Happy Little Gerbils

[Daveparts still]

Happy Little Gerbils
By David Glenn Cox


It is as if the darkness is falling on the blind, and I get angry. I feel like I'm in Richmond, Surrey, talking to the Eloi. I get angry because so many others of you don’t get angry. Your government is a fascist oligarchy with a sideshow Duma to give the appearance of a Democracy. Yet people still want to talk about tea parties.

The tea parties are almost, but not quite, as important as Sponge Bob Square Pants. They are both creations made-up to amuse small children. As a political entity they are totally meaningless and the fascination of the left with them is nearly incomprehensible. While Americans are worried about traffic stops in Phoenix, they are being robbed blind. While they worry about tea parties, their future is being stolen from them and from their children.

When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans it left a million people jobless, homeless or otherwise displaced. George W. Bush was rightfully pilloried over his neglect of those Americans. In this year of 2010 we will have 4.5 million home foreclosures leaving eighteen times the New Orleans' number of people homeless or displaced. The government's plan to help those people? Zip, nothing, nada, too bad so sad. Where is the outrage? Is "American Idol" that fucking entertaining?

Read what the liberal New York Times says:

“Ms. Norton is one of 1.7 million Americans who were employed in clerical and administrative positions when the recession began, but were no longer working in that occupation by the end of last year. There have also been outsize job losses in other occupation categories that seem unlikely to be revived during the economic recovery. The number of printing machine operators, for example, was nearly halved from the fourth quarter of 2007 to the fourth quarter of 2009. The number of people employed as travel agents fell by 40 percent.

"This 'creative destruction' in the job market can benefit the economy. Pruning relatively less-efficient employees like clerks and travel agents, whose work can be done more cheaply by computers or workers abroad, makes American businesses more efficient. Year over year, productivity growth was at its highest level in over 50 years last quarter, pushing corporate profits to record highs and helping the economy grow.”

That’s newspeak for "Fuck those little people!" Big business is making more money. “Pruning relatively less-efficient employees like clerks and travel agents, whose work can be done more cheaply by computers or workers abroad, makes American businesses more efficient.” You’re not downsized or outsourced, you're “pruned,” and it’s a good thing, too! So they say. Doesn’t that bother you? Doesn’t that make you even a little bit angry, that they talk about you and your countrymen and your friends and neighbors as dead branches to be pruned away?

I typed "oil spill" into my Google browser and an article came up from NOLA.com and an article from Huffington Post, but new news? None, zip, nada, not one major news organization is covering the spill. Do you think that it’s not intentional? Is the story no longer important? It’s important to me, is it important to you?

The New York Times did a story, “Size of Oil Spill in Gulf Underestimated, Scientists Say." Then they devolved to explaining just how such figures are arrived at and different protocols used to judge the amount of spills. So how much oil is being spilled?

“A small organization called Sky Truth, which uses satellite images to monitor environmental problems, published an estimate on April 27 suggesting that the flow rate had to be at least 5,000 barrels a day, and probably several times that.”

“Several times that” is a muted way of saying maybe 15,000 barrels a day, or maybe 20,000 barrels a day, or even 25,000. But guess what, according to your government, it doesn’t matter.

“I think the estimate at the time was, and remains, a reasonable estimate,” said Dr. Lubchenco, the NOAA administrator. “Having greater precision about the flow rate would not really help in any way. We would be doing the same things.”

It matters to me, does it matter to you? Here is all that they are really concerned about, from the Associated Press, “Poll: Good marks for Obama on spill, more drilling.” I came, I saw, I acted presidential and made promises that I have no intention of keeping and then I went home. Someone tell me, please, what George W. Bush would have done differently? This is Obama’s coastal drilling plan and Obama’s well on Obama’s watch.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the Congressional Budget Office estimates US corporations are avoiding and or dodging taxes to the tune of $60 billion annually. What plans does the administration have to correct that? Why, they’ve set up a panel to figure out how much we need to cut Medicare and Social Security to try and balance the budget. No one, not no how, not no way, is trying to fix that $60 billion leaking out like oil into the Gulf. Not the Republicans, not the Democrats, not Obama and not the Congress, their plan is to take it out of your backside. Why the fuck doesn’t that make you angry?

Officially there are seventeen million unemployed workers and unofficially who knows what the actual number is. Like everything else in this fascist dystopia it is muted to a soft focus. What are the administration's plans for these tens of millions of unemployed Americans? Tax cuts and letting the marketplace work, same as George W. Bush or Herbert fucking Hoover. But I make people mad when I say things about Obama because he’s a Democrat. So let me tell you something: no, he’s not a Democrat.

“We believe that if men have the talent to invent new machines that put men out of work, they have the talent to put those men back to work.” John F. Kennedy

“If we can boondoggle ourselves out of this depression, that word is going to be enshrined in the hearts of the American people for years to come.” Franklin Delano Roosevelt

“Our greatest primary task is to put people to work. This is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously. It can be accomplished in part by direct recruiting by the Government itself, treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war, but at the same time, through this employment, accomplishing greatly needed projects to stimulate and reorganize the use of our natural resources.” Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Barack Obama has put unemployment on the back burner while he pushes a corporate agenda of profits over people. The Democratic Party was once the party of the working people. Pushing oil company agendas and nuclear power aren’t even close. We're given expansion of the wars and the unitary executive and claiming a presidential prerogative for extra-judicial killings. A Democrat, really?

“More than an end to war, we want an end to the beginning of all wars - yes, an end to this brutal, inhuman and thoroughly impractical method of settling the differences between governments.” Franklin Delano Roosevelt

“The very word 'secrecy' is repugnant in a free and open society, and we are, as a people, inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it. Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions. Even today, there is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment. That I do not intend to permit to the extent that it is in my control." John F. Kennedy

These were Democrats, what we have now is the left wing of the rightist corporate party and a public that sits like gerbils, and as long as their exercise wheel doesn’t squeak, they’re happy. Have we lost the ability to get angry? Have we lost the brains and the spines to stand up for ourselves?

[ensho]

1. I'm angry too and agree with you

nt

[mirrera]

2. Seething...

We haven't lost our anger, it is that they have immobilized us with propaganda. People feel alone because the media makes the drunk on the bus a star. They swell the ranks of the mediocre and the angry and intelligent feel small. Protests are ignored, and we are non-violent.

No one represents us... but we are the majority and we are seething.

[tavalon]

3. We are furious and we feel impotent

We've learned all about learned helplessness.

[cdsilv]

6. Yes, I'm pissed off. And I'm also treading water furiously just to keep my head above water....

...and am therefore exhausted and unable to express my anger.

[proudohioan]

4. I read that NYT article yesterday, and their attitude infuriated me...

Yes, I'm angry. And as another has posted, feel 'impotent'.

Those folks that not just tolerate, but actually condone what this administration is doing, just because "He's on OUR side" are just as insane and dangerous as the tea baggers, IMO.

As always, keep up the fantastic journals!

T.

[emilyg]

7. Show your anger when you vote. This is the

first time in my lifetime that I will not automatically vote for a D

[proudohioan]

8. Good for you!!!! I thought I was the only one......

This time, I actually voted for a Socialist candidate for Ohio senator in the primaries last week.

I realize that the guy doesn't have a chance in hell, but damn it, I am TIRED of voting "the lesser of two evils" or voting for the Democrat just so the Republican doesn't win! I don't want to hold my nose, so to speak, when I'm casting a ballot!

Like minded people need need to start fighting back against the corporate take-over!

T.

[Beam Me Up]

5. Angry? I'm beyond angry.

What to call it? I knew, for example, that when I poked the hole voting for Obama that what I was going to get was exactly what I've gotten. No surprise. It was clear to me from the 04 Convention that Obama was being 'groomed' to play a role in national politics. The only question was, was it going to be Hilary or Obama? I figured it would be Obama. I remember before the primary an upper middle class liberal friend of mine rattling on about Obama saying, "We're going to take our country back, what do you think about that?" My reply: "I think you are delusional." She was shocked that I would say such a thing. Did I support Obama? Yes. Did I vote for him? Hell yes. Did I believe he was going to solve our problems -- or even be a significant step forward? Hell no.

For me the Anger began with the theft of the 2000 election. I knew right then and there that we were no longer in the realm of 'politics as usual.' Very powerful forces were at work shaping US destiny -- and they weren't the voices of We The People. When 9/11 happened I saw very clearly that it was NOT an terrorist attack by radical Muslims. I also saw that this was the overriding narrative that would cement people's understandable shock, grief and rage and would be use as the reason detre for the advancement of the 'national security surveillance state', the curtailment of civil liberties and the cover story for resource wars in the middle east. Telling the truth about what I saw lost me a lot of 'liberal' friends. I watched in horror as everything I'd predicted came true followed by utter disillusionment not only with progressives and liberals but with every institution that refused to even question let alone comment on the absurdity of the narrative we'd been given. From that point I knew we were WAY down the rabbit hole. Even here on DU discussion of this topic is kept shuttled off into the dungeon and black listed as 'conspiracy theory' -- evidence be damned.

Since then I've watched as everything I anticipated and worse has unfolded. The greatest financial heist in global history occurred in 08 setting in motion a cascade of events that is still unfolding. The environmental crisis is now punctuated by a disaster that has profound consequences on a regional scale that could become global. Even people here at DU are still shocked to discover that the M$M aren't reporting on what is actually going on -- apparently still operating under the illusion that giving us information that might make us angry or empower us to make the kinds of changes needed to address these crises is their role, their job. No. Clearly that is NOT their job.

So, where are we? In my estimation, we are in the midst of a global political, economic and environmental crisis that threatens the life, liberty and happiness of every one of us, our friends, family -- everyone we know -- and yet the majority remain clueless, uncertain of the scope, unclear about the structure of the beast that has us in its death grip. The old paradigms are still clung to as if they are all we have. And as long as we hold on to them and refuse to look at how bad things really are, we allow ourselves and everything we ascribe to as our values to be swept away in a chain of events we can not even grasp, let alone decisively influence or control.

This was written in 2004:

Perhaps the biggest hidden reason people don’t make the paranoid shift is that knowledge brings responsibility. If we acknowledge that an inner circle of ruling elites controls the world’s most powerful military and intelligence system; controls the international banking system; controls the most effective and far-reaching propaganda network in history; controls all three branches of government in the world’s only superpower; and controls the technology that counts the people’s votes, we might be then forced to conclude that we don’t live in a particularly democratic system. And then voting and making contributions and trying to stay informed wouldn’t be enough. Because then the duty of citizenship would go beyond serving as a loyal opposition, to serving as a “loyal resistance” -- like the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War, except that in this case the resistance to fascism would be on the side of the national ideals, rather than the government; and a violent insurgency would not only play into the empire’s hands, it would be doomed from the start.

Forming a nonviolent resistance movement, on the other hand, might mean forsaking some middle class comfort, and it would doubtless require a lot of work. It would mean educating ourselves and others about the nature of the truly apocalyptic beast we face. It would mean organizing at the most basic neighborhood level, face to face. (We cannot put our trust in the empire’s technology.) It would mean reaching across turf lines and transcending single-issue politics, forming coalitions and sharing data and names and strategies, and applying energy at every level of government, local to global. It would also probably mean civil disobedience, at a time when the Bush regime is starting to classify that action as “terrorism.” In the end, it may mean organizing a progressive confederacy to govern ourselves, just as our revolutionary founders formed the Continental Congress. It would mean being wise as serpents, and gentle as doves.

It would be a lot of work. It would also require critical mass. A paradigm shift.

But as a paranoid, I’m ready to join the resistance. And the main reason is I no longer think that the “conspiracy” is much of a “theory.”

http://www.onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_203.shtml

Michael Hasty, the author of the above, may not have it all right but he is right on the main point: What is required is a new perception of what our politics actually are, a paradigm shift where we are no longer deluded into believing, time after time, that 'politics as usual', politics as driven and instilled in us by M$M, is going to 'save' us. It isn't. What is needed now is resistance and for that resistance to make any meaningful and strategic sense, it is still going to require a critical mass, a lot of work and 'street smarts' in the age of Deep Politics. What we are up against are very dark forces, forces that keep us distracted, deluded, confused, perhaps even angry but powerlessly so. Yes, anger is necessary to motivate people beyond their keyboards, their TV sets, their gerbil existence in the consumer reality bubble. But ultimately even that isn't enough because anger alone can be too easily manipulated, misdirected, playing right into the opposition's hands. We have to be smarter than that. Much smarter. But how 'smart' we are depends upon what we know, what we believe to be true, and this has been the battle ground for the last decade (and longer).

From what I can tell, the battle ground is about to shift, perhaps dramatically. The past is gone and it is never going to return. Not in our life times. The new and growing political, economic and environmental turmoil is becoming the new 'ordinary'. Humanity is at a critical juncture in its history. Either we awaken to the necessity of a whole new perception of ourselves and the world we live in or we will fall deeper into the hole of slavery, perhaps never again to escape.

This gerbil is beyond angry. He is resistant. I see the naked emperor and know who the real enemies are. And, to be clear, this includes the way I, myself, have been programmed to think, feel, live, produce and consume. It isn't just oligarchy any more, it is the entire system of ideas and manipulated emotional reactions that keeps us tied to a perception of reality that is fundamentally flawed, false. This is what we must change, now, both in the world and in ourselves.

edit typo

[mirrera]

9. Exactly right... well said!

[inna]

10. Outstanding post.