Archive for June, 2010
AMERICA’S LYING TIMES BEGINNINGS. CULTURE WAR BEGINNINGS — Exposing the Reality Behind the Biggest Divide in America since the Civil War
Posted by sillymickel in History on June 22, 2010
America’s Lying Times Beginnings. Why “they” started a “culture war” against ordinary Americans, which continues.
AMERICA’S LYING TIMES BEGINNINGS. CULTURE WAR BEGINNINGS —
Exposing the Reality Behind the Biggest Divide in America since the Civil War, How it Was Instigated and Kept Alive for 40 Years by Certain Elite Powers and How and Why They Chose to Benefit while Tearing Families in Two and Keeping America Paralyzed. Why America’s “Privileged Class” — its “royalty,” “blue bloods” — started a “culture war” against the middle class, working class, the poor…and the educated, artists, and humanists in the early 1970s. How their fear of 60s activism panicked them into into an all-out assault against elements that threatened their wealth and privilege in all institutions of American society — media, education, medicine, government, politics, publication, religion, especially higher education, and so on — and restructured them. How it continues today: blatantly so in the Tea Party movement, the Republican Party, the Wall Street giveaways at the expense of jobs, rampant anti-environmentalism and anti-minority, -immigrant laws and attacks…not to mention politicians like Congressman Barton who kowtow to corporations, even defending British Petroleum from having to pay for its atrocious spill, and a candidate (Republican of course, and in Arizona, not coincidentally) for a governor’s race who would actually run on the platform of doing away with Social Security and Medicare. This is an introduction to “The Rise and Fall of Obvious Truths”
The ‘Why’ of “Obvious Truths” an Audio Reading by SillyMickel Adzema
Culture War and Matrix Beginnings, How We Became a Nation of Puppets, and the Hidden Puppeteers :
Pt. 1, “Whatever Happened to the Sixties Generation?”
The Fear they Engendered in the Privileged
The All Out Campaign to Slander Them, Distort their Actions, Activities, History, and to Scapegoat the Sixties Generation, their Values and Ideals
The “Big Lie” of the “Conservative Backlash” That Never Was
The Total Remaking of Education, Publishing, Media,
Middle Class Prosperity, and Other Institutions
so Such a Generation Would Never Rise Again
The Beginnings of the Comprehensive Blanket of Untruth
– Put Out by a No Longer Free Media, a Media Bought and Owned —
Which Is Increasingly Being Termed “The Matrix”
Description of Audio
Others have asserted that the media played a large and active part in the “disappearance” of this generation. It has been noted, for example, as simply one indicator, that 90% of youth protests were reported by the media in 1969, but only 20 to 25% were covered in 1970-71, and only 1% of such dissident activities could be found in the media coverage of 1972.
This decline was part of a concerted effort by the media, in collusion with the threatened established sectors of society, to actively put a lid on student and youthful dissent and unrest.
I myself have knowledge and personal experience of how a similar suppression at exactly this time was perpetrated on university campuses. Specifically, at the college I was attending — Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania — and other colleges and universities around the country, wealthy alumni threatened to withdraw funding unless (1) certain faculty members, considered “threatening” to established interests, were fired, (2) certain programs — considered too innovative, “disruptive,” or “instigative” — were cut back or eliminated, and (3) certain “unorthodox,” “undisciplined,” or “publicly disrespectful” student behaviors were discouraged, suppressed, and/or harshly responded to and clamped down on.
Indeed, such active “blacklisting” of counterculture figures, behavior, and values on university campuses seemed to be part of a general dictum across institutions — including publishing, films, TV, education at all levels, medicine and science, and the work place — to actively fight back at what was seen as dire threats to traditional values calculated to placate the masses and keep them, as for hundreds of years, feeling nervous, unworthy, inferior, and slavish in relation to the wealthy and powerful.
With these considerations, it is understandable that in 1971 and 1972 — despite increasing unrest and demonstrations on college campuses, increasing liberalization of values among all age groups and growing liberal and counterculture political power — there would be a number of books published and widely reviewed which, closing their eyes on all this, instead presented dubious evidence and selectively chosen incidents to make a case for a so-called “conservative backlash,” which there is no doubt the authors earnestly hoped for and fervently sought to bring about in their proclamation of it.
This may be seen as the beginnings of the use of “The Big Lie” as a major, sometimes the only strategy, in conservatives attempts to fight back against this outpouring of sensitivity to injustice at all levels.
However, its more recent re-emergence in contemporary America and its rise to the heights of skillful political brandishment in the hands, first, of Ronald Reagan and George Bush, Sr., and then later to its most pervasive use, however awkwardly and skill-less, during the eight years of George W. Bush, where Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove, and others took it to such moronic lengths they eventually were seen to be what they were — big lies, with no attempt to educate the public at all; but simply to cover up and to manipulate, like common criminals would. (Note, that the results of this are discussed, with a fair amount of humor, in another piece I’ve written for this site titled “Naked Republicans.”)
Nevertheless, these later major uses, in fact the evolution of The Big Lie into the ONLY strategy of Republican politics may find its beginnings in such publications as these books from the early 70s, as well as to its highly skilled, and much documented, use by Richard Nixon throughout his political career.
Sample Quotes
The success of The Big Lie; and its eventual morphing into the Big Web of Deceit, more easily termed The Matrix.
Whereas the 60s youth had only their enthusiasm and their heartfelt passion to allow a world of freedom, and all the other values espoused in our Constitution, they were up against huge entrenched, and filthy with wealth, nameless puppeteers. Their wealth got them any support they wanted for anything. And sensing a threat to the established quo, hearing about idealistic notions of equality, freedom, and such — knowing that their positions depended not on the actual enjoyment of the masses of their supposed “freedoms” but only their being convinced that they had them.
So it was a huge threat to see masses of people proclaiming their rights and actually daring to use them. They could be slowed down in using their rights by having them violently bludgeoned by police and riled up construction workers in Chicago; they could be taken off track perhaps, by having several of them killed at Kent State; and they could be continually arranged to be misreported in the media and maligned as well. But this seemed to make them only more determined.
Still, these puppeteers owned the media and therefore controlled what the public would be told; they were the main sources of income for universities across the country, so they controlled what would be rolled out as truth and knowledge; and ultimately they could fund politicians and speakers, and radio and TV show hosts who would speak their Big Lies. So they really had all the weapons to roundly put down this band of idealists whose only weapons were truth, and righteous feeling, and passion of youth, and clarity of youthful mind.
So it was no contest, especially as only one side was fully aware that they were at war; indeed the other side — most of them — having no inkling of the powers behind the scenes (that would of course be left out of the history and sociology books they had read — funded by the puppeteers of course). So, many of them even began to believe that they had lost, and that most Americans were lashing back at them. This would be disheartening to many; especially to those who had seen the coming together of middle class, upper middle class, and working class to join in mass movements like the one million who showed up from all over the country to be at Moratorium Day in November 15, 1970
So, believing the media probably had a big influence on taking the wind out of the sails of many of the youth. And still others, feeling they must be wrong because they had now, according to the media, become the enemy to those they hoped would see the wisdom of these values that basically came from them, i.e., their parents and the liberal worlds they grew up in! Their response, unfortunately, was to try to reintegrate with the society they had thrown behind them, but now saw as the only one possible. Still, they retained their values, and it became common to hear that these motivated youth decided on a strategy of playing the game to gain entrance to the positions of power and to change the structures of violence and hatred from within.
Coming Next: The Rise and Fall of “Obvious Truths” — How The Big Lie Continues; The Fifty Year Invisible Family and Community That Surrounded All Americans and Affected Every Aspect of Their Lives Including, and Intentionally, the Basic Components of One’s Personality, and the Erosion of Reason, Soul, and Independent Thought or Action.
For More:
http://bit.ly/Am-Y
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Read more at culturewar.webs.com
>AMERICA’S LYING TIMES BEGINNINGS. CULTURE WAR BEGINNINGS — Exposing the Reality Behind the Biggest Divide in America since the Civil War
Posted by sillymickel in History on June 21, 2010
>
America’s Lying Times Beginnings. Why “they” started a “culture war” against ordinary Americans, which continues.
AMERICA’S LYING TIMES BEGINNINGS. CULTURE WAR BEGINNINGS —
Exposing the Reality Behind the Biggest Divide in America since the Civil War, How it Was Instigated and Kept Alive for 40 Years by Certain Elite Powers and How and Why They Chose to Benefit while Tearing Families in Two and Keeping America Paralyzed. Why America’s “Privileged Class” — its “royalty,” “blue bloods” — started a “culture war” against the middle class, working class, the poor…and the educated, artists, and humanists in the early 1970s. How their fear of 60s activism panicked them into into an all-out assault against elements that threatened their wealth and privilege in all institutions of American society — media, education, medicine, government, politics, publication, religion, especially higher education, and so on — and restructured them. How it continues today: blatantly so in the Tea Party movement, the Republican Party, the Wall Street giveaways at the expense of jobs, rampant anti-environmentalism and anti-minority, -immigrant laws and attacks…not to mention politicians like Congressman Barton who kowtow to corporations, even defending British Petroleum from having to pay for its atrocious spill, and a candidate (Republican of course, and in Arizona, not coincidentally) for a governor’s race who would actually run on the platform of doing away with Social Security and Medicare. This is an introduction to “The Rise and Fall of Obvious Truths”
The audio readings of relevance, in order:
The Why of Obvious Truths, Culture War and Matrix Beginnings: Pt. 1, “Whatever Happened to the Sixties Generation?” The Fear they Engendered in the Privileged, the All Out Campaign to Slander, Distort their Values, and to Scapegoat Them, the Big Lie
“Smoke, Lies, and Revelations – Struggle for Truth During America’s Lying Times (Nov. 23rd, 1963 thru Jan 20th, 2009, + August, 2009): Part 1: 50s thru early 70s – Politics, Truth, and the Furious Market in Enlightenment Lobotomies” by SillyMickel Adzema
The Rise and Fall of “Obvious Truths”: Part One.
The Rise and Fall of Obvious Truths, Part 2.
“The Rise and Fall of ‘Obvious Truths’ Part 3″
Naked Republicans: Blue Meanies Fleeing or Looking Foolish by SillyMickel Adzema
“You’re Turning Down my Money for ME!…To Stare Down…Who?!!”: Likely Constituent’s Response to Republican Governors Who Turned Down Unemployment Money from Stimulus to “Score Points” Against Obama
The ‘Why’ of “Obvious Truths” an Audio Reading by SillyMickel Adzema
Culture War and Matrix Beginnings, How We Became a Nation of Puppets, and the Hidden Puppeteers : 
Pt. 1, “Whatever Happened to the Sixties Generation?”
The Fear they Engendered in the Privileged
The All Out Campaign to Slander Them, Distort their Actions, Activities, History, and to Scapegoat the Sixties Generation, their Values and Ideals
The “Big Lie” of the “Conservative Backlash” That Never Was
The Total Remaking of Education, Publishing, Media,
Middle Class Prosperity, and Other Institutions
so Such a Generation Would Never Rise Again
The Beginnings of the Comprehensive Blanket of Untruth
– Put Out by a No Longer Free Media, a Media Bought and Owned —
Which Is Increasingly Being Termed “The Matrix”
Description of Audio
Others have asserted that the media played a large and active part in the “disappearance” of this generation. It has been noted, for example, as simply one indicator, that 90% of youth protests were reported by the media in 1969, but only 20 to 25% were covered in 1970-71, and only 1% of such dissident activities could be found in the media coverage of 1972.
This decline was part of a concerted effort by the media, in collusion with the threatened established sectors of society, to actively put a lid on student and youthful dissent and unrest.
I myself have knowledge and personal experience of how a similar suppression at exactly this time was perpetrated on university campuses. Specifically, at the college I was attending — Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania — and other colleges and universities around the country, wealthy alumni threatened to withdraw funding unless (1) certain faculty members, considered “threatening” to established interests, were fired, (2) certain programs — considered too innovative, “disruptive,” or “instigative” — were cut back or eliminated, and (3) certain “unorthodox,” “undisciplined,” or “publicly disrespectful” student behaviors were discouraged, suppressed, and/or harshly responded to and clamped down on.
Indeed, such active “blacklisting” of counterculture figures, behavior, and values on university campuses seemed to be part of a general dictum across institutions — including publishing, films, TV, education at all levels, medicine and science, and the work place — to actively fight back at what was seen as dire threats to traditional values calculated to placate the masses and keep them, as for hundreds of years, feeling nervous, unworthy, inferior, and slavish in relation to the wealthy and powerful.
With these considerations, it is understandable that in 1971 and 1972 — despite increasing unrest and demonstrations on college campuses, increasing liberalization of values among all age groups and growing liberal and counterculture political power — there would be a number of books published and widely reviewed which, closing their eyes on all this, instead presented dubious evidence and selectively chosen incidents to make a case for a so-called “conservative backlash,” which there is no doubt the authors earnestly hoped for and fervently sought to bring about in their proclamation of it.
This may be seen as the beginnings of the use of “The Big Lie” as a major, sometimes the only strategy, in conservatives attempts to fight back against this outpouring of sensitivity to injustice at all levels.
However, its more recent re-emergence in contemporary America and its rise to the heights of skillful political brandishment in the hands, first, of Ronald Reagan and George Bush, Sr., and then later to its most pervasive use, however awkwardly and skill-less, during the eight years of George W. Bush, where Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove, and others took it to such moronic lengths they eventually were seen to be what they were — big lies, with no attempt to educate the public at all; but simply to cover up and to manipulate, like common criminals would. (Note, that the results of this are discussed, with a fair amount of humor, in another piece I’ve written for this site titled “Naked Republicans.”)
Nevertheless, these later major uses, in fact the evolution of The Big Lie into the ONLY strategy of Republican politics may find its beginnings in such publications as these books from the early 70s, as well as to its highly skilled, and much documented, use by Richard Nixon throughout his political career.
Sample Quotes
The success of The Big Lie; and its eventual morphing into the Big Web of Deceit, more easily termed The Matrix.
Whereas the 60s youth had only their enthusiasm and their heartfelt passion to allow a world of freedom, and all the other values espoused in our Constitution, they were up against huge entrenched, and filthy with wealth, nameless puppeteers. Their wealth got them any support they wanted for anything. And sensing a threat to the established quo, hearing about idealistic notions of equality, freedom, and such — knowing that their positions depended not on the actual enjoyment of the masses of their supposed “freedoms” but only their being convinced that they had them.
So it was a huge threat to see masses of people proclaiming their rights and actually daring to use them. They could be slowed down in using their rights by having them violently bludgeoned by police and riled up construction workers in Chicago; they could be taken off track perhaps, by having several of them killed at Kent State; and they could be continually arranged to be misreported in the media and maligned as well. But this seemed to make them only more determined.
Still, these puppeteers owned the media and therefore controlled what the public would be told; they were the main sources of income for universities across the country, so they controlled what would be rolled out as truth and knowledge; and ultimately they could fund politicians and speakers, and radio and TV show hosts who would speak their Big Lies. So they really had all the weapons to roundly put down this band of idealists whose only weapons were truth, and righteous feeling, and passion of youth, and clarity of youthful mind.
So it was no contest, especially as only one side was fully aware that they were at war; indeed the other side — most of them — having no inkling of the powers behind the scenes (that would of course be left out of the history and sociology books they had read — funded by the puppeteers of course). So, many of them even began to believe that they had lost, and that most Americans were lashing back at them. This would be disheartening to many; especially to those who had seen the coming together of middle class, upper middle class, and working class to join in mass movements like the one million who showed up from all over the country to be at Moratorium Day in November 15, 1970
So, believing the media probably had a big influence on taking the wind out of the sails of many of the youth. And still others, feeling they must be wrong because they had now, according to the media, become the enemy to those they hoped would see the wisdom of these values that basically came from them, i.e., their parents and the liberal worlds they grew up in! Their response, unfortunately, was to try to reintegrate with the society they had thrown behind them, but now saw as the only one possible. Still, they retained their values, and it became common to hear that these motivated youth decided on a strategy of playing the game to gain entrance to the positions of power and to change the structures of violence and hatred from within.
Coming Next: The Rise and Fall of “Obvious Truths” — How The Big Lie Continues; The Fifty Year Invisible Family and Community That Surrounded All Americans and Affected Every Aspect of Their Lives Including, and Intentionally, the Basic Components of One’s Personality, and the Erosion of Reason, Soul, and Independent Thought or Action.
For More:
http://bit.ly/Am-Y
Read more at culturewar.webs.com
“Smoke, Lies, and Revelations – Struggle for Truth During America’s Lying Times (Nov. 23rd, 1963 thru Jan 20th, 2009, + Aug, 2009): Part 1: “50s thru early 70s – Politics, Truth, and the Furious Market in Enlightenment Lobotomies”
Posted by sillymickel in History on June 16, 2010
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Smoke, Lies & Revelations: One Person’s Lifelong Struggle for Truth During America’s Lying Time
Category: News and Politics
Smoke, Lies, and Revelations: One Person’s Lifelong Struggle for Truth During America’s Lying Times (November 23rd, 1963 through January 20th, 2009)
“Smoke, Lies, and Revelations – Struggle for Truth During America’s Lying Times (Nov. 23rd, 1963 thru Jan 20th, 2009, + August, 2009):
Part 1: 50s thru early 70s – Politics, Truth, and the Furious Market in Enlightenment Lobotomies” by SillyMickel Adzema (sound bite From the Collection of Audio Presentations by SillyMickel Adzema titled: History Unspun – the Smoke, Lies, and Revelations sound bites
Click the audio player below for my reading, with elaboration and context, on this posting:
“Smoke, Lies, and Revelations – Struggle for Truth During America’s Lying Times (Nov. 23rd, 1963 thru Jan 20th, 2009, + August, 2009): Part 1: 50s thru early 70s – Politics, Truth, and the Furious Market in Enlightenment Lobotomies” by SillyMickel Adzema sound bite History Unspun – the Smoke, Lies, and Revelations sound bites
SillyMickel Adzema was born just before the collapse of certainty and traditional truths in America during the 1960s. For many that decade, with the Vietnam War as the backdrop, was a time of confusion. The traditional bellwethers for morality and behavior had been undermined from several fronts. Honesty and truth had been — since the McCarthy era of the early 50s — shaky, uncertain, and vulnerable. With the rise of the power of huge corporations during this period, and with competition and profit rapidly eroding all values and making truth the servant of the (always hidden) agenda, truth and honesty were the first of life’s pillars to be invaded and occupied. While it was gradual, secretive, and so went largely undetected, some astute observers were not fooled and even tried to warn the nation.
Books were written in the 50s about the changing values influenced or directly the result of the amassing of power in these huge corporations. These exposes increased in number during the early 60s — Organization Man (1956) by William Whyte, David Riesman’s The Lonely Crowd (1950), C. Wright Mill’s trilogy on power: The New Men of Power (1946), White Collar (1951), and The Power Elite (1956), along with his obviously relevant Character and Social Structure (1953). Books like Erich Fromm’s The Sane Society (1955) and Presthus’s The Organizational Society (1963) made arguably more serious criticisms that the psychological map of Americans were being negatively affected in important areas.
The most significant warning came from the President of the United States who had presided over this post WWII rise of corporations. Dwight D. Eisenhower in his final televised address to the nation before leaving office warned against the power and influence of the military-industrial complex. Prophetic and prescient, his words — often quoted over the decades since — included “we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex….”
With Americans caught between opposing evils of confusion and anomy and being assimilated by corporate culture (“resistance is futile”), many suffered through, or clung to traditional ways, especially the elderly, and ignored the assaults on their credibility.
There was an astounding era of unity and enthusiasm during the Kennedy years, where corporate culture was subsumed under lofty ideals, which included both technological advance — and thus harnessed corporate energy in a positive direction, and social and intercultural advance, as for example with the Peace Corps. Fragmentation and anomy were forgotten as America believed it was involved in higher causes emanating out of the times that seemed powerful enough to propel everyone into the future with all the fragmentation following and somehow working itself out eventually.
When he was murdered, arguably by the Mafia but either in collusion or under pressure from powers aligned with that military-industrial complex, of which Eisenhower spoke, the floor fell out from beneath aspiring Americans, leaving them empty, directionless, and therefore vulnerable.
Almost immediately after JFK’s murder, Johnson escalated the war and funding for it. America had its first coup; its first massive cover-up and Big Lie. Over the next forty-six years, with Republicans taking over soon enough and holding onto Executive Power for all but seventeen years, including Johnson’s five years, the tendencies that began in the Fifties involving the gathering of power into fewer and fewer hands, and the use of that power to influence the beliefs, ideals, and even psychology of the masses, increased and became more severe, pervasive, and threatening up to the point of the outright lunacy and obvious deceptions and manipulations that were evident under George W. Bush. Only at that point, with year after year throwing up scandals, corruptions, misgovernment, several stolen Presidential elections, an unnecessary war, runaway deficits, and most significantly, right from the start, another massive transfer of wealth upward to benefit that small elite and increase their power, were Americans finally beginning to open their eyes to the ways they’d been lied to, used, and robbed by the rich and powerful. It took all that, which played out on the media nightly, year after year, with no recourse even for impeachment because of an ill-timed agreement between the parties about impeachment that had come out of the debacle of the impeachment attempt on Clinton, to create the cracks in the Matrix, or web of Big Lies built up over nearly 50 years. So that finally an authentic man, a man not of the powerful elite, could win the Presidency handily.
However, before that last event and over the course of those decades Americans saw essentially the rise of a one party government, a consolidation of the mass media and its subservience, along with the government’s, to that same small group of people and powers, aligned with the huge corporation and serving its interests for profits and for enrichment of the already filthy rich. With most powers and most institutions, including education and publishing, orchestrated to the ends of a mighty few, there existed a pervasive — however very slick and clever — propaganda and cover-up apparatus constantly at work to fill or bend the minds of Americans along lines not in their interests, but rather those of these hidden powers with their corporate and political fronts. So pervasive and overwhelming was this effort at mind control and misinformation that it mirrored that of the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
Since it provided no comfort, motivating people through the strategic use of terror and the incitement to hatred, it left that aspect wanting and many people — pushed to desperation and irrationality because of the continual terror and hatred campaigns — ran to traditional religions or clung feverishly to any one of the many alternatives offering easy one stop full service truth — whether evangelical, political, ideological, or traditional.
In this context at no time was there an opening for the kind of rational or thoughtful, peaceful and considered pursuit of truth, insight, or enlightenment that had characterized the eras that had actually led to the birth of America and its system of democracy, freedoms, and rights. By this I mean that since 1963, there was little room in America for any of the elements that characterized the Reformation, the Renaissance, the Age of Reason or Rationalism, or the Age of Enlightenment — whose adherents and tenets spawned the American experiment.
Indeed, I personally observed the downfall of the ideal of education in the liberal arts. A liberal arts college education had been regarded, since the birth of America, as a preeminent basis for further education and for life and career in general for those who would be among the educated and eventually the leaders and decision-makers of society. Its ideals came directly out of the Enlightenment and Renaissance ideals of a well-rounded, diversely educated, and broadly knowledgeable individual and citizen. It was wisely considered that such broadly knowledgeable and broadly thinking leaders would benefit society in the wisdom, social consciousness, and moral conscience, indeed, selflessness, and social service ideals that would be part of that kind of exposure to diverse views.
But the Vietnam War had seen increasingly larger degrees of complaint, criticism, resistance, and defiance to its pursuit from these liberal arts campuses. I was on campus and was part of it. I also saw how the campuses were purged of the liberal thinkers — professors were fired, departments of philosophy, religious studies, history, and the other liberal arts were cut back, often to be eliminated entirely. It had become clear to the people at the top that they could better manipulate the masses without free thinkers in the way. They did not want smart people noticing, that’s for sure. At the same time, it was deemed a good idea to train people for corporate niches that were becoming increasingly complex.
So liberal arts ideals were bulldozed away to make room for the career tracks leading directly into positions in management, medicine, law, and many new and highly specialized niches — usually the kind of specialization that would not occur until the postgraduate years, or after graduation directly on the job. I’m talking about such tracks as international finance and the like.
Students were no longer taught the great ideas of the millennia, ideas that had stood the test of time and influenced numerous societies and nations and individuals. Rather, if corporations were seen or heard to be needing, say, people knowledgeable in inter-managerial, midcorporate, communicative intercourse and response, well entire four year programs were built around that. Add that kind of narrowly focused citizenry with its ephemeral knowledge and you have the kind of population that will do the bidding of the overseers and be happy for their fat paychecks — until their narrow niche of “knowledge” becomes obsolete because of the development of a new way of approaching or handling things, equally as ephemeral, but more efficient or something, and itself to become outmoded eventually. They will be happy for their paychecks, not knowing of any higher ideals than greed and accumulation. They will not know of their manipulation, would not know of the historical predecessors to it or the like. They would not have training in original thought but rather in training in decided upon processes and procedures and the jargon accompanying it. So they would become rote learners of narrowly applicable and short-lived “knowledge.” This would remove the educated class as a barrier to any kind of totalitarian efforts.
So we can consider ourselves to be better in America. For totalitarianism — as, for example, under Stalin, Mao, or the Khmer Rouge — is usually accompanied by the slaughter of the educated. In my own lifetime, in Cambodia at least one million were killed wantonly, anyone with education was slated for death. But in America, we are better because we just seduce them away from higher aspirations of the soul to the lower base impulses that are satisfied with what money can buy. The corporations buy their talent and their potential for high achievement and all the rewards that come with rich lives of insight and personal growth; in exchange for their moneyed positions they receive an enlightenment lobotomy. Should they feel dissatisfied — as we psychologists and liberal arts thinkers know they will sooner or later — others of their kind who took the medical or pharmaceutical tracks have conveniently produced the sedatives, palliatives, and opiates to keep them numb. I guess you could say these are the “breathing holes” that Kurt Cobain talked about. They may put you in a jar, but they’ll give you “breathing holes,” and you’ll think you’re happy, he sang.
So this is the context of my life in terms of the increasing suppression of truth. Since Kennedy’s time and because of the Vietnam War protests, I have seen the increasing web of deceit cover this land. I have seen things with my own eyes that have been changed when reported to the country and written into history books. I have seen the 1984 of George Orwell creep into America unseen — slick and gradual and perfect, as only the best minds, paid handsomely by the people with the wealth, can concoct. A well-regarded book about Bush’s America recently published and tallying the actions and events of the last eight years concludes without equivocation that America had become a dictatorship.
I believe that to be true, but even if it did not rise to that level, whatever it did rise to did not happen overnight and just because of one administration. Bush’s dictatorship was the end result of the slick suppression of truth and manipulation of the masses that had its roots in the 50s, took the helm after killing Kennedy, and went into all-out war stance when confronted by the backlash of the educated in the late 60s and very early 70s.
As for what follows from here in this narrative: This if the story of one person’s life in those times. This is the story of one person’s involvement in those times as Forrest-Gump-like he found himself caught up in all the major trends over the last sixty years either through first hand observation or through the fact that as a writer and avid follower of the events of the day — in an era that seemed his whole life to be peppered with national and international surprises and upheavals, some positive; others mostly not.
In particular, it is the story of my quest for truth during those times. Through a coincidence of birth, genetics, and upbringing, and because in general a quest for truth requires too much time involvement and is usually not a higher priority over things like family and community, my quest for truth, foregoing family, wealth, and community ties, was unusual for my times. I found few fellow travelers. I had a life different from most, one which took me to live, to study, and to participate in places and with groups around and around the country for 40 years. Many of these groups and places and the activities and thinking would be considered exotic or alien to most Americans, and if they’d heard about these developments, for most people it was something that was happening far away from them with people they did not know, and was on top of that reported to them in a way to distort and misinform.
So many of the events of my life would not be well known, although some of the things I was involved in had major influences on our country. For example, the cessation of the building of nuclear power plants in the early 80s. Not many people could tell you why or how that happened. I was one of the people involved in bringing that about. I was not one of the major players up front. But I was involved full-time over a couple year period that led up to the events that stopped nuclear power construction to this day. I can tell you what happened.
What’s instructive is that at least one of the other persons involved once tried to get the story of what happened published. He wasn’t a writer and nobody cared to publish the story. It is one of those stories that you will only hear from our opponents and for most people it will have been chalked up to some confusing mysterious and random events. It was not. It was something that was desired, worked for, and hoped for by people who knew the dire consequences of nuclear energy and the people behind it who had no concept of that or conscience.
To put one leg of this narrative on terra firma I can tell you this at this time: Peter DeFazio, congressman from Oregon, was one of the players. This happened just before he won his seat; and if memory serves me it was one of the reasons that he won. He was one of the people who came in at the conclusion to play a critical role. I knew him casually, as an acquaintance. He was my neighbor at this time, too, living in the house across the street from me, in Springfield, Oregon. I personally canvassed him at his house on this issue for the organization I was working for. We had a nice talk about the nuclear and other issues. He contributed and was a member of our organization. He is a very, very good man.
I rarely heard of him on TV in the 25+ years since I left Oregon. He is one of the people who would tell you the truth, so obviously he would not be one of those speaking to you on TV. Interestingly, I have already seen him on TV since Obama took office, however. I don’t consider any of this to be coincidence.
As for my life and my quest, I can tell you that the pursuit of truth is a solitary journey. But, as I’ve alluded, I have an unusual and particular personal history in childhood that turned me a particular way. I also have a very common set of experiences in growing up that led me to the average American’s thorough belief in the transcendence of America, its superiority as a nation and a form of government, and as the leader of the free world, based on individual rights. I also was brought up believing that freedom of the press and the other rights and institutions — such as shared powers in government, a balance of powers — gave our country a foundation to provide like no other the discovery and the reporting of events most closely in alignment with the facts, the actual truth. That is the way I was taught; I had no basis or evidence to believe otherwise.
However, when I had my first personal experience with a major national lie at the age of 19 — one that involved an obvious collusion of State Department, Department of Defense, and all the major newspapers in America — I was shaken. When I saw that one day later all the local media followed up by headlining stories that further misinformed, and that nowhere was the truth of what one million people experienced on a day that would go down in history forever after reported inaccurately, I was further changed. Indeed, I have checked the history books and they tell the story of what I saw with my own eyes inaccurately, following the newspaper reports, which followed the reports from unknown sources in the Department of Defense. Even the idea that anyone would take Department of Defense’s version of the largest anti-war demonstration in history as the basis for the story of that day is telling.
Then I was to find out that the story of that day and its coverage was bigger in some arenas than it should have been. Howard K. Smith lost his job at ABC over the telling of the truth of that day. People remember him from the PBS channel; some of us who are older remember that he was one of the major anchors at ABC. What would cause such a precipitous event as his firing? Well, it had to do with the fact that ABC news was scheduled and fully prepared to do dawn to dusk coverage of Moratorium Day 15 November 1969. One million people flooded into Washington, D.C., the largest gathering for an event, save Woodstock, in American history, and for the purpose of stopping a war. Mom, Pop, and the kids and the students came from all 50 states. The buses were lined up and I personally saw buses that came from the West Coast, from Wisconsin, from Washington State, and so on. It was phenomenal.
Well, before coverage could begin over at ABC, as it turns out, word came down from “on high,” meaning outside of the news department. People like to say that it doesn’t matter who owns a media outlet, like, say Rupert Murdoch now owns the Wall Street Journal. They say editorial policy is not affected by who owns it. Well that day whoever controlled and owned ABC decided that their personal interests were going to be hurt by showing a gathering of that many people amassing against the war — one out of every 200 people living in America managed to personally show up, how many more would have come if they could, how many more would be at home watching and would be stirred and influenced by such a sight.
When Woodstock saw such numbers it was talked about in the media and it became history. But the people who pull the strings in this country pulled the strings at ABC that day and changed what would be reported as history. And it would be a lie. As for the News Department at ABC having independence. Well, Howard K. Smith, veteran and senior news reporter at the time was so incensed and so insistent on finding out who and how and why this coverage was changed from dusk to dawn to practically nothing, that it led to his dismissal. If he was angry about it, angry enough to get fired over it, can you not imagine that the entire News Department was against the change?
So who determined what would be the truth that day. Well, it certainly wasn’t news reporters. The story is only that it came from “on high.” I guess from that you can discern that ownership made the decision that day; and we have no idea how many other times it has done that. And we can only conclude that just the threat of interference will keep the media in line with the interests of ownership. And we can only conclude that when senior people, household names, are fired on the spot, that it sends a message that only grows stronger with the years, especially as ownership will make the decisions behind the scenes as to the kind of reporters it will even have working for them.
By the way, a more recent example of such a thing happening has to do with the dismissal of Dan Rather. You’ve probably heard the ownership’s slant on that story. You should listen to him tell the story some time. It’s quite different, and Dan Rather’s position, if it had not been undermined might have led to Al Gore, not George Bush, getting the Presidency in 2000. That’s another thing to think about when you think that we have a free press in this country; or if you should think that any ownership involvement in the news has little or no consequences.
Back to my story, this incident has to do with my understanding of the truth and history as it relates to the media and their coverage. For on the days following what should have been one of the major events in American history and should have been influential in the course the war would take after that day, my belief in America’s premier role, because of its supposed rights, such as “freedom of the press,” in being the most reliable in getting to the real story and reporting events as close to actuality as humans are capable of was shattered forever. Never again would I look at a story out of the mainstream press, no matter how widely reported and/ or held to be fact, without looking for the possible agendas and forces that would affect the veracity of what was being said.
So, again this is the story of my life, but more importantly it is the story of one person’s passionate quest for truth, and how he gradually uncovered a good deal of its many aspects — personal, historical, social, cultural, political, especially spiritual, and so much more.
Unfortunately while this story is personally gratifying, it has led me to the most disturbing truth of all time, something widely known, something dire, something so big that most people — in keeping with the times of smoke and lies — are finding it easy to look away, even at the cost of their lives and those of their children. (To be continued.)
Click the audio player below for my reading, with elaboration and context, on this posting:
“Smoke, Lies, and Revelations – Struggle for Truth During America’s Lying Times (Nov. 23rd, 1963 thru Jan 20th, 2009, + August, 2009): Part 1: 50s thru early 70s – Politics, Truth, and the Furious Market in Enlightenment Lobotomies” by SillyMickel Adzema sound bite History Unspun – the Smoke, Lies, and Revelations sound bites
_________________________
Oh, yeah, “they’ll give you breathing holes, and you’ll think you’re happy.” Kurt Cobain knew:
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>"Smoke, Lies, and Revelations – Struggle for Truth During America’s Lying Times (Nov. 23rd, 1963 thru Jan 20th, 2009, + Aug, 2009): Part 1: "50s thru early 70s – Politics, Truth, and the Furious Market in Enlightenment Lobotomies"
Posted by sillymickel in History on June 15, 2010
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Smoke, Lies & Revelations: One Person's Lifelong Struggle for Truth During America's Lying Time
Category: News and Politics
Smoke, Lies, and Revelations: One Person's Lifelong Struggle for Truth During America's Lying Times (November 23rd, 1963 through January 20th, 2009)
"Smoke, Lies, and Revelations – Struggle for Truth During America's Lying Times (Nov. 23rd, 1963 thru Jan 20th, 2009, + August, 2009):
Part 1: 50s thru early 70s – Politics, Truth, and the Furious Market in Enlightenment Lobotomies" by SillyMickel Adzema (sound bite From the Collection of Audio Presentations by SillyMickel Adzema titled: History Unspun – the Smoke, Lies, and Revelations sound bites
Click the audio player below for my reading, with elaboration and context, on this posting:
"Smoke, Lies, and Revelations – Struggle for Truth During America's Lying Times (Nov. 23rd, 1963 thru Jan 20th, 2009, + August, 2009): Part 1: 50s thru early 70s – Politics, Truth, and the Furious Market in Enlightenment Lobotomies" by SillyMickel Adzema sound bite History Unspun – the Smoke, Lies, and Revelations sound bites
SillyMickel Adzema was born just before the collapse of certainty and traditional truths in America during the 1960s. For many that decade, with the Vietnam War as the backdrop, was a time of confusion. The traditional bellwethers for morality and behavior had been undermined from several fronts. Honesty and truth had been — since the McCarthy era of the early 50s — shaky, uncertain, and vulnerable. With the rise of the power of huge corporations during this period, and with competition and profit rapidly eroding all values and making truth the servant of the (always hidden) agenda, truth and honesty were the first of life's pillars to be invaded and occupied. While it was gradual, secretive, and so went largely undetected, some astute observers were not fooled and even tried to warn the nation.
Books were written in the 50s about the changing values influenced or directly the result of the amassing of power in these huge corporations. These exposes increased in number during the early 60s — Organization Man (1956) by William Whyte, David Riesman’s The Lonely Crowd (1950), C. Wright Mill's trilogy on power: The New Men of Power (1946), White Collar (1951), and The Power Elite (1956), along with his obviously relevant Character and Social Structure (1953). Books like Erich Fromm's The Sane Society (1955) and Presthus's The Organizational Society (1963) made arguably more serious criticisms that the psychological map of Americans were being negatively affected in important areas.
The most significant warning came from the President of the United States who had presided over this post WWII rise of corporations. Dwight D. Eisenhower in his final televised address to the nation before leaving office warned against the power and influence of the military-industrial complex. Prophetic and prescient, his words — often quoted over the decades since — included "we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex…."
With Americans caught between opposing evils of confusion and anomy and being assimilated by corporate culture ("resistance is futile"), many suffered through, or clung to traditional ways, especially the elderly, and ignored the assaults on their credibility.
There was an astounding era of unity and enthusiasm during the Kennedy years, where corporate culture was subsumed under lofty ideals, which included both technological advance — and thus harnessed corporate energy in a positive direction, and social and intercultural advance, as for example with the Peace Corps. Fragmentation and anomy were forgotten as America believed it was involved in higher causes emanating out of the times that seemed powerful enough to propel everyone into the future with all the fragmentation following and somehow working itself out eventually.
When he was murdered, arguably by the Mafia but either in collusion or under pressure from powers aligned with that military-industrial complex, of which Eisenhower spoke, the floor fell out from beneath aspiring Americans, leaving them empty, directionless, and therefore vulnerable.
Almost immediately after JFK's murder, Johnson escalated the war and funding for it. America had its first coup; its first massive cover-up and Big Lie. Over the next forty-six years, with Republicans taking over soon enough and holding onto Executive Power for all but seventeen years, including Johnson's five years, the tendencies that began in the Fifties involving the gathering of power into fewer and fewer hands, and the use of that power to influence the beliefs, ideals, and even psychology of the masses, increased and became more severe, pervasive, and threatening up to the point of the outright lunacy and obvious deceptions and manipulations that were evident under George W. Bush. Only at that point, with year after year throwing up scandals, corruptions, misgovernment, several stolen Presidential elections, an unnecessary war, runaway deficits, and most significantly, right from the start, another massive transfer of wealth upward to benefit that small elite and increase their power, were Americans finally beginning to open their eyes to the ways they'd been lied to, used, and robbed by the rich and powerful. It took all that, which played out on the media nightly, year after year, with no recourse even for impeachment because of an ill-timed agreement between the parties about impeachment that had come out of the debacle of the impeachment attempt on Clinton, to create the cracks in the Matrix, or web of Big Lies built up over nearly 50 years. So that finally an authentic man, a man not of the powerful elite, could win the Presidency handily.
However, before that last event and over the course of those decades Americans saw essentially the rise of a one party government, a consolidation of the mass media and its subservience, along with the government's, to that same small group of people and powers, aligned with the huge corporation and serving its interests for profits and for enrichment of the already filthy rich. With most powers and most institutions, including education and publishing, orchestrated to the ends of a mighty few, there existed a pervasive — however very slick and clever — propaganda and cover-up apparatus constantly at work to fill or bend the minds of Americans along lines not in their interests, but rather those of these hidden powers with their corporate and political fronts. So pervasive and overwhelming was this effort at mind control and misinformation that it mirrored that of the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
Since it provided no comfort, motivating people through the strategic use of terror and the incitement to hatred, it left that aspect wanting and many people — pushed to desperation and irrationality because of the continual terror and hatred campaigns — ran to traditional religions or clung feverishly to any one of the many alternatives offering easy one stop full service truth — whether evangelical, political, ideological, or traditional.
In this context at no time was there an opening for the kind of rational or thoughtful, peaceful and considered pursuit of truth, insight, or enlightenment that had characterized the eras that had actually led to the birth of America and its system of democracy, freedoms, and rights. By this I mean that since 1963, there was little room in America for any of the elements that characterized the Reformation, the Renaissance, the Age of Reason or Rationalism, or the Age of Enlightenment — whose adherents and tenets spawned the American experiment.
Indeed, I personally observed the downfall of the ideal of education in the liberal arts. A liberal arts college education had been regarded, since the birth of America, as a preeminent basis for further education and for life and career in general for those who would be among the educated and eventually the leaders and decision-makers of society. Its ideals came directly out of the Enlightenment and Renaissance ideals of a well-rounded, diversely educated, and broadly knowledgeable individual and citizen. It was wisely considered that such broadly knowledgeable and broadly thinking leaders would benefit society in the wisdom, social consciousness, and moral conscience, indeed, selflessness, and social service ideals that would be part of that kind of exposure to diverse views.
But the Vietnam War had seen increasingly larger degrees of complaint, criticism, resistance, and defiance to its pursuit from these liberal arts campuses. I was on campus and was part of it. I also saw how the campuses were purged of the liberal thinkers — professors were fired, departments of philosophy, religious studies, history, and the other liberal arts were cut back, often to be eliminated entirely. It had become clear to the people at the top that they could better manipulate the masses without free thinkers in the way. They did not want smart people noticing, that's for sure. At the same time, it was deemed a good idea to train people for corporate niches that were becoming increasingly complex.
So liberal arts ideals were bulldozed away to make room for the career tracks leading directly into positions in management, medicine, law, and many new and highly specialized niches — usually the kind of specialization that would not occur until the postgraduate years, or after graduation directly on the job. I'm talking about such tracks as international finance and the like.
Students were no longer taught the great ideas of the millennia, ideas that had stood the test of time and influenced numerous societies and nations and individuals. Rather, if corporations were seen or heard to be needing, say, people knowledgeable in inter-managerial, midcorporate, communicative intercourse and response, well entire four year programs were built around that. Add that kind of narrowly focused citizenry with its ephemeral knowledge and you have the kind of population that will do the bidding of the overseers and be happy for their fat paychecks — until their narrow niche of "knowledge" becomes obsolete because of the development of a new way of approaching or handling things, equally as ephemeral, but more efficient or something, and itself to become outmoded eventually. They will be happy for their paychecks, not knowing of any higher ideals than greed and accumulation. They will not know of their manipulation, would not know of the historical predecessors to it or the like. They would not have training in original thought but rather in training in decided upon processes and procedures and the jargon accompanying it. So they would become rote learners of narrowly applicable and short-lived "knowledge." This would remove the educated class as a barrier to any kind of totalitarian efforts.
So we can consider ourselves to be better in America. For totalitarianism — as, for example, under Stalin, Mao, or the Khmer Rouge — is usually accompanied by the slaughter of the educated. In my own lifetime, in Cambodia at least one million were killed wantonly, anyone with education was slated for death. But in America, we are better because we just seduce them away from higher aspirations of the soul to the lower base impulses that are satisfied with what money can buy. The corporations buy their talent and their potential for high achievement and all the rewards that come with rich lives of insight and personal growth; in exchange for their moneyed positions they receive an enlightenment lobotomy. Should they feel dissatisfied — as we psychologists and liberal arts thinkers know they will sooner or later — others of their kind who took the medical or pharmaceutical tracks have conveniently produced the sedatives, palliatives, and opiates to keep them numb. I guess you could say these are the "breathing holes" that Kurt Cobain talked about. They may put you in a jar, but they'll give you "breathing holes," and you'll think you're happy, he sang.
So this is the context of my life in terms of the increasing suppression of truth. Since Kennedy's time and because of the Vietnam War protests, I have seen the increasing web of deceit cover this land. I have seen things with my own eyes that have been changed when reported to the country and written into history books. I have seen the 1984 of George Orwell creep into America unseen — slick and gradual and perfect, as only the best minds, paid handsomely by the people with the wealth, can concoct. A well-regarded book about Bush's America recently published and tallying the actions and events of the last eight years concludes without equivocation that America had become a dictatorship.
I believe that to be true, but even if it did not rise to that level, whatever it did rise to did not happen overnight and just because of one administration. Bush's dictatorship was the end result of the slick suppression of truth and manipulation of the masses that had its roots in the 50s, took the helm after killing Kennedy, and went into all-out war stance when confronted by the backlash of the educated in the late 60s and very early 70s.
As for what follows from here in this narrative: This if the story of one person's life in those times. This is the story of one person's involvement in those times as Forrest-Gump-like he found himself caught up in all the major trends over the last sixty years either through first hand observation or through the fact that as a writer and avid follower of the events of the day — in an era that seemed his whole life to be peppered with national and international surprises and upheavals, some positive; others mostly not.
In particular, it is the story of my quest for truth during those times. Through a coincidence of birth, genetics, and upbringing, and because in general a quest for truth requires too much time involvement and is usually not a higher priority over things like family and community, my quest for truth, foregoing family, wealth, and community ties, was unusual for my times. I found few fellow travelers. I had a life different from most, one which took me to live, to study, and to participate in places and with groups around and around the country for 40 years. Many of these groups and places and the activities and thinking would be considered exotic or alien to most Americans, and if they'd heard about these developments, for most people it was something that was happening far away from them with people they did not know, and was on top of that reported to them in a way to distort and misinform.
So many of the events of my life would not be well known, although some of the things I was involved in had major influences on our country. For example, the cessation of the building of nuclear power plants in the early 80s. Not many people could tell you why or how that happened. I was one of the people involved in bringing that about. I was not one of the major players up front. But I was involved full-time over a couple year period that led up to the events that stopped nuclear power construction to this day. I can tell you what happened.
What's instructive is that at least one of the other persons involved once tried to get the story of what happened published. He wasn't a writer and nobody cared to publish the story. It is one of those stories that you will only hear from our opponents and for most people it will have been chalked up to some confusing mysterious and random events. It was not. It was something that was desired, worked for, and hoped for by people who knew the dire consequences of nuclear energy and the people behind it who had no concept of that or conscience.
To put one leg of this narrative on terra firma I can tell you this at this time: Peter DeFazio, congressman from Oregon, was one of the players. This happened just before he won his seat; and if memory serves me it was one of the reasons that he won. He was one of the people who came in at the conclusion to play a critical role. I knew him casually, as an acquaintance. He was my neighbor at this time, too, living in the house across the street from me, in Springfield, Oregon. I personally canvassed him at his house on this issue for the organization I was working for. We had a nice talk about the nuclear and other issues. He contributed and was a member of our organization. He is a very, very good man.
I rarely heard of him on TV in the 25+ years since I left Oregon. He is one of the people who would tell you the truth, so obviously he would not be one of those speaking to you on TV. Interestingly, I have already seen him on TV since Obama took office, however. I don't consider any of this to be coincidence.
As for my life and my quest, I can tell you that the pursuit of truth is a solitary journey. But, as I've alluded, I have an unusual and particular personal history in childhood that turned me a particular way. I also have a very common set of experiences in growing up that led me to the average American's thorough belief in the transcendence of America, its superiority as a nation and a form of government, and as the leader of the free world, based on individual rights. I also was brought up believing that freedom of the press and the other rights and institutions — such as shared powers in government, a balance of powers — gave our country a foundation to provide like no other the discovery and the reporting of events most closely in alignment with the facts, the actual truth. That is the way I was taught; I had no basis or evidence to believe otherwise.
However, when I had my first personal experience with a major national lie at the age of 19 — one that involved an obvious collusion of State Department, Department of Defense, and all the major newspapers in America — I was shaken. When I saw that one day later all the local media followed up by headlining stories that further misinformed, and that nowhere was the truth of what one million people experienced on a day that would go down in history forever after reported inaccurately, I was further changed. Indeed, I have checked the history books and they tell the story of what I saw with my own eyes inaccurately, following the newspaper reports, which followed the reports from unknown sources in the Department of Defense. Even the idea that anyone would take Department of Defense's version of the largest anti-war demonstration in history as the basis for the story of that day is telling.
Then I was to find out that the story of that day and its coverage was bigger in some arenas than it should have been. Howard K. Smith lost his job at ABC over the telling of the truth of that day. People remember him from the PBS channel; some of us who are older remember that he was one of the major anchors at ABC. What would cause such a precipitous event as his firing? Well, it had to do with the fact that ABC news was scheduled and fully prepared to do dawn to dusk coverage of Moratorium Day 15 November 1969. One million people flooded into Washington, D.C., the largest gathering for an event, save Woodstock, in American history, and for the purpose of stopping a war. Mom, Pop, and the kids and the students came from all 50 states. The buses were lined up and I personally saw buses that came from the West Coast, from Wisconsin, from Washington State, and so on. It was phenomenal.
Well, before coverage could begin over at ABC, as it turns out, word came down from "on high," meaning outside of the news department. People like to say that it doesn't matter who owns a media outlet, like, say Rupert Murdoch now owns the Wall Street Journal. They say editorial policy is not affected by who owns it. Well that day whoever controlled and owned ABC decided that their personal interests were going to be hurt by showing a gathering of that many people amassing against the war — one out of every 200 people living in America managed to personally show up, how many more would have come if they could, how many more would be at home watching and would be stirred and influenced by such a sight.
When Woodstock saw such numbers it was talked about in the media and it became history. But the people who pull the strings in this country pulled the strings at ABC that day and changed what would be reported as history. And it would be a lie. As for the News Department at ABC having independence. Well, Howard K. Smith, veteran and senior news reporter at the time was so incensed and so insistent on finding out who and how and why this coverage was changed from dusk to dawn to practically nothing, that it led to his dismissal. If he was angry about it, angry enough to get fired over it, can you not imagine that the entire News Department was against the change?
So who determined what would be the truth that day. Well, it certainly wasn't news reporters. The story is only that it came from "on high." I guess from that you can discern that ownership made the decision that day; and we have no idea how many other times it has done that. And we can only conclude that just the threat of interference will keep the media in line with the interests of ownership. And we can only conclude that when senior people, household names, are fired on the spot, that it sends a message that only grows stronger with the years, especially as ownership will make the decisions behind the scenes as to the kind of reporters it will even have working for them.
By the way, a more recent example of such a thing happening has to do with the dismissal of Dan Rather. You've probably heard the ownership's slant on that story. You should listen to him tell the story some time. It's quite different, and Dan Rather's position, if it had not been undermined might have led to Al Gore, not George Bush, getting the Presidency in 2000. That's another thing to think about when you think that we have a free press in this country; or if you should think that any ownership involvement in the news has little or no consequences.
Back to my story, this incident has to do with my understanding of the truth and history as it relates to the media and their coverage. For on the days following what should have been one of the major events in American history and should have been influential in the course the war would take after that day, my belief in America's premier role, because of its supposed rights, such as "freedom of the press," in being the most reliable in getting to the real story and reporting events as close to actuality as humans are capable of was shattered forever. Never again would I look at a story out of the mainstream press, no matter how widely reported and/ or held to be fact, without looking for the possible agendas and forces that would affect the veracity of what was being said.
So, again this is the story of my life, but more importantly it is the story of one person's passionate quest for truth, and how he gradually uncovered a good deal of its many aspects — personal, historical, social, cultural, political, especially spiritual, and so much more.
Unfortunately while this story is personally gratifying, it has led me to the most disturbing truth of all time, something widely known, something dire, something so big that most people — in keeping with the times of smoke and lies — are finding it easy to look away, even at the cost of their lives and those of their children. (To be continued.)
Click the audio player below for my reading, with elaboration and context, on this posting:
"Smoke, Lies, and Revelations – Struggle for Truth During America's Lying Times (Nov. 23rd, 1963 thru Jan 20th, 2009, + August, 2009): Part 1: 50s thru early 70s – Politics, Truth, and the Furious Market in Enlightenment Lobotomies" by SillyMickel Adzema sound bite History Unspun – the Smoke, Lies, and Revelations sound bites
_________________________
Oh, yeah, "they'll give you breathing holes, and you'll think you're happy." Kurt Cobain knew:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BE1KRj5iiM
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Ok we’re commiting species-suicide; but how DARE we become species-suicide-bombers killing all OTHER life with us
Posted by sillymickel in History on June 12, 2010
Ok we’re commiting species-suicide; but how dare we become species-suicide-bombers killing all OTHER life with us
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>Ok we’re commiting species-suicide; but how DARE we become species-suicide-bombers killing all OTHER life with us
Posted by sillymickel in History on June 12, 2010
>
Ok we’re commiting species-suicide; but how dare we become species-suicide-bombers killing all OTHER life with us
This got me to thinking. Of course what I know confirms his conclusions in spades, but I couldn’t help feeling irked by his all-too-familiar perspective. For, to me, it is not just about our species. It is not just about our extinction. It is not just suicide, but murder. Recently, Open Intelligence used the term, “ecocide,” to make this kind of point.
I checked on the actual number of species recently, which currently are on our planet, and the number was estimated at 500 million SPECIES. I think the whole problem IS that we only see “life” in terms of “our” life — our species. Indeed, some people think only in terms of life being for those of their religion, nation, social group, tribe, family, or even just oneself — all of which aid the murder of those who are “not life.” So, Leslie is apparently thinking along the lines of many others who are not seeing the tragedy we are perpetrating to those other than our species, which is a milder form of the bigotry and prejudice we hold for one human against another type of human. I think that is a shame.
But then we cannot seem to even wake up people to saving themselves or their children, so how we get them to empathize with the trillions upon trillions of other lives and the multimillions of other life forms we share this planet with.
I guess that is my problem with his approach: It comes from my feeling that: OK, we are committing suicide, but maybe we fucking deserve it. But how DARE we “blow up” — like a species suicide bomber — without a second thought for their pain or their lives — which we are only too dumb, and ego- species-centric, bigoted to see, let alone empathize with — as simple “collateral damage,” innumerable multi-bijilliion-trillions of innocent souls/ life forms and hundreds of millions of other entire species of them with us. That is murder of the highest degree, and an evil that this planet has never imagined before this time.
But, again, I see the point of talking to people where they are coming from as a starting point, as Leslie is doing. But shouldn’t we try to raise as much awareness as possible of, to me, the much greater evil that we are committing, for those who can hear it? I say, if we want to kill yourself off, fine. But how dare we sink to becoming the biggest mass murderers of all time, by a multimultitrillionfold? We are currently making the Nazis look like Mother Theresas by comparison. Can you say, “Gulf Oil Spill dead zones,” just for starters!
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SillyMickel Adzema
Culture War, Class War 