For the last week or so I’ve been feeling a sort of emptiness, an exasperation of the state of things, a growing acceptance of the intractable way of things. And no matter the reality that a small percentage of us can clearly see, the titanic wheels of the ‘system’ will spin onwards like a runaway train heading over a cliff, taking us all with it. People are not entitled to their own version of reality, but that is the society we live in today where facts are interchangeable with self-serving opinion and corporate spin.

This morning I came across an excellent movie entitled ‘Obey’ based on Chris Hedges’ brilliant book ‘Death of the Liberal Class’. For those who want to hear an insightful and perceptive analysis of the real world in which we exist, please watch:

…Passivity permits societies to transfer their emotional allegiance to the absurd and ignore real problems. It exacerbates despair. It keeps us in a state of mass self-delusion. Once we are drawn into this form of magical thinking, the structure and goals of the corporate state are not questioned. This magical thinking coupled with the bizarre ideology of limitless progress holds the promise of an impossible, unachievable happiness. It has turned whole nations into self-consuming machines of DEATH…

…The giddy, money-drenched choreographed carnival, the petty spectacle of politics will divert our attention from the collapsing world around us. The glitz and propaganda, the ridiculous obsessions imparted by our electronic hallucinations, and the spectacles that pass for political participation will mask the deadly ecological assault by the corporate state. We will convince ourselves that global warming never existed or we will concede that it exists, but insist that we can adapt. Both responses will satisfy our mania for eternal optimism and our huge reckless pursuit for personal comfort. And all around us the natural world will change…

…The death of the planet is just another investment opportunity.

Many human monstrosities have burst forth from the bleak and soulless landscape of American suburbia, reaping their 15 minutes of infamy. The brothers Tsarnaev are simply the latest. American society, for the most part, does not exist; it’s been bought out, chopped up, and repackaged for the corporate state’s consumer culture. A society that has been broken up and atomized is ripe for control and plunder.

I was poking around the twitter account of Dzhokhar ‘Jahar’ Tsarnaev and found some ironic and disturbing reflections on life in America. With the morbid fascination our throwaway culture has with its own social atrocities, perhaps it’s not so odd that ‘Jahar’ now has nearly 85,000 followers.

Sifting through the evidence, people want to know why, but one thing that won’t be analyzed is the society from which such horrors spring.

American society always emerges squeaky-clean out of all the investigations, post-mortems, examinations, inquiries that follow. Its guiltlessness is asserted by implication that the motives for such slayings are incomprehensible, unfathomable…

…The script is now word-perfect. Whenever some violent event erupts in the US, the chronology is identical. The shock is followed by flowers at the site of the deed, which is transformed into a temporary shrine, the comforting of the bereaved and injured, the assertion of solidarity, the lessons to be learned. In the end, American society becomes the hero of the tragedy, with its perpetual penitence, its never-again reflex, its openness to the cleansing effects of trauma, its avowals of solidarity, its ritualistic counselling which is a form of cancelling, as people ‘come to terms with’ their grief.

What is never asked is, what kind of social pathology creates such disorders? ‘No Entry’ signs are posted on all avenues of exploration where some clue is most likely to be found… – source

(in chronological order)