And Here We Are

And Here We Are

By David Glenn Cox
The Leftist Review
May 29, 2013

And so here we are, living in an environment Huxley or Orwell could
forecast, but could never foretaste.

It is the enormity of it and the stealthiness of it, which gets next to
you.

Shoving money through the slots as the man with gun and uniform
watches you from the corner of the grocery store on a Friday night.

It requires the suspension of belief and the acceptance of an
un-reality, as Barack Obama names a former cable industry lobbyist
to head the Federal Communications Commission and the Republicans
create a false flag issue out of Benghazi.

It is the one-party state creating a smoke screen, diverting attention
from the real issues of domestic policy.

Divide and conquer, always keep’em guessing, always leave’em
laughing.

Jack Lew is a former hedge fund manager for Citigroup and manager
of its alternative investments unit, with oversight over Citigroup’s
subsidiaries in the Cayman Islands, Bermuda and Hong Kong and he’s
the new Treasury Secretary.

Sally Jewell worked for Mobil as an engineer in the oil fields of
Oklahoma from 1978 to 1981. From there she moved on to banking
at Security Pacific and West One Bank, before moving on to the
Titanic disaster of modern banking, the ill-fated S.S. Washington
Mutual.

Jewell escaped the disaster by jumping ship as the iceberg
approached, moving on to become the CEO of REI sporting
goods.

She’s the Secretary of the Interior now and her qualifications for the
job are based solely on chairing several green committees, versus a
twenty-plus-year career in oil, finance and banking.

Who would a thunk it; an oil engineer with background in banking and
the Republicans said what?

The Secretary of Agriculture, former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack, was
named Governor of the year by the lobbying group, Biotechnology
Industry Organization.

This after Tom founded and chaired the Governor’s Biotechnology
Partnership.

Let’s forget Vilsack is in the pocket of agribusiness; he’s what
we’d call on the street, a bag man.

Vilsack approved a 15 cent tax, per live Christmas tree. The tax
had been a result of three years of lobbying by the Christmas tree industry.

What was the purpose of the tax? Was it to aid the unfortunate or
to buy meals for the hungry during the holidays?

No, the purpose of the tax was to fund an advertising program by
the Department of Agriculture, promoting the sale of live Christmas
trees.

It is classic Corporate Fascism; industry prompts government policy
to tax the populace, for the needs of the corporation.

Barack Obama never had the sympathies of the right, but he did
have the good will of the middle and of the Left.

Very quickly, Barack Obama disappointed, as the diehards wanted
to take a wait-and-see attitude.

Hope and Change degenerated into disappointment and
disillusionment; not just with Obama, but with the system
in its entirety.

The two-party system resembles two dogs fighting over one piece
of meat; growling and scrapping in a winner-take-all grudge match.

As cunning as they are, they are humans after all, only appearing to
act as dogs and with their cunning, it is altogether a better piece of
performance art, if they only pretend to fight and split the meal backstage.

There is an unspoken belief that Capitalism and Democracy are
somehow chained to the public good — they aren’t.

Capitalism is about making money and maximizing profit; public
good isn’t a pillar of Capitalism and public good isn’t a pillar of
Democracy either.

If they were, I wouldn’t be writing this and you, wouldn’t be
reading it.

Democracy is the alleged public control of government, but first,
you must take control of the party which selects the candidates.

Supporting the American two-party system is like pretending to be half blind, believing one side corrupt and morally bankrupt, while the other side has just a few bad apples, disgracing the nobles.

Forced to defend a Larry Craig or an Anthony Weiner?

Just imagine you have a six figure income and an easy job.

You can take care of your family, provide them with great
government-paid healthcare benefits and, if you don’t screw
up, it could lead to even more money in the future.

That’s the key, don’t screw up.

So would you put pictures of your dick on the internet; would
that be considered screwing up?

Would you consider soliciting other men for sex in the airport
men’s room; would that be considered screwing up?

It has nothing to do with sexual preferences; it’s about being
at work.

About the personal responsibilities of separating work and play
with only an implied understanding of doing the public good.

This list of offenders rolls on forever, as incumbents keep getting
re-elected, no matter how angry the public gets.

There is no office of public good in the United States.

No room where honorable individuals debate the merits versus
the cost.

In Norway, a state oil company does all the drilling with safety as
their priority.

The world’s oil companies bid to buy the oil and the revenue goes
into a national trust fund. Politicians can spend the interest from
the fund, but not the principal.

Here in America, Barack Obama wants to cut lease rates for oil
companies drilling on Federal lands.

The President claims this policy will encourage oil development,
without saying exactly why that idea is superior to a competing
idea — investing in clean renewable energy, like Germany has.

The new Secretary of Defense is a lifelong Republican, who
co-founded Vanguard Cellular, making himself a multimillionaire.

He was also the president of the investment banking firm, The
McCarthy Group, and was the CEO of American Information Systems,
later re-named Election Systems & Software.

After serving twelve years in the Senate, Chuck Hagel served time in
right-wing think-tanks with the likes of Brent Scowcroft and Richard
Lugar.

Hagel serves on the board of Directors of Chevron Corporation.

Think about that, the Secretary of Defense is an oil company
executive with investment banking experience.

The Secretary of the Interior is an oil company engineer and
career investment banker.

The Secretary of Agriculture was named Governor of the year
by a Monsanto funded lobbying group.

Benghazi! Benghazi! Scandal! Murder! Treason! Outrage! Democrats!
Republicans!

All right before your eyes; presto–chango!

The corporate police state is in full flower, as the media obsesses
ad-nausea for endless hours of infotainment; the actual culprits
walk between the raindrops.

As America’s only native criminal class robs the national treasury, like
looters at the Wal-Mart and dare call it Democracy — and so, here we
are.

In regard to propaganda the early advocates of universal literacy and
a free press envisaged only two possibilities: the propaganda might
be true, or the propaganda might be false. They did not foresee what
in fact has happened, above all in our Western capitalist democracies
– the development of a vast mass communications industry,
concerned in the main neither with the true nor the false, but with
the unreal, the more or less totally irrelevant. In a word, they failed
to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.
~ Aldous Huxley



David Glenn Cox is a senior staff writer for TLR and an award
winning author and musician; he is the author of the novel,
“The Servants of Pilate”.

http://www.leftistreview.com/2013/05/21/and-here-we-are/
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