Tyranny & Tantrums: A Rant on America’s Collapse

America is to going to hell in a hand basket, and the cracks in its foundation are glaring. As Linkin Park’s Burn It Down echoes, “We’re building it up to break it back down,” the cycle of destruction and collapse feels all too familiar. Institutions meant to uphold democracy are being dismantled, only to be rebuilt on even shakier ground. Power is concentrated in the hands of a few, while the vulnerable are left to fend for themselves. Like the song’s imagery of betrayal and downfall, the current political landscape mirrors a system that prioritizes control and greed over people. The flames of collapse are fanned, and the question remains—what will rise from the ashes?

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“The more of himself man attributes to God, the less he has left in himself.”

Estranged Labour

All these consequences are implied in the statement that the worker is related to the product of labor as to an alien object. For on this premise it is clear that the more the worker spends himself, the more powerful becomes the alien world of objects which he creates over and against himself, the poorer he himself – his inner world – becomes, the less belongs to him as his own. It is the same in religion. The more man puts into God, the less he retains in himself. The worker puts his life into the object; but now his life no longer belongs to him but to the object. Hence, the greater this activity, the more the worker lacks objects. Whatever the product of his labor is, he is not. Therefore, the greater this product, the less is he himself. The alienation of the worker in his product means not only that his labor becomes an object, an external existence, but that it exists outside him, independently, as something alien to him, and that it becomes a power on its own confronting him. It means that the life which he has conferred on the object confronts him as something hostile and alien.

Related:

Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

Crosspost: The Unpretty Souls


Credit: Darkmoon_Art on Pixabay

Unpretty people, heartless and cold,
Their greed for profit, a story oft told.
No sympathy flows for the downtrodden’s plight,
Their eyes see only gold, no wrong or right.

Dollar signs gleam where their hearts should be,
Their profit motive blinds morality.
They’ve sold their souls for a sixpence’s gain,
A bargain with darkness, a life of disdain.

Once in the temple, tables were turned,
By He who saw greed and with anger burned.
“A den of robbers!” His voice did declare,
For prayer and peace, no room was there.

“A camel through a needle’s eye,” He said,
“Is simpler than riches leading souls to dread.
For wealth may chain what the spirit should free,
And bar the way to eternity.”

If there’s a God, justice will reign,
And the money changers will meet their pain.
Yet fear remains, will justice be served?
Or will greed’s legacy go undisturbed?

Unpretty souls, with hearts of stone,
May they find grace before the throne.
For wealth is fleeting, but love endures,
And only kindness truly cures.

by Tina Antonis

Do Critics of Biological Psychiatry Have an Alternative to a Life of “Whack-A-Mole”?

Economic Manuscripts: Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy

stablishment psychiatry has recently switched the biological cause of mental illness from a “chemical imbalance” to a “brain circuitry defect.” There is no more important institution in establishment psychiatry than the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), and in 2022, psychiatrist Thomas Insel, NIMH director from 2002-2015, stated in his book Healing, “The idea of mental illness as a ‘chemical imbalance’ has now given way to mental illnesses as ‘connectional’ or brain circuit disorders.”

Do Critics of Biological Psychiatry Have an Alternative to a Life of “Whack-A-Mole”?

Listening to Soldiers Of Reason: The RAND Corporation and the Rise of the American Empire

Opening quote.

Soldiers Of Reason: The RAND Corporation and the Rise of the American Empire

Related:

The Rand Corporation: The Think Tank That Controls America (archived)

By the 1960s, America’s rivals were paying attention. The Soviet newspaper Pravda nicknamed RAND “the academy of science and death and destruction.” American outfits preferred to call them the “wizards of Armageddon.”

UAW Stellantis workers protest in the streets from coast to coast

WASHINGTON—Back in the days when Stellantis was Chrysler, there was a sense of camaraderie on the shop floor, veteran Auto Workers say. Not anymore. Not under Stellantis. All they perceive now is corporate greed, satisfying investors, and filling honchos’ pockets with workers’ dollars.

UAW Stellantis workers protest in the streets from coast to coast

02-2024: The UAW Strike Saved Their Shuttered Plant, But the Fight Is Just Beginning

Eight months ago, the idling of the Belvidere Assembly Plant had local United Auto Workers questioning their next steps.

2023: Stellantis commits nearly $5B to Belvidere with new UAW contract

The revival of the Stellantis plant is a stunning reversal of fortunes for Belvidere, Ill. But workers say they won’t rest until they see the concrete being poured.

2022: All Biden’s Green Job Losers

Climate industrial policy is costing 1,350 workers their jobs at a Stellantis plant in Illinois.

UK: Will Labour legalise assisted dying?

As things stand, “assisted dying” is illegal in England and Wales under section two of the Suicide Act 1961 — but will this change under Keir Starmer’s government? Lord Falconer’s Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults Bill had its first reading in the House of Lords last week and has just been published.

Will Labour legalise assisted dying?

As if privatizing the NHS wasn’t enough, now they want to kill off the plebs!

Related:

The Nazis’ First Victims Were the Disabled