The U.S. Does Not Practice Capitalism As Much as Theft From Workers

The U.S. Does Not Practice Capitalism As Much as Theft From Workers - Capitalism and the Mad Uncle in the Attic

Listen.  Can you hear the Mad Uncle in the attic? His muffled shriekings are getting louder as the myths, deceptions and delusions we’ve been living on evaporate one by one in the face of reality.

Can you feel that sickening thrill as we poise atop this Sisyphean peak we call capitalism, right before the inevitable, nauseating plunge back down into reality?

Can you smell the stench from the soon-to-fail Rio plus 20 meeting as we con ourselves into believing we can snatch a bit more time at the peak if only we could steal yet more of our children’s children’s children’s birthright?

Ah, but we – plutocrats and people alike -- all beg, can’t we keep this damned Uncle locked up for just a little more time.  Maybe until this election is over.  Or until we’ve extracted a little more money from a fossil-fueled economy based on greed and exploitation. Or until … oh, I don’t know … until we’ve bled the last iota of money from the 99%?  Or at least until … I get mine?

Can’t we pretend for just one more generation that capitalism – pure, unconstrained capitalism, the kind Reagan promised us would bring morning to America – isn’t instead bringing mourning to America, and to the world?

Can’t we just pretend, for one more generation, that the whole infinite growth on a finite world thing isn’t just a giant, tragic Ponzi Scheme designed to sell out the future?

Can’t we pass this problem onto them?

Can’t we use buzz words and sound bites to drown out the lunatic?  Words like socialist or redistribution or – most dreaded of all – communism.  Can’t we keep pretending that capitalism is the necessary handmaiden of Democracy, the only path to prosperity, our only source of happiness?

No. We can’t.  Because deep down inside, in places we don’t like to visit, we know the Mad Uncle is right.

What we’re doing now isn’t making us all rich.  It’s impoverishing us.

Ultimately, all wealth comes from natural capital.  Things like fertile soils; viable forests; intact gene pools; abundant minerals; clean water and living oceans; sustainable fish stocks; flourishing ecosystems; a stable, life-sustaining climate.  We are liquidating these essential sources of wealth as if they were so much junk offered for pennies on the dollar at a desperate garage sale.

Our current version of capitalism is good at generating more currency, not greater wealth. And we forget that currency is merely a surrogate for things of real value, with no tangible value in and of itself.

And even the currency isn’t being distributed equally.  It’s being siphoned off by the richest and most powerful in a spiral of inequity.

It isn't making us happy, it's enslaving us to a life spent pursuing more and more stuff we don’t need for reasons we don’t understand.  Bigger; more; faster becomes biggest; most; fastest.  But easy, easier, easiest becomes fatter, sicker weaker.

It isn’t making us free, it’s creating a tyranny of the corporations and plutocrats. They weaken government in the name of freedom, only to turn us into indentured servants to a system that's designed to take from the poor and middle class and give to the uber rich, even as it liquidates Earth’s treasures.

But the real tragedy isn’t our own alienation or our economic and spiritual impoverishment.   It is the diminished legacy we leave the rest of humanity and indeed, the rest of the biosphere.

It’s our willingness to consume the future in an orgy of gluttony, drowning out the Mad Uncle’s protests with the noise of our own slurping, chewing, smacking, munching, crunching as we inhale our children’s birthright.

Hyperbole?

Not really.  Every living system is in decline, and the rate is accelerating.

In the case of climate change we are at the threshold of igniting feedbacks that will usher in an inevitable and catastrophic set of changes that will make life difficult in some areas and impossible in others.

It’s time to admit that the Mad Uncle is right.  Pure, unconstrained capitalism is the problem, not the solution.

What, then, are we to do?

There are alternatives.  We could tie currency to sustainable eco-systems.  Instead of a gold standard we could have a green standard.  Thus, destruction of a nation’s stock of natural capital would devalue its currency, and make it poorer.

We could adopt systems of production and ownership such as Co-ops that emphasized cooperation, equitable sharing of revenue and stewardship of our natural resources. It’s not pie-in-the sky, to consider this. Cooperatives already produce more than $1 trillion in assets, enough to make them equivalent to the 10th largest economy in the world.

Buying and selling stuff is part, but only one of the aspects of freedom. Conservatives seem to aim - on the surface anyway - for some pure capitalism where there are no regulations/no restraints on what has become criminal behavior. This is one they consider the 2012 elections so important. Demographics are changing - and not in favor the proto-fascism practiced by Republicans. They see this as their last chance to put on the power in the hands of the wealthy elite. It is astonishing that at least some working class Americans are happy to help them with their sick twisted agenda.

Please write to the Fox News Anti-American Propaganda channel and ask Monica Crowly to start taking her meds. She cannot tell reality from her fetid paranoia - Fox's Monica Crowley: "Kooks" In Democratic Party Have Taken U.S. "On A Socialist Joyride, Starting With" Obama. The fact is M's Crowly the object of so much Republican idol worship- Ronald Reagan - was more liberal than Obama.

Republican Congressional Candidate Wants To Impeach Obama For ‘Giving Away’ Seven Arctic Islands

Wes Riddle, a Republican tea party activist locked in a run-off with fellow GOPer Roger Williams in Texas’ 25th congressional district, is campaigning on a conspiracy theory even more bizarre than the fantasy that the United Nations and George Soros are conspiring to eliminate the game of golf.

Riddle has promised to begin the impeachment process against President Obama the day he enters Congress — seemingly implying that he believes Obama will be reelected — because of a boundary treaty that was ratified by the Senate in 1991. Obama was 30 years old at the time and just finishing up law school.

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram has the details:

    Riddle, a retired Army officer from Gatesville, wants to impeach Obama for “giving away” seven Arctic Ocean and Bering Sea islands near Siberia to Russia.

    (Yes, even though those islands were ceded in 1991 under President George H.W. Bush.)

Riddle also wants to impeach Obama, according to the paper, because of “President Obama’s abuse of power and blatant disregard to the Constitution.”

This paranoid fantasy appears to have been spawned by Tea Party favorite Joe Miller. According to his World Net Daily piece, the Obama administration gave away “seven strategic, resource-laden Alaskan islands.” Miller was apoplectic: “We won the Cold War and should start acting like it.”

Though FactCheck.org has thoroughly debunked this conspiracy theory, reality hasn’t stopped Riddle from using it as a rationale for his goal of impeaching Obama.

Riddle has to prove to the other anti-American conservative wackos that he is as deranged as they are so they'll vote for him. Whether what he says is true or not has nothing to do with it. Making mentally deranged claims is the way nutcan Republicans signal to each other they belong to the same tribe of knuckle dragging morons.