The Warning That Was Unheeded, The Remedy That Wasn't Tried But Still Can Be

As the people were forced
to fight over jobs,
self-defense became a way of life,
- in wars,
- in sports,
- in movies,
- even sometimes at home.

Our country meanwhile
grew strong and powerful
because of
- exploding war-stimulated technology,
- cheap raw materials from abroad,
- lots of oil,
- and a large work force.

But many people stayed poor,
and suffered attacks on their dignity,
especially
- Native Americans,
- Blacks,
- Mexican Americans,
- immigrants,
- Puerto Ricans,
- and poor whites, like Appalachians.

Brothers and sisters in suffering,
these people were often forced
to turn against one another,
for some meager piece of a pie,
which, however big
(the biggest the world had ever known),
refused to feed all its children 

As industrial production grew,
it brought blessings to the human family,
but the more it grew
the more some felt
it became like a cancer
eating away its own foundation.

This is a passage from what I think is one of the best pastoral letters,  This Land Is Home To Me, issued by the Bishops of Appalachia in 1975.   What they warned about forty-three years ago has now become the facts of life for Americans everywhere, including many from the middle-class, white-collar families who the system still worked for back then.  That was predicted in the document, noting that Appalachia was not only a reality for its people and land but was also symbolic of what would become a more general result of what it warned of.  That is one of the great accomplishments of the regime of lies I talked about yesterday.

I will point out that at the time it was written, the oligarchs were just beginning to take advantage of the Chinese near-slave labor market opened up by Nixon and Kissinger, when they still had to contend with workers who had at least some rights here.   The great accomplishment of globalization in allowing the ownership class to export jobs to slave labor markets hadn't taken hold.  And if you think that's not a serious consideration look at those areas of the rust-belt that gave Trump his Electoral College win.  Even as he was part of the ownership class who exported jobs out of the United States.

Worship Of An Idol

The way of life
which these corporate giants create
is called by some
"technological rationalization".

Its forces contain the promise
of a world where
- poverty is eliminated,
- health is cared for,
- education is available for all,
- dignity is guaranteed,
- and old age is secure.

Too often, however,
its forces become perverted,
hostile to the dignity of the earth
and of its people.
Its destructive growth patterns
- pollute the air,
- foul the water,
- rape the land.

The driving force
behind this perversion is
"Maximization of Profit",
a principle which too often converts itself
into an idolatrous power.

I just thought I'd post some of it so it could be read, I doubt that many people have read or do read this very important document.   It's far from the only document of the kind from that period but, written in the poetic language of prophesy, as so much of William Blake was, it is some of the most potent.  It also has proposed solutions to overturn the beast it opposes, the same best that Blake sensed and opposed, though with the better part of two-centuries witness that wasn't available to Blake.  As maybe they didn't appreciate in 1975, the nature of those solutions wouldn't be any more acceptable to materialists of the left than they were to the corporate materialists who run the system.   That "left" was as invested in the ideological, political and material motivations behind the oppressive system as the oppressors, why they found it so easy to support the same thing when it was branded as Marxist or Leninist, or Maoist.   We know a lot more, now, where Marxism leads, fascistic mafia-states. 

Yes, instead of reprinting the whole thing - it's not long, only 19 pages of poetic text, not too many words to a page - you should read it at the link.   I've decided to read it every day for a week or two.  Like the Prophets, Hebrew or William Blake, it's the kind of text you have to read a number and really think about to really get what it means.