Tag Archives: Capitalism

A Year From Now

Posted on by

People love making plans. Dreaming can be fun, and looking ahead might be “the American pastime.” If not, it’s something that most of us do, like we’re guaranteed a future pregnant with certainty.

This weekend I read a story on the war that most of us have forgotten about in Afghanistan. I empathize with the soldiers and their sense that this war seems to lack a purpose or an end game. I also thought about those forced to live, waiting for a bomb to fall on their heads, or to having soldiers kick in the door under the guise of looking for “the enemy.” I’m pretty sure that for both the soldiers and the natives, planning for the future seems like a moot point. Life for them simply becomes an act of survival.

What Does the Future Hold?

I know a bit about what happens when one’s life gets flipped upside-down. One thing that goes away is the certainty (and a certain arrogance) that you actually control the ability to look out into the future. The present is affected, too. Then, there’s the tendency to hearken back to the past and the preference to “live” there. Continue reading →

Invasive Prayer

Posted on by

Prayer’s been all around us since Mark was killed in January. People have forced prayer on us, even though none of us (including Mark) held out any hope that petitioning a deity would alter the universe in any way. I’m still curious where God might have been back on January 21. Perhaps he doesn’t travel Highway 90 in Florida.

Every time a tragedy occurs, Facebook lights up with “prayer” and a host of other religiously-draped sentiments. While some of those directly affected might find comfort knowing that there are a legion of warriors out there “wrestling with their God,” directing His/Her “comfort and healing” earthward, lives remain forever altered.

I’m not telling anyone what to believe. If you want to talk to your conception of a deity, have at it. However, to impose those ideas that have no actual basis in science and reality seems invasive at the very least.

Here’s what I think about the platitudes and prayers offered to those of us who’ve had our lives turned upside down by tragedy. Prayer and words that may or may not be infused with anything more than a sentiment help make you feel better and even heroic. But for us living with loss each and every moment of every day, it changes nothing. In fact, when I’m forced to endure another round of this happy horseshit, it just makes me tune it out. Continue reading →

When Disaster Strikes

Posted on by

When loss hits you, your world is turned upside down. Whether the loss involves death, or in places hit by hurricanes and other kinds of disasters where people are displaced from their homes, stress and the subsequent emotional and physical effects target the victims.

A key element in ensuring health and harboring the hope for longevity requires learning to manage and mitigate stress. That’s easier said when you are observing stress from a distance. When you are in the midst of swirling waters either literally or figuratively, remaining detached and free from roiling emotions and a knot (or pain) in your gut is nearly impossible.

Disasters bring out the best and worst in humans. While now personally acquainted with the personal variety, natural (and national) ones are often magnified by the media. They serve an important function for programmers—ready-made stories that fill hours of air time, with advertisers happy to fork out marketing capital to capture fixated eyeballs.

Speaking of capitalizing on disaster, our sitting president is someone who has done well capitalizing and exploiting the misfortunes of others. I’ve mentioned Sarah Kendzior before. She nails it in this article by Nancy LeTourneau on our Exploiter in Chief being our “ultimate disaster capitalist,” a master at reveling (and profiting, handsomely) when others are in the midst of chaos and suffering. Make sure you click on the links provided in the quoted snippet, too. This isn’t false (or “fake”) propaganda, but a telling measure of the man we elected as our 45th president. He’ll surely find a way to profit from the fates of those in Houston like he has throughout his business career. That’s the Trump MO.

Trump spent his business career eagerly anticipating both social and economic disasters. “I sort of hope that happens because then people like me would go in and buy,” Trump said of the housing crash in 2006. Before that, Trump spent decades exploiting the damaged economies of towns like Gary, Indiana and Atlantic City, leaving them as bad or worse off than when he arrived.

America’s 4th largest city, underwater. [Aaron Cohan photo]

Continue reading →

People and Corporations

Posted on by

We hear a lot of lip service paid to cracking back on corporations. People generally seem to dislike corporations—except when they’re supplying a paycheck, or often, cheap, substandard products manufactured offshore, by exploited workers.

Corporations have more rights now than ever before. In fact, the Supreme Court has broadened the concept of “corporate personhood” considerably over the past decade.

Candidates for president say the darndest things.

Candidates for president say the darndest things.

Mitt Romney, when running for president in 2012, actually came out and said explicitly, “corporations are people.” Justice John Paul Stevens would disagree, as he did in his dissent in the Citizens United case:

[C]orporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires. Corporations . . . and their “personhood” often serve as a useful legal fiction. But they are not themselves members of “We the People” by whom and for whom our Constitution was established. Continue reading →

Amish Country

Posted on by

Mark is passing through rural Pennsylvania. He’s in farming country. Google delivers some beautiful panoramas when I search his location.

Yesterday, we spoke by phone. He was in good spirits, as he usually is. We talked about the Amish.

The Amish are primarily rooted in Lancaster County, to the east of where Mark is right now. However, he said he’s seen a number of them pass in their horse and buggy get-ups.

One foot in the past, and one in the present.

One foot in the past and the present.

Continue reading →