Profit
Of Doom
By Jason Miller
27 August, 2007
Countercurrents.org
“It is impossible
for capitalism to survive, primarily because the system of capitalism
needs some blood to suck. Capitalism used to be like an eagle, but now
it’s more like a vulture. It used to be strong enough to go and
suck anybody’s blood whether they were strong or not. But now
it has become more cowardly, like the vulture, and it can only suck
the blood of the helpless. As the nations of the world free themselves,
the capitalism has less victims, less to suck, and it becomes weaker
and weaker. It’s only a matter of time in my opinion before it
will collapse completely.”
–Malcolm X
Striving
with the unwavering dedication of true believers and slaves to the grind,
those of us who exist within the geographic, social, cultural, economic,
and political boundaries of the United States are collectively destroying
the Earth.
With dutiful efforts, heavily
sedated consciences, and sweet obliviousness to the depth of our depravity,
we toil away at our chosen or assigned tasks. After all, predatory plutocrats
like “Mitt” Romney would be impotent without his minions—the
hundreds of millions of wage slaves exercising their “right to
work” (for as small a wage as they desire) while obediently manning
the bulwarks of a system so putrid that were it possible to feed it
to a pig, our porcine friend would wretch his guts out.
Capitalism, as Malcolm X suggested, is in its twilight. Under this egregiously
malevolent and brutal system of economic organization, we have “evolved”
to a point where corruption is so pervasive, the divide between the
“haves” and the “have nots” is so vast, and
the imperial wars for resources are so frequent and destructive that
as it is imploding, capitalism may take most of us with it.
Despite the fact that he
mixed his metaphors a bit, Malcolm drew an astute conclusion. With the
United States as its nexus, the complex array of components and dynamics
known as capitalism sustains itself in much the same way as did Bram
Stoker’s Dracula and the vampires of Slavic folklore.
Like the bloodthirsty undead
of Transylvania, capitalism is essentially parasitic. Contrary to the
inane mythology that anyone who dreams, comes up with a novel idea,
follows Oprah “wisdom,” and works hard will eventually sport
a net worth north of seven figures, there is very little true upward
mobility in the United States. High regressive taxes, low progressive
taxes, de facto monopolies, nepotism, cronyism, bribery, a legal system
blind to economic crimes of the highest order, and a host of other factors
ensure that the rich stay rich and that those in the working class have
just enough to ensure their continued existence as hosts for their parasitic
masters.
Most capitalists -those who rest comfortably at the apex of humanity’s
pyramid of wealth and power AND reside in the penthouses of the Park
Avenues of the world–do not engage in the activity which is the
staple of existence for most of us. Capitalists do not work. They may
engage in taxing activities for long hours, but even then they are not
working as most of us understand the concept. Capitalists are not compelled
to expend their labor to provide for a family or to survive. They simply
administer their vast fiduciary empires. They have “fuck all of
you” money and have the choice of hiring armies of highly competent
individuals to manage their affairs. Don’t look for Richard Mellon
Scaife, John Franklyn Mars, Henry Kravis or the rest of their nauseating
ilk to start punching a time clock anytime soon. While us “house
negroes” in the United States and the “field hands”
in the horribly exploited developing nations on the periphery of the
Empire scratch and claw in quiet desperation, our lords and masters
feast upon the blood, sweat and tears of our labor.
Yet the US moneyed elite’s
malignity doesn’t end there. In fact, their direct actions are
merely the tip of the proverbial iceberg. The greatest testament to
their indefatigable efforts to maintain their immense wealth and power
is the ridiculously effective hologram their media assets relentlessly
project. Ponder for a moment the inanity of the holographic illusion
burnished into our consciousness that portrays our wealthy elites as
“mere citizens” of a constitutional republic that acts on
the will of its people and characterizes our nation as mankind’s
benefactor, selflessly and thanklessly spreading freedom and democracy.
Three million slaughtered Vietnamese, millions butchered in South and
Central America, over a million liquidated Iraqis, and countless others
around the globe are thanking us from heaven as you read these words.
Culturally programmed from
birth to reflexively participate in such idiocies as CNN’s Nancy
Grace’s recent “call to arms” against those evil “ravers,”
we become our own worst enemies and the principal allies of the privileged
scum who hubristically strut about the corridors of power in DC and
on Wall Street. Persecuting and prosecuting “ravers” is
simply one of many examples of our grossly distorted value system. To
ensure the perpetuation of a “just” and “safe’
society, we criminalize “dangerous” behaviors like drug
abuse, thus increasing our world leading prison population of 2 million
plus—many of whom are non-violent offenders. Meanwhile, members
of our ruling elite get away with the same infinitely reprehensible
acts for which the Nazi architects swung from the gallows. Electrocution
for stealing a loaf of bread, victor’s justice, and the criminalization
of poverty are the foundations of our legal system.
Yet the media’s inculcated
working stiffs (some of whom apparently still think they report “news”)
and cynical opportunistic careerists like Lou Dobbs, Bill O’Reilly,
and Glenn Beck don’t get all the “credit” for crafting
and maintaining the false consciousness that keeps a majority of us
aiding and abetting our filthy capitalist “betters” in their
abject crimes against humanity.
Intellectually nursed at
the teat of lying whores, most of us spend our lives truly believing
the asinine mythology about our nation. Awash in a perpetual stream
of endorphins triggered by the constant mind fuck that we are exceptional,
blessed, and saintly, we pursue “life, liberty and happiness”
(Jefferson meant property when he penned the word happiness) with a
child-like abandon as our capitalistic endeavors savagely rape the planet.
Despite their nearly endless
glorification as the gold standard to which all humanity should aspire,
our national heritage, government, society, and culture are rife with
deep imperfections, meaning that the “frightening” reality
is that the United States has no monopoly on virtue. In fact, intellectually
tethered by manufactured ignorance, imbued with a pathological sense
of hubris, exhibiting knee-jerk denial in the face of our flaws and
wrong-doings, and, in exchange for our service the Empire, insulated
from much of the misery our nation inflicts upon the world, we stand
with both feet firmly planted on the bottom rung of humanity.
Yet before we dismiss ourselves
as miscreant aberrations who inherited a proud tradition and besmirched
it, consider a brief perusal of a few strands of our cultural DNA that
coalesced to make us the collectively despicable lot we are today:
The “New World”
was settled by significant numbers of religious fanatics who subscribed
to the principles of Calvinism, which included the exultation of the
wealthy, a belief in humanity’s inherent wickedness, and a sadistic
desire to severely punish those who had “transgressed.”
Hence our worship of monetary success and our maleficent Prison Industrial
Complex.
Once the Ulster-Scotts arrived
in the “New World”, they ensured that our culture would
be infused with heavy doses of mean-spiritedness, belligerence, and
locust mentality. Following their lead, we did a “hell of a job”
of eradicating most of the Native American population and stealing as
much of Turtle Island as we could. To this day we continue to ravage
the Earth like a swarm of locusts unleashed by a wrathful Jehovah.
Royalists settling in Virginia
established the aristocracy that allegedly doesn’t exist in our
“classless” society. As an added bonus, they “graced”
us with the plantation system that proliferated like noxious weeds throughout
southern states. Chattel slavery, the backbone of the economy fostered
by Virginia’s “Cavaliers,” represents one of the most
shameful elements of our history and obliterates the notion that America
is an exceptional nation.
Sadly, we didn’t even
live up to our hype coming out of the starting gate. While many of our
deeply revered Founding Fathers were rather enlightened individuals
for the times in which they lived, the government they forged was ultimately
of the rich, by the rich and for the rich. While the monstrosity of
industrial capitalism had yet to be birthed, remember that most of those
who drafted our Constitution were affluent individuals primarily interested
in grabbing the power the American Revolution had wrested from England.
This white land-owning patriarchy only represented about 13% of the
population. If anything, that percentage has declined precipitously
throughout our history. How else does one explain a president who is
hated by the vast majority of Americans yet remains immune from impeachment
or a “do-nothing” Democratic Congress which is ignoring
our mandate for them to end the brutal war crimes in Iraq?
Certainly we have compelling
reasons for blindly supporting and participating in the depravities
of consumerism, militarism, neocolonialism, speciesism, Zionism, and
a host of other diseased “isms” we inflict upon the world.
However, the fact that we have been severely hobbled by our ancestral
roots, by capitalism’s exploitation of our tendencies to act on
our greed and selfishness, and by deeply insidious psychological conditioning
does not alleviate us of our share of the responsibility.
Revisiting the vampire metaphor,
like the immortal undead of lore, we US Americans are spiritually vacuous.
Ignoring our spiritual needs to invest nearly all of our time in the
narcissistic, hollow pursuits our inculcation demands, at the collective
level we contribute to capitalism’s vampiric feast on the Earth
and its sentient inhabitants, and at the individual level we drain the
life force from nearly all with whom we come in contact in a desperate
attempt to fill our inner void.
Yet there is hope.
Despite the nearly overwhelming
odds against it, increasing numbers of US Americans are seeking and
finding the truth, refusing the system’s myriad tantalizing bribes,
engaging in introspection, feeling a sense of moral outrage, acting
with a sense of justice and compassion, abandoning what passes for thinking
in the mainstream, and rejecting the notion that the disease of capitalism
is incurable because it is natural (and even admirable) to consistently
act on our greed and selfishness.
It is only a matter of time
before decent human beings who are no longer willing to silence their
consciences drive a stake through the heart of the vampiric moral abomination
known as capitalism.
Jason Miller
is a wage slave of the American Empire who has freed himself intellectually
and spiritually. He is Cyrano’s Journal Online’s associate
editor (http://www.bestcyrano.org/)
and publishes Thomas Paine’s Corner within Cyrano’s
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