Jun 28 2007
Mcmansions, SUVs, Mega-Churches and the Baghdad Embassy: Life Among Dim and Brutal Giants
NOTICE TO OUR READERS: The editors will be most grateful for your attention at the end of this feature. Thank you.
“In folk stories, when giants are about, drought and famine withers the land and starvation stalks its people. Accordingly, the ruthless giantism inherent to the Corporate/Military/Mass Media state has withered our inner lives, blighted our landscape, and left us powerless before a huge, demeaning system that devours our time, health and humanity.”
by Phil Rockstroh
6/28/07
In microcosmic mimicry of the plight of the besieged middle and laboring classes, my parent’s Atlanta neighborhood, as is the case with many others in the vicinity, is being destroyed, in reality –disappeared — by a blight of upper-class arrogance. The modest, post-war homes of the area are being “scraped” from the landscape as an infestation of bloated mcmansions rises from the tortured soil. These particleboard and Tyvek-choked monstrosities loom over the remaining smaller houses of the area, as oversized and ugly as mindless bullies, as banal as the dreams of petty tyrants.
In the surrounding suburbs, in a similar manner as mcmansions eclipse sunlight, throwing the adjacent houses into half-light, mega-churches eclipse the light of reason, leaving their congregations in an ignorant half-light of dogma and superstition. Of course, these true believer lunatics are wrong about everything, except, perhaps, for their elliptical apprehension regarding the arrival of proliferate cataclysms in the years to come. Oddly: Although they promulgate dire warnings on the subject, they seem gleeful at the prospect of wide-spread suffering.
How could they not be? They’ve seized upon a fantasy that allows them to escape from the tyranny of their own life-suffocating belief system. Attempting to subdue the suffocating dread of their corporately circumscribed lives, they wish for the destruction of the entire planet. Hence, their escapist fantasy, by the necessity of narrative, is huge, outrageous — apocalyptic. The progenitor of their End Time tale is this: The believer’s emotional inflexibility begets a form of ontological giantism — a phenomenon that arises when one’s worldview is too small to explain the larger world. Therefore, a story must be created that contains violence and terror on such a massive scale that it’s unfolding would kill off the entire, problematic world. “That’s right world, there’s not enough room on this planet for both you and my beliefs. One of us has to go.”
Upon the nation’s roadways and interstate highways, the overgrown clown cars of the apocalypse, SUVs, Humvees, and oversized pickup trucks also evince hugeness to compensate for the feelings of those folks inside the grotesque vehicles of being crushed down by alienation and isolation — not only while on the road — but by the realities of an existence within a hapless, oil-dependent empire which is itself powerless against the changing realities of the larger world.
In the ranks of the exploiter class, the fat salaries of CEOs separate them further from the general population of the consumer state (that they take every opportunity to bamboozle) as the American public itself grows fatter and fatter in body mass, vainly attempting to sate an inner emptiness borne of their perceived helplessness before the predation of corporate culture.
Concurrently, in Baghdad, the U.S. embassy, which, when completed, will be the largest “diplomatic” compound on the planet is, in fact, an inadvertent monument to the mindless colossus the U.S.A. has become. The structure is as accurate as the art of architecture can be in its depiction of the spirit of a nation’s people. As big and bloated as our national sense of exceptionalism, it stands in the so-called Green Zone of Baghdad, shielding those who will be bunkered down within it — not only from the murderous madness unfolding outside its highly fortified walls — but from reality itself. A massive emblem of the arrogance of power, the embassy is a testament to how the noxious vapors of cultural self-deception can be made manifest in reinforced concrete, armed watchtowers and razor wire.
Through it all, like some eternally slumbering Hindu deity, we Americans dream these things into existence. Far from blameless, we continue to allow the elites to exploit us; therefore, we enable and sustain their titanic sense of entitlement. In turn, we accept their paltry bribes and, as a result, our banal, selfish dreams have conjured forth George Bush from the zeitgeist. Ergo, Bush is a man whose impenetrable narcissism is so grotesque and ringed with fortifications, that all on his own he constitutes a walking analog of the American embassy in Baghdad.
In addition, we Americans continue to believe our fables of righteous power: Big is good, goes our John Wayne jack-off fantasy. Our leaders must be large: Only Mcmansion-like men, such as Mitt Romney, are acceptable. We believe: Dennis Kucinich is too diminutive in physical stature to be president – with the length of his body being roughly the size of Romney’s head.
In turn, our national landscape is stretched to the breaking point: Cluttered upon it, gigantic islands of garish light torment the night, scouring away the stars, estranging us from imagination, empathy, and Eros, and leaving us only with the insatiable appetites of consumerism. Thus, around the clock, inside enormous, under-inspected, industrial slaughterhouses and meat processing plants, underpaid, benefit-bereft workers ply their gruesome, monstrously cruel trade, then the butchered wares are transported by way of brutal, double and triple-axle trailer, diesel trucks over stygian interstate highways to sepulchral supermarkets and charnel house restaurant chains. Insuring, we flesh-eating zombies are provided with all the water-bloated, steroid-ridden meat and industrially farmed, pesticide-lacquered vegetables and starches — The Cuisines of the Living Dead – we could ever crave … uum, uum, it’s the Thanatotic yumminess of empire’s end. Try our convenient drivethrough window. Would you like us to super-size your order of commodified death?
Hyperbolic ravings, you say. America is not a culture in love with death.
Let’s see. Drawing upon just one example: The corpses of well over half a million dead Iraqis testify otherwise. Moreover, the continuing Iraqi resistance to our occupation speaks volumes as well. Yet still, most of us cannot hear their elegy of outrage over the din created by the parade of killer clowns that we have mistaken for the pageantry of nationhood.
How does one slow this juggernaut of psychosis and curb these acts of murder/suicide being perpetrated on a global scale? Truth is, we might not be able to stop it, because this is what lies beneath our unlimited sense of entitlement and self-defeating arrogance: a death-wish that manifests itself as exceptionalism and may well destroy the nation by means of imperial overreach — which is, of course, the time-established method by which empires dispose of themselves.
Further, this state of affairs is exacerbated by the narcissistic insularity of our media elite. At the end of the day, it’s their tumescent egos that are distorting our societal discourse; their vanities and attendant self-serving pronouncements are little more than steaming cargos of horseshit, carried and delivered by one-trick-jackasses — jackasses endowed with the singular skill of being able to read a teleprompter … Fred Thompson, your agent is calling: You have an important call from Washington, DC.
Notice this: The more permeating the rot becomes within the system’s structure the more huge and pervasive the edifice of media imagery will grow and the more trivial its content will become. The closer we come to systemic collapse the more we will hear about celebrity contretemps. Cretinous heiresses and shit-wit starlets, with shoddy mechanisms of self-restraint, people the public imagination, because they carry our infantilism, embody our collective carelessness, and, in turn, suffer public humiliation, as we desperately attempt to displace, upon them, the humiliation of our own daily existence within the oppressive authoritarianism of the corporate state.
Correspondingly, there is a well-known (by those who care to look) link between fascism and corporatism. To Mussolini, the two terms were interchangeable. According to rumor, we defeated fascism, during the first half of the 20th century. Yet, at present, we spend our days sustaining a liberty-loathing, soul-enervating corporatocracy. To live under corporatism is, in ways large and small, to be a fascist-in-training. Everyday, hour by hour, the exploitive, neo-liberal concept of work devours more and more of our lives. As a consequence, the true self within is crushed to dust and what remains rises as cultural squalls of low-level fear, with its concomitant need for constant distraction. As all the while, the psyches of the well-off (financially, that is) become inflated, gaudy and ugly; in short, internally, they become human versions of mcmansions.
Freedom is a microcosm of the forces of evolution engendered by living in the midst of life — a mode of being that apprehends and is transformed by the beauty, sorrow, and wit of the world. Conversely, authoritarian societies are collectives of accomplished liars and lickspittle ciphers, where one must conceal one’s essential self at all costs and the soul falls into atrophy.
To what extent does authoritarian rule diminish both the individual and a nation? Simply, take a look around you and witness the keening wasteland our nation has become. Furthermore, our emptiness cannot be filled by any amount of wealth or power. This is the reason the obscene amounts of mammon acquired by the privileged classes is never — can never be –enough to satisfy them, for their inner abyss is boundless. In a similar vein, no amount of killing can sate a psychopath’s emptiness. Dick Cheney will scowl all the way to the boneyard, hoping he can ascend to heaven by scaling the mountainous pile of corpses he’s responsible for placing there.
In folk stories, when giants are about, drought and famine withers the land and starvation stalks its people. Accordingly, the ruthless giantism inherent to the Corporate/Military/Mass Media state has withered our inner lives, blighted our landscape, and left us powerless before a huge, demeaning system that devours our time, health and humanity.
The bone-grinding giants of the American corporate and political classes have shot the Golden Goose full of growth hormones, enclosed her in an industrial coop, and hoarded her voluminous output of eggs. Yet, nothing satisfies them.
Meanwhile, online, we struggle in a Jack in the Beanstalk Insurgency, hoping that from things as tiny and seemingly trivial as mere beans — our postings, exchanges and periodic meet-ups — the fall of tyrannical giants might begin.
Phil Rockstroh, a self-described, auto-didactic, gasbag monologist, is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City. He may be contacted at:
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Phil’s latest column really hits the nail on the head. Sadly, there’s really not a thing we can do to stop the inevitable collapse of America. We can still speak out on the internet, for now, yet it’s just too little too late. America’s decline started over a hundred years ago and has been accelerated over the past 7-15 years. The very worst aspects of Socialism and Capitalism (instead of the better aspects of both) have been employed by the Elite to keep the people alienated and divided. Naturally the people are going to turn inward and indulge themselves because they’ve been phased out of the decision making process. Yet, I’m still fascinated day in and day out at how trivial and cravenly selfish the American people have become, including myself, family, friends, etc,; just like the millions of assholes I see on the roads and public places everyday the American people have no where to place their righteous rage but against their fellow citizens struggling to make ends meet and have a life worth living.The best thing that could happen is that the Empire falls and the Republic is born again.
Organized Jewry and Organized WASPS dictate what happens in America and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it but wait…………
Great read, let it out. I also must say that Tom’s comment was also spot on.
I agree, let it fall. I am getting out of North America. I may return after the ordeal, but I need to start living a human life. Not one of slavery (economic and social) and not one for any of the countless selfish people that one encounters on a daily basis. Get back to nature and wait, while there, I will clear my mind and body.
Sadly and slowly, I am beginning to realize that the future I envisioned is not the one I, and more importantly, my children will live in. Continue the good work.
NO, maybe it is not all lost!!!We must envision the future WE want, and send it out there!!!!!There has got to be more of us than of them. We can learn a lot from our own history. Read about the original people, or the Quakers….all is not lost, yet.
I sympathize with those who think the solution is simply to leave the US, something I did about fifty years ago, but that solution doesn’t work any
more.
Here in France, Sarko is imitating Bush right down to the smallest details… his first move in office was a bill giving tax breaks to the rich. Sound familiar?
His second move was getting rid of the French Secret Service and replacing them with handchosen cops. Paranoia in high places is ubiquitous.
Third move: he announced that the the 500-room Elysees Palace (French White House) was too small for his family, and took over the guest palace across the street that was built to hold visiting
dignitaries.
Notice any similarity of egos here?
Chemtrails abound over Paris… pollution levels measured in the RER underground trains are now three times legal limits.
A demonstration in the Latin Quarter by a few dozen rightist hoodlums right after the elections was countered by over two thousand armed and armored cops being sent into the neighborhood.
They clogged every street in the Quarter with buses full of heavily-armed goons… I counted over two hundred weapons on hips of cops outside the buses alone… all to handle 20 demonstrators? Nope, to scare the shit out of all the voters. And guess what.
It works.
Sound familiar?
It’s global, my friends. Stay where you are and fight it there. It’s not going to go away until we all do.
The picture on the top of this article . . . .(empty concrete structure with McDonalds bus seat) is taken from Biloxi Mississippi. Right across the street from this busted up building is a casino, beautifully restored. The contrast of the two is amazing, and it fits with the article.
You have until 28 April 2010 to get tour life, debts and family under control, get some gold and silver, get somewhere safe, get 2 years of supplies and a whole heap of community around you, its going to be tough but the 2nd foundation needs you
Like almost all items published on this website, it has way too much “filler”. This site has some articles that sound interesting, but are long on words and little on content. The writers and editors here need to get to the point and not blab so much that their entries become boring, appearing a work in literary masturbation rather than getting the message out. Otherwise, there might be some good information here to digest, but many of us have better things to do and other sites to visit where we can get our desired news and current topics written in a concise and to-the-point manner.
Ken880, what’s going to go down in 2010? I’m curious. Do you know something we don’t? Will it change our lives?
I agree with the author but I do think there is one last chance to reclaim this nation. To simply get money, and thus corporations, lobbyist, etc , out of politics. Simply making ALL election in the US publically financed would allow once agin for the voice of the people to be heard. Eiminate all special interest advertising during election times and just allow REAL americans the opportunity to run for office as opposed to the puppets of the rich we now have.
Once simple change in election law could save this country, of course, I am not holding my breath, those in power understand the power of money, and will not let this power go.
IN 2007, america is all talk and show, and very little substance. The forefathers although rich bastards themselves, would shudder at what has happened to their dream.
You wouldn’t feel so bad if you understood that you are not special. The world will never be the way you would like it to be. Those stronger than you will always make it the way they would like it to be. And until you are stronger than them, it will not be your way. The answer does not lie within the pages of your thesaurus.
You got it all wrong, making these leaps into why people are the way they are. Yanks are fat because Big jew agri-biz feeds them garbage, which is promoted by the jewsmedia on talmudvision. With SUV’S , its because they need security, in a country in which Jew Gov. has allowed in multi-millions of strangers, no one fees safe, desire for big armored vehicles reflect the fear Big jew has instilled in her white slaves.
Mega churches, well thats easy, scumbag christian preachers (many of whom are Jews)
push for support of Jew.S.A/Israeli wars as well as $$$$$$$$$$$ for the jew state israel, as a result they are funded from “above” and can build such big ugly pig pens , to then fleece their stupid flock of white cattle (goyim they call them) and promote the wosrhip of a jewish man as God.
Phil Rockstroh uses English the way that it was designed to be used to convey a message with appropriate semantics. Readers who don’t value the art of succinct communications might miss the true artistry of his writing. Simplified versions of his story about the spiritual vacuum of America can be found anywhere. Rockstroh is the Shakespeare of contemporary American journalism embodying wit, semantics and wisdom to convey his message.
Did those last two comment come from mental ill children?
I tell you what I will find in a thesaurus:
Synonyms for Johnny’s worldview: banal (for your bandying about platitudes) and bully (for your seven year old’s, none-too-smart, male child’s belief that all that matters in this vast and varied world is size and strength).
And for Jay: Banality and Evil. As in Banal of Evil.
Thanks Patrick: After the two comments above yours, I was worried that site had been hacked and the only place its content was being download was an insane asylum.
You right: at times the complexities of the world require a complexity of speech.
The keep-simple-crowd is generally saying: I don’t want to stretch myself to learn anything. And that anyone who would attempt to stretch themselves must be a fool, because no-nothings like me can’t be reach by intelligence. Therefore, you’re stupid for trying. Trying to reach the stupid is stupid — so therefore, I’m off the hook. And if you weren’t stupid — you’d try to be stupid too like me.
That’s why: stupid is the new smart.
Q. While the economic theorization at planetization/soulutions is interesting, it would require the Sheeple be(com)ing educated as to the true nature of money and economics - flying in the face of the overwhelming brainwashing to which they’ve been subjected in the “public” schools and in the media on a daily basis. Yeah, like that’s gonna happen!
A. What is being sold for free at www.planetization.org/soulutions.htm at planetization.org is financial freedom through simple viable logical and peaceful economic reform designed to empower the sheeple[including you and me] by putting more cash in the pockets of the sheeple-us. The amount of brainwashing one has received means little when financial freedom is had for all. With cash in ones pocket, even sheeple tend to think outside their brainwashed states of being. This is not rocket science. Freedom is a mere perception shift away. Think of the benefits of freedom based economics. Tell me they are not profound and worth pursuit. Doing anything less is to choose to remain a slave.
Those that deny their brainwashed state confirm their brainwashed state. Our entire culture and way of life is based on a dream brainwashed into us the masses through the scientific tools used to shape and define our culture. Do the research. We are in a cult built on an in denial ponzi scheme run amok. I get tired of the naysayers who claim change is not possible. We own our money supply. Why not pay ourselves a living wage based on the cost of in-common goods and services? Why not open the discussion lines and work together to establish a many-voiced alternative economic system that is designed to fix the problems caused by our current economic policy?
Anybody?
Keep-simple-crowd? One can study the infinite complexities of an apple down to the subatomic level and ponder string theory as the underlying hum beneath even that… but it’s still an apple. The more you dig, the more complex it becomes. The more questions you’ll have. The more you’ll become frustrated. I appreciate and understand things at many levels. I am smart enough to know that there exist levels that I can’t even begin to comprehend. You can throw an apple at someone’s head, or you can feed a hungry child. It can inspire scientists, generate new trees, or rot in a field - never having been seen by a human being. It’s still an apple. Don’t presume to know me. Don’t lump me in with those you think don’t understand you. I understand you. I don’t want to stretch myself to learn? When things stretch, they either stretch so far that they break or they return to their unstretched state. You are stretched, and now you have to decide… do I break, or do I return, clear-headed, to look at the whole picture? The only thing this site was hacked by is common sense. I never said I was one of the ’stronger’ ones. Go back and read my first post. All I did was agree… stupid. You can’t hope to help all the ‘oppressed and exploited sentient beings on our Earth’ unless you understand the problem. We give aid to Africa and it gets taken by a corrupt (& stronger) government or warlord. The stronger Hamas takes from the weaker Fatah. The stronger Taliban takes from the weaker villager. The stronger boy on the playground takes from the weaker boy. The stronger cable channel triumphs over the weaker one. Open your eyes and maybe you can do some good. I don’t like the state of the world any more than you, but unless you understand the rules they play by… nothing will change. Please excuse my ramblings, I probably don’t have the education you do. Because I’m stupid and I have to slug it out in the real world.
Forgive me, everyone, but I believe the best way to answer Johnny is to post this poem by Rilke: It approaches the question of the strong, the supple and the sublime in a brilliant way.
http://www.cdra.org.za/creativity/Rainer%20Maria%20Rilke%20-%20The%20Man%20Watching.htm
The Man Watching
by Rainer Maria Rilke
I can tell by the way the trees beat, after
so many dull days, on my worried windowpanes
that a storm is coming,
and I hear the far-off fields say things
I can’t bear without a friend,
I can’t love without a sister
The storm, the shifter of shapes, drives on
across the woods and across time,
and the world looks as if it had no age:
the landscape like a line in the psalm book,
is seriousness and weight and eternity.
What we choose to fight is so tiny!
What fights us is so great!
If only we would let ourselves be dominated
as things do by some immense storm,
we would become strong too, and not need names.
When we win it’s with small things,
and the triumph itself makes us small.
What is extraordinary and eternal
does not want to be bent by us.
I mean the Angel who appeared
to the wrestlers of the Old Testament:
when the wrestler’s sinews
grew long like metal strings,
he felt them under his fingers
like chords of deep music.
Whoever was beaten by this Angel
(who often simply declined the fight)
went away proud and strengthened
and great from that harsh hand,
that kneaded him as if to change his shape.
Winning does not tempt that man.
This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively,
by constantly greater beings.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Notice these lines: “What we choose to fight is so tiny!
What fights us is so great!
If only we would let ourselves be dominated
as things do by some immense storm,
we would become strong too, and not need names.
“When we win it’s with small things,
and the triumph itself makes us small.
What is extraordinary and eternal
does not want to be bent by us.”
In this poem, Rilke testifies about the tragedy of viewing existence as a matter of strength and strength alone.
Would you like extra fried lard with your mystery meat and neurotoxic syrup?
thanks phil for your great words explaining the big idea we realists have about living on this hellish planet, keep writing and sharing. It may seem like a fruitless struggle, but like i tell my friends, even though no one reads me, being able to emasculate the enemies of humankind with reasonalbe articulation vindicates my rage.
One suggestion, curb your vitriol lest you be relegated to the lunatic fringe with my kidsarmy brethren; voices such as yours need to be heard above all the hate being spewed mercilessly in cyberspace.
peace
It’s a beautiful poem, and I agree with its sentiment wholeheartedly. But the stated goal of this website is to change things, whereas Rilke finds solace in the struggle itself… against an admittedly unforgiving and ever-present foe… just like I crudely described in my first post. I like Rilke’s optimism better, though…
“Whoever was beaten by this Angel
(who often simply declined the fight)
went away proud and strengthened”
I suppose “proud and strengthened” is better than my “not special.”
Hey, it has been fun. Keep up the good fight & sorry about the thesaurus crack… your writing is genius.
The pen is mightier than the sword. (Unless the two are in the same room.)
As we often say on the Rez/Reservaton, Whatever!
Life has never been easy. Obsessing about all of the problems in the world is a pretty miserable way to go through life.
compelling, appropriately angry and, as one critic above so eruditely pointed out, literary. your metaphors sizzle. you are indeed a poet.
When settlers first built their homes on this continent, their needs were different from ours. Centers of commerce then were not in the same places as now. Therefore they cease to be inhabited. The new centers grow instead. The new era will be grand, no doubt. But grand in what? Grand in disaster? In conflict? In poverty? Not for me. I’m going to wide open spaces. I don’t care where the centers are. My home is where ever I happen to be. This is the best answer I know of for the times to come.
Allright Phil, first, great post, very articulate and enlightening.
“Those that deny their brainwashed state confirm their brainwashed state. Our entire culture and way of life is based on a dream brainwashed into us the masses through the scientific tools used to shape and define our culture.” … Love this, this says it all, thanks David Roblee.
As for Johnny Belmar, and I am speculating here, but I don’t believe this website’s aim is to change things. We are too few and too insignificant to instill change, I beieve that this website’s goal is to create thought, beyond the norm and beyond the spoon fed media; this in itself will eventually instill change. Only truth and understanding will set humanity free of the chains of free market enterprise.
It is ignorance that propegates injustice.
The story, like so many pieces of nonsense on the Internet starts with a false image. The photo is of a Comfort Suite motel in Biloxi, MS. that was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina on August 29th, 2005. The destroyed building is not a “casino” as one poster mentioned. I know the structure and its location well as it is on the street near my home. It is at the corner of U.S. Highway 90 and Iberville Drive. The McDonald’s sign points to the street adjacent to the motel that is in a modest residential area. The McDonalds, located more than three blocks away, is a typical version near the west entrance to Keesler A.F.B. and is open and in good shape.
It disturbs me that an opinion piece that seeks to relate some points of wisdom starts with a misleading photo and a headline. Perhaps the writer’s New York City point of view has not given him the vision he actually needs. Certainly, many people buy large SUV’s, but they are among the few vehicles that can carry a family, pull a boat or trailer, and their gas mileage is reasonable for a vehicle that can do those things. Perhaps the writer only is familiar with big city dwellers who do not have such things or large families. Or, perhaps he doesn’t think that anyone should have them (campers and boats). Not very American.
There is this huge sentiment that America is using too much, has had too much of a good thing, that success and prosperity is only for the powerful. That is not true. American got to where it is because of hard work, determination and skill. America is not a finished work. It is a nation with problems, but turning our backs, becoming lazy and thinking that what goes on in New York or the other major metropolitan areas constitutes to the “truth” of this country, is not what is actually going on.
So much of the rhetoric these days sounds like those who once thought the world was flat and if you went too far, you would fall off the surface. The people that once said those things were from the big cities of their day too….
But if such stories as this is your vision of the future, you are among those those that are trying to make it so. For me, I think we can still affect change for the injustices we see and the excesses that are apparent in corporations and government. Seeing problems is not the end of a situation, it takes no skill or vision to know you have stubbed a toe. But you have to get your eyes off your foot if you expect to get anywhere.
Keith, I live out here in the woods of south Georgia. I can testify to streetfulls of Humvee’s driven by old fart millionaires, who have never taken their shiny little tanks off road in their lives. You have no idea how much is too much when there is not enough going around. It’s not the having what you want, it is supporting a paradigm that leaves so many out…many who DO work hard just to stay in place.
By the way, I want to congratulate Rick, the original auther for his beautifully written, soul inspiring article.To everyone out there: There are many ways to skin a cat, let’s all keep our knives and wits sharp.
Currently there is a cabal that limits the global money supply that creates monied slaves seeking identity in the void that is capitalist greed. Those that limit the global money supply sell monied choices to ITs monied slaves at their expense. Monied slaves generationally evolve into bioborg biobots programmed to evolve into obedient consumers of ITs monied lies that reinforces debtor slavery upon ITs monied slaves.
The solution to slavery is freedom. Attain financial freedom from monied slavery by flooding the free market with free money for all. Make the topic of free money economic reform a global talking point and free the slaves in the world for they are us. The benefits are profound, the downsides few. Flood the free market with free money for all. Simple solutions always solve complex problems. Pay consumers to consume. Reap the benefits. Free the slaves.
www.planetization.org/soulutions.htm at planetization.org
Pass it on and regain OUR freedoms from those intent on devolving US.
Ken880:
” the 2nd foundation needs you”
What is that?
Also, what’s with “28 April 2010″?
Thank you, Phil. I wait all year for a tragically beautiful piece of writing like this that sums up all that I feel inside. I’m in my 30’s and have had emotional problems (ADD, depression, etc.) since my teens. Society always seemed hopeless to me. Somehow I knew that I never stood a chance. I cried when I read this piece.
Hang is there, Rose,
You are not alone is feeling the sadness of the world and are less sick than you think.
Here’s an early piece of mine in which I address the subject if you care to it:
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Sept06/Rockstroh28.htm
Excerpt: “True sanity entails in one way or another the dissolution of the normal ego, that False Self competently adjusted to our alienated social reality . . . and through this death a rebirth, the ego now being the servant of the divine, no longer its betrayer.”
– R. D. Laing
[…] Ronnie Laing’s profound dictum leaves us confronting many poignant questions regarding the true nature of the psychic lives of us so-called ordinary citizens of The United States of America and our ability to function within this corrupt and crumbling empire. In short, is it sane to be able to adapt to an insane culture?
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Sept06/Rockstroh28.htm
Hang is there, Rose,
You are not alone is feeling the sadness of the world
and are less sick than you think.
Here’s an early piece of mine in which I address the
subject if you care to it:
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Sept06/Rockstroh28.htm
Excerpt: “True sanity entails in one way or another
the dissolution of the normal ego, that False Self
competently adjusted to our alienated social reality .
. . and through this death a rebirth, the ego now
being the servant of the divine, no longer its
betrayer.”
– R. D. Laing
[…] Ronnie Laing’s profound dictum leaves us
confronting many poignant questions regarding the true
nature of the psychic lives of us so-called ordinary
citizens of The United States of America and our
ability to function within this corrupt and crumbling
empire. In short, is it sane to be able to adapt to an
insane culture?
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Sept06/Rockstroh28.htm
For the most part, all that Americans own is their homes and cars on credit. This is really stupid when they can make 10 times as much with a well managed 401k/IRA, which are both tax deductable like a mortgage. The tax-deductable contribution limits are currently $20,000 for 401k/IRA and $42,000 for SEP/IRA, per year. I personally would prefer to see the mortgage deduction eliminated so that people would start investing in industry instead of wasting it on credit. If not, this country will be doomed shortly.
“Freedom is a microcosm of the forces of evolution engendered by living in the midst of life — a mode of being that apprehends and is transformed by the beauty, sorrow, and wit of the world.”
The kindest thing to be said about this maudlin prayer dumped amongst some fairly unremarkable acrimony is that it is puerile, bombastic crap. “The forces of evolution,” apparently, have also imparted to Phil Rockstroh a huge faith in the power of his acidic finger-pointing. This self-confessed gasbag poet, however, wouldn’t know real cynicism if it were to bite him in the buttock and then upchuck all over him.
A true “cynic” would know that the cold mechanics driving bio-molecular reality could care less about “the beauty, sorrow, and wit of the world.” Phil must think that the Natural Selector has a soft spot for humanist harangues, (or perhaps, it just installs ego rewards when the brain identifies the American nightmare).
Silly Phil. He writes against “an ignorant half-light of dogma and superstition” from the dead pit of his own belief in insensate matter’s magical creativity. “Freedom is a microscosm of the forces of evolution”? Nah—this is his wretched little proof-text from the scriptures of fundamental meaninglessness.
Phil Rockstroh– are you jewish? I did a short google search and cant figure if you are a chosenite or not, but you sure talk as one. So I am banal? let me check the dictionary… devoid of freshness or originality; hackneyed; trite…. Oh really Phil, and I suppose writing about fat yanks, and Evil SUV’s is the height of originality.
Calling me mentally ill is a classic jewing. You either question my sanity or as the evil Jew hitler did to Ernst Rohm, you label your enemy a homosexual.
Jew marx said…. “accuse others of what you do” Phil I submit to you, You have accused me of what you are guilty of…..being banal and evil. The Jew tricks are being exposed daily on the net, hopefully one day Euro man will no longer fall for the rhetoric and Psy. games of sicko Jew.
Phil, your points are well made, but …
You are a truly excellent writer and an exceptional thinker!
I commend your writing skills and both your creative mode of expression and your keen insights into the American zeitgeist. Your perspective cuts to the quick with a sword of analytic investigation that yields a dramatic and stimulating synthesis.
Your artcile is both unsettling and refreshing to read as you wield your literal strokes in a way thats make the parts of speech transform literally into a vivid palette of information that transforms vital facts into a riveting read that commands attention.
Thank you for your inspirational contribution to the use of language and your unabashed use of an extensive vocabulary. Your work reminds me of the level of reading and writing that many more Americans would function at if not for the lead anchor of dumbing-down that has infested everything from media to education today.
Of course, all the kudos aside, this article is a must read and an important cerebral chemotherapy and a bit of intellectual shock therapy for the media enveloped masses so peacefully imprisoned in the opiate-like sleep of the total control matrix, aka, post-modern American culture.
Keep on writing … for duty and humanity!
[…] theyre insane theyre acting out a death wish and our whole culture is following suit and its going to kill us and all the animals and plants and everything were caught in it and theres so many people which hardly anybody talks about and with the climate changing and the end of oil and competition for food and oceans dying and plastic everywhere theres way too many of us and that cant last it just cant I gotta stop now tim has just asked me to look over the dvd cover design one last time hes gotta get in the the overnight fedex so they can get the dvds made in time for the tour I think hes beat hes exhausted and I get worried that hell get sick or something so Im going to help him and then make sure he puts the disc in the mail and then rests and doesnt do anything and stays off the computer for a while […]
Mr. Rockstroh breys, snorts, struts and swaggers like a cocksure juvenile jackass that has just discovered that his dick is good for more than just pissing on his own feet. Behind the veneer of his labored prose is an emptiness. He would do well to spend a little less time thumbing his thesaurus and a bit more time polishing up his arguments and a lot more time contemplating the world, as it truly is, outside the bounds of his own little puddle. He lacks both humility and philosophical breadth. His observations are superficial and show a distinct lack of either historical perspective or honesty about the nature of the true human spirit: Smart but not wise.
Does he suppose that his is the first generation that has had either bullies or tyrants? Is he the first person to notice greed and blind ambition?
The fact is that none of the targets of Mr. Rockstroh’s sputtering wit are not the cardboard cutouts he would have us believe. Rather, they are folks just like himself, greedy, selfish and imperfect in the same way that people have been since the beginning of time.
Welcome to the real world Phil.
Great job Phil. I truly enjoyed reading your article. I believe those who have criticized your article and writing style are jealous. Most poets are disliked. It is very refreshing to be able read articles like those found in Cyrano. Keep up the good work.