Nov 23 2007
Institutionalized Glorification of our Greed and Gluttony: Thanksgiving Reflections of an Anti-Capitalist
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
By Jason Miller
11/23/07
Gluttony and greed kill more than the sword.
—Italian proverb
Gluttony and surfeiting are no proper occasions for thanksgiving.
~Charles Lamb, 1821
Another propaganda-driven greed-fest has nearly passed in the land of the corporatized and the home of the subservient. Obedient little wage slaves and consumers that most of us are (to varying degrees of course), we have once again dutifully greased the wheels of the monstrous capitalist machine and made our proper sacrifices at the altar of Mammon. Between our voracious inhalation of all manner of edibles to our obscene spree of rapacious spending using money eagerly fronted by the usurious kings of finance capital, Thanksgiving and Black Friday are celebratory days indeed for the moneyed elite comprising the allegedly non-existent ruling class in our “egalitarian” and “democratic” nation.
I celebrated Thanksgiving. However, I wasn’t bowing my head and expressing gratitude to the Calvinist God in which I am “supposed to” believe for the things for which I “should” be grateful. There was an interesting duality to my day as I contemplated that for which I feel a deep ingratitude and celebrated that which sparks my feelings of sincere gratitude.
The components of my “Thanklessgiving” included:
1. The trillions of OUR tax dollars OUR government spends each year attempting to attain global hegemony through nearly ubiquitous military bases, a nuclear arsenal large enough to obliterate the universe, and numerous ecocidal, genocidal invasions of ridiculously weaker nations which, fortunately, usually give us a bit of what we deserve by sending us home limping.
2. The US American Gulag, a penal system populated by over two million human beings. The “land of the free” has the largest number of incarcerated people in the world, even surpassing China, the most populous and allegedly most repressive nation in the world. Criminalizing select forms of self-medicating (those that predominate in the urban core Bantustans to which we have relegated much of our black population) has proven to be an efficient means of “legally” repressing black males. Meanwhile, alcohol, a drug which severely impairs judgment, lowers inhibitions, causes the bloody demise of over 16,000 innocents on our highways each year, and tends to increase the belligerence factor exponentially, remains quite legal and practically flows from the spigots of our homes. And we’re imprisoning people for the possession of marijuana?
3. Factory farms and the fast food industry that necessitated their genesis. Speciesism is a cancer that has long infected our collective thinking with the notion that we can selectively inflict wanton cruelty on non-human animals. Pigs are as intelligent as dogs (imagine the mass outrage if we began large-scale torture, mutilation, and consumption of family canines) yet we imprison them in such tight quarters for such extended periods that they go insane, treat sows as breeding machines, rip out their teeth without anesthetizing them, sometimes disembowel them with hooks through their anuses while they are alive, and at other times boil them to death while they are still conscious. Recently, the turkeys who suffered unimaginably painful lives and deaths (so their flesh could help expand the midriffs of scores of millions of human animals) experienced their own “thanksgiving” when their agonized existences finally came to an end. Instead of using the monster military (which We the Taxpayers have paid to create) as a means to murder untold millions of civilians who “are in the wrong place at the wrong time,” perhaps we would be better served to evacuate the human and non-human animals from the murderous slaughterhouses and thus finally facilitate the smart use of “smart bombs.”
4. The crypto-racism that continues to mar our sociocultural landscape like cesspools of toxic sludge. Aside from the aforementioned “War on Drugs” that targets black males and enables us to justify arming and supporting Latin American Right Wing dictators who foster an environment which allows our corporations to rape their nations, there is still a chasm of inequality between blacks and whites in terms of income, wealth, health, and education. The root causes of this gross injustice are myriad but include rampant covert racism (Jim Crow is not dead; he has simply gone incognito) and epidemic intergenerational poverty perpetuated by deplorable public education in predominately black schools and various other nearly insurmountable systemic impediments to climbing the socioeconomic ladder. And let’s not forget Lou Dobbs’ crusade against the Mexican migration to the US forced by neoliberal economic policies born of savage capitalism.
5. The War on Terror. A more appropriate name for this abomination would be “The War on Islamic People because many of their nations possess much of the oil that capitalism needs to continue fueling the engines of profit and endless growth and because many Muslims are furious that the Zionists stole Palestine.” I guess they went with the War on Terror because the true name is too cumbersome. If we stopped bankrolling the terrorist state of Israel, launching imperial invasions, installing and supporting ruthless regimes, and wielding our economic power like a cudgel, we would stop pissing off so many people and wouldn’t have the constant concern of angry victims employing asymmetric warfare against us.
6. The evisceration of our Constitution and steady march toward fascism. Bush’s signing statements, the Patriot Act and subsequent Orwellian legislation, the trend toward privatization of the military, the increasingly incestuous relationship between the public and private sectors, two consecutive stolen Presidential elections, Islamophobia, pathological nativism, and an ever-increasing obsession with militarism are the obvious symptoms of a nation plunging into an abyss not unlike that experienced by the Germans under the Nazi regime. While we are not there yet, we are certainly experiencing the prefigurements of “capitalism in decay.” Remember that Hitler and his cabal did not fully initiate the machinations of fascism overnight either.
7. The soul (and human and animal and Earth) murdering socioeconomic construct of capitalism. While it is true that selfishness, greed, narcissism, and the tendency to exploit are intrinsic to each human being, we choose to glorify, embrace, amplify and perpetuate a system that demands that we hone these characteristics like weapons in order to “succeed” within our malignant means of economic organization. Tragically, even those who recognize the infinite toxicity of such practices still need to employ them to some extent simply to survive.
8. The mainstream media and Madison Avenue. These entities are deeply complicit in crimes of the highest order, including the ongoing genocide in Iraq that has killed millions of people dating back to the Gulf War and the insatiable desire we US Americans have to acquire more “stuff” (also known as consumerism—a practice that is literally killing our planet). Crypto-fascist media outlets like Fox News and the endless stream of advertising blasted at us 24/7 serve the interests of our depraved moneyed elite well as they shepherd the masses to support and glorify the malevolent American Empire with sanguine enthusiasm.
9. The myth that “America doesn’t torture.” Sorry folks, but we have been doing it for quite some time. Abu Ghraib was no anomaly. MK-ULTRA was not about mind control. The CIA used the results of the horrifying abuse Dr. Ewen Cameron inflicted on his psychiatric patients to write Kubark, their manual on employing psychological torture. During the Vietnam War, the US employed Operation Phoenix, which included the routine use of torture and resulted in the deaths of over 20,000 Vietnamese. The School of Americas (now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation) at Fort Benning in Georgia has churned out over 60,000 Latin American Right Wing thugs trained to torture and murder any who dare challenge the sacred right of capitalists to rape and exploit our neighbors to the south, including saintly men like Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was gunned down for having the fortitude to stand up for the impoverished victims of US-sanctioned and financed death squads in El Salvador.
10. The existence of over one million homeless human beings in a nation awash in abundance. Our perverse system spends trillions of PUBLIC dollars on our leviathan killing apparatus yet we apply asinine palliatives, like the privately-funded Christian homeless shelter where I helped prepare and serve Thanksgiving dinner again this year, to feed and shelter our indigent and hungry brethren (many of whom are veterans who were brain-washed into serving in our imperial conquests and then kicked to the curb like yesterday’s garbage).
As I reveled in my role of ingrate to the Empire, I gave sincere thanks for:
1. Family and true friends.
2. Chandra
3. Patrice Greanville, the editor in chief of Cyrano’s Journal, who is also my friend, ally, and mentor.
4. My intellect, moral stamina and profound life experiences which have enabled me to shed my false consciousness and begin waging a sustained struggle against the many ravages of the cancer of capitalism and the American Empire.
5. The numerous anti-capitalist individuals, websites, publications, and groups with which I have become allied and affiliated.
6. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, for providing us with the knowledge and tools to battle the exploitative, murderous abomination that is destroying the Earth.
7. Radicals throughout history, including Thomas Paine, Rosa Luxemburg, Emma Goldman, MLK, Malcolm X, Archbishop Romero, and many others.
8. The numerous brilliant and intellectually courageous contributors to Cyrano’s Journal and Thomas Paine’s Corner.
9. The Earth, its infinite beauty, and its capacity to sustain life.
10. Groups like PETA and the Animal Liberation Front. While I don’t formally militate with a specific group, I am a passionate animal liberationist. Collectively, we horrifically torture and slaughter billions of animals each year. While too far ahead of the consciousness curve to effect sweeping changes to the prevailing paradigm, “terrorist groups” like the ALF serve the movement well and their efforts are laudable.
11. Hamas, for the social service work it does on behalf of its horribly oppressed people and for its relentless struggle against US/Israeli efforts to eradicate the Palestinians.
12. Hugo Chavez, for catalyzing and perpetuating the Bolivarian Revolution as an alternative to the deeply entrenched Washington Consensus and for the huge strides he has made towards egalitarianism in Venezuela.
13. Fidel Castro, despite his imperfections (which have been ridiculously over-exaggerated by both the capitalist propaganda networks and the reactionary Gusanos), has remained steadfast in his defiance against US and capitalist domination of the Western Hemisphere and has launched numerous invasions of other nations with his army of physicians. Small wonder he invokes such fear in the tiny, shriveled hearts of capitalists and petite-bourgeoisie the world over.
14. The Internet, for providing a means for people of conscience to connect, network, and strive to give the masses an education to supplant their capitalist mind-fuck. Underestimating the importance of winning hearts and minds would be a gross miscalculation indeed for those of us who want to evoke significant social and political change for the better.
Yes, our social indoctrination to immerse ourselves in the “traditional activities” of Thanksgiving and Black Friday is premised on filthy lies, the torture of hundreds of millions of innocent birds, a celebration of the initiation of the Native American Genocide, an unconscionable waste of resources, and the insatiable greed of those atop the capitalist hierarchy. More nauseating than eating too much turkey, isn’t it?
Yet that doesn’t mean that we can’t opt out of “the great American tradition,” use the time to experience gratitude for those aspects of our existence which are truly meaningful, and commit ourselves to the struggle against the beast that is devouring them.
Jason Miller is a recovering US American middle class suburbanite who strives to remain intellectually free. He is Cyrano’s Journal Online’s associate editor (https://bestcyrano.org/) and publishes Thomas Paine’s Corner within Cyrano’s at https://bestcyrano.org/THOMASPAINE/. You can reach him at
================================================================
The editors and contributors of Cyrano’s Journal and Thomas Paine’s Corner work hard to provide you with the most original and diverse progressive content on the Internet. We are fiercely determined to provide enough people with a sound political education so that, in authentic democratic fashion, they will not only liberate their minds, but eventually cure the economic and moral disease afflicting our world.
We derive no financial remuneration for our efforts to build a social order based on justice, democracy, compassion, and humanity. (Isn’t that your desire as well?) In fact, it costs us money to maintain our Internet presence.
If each of you donated a mere $5 a month—a trifling sum these days—we would have enough money to cover our overhead, upgrade our server capacity, expand our audio offerings, and begin providing you with compelling video content.
By helping us in this fashion you will be assisting the birth of a new type of American democracy, a democracy which will be genuinely rooted in the ideals we US Americans profess to honor, thus enabling the United States to finally measure up to its promise.
For you, for us, and for everyone and everything that you think needs defending, make a donation that fits your budget today by clicking the button below!
Jason ,I’m from St.Louis.There is a 15 year old in the Gulag who deserves to be there.2 years ago he grabbed a 6 year old off the street,he took her to n empty building where he raped her,beat her,tried to rip her ear off and left her to die .Excuse me if I don’t shed Any tears for him.
Obviously Laura there are many many people in jail who amply deserve to be there—many for good or worse. After all, even imperfection can’t be perfect, because there can never be absolutes, therefore some judgments in this highly imperfect judiciary system are correct. But I believe what Mr. Miller is saying here pertains to a different sphere: the fact—outrageous when you look at the evidence—that a huge number of people are serving heavy long sentences for what many jurisdictions or well-heeled offenders would regard as petty crimes or violations. The criminalization of drugs—and I’m not endorsing the use of drugs here—the way we fight this battle is wrong, and unjust because it serves as a broad net that ends up catching and punishing the poor disproportionately, and, as usual, blacks and latinos more than anyone else. Mr. Miller’s points are perfectly on target, but it takes some reflection (and personal evolution into a more mature moral person) to fully comprehend how right he is.
Phil,what mad me mad about this is this kid showed no remorse.It was like so what?The kid was black but no one could believe a kid that young could be so violent.
Jason ,I’m from St.Louis.There is a 15 year old in the Gulag who deserves to be there.2 years ago he grabbed a 6 year old off the street,he took her to n empty building where he raped her,beat her,tried to rip her ear off and left her to die .Excuse me if I don’t shed Any tears for him.
I am not quite sure what the above comment has to do with the article .. horrifying as it is .. one may not remove that 15 year old from the crucible of his social setting .. the matrix within which he was raised .. what was it .. violent video games absorbed as a seasoning into that mental stew of poverty and a dash or two of child abuse?
Fast forward 3 years .. the military recruiters seeking to press the Queens shilling into the hand of unprivileged .. the powerless placed into a position of an occupiers power .. in a land of which they do not understand .. a peoples and a culture that they do not understand .. and simmering below the surface the suppressed anger and outrage of a young life distorted by a heartless system .. the results are inevitable.
The results manifest themselves in such places as Abu Gharib .. Gitmo and countless other hidden gulags as the powerless put into a position of power work out their angst .. as a slum boy of a bombed out British City in WWII .. I understand the system .. and who it serves .. very well indeed .. The Judicial system of both our lands are identical in intent and purpose .. the Magna Charta has been trashed and the right of Habeas Corpus removed .. but then what did we expect?
The law was written for the ruling classes .. and not for those on whose backs the burden falls .. of supporting the tyrannical pyramids of power .. The Stock Exchanges a euphemism for a network of Global Gambling Casinos .. the participants gamble the lives and the jobs of untold millions .. this for the sake of a a handful of colored pieces of paper .. Predatory Capitalism .. Dog eat Dog .. a feudal abomination.
Jason .. a stone from the sling of David to the forehead of Goliath .. well launched .. and right on target .. that made the bastard stagger.
Dear Laura, a few days back this site published an article called DESECRATION in which the author described in persuasive and harrowing detail the murder—’for kicks”—of a little kitten by two clearly unhinged white teenagers. Your pain, and pent-up frustration with the insanity of this society is amply shared by me, and many others. Some people commit heinous crimes, revolting and cowardly crimes, and richly deserve what they get—black, white, yellow or zebra! It doesn’t matter. As well, this nation is well-known the world over for its serial killers and sociopaths. It apparently produces more alienated, brain and soul-dead people than any other modern nation on the face of the earth. This is a social pathology that cannot be denied or papered over by all the heaps of glorification we pour on our egos daily (courtesy of The Great Prostitute—the media), and point to the fact that something deep in our culture causes these people to act in almost suicidal alienation. (Many actually commit suicide “by cop” as they call it, or kill themselves after killing a bunch.)
I reiterate that, IMHO, it was these areas of the intersection between society (diseased in the extreme), and human, imperfect (class-contaminated) justice that Jason was apparently addressing in his denunciations of the unjustly incarcerated.
Thank you all for your patience with this dialog.
OOps! Forgot to say that I appreciate the stylistic ease with which Ivor (Hughes) summed up our predicament and the causalities in that errant kid. Little else can be expected from an entire culture built on the obviously bankrupt notion that selfishness and deceit can be a healthy glue for most social interactions.
Seriously, 180-degrees opposite of the truth about Political Economy. Let me guess: a one-world socialist, right?
This was very well written… kudos.
Just one word: magnificent. And thanks for saying so well what already beats in my chest.
Laura: Excuse me, but the high levels of crimes in societies require a little bit more of scientific understanding. I think you are talking about the symptoms not the causes. Of course we still need a state apparatus to prevent, and treat crimes. However, the US state apparatus is anti-scientific, irrational and fascist. It is not treating the root of problems which is capitalism.
Let’s not fight a war on terror or crimes, let’s instead go to the head of the snake, the root of the problems which is capitalism !!
Fight the real enemy !!
FIGHT CAPITALISM !! THE REAL ENEMY !!
O.K i sense that none of you have a clue.People on this site are eschewing the theories of Marx,Chavez and Castro?Just what country are you from?We are already living under these principles and you want more?Come on.
greibertertie, what libertarian planet did you crashland from? It takes a certifiable idiot or someone functionally insane to be convinced that the US, the citadel of plutocratic power on earth, is a beehive of communists and revolutionists. Go see—no, make that RUN! to the— nearest shrink to have your head examined.
You eviscerate every value that a holiday may hold with the hook of the worlds horror without regard to the consept that life is conflict. Earth has never been free of that, and without conflict we would have no clue what peace is.
Hopelessness is rampant in our society, and there are some people, broken by the painful embrace of hardship, who fail to persevere. Have you ever considered the concept that perhaps, half of the people alive don’t deserve the breath they draw?
Learn the best way to evoke change in the world is to hold your ground against hardship. The weak have a tendency to see this and follow suit.
Great gazooks! What a plague. Yet another big guy recommending INDIVIDUALISM, INDIVIDUALISM, INDIVIDUALISM, big tough macho bullshit and so on as the solution to society’s problems. I bet you’ll recommend next private initiative and freedom…(for the business interests, that is). Listen pal, I spent 5 years in some of the toughest corners of this planet, and individualism is not what gets you through—it’s team work. It’s the group. One for all all for one.
I’m with you, however, on the fact that this planet has way too many humans. We have done a great job at destroying it. And too many people are just a waste of space.
Wow! What a great article. I wish I had written it.
As for the Laura, non sequitor; do you think maybe one of Rush Limbaugh’s agents got in here and was so scared of Jason’s piece that he had to derail it a la Fox Nerwork and Karl Rove? These people are so clever and so destructive of investigative thought.
On the other hand it might just have been a concerned woman who wrongfully equated all imprisonment and punishment, no matter what, with justice.
Capitalism, a milder and more subtle form of Marxism, brought to you by mass murdering, lying, corrupt leftist scum, who are in the midst of ’saving the world’ again for that ’shitty little country’.
Wow, what a nightmare your post-war dream has turned into! Ever get the feeling you have been cheated?
Never mind just blame Bush, because that’s nice and safe.
Once it is understood by more than too few that the true root of all of our social ills is the abuse of the core principle of banking known as fractional reserve lending.
What this means is that banks lend money they do not have being a multiple of what they have on deposit secure in the knowledge that rarely do depositors come in on the same day to withdraw all their deposits.
That is the equivalent of counterfeiting, but for banks it is legal, whereas for us it is jail - big time. It is a private monopoly as jealously guarded as is state sponsored murder. Again, for us it means jail to do the same.
But it is the abuse of fractional reserve banking that is at the root of all evil and not its mere practice. By this i mean that banks can quite morally lend out a multiple of what they have on deposit, but the evil arises only when they demand that people pay interest on what is essentially loans created out of thin air.
It is the charging of interest on fictitious money which spawns all the other evils contributors have listed which in turn beget the detailed social pathology so graphically instanced by Lauraj400.
This core evil of charging interest on fictitious money is so powerfully and deeply entrenched as a near universal practice that it has not been recognised as the principal cause of WW2; as Mr Hitler, to the bankers’ surprise, told them in February 1933 that he would issue money at no interest, and that debts would be interest free.
That meant Germany had to be destroyed since other countries might see merit in Mr Hitler’s adroit executive decision.
Had Mr Hitler complied with the bankers’ requests for business as usual there would have been no German militarism, and he would have been as utterly forgotten by now as past Chancellors before or since.
Hitler also stopped massive chainstores from taking over the high streets, he only allowed a certain few, whilst maintaining the small family run stores.
You are right michael. Germany was becoming very powerful and had shown that debt and world banking could be bypassed. Britain could not tolerate a powerful Germany in the middle of Europe. The alcoholic Jew Churchill (His mother was Jenny Gerome, an American Jewess) had also made a pact with the Zionists. They ousted Chamberlain the peace maker, and bankrolled the butcher of Gallipoli (Churchill) to start bombing German cities until a retaliation was forthcoming, even though Hitler had said so many times that he never wanted a war with Britain. All he wanted was to smash the Jewish/Bolshevik yolk that had turned Russia into a nightmare, very much as they are doing to America today.
I do not know if America will survive as well as Russia has. I feel by the time AIPAC/Zionist/Israel has finished with her, she will resemble a stricken child with elephantitis, a dried husk, a mushroom nation.
First of all you must do some killing for them in the ME though.
This has to be the best writing I have ever read on a blog! My take is that the shit has already hit the fan: (1) Boston police attempting to confiscate guns, (2) 800+ FEMA concentration camps in this country most of which were recently built by Haliburton, (3) the Simon Weisenthal Center testifying for Jane Harmon that 911 Truthers are really home grown terrorists (this one really sticks in the throat), and (4) the doubling of military fuel supplies in the Gulf starting now. We are careening out of control and the only question is how hard and bloody the crash will be. Best to think about exercising your 2nd amendment rights for the reason the founders gave it to us.
There has never been a Jew in my family but if I had lived in Hitler’s Germany I would be dead.Why?I have celebral palsy.
Ronald O’Malley, you have hit the nail on the head. Individualism is not what gets you through. Looking through the lens of history one sees that those civilizations that base their society on the family and its social bonds and not on the individual alone are the ones that endure.
We don’t need an ownership society, we need a give a shit society.
SAYS GERMAR RUDOLPH, PROUDLY:
Capitalism, a milder and more subtle form of Marxism, brought to you by mass murdering, lying, corrupt leftist scum, who are in the midst of ’saving the world’ again for that ’shitty little country’.
Wow, what a nightmare your post-war dream has turned into! Ever get the feeling you have been cheated?
Never mind just blame Bush, because that’s nice and safe.
This fellow’s posts require some reply, so let me try.
First, a little personal history. I’m an Austrian born man whose father served in Hitler’s armies with distinction, and remained all his life a certified Nazi. The allies “Denazification” hardly made a dent in our lives—it was just an unpleasant interlude in a life of upper-class comfort and privilege. That was not uncommon. “Denazification” was NEVER a serious effort by the allied elites to purge the Germans of their Nazi doctrines (the precursor of the CIA was busy recruiting Nazis to help fight communism even before the war was formally over, many of these were given free passes to South America or brought to the US); it was more a show for their own publics at home that “something” was being done about this just defeated ideology. In reality, as we know, Germany was defeated—militarily—and momentarily, only to rise again as major economic power, and Nazism really never died, because, friends, prejudice and imbecility have always been with us and always will (in all probability) as long as human society remains the messy highly confused free-for-all guaranteed by bourgeois values.
My father was an architect, and books were certainly not a rarity at home, so I was able to read quite a few before I was out of my teens. The problem was that, as befits the upside down world of a Nazi, most of these books saw reality through the funnel of blind hatred toward Jews, and made all facts, no matter how clear pointing in another direction conform to that obtuse and regimented rationale. Hatred and fanaticism work like that. Anyone brought up at that time in Austro-Germany will remember the ubiquitous EWIGES DEUTSCHLAND (Eternal Germany), that circulated so widely. Read now, with the perspective of mature knowledge of history, it’s a cruel joke.
In any case the above to underscore two simple things that need presentation with Nazis of any stripe: (a) your blood purity (I come from impeccable, in fact CERTIFIED Aryan stock (courtesy of the Nazis) dating back to Walkyrie times; and (b) my first-hand knowledge of Nazi ideas, mores and ways of acting.
With these antecedents out of the way, let me say, unequivocally, that Germar Rudolph and his ilk are fit to be tied. Sentiments like these:
“Capitalism, a milder and more subtle form of Marxism…” make my jaw drop to the floor. This is a brand of imbecility mixed with arrogant ignorance so profound as to defy explanation. Yet it’s hardly new.
This pretend animosity toward capitalism, this accusation that Bolsheviks and capitalists are really the same—or simply evil twins— is not new. It was used by the Nazis to actually capture naive followers, since capitalism WAS correctly and widely seen in the 1930s as the cause of massive human misery. That’s why the Nazis’ real name was National Socialist Workers’ Party! They incorporated “workers” and “socialism” because such words had credibility and resonance with the masses, and wanted to steal a march from the real thing—which they did, thanks to huge financial support from the German and European aristocracy and German army, which gave Hitler and his crew tens of millions to stay afloat, while the social democratic government betrayed the workers by not investigating Nazi violence. Now, only mentally defective people can believe that you’re gonna be aggressively backing those who want to kill you. There are cases whereby assaulted minorities have tried to gain some breathing space by appeasing their attackers with “bribes”—but that could never be the case of the world’s upper classes because they were too powerful and rich to have to do that. And they didn’t. The plutocrats—of all ethnic stripes—Jewish and NON-Jewish—are the problem. It’s NOT and never has been a Jewish question. It’s a class question. But that simple and almost self-evident concept is apparently too hard to grasp by the feeble brains of Nazi adherents like “Rudolph” here.
I think the world would be a better place if more people got the mess they have in their brains cleaned up, stopped reading crap (like that written by “distinguished historians” like this Brit Antony C. Sutton, a favorite of NeoNazis and libertarians) that says the communists and capitalist are one and the same, and started seeing reality for what it is. You can’t cure anything unless you properly diagnose it.
Well, that’s that. I believe there’s no cure for “Germar Rudolph.” He’s too far gone. But some of you may have a chance. Use your remaining brain cells while you can.
Auf Wiedersehn.
Terrible having to resort to censorship, but then that’s the price one has to pay for living a lie I presume.
P.S
The spite and venom in your reply does little for your case, as it only goes to highlight your bitterness at being exposed to the inquisitive onlooker.
Have you found those’ WMD’s’ yet?
Beam me up, Scotty
About 1:30 PM Mountain Time Saturday May 8, 1937 a deserted playground of the Lincoln Elementary school in Ogden, Utah became the site of an extraterrestrial visitation from space. A young boy of Scottish ancestry from the genes of the Wallace (Braveheart) Clan celebrating his 8th birthday had just orally ( With how come….??) cursed the concept of God as held by those with whom he associated in the densely populated but second class railroad Mormon community of Ogden as he passed a church building on his bike and now entered the deserted playground several blocks north.
An answer to the curse was now upon him. In a burst of light greater than the midday sun a small humanoid figure appeared in that beam as a hologram of energy. The young boy knew this personage, an old friend, and shouted his name as he was lifted off his bike with sure energy and brought back face to face with the visitor.
An attempt at vocal exchange was suppressed by motions of the Visiter. Then a voice from space uttered a response to the curse as understood by an 8 year old.
I heard your prayer………
I am not a God of stone, steel, brick, mortar and glass………
I dwell not in structures made by the hand of man…….
I dwell only in the hearts and minds of those who know and love me….
Those who build Temple structures to lure people into them to find me decieve…….
They do so to gain obedience and money……
The day will come when these men will seek to control the earth for me…….
It is an evil I will not allow……
You are among those called to lead the struggle against these men….
Many others have been called to research this….
You will use this research to defeat the evil ones……
You need not worry as you will be guided by the spirit…..
The boy asked, “When will this happen give me a sign.”
When a temple is built in this area will be the time of beginning for you……
The young boy again asked, “but how old will I be?”
You will be in your 40’s……..
A temple at Ogden was built in the early 1970’s
The young boy is now 78 and still no one listens.
The time of interest is now upon us.
Beam me up Scotty, I am too old for this!
Germar Rudolph = uber dumbkopf = troll
Shouldn’t it be called ‘Thanks Stealing’ considering that’s what the Americans are best at? Pillaging the world’s resources to line their pockets. It’s pretty funny how it’s turned out though, Americans are now the fattest, dumbest population on the planet and it won’t be long before it all comes crashing down. C ya.
Dear Jason
Thanks for your clear enunciation of the “Institutionalized Glorification of our Greed and Gluttony: Thanksgiving Reflections of an Anti-Capitalist”. It is an inspiring reiteration of what the global humanity must remind itself if it wants ward off the fast approaching US-engineered doomsday.
If we wish to understand why the anti-capitalist movement seems to be having absolutely no effect on the runaway destructiveness of capitalism we need only to examine this article. Two thirds of it is a long lament… a compilation of all the things wrong with capitalism and particularly capitalism in America. These points are not false… but they’re old hat. We’ve been reading them for months, in many cases for years. I was unable to spot a single new insight or bit of news or revelation in the first 2/3 of this diatribe, just a restatement of how rotten our system is and in how many ways it is rotten.
Would some other reader please point out to me what is original here, show me a single line which teaches us anything new or gives us any clue as to how to improve our effectiveness in the struggle against rampant capitalism?
The final third of the post, nominally a list of things to be grateful for, is a barely-disguised self-delivered pat on the back by the author, both to himself and to all those who agree with him. Once again, would someone out there please show me, in this final third of the article, what is new, what is useful, what is relevant to the struggle against capitalism?
If an editor in the mainstream media published as ‘editorial content’ in any US newspaper such a compilation of old news mixed with a hearty self-congratulatory message he’d probably be laughed out of the business by his associates, or relieved of his duties, but here on Tom Paine’s corner he merely gathers lots of admiring comments.
What I want to know, self-proclaimed American heros of the Left, in fact what I demand to know is: WHAT’S THE PLAN? For almost six months I’ve been reading on this site the ‘brilliant minds’ that Miller brags about but have yet to come across a single valid suggestion on what practical steps must be taken to remove capitalism from our lives, and what you suggest we replace it with, and how that change will be accomplished.
How do our brilliant anti-capitalists suggest that we are going to wrest power from the banks and the brokers? Are you advocating violence? Against the US military and police? If not, what are you advocating? I’ll believe you’re ‘brilliant’ when you stop whining brilliantly and start coming up with real plans and feasible solutions on how to change our dismal and fast-deteriorating situation.
I’m waiting most avidly for your replies.
Shayne Nelson, I had a few similar thoughts as you about the article. The problem we all face is the same as Bob Cratchit’s: how to turn heartless people into human beings. Unfortunately, we don’t have the Ghosts of Christmas to help people find their lost humanity. As Mencius said 2300 years ago, people know to look for their dogs and chickens, but do not know to look for their lost humanity. It took the Han dynasty’s adoption of Confucian principles to set things right and provide an enduring cultural legacy that spread throughout East and SE Asia. Until we change from a legalist system to a morally based system and makes the family instead of the individual the basic unit of society, America , and perhaps the West, is doomed to failure. Such is the way of things. The unsustainable ends. The sustainable continues.
As for what you seek, it cannot be found. The system must crumble and we will indeed go through a long period of anarchy, if not a kind of dark ages, before the old is swept away and something new can arise. You might take a gander at Karen Armstrong’s “The Great Transformation.” There is much insight to be gained there. We MUST learn that we are indeed our brother’s keeper.
I tend to agree with the above two comments by Shayne and NeoLotus. I really found this piece to be more of a poorly written rant than anything else. Nothing new at all, and, in fact, more of the same angry stuff from a person trying to change the world. Then the guy gives thanks for his intellect. Woah baby, this is gettin good, I’ll be coming back to this site to see what we’ll be offered next. A rant against how our tax dollars are spent?
Hey man, in the USA you have a Deep Government running the show, and the whole political scene is a dog and pony show for the people. Any president who steps out of line knows what will happen to him, and any member of Congress will get the same — just look at Paul Wellstone, his wife, daughter and those two pilots. Leahy steps out of line and he gets an anthrax letter.
And forget about how your tax dollars are spent, look at how they are STOLEN. Rumsfeld announces on 10 september 2001 that 2.3 Trillion dollars are “missing.” Hello? And what about the CIA running drugs? This has been well documented for decades in books such as “The Politics of Heroin” by Alfred W. McCoy and books by Peter Dale Scott, but there are literally dozens. What you are looking at and writing about is pathetic dribble. What are you trying to change?
Get out of that country and go find yourself another one and turn those nasty negative waves into some positive ones and get over it. Forget about the USA it is OVER and time to GET OUT and STAY OUT because the place is run by thieves and murderers who wage war for profit, plain and simple.
This site would do well to look beyond these cute little arguments for or against this or that, and rather take a look at the Deep Government that is running your country. There is no constitution. There are no rights. Get out while you can and enjoy yourselves. This site is pure distraction and articles like this is nothing more than a pointless, poorly written rant that is going nowhere. None of you are getting the big picture, you’re too stuck in the details and arguing like Freshmen philosophy majors smoking dope in their dorm room.
As a long-time reader of Cyrano’sI have to wonder what kind of dope Shayne and Bob are smoking. I’m not sure I would call this article a “rant” and i guess i missed the part that is “silly”. but on second thought, maybe bob is rite….this writer is a real piece of shit for publicly giving thanks for things most americanns despise or could give a shit lessabout….as shane says; its just self-congratultory bullshit….bob and shayne are dead on–even when their fucked up on whatever it is they smoke….
For years now Cyrano’s has been expsing the realities CNN and Fox buries behiind their disneyland presenttion of america…. Does thsi site flog capitalism over and over? Sure. But let’s see, the site meter shows about 240k visitors since sept…. A hundred times that number are being brain-washed the lame-stream media at any given moment… Uh, if they have a prayer in this battle, maybe they have no choice than to keep hammering home the truth in different ways, huh?
As far as Cyrano’s editors being “laughed out of business” if they ran their content in the lamestream mediaa……uh, isnt’ that the point of this site? To publish work that wouldn’t appear in our fucked up corporate newspapers and magazines?
And I challenge any of you to find another radical site anywhere that attacks the issue of animal liberation as hard as these guys–attempting to end the torture and slaugher of 40 billion animals every year….. I bet the cows, pigs,and chickens hope Cyranos keeps mking its “cute arguments”…
But maybe these guys are right…..maybe Cyrano’s should give up cuz the US is a lost cause and too dangerous…..then all their writers and publishers and editrs could take the chicken exit, like Bob suggests…..is that what you would do, Bob? take the coward’s way out? what abot you, shayne?
On Shayne’s attacks on this site’s purposes: I agree with John Stephens’ note filed earlier in defense of Cyrano’s editorial choices.
Mr. Shayne:
Yours is what I normally classify as the “tired pseudo elder statesman argument.” Your comment is riddled with holes and contradictions of which only a few can be elucidated here, as we’d need tomes to do this mess full justice. But let’s try.
You attack Mr Miller for denouncing, for railing against what you supposedly are denouncing at a “deeper level” —which is not clearly explained. And you pick issues where none exist. Consider:
• Why is it mutually exclusionary to denounce how our dollars are spent and how they are stolen? It would seem to me that both topics, far from being antipodal, are really one, when you analyze it and that anyone with cojones will say so: our tax dollars are not only criminally misspent but stolen. Cyrano’s editors have said so on many occasions, and that’s one of the reasons, I, for one, keep coming back over the years. Again, these are not mutually contradictory positions, and kudos for those who go after this topic.
Shayne (and Bob) really advance very weak, illogical on their face, and, even upon cursory examination, pathetic lines of argumentation to attack Miller’s latest piece. This was a very personal, almost one-on-one confessional piece, and the kind that you see infrequently in the mainstream media…but so what? I’ve seen all kinds of columnists do that over time, plus, just look at what these people are trying to do and what the corporate media does! These people oppose and denounce in the most lucid and angry terms (yes, angry, righteous anger is amply justified in these instances), the crooks and criminals in our midst, the prostitutes in academia, the Congress, the press and the pulpits, who do the bidding and shilling for an outrageously immoral and ruthless deathdealing system.
The squalid nature of Shayne’s (and Bob’s, too, assuming they are two different people (it could just be some creative schizoid temperament fortified by what some have called multiple Internet personality disorder…) criticism is easily laid bare when he says mockingly, “more of the same angry stuff from a person trying to change the world…”
Note, first how the word “angry” is injected here. Haven’t we seen this before? In fact anyone semi-aware of capitalist propaganda defenses, of the system’s semantic tricks, would recognize that word as a favorite standard pejorative when referring to “radicals” or “extremists”—in short, “the beyond the pale rabble attempting to change the capitalist system and its supposedly perfect and immutable order…” The adjective is especially effective among amply conditioned American audiences, for whom its use was first recommended. Nothing new here, Mr. Shayne, so why even use it? You say we should only read, write and do “new things”—all else being “old hat.”
Second, what a poor student of historical dynamics, let alone human dynamics, Mr Shayne (and Bob, sorry) is. Hasn’t he observed that while a few humans beings may be so cerebral that they can pursue immensely difficult assignments cold-bloodedly and in the absence of passion, it is passion, a thirst for rectification of wrongs (which have to be well understood) that propels most people to seek difficult and often highly risky change? Anger–much berated as an “improper emotion” by liberals, social democrats, and establishmentarians–has a place in the panoply of motivations fueling remedial action, and is certainly one of the decent person’s reactions to injustice and institutionalized evil. You never heard of the word “outraged” Or “outrageous”? Isn’t Rumsfeld’s dismissal of those missing trillions of dollars an “outrage” in your book? It ought to be, if you’re consistent with your very logic.
In any case to recap, if Mr. Shayne, and his cohort or sidekick Bob—castigate “those who [are] trying to change the world” as Cyrano’s writers and editors are trying to do, why regale us on this thread with their own angry rant about the transparent, OUTRAGEOUS, crookedness of our government? What do THEY propose to do (well, see below on that). This is what Shayne says:
“Hey man, in the USA you have a Deep Government running the show, and the whole political scene is a dog and pony show for the people. Any president who steps out of line knows what will happen to him, and any member of Congress will get the same — just look at Paul Wellstone, his wife, daughter and those two pilots. Leahy steps out of line and he gets an anthrax letter.
And forget about how your tax dollars are spent, look at how they are STOLEN. Rumsfeld announces on 10 september 2001 that 2.3 Trillion dollars are “missing.” Hello? And what about the CIA running drugs? This has been well documented for decades in books such as “The Politics of Heroin” by Alfred W. McCoy and books by Peter Dale Scott, but there are literally dozens. What you are looking at and writing about is pathetic dribble. What are you trying to change?” This site would do well to look beyond these cute little arguments for or against this or that, and rather take a look at the Deep Government that is running your country. There is no constitution. There are no rights. Get out while you can and enjoy yourselves. This site is pure distraction and articles like this is nothing more than a pointless, poorly written rant that is going nowhere. None of you are getting the big picture, you’re too stuck in the details and arguing like Freshmen philosophy majors smoking dope in their dorm room…”
Doesn’t THAT sound to any reasonable observer as something coming from a guy quite fed-up…angry…with the status quo? But hold it. This same person now turns on a dime, and proposes the following wonderful course of action as the “intelligent” and one would imagine “mature” position to confront this unprecedented global crisis. ( I’m just quoting him, again):
“Get out of that country [the USA] and go find yourself another one (sic) and turn those nasty negative waves into some positive ones and get over it. Forget about the USA it is OVER and time to GET OUT and STAY OUT because the place is run by thieves and murderers who wage war for profit, plain and simple…”
So, there you have it. Nihilism, with a generous dollop of defeatism. Escapism, and that old canard, “positive thinking”! Lenin would have been awed by this level of sagacity. All we need to fix matters in the world is for American critics to shut up…desist..retreat unto themselves, and join the baccanalia! They should just cultivate their gardens, abandon ship, yea, leave the USA, the most dangerous, mayhem-causing and still very much hyperactive superpower in the world, and go elsewhere, thereby allowing the thieving ruling orders to do pretty much as they please without even the semblance of possible criticism or counteraction! Anything else is “sophomoric”!
And to do what?
Hasn’t this man heard that America casts a very long shadow in the world? That no social change process in any land escapes being meddled with by the US to sink it to the very bottom—openly or underhandedly? Go to Europe? Now that the European ruling classes are taking off their postwar amiable mask, as being less savage and greedy than the Americans, while China is ruled by capitalist authoritarians hiding behind the prestige of Mao, and Russia is a capitalist free-for-all immersed in a fierce class struggle from which no one knows yet who will emerge as a winner? There these critics would be fighting the same fight and their duty is first to fix their own house! For all you are seeing now is some relatively minor—from the long historical perspective—differences between various segments of the world capitalist system caused by the law of “uneven development of nations.”
Well, enough of a defense of this site. Frankly I don’t think it needs a lot of defense since its value is obvious to even a semi-reasonable person. No wonder it is held in high regard in many prestigious places throughout the Net. Still, I thought I’d take the time to repay the countless hours of education (and pleasure) I have received on this site over the years (I was a subscriber to Cyrano when it first appeared in 1982 in hard-print during my stay in the US).
I apologise to fellow readers if my English is not clear enough, and for the length of this post.
Thank you.
—C.J. Villalobos, PhD
Former professor of Economics, UTE, Chile
Chiloé, Chile