- Gluttony and greed kill more than the sword. -Italian
proverb
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- Gluttony and surfeiting are no proper occasions for thanksgiving.
~Charles Lamb, 1821
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- Another propaganda-driven greed-fest has nearly passed
in the land of the corporatized and the home of the subservient. Obedient
little wage slaves and consumers that most of us are (to varying degrees
of course), we have once again dutifully greased the wheels of the monstrous
capitalist machine and made our proper sacrifices at the altar of Mammon.
Between our voracious inhalation of all manner of edibles to our obscene
spree of rapacious spending using money eagerly fronted by the usurious
kings of finance capital, Thanksgiving and Black Friday are celebratory
days indeed for the moneyed elite comprising the allegedly non-existent
ruling class in our "egalitarian" and "democratic"
nation.
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- I celebrated Thanksgiving. However, I wasn't bowing my
head and expressing gratitude to the Calvinist God in which I am "supposed
to" believe for the things for which I "should" be grateful.
There was an interesting duality to my day as I contemplated that for which
I feel a deep ingratitude and celebrated that which sparks my feelings
of sincere gratitude.
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- The components of my "Thanklessgiving" included:
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- 1. The trillions of OUR tax dollars OUR government spends
each year attempting to attain global hegemony through nearly ubiquitous
military bases, a nuclear arsenal large enough to obliterate the universe,
and numerous ecocidal, genocidal invasions of ridiculously weaker nations
which, fortunately, usually give us a bit of what we deserve by sending
us home limping.
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- 2. The US American Gulag, a penal system populated by
over two million human beings. The "land of the free" has the
largest number of incarcerated people in the world, even surpassing China,
the most populous and allegedly most repressive nation in the world. Criminalizing
select forms of self-medicating (those that predominate in the urban core
Bantustans to which we have relegated much of our black population) has
proven to be an efficient means of "legally" repressing black
males. Meanwhile, alcohol, a drug which severely impairs judgment, lowers
inhibitions, causes the bloody demise of over 16,000 innocents on our highways
each year, and tends to increase the belligerence factor exponentially,
remains quite legal and practically flows from the spigots of our homes.
And we're imprisoning people for the possession of marijuana?
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- 3. Factory farms and the fast food industry that necessitated
their genesis. Speciesism is a cancer that has long infected our collective
thinking with the notion that we can selectively inflict wanton cruelty
on non-human animals. Pigs are as intelligent as dogs (imagine the mass
outrage if we began large-scale torture, mutilation, and consumption of
family canines) yet we imprison them in such tight quarters for such extended
periods that they go insane, treat sows as breeding machines, rip out their
teeth without anesthetizing them, sometimes disembowel them with hooks
through their anuses while they are alive, and at other times boil them
to death while they are still conscious. Recently, the turkeys who suffered
unimaginably painful lives and deaths (so their flesh could help expand
the midriffs of scores of millions of human animals) experienced their
own "thanksgiving" when their agonized existences finally came
to an end. Instead of using the monster military (which We the Taxpayers
have paid to create) as a means to murder untold millions of civilians
who "are in the wrong place at the wrong time," perhaps we would
be better served to evacuate the human and non-human animals from the murderous
slaughterhouses and thus finally facilitate the smart use of "smart
bombs."
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- 4. The crypto-racism that continues to mar our sociocultural
landscape like cesspools of toxic sludge. Aside from the aforementioned
"War on Drugs" that targets black males and enables us to justify
arming and supporting Latin American Right Wing dictators who foster an
environment which allows our corporations to rape their nations, there
is still a chasm of inequality between blacks and whites in terms of income,
wealth, health, and education. The root causes of this gross injustice
are myriad but include rampant covert racism (Jim Crow is not dead; he
has simply gone incognito) and epidemic intergenerational poverty perpetuated
by deplorable public education in predominately black schools and various
other nearly insurmountable systemic impediments to climbing the socioeconomic
ladder. And let's not forget Lou Dobbs' crusade against the Mexican migration
to the US forced by neoliberal economic policies born of savage capitalism.
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- 5. The War on Terror. A more appropriate name for this
abomination would be "The War on Islamic People because many of their
nations possess much of the oil that capitalism needs to continue fueling
the engines of profit and endless growth and because many Muslims are furious
that the Zionists stole Palestine." I guess they went with the War
on Terror because the true name is too cumbersome. If we stopped bankrolling
the terrorist state of Israel, launching imperial invasions, installing
and supporting ruthless regimes, and wielding our economic power like a
cudgel, we would stop pissing off so many people and wouldn't have the
constant concern of angry victims employing asymmetric warfare against
us.
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- 6. The evisceration of our Constitution and steady march
toward fascism. Bush's signing statements, the Patriot Act and subsequent
Orwellian legislation, the trend toward privatization of the military,
the increasingly incestuous relationship between the public and private
sectors, two consecutive stolen Presidential elections, Islamophobia, pathological
nativism, and an ever-increasing obsession with militarism are the obvious
symptoms of a nation plunging into an abyss not unlike that experienced
by the Germans under the Nazi regime. While we are not there yet, we are
certainly experiencing the prefigurements of "capitalism in decay."
Remember that Hitler and his cabal did not fully initiate the machinations
of fascism overnight either.
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- 7. The soul (and human and animal and Earth) murdering
socioeconomic construct of capitalism. While it is true that selfishness,
greed, narcissism, and the tendency to exploit are intrinsic to each human
being, we choose to glorify, embrace, amplify and perpetuate a system that
demands that we hone these characteristics like weapons in order to "succeed"
within our malignant means of economic organization. Tragically, even those
who recognize the infinite toxicity of such practices still need to employ
them to some extent simply to survive.
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- 8. The mainstream media and Madison Avenue. These entities
are deeply complicit in crimes of the highest order, including the ongoing
genocide in Iraq that has killed millions of people dating back to the
Gulf War and the insatiable desire we US Americans have to acquire more
"stuff" (also known as consumerism-a practice that is literally
killing our planet). Crypto-fascist media outlets like Fox News and the
endless stream of advertising blasted at us 24/7 serve the interests of
our depraved moneyed elite well as they shepherd the masses to support
and glorify the malevolent American Empire with sanguine enthusiasm.
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- 9. The myth that "America doesn't torture."
Sorry folks, but we have been doing it for quite some time. Abu Ghraib
was no anomaly. MK-ULTRA was not about mind control. The CIA used the results
of the horrifying abuse Dr. Ewen Cameron inflicted on his psychiatric patients
to write Kubark, their manual on employing psychological torture. During
the Vietnam War, the US employed Operation Phoenix, which included the
routine use of torture and resulted in the deaths of over 20,000 Vietnamese.
The School of Americas (now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for
Security Cooperation) at Fort Benning in Georgia has churned out over 60,000
Latin American Right Wing thugs trained to torture and murder any who dare
challenge the sacred right of capitalists to rape and exploit our neighbors
to the south, including saintly men like Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was
gunned down for having the fortitude to stand up for the impoverished victims
of US-sanctioned and financed death squads in El Salvador.
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- 10. The existence of over one million homeless human
beings in a nation awash in abundance. Our perverse system spends trillions
of PUBLIC dollars on our leviathan killing apparatus yet we apply asinine
palliatives, like the privately-funded Christian homeless shelter where
I helped prepare and serve Thanksgiving dinner again this year, to feed
and shelter our indigent and hungry brethren (many of whom are veterans
who were brain-washed into serving in our imperial conquests and then kicked
to the curb like yesterday's garbage).
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- As I reveled in my role of ingrate to the Empire, I gave
sincere thanks for:
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- 1. Family and true friends.
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- 2. Chandra
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- 3. Patrice Greanville, the editor in chief of Cyrano's
Journal, who is also my friend, ally, and mentor.
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- 4. My intellect, moral stamina and profound life experiences
which have enabled me to shed my false consciousness and begin waging a
sustained struggle against the many ravages of the cancer of capitalism
and the American Empire.
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- 5. The numerous anti-capitalist individuals, websites,
publications, and groups with which I have become allied and affiliated.
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- 6. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, for providing us with
the knowledge and tools to battle the exploitative, murderous abomination
that is destroying the Earth.
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- 7. Radicals throughout history, including Thomas Paine,
Rosa Luxemburg, Emma Goldman, MLK, Malcolm X, Archbishop Romero, and many
others.
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- 8. The numerous brilliant and intellectually courageous
contributors to Cyrano's Journal and Thomas Paine's Corner.
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- 9. The Earth, its infinite beauty, and its capacity to
sustain life.
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- 10. Groups like PETA and the Animal Liberation Front.
While I don't formally militate with a specific group, I am a passionate
animal liberationist. Collectively, we horrifically torture and slaughter
billions of animals each year. While too far ahead of the consciousness
curve to effect sweeping changes to the prevailing paradigm, "terrorist
groups" like the ALF serve the movement well and their efforts are
laudable.
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- 11. Hamas, for the social service work it does on behalf
of its horribly oppressed people and for its relentless struggle against
US/Israeli efforts to eradicate the Palestinians.
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- 12. Hugo Chavez, for catalyzing and perpetuating the
Bolivarian Revolution as an alternative to the deeply entrenched Washington
Consensus and for the huge strides he has made towards egalitarianism in
Venezuela.
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- 13. Fidel Castro, despite his imperfections (which have
been ridiculously over-exaggerated by both the capitalist propaganda networks
and the reactionary Gusanos), has remained steadfast in his defiance against
US and capitalist domination of the Western Hemisphere and has launched
numerous invasions of other nations with his army of physicians. Small
wonder he invokes such fear in the tiny, shriveled hearts of capitalists
and petite-bourgeoisie the world over.
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- 14. The Internet, for providing a means for people of
conscience to connect, network, and strive to give the masses an education
to supplant their capitalist mind-fuck. Underestimating the importance
of winning hearts and minds would be a gross miscalculation indeed for
those of us who want to evoke significant social and political change for
the better.
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- Yes, our social indoctrination to immerse ourselves in
the "traditional activities" of Thanksgiving and Black Friday
is premised on filthy lies, the torture of hundreds of millions of innocent
birds, a celebration of the initiation of the Native American Genocide,
an unconscionable waste of resources, and the insatiable greed of those
atop the capitalist hierarchy. More nauseating than eating too much turkey,
isn't it?
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- Yet that doesn't mean that we can't opt out of "the
great American tradition," use the time to experience gratitude for
those aspects of our existence which are truly meaningful, and commit ourselves
to the struggle against the beast that is devouring them.
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- Jason Miller is a recovering US American middle class
suburbanite who strives to remain intellectually free. He is Cyrano's Journal
Online's associate editor (http://www.bestcyrano.org/) and publishes Thomas
Paine's Corner within Cyrano's at http://www.bestcyrano.org/THOMASPAINE/.
You can reach him atJMiller@bestcyrano.com
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- http://www.bestcyrano.org/THOMASPAINE/?p=453
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