lambchops by Haj

The Capitalist Lie – Welcome to the Slaughterhouse
The Capitalist Lie, part one

This is part one of a six-part series first appearing in the Medium publication Coping with Capitalism April 15, 2024 in response to the lies propagandized by our capitalist society. Much gratitude to Shawn Roberts, Jr. publisher and editor for his vision and improvements on this series.

Every one of us should take this moment and reflect on where humanity finds itself.

We have ascended great heights. Indeed, our dreams draw us towards the heavens itself.

Yet, with all of our genius, we are now facing what has been called the Mass Extinction that could well mean the eradication of most, if not all, human life on Earth.

What have we done to bring this upon ourselves?

It seems that our potent intellect fails to insulate us from our own intractable folly.

By reaching such great heights, we are like Icarus as we float above the clouds for only a moment before we must fall to certain doom.

This situation must change. Our society, the world we have constructed, as we know it, must transform and transform dramatically.

What is it that has led us here? Only by recognizing this, can we hope to change our situation for the better. Those responsible will reveal themselves.

Certainly, we all share responsibility on a sublimely real level, but the society we have constructed is both competitive and skewed into an intensely distilled concentration of real power.

This power has in no way been democratically distributed. Today, we see the rise in fascism around the world meaning power will further consolidate. That is exactly the idea.

The distortions are so amplified that we are kept confused, spinning on our heels, and utterly distracted.

We must seek the truth without prejudice. If we have any prayer to alter this course of complete social and demographic collapse, we should all pay very close attention.

What should be glaringly apparent to many by now is that our global system of economics must be held to account.

Our economics has, in truth, been based on thousands of years of hierarchical power and wealth. Our institutions and systems support these hierarchies exactly as they were intended to do.

Certainly, in years past, some distribution of power was deemed a political necessity; yet our economics is supported by and supports a violent, white-supremacist patriarchy that has been in place since the foundations of the Western world.

We could call this the Great Exploitation – of our neighbor and the natural world that supports us all. This would have been the perfect moniker. Power wielding power.

Labeling this system a competitive economy propelled by the consumption of goods and services or even simply calling it a consumption-driven economy would have been a more informative compromise for a name.

What we actually call this, of course, is global capitalism.

If you want to do it one better and ramp up the distortions and lies, call it by its Newspeak name. Therein lies the real problem for a good number in Americans.

…Go figure…many, it seems, wish to affix the preponderance of blame elsewhere.

There really isn’t a rush from a media too steeped in the deception of the propaganda model to expose the truth. Politics have become national with the national media monopolized in the hands of a wealthy elite. So, the lies are simply being amplified or the truth is quietly swept under the rug.

Most often, we hear this notion that our planet can’t support a human population of 8 billion people, and this is the apparent cause of our current climate troubles.

In truth, this line of thinking is likely a gross distortion of the facts. The most glaring evidence of this is that the vast majority of negative climate activity is attributed to a much smaller percentage of the world’s population.

While 80% of the globe’s population accounts for 20% of the climate change activity, a meager 20% of the population accounts for a whopping 80% of the negative impacts on the climate.

What is this telling us?

First, and most apparently, it is telling us that demographics are not the entirety, if even a significant portion, of the problem here.

So, while one might blame population for our woes, one would be missing the most significant point presented by the data. Poor people are accounting for only a minimum of climate change activity. Wealthy nations are overwhelmingly the most responsible.

Wealthy nations have industrialized. This means: high amounts of carbon emissions from a panoply of waste their industry creates; modern transportation networks that are built around the individual and the automobile; a neurotic intensity for repetitious consumer activity to support a materialist lifestyle; and a profit obsessed and “factoried” agriculture that features the cruel exploitation of animals. All of this activity drives a seemingly insatiable thirst for more and more energy while generating volumes of harmful waste.

Poor nations remain far behind wealthy nations in building industrialized economies that generate this level of greenhouse gas. It’s really that simple, but we seem to turn away when we are faced with these facts.

The truth is, once we examine demographics, we realize that in wealthy nations, with relatively broad, affordable and convenient access to both education and health care, birth rates begin to decline. When poorer countries fail to deliver this level of affluence to their citizens, birth rates are consistently higher.

This data exposes the potential causes underlying our planet’s rapid population growth. It seems embedded within global economic disparities. When people are provided affordable and convenient access to health care and education, they moderate population growth to the point of negative growth.

The problem is that bringing this level of affluence to the rest of the world would simply exacerbate the crisis before us even as populations drop. It’s in the data.

Swimming in these seas, we are like an addict. We may well realize we have a problem, but we deny what is causing the problem. This metaphor is significant as we really are dealing with the same demons as the addict or the alcoholic.

This remains lost to us.

That’s not all. When we begin to dig into why there are things like addiction, alienation, suicide, and other self-destructive and violent behaviors that plague our society and why these things are on the rise, we might begin to see what is behind all of this. That is, if we could introduce a meaningful level of honest self-critique into our thinking.

When our world finds itself racing towards extinction and destruction, a number of critical questions must be asked.

First, we must question the leadership that has brought us to this point and seems to be propelling us towards certain doom. Everyone should be concerned simply because these are the same group of leaders who brought us here.

Everyone – not just the poor and the black and brown people – should be concerned. Listen closely. Talk of “thinning the herd” seems darkly akin to “the Final Solution” particularly with the entirety of the rhetoric of this caste. LGBTQ+, Jews, immigrants, or anyone else “othered” – should be worried. In truth, even the rich should jump ship.

As we question our leaders, we must also cast a critical eye on our venerated institutions.

These institutions include our precious global economic system which is indeed known as capitalism.

In Part Two: Shop ‘til you Drop – the Unsustainability of Capitalism we will deconstruct some of the faulty mechanisms of a consumption-based economy.

American Death

Once upon a time, it was popular to call America’s form of representational government “democracy”. Now, many of those advocating for revolutionary change have drawn the distinction between democracy and the American Republic. There seems little question that in rhetorically drawing America away from democratic traditions, there is an attempt to make us all a little more comfortable with the idea of the rule by the few.

This isn’t something new either. The machinations of the cold war served to obscure the distinction between political systems of governance, such as democracy or authoritarianism, with economic systems such as capitalism or communism. This didn’t just serve to confuse one into believing one type of economy demanded a specific form of politics. America became a “democracy” and this implied a capitalist economy where individual freedom was nurtured. Meanwhile, communist economics were aligned with the oppressive totalitarianism of the Soviet Union and Red China.

In truth, political systems of government are how states determine their laws, enforce their laws, and adjudicate their laws. Political systems, like democratic forms of government, have no direct correlation to the economic systems that determine the division of wealth of a nation-state. Conversely, economic systems like capitalism are not political systems and have no direct bearing on individual liberties outside the market.

By conflating these, America propagandists successfully bundled “Communism” with fascist authoritarian rule and “Democracy” with the free markets of capitalism.

The result is a confusion of what socialism is and what it is capable of. More important, Americans have a residual dread fear of anything smacking of socialism. When someone proposes a socialist agenda, the fear of tyrannical oppression paralyzes the nation. Although this all served the propagandists of America’s cold war corporatism, it has become burdensome in our time of crises to say the least.

Where does America find itself not quite a year before the 2024 presidential elections?  

One important fact of the American political system has not changed. This “democracy” we have forged is decidedly a Two-Party System. You may like this or not, but it is the reality we all must deal with. To believe otherwise and to pursue phantom candidates from alternative parties is simply not an option unless one wishes to simply not participate in the vote-wielding potency of American politics and its two-party system.

So, we have a two-party system here in America. One of these political parties is corrupt. It has been bought and sold to serve corporate wealth and power. It is less beholden to the people and most in debt to wealthy donors, corporate big-wigs, and the billionaire class. It is filled with corrupt politicians seeking personal gain through increased wealth and the power that accompanies it.

One must seriously consider whether it is wise to support such a party. That is, until one considers the alternative. After all, this is a two-party system and not a three-party or pluralistic democracy.

The other political party in America is the Nazi Party.

This is not an exaggeration and is true in everything but name. The very ones who have reformed this political party espouse the ideology of fascism along with many of the aesthetics, slogans, racial animus, hatred, and violence.

If one calls themselves a Republican, one must consider this. First, the Grand Old Party you formerly embraced no longer exists. This is a plain and simple fact. That party is not coming back like some noble Lazarus either. Quite literally, this party has now become the Nazi Party.

In a two-party system, history instructs us that at some point one party will eventually come into power. This may be through presidential elections or dominance in one or both houses of congress. It is simply a feature of a two-party system that each party, at some point or another, will eventually come into power.

No problem there until one considers our new reality. In America, we have the corrupt party of neoliberal corporatism and the Nazi Party. Eventually, the Nazi Party will come into power.

Then America will have a One-Party System.

This party spells the end of America.

Unless, by some miracle of human insight followed by a Herculean struggle, the Nazi Party is utterly destroyed and erased from the American political landscape.

How did America get here? It seems what we see in American politics today is reflected throughout much of the world especially where one once expected to see liberal “democracies” in power.

Something has caused people to lose confidence in their institutions and their leadership. We are faced with an extraordinary stark division of wealth throughout the world. A smaller and narrower number of people hold an awesome level of power. One can state confidently and without exaggeration that the amount of power possessed by this very few is the most power ever grasped by human hands.

There is certainly the climate crisis. There are uncertainties, the fear of nuclear holocaust, the manipulation of the human genome, the rise of artificial intelligence, mass surveillance, more people competing for a dwindling pie, and any of a number of circumstances that traumatize and add to our already overstressed psyches. 

It’s simple really, isn’t it? We are facing the end of the world.

The result is an abandonment of the status quo – the political middle. This is the very same middle that has guided American and much of the world’s politics likely since the inception of these nations and their constitutions.

From our political vantage, this “middle” is very broad and encompasses both a “right” and a “left”, but not necessarily the political poles largely left out of serious political discourse within nations such as the USA.

As the middle is abandoned, some move to farther right and some farther left. Eventually, the extremes are drawn into mainline politics.

As usual with the version of “democracy” spread by America, the left ends up cut off. Rather a brutal and murderous military dictatorship friendly to multinationals than socialism antagonistic to these same businesses. Indeed, by labeling leftist politics as socialism or “worst”, the left is stigmatized to the point of being cut out of the political process as too “undemocratic”.

This was witnessed in the primaries leading up to the 2020 US presidential elections when every democratic primary candidate dropped out of the race as a unified whole once the “socialist” candidate on the left, Bernie Sanders, was becoming the leading candidate. This left the nomination to middle-of-the-road Joe Biden, the only other democrat left to face him.

Meanwhile, corporations who favor Biden will take the previous president, #45, over of a died-in-wool Wobbly like Sanders. So, we have the corrupt, middling, status quo and the fascist right.

On the right, we have He Who Shall Not Be Named. Former president #45 who tried to stay in office by overthrowing America’s form of democracy.

Now he whines about democracy and not being allowed on states, like Colorado and Maine’s, ballots. The media, operating under the Herman/Chomsky propaganda model, declare this disqualification would disenfranchise a whole slew of the American voting public.

Conveniently, these same journalists and opinion-makers seem to fail to see that there are two sides to this. Allowing someone to run for president who had formerly attempted to overthrow the government is the real outrage here, not barring this person from seeking this sort of political power he will certainly turn to tyranny. 

The fact is the 2024 presidential elections are almost certainly doomed to chaos. If Biden wins, the fascists will explode in furious outrage. If the other is even allowed to run, the elections will be viewed as illegitimate by those seeking to defend democracy in America.   

It seems America’s founders wished to protect the new republic from tyrants like King George or this new demon. Even as this 14^th amendment was a response to the threat from insurrectionists and rebel confederacies after the Civil War, it seems the very heart of our constitution is built to protect the American people from tyrannical rule.  

To simplify things – those who do not abide by the oaths of the office, should not be allowed to run for the office. Those who attempt to overthrow the government, should not be allowed to run for the same government they wish to overthrow.

We may need a little of the common sense of these founding fathers to recognize how critical this is to our nation’s survival.

To argue that this should be resolved in the court of law is another trap. Certainly, to throw him in jail for his crimes would require a proceeding in our criminal courts, but this is a matter of barring someone from running for office.

His guilt was on full display. The evidence isn’t a matter of hearsay, but has been gathered first-hand by the millions who watched him and listened to him in his many machinations designed to thwart our democracy.

This crime was performed in front of the entire nation day-after-day leading up to January 6^th. Certainly, a good many Americans have been deceived into believing the falsehoods spouted by this traitor and his sycophants.

Justice demands we filter out the distortions and lies and seek only the truth.

That truth is that this was almost certainly the greatest crime ever perpetuated against the United States of America. Nixon and Benedict Arnold were choir boys compared to this one. Put him in the company of Jeff Davis and his ilk. 

This will be decided by the Supreme Court. Yet, the ruling should be obvious. This man does not meet the bar of eligibility for the presidency of this country.

This is a matter of his fitness to hold the greatest office in the land and not whether he is guilty of a crime or not. He took part in and led an insurrection against the government “of the people”. His guilt in this matter was on full display.

Allowed to take the oath of office of presidency once again, he will betray this oath once more and remove the last grasp of political power from “We the People”.

Yes, the 45^th president lowered the bar of the presidency. Are we to lower the bar further and allow insurrectionists to run for the highest office of the land?

This Supreme Court is likely to rule that he shall and to leave it to the voters to decide.

So, the bar has been lowered.

President Biden meets this low bar. He will likely be the only candidate of the two (and recall this is a Two-Party System) who can meet this low bar.

Why, because his opponent will almost certainly fail to meet this bar. In fact, most any potential nominee from the Republican Party would likely enable the former and 45^th president and/or the fascist agenda that will, based on Republican success, doom America to a One-Party System.  

The bar that Joe Biden meets, that low bar, is that Biden loves American democracy and wants to protect it.

Nothing else really matters. You can try to go further and sure, Biden reaches a higher bar than this, but the point is the other party doesn’t.

You can talk about Biden’s track record, voting record, challenges dealing with obstructionism, Israel, or whatever, but all of that doesn’t really matter when the opposition fails to reach this low bar that has been set for presidential candidates in this country for 2024.

Joe Biden must be the best candidate for president ever put forth in American history. This isn’t hyperbole. It’s a night and day decision and is entirely based on the opposition in this Two-Party System – the Nazis.

We must go further. We must eliminate this Nazi Party. It must be erased from the American political landscape. This party, called the Republican Party, and its leader, He Who Shall Not Be Named, spell the end of America’s experiment if we fail.

If we fail, America will make its final, greatest fall and become something it was never intended to be.

A One-Party system.     

Someone once said, “Turn your face to the sun and the shadows fall behind.”

When Christ went into the desert, He went alone. Yet, there in the desolation of oneness was another. This presence we see brought into being as the Devil himself tempting Jesus with the fruits of worldly power.

So, in the desert all alone, Christ met with His devil. To this devil, Christ would command… “get you behind me”.

Christ did not banish the devil to some nefarious plane. Instead, He commanded the devil to “get behind me”.

It seems, this devil was a part of Christ. This devil is something we might call the Shadow.

Among the many illuminations of Carl Jung is the essentiality of our shadow selves. In the desert, we see Christ shine a light on His own shadow self and bring these temptations into the light of day so that He could confront each one by one.

To deny His shadow self, Christ would have empowered His shadow. The shadow can not be seen in unconscious darkness. He may not have openly worshipped Satan, but His service would at best be divided. As Christ told us, one can not be a good servant for two masters. One will either betray the one while serving the other or betray them both.

When Christ left the desert. His aspiration was to spread the good news. One might say that this is when things got political. This is when things reached a moral climax.  

The life of the Spirit begins with the inward moral journey for enlightenment and balance, but is never truly realized until the Spirit is moved to bring the light to all of humankind. One should not hide one’s light under a bushel.   

We may look to the life of Christ as an example of the life of service to one’s fellow creature.

After finding the peace within, Christ faced the sun and walked towards civilization where He would make the salvation of humankind His mission. His shadow, His demons, were cast behind Him.

The light can not exist without shadow, nor can the shadow be without light.  

Just as there is no courage without vulnerability, the capacity for wrongdoing provides us an opportunity to see ourselves in the most positive light. Without the capacity to do evil, we really can do no good.

God’s Law is only enforced through the moral order of the universe or with what one might call karma. As Christ instructed us, “you reap what you sow”. God’s Law allows for our free choice. Our collective fall is an example of this. Without this freedom, there is no moral choice being made, but only the coercion of a higher power. Without choice, one is really doing neither good nor evil, but simply what one is compelled to do.

Without the capacity to do evil, there can be no good.

The knowledge of this universe seems to rely on a sort of binary symbolism. We rarely know what something actually is except through a kind of negation. In other words, we only seem to gain an inkling of what something is through the realization of what something is not. Possibly, this is because much of what we consider “reality” is actually a manifestation from the Creator God and not the fundamental reality we often ascribe to it. In this way, the true nature of reality becomes elusive as we remain trapped in spacetime. The true vitality of the manifestation is missed, but like a lamp casting shades, for those who see, the material seems to illuminate that which is hidden from our eyes.

Like Christ, we must each shine a light on our own demons. They will otherwise operate in darkness.

After departing the desert, we find Christ with the Baptist in his wilderness at the River Jordan. It was from this confessional point that Christ could truly begin His mission as the dove of peace took flight from His shoulder.

Like the temptations in the desert, this was not a purge of the darkness, but a casting of the darkness into its rightful place.

Christ was led by the Light of God. This is the truth and the good news that Christ spread through ancient Judea.

It is the humility of this master who only takes it upon Himself the role of servant where we can best begin to understand our Savior. As a true servant of God, Christ became a servant to each of us.  

In the story of His life, we find a Christ who rubs shoulders with the sinners and those marked as the “unclean”. Christ made it abundantly clear. He did not come for the sake of the righteous and to give succor to the powerful of this world, but He came for the lowly sinner in need of correction and healing…those who were in need of Him, those who were being persecuted, exploited and oppressed by the powerful.  

Indeed, we have been told where to find Him upon His return.

The depth of meaning of this is lost to those who today claim the mantel of righteousness. They are the same as they were in Christ’s time. Sitting in their high places looking down upon the unclean masses.

Today, we can see as was seen then, that these same “righteous” are anything but. Indeed, none save the Savior Himself, are free of the shackles of sin. He is the first.  

Those that make these claims must make the same supplication they did in ancient times. They must humble themselves before the Lord, go to the lowly places and confess their sinning ways. There is no other path to Christ.

Each of us must bend a knee to ask forgiveness. There are no exceptions.

It is true that the judgment of the Father is always Mercy. God is Love and He is the All Creator. It is from this Love that we can begin to understand that Christ has come to serve and that He is truly the Good Shepard.

Even if Christ were to come to a world of Christian Love and not this Hell lorded over by Satan, He would still not be found with the righteous in paradise. This is not His place. He will be out seeking the lost sheep. He will be in this Hell with the sinners until that last, lost sheep is found and brought to the gates of paradise.

The first shall be last and the last shall be first. This is the Alpha and the Omega or the great unification of all that is. The monism or the oneness whole of God the Holy Father. The good news.

Each of you are a child of God.

The sinners in Christ’s day are really no different than today. They are the most vulnerable. They are the “unclean”, the despised and the outcasts. They are the “Other”. Today we see them as the persecuted and most targeted by the self-proclaimed righteous ones: the homeless and the poor, the stranger and the immigrant, black and brown people, any LGBTQ+, Jews, Muslims, the heterodox and so on and so on.   

We can watch the works of the powerful and hear their words. They are the victims, they say. They are the ones being persecuted despite their exalted state of grace. These are the innocent. Those who are at fault are the sinners. They may pick one, more, or even all to point their fingers at, but the fault is in the sinners and not within themselves and their own Shadow being.

Like in ancient times, they are likened to carved marble sarcophagi. Beautiful and ornate on the outside, but corrupt with death inside. Their example is really just hypocrisy, corruption and self-serving enrichment.

Which leads us to further consider, what lessons does all of this provide today’s Christian?

Today, those righteous few incite the many with violence pointing their fingers at the sinning trans, poor, immigrants. Suddenly, out leaps one of the mentally weak with a claw hammer attacking your family in brutal, bloody violence.

Who should we blame?

What responsibility to those leaders who demonize their opponents with violent rhetoric?

What of those who give support to these leaders?

What of you and I?

If, for example, we end up with an LBGTQ+ grandchild and they are attacked. What then?

How should that make us feel?

After all, we have given our support to these leaders and, it must be said, their violent rhetoric. It seems we become complicit in this violence when we lend them our support.

How should we feel about these issues now?

Do we condone a self-destructive social order that relies on vigilantism instead of some semblance of justice?

Do we even seek justice…or is it really just petty revenge?

Whose side are we on?

Are we among the righteous or the sinners? For, if you are to believe the words of Christ, He comes only for the sinners and not for the righteous. The righteous have no need for healing.

…and they know it.

Are you one of them?

How does this make you feel?

Once you have answered that, you might have gotten something out of this essay.

Go with God.

Find Joy

Love and Peace.  

Amen.