Is the GOP a "Kooky Cult" or a "Crime Syndicate"?

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

As it is true of individuals, it is also true of groups: they are what they do! The GOP, like any other group or any individual is defined by what it has done over the years. I am of the opinion that most of what the GOP has "accomplished" has been harmful to American society over all and to individuals in specific cases. This includes the GOP's apparent disdain for the environment, its horrific record with respect to any "class" that is not fabulously wealthy. By its many acts and as many omissions, the GOP has created the ruling elite.

I have often called the GOP a "kooky cult, possibly a crime syndicate". Following are The defining characteristics of a cult according to Janja Lalich, Ph.D. & Michael D. Langone, Ph.D.

• The group displays excessively zealous and unquestioning commitment to its leader and (whether he is alive or dead) regards his belief system, ideology, and practices as the Truth, as law.
• Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished.
• Mind-altering practices (such as meditation, chanting, speaking in tongues, denunciation sessions, and debilitating work routines) are used in excess and serve to suppress doubts about the group and its leader(s).
• The leadership dictates, sometimes in great detail, how members should think, act, and feel (for example, members must get permission to date, change jobs, marry—or leaders prescribe what types of clothes to wear, where to live, whether or not to have children, how to discipline children, and so forth).
• The group is elitist, claiming a special, exalted status for itself, its leader(s) and members (for example, the leader is considered the Messiah, a special being, an avatar—or the group and/or the leader is on a special mission to save humanity).
• The group has a polarized us-versus-them mentality, which may cause conflict with the wider society. The leader is not accountable to any authorities (unlike, for example, teachers, military commanders or ministers, priests, monks, and rabbis of mainstream religious denominations).
• The group teaches or implies that its supposedly exalted ends justify whatever means it deems necessary. This may result in members' participating in behaviors or activities they would have considered reprehensible or unethical before joining the group (for example, lying to family or friends, or collecting money for bogus charities).
• The leadership induces feelings of shame and/or guilt iin order to influence and/or control members. Often, this is done through peer pressure and subtle forms of persuasion. Subservience to the leader or group requires members to cut ties with family and friends, and radically alter the personal goals and activities they had before joining the group.
• The group is preoccupied with bringing in new members.
• The group is preoccupied with making money. Members are expected to devote inordinate amounts of time to the group and group-related activities. Members are encouraged or required to live and/or socialize only with other group members.
• The most loyal members (the “true believers”) feel there can be no life outside the context of the group.
• They believe there is no other way to be, and often fear reprisals to themselves or others if they leave (or even consider leaving) the group.
--Janja Lalich, Ph.D. & Michael D. Langone, Ph.D.

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How Steinbeck 'Predicted' a Decline and Fall of America

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

There are MANY differences between the GOP and Democrats! Enough to write books about! Why, then, has the meme taken hold that there are no differences between the parties?

That's found in 'Right Wing Campaigning 101', better known as a GOP 'Campaign Manual'. There exist such manuals, produced for candidates by their highly paid consultants. At one time, I had several of these large tomes. Lesson no 1 states (in effect): in appropriate situations, it is to your candidate's advantage to BLUR the distinction between the candidates. Generally, the GOP is a minority party. It is often to their advantage to convince the public that Dems are just GOP-lite! It "ain't" necessarily so! For a start: EVERY Democratic President since WWII has enjoyed greater GDP and JOB CREATION rates than has any GOP President.

No one was surprised recently when some 227,000 NEW Jobs were reported. Those were among many more that had disappeared under Bush Jr. That the Shrub lost and/or destroyed jobs put Obama in the position of having to regain lost ground and add to the baseline! The cycle is repeated whenever a Democrat assumes the White House; he must create jobs and quickly. When a Republican assumes the White House, he or she will promptly destroy them. If there were NO differences between the parties then HOW is that pattern explained?

Clue: STOP buying the bullshit! Check the official numbers.

The great motion picture --The Grapes of Wrath --was all about the disastrous, often heart-breaking loss of jobs that began with the incompetent if not evil policies of a GOP administration, that of Herbert Hoover and the GOP administrations which preceded him --Harding and Coolidge. The GOP OWNS its creation: the GREAT DEPRESSION.

Daring to tell the truth about the Great Depression and the GOP which created it earned John Steinbeck numerous death threats, an FBI investigation, and --to be expected of the nation's moronic/crooked right wing --charges of 'Communist sympathy', charges never proven. They were not proven because they were not true! What if they had been? Are we not guaranteed freedom speech? Are we not free to vote as our consciences dictate? Are we --in fact --NOT free?

The actions of the GOP/right wing define them thus: 1) they are liars who know their 'economic policies' are disingenuously conceived and promoted;the GOP knows its 'theories' are hooey but does not care; 2) the GOP are ruthless and will rig elections in order to seize power.

In the meantime, we have no choice but to exercise free speech until it is denied us by a tyrant. We narrowly survived one recently --George W. Bush who might have parlayed a success in Iraq into a 'triumph' perhaps with laurel wreaths and a parade of slaves from conquered nations.

That the GOP is utterly incompetent may very well be our only salvation --so far! It may be dumb luck that things worked out in our favor. In the aftermath of Bush Jr, we should be thankful that we are still --on paper at least --guaranteed freedom of speech and, by extension, the freedom of conscience that inspires it.

Not surprisingly, it was an Oklahoma Congressman who labeled John Steinbeck's novel --The Grapes of Wrath' --a "dirty, lying, filthy manuscript”. Nevertheless, it remains one of America's great novels, one of America's great motion pictures starring Henry Fonda. Predictably, the GOP despises it because it dares to tell the truth and depict it realistically.

Tragically, a 'sub-stratum', i.e, the right wing inclined, has refused to evolve, progress, grow or, in any way, transcend a disastrous mental constipation that has --it seems --forever retarded our nation's best but utterly lost dreams and better aspirations. One fears that America will be remembered as Rome is remembered, that is, as a repressive, failed, cruel empire remembered most often for its cruelty, its obsession with spectacle, it's neglect of anyone not of 'noble' lineage.

Robbers of the world, having by their universal plunder exhausted the land, they rifle the deep. If the enemy be rich, they are rapacious; if he be poor, they lust for dominion; neither the east nor the west has been able to satisfy them. Alone among men they covet with equal eagerness poverty and riches. To robbery, slaughter, plunder, they give the lying name of empire; they make a solitude and call it peace!

--Tacitus: Calgacus' Speech to His Troops (A.D. 85)

Dust Bowl --a 1950s Documentary

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The Fascist Origins of 'Corporate Personhood'

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Many sources support my assertion and emerging thesis: the concept of 'corporate personhood' has Germanic, fascist roots. Herr Schlegel, for example, wrote an essay entitled “Signature of the Age” (Signatur des Zeitalters, 1820). Amid his attacks on British-American "parliamentary government" may be found his Mitt Romney/SCOTUS-like descriptions of a "machine-like", ideal state.

Schlegel describes his ideal with the term "organic" --though it is not! Schlegel also used the term 'Christian' to describe his 'fascist' state. His 'Christian corporations', he said, were 'living wholes' and he described them in terms not unlike that of the corporatist (fascist) philosophy that had been espoused/advocated by Hegel.

Some hard background: in England, ‘the Crown’ has been regarded as a 'legal entity' for centuries. But that is not to say that the 'Crown' IS 'a person'! It simply does not follow that because the 'Crown' may exert power and/or authority it is a 'person'.

Likewise, it simply does not follow that because 'corporations' may enter into contracts that the said 'corporation' is a person. In the case of the 'Crown', for example, it was said that it was both a source of law and the means by which it was enforced! This, it is said, put it above 'laws' --laws which people, real people, are expected to obey. Ergo: the 'state' is, likewise, not a person.

It is said that 'all modern societies' recognize the 'legal existence, as persons, of companies or corporations'! Again --many things may be asserted! It was often asserted that the world was flat; saying so did not make it true.

Corporations do not procreate sexually; corporations do not grow, fart, belch or have babies. Corporations do NONE of the things that define 'real people' either biologically or psychologically. A 'corporation' is nothing less than a paper contract outlining how and possibly when they may interact with 'real people' and with other corporations. NONE of these 'privileges' imply or bestow upon a 'corporation' either a sexual or asexual means by which they may procreate; NONE of these 'privileges' have either the evolutionary power or the 'God-like' power of bestowing upon a mere paper contract the status of 'personhood'.

SCOTUS was wrong and wrong-headed and so are those members of the GOP who bought the scam!

Some have said that a corporation is an 'artificial' person! But a 'real person' is ...uh...a 'real' person! A corporation is not by definition! Black's Law definition is disingenuous. Neither dictionaries nor ill-informed legal decisions can make people out of what are --in fact --mere contracts. Existence precedes 'essence' and it is 'essence' which defines! People are what they are upon birth. Corporations share none of characteristics which define what it means to be a person!

Contracts which, in effect, create a 'corporate entity, differ from other contracts only because they are normally on-file with a Secretary of State somewhere. But that hardly makes of them a 'real person'. They simply outline the legal scope of responsibilities of those party to the contract. See the quote by St. Thomas More who said of them that they were, in fact, '...conspiracies of rich men to procure their commodities in the name and title of the commonwealth'!

When the Sec of State in Delaware (for example) affixes his SEAL upon the articles of incorporation he has performed in a manner PRECISELY described by St Thomas More in his classic "Utopia". Ergo --corporations are better described as being 'legalized conspiracies' than as 'real people'.

“I can perceive nothing but a certain conspiracy of rich men procuring their own commodities under the name and title of the commonwealth.”

- Sir Thomas More (1478 – 1535), Utopia, Of the Religions in Utopia

Words fail to describe the depths of lies, propaganda and sophistry indulged by the likes of A. Scalia who --laughingly --believes himself to be 'too smart for the court'!

Most advocates of 'corporate personhood' indulge false analogies because 'false' analogies may be their last redoubt. Clearly --real persons are not so easily defined or summed up having attributes of consciousness and volition that may never be duplicated in unimaginably large super-computers let alone a mere scrap of papers with a seal on it. Simply, 'personhood' cannot be duplicated artificially and most certainly is not duplicated in mere 'legal abstractions' of any kind.

I deny many right-leaning assertions that "modern societies recognise the legal existence as persons of companies or corporations"! If what is said in defense of corporate personhood were true, TRADE UNIONS would, may and should claim 'personhood'. Should they do so, GOP hypocrites would scream bloody murder, foul, no fair!

By simply refusing to tolerate such an outcome, the GOP will have demonstrated its hypocrisy, its disingenuous assertion that corporations are people. Alas --the GOP has historically sought to have it several ways but right.

In the meantime, I urge those who make cars for a living --ORGANIZE AND INCORPORATE!

I urge those who make steel for a living --ORGANIZE AND INCORPORATE!

I urge those who work in any way with respect to the production of oil and/or petroleum related/derived products --ORGANIZE AND INCORPORATE!

In that way, you are guaranteed that you will be treated like REAL PERSONS while, previously, actually BEING a real person would have guaranteed your enslavement to MOLOCH.

ORGANIZE!!!

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