Sexual Arousal & The Politics of Resentment

A sullen resentment weighs down the American Psyche. The USA has been going downhill for so long, that people don’t know who to lash out at. So often the gnashing of teeth and growls of resentment will feature the striking out at the wrong target.

Such is the case in Wisconsin. Erstwhile right-wingers & Tea Baggers are lining up behind Governor Scott Walker and his union-busting campaign, part of his campaign to turn Wisconsin into a plantation. Otherwise sensible folks are lining up in this game of zapping labor, lining up with the dregs of the reactionary Right.

Teachers are not the enemy. If their unions have afforded them at least temporary protection against the ravages of the New World Order, one should emulate them rather than cast stones.

But increasing numbers are resentful of the teachers. But teachers and the Unions are not the cause of the steady decline in US living standards since 1972. It’s the Free Trade Regime which kicked in under Nixon in 1973. A slippery slope ever since.

It wasn’t feminist ideology that caused the massive entry of women into the workforce; it was sheer economic necessity.

It wasn’t the Unions who caused the dismantling of America’s manufacturing base, it was Ronald Reagan.

Illegal immigration has gone a long way into lowering the wage level. Most illegal immigration over the past 40 years has occurred under Republican auspices.

Democrats were no help on trade or immigration. Liberal champion Ted Kennedy was one of the biggest free traders of all. And he grooved on busing for forced integration as long as his his kids weren’t involved. And need I mention that old Plutocratic Whore Bill Clinton?

In fact, it was the Labor movement which put up a fight. But it was feeble and muscled aside by the ‘Washington consensus.’

So those following the lead of Zombie Right in the Wisconsin crisis are picking on the wrong enemy.

But something more is at play here. Among American ‘conservatives’ there is a certain ritual of Primitive Magic. They think by lining up on the side of the Plutocracy and Finance-Capital that maybe some of that wealth will rub off on them.

Still, there’s even something more at play here. Why do ‘conservatives’ crave authoritarian leadership? Why their affinity for thugs like Wisconsin Governor Walker? Why this taking the side of the rich & powerful. Indeed, why do ‘conservatives’ seem to get sexually aroused by all this? Why do so many old Republicans turn gay?

I would urge ‘conservatives’ and Tea Baggers to stay out of my home state of Wisconsin. Hire a woman to beat you up instead. You’ll still get off in the same way!

Lawrence Dennis & the Third Position

Lawrence Dennis showed that the central thesis of Marxian economics–the drive to hold down wages & living conditions–was faulty even before Marx died in 1883. Rather, governments in the modern world thrive only by promoting consumption.

This observation did not make Lawrence Dennis an unthinking capitalist booster of the Chamber of Commerce type. On the contrary, Dennis located the great weakness of the so-called free market in what he termed underconsumption. This is ignored or goes over the heads of our ‘leading thinkers’ today.

W A Carto, in his 1993 introduction to a reprint of Dennis’s seminal 1936 work, THE COMING AMERICAN FASCISM, summed up these views:

“The major credit to the Dennis ledger is his stubborn (and totally correct) insistence on identifying the primary endemic problem of capitalism–the maldistribution of production, a glaring–if hidden–reality he called underconsumption (but what this writer would label overproduction.) This is the chronic failure or inability of capitalism to adjust the balance between production and consumption without war, cold war, socialism or the placebo of foreign aid–the latter being something Dennis did not foresee in 1936 but correctly identified as soon as Harry Truman enunciated the great idea in 1947.

“It is the tragedy of the West that this is the dirty secret that capitalist apologists have desperately tried to conceal for the last hundred years. That they have succeeded has enabled the politicians and pressure groups to manufacture two otherwise stupid and needless world wars as well as innumerable small wars to dispose of surplus production, diminish unemployment and raise the bankers’ blessed debt.”

The position of Lawrence Dennis is what we now call the Third Position. In the Thirties, he was also writing at the same time as Ezra Pound and Father Coughlin. Like them, he saw the evil of Usury and made the distinction between Industrial Capital which is productive and Finance-Capital which is parasitic. Needless to say, this insight is over the heads of the Tea Party crowd today.

This also made Lawrence Dennis an implacable enemy of Austrian School economics, so beloved by Randroids and ‘libertarians.’

From the diagnosis comes the cure: We need to wrest control of our economy from the hands of the investment banking houses. As Dennis foresaw, this may take a Nationalist Revolution.

Lawrence Dennis versus Karl Marx

Orthodox Marxists of the 19th century type preached that capitalism could only work if the system ground down the faces of the workers, that is, kept down their wages and living standards.

American Nationalist thinker Lawrence Dennis countered that by the 20th century capitalism could only survive by promoting a continuous rise in consumption and living standards. That was the American experience until the time of Reagan.

Marx formulated his basic theory around 1840, time of the darkest moments of the industrial revolution in England. For an English worker, the minimal cost of living was 14 shillings a week. Yet the average wage was 8 shillings, not much more than half of what it took to survive. Hence, women working and an abundance of child labor.

Marx taught there was no way out. Revolution was the only answer. Trade unions and the like were futile. Hence the slogan: Abolish the wages system!

But even before Marx expired in 1883, this had begun to change. By 1875 the cost of living had risen to 15 shillings a week. But wages had also risen to 15 shillings a week. British historian Arnold Toynbee would later write that this was the first time unskilled labor earned enough to survive.

Now, since the advent of Reagan, we may be moving back to the 19th century world. Read some of the novels of Charles Dickens.

Dennis located the key contradiction of the system in the chronic tendency of a free market economy to underconsumption. The challenge is how to provide for a rise in consumption without resort to war.

This is the topic of our next Blog.

The first few days of the Egypt protests…

The first few days of the Egypt protests there was a thunderous silence from the NeoCon camp. After all, NeoCons like to hide behind pretensions of being ultra-democrats. Most of the world sympathized with Egyptians fight to rid themselves of a tyrant and a kleptomaniac to boot–30 years in power for Mubarak equals 80 billion dollars in the bank. You’d think the NeoCons would keep up appearances and join the throng.

But no. The Israeli relationship with Mubarak has been one-sided, all to the benefit of Israel. Any new Egyptian Regime, with even a shred of popular support, would have to review that relationship. That’s what has the Israeli government in a tizzy.

NeoCons and Tea Party pygmies sat silent, on pins & needles, waiting for the appropriate signals from Tel Aviv. One solid, coherent Party Line is yet to emerge; what we have, instead, is a series of driblets from the Usual Suspects.

First out of the gate was Tony Blair who opined that Mubarak had been a staunch ally. This has been followed up by the Man Without a Pulse, Dick Cheney, mumbling Amen!

CNBC’s own cute hustler Erin Burnett got into the act by saying dictatorships in the Mideast were necessary to maintain the flow of oil. Follow-ups in the Zionist business press warned of a collapse in sock market values were the Egyptian unrest to continue.

But all these hints were perhaps too subtle for the usual pinheads trying to pick up the signals. For example, the first response out of Glenn Beck was totally incoherent.

Sarah Palin, taking time out from celebrating over Reagan’s rotting corpse, issued her own 2 cents on the larcenous Christian Broadcasting net. Reading the transcript of her remarks, I wonder which cartoon show she was watching. She too was confused and incoherent.

So, thus far, the Useful Idiots haven’t come through. This is just as well. Much of the Zionist Project can’t stand the light of day. They do better behind the scenes.

And behind the scenes they’ll stay. The game emerging is the big stall. Drag the whole thing out. Wear everybody down. Make sure that when Mubarak expires, the basic regime stays in place. Just a fresh coat of paint.

USA OUT OF THE MIDEAST!

FOLLOW THE LEAD OF HUEY LONG: AMERICA FIRST!

Ayn Rand versus Che–Is There A Choice?

In the USA, the primitive (and limited) opposition to the Obama Regime comes from the reactionary Right. This is remarkable since the Obama Regime adopted in total the general line of the Bush-Cheney Junta. Just a change in rhetoric plus a little black face make-up.

What passes for hip & cool in the Tea Party rallies staged for FOX is someone holding up a sign saying, “I am John Galt.” Galt is a fictional character from Ayn Rand’s 1957 novel ATLAS SHRUGGED. Rand is thus posed as the alternative to the disintegrating status quo.

Across town at some college campus, there is probably somebody in the poise of another alternative. I’m speaking of a white, middle-class kid wearing a Che Guevara tee shirt.

While the mainstream media avoids substantive discussion and increasingly involves itself with celebrity gossip, Che vs Ayn Rand seems to be the discussion at the margins. At first blush, it doesn’t seem to be much of a contest. Except in the drug-addled mind of Glenn Beck, the Left really doesn’t amount to much in the USA. Ayn Rand probably has a hundred thousand followers for everyone of Che or Trotsky.

If the disillusioned American public is sick of hypocrisy, then Che would win hands down. After all, he died fighting for his beliefs while Rand signed up for Social Security & Medicare to get government money to fight her cancer.

Still, in the language of tennis, one would have to say “Advantage Ayn Rand!”

We’re living in an Ayn Rand world almost. One delightful blogger put an irreverent spin on it.

Digby points out that the Obama Regime is making a peace offering to the vile Chamber of Commerce. This with his deficit reduction cat food commission and embrace of Bush tax cuts for the rich, points the direction where we’re all headed in this mad lemming-like escapade.

This all started when Clinton carried the torch passed from Reagan and the first Bush and went all gung ho for economic deregulation, NAFTA & GATT which then had the torch passed to the second Bush who enacted tax cuts for the rich. All of this served to create the great bubble illusion of prosperity. Then, predictably, it all crashed in an exact replicate of 1929.

So then the battered masses voted for Obama, hoping for a second FDR. What they got instead was a Harding, Coolidge & Hoover retread rolled up into a gigantic exploding cigar.

Now, shades of Ayn Rand, Obama and the Republicans seem to be banking (literally) on one more crank of deal with the devil/corporatist economic policy and privatizing social security will be the last easy ox to gore. Then, as the last drop of wealth drags its weary ass on up to Wall Street, the economy will probably exhale a tiny little fart of relief.

The President will proclaim victory and the American dream will continue for another minute or so.

Yet, Che won’t get a hearing because of Zombie-Consumerist fears of empty shelves at the shopping malls. And, to be frank, such dread has the ring of truth about it.

Between a rock and a hard place.

EXCEPT:

There is REAL ALTERNATIVE called the THIRD POSITION. Anti-Communist yet opposed to predatory laissez-faire capitalism. It distinguishes between industrial capital which is productive and finance-capital which is parasitic. Its heroes & champions are home-grown like Huey Long and Father Coughlin, as are its intellectuals like Lawrence Dennis and Francis Parker Yockey.

We’ll be exploring more of the Third Position.

Revolution in the Air! Is Uncle Sam Next?

With the US client-regime of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt all wobbly at the moment, the politically incorrect question would be: Could it happen here? The short answer is No. (That’s short answer in the short run.)

Recent revolutions around the world have started out as pieces of upper-class political theatre using the unwashed masses as stage props. That’s the long and the short of it.

Just as most terrorism today is state-sponsored terrorism with this or that government behind it, similarly the recent revolutions seem to have the fingerprints of differing intelligence agencies behind them. A classic case was the charade of the ‘Orange Revolution’ in Ukraine which was an Anglo-American psy-ops gambit from the git-go.

In the USA, an increasing restive population has periodic elections to let off steam. Parties & politicians come and go but the policies remain the same. Sick of the Bush-Cheney disaster? Then try a little black face.

Right now, the American Oligarchy–itself a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Global Financial Elite–feels secure enough that it doesn’t feel the need to stage manage anything. The one putative opposition force, the Tea Party, has been co-opted and is just one monster in the swamp of Inside-the-Beltway politics.

That’s it for the short run. How about the long term? Well, there might not be a long term. Medium term is more like it. Kevin Philips argued forcefully in his 2006 book, AMERICAN THEOCRACY, that every world-dominating power from ancient Rome to the British Empire came to be brought down by a related set of causes including global overreach, militant religion, resource shortages and ballooning debt. Yet both the Obama Regime and the Republican opposition are committed to the status quo. They live for the moment and not for the long term. As Keynes wrote, in the long term we’re all dead.

Greatly aiding the Establishment in keeping the lid on is the nature of the American people. Lawrence Dennis summed it up best in his 1932 book IS CAPITALISM DOOMED?:

“Americans are the most organized, standardized, regimented and docile people in the world.”

Francis Parker Yockey said much the same thing in IMPERIUM. Yet he held out hope. In his masterwork IMPERIUM, the chapter entitled “The Future of America” contains the following KEY:

“Despite the extent of Culture-distortion and its attempts to render a People into a feckless, uniformed mass, there are millions of people who have held themselves instinctively aloof.

“These people are the focus of great historical forces. They fight against gigantic odds and fight under enormous handicaps.

“The primary objective, it then appears, gigantic odds and handicaps aside, is to reach those millions who have held themselves instinctively aloof.

“And these people MUST be reached if we are to survive–reached with all possible speed and with the correct solution to the problem at hand.”

No Direction Home–An Epitaph for Our Times

President Obama’s State of the Union address could be called ‘No Direction Home.’ I was reminded of Martin Scorsese’s 2005 documentary “No Direction Home” which was about Bob Dylan’s rise to fame & fortune in the 1960s. The title comes from a throw-away line from Dylan’s song “Like a Rolling Stone.”

The documentary was unintentionally sad since Bob Dylan has been adrift and aimless since the Sixties. He’s been all over the place. He started out as a folksinger in the radical folk milieu which emerged from the Communist Party periphery, i.e. Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, et al. That gave him a purpose however dubious it might be. Then he wanted to be a rocker. Then he did an album as a Jesus freak. Another as a super Jew. And so it goes. Most were impossible to listen to. But he made a good living with small concerts, coasting for 40 years on his Sixties celebrity status. He might be awful but he was cool and hip. Go figure.

Dylan songs like “Blowin’ in the Wind”, made into a big hit by Peter, Paul & Mary, made him the troubadour of the Civil Rights movement. But that movement is a failure. A freak poll conducted about 10 years ago surprisingly showed a plurality, if not a majority, to the LEFT of the Democrats on bread n’ butter issues but to the RIGHT of the Republicans on civil rights issues. So much for the romance of the Sixties.

Back to Obama: Left journalist Alexander Cockburn said that Obama’s whole presidential campaign, with its empty sloganeering, made no sense except for him being black. He stood for nothing but hope. The subliminal message was we were to vote for him on faith so we could feel good about ourselves.

The snow job worked. But now we have Dubya in black face. He continued the Bush bailout of Wall Street at the expense of Main Street. He expanded the Bush wars. And the USA decline has speeded up.

Little wonder he couldn’t offer anything concrete in his SOTU address.

In the meantime, the putative Leader of the Opposition, Sarah Palin, has been hiding out in her Alaska bunker since the shootings in Arizona.

No Direction Home!

Sarah Palin & the Dumbing Down of the American Right

Francis Parker Yockey maintained that the American Right was the stupidest in the world. The mis-begotten Tea Party movement and their anointed Queen Bee, Sarah Palin, have done nothing to prove Yockey wrong.

There is some personal sympathy towards Governor Palin because of unfounded charges that she incited the half-crazed Arizona gunman Jared Loughner. I share that bit of sympathy. A bone fide lunatic like Loughner doesn’t need to be incited by anyone. Anyway, he’s going to stand charged by his lonesome.

But since Governor Palin aspires to the highest office in the land, politically is how we must judge her.

The original Tea Party came out of the Ron Paul for President movement. At the early demonstrations, “Audit the FED” signs were always prominent. That was then, this is now. Where are those signs today? Ask Palin if she ever consents to an interview by someone other than Sean Hannity.

The Tea Party, in its origins, was a genuine opposition movement. Thus it had to be taken down or, taken over and de-fanged. The latter is what occurred.

Palin fronted the NeoCon co-option of the Tea Party. This involved what amounted to non-stop infomercials on Fox News. Glenn Beck, noted in the past for bad-mouthing Ron Paul, was notable in this effort.

Then there was money, lots of it. Much of it was funneled through an outfit named ‘FreedomWorks’. This falsely named organization is funded by some of the fattest fat cats in the USA. It’s led by the former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, a long-standing stooge of the Global Financial Elite.

The dumbing down part came after the NeoCon takeover. With Governor Palin, an attractive & charismatic woman out in front, hard stands on real issues were out. Back in were all the old GOP wedge issues. You know the dreary drill: God, guns & gays. 80% or better of the American populace is being hammered economically. Yet Palin and her handlers want to talk strictly in terms of symbolism.

But the symbolism is often pure bullshit. The Tea Party ranks are supposedly against Open Borders. Yet they’re funded and directed by Dick Armey who was an Open Borders advocate while in the GOP Congressional leadership. What does Palin have to say? Duh!

The Tea Party favors reducing government spending. Yet, in following Palin, they are gung ho for every war that comes down the pike. Where will they cut? Social Security? Ask Palin. Duh!

Doesn’t the FED still need to be audited? Ask Palin. Duh!

We could keep going but why bother?

Sarah Palin has her tit in a wringer bec…

Sarah Palin has her tit in a wringer because she placed a target symbol on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) who lies critically wounded in a Tuscon hospital, the victim of a shooting. Any direct connection? Probably not. At first glance the shooter in custody appears to be a bona fide lunatic. This would make the wounding of 20 and killing of 6 more like Columbine and Virginia Tech than anything political.

The authorities are looking for an additional ‘person of interest’ who was spotted on a security video. He might just be a slick off the street who wandered in front of the camera. Or, he could be the ‘handler’ who now lies buried in the desert sands. Or, he could be another lunatic running for his life. We don’t know.

What we DO know is that Sarah Palin placed a target symbol on the now wounded Congresswoman. Why? I wouldn’t place a target symbol on anybody unless I intended to do the dirty deed. And I wouldn’t do it in public. That’s the province of underground paramilitaries. That is, if we’re talking about serious people.

But there’s something less than serious about the whole Palin operation. They’re trying to use Old West symbolism for good old fashioned but decidedly 21st Century money-making. Establishing a certain persona is part of the act.

But is it real? Hell no! Kurt Nimmo of Infowars.com said it best:

“Sarah Palin is not an anti-government radical–she is part of the establishment Republican party . . .”

And we might add that Rep. Giffords is an Eastablishment Democrat. closer to the likes of Joe Lieberman than, say, Dennis Kucinich.

So Sarah Palin using target symbolism is unserious and careless. Just part of the all-around escalation of bullshit in the country.

Kurt Nimmo goes on:

“Sarah Palin is obviously a creation of the establishment. She was appointed the unofficial leader of the Tea Party movement after a large part of it was craftily transformed by operatives into a harmless cheerleading section for the Republican party. Palin’s handlers made sure she publicly kissed the ring of top level Rockefeller minion and notorious unapprehended war criminal Henry Kissinger.

“The Tea Party movement originally established by Libertarians and Ron Paul and subsequently co-opted and brought trance-like into the Republican party hive is not a threat to the establishment.

“The real Tea Party not co-opted by Republicans is the obvious target of what may yet turn out to be another staged event. Sarah Palin is the television reality show queen and propped up figurehead of an orchestrated movement funded in part by the CIA operative Richard Mellon Scaife. The CIA has perfected the art of undermining and destroying indigenous political movements in opposition to the ruling elite and their power structures and institutions.”

I would add that what the CIA does abroad they also do here at home.

Stay tuned.

2010 in review

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

Healthy blog!

The Blog-Health-o-Meterâ„¢ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

Featured image

The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 75,000 times in 2010. If it were an exhibit at The Louvre Museum, it would take 3 days for that many people to see it.

 

In 2010, there were 195 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 512 posts. There were 646 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 55mb. That’s about 2 pictures per day.

The busiest day of the year was October 25th with 632 views. The most popular post that day was Tea Party: Ass Over Tea Kettle.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were networkedblogs.com, facebook.com, oskorei.motpol.nu, attackthesystem.com, and wvwnews.net.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for tony soprano, confederate flag, ayn rand, uncle sam, and overpopulation.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

Tea Party: Ass Over Tea Kettle September 2010
1 comment

2

Gangster Government? October 2009

3

Overpopulation is more than just a Third World thing February 2010
5 comments

4

How Uncle Sam Almost Lost World War II February 2010
6 comments

5

The Confederate Battle Flag Battle April 2010