Classism

Universal travel: plenty of haves and a shit more have-nots

When I was very young, my parents used to tell me why having “lots of toys” wasn’t a good idea. “The more you have, the more you want,” they would say. I didn’t have many toys — we were poor — so the idea of possessions feeding greed didn’t make much sense to me then.
But I’ve learned the truth of that statement from observation over the years and lately I’ve been observing Mark Zuckerberg.

What is Fascism? Recently Chris Hedges wrote of an imperialist US that is infected by “the virus of fascism, wrapped in the American flag, held aloft by the Christian cross and buttressed by white supremacy.” Hedges was not using the term fascism as it would be used by a political theorist or historian. It is common to use “fascism” to indicate a more general and imprecise fascistic tendency.

“You’re retired, aren’t you?” the 29 year old says to me today, while I am with a friend, 62, who used to be my board president over at United Cerebral Palsy, just one of several jobs I’ve been sacked from by the Controllers – this time, unfortunately, by two insecure, anti-male-in-the-workplace self-described Jewish women who could not square that I was smarter than they were-are and that I had a passion for representing my people, clients living with severe disabilities, developmental and intellectual and psychological.

The US and its allies murdered one million civilians in Iraq, using indefinite sanctions and war, destroyed all public infrastructure, and gutted all institutions. Do you think that would cause some people to be pissed off and desperate?
These “leaders of the free world” went on to inflict the same such “humanitarian” medicine on Afghanistan, Libya, and now Syria (by proxy) and Yemen. And these “leaders” condone the regular genocidal slaughters perpetrated by Israel as part of its brutal occupation and program of land seizures.

Roots
I remember ageism striking me right between the eyes, in Oaxaca, while I was climbing a pyramid at Monte Alban. Running, really. A silly sight from afar, trying to beat the veronica of the sun so I could get the “perfect” dusk shot with my Nikon.
Two elderly ladies on the side of the steps were selling beautiful weavings, something for which the Zapotec Indians of that region are known.

The re-enserfment of Western peoples is taking place on several levels. One about which I have been writing for more than a decade comes from the offshoring of jobs. Americans, for example, have a shrinking participation in the production of the goods and services that are marketed to them.

Former Chicago Bulls great Michael Jordan recently opened yet another gym shoe store – this time in the heart of Chicago’s “Loop.” As with everything Jordan touches (especially in Chicago), this latest opening became something of an “event” – another opportunity for Jordan to further pad his already billionaire bank account.

Incumbent politicians and parties, both Center-left and Right, have suffered serious defeats in recent elections. The principal beneficiary has been the extreme Right. Nowhere did the ‘consequential Left’ register a victory, although in a few instances it marginally increased its vote.

Democratic critics of military seizures of power commonly refer to them as military coups. They adopt a very narrow and misleading conception of what is taking place.
Likewise, human rights activists and progressive analysts who conceptualize the reign of violence which follows, a ‘coup’ as state terror fail to take account of the systemic forces – the capitalist social order and class relations – which determine the classes which wield state power. They ignore the specific classes and groups which are targeted and which classes direct and benefit from terror.