These days, there is the constant and widespread use of “brand” to describe people—what individuals should turn themselves into and how they should think about themselves. This is an expression of the most grotesque “commodification” of everything, including people—turning everything and everyone, including yourself, into a “commodity”—something to be marketed.

And this goes along with another flagrant manifestation of the putrid culture that is constantly promoted in this country: the fact that “ownership” has replaced “responsibility.” (People broadly say “I need to own that”—or “I take ownership of that”—instead of “I take responsibility.”)

All this is an expression of this parasitic American empire and the system of capitalism-imperialism overall: feasting off the cruel exploitation and murderous oppression of literally billions of people throughout the world, including hundreds of millions of women and more than 150 million children forced to work long hours in near-slave conditions in sweatshops, mines, and farms in countries like Bangladesh, Thailand, Haiti, Mexico and Congo. This is where a huge part of the wealth comes from that enables more than a few people in this country to turn themselves into “brands” that they can market, along with the striving to be “owners” of capital (which means exploiters, profiting from the labor of other people).

All this goes along with the exploitation of millions of people in this country itself, while millions more are condemned to lives of cruel oppression, bitter desperation, murderous repression by police and mass incarceration or being caught up in the injustice system in one way or another, from a very early age. All while much of the “popular culture” that is given backing continues to pump people full of the idea that the way to be is to do for yourself and get over on others, and any other approach is just for suckers who will get stepped on, used and abused, by those who understand what is really happening.

If people don’t see what is wrong with this whole way of thinking, and approaching things, that itself is a manifestation of how deeply this putrid parasitic culture has penetrated into people’s consciousness.

It is another manifestation of the fact that this system, with its horrific relations and poisonous culture, needs to go.