"Make Capitalism Hated Again" This Year's Fashion

“I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashions.” --Lillian Hellman

“Make Capitalism Hated Again” This Year’s Fashion

by C. A. Matthews

I’ve always been confused and dismayed by how some people can seemingly change their tunes and start acting like sociopaths with ease. Their newly acquired opinions don’t seem to conflict with their innate sense of right and wrong. I must have missed the class on how to stop acting like a decent human being at the drop of a hat. Without this ability, I stick out like a sore thumb in society without even trying.

Some people have simply stop talking to me because I said and/or did something that wasn’t quite in fashion. Whatever it was it must have made them feel uncomfortable, so uncomfortable that they had to dismiss me out of hand. It took some time, but I eventually figured out what it was that made some folks uneasy around me.

Nobody wants to be reminded that they have a conscience.

Nobody wants to hear that other human beings have rights and should be respected as equals. It’s so much easier to label others “human animals” or “serfs” or “illegals” and use and abuse them as you like. It’s no wonder these fashionable folks without a conscience stopped talking to me.

But I won’t apologize for making others feel uncomfortable about genocide, racism, and discrimination. I refuse to condone sociopathic actions of any kind. To quote Lillian Hellman: “I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashions.”

Will these budding tyrants ever apologize for making me feel like a freak whenever I stand up for the rights of others? Probably not. I don’t expect them to, frankly. They’ve made their bed with war criminals, and they’ll lie in it until the next political fad comes along.

You might be asking yourself at this point, “Where does all this talk about having a conscience fit in with what’s currently happening in the US and the world?” My answer: “How about everything?” Here are some recent headlines to make my point:

SHOCK: Israel Has Killed At Least 14% of Gaza's Population. That's 306,000 People. stevendonziger.substack.com/p/shock-israel-has-killed-at-least

Trump didn't invent the Gaza ethnic cleansing plan. It's been US policy since 2007 jonathancook.substack.com/p/trump-didnt-invent-the-gaza-ethnic

UnitedHealth hired a defamation law firm to go after social media posts criticizing the company https://fortune.com/2025/02/10/unitedhealth-defamation-law-firm-social-media/

US media refuses to connect LA fires to climate chaos—or the billionaires responsible for it https://therealnews.com/us-media-refuses-to-connect-la-fires-to-climate-chaos

Mass Deportation As Ethnic Cleansing: On The Ongoing War https://popularresistance.org/mass-deportation-as-ethnic-cleansing-on-the-ongoing-war/

The Migrant Disappearance Protocols: Trump Sends Immigrants to "Legal Black Hole" at Guantánamo Bay austinkocher.substack.com/p/the-migrant-disappearance-protocols

ICE Wants to Know If You’re Posting Negative Things About It Online https://theintercept.com/2025/02/11/ice-immigration-social-media-surveillance/

Notice that these stories (both domestic and international) have an element of suppressing the truth or propagating falsehoods to cover over despicable actions taken by the oligarchs/billionaires and their allies, our so-called elected officials. We ordinary Americans aren’t supposed to speak out against the horrible abuses of ICE or the fact that we’re shipping immigrants to a “Legal Black Hole” at Guantánamo Bay.

We’re not supposed to consider the thousands of unnecessary deaths caused by the American for-profit healthcare corporations every year. We aren’t supposed to know how capitalists make massive profits from fossil fuels by instigating genocide in Gaza to obtain more oil and natural gas reserves, heating the planet from their burning, and thus driving this year’s wildfire epidemic out west.

We aren’t even supposed to know that hundred of thousands of human beings have been killed by the Israeli government in Gaza and the West Bank. We aren’t supposed to know that there are more children with amputations in Gaza today than in the whole of warfare up until this time.

But why aren’t we to know about these dreadful things? This information could bring about an enlightenment of the masses, possibly enraging them and inspiring them to rise up and demand justice. Our rulers can’t have that.

Our gracious rulers, the oligarchs, don’t want us to get all hot and bothered over such inconsequential things… You know things such as asylum-seekers being imprisoned without benefit of a trial. So, in their benevolence our rulers make sure we know little to nothing about what’s going on.

It’s become the fashion to put our consciences to sleep and not worry about what we do or do not know about what’s happening to us and our world. We’re told to keep quiet by those in authority. We’re commanded to ignore any nagging feelings about how immoral or unjust the actions of our rulers are. It’s not the fashion to speak out and agitate for better behavior from our elected officials, let alone billionaires.

The current cultural vibe is one of “Shut up and we’ll tell you how to think. Mind your own business so we can get on with our business to make more profits!”

I have a conscience so I find it very difficult to shut up. And I like to think for myself, thank you.

I’ll argue that it is our “business” when our loved ones are denied health care because billionaire CEOs desire to profit off our illnesses. It is our business when our immigrant neighbors are deported to Guantanamo Bay and denied access to the US immigration courts. It is our business when we let Trump’s de facto co-president Elon Musk go wild and slash vital government-run programs (Medicaid and Social Security) while simultaneously taking billions of dollars in contracts from other government agencies (NASA and the Defense Department).

It is our business to know where our tax dollars are going, especially when they’re going to Israel that is openly committing a genocide of the Palestinian people. It is our business to know that aiding and abetting a genocide or ethnic cleansing goes against US Code, namely the Leahy Laws. It is our business to stand up and fight back and hold our elected officials responsible for their despicable actions, even if corrupt appointed judges won’t play fairly.

Our conscience, our moral center, has a lot to do with our “business”. This reality is very inconvenient for capitalists in general, however.

It’s more than being “out-of-fashion” to capitalists whenever We the People bring up morality. We’re raining on their parade whenever we point out that 68,500 Americans die each year from a lack of health care. We embarrass capitalists when we point out how the CEOs of for-profit corporations like UnitedHealth act exactly like a “death panel”. (Strange how capitalists insist that universal health care would lead to the creation of death panels, despite evidence to the contrary from other countries’ national health services. A bit of projection on their parts, don’t you think?)

Toss an oligarch like Musk into the mix and US capitalism gets even worse. He’s gleefully cutting and closing programs and agencies that help the old, the disabled, the poor, children, students, refugees, etc., so that billionaires can have more tax breaks. The reasoning behind his actions are clear: Our rulers want to wipe out large portions of the population they feel are a drag on the capitalist system.

Capitalists don’t enjoy how bad they look to the masses whenever their immoral activities are highlighted. But since they own the media outlets we’ll never hear what they’re really up to. And the many government-paid propagandists work hard to convince us to leave their billionaire bosses alone.

I caught an example of this in the mass media recently. The article claimed it’s okay to ignore the plight of others because we’re doing well ourselves. We shouldn’t let others’ poor financial decisions bring us down. They brought it on themselves.

You are doing okay, aren’t you? Really? It’s that bad… You’re going to be evicted? The price of a carton of eggs is what?

My conscience tells me not to accept the status quo propaganda. I must speak out.

I have two words in response to anyone who tries to make me feel awkward about revealing how horrible our rulers, the billionaires/oligarchs, are and how detestable capitalism is. Those two words are: F*ck you.

Let’s get real. The US has been a capitalist nightmare from the moment white-Europeans and their disastrous economic policies came ashore. Their profit-making enterprises were created with no regard to the harms they’d make to the environment. Capitalists never cared about the harms they caused the indigenous people or the enslaved people they forced to do their physical labor. And they still don’t.

So, a big F. U. goes out to anyone who ignores the decency and morality of ordinary human beings in order to make a fast buck. The Trumpsters chant, “Make America Great Again!” which makes absolutely no sense. It was never great to begin with. The chant we should shout (in unison) is, “Make Capitalism Hated Again!”

If you have a conscience, you know instinctively at the core of all the world’s problems lies this evil economic arrangement that thrives on the false inequalities created among genders and races, on income disparities, and on wars for oil and resource grabs. Our rulers, the billionaires, might say that capitalism is preferable to other economic systems, but why listen to these sociopaths? The don’t care if they destroy the planet and wipe us out for profit!

We must kill the system that is killing us all. We must make having a conscience fashionable. Make Capitalism Hated Again.

Related Articles and Other Interesting Links

The Mafia State https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/the-mafia-state

Israel Admits It Violated The Ceasefire And Hamas Did Not https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/israel-admits-it-violated-the-ceasefire

The IDF Didn't Just Target Hospitals, They Destroyed Individual Medical Machines https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/the-idf-didnt-just-target-hospitals

Washington Drops Ukraine, Israel Backs Down On Hamas Demands https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/washington-drops-ukraine-israel-backs

Curfews, Roadblocks, House Raids—Israeli Military Entrenches Inside Syria https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/israel-syria-occupation-golan

Britain's Secret Palestinian Authority Control https://www.kitklarenberg.com/p/britains-secret-palestinian-authority

How Trump's tariffs will accelerate US decline https://geopoliticaleconomy.substack.com/p/trump-tariffs-accelerate-us-decline

The day Israel came for the booksellers https://www.972mag.com/educational-bookshop-east-jerusalem-raid-arrests/

There Is No Antisemitism Crisis In Australia. It's A Carefully Constructed Lie. https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/there-is-no-antisemitism-crisis-in

Why were 2 people shot in Miami Beach? Suspect told cops that he ‘saw 2 Palestinians’ https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/crime/article300433159.html

I Write About Israel All The Time Because I Have To, Not Because I Want To https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/i-write-about-israel-all-the-time

Our film is going to the Oscars. But here in Masafer Yatta, we’re still being erased https://www.972mag.com/no-other-land-oscars-masafer-yatta-erasure/

122 years of US imperialism in Guantánamo: From torture to migrant detention https://geopoliticaleconomy.substack.com/p/us-imperialism-guantanamo-torture-migrant-detention

Trump Gives Peace a Chance in Ukraine https://medeabenjamin.substack.com/p/trump-gives-peace-a-chance-in-ukraine

Why federal courts are unlikely to save democracy from Trump’s and Musk’s attacks https://theconversation.com/why-federal-courts-are-unlikely-to-save-democracy-from-trumps-and-musks-attacks-249533

"Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)" https://almartinez.substack.com/p/deportee-plane-wreck-at-los-gatos

ICE's Latest Detention Data Shows Growth of Immigrants Targeted With No Criminal Histories – Exactly as Predicted https://austinkocher.substack.com/p/ices-latest-detention-data-shows

The Housing Loophole That Lets Wealthy Investors Raise Rents on Poor Tenants https://www.propublica.org/article/affordable-housing-investors-loophole-rent-tenants

‘Long-Overdue’ Trial to Begin After Decades of Shell Polluting Nigeria https://scheerpost.com/2025/02/13/long-overdue-trial-to-begin-after-decades-of-shell-polluting-nigeria/

Amazon Stokes Racial Divides in Lead-Up to North Carolina Union Vote https://www.labornotes.org/2025/02/amazon-stokes-racial-divides-lead-north-carolina-union-vote

Princeton students head to trial nearly a year after Gaza encampment https://mondoweiss.net/2025/02/princeton-students-head-to-trial-nearly-a-year-after-gaza-encampment/

I Would Not Have Survived Without UNRWA https://truthout.org/articles/i-would-not-have-survived-without-unrwa/

Israeli Soldiers Face Arrests And Travel Bans Worldwide https://popularresistance.org/israeli-soldiers-face-arrests-and-travel-bans-worldwide/

What a $2 Million Per Dose Gene Therapy Reveals About Drug Pricing https://www.propublica.org/article/zolgensma-sma-novartis-drug-prices-gene-therapy-avexis