What happens when everything is a commodity

Chris Hedges discusses America's warmongering, the war that the military is waging on journalism, the rise of hyper-masculinity, the fact that most problems are now seen as invitations to apply violence, and the fact that most things have become valuable only insofar as they are commodities. Hedges is not a defeatist, though. He states, "You can't talk about hope if you don't resist. Once we give up, we're finished. . . . We have a moral duty to fight against forces of evil even if it seems certain that those forces will triumph."

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Chris Hedges highlights the menace of the military mind

The military has won an ideological battle in the United States. We see many of our most pervasive problems in terms of war. Once we do that, the solution is violence. Now it's eating up all of us, based on the "culture wars." Watching TV for any amount of time will demonstrate that Hollywood struggles to be creative, and has descended to the lowest common denominator: violence. It's something we all understand and it captivates us because we fear it, just as we fear spiders and snakes. And listen to our modern language. We are constantly speaking in metaphors of violence. We always have, but it seems worse to my ears. Mark Johnson and George Lakoff pointed out (in Metaphors we Live By) that we employ the war as a conceptual metaphor: ARGUMENT IS WAR Your claims are indefensible. He attacked every weak point in my argument. His criticisms were right on target. I demolished his argument.I've never won an argument with him. You disagree? Okay, shoot! If you use that strategy, he'll wipe you out. He shot down all of my arguments. But it now seems worse, whenever I'm listening to those engaged in dispute (we almost always dispute rather than discuss). We Americans destroy the opposition, we kill ideas, we employ shock and awe, we look for smoking guns, we come out with guns blazing. Mary Hamer has categorized many types of speech that draw on violence in an essay called "Violent Language That Kills The Human Spirit." It's a long painful list. Here is her thesis:

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Time to cut the U.S. military arsenal

Walter Pincus of the Washington Post has it right:

If ever there was a costly relic of Cold War spending that needs a dramatic overhaul it’s the U.S. strategic nuclear deterrent, a program with a price tag of $355 billion or more over the next 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

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The purpose of solemnity

Yesterday I was walking through Arlington National Cemetery, when I saw the following signs dictating that those in the cemetery should be solemn. IMG_3798 DC - lo res sign in cemetery This sign made me think of the two-minute video in which John Cleese (of Monty Python fame) explains that people commonly confuse seriousness (which can be properly accompanied by laughter and frivolity, often enabling inspiration and catharsis) with solemnity. What is the purpose of solemnity? IMG_3842 DC - sign 2 low res

It serves pomposity, and the self-important always know at some level of their consciousness that their egotism is going to be punctured by humor. That is why they see it as a threat. So they dishonestly pretend that their deficiency makes their view more substantial, when it only makes them feel bigger. [raspberry]. Humor is an essential part of spontaneity and an essential part of playfulness, and an essential part of the creative activity that we need to solve problems, no matter how serious they may be.

Apparently, humor (and other forms of free expression--something for which the soldiers allegedly died for--is more powerful than bullets.  We wouldn't want people walking through the cemetery speaking out, especially using the weapon of humor, to question whether many of these soldiers died for lies, be it the alleged Gulf of Tonkin incident, the alleged weapons of mass destruction, or the other lie from the steady stream of lies that has kept America constantly at war.  IMG_3947 graves - low res

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Obama- hoist by his own terrorist petard

But what happens when President Obama aids the enemy?  Will we as a nation insist that the President should also be subject to the law?  Are we a nation of laws, or corrupt banana republic which only enforces the law against those powerless to resist?

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