HOW CAPITALISM IS CONDUCIVE TO RANK AND UTTER COWARDICE
Napolean was right: England, and its American progeny, are natons of shopkeepers.
By
David Gottfried
First, consider the evidence proving that America is a nation of cowards and weaklings. Second, consider the ways in which capitalistic behavior castrates our courage.
Evidence of Epidemic Cowardice:
1) When a few men boarded American planes with only box-cutters for weapons, in 2001, the slavish American people politely sat in their seats and did nothing and allowed themselves to be incinerated alive.
2) When George Bush, in 2004, mandated that people who attended his re-election rallies sign statements pledging support for George Bush, the people, by and large, complied.
3) When police forces, in 2004, arrested persons, one half a mile from George Bush campaign rallies, for committing the alleged offense of carrying an anti-Bush sign, most of the media was quiescent.
4) When we were told that Mayor Rudolf Giuliani was New York’s Savior, because after 9/11 he emoted on television about the odiousness of the attack – which anyone’s Grandmother could have done with better theatrical flourish – the media left this verdict virtually unchallenged.
5) When a man in Congress shouted Liar, at President Obama, the Left cried foul because generally congressman never shout at sitting presidents while they are addressing Congress. The right hemmed and hawed and said it was no big deal. Naturally, the media missed the bigger point: If we are a democracy, why should our elected members of congress sit still, like obedient Catholic School Girls, while the President is speaking. Please view assemblies of the British House of Commons; members of Parliament boo and hiss and renounce their Prime Minister, to his face, all the time.
6) The great majority of people will never intervene to stop harm from occurring because they are cowards. Remember the story of Kitty Genovese. She was a young woman, and she was killed in New York City, in 1965, while dozens of her neighbors witnessed the crime and failed to call the police.
How Capitalism Makes Us Smiling, Frightened, Emotional Cripples
We are often told that we are a free people because Capitalism makes us free. Since the evidence suggests that we are not very free, perhaps we ought to consider the manifold ways in which capitalism makes us unfree and fearful.
Capitalism does not make us absolutely, necessarily slavish, but it is conducive to the development of traits which are inconsistent and incongruent with free, independent and bold behavior.
A good capitalist is a good seller. This means that he is a good ass kisser. He is good not at helping us transcend or go beyond stultifying convention and mediocrity; a good capitalist gives the masses the crap they adore, and he gives them the crap with a smile on his face. A good capitalist is exactly like the sort of Jew who did not agitate and organize against Hitler because his mantra is “Don’t make trouble, don’t be independent, assuage authority, mollify your enemies.”
A capitalist will not tell you what he thinks is true. He will not tell you what you need to hear. He will only tell you what he thinks you want to hear because he only wants to make a sale.
A Capitalist is a weak kneed, curtseying castrato debasing himself before princes and potentates.
Getting ahead in a capitalist structure requires ass-kissing and subservience to one’s corporate bosses.
At times, capitalism might have required real chutzpah and élan. In the days of Stanford Oil, of JP Morgan, of the Jewish Garment Center Kings, businessmen might have had balls. But in our late capitalistic society, in which the great fortunes have been won, and the nation, like an old woman, chooses to rest on her laurels, capitalism is timid and self-effacing. For every aggressive and imaginative capitalist, there are dozens of little men whose primary virtue is their ability to conform to the corporate norm. As David Riesman and Nathan Glazer explained in “The Lonely Crowd,” today most Americans are “other directed,” which meant that they are very concerned with what other people think, how to please other people and how to act like other people, This anxious effort to make one as inconspicuous as possible by seamlessly merging into a sea of undifferentiated blobs in grey flannel is antithetical to that which is courageous and bold.
And so in this age of the cowering capitalist, in this age of spineless American weaklings, it is perhaps understandable that the security apparatus of the State must be stronger and stronger and that we must wait several hours to board a plane because if Americans encountered hijackers again, they’d probably mess it up.
You make think I am wrong and will tell me that the West, through Ukraine, is bashing Russia. But in 1943, for every German soldier facing the Brits and the Americans in Italy and North Africa, there were eight German soldiers on the Russian front because Russia was so fierce. We’ll see.