jc.tryps

satire

Remember the Crisis? You know, that big crisis that threw the whole world off balance and made lots of people lose their jobs and cost everyone lost of money. Remember that one, back in the 1990s? Or was it 2001? No wait, there was one 2007 too. No, I mean 2009. In fact, is it over yet? That crisis that started some time in…uh 1900 something and went on till… well it’s actually still going on, isn’t it? All this talk aboutThe Financial Crisis. Yeah sure, but which one?! Because it’s not like there’s been only one in recent decades. In fact, once could argue that it seems to have become a permanent state, this whole financial crisis business. If one didn’t know any better one might think that there was actually something fundamentally wrong with the whole system, but one does know better, right? Because surely we’re on the right track, we’re real close to fixing it all now, aren’t we? Yeah, for sure… I mean just the other day the spanish prime minister said the growth is positive, just very slow. And I’m sure the people of Spain agrees, right? Real close to fixing it now you see. We have a solution you see.

But it’s rather interesting to notice how the solution is always to sell off the rights of the citizens. A more flexible labour market, selling state-owned businesses, upping the retirement age etc. It’s all very much in line with the commandments of capitalism: money talks and he who has none shall shut the fuck up. And it’s always promoted with the propaganda of fear. “If we don’t fuck you over a little bit now we’ll all end up being totally fucked later. So bend over people!” But are they really telling the truth? Because if you look a bit closer, doesn’t it look very much like we’re actually already being totally fucked? Slowly but surely we are building a system, or maybe that should be rebuilding, a system where you can’t be sure if you’ll ever be able to retire, where having one full-time job isn’t enough to support yourself and where you never get a permanent employment contract but always have to stay on your toes. Not that you should kind of just lay back once you have a job, but you shouldn’t have to constantly be looking for a new one either. It doesn’t work to spur the employees work-morale, nor does it give the employer any real flexibility. That’s just the lies we are being fed. In reality it makes the employees not give a shit because they know they will be gone in six months anyway, and it gives the employers big problems keeping anyone who actually knows what they are doing. No one really benefits from the allegedly flexible labour market. Apart maybe from some far removed parallel universe bankers who in the short-term can make stupid amounts of money from imaginary forecast profits created by shuffling around imaginary sums of make-believe money. None of it’s even real anymore.

And isn’t it also interesting that the people responsible for the crisis are always off the hook, that they are always the ones getting out on top? Big business caused all of this, and it’s actually no secret. It’s not even a theory, it’s the plain and simple and very much verified truth. And yet, they are still the ones who get to decide what needs to be done. They made the mess and now, not only are they the only ones that don’t have to help clean it up, they also get to decide how it is to be done. Quite the accomplishment I have to say, to have the balls of the world leaders by such a grip that you can pull of a trick like that. Seriously, the idea of cleaning up a mess by adding more of what created the mess in the first place is pretty fucking absurd. In fact, it’s idiotic, not to mention mind-bogglingly self-destructive. You usually don’t fix something that’s broken by adding more of what broke it in the first place because it very rarely actually works. In fact as rarely as never. And yet that is the genius plan we are being sold. “This is what we did to fuck it up, so let’s keep doing the exact same thing and we’ll fix it for sure.” Yeah, for sure.

Yes, we are really being fucked over and yet we don’t seem to want to believe it. In spite of the pretty much constant financial crisis we still believe that money is what’s going to solve it all. More money to those who already have more than enough and less to those that hardly have any at all. If one didn’t know better one could think that it’s all part of a sinister plan to keep us all in fear of ending up in that group of people who have nothing at all. I consume therefore I am, and if I can’t consume anymore, then I no longer am. Descartes has been thrown out and replaced by a social contract not even Hobbes could have imagined. Leviathan has morphed into Mammon.

And what’s even sicker, is that if you actually start to scratch the surface of this alleged capitalism you see that it’s not even what they claim it to be. It’s not a free market at all. The banks are so closely entangled with the governments that it’s hard to even tell the difference. All these actions perpetually being taken to save the economy in various countries all the time have very little to do with saving the actual country in which they are taken, but mainly with saving the financial market itself. For instance, most states initiated ‘support packets’ for banks back when the shit hit the fan in 2009. And now, when Greece is supposed to be ‘rescued’, the banks can’t be forced to contribute because that would “cause bad ratings with the rating agencies”. Excuse me? Are we still on planet earth? Or rather, are we still living in a democratic society? Yeah, it’s becoming a more and more relevant question.

And in light of that question, it’s also rather interesting to compare the two big nuclear disasters we’ve had on this planet. One was in a communist dictatorship and one was in an ultra capitalist state. In both cases the public was kept in the dark until it was impossible to not say anything. In the first case the verdict was unanimous, the silencing maneuver was the result of a totalitarian state. The M.O. was to hush in order for the regime to save face and keep their totalitarian power. A total no brainer. But how are we going to explain the latest one? Japan is a democracy and it wasn’t a state but a company that was doing the hushing. The same way BP was trying to hush down the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010. The thought that today’s capitalist consumer driven society is just as driven by propaganda as the former Soviet Union isn’t all that far-fetched. Capitalism’s biggest marketing slogan has always been that it’s a guarantee for freedom and democracy; when the market is free so are the people. The problem is that the market isn’t free, because the ones who have the money can buy other people’s rights. And they do. We’re not free. We consume to exist and we pay with our freedom. Essentially we are selling our lives and we are getting a shit deal. And when we protest we are told that we are being irresponsible. Just like the people of Greece, the place that gave birth to the very concept of democracy, are being told right now. No, we are not free and this is no longer a democratic society. It’s a financial market and it’s fucking us all over.