The Prison Wall by Original digital art by Richard Posner
or, Why Bother?
or, What's the Point?
or, Who Gives a Rat's Ass?
or, You Made Your Bed Now Sleep In It.
For the last few weeks I have devoted most of my time to "surfing" for politically relevant sites. I have only browsed the articles to get the gist of the subject. I devoted the bulk my time to reading the comments and discussions that developed. The first time I tried this was a few years ago. At that time I was "inspired" to write about the experience. This was originally posted at HubPages a couple of years ago. Since the message still seems relevant, I decided to revisit, update and republish it.
FUTILITY
On every site I visit, I see divisiveness, argument, derision, contempt, name calling, obscene expletives and mindless parroting of slogans and memes. There is an endless vomitus of non-productive, pointless, time and mind-wasting conflict. Meanwhile the United States crashes and burns, probably destroying most Life on Earth in the process.
Here is a new rule I wish everyone would follow: The word Life must always be capitalized. We all seem to think capitalization is appropriate for such inconsequential words as God, American, Arab, African, Christian, Catholic, Muslim, French, British, on and on ad nauseam. All the things that make us "different" must be emphasized and elevated to levels of great import while the single most significant thing, Life, is deemed just another word to which we really shouldn't pay too much attention.
Instead of using the Internet, this last bastion of free and open communication, to organize and build solidarity, in resistance to their common foe, people waste hours, days, weeks and months ranting, disputing and berating each other. We have been well trained to waste our passion at each others throats rather than uniting in common cause. We share a monstrous enemy that will see us all enslaved and our children and grandchildren starving in a barren, sterile landscape, choking on a poisoned atmosphere.
The Internet, like all things showing potential for positive change, has been co-opted by the very machinery of death it could have helped to destroy. It has become, instead, yet another weapon of mass distraction used by the totalitarian elite to divide us, to spread fear and lies, disseminate propaganda, disinformation and further undermine the Bill of Rights.
At the same time it has become a powerful tool for generating revenue to feed the ravenous, insatiable, neofascist, profit machine. It has become capital. Millions of us are gleefully feeding the monster that is devouring Earth. It feeds on sites like Facebook, MySpace, HubPages and many, many more.
Immediately after publishing the first version of this piece on HubPages, I took down all advertising from all my earlier posts and canceled my accounts with adsense and any other programs designed to make a few people obscenely rich while deluding millions of others into believing that they too could share equally in the wealth. Not long afterward I removed all my work and closed my HubPages account.
It seems to me now that I have squandered these last dozen years foolishly hoping I would somehow connect with, become part of, a community of caring, conscious, rational and progressive people, committed to a peaceful, or at least bloodless, revolution. I imagined, with access to the millions on the internet, we could bring about the awareness and awaken the urgency needed to stop this insanity. I thought that rational human beings, once presented with reality, would realize the need to put aside petty differences in order to defeat a common enemy. It seems a majority of us believe that "Survivor" is reality.
I have realized that the Indoctri-Nation has become self-perpetuating and reaches absolutely everywhere. The fabricated wedges of poisonous, irrational ideologies are driven so deeply into the trunk of the human family tree that it has been split asunder. It lies dying on the bloodied ground, its branches scattered with withering leaves, writhing in the final paroxysms of avarice, racism, bigotry, fundamentalism, ignorance and hatred.
The totalitarian plutocracy has learned its lessons well. As they did with the counter-culture of the sixties, they have done with the potential of the internet;
"To take advantage of sentiments, not wasting one's energies in futile efforts to destroy them".
Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto.
What could have become a weapon for those seeking Freedom and Peace has been commodified and turned back upon them.
LIFE AND DEATH FOR SALE-BUY OR DIE
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