Bongo Lecture: The Military Industrial Complex

As I was sitting in my desk listening to this lecture I felt the only appropriate response would be to allow the tears to come and to cry the ugly cry and to let my physical reaction to the madness that is being described flow freely.  But at the very same time that seemed like the last thing I could possibly do. Because that is not acceptable student behavior. Even in a classroom full of Buddhas I don't know that it could ever be that way. I wonder if anyone else feels this too.

Apparently there is a Wikipedia article onCorporatocracy. I have never heard this term before but it makes mountains of sense.

My notes on the lecture:

Texts: Thoreau, Ginsberg, Eisenhower's farewell speech.

When we're ready... "Government which governs not at all"

Disasterous rise of misplaced power. Axiety. Moloch. Military. Government.
The idea of the MACHINE.

Terror's roots rather than extensions
Why not jobs, education, medicine instead??
Giant private corporations, billions of dollars

Corporatocracy - not even capitalism not even close to democracy

Privitization of profits while poverty is ignored, denied.

Conscious without a body. Moloch.

Everything cold, lifeless, dirty, endless, giant, intangilbe, impersonal.

BOMBS. Ubiquitousness of destruction & inhumanity.

We're stuck in a time warp and we can't get out. We need to get out.

Hall of mirrors, doors, we go out & come back in.

Reich - The Trap   Ginsberg - Moloch

We've got to learn to make new mistakes because we're not going to solve the current mistake.

Eddison - new mistakes until we find the light.

We're going to have to be creative to make new mistakes.

A solution is not forthcoming & the consequences are getting scarier & scarier but we're more insulated from our capacity for total self-destruction. The insulation? $MONEY$

We need a space for outpouring & cleansing & freaking out before we can really get to work.

We don't want to get to the point in that room where we start to experience vertigo & can't find the door.

George Santiano - Spanish American philosopher - repeating the past