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central scrutinizer Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-07-09 11:49 AM
Original message
Escape from the Zombie Food Court
http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2009/04/escape-from-the-zombie-food-court.html

A couple of paragraphs from a long article:

I just returned from several months in Central America. And the day I returned I had iguana eggs for breakfast, airline pretzels for lunch and a $7 shot of Jack Daniels for dinner at the Houston Airport, where I spent two hours listening to a Christian religious fanatic tell about Obama running a worldwide child porn ring out of the White House. Entering the country shoeless through airport homeland security, holding up my pants because they don't let old men wear suspenders through security, well, I knew I was back home in the land of the free.
...........
Yet it all seems so normal. Certainly the psychologists who have prescribed so much Prozac that it now shows up in the piss of penguins, saw what they did as necessary. And the doctors who enable the profitable blackmail practiced by the medical industries see it all as part of the most technologically advanced medical system in the world. And the teacher, who sees no problem with 20% of her fourth graders being on Ritalin, in the name of "appropriate behavior," is happy to have control of her classroom. None of these feel like dupes or pawns of a corporate state. It seems like just the way things are. Just modern American reality. Which is a corporate generated reality.

Given the financialization of all aspects of our culture and lives, even our so-called leisure time, it is not an exaggeration to say that true democracy is dead and a corporate financial state has now arrived. If you can get your head around that, it's not hard to see an ever merging global corporate system masquerading electronically and digitally as a nation called the United States. Or Japan for that matter. The corporation now animates us from within our very selves through management of the need hierarchy in goods and information.
.........
So how is it that we Americans came to live in such a parallel universe? How is it that we prefer such things as Facebook (don't get me wrong, I'm on Facebook too), and riding around the suburbs with an iPod plugged into our brain looking for fried chicken in a Styrofoam box? Why prefer these expensive earth destroying things over love and laughter with real people, and making real human music together with other human beings -- lifting our voices together, dancing and enjoying the world that was given to us? Absolutely for free.
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acmavm Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-07-09 12:17 PM
Response to Original message
1. Please to be Rec #5. This is a great article.
Edited on Tue Apr-07-09 12:18 PM by acmavm
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villager Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-07-09 12:35 PM
Response to Original message
2. Reading it now. Bageant's usual great stuff...
n/t
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truedelphi Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-07-09 01:41 PM
Response to Original message
3. People no longer have critical thinking skills. It is almost like that has been
Edited on Tue Apr-07-09 01:41 PM by truedelphi
"educated" out of us.

I had a friend of mine, who holds a PHD and helps run a University, tell me That I was over concerned and perhaps "nuts" over the Bush Administration's activities.

"Carol, she said, "if we were that close to Fascism, wouldn't the Media let us know about it?"

I don't think I am long for life in this country. I watch people doing stupid stupid things,and yet expecting some type of miraculous outcome. And the worship of Obama despite the Corruption of his economic team makes me realize that we will not get Universal Single Payer Health Care before I am eligible for MediCare. It is simply not a viable system in this country.

Plus like you say, where is the community?
I happen to have it around me, because I moved to the rural outskirts of America. But in the cities, this festering and tangible energy of distress and fear, makes me aware that we could have mass murder sprees every hour on the hour -there is that much disconnect between the internal human nature and the one foisted on us. (Not sure I should use the word "foisted" as we are creatures of free will. Nothing can really be foisted on us.)
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Grinchie Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-07-09 05:03 PM
Response to Reply #3
6. This documentary is illuminating - The Century of the Self
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8953172273825999151

There is nothing like a well researched documentary on the mechanisms that have been put in place to control citizens of the past century.

When one can actully take their own thinking back to the age when these images were taken, and the thinking of the population of the times, one can see the inevitable path to facism and Corporate control. It is interesting to see the shift from industrialized production of necessities, where things are built to last, in a limited number of models to fit the inflexible production lines, to a type of industry that produces short runs, that produce slightly modified, yet essentially identical products for consumers to express their individuality.

Consumerism replaces actual productivity and education, and the ego takes over, leading to the destruction of community. Big ego's produce too many chiefs which contradict each other because they all want to be in charge, no matter what their experiences are. Eventually, stalemates occur, and the system breaks down with every individual work alone to do their own thing.

Real community demands a cooperative method of control that takes into account every individual and make sound decision that benefit the whole. At this point in time, as members of the Earth community, man has disassociated himself from the Earth, and no longer feels any kinship with the millions of organisms we share the biosphere with. When mankind can return to days when he can marvel at the lifestyle of a Centipede, Cockroach, ant, spider or Corn Earworm, maybe then balance will return. Until then, man will destroy his fellow creatures until their is nothing left but a sterilized planetary hell of his own making.

It's 11:59:58 on the age of man, and man better get with the program soon or it will be too late.

I like Obama, but he is proving once again that we do not live in a 2 party system. It is the illusion of democracy, and we all have to look at the facts and watch out for our own interests and take care of ourselves. We cannot be directed to think as a heard and depend on the patriarch to save us. The only real change will occur when the citizens no longer behave as predicted by the current computer models, and are no longer willing to be good consumers buy loads of crap while the earth dies around us. The corporations will need to fail miserably, and the wealthy elite will need to regroup and figure out the next game plan for the next century.

Be on the alert for innovative new ways to generate fear, consumption and more poverty and control, and refuse to fall for it. They can take property, but they cannot take your inner self unless they kill you, and even then, they don't really take anything away, because the soul lives forever.
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truedelphi Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-07-09 06:12 PM
Response to Reply #6
7. Thank you for the kindness in your very well thought out response
Edited on Tue Apr-07-09 06:12 PM by truedelphi
And ALso for the link.

I live in a world right now, where if I am not ranting and raving on DU, I am outside noticing the centipede, squirrels and deer, or the woodpeckers.

Miracles happen here - we were about to lose three or four big pines to the woodcutters on account of disease. We talked the landlord out of it the same weekend we put up some bird feeders.

The bird feeders attracted some woodpeckers, and they took care of what ever nasties were killing the trees.

We really did not have that intention - it was sort of an inadvertent miracle.
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nilram Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-07-09 02:16 PM
Response to Original message
4. awesome.
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Earth Bound Misfit Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-07-09 03:28 PM
Response to Original message
5. Posted by DUer marmar under the heading...
Bageant: We've Let Corporations and Media Rob Our Souls -- It's Time to Do Something Meaningful

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x438881

Great article, I'll rec again, gladly.

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central scrutinizer Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-07-09 06:24 PM
Response to Reply #5
8. I searched before posting and didn't see this one
I found it hard to believe I was the first DUer to come across this one. Turns out I wasn't.
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