THE EVIL OF DOGMA

Certainty and dogma. They are the enemies of progress and the favorite tools of oppressors. Give something a prejudicial label and get people to believe in the certainty of that label and reason gets sabotaged and shut down.

I was talking with a new member of our free thought group yesterday and toward the end of our conversation, some comments drifted toward politics. He stated that what he feared was "marxism." That's another hate-filled label guaranteed to shut down constructive thought.

Communism, a perverted version of socialism imposed by Joseph Stalin, was a horrible system, but it was a perversion of the teachings and intent of Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, etc. A sociopath ruthlessly gained control and precipitated a reign of terror and oppression that has enabled champions of unfettered capitalism to demonize every aspect of progressive thinking by simply attaching a prejudicial label to it -- Socialism.

Unfettered socialism, especially in the hands of a sociopath like Stalin, leads to tyranny. So does unfettered capitalism. Both soon become basically the law of the jungle where those in power mercilously devour anyone and everything too weak to resist them.

Unrestrained capitalism is just as bad, or perhaps even worse than, unrestrained socialism. Both lead to a master class which enslaves everyone under the ruling elite.

The most progressive and happiest forward moving nations today are nations like Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, etc. where Capitalism has been blended with sensible aspects of socialism.

In this country, reason has been replaced by prejudicial labeling that shuts down reason and replaces it with mindless dogma. It's the attitude that drives that insane "tea party" bunch of mindless "slogan mongers."

Adopting slogans of certainty is the path to ruin. It leads to mental ossification and a ruinous drive to tear down and destroy every vestige of sanity and benevolence that led our country forward for several decades. Now, we're retrogressing back to the age of the robber barons at breakneck speed.

OUR NEW DICKENSIAN WORLD

It's April 10, 2011. I talked to my son, Gene, this morning. He's in the same occupation that supported both of us so well for so long. He's a carpet technician who had to move from Prescott, Arizona to Houston over two years ago just to have any work at all, after losing his home and 401K. (He's 48. So much for his retirement security!) He had to go to work for an installation company that services Home Depot.

He was hired for wages less than what we charged customers when we worked together 15 and 20 years ago. (You know what inflation has done since then!) He told me that his compensation has been cut again and that the $40 trip charge he was getting for long distances has been cut to $15. I don't know what is being put on his table for meals – I'm afraid to ask. Retirement? That's a joke!

Yea, for capitalism. You're seeing the glories of a “trickle-down” economy. The cliches we all bought are now the buzzards coming home to roost. Capitalism and uncontrolled free enterprise are running their predictable course. There's an article on Huffington Post this morning about soaring executive pay and record corporate profits: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/10/business/10comp.html?_r=2&ref=business

Every destructive weapon imaginable is being zeroed in on the middle and laboring classes. Unions are being savaged and destroyed. Every legal safeguard that protected people from unfairness is being attacked and obliterated. Regulation is demonized. We are becoming a carbon copy of the society that existed in Dickensian England and Czarist Russia, as well as in the age of the American “robber barons.” We seem determined to return to poor houses, company stores and pestilence ridden slums where the common people are expendable fodder for corporate machines.

As far as I can see, the “American dream” has become the “American nightmare.” It certainly is for my son and his family. It's even worse for many others.

We still have it pretty good. My wife and I both have Social Security coming in and my wife gets a moderate state retirement check every month. I do a few small carpet service jobs and an occasional wedding ceremony, and we manage to survive. Don't count on that being the case for my son or anyone else of his generation, if the aristocrats of today have their way. They have the famous “Let them eat cake” snotty attitude (think Boehner here).

Socialism is almost universally badmouthed in this country, and most of the badmouthers don't have a clue what they are talking about. Their ignorance is appalling.

Total socialism has never worked. The fate of Communist Russia vouches for that fact.

What people don't realize is that total capitalism is just as bad, or worse than, total socialism. Both lead to a super rich ruling class that lords it over everyone else. Communism was really just state run capitalism dreamed up by Stalin, not by Lenin. Both, in their ultimate form, lead to feudalism. You see it every time you enter one of these giant corporate run franchises. Over the whole thing sits the corporate “Lords” raking off enormous profits from the “vassals” in the local operations supervising armies of clone-like “serfs” running around in their dopey little uniforms, lucky to be paid “minimum wage.”

I'm not dumb enough to believe that all that has happened has happened by accident. It's been carefully planned by the faceless super wealthy overlords who have been working tirelessly behind the scenes ever since they engineered the election of “trickle down” Reagan with his “voodoo economics,” the haughty elitist who wouldn't think of “demeaning” his office by taking off his coat and getting down to business in his exalted oval office. He was a great “acting” president. He was guided, like the clueless puppet he was, into giving us the original savings and loan crisis. That was just step one in the steady parade of maneuvers that have never ceased and have brought one society changing (and destroying) crisis after another, all intended to accomplish the same goal.

Anyone with a modicum of intelligence should be able to figure out what the real goal is.

SLAVERY! A FEUDAL, AND LIKELY THEOCRATIC, AMERICA!

Nothing, absolutely nothing, controls a population as well as a theocracy.

Wake up, my fellow Americans! Quit being led around by the nose and swallowing every stupid story you are fed!