Realistic, Pithy Thoughts for a New Year

When a woman drives downtown, she will generally consider the architecture of the buildings, the impressive height, the money being made, the power being controlled. The thought rarely, if ever, will cross this woman’s mind that decisions are being made daily in these buildings that directly and indirectly lead to the death and harm of her fellow citizens. And those decisions are made in a rote, repetitive fashion without any regard for the consequences.
Every damn day.

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Cutting off a family’s water is a matter of payment, not of health. Picking a 1.5 million dollar missile 161 times, and paying above market price, is just good business. Sometimes you just got to make sure to increase dividends, whether or not people suck in waste. Or dropping 18,000 dollars on a luxury box for just one game, more than half a year’s salary for half of America. Shit, at Food Not Bombs Houston, the public library won’t even turn the lights on in the plaza, because the city made it illegal to help each other out.

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It isn’t as if capitalism caused religious fundamentalists to go berserk. And it doesn’t really matter to capitalism if they lose it for Jehovah, Allah, Shiva, Buddha, or their fathers. The Crusades, the Christian invasion of the Middle East, or the occupation of Spain by Muslims, happened without the market machinations driving the capitalist desiring-machines towards consuming and pushing ever more flows of green down the hatch and out the ass. Capitalism just found out how to generate a dollar off of it.

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What is this imagined past conjured up by the likes of Robert Reich and Bernie Sanders when elections weren’t bought by the elites? Am I missing something, or was capitalism overthrown at some moment? Years of schooling for Dr. Reich have led him into mental gymnastics. Capitalists act against democracy like the mob, but apparently Reich has thought bubbles filled with inane things like, “O capitalism, always up to mischief.”

My pops always told me that if someone looks like they are fighting you, they probably are. So hit them before they hit you. But I assume Reich sees the American people as the Rocky or Hulk Hogan types. You know, just let the guy beat the hell of out you. And then, when you are knocked out, have a miraculous stage-managed rebirth!
Meh, who needs anti-systemic resistance when you’ve got a wolf in sheep’s clothing looking out for you.

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A beer is illegal to be carried open while walking down the street. Breasts claim a similar status, along with a penis or a vagina. Through their sheer presence alone these things cause societal chaos and moral degeneration, apparently. I guess death by dick is happening, like Medusa with one eye.
Fully loaded handgun or assault rifle totally cool though.

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Anybody else realize that when Bundys and Hammonds are claiming the right to the land, they make the case they’ve been there since the 1800s? That makes them the fucking descendants of genocidal maniacs not much different from Hitler, right? Time to call in question generational liability. Or maybe apply Nuremberg statutes based on their continual claim to stolen property. If they want the land they should have to pay for the real crime committed.
Otherwise, shut the fuck up and get off First Nation land.

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The modern day realist is nothing more than a callous nihilist. Recognition of all this shows the modern-day realist is actually a denier, an unrepentant master of charlatanism, false-purveyor of the truth always negated. We should guillotine Pangloss.

Andrew Smolski is a writer and sociologist.