We’re hard wired to conserve our energy and effort. This has been, is, and will be exploited by those with power and influence against those without them to keep it that way.
Control.
It’s all about control. Influence. Manipulation.
To do what?
Benefit those in power.
That those with the most have such a scarcity mindset is sad.
The fact that their scarcity mindset causes so much undue suffering to the masses is something worse than sad.
There are so many things in life that we just don’t think about.
So many physical things that exist that we don’t think about. So many phrases in our language that we don’t think about.
Cost of Living.
The term implies that we don’t deserve to live. We don’t deserve to be alive. So much for the pro-choice crowd. Once the fetus is born, its on its own.
Self help gurus and the toxic positivity crowd like to talk about what a statistical miracle it is to be alive. Good for content, great for someone whose doing well in life to feel even better about themselves. That concept smacks into a brick wall of the externally, measurable, physical reality of any capitalist controlled civilization.
The paramedic will save your life and tell you that it was a miracle, then the clerk sends you a bill that puts you into medical bankruptcy. The politician tells you it’s a miracle to be alive in the richest country in the history of the world, then votes against universal healthcare.
Cost of living. Trade ⅔ of your life in the service of being to survive the other ⅓ while you’re not working. Five days on for two days off. Fifty weeks on for two weeks off. If you’re a worker with a white collar maybe. What is a weekend? What is a holiday? Sick days? Suck it up and turn your gear on the machine plebe.
Cost of living. You mean the mental and emotional toll that simply existing, maintaining sanity and decorum takes on us? You mean the unanswerable questions about existence? What is consciousness? What happens when we die?
The consequences of the body decaying as we get older as the positive alternative to dying young? The feeling of being alone in rooms full of strangers? Wondering if anyone will ever really get us? Not knowing who we can actually trust? Why do bad things happen to good people? Why does absolute power corrupt absolutely? What does living up to my potential mean? Are we alone in the universe? Isn’t there a risk of dying at any moment? That cost of living?
No, not the immaterial cost of living. The other one. The material cost of living. The one that says if you don’t trade your time for money often enough, for enough quantity, you’ll be left to die of dehydration and starvation on the streets. That cost of living.
I am regularly around people not from America. I enjoy it. I enjoy different perspectives and experiences and perceptions and opinions.
One of my favorite things about regularly being around foreigners is their reactions when they see American political advertising aka campaign commercials. Which is common because election season in America never ends now, since it’s a set it and forget it emotional trigger and decisiveness tool for the unwashed masses.
After they see one or two…dozen…political ads in an hour, they’ll inevitably start asking the people around them what they think of politics, what they think of democracy, what they are thinking about the upcoming election, etc.
If/when they ask me, my answer is a sloppy version of the following; American politics is theater for the capitalist oligarchy and the military industrial complex to give the masses the illusion of choice, control and influence.
If I’m talking to a European, they quickly understand what I’m talking about. If it’s an Australian or South American, there is usually an explanation of what an oligarchy is and that the MIC is and how they are the shadow authoritarian government and have been for a minimum of half a century.
Any doubt or skepticism towards that can be directed towards the 2008 bank bailouts, 2020 TARP bailouts, the volume of assassinations of anti-war organizers in the 1960s, and of course the never ending wars we have never ending money for while homelessness and wealth inequality reach all time highs in the richest country in the history of the planet.
I remember in the 90’s when Jessie Ventura became governor of Minnesota as an independent. When asked why he was an independent he said that the only difference between a democrat and a republican is the speed at which their knees hit the ground when their donors walk into the room.
Those who would say that America is a democracy and isn’t a corporate captured, authoritarian state; would also openly admit how corrupt Washington is. They would call me a conspiracy theorist, and then complain about how nothing ever seems to get done in Washington. Drain the swamp! But we live in a direct democracy. What does duopoly mean anyways?!
As long as we’re blaming the rank and file voters of the opposite party, obsessing over pronouns, or thinking an ex billionaire game show host is to blame for all of our problems, then we certainly won’t have the mental capacity to comprehend the people who control the currency, the land, the bombs and the resources are the ones controlling the government and that the combination of the two controls our lives.
Because then we would have to admit that we aren’t free, we own nothing, we have no rights. And I know from repeated experience, that ignorance…is…bliss.
“They got money for war, but can’t feed the poor” Tupac Shakur
Anytime I mention the >$845 billion annual budget for the Military Industrial Complex I am always greeted by either confusion, deflection or anger.
Anger is the one that gives me that kind of self mutilating joy. Such sadness and disappointment at my fellow human that they feel the need to take up verbal defense of an entity that literally has more money than any other entity on Earth…for “defense”
What’s worse than an exploited worker in false class solidarity with billionaires? Military Industrial Complex bootlickers.
It’s not their fault. America is the most propagandized country in the history of the world and it’s not even close. Germany? North Korea? Wake up.
Have you looked at a screen ever? What is advertising? What are commercials? Who owns the news? Who owns the media? And why? Exactly.
It’s in our nature to think we’re the good guys. We’ll already justify our own actions to ourselves regardless of their external effects unless we suffer immediate negative repercussions.
You take that part of our nature and subject us to a literal non stop, inescapable propaganda machine in every home, public space, purse, and pocket and how can the masses in America not have the consciousness be corporate captured?
We know in our hearts poverty shouldn’t exist in the world with so much wealth. But what our eyes see and our ears hear, our mind believes. And those two senses are under a never ending attack of seduction by entities that want us to live like donkeys chasing the carrot to avoid the stick.
And if we’re too buys mentally, verbally, and physically fighting each other or buying things or working ourselves to the bone to avoid poverty, then we certainly can’t unite for the greater good of the 99%.
Exploited workers in false class solidarity with the billionaire class, seem to always want to use hypotheticals and theories to justify the poor living conditions of a vast majority of working age human beings.
Just the concept of, “earn a living” is a skewed paradigm of existence in a world with more than enough to go around for all humans to live comfortably.
Being able to live comfortable was the American Dream was it not? Wasn’t that the entire concept of the economic middle class?
It’s human nature for people to always want more and for others to always want to do less. Sure, but we default to an economic system of exploitation? Exploitation of ignorance. Exploitation of resources. Exploitation of labor. Exploitation of emotions.
But it’s the greatest economic system in history in the greatest country in history says the people currently reaping it’s benefits. And their bootlickers who confuse having a comma in their bank account and lots of shiny new adult toys to show off online. Just don’t dare ask them about their debt(s).
Anarchy Journal Constitutional 