These are the three official videos for Over & Out. All are edited & produced TomP.
“DDSeuss” features images from NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) archives:
In “Many Miles,” images were gathered (Google) to portrait one of the great jazz artists of the 20th century:
“Sun-Wind-Bird” features the outstanding photography of Bill Haley, (the few Florida photos are RS):
A complete archive of his photos can be found at Bill Haley-FHPhotography on Facebook.
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Tom Pearce recorded the last Ric Size studio album on Tuesday, May 16th– with everything you see in these photos:
It took ~ 3 hours total, with set-up & teardown. All photos, scans, layout & design by TomP & Ric Size. These are the tracks:
TomP did all the sound set up, miking, engineering, etc; while I provided the guitar, songs & performance– in my spare bedroom. It was a LOT nicer than the Hwy 19 & Main St. studio, to say the least. Those are actual cardinals chirping on “Many Miles.” Work with what you’ve got.
Tom Pearce recorded, edited, produced & delivered Over & Out in under a week. Photo below is his home studio, running Studio One 3 Pro mastering plug-ins. Have I mentioned the importance of a producer who is an artist and can finish?
“Yes/No Wave” was self-recorded/produced on a Fostex 4-channel cassette recorder, in 2001. It is the only multi-track recording on this album. Note the higher pitch in my voice.
Fan note: We are still working on Re-Magnified. That project has taken a new & exciting creative turn, and we look forward to getting definitive versions of those songs produced sometime soon!
When care is taken to observe the immutable principles of sound dynamics, a producer’s job becomes much easier.
Also note, this gets product (new songs) to market quicker. If this sounds like the way you would like to record, then contact Tom Pearce at Last Minute Productions in Tavares, FL for all your audio recording needs!
Any promotional tour for Over & Out will depend on the money. Haven’t seen any so far, and if that maintains, then that’s it. All I ever wanted to do was share my songs. I did it on my own terms, paid the price, became profoundly influential, and survived. As they say in showbiz, that’s a helluva run!!
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Does NASCAR want this?
Absolutely! Otherwise it’s a boring race and the sponsors get itchy.
Just read the tags on the address links:
http://www.foxsports.com/nascar/story/danica-patrick-joey-logano-aric-almirola-violent-fiery-crash-kansas-speedway-nascar-051317
http://www.espn.com/racing/nascar/cup/story/_/id/19377982/danica-patrick-aric-almirola-joey-logano-fiery-crash-kansas-speedway
Makes you want to view it, huh?!
EVERYONE sent well wishes & concerns to Aric Almirola, who plowed into Joey Logano after his front-right ‘mechanical’ failure. Logano should have turned himself into the SAFER barrier, instead of right-rearing Danica Patrick into the wall at nearly full speed– the most dangerous type of oval crash. It is a driver’s first responsibility when feeling the blowout, to not wreck (endanger) others; you deal with this wreck on your own as much as possible.
It is also up to other drivers to slow down when there is a fireball ahead. Almirola was going WAY too fast (completely out of control); he had time to veer from the wreck, but instead slammed into the pile. Since he’s so badly hurt (fractured T-5), no one mentions that.
The only driver who mentioned Danica Patrick in their ‘tweets of concern’ was 7-time champion Jimmie Johnson (above).
So the driver who made no mistake here (and was nearly killed) is ignored, and shouted down as “selfish” by the haters. My advice to Danica: skip the All-Star race (for which you have to run qualifiers!), and save yourself the headaches.
http://nascar.nbcsports.com/2017/05/14/what-drivers-said-after-kansas-cup-race/
Danica Patrick — Finished 36th: “We were having a really good race and having fun out there and had a lot of speed. I kinda felt like Wonder Woman for a little while. All I know is that I all of a sudden crashed. I definitely had a feeling it was the 22 and I am sure that the doctors in the medical center checking my neurological abilities are glad to know I was right that it was Joey. When he said he had a failure I can’t say it made me feel that much better in the moment. I am just frustrated for the lack of breaks I get. It seems like every time things are going better and something happens I get crashed or am in a crash. Especially a place like this, a brake rotor, when we are using 200-300 pounds of pressure seems odd. Unfortunately there were two of us that got collected and while I am okay, one of these times one of these really big accidents someone is not going to be okay. Aric (Almirola) is not okay and his car looked the best of everybody. You never know when it is going to be the wrong hit. I have a team that works hard and put another car on the track and I hope we are saving up for a really good run of good luck.”
This was Danica Patrick post-race last week, after getting caught up in the ‘Big One’ at Talladega (again):
Ricky Stenhouse, Jr (above) looks pretty happy with his girlfriend standing beside him– like she should. That begs the question: what does Ricky have to say about his girlfriend getting violently wrecked more than any other driver in NASCAR?
Last notes to NASCAR faithful: since Kansas is a boring oval, make it a road-coarse race.
Why do so many NASCAR die-hards hate Danica? The reason the haters go off (as best I can tell) is because they are ugly, and she would never look at them in real life. It’s a vitriolic cry for attention, which they rationalize with selective nonsense. Shout them down!
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Amendment 2, which legalized medical marijuana was approved by 71% of Florida voters on Election day 2016. but it never had a chance of become reality. The Florida legislature had 60 days to pass this amendment in law, and willfully ran out the clock in defiance of the voters of Florida.
Before this amendment was publicly passed, Republican party machinery worked behind the scenes to make sure that widely-available legal marijuana never happened. With backroom deals made to venture capital & hedge fund investors, Florida is being setup as the new model for legal marijuana under corporate control. “Vertical integration” is the term that keeps being bandied about in the local media (and in Tallahassee, photo below), meaning monopoly control for a few hand-chosen cannabis distributors.
Background: In 2015-16, twenty-four nurseries applied for the five (5) to-be-available state licenses for medical marijuana, in a secretive process by a board appointed directly by Florida governor Rick Scott, with each coughing up a $60,000 non-refundable application fee. Licenses were awarded to Costa Nursery farms of Miami, Knox Nursery of Winter Garden, Hackney Nursery Company of Tallahassee, Chestnut Tree Farm of Alachua and Alpha Foliage (Surterra Therapeutics) of Homestead.
Click on any of the five hyperlinked entities above, and you will notice that none of them grow marijuana! For example Jake Bergman (photo above) is the CEO of Surterra Holdings, Inc. a cannabis-based therapeutics company, seeded by Wall Street hedge fund firm Vakyrie Capital. Surterra has a well-documented history of using pesticides (medically harmful), and their plants have been denied and returned by the State of California due to pest infestations. [1] Alpha Foliage is simply a Florida-based shell company which gets Surterra their coveted license. Marijuana growth & production will be outsourced to behemoth cannabis cultivator MJardin.
What MJardin offers to the Florida growers is a turn-key cartel service to licensed Florida cannabis businesses. The five license holders merely partner with this Colorado company that steps in and puts the operation in place– for a healthy piece of the action. Rick Scott (with Trump below) and the Florida legislature provide political protection to the five ‘growers,’ while MJardin monopolizes the Florida marijuana market. [2]
Florida legislators have engineered regulations that shut out small businesses, and prohibit personal home cultivation. In states like Colorado and California, where the industry was developed before legalization, the medical market was initially served by thousands of small farms. This allowed patients access to a more genetic diversity and a much wider range of product offerings, which led to the discovery of the medical utility of CBD in the first place. When home cultivation is banned and genetic diversity is not allowed to flourish, the true medical potential of marijuana remains hidden in favor of cartel profiteering.
The legislative debate over medical marijuana is an instructive example of capitalist politics overriding democracy and the will of the electorate. The original Florida House of Representatives measure banned smoking, eating, and vaporizing; which meant that despite a constitutional amendment, Floridians would have been banned from actually ingesting marijuana!
After public pressure, the House backed off and authorized vaping and edibles, but still banned smoking & home cultivation. The Senate haggled on their end, and then came back with more edits… back & forth until time ran out. All this murk makes it difficult for most people to understand who’s to blame, much less what actually happened?
After the annual legislative session closed, pro-pot advocates began turning on each other, in an attempt to shift blame & avoid the political fallout. Orlando-based trial attorney John Morgan is the one who bankrolled Amendment 2. Morgan is a longtime Democrat, with ambitions for governor in 2018. He also has a bit of a drinking problem as revealed by his past DUI record, and this idiotic tweet (since deleted) late Friday (May 5) evening:
The next morning Morgan stated in a interview, “Ben Pollara fucked the patients. The first thing I am going to do is make sure the people who helped me pass Amendment 2 know not to give Ben Pollara another red nickel,” Morgan said.
Ben Pollara (above, left) was the campaign chairman for Amendment 2, and the political brains for the entire operation. Pollara told Sunshine State News, “The cartel’s position was unlimited dispensaries for themselves and their investors. Their lobbying team was very successful at holding that position. They got what they wanted and the bill died. My instructions to my lobbying team today were to get a bill – any bill – passed.”
Amendment 2 now moves to the Florida Department of Health, to implement without direction of the Florida Legislature. It has until July to put rules into place. However, the department is under Gov. Rick Scott’s control. Scott is anti-marijuana, so expect no further progress, and this whole mess likely ends up in court.
The silliness of all this is the fact that Florida has been growing some of the finest kinds of marijuana for generations, and yet it can’t legalize it due to bureaucratic ignorance & corporate greed. The reason being legal marijuana is a major threat to distilleries, breweries, tobacco, and big pharma.
Those are major industries with serious political clout, which stand to lose billions in revenue, perhaps even threatening their very existence. Marijuana is a weed, which means you can grow it anywhere. In many ways it is the most ‘socialized’ plant, ubiquitously used– recreationally and medically. In many ways, the fight for legal marijuana is a necessary attack on the entire capitalist healthcare system which favors monopolization, and that is why it is hated & feared by so many bourgeois politicians.
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Thanks to Orlando Weekly for covering this issue intensely, as much was revealed in only their reporting.
See also: Medical & Recreational Marijuana
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ESPN/NASCAR 5-1-17: Joey Logano starts from the back and ends up front [1]
My posted comment: “I like Joey Logano, but I do have a question. What was the ‘unauthorized transmission adjustment’ that sent him to the back of the field to start? He went from last to race winner, so it definitely worked. Just seems unfair, at least until the fans know more.”
Like · Reply · May 1, 2017 11:21am
ESPN/NASCAR 5-4-17: Joey Logano’s win at Richmond won’t count toward playoffs [2]
NASCAR announces Logano’s car was ‘illegally modified’ and that his Richmond win is “encumbered,” meaning he doesn’t get the points or free pass in the Chase. Amazing that no one else in the media initially asked the question, huh?
Cheating is endemic and part of the fabric of NASCAR. Certain teams are allowed to cheat more, depending on their favor with Brian France. For the serious Chase competitors it’s about pushing this envelope, and keeping good political relations with Steve O’Donnell & France. Power owners like Roger Penske, Joe Gibbs & Rick Hendricks get decisive edges for their teams.
Some drivers are more strictly censured than others. There are some whose best interest is NOT to cheat. For instance, Danica Patrick never gets busted for illegal modifications, failing laser inspections, loose lug nuts, etc. It’s not in her interest to cheat, because of how she markets herself to her fanbase of women & kids– as beautiful & fair-minded. That’s how she attracts major sponsorship, and notice that Aspen Dental is now the “official dentist of NASCAR.” [3]
She consistently runs ~25th, and can never win a race because she isn’t trying (cheating), but with Dale Jr. retiring, Danica will easily become their most valuable commodity. That is the paradox of NASCAR, and it’s the reason she’s so loved & hated [4].
The landscape of women’s tennis has undergone a seismic shift recently. Serena Williams announced her pregnancy (congratulations!), and very likely is leaving professional tennis as quietly as possible. I don’t see a comeback at her age, with all she’s already accomplished. Motherhood will likely motivate her more.
The other bombshell is Maria Sharapova returning, in top form it appears. She’s definitely among the early favorites at Roland Garros, with plenty of motivation & support. Her May 16th official announcement for the French Open is being promoted, so what does that tell you the decision to let her play will be?
Any Sharapova vs. the WTA scandal-mongering in the media is flak designed to distract people from the political & controversial nature of her suspension from the start. Player gossip covers these hidden interests. Maria Sharapova is double-edged, as the tour needs her star power, but she is personally disliked by most players. Rafa Nadal (below) welcomed Marin Cilic back by saying, “Only thing that I can say is I am happy to see Marin back on tour. He’s a good guy and a great player.”
But Nadal didn’t advocate for Sharapova’s return as a wild card under similar circumstances. Sober tennis fans see what’s important here. Cilic is accepted by the players, while Sharapova (an even greater player in the women’s game) is not, due to her unpopular status in the locker room.
Maria Sharapova has won the career grand slam and the French open– twice. Of course she deserves a wild card, and her current situation is why they have such a thing. This entire affair has been a political vendetta, with Sharapova’s Russian nationality being at the heart of it [5].
Serena & Venus Williams were/are allowed to compete with therapeutic-use exemptions (Serena TUE below) for schedule II narcotics & banned steroids, without even a hint of media scrutiny or sanction from the US-backed ITF or WADA. This hypocrisy is staggering, and the response from most of the players is disappointing in it’s selfishness.
Racialist (definition): 1) One who insists that all differences in society are based on race, instead of class. 2) A form a racism.
Genie Bouchard (above) also spoke against Sharapova even being allowed to return [6]. Bouchard’s current situation is beyond bizarre & messed-up, as she is suing the USTA, while her game has fallen apart [7]. Background: in October 2015, Genie Bouchard slipped in the locker room at he US Open In NY, when she couldn’t find a light switch after a late-evening match. She claims a “serious head injury” with lingering concussion issues [8].
The USTA has destroyed evidence (locker room video) and is at least partially at fault; but this ultimately falls on Bouchard herself. She would win more support from everyone by becoming an advocate for better locker room conditions for all the athletes. When you speak selfishly about others, they won’t stand with you when you need them.
As we can see, there is much cheating going on everywhere in sports; men & women, white, black, and any other skin pigment. It’s inherent ugliness is why it’s hidden, until someone eventually reveals it to the rest of us. It’s motive is to selfishly put oneself ahead of others. Cheating diminishes our souls because it values trophies over character, and that understanding is its best deterrent.
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Over seven billion humans currently live on this planet. Human civilization has mostly operated (for several hundred years) under an economic system called capitalism, which is predicated on individual profit & loss. By 2017, in order to maintain extreme levels of social inequality, illusions have had to be constructed & sustained. This is where our fake economy comes in.
Under feudalism (and before that, slavery in antiquity) illusions also had to be maintained, as all human societies have been ruled by class forces. The Romans gave their plebeian class “bread & circuses,” until they were overrun by barbaric hordes. Medieval royalty ruled their domain with their knighted class, and the mysticism of organized religion in the Catholic Church. The Crusades were about conquest & power, but peddled as a “Holy War” against Islam. We can therefore see that ‘fake news’ and manipulation of public opinion are not new phenomena. Only the tools & techniques change, as their purpose & interest always remain the same, which is to railroad public opinion towards war.
Fake jobs & industries under capitalism include: sales, business, investing, consulting, management & politics. Education is a crucial area for ideology, as corrupt ivory tower academia provide ‘proofs’ for every absurd irrationally of the profit system and all its malignancies. It’s easier to manipulate fake people, as zombies don’t know how to think for themselves. Here in the United States, children are taught how to think & act at a very young age, with a consistent propaganda message. That message is to consume things that give instant pleasure. Sugar is the most addicting substance to man, and children are bombarded with targeted advertising in all media programming for unhealthy food from infancy onward.
Now people have fake bodies which aren’t healthy, so they need fake cures. “Selling sickness” is a nefarious industry secret in medicine, dentistry & pharmaceuticals. People are susceptible to this pressure because they have become so insecure about themselves. Any salesperson recognizing this can target weaknesses and close in. When a body is ugly with fat, one has a hard time socializing. One smells bad, so one needs more deodorant, and so on…
After a while, many obese people give up on themselves and don’t go out anymore. Luckily there is the Internet and social media, when one can project whatever one pleases. While the Internet & social media are real technology, there is a large element of distortion and inherent falseness in most social media posting over time. We tend to project what we want other people to see, and filter out the rest. It’s much harder to do that in real life, with real people.
The news on the Internet is virtually all fake, outside of the WSWS.org. Capitalism runs every publication, which employs Madison Avenue advertisers to tell everyday people what’s important. This includes the entertainment industry (music, film & TV), sports & fashion. All of these are fake economies, endlessly generating useless content 24/7 for mindless consumers who must be kept entertained in order to distract them from world-significant events happening all around them.
The lure of PED’s in athletics is a form of ‘fake health.’ It plays on competitors’ deepest doubts & insecurities, leading into a chemical morass. Eventually male users need Cialis to get an erection, which begs the question: if you’re so hard, why do you need help there? Steroid use makes no sense when thought out rationally, but our society has taught people to ignore consequences for perceived short-term gains. The problem is the gains aren’t real, and they are more than offset by the detrimental side effects.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtkFSTjdI-8
The healthiest way to interact is to listen & learn from others, while being influential (in a positive way) where appropriate. Don’t go for popularity because:
1) It’s shallow and accomplishes nothing for anyone else
2) Everyone else is doing it, which means it’s old already
The only way humans can be truly happy is when they are allowed to express themselves freely, without repercussions & without hurting others. That is impossible under our current fake economy. We need to starting getting real with everything, in order to replace these illusions with something real, as nothing else works.
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This is aluminum, a silvery-white, soft, nonmagnetic, ductile metal; remarkable for it’s low density and its ability to resist corrosion [1]. It is widely abundant in the Earth’s crust, but also hazardous in many ways. The most-noted hazard is its link to brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s.
Aluminum’s unmentioned hazard is rooted in capitalism, as China now manufactures most of this commodity, which is used in anything that has metal in it. This is because China does it cheaper than everyone else, super-exploiting their workers & destroying the environment in the process. This is “killing us,” so US national insecurity throws up trade barriers which precede war.
Our economy is GLOBAL and can no longer be ruled by competing nation states, as it inexorably leads to world war. That is the essential historical lesson of the 20th century, which must be learned & applied now– by the workers & youth of the world in revolutionary action!
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This arrived in my PO Box. I’ve asked to be removed from their mailing list many times, but this is a big deal for the American Dental Association (ADA), so I get this issue:
Licensure exams are a huge source of corruption, graft & bureaucratic waste. Every dentist has to submit to the unfair practices of each state or regional board, who define clinical competency on their own terms. Basically many state licensure exams (Florida in particular) are a blatant pay-offs to the good ‘ol boy network & connected cronies. Hence the ‘skeptics’ who are assured their graft is protected, as this be be a only be a suggested model (available by 2020) according to the ADA at the very end of the article:
One of the most powerful figures in dentistry is the Howard Farran, DDS (photo below, bottom middle). He is the creator of Dentaltown, which became THE social media forum for dental professionals, so no surprise that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is speaking at their annual ‘Townie’ meeting:
Many years ago I visited Dentaltown frequently, but never posted. Handle: DocEric. I was there to learn, and I learned a lot– on many, many facets of dentistry. That is the power of the Internet and content sharing.
Dentaltown’s archive is massive and pretty much complete, meaning that every issue that has ever come up in modern dentistry has probably been discussed there. Farran’s specialty is business, but each clinical forum has expert moderators. It’s the best place for professionals to go for current, real-world answers to dental problems.
For the rest, this mp3 (above) should do.
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These corporate clowns had no answers for angry shareholders concerning their bank’s financial malfeasance at their annual stockholder’s meeting today.
Wells Fargo Chairman Stephen Sanger (L) and CEO Tim Sloan (R) leave a meeting with reporters after the annual shareholder meeting in Jacksonville, Florida, U.S., April 25, 2017. REUTERS/Phelan Ebenhack [1]
Wells Fargo is being pressured by Institutional Shareholder Services, Inc. (ISS), a proxy advisory firm for short-selling hedge funds, which own shares of numerous companies. ISS advises shareholders and votes their shares (often unknowingly) in stockholder voting.
Proxy season is the period during which many companies hold their annual shareholder meetings. It usually occurs in April, as most companies end their fiscal years on Dec. 31 and hold their annual meetings the following spring. By ISS’s own estimate, its opinions affect the governance decisions of professional investors controlling $25 trillion in assets — half the value of the world’s common stock. [2]
I.S.S. is controlled by Gary Retelny, CEO (photo above). It was the first, and is now the largest firm to advise institutions on voting, offering ‘research’ for 35,000 companies in 15 countries; making recommendations on issues including mergers, poison pills, and the fitness of directors. It also collects and transmits corporate ballots. Around 75% of the votes it transmits require a signoff by the client, or are cast by specific instruction. About 25% are on a policy of implied consent, under which votes are cast according to I.S.S.’s annually updated guidelines.
Stock value is the only indicator that matters to financial capitalists such as these. Non-performers will have their directors targeted for removal by a proxy campaign from this powerful Black Hand [3].
At most S&P 500 companies, director support averages around 95% of votes cast, according to pay consulting firm Semler Brossy. Typically a recommendation from ISS that investors vote “against” a director will reduce support they receive by an average of 17 to 18 percentage points. If 80% is considered the threshold for maintaining a corporate director position (and it is), then ISS’s influence is decisive in corporate governance.
This is the pressure on the markets, and it is bursting at the seams everywhere. There is basically no long-term productivity left, as financial capital insists on short-term results every time. It’s less than 100 days into the Trump administration, and it is clear that U.S. capitalism is now rudderless. Donald Trump is so unstable and such an unreliable leader, that it’s created a power vacuum in political economy & the military. After being shot down by stiff popular opposition, the preferred Trump administration option always becomes the ‘nuclear’ one.
A video shows the moment a MOAB, or “mother of all bombs”, struck the Achin district of the eastern province of Nangarhar, Afghanistan, bordering Pakistan.
DVIDS/Handout via Reuters TV
There are now a few hundred powerful individuals basically controlling the world economy. The deep state is a nexus of Wall Street power brokers, CIA/intelligence experts, Pentagon brass and political royalty. They are ideologically & ethically bankrupt, and do nothing but exist in isolation in order to further monetarily enrich themselves. The first revolutionary task is to specifically identify these individuals, and understand the depth of their criminality. Once that has been widely achieved, the intervention of the working masses into this mix will quickly sweep this elitist rubbish into the trash bin of political history.
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Everyone wants to be famous, right? Then you are well-known and everyone listens to what you have to say, so you can make a difference! That’s what most people believe. Celebrity reality (an oxymoron) is much different.
People naively believe that if you work hard and are amazing at what you do, then you will (somehow?) become a celebrity. Wrong! You become a ‘star’ when the ruling class selects you to be one of their representatives. That’s where the big money comes from to pay these superstar contracts. Celebrities are spokespersons for capitalism, whether they are movie stars, rock stars or famous athletes– they are all sponsored by finance capital. These are the circuses which decadent capitalists enjoy, but primarily serve as a distraction (fake economy) for the underprivileged working masses.
The deal you make when you become a celebrity is that you NEVER speak badly about the sponsors, ie. capitalism. Since they are paying for your enhanced status, they expect full cooperation across the board. This definitely reaches into celebrities’ private lives, as they are simply no longer allowed to mingle with non-celebrities, unless there is complete control of the setting. This celebrity insecurity is a lonely disease. That fact that nearly every Hollywood/celebrity marriage ends in divorce substantiates this thesis. This leads to the ever-constant celebrity fascination with sex, probably because they aren’t getting any, or if they are it is of poor quality.
The fact that the vicarious public knows every detail of these figures & figurines demonstrates that they are allowed no privacy themselves; as famous lives are endlessly analyzed, dissected and discussed everywhere in the corporate news & social media. Any slip of the tongue on a bad day can be ruin. This is the tightrope the glamorous & famous must gracefully walk every day. If that sounds like an impossible amount of work, that’s because it is. Eventually every celebrity is wrecked or quietly taken down, and this entire fake economy lurches forward with new ‘stars.’ The bankers & corporate heads that control everything remain the same, and stay hidden.
As a celebrity, what you get to say for yourself hardly matters. Big capital owns the important parts of your brain which determine ethics & character. The rest is basic functions, fluff & bragging backed by lots of money. Working people aren’t stupid, they’re just overworked– so they are a little slower in seeing all this. Many have already ‘cut the cord’ and that trend will accelerate as working people can no longer afford these spectacles, which are increasingly being recognized as fake.
The cult of celebrity is a major hurdle for the working class to clear on its way to a successful socialist revolution. The role of modern finance capital in creating a privileged ‘buffer layer’ to insulate the ruling 1% from the working masses has been an effective innovation. This ~10% buffer includes celebrities, who mesmerize many working people.
This is because workers are trained to believe their own lives don’t matter, because it’s only money & fame that count. This is not only wrong, it is exactly the opposite of the truth– a Big Lie technique. It is the workers who are real, as they are the ones who produce the material value for society. Celebrities are part of this vast fake economy which is crumbling all around us– daily. In spite of this reality, these charlatans must continue to dance to the music, no matter how banal & vapid it is.
It is correct to say that artists should be rewarded no more than any other worker, under socialism. Under capitalism things are unequal, and therefore artists hold the highest rank of importance in bourgeois society. Without Pablo Picasso, Orson Welles, Mile Davis, Stanley Kubrick, Andy Warhol, John Lennon, etc., there is no culture and no beacon for truth. True artists are of precious value, because they can be taken away in one act of violence by a ruling class that will stop at nothing to preserve its privilege and avoid being exposed.
Marxism uses the dialectical method to analyze society historically & materially. Dialectics means that everything is always moving & changing, so it is critical to understand the process in order to project the future. At one point most celebrities had noble aspirations. Saint Bernard of Clairvaux is attributed with the proverb, “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.” Even this noble saint had progressive thoughts, but when it lacks Marxist discipline & critical dialectical thinking, it inevitably becomes an idealist morass, which always funnels back to god & bourgeois capitalism in the dead-end form of the Democratic party in the US.
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