COUNTERPUNCH OCTOBER 6, 2023 BY ROB URIE
The Americans are Unleashing Monsters They Have No Idea How to Contain SNIPPETS:
Via technology, capital has shifted from using psychological coercion to sell its wares to using state power to force consumption. With a stunning lack of political foresight, the US has created commercial dependencies— e.g. the insurance industry bears no natural relation to healthcare, that leave ‘us’ beholden to corporate power. ... ...
According to a new poll from the Pew Research Center,
only four percent (4%) of Americans believe that the American political system is working.
Four percent 👀. In 2023. The reason why the year is important is because the elevation of Joe Biden was the response-from-power that was supposed to right the ship-of-state. ... ... as the results of the Pew poll suggest,
the public has lost political interest in policies that benefit oligarchs and corporate executives alone.
This result pits the institutions of the Federal government against the political will of the American people. ... ...
Woke fantasies and seven dollars might buy someone a cup of coffee. But the surge in corporate profits— while labor sees none of it, illustrates the challenge. As long as race is in the aggregate a class relation, woke solutions from authoritarian liberals will be racist. Consider: Joe Biden has been sold as the second coming of Dr. Martin Luther King.
What has he wrought? A surge in corporate profits, the creation of a permanently disabled class from long Covid, and a proxy war against nuclear-armed Russia. I fail to see the social justice of any of this.Full article:
💣👀 https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/10/06/the-americans-are-unleashing-monsters-they-have-no-idea-how-to-contain/ :dreamjoehill2 An excellent article that clearly outlines the deterioration of the left in the US and its causes.
AGelbert > dreamjoehill2Agreed. Rob Urie is one of the most reality based writers out there.
"
Capitalist ideology claims that the world is perfectly ordered and everybody is in their place (i..e. everybody gets what they deserve). This self legitmating aspect of Capitalism
is Socially Catastrophic." Rob Urie
dreamjoehill2 > AGelbert Right on!
Urie is my fave counterpunch contributor and I always read Friday's Roaming Charges by that site's editor.
Urie's take on the reactionary nature of woke ruling class politics is spot on.
newestbeginning Mod I put this up with a disclaimer that I do not concur with what the author refers to as the "fascist left". By that, I think he means the neoliberal Democratic party pseudoleft, aka "right" leaning opposition to the working class in the class struggle.
https://ongoingclassstruggle.blogspot.com/2023/10/the-americans-are-unleashing-monsters.html#comment-6298117979AGelbert > newestbeginning Mod Today's article by Christ Hedges, perhaps, makes Rob Urie's remarks in regard to the "Left" more understandable. At the root of this miasma of perception management propaganda we find ourselves in is the constant highjacking of labels by those who wish to confuse and manipulate us.
Both Rob Urie ✨and Chris Hedges ✨ work overtime warning advocates of an ethics based society that they must always read the fine print, so to speak.
Some leftists will not like the "self-righteous woke ideology" phraseology in this paragraph, though they will be quite happy with the adjective (i.e. "Christianized") describing the Fascist State now taking over the USA.
October 8, 2023 Fascism comes to America by Chris HedgesSNIPPETS:
"The parting gift, I expect, of the bankrupt liberalism of the Democratic Party will be a Christianized fascist state. The liberal class, a creature of corporate power, captive to the war industry and the security state, unable or unwilling to ameliorate the prolonged economic insecurity and misery of the working class,
blinded by a self-righteous woke ideology that reeks of hypocrisy and disingenuousness and bereft of any political vision, is the bedrock on which the Christian fascists, who have coalesced in cult-like mobs around Donald Trump, have built their terrifying movement." ... ...
Of course, all socialists that are firmly grounded in ethics will agree with this irrefutably true paragraph, from the same article:
"
We were warned. The seeds of fascism, like the climate emergency, were apparent decades ago. The leading scholars of fascism told us that unless American society halted its slide to ever greater levels of social inequality and returned democratic power to a betrayed populace, fascism would metastasize and consume the state.
The ruling class, blinded by greed, a lust for power and willful ignorance, was as deaf to these warnings as they were to those of climate scientists."
Full article with comments: Reality Based COMMENT agreeing about the Evil of US Fascism BUT totally disagreeing with Chris's allegation that "Christian" (my quotes, not Chris's) Fascists are a large part of the problem.
Facsists ARE the problem, but Fascism is ANTI-Christian, not "Christian".
The ruling class's Social Darwinist PRO-FASCIST ideology is 100% ANTI-Matthew 7:12.: Elizabeth Heilman 👍
Most people in the plains sates and in rural communities live in what Edward Hall calls "high context" cultures, valuing relationships, hard work, nature and spirituality. Many rural folk are aware of the dangerous the uniparty and fascism and are nobody's fool. The rhetoric of "
exclusion, cruelty and intolerance" is from the powerful who manipulate the press and politicians and a small number of emotionally vulnerable people. It
is NOT AT ALL how most red state Christian Americans think or feel. It is time for solidarity, Chris, not hysterical demonizations of whole groups Americans.
🐘 Christian 👿 nationalism is not 🕊️☝🏻 ChristianityAs a Christian who views Socialism as the logical effect of a Matthew 7:12 based morality, even if Engels and Marx most certainly did not, all I can do is try as hard as I can to separate truth from legerdemain. It is like a well, a DEEP subject.
newestbeginning Mod > AGelbertThe problem with the "Christian" label is that anyone can claim it; and many who do behave in what appear to be very cruel, sadistic and generally un-Chistlike ways. When the fascists claim the label, and hold up the Cross in front of them to justify their cruelty and entitlement, it tarnishes those who try to walk the walk and follow the Golden Rule.
Dmar3 > newestbeginningI'd say an even more fundamental question is whether the Golden Rule even works at all?
AGelbert > Dmar3Indeed. If there is no God, and no immortal soul within every human being, the Golden Rule is for suckers and Social Darwinism is for the winners.
If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. -- 1 Corinthians 15:19newestbeginning Mod > Dmar3 I don't know, but it seems like the only way to live; to put the needs of others first when possible. It is part of our human heritage - our species only survived because of sharing.
newestbeginning > Mod Dmar3 No of course I don't think that the ruling class follows the Golden Rule. Of course they don't. They extract everything from the world that they can at the expense of everyone else.
Of course they don't value the things that the working class values, no matter how much lip service they pay to the pretense.
AGelbert > newestbeginning Mod True. Sophistry based legerdemain is the bread and butter of those con artists that make it their business to exploit their fellow humans.
Dmar3 > AGelbertI don't believe in god or an immortal soul but I absolutely don't believe in social Darwinism either.
AGelbert > Dmar3 I celebrate your rejection of Social Darwinism. The more people reject that insanity, the more hope we have that we are not all toast within a century or so.
Dmar3 > AGelbert"Indeed. If there is no God, and no immortal soul within every human being, the Golden Rule is for suckers and Social Darwinism is for the winners."
But historically a huge number of socialists and anarchists would dispute this, and they've got quite a bit of evidence on their side. Like Kropotkin, or Graeber's work, et cetera. They're not/they weren't making theological, moral arguments. They were making arguments that people were better off with cooperative social arrangements instead of competitive ones that invariably only favored the existing winners and were then oriented towards protecting their power, and in Graeber's case, even complex societies.
Furthermore, it seems like Christianity, institutionally, has been changed more through abandonment or the threat, implicit to explicit, of severe disestablishment as compared to internal criticism. But one of the points that I'm trying to build towards (although perhaps in an inept manner) is that it seems like for decades criticism of all...this has been treated as an internal manner between different groups of Christians or systems of such, and as such hasn't had as much to do with people outside of this except in a kind of patronizing way, and has frequently neglected coming up with solutions to the kinds of problems that I'd say that most people who aren't totally far gone would actually say really are terrible, but haven't really seen much resolution for either.
Its the difference between having charity or pity for prisoners, and being willing to commit to actually ending incarceration with all of the social and material changes that this would entail.
Dmar3 > newestbeginning Yes, but that's not the Golden Rule the way I see it being formalized and used (or rather: weaponized). You can't possibly claim that we're actually ruled by people who believe in that in any possible way. If what they want is to keep ruling us no matter how cruel and violent they are then there's no possible way to put their needs first without saying that everything that you value that's better than that is basically meaningless. So there has to be some limit to this, but I don't think that treating it as an absolute really takes that into account.
AGelbert > Dmar3 I understand your point of view, but question your basic premise about the motives of the "rulers" over us.
From a secular ONLY social studies perspective, Academia also rejects your premise. I'm not fully on board with secular social studies assumptions, but I fully support Academia in their claim that the Dunbar Number (i.e. around 250 total village population) is the upper limit for a society run mostly by cooperation and altruism. Above that number, the "baser" instincts become prevalent due to lack of interpersonal relationships.
Dmar3 > AGelbertSo I'm going to ask a related question because there's a common thread running through all of this in your positions: how many people do you think are going to support the total dismantling of society so that there are nothing but villages of 262 (maybe 270 but that's really pushing it!) people left?
AGelbert > Dmar3 Dmar3: "So I'm going to ask a related question because there's a common thread running through all of this in your positions: how many people do you think are going to support the total dismantling of society so that there are nothing but villages of 262 (maybe 270 but that's really pushing it!) people left?"
The "common thread" you assume to be "running through all my positions" is a perception you have. As to ideal human interpersonal relations, which is what I assume you are referring to, I have only one position: Matthew 7:12 is
sine qua non to a socially constructive civilization. The Dunbar Number phenomenon is a secular Social Science based observation. Social Scientists could care less about what Jesus Christ said. They simply looked at the evidence.
The question you posed is not relevant to the Dunbar Number. A condominium with 250 or so people living in it is certainly not a village, but, if most people there looked after each other responsibly, this would qualify as a Matthew 7:12 based harmonious community. The argument often put against this type of "small town" situation is that small towns have a (mostly undeserved) reputation for being intolerant of diversity, socially suffocating and intellectually stunted. That certainly is true in some cases. Those statistical outliers are examples of small populations where the Dunbar Matthew 7:12 math failed because most of the members are too morally bankrupt and/or too stupid to realize that their neighbor's welfare is intimately tied to their own. It is difficult to fix stupid.
If you want to get into land area versus population distribution, I can go there, but before I do, let me ask you how many people you actually have conversed with in your entire life? Next, I would ask you how many people you have conversed with in the last year. Next I would ask you to classify them in one of three categories (i.e. Friends, Enemies or Neutral Acquaintances). You may reside in a city with millions of people in it, but your circle of interpersonnal relationships can easily be considered a "village". Condemning the Dunbar Number as "impractical in a 9 billion world population" ignores the irrefutable reality that we are all cognitively limited to small numbers of human interpersonal relationships. Trump is as much a part of your "village" as Elvis. Those people may have influenced you and I in negative and positive ways, but we know they were never a part of our daily. monthly, yearly (and so on) lives except to buy a record or try to avoid being overtaxed. Anyway, I agree that it is ridiculous to try to engineer Dunbar Number based caring relationships by redistributing the human population into around 250 people cities. I am certainly NOT advocating that.
What I am advocating is that, as opposed to Margarat Thatcher's morally bankrupt BS,
There Is No (socially constructive) Alternative to Matthew 7:12 based civilization. And yeah, you are quite right if you believe the trend is certainly not my friend. So, your alternative is to let it all hang out? THAT is your definition of "Socialism"? We are all going to respect each other's needs because Marx said so? We are all going to look after the poor and needy because Marx said so? We are all going to keep nursing homes from hastening the death of the residents, never mind ripping them off with outrageous fees, because Engels said comrades don't do that? I was there in 1965, bro. I have been there, watching and experiencing the "progress" we have made here in the USA along the way.
I have watched as the Game Theory (i.e. might equals right, altruism is to be used as a ploy to lower the competition's guard so you can pounce and crush them later, everyone is basically selfish, piety is a hypocritical front, there is a sucker born every minute, good guys finish last, the language of evolution explains the growing gulf between the rich and the poor, as well as the many differences between cultures all over the world, businessmen and others who are economically and socially successful are so because they are biologically and socially “naturally” the fittest, the poor are “naturally” weak and unfit and it would be an error to allow the weak of the species to continue to breed, etc. ad infinitum ad neauseum.) worldview blanketed the USA. You do not agree with my Christian worldview position, but I fail to see absolutely any rational argument you can make (mocking, disdain, dismissal, etc. is fun but it scores no debating points whatsoever) that Socialism, without Matthew 7:12 being an instrinsic part of it, will not continue to fail against the forces of egocentric greed.
Collectivist Action > AGelbertI find no necessary nor intrinsic antagonism between your (genuine) Christian view and Marxism.
Do you?
AGelbert > Collectivist Action 🤠 Thank you, bro. In material cause and effect it is 6 of one and half a dozen of the other. The ideological difference lies in that Marx excludes the afterlife or a human immortal spirit from his ideology and Christians accept it.
This too is like a well, a DEEP subject. The caveat I would add is that I totally disagree with Marx's admiration for Darwin and I think, whatever modern Marxists claim about Marx and Engels, both of them had VERY CLEAR concepts of what was Socially RIGHT and WRONG. Today, there is too much wishy washy crap out there.
I haven't been inside a church for over 35 years, yet I have the bold faced "arrogance" to call myself a Christian. Well, if I'm going to Hell because I cannot stomach the heretical "Christianity" now dominant in the USA, then so be it. God is Righteous, so I'm sure my avoiding "fellowship" with corrupted churches is justified. Hell is for the unjust, IMHO.
I'm currently listening to some great sermons by Christian Socialist Frederick Denison Maurice 🕊️ in 1852. I do all my "church" on the internet.
Dmar3 > AGelbert "🤠 Thank you, bro. In material cause and effect it is 6 of one and half a dozen of the other. The ideological difference lies in that Marx excludes the afterlife or a human immortal spirit from his ideology and Christians accept it."
Would you really call that the only ideological difference? I'd hardly say that Marx believed that either humanity or for that matter the world were fallen in any kind of metaphysical sense. In fact, I'd say that a really important point to Marx and later socialists is an underlying assumption which desperately needs to be explicitly stated given how much its been abandoned and how deleterious this has been that the human condition can actually be improved.
AGelbert > Dmar3Dmar3 asked, Would you really call that the only ideological difference?
Of course there are lots of other differences, but they are not, strictly speaking, ideological according to the following definition in Wikipedia (
emphasis and definition of "epistemic" added by me):
"An ideology is
a set of beliefs or philosophies attributed to a person or group of persons, especially those
held for reasons that are not purely epistemic (relating to knowledge itself),[1][2]
in which "practical elements are as prominent as theoretical ones."[3] Formerly applied primarily to economic, political, or religious theories and policies, in a tradition going back to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, more recent use treats the term as mainly condemnatory.[4]"
Engels did a lot of great work exposing the brutal conditions of the poor in 19th century London, where people that worked in factories were forced to literally live in disease laden overcrowded, filfth ridden conditions without sewers or running water. They were forced to live with their fecal matter all around them. They were mercilessly exploited during their short, misery laden lives. The Christian Socialists of that time pointed at those horrid conditions as unacceptable for a society and government claiming to be espouse Christian values. The newspapers, doing their craven lackey bit to defend the cruel Capitalist status quo (i.e. Landlords who rented the crap housing to the poor and factory owners that exploited them and the government that passed laws making it illegal to strike), mercilessly attacked them. Socialism in all its forms was so consistently slandered that even the English bedraggled poor were propaganidized to turn against it. 😞 🤦♂️
Sometime before the end of that century a Pope named Leo XIII published a masterpiece of hypocrisy attacking Socialism and defending Property and, of course, the "Church". If you have never had the misfortune to listen to that encyclical screed, I recommend you do so. I call it a masterpiece because, as with all effective pieces of propaganda, it is sprinkled with truth. For example, the Roman Catholic Church certainly is a force for good (then and now) through its work with hospitals and charity to the poor. But that is no excuse for claiming that the only "Christian" recourse for an abused and underpaid worker is to "accept his lot in life without complaint".
This Pope is a piece of work. The only thing he doesn't do when talking about Socialism is froth at the mouth! Out of the other side of his mouth he twists the Scripture to defend abusive property owners by saying that the "Queen of Heaven" guided "Mother Church" keeps the rich from greed by reminding them that they will be judged by God in the afterlife if they unjustly abuse and exploit the poor who are favored by Christ in Scripture (see: strongly worded letter HYPOCRISY).
The part that REALLY galled me was the claim by said Pope that Socialists were "twisting" Holy Scripture when that is EXACTLY what the Pope was doing every single time he sanctimoneously
quoted Holy Scripture completely out of context. I'll post a link to that below. Bring your barf bag if you want to listen to it.
I can see why Socialists sometimes, as you did, make the argument that it was the Christian Religion that got us to this sad state of affairs.
Heretical forms of Christianity certainly did contribute, but Religions in the service of TPTB during any time period in human history do not have a patent on abuse, exploitation and cruelty. The fact that evil bastards claim that "God" is with them does not, now, or ever, justify condemning theism in any form as the "cause" of said abuse, exploitation and cruelty.
So, what IS the ROOT CAUSE of mankind's inhumanity to mankind?
Marx postulated a new man, that would overcome all that socially destructive stuff humans engage in WITHOUT God's help because "God is a myth and Religion is the opiate of the masses promoted on behalf of Capitalism based GREED by TPTB" (or something like that - you get the idea). He was half right. TPTB, at least in western "civilization", hypocrites to the core, promote a HERETICAL version of Christianity.
As to the fallen nature of mankind that Marx rejected, the evidence of history argues that we certainly DO have a fallen nature. The evidence of history argues that the human heart is wicked beyond any materialistic cause and effect definition. Christian Scripture states that there is only the OLD man and only through the power of the Holy Spirit of God can the wickedness inherent in every single adult human be tamed so that altruism and cooperation is the rule, and not the exception. Yes, that is a BIG difference from Marx's optimistic take on what we are capable of. Marx thought we could fix all our social problems without recourse to a Supreme Being.
You may wholeheartedly agree with Marx, but you cannot fail to observe that things are getting worse, not better. Things are getting worse because GREED, SELFISHNESS and SELF-WORSHIP in the fallen heart of humans who reject obedience to God is rampant, not because of Christianity based Religion.
If you put much of the blame on Social Darwinsim, which is the REAL Religion of TPTB, I would agree. Sorry for being so long winded, but I cannot help but look around and see how BAD things are getting. WHO corrupts the politicians? It sure ain't God fearing Christians! Making them the whipping boy is fun, but avoids addressing the ROOT of the problem of human depravity.
C.S. Lewis wrote, and I agree, that
it is Pride which has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began. Other vices may sometimes bring people together: you may find good fellowship and jokes and friendliness among drunken people or unchaste people. But Pride always means enmity—it is enmity. And not only enmity between man and man, but enmity to God." -- Quote from
Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis.
So, yeah, I believe that Socialism without the fear of God is quixotic, which makes me unpleasant company for the "new man" advocates. Nevertheless, I'll take any port in the ideological storm that champions the health and welfare of less fortunate humans in the home and in the workplace. I pray that you will do the same.
Here's the link to Pope Leo XIII's 28 minute slander filled attack (
notice the date...English Socialism had been all but crushed by that time but Socialism was gaining advocates all over the world) on Socialism:
Quod Apostolici Muneris 🙄 Encyclical Letter On Socialism December 28, 1878For Socialists who don't have 28 minutes and 24 seconds to waste on a dead Pope, the first four minutes will be quite enough.