What do villages, kingdoms and nation-states all have in common? Every political unit in history has been tied to a patch of land. Land was a people and their culture. It was wealth and home; a place a nation-state could call its own.
However, America has changed all that! Over the last thirty years something wonderful has happened! America has broken the shackles of geography. She is no longer a country, but is now a black thunderhead of capital scudding across the face of the earth, leaving poverty and want in its wake.
The net result of this transformation is that the rights that once accrued to people now accrue to the dollar. American is no longer a land of people, but a mass of free-floating dollars. This new liberation now means that the dollar now has a constitutional right to influence Congress. Some old-fashioned types insist on calling this corruption. But, it isn’t! It’s civic participation.
This civic participation would gain the legitimacy it deserves if Congress would only tear a page from the NASCAR game book. Let the members of Congress sport jumpsuits emblazoned with the corporate logos of their sponsors.
It’s a win-win plan. The corporate logos would get free airtime every time a congressman appeared on Meet the Press. Congressmen would love it because they could sell prime jumpsuit space to the highest bidder. And the lobbyists would love it because they could tell at a glance who their friends were.
Finally, the public could no longer complain about money being passed under the table because Congress would literally wear its corruption on its sleeve. After all, if they can name stadiums after corporations, why can't they do the same with congressmen?
--Belacqua Jones
Friday, April 10, 2009
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
The "Devil" made them do it!
Hot Flash!
Bankers ain’t villains! That’s the word from Citi’s new chairman, Richard Parsons, and I couldn’t agree more.
Parsons knows the score: when you screw up, blame everyone.
He cleverly elides over the fact that banks, blinded by hubris and greed, provided the hot air that inflated the Great Twenty-First Century Housing Bubble that Popped and Splattered Everybody with Shit.
It is unfortunate that the unwashed public when confronted with stupidity mistakes it for evil.
“Besides the banks,” Parsons points out, “there was reduced regulatory oversight, loans to unqualified borrowers were encouraged and people took out mortgages or home-equity loans they couldn’t afford.”
The truth is the banks were victimized by a venal public who forced them to approve loans to unqualified borrowers and made them write mortgages and home-equity loans they couldn’t afford.
The banks pleaded with them not to take the money on which the banks would collect fat fees for passing these toxic loans on to the next sucker. But the ignorant fools wouldn’t listen and dragged the banks, kicking and screaming, into their vaults and stood over them while they counted out the money.
It was this same mob, brandishing pitchforks and torches, that forced the banks’ lobbyists to direct their congressional employees to deregulate the financial system.
Dick's right to plead the banks' innocence. The truth is the American public mugged them.
--Belacqua Jones
Bankers ain’t villains! That’s the word from Citi’s new chairman, Richard Parsons, and I couldn’t agree more.
Parsons knows the score: when you screw up, blame everyone.
He cleverly elides over the fact that banks, blinded by hubris and greed, provided the hot air that inflated the Great Twenty-First Century Housing Bubble that Popped and Splattered Everybody with Shit.
It is unfortunate that the unwashed public when confronted with stupidity mistakes it for evil.
“Besides the banks,” Parsons points out, “there was reduced regulatory oversight, loans to unqualified borrowers were encouraged and people took out mortgages or home-equity loans they couldn’t afford.”
The truth is the banks were victimized by a venal public who forced them to approve loans to unqualified borrowers and made them write mortgages and home-equity loans they couldn’t afford.
The banks pleaded with them not to take the money on which the banks would collect fat fees for passing these toxic loans on to the next sucker. But the ignorant fools wouldn’t listen and dragged the banks, kicking and screaming, into their vaults and stood over them while they counted out the money.
It was this same mob, brandishing pitchforks and torches, that forced the banks’ lobbyists to direct their congressional employees to deregulate the financial system.
Dick's right to plead the banks' innocence. The truth is the American public mugged them.
--Belacqua Jones
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
The Theology of Consumerism
I am what I own, and if I own nothing, I am nothing. Not wishing to be nothing, I strive to be something by owning something I can’t afford so I can be something.
It all comes down to things, be it the thing I own or the thing I am. Without things, there is only the silent void, empty and without meaning. It is the void I dread, which is why I must fill it up with lights, beeps and the soothing glow of stainless steel and plastic.
This is why I am a member of what writer Joe Bageant calls, “the cult of radical consumerism.”
Another reason I am a member is that I love destructive ironies. You see, it is my patriotic duty to buy because in a corporatist society, there are but two choices: either grow or die.
The irony is that all growth is a journey towards death. The faster the growth, the nearer we come to death. We are seeing this phenomenon at work as red ink pours from the open veins of our dying economy.
I also belong because I love servitude. There is a perverse peace in being so far in debt that I dare not raise my eyes to cast a disapproving glance at my betters. Better to keep my mouth shut and make my monthly minimum payments. Show me a man behind the wheel of a BMW, an iPod in his ear, and I will show you the most pliable of beings, a slave who thinks he’s a rebel.
The thrill of ownership in is the anticipation of possession. However, once possessed, the treasured item becomes another piece of junk gathering dust on a shelf or in a closet. Novelty stimulates; familiarity bores.
When I think about it, what I practice is not the “cult of radical consumerism” but the theology of consumerism. I am a consumptive mystic seeking unity with the toy. I am on a spiritual pilgrimage to find the ultimate toy into which I will merge in perfect union as the cosmos opens up to me.
So, I snort and buy, snort and buy, a mendicant shopper wandering the barren malls of America looking for the logo that will liberate.
--Belacqua Jones
It all comes down to things, be it the thing I own or the thing I am. Without things, there is only the silent void, empty and without meaning. It is the void I dread, which is why I must fill it up with lights, beeps and the soothing glow of stainless steel and plastic.
This is why I am a member of what writer Joe Bageant calls, “the cult of radical consumerism.”
Another reason I am a member is that I love destructive ironies. You see, it is my patriotic duty to buy because in a corporatist society, there are but two choices: either grow or die.
The irony is that all growth is a journey towards death. The faster the growth, the nearer we come to death. We are seeing this phenomenon at work as red ink pours from the open veins of our dying economy.
I also belong because I love servitude. There is a perverse peace in being so far in debt that I dare not raise my eyes to cast a disapproving glance at my betters. Better to keep my mouth shut and make my monthly minimum payments. Show me a man behind the wheel of a BMW, an iPod in his ear, and I will show you the most pliable of beings, a slave who thinks he’s a rebel.
The thrill of ownership in is the anticipation of possession. However, once possessed, the treasured item becomes another piece of junk gathering dust on a shelf or in a closet. Novelty stimulates; familiarity bores.
When I think about it, what I practice is not the “cult of radical consumerism” but the theology of consumerism. I am a consumptive mystic seeking unity with the toy. I am on a spiritual pilgrimage to find the ultimate toy into which I will merge in perfect union as the cosmos opens up to me.
So, I snort and buy, snort and buy, a mendicant shopper wandering the barren malls of America looking for the logo that will liberate.
--Belacqua Jones
Monday, April 6, 2009
The Beauty of Cancer
The cancer metaphor is in need of rehabilitation. It has been much abused in the past, usually by authoritarian regimes who equate its malignancy with dissent and subversion. In their minds, cancer is a disease to be excised through force and oppression.
Yet, when you stop and think about it, what is cancer if not a vehicle of untrammeled growth, and what is corporate prosperity if not a product of untrammeled growth? To the corporate state, cancer is a life force without which stagnation would set in. It is the most perfect union of parasite and host because the two become one as cancer evolves into the organ it has laid its healing hand upon.
Our plutocrats love bon mots of meaningless wit that help the masses to endure their misery. One of them is:
Change is inevitable; growth is optional.
Is that not the philosophy of a cancer cell?
The reason cancer kills is because the body refuses to adapt to a new situation. Were it to simply go with the flow and accept the accompanying pain, it would find its life much less stressful.
This is why humility is touted by organized religion. One attains a state of holiness by meekly accepting one’s station is life, even if that station includes rotting organs. We are born to die, so why sweat the petty details.
When you think about it, healthcare represents a potential threat to a well-ordered society. The person who demands physical health is the person who could demand economic health, as well. And since the corporate state can only prosper if it impoverishes its citizens, too great an emphasis on a healthy economy could well become counterproductive.
There was a time when good health was important because a healthy worker was a productive worker. This was true when we were still an industrial nation,. But now that manufacturing is being shipped overseas and the ranks of our unemployed continue to swell, the need for healthy proles is shrinking.
To the corporate state, cancer is life and life is a cancer. In the end, it’s all about growth.
--Belacqua Jones
Yet, when you stop and think about it, what is cancer if not a vehicle of untrammeled growth, and what is corporate prosperity if not a product of untrammeled growth? To the corporate state, cancer is a life force without which stagnation would set in. It is the most perfect union of parasite and host because the two become one as cancer evolves into the organ it has laid its healing hand upon.
Our plutocrats love bon mots of meaningless wit that help the masses to endure their misery. One of them is:
Change is inevitable; growth is optional.
Is that not the philosophy of a cancer cell?
The reason cancer kills is because the body refuses to adapt to a new situation. Were it to simply go with the flow and accept the accompanying pain, it would find its life much less stressful.
This is why humility is touted by organized religion. One attains a state of holiness by meekly accepting one’s station is life, even if that station includes rotting organs. We are born to die, so why sweat the petty details.
When you think about it, healthcare represents a potential threat to a well-ordered society. The person who demands physical health is the person who could demand economic health, as well. And since the corporate state can only prosper if it impoverishes its citizens, too great an emphasis on a healthy economy could well become counterproductive.
There was a time when good health was important because a healthy worker was a productive worker. This was true when we were still an industrial nation,. But now that manufacturing is being shipped overseas and the ranks of our unemployed continue to swell, the need for healthy proles is shrinking.
To the corporate state, cancer is life and life is a cancer. In the end, it’s all about growth.
--Belacqua Jones
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Lusting after Progress
So dazzled are our Masters of the Universe with the beeps and blinking lights of their manifold electronic toys that they do not even realize that the Bitch Goddess, Progress, is leading us into the grave. She’s a clamorous whore who demands that life and nature be offered up as burnt offerings on the gurney that is her altar.
They are always striving out for the New Frontier just beyond the horizon, for the dawn that never breaks, for the Age of Aquarius that is still born.
They equate progress with change, any change, even if it’s decay and decline. They worship her even if it makes life more wretched in the belief that the putrescence that engulfs them is a product of Divine Providence.
They are comforted by their belief that progress is a straight line ascending upward towards a heavenly golden age when, in fact, progress is a Bell Curve, complete with ascent, apogee and descent. The sad truth is that as “progress” advances, there is a diminishing return in the change each step “forward” effects on our lives.
· The railroad affected a profound change by jump starting the Industrial Revolution with all of its attendant misery. Products could be transported cheaply so factories could be built anywhere. Before the advent of rail transport, they had to be built next to waterways because that was the cheapest means of transportation available.
· The automobile affected another radical change because towns could spread outwards from the rail lines and urban sprawl became possible.
· Telegraphs and telephones made instant communication possible and reflective thought unnecessary.
· Television destroyed community and family as society fragmented into multiple screens.
Alas, since then, the changes affected by new technologies have been superficial, at best. Everyone touts the computer as the instrument that brought us the Information Age. They told us more information would bring increased prosperity by giving managers more detailed idata to work with. Unfortunately, nobody had anything new to say, so this “information” was little more than a raging torrent of trivia. And, judging from our economic meltdown, the information the computer fed to management sucked.
Optimism is their religion. Like Little Orphan Annie they burst into song at the drop of a hat, their lyrics proclaiming that tomorrow will be a better day, that tomorrow the sun will shine, that tomorrow will clear away the cobwebs and sorrows.
Little do they know that Miss Hannigan has changed the locks on the orphanage.
--Belacqua Jones
They are always striving out for the New Frontier just beyond the horizon, for the dawn that never breaks, for the Age of Aquarius that is still born.
They equate progress with change, any change, even if it’s decay and decline. They worship her even if it makes life more wretched in the belief that the putrescence that engulfs them is a product of Divine Providence.
They are comforted by their belief that progress is a straight line ascending upward towards a heavenly golden age when, in fact, progress is a Bell Curve, complete with ascent, apogee and descent. The sad truth is that as “progress” advances, there is a diminishing return in the change each step “forward” effects on our lives.
· The railroad affected a profound change by jump starting the Industrial Revolution with all of its attendant misery. Products could be transported cheaply so factories could be built anywhere. Before the advent of rail transport, they had to be built next to waterways because that was the cheapest means of transportation available.
· The automobile affected another radical change because towns could spread outwards from the rail lines and urban sprawl became possible.
· Telegraphs and telephones made instant communication possible and reflective thought unnecessary.
· Television destroyed community and family as society fragmented into multiple screens.
Alas, since then, the changes affected by new technologies have been superficial, at best. Everyone touts the computer as the instrument that brought us the Information Age. They told us more information would bring increased prosperity by giving managers more detailed idata to work with. Unfortunately, nobody had anything new to say, so this “information” was little more than a raging torrent of trivia. And, judging from our economic meltdown, the information the computer fed to management sucked.
Optimism is their religion. Like Little Orphan Annie they burst into song at the drop of a hat, their lyrics proclaiming that tomorrow will be a better day, that tomorrow the sun will shine, that tomorrow will clear away the cobwebs and sorrows.
Little do they know that Miss Hannigan has changed the locks on the orphanage.
--Belacqua Jones
Friday, April 3, 2009
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Art qua Art qua Numbers
Art is the paradox that produces something from nothing, be it an empty canvas, a blank sheet of paper or a slab of marble. This is why it is incompatible with the corporate state, which produces nothing from something as in economic formulas grounded in fantasy or an unanchored fiat currency that leads to economic ruin.
Not that the corporate state is a Philistine. It is quite willing to fund either museum art sucked dry of its energy and dynamic or art so abstract and conceptual that it is devoid of meaning. Real art is marginalized to small presses, Off-off Broadway theaters and regional playhouses.
Real art deals in metaphor and the Masters of the Universe have no feel for it because they were raised with the following mantras:
· Say what you mean!
· Get to the point!
· Don’t beat around the bush!
One word; one meaning. No depth, no resonance and no metaphors. From this evolves the assumption that if it can’t be expressed by a number, it doesn’t exit. One number; one meaning. To them, that is the sum total of reality.
Thus it is that reality in the corporate state is defined by arcane mathematical formulae ground out by number crunchers operating under the delusion that they can impose a linear matrix on a complex collection of nonlinear paradoxes called reality.
According to Anatole Kaletsky, John Maynard Keynes referred to these individuals as “madmen in authority”. When reality is reduced to a series of formulae life withers. The beauty of numbers and formulae is their value-free amorality. They are exercises in a pure rationality cut free from the moral and ethical anchor that grounded it in ages past.
Such knee-jerk linear thinking is the product of an overly intellectualized ego that knows nothing of wisdom. This is why organized religion is so important to the corporate state. Religion’s sole function is to erect a firewall between God and the soul. Behind this firewall, the soul withers and the ego steps into fill the vacuum.
But, when God breaks through, the ego begins to crack and weaken. As it loses ground to the soul, the unfortunate one spends sleepless nights tormented by the Greek Furies of memory who tear at him with memories of the pain inflicted by his ego. From this agony comes redemption, and you can’t run corporate state with that nonsense.
The key to success is quantity, not quality. Don’t think; count!
Look at all this has done for us.
--Belacqua Jones
Not that the corporate state is a Philistine. It is quite willing to fund either museum art sucked dry of its energy and dynamic or art so abstract and conceptual that it is devoid of meaning. Real art is marginalized to small presses, Off-off Broadway theaters and regional playhouses.
Real art deals in metaphor and the Masters of the Universe have no feel for it because they were raised with the following mantras:
· Say what you mean!
· Get to the point!
· Don’t beat around the bush!
One word; one meaning. No depth, no resonance and no metaphors. From this evolves the assumption that if it can’t be expressed by a number, it doesn’t exit. One number; one meaning. To them, that is the sum total of reality.
Thus it is that reality in the corporate state is defined by arcane mathematical formulae ground out by number crunchers operating under the delusion that they can impose a linear matrix on a complex collection of nonlinear paradoxes called reality.
According to Anatole Kaletsky, John Maynard Keynes referred to these individuals as “madmen in authority”. When reality is reduced to a series of formulae life withers. The beauty of numbers and formulae is their value-free amorality. They are exercises in a pure rationality cut free from the moral and ethical anchor that grounded it in ages past.
Such knee-jerk linear thinking is the product of an overly intellectualized ego that knows nothing of wisdom. This is why organized religion is so important to the corporate state. Religion’s sole function is to erect a firewall between God and the soul. Behind this firewall, the soul withers and the ego steps into fill the vacuum.
But, when God breaks through, the ego begins to crack and weaken. As it loses ground to the soul, the unfortunate one spends sleepless nights tormented by the Greek Furies of memory who tear at him with memories of the pain inflicted by his ego. From this agony comes redemption, and you can’t run corporate state with that nonsense.
The key to success is quantity, not quality. Don’t think; count!
Look at all this has done for us.
--Belacqua Jones
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
