Thanks, marmar. I wrote this song almost thirty years ago ~

Industrial Disease

I must be living in a dream
how can this be reality?
Nightmare of our own creation,
some destructive inclination
All around me, stacks are smoking
and the trees ain't got no leaves ~

You call this progress? You must be joking ~

It's Industrial Disease.

Vultures on my young friends veins
she's going down with the price of heroin and cocaine
Mom and dad can't figure it out
two years divorced, and still they shout
People lying dead in the street
missile strikes are hard to beat

Red and white, black and blue ~

It's all here for me and you.

© 1983, 1999

What is, to say the least, extremely disturbing is that, right at this very moment, right on the first page of GD, we have posts here at DU expressing concern over climate alteration resulting from planetary abuse by humans, deaths caused by heroin overdoses, and drone missile strikes. Almost thirty years after that song was written in a fit of despair, after a satellite error had almost led to nuclear war, and while observing the oil refineries somewhere around Elizabeth, NJ, during the dark, hope crushing years of the Reagan era.

In my humble opinion, it is time for all of us to stop with this silly childish fantasy that these problems can be solved through the system. They can't be, and they won't be, at least not until Mother Nature solves them for us with some seriously catastrophic tough love that will kill off many of us and make the rest of us very uncomfortable. and make us wish we had done something to try to prevent the catastrophe. We must grow up, and take responsibility upon ourselves, instead of depending on a system primarily run by sociopathic, insatiable, greed driven ego/megalomaniacs to fix it for us.

Hopefully, it's not already too late to take our planet back from these insane bullies, but it's surely at least worth the effort.

First of all, I simply do not want my government/military being the private international police

force whose primary purpose is protecting or securing profit making holdings of imperialistic wealthy global private interests. Yes, maybe some are conflating these "issues" but these issues in themselves that you are discussing arise from a collective cultural consciousness that harbors the unmitigated arrogant assumption that we have some kind of divine right as Americans to kill anyone we want, anytime we want, anywhere we want.

These. Are. Not. Our. Countries. If wealthy global private interests had not been invading and exploiting these countries, they would not be interested, in the slightest, in blowing up buildings in NYC. Herb smoking camel herders in the Hindu Kush would have no problem with the US if we, and everyone else, would simply just leave them the fuck alone. Yeah, the Taliban sucks. Just like the oppressive government of most every Arab country sucks. Saudi Arabia is heinous. But we're not killing anyone in Saudi Arabia with drones or battalions of marines. Because, even though they are unspeakably corrupt and mercilessly cruel and oppressive, the royal government of Saudi Arabia is an integral part of the good ol' boys global corporate imperialist club.

We have a lot of problems that need to be solved here in this country, and spending more than half of the money we pay in taxes giving free security services and profit securing personnel/weaponry to wealthy private interests all over the planet is Nationalized Corporatism.

The ways of greed, injustice, violence, death, and destruction cannot end the ways of greed, injustice, violence, death and destruction. They only bring more horror upon innocent human beings.

It's all about money, and if you believe drones are used in Pakistan simply to protect your sweet lil ol' granny in Peoria, well...hey, wanna buy some ocean bottom land 100 miles due west of San Francisco?

Tribal folk in the Hindu Kush don't want Amalgamated Global EarthRapers, Incorporated, plundering their land, ripping up their ground, and polluting their rivers. The people of Afghanistan have been fending off invading imperialists for centuries. Not too long ago it was the Soviet Union. Now it's us.

Honestly, the total selfish, thoughtless, elitist arrogance of money worshiping cultures is frightening. They'll heartlessly kill anyone and anything that gets in the way of their comfort and profit making.

In this century, it's all, and only, about global corporate profits.

It's time to change it, and make it about people.

Seriously? What you are essentially saying is that Obama has every right to execute anyone he

chooses whenever he chooses without due process, because you have complete faith in him to have the knowledge and wisdom to always execute the people who need to be executed.

And you're also apparently saying that rightwingers believe that this is a good thing, so they are not complaining about it; and we should not complain about it either because we don't want to stir up the hornet's nest and expose the President to criticism.

We've seen things like this before in this land, and others. A lot of really good people sacrificed, suffered, and died to stop these types of things from happening throughout human history. It must not be tolerated now, or ever, no matter how much you may love your president and believe he can do no wrong. When you are wrong, you are wrong. Justifying and allowing tyranny can only lead to more tyranny.

"That it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer, is a Maxim that has been long and generally approved."
~~Benjamin Franklin, 1785

Are you kidding me? He should pick himself up by his bootstraps instead of

pointing out the rapidly accelerating inequities of the system?

This is post Reagan/Bush America. Bankster America. Elvis has left the building.

We live in a consolidated capitalist/globalist plutarchy in which wealth has been polarized in the extreme. Union/labor power is essentially non-existent. The Military Industrial Complex controls the government. Wages have essentially gone down while the cost of everything has skyrocketed.

You'd have to have just fallen off a turnip truck to believe that this was just a random occurrence. Money makes money, and people with money often do very nasty shit to others in order to make more and more profit.

The chances of starting and maintaining a successful business are very slim unless there is substantial capital to float the business for a long time, or unless the business is based on some marvelous new invention or idea or something like that. Most of my friends who own/owned small businesses can no longer compete with Walmartization and have gotten out or are getting out.

Wealthy private interests are totally in control now, and we need a revolution, not another failed small business that can only afford to pay its workers a less than living wage with no benefits.

The problem is clearly systemic, and we need to fix or change the system before this country goes completely third world Les Miserables.

A hero these days would be someone who engages in non-violent democratic revolution, not in some rigged capitalist matrix fantasy in which austerity and disaster capitalism snowballs all economic wealth and power into the hands of a very few.

It's time to level the playing field.

Telling someone, in the style of Scott Walker, to pick themselves up by their bootstraps and get rich so they can become a philanthropic capitalist in post Reagan/Bush/Bankster Feudal America is like saying

"Let them eat cake".

It's impossible to say. Small, traditionally organized quasi-communal tribes are so different

from the impersonal chaos of the industrial world in so many ways that the word better in the OP subject line is inappropriate, IMO.

What's interesting to me is the possibility that some hunter gatherer tribes as small closed societies may understand the effects of constant surveillance on human beings from birth, and are allowing their children to experience life with minimal surveillance conditioning.

Individuals, particularly anthropologists in this context, in industrial societies generally have difficulty comprehending the real individual and collective consciousness/worldview of past and hunter gatherer societies. Anthropologists very often develop theories on very incomplete information and process this information from their own conscious and unconscious processes and value systems based on their experiences as people raised in industrial cultures. They often formulate theories based on observation of material relics or art, with little or no information as to what was going on in the consciousnesses of hunter gatherer individuals and the hunter gatherer culture's respective collective consciousness.

I love this magazine article below, from 1891, and have posted it on DU several times, because it illustrates differences in the worldviews and understandings respective to two very different cultures. Granted, most North American aboriginal cultures had already been tainted by European interference by this time, but, IMO, the differences in intrinsic cultural worldviews are still relevant in the present with respect to present day traditional North American native folks and descendants of European imperialists.

Please keep in mind as you read this that this entire article is Huggins' basically clueless outsider interpretation of what was going on in the minds and hearts of North American native culture(s) of the time. I believe the the excerpt I have chosen to post here is a succinct illustration of the wide and deep chasm in values, consciousness, and understanding between two very different cultures.

The President has nominated a republican for the post of Secretary of Defense,

and Democrats have every right in the world to question and suspect the President's motives and judgment for doing so.

The fact is, a person has to have a serious lack of good judgment, ethics, and morals in order to identify as a republican and to voluntarily become a member of the republican party. If we consider the massive harm that republicans have done, and continue to do, to people, our country, and the world, it is naturally very, very worrisome to a large number of Democrats that Obama chose a republican for this important post.

A republican is not fit for high office because of the simple fact that they exhibit such inexcusable poor judgment that they willingly choose to be a republican. Fatal flaw. End of story.

Did the President not see, and understand, what Bush years did to us and our country? We progressives certainly got it, and we damn sure don't want any more of it.

This Democratic President who we just elected for a second term, who does not have to worry about re-election, is displaying awful and suspect judgment in choosing right wingers for high level posts in government, when these choices are absolutely not dictated by necessity. The President certainly does not need to kowtow to republicans and other RWers and their lunatic desires.

Personally I'm really pissed off about this, as are many other Democrats, and generally we don't give a rat's ass about the opinions of those who are so starry eyed in love with the President that they believe he can do no wrong.

It appears to me that if Obama appointed Rupert Murdoch, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Wiener, and Pat Robertson as FCC Commissioners, some DUers would be singing the praises of the President's infallible wisdom and brilliance by being so bipartisan in his choices.

It's perfectly OK to question the President. It's healthy. It is not healthy to never question him, and to blindly defend him even when he is clearly wrong.

But of course, that can never happen, because he is so good, wise, and wonderful that he can never be wrong! Catch 22!


Sycophants, nobility/authority worshipers, and cults of personality are threats to any and every democracy.

Yes, President Obama has done some awesome things, and it is right that he be commended for doing them.

But nominating republicans and Wall St. Banksters to high level cabinet posts are not among these awesome things, and some of us see this as a form of betrayal to our party and our belief systems. Some of us actually wonder exactly what the President's relationship is to Wall St. and wealthy private interests, and worry that he may be primarily serving the 1% and not the American people. Yes, of course, he's far superior to Romney. But in reality, that doesn't take much, and certainly does not place the President beyond justifiable reproach.

Since some of us do not worship the ground he walks on, we are going to continue to criticize and pressure the POTUS when he fucks up, and does not really explain his actions satisfactorily to us.

The POTUS is supposed to be our servant, not our king, or our deity.