Our gifted guest blogger disaffected recently did a guest post entitled "The Beast".In the comments section to that post disaffected pointed out that the metaphor "The Beast" was used because it is a powerful metaphor, used even by those who penned the Bible.
Regular readers of Dredd Blog know that I use the metaphor MOMCOM, along with the image of "a beautiful, intelligent, witty, and entirely competent creature" (see Jabber The Whut?) which is entirely at odds visually, it would seem at first blush, with the metaphor disaffected used in "The Beast" post.
I will now explain why MOMCOM is the metaphor of official Dredd Blog posts, instead of The Beast.
For those familiar with the apocalyptic imagery of the Bible, and especially the metaphor of "The Beast", the metaphor does not end with "The Beast".
No, the full picture is a woman riding a beast:
There I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was covered with blasphemous names and had seven heads and ten horns. The woman was dressed in purple and scarlet, and was glittering with gold, precious stones and pearls. She held a golden cup in her hand, filled with abominable things and the filth of her adulteries.(Book of Revelation, King James Bible). This type of writing comes from the viewpoint of those outside "The Beast", from its "enemies" as it were.
To the contrary reality, MOMCOM is us; our mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, and our neighbors; in our own good nation.
MOMCOM is not our enemy, she is our misguided amygdala, as has been pointed out ad nauseum on Dredd Blog System posts.
To understand, think of the Pogo principle: "we have met the enemy and it is us".
The reality is that MOMCOM is not a strange beast from another part of the world, no, MOMCOM is those we love and fight for here at home and abroad.
That is why our system cannot defeat our problem, that is why our system's eyes cannot even see our problem for the most part.
We of MOMCOM are our own worst enemies because we love and fight for the wrongs that are destroying us (remember "America, love it or leave it"?).
The ultimate conclusion is that "The Beast" is what the world sees in us.
If MOMCOM was "The Beast", in our own eyes, we could demonize it with massive applications of propaganda, then attack it and destroy it.
Since MOMCOM is not "The Beast", but is instead us, we cannot defeat it with our usual imperialistic, political machinations.
That is why MOMCOM is far more dangerous to us than "The Beast" is - we do not want to "hurt" ourselves by "hurting" MOMCOM now do we?
Notice how suicidal this hypnotic mantra really is, and why it is likely to stay that way until the end:
America is on a collision course with itself ... what will become a pitched battle for the soul of American politics ...(Jeff Sachs, Huffington Post, emphasis added). As President Obama reads up on Reagan, MOMCOM gets the mine & the citizenry gets the shaft.
As in many countries, conflicts over public morality and national strategy come down to questions of money. In the United States, this is truer than ever. The US is running an annual budget deficit of around $1 trillion ...
The problem is America's corrupted politics and loss of civic morality ...
The result is a dangerous paradox ... after three decades of elite fiscal rule in the US that has favored the rich and powerful. Since Ronald Reagan became president ... the richest 1 percent of American households now has a higher net worth than the bottom 90 percent. The annual income of the richest 12,000 households is greater than that of the poorest 24 million households ...
Meanwhile back at The Circle W Ranch, no one dares to question the vast economic and moral waste of imperialism via a vast U.S. Military welfare system grown bigger than the rest of the nations' military budgets combined.
Great post today. The beautiful woman metaphor has indeed been embraced totally. It's going to be very interesting watching the GOP deficit hawks contort themselves mentally to continue massive MOMCOM military spending in the face of what will necessarily be massive social spending cuts. Look for the further demonization of pensioners and the poor as "leeches" and such.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, they're going to continue to find out that social spending cits are political losers as well, although I suspect they'll employ a little political sleight of hand first by transferring the unfunded liabilities to the private sector, where their eventual termination will be that much more "politically agreeable." NoBama's recent healthcare privatization bill was the first major step in that direction.
Either way, we know MOMCOM is virtually untouchable and will use false flag terrorist incidents if necessary to ensure that she remains so, while the Baby Boom retirement generation across the world will gradually lose political clout as they age and die off, until at some point, with the aid of private sector, which suffers no compunction about cutting off unprofitable services, they will simply be kicked to the curb and left to their own devices. There will simply be no choice as resources run out, tax revenues plummet, and corporate profits dry up.
Another great post from James Kunstler over at Clusterfuck Nation. The man's got a real way with words.
ReplyDeleteWhich brings me to the subject of our own financial crisis, soon to mutate into a political crisis. There really is no "solution" to our problem of debt except to become a less affluent society. You can get there via the path of compressive deflationary depression (no money), or hyperinflation (plenty of worthless money), but the destination is the same. In the meantime we're stuck with the extremely uneven distribution of hardship and luxury. Whole classes of formerly working people face the prospect of genuine ruin while an ultra-pampered class of celebrity clowns and professional swindlers fob off with whatever's left on the national buffet table. The real politics of all this are so far from being sorted out that sheer contemplation of what lies ahead leaves the mind harrowed and feeble.
The Jacobins of 1793 France were basically the Left. It took only five hundred or so of them to bully a nation of 30 million. The Jacobins of the USA in 2011 are basically the Right Wing, followers of Senator Jim DeMint, the mind-slaves of Rush Limbaugh and "students" of Prof Glenn Beck, and, of course, the worshippers of Sarah Palin. Their brand of politics might be labeled Nostalgic Sentimental Paranoid Know-Nothingism. They're proud and loud, pious and ignorant, so deeply insecure that they depend on flag lapel pins to remind them to care about their country, full of righteous anger about their own sexual impulses, the religious notions (or not) of other people, and the possible introduction of the rule of law in banking matters. They pretend to represent the folks freezing in their mobile homes who subsist on Froot Loops, but they're really protecting the country clubbers, the corporate poobahs, the fraudsters on Wall Street, and every other racketeer in the land - including their own class of political grifters.
The Obama Democrats, the putative Left Wing, are analogous to the pro-monarchy center of revolutionary France. Their ethical sanctimony is fake while they do everything possible to keep the rule of law out of money matters. They are most of all ineffectual and impotent, capable only of grandstanding hyped up Great Compromises that accomplish nothing, and probably doom the party to be chewed up by the machinations of their bloodthirsty adversaries on the right. It's hard to shed a tear for them, their performance has been so purblind and wimpish.
It boils down to "look out, look out, the Bimbo has a gun"
ReplyDeleteThe RAND corporation may be the amygdala of the Bimbo:
ReplyDeleteRAND researchers believed that as long as 10 million Americans survived a nuclear war, the war was won.
Insider Reveals Diabolical Secrets Of The Rand Corporation
I had an econ professor in college who spent a few years with RAND. I was writing a paper on government debt at the time and asked her to read it and comment. Her reply? "That's all fine, but everyone knows that governments don't actually pay their debts, so what's the issue?" Needless to say, I didn't ask her for any more advice after that.
ReplyDeleteMost all "think tanks", liberal OR conservative, are merely politically sponsored academic propaganda mills. That said, the conservatives certainly led the way (once again!) in the use of think tanks to provide acadmemic justification and authority for what was more often than not questionable policy prescriptions. Can you say "trickle down" economics via large personal income tax cuts for the wealthy? They're still selling that one after 30 years of disastrous results. And guess what? Americans are still buying it too!