October 27th, 2009 by Hoopleton

With the Northern Hemisphere trapped in the malaise of Fall, bracing itself for winter and the healthcare debate dragging on without end it’s time to reexamine once again how we, the people of the most powerful nation on Earth (that’s still accurate isn’t it?), are being screwed over by those who would rule us. So, without anymore introduction, I present to you this updated short list of how you’re being fucked by America.

1. China. All right, so China isn’t exactly America, but God knows that everything in America was made in China so it may as well be. The booming, ironically named People’s Republic has had quite the last couple of decades. Unprecedented growth. Massive capitalization. Frantic industrialization. Host to the Olympic Games. China, the country that invented everything from gunpowder to the printing press and yet failed to take credit for any of it has seemed determined of late to regain it’s status as a cultural and industrial powerhouse. The government of China is a Communist one. They enslave entire nations. Many of their citizens disappear on an almost daily basis, tossed into political prisons and concentration camps. Try Googling “Tiananmen Square” in Beijing and you’re likely to get a blank screen. But the products they produce are cheap and plentiful. So what that the toothpaste contains radioactive waste and those baby toys are dipped in lead paint? It may all be disposable crap that falls apart after a week, built by the hands of children and women living in conditions well below anything resembling poverty, but did I mention it was affordable? Also, let’s not forget that China is America’s biggest savings and loan. Currently, as of July 2009, our favorite exporter holds 24% of our public debt, or $800 billion. Some in the defense industry have warned that this could potentially threaten America’s security interests. That it leaves us vulnerable to economic extortion. That our foreign policy decisions might be compromised by our lender status. Wait. Walmart’s having a sale you say? It’s funny, isn’t it, how all that talk of democracy and human rights, of pushing back against Communist and defeating the Great Satan seems to dry up as soon as they can sell you a cheaper toaster? Many Americans have been brainwashed to believe that providing a “public option” in healthcare would lead to socialism and dictatorship, but we seem to have no qualms about selling our souls to a repressive, quasi-Stalinist, totalitarian state. We buy their cheap, disposable, dangerous products, we gleefully sell to them our debt, we turn a blind eye to their treatment of minorities and neighbor states, we demure to their interests even in the face of genocide (see: Darfur), and for what? Save a dollar today only to pay a pound of flesh tomorrow.

2. Food. The American obesity epidemic is well documented. We’re growing fatter and fatter with each passing year. As I’ve written about extensively on previous occasions obesity is close to surpassing smoking as the number one cause of preventable death. It is estimated that by 2015 nearly half of all Americans will tip the scale. This will further drive up healthcare costs and may result in the first major decline of life expectancy figures in the United States. My generation, those of us in our thirties and late twenties, may be the first to die younger than that of my parents. The main culprit for the fattening up of America is our over reliance on corn. We use it in everything from our breads to our sweeteners. Our beef is corn fed. Our potatoes are corn fried. All of this is thanks to the Federal government, which since Nixon does not subsidize farmers but the crop they grow. Without tax dollars being pumped into corn, maize would virtually disappear from our diet. But unfortunately corn is only part of the problem. The use of chemical pesticides has been linked to the increase of cancer rates. Leading some scientists to declare that we are seeing an apocalyptic scale event. The antibiotics given to animals as a way of treating the diseases that come from a corn-based diet have crossed into the food supply making people more resistant to medication. Each year more of us die from simple infections because the antibiotics we’re given are simply not effective anymore. But wait it gets worse. The United States is the leader in genetically modified foods. Banned in Europe, GM foods need not even be labeled on American store shelves. These modified foods include nearly everything we eat and often are a major factor for our increasingly poor health. Any attempts to reverse these food trends have been stone walled by corporations, lobbyists and the public officials meant to protect us. And the worst part is, that even if there was the political will to stop or slow the prevalence of genetically modified foods in our diet, many agriculturalists have warned that it may already be too late as modified crops have spread on their own, seeds carried by the winds, by animals to every corner of the globe. When you add to all this the growing lack of biodiversity in farming, the reliance on single varieties of a crop, you get a national food reserve that’s not only dangerous, but also more susceptible to disease. Ironically, as we get fatter and increasingly unhealthy we face the potential for crop failure and starvation.

3. Wall Street. If you’re not getting fucked by foreign powers, the food in your refrigerator or the various products around your home you’re probably being fucked by the business establishment. Wall Street, and the various institutions of capitalism that it represents, is no stranger to cheating basically anyone it can. That’s the nature of the beast. They take away your pension. They take away your healthcare. They take away your home. They’ve always done it if there’s profit in it. But whereas once they did it all in the hopes of creating long term gain, or at least of gaining power, now the idea is to take the money and run. Whereas once the robber barons built infrastructure, libraries, museums and hospitals, now they leave only a wake of destruction in their path. The ongoing housing and banking crisis is perhaps the most recent example, but lest we forget that Enron and Worldcom weren’t all that long ago. For every Bernie Madoff in jail another hundred are still walking the streets. It makes you wonder if they know something we don’t. Is the ship sinking? Are the lifeboats already full? In the 1950s and 1960s a family of four could live a comfortable Middle Class lifestyle on one income. One income. Two cars in the garage. A dog. Summer vacations and weekends off. Food was more expensive then (thank you corn!), so were many of the products on the store shelves, but incomes relative to inflation were higher. People could afford more then. Today that same family of four has two incomes to live virtually the same lifestyle. We’re more isolated from eachother. Rates of divorce are higher than ever before. Unions are corrupt and beaten down. Corporations lay off workers by the tens of thousands while the salaries of CEOs are astronomical compared to what they were even twenty years ago. Retirement age gets pushed back further each year while our life expectancy grows shorter. There are more elderly Americans working today than since the introduction of Social Security. The entire system is designed to put us into debt. To make us buy crap we don’t really need. The GDP, the basic measure of a country’s economic performance goes up not when you save money, it doesn’t count the value of domestic work or the inequality of wealth distribution, but it does add points for every patient diagnosed with cancer or every casket that’s sold. It’s not anyone industry. It’s not just Big Oil. It’s not just food. It’s not just Walmart. It’s all the bastards. Modern capitalism at its core. We once had made great strides in our economic relationships. In the regulation of our financial industries. In evaluating our worth. But more than ever we seem to be reverting to an owner class society in which most of us will likely be owned. They won’t stop till they take everything away, and once they do they’ll sell you a dozen times over until one day you’ll get a letter from your masters in Beijing. You’ve been bought and paid for, fat, diseased body and empty soul.

4. Military-Industrial-Complex. Let’s just put it out there, Eisenhower was right. For a man who spent most of his time on golf courses, the 34^th President of the United States left office in January of 1961 on a note of terrifying brilliance. Speaking to the American people he warned “against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.” A cabal of sorts, comprised of the Defense Industry, the Military and Congress that would turn the land of the brave and the home of the free into a glorified arms factory, exporting only war and militarism throughout the globe. The Military budget of the United States for the 2009 fiscal year was $515.4 billion. Adding emergency discretionary spending and supplemental spending brings the sum to $651.2 billion. This does not include many military-related items that are outside of the Defense Department budget. Overall the United States government is spending about $1 trillion annually on defense-related purposes. In other words, we Americans spend more on the business of war than every other country in the world combined. Increasingly military solutions seem like the only solutions and we tend to most often fight the very monsters that we create. Creating new monsters in the process. The frightening trend of the last several years has been the privatization of the military. Mercenaries trained by tax dollars. Corporations like Blackwater and Halliburton have taken over many of the duties once performed by soldiers. Often time above the law and motivated purely by profit, these groups operate with impunity abroad and at home. Blackwater doesn’t only operate in Iraq or Afghanistan. If anything their increasing role in domestic security makes foreign operations look like pocket change. How does this translate to you and me? A permanent war economy means permanent war. We’ve been in Iraq for six years now and the war in Afghanistan is just reigniting. If we ever leave the Middle East new conflicts will arise simply because they have to. Peace may be nice for reasons of longevity but it hardly justifies the largest defense budget in history. More war means more debt, more death, increased instability and an Empire in freefall. The Europeans will complain but won’t ever do anything about our love of war. They can’t. We are their army. All those social programs are nice as long as you don’t have a defense budget. Though China may feel intimidated, more spending here means bigger profits there. There will always be a new enemy. There will always be another war. Conflicts will breed conflicts. Young men and women, inspired to fight for country will die never knowing why.

5. Government. There is perhaps no way to adequately capture all that’s wrong with the United States of America without mentioning its political system. It’s the bastards we elect, supposedly there to represent our interests, who are most directly responsible for all the misdeeds mentioned in the points above. Our public institutions are not part of the problem. They are the problem. In fact, the government is not only guilty of negligence but I would go so far as to say that they are guilty of willful criminal acts against the people. Should we start with scandals? Watergate may be the most obvious example but we need not travel that far back in time. In the last decade we’ve seen a torrent of scandals involving corruption, thievery and sexual misconduct. Alabama Governor Don Siegelman (D-AL) found guilty of bribery. Connecticut Governor John G. Rowland (R-CT) pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit mail fraud and tax fraud. Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich (D-IL) charged with conspiracy to commit mail, wire fraud and solicitation of bribery. Illinois Governor George H. Ryan (R-IL) found guilty of illegal sale of government licenses and contracts as Secretary of State. Louisiana Governor Edwin Edwards (D-LA) convicted of extortion. New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey (D-NJ) resigned from office after admitting his homosexuality and the inappropriate appointment of his alleged male-sex partner to a government paid office. Ohio Governor Bob Taft (R-OH) guilty of four first-degree misdemeanor ethics violations. Governor Mark Sanford (R-SC) who had voted for the Bill Clinton impeachment, admitted during a press conference that he had traveled to Argentina to have an extra-marital affair with an Argentinean woman. I could go on. The list is quite extensive and this is only a partial look at what’s going on at the gubernatorial level. Local political scandals list in the hundreds. Should we try Federal? Karl Rove, Jack Abramoff, NSA Wireless Surveillance, Lawyergate, Ted Stevens, Tom Delay, Jim Traficant, Sarah Palin. Those are just the big ones. Just the ones who got too greedy or too stupid and got caught. And even now, some are still respected names in politics. Some may even stand for President someday. Bribery, graft, patronage, nepotism, embezzlement, kickbacks, every last member of every branch of government is guilty, if not by direct involvement than simply by association. Our government is run by a pack of shortsighted, self-serving crooks. The mob has gone legit and it’s writing legislation. When not stealing from the coffers to enrich themselves or to pay for those high-class hookers, our government fucks us with the legislation they pass. Again, the list is too extensive. They’ve dismantled nearly everything good in the last thirty years. Labor protection. Oversight. Clean air and water laws. They subsidize a corn diet that will kill us. They turn a blind eye to an ecosystem in collapse. They spy on us. They take away our basic rights. They use double-speak and change the meaning of language. The Patriot Act. No Child Left Behind. At this moment John Mccain’s Internet Freedom Act, a piece of legislation meant to provide the exact opposite of what its name implies is finding popular support. They think we’re stupid. They think we’re saps. And the sad part is we are. We are stupid. We are saps. We reelect them over and over again. We give money to them. We buy into their bullshit. We let them distract us with fear mongering and race bating, with abortion and homophobia. The Chinese will never be the superpower they crave to be because they don’t understand that the illusion of democracy will triumph over brute force every time. This country was founded by a slave owning wealth class and it remains so till this day. They raped and pillaged the land and when that was all gone they started in on us. We are so stupid we willingly fight for them. Die for them. We provide moral justification for their crimes. And when they finally leave office where do they go? They become consultants, CEOs and members of the board. Because it’s the corporations they serve. Not us. Not us. At this moment the United States has a national debt of over $11 trillion dollars. That translates to nearly $40,000 per person. Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security could be bankrupt in ten years. If Congress manages to pass a healthcare bill you better believe it’ll be overpriced, corrupt and ineffectual. We’re long past the days of the New Deal or the Great Society. What we have here is a free-for-all. Pork and shit sandwiches, hypocrisy slathered on thick. Maybe I should vote for a third party? HA! Go ahead you idiot, throw your vote away!

6. Media. It’s the circus, baby! If the politicians and the business interests are guilty of criminal acts, the media is responsible for letting them get away with it. As newspapers close down across the land, journalistic ethics go the way of the dinosaur and the trend of media conglamerization continues unabated we are left with little in the way of real information. All we have is a sideshow of pundits and bloggers more interested in winning an argument then telling us the truth. Facts get twisted out of shape or go unreported all together. MSNBC and Fox scream to the fringes while networks like CNN report opinion as news. In a 24-hour news cycle there’s no room for content. All stories become old stories as soon as they’re reported. Spin rooms become credited areas of expertise. News broadcasts become infotainment and platforms for cross-promotion. Disney has a new movie coming out? Expect full coverage on the ABC Nightly News. But we give the people what they want, every media executive will be quick to say. The problem is that you can’t give people what they want. People would gorge themselves into the grave if given half a chance. What you need to give the people is what they need. Not that it’ll happen. It’s all part of the show. A ruling class happily in bed with the political elite. John Mccain’s new bill? Who do you think sponsored that piece of prose? The government leases to the media the public airways as to inform and guard the public trust. The fifth estate exists, in theory, to protect the fragile institutions of democracy. But instead they aim to destroy them. What we have is “news” organizations sponsoring white fear protests. Movie stars peddling dangerous drugs on the market. Commercialization run amok. Whereas China sensors its media our media sensors itself. That’s the beauty of the American system. Delusion built upon delusion. Lie upon lie. And where does that leave us? George W. Bush liked to say that people crave freedom, but the truth is all that people really want is entertainment. As long as you distract them enough they’ll happily swallow whatever pills you feed them. And so here we are. Fucked from all sides. A fat, ignorant populace with neither the power or desire to fight back. God bless America.

October 15th, 2009 by Hoopleton

The people of pre-Columbian Peru, known to us as the Inca, linked corn to blood.

On the fourth month of their eighteen-month calendar the Inca honored their divine maize gods with a festival. It began with the distribution of food and drink by the emperor. The people would gorge themselves, dancing wildly in long processions. Young girls carried ears of corn and deposited them at the temples as a show of devotion. Men got drunk off corn alcohol and were said to have visions of the spirit world. Spirits walked the Earth. Animals spoke.

At the center of the festivities was a woman selected to serve as the honorary host. The ritual companion of the head priest. She was dressed in a magnificent gown and jewelry. She wore a carefully crafted tiara of feathers on her head. Her face was painted yellow and red. As she danced and sang she embodied the sensual connection between the mortal and divine.

At the climax of the first day this woman would climb the steps of the temple. She would sing and dance. Her body twisting and curving with the music. Her eyes wild. Her lips parted. The priests would lay her down. They would remove her clothes and gently take the jewelry from her neck. As the voices of the onlookers came to a pitch, as the music swelled and the fires flared, the priests would take her head. They would skin her body and drain her blood.

For the next nine days her blood was mixed with the cornmeal that the revelers ate. Her skin was worn by the high priest who had been her escort. And in the end what remains were left of her, were buried along with her head. A sacrifice to the crop that had made American civilization possible. An offering of corn and blood.

The Inca understood the power of maize. Its capacity to bring prosperity. Its capacity to destroy.

Today, North America, and specifically the United States is the greatest producer of corn in the world. Through modern farming methods a single acre of land is capable of producing some two hundred bushels, nearly ten times of what was possible just a hundred years earlier, four times more than what was possible just thirty years earlier. That equates to about fifty tons of food per acre.

In the past, the American government offered subsidies to farmers as to stabilize market prices and limit the amount of corn entering the market. Today the government pays farmers for every bushel that they grow as corn is too cheap to be profitable. The result is a crop so plentiful that it has permeated nearly every industry. From plastics and synthetic fuel to livestock feed and food additives.

Increasingly the Western diet is a corn diet. The greater majority of US cattle is corn fed, producing beef with ten times the fat as that of cattle raised on grass. As the animals can’t properly digest grains they are fed over seventy percent of the nation’s antibiotics as to keep them alive long enough to make it to slaughter. Whereas thirty years ago corn based sweeteners were too expensive to produce, today high-fructose corn syrup can be found in everything on the supermarket shelf, from soda to bread. The over-consumption of corn sweeteners has been directly linked to climbing cases of diabetes and a plethora of other conditions associated with obesity.

As corn has become a bigger part of our diet so too we’ve become bigger ourselves. The obesity epidemic is close to surpassing smoking as the number one cause of preventable death. It is estimated that by 2015 nearly half of all Americans will tip the scale. This will further drive up healthcare costs and may result in the first major decline of life expectancy figures in the United States.

My generation may be the first to die younger than that of my parents.

Today this nation is locked in a healthcare debate. The argument used most frequently against any sort of “public option” is that the government would take too much control. Ordinary citizens, it is argued, would be so powerless when it came to their health issues that the result would be premature death. The irony is that our government’s system of corn subsidies, paid and sustained by tax dollars, is directly responsible for our increasingly unhealthy, increasingly shortened lives.

I am paying my masters to kill me. Perhaps the Inca would appreciate the symmetry. My sacrifice in blood.