"America's religion is Capitalism."

[ConsAreLiars]

Said by Walter Mosley http://www.waltermosley.com/ on the Laura Flanders show on FSTV and online at FireDogLake http://www.lauraflanders.com/

That brief sentence says everything you need to know about why things are the way they are. "Religion" = a set of unprovable faith-based convictions and loyalties, plus "Capitalism" = a non-human system that feeds on exploitation of the vulnerable and gullible.

[chknltl]

1. I hadn't thought of it this way...

...but with hindsight the comparison is there! Blind faith in the face of the facts has been an issue for me in debates with wannabe neocons and bush supporters. My step kid is a closet freeper, (he has never set foot in the free republic but he would be easily welcomed there), he has this exact disorder. He is unable to best me in our debates, gets quite agitated oftentimes when I walk him through the inconsistencies of his own arguments and even threatens to vote for mCcain when all else fails, (he HATES mcCain as not being conservative enough).

Now I see the problem...I just wish I saw the solution! The best I have come up with is to take the side of democracy as opposed to taking the side of the Democrats when debating these folks. Most of these conservatives agree that our country is worth dieing for, (well as long as 'you know who' ain't doing that dieing). Most will quickly agree that there is no better form of governance than democracy. I seem to do best when I point out that democracy is taking care of the needs of the majority over the needs of the few greedy folks who rob the majority and in doing so ultimately damage our democracy.

KnR and link bookmarked, thank you for this.

[ConsAreLiars]

3. Thank Mosley and Flanders.

I hadn't thought of this linkage quite that way until I heard Walter Mosley say is so succinctly. Before then it was how the Mellon-Scaife and Coors money funded hate groups like the religious right and so on, giving a cover of religiosity to mask their economic objectives. But this quote made me recognize that this sort of slavery ideology is even more fundamental and widespread than those peculiar religious variants. It is a far deeper delusion than the usual religion-based nonsense.

[Fridays Child]

2. “Our enormously productive economy . . . demands that we make consumption our way of life...

“Our enormously productive economy . . . demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption . . . we need things consumed, burned up, replaced and discarded at an ever-accelerating rate.”

--Victor LeBow, 1955, as quoted in "The Story of Stuff"

[ConsAreLiars]

4. Just exactly why the Powers That Be want to define us as "consumers"

rather than workers or producers. We do the work that turns stuff into better stuff, but as far as they are concerned, since they "own" the stuff we make, we are seen only as dweebs who must continue to pay them to get our stuff back from them.

[chknltl]

5. kicked nt