"I'm no longer preaching to the converted, that congregation has long ago deserted" (-Manic Street Preachers, "All We Make Is Entertainment" )
"There is nothing new in the world except the history you do not know."
(-Harry S. Truman)
“The left has nowhere to go, Obama knows it. The corporate Democrats know it. There will be criticism by the left of Obama this year and then next year they will all close ranks and say ‘Do you want Mitt Romney? Do you want Sarah Palin? Do you want Newt Gingrich?’ It’s very predictable. There will be a year of criticism and then it will all be muted. They don’t understand that even if they do not have any place to go, they ought to fake it. They should fake going somewhere else or staying home to increase the receptivity to their demands. But because they do not make any demands, they are complicit with corporate power.
Corporate power makes demands all the time. It pulls on the Democrats and the Republicans in one direction. By having this nowhere-to-go mentality and without insisting on demands as the price of your vote, or energy to get out the vote, they have reduced themselves to a cipher. They vote. The vote totals up. But it means nothing.”
(-Ralph Nader)
"The past is never dead. It's not even past."
(-William Faulkner)
"There is no major difference between a McCain administration, a Bush and an Obama administration. Obama, in fact, is in many ways, worse. McCain, like Bush, exposes the naked face of corporate power. Obama, who professes to support core liberal values, while carrying out policies that mock these values, mutes and disempowers liberals, progressives and leftists. Environmental and anti-war groups, who plead with Obama to address their issues, are little more than ineffectual supplicants.
Obama, like Bush and McCain, funds and backs our unending, and unwinnable wars. He does nothing to halt the accumulation of the largest deficits in human history. The drones murder thousands of civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as they did under Bush, and would have done under McCain. The private military contractors, along with the predatory banks and investment houses, suck trillions out of the U.S. Treasury, as efficiently, under Obama. Civil liberties, including habeas corpus, have not been restored. The public option is dead. The continuation of the Bush tax cuts, adding some $900 billion to the deficit, along with the reduction of individual contributions to Social Security, furthers a debt peonage that will be the excuse to privatize Social Security, slash social services, and break the back of public service unions. Obama does not intercede, as tens of millions of impoverished Americans face foreclosures, and bankruptcies. The Democrats provide better cover. But the corporate assault is the same."
(-Chris Hedges)
"I'm tired of its acceptance as a national institution and fear that Americans have
forgotten that there even was a time when we did not hold detainees in a
Caribbean island fortress."
(-Amnesty International member Barbara Quintiliano)
"The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don’t. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own, and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought, and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear.
...and now they’re coming for your Social Security money. They want your fuckin' retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street, and you know something? They’ll get it. They’ll get it all from you sooner or later cause they own this fuckin' place. It’s a big club and you ain't in it. You and I are not in The big club."
(-George Carlin)
"Amendment 4: The right of the people to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated."
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Reading Dr. Cornel West's essential book, "Democracy Matters", while drinking some fat burning green tea, with lemon, when suddenly, it appears I've been struck, YET AGAIN, by one of these mysteriously recurring, mutant-illnesses. It's getting harder to acquire healthy, organic food, no one, but the super-rich, are getting enough real vitamins. I need a juicer. Two of my associates, in other cities, have similar symptoms. One of my healthiest, most physically-fit, pals suddenly has this suspicious strain of Pneumonia. My Grandma got a touch of Pneumonia, and they killed her at the hospital, two months later. Any legitimate treatment is not profitable enough to insurance companies, your primary doctor has to refer you to a specialist, and all they ever prescribe are these jive Merck pharmaceuticals, and dangerous steroids, anyway. It's one hundred bucks just to wait around, all day, to even see a doctor. The medical industry is entirely on-the-take. Doctors don't even STUDY natural remedies, anymore. The government's been lying to us, for decades, about the amount of radiation, depressants, and other chemicals, and pharmaceuticals, found in our tap water. They've been helping B.P. cover-up the ecocide in the Gulf. We've got some kind of toxins being sprayed in the sky. We know that Monsanto is poisoning our food and ruining our organic seeds. The Obama Department Of Homeland Security is rolling out their Israeli-style military apparatus to police the malls, and sporting events. Many folks are being cowed by the DHS and submissively, continuing to fly, instead of boycotting the air-lines, and Obama's TSA policies that treat us all like suspects, criminals. Presumed guilty, until fondled-up, and dosed with lethal Chertoff Group radiation. Meanwhile, we all keep watching TV, and shopping obediently. I had to return some absurd gift to the mall yesterday, and man, who are these crazy people, where do they get their money, and what do they possibly get out of wasting so much money on all that useless, generic, overpriced shit??? Fat, unhappy, young girls in too much make-up, knee high boots, and too tight blue jean jeggings, strutting around like Bristol Palin/the fugly Kardashians. Shaved headed, pre-military, teenaged boys decked out like 90's boy bands, lurking around the Verizon cell-phone booth, like they're waiting to get tattoos. Old women, in long lines for returns. Swiping cards. Complaining. Horrible. The parking lot was even worse. Treacherously oblivious, oversized-vehicle driving hicks, who pay no attention-too busy texting, talking on cell-phones, and listening to unspeakably horrible, Disneyfied, commercial-country Music, and barking mad talk radio-jocks. Everybody's sick, and the birds and bees are dying. Never mind the sea life in the Gulf, the still untold ecocides, covered-up by B.P., and Obama's Coast Guard, and the fawning corporate media. Under the cover of rightwing Obama, the prison industrial complex has continued to build their gulags all over the country, America already has an out of sight, imprisoned permaclass, locked-up, from coast to coast...so who, exactly, are these new jails being built for? Why was Gov. Jesse Ventura's show on Fema camps censored? People are either despondant, or in denial, taught to believe absuridities, so they'll endorse atrocities.
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If it's not on tv, it can't be happening...right? White, middle-class Americans are all still overconfident. Particularly, those who've inherited property, or attended university. They still like all those comforting illusions and commercials. Logos, lies, brands, simple instructions. Fake choices. Coke or Pepsi. McCain or Obama. Rachel Maddow or Sean Hannity. Wal-Mart or Target...They trust and rely on their slave-masters. We've all been Programmed, since Sunday school, to worship authority, suck up to the the hierarchy, help preserve the status quo...remember all those G.I. Joe comic-books and cartoons? Young Americans are still being taught to ask no real questions. Boot-camped and boot-camped. No faculties for critical thinking. We don't want to think about Monsanto seeds, building seven, tasers, routinely, used on young kids and grandparents, chemicals and Fluoride in our water, barium and aluminum in the air, secrecy surrounding the Haarp, the vanishing bees, the thousands of birds falling from the skies, the sick people in the Gulf, the dead first responders, the lawless mercenaries, FEMA camps, or their own complicity with the invasions and occupations of Iraq,
Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan, Gaza, etc., that have needlessly left millions of Muslims dead, sick, crippled, homeless, grieving, and dislocated, while we chicken wing inhaling, video game playing, supposedly "Christian", American sports fans did nothing to stop the genocide, submissively accepting the neo-cons Bill-Of-Rights undermining Patriot Act, gobbling Sam's Club Cheetos, watching either Jon Stewart, or Glen Beck, licking orange crud off our fingers, while chanting, "USA".
War-Spores. Violent Consumers. Zombies in big vehicles. A blur of sports, history-revisionism, cover-ups, subliminal signals, secreted symbols, police state bullshit, the non-stop brainwashing of television. The lower-classes are always subject to dire consequences, absurdly disproportionate to the so-called crimes of being poor, or for possessing the ability to see through the media smokescreen, to think critically. The shrinking middle-class, and intentionally dumbed-down, public school attending, Wal-Mart shopping, cable watchers, have seemingly, just blindly accepted the "new normal": mandatory background checks, urine tests, Obama's indefinite detention, kill-squads, and all day/all night wire-taps you can believe in; veal-pen/chicken wire "free speech zones", skies filled with chem-trails, oceans full of oil, shock-doctor disaster capitalism, the persecution of whistle-blowers, murdered journalists, false justifications for always expanding the endless wars, the surveillance of peace groups, the Patriot Act, the demonization of unions, false-flag attacks, and now, they're being trained to accept these random pat-downs, and pornographic radiation-scanners, if they ever need to travel by air. Poor people have to interact with violent, low-brow, militant cops, everyday. We see them bullying, beating, profiling, and ticketing the working poor, and destitute people, day in and day out. For chump-ass "violations". It's like a sport, to these guys. Strong-arming for fun and profit. The cable-zombies believe these guys, and the "terror"-crazed, military, are "protecting" them, somehow. Sure. "Protection". Like the Cosa Nostra. Only if you can AFFORD their "protection". Midwesterners love all that macho, Clint Eastwood, boot-straps shit dished out by hate-mongering, Fox Fraudcasters and all those obnoxious, Limbaugh-style, chickenhawk, radio drill-instructors. UNTIL they get caught-up in the system, themselves. The white hicks with the hot tubs and wrap around sun decks, never think they can get burned by the cops and courts, UNTIL one of their own white kids gets busted dealing middle-class, prescription drugs, or smoking pot, or driving without insurance (more "protection") or, is just in the wrong place, at the wrong time. Nowadays, policing is big business. They'll bust you for playing guitar, they'll bust you for loitering, for skate-boarding, for wearing baggy pants...you just wanna avoid them, entirely, which is increasingly challenging, outside of the bourgeois neighborhoods, all my ex-pals, smugly inhabit. Happy New Years, boys, have a Coke and A Smile. Coke adds life. Coke on. The paisley tied wonderbreaders make some money, and immediately, start repeating lies their fat Dads tell them, from talk radio. They yap, yap, yap, all day long, their out-dated, fifties, John Wayne bullshit, and only ever temper their tough TALK, when they find out, first-hand, how the whole system's a murderous pyramid-scheme. A racket, just like the mafia. They can kill you for any reason, at any time, and the still conspicuously powerful, cop-unions, and kangaroo courts, will always side with the brutes. Once, they get you in the system, it takes tens of thousands of palm-greasing dollars, to ever get back out. High-paid spies read your E-mail, record you phone calls. They don't need no stinking search warrants. Oil rich judges throw the book at poor people, and take constant kick-backs via their private prison corporate stock shares.
Under Obama, the indefinite-detention, drone-striking, wire-tapping, TSA fondling, war puppet.
The corporate elites use music, news, movies, video-games, schools, and advertising to manufacture false consent, through their absolute monopolies in the mass medias. Have you noticed how even DANCING seems militant, now? All their big-label music is generic, dumb, unsexy. It's all the same. Robotic....Ironic...All the supposedly popular music is reminding me of an old "Dieter" skit on Mike Myers era "Saturday Night Live." Crap-techno, crap-emo, crap-country, crap-R&B. No real Rock'n'Roll, at all. Maybe some more "Spinal Tap" sock in the crotch jokes. Or an old Scorpions t-shirt, worn with a smirk. Everybody's favorite dark and scuzzy rock dives are going out of business, in every city. No little rock clubs are left around, with the no smoking ordinances, and brisk d.u.i. biz. Who can afford a night out on the town? Everybody's hiding alone, in our tiny rentals, getting conned by these glowing boxes. Affordable housing is vanishing at an accelerating pace. Cottages are getting torn down, luxury condos are popping up. The yuppies don't like encountering poor folks in "their" neighborhoods. They moan to city hall that the unsightly poor are "bad for business", so city halls divert more money from parks, libraries, and museums into buying more military apparatus, and deploying more thugs into over-policed neighborhoods. Yuppies hate getting parking-tickets, their little suburbanite hackey-sacking soccer players eventually, also, get leaned-on by cops, panhandling teenagers annoy shoppers, independent businesses are driven out---by lack of foot traffic, and ta-daaaa...downtown's a ghost town. A place for the rich to park in concrete parking garages, guarded by security-clods, to eat at fancy hotels. Outside, military-style police will bust homeless people, search kids pockets on the corners, stopping anyone not driving in a new vehicle. That's why all the tv people are at home in front of the giant, flickering, hypno-screens and only leave the tv, where life is just a boob job and a shopping spree on Daddy's credit-card, to go "be seen" shopping at green-washed, anti-union, minimum-wage paying, homo-hating, Target---the middleclass' own Wal-Mart. This is happening in every town. The teenagers got nowhere to go EXCEPT for Wal-Mart and Target. That's a DATE.
Us grown-up's don't get together, anywhere. There's nowhere to go. Most of my old friends quit drinking, to focus more, on making money. We can't even work together creatively, anymore, organizing or making music, because our only incentives are these collections, conspicuous consumption, in-law appeasing, constant remodeling, prestige, profit motives. Careering. It's sad. Bands and other creative ventures become these undesirable attachments, burdensome obligations, like romantic relationships. Once you've been burned, misused, betrayed, or exploited enough, it makes one loathe to even bother with collaboration, anymore. Everybody's making mouse-pad music. Solo artistes. Competing. Isolated. Boss of my zip code. Mighty mogul! Navel Gazing King Of The Channel-Changer. Hu-Wah!
Meanwhile, there are no bands that matter, anymore. No one left like Phil Ochs, the Last Poets, the Clash, Sex Pistols, Adverts, Lords Of The New Church, or Public Enemy, to communicate the truth about our times.
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