IMPEDIMENTA

(or Buried Alive)

Cordoned off, physically, from Nature

by concrete, electronics and oil-based plastics,

their food, water and even air saturated

with pharmaceuticals and the chemicals of petro-agriculture,

children lack connection

not only to The Source,

but the source of self

within themselves.

Imprisoned behind the barbed wire of religion,

which claims a patent on rightness and wrongness,

the one Great Gift given us all, free will,

the arbiter of an intrinsic ethics, conscience,

is short-circuited in service to the purveyors

of greed, lust, fear, envy and hatred

who are themselves granted absolution and given free rein

to market these to children at their most impressionable age,

indelibly imprinting them with unthinking obeisance,

brand loyalty to products as well as to a nation,

and the willingness to put the bit in their mouths,

wear the saddle, and be easily ridden

by the status quo at the behest of an "elite"

which has nothing but contempt for them.

Children are made so afraid to trust themselves 

that they early give up the power to make decisions,

and submit to an authoritarian Father Figure

who takes this frightful responsibility away from them

and the choices that children have left,

if that's what they could be called,

are all of them pre-arrayed and made

in the safe, sacred space of the mall.

And like the unwanted excrescences

of too-long tails and ears on "purebred" dogs,

extraneous on purebred, bio-engineered consumers

are the interconnections of human bonds

which are then prevented from reforming

by the application of cultural shock collars

which let children know they're straying from convention

and prompts shopping in which to find solace.

Children are taught to speak

by mimicking animals sounds,

"What does the cow say?" and to read

by rattling off their names.  "C is for cow."

They're given pets with whom they bond,

but learn love and promises can be exchanged.

Should a more pleasing specimen come along,

the original is easily replaced.

Children also bond with animals in Farm Programs,

then sell them for slaughter, betraying them,

and take comfort in the profit they earn,

learning money trumps loyalty and friends.

Some children are sent out into the woods,

armed with high-powered weapons

with which they then hunt down and kill

their essentially defenseless animal friends.

This template for the eradication of feelings

via the extermination of beloved animals

is covered with the bandage of denial

and purges children of much of their humanity.

And this cold, cruel, callous psychology

is the epitome of American masculinity.

Love, friendship, fair play and promises,

gratitude and empathy are strictly for sissies.

And since mothers now work to make up

increasing profit taken from wages of fathers,

children are often left alone and unguarded

to sit alienated, anxious and wanting

getting much of their nurture by nursing

at the ubiquitous TV tit,

which disperses only the addictive milk

of corporate ejaculate,

driving small children back

to the sacred, sacrificial mall altar

where they give up the rest of their selves

to the holy corporate Uber Father

self silenced

in the quest for eternal youth,

to gain the illusion of status,

for the refuge of sedatives or stimulants

to create an artificial happiness

to get what they're told they deserve

to relieve the quiet desperation,

to find love in the acquisition of goods,

for the reward of instant gratification

for the waxen mask of faux beauty,

to transfer loyalty to brands,

to compete in the search for identity,

to amass enough feel like a man

for products as opposed to friendships,

for the feeling of being included,

to keep them amused as they're being abused

making sure curiosity is neutered.

Thus market needs supplant personality

by strip mining children of all that is personal,

implanting needs created by advertising

making them vassals of all things commercial,

clamoring to be filled with what the market purveys,

but these false needs can never be satisfied.

The constant effort to do so creates profit,

and that's the whole point of the enterprise.

There are more TV drug-delivery systems

in American homes than there are residents.

Hundreds of channels inject it 24/7

promoting non-existent TV characters as friends

to be imprinted on, bonded with and emulated

in the purchase/pursuit of the American Dream,

prompted by longings both real and created,

but both of which fulfill corporate needs.

Children are sitting ducks for the sale of junk

sold as a way off the island of solitary confinement

on which the perfect consumer, cut from the community,

lives a faux life that he is resigned to,

built on maximum conformity via pre-selected choices

of identical products that ensure profitable uniformity,

since mass production creates massive profits

in the futile struggle to buy style and identity.

And rather than educate, schooling trains children

to take their place in the assembly line of those seeking

the elusive and non-negotiable American lifestyle

as if it were worthy of achievement.

Children are schooled to

sit down

shut up

ask permission

and pledge an unquestioning oath

to xenophobia and imperialist aggression

in service to the enrichment of the already rich

disguised as life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness

as they provide the fodder,

both consumer and cannon,

which makes possible empire,

both military and financial.

No deviation is allowed from this rut

dug by consumers on the conveyor belt of debt slavery

into the financial furnaces of the American Mirage,

divested of reality and devoid of the context of history.

This focus on the out side, the vehicle,

rather than the in side, The Driver,

creates a vehicle careening, directionless, through life,

oblivious of its blatant denial

that diverts the creation of character

and creates a socially-engineered emptiness

that eases the transfer of wealth from the worker/seekers

to the idle manufacturers of meaninglessness

who profit when compassion is ousted by competition

and empathy is eaten up with envy,

when addiction to lust is more important than love

and acquisition is more attractive than friendship

when winning brings more approval than fair play

and promises are temporary constructs

gratitude is seen as humiliation

and profit the sole desirable object.

The guard towers of religion and education,

psychology in advertising and public relations,

patriotism and control of information

are the bricks and mortar of this prison's foundation.

They make up the impenetrable wall

guarded zealously by corporate capitalism.

It encloses Americans' individual cells

and they don't know that they are the keys to them.

"In our dreams, we have limitless resources and the people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands.  The present education conventions fade from their minds, and unhampered by tradition, we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive rural folk.  We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning, or men of science.  We have not to raise up from among them authors, editors, poets or doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we have an ample supply.  The task we set before ourselves is very simple as well as a very beautiful one, to train these people as we find them to do in a perfect way the things their mothers and fathers are doing in an imperfect way, in the homes, in the shops, and on the farms."

  - John D. Rockefeller's General Education Board's "Occasional Letter #1"

"Ours must be a leadership democracy administered by an intelligent minority who know how to regiment and guide the masses...The voice of the people expresses the mind of the people, and that mind is made up for it by the group of leaders in whom it believes and by those persons who understand the manipulation of public opinion.  It is composed of inherited prejudices and symbols and cliches and verbal formulas supplied to it by the leaders...It must be enlightened propaganda through the creation of circumstances, through the high-spotting of significant events and the dramatization of important issues." 

- Edward Bernays, architect of Woodrow Wilson's Committee on Public Information, nephew of Sigmund Freud and the Father of Public Relations

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