The Pawn Game


D. VanThournout
October 11th 2003

Who are the oppressed and the persecuted in our society?

Our hemp heads and our addicts.

Our poor, our elderly and our sick,

Our gays, and our lesbians.

Our minorities, and our workers.

Our women.... and our children....

In short, most of us. With the possible exception of the 358 billionaires (owning the equivalent of the poorest 3 billion people on earth) and even they exist within a hierarchy which limits them. Though I wouldn't lose any sleep on their account.

All oppressed. All victims of an apparatus manipulated for the rich, by the rich. The lines that seemingly divide us are imaginary. They keep us "divided" and "conquered". They, with purpose, destroy the fabric of community with endless tedium. Each of us having a personal transportation device rather than public transportation. It is a myth that cars free us. They enslave us. And the planning of cities with neighborhoods far from work places and businesses. These two things alone serve to consume our time and isolate us. We are further isolated and polarized against our neighbor and fellow citizens of the world by our favorite pastime and greatest health risk, television. Supposedly the worlds most advanced society and we spend on average, four hours per day watching TV.

Isolation destroys social skills and we become machine like in our behavior. We specialize and it becomes difficult to imagine what true community is, being just a cog in the wheel. Bred simply to produce widgets, we lose our ability to join with community. Our competitive capitalist environment encourages individualism to a fault. We become as unthinking, unfeeling and uncaring as the apparatus itself in our competitive isolation.

Nuclear families are more predominant in northern climates because of the need for warmth. Small spaces are easier to build and to heat. Our northern houses must be more substantial than houses in the south. Industrialization was born in the north. Technology and fierce individualism also arose as a solution to the cold northern climate and it's scarcity of resources. The quest for fire became, for the northern people, a brutal necessity.

Now, corporations make war with other corporations. In these conflicts blood is not necessarily directly spilled. However in becoming unthinking, unfeeling, uncaring and machine like, we don't realize that we are perhaps, metaphorically speaking, hacking away at our neighbors source of income and that they may lose their jobs and their children may lose their health care, their homes and their education. We rationalize this all away as if it were ok. We tell ourselves that they were; "stupid, lazy, inferior or inefficient". Or perhaps they are; "black, women, potheads, or drug addicts." Or perhaps they; "just don't want to work". We perceive no responsibility for our fellow people or our environment. Though they might live just around the corner, and our children might play together.

It is thus that unthinking, unfeeling, uncaring corporations tyrannize and feudalize our world.

Corporations are mental constructs and exist upon paper alone. So much paper our forests are being destroyed for it. Our rivers polluted as well as our minds. As mental constructs they are incapable of caring, feeling, or showing compassion to anything including themselves. It becomes entirely up to us to make corporations socially responsible and to hold them accountable for their actions.

In America, freedom has been relegated to a question of; "To buy? or Not to buy?" Who are you making richer?

Mussolini claimed that fascism should rightly be called Corporatism because it is a blending of state and corporate powers. Indirectly Hitler helped create world unity.

So is George W. Bush. In the long run we will realize as a nation that we should have acted with world consensus concerning aggression towards Iraq. We should have listened to the 12 to 15 millions who protested the war. We should have listened to the Pope. We should have listened to the President of France and of Mexico. We should have listened to the world. Let this be a lesson to us here in America. Listen to your neighbors. Listen to what your enemies are saying. Defy your leaders if they are lying. It is our patriotic duty to defy them when they are as dangerous and self-serving and corrupt as the Bush Administration.

Our military is really a conglomerate of corporations. As such they find it convenient to clear their aging inventory and thus find it irresistible to go along with any war hawk that comes along and offers them a job. In clearing it's inventory of aging weapons, our economy is stimulated by the imagined "need" to stock new ones. We welcome the employment merely thinking of ourselves and our immediate families needs.

This is nationalism in action. The imaginary line of nationalism divides us and serves absolutely no interests but the very rich and powerful. It allows the international corporate plutocrats to pit us nation against nation in a bizarre game of global chess. We are all, mostly pawns. Cannon fodder. Do not let this daunt you. Simply learn the pawn game.

Ask yourself again; "who are we making richer?" and who are we oppressing with our dollars?" with our hidden feudalism and our quest for fire.

D. VanThournout

Contact the author at DVanThournout@thedeprogrammer.com

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