.
Yet despite my unintended contribution to the intellectual wars our overlords use to distract us, if I stop writing and publishing, I will surrender a significant means to contribute to the struggle for social justice and human rights and to counter the lies of the corporate media, government propagandists and history revisionists.
The answer is not to stop thinking, debating, or writing. Regardless of how we contribute to the struggle or how much we differ in opinion, we of the poor and working classes need to "agree to disagree" and unite against those who prey upon us.
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