25 November 2020
Now that the transition, like an old Model-T, has finally sputtered to a start and people are beginning to assume there are enough committed honest electors to guarantee Biden will be voted in on December 14th, progressives are protesting loudly at the choices that the president-elect is making for his cabinet. Nobody in the new regime, or in the media that supports it, is listening to their cries of woe and accusations of betrayal.
Betrayal? What betrayal? It was quite clear about one-minute after Old Joe was shoe-horned into the role of challenger that if he managed to slip through the cracks in the Unmentionable One’s façade that it would be business as usual: Wall Street, War and Weasel Words about strengthening unions, bolstering green energy policies, saving the environment from exploitation by unscrupulous business interests. Reconstitution of anti-trust laws that would break up big tech firms and kill current monopolies are only the dreams of people living in Thatcher’s cloud cuckoo land.
You can’t say you didn’t know that increased budgets for the military will continue, weapons will be sold to authoritarian regimes that can (or can’t) afford to buy them, as long as they pledge due fealty to Uncle Sam’s Dollar Emporium. New Cold Wars will be pushed along so that the enemy from without can supplant the current enemy from within (people of color and progressive individuals). But don’t think that the enemy from within will slip out of focus. The state’s protection of private ownership of productive resources through the use of its police apparatus, both local and federal, can be ratcheted up at will, and if it is being seen to be done by reasonable people like Biden or Harris, nobody will lift a finger to help the beleaguered progressive forces demanding change, be they milquetoast socialists of the Bernie and AOC type or street activists like the Occupy Wall Street masses who have been dispersed but have not been forgotten, for you can be sure the law enforcement databases are going to follow those unfortunates throughout their lives.
POLONIUS: What do you read my Lord?
HAMLET: Words, words, words.
So many wonderful words pour out from enlightened minds with rational arguments – e.g. Chomsky. If followed, even partially, their ideas put into action would promise a better future for mankind. Pearls before swine? It’s more like diamonds dumped into the sewers to be mixed with all the shit emanating from the imbeciles who will, as usual, be speeding the world toward oblivion. The torrent of lies during the past four years has washed away truth as well, since no one seems to have an attention span long enough to pursue truth into the alley where it lurks or listen to it speak longer than it takes a TikTok clip to play. To the below-average thinkers who overwhelmingly populate our world, it’s only talk. Noisy meaningless talk. It’s not their fault they can’t figure it out. The system has been re-constructed so as to deny people the education they need in order to be able to figure out what is true and what is not. All in the service of capitalism.
The American capitalist has slavishly adhered to Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism and intensified it into a neo-liberalism that has turned hyper-capitalism into the over-arching goal of every wannabe billionaire on the planet. Anyone who dares speak a word in criticism of the scourge of capitalism is immediately thrown into the company of the twin demons Marx and Kropotkin, when in truth many of today’s hyper-capitalists are more like Max Stirner and the anarchist proponents of propaganda by deed because they never ever shy away from direct action when it is in the interests of capitalism – with which they identify intimately. Must that not be the reason we have so many wars and why our planet is eager to choke its human inhabitants to death as soon as possible?
Russian scientist, philosopher, writer, economist, activist and communo-anarchist
CC0 Public Domain
Yes, I express my dismay like a pessimist would. However, a pessimist is not someone who thinks the glass is half empty. It’s someone who realizes that when the water has been swallowed there will be no more water to drink. And our life-water is being swallowed, again, by those thirsty for power, thirsty for money, thirsty for domination. It’s nothing new of course. This scratching and kicking to reach the top of the greased pole has been underway for millennia. Hieronymus Bosch depicted the consequences of the 7 deadly sins so extremely well, and the torments awaiting those who over-indulge their lust – in the right-hand panel of his Garden of Earthly Delights.
What seems quite clear to me is that no matter how loudly the pious rich proclaim their adherence to Weber’s Protestant work ethic and to a religious faith, they cannot possibly believe in any kind of Christian deity or afterlife. Would a real Christian act like they do? Other religions – that I know less of – also have teachings that urge their followers to behave with humanity toward others. My only conclusion can be that we are dealing with a hard core group of non-believer narcissist sociopaths who are living in their own private version of 120 Days of Sodom and are loving every minute of it!
King Crimson sums up very nicely the cacophony of complaints and recriminations – mine included – that echo over our progressive and regressive media landscape these days: Elephant Talk.
ELEPHANT TALK
King Crimson
Talk, it’s only talk
Arguments, agreements
Advice, answers
Articulate announcements
It’s only talk
Talk, it’s only talk
Babble, burble, banter
Bicker, bicker, bicker
Brouhaha, balderdash, ballyhoo
It’s only talk
Back talk
Talk talk talk, it’s only talk
Comments, cliches, commentary, controversy
Chatter, chit-chat, chit-chat, chit-chat
Conversation, contradiction, criticism
It’s only talk
Cheap talk
Talk, talk, it’s only talk
Debates, discussions
These are words with a D this time
Dialog, duologue, diatribe
Dissention, declamation
Double talk, double talk
Talk, talk, it’s all talk
Too much talk
Small talk
Talk that trash
Expressions, editorials
Explanations, exclamations, exaggerations
It’s all talk
Elephant talk
Elephant talk
Elephant talk
Danny Antonelli 
