Welcome To Badlands Journal

Simone Weil, from “Sketch of Contemporary Social Life,” (1934).

To imagine that we can switch the course of history along a different track by transforming the system through reforms or revolutions, to hope to find salvation in a defensive or offensive action against tyranny and militarism—all that is just day-dreaming. There is nothing on which to base even attempts. Marx’s assertion that the regime would produce its own gravediggers is cruelly contradicted every day, and one wonders, incidentally, how Marx could ever have believed that slavery could produce free men. Never yet in history has a regime of slavery fallen under the blows of the slaves.

In moments of absolute certainty

...which we seem to be experiencing as a whole society, it might be useful to remember the great Red hunts of the 50's and Edward R. Murrows' commentary.--blj

EDWARD R MURROW EDITORIAL ON JOSEPH MCCARTHY (1954)
Closing a half-hour television report on Senator Joseph McCarthy in March 1954, American journalist Edward R Murrow delivered a stinging editorial about McCarthy’s tactics and their impact:

Thom Hatrmann's reflections on the factions of our day

Yesterday (March 21, 2022) Thom Hartmann wrote a terrific essay, titled “Is America facing the ‘Doom Loop’ of democracy?” 
Is America Facing The “Doom Loop” of Democracy? (hartmannreport.com)
It is an essay about the present state of political affairs in both the US and Russia, which are both dominated by factions bought by a wealthy few, “oligarchs” or “plutocrats,” who use factions of bought-and-sold “elected” politicians to form governments for their donors/owners. 

"Clarity: It is always a fine thing, whatever the difficulties it brings."

“Rational argument can be conducted with some prospect of success only so long as the emotionality of a given situation does not exceed a certain critical degree. If the affective temperature rises above this level, the possibility of reason’s having any effect ceases and its place is taken by slogans and chimerical wish fantasies. That is to say, a sort of collective possession results which rapidly develops into a psychic epidemic.” --CG Jung

 

3-8-22
The Casualties of Empire

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