This was written to
address the financial debacle of 2008-?, fruition of the so-called Reagan
Revolution, characterized by dismantling the public sector, “deregulating” the
corporate sector, shipping manufacturing jobs overseas, and sweeping all
profits into the pockets of the rich and powerful. In it, government and its role
in regulating conscienceless profiteering became the enemy. It’s success
allowed its proponents to use their ill-gotten gains to pack the government and
the media with their lackeys, accelerating the revolution.
Many years ago
Michael Parenti summed up the game in one perfect sentence: government exists
to keep the parasites from consuming the host.
Regulation means the
government gauges how much blood the body politic produces and limits the
parasitism accordingly. While I can envision more equable systems,
intelligently regulated capitalism can be one part of a healthy economic
system. (Actually, most forms of life are parasitic to some degree, and
parasites can be helpful as well as harmful. But in nature they are careful to
not kill their host, lest they die along with it.) Regulations are essentially
laws to prevent criminal behavior that drains the host faster than it is replenished,
so while deregulation may sound catchy it is simply an invitation to
lawlessness resulting in the exhaustion of the system.
Problems rapidly
mount when the parasites eliminate their restraints and begin a feeding frenzy,
which is what has been building up over the last thirty years within the
capitalist system. Competition became nothing more than jockeying for the best
places on the primary arteries. Now we are left with a group of bloated leeches
hovering around an emaciated corpse, and blaming the corpse itself for cutting
off their fair share of the juice.
It’s incredibly
unseemly to blame the victims in such a pass, but that’s part of the typical
denial pattern. The rightwing gas bags whine “Poor people caused this mess!” “Immigrants
caused it!” “No, liberals who sympathize with poor people and immigrants caused
it!” Au contraire, liberals are those who seek sustainability of the system,
and believe in leaving a little of the blood in the host so the poor can have a
sip occasionally and the host doesn’t actually die. They know that hard working
poor and lower middle class folks are who makes the blood in the first place.
The military corporate (or industrial) complex, a gang of shameless welfare
queens, is by far the main parasitical factor. The Reagan Revolution proposes
to keep the host alive by a little blood trickling back into the body politic
from the very parasites who are draining it dry. Nice! Too bad it didn’t work
out that way.
Quick fact: all
American mortgages in arrears could be retired for around 300 billion dollars,
less than half the initial bail-out package. (Give people jobs and fair rates
and they could pay it off themselves with ease.) The value of the credit
scandal Ponzi scheme of the parasites at the moment is approximately 62
trillion dollars, around 200 times more money than the mortgage crisis. The
difference is all smoke and mirrors, by the way. It’s a hot potato that keeps
getting tossed to the next bigger sucker, until you run out of suckers willing
to catch it. Which just happened.
Current government
philosophy about fixing the situation? Drill the corpse for more blood in
places where there might be a little left. While waiting for that to pay off,
manufacture some more blood out of thin air and give it to the parasites as a
bail-out so they don’t have to lose weight or give up their place at the table.
And let the potatoes cool down a little and then see who will be willing to catch
them. Hmmm.
It’s no wonder that
fundamentalists play along with these most un-Christian greedheads: they
believe that hey, God could refill that corpse with blood in a nanosecond if he
wanted to, but he doesn’t because there are nonbelievers ruining his happy
planet. All we have to do is get rid of the liberals and other ungodly types so
God can love us and shower us with bounty once again. Unregulated capitalism is
as much a pie-in-the-sky religious creed as any other: just substitute the word
Market for God. But their way of consuming the host destroys life rather than
affirming it, because the root belief is the deification of selfishness.
Religions at least pay lip service to selflessness or brotherhood or the common
good, and some actually put it into practice.
Well, I’m sorry for
carrying on, but I can’t stand by while the architects of our problems point
fingers at the innocent bystanders and pose as holier than everyone. It’s
frankly disgusting, and even though I’ve anticipated it for a long time it
doesn’t make it any prettier. Those guys are still rich. They could offer a
little respect and compassion, and it wouldn’t cost them a cent.
The
parasites are particularly good at the tried and true technique of divide and
conquer. Controlling the media and thus the public conversation, they adroitly
divert the focus from themselves, placing the blame on polarized aspects of the
body politic. Any “us versus them” attitude builds aggressiveness, which leads
to blindness. Remember “you’re either with us or with the terrorists” from
George Bush’s first speech after 9-11? So now even mainstream Presidential
candidates are being treated as monsters. What a pathetic sight as metaphorical
torch-bearing mobs chase chimeras in the form of ordinary citizens of various
persuasions, while the real culprits smirk unobserved in their safe havens.
The
solution is never to start battling some purported Enemy. It begins by
disengaging from the context of suffering, by intelligently and peacefully
extricating ourselves from the morass of polarization. Even “parasites versus
host” has to be treated with care, because we overlap in many respects, and we
all share culpability.
Life is resilient
and will persist in some form, through thick or thin. As
long as there is life, blood will be manufactured continuously. Times
like this are a test of whether we’re ready to use our “God-given” intelligence
or just get swept along by the broom of history, as Hank the Cowdog would put
it. A Big Crash could give us the chance to shake off many of the parasites and
get a fresh start in a much more sane direction, so long as we don’t cherish
and cling to all our outmoded sacred cows. That would be the military first and
foremost, followed by corporate waste and fraud. There is actually very little
difference between corporate greed and the military it has co-opted into its
service.
Living in amity with
the world community is inexpensive and could be wholly free, while living in
fear and paranoia as a well-defended fortress is almost infinitely expensive.
As Nataraja Guru suggested, though, we will have to give up our opulent
lifestyle for mere abundance.
We all draw our
sustenance from somewhere, despite the mythos that we create it ourselves from
scratch. Some Christians consume a host wafer to symbolize their connection to
the Source of sustenance. If it is done as a one way delivery of energy to them
it is parasitical; if it is done reciprocally it is life-affirming. Unselfish
host-consumers draw energy so they can give back energy, sharing the blessing
with their comrades. And “comrades” has to include everyone, lest the result be
parasitical, which is why Jesus counseled his followers to love their enemies
along with the rest.
Life is
anti-entropic, filled with the energy of hope and renewal. The Earth itself is
our common host, and we can sip her bounty judiciously while making sure she
stays healthy. Humans have many great ideas along these lines, most of which
have been actively suppressed by the greed mongers. It’s time to toss the
parasites off and let a million flowers bloom! It will be exciting and fun,
even though there will undoubtedly be some big bumps in the road. Go well.
