When a nation manifests a mixture of mass ignorance and official mendacity, in combination with unchecked power emanating from an insular and arrogant elite, a golden age of peace and plenty is as possible as holding a tea dance in a tsunami.

The corporate culture of exploitation has begot a hellscape of narcissists. It is an authoritarian culture riddled in kitsch and cruelty, in nationalistic hagiography and displaced rage -- all the distortions of national character inherent to privileged grotesques and ordinary monsters.

In folk stories, when giants are about, drought and famine withers the land and starvation stalks its people. Accordingly, the ruthless giantism inherent to the Corporate-Military-Mass Media state has withered our inner lives, blighted our landscape, and left us powerless before a huge, demeaning system that devours our time, health and humanity.

This may help to better understand the Washington establishment and its courtesan punditry who serve to reinforce their ceaseless narrative of exceptionalism. This is why they've disingenuously covered up the infantilism of George W. Bush for so long: Little Dubya is the id of the ruling class made manifest -- he's their troubled child, who, by his destructive actions, cracks the deceptively normal veneer of a miserable family and reveals the rot within. At a certain level, it's damn entertaining: his instability so shakes the foundation of the house that it causes the skeletons in its closets to dance.

"Of Savage Imperialism, Pigskin Monopolists, and Intellectual Emasculation"

By Jason Miller

"Two things only the people anxiously desire -- bread and circuses."

--Juvenal

Searching for masculine bliss incarnate?

Look no further than NFL football and its myriad machismo delights....

Fierce armor-clad gladiators applying wicked hits, battering each other relentlessly, engaging in bone-jarring collisions, and performing feats of near super-human athleticism....

Provocatively undressed cheerleaders manifesting our culture's ideal of feminine perfection.....

Rivers of ice cold beer gushing forth to satiate our desire to numb the mind and lower inhibitions....

And lest we forget, the NFL provides us with "Man Law" to shield us from our long repressed anima, which is constantly poised to assail our grossly exaggerated masculinity ....

By Jason Miller

Bursting forth with renewed intensity, the "War on Christmas" is back in 2006.

So just what does this alleged war against an impalpable enemy entail?

Have "Islamofascists" captured and decapitated Santa Claus?

Did a US-made IDF "smart bomb" strike Bethlehem and obliterate baby Jesus as he lay in the manger?

Did the Grinch go global with his nefarious thievery?

Hence, it might be instructive to look at the mode of being evinced by the pioneers of Punk Rock ... Tired of endless guitar solos and of Arena Rock and Roll's egomaniacal inanities, they learned to play three cords -- real fast -- and would play for little or no money in shot-out downtown clubs -- thereby reintroducing the danger and allure of the subversive intimacy of early Rock and Roll to a new generation -- and forever establishing the enduring principle that being an imbecilic Rock and Roll egoist should be a democratic process -- not limited to only corporate, guitar technocrats (or even those individuals possessed of the tyranny of talent).

Hence, it might be instructive to look at the mode of being evinced by the pioneers of Punk Rock ... Tired of endless guitar solos and of Arena Rock and Roll's egomaniacal inanities, they learned to play three cords -- real fast -- and would play for little or no money in shot-out downtown clubs -- thereby reintroducing the danger and allure of the subversive intimacy of early Rock and Roll to a new generation -- and forever establishing the enduring principle that being an imbecilic Rock and Roll egoist should be a democratic process -- not limited to only corporate, guitar technocrats (or even those individuals possessed of the tyranny of talent).

It was leftist outsiders -- not reasonable, accommodating liberals -- who were right about the disastrous consequences that would befall an invasion of Iraq; as we were and remain right in our revulsion to the fascistic fraud that is the Patriot Act and the War on Terror.

"During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act".  
--George Orwell

"I don't want to be part of your revolution if I can't dance."
--Emma Goldman

Rumsfeld is gone. Mehlman is gone. Delay is gone. Yet -- let's not have our progressives' version of a strutting on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier moment. Because mission has not been accomplished.

For those who haven't noticed: While we were busy with other concerns, many of our rights and liberties went missing. Moreover, along with them, have went or are going fast: our planet's polar ice caps; accountability of the corporate sector (our nation's true power brokers); as well as, a sense of place, history, and even a cursory understanding, among a large percent of the populace of the US, of the precepts of civilization and of democratic discourse.

 It was leftist outsiders -- not reasonable, accommodating centrists -- who were right about the disastrous consequences that would befall an invasion of Iraq; as we were and remain right in our revulsion to the fascistic fraud that is the Patriot Act and the War on Terror.

by Jason Miller

"What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul?"

---Jesus Christ

Humanity's "beacon of hope" is unraveling at its moral seams faster than George Bush can say nucular. 230 years ago, disciples of the Enlightenment shattered the shackles of colonial oppression and inaugurated their conception of a haven for humanity. While tainted by patriarchy and racism, the founding of the United States was arguably the pinnacle of social and political evolution. Tragically, the descendents of those who ascended to that zenith are racing to the bottom at a dizzying velocity.

In a collective sense, the soul of the United States is writhing in the agony of spiritual asphyxiation. Trapped in an overflowing cesspool of its own making, the nation's élan vital desperately needs freedom and an infusion of spiritual oxygen. Sans significant change, its odds for survival equal those of an under-sized fish carelessly tossed ashore by a heartless angler.

Does anyone believe that the denizens of K Street have, as of late, begun enriching the coffers of the Democratic Party because the lobbyist class now harbors a secret desire to create a system where a greater diversity of views can be promulgated? Yes, and Jack the Ripper stalked the streets of East London because he wanted to draw attention to the wretched plight of underclass women in class-stratified Victorian England.

Midterm Elections 2006: It's Always Darkest, Right Before ... It Goes Completely Black
by Phil Rockstroh

If voting could change the system, it would be illegal.
--Theodore Adorno

"I can't go on. I'll go on."
--Samuel Beckett

One's actions grow out of one's beliefs. Beliefs grow out of the ecosystem of our collective lives known as culture. In this way, cultures are organic: they germinate, sprout, grow, bloom, bear fruit, then fade in accordance with the climes and terrain of the times.

Does anyone believe that the denizens of K Street have, as of late, begun enriching the coffers of the Democratic Party because the lobbyist class now harbors a secret desire to create a system where a greater diversity of views can be promulgated? Yes, and Jack the Ripper stalked the streets of East London because he wanted to draw attention to the wretched plight of underclass women in class-stratified Victorian England.

All human beings have a talent for the denial of the more unpalatable aspects of ourselves, but we Americans have turned denial into a form of collective genius. There is no need to burn books, if the public is too ignorant to know they exist -- or too benumbed to resonate with their content.

Headline (Reuters): "United States numb to Iraq troop deaths: experts"

"O Nature, and O soul of man! how far beyond all utterance are your linked analogies! not the smallest atom stirs or lives in matter, but has its cunning duplicate in mind."
--Herman Melville, Moby Dick

All human beings have a talent for the denial of the more unpalatable aspects of ourselves, but we Americans have turned denial into a form of collective genius. There is no need to burn books, if the public is too ignorant to know they exist -- or too benumbed to resonate with their content.