As Jason Miller writes in Pravda:
We are in the midst of a crisis of epic proportions... Our chief foe is a swarm of greed-driven, self-absorbed, mean-spirited locust-like human beings who are dedicated to “reforming” and perpetuating capitalism, the very system that has led us to this woeful state of environmental, economic, social, and political affairs.
Capitalism has inflicted deep wounds upon the Earth and is the persistent infection that must be eradicated to avert... the ongoing torture and murder of billions of non-human animals, an acceleration of Climate Change, further economic collapse, mass starvation, severe shortages of potable water, perpetual resource wars, and a host of other catastrophic events.
While much of its foul stench emanates from the United States, the foul odor of capitalism has wafted its way into the nostrils of nearly every citizen on the globe. Capitalism’s cockroach-like apologists, propagandists, beneficiaries, enforcers, and power brokers scurry in and out of nearly every nook and cranny of the planet.
Global and dominant as it is, capitalism is the culmination and perpetuator of a number of vile social, economic, political, and cultural elements and dynamics, many of which began rearing their ugly heads with the advent of agriculture, domestication and civilization. Starting about 10,000 years ago, as humans became “civilized,” we alienated ourselves from nature, psychologically enabling us to exploit non-human animals and savagely abuse the Earth for our enrichment, amusement and comfort.
As a collective, we human animals have determined that we are the master species, endowing ourselves with the right to dominate, enslave, torture, humiliate, murder, and eat any sentient being on the planet...
(A) mental perversion afflicts most people, causing them to view themselves as superior to all other species. (This)is the one of the most blatantly exploitative and reprehensible of all human ideologies. Yet it remains “socially acceptable”, (and) reveals the ferocity and grotesquery of savage capitalism. Animal exploiting capitalists of all stripes, including ranchers, biomedical researchers, meat processors, egg producers, fast food restaurateurs, and their ilk spend billions of dollars on agitprop each year to ensure that both the law and those who consume their products continue to view non-human animals as property, worthy of no more consideration than a lawn-mower.
Human slavery, in which certain members of the human species were reduced to the status of property, was once institutionalized... and abolition wouldn’t have occurred had it not been for great sacrifices by many people of conscience and a civil war. Such is the pernicious and relentlessly cruel nature of capitalism.
Patriarchy and racism were once institutionalized too. Yet despite the fact that women and minorities have made significant legal, political, and social strides, the white man still wields tremendous power in this world, much of it economic in nature.
...
Many people are concerned about the devastating and noxious impact we humans are having upon the Earth. But thanks to .. the globalization of the American Way of Life, and the deep allegiance many people have to capitalism (a system that is based on infinite growth on a finite planet), the rape and plunder of Mother Nature continues at an alarming rate. .. Potential solutions that might interfere significantly with growth and profit are beaten to death before they can fully emerge from the womb.
Meanwhile, anti-capitalist radicals .. remain marginalized, persecuted, ridiculed, vilified, and perhaps worst of all, divided.
American Capitalism’s power elite, comprised of the upper strata of the economic, corporate, political, and military hierarchies, enjoy tremendous advantages over those who oppose them. Despite their obvious economic and military might, their most powerful weapon is actually their seemingly omnipotent abilities to prevent any ideology from challenging the national religion of capitalism, to maintain the allegiance of most of the working class, and to demonize those who dare to blaspheme against their economic rape.
In a recent interview, internationally-renowned progressive political analyst Michael Parenti described the means by which the ruling class manipulates the masses into supporting such an obviously wretched system:
“Through control of the universe of discourse, including the media, the professions, the universities, the publishing industry, many of the churches, the consumer society, the job market, and even the very socialization of our children and the prefiguring of our own perceptions, the ruling interests are able to exercise a prevailing ideological control that excludes any reasoned critique of the dominant paradigm.”
.. Electing a Democrat who is a racial minority and who talks a progressive game is a band-aid, at best. The real solution is to drive a stake through the heart of vampiric capitalism by uniting and by finding a means to take on the corporate media in such a way that we begin winning significant numbers of hearts and minds... Let’s come together and crush those loathsome bastards who prosper via the domination and abuse of the Earth and its sentient inhabitants.
If we truly intend to subvert the dominant rapacious paradigm and replace it with something that will serve the greater good and heal the Earth, we must put animal liberation on our agenda.
The soulless status quo empowers and rewards those who are the most sociopathic and the most devoid of empathy.
There is no moral defense for enslaving, torturing, and murdering sentient beings who feel pain and fear just as we do. How can we castigate the Nazis for the Holocaust, and then condone almost identical treatment of the non-human animal races?
Our delusion of superiority is so deeply ingrained that even many people of good conscience ignore the brutal treatment of non-human animals, who have no voice, no legal rights, and no viable means to defend themselves.
The time has come to abandon this old-paradigm cultural ethos that allows and encourages "morally retarded wretches to pitilessly damn billions upon billions of innocent beings". This horrendous cruelty has no place in the new paradigm that the human race is now entering.
Peace and love and goodwill must be extended to all beings, and not just those in human form.
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