Mato's Blog

I was not completely satisfied with my blog entry “Glock-works”, and I thought it over and considered ways to make the text more useful for the reader. In doing that I came to the conclusion that I have to write down unmistakably my underlying views so that every visitor of this site knows where I’m coming from.

My views are explained in earlier blog entries, for instance:
The ethical cat,
Mato’s cats and the rest of the universe,
and I cordially invite everybody to read these texts.
The following document is meant to provide additional information and to set things straight.

The text “Glock-works” was about firearms and their prevalence in US society.

I don’t like weapons and wars and I don’t like US dominance. I never considered the American way of life as a desirable model. I never was impressed by “The American Dream”. I am very weary of unrelenting attempts to impose US American social, cultural and economic systems on other nations. I hope, that “The American Dream” will not become a global standard and that I don’t have to participate in it!

The USA has tried for more than a century with every possible means, including war and occupation, to install its culture and social values and its economic model in other countries. The USA needs to increase her influence because the capitalist economy depends on growth, without growth it will falter and ultimately fail.

Capitalism is a gigantic pyramid scheme or Ponzi scheme or chain letter scheme. Capitalism is a fraudulent scheme because it is based on misleading information and false promises. The main tool for spreading misinformation is the “Hollywood Dream Machine”, Anglo-American popular culture, and the propaganda of global media corporations.

There is another factor that puts me off: The USA has a history of violence. The nation was founded on the genocide of the Native Americans (which in sheer numbers exceeds the Holocaust), and on the abduction and enslavement of Africans. Beyond that, the Americans also slaughtered each other in big numbers. 620,000 soldiers died in the Civil War. Assassinations of political opponents are common throughout the history of the USA (Lincoln, Kennedy, M.L. King), and homicide rates are higher that in any other developed country.

There are various examples in human history of violent tribes that were able to conquer big areas and expand their influence by force (Alexander III of Macedon, Mongol invasions, Spanish conquests, the British Empire). A main factor in the success of these violent tribes was, that they exploited their own resources in an unsustainable way, what at one hand gave them a competitive advantage, on the other hand made it necessary to conquer new areas. A prime example is the Industrial Revolution in England (Liverpool, Manchester) where a “working class” emerged and was exploited, and the countryside was devastated by coal mining.

The Americans are the Mongols or Conquistadors of our time.

I live in a small country which until now fortunately has to some degree resisted US pressure to change the social fabric and deregulate the economy and reduce consumer protection and privatise social services. As I wrote before, the USA is not a desirable model for me and if I compare the myth of “The American Dream”, created by the Hollywood Dream Machine and the propaganda of corporate media outlets with reality, it becomes very clear that American capitalism is a fraudulent pyramid scheme. Here are some facts to prove my assessment:

The US poverty rate reached 14.3 percent in 2009, 1.1 percent higher than in 2008. 44 million Americans lived below the poverty line. Every fifth child in the US lives in poverty today. Many families only survive on food stamps and people have to work in several jobs at the same time to make a living. From 2007 through 2009, the number of families in homeless shelters leapt to 170,000 from 131,000. The number of people without health insurance rose to more than 50 million in 2009, almost one in six U.S. residents is uninsured.

The USA has the greatest income disparity among Western industrialized nations. The share of income going to the top 1 percent of earners, which stood at 8.9 percent in 1976, rose to 23.5 percent by 2007. In the 1960s the richest 400 taxpayers paid an average federal income tax rate of 40 percent, in the 1990s 30 percent, in 2007 16 percent. Americas best-paid CEO’s make about 1,100 times the pay of a worker on the production line.

The top-earning 20 percent of Americans — those making more than $100,000 each year — received 49.4 percent of all income, compared with 3.4 percent earned by those below the poverty line.

African Americans are not better off than they were in M.L. King’s time. In 1968, the income of a typical black family was 60 percent of whites. Medium Income grew slowly throughout the 1970s and 1980s, and much more gradually for blacks than for whites. As of 1997, the ratio stood at 61 percent.

As I wrote before, violence and a love for weapons is characteristic for US society.

The nation’s 60,000 retail gun dealers are not complying with record keeping and lose track of an enormous number of guns. Since 2005, 3,847 inspections have documented that 113,642 guns cannot be found. The USA has a rate of 90 percent hand guns per capita, the highest percentage in the world. From an estimated 850 million privately owned firearms worldwide, 270 million are owned by Americans. 14 million guns were sold in 2009.

The USA is in fourth place in the world with murders by firearms. Gun crimes have risen by 89 percent between 1999 and 2009. The number of injuries or deaths from gunshots has increased from 864 in 1998/99 to 1,760 in 2008/09. In 2009 there were 13,636 murders in the USA, 9,146 were caused by firearms.

Considering all this data, I desperately hope that America will not be able to increase her influence in my home country and I am glad, that until now I don’t have to participate in “The American Dream”. I intend to continue a discussion about this matter in future blog entries but for now I will close down and end this text with another excerpt from a standup routine of George Carlin, who describes “The American Dream” very pointed and better than I could ever do it:

George Carlin

The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice . . . you don’t. You have no choice. You have OWNERS. They OWN *you*. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought, and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying . . . lobbying, to get what they want . . . Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else, but I’ll tell you what they don’t want . . . they don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that . . . that doesn’t help them. That’s against their interests. They want obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork. And just dumb enough to passively accept all these jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it, and now they’re coming for your Social Security money. They want your retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street, and you know something? They’ll get it . . . they’ll get it all from you sooner or later cause they own this place. It’s a big club and you ain’t in it. You and I are not in the big club. By the way, it’s the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over the head with their media telling you what to believe, what to think and what to buy. The table has tilted folks. The game is rigged and nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. Good honest hard-working people . . . white collar, blue collar it doesn’t matter what color shirt you have on. Good honest hard-working people continue, these are people of modest means . . . continue to elect these rich ***** who don’t give a ***** about you. They don’t care about you at all, and nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. That’s what the owners count on. The fact that Americans will probably remain willfully ignorant is the big red, white and blue lie that’s being jammed up their ***** everyday. It’s called the American Dream, and the reason they call it the American Dream is because you have to be asleep to believe it.