Surprisingly moving Barack Obama music videos?
The potential end of the writer's strike?
Cute young deer being saved by helicopters?
No no no no no. Here are your most deeply
inspiring news stories of the month:
A flurry of pink slips fluttered over the job sector as
corporate payrolls were sliced like sour pie.
Foreclosures are skyrocketing and new home sales across
the nation are plummeting faster than Britney
Spears' serotonin levels. A nasty recession is
either creeping or flooding in, depending on your perspective
and how recently you purchased your home and/or tried to
dump your Google stock.
Meanwhile, the largest corporation in the world, the one
which has consistently raked in the largest and most
appalling profits of any organization on Earth, a
company so powerful and deeply influential to the
machinations of our own nation, our government, the
globe, so ingrained and unstoppable that no president,
no administration, no nuclear warhead to its CEO's
home planet stands a chance of slowing it down or altering
its behavior in any significant way because there is simply far,
far too much money involved in its nefarious endeavors,
has recently posted
the largest profit of any company in American history.
Yes, the Exxon Mobil corporation sucked in a staggering $11.7
billion in a single quarter (more than $40 billion for the year, a
new record for an American company) thanks largely to
record-breaking prices for a barrel of oil, which are of
course only record-breaking because, well, the Bush administration
has essentially engineered the economy and launched a bogus
war and desiccated the American idea exactly so they would be.
Oh yes, two more trifling stories, buried beneath the nauseating
Exxon headlines and the tales of looming economic struggle:
More U.S. soldiers are dead in Iraq as a result of Bush's failed
war, U.S. military spending in 2009 will reach
its highest levels since WWII ($515 billion), insurgents
have taken to strapping suicide bombs to
mentally retarded women and nearly 100 more civilians are
dead in another bombing in Baghdad because the
U.S. troop surge is working so well. Oh wait.
Do you feel the righteousness? The inspiration? Can you
sense the deep connection between these stories? Because
the truth is, they merely add up to the heartwarming conclusion that,
without a doubt, American capitalism is still firing on all cylinders. Praise!
Yes, the system is working just exactly as those in control of the nation
right now wish it to be working, with the most dominant,
ruthless corporations in the world (Exxon joined by Shell,
Chevron, BP, ConocoPhilips et al) still making the most money
in the most destabilizing and environmentally devastating manner
possible, while poor uneducated kids die like chattel in
unwinnable wars trying to secure a tiny bit more of the
source of their profit.
And somewhere in between, the nation's overall health and
well-being are sacrificed like dazed lambs to an ignorant god,
with our government offering up only the most meager, desultory
efforts to keep it functional so as to not induce all-out fire
-and-pitchfork revolt.
Is that too simplistic? Too reductive? Not even close. Hell, you
can distill it down even further. For if you understand, as most
sentient creatures on the planet now do, that this "war" is merely a
particularly bloody chunk of a particularly brutal, fraudulent national
energy policy spearheaded by Dick Cheney and beloved by Saudi
Arabia and Halliburton and most of Texas, then it is no stretch at all
to say that we are sending American kids to their deaths exactly
so Exxon can continue to make $3 billion in a single month
(or: $100 million per day, $4 million per hour, or more
than $1,000 every. Single. Second).
Or how about this for dark math: $40 billion for the year,
4,000 dead U.S. soldiers ... that's a cool $10 million in pure
profit for every American soldier BushCo has thrown to the
wolves of petroleum, just for 2007 alone. Even if you factor in the
20,000 wounded, paralyzed and brain damaged U.S. soldiers —
not to mention the record number of military suicides —
on a body-by-body basis, you've still got yourself one hell of a
sweet profit margin. See Dick Cheney's vile, crooked little grin?
Now you know where it comes from.
This, you might argue, is perhaps the bleakest way to look at
American capitalism, as an instrument of war and death and
gluttony that serves only the most cretinous corporate masters
at the expense of, well, everyone else.
This is the capitalism of the hard right, a particularly ruthless type that
happily sacrifices quite literally everything — the environment, health,
human life, God, national identity, the stability of future generations —
for the sake of immediate and unchecked profit.
It is the kind of system, furthermore, that brings with it a huge,
nauseating sense of shame for how we have approached the world,
pouring a vague disgust over the nation like a cancerous sludge.
This is perhaps BushCo's cruelest gift of all: tragically convincing
us that this strain of capitalism, a furious weapon of greed and
disgrace, inviting all manner of corruption and destruction as it
brings out the absolute worst in the human animal, is the
only flavor there really is.
But then again, no. Maybe there's something else, a flipside we've
forgotten amid the insane oil profits and dead bodies and global
mistrust. It's the awkward truism that American capitalism is
potentially capable, despite its dark core of profit, despite its
frequently poisoned heart, of tremendous creative opportunity and
ingenuity. Like porn, like God, like wisdom and plutonium and
very, very dark rum, it's all in how you use it.
Here, then, is perhaps the most dominant question surrounding
the upcoming big transition, as the nation prepares over the next
year to finally rid itself of the cancer of Bush: Are we still capable
of reshaping the capitalist demon, injecting it, on a national scale,
with something like conscience and compassion and responsibility,
sans the need to sell your mother, rape Alaska, or bomb ancient
cities and kill pathetic foreign dictators in a pitiable attempt to
vindicate your dad? Is such a turnaround even possible anymore?
Because this nasty truth remains: Bush or no, Exxon and its nefarious,
insanely powerful ilk are ramming full speed ahead, undertaking more
incredibly brutal, land-raping techniques as you read these very words
to get at the Earth's remaining supply of oil, sucking up tar sand and
coal and anything else possible to maintain profit and power. They are,
and will continue to be, utterly relentless and, at least for a number
of years to come, quite unstoppable.
There is no eliminating the dark side of capitalism, the gluttony and the
greed and the violent underbelly. There is only minimizing, shifting the
emphasis, changing the pitch and angle of approach, trying to take
what is, at its very heart, a flawed and self-destructive system, and
making it into something proud and interesting and vibrant, something
actually worth defending.
Can it be done? Is it still possible? No matter how many poetic Barack
Obama speeches, no matter how many pragmatic Hillary Clinton
promises, it's a question that seems far bigger than both of them.
And the truth is, it's really the only question that matters.
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