Archive for the 'Cultural Inanity' Category

Oct 08 2007

35% of US Americans Still Support Bush: Diagnosing the Insanity

Cyrano’s Journal Online and its semi-autonomous subsections (Thomas Paine’s Corner, The Greanville Journal, CJO Avenger, and VoxPop) would be delighted to periodically email you links to the most recent material and timeless classics available on our diverse and comprehensive site. If you would like to subscribe, type “CJO subscription” in the subject line and send your email to

bush

By Jason Miller

10/8/07

Cluster B Personality Disorders

1776.0 Americanistic Personality Disorder

The essential features of Americanistic Personality Disorder include pervasive patterns of extreme self-absorption, profound and long-term lapses in empathy, a deep disregard for the well-being of others, a powerful aversion to intellectual honesty and reality, and a grossly exaggerated sense of the importance of one’s self and one’s nation. These patterns emerge in infancy, manifest themselves in nearly all contexts, and often become pathological.

These patterns have also been characterized as sociopathic, or colloquially as the “Ugly American Syndrome.” Note that the latter terminology carries too benign a connotation to accurately describe an individual afflicted with such a dangerous perversion of character.

For this diagnosis to be given, the individual must be deeply immersed in the flag-waving, nationalistic, and militaristic fervor derived primarily from the nearly perpetual barrage of reality warping emanations of the “mainstream media,” most commonly through the medium of television. Typically indoctrinated from birth to believe that they are morally superior, exceptional human beings, these individuals suffer from severe egocentrism, a condition further engendered by the prevalence of the acutely toxic dominant paradigm known as capitalism.

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Sep 19 2007

Shit fight to a non-existent “Easy Street”

Cyrano’s Journal Online and its semi-autonomous subsections (Thomas Paine’s Corner, The Greanville Journal, CJO Avenger, and VoxPop) would be delighted to periodically email you links to the most recent material and timeless classics available on our diverse and comprehensive site. If you would like to subscribe, type “CJO subscription” in the subject line and send your email to

easy-street

by Sylvain Lamoureux

9/19/07

After a while, one begins to realize that things must be narrowed down for those that can only take one or two things at a time–those who are so deeply entrenched into a system that they don’t even understand but will defend to the death.

Fear - a control mechanism used throughout history to mold and steer society in the direction that some think it has to go.

Daily the masses are subjected to images, sounds, and ideas that convey a message that they should be afraid of something or someone. I found evidence of this the other day when I was confronted by some individuals simply because I said that I was not afraid of anything. Apparently, I have to be afraid of something in order to be part of today’s society. I fear something: that the world and its inhabitants will not see clearly until it is too late.

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Sep 11 2007

Forget The Color Purple: Oprah’s all about the Green

Cyrano’s Journal Online and its semi-autonomous subsections (Thomas Paine’s Corner, The Greanville Journal, CJO Avenger, and VoxPop) would be delighted to periodically email you links to the most recent material and timeless classics available on our diverse and comprehensive site. If you would like to subscribe, type “CJO subscription” in the subject line and send your email to

oprah2

By Jason Miller

9/11/07

“The other kids were all into black power,” Oprah told the Tribune in the mid-1980s. But “I wasn’t a dashiki kind of woman … Excellence was the best deterrent to racism and that became my philosophy.”

Excellence indeed. Few would deny that Oprah Winfrey has achieved an extraordinary degree of THAT, at least by our society’s warped standards. Witty, articulate, attractive, beloved by tens of millions, and fabulously wealthy, she is the “I pulled myself up by my bootstraps” queen of a vast media empire. Oprah is a living embodiment of the American Dream. What is perhaps most inspiring to her genuflecting disciples is that Oprah rose to her stratospheric position of wealth and influence from an impoverished start in a socioeconomic hierarchy still largely dominated by white males.

Oprah Winfrey ostensibly possesses the mythical Midas Touch, a generous spirit, deep spiritual wisdom, and, in the eyes of those blinded by their adoration, the credentials of a saint. Yet despite appearing destined for canonization, Oprah injects heavy doses of infectious pus into the already deeply abscessed wound of the American psyche.

How could anyone who’s noted for having said, “Let your light shine. Shine within you so that it can shine on someone else. Let your light shine,” have such a pernicious effect on our culture?

Let’s “count the ways…with a passion put to use.”

To truly understand the depth of the damage Oprah inflicts on our society, we need to step outside of our bourgeois indoctrination and see her for what she truly represents. Manifesting the Horatio Alger Myth on steroids, Oprah is a wet dream come true for our criminal class of ruling elites sometimes referred to as the plutocracy. She provides them with “irrefutable” and ubiquitous anecdotal evidence which “proves” the idiotic delusion that America is a meritocracy where everyone has a realistic chance of getting rich, if they just work hard enough. The reality is that the richest 20% of US Americans own over 80% of the wealth and the long-term trend has been toward an ever increasing concentration of treasure into a smaller number of strong-boxes(1).

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Sep 08 2007

Pass the Nachos…and the “Freedom Fries”

Cyrano’s Journal Online and its semi-autonomous subsections (Thomas Paine’s Corner, The Greanville Journal, CJO Avenger, and VoxPop) would be delighted to periodically email you links to the most recent material and timeless classics available on our diverse and comprehensive site. If you would like to subscribe, type “CJO subscription” in the subject line and send your email to

freaky_mcdonalds

“More cruel and more angry, and more addicted to the illusory benefits of a technology that actually has created a dependency on mechanical solutions to even basic problems, and has generated a psychic prison of adumbrated personal choice. When Bush says “they” hate us because of our freedoms, the hidden meaning is that there is a fear “they” will someday have to suffer these same *freedoms*.”

By John Steppling

9/8/07

You know, one of the things that has been interesting about our long dialogue here is that you are *there* and I am *not*. I forget, I think, what it must be like to live in the middle of the madness, of the vast necropolis of the mighty empire. Someone asked me recently if I didn’t miss the US, and in particular Los Angeles (my birthplace). I thought about it and said, “no, I don’t”. And it’s true, I don’t. I miss small things of the culture; Mexican food, good Bar B Q, and of course a lot of my old friends. But I DO NOT miss anything else. Burroughs once said, many many years ago, that whenever he left the US he felt a great weight lifted from his shoulders.

The sense of constant selling is overwhelming. My last visit to the States was several years ago, and the most vivid impression I had was of a populace addicted to buying what they don’t need, arrogance, intellectual hypertrophy, and obesity. The other most vivid impression was that of American television. Let me post this link to Scott Ritter’s latest:

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Sep 04 2007

A Very Brady Homeland (The Lost Episodes, circa 1969-1973)

Cyrano’s Journal Online and its semi-autonomous subsections (Thomas Paine’s Corner, The Greanville Journal, CJO Avenger, and VoxPop) would be delighted to periodically email you links to the most recent material and timeless classics available on our diverse and comprehensive site. If you would like to subscribe, type “CJO subscription” in the subject line and send your email to

bbalicehead

By Adam Engel

9/4/07

Arise Jan, Marcia, Cindy! Arise Greg, Peter, Bobby! Arise Mike, Carol, Alice!

Vbh.X.118: In Country

The soldier in the bush does not forgive. All is not well with us, not always — what do we know from love? To reach informed decisions among fraudulent sources; that momentary rapprochement with the species — after all it is our planet, in some ways, but we are only the people, our leaders, responsible adults, architects of our… the photograph of my mother in a drawer somewhere I never saw again…I know there is a center and I’m walking toward it: union of man and woman for perpetuation of…genocidal tendencies. If only it were simple as fallen cake. Blonde girls, dark boys; the servants ignorant and happy. Tiger lays with the lamb while we devour similar illusions. In love with youth and freaked out by corruption. The judges scratch out every line. “Be fruitful and multiply (but don’t be fruits),” and all this happens over Sitting Bull’s corpse (or some slain Injun under the cement). What we were thinking, that is, we must have known… in the beginning…

Vbh.X.119: Bobby and Cindy Emerge

And love abounds, again, to conquer all together now we’re Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, again, the letter, the word, can tear us apart: missive misconstrued, one must read between the lines, the meaning of the text must be resolved, that is, our children must be protected from the…doors of perception bolted shut. All we wanted was a bond, a union. Nobody cares about us but us, though occasionally a Stranger rides to town, rids us of doubt. We search our pockets for a tip. Pennies later, Silver gallops down the street. Neighbors complain. Manure on the pavement gleaned by complainers for their gardens; minutes dry like raisins under ersatz sun. Divide them evenly among ourselves, chew twenty times in unison, swallow, like a family, for real, this time…

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