Dear Friend and Reader:
In the classic 1980s science fictionВ black comedyВ film They LiveВ by John Carpenter,В the hero, a homeless laborer trying to survive in the streets of LAВ stumbles upon aВ crate of sunglasses in an alley. PuttingВ them on heВ sees that the earth has beenВ taken overВ by aliens whose faces resembleВ those of corpses. The aliens walkВ the streets, chair boardrooms ofВ large corporations, are bankers, police officers andВ stars of major news and television shows.В They are unnoticed and perceived as normal people by human passers by.
Looking up with the sunglasses the hero seesВ revealed the subliminal messagesВ of signs, billboards and television commercials bombarding him from every corner. A billboard selling shampooВ really says В “Consume,” another showing a bikini clad nymph in theВ Caribbean says “Marry and Reproduce,” while a dollar bill is imprinted with the words, “This is your God.” В Signs everywhere say “Conform,” “Watch TV,” “Submit” and “Stay Asleep.”
As the plot further reveals,В aliens were successful in colonizing the earth.В Through a hugeВ broadcast tower conveniently locatedВ atop a television station inВ downtown LA, the aliens continuallyВ bombarded the planet with signals that fooled the humanВ populationВ intoВ believing the aliensВ were one of us, and disguising the aliens’В true motives – to lull human beings into complacent conformity so thatВ their takeover of the world would be irrevocable and complete.
This film was produced by John Carpenter in 1988 as a way to throw a turd into the punchbowl ofВ the Reagan Administration’s deregulated American economy.В Carpenter had enough like most of us, of the ostentatious wealth that few could achieve, the fancy cars and extravagant lifestyles that became a media obsession, and the unapologetic opulence inВ the good old days of Reagan’s “morning in America.” В “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” premiered in 1984 at the height of Reagan’s reign and ran successfully for 11 years, promoting champagne wishes and caviar dreams.В We were sold and most Americans bought that myth of materialism and greed as good.
Instead of worrying us over the global costs of our consumption, or making us aware of the costs to the rest of the world for our use of resources, like Reagan’s predecessesor Jimmy Carter had attempted, ReaganВ allowed us feel good about our consumerism born inВ the America of the post World War II fifties. Mom was June, Dad was Ward and the Beaver, bless his heart was getting into some kind of trouble resolvable by the end of the last commercial.
Carpenter’sВ filmВ exposedВ the other reality ofВ “having it all” — the new and expanded version of the America dream, for the few. For the rest of us, it was crushing minimum wage jobs,В layoffs, unemployment, warehousing of human beings and homelessness. To add insult to injury, it became expensive to be poor. If you didn’t have a bank account and had a general assistance check to cash, you’re charged a fee. Even though the era of big government programs was over, the military budget managed to balloon to double its size from the Vietnam war to manage Reagan’s warВ against the “Evil Empire” of the Soviet Union.
30 years later, an economyВ de-regulatedВ and trillions in debt, mostВ AmericansВ now haveВ the “sunglasses” on our eyes.В But the broadcast tower is still operational, particularly if you’ve been mired in fake outrage over meaningless events and past shock doctrine tactics, asking you to participate in an exercise of fake awareness over our current state of economic affairs, which at this point is still being unearthed.В These are all known as distraction, more iterations of the same alien subliminal message: Watch TV. Conform. Submit.В Stay Asleep. No imagination. Let us react for you. Let us give you your outrage so you don’t have to think too deeply about what’s really happened to you and why. You don’t have to think at all.
Don’t be fooled. Ask Jon Stewart. He knows.В The aliens still walk among us, talking and breathing and acting as if people still believe they are human. Keep your sunglasses on and above all, ignore alien orders!!!
YoursВ & truly,
Fe Bongolan
San FranciscoВ
This website has the drought maps: http://www.marketskeptics dot com
another good source for info is here, http://www.globalresearch dot ca
I’d rather see some education dollars toward home-gardening and preservation of water and resources at home.
One of the men in my master gardener group has completely eliminated the need for trash pick up. He recycles down to 1 trash barrel of trash per year. He also installed a 100 gallon water barrel in his basement to collect ‘gray water’ for non-drinking/cooking purposes. I am doing the same with outdoor rain barrels, but the basement rain barrel is fantastic and amounts to a very safe indoor, enclosed, cistern with water that won’t freeze in the winter and that can be used for washing cars, watering, mopping floors, flushing toilets, and so on.
I have waged war on plastic for awhile now, reducing my family plastic consumption as much as possible. Plastic is made from oil. You can use your own baskets to carry fresh produce to the checkout counter, and you can make it a point to avoid purchasing products that are stored in plastic containers.
Being thrifty isn’t new. Remember the Tightwad Gazette, where the author said she re-used the same piece of aluminum foil for over a year??? I wash the plastic bags from my frozen vegetables and hang to dry for reuse. I do store some frozen home grown vegetables and fruits in glass jars, but space is a problem. You can’t reuse plastic that has had meats frozen in them.
This whole bailout plan is too socialist for my taste. Besides who does it help? The misery index won’t see much relief. We are a nation of people who don’t know how to take care of ourselves or live frugally.
I still think it is all about gluttony. People eat poorly so they have poor health. They smoke, drink, eat sugar and fat, don’t exercise, buy crap they don’t need on credit and sit in front of the big screen TV all night, or the computer (guilty).
The seed companies are making a killing on seeds this year because people are so afraid of the future. You can still buy seeds at the dollar stores very inexpensively. If they are 10 packs for $1.00, buy a test amount to see if they are still good. Most seeds will keep if properly stored. Test some of the seeds in a wet paper towel to see if they will sprout. If 9 out of 10 seeds sprout, you have 90 percent viability. Go back to the dollar store and buy some more seeds since you know they are good. There are plenty of good websites that teach gardening – organic gardening is a good place to start. The libraries have back issues of the magazines. Mother Earth News is my favorite for doable ideas.
My son has been telling me for years that everything that has happened was planned back in the 1700s. well I believe it. In the mid-1700s, laws were passed giving landlords private ownership of all the lands, and the poor workers no longer had access to public lands for gardening and raising farm animals. At the same time, the mills and other industries moved into factories, so cloth weavers and other craftsmen lost what little income they were getting too. At the same time, laws were passed to ban the people from hunting on private lands – and poachers were frequently killed or imprisoned.
People began moving into the cities looking for work. There was no way to raise food, so many became petty thieves, robbers, and highwaymen. Those who could work 80 hours per week had jobs in the factories – but admit it, working 80 hour weeks at hard labor is not for the feint of heart. The rest were cooks, servants, maids, and in other service jobs.
Soon there were so many people in prison they couldn’t hold everyone, so prisoners were sold off as slaves to America, Australia, Canada and the Carribean – in short – everywhere. Voila – free labor for the rich. This group of indentured servants included a lot of religious people who didn’t fit in, or couldn’t swear allegiance to the king or whatever.
What needs to happen in the 21st century is a return to self-sufficiency and using only the resources our families need. If you look at population maps, Africa is not over-populated at all, yet that is where a lot of population containment is taking place. In the 1500-1880 span, we wiped out most of the indigenous people of the Americas and Australia. So where is the new frontier of population control and slavery? China? India? Will they be given man-made viruses like the chicken pox that was deliberately given to the Indians? We still see bird flu warnings from time to time.
We don’t really seem like we are any different now than in the late 1700s. The plan put in place is still working very well.
[victorialynn]: “I find it absolutely unbelievable that Republicans aren’t getting behind President Obama. Why are they banding together like that? I would think a few of them would be making up their own minds (other than the three in the senate). It is apparent now that not everyone wants change.”
victorialynn, of course they’re not getting behind Obama, and that has never been any secret to me. Lindsey Graham and Jim DeMint (or as my friends and I call him, “Jim DeMented”) are my senators… so as far as I’m concerned, it’s just another day in
hell. :-} I work and live among many people who are quite happy to continue down the primrose path.
victorialynn:
My gut says the Republicans WANT the stimulus package to fail. They NEED it to fail.
If the bill’s “New Deal” design works, and that remains to be seen, that would mean their raison d’etre (SIC) or brand, would cease to exist. St. Ronnie and “supply-side economics” would be confined to the ash-heap of history, where personally, I think he and it belongs.
fluidity:
Its one of Carpenter’s better satires. I still think his best sci-fi slick was “The Thing” remake, though that one is a bit much on the digestion.
Gardener:
I would like to see what would happen to CA’s agricultural business if indeed that’s what the governor’s were planning!! Its still a big business that relies on migrant workers. Its also somewhat of a myth about immigrants taking up the dollars for social services, and committing the bulk of crimes.
It is true, however, that most people not covered by health care, or not employed DO use the emergency room as their health provider. That is the true crime of the economy’s neglect and disdain of the nation’s worker.
Brendan:
When that movie came out in the 80’s I was thrilled. No one was saying a thing about the incredible excess of those days and the costs. But we could see that every day in California as prelude while Reagan was governor. The guy did not give a shit who he turned out on the streets.
As for immigration, we shall see, alot of new arrivals became citizens thanks to efforts by locals to get involved during the immigration reform period used by Republicans to race bait us to distraction. It killed them in the mid-terms of 2006, and has lost the Latino vote since then.
And I loved Rowdy Roddy. He was perfect in that part, as was Meg Foster as the ice-eyed villainess. What a film.
Brendan–its good to have you and welcome back!!!
bk:
Oh Katrina did too happen. But the government response was unreal, to say the least, but by the time Katrina happened, the peak in housing prices was about to hit, and that’s where the balloon was on its ascent to the bursting point.
Confession: I had big hair while Dallas was on TV.
ps thanks for telling us about that movie
Change we can believe in might just have to be changed to “change we’re going to have to force.” (or something like that)
I find it absolutely unbelievable that Republicans aren’t getting behind President Obama. Why are they banding together like that? I would think a few of them would be making up their own minds (other than the three in the senate). It is apparent now that not everyone wants change.
“Let us give you your outrage so you don’t have to think too deeply about what’s really happened to you and why.”
Obama has done a good one with being outraged over the bonuses paid to bank employees … while not challenging the fundamental problems of the financial system at all. Change we can believe in. 🙂
Fe,
You’re giving me the heebeejeebee’s! Was Katrina real?
Well, anyway, wasn’t that about the time (’80’s) when all those tv shows with the fancy clothes, fancy houses, . .you know, like “Dallas” started? Well I swan, who would have ever thought that it would lead to this.
A classic movie with such a strong message. A friend was flying from LA to Seattle a few years after the movie was out, and he ended up sitting next to Rowdy Piper (our hero) – who was touched that someone had seen the movie and liked it!
As we’ve attributed to the Romans for so many years: “bread and circuses” are not yet passe amongst the humanoids.
Anecdotally, I have no idea about our immigrant popluation but I wouldn’t be surprised if the local itinerant farm worker population hasn’t thinned out here either. Washington certainly doesn’t have the numbers found in Cali or Arizona, but being further away and much more seasonal it could be an interesting year for the farmers. We won’t know for a few months what the story is going to be.
Hi to Fe and all, it’s good to be back!
Oh you haven’t seen anything yet. Last year it was high gas prices, this year it will be food shortages. California will lead the parade when they stop 90 percent of water to the farmers because of water shortages. Yeah right – what water shortage? I just read this yesterday in an online CA newspaper. California provides nearly all fresh produce in the US and 50 percent of fruits.
Eric is more the conspiracy theorist, but I am sensing that an attempt is being made to force some people to go back from where they came, to lessen some of the social spending, police work hours, etc. If the crops are dead you won’t need workers. Might be cheaper to do imports in the long run.
Since we’ve lost so many jobs in my state, a lot of Mexicans have left (is what I’ve been told), and that reduces crime, free health care needs, and all sorts of other expensive problems.
The governors do talk to each other.
aword:
Nice to see you again. I’m as baffled by the standoff in CA as well.Are the Republicans on a nationwide jihad to stop the country from being in need?
Schmucks.
And some of us still don’t have a bank account, and pay an ever-growing fee to cash our not-even-poverty-level federal government issued disability checks.
Actually – this is my latest “funny”: Just as Obama initiates cash credits to offer a teensy bit of financial assistance to many formerly middle-class people — here in sunny SoCal good ol’ Arnie McMovieStar is already taking that money and more away with new bigger and better taxes (to support who’s lifestyle?)
I wonder if he’d take a cameo role in my upcoming short film: ‘Can’t Terminate Us ‘Cause We’re Already Laid Off’ ? Or ‘I Totally Recall (the Day I Could Afford to Eat)’ -? Or maybe ‘True Lies in SoCal’ – ? Or maybe just ‘End of Days Pt. II’.
Sigh.