Quote
What choice do you have? The machinery of aristocracy and control is well beyond the need for your support. They’re self-sustaining and the level of corruption in all aspects of government and politics so unbelievably extensive and deep and convoluted that there is no way to simply excise the foreign tissue by itself.
Naomi Wolf does a great job of describing the process that seems to be occurring right now (including this event) in her book “The End of America”.
I mean, we live in a country where our president’s (last president) family did extensive business with the family of the man that killed thousands of Americans. We live in a country where government officials who are employees of Goldman Sachs take a trillion dollars from the tax payers to bail out Goldman Sachs. We live in a country where our president appoints Ken Lay as energy advisor to deregulate his own industry on his own terms. We live in a country where we allow our government to pass bills that allow the president to point at a citizen and make them disappear. Off to gitmo for torture, if he wants. Without representation or a trial. We live in a country where judges are paid off in millions of dollars by the private prison industry to fuel their business by unfairly punishing minor juvenile violators with many months in juvenile detention (google it - in Pennsylvania).
It’s probably not too late to force change, but by the time you could ever even remotely possibly convince enough of the population to give a flying fuck and get their heads out of their Bible and Twilight or their “durr durr abortion” and “durr durr immigration” and “durr durr religion” bullshit to actually do something about the real problems facing us, it’ll definitely be too fucking late.
—
Seumas
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/05/27/2324227/DoD-Paper-Proposes-National-Security-Through-a-Culture-of-Restraint-and-Stigma
Quote
Some days I know that if I let my brain fully understand what my gut was propelling me into, it’d chuck itself out my ear.
— Spider Jerusalem
Vonnegut on The American Dream
“America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, ‘It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.’ It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: ‘if you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?’ There will also be an American flag no larger than a child’s hand – glued to a lollipop stick and flying from the cash register… Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say Napoleonic times. Many novelties have come from America. The most startling of these, a thing without precedent, is a mass of undignified poor. They do not love one another because they do not love themselves.” I was rereading Slaughterhouse 5, and this really hit me. True then, true now.
Dem lemons ain’t real! OMG.
Answer
tumblrbot Asked:
WHAT IS YOUR EARLIEST HUMAN MEMORY?
Broadcast Domain Answered:
My earliest human memory is that when I lived in Milwaukee, I was 2 or 3 years old. A little girl down the street was playing on a third floor balcony and fell off, or decided to jump off; I’m unsure which. I remember the sirens, and my mother coming and grabbing me, likely worried that I had been hurt. I don’t know if the little girl was alright, or hurt, or if she died. I just remember the commotion, and the hubbub of the scene.



