Night hauling

Jean-Francois Millet Les pêcheurs (Fishermen) 1870 

Similar subject matter to this painting by Andrew Wyeth (different light-source).

Unpublished response

State-sponsored corporate hegemony over American society (also known as corporatism, a synonym for fascism according to Benito Mussolini) is a far more significant and immediate threat to our freedom than the vague indication of creeping Islamist influence you are clamoring over here. Those repressive rulers who foist crack-pot fundamentalism on their impoverished populations and relish in grand designs on world domination represent but a minuscule danger to this country, no matter how fanatical they are.

Don't the final sentences in this post betray a fixation on competitive electoral politics? You associate by intimation a highly speculative and, in my opinion, somewhat specious outside threat with our current President, stating the matter in the gravest of terms and implying his ouster in November will thwart "The Project." I think it is remiss to encourage any kind of fear and reaction over this (non)issue.

Even if Obama is a secret Muslim with wicked intent to undermine the Bill of Rights, the framers of that document were wise enough to embed checks-and-balances in the structure of our government to prevent such unilateral subversion (as I'm certain the civic and patriotic author of this blog is well aware). Show a little courage and confidence in the spirit of freedom that, at the very least, stands at the foundation of American society. Sharia will never, ever, be the law of this land – it doesn’t merit a mention much less a call to action.

Indeed, this land of the free and home of the brave faces far more important issues, especially vis-à-vis the coming election. I would dare to suggest that, on solutions to problems that actually affect our nation, both candidates for President of the United States have demonstrated precious little in the "to offer" column. Still, it's hard to imagine Mitt Romney being any more lenient in regulating corporate abuse of the citizenry than the current administration has proven to be.

Thank you for respectfully and thoughtfully reviewing my comment.

Civilly, pete v

The above comment was submitted as a response to this blog post on "Liberty Belle: Right-side Up Thinking in an Upside Down World" (or is that "Liberty Belle: Shill for Corrupt Jingoistic Neoliberal Establishment Colonialism"? Is that uncivil?).

Tantamount to screaming “The Muslims are coming! The Muslims are coming! And Obama is their Manchurian Candidate!” the post proffers the distinctly absurd notion of infiltration of our sovereign government by the evil Muslim Brotherhood in accordance with their master plan for implementing a global caliphate of Sharia Law. The author goes on to suggest that those unaware of this critical threat ought to "wake up and smell the coffee" before the November election.

Though the hallucinatory nature of this perceived danger hardly needs to be pointed out, I thought I’d attempt to do so. The comment was not published.

Electoral politics: winnable battlefield?

To Vote or Not to Vote? » Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

The article linked above features quotes from George Carlin and Noam Chomsky. And Wendell Berry.

This is how it works

"War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small 'inside' group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes." ~ General Smedley D. Butler (1935)

Humanity betrayed

BOWED by the weight of centuries he leans
Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground,
The emptiness of ages in his face,
And on his back the burden of the world.
Who made him dead to rapture and despair,
A thing that grieves not and that never hopes,
Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?
Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw?
Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow?
Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?
Is this the Thing the Lord God made and gave
To have dominion over sea and land;
To trace the stars and search the heavens for power.
To feel the passion of Eternity?
Is this the Dream He dreamed who shaped the suns
And marked their ways upon the ancient deep?
Down all the stretch of Hell to its last gulf
There is no shape more terrible than this -
More tongued with censure of the world’s blind greed -
More filled with signs and portents for the soul -
More fraught with menace to the universe.

What gulfs between him and the seraphim!
Slave of the wheel of labor, what to him
Are Plato and the swing of Pleiades?
What the long reaches of the peaks of song,
The rift of dawn, the reddening of the rose?
Through this dread shape the suffering ages look;
Time’s tragedy is in that aching stoop;
Through this dread shape humanity betrayed,
Plundered, profaned and disinherited,
Cries protest to the Judges of the World,
A protest that is also prophecy.

O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,
Is this the handiwork you give to God,
This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched?
How will you ever straighten up this shape;
Touch it again with immortality;
Give back the upward looking and the light;
Rebuild in it the music and the dream;
Make right the immemorial infamies,
Perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes?

O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,
How will the Future reckon with this Man?
How answer his brute question in that hour
When whirlwinds of rebellion shake the world?
How will it be with kingdoms and with kings -
With those who shaped him to the thing he is -
When this dumb Terror shall reply to God,
After the silence of the centuries?



The Man with the Hoe
Edwin Markham 1917