We Are Ruled by Fear

Today a majority of the people in the US supports strikes in Iraq and Syria. After weeks of propaganda from all sides of the spectrum the bamboozled and frightened populace capitulated in its resolve to the demands of the deep state.

Perhaps if the corporate media showed Saudi Arabia's hundreds of public executions by beheading and sometimes by stoning, the people in the US would support the bombing of that country as well. But of course we don't air our friend's dirty laundry.

The tribalism and groupthink of our supposed free press is mind boggling and it will be an object of study for future scholars, if there are to be any given the current corporate attack on education and the destruction of the ecosystem.

Such articles, and these polls are thus simply self-congratulatory PR as if to say: look how well we have done to con the people in the US into supporting yet another murderous and destabilizing military action. The contempt for democracy in the elite is almost palpable. The fact is that, hand in hand with the corporate media, the ruling oligarchs keep manipulating our emotional responses by manufacturing one crisis after another.

Yet, the disconnect in popular consciousness is also visible in the poll. Obama's ratings are nearing his all-time low. Perhaps it's a message from the true consciousness of the people saying to Obama: "You have frightened us into doing something hateful yet again and we hate you for bringing out the worse in us."

Perhaps the reason why we keep telling ourselves that this is the "home of the brave" and the "land of the free" is because we are not willing to accept the reality: that we are a fearful and frightened nation ruled by fear and that we are willingly renouncing our freedom for the false promise of protection from the very people who have taken us to the brink of extinction.

This is what happens to a nation that is raised from cradle to grave to pledge allegiance, follow orders and, of course, shop.

1866: The Birth of the Eight-Hour Working Day

From the Resolution of the Working Men of Dunkirk, State of New York, 1866:

We, the workers of Dunkirk, declare that the length of time of labour required under the present system is too great, and that, far from leaving the worker time for rest and education, it plunges him into a condition of servitude but little better than slavery. That is why we decide that eight hours are enough for a working day, and ought to be legally recognized as enough; why we call to our help that powerful lever, the press; .. and why we shall consider all those that refuse us this help as enemies of the reform of labour and of the rights of the labourer.

Source: Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy: A Critique of Political Economy v. 1 ( Penguin Books) 414n63

At the same time (the beginning of September 1866), the Congress of the International Working Men’s Association, held at Geneva, passed the following resolution, proposed by the London General Council: ‘We declare that the limitation of the working day is a preliminary condition without which all further attempts at improvement and emancipation must prove abortive… the Congress proposes eight hours as the legal limit of the working day.’

Source: Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy: A Critique of Political Economy v. 1 ( Penguin Books) 414-5

Welcome to the United States: Land of the Free

A small correction on the caption: America is a continent, the United States is the country in question. The fact that people living in the United States calls themselves Americans says a lot about the type of hubris existing within the dominant culture. Call me pedantic, but words are all that matters these days in the propaganda wars.