Cleansing Wall Street of Blame: Lost Verities and Dirty Hippies

[Phil Rockstroh]

Cleansing Wall Street of Blame: "By Imbeciles Who Really Mean It": Lost Verities and Dirty Hippies
By Phil Rockstroh

http://consortiumnews.com/2011/12/07/cleansing-wall-street-of-blame/

Editor's Note: The Right’s giant megaphone is reversing the narrative for today’s crisis: It is Barack Obama’s “food-stamp presidency” and the Occupy demands for fairness that are at fault for the hard economic times, not Wall Street’s unregulated greed increasing the need for food stamps and heightening the imperative for resistance – as Phil Rockstroh explains:


Regardless of the dissembling of corporate-state propagandists, free-market capitalism has always been a government-subsidized, bubble-inflating, swindlers’ game, in which, psychopathic personalities (not “job creators” but con-job perpetrators) thrive.

By the exploitation of the many, a ruthless few have amassed large amounts of capital by which they dominate mainstream narratives and compromise elected and governmental officials, thereby gaming the system for their benefit.

'Occupy Everything' sign (Photo by Angela Tyler-Rockstroh)

Historically, the system has proven so demeaning to the majority of the population that the elite, from time to time, have, as a last resort, due to fear of a popular uprising, introduced a bit of socialism into the system, allowing a modicum of swag to funnel downward, and, as a result, the ranks of the middle-class have been expanded.

For a time, the bourgeoisie are bamboozled by the sales pitch that one day they will be affluent enough to be freed from the taxing obligations of a dismal, debt-beholden existence, when, in fact, they sowed their fate (like those swindled by opening their bank accounts after receiving email from parties claiming to be momentarily cash-strapped Nigerian royalty) by their own greed, i.e. by their self-imprisonment within their own narrow, self-serving view of existence.

These stultifying circumstances will level an atmosphere of restiveness and nebulous rage. In general, the middle-class can be counted on to detest the poor … blaming those born devoid of societal advantage and political influence for the impoverished circumstances that were in place long before the happenstance of their birth.

Moreover, in a bit of noxious casuistry, as despicable as it is delusional, all too many members of the middle-class have been induced by grift artists, employed by the ruling elite, to blame their own declining social status and attendant beleaguered existence on the poor.

“Be thine own palace, or the world’s thy jail.”–John Donne

This has proven to be an effective, time-tested grift: Because as long as the animus of the middle class remains fixated on the poor, the criminal cartels known as the economic elite can continue to ply their trade. Of course, in reality, by their greed and complicity, what the middle-class has gained is this: trustee status in the capitalist workhouse.

Although, there is no need to fret: The run of neoliberal capitalism is about over. Don’t mourn: This late-stage, rapacious, mutant economic strain has leveled destruction on community and the planet itself as well as the hearts and souls of too many of those imprisoned within its paradigm.

At this point, the situation comes down to this: paradigm shift or perish. The hour is amenable to reevaluate, reorganize and re-occupy. Doing so will prove helpful in withstanding false narratives.

Apropos: As of late, in my hours spent at Liberty Park, I’ve been witness to increasing numbers of tourists wandering in and repeating derisive, right-wing distortions regarding the OWS movement and its participants.

For example, the distortions allege that the OWS participants are a collection of whiny college students who want taxpayers to be responsible for picking up the tab for their student loans because they are too lazy and spoiled to work off their debt.

These tales are variations of the old canards involving welfare queens, mouths gleaming with taxpayer financed gold teeth, arriving at grocery stores lounging behind the steering wheels of late-model Cadillacs, and proceeding to purchase steaks and fifths of gin with food stamps.

Ronald Reagan spoke of this mythical figure often, affording her near supernatural powers: She, through indolence, guile and a welfare-state-bestowed sense of limitless entitlement, was the near singular cause of the nation’s economic woes; her very existence, not only depleted the U.S. Treasury of dollars, but drained the U.S. free enterprise system of vitality and the very will to compete. She was a succubus who arrived in the socialist haunted night to feed on and zap the very virility of capitalism.

Because of the wealth inequities inherent to capitalism, in order to prevent social unrest, the system is reliant on creating false narratives that foster misplaced and displaced class resentment. These tales are very potent, because they serve as palliatives for the enervating states of shame inflicted on the population at large by their enslavement to the free market.

Accordingly, because the vast majority of the populace are deemed “losers,” due to how the system is rigged, techniques must be created and maintained to displace the rage, born of a sense of powerlessness, that grips the system’s exploited underlings.

OWS is beginning to change the narrative … align it with reality – and that is an alarming development for the 1 percent; hence, the retooled, amped-up propaganda campaign we’re seeing signs of at present.

This is the reality the 1 percent endeavor to obscure: Capitalism is a pyramid scheme; by its very structure, only a few will ever receive its bounty … that is wrung out of the exhausted hides of the vast majority. Fact is, capitalism, the neoliberal variety or otherwise, has never worked as promised; its innate structure ensures exploitation and inequity.

Therefore, time and time again, adding aspects of socialism (e.g., New Deal-era programs and reforms) have saved capitalism from itself. But, after a time, the plutocrats regroup and begin anew to launch a big money-financed, slow-motion coup d’état of government (e.g., the Reagan Revolution).



A vast disparity of wealth within a nation will all but ensure this societal trajectory. But that isn’t going to happen, this time. The planet cannot endure the assaults wrought by a system that requires exponential growth to be maintained.

The run of capitalism is nearly over. A more sustainable economic system, based on horizontal rule, is being developed, globally (e.g., the Icelandic model).

The vertical structure inherent to capitalism brings about the self-perpetuating reign of an insular elite who choose to go the route of empire and, by doing so, overreach and bring themselves down, but only after much unnecessary suffering, exploitation and death – the calling card and ground-level criteria of imperium.

Yet, often within a declining empire, even as the quality of life grows increasingly degraded for the majority of the populace, questioning sacrosanct beliefs, such as, the myth that capitalism promotes societal progress and personal advancement, by means of the possibility of upward class migration, proves to be a difficult endeavor for many.

The reason: Even given the degraded nature of life as lived under late capitalism, the act of taking stock of one’s situation – beginning to question how one arrived at one’s present station in life – will engender anxiety, anger and regret.

Apropos to the shame-based Calvinism of the capitalist state: If I was duped in a rigged game, what does that say about me? The narrative of capitalism insists that if I work hard, applying savvy and diligence, at fulfilling my aspirations then I would, at some point, arrive in the rarified realm of life’s winners.

But if success proves elusive, then my flawed character must be the problem – not the dishonest economic setup – and miasmic shame descends upon me. Yet I can count on right-wing media to provide the type of provisional solace proffered by demagogues, i.e., imparting the reason that folks like me can’t get ahead is because scheming socialists have hijacked my parcel of the American Dream and delivered it to the undeserving thereby transforming my shame into displaced outrage.

And that must be the case; otherwise, it would behoove me to make the painful admission that I have been conned … have co-signed the crimes committed against me. Worse, I would be compelled to question all my verities and beliefs – all the convictions I clutch, regarding, not only the notions that I possess about myself and the methods I’ve adopted in approaching life, but also, the social structure that influenced my character.

Imagine: If you had to re-imagine your life. Imagine, how the act would unnerve your loved ones, threaten friendships, even endanger your livelihood.

What an unnerving task that would prove to be … an ordeal certain to deliver heart-shaking anxiety, devastating regret and nettling dread directly into the besieged sanctuary of what is suppose to be the inviolable precincts of my comfort zone.

“At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face.”–Albert Camus

Accordingly, I might turn to Fox News and other well-rewarded, professional dissemblers of the political Right, imploring them to dissolve my doubts and dread.

To escort and ensconce my troubled form back into my comfort zone by telling me the problem is not the iron boot of the corporate state upon my neck; rather, my oppression stems from the barefoot hippie lefties of OWS “who need a bath and a job”; it is their odious presence in our lives that has subdued my happy capitalist destiny by the pernicious act of laying down an effluvia (more demobilizing than pepper spray) of patchouli musk and has caused capitalism itself to weaken into an enervated swoon.

Yes, this has to be the case: The cause of my oppression. Those America-hating Occupy Wall Street hippies are actually the hidden hand that controls the global order and who possess a craven desire to smelt down the gleaming steel of the humming engines of U.S. capitalism into creepy, Burning Man statuary, who want to hold 24/7 Nuremberg-style rallies in the form of annoying drum circles.

In reality, it is those dirty hippies who are actually “The Man.” Withal, hippies crashed the global economy and pinned the blame on the selfless souls who ply their benign trade on Wall Street.

Now, you know why conservatives harbor such animus towards hippies. Don’t claim that Fox News et al – those selfless souls – who only desire to protect the glories of the present order, and who only have your best interest in mind, didn’t try to warn you.

“I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on, or by imbeciles who really mean it.” –Mark Twain

Phil Rockstroh is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City. He may be contacted at: [e-mail]. Visit Phil’s website: http://philrockstroh.com/ or at FaceBook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000711907499

[russspeakeasy]

1. Occupy Everywhere !!

Thanks for the post...

[certainot]

2. thanks. and to that, the left needs to ask, how many protestors is one talk radio host worth?

because there's a whole bunch screaming the same thing all day long from 1000 radio stations to 50 mil a week, from stations licensed to operate in the public interest, many of which get community credibility and ad money from broadcasting university sports.

and they're getting a free speech free ride.

until that is at least challenged by the left in some organized way there will be little opportunity to have rational rational discussions that can't be screamed over by freaks yelling "dirty hippies"

here's what Limbaugh said in part of one hour one wednesday morning a few weeks ago:

praphrasing Limbaugh (whose parent stations WABC is at Penn Station, NYC)
xxxxxx'

lousy hippies thieves rapists purse snatchers
sexually transmitted diseases, murder, filth, gunfire, scabies


The protestors are so used to urinating and defecating in the streets so when they go back home to their parents they might need to be housebroken again. They’re going to have to put some newspaper down.


endless parade of human debris,
whining little wimps
looking for free meals free drugs free sex


it was never big, never any public support, not the backbone of America


white house wanted bloomberg to get them out because it was one big ad for the dem party.
'

xxxxxx

[defendandprotect]

14. While I wouldn't deny Limbaugh's power, anyone who truly cares about America

will eventually question his recklessness and his constant attacks --

I'm more concerned about seeing "Fairness in Broadcasting Doctrine" reinstated --

which is something our corporte Congress is not going to do --

Corporate money buys a lot of SILENCE from those who should be defending us from

all of this RW trash -- i.e., our elected representatives!!



Meanwhile, the message of OWS is that both parties are finished.

[defendandprotect]

3. Americans weren't told about propaganda in their schools, the fact that it works ...

how it causes people to react often against their own interests -- !!

It was only recently that a few writers of non-fiction began to point to it

and acknowledge it.

Some college courses now acknowledge and examine the "propaganda of white male history" --

but there is a long history of organized propaganda emanating from powerful groups/

elites/wealthy power structures -- and I think James Carroll's book* gives some

interesting insight into historical propaganda. I'm sure many will agree that the Nazi

Era propaganda was about as vile as we would ever expect to come across -- but only if

you aren't familiar with "The Hammer of Witches" and the organized propaganda against the

Jews which occurred much earlier than the Hitler era.



IMO, the first thing we have to understand is patriarchy -- and that it's underpinning

is organized patriarchal religion. And that capitalism is its economic invention.

All three are, of course, fascist systems which have used propaganda to retain control

over populations and power which often challenges governments.

Propaganda is a very interesting subject we need to pay more attention to -- and work

over in our minds as to how to respond to it. It seeks to create an emotional reaction

which short circuits any real thought.

One of the best responses to "partial birth abortion," imo, was "partial truth abortion."

We all need to work together dismantling and creating responses to propaganda which can at

times be quite alarming. Notice that our representatives are not going to do this for us!


There is a great deal more to be said on this subject, but we should at the least be

familiar with the fact that in the Nixon White House they studied Nazi propaganda films.



Here's an interesting story on that related by Harrison Livingstone in his "High Treason I" --

Many of Nixon's staff came to him from University of Southern CA and UCLA -- "where there

were fraternities which kept alive the vision of a new Reich."

"Some of these men would watch the great Nazi propaganda films in the basement of the

Nixon White House until all hours of the night, and drink, in fact get drunk with their power,

with blind ambition, as one of them wrote."

"One of Nixon's top assistants took a dislike to a reporter, and had him invited to a private

showing of a movie. The reporter sat down, and soon was seized by the hair from behind and

his head cruelly jerked back and cracked against the back of the seat. The man's head was held

there for some time, and then he was let go. He turned to see the Presidential assistant,

who said, 'Oh, I thought you were someone else.'"

Don't ever let anyone tell you that Watergate was nothing -- !!





*

Crusade: Chronicles of an Unjust War

http://www.jamescarroll.net/JAMESCARROLL.NET/Non-Fiction.html

[chervilant]

6. hmm....

Are you familiar with Bernays? In light of your comment, I think you might find his work relevant to this discussion.

[defendandprotect]

7. Of course --

[defendandprotect]

9. Just a little PS on my earlier resposne --

Was rushing out at the time -- but did just want to comment that Betty Friedan also

brought widespread anti-female propaganda to our attention -- much of it in women's

magazines -- !!


And if you ever see a male on TV cleaning a toilet bowl, let me know!!


MS MAG also did a lot to show the very severe attacks on females in porn-like advertisemtns --

many dehumanizing -- literally.


David Brock wrote a fantastic book -- It's either the RW NOISE Machine or the Republican

NOISE Machine -- most libraries have it and would highly recommend it.

You may recall he was a RW'er and socially mixed with Ann Coulter --

He also wrote a very vile book re Prof. Anita Hill -- you may recall, "A little bit slutty,

a little bit nutty" -- that's him.

Brock later kind of "told all" about the "get Clinton thing" -- can't remember the name of the

tell all book but if you look him up, if you're interested, it should all be listed.

He later started MEDIA MATTERS.


The most valuable part of his book NOISE MACHINE book is that he relates the interlinkings

between all the RW groups and individuals.


Many have covered propaganda in a very general kind of way -- but very important ways.

But still think the public is lacking FULL knowledge of the history of trhe propaganda

campaigns -- and it isn't focused enough on what's going on today with the kind of work

Frank Luntz "Climate Change" - and Karl Rove do, for instance!!

Or "Newt of Tiffany" -- !! :evilgrin:

[chervilant]

11. Thanks!

I shall avail myself of those resources!

On Rove: I recommend Bush's Brain (Moore, Slater, and Moore). My fave factoid from this book is Rove's high school strategy of taking carts laden with boxes full of blank index cards to his debates--specifically to intimidate his opponents. Even as a child, Rove had no moral compass.

[defendandprotect]

12. And, thank you .. I hadn't seen "Bush's Brain" ... but plays now on Current TV ...

and I've seen some of it but next time it's on, I will watch it for real.

Corporate TV has made sure to keep Michael Moore's movies off of anything but

pay TV! Current TV is a great assist in that way.

Sounds like Karl Rove is also a bit of a bluffer -- but he certainly is a danger

to democracy!


:hi:

[defendandprotect]

4. Thank you -- excellent run down of the American experience -- !!

RW propaganda does work -- !!

Historically, the system has proven so demeaning to the majority of the population that the elite, from time to time, have, as a last resort, due to fear of a popular uprising, introduced a bit of socialism into the system, allowing a modicum of swag to funnel downward, and, as a result, the ranks of the middle-class have been expanded.

For a time, the bourgeoisie are bamboozled by the sales pitch that one day they will be affluent enough to be freed from the taxing obligations of a dismal, debt-beholden existence, when, in fact, they sowed their fate (like those swindled by opening their bank accounts after receiving email from parties claiming to be momentarily cash-strapped Nigerian royalty) by their own greed, i.e. by their self-imprisonment within their own narrow, self-serving view of existence.

These stultifying circumstances will level an atmosphere of restiveness and nebulous rage. In general, the middle-class can be counted on to detest the poor … blaming those born devoid of societal advantage and political influence for the impoverished circumstances that were in place long before the happenstance of their birth.

Moreover, in a bit of noxious casuistry, as despicable as it is delusional, all too many members of the middle-class have been induced by grift artists, employed by the ruling elite, to blame their own declining social status and attendant beleaguered existence on the poor.

[chervilant]

5. Indeed.

In Stone Age Economics, Sahlins wrote:

The market-industrial system institutes scarcity, in a manner completely unparalleled and to a degree nowhere else approximated. Where production and distribution are arranged through the behavior of prices, and all livelihoods depend on getting and spending, insufficiency of material means becomes the explicit, calculable starting point of all economic activity. … Consumption is a double tragedy: what begins in inadequacy will end in deprivation.

The Corporate Megalomaniacs are counting on most of us to strive assiduously to avoid the cognitive dissonance commensurate with realizing the BIG LIE of their wealth carrot meme.

[Sentath]

8. Ok, This line struck me.

"Imagine: If you had to re-imagine your life. Imagine, how the act would unnerve your loved ones, threaten friendships, even endanger your livelihood."

Because I don't have to imagine. I'm a not quite out, gay male in Kansas. I cannot<\i> imagine<\b> what it must be like for the trans people stuck in this state.

P.S. is text formatting broken or am I doing it wrong?

I cannot<\i> imagine<\b> what

[defendandprotect]

10. Hi -- not that I'm very computer literate ... YIKES ...

but in order to BOLD ...

At the beginning of section you want to BOLD -- use the brackets to open

-- then add a "b" and then close brackets.

At the end of section, open brackets again -- then a slash -- and then a "b"

and then close the brackets.

Don't put the b's in quotation marks!!


DU3 is supposed to be much easier to use -- !!


:evilgrin:




Re your comments -- I did read the book -- sorry it's late and I'm not going

to look it up -- but Franks -- Whatever happened to Kansas?

And other than getting the populism of the earlier times, it didn't do much for me.

Still don't understand what happened to Kansas!

I can't even remember if he mentioned CHURCH influence over the state -- ???

I'm just a blank on the book, mostly!

Is the homosexual intolerance coming from religion in Kansas?

Is it a Catholic, or Protestant or whatever influence?

Or is it something older in the culture?


How about in the schools -- I have a friend who is a homosexual -- probably 50 or more

now -- and he can still feel enraged at how he was treated in his NJ highschool by

someone who was even still recently still there!!


As things progress, I'd love to see a way that the older homosexual community could provide

some protection and education for the young students who are still being harassed.


Sad to read your comment -- but keep on tellin' it !!



:hi:

[defendandprotect]

13. Youth Revolution was an overall threat to capitalism -- and NOT merely about sex ... !!

There's a lot to know about that time and the Youth Movement --

and the very serious effort by the RW to demonize it --

Rethink Charles Manson as a very unlikely and very well financed "hippie" !!

Here's a good place to start -- *


And would just also add, that usually youth are the ones who bring

revolution so, in many ways, the RW is always trying to demonize them.

You'll recall "Juvenile delinquents"? And Drug War is largely directed

at youth - black youth. There always seems to be a program in place to

ensnare youth in the legal system. Give them a record. Make them look

dumb -- Generation X.


. . . . . .

*

Indeed, in 1972, when the details began to come out about a break-in at Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate Hotel, Mae immediately recognized personnel and modus operandi from nine years of assassination research, while the mainstream press continued to refer to Watergate as a "caper" and "a third-rate burglary." And so it came to pass that while Rabbi Magnin was entertaining Richard Nixon at his home in Los Angeles, his daughter Mae was revealing the President's role in an incredible conspiracy. Meanwhile, she also perceived an assassination plot, not merely against specific individuals, but against the entire counterculture that was burgeoning at the time.


"I realized that in this country we had a revolution--of housing, food, hair style, clothing, cosmetics, transportation, value systems, religion--it was an economic revolution, affecting the cosmetics industry, canned foods, the use of land; people were delivering their own babies, recycling old clothes, withdrawing from spectator sports. They were breaking the barriers where white and black could rap in 1967. This was the year of the Beatles, the summer of Sergeant Pepper, the Monterey Pop Festival, Haight-Ashbury, make your own candle and turn off the electricity, turn on with your friends and laugh--that's what life was all about."


http://maebrussell.com/Mae%20Brussell%20Articles/Ballad%20of%20Mae%20Brussell.html