Countdown to the Dying Culture: Can You Name 10 Reasons Why It’s Going, Gone-Gone?

Insanity and drooling for the last bites of capitalism's moldy pie

“You’re retired, aren’t you?” the 29 year old says to me today, while I am with a friend, 62, who used to be my board president over at United Cerebral Palsy, just one of several jobs I’ve been sacked from by the Controllers – this time, unfortunately, by two insecure, anti-male-in-the-workplace self-described Jewish women who could not square that I was smarter than they were-are and that I had a passion for representing my people, clients living with severe disabilities, developmental and intellectual and psychological. I’ve written about that work here and here!

The 29 year old was flabbergasted that I was out looking for work, that I have no 401 k and that people my age – 58 – with the shitload of degrees and a million dreams realized in life and work and travel have to work at fastfood joints and two other jobs to survive. It’s counter-intuitive, and when these fellows are on Netflix, scrolling on their screens after screens, all the Zuckerberg and Amazon conspicuous consumption time committed in their lives, they think this white man is of privilege.

The dumbdowning of America – five easy pieces of the pie gone into the bellies of the controllers, the punishers, the at-will lovers, each and everyone of them. I don’t personally blame this fellow, but we are a throwaway society because we have fatherless millions, women who are picking themselves up by the bootstraps and resentful, too, and a messed up world of dog eat dog and the spectacle of nothingness that is sports-booze-pot-clubbing and just big screen stupidity.

Look, Portland is a fucked up place, ancient and retrograde, another dirty city that got some facelifts here and techie lifts there. A landed gentrified bunch of Steve Jobs lovers and IT suckers. In reality, though, when old Marxist me goes a job hunting, the cards are triple stacked. Imagine, in the past five days, a dozen applications – union organizer for AFT, executive director for a service dog outfit, outdoor educator for Mt. Saint Helens, education organizer for two places, another job in Oakland, CA, and then another one in Boston! Here and there, jobs helping homeless, gang kids, poor, addicts. Nothing. Zilch. I’ve tried communications jobs, and, again, zilch. Education? Zilch.

Imagine the shit world where you have to leave roots, chopped down, to take a job in Boston, with UMass, and the job is, again, at-will, and you can be fired on a moment’s notice. Not that I think I will even get a call for a phone interview . . . this is today’s 25 percent unemployment, and 50 percent underemployment. Read the real statistics on employed versus unemployed!

This is bare bones capitalism. Throw away people society. Endless stupid entertainment. The powder is soft in the mountains, and the pot is legal, so let’s go skiing. Imagine, all people talk about is pot and wine and hops. Endless drunken laughter for those who have a slice of that messed up pie, and the Zionists and other marketers rake it in on levies, fees, permits, taxes, administrating the booze and pot, and then when these pathetics need lawyering up, these money changers are in the wait, in the lurch.

Dozens of jobs applied for, and the majority of the HR or recruiters or whatever they are calling their pathetic selves, well, not a word back to me – No – “Sorry, sucker, your interview did not make the cut. Thanks for applying.” I even applied to a planning outfit, and, alas, nothing.

These people are the pigs we have produced in higher education. Not me specifically, because I was always forcing thinking, more work than most, pushing political and environmental and diversity and anti-capitalism themes in the writing classes I taught. Always getting jabbed by fellow fucked up faculty and called on the carpet by administrators, and turncoat deans.

We have watered down everything and the humanities teachers are spineless. I was advocating for more writing, more lit, more stuff outside the bloody STEM straight-jacket, (ScienceTechnologyEngineeringMath). But look what we have – one of the most ignorant people one will see on a daily basis – Ben Carson. How blown is that guy’s brain – a danger to patients, family, the world. Nothing about nothing. He’s a mechanic, not a doctor, and I respect mechanics, so, what is he, just a scalpel thruster? He knows no art, no literature, no history, no classics, no nothing about the world.

The fellow that was floored that I was on the entry-level job market, throwing my hat in the ring for $65K a year jobs and $15.50 an hour jobs, he is a product of the dumbdowning and the psychological war that the educators-militarists-indutrialists-financiers-bankers-media have constructed. Do Not Question The Boss, The Money Trail, The Lies of Capitalism.

He doesn’t get it that there is a big ugly world out there that sees him as a number, or series of numbers, not a human, just a mark for making money for the vanguard, the PayDay Loan society that we are. Capitalism is about stripping humanity out of our lungs and heart. He still has a heart and a chance at change. But he too is tied up in his digital screenshot world. It is sad, really, seeing the shit he lines up for Netflix streaming.

We talked about Trump, that this country is a mean and as crass as Trump, but more so – poor and middle class and leaders in the white male club, and female, who hate Mexicans, hate gays, hate Muslims, hate counter-intuitive thinking, hate thinkers, hate socialism, hate safety nets, hate everything other than the Millionaires and Military and Markets. Trump is playing, not as dumb as dirt as is Carson or Jeb Bush, and Obama’s pretty stupid too, but we never talk about him that way because, why? Ivy league schmuck? In bed with Zionists? Taught in college, constitutional law? Listen to him. There is something very damaged and wrong with the fellow. He is not god’s gift to smarts.

So, we will get all sorts of foolish stuff over the internet – diabetes drug now the fountain of youth, 110 or 130 years old and still going strong. This is how the Controllers do their stupid and but effective work – distractions, lies, outside normal logic, outside common morality, ethics, but, we will see paid doctors are researching that drug to make people live longer? Is that with a titanium set of hips and five knee transplants and fifth pacemaker? With or without the Lazy Boy and Cheetos? This is the stuff of a dying culture.

  • Space rockets for the rich – dying culture.
  • Presidential debates – no debates, – a dying culture.
  • More control by corporations and zero for workers – a dying culture.
  • NAFTA and TPP – dying cultures.
  • Amazon-Starbucks-Walmart – a dying culture, because, shit, no one wants to own their own store, bricks and mortar, own their own restaurant, own their own coffee shop, run their own hardware store! Triple dying culture.
  • On-line education – dying culture.
  • Genetically modified anything – dying culture.
  • Five conglomerates controlling 95 percent of publishing – a dying culture.
  • The 1.85 percent Jewish population controlling 99 percent of Media or Hollywood – a dead culture.
  • Tasers, drones, SWAT teams at public schools – dying culture.
  • Cops on testosterone – dying culture.
  • PTSD, VA, wars, wars, wars – dying and killing culture.
  • Money controlled by Point Zero One Percent – a dying culture.
  • Boys and girls schooled in schools 100 percent made up of women – a dying culture.
  • So, sure, bring on the Happy Meal and I will pack it for you; bring me to the Walmart greeter school and I will smile for you; let me have at it at Walgreens scanning bar codes in my last days on earth. Give me the boot, quadruple boot, and sell America’s lies about merit and caring to Hallmark.

Rob us all, and then jail us for not having money for bail.

You can say this a thousand ways, look at the Matrix from a million angles, and we still have Capitalism as the Biggest Evil the Planet Will Ever Witness. Approve Glyphosate for baby’s formula. Engineer more toxins in Johnny’s cereal. Get Jane into puberty earlier and earlier. Have an endocrine disrupting Happy New Year. Celebrate Puerto Rica’s demise . . . told you so . . . Capitalism is all about told you so. Zuckerberg-Google-Microsoft-Bezos-Allen-Zio-cons . . . see a pattern, yet?

Live as long as possible so the elite can make as much money off those hobbling, horror-filled 90-year-old’s and then the 120 year old’s. Can you see the drug manufacturers drooling yet? While 5 billion people live on $10 or less a day, and we are talking about space walks for stars and million dollar soul replacements for billionaires.

See the culture dead yet?

Paul Haeder's been a teacher, social worker, newspaperman, environmental activist, and marginalized muckraker, union organizer. Paul's book, Reimagining Sanity: Voices Beyond the Echo Chamber (2016), looks at 10 years (now going on 17 years) of his writing at Dissident Voice. Read his musings at LA Progressive. Read (purchase) his short story collection, Wide Open Eyes: Surfacing from Vietnam now out, published by Cirque Journal. Here's his Amazon page with more published work Amazon. Read other articles by Paul, or visit Paul's website.