Dear George,
America has always had a problem with Black preachers. Here is why: American is a world power and the truth is that no nation becomes a great power without leaving a string of evil acts in its wake. The blood shed by the powerful attracts the attention of the Greek Furies who, in unguarded moments, sink their teeth into the souls of the nation until it is driven insane.
For a country like America, it is imperative that a fantasy bubble be firmly in place as protection against these Furies. It is a bubble that seals out the rancid smell of rotting viscera and deadens the cries of the broken and the oppressed. Within this bubble, Americans are able to entertain the illusion that we are benevolent citizens of a benevolent republic that cares only about spreading benevolent ideals to the world.
The trouble with Black preachers is that they are constantly trying to pop this bubble and leave us exposed to the wrath of the Furies. The fact that Black preachers can preach circles around White preachers doesn’t help.
The Black preacher is the prophet who stands outside the walls of the city and enumerates the sins of the King within. He discomforts and disturbs with his belief that the church should be an institution that acts into the world.
Black preachers simply do not understand that organized religion exists to numb and soothe. The purpose of the sermon is not to enflame and inspire, but to allow the listener to sink into a grey haze of indifference and inattention. Church is a place to be seen and not a place to worship.
Martin Luther King was the prototype of the trouble-making Black preacher. The disruption and discord he created with his inflammatory sermons let loose the full fury of the Furies on an unsuspecting White America. It set into motion a era of disorder and upset that was only quelled when White America began jailing as many Black youths as it could get its hands on.
Now we have another Black preacher trying to pop America’s complacent bubble, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barak Obama’s minister. Here is a preacher trying to create turmoil and discord by telling the truth. As soon as the truth raises its head, the Furies raise theirs, which is why the truth must not only be suppressed, it must be destroyed.
Here we have a preacher proclaiming that, “We have no right to take a life!” I ask you, George, how in the fuck can you run an empire without a little collateral damage?
Then there are his disturbing claims that racism is alive and well in America. What nonsense! Blacks live in impoverished ghettos because they want to. America is a land of equal opportunity for all those born into the right families with the right connections and with the ability to kiss the right asses.
Well, thank God your employees on The New York Times[1] know how to handle him. They printed an article on the front page about Wright’s appearance before the National Press Club in Washington. In it, they reduced Wright to a publicity-seeking buffoon, not to be taken seriously. You can always count on the Times to make sure America’s fantasy bubble is never popped.
There are no poor Blacks in America, only Blacks not born into the right families without the right connections who don't know how to kiss the right asses.
The beauty of this is that Obama is dumb enough to distance himself from Wright instead of stomping on the media with both feet for aiding and abetting America’s racism by marginalizing an outspoken Black preacher.
America learned her lesson with King: you don’t take these guys seriously.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
[1] Stanley, Alesandra. “Not Speaking for Obama, Pastor Speaks for Himself, at Length. The New York Times, Tuesday, April 29, 2008.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Preserving the Freedom of our Economic Democracy
Dear George,
We are living in dangerous times. No, I’m not talking about terrorism; that is nothing more than a non-threat elevated to the level of an imaginary real threat for the purposes of keeping our military-industrial-security complex in robust health.
The danger I speak of strikes at the very heart of our democratic system. But first, I have to take you around the barn a couple of times, so try not to fall behind.
When Ronnie brought mourning to America, he oversaw a seismic change in democracy. Under his firm hand, both political and social democracies were exiled to history’s dustbin and were replaced by economic democracy. This was a frightfully clever ideology in which the masses were scammed into becoming willing participants in their own exploitation.
Two dynamics shored up this economic democracy: debt-driven consumerism and the Africa Syndrome.
Consumerism allowed the drones to maintain a façade of prosperity as they slid slowly down the economic ladder. If the local factory closed forcing blue-collar workers to don a Wal-Mart vest, their impoverishment was tolerable as long as their line of credit had some wiggle room left. It was easy for a drone to forget his misery if he could plop himself down in front of a big-screen TV and lose himself in “Dancing with the Stars” or “WWF Raw.” In short, America’s working class sunk into a gentile poverty that preserved the illusion of a thread-bare prosperity.
The Africa Syndrome is a little more subtle. Thanks to it, America is convinced that poverty wears blackface makeup. It is something that happens in the ghettos and not the burbs. This is because the only time America sees an African on the tube, he is either starving, diseased or dead. But above, an African is a label and not a human being.
What is telling is the outrage that followed Katrina. It lasted only until Blacks were evacuated from New Orleans and scattered across the nation. They were still as poor and as miserable as ever, but they were now diffused and invisible.
These two pillars that supported America’s experiment in economic democracy are starting to crumble. We are beginning to see the stirrings of a populist revolt in the growing popularity of “jingle mail” where homeowners are mailing their house keys to the bank and walking away from the negative equity their houses now represent.
The social fabric that once equated default with shame is no more. The economic repercussions could be devastating. However, I don’t see it getting out of hand as long as corporate-friendly courts are willing to seize property and garnish poverty level wages.
The real problem is the threat the Africa Syndrome is under. The successful exploitation of Whites has always depended on the presence of a Black underclass upon which poor whites could heap scorn and prejudice.
Tragically, this instrument of social control is under attack by the presence of one Barack Obama. Every time he opens his mouth, every time he is shown on the tube, America sees a Black man who is articulate and intelligent. He’s not angry; he’s not peppering his sentences with “‘mo fuckers.” In short, he comes across as a human being, and therein lays the danger.
George, the day Blacks cease to be labels and become human beings is the day the entire structure of economic democracy will collapse. Once Whites discover that their lives are becoming as wretched as Blacks, you will see the growth of a class solidarity that could well shake the very foundations of finance capitalism.
This is why it is so important that your Corporatists throw their weight behind HillBill. She’s spent enough time at the pig trough that she will do whatever is necessary to keep it filled to the brim. Her strength is that she will give the impression of a populist revolt without actually creating one. The same cannot be said for Obama. We simply can’t allow the racist scales to fall from America’s eyes.
Successful impoverishment rests upon a firm foundation of divide and rule. As long as animosity between Blacks and Whites can be kept at the boiling point, the health of our economic democracy is guaranteed.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
We are living in dangerous times. No, I’m not talking about terrorism; that is nothing more than a non-threat elevated to the level of an imaginary real threat for the purposes of keeping our military-industrial-security complex in robust health.
The danger I speak of strikes at the very heart of our democratic system. But first, I have to take you around the barn a couple of times, so try not to fall behind.
When Ronnie brought mourning to America, he oversaw a seismic change in democracy. Under his firm hand, both political and social democracies were exiled to history’s dustbin and were replaced by economic democracy. This was a frightfully clever ideology in which the masses were scammed into becoming willing participants in their own exploitation.
Two dynamics shored up this economic democracy: debt-driven consumerism and the Africa Syndrome.
Consumerism allowed the drones to maintain a façade of prosperity as they slid slowly down the economic ladder. If the local factory closed forcing blue-collar workers to don a Wal-Mart vest, their impoverishment was tolerable as long as their line of credit had some wiggle room left. It was easy for a drone to forget his misery if he could plop himself down in front of a big-screen TV and lose himself in “Dancing with the Stars” or “WWF Raw.” In short, America’s working class sunk into a gentile poverty that preserved the illusion of a thread-bare prosperity.
The Africa Syndrome is a little more subtle. Thanks to it, America is convinced that poverty wears blackface makeup. It is something that happens in the ghettos and not the burbs. This is because the only time America sees an African on the tube, he is either starving, diseased or dead. But above, an African is a label and not a human being.
What is telling is the outrage that followed Katrina. It lasted only until Blacks were evacuated from New Orleans and scattered across the nation. They were still as poor and as miserable as ever, but they were now diffused and invisible.
These two pillars that supported America’s experiment in economic democracy are starting to crumble. We are beginning to see the stirrings of a populist revolt in the growing popularity of “jingle mail” where homeowners are mailing their house keys to the bank and walking away from the negative equity their houses now represent.
The social fabric that once equated default with shame is no more. The economic repercussions could be devastating. However, I don’t see it getting out of hand as long as corporate-friendly courts are willing to seize property and garnish poverty level wages.
The real problem is the threat the Africa Syndrome is under. The successful exploitation of Whites has always depended on the presence of a Black underclass upon which poor whites could heap scorn and prejudice.
Tragically, this instrument of social control is under attack by the presence of one Barack Obama. Every time he opens his mouth, every time he is shown on the tube, America sees a Black man who is articulate and intelligent. He’s not angry; he’s not peppering his sentences with “‘mo fuckers.” In short, he comes across as a human being, and therein lays the danger.
George, the day Blacks cease to be labels and become human beings is the day the entire structure of economic democracy will collapse. Once Whites discover that their lives are becoming as wretched as Blacks, you will see the growth of a class solidarity that could well shake the very foundations of finance capitalism.
This is why it is so important that your Corporatists throw their weight behind HillBill. She’s spent enough time at the pig trough that she will do whatever is necessary to keep it filled to the brim. Her strength is that she will give the impression of a populist revolt without actually creating one. The same cannot be said for Obama. We simply can’t allow the racist scales to fall from America’s eyes.
Successful impoverishment rests upon a firm foundation of divide and rule. As long as animosity between Blacks and Whites can be kept at the boiling point, the health of our economic democracy is guaranteed.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Monday, April 28, 2008
War is Sweet
Dear George,
War is delectable; it is so crunchy on the teeth. Here we have the highest expression of the human spirit. Only on the battlefield can man struggle for the glory that is his destiny. Honor descends on him astride the incoming round that blows him to bits. He dies knowing that in some place, at some time, someone will carve his name in marble and his memory will endure from generation unto generation, all the days of his life. For the warrior there is the honor of the shattered limb and the glory of disfigurement.
Though the suffering remains constant, the face of war has changed. Once, wars were waged to be won; now they are waged to go on and on. Nothing spoils a good war like victory. All wars are a source of funding and actually winning one can only have a negative impact on our economy. War is America's economic steroid.
War plays an important political role, as well. The corporatist state needs frighened drones to function efficiently. A nation tolerates war because it is afraid, and a frightened public is more willing to lose a freedom here and a freedom there, all for the sake of security.
War is our friend, George. The next time you and Jesus sit down for a hand or two of Texas Holdem, ask him to keep the Iraq enterprise bubbling a bit longer. Your defense contractors will thank you for it.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
War is delectable; it is so crunchy on the teeth. Here we have the highest expression of the human spirit. Only on the battlefield can man struggle for the glory that is his destiny. Honor descends on him astride the incoming round that blows him to bits. He dies knowing that in some place, at some time, someone will carve his name in marble and his memory will endure from generation unto generation, all the days of his life. For the warrior there is the honor of the shattered limb and the glory of disfigurement.
Though the suffering remains constant, the face of war has changed. Once, wars were waged to be won; now they are waged to go on and on. Nothing spoils a good war like victory. All wars are a source of funding and actually winning one can only have a negative impact on our economy. War is America's economic steroid.
War plays an important political role, as well. The corporatist state needs frighened drones to function efficiently. A nation tolerates war because it is afraid, and a frightened public is more willing to lose a freedom here and a freedom there, all for the sake of security.
War is our friend, George. The next time you and Jesus sit down for a hand or two of Texas Holdem, ask him to keep the Iraq enterprise bubbling a bit longer. Your defense contractors will thank you for it.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Keeping our Virtual Reality Virtual
Dear George,
HillBill was right when she jumped all over Obama for saying that America’s underclasses are “bitter.” In attacking him, HillBill reinforced the salient fact that there are two levels of reality in American politics: the virtual and the actual. Obama erred in shining a light on the actual reality, and Hill Bill responded by redirecting America’s attention to the virtual reality, which is the only reality that counts.
Virtual reality is the reality that is defined by statistics released by various government agencies. It is a quantified reality, tweaked and caressed by our political leaders to prove to Americans that they are prosperous and happy.
Actual reality is the day to day misery and anxiety experienced by the majority of the public.
The purpose of America’s virtual reality is to comfort and soothe and to allow our political leaders to stay put in their comfort zone of denial as they continue to raid the public treasure for earmarks and defense contracts.
For this virtual reality to work, it is crucial that the books be creatively cooked. HillBill understands this process since it was during hubby BillHill’s administration when the coup de grace was administered to whatever integrity remained in our economic reporting system. As one critic explained it, “Unemployment was redefined to eliminate five million discouraged workers and to lower the unemployment rate; methodologies were changed to reduce poverty reporting, to reduce reported CPI inflation, to inflate reported GDP growth, among others.”
Employing the pre-BillHill methodology would give us an actual unemployment rate of 12.5%. It would also give us a reality that was a little too real. What politician is willing to risk his career by telling America the truth when he would be swamped by a sea of cooked statistics proving that the truth isn’t true at all.
America is the land of prosperity and opportunity and it is crucial that the numbers be distorted to reflect this virtual reality.
But, BillHill didn’t stop with terminating discouraged workers. Another technique for determining unemployment was to survey a sampling of 60,000 households. BillHill reduced this number by eliminating 10,000 inner city households from the survey. All of a sudden, there was a significant drop in Black unemployment, and the sweet smell of prosperity wafted from America’s ghettos.
In truth, this creative book cooking has been a bipartisan effort that started with the Johnson administration’s effort to prove that we could afford both guns and butter.
It all gets down to a question of what kind of president America wants. Do we want someone like HillBill who has years of expertise in creating virtual reality, or do we want someone like Obama who will get us all upset by telling us the truth? If you’re not sure of the answer, just check the ratings for American Idol.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
HillBill was right when she jumped all over Obama for saying that America’s underclasses are “bitter.” In attacking him, HillBill reinforced the salient fact that there are two levels of reality in American politics: the virtual and the actual. Obama erred in shining a light on the actual reality, and Hill Bill responded by redirecting America’s attention to the virtual reality, which is the only reality that counts.
Virtual reality is the reality that is defined by statistics released by various government agencies. It is a quantified reality, tweaked and caressed by our political leaders to prove to Americans that they are prosperous and happy.
Actual reality is the day to day misery and anxiety experienced by the majority of the public.
The purpose of America’s virtual reality is to comfort and soothe and to allow our political leaders to stay put in their comfort zone of denial as they continue to raid the public treasure for earmarks and defense contracts.
For this virtual reality to work, it is crucial that the books be creatively cooked. HillBill understands this process since it was during hubby BillHill’s administration when the coup de grace was administered to whatever integrity remained in our economic reporting system. As one critic explained it, “Unemployment was redefined to eliminate five million discouraged workers and to lower the unemployment rate; methodologies were changed to reduce poverty reporting, to reduce reported CPI inflation, to inflate reported GDP growth, among others.”
Employing the pre-BillHill methodology would give us an actual unemployment rate of 12.5%. It would also give us a reality that was a little too real. What politician is willing to risk his career by telling America the truth when he would be swamped by a sea of cooked statistics proving that the truth isn’t true at all.
America is the land of prosperity and opportunity and it is crucial that the numbers be distorted to reflect this virtual reality.
But, BillHill didn’t stop with terminating discouraged workers. Another technique for determining unemployment was to survey a sampling of 60,000 households. BillHill reduced this number by eliminating 10,000 inner city households from the survey. All of a sudden, there was a significant drop in Black unemployment, and the sweet smell of prosperity wafted from America’s ghettos.
In truth, this creative book cooking has been a bipartisan effort that started with the Johnson administration’s effort to prove that we could afford both guns and butter.
It all gets down to a question of what kind of president America wants. Do we want someone like HillBill who has years of expertise in creating virtual reality, or do we want someone like Obama who will get us all upset by telling us the truth? If you’re not sure of the answer, just check the ratings for American Idol.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Making the World Safe for Jesus Christ
Dear George,
Just because we’re a Christian® nation does not mean we are going to embrace every Christian who comes down the pike. What we are looking for are State-friendly Christians who worship the Bronze Age tribal God that is always blessing America. These are Christians who interpret Jesus’ command to clothe the naked, feed the hungry and shelter the homeless as a metaphorical command to keep our corporate elite in their designer clothes, Beluga caviar and gated communities.
Christians who take Jesus’ teachings to heart are a source of disorder and destruction as we discovered during the Civil Rights movement with its illegal boycotts and sit-ins.
Thanks to a Religious Right that is as well-funded as it is loud and obnoxious, the voice of liberal religion has been almost muted. I say “almost” because there is still one tumor remaining on Jesus’ nose: the United Church of Christ (UCC). They are getting dangerous, George, with their calls for gay marriage and social justice.
The Religious Right hasn’t shut them up, so it is time to look across the Pacific for inspiration. And you need look no further than the Philippines, one of the first nations to whom we gave the blessings of Democracy™ in the days following the Spanish-American War.
Philippine President Gloria Arroyo is another world leader into whose eyes you have looked and seen the toenails of her soul. It seems she also has a problem with troublesome religious leaders who are making noise about social justice and all that other shit. One of the more radical organizations is the United Church of Christ in the Philippines (UCCP).
Her strategy for dealing with those troublemakers is summed up in two words: extrajudicial killings. Just as the Inquisition purified Christianity with stake and rack, she is purifying Christianity with bullets. To date, her government has terminated over 900 human rights workers “with extreme prejudice.”
It is axiomatic that it is easier to kill a label than a human being. So she has designated the church and any other organization concerned with human rights as “Communist infiltrated.” Granted, that these days calling a man a Communist is a bit like calling him a Loyalist. But the purpose of a label isn’t to describe, it is to justify taking extreme measures against any group so designated.
To her credit, it is an equal-opportunity label. Not only did she hang is on the UCCP, but she expanded the tent to include other organizations, such as the Catholic Bishops conference of the Philippines (CBCP) and the United Methodist Church of the Philippines. Actually, the label embraces anyone who gives a shit about poverty and injustice.
This allows her to justify the killing under the one rubric that lights your fire: antiterrorism. This is why we are funding the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) as they carry out their Philippine Defense Reform Program. (Damn, George! Isn’t that a cuddly little euphuism? It is one of those squeegees that wipe away every trace of blood.)
Now, George, you know I am loath to criticize anything you do. But, I gotta ask, what in the fuck are you doing spending all that money on foreign death squads when there is so much to be done in this country? Would not a similar program silence liberal Christians? I admit you’ve taken some salutary steps like the Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act. But those are too subtle. We need Action! We need some bodies left alongside the Interstate.
It is true, this country does not have a strong tradition of extrajudicial killing. This is one area where the Third World is light years ahead of us. The best way to close this gap would be to outsource the prejudicial terminations to a private firm, like Blackwater.
Nothing makes a little girl a good citizen like seeing her mother raped and her father murdered. President Arroyo has shown you the path. It is up to you to take it.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Just because we’re a Christian® nation does not mean we are going to embrace every Christian who comes down the pike. What we are looking for are State-friendly Christians who worship the Bronze Age tribal God that is always blessing America. These are Christians who interpret Jesus’ command to clothe the naked, feed the hungry and shelter the homeless as a metaphorical command to keep our corporate elite in their designer clothes, Beluga caviar and gated communities.
Christians who take Jesus’ teachings to heart are a source of disorder and destruction as we discovered during the Civil Rights movement with its illegal boycotts and sit-ins.
Thanks to a Religious Right that is as well-funded as it is loud and obnoxious, the voice of liberal religion has been almost muted. I say “almost” because there is still one tumor remaining on Jesus’ nose: the United Church of Christ (UCC). They are getting dangerous, George, with their calls for gay marriage and social justice.
The Religious Right hasn’t shut them up, so it is time to look across the Pacific for inspiration. And you need look no further than the Philippines, one of the first nations to whom we gave the blessings of Democracy™ in the days following the Spanish-American War.
Philippine President Gloria Arroyo is another world leader into whose eyes you have looked and seen the toenails of her soul. It seems she also has a problem with troublesome religious leaders who are making noise about social justice and all that other shit. One of the more radical organizations is the United Church of Christ in the Philippines (UCCP).
Her strategy for dealing with those troublemakers is summed up in two words: extrajudicial killings. Just as the Inquisition purified Christianity with stake and rack, she is purifying Christianity with bullets. To date, her government has terminated over 900 human rights workers “with extreme prejudice.”
It is axiomatic that it is easier to kill a label than a human being. So she has designated the church and any other organization concerned with human rights as “Communist infiltrated.” Granted, that these days calling a man a Communist is a bit like calling him a Loyalist. But the purpose of a label isn’t to describe, it is to justify taking extreme measures against any group so designated.
To her credit, it is an equal-opportunity label. Not only did she hang is on the UCCP, but she expanded the tent to include other organizations, such as the Catholic Bishops conference of the Philippines (CBCP) and the United Methodist Church of the Philippines. Actually, the label embraces anyone who gives a shit about poverty and injustice.
This allows her to justify the killing under the one rubric that lights your fire: antiterrorism. This is why we are funding the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) as they carry out their Philippine Defense Reform Program. (Damn, George! Isn’t that a cuddly little euphuism? It is one of those squeegees that wipe away every trace of blood.)
Now, George, you know I am loath to criticize anything you do. But, I gotta ask, what in the fuck are you doing spending all that money on foreign death squads when there is so much to be done in this country? Would not a similar program silence liberal Christians? I admit you’ve taken some salutary steps like the Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act. But those are too subtle. We need Action! We need some bodies left alongside the Interstate.
It is true, this country does not have a strong tradition of extrajudicial killing. This is one area where the Third World is light years ahead of us. The best way to close this gap would be to outsource the prejudicial terminations to a private firm, like Blackwater.
Nothing makes a little girl a good citizen like seeing her mother raped and her father murdered. President Arroyo has shown you the path. It is up to you to take it.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Friday, April 25, 2008
How the Captain Saves the Ship of State
Dear George,
The ship of state is sinking. The sea of oil upon which it has cruised is growing shallower and shallower, and as the oil is drained, the rocky shoals that will tear the ship's hull asunder lurk just beneath the surface even as the capital that fueled it is wasted as the the ship struggles against the headwinds of indebtedness and insolvency.
One of the more amusing side effects of this pending disaster is the blind faith the passengers have in the captain’s ability to steer a steady course out of this sea of troubles.
George, George, George, they simply do not understand how it works.
Once the captain realizes his ship is sinking, he initiates a three-step protocol. First, he steals as much of the ship’s silverware as his pockets can hold, then he throws an old lady overboard so he can take her seat in the lifeboat, and finally, he abandons ship while the dazed passengers continue to look to the quarter deck for their salvation.
In the real world, captains may go down with their ships. In the make believe world of politics and commerce this never happens, especially if the corporate headquarters can be moved to Dubai.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
The ship of state is sinking. The sea of oil upon which it has cruised is growing shallower and shallower, and as the oil is drained, the rocky shoals that will tear the ship's hull asunder lurk just beneath the surface even as the capital that fueled it is wasted as the the ship struggles against the headwinds of indebtedness and insolvency.
One of the more amusing side effects of this pending disaster is the blind faith the passengers have in the captain’s ability to steer a steady course out of this sea of troubles.
George, George, George, they simply do not understand how it works.
Once the captain realizes his ship is sinking, he initiates a three-step protocol. First, he steals as much of the ship’s silverware as his pockets can hold, then he throws an old lady overboard so he can take her seat in the lifeboat, and finally, he abandons ship while the dazed passengers continue to look to the quarter deck for their salvation.
In the real world, captains may go down with their ships. In the make believe world of politics and commerce this never happens, especially if the corporate headquarters can be moved to Dubai.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Thursday, April 24, 2008
wherethefuckami?
BULLIONBOOTY!!!
Careening through the cosmos on the slipstream of the sacred smoke I peer down through the cracked lens of the brain addled and see a great mob putting on their own collars and leading themselves about with their own leashes in the darkened dark of the vault in which past and future are reduced to a pinprick of light that is nay but a silly millimeter in diameter dancing to and fro, unable to tell wall from ceiling from floor as it bounces first here and then there in a jerking streak rising and falling as the pinprick remains so swallowed by the darkest of darkness that it never realizes that the vault it is exploring is its own burial vault.
eternallynow
yourzombiefiedshadow
Careening through the cosmos on the slipstream of the sacred smoke I peer down through the cracked lens of the brain addled and see a great mob putting on their own collars and leading themselves about with their own leashes in the darkened dark of the vault in which past and future are reduced to a pinprick of light that is nay but a silly millimeter in diameter dancing to and fro, unable to tell wall from ceiling from floor as it bounces first here and then there in a jerking streak rising and falling as the pinprick remains so swallowed by the darkest of darkness that it never realizes that the vault it is exploring is its own burial vault.
eternallynow
yourzombiefiedshadow
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Empty Lapels and Empty Minds
Dear George,
All elections turn on trivia. This is because our corporate elites are able to frame the message with the cooperation of their media lackeys. So it was that one of the deciding factors in Pennsylvania was Obama’s empty lapel.
There are certain things America expects from her candidates, and one of them is a crippled patriotism based on greed and exploitation as symbolized by a flag pin in the lapel. It is a patriotism of bile that appeals to the basest instincts of the nation. It is a patriotism that builds walls along its borders, joining the other wall builders of the world. (The Soviet Union started the practice in Berlin and both America and Israel have made an art of it.)
The lapel pin signifies the patriotism of the scoundrel who uses his patriotism as cover for his efforts to undercut the freedoms that have made America so problematic.
This is the patriotism that has given us the Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act. It is the patriotism that has made torture a household word and has brought out all that is ugly and vile in the American psyche.
The flag pin the scoundrel wears in his lapel is a flag soaked in the piss of tyranny and oppression. Its red stripes are the blood of the innocent women and children who have sacrificed their lives so America could flex its military muscle.
Obama’s problem is too much truthiness. His empty lapel shines a light on America’s sins, and it will not be tolerated, just as his speaking the truth about America’s bitterness will not be tolerated. There are only two things the public looks for in an election campaign: happy talk about America and trash talk about the other candidate.
Both HillBill and McCain know the score. They know how to press all their right buttons and mouth all the approved buzz words. Both know better than to tell the truth.
Trust me, George, the party hacks will make sure HillBill gets the nomination. This will unite your base and sweep McCain into the White House on a shit-stream of trivia. Paranoia has so conditioned the public that they will never stray too far from the candidate who rattles the loudest saber.
The successful candidate is the one who can make the ugly beautiful. It is the candidate who can continue our long tradition of rogue administrations that serve the narrow interests of our elite. It is the candidate who can recite the shibboleths that soothe and distract. In the end, it is the candidate who can scam the American people into voting against their interests.
It is the lack of these skills that will cost Obama the nomination.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
All elections turn on trivia. This is because our corporate elites are able to frame the message with the cooperation of their media lackeys. So it was that one of the deciding factors in Pennsylvania was Obama’s empty lapel.
There are certain things America expects from her candidates, and one of them is a crippled patriotism based on greed and exploitation as symbolized by a flag pin in the lapel. It is a patriotism of bile that appeals to the basest instincts of the nation. It is a patriotism that builds walls along its borders, joining the other wall builders of the world. (The Soviet Union started the practice in Berlin and both America and Israel have made an art of it.)
The lapel pin signifies the patriotism of the scoundrel who uses his patriotism as cover for his efforts to undercut the freedoms that have made America so problematic.
This is the patriotism that has given us the Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act. It is the patriotism that has made torture a household word and has brought out all that is ugly and vile in the American psyche.
The flag pin the scoundrel wears in his lapel is a flag soaked in the piss of tyranny and oppression. Its red stripes are the blood of the innocent women and children who have sacrificed their lives so America could flex its military muscle.
Obama’s problem is too much truthiness. His empty lapel shines a light on America’s sins, and it will not be tolerated, just as his speaking the truth about America’s bitterness will not be tolerated. There are only two things the public looks for in an election campaign: happy talk about America and trash talk about the other candidate.
Both HillBill and McCain know the score. They know how to press all their right buttons and mouth all the approved buzz words. Both know better than to tell the truth.
Trust me, George, the party hacks will make sure HillBill gets the nomination. This will unite your base and sweep McCain into the White House on a shit-stream of trivia. Paranoia has so conditioned the public that they will never stray too far from the candidate who rattles the loudest saber.
The successful candidate is the one who can make the ugly beautiful. It is the candidate who can continue our long tradition of rogue administrations that serve the narrow interests of our elite. It is the candidate who can recite the shibboleths that soothe and distract. In the end, it is the candidate who can scam the American people into voting against their interests.
It is the lack of these skills that will cost Obama the nomination.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
The Reality of Make Believe
Dear George,
Isn’t it wonderful living in the greatest country the world has ever known? We are a country of Main Street ideals where kindly, white-haired owners of local Mom and Pop stores radiate warmth and wisdom, and where the laughter of clean-cut teenagers rolls from the local soda shoppe.
We are a country where racial tolerance fills the air with all of the purity of driven snow, where every Sunday mom, dad and the kids walk to church, resplendent in their Sunday best. We are a country frozen in time by the paintings of Norman Rockwell.
We are, above all, a country grounded in an imagery created by the best minds Madison Avenue can buy.
The truth is that life sucks! The local Mom and Pop store is boarded up, the soda shoppe closed decades ago and was torn down to make way for a McDonalds, racism is our national pastime and families, if they even bother going to church, head for the nearest mega church with its message of fear and paranoia.
Mind you, we are still the greatest country in the world, but we are so because we have snuffed the reality that once informed Rockwell’s paintings. We have taken the fragmented reality that was once small-town America and consolidated it into a totalistic whole whose oppressive reality is concealed by a fog of small-town imagery.
As one sage explained it, “There is a god, he is a nice fatherly-looking Caucasian fellow with a big snowy beard (if the resemblance to the god of American children—Santa Claus—doesn’t by itself tell you everything you need to know about religion, you’re still not paying attention!) And he’s quite angry at Muslims and other people who didn’t get the memo on who to worship.”
And every four years this imagery is reinforced by a gaggle of sociopaths who want to punish themselves by becoming president of the United States of America so they can keep us the greatest country in the world by rolling out a whole new set of weapon systems.
Politics isn’t theater; it’s a Saturday morning cartoon show, resplendent with cuddly characters and happy endings. And like the cartoon show, no political campaign would be complete without a nasty villain to keep the children frightened. And the darker the villain’s skin, the more frightening he is.
And like the cartoon show, neither reality nor truth has any place in the political arena. Were they to raise their ugly heads, the whole system would unravel.
Every time HillBill opens her mouth, I am reminded of the song, “It’s Only Make Believe.” She’s the kind of leader America needs who will carry us to a new plateau of infamy.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Isn’t it wonderful living in the greatest country the world has ever known? We are a country of Main Street ideals where kindly, white-haired owners of local Mom and Pop stores radiate warmth and wisdom, and where the laughter of clean-cut teenagers rolls from the local soda shoppe.
We are a country where racial tolerance fills the air with all of the purity of driven snow, where every Sunday mom, dad and the kids walk to church, resplendent in their Sunday best. We are a country frozen in time by the paintings of Norman Rockwell.
We are, above all, a country grounded in an imagery created by the best minds Madison Avenue can buy.
The truth is that life sucks! The local Mom and Pop store is boarded up, the soda shoppe closed decades ago and was torn down to make way for a McDonalds, racism is our national pastime and families, if they even bother going to church, head for the nearest mega church with its message of fear and paranoia.
Mind you, we are still the greatest country in the world, but we are so because we have snuffed the reality that once informed Rockwell’s paintings. We have taken the fragmented reality that was once small-town America and consolidated it into a totalistic whole whose oppressive reality is concealed by a fog of small-town imagery.
As one sage explained it, “There is a god, he is a nice fatherly-looking Caucasian fellow with a big snowy beard (if the resemblance to the god of American children—Santa Claus—doesn’t by itself tell you everything you need to know about religion, you’re still not paying attention!) And he’s quite angry at Muslims and other people who didn’t get the memo on who to worship.”
And every four years this imagery is reinforced by a gaggle of sociopaths who want to punish themselves by becoming president of the United States of America so they can keep us the greatest country in the world by rolling out a whole new set of weapon systems.
Politics isn’t theater; it’s a Saturday morning cartoon show, resplendent with cuddly characters and happy endings. And like the cartoon show, no political campaign would be complete without a nasty villain to keep the children frightened. And the darker the villain’s skin, the more frightening he is.
And like the cartoon show, neither reality nor truth has any place in the political arena. Were they to raise their ugly heads, the whole system would unravel.
Every time HillBill opens her mouth, I am reminded of the song, “It’s Only Make Believe.” She’s the kind of leader America needs who will carry us to a new plateau of infamy.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Monday, April 21, 2008
How Certitude Conceals Incompetence
Dear George,
There was a time when hard-hitting investigative journalism tore the lid off the cesspools of power and revealed the corrupt slop moldering in their dank depths. It is a tribute to your successful management of the media that today’s investigative journalism uncovers the obvious.
Sunday’s New York Times ran a hard-hitting expose that revealed that the military analysts so loved by our electronic media were far from being objective observers. Not only did many of them have ties to the military contractors who are making money hand over fist on your Iraq enterprise, but were being fed talking points by the Pentagon.
Duh!
The Pentagon is doing its best to execute a war that everybody loathes. Of course they are going to do their damndest to distort the information that is fed to the public. Did anyone believe that a retired military officer who holds a cushy job with a defense contractor is going to go on the air and criticize your administration?
The Times simply does not understand the dynamic of power. The more power grows, the more incompetent it becomes. At the close of World War II, America was the greatest military power in the world. This is why we haven’t won a war since then.
There is but one antidote for the incompetence of power and that is certitude. Certitude is a smoke screen that conceals power’s inevitable collapse. And if there were ever a time our country needed the reassurance only masculine certitude can bring, it is now. Iraq is a disaster, our economy is falling apart and democracy grows quainter with each passing day. All that stands between the American people and existential despair is the soothing baritone of the “expert”, whose voice oozes confidence even though he hasn’t a clue.
Certitude is an essential prop for power in all its manifestations. The practitioners of certitude know neither doubt nor error, no matter how bizarre their position. It was certitude that predicted Iraq would be a cakewalk. Certitude warns us that people boarding planes with unchecked shoes are a threat to our national security. It is certitude that sees our Constitution for what it is: a document that coddles terrorists.
Certitude silences dissent and discourages probing questions. The definitive statement gives life to the lie by coating it with a patina of truth.
So it is only natural that the “military experts” who flood our news shows appear with Pentagon talking points in their back pockets. Capitalism is all about enlightened self interest, and it is certainly in the interest of those who profit from the war that the war continues. This is why their mission is not to inform or analyze, but to spin.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
There was a time when hard-hitting investigative journalism tore the lid off the cesspools of power and revealed the corrupt slop moldering in their dank depths. It is a tribute to your successful management of the media that today’s investigative journalism uncovers the obvious.
Sunday’s New York Times ran a hard-hitting expose that revealed that the military analysts so loved by our electronic media were far from being objective observers. Not only did many of them have ties to the military contractors who are making money hand over fist on your Iraq enterprise, but were being fed talking points by the Pentagon.
Duh!
The Pentagon is doing its best to execute a war that everybody loathes. Of course they are going to do their damndest to distort the information that is fed to the public. Did anyone believe that a retired military officer who holds a cushy job with a defense contractor is going to go on the air and criticize your administration?
The Times simply does not understand the dynamic of power. The more power grows, the more incompetent it becomes. At the close of World War II, America was the greatest military power in the world. This is why we haven’t won a war since then.
There is but one antidote for the incompetence of power and that is certitude. Certitude is a smoke screen that conceals power’s inevitable collapse. And if there were ever a time our country needed the reassurance only masculine certitude can bring, it is now. Iraq is a disaster, our economy is falling apart and democracy grows quainter with each passing day. All that stands between the American people and existential despair is the soothing baritone of the “expert”, whose voice oozes confidence even though he hasn’t a clue.
Certitude is an essential prop for power in all its manifestations. The practitioners of certitude know neither doubt nor error, no matter how bizarre their position. It was certitude that predicted Iraq would be a cakewalk. Certitude warns us that people boarding planes with unchecked shoes are a threat to our national security. It is certitude that sees our Constitution for what it is: a document that coddles terrorists.
Certitude silences dissent and discourages probing questions. The definitive statement gives life to the lie by coating it with a patina of truth.
So it is only natural that the “military experts” who flood our news shows appear with Pentagon talking points in their back pockets. Capitalism is all about enlightened self interest, and it is certainly in the interest of those who profit from the war that the war continues. This is why their mission is not to inform or analyze, but to spin.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Living and Thriving in God's Belly Button
Dear George,
Don’t get me wrong. I love what the Religous Right is doing to reform democracy along more traditional lines. Freedom is a gift given by God to those who worship and follow his Way in a manner that is acceptable to those who are arbiters in such matters, the Religous Right.
However, I am concerned about some unintended consequences that could surface were Darwin overthrown. We’ve got to tread lightly here. There is an upside to Darwin that is overlooked in the heat of debate, and that upside is Social Darwinism. Social Darwinism sees social implications in Darwin’s theory of the survival of the fittest. If the fit survive, then it follows that those who don’t survive are unfit.
An early proponent of this theory was Herbert Spencer. Spencer was to capitalism what de Sade was to sex. To Spencer, fitness equals money, lots of it. Thus, the poor are unfit. He believed that feeding and housing the poor was a mistake, because it allowed them to survive and pass their unfitness to their offspring.
He was your kind of guy, George. But where you and he have a lip lock is in his belief that the Caucasian male capitalist of European descent represented the apex of social evolution, and that in the Great Chain of Being, the Anglo-Saxon Protestant was right there at the top, tucked into God’s belly button.
Spencer believed that the unfitness of the poor was genetic. Poverty breeds poverty, and the only way to eliminate poverty is to eliminate the poor.
However, we must admit that among the poor, there may be a few with defective poverty genes who, given the right circumstance, might turn out to be quite fit. We are seeing this phenomenon in the favelas of the Third World where, under the guidance of the Washington Consensus, the social safety net has been eliminated.
When you pull the rug out from under the poor, you produce the existential crisis that is the foundation of all conversion experiences. For the majority of the poor, this conversion will take the form of death. But, the fortunate ones with defective poverty genes will be given the opportunity to take their first steps towards financial independence—a life of crime. All commerce is grounded in crime, and today’s gang leader is tomorrow’s CEO.
This is why we need Darwin. We are where we are today because we are ruled by the fittest who survived. Our leaders are those men who succeeded because they were born into the right families or had all of the right connections or kissed the right asses. If a man is able to purchase his survival with his family’s fortune, the that is proof positive that he is fit to survive.
Your admire,
Belacqua Jones
Don’t get me wrong. I love what the Religous Right is doing to reform democracy along more traditional lines. Freedom is a gift given by God to those who worship and follow his Way in a manner that is acceptable to those who are arbiters in such matters, the Religous Right.
However, I am concerned about some unintended consequences that could surface were Darwin overthrown. We’ve got to tread lightly here. There is an upside to Darwin that is overlooked in the heat of debate, and that upside is Social Darwinism. Social Darwinism sees social implications in Darwin’s theory of the survival of the fittest. If the fit survive, then it follows that those who don’t survive are unfit.
An early proponent of this theory was Herbert Spencer. Spencer was to capitalism what de Sade was to sex. To Spencer, fitness equals money, lots of it. Thus, the poor are unfit. He believed that feeding and housing the poor was a mistake, because it allowed them to survive and pass their unfitness to their offspring.
He was your kind of guy, George. But where you and he have a lip lock is in his belief that the Caucasian male capitalist of European descent represented the apex of social evolution, and that in the Great Chain of Being, the Anglo-Saxon Protestant was right there at the top, tucked into God’s belly button.
Spencer believed that the unfitness of the poor was genetic. Poverty breeds poverty, and the only way to eliminate poverty is to eliminate the poor.
However, we must admit that among the poor, there may be a few with defective poverty genes who, given the right circumstance, might turn out to be quite fit. We are seeing this phenomenon in the favelas of the Third World where, under the guidance of the Washington Consensus, the social safety net has been eliminated.
When you pull the rug out from under the poor, you produce the existential crisis that is the foundation of all conversion experiences. For the majority of the poor, this conversion will take the form of death. But, the fortunate ones with defective poverty genes will be given the opportunity to take their first steps towards financial independence—a life of crime. All commerce is grounded in crime, and today’s gang leader is tomorrow’s CEO.
This is why we need Darwin. We are where we are today because we are ruled by the fittest who survived. Our leaders are those men who succeeded because they were born into the right families or had all of the right connections or kissed the right asses. If a man is able to purchase his survival with his family’s fortune, the that is proof positive that he is fit to survive.
Your admire,
Belacqua Jones
Saturday, April 19, 2008
The Sanity of Madness
Dear George,
As you may have gathered I get off on madness, just as you do, which is why you and the Big Dick make such a bang-up team.
There is nothing like a raving madman to set my follicles atwittering. A crazed mob is even better, but the crème de la crème is a crazed nation. That, Big Guy, is Valhalla!
All madness is made up of two components: delusion and exceptionalism. Madness liberates itself from reality by creating an imaginary parallel universe, a universe teeming with threats and dangers. Madness is also convinced of its exceptionalism. Not only does madness believe in its own sanity, it also believes that it is the only entity with the clarity of vision necessary to understand the world around it. Because it occupies a higher level of reality, it believes that its way and its view are interface perfectly with the Devine Will.
When an individual behaves in this manner, he is committed; when a nation behaves in this manner, it starts a war. The public easily recognizes madness in the individual, but they never see it in their own nation, though they are quick to see it in other nations. The madman believes all other individuals to be mad; the citizens of an insane nation believe all other nations mad.
To the mad nation, delusion is truth, the imaginary is real and threats are on the cusp of destroying civilization as the mad nation defines it.
The pathological nation sees itself as representing the end product of the evolutionary process (or as God’s chosen in the case of Creationists). In this light, its every act, no matter how brutal, is right and moral. So noble are its ends that it is justified using the vilest of means to achieve them.
This is why it imperative that we destroy that most pathological of nations, Iran. Delusion and exceptionalism drives it. If you listen carefully you can hear them sharpening their knives as they hatch their plans to destroy Capitalism and achieve world domination. Forget the NIE that said Iran has suspended its nuclear weapons program. The very fact that they could possibly develop nuclear weapons meets the Big Dick’s one-percent doctrine (If there is a one percent probability a nation will be a threat that is sufficient reason to take action against said nation.
Muslims have no qualms about bombing innocent women and children, and it is a fact that Iran’s goal is to spread its Tehran consensus across the face of the earth as it establishes its world-wide caliphate. This is not paranoia, George, it is policy. As the moral beacon of the world, the United States is justified to use any means at its disposal to maintain world order and stability, even if we have to sacrifice peace to do so.
You have the perfect sound bite: If Iran gets nuclear weapons; it will destroy Israel (The fact that Iran has never made this threat makes your sound bite even juicier. All Iran has said is that the present regime that occupies Jerusalem will vanish from the pages of history. They were talking about the natural flow of history in which all power eventually crumbles and turns to dust, as we are beginning to find out. Notice how many words it took me to explain this. That’s the beauty of sound bites; they don’t tax the listener’s crippled attention span. “Iran wants to destroy Israel.” That is all the public needs to know.)
It is our mission to restore sanity to the world, and if we have to get a little crazy doing so, it is a small price to pay. When the radioactive dust settles and all of the cluster bombs have been detonated, we will be left with a world so mad everyone will think it sane.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
As you may have gathered I get off on madness, just as you do, which is why you and the Big Dick make such a bang-up team.
There is nothing like a raving madman to set my follicles atwittering. A crazed mob is even better, but the crème de la crème is a crazed nation. That, Big Guy, is Valhalla!
All madness is made up of two components: delusion and exceptionalism. Madness liberates itself from reality by creating an imaginary parallel universe, a universe teeming with threats and dangers. Madness is also convinced of its exceptionalism. Not only does madness believe in its own sanity, it also believes that it is the only entity with the clarity of vision necessary to understand the world around it. Because it occupies a higher level of reality, it believes that its way and its view are interface perfectly with the Devine Will.
When an individual behaves in this manner, he is committed; when a nation behaves in this manner, it starts a war. The public easily recognizes madness in the individual, but they never see it in their own nation, though they are quick to see it in other nations. The madman believes all other individuals to be mad; the citizens of an insane nation believe all other nations mad.
To the mad nation, delusion is truth, the imaginary is real and threats are on the cusp of destroying civilization as the mad nation defines it.
The pathological nation sees itself as representing the end product of the evolutionary process (or as God’s chosen in the case of Creationists). In this light, its every act, no matter how brutal, is right and moral. So noble are its ends that it is justified using the vilest of means to achieve them.
This is why it imperative that we destroy that most pathological of nations, Iran. Delusion and exceptionalism drives it. If you listen carefully you can hear them sharpening their knives as they hatch their plans to destroy Capitalism and achieve world domination. Forget the NIE that said Iran has suspended its nuclear weapons program. The very fact that they could possibly develop nuclear weapons meets the Big Dick’s one-percent doctrine (If there is a one percent probability a nation will be a threat that is sufficient reason to take action against said nation.
Muslims have no qualms about bombing innocent women and children, and it is a fact that Iran’s goal is to spread its Tehran consensus across the face of the earth as it establishes its world-wide caliphate. This is not paranoia, George, it is policy. As the moral beacon of the world, the United States is justified to use any means at its disposal to maintain world order and stability, even if we have to sacrifice peace to do so.
You have the perfect sound bite: If Iran gets nuclear weapons; it will destroy Israel (The fact that Iran has never made this threat makes your sound bite even juicier. All Iran has said is that the present regime that occupies Jerusalem will vanish from the pages of history. They were talking about the natural flow of history in which all power eventually crumbles and turns to dust, as we are beginning to find out. Notice how many words it took me to explain this. That’s the beauty of sound bites; they don’t tax the listener’s crippled attention span. “Iran wants to destroy Israel.” That is all the public needs to know.)
It is our mission to restore sanity to the world, and if we have to get a little crazy doing so, it is a small price to pay. When the radioactive dust settles and all of the cluster bombs have been detonated, we will be left with a world so mad everyone will think it sane.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Friday, April 18, 2008
A Stoned Vision of the Muck
O Piepulcratus You,
Stoned! Stoned! Stoned! As I suck the air you breathe to tell you of God’s Word: numbing numbness spreading rose blankets of knife-edged silence over the dead, seeing neither wound nor blood, nose-to-nose with smoke words of policy, droning before the pale flesh bulldozed into muddy trenches, anointing the earth with their fluids while the knife-edged silence bellows wordless platitudes and pieties into the deaf ears of the dead, words creased and pressed before the tangled mass; numb, numb, wingtips dead to seeing, dead to hearing, polished wingtips dancing lightly over steaming gore, preaching puffs of smoke, dissipated by fetid air heavy with the cries of broken babies, ribboned pacifiers around their shattered necks; wingtips dancing the minuet of the frozen, spreading rose petals over the rain-drenched piles of freshly bulldozed muck.
Yours,
Whothefuckknowswhothefuckcares
Stoned! Stoned! Stoned! As I suck the air you breathe to tell you of God’s Word: numbing numbness spreading rose blankets of knife-edged silence over the dead, seeing neither wound nor blood, nose-to-nose with smoke words of policy, droning before the pale flesh bulldozed into muddy trenches, anointing the earth with their fluids while the knife-edged silence bellows wordless platitudes and pieties into the deaf ears of the dead, words creased and pressed before the tangled mass; numb, numb, wingtips dead to seeing, dead to hearing, polished wingtips dancing lightly over steaming gore, preaching puffs of smoke, dissipated by fetid air heavy with the cries of broken babies, ribboned pacifiers around their shattered necks; wingtips dancing the minuet of the frozen, spreading rose petals over the rain-drenched piles of freshly bulldozed muck.
Yours,
Whothefuckknowswhothefuckcares
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Saying much by saying nothing.
Dear George,
Language is a whore who spreads her legs for any John with money in his pocket. And like a whore, she is quick to cut your throat if you abuse her. She can inspire, inform, emote or bore. She has started wars and fistfights, but is equally able to soothe and comfort.
In politics, language has a special role. In the real world, words communicate. For the politician, words are like the zeros in arithmetic; they are place holders devoid of both value and semantic information.
When pundits, politicians and experts talk about the current economic challenges facing America, they dance around the R word and the D word. Both recession and depression carry too much emotional baggage to be of any use. What is needed is a word that is a semantic zero, that conceals more that it reveals. You need a label, George, because understanding and analysis end where the label begins. A well-turned label becomes the lens through which reality is refracted.
May I suggest that in the future when your minions discuss the economy they say that America is now going through a countersession? Here is a word that speaks volumes without saying a damn thing. Because it says nothing, it neutralizes and comforts.
Explain that a countersession is simply an historical trend that focuses the benefits of unbridled growth on the demographic most likely to benefit from its returns. What we are seeing is not an economic downturn, but an economic adjustment.
A countersession is simply a structural adjustment that is reflective of the democratization of the global economy. It is an egalitarian movement that will establish parity between American workers and Third World workers. In a world of increasingly scarce resources, our obscene standard of living must go south if we are to avoid species extinction. This is facilitated by the upward movement of capital to the top of the food chain.
In a countersession, financial retards are turned loose on the economy in the expectations that they will encourage this upward movement by trashing the economy thus making it easier to gut the social programs that have only served to enrich the underclasses by tying up capital that could have been better used to invest in more derivatives.
Once the drones accept the fact that the country is in a countersession, they will breathe a sigh of relief and will greet you a liberator who has freed them of the oppression of debt-driven consumption. Nothing comforts like a rhetorical void.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Language is a whore who spreads her legs for any John with money in his pocket. And like a whore, she is quick to cut your throat if you abuse her. She can inspire, inform, emote or bore. She has started wars and fistfights, but is equally able to soothe and comfort.
In politics, language has a special role. In the real world, words communicate. For the politician, words are like the zeros in arithmetic; they are place holders devoid of both value and semantic information.
When pundits, politicians and experts talk about the current economic challenges facing America, they dance around the R word and the D word. Both recession and depression carry too much emotional baggage to be of any use. What is needed is a word that is a semantic zero, that conceals more that it reveals. You need a label, George, because understanding and analysis end where the label begins. A well-turned label becomes the lens through which reality is refracted.
May I suggest that in the future when your minions discuss the economy they say that America is now going through a countersession? Here is a word that speaks volumes without saying a damn thing. Because it says nothing, it neutralizes and comforts.
Explain that a countersession is simply an historical trend that focuses the benefits of unbridled growth on the demographic most likely to benefit from its returns. What we are seeing is not an economic downturn, but an economic adjustment.
A countersession is simply a structural adjustment that is reflective of the democratization of the global economy. It is an egalitarian movement that will establish parity between American workers and Third World workers. In a world of increasingly scarce resources, our obscene standard of living must go south if we are to avoid species extinction. This is facilitated by the upward movement of capital to the top of the food chain.
In a countersession, financial retards are turned loose on the economy in the expectations that they will encourage this upward movement by trashing the economy thus making it easier to gut the social programs that have only served to enrich the underclasses by tying up capital that could have been better used to invest in more derivatives.
Once the drones accept the fact that the country is in a countersession, they will breathe a sigh of relief and will greet you a liberator who has freed them of the oppression of debt-driven consumption. Nothing comforts like a rhetorical void.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
If hedonism doesn't work, try jingoism.
Dear George,
We have a problem, here. Seven years of hedonic consumption by the public kept them diverted while you implemented your Corporatist Police State. The country simply wouldn’t get its knickers in a knot over the suspension of habeas corpus, the introduction of torture, military commissions, the Patriot Act, illegal wars of aggression, stagnant wages, tax cuts for the rich and the erosion of the Constitution as long as it could get a new Lexus, charge a Louis Vitton™ purse on its MasterCard or lose itself in its wide-screen plasma TV.
Unfortunately, the times they are a changing. The American consumer is a little tapped out. Credit is collapsing, he’s stuck with a negative equity of his leveraged house, the bank is cancelling his equity line of credit, and he’s starting to realize that he’s been royally fucked over.
In other words, there is a real danger that the American consumer might morph into an American citizen who is suddenly very interesting in the malfeasance and mendacity coming out of the Beltway. And outbreaks of democracy, as we all know, can be very destabilizing.
Hedonic consumption encouraged self-absorption, which contributed to keeping both families and communities fragmented. The husband who just has to have the newest electronic gadget is loath to discuss his desire with his wife because he knows damn well she will tell him how stupid he is for wanting it and how the money could be spent for something better, like a new stove or wallpapering the family room.
Now that families can no longer consume, there is a danger that they may discover each other. The danger a cohesive family presents is that it could well merge with other families to form a community. Once this happens, things begin to get a little testy for the Corporatist State as people start taking an interest in its machinations.
I know you don’t do history, so I’m going to run some by you. Try to stay awake.
Whenever our oligarchy has faced an outburst of populism, they have found that the best antidote is to start a war. This all begin when McKinley snuffed a nineteenth century outburst of populism by starting the Spanish American War. Wilson followed with World War I, and FDR sidetracked a growing socialist movement with World War II.
But, you say, we already have a robust war going in Iraq. This is true, but the problem with Iraq is that it is a colonial war, and colonial wars simply don’t stir up the jingoism necessary to redirect the public’s attention away from its misery.
So, here's what you do. Have the CIA plant a monumental explosive device in the Green Zone of sufficient magnitude that it would reduce our fortress embassy to rubble. What we need are some massive American casualties.
Next, you produce evidence that places the blame for the explosion squarely on Iran’s shoulders.
This you call America’s new Pearl Harbor. Go before Congress and give them your Day-Of-Infamy speech and ask for a formal declaration of war on Iran. Bring back the draft and scam America into believing we have another “just” war.
Those who suggest that a war with Iran would ruin America forget that America is ruined already, so what difference does it make.
Okay, it’s unfortunate that you are going to snuff a lot of Americans. But as the Big Dick said, they are all volunteers. Every noble cause needs its martyrs.
Great powers feed on blood. A rousing war with Iran would keep our Corporatist State sated for a good decade or two. By the time the country collapsed, you would be sequestered in your library still trying to work your way through “My Pet Goat.”
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
We have a problem, here. Seven years of hedonic consumption by the public kept them diverted while you implemented your Corporatist Police State. The country simply wouldn’t get its knickers in a knot over the suspension of habeas corpus, the introduction of torture, military commissions, the Patriot Act, illegal wars of aggression, stagnant wages, tax cuts for the rich and the erosion of the Constitution as long as it could get a new Lexus, charge a Louis Vitton™ purse on its MasterCard or lose itself in its wide-screen plasma TV.
Unfortunately, the times they are a changing. The American consumer is a little tapped out. Credit is collapsing, he’s stuck with a negative equity of his leveraged house, the bank is cancelling his equity line of credit, and he’s starting to realize that he’s been royally fucked over.
In other words, there is a real danger that the American consumer might morph into an American citizen who is suddenly very interesting in the malfeasance and mendacity coming out of the Beltway. And outbreaks of democracy, as we all know, can be very destabilizing.
Hedonic consumption encouraged self-absorption, which contributed to keeping both families and communities fragmented. The husband who just has to have the newest electronic gadget is loath to discuss his desire with his wife because he knows damn well she will tell him how stupid he is for wanting it and how the money could be spent for something better, like a new stove or wallpapering the family room.
Now that families can no longer consume, there is a danger that they may discover each other. The danger a cohesive family presents is that it could well merge with other families to form a community. Once this happens, things begin to get a little testy for the Corporatist State as people start taking an interest in its machinations.
I know you don’t do history, so I’m going to run some by you. Try to stay awake.
Whenever our oligarchy has faced an outburst of populism, they have found that the best antidote is to start a war. This all begin when McKinley snuffed a nineteenth century outburst of populism by starting the Spanish American War. Wilson followed with World War I, and FDR sidetracked a growing socialist movement with World War II.
But, you say, we already have a robust war going in Iraq. This is true, but the problem with Iraq is that it is a colonial war, and colonial wars simply don’t stir up the jingoism necessary to redirect the public’s attention away from its misery.
So, here's what you do. Have the CIA plant a monumental explosive device in the Green Zone of sufficient magnitude that it would reduce our fortress embassy to rubble. What we need are some massive American casualties.
Next, you produce evidence that places the blame for the explosion squarely on Iran’s shoulders.
This you call America’s new Pearl Harbor. Go before Congress and give them your Day-Of-Infamy speech and ask for a formal declaration of war on Iran. Bring back the draft and scam America into believing we have another “just” war.
Those who suggest that a war with Iran would ruin America forget that America is ruined already, so what difference does it make.
Okay, it’s unfortunate that you are going to snuff a lot of Americans. But as the Big Dick said, they are all volunteers. Every noble cause needs its martyrs.
Great powers feed on blood. A rousing war with Iran would keep our Corporatist State sated for a good decade or two. By the time the country collapsed, you would be sequestered in your library still trying to work your way through “My Pet Goat.”
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Another Breakthrough in Cost Containment
Dear George,
I finally understand why the United States in on the cutting edge of technological innovation. I recently wrote my HMO about my erectile dysfunction, and the good people were kind enough to send me one of their ED kits: two tongue depressors and a roll of duct tape.
Gotta run and get the splinters out. Man, is she pissed!
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
I finally understand why the United States in on the cutting edge of technological innovation. I recently wrote my HMO about my erectile dysfunction, and the good people were kind enough to send me one of their ED kits: two tongue depressors and a roll of duct tape.
Gotta run and get the splinters out. Man, is she pissed!
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Monday, April 14, 2008
Battling Reality in Elysium
Dear George,
The wise leader demeans democracy by trivializing the election process. His instrument of trivialization is a Mainstream Media that dedicates itself to microscopic coverage of every petty detail of a campaign except the issues that matter. Issue avoidance is the key to creating a level of bored apathy in the polity that yields low voter turnout.
This trivialization process kicked into high gear over the weekend when Obama made the following statement at a San Francisco fund raiser:
In that remark, Obama committed political suicide: He told the truth, and nothing creates a firestorm like a politician telling the truth. In his statement, Obama displayed a clarity of vision that has no place in American politics.
HillBill jumped right on him, charging that Obama’s comments were “not reflective of the values and beliefs of Americans.”
HillBill understands that politics have nothing to do with reality. The values HillBill praises are those spun from the Approved Political Myth (APM), which states that such a thing as small town values actually exist in small towns long ago left empty shells of their former shelves.
This APM draws on the Approved Political Values (APV) featured in the Andy Hardy films produced in the 1930s and 1940s. The films were set in the bucolic town of Carvel where the children were all scrubbed and well behaved, Judge Hardy dispensed his fatherly wisdom and life rolled on as if neither Depression nor war existed. The citizens of this small town reflected the small town values of piety, patriotism, generosity and tolerance. Nobody lynched Blacks in Carvel.
Obama’s gaff was in referring to the reality of America’s small towns that are now gutted and boarded up, victims of globalization and Wal-Mart, places where the kids are on meth and the only wisdom Judge Hardy dispenses in embedded in a spray of angry spittle.
Obama's sin was uttering the word, "bitter." America's underclass is pissed off, but it in an anger that alienated and isolates. They believe their situation is unique. For a political candidate to acknowlege their anger might cause the scales to fall from their eyes and see that theirs is a shared anger. This could well give rise to a destabilizing solidarity.
HillBill knows better than to touch reality. She will stick to her fairytale vision of villages raising children. She has no choice, since it was her clone, BillHill who set small-town decay in motion when he weaseled NAFTA around Congress by making it an agreement instead of a Treaty, which would have required Senate ratification.
For any politician the truth is a cement boot that will plunge him to the bottom of the political swamp where he will never be seen again. Politics is all about fairytales and flag lapel pins because the media says it is.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
The wise leader demeans democracy by trivializing the election process. His instrument of trivialization is a Mainstream Media that dedicates itself to microscopic coverage of every petty detail of a campaign except the issues that matter. Issue avoidance is the key to creating a level of bored apathy in the polity that yields low voter turnout.
This trivialization process kicked into high gear over the weekend when Obama made the following statement at a San Francisco fund raiser:
You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton Administration and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.
And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
In that remark, Obama committed political suicide: He told the truth, and nothing creates a firestorm like a politician telling the truth. In his statement, Obama displayed a clarity of vision that has no place in American politics.
HillBill jumped right on him, charging that Obama’s comments were “not reflective of the values and beliefs of Americans.”
HillBill understands that politics have nothing to do with reality. The values HillBill praises are those spun from the Approved Political Myth (APM), which states that such a thing as small town values actually exist in small towns long ago left empty shells of their former shelves.
This APM draws on the Approved Political Values (APV) featured in the Andy Hardy films produced in the 1930s and 1940s. The films were set in the bucolic town of Carvel where the children were all scrubbed and well behaved, Judge Hardy dispensed his fatherly wisdom and life rolled on as if neither Depression nor war existed. The citizens of this small town reflected the small town values of piety, patriotism, generosity and tolerance. Nobody lynched Blacks in Carvel.
Obama’s gaff was in referring to the reality of America’s small towns that are now gutted and boarded up, victims of globalization and Wal-Mart, places where the kids are on meth and the only wisdom Judge Hardy dispenses in embedded in a spray of angry spittle.
Obama's sin was uttering the word, "bitter." America's underclass is pissed off, but it in an anger that alienated and isolates. They believe their situation is unique. For a political candidate to acknowlege their anger might cause the scales to fall from their eyes and see that theirs is a shared anger. This could well give rise to a destabilizing solidarity.
HillBill knows better than to touch reality. She will stick to her fairytale vision of villages raising children. She has no choice, since it was her clone, BillHill who set small-town decay in motion when he weaseled NAFTA around Congress by making it an agreement instead of a Treaty, which would have required Senate ratification.
For any politician the truth is a cement boot that will plunge him to the bottom of the political swamp where he will never be seen again. Politics is all about fairytales and flag lapel pins because the media says it is.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Of Rats, Lice and Currency
Dear George,
Rats desert a sinking ship; lice flee a cooling corpse. It is no different with currency. As soon as it begins to sink, value heads for the nearest exit. There is, however, one significant difference. The rats occupied the ship, the lice were at home in the body, but value never inhered to our currency. This makes its fall all that easier. The truth is that our worthless fiat currency was one of the greatest scams ever to be foisted on the world.
It all started in another decade mired in another war. This time is was the 70s and Vietnam. For the first time in the twentieth century, the United States found itself saddled with a trade deficit.
Unfortunately, we were a signatory to the Bretton Woods Agreements which obligated us to keep our currency pegged to gold, i.e., every dollar represented real value. The problem was, we’d printed so much money just to keep up with the cost of losing the war in Vietnam, that we only had enough gold to cover twenty percent of the currency in issue.
Well, the solution to that problem was simplicity itself: Nixon simply unpegged the dollar from the value of gold. The liberated paper now represented whatever we could scam the world into thinking it was worth.
Without the albatross of gold hanging around its neck, the dollar soared. And as the dollar soared, the Dow Jones soared while assets bubbled.
One plus of a worthless currency is that it is much easier to go into debt. And go into debt we did. Between 1987 and 2005, public and private debt went from $10 trillion to $43 trillion. With all that debt, finance capitalism ruled.
Another advantage of a worthless currency is that is makes the economy look better than it actually is. Of course, this rosy picture is made rosier by the deftness with which our technicians cook the books. For example by excluding volatile commodities like food and fuel from the Consumer Price Index, you make inflation appear much lower than it really is.
There is but one danger in all this, and that is if some fool takes a look at the Dow and realizes it is being denominated in worthless dollars. Let’s say the Dow is sitting at 12,200. But, if we measured the Dow in Euros, it would drop to 7300.
Needless to say, that simply would not do.
Now you, Paulson and Bernanke are like tap dancers frantically tapping away in a burning theater, smiles frozen on your faces. Thank God reality is to you whatever you say it is. It deadens the pain.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Rats desert a sinking ship; lice flee a cooling corpse. It is no different with currency. As soon as it begins to sink, value heads for the nearest exit. There is, however, one significant difference. The rats occupied the ship, the lice were at home in the body, but value never inhered to our currency. This makes its fall all that easier. The truth is that our worthless fiat currency was one of the greatest scams ever to be foisted on the world.
It all started in another decade mired in another war. This time is was the 70s and Vietnam. For the first time in the twentieth century, the United States found itself saddled with a trade deficit.
Unfortunately, we were a signatory to the Bretton Woods Agreements which obligated us to keep our currency pegged to gold, i.e., every dollar represented real value. The problem was, we’d printed so much money just to keep up with the cost of losing the war in Vietnam, that we only had enough gold to cover twenty percent of the currency in issue.
Well, the solution to that problem was simplicity itself: Nixon simply unpegged the dollar from the value of gold. The liberated paper now represented whatever we could scam the world into thinking it was worth.
Without the albatross of gold hanging around its neck, the dollar soared. And as the dollar soared, the Dow Jones soared while assets bubbled.
One plus of a worthless currency is that it is much easier to go into debt. And go into debt we did. Between 1987 and 2005, public and private debt went from $10 trillion to $43 trillion. With all that debt, finance capitalism ruled.
Another advantage of a worthless currency is that is makes the economy look better than it actually is. Of course, this rosy picture is made rosier by the deftness with which our technicians cook the books. For example by excluding volatile commodities like food and fuel from the Consumer Price Index, you make inflation appear much lower than it really is.
There is but one danger in all this, and that is if some fool takes a look at the Dow and realizes it is being denominated in worthless dollars. Let’s say the Dow is sitting at 12,200. But, if we measured the Dow in Euros, it would drop to 7300.
Needless to say, that simply would not do.
Now you, Paulson and Bernanke are like tap dancers frantically tapping away in a burning theater, smiles frozen on your faces. Thank God reality is to you whatever you say it is. It deadens the pain.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Saturday, April 12, 2008
In praise of the free market as it culls the herd.
Dear George,
How sweet is the movement of a free market; how efficiently it restores balance. No matter how violent the forces assailing it, it is constantly tipping towards equilibrium and balance. In this respect, the market is simply a reflection of nature, which is also in a constant quest for balance.
We are in an exciting age, George, because we are entering an era in which the free market will face its greatest challenge. The earth is under siege. Homo sapiens are crawling over its face like vermin. The earth is dying as 6.6 billion people strip her resources in their struggle to survive. The result is a resource depletion that could impact negatively on all of humanity if steps are not taken to restore balance.
Now it is a fact that in 2007 enough calories were produced to feed the world with enough left over to feed a population of ten billion people. With those kinds of numbers, we could kiss goodbye to whatever oil remains.
Life is out of balance, and it is time to take some proactive action. In other words, it is time to let the free market address the problem, and I am happy to say that it is already doing just that.
To allow the world’s caloric output to reach all the peoples of the world would be to court disaster. So the market has dictated a more productive use for some of this output. (When spinning this, it is important to speak of “output” instead of “food.” Food humanizes the problem, which is a no-no.)
The market’s solution to this problem is biofuels and beef. By diverting massive amounts of grain to ethanol production and feedlot cattle, we are encouraging a structural adjustment that will bring the world’s population down to a manageable level.
The greatest strength of the free market is its ability to ignore reality. The reality of this structural adjustment will be the cry of a starving baby. Spin silences the baby's cry by repositioning its suffering as a “market correction.”
Feed the poor? What kind of commie crap is that? It is not a question of “people” but of “demographics.” Specifically, it is a question of which demographic is best suited for survival. And the short answer to that it is the demographic with the most weapons systems.
(Just between us girls, we know that comparing market equilibrium to nature’s equilibrium is bullshit. There is one veritable found in the market that is not found in nature—sustained greed. In nature, the wolf may experience a passing moment of greed as it devours its prey, but as soon as its greed is sated, it returns to its den for a nap. In the market, greed is never sated, which is why the market will never achieve equilibrium. Believe me, George, were we to teach wolves how to sell short, nature would spin out of control in no time.)
But, I digress…
The bottom line is that we may sleep well tonight knowing that all over the world demographics are slowly starving so we might drive our SUVs the nearest supermarket and by a nice, thick Porterhouse for dinner. The starving are martyrs who are sacrificing themselves we can live the good life.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
How sweet is the movement of a free market; how efficiently it restores balance. No matter how violent the forces assailing it, it is constantly tipping towards equilibrium and balance. In this respect, the market is simply a reflection of nature, which is also in a constant quest for balance.
We are in an exciting age, George, because we are entering an era in which the free market will face its greatest challenge. The earth is under siege. Homo sapiens are crawling over its face like vermin. The earth is dying as 6.6 billion people strip her resources in their struggle to survive. The result is a resource depletion that could impact negatively on all of humanity if steps are not taken to restore balance.
Now it is a fact that in 2007 enough calories were produced to feed the world with enough left over to feed a population of ten billion people. With those kinds of numbers, we could kiss goodbye to whatever oil remains.
Life is out of balance, and it is time to take some proactive action. In other words, it is time to let the free market address the problem, and I am happy to say that it is already doing just that.
To allow the world’s caloric output to reach all the peoples of the world would be to court disaster. So the market has dictated a more productive use for some of this output. (When spinning this, it is important to speak of “output” instead of “food.” Food humanizes the problem, which is a no-no.)
The market’s solution to this problem is biofuels and beef. By diverting massive amounts of grain to ethanol production and feedlot cattle, we are encouraging a structural adjustment that will bring the world’s population down to a manageable level.
The greatest strength of the free market is its ability to ignore reality. The reality of this structural adjustment will be the cry of a starving baby. Spin silences the baby's cry by repositioning its suffering as a “market correction.”
Feed the poor? What kind of commie crap is that? It is not a question of “people” but of “demographics.” Specifically, it is a question of which demographic is best suited for survival. And the short answer to that it is the demographic with the most weapons systems.
(Just between us girls, we know that comparing market equilibrium to nature’s equilibrium is bullshit. There is one veritable found in the market that is not found in nature—sustained greed. In nature, the wolf may experience a passing moment of greed as it devours its prey, but as soon as its greed is sated, it returns to its den for a nap. In the market, greed is never sated, which is why the market will never achieve equilibrium. Believe me, George, were we to teach wolves how to sell short, nature would spin out of control in no time.)
But, I digress…
The bottom line is that we may sleep well tonight knowing that all over the world demographics are slowly starving so we might drive our SUVs the nearest supermarket and by a nice, thick Porterhouse for dinner. The starving are martyrs who are sacrificing themselves we can live the good life.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Friday, April 11, 2008
Singing a Song of Banalized Evil
Dear George,
It is a droning voice, monotonous in its movement, a dulling cadence that moves neither too quickly nor too slowly as it casually drops labels and clichés, trying to pass jargon off as depth, concealing its dehumanizing thrust behind a shield of faux-positive delivery, passing off uncertainty as certainty, hinting at salvation in words that conceal the linguistic nihilism that is the dynamic that moves it, pumping itself up on a word stream of its own self importance, a smokescreen spinning itself out of the stale cobwebs of fantasy.
There you have it, George: stage directions for your Pentagon spokesmen.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
It is a droning voice, monotonous in its movement, a dulling cadence that moves neither too quickly nor too slowly as it casually drops labels and clichés, trying to pass jargon off as depth, concealing its dehumanizing thrust behind a shield of faux-positive delivery, passing off uncertainty as certainty, hinting at salvation in words that conceal the linguistic nihilism that is the dynamic that moves it, pumping itself up on a word stream of its own self importance, a smokescreen spinning itself out of the stale cobwebs of fantasy.
There you have it, George: stage directions for your Pentagon spokesmen.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Hot Teenage Virgins Find God
My absence since Monday was the result of a rogue BlogSpot algorithm that scans for blogs for potential spammers, I assume by targeting key words.
In a recent blog, I used the word “Viagra” and this is what caught the algorithm’s attention. Because of this, Google blocked my blog until it could confirm that a living human being was generating it.
They have determined I am human, and I am back.
However, what happens if I use another word, or set of words, that cause the algorithm to shut me down again.
I don’t self-censor, so I have loaded the title of this post with words that might set its lights ablinking.
Normally, if I am not going to post, I’ll leave a notice on my blog saying so. If you click on and I am missing for several days, you will be able to find Belacqua over at Word Press.
Regular posts will begin tomorrow morning, providing I haven’t been shut down again.
--cw
In a recent blog, I used the word “Viagra” and this is what caught the algorithm’s attention. Because of this, Google blocked my blog until it could confirm that a living human being was generating it.
They have determined I am human, and I am back.
However, what happens if I use another word, or set of words, that cause the algorithm to shut me down again.
I don’t self-censor, so I have loaded the title of this post with words that might set its lights ablinking.
Normally, if I am not going to post, I’ll leave a notice on my blog saying so. If you click on and I am missing for several days, you will be able to find Belacqua over at Word Press.
Regular posts will begin tomorrow morning, providing I haven’t been shut down again.
--cw
Monday, April 7, 2008
Protecting Big Pharma from its Victims
Dear George,
It really grinds my teeth on edge when your critics start carping about “crony” corporatism, because it is a buck-assed truth that cronyism plays no role in the corporatist world. What we have, instead, is a collegial corporatism, a far more civilized manifestation of capitalism. In its collegial form, corporatism restricts bare-knuckle competition to certain well-established parameters and puts its primary emphasis on a cooperative effort to shore up its power and influence by breaking down the firewall that has traditionally separated commerce and the state.
In the emergence of collegial corporatism we are seeing the emergence of a new Holy Roman Empire that promises the world the eternal peace that only resource wars and wars of conquest can bring. But instead of piety, this Holy Roman Empire pursues profits.
It was necessary to sketch in this background before getting to the meat of this letter, and that is the role of the courts as midwives to this new empire. An article in Sunday’s New York Times illustrated the importance of the courts in giving birth to our new Rome.[1]
Big Pharma, more than other industry, has for too long been the victim of frivolous lawsuits by individuals who suffered ill effects, such as death and permanent disability, from using its drugs. The plaintiffs, to a person, are individuals who lack the backbone to suffer death and injury with the stoic apathy that is the mark of the good citizen.
It seems that seven years ago, the FDA approved a Johnson & Johnson product, the Ortho Evra patch, that delivered a dose of estrogen to post-menopausal women. Even before FDA approval, company research showed that the patch delivered a pretty heavy dose of the hormone. It was one of those little oversights that can happen to anybody. In a humane act, Johnson & Johnson decided to withhold this information because it did not want to cause the patch’s users undue distress.
Consequently, a couple of heart attacks and strokes popped up, which resulted in a net body count of forty deaths.
As too often happens, 3,000 “victims” of the patch are suing Johnson & Johnson, forgetting that taking any drug involves an act of informed assumption of risk on the part of the user.
I’m happy to say, George, that if your cronies (sorry, I mean colleagues) on the Supreme Court do their duty, this could well be the last class action suit against a pharmaceutical we will ever see.
Your administration is vigorously backing up Johnson & Johnson’s claim that they have immunity from liability because the FDA approved the patch, even though the firm withheld information about the dangers posed by the high estrogen dosage. The legal doctrine is called pre-emption, and states that the FDA is the only agency with the expertise necessary to evaluate a drug, even if this evaluation is grounded on false or misleading data.
The beauty of it moves me. The FDA, like other agencies in your administration, if rift with cron---, whoops! colleagues whose sole function is to see to the care and feeding of Big Pharma. The most efficient way of doing this is to make FDA approval an automatic shield against liability suits, thus saving Big Pharma the millions it spends each year defending these frivolous suits.
If the court decides in favor of Johnson & Johnson, it will be an illustration of the law at its finest as a enabler of procedural larceny.
The old Holy Roman Empire use to burn heretics; the new one simply rules against them in court.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
[1] Harris, Gardiner & Berenson, Alex. “Drug Makers Near Old Goal: A Legal Shield.” The New York Times, Page One, Sunday, April 6,2008.
It really grinds my teeth on edge when your critics start carping about “crony” corporatism, because it is a buck-assed truth that cronyism plays no role in the corporatist world. What we have, instead, is a collegial corporatism, a far more civilized manifestation of capitalism. In its collegial form, corporatism restricts bare-knuckle competition to certain well-established parameters and puts its primary emphasis on a cooperative effort to shore up its power and influence by breaking down the firewall that has traditionally separated commerce and the state.
In the emergence of collegial corporatism we are seeing the emergence of a new Holy Roman Empire that promises the world the eternal peace that only resource wars and wars of conquest can bring. But instead of piety, this Holy Roman Empire pursues profits.
It was necessary to sketch in this background before getting to the meat of this letter, and that is the role of the courts as midwives to this new empire. An article in Sunday’s New York Times illustrated the importance of the courts in giving birth to our new Rome.[1]
Big Pharma, more than other industry, has for too long been the victim of frivolous lawsuits by individuals who suffered ill effects, such as death and permanent disability, from using its drugs. The plaintiffs, to a person, are individuals who lack the backbone to suffer death and injury with the stoic apathy that is the mark of the good citizen.
It seems that seven years ago, the FDA approved a Johnson & Johnson product, the Ortho Evra patch, that delivered a dose of estrogen to post-menopausal women. Even before FDA approval, company research showed that the patch delivered a pretty heavy dose of the hormone. It was one of those little oversights that can happen to anybody. In a humane act, Johnson & Johnson decided to withhold this information because it did not want to cause the patch’s users undue distress.
Consequently, a couple of heart attacks and strokes popped up, which resulted in a net body count of forty deaths.
As too often happens, 3,000 “victims” of the patch are suing Johnson & Johnson, forgetting that taking any drug involves an act of informed assumption of risk on the part of the user.
I’m happy to say, George, that if your cronies (sorry, I mean colleagues) on the Supreme Court do their duty, this could well be the last class action suit against a pharmaceutical we will ever see.
Your administration is vigorously backing up Johnson & Johnson’s claim that they have immunity from liability because the FDA approved the patch, even though the firm withheld information about the dangers posed by the high estrogen dosage. The legal doctrine is called pre-emption, and states that the FDA is the only agency with the expertise necessary to evaluate a drug, even if this evaluation is grounded on false or misleading data.
The beauty of it moves me. The FDA, like other agencies in your administration, if rift with cron---, whoops! colleagues whose sole function is to see to the care and feeding of Big Pharma. The most efficient way of doing this is to make FDA approval an automatic shield against liability suits, thus saving Big Pharma the millions it spends each year defending these frivolous suits.
If the court decides in favor of Johnson & Johnson, it will be an illustration of the law at its finest as a enabler of procedural larceny.
The old Holy Roman Empire use to burn heretics; the new one simply rules against them in court.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
[1] Harris, Gardiner & Berenson, Alex. “Drug Makers Near Old Goal: A Legal Shield.” The New York Times, Page One, Sunday, April 6,2008.
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Viagra and power. Perfect together.
Dear George,
Benito was such a sweetheart. It’s a pity they hung him out to dry, and from his ankles off all things! (That’s the problem with allowing the public to participate in the political process.) Anyhow, the guy sure nailed it when he said that the marriage of business and government is a thing of beauty.
We are seeing his dream come true as America’s continues her transition into a market-state. The market-state exists for one reason: to feed its power and its profits. It can only do so by sucking the blood out of those with blood left to suck. The blood of the innocent is its Eucharistic wine.
Effective leadership in the age of the market-state must, by definition, be a death wish because the demand for infinite growth in a finite state will in time, like a cancer cell, destroy the host organ, i.e., the market-state.
Death is best facilitated by an innocent aggression that is divorced from the consequences of its actions. This innocent aggression is commonly found in the arrested adolescent, a subspecies of Homo sapiens, the walks the privatized/public corridors of power. In the arrested adolescent you have an energetic dynamo, untainted by the weariness of morality.
They are able to facilitate death because they deny its reality, just as they deny the ravages of time on themselves. They seek the fountain of youth in their gyms and health spas, drinking their imported water as they rub oil and ointments into their faces to restore the fading glow of youth. Here you find the fifty-somethings who leave their wives of thirty years for their twenty-something secretaries, their Viagra tucked away in their briefcases, desperate to keep their vital fluids flowing through clogged and decaying channels.
A key element in their quest for eternal youth is their addiction to the adrenalin rush that only aggressive destruction can produce. Striking out at the weak is the drug that deadens all of their doubts and anxieties. Killing keeps the Grim Reaper away from their door and helps preserve their fragile belief in their own immortality.
The arrested adolescent runs from his mortality by causing others to die in his stead. This is why maturity is anathema to the market-state, because it is at peace with its own mortality. Death has lost its sting for the mature so they are able to turn their attention to pain-in-the-ass questions about the nature of good and evil.
It is a truism that it is always easier for the immature to lead than the mature because their childish lack of impulse control gives rise to the impetuousness that is often mistaken for decisiveness. The arrested adolescent relies on the bluster and bluff that will always trump the reasoned maturity that tends to speak quietly.
Maturity and wisdom have fallen victim to a youth-culture that favors the gut over the heart or the brain. Your legacy is that you have brought the Age of the Arrested Adolescent to the forefront of leadership.
What America needs is the exuberance of a decayed youth who care more about the thrill of the now than the consequences of a given act. This is why the infusion of corporatism into the halls of government is such a boon. There you find the burnt-out jocks who will order destruction for the youthful excitement it offers. To destroy with state sanction is the dream of every arrested adolescent. Open your arms to them, George. They are the future of America, and you are their role model.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Benito was such a sweetheart. It’s a pity they hung him out to dry, and from his ankles off all things! (That’s the problem with allowing the public to participate in the political process.) Anyhow, the guy sure nailed it when he said that the marriage of business and government is a thing of beauty.
We are seeing his dream come true as America’s continues her transition into a market-state. The market-state exists for one reason: to feed its power and its profits. It can only do so by sucking the blood out of those with blood left to suck. The blood of the innocent is its Eucharistic wine.
Effective leadership in the age of the market-state must, by definition, be a death wish because the demand for infinite growth in a finite state will in time, like a cancer cell, destroy the host organ, i.e., the market-state.
Death is best facilitated by an innocent aggression that is divorced from the consequences of its actions. This innocent aggression is commonly found in the arrested adolescent, a subspecies of Homo sapiens, the walks the privatized/public corridors of power. In the arrested adolescent you have an energetic dynamo, untainted by the weariness of morality.
They are able to facilitate death because they deny its reality, just as they deny the ravages of time on themselves. They seek the fountain of youth in their gyms and health spas, drinking their imported water as they rub oil and ointments into their faces to restore the fading glow of youth. Here you find the fifty-somethings who leave their wives of thirty years for their twenty-something secretaries, their Viagra tucked away in their briefcases, desperate to keep their vital fluids flowing through clogged and decaying channels.
A key element in their quest for eternal youth is their addiction to the adrenalin rush that only aggressive destruction can produce. Striking out at the weak is the drug that deadens all of their doubts and anxieties. Killing keeps the Grim Reaper away from their door and helps preserve their fragile belief in their own immortality.
The arrested adolescent runs from his mortality by causing others to die in his stead. This is why maturity is anathema to the market-state, because it is at peace with its own mortality. Death has lost its sting for the mature so they are able to turn their attention to pain-in-the-ass questions about the nature of good and evil.
It is a truism that it is always easier for the immature to lead than the mature because their childish lack of impulse control gives rise to the impetuousness that is often mistaken for decisiveness. The arrested adolescent relies on the bluster and bluff that will always trump the reasoned maturity that tends to speak quietly.
Maturity and wisdom have fallen victim to a youth-culture that favors the gut over the heart or the brain. Your legacy is that you have brought the Age of the Arrested Adolescent to the forefront of leadership.
What America needs is the exuberance of a decayed youth who care more about the thrill of the now than the consequences of a given act. This is why the infusion of corporatism into the halls of government is such a boon. There you find the burnt-out jocks who will order destruction for the youthful excitement it offers. To destroy with state sanction is the dream of every arrested adolescent. Open your arms to them, George. They are the future of America, and you are their role model.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Saturday, April 5, 2008
A Terminal Solution to America's Healthcare Crisis
Dear George,
The trouble with presidential elections is that they roil the waters. Every four years the public throws a hissy-fit over whatever is plaguing them in the deluded belief that whomever they elect will put things right. They’ve yet to realize that elections are nonevents whose sole function is to give the illusion of a healthy democracy in action.
This time around, the big issue is healthcare; an issue that brings out the worst in the public’s misguided sense of entitlement.
It is a dead albatross hanging from our country’s neck. We are caught in a vicious cycle. As medical costs continue to spiral upward people become more and more frantic about the uninsured while liberals keep coming up with budget-busting plans to provide coverage for every deadbeat in the country.
It is time for you to take bold measures that will solve the problem once and for all with a compassionate and comprehensive plan that will relegate all of the concerns over healthcare and coverage to history’s dustbin.
The reason healthcare is such a so expensive is that people are simply living to goddamn long. The longer they live, the sicker they get, the sicker they get, and the more of a drain on the economy they become. Early diagnosis only exacerbates the problem.
Now is when you, as president, must take a step back, look at the big picture and decide what is best for America.
The truth is, George, there is only one way we can bring healthcare costs down. We must reposition death. Do a cost-benefit analysis and you will see what I am talking about. The per unit cost of a death is much lower than the per unit cost of prolonged healthcare for a chronic condition brought on by excess longevity.
Your message to America must be that the most patriotic thing an citizen can do is die. This is where a massive reeducation program comes in. Drive home the point that no matter what the level of medical care is available, we all die anyway. Why not avoid the pain and expenses involved in medical treatment and simply drift off to never-never land.
Would not the cancer patient live a fuller life if the diagnosis of his disease were delayed until its terminal stage? Think of the years of traumatic chemotherapy he’d be spared. How more joyful would the life of the heart patient if it could be lived without the trauma of open-heart surgery?
By putting a positive spin on death, we would free up precious dollars that could be used for the important job of expanding America’s interests overseas, thus honoring those who die young brave soldiers in the crusade to bring to fruition the American century.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
The trouble with presidential elections is that they roil the waters. Every four years the public throws a hissy-fit over whatever is plaguing them in the deluded belief that whomever they elect will put things right. They’ve yet to realize that elections are nonevents whose sole function is to give the illusion of a healthy democracy in action.
This time around, the big issue is healthcare; an issue that brings out the worst in the public’s misguided sense of entitlement.
It is a dead albatross hanging from our country’s neck. We are caught in a vicious cycle. As medical costs continue to spiral upward people become more and more frantic about the uninsured while liberals keep coming up with budget-busting plans to provide coverage for every deadbeat in the country.
It is time for you to take bold measures that will solve the problem once and for all with a compassionate and comprehensive plan that will relegate all of the concerns over healthcare and coverage to history’s dustbin.
The reason healthcare is such a so expensive is that people are simply living to goddamn long. The longer they live, the sicker they get, the sicker they get, and the more of a drain on the economy they become. Early diagnosis only exacerbates the problem.
Now is when you, as president, must take a step back, look at the big picture and decide what is best for America.
The truth is, George, there is only one way we can bring healthcare costs down. We must reposition death. Do a cost-benefit analysis and you will see what I am talking about. The per unit cost of a death is much lower than the per unit cost of prolonged healthcare for a chronic condition brought on by excess longevity.
Your message to America must be that the most patriotic thing an citizen can do is die. This is where a massive reeducation program comes in. Drive home the point that no matter what the level of medical care is available, we all die anyway. Why not avoid the pain and expenses involved in medical treatment and simply drift off to never-never land.
Would not the cancer patient live a fuller life if the diagnosis of his disease were delayed until its terminal stage? Think of the years of traumatic chemotherapy he’d be spared. How more joyful would the life of the heart patient if it could be lived without the trauma of open-heart surgery?
By putting a positive spin on death, we would free up precious dollars that could be used for the important job of expanding America’s interests overseas, thus honoring those who die young brave soldiers in the crusade to bring to fruition the American century.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Friday, April 4, 2008
Dying so we may live forever.
Dear George,
My, how it all seems to be falling apart: Iraq and Afghanistan are military disasters, Latin America is slipping away from us, our obsession with military hardware is slowly bankrupting us, and our financial corporatists have brought us to the brink of economic ruin.
In short, we are a dying empire, and like any wounded animal, the weaker we become the more dangerous we are. (Do you hear that, Iran?)
There are those who bemoan this, who thrash about in a desperate attempt to cling to our position as hegemon of the world. Then there are the moralizing leftists who see our decline as payback for our hubris and look forward to a time when we will be a humbler and better nation for the experience.
Neither position is correct because neither understands the true nature of empire building.
Empire building is an act of martyrdom. It is the personification of nobility as a nation sacrifices itself in order to reshape the world and leave it in worse shape than it found it.
The nation that would build an empire must be as morally bankrupt as they are economically bankrupt. It is a suicidal act of self-sacrifice in which a nation destroys itself so history will long remember its negative impact on the world. Empires are built through ruination, be it physical, economic, or social. The trick is to break an egg without making an omelet. The nation that builds empires sacrifices everything: its values, its prosperity, its freedom and its future.
Quests for power are, in the end, all suicidal. By the time a nation or an individual achieve it, nothing is left of them but a paranoid empty shell that cares nothing for growth, but everything for hanging to the power it has accumulated. All power ends in the graveyard.
It takes a scam artist to build an empire. This is why you excel at it. My heart glowed with patriotic pride when you convinced NATO to back your Eastern European missile shield as protection against Iran’s nonexistent nuclear missiles. Every time you create another opportunity to drain our treasury for some wild pipedream, you bring us one step closer to fulfilling empire’s destiny—destruction.
There is but one historical phenomenon that holds the world’s attention, and that is the marble ruins of an empire that once was.
The Roman writer Tacitus described empire when he wrote, “A rich enemy excites their cupidity; a poor one their lust for power. East and West alike have failed to satisfy them….To robbery, butchery, and rapine, they give the lying name of ‘government’; they create a desolation and call it peace.”
Surely, Tacitus was your Isaiah.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
My, how it all seems to be falling apart: Iraq and Afghanistan are military disasters, Latin America is slipping away from us, our obsession with military hardware is slowly bankrupting us, and our financial corporatists have brought us to the brink of economic ruin.
In short, we are a dying empire, and like any wounded animal, the weaker we become the more dangerous we are. (Do you hear that, Iran?)
There are those who bemoan this, who thrash about in a desperate attempt to cling to our position as hegemon of the world. Then there are the moralizing leftists who see our decline as payback for our hubris and look forward to a time when we will be a humbler and better nation for the experience.
Neither position is correct because neither understands the true nature of empire building.
Empire building is an act of martyrdom. It is the personification of nobility as a nation sacrifices itself in order to reshape the world and leave it in worse shape than it found it.
The nation that would build an empire must be as morally bankrupt as they are economically bankrupt. It is a suicidal act of self-sacrifice in which a nation destroys itself so history will long remember its negative impact on the world. Empires are built through ruination, be it physical, economic, or social. The trick is to break an egg without making an omelet. The nation that builds empires sacrifices everything: its values, its prosperity, its freedom and its future.
Quests for power are, in the end, all suicidal. By the time a nation or an individual achieve it, nothing is left of them but a paranoid empty shell that cares nothing for growth, but everything for hanging to the power it has accumulated. All power ends in the graveyard.
It takes a scam artist to build an empire. This is why you excel at it. My heart glowed with patriotic pride when you convinced NATO to back your Eastern European missile shield as protection against Iran’s nonexistent nuclear missiles. Every time you create another opportunity to drain our treasury for some wild pipedream, you bring us one step closer to fulfilling empire’s destiny—destruction.
There is but one historical phenomenon that holds the world’s attention, and that is the marble ruins of an empire that once was.
The Roman writer Tacitus described empire when he wrote, “A rich enemy excites their cupidity; a poor one their lust for power. East and West alike have failed to satisfy them….To robbery, butchery, and rapine, they give the lying name of ‘government’; they create a desolation and call it peace.”
Surely, Tacitus was your Isaiah.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Pumping Jesus full of theological steroids.
Dear George,
I know you talk to God a lot, and that’s great, because as soon as the powerful enter into dialog with God, they shit into the nearest fan. The reason is quite simple. Ego drives the leader. Without it, he’d be just another drone. So when a leader starts talking to God, he does so with his ego and not his soul. As a result, the God he talks to morphs into the basest elements of his ego and the blood begins to flow.
Talking to God raises a problem I’ve touched on before—his son. The kid can be a real pain in the ass. During his time on earth he left a ticking time bomb that could easily blow up and put an end to your religious crusade just as it’s starting to pick up a head of steam. I’m talking about his Sermon on the Mount.
The religious right has been heroic in its efforts to reduce Jesus to a logo, a sort of virtual “godfather” with whom the powerful have a “relation” which is little more than an entry portal to the kick-ass Jehovah of the Old Testament. But, no matter how heroic their efforts are, that goddamn Sermon is still sitting there with the potential to really screw things up. Should it ever surface, peace and justice would spread over the earth like the bubonic plague, things would spin out of control and you could kiss your potential control of the world’s oil supply goodbye.
George, we’ve got to reposition Jesus, beef him up, and shoot him full of theological steroids. And I’ve got just the baby to do that.
In the ninth century, Charlemagne rammed Christianity down the throats of the Saxons of Northern Europe. This pissed the Saxons off and presented the church with a problem. The Saxons were a warrior tribe whose idea of a good time was cleaving someone from crown to crotch with a broad sword. It was obvious they weren’t going to take to a long-haired, peace-spouting hippy type who suffered the little children unto to him. Such a figure wouldn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell with those bad asses.
So the missionaries did the only sensible thing they could, they rewrote the Gospels. The called it the Heliand, which in Saxon means “Savior”.[1] In this revised version, they transformed Jesus from a mealy-mouthed Prince of Peace into the warrior-chieftain of mankind. He was born in the Hill-Fort Bethlehem and grew up in the Hill-Fort Nazareth.
Taking this volume and employing some creative quoting out of context, we are able to recast the Sermon on the Mount. Here are just a few examples:
Doesn’t this just have Iraq written all over it? In effect it says that the more you roil the waters and drive the opposition into a homicidal rage, the more you will be blessed.
But, it gets even better:
There is it George, The Theology of Empire! Christ has promulgated the Doctrine of Coercive Peace. He’s telling the “nobly-born” (Note, he ain’t talking to the poor and the oppressed as some so-called Christians would have us believe) to bring peace to the world whether it wants it or not.
With this doctrine, it would be no problem for your spinmeisters to convince the public what Jesus really meant when he said turn the other cheek was turn the other’s cheek with a fist full of knuckles.
Do you see what we have here? A macho Jesus who is gutting infidel terrorists with impunity. With this Christ in your back pocket you could lock up every drop of oil in the world, and you would have the theological moxie to totally discredit the very concept of peace.
Change the iconography; lose the white robe and give him a set of God-fearing desert fatigues. In place of a shepherd’s crook, give him an M16. And instead of riding into Jerusalem on an ass, have him enter standing in the back of a Humvee. He’d look great with a green beret cocked over his shaven skull.
God’s embedded with us, Big Guy, rolling across the desert in his Bradley fighting vehicle, blowing the heathen away as He brings His light to the oil rigs of the world. And you're right behind him, sucking up all the dust!
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
[1] Murphy, G. Ronald, translator. The Hileand: The Saxon Gospel. USA: Oxford University Press.
I know you talk to God a lot, and that’s great, because as soon as the powerful enter into dialog with God, they shit into the nearest fan. The reason is quite simple. Ego drives the leader. Without it, he’d be just another drone. So when a leader starts talking to God, he does so with his ego and not his soul. As a result, the God he talks to morphs into the basest elements of his ego and the blood begins to flow.
Talking to God raises a problem I’ve touched on before—his son. The kid can be a real pain in the ass. During his time on earth he left a ticking time bomb that could easily blow up and put an end to your religious crusade just as it’s starting to pick up a head of steam. I’m talking about his Sermon on the Mount.
The religious right has been heroic in its efforts to reduce Jesus to a logo, a sort of virtual “godfather” with whom the powerful have a “relation” which is little more than an entry portal to the kick-ass Jehovah of the Old Testament. But, no matter how heroic their efforts are, that goddamn Sermon is still sitting there with the potential to really screw things up. Should it ever surface, peace and justice would spread over the earth like the bubonic plague, things would spin out of control and you could kiss your potential control of the world’s oil supply goodbye.
George, we’ve got to reposition Jesus, beef him up, and shoot him full of theological steroids. And I’ve got just the baby to do that.
In the ninth century, Charlemagne rammed Christianity down the throats of the Saxons of Northern Europe. This pissed the Saxons off and presented the church with a problem. The Saxons were a warrior tribe whose idea of a good time was cleaving someone from crown to crotch with a broad sword. It was obvious they weren’t going to take to a long-haired, peace-spouting hippy type who suffered the little children unto to him. Such a figure wouldn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell with those bad asses.
So the missionaries did the only sensible thing they could, they rewrote the Gospels. The called it the Heliand, which in Saxon means “Savior”.[1] In this revised version, they transformed Jesus from a mealy-mouthed Prince of Peace into the warrior-chieftain of mankind. He was born in the Hill-Fort Bethlehem and grew up in the Hill-Fort Nazareth.
Taking this volume and employing some creative quoting out of context, we are able to recast the Sermon on the Mount. Here are just a few examples:
He said that fortunate too are the fighting men who wanted justice, and because of that suffer…men’s hatred and verbal abuse. To them is granted God’s meadow and spiritual life for eternal days—thus the end will never come to their
beatific happiness.
Doesn’t this just have Iraq written all over it? In effect it says that the more you roil the waters and drive the opposition into a homicidal rage, the more you will be blessed.
But, it gets even better:
They listened to the Chieftain of the People giving law unto the
nobly-born. He promised them the heaven-kingdom and said to the heroes, “I can tell you also, My companions, in truthful words, that from now on you will be, for the human race, this world’s light, shining peacefully among men, over many peoples, bright and beautiful.
There is it George, The Theology of Empire! Christ has promulgated the Doctrine of Coercive Peace. He’s telling the “nobly-born” (Note, he ain’t talking to the poor and the oppressed as some so-called Christians would have us believe) to bring peace to the world whether it wants it or not.
With this doctrine, it would be no problem for your spinmeisters to convince the public what Jesus really meant when he said turn the other cheek was turn the other’s cheek with a fist full of knuckles.
Do you see what we have here? A macho Jesus who is gutting infidel terrorists with impunity. With this Christ in your back pocket you could lock up every drop of oil in the world, and you would have the theological moxie to totally discredit the very concept of peace.
Change the iconography; lose the white robe and give him a set of God-fearing desert fatigues. In place of a shepherd’s crook, give him an M16. And instead of riding into Jerusalem on an ass, have him enter standing in the back of a Humvee. He’d look great with a green beret cocked over his shaven skull.
God’s embedded with us, Big Guy, rolling across the desert in his Bradley fighting vehicle, blowing the heathen away as He brings His light to the oil rigs of the world. And you're right behind him, sucking up all the dust!
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
[1] Murphy, G. Ronald, translator. The Hileand: The Saxon Gospel. USA: Oxford University Press.
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Random crystalline thoughts from a crystal-pocked brain
Dear George,
I am in a phase when my meth-addled moon brain has cut lose its synapses and allowed them to float randomly in the cosmos as unrelated and disparate thoughts pop to the surface like methane bubbles from the pool of sludge that cover the R-complex of my brain.
Thus, do I commence…
The religions that evolved from the God of Abraham are called monotheistic. This is a misnomer. Each and every one of them is polytheistic. This is what makes them such powerful forces for evil. Many Gods populate the various scriptures from which these religions draw their inspiration. Some of these Gods are troublesome, some are quite productive. The troublesome Gods eschew political power and employ prophets who stand outside the city walls and demand decency and compassion from the pimps of Babylon within. Fortunately, they are easily marginalized as half-crazed do-gooders who have little or no influence on the fully-crazed kings within the walls. Once a religion discovers power, it heads straight for the God of Leviticus whose idea of a Sabbath service is a rousing stoning of sinners.
…a diversion…
There are some positive aspects to stoning that are frequently overlooks. Properly handled, a public stoning can be an impressive revenue stream. Imagine booking Yankee Stadium for the stoning. It would be a sellout. Bring in pay-for-view and you’d be looking at big bucks. Further revenue could be generated by selling space on each stone for a corporate logo and panning in on the logo just before the stone was cast. But the really big money would be in selling the right to cast the first stone. What politician wouldn’t pay a fortune for this privilege?
…and on to something completely different.
Pundits keep wondering why the under classes in America are always voting against their interests. All sort of reasons have been floated such as culture wars, clever propaganda, and effective fear mongering. All of these do indeed play a part. But there is a metanarrative at work here. The greatest propaganda coup executed by your administration has been to convince the public that Russian roulette is as safe as it is healthy. Its safety is confirmed every time a player pulls the trigger and the hammer clicks on an empty chamber. The occasional player who pulls the trigger and blows his brains out is a statistical anomaly, and a good example of market forces at work. Such victims in no way distract from the overall safety of the game and should not be used as an excuse for increased regulation of the activity. Both our prosperity and our security depend upon free men engaging in free games of Russian roulette.*
,,,next i…
Weepywackos are always bemoaning the exploitation of the Southern Hemisphere by the Northern. They have it all wrong. The North isn’t exploiting the South, it is civilizing it. It is a noble mission we are engaged in, one in which we are modeling for the South the Northern virtues of greed and exploitation. It is a grand exercise in reconciliation in which the South will be lifted from nature's muck and scrubbed clean of all that is organic and real.
Fastidiousness is the midwife of oppression.
There you have it, George, the effluvia of a brain that has looked into the septic tank and seen the future. The rank odor that remains as my thoughts drift back to the security of the tank are markers of their vision, a vision you share that is leading the world down into the pit of fiery redemption.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
*This is a rift on some thoughts by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his insightful book, Fooled by Randomness. --cw
I am in a phase when my meth-addled moon brain has cut lose its synapses and allowed them to float randomly in the cosmos as unrelated and disparate thoughts pop to the surface like methane bubbles from the pool of sludge that cover the R-complex of my brain.
Thus, do I commence…
The religions that evolved from the God of Abraham are called monotheistic. This is a misnomer. Each and every one of them is polytheistic. This is what makes them such powerful forces for evil. Many Gods populate the various scriptures from which these religions draw their inspiration. Some of these Gods are troublesome, some are quite productive. The troublesome Gods eschew political power and employ prophets who stand outside the city walls and demand decency and compassion from the pimps of Babylon within. Fortunately, they are easily marginalized as half-crazed do-gooders who have little or no influence on the fully-crazed kings within the walls. Once a religion discovers power, it heads straight for the God of Leviticus whose idea of a Sabbath service is a rousing stoning of sinners.
…a diversion…
There are some positive aspects to stoning that are frequently overlooks. Properly handled, a public stoning can be an impressive revenue stream. Imagine booking Yankee Stadium for the stoning. It would be a sellout. Bring in pay-for-view and you’d be looking at big bucks. Further revenue could be generated by selling space on each stone for a corporate logo and panning in on the logo just before the stone was cast. But the really big money would be in selling the right to cast the first stone. What politician wouldn’t pay a fortune for this privilege?
…and on to something completely different.
Pundits keep wondering why the under classes in America are always voting against their interests. All sort of reasons have been floated such as culture wars, clever propaganda, and effective fear mongering. All of these do indeed play a part. But there is a metanarrative at work here. The greatest propaganda coup executed by your administration has been to convince the public that Russian roulette is as safe as it is healthy. Its safety is confirmed every time a player pulls the trigger and the hammer clicks on an empty chamber. The occasional player who pulls the trigger and blows his brains out is a statistical anomaly, and a good example of market forces at work. Such victims in no way distract from the overall safety of the game and should not be used as an excuse for increased regulation of the activity. Both our prosperity and our security depend upon free men engaging in free games of Russian roulette.*
,,,next i…
Weepywackos are always bemoaning the exploitation of the Southern Hemisphere by the Northern. They have it all wrong. The North isn’t exploiting the South, it is civilizing it. It is a noble mission we are engaged in, one in which we are modeling for the South the Northern virtues of greed and exploitation. It is a grand exercise in reconciliation in which the South will be lifted from nature's muck and scrubbed clean of all that is organic and real.
Fastidiousness is the midwife of oppression.
There you have it, George, the effluvia of a brain that has looked into the septic tank and seen the future. The rank odor that remains as my thoughts drift back to the security of the tank are markers of their vision, a vision you share that is leading the world down into the pit of fiery redemption.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
*This is a rift on some thoughts by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his insightful book, Fooled by Randomness. --cw
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Keeping the Dollar Afloat on a Sea of Death and Violence
Dear George,
When cries of the dollar’s demise echo through the land, many experts dismiss them by referencing the story of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf”. Nobody seems to remember that the goddamn wolf eventually showed up and blindsided the villagers.
It is true that American Imperial Corporatism is suffering from a slow process of internalized dry rot. We’ve danced our many dances, but now the servants are snuffing out the candles and the ballroom is slowly darkening. Both oil and the dollar are drying up.
The big concern in a situation such as this is crowd control.
It is here that we have several plusses working for us. We have a public that has internalized a key delusion that has made our prosperity possible, for they are convinced that all change represents progress and that all progress in represents advancement regardless of its consequences. This is given an additional dynamic by the deftness with which our corporatists have repositioned larceny as progress. Couple this with a belief that all progress is deterministic and you have a perfect formula for legalized pillage.
The unemployed factory worker, trying to keep food on his table by working as a Wal-Mart greeter, believes in his heart of hearts that his suffering was ordained by God so His City on the Hill might prosper and grow.
Progress’ siren call even seduces our movers and shakers. In their eyes they believe the piling debt upon debt and leveraging their asses to the hilt is progress in that the more debt they accrue the stronger they are, and that being able to keep their indebtedness off their books through complex financial instruments makes them even stronger.
Then there is one plus that guarantees the dollar will remain the world’s reserve currency no matter how worthless it is. As one writer explains it, “But economist Tim Congdon doesn’t think the dollar will significantly diminish in importance as, crucially, the US is still the leading exporter of military technology. As these sell in dollars, it makes sense for nations such as Taiwan to peg their currency to the greenback, or risk paying through the nose for the military hardware with a potentially fragile currency.”[1]
There’s our salvation, George. We gotta support the dollar by building more weapons systems that do their part in drying up the world’s oil supply in wars over oil so they can be used to fight more wars for more oil, which will require even more weapon systems to replace the trashed systems so they can fight more unnecessary wars and consume even more oil so they can spend more dollars, thus keeping our funny money strong for all of eternity or until the whole system collapses, whichever comes first. Nothing stimulates conflict like the need to sell weapons.
It is genius such as this that keeps humanity at the top of the food chain.
So, tell the Big Dick to firm up his plans for the Iran Enterprise. Death and violence are the steroids that keep the dollar bulked up.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
[1] The Guardian. Richard Wachman, “Dollar chilled by rise of euro.” March 30, at http://www.guardian.co.uk/.
When cries of the dollar’s demise echo through the land, many experts dismiss them by referencing the story of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf”. Nobody seems to remember that the goddamn wolf eventually showed up and blindsided the villagers.
It is true that American Imperial Corporatism is suffering from a slow process of internalized dry rot. We’ve danced our many dances, but now the servants are snuffing out the candles and the ballroom is slowly darkening. Both oil and the dollar are drying up.
The big concern in a situation such as this is crowd control.
It is here that we have several plusses working for us. We have a public that has internalized a key delusion that has made our prosperity possible, for they are convinced that all change represents progress and that all progress in represents advancement regardless of its consequences. This is given an additional dynamic by the deftness with which our corporatists have repositioned larceny as progress. Couple this with a belief that all progress is deterministic and you have a perfect formula for legalized pillage.
The unemployed factory worker, trying to keep food on his table by working as a Wal-Mart greeter, believes in his heart of hearts that his suffering was ordained by God so His City on the Hill might prosper and grow.
Progress’ siren call even seduces our movers and shakers. In their eyes they believe the piling debt upon debt and leveraging their asses to the hilt is progress in that the more debt they accrue the stronger they are, and that being able to keep their indebtedness off their books through complex financial instruments makes them even stronger.
Then there is one plus that guarantees the dollar will remain the world’s reserve currency no matter how worthless it is. As one writer explains it, “But economist Tim Congdon doesn’t think the dollar will significantly diminish in importance as, crucially, the US is still the leading exporter of military technology. As these sell in dollars, it makes sense for nations such as Taiwan to peg their currency to the greenback, or risk paying through the nose for the military hardware with a potentially fragile currency.”[1]
There’s our salvation, George. We gotta support the dollar by building more weapons systems that do their part in drying up the world’s oil supply in wars over oil so they can be used to fight more wars for more oil, which will require even more weapon systems to replace the trashed systems so they can fight more unnecessary wars and consume even more oil so they can spend more dollars, thus keeping our funny money strong for all of eternity or until the whole system collapses, whichever comes first. Nothing stimulates conflict like the need to sell weapons.
It is genius such as this that keeps humanity at the top of the food chain.
So, tell the Big Dick to firm up his plans for the Iran Enterprise. Death and violence are the steroids that keep the dollar bulked up.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
[1] The Guardian. Richard Wachman, “Dollar chilled by rise of euro.” March 30, at http://www.guardian.co.uk/.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
