As so often happens, I was getting my daily coffee and doing the blah-blah with my friendly baristas, and in the course of the conversation we discussed how the choices we make about drugs are so strange.

My basic point was that crack is a crime...while coffee is a growth industry...but fundamentally, the two are not all that different.

Then the conversation got really strange: I began to speculate what the world might look like if the reality had been reversed.

The next thing I knew, I was writing this story.
Follow along and we’ll see what happens.
And a small warning: there’s satire ahead, so be careful.

By Jason Miller

Thomas Paine's Corner

http://www.bestcyrano.org/THOMASPAINE/?p=502

We “Free World” capitalistic Westerners are a loathsome lot—or to put it more crudely, we suck. When one considers how degenerate we are from a collective standpoint, it is difficult to suppress intense feelings of disgust and contempt. There are many layers to our repugnant, depraved, and “beloved” capitalism, a socioeconomic system which ultimately furnishes the members of its upper echelon with de facto licenses to exploit, plunder, and murder with impunity. Problem is that as one peels back each successive layer hoping to find some purity, one finds a more profound rot.

The enemy of Corporate Capitalists is regulation. The freedom to do whatever needs to be done to make a buck is the most efficient way to make that buck. Regulations, by the very nature, put a roadblock into that process. On the other hand, the goal of regulation is to protect the weak that do not have the strength to fight someone who chooses an efficient way of making money that also damages the society. Regulation is by its very nature a method to prevent efficiency.

By Jason Miller

Thomas Paine's Corner

http://www.bestcyrano.org/THOMASPAINE/?p=453

Gluttony and greed kill more than the sword.

—Italian proverb

Gluttony and surfeiting are no proper occasions for thanksgiving.

~Charles Lamb, 1821

By Jason Miller

Thomas Paine's Corner

http://www.bestcyrano.org/THOMASPAINE/?p=407

“America touts itself as the land of the free, but the number one freedom that you and I have is the freedom to enter into a subservient role in the workplace. Once you exercise this freedom you’ve lost all control over what you do, what is produced, and how it is produced. And in the end, the product doesn’t belong to you. The only way you can avoid bosses and jobs is if you don’t care about making a living. Which leads to the second freedom: the freedom to starve.”

–Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine

By Jason Miller

Thomas Paine's Corner

http://www.bestcyrano.org/THOMASPAINE/?p=239

“It is impossible for capitalism to survive, primarily because the system of capitalism needs some blood to suck. Capitalism used to be like an eagle, but now it’s more like a vulture. It used to be strong enough to go and suck anybody’s blood whether they were strong or not. But now it has become more cowardly, like the vulture, and it can only suck the blood of the helpless. As the nations of the world free themselves, the capitalism has less victims, less to suck, and it becomes weaker and weaker. It’s only a matter of time in my opinion before it will collapse completely.”

–Malcolm X

By Paul A. Donovan

Thomas Paine's Corner

http://www.bestcyrano.org/THOMASPAINE/?p=230

“The only thing most American know about socialism is they don’t like it. They have been led to believe that socialism is something to be either ridiculed as impractical, or feared as an instrument of the devil.”

–Leo Huberman

During the Mid 1990s I was a student at Cal (that's a story in itself)and I met Ron, who was a pumped-up radical grad student researching History-Ethnic Studies.

I recently received a random email from Ron, and I thought y'all might find the subsequent correspondence amusing. The topics cover American History, NAFTA, immigration, and of course, politics. I can't wait to hear what y'all think of this...

Thomas Paine's Corner

http://www.bestcyrano.org/THOMASPAINE/?p=168

By Jason Miller

A few days ago, one of my closest friends hit me with a heavily loaded question.

“Are you a Communist?” she queried.

To which I replied:

Thomas Paine's

http://www.bestcyrano.org/...

At present, George W. Bush is unpopular with the majority of the American public not because of the murderous mayhem he has unloosed in Iraq; rather, his standing has plummeted, due to the fact that he didn’t deliver the goods. Americans are fine with fueling our republic of road rage using the blood of Iraqis (or any other distant and darker people) as long as "the mission" doesn’t drag on too long or reveal too much about ourselves.

Crossposted at DailyKos

Thoughts on dropping out of the American Consumer Society

Preface: I have thought about/contemplated the themes in this piece for...I don't know how long.

I remember one afternoon, it had to be 1980. I was standing on a railroad track near a house I rented out north of the dinky college town where I went to college. I found some piece of plastic crap - a broken toy.

I knew it would not begin to decompose for 10000 years - or something like that and that it was produced from petroleum for little of nothing, sold to somebody for a big profit (relatively) for a moment's novelty.

It just seemed wrong.