There is no wonder why capitalism gets a bad name. Ever since the dawn of time, governments have been used by large business ventures to secure their market and guarantee their revenue.
Back in colonial days, the East India Company had a monopoly supported by the British Empire, and in more recent times the canal/railroad building and steel industry in the United States were given favored treatment to drive away competition.
In the past decade and especially during the plan-demic, it is obvious that most large businesses and their owners have benefited (top 0.1% elite’s wealth increased dramatically) from the government connection as they were exempt from the strict and arbitrary rules that government handed down to small businesses, in effect scaring them out of business.
There is a name that is appropriate for this arrangement, crony-capitalism.
Understanding this, it is easier to ready articles that criticize capitalism, because one know that the target is not free market capitalism, but capitalism achieved by exploiting a government connection to get favored treatment.
In the United States, there is no one who better understood this connection and profited from it than Abraham Lincoln, a railroad lawyer who made land purchases based on the insider knowledge he had of the railroad-industrial complexes intentions. Once president, he would further intertwine private corporations to enter into partnership with federal government to set the stage for all the fraud that the Grant administration had to face. Truth comes out eventually, and that is a treat that the political establishment has to live with every day. The corrupt US government/big corp/big tech web of deceit of 2021 is only the natural progression of what has happened over the past 200+ years here in America.
Now that we have this knowledge, there is an article by Caitlin Johnstone that helps us all understand the mental harm we are being subjected to in and around the Covid-19 overreaction.
How many of people’s mental health diagnoses are really just them struggling to function in a capitalist system that is amoral, destructive, overwhelming, overbearing, unsatisfying, and bereft of meaning?
It’s surely one of the most under-examined questions in the field of modern psychology. People in general and researchers in particular all too rarely think to take a step back from the data they are looking at and consider the large-scale framework within which that data is materializing, and to consider whether there’s anything about that particular framework which is giving rise to the particular data sets they are seeing.
Specifically:
How many people end up consulting with mental health professionals because they find themselves psychologically unable to keep up with the frenetic corporate pace that’s demanded of them in order to “earn a living”? Or earlier on as children because they are unable to successfully navigate the capitalism boot camp known as school? How many people are given diagnoses, and corresponding bottles of pills, simply because they can’t march to the beat of the capitalist drum?
Know anybody? Know yourself?
I know that listening to my company’s CEO makes me ticked that he feels he can impose HIS political agenda on the sheep in his company. Especially this past year it seems that this occasional ramp-up of subtlety saying that BLM is inherently good and Trump was 100% bad. The Kool-Aid has been moved from favored beverage almost to a point of being a mandatory IV in the past year.
But I digress.
While the sheep will always be with us, I believe there are some critical thinkers that may have been tricked by a slick marketing campaign as well as Covid-19 narrative has given hope to the climate change cult that their agenda is not dead. No doubt that the evil high priests that believe man can totally shape his world into the perfect utopia that has failed in the past, that Marxism 15.0 accomplished by an exceptional USA can give everyone equality and no hurt feelings. The marketing of this “new normal” is obvious to those that look and are not afraid of questioning the various cult’s claims:
How many of these stressors are exacerbated by being psychologically pummelled with mass media propaganda day in and day out, artificially twisting your mind into the belief that this is all normal, and that if you can’t keep up, you’re the problem? Telling you that it’s fine and normal for there to be billionaires and empty investment properties while you struggle to keep a roof over your head? Telling you it’s fine and normal for wealth and resources to go toward murdering strangers overseas while you’re forced to choose between medicine and groceries?
Apparently, the elites believe that they have too many people to manage in this world (right Bill Gates?) and the case-demic/plan-demic is intended to be version 1.0 of an annual ritual where select sections of society can be culled so that future people management attempts may be easier to carry out with less insurrection, revolt or rebellion.
And by the capitalism propaganda known as advertising? How is our psychological health affected by a nonstop barrage of corporate messaging informing us that we are deficient, and that there are things we lack which we must obtain in order to become whole? That we’re not beautiful enough, not skinny enough, not fashionable enough, not affluent enough, that we don’t own enough of the top-line items which only the well-off can afford?
Expanded areas of deficits might be some are too white, too racist and not doing enough good to keep our neighbors safe.
If you don’t know this is slavery, then you might want to research things for yourself.
The antidote to all this is to connect with others on similar paths and talk openly about your own fears for the future as society blindly follows the diktats of the ruling elite and all those who “only are following orders”. Simple actions like walking into a store sans masks as a group and watch others embolden by your actions remove their masks as well. Plan for the future in strategic ways so you are prepared for what our government might have in store for us as this twisted and demented decade rolls on, squashing freedoms and liberties. Make a hobby out of learning and training to be able to live in a much different world that is more like East Germany of the 1970s or Venezuela of the 2010s.
Good luck in all you do while seeking to really living your life in spite of the tyrannical diktats of disillusioned political types that have finally exposed their superiority complex. Small businesses and individuals need to be encouraged while big government and all their complexes who desire to group us serfs into various groups that will determine our futures needs to be frustrated by our throwing sand into the gears of their plans and programs in non-aggressive ways.
Every little bit accomplished in our communities helps. The small things do add up as there is more of us than there are of “them”.
-SF1